What should a nation do when its women and children are murdered and taken hostage.
Israel has the same choice it always had. That choice becomes clearer each year and with each atrocity.
It can carry out another "limited incursion" into Gaza, bomb the homes of some terrorists and then go home, hopefully with the hostages, and wait for something like it or worse to happen again.
Or it can actually go to war and win.
Israel, like America, doesn't win wars anymore. It has operations. It takes out terrorist leaders and occasionally terrorist cells. And then it goes home. But when home is within a stone's throw of where monsters live, then there's no way to go home. Home is where the monsters are.
A war ends with victory. The destruction of the enemy. The Islamic terrorists have been waging a war meant to end in victory since Israel was reborn. Unless Israel fights to win, it will be lost.
What does a war look like? It is not "proportionate" or "limited". It is not based on "deterrence" and does not end with a "truce". If at the end of the war, the enemy still exists, you have not won.
Israel has yet to fight a war against the terrorists. Let alone win one.
It's been 30 years since the Israeli Left sold the myth of peace with the Arab Muslim invaders in Gaza and the West Bank and under 20 years since building walls and defenses was sold as the alternative.
Neither of those were ever a viable option against a genocidal enemy.
The myth of peace and the myth of defense never took into account the reality of who the enemy is.
The enemy is not Hamas, a grand name for an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, backed and financed by Iran, it is a culture that has been out to kill Jews and all non-Muslims since the days of Mohammed.
What we have seen in the Hamas attacks, the murder of elderly women and children, the degradation of a murdered woman's corpse, and all the rest of the atrocities, comes from the same ideology and culture as the one that beheaded prisoners and burned them to death in Syria and Iraq, that raped imprisoned political prisoners so that they would not die virgins in Iran, and that sexually assaulted 12-year-old girls in Iraq by men who declared that rape "brought them closer to Allah." The same one that flew planes into skyscrapers, set off bombs at a marathon and drove trucks into spectators.
These are only a few of the more recent and notable atrocities in over a thousand years of terror.
It is impossible to live in peace with the Religion of Peace except in temporary truces or through strength. And strength does not mean possessing devastating weapons that a nation is too afraid to actually use. It does not mean building walls and hoping that each time the enemy comes, they can be thrown back.
The bloody lesson that is being taught yet again is that playing defense gives the enemy the initiative, the momentum and the choice of battlefield.
The Simchat Torah massacres are being called Israel's 9/11. They have one thing in common which is that both America and Israel came to believe that they could rely on intelligence and occasional targeted air strikes to hold off Islamic terrorists. But the terrorists only have to get it right once. They can and do fail most of the time, but when they succeed, a nation burns. Given enough tries, enough training and enough support, they will eventually succeed. That's simple statistics. And then what is happening now happens.
Playing defense is what leads to 9/11 or the mass butchery of Israelis that happened during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.
Playing defense is slow suicide.
The first rule of co-existing with Islamic Jihadists is that you can't.
You can't make peace with them and you can't have an 'understanding' with them. You can only deter them for so long. Eventually they will break through your defenses. And then planes will crash into skyscrapers and young people will be massacred at a concert. Worse will come if you don't learn those lessons.
Either you defeat Islamic terrorists or they will defeat you. The idea of a middle ground is an illusion that lasts only as long as your capabilities do.
The only thing that works is going on the offensive.
Going on the offensive what was made Israel possible. Draining swamps and making the desert bloom was all well and good, but it was citizen militias and then an early national military that made the country of an oppressed minority into a viable possibility by striking ruthlessly at the enemy.
Until the 1980s, Israel did not tolerate Jihadists within its borders. By the 1990s, it had not only learned to tolerate them, it had made a deal with them. By the oughts, it learned to accept them as a fact of life. Shvitzers with big titles bragged that there was an understanding, that the terrorists knew not to go too far or there would be more air strikes. By this decade, Israelis in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv got used to being in bomb shelters again. Now, the terrorists broke through in a full-fledged assault on Israeli territory beyond the so-called 'Green Line'.
There is big talk now about permanently ending the military capabilities of Hamas. I truly hope that it's sincere because such big talk has been heard before. And then the air strikes kill women and children in Gaza. The world condemns Israel. The United States threatens to cut off support. And it all falls apart.
Sharon's Disengagement from Gaza, as many have noted, has failed. The idea that Israel can isolate Gaza and prevent Hamas from killing more Israelis is deader than the estimated 700 victims. A number that will only continue growing. And it's been dead long before that.
Israel has a choice between eliminating Hamas from Gaza or reliving this Simchat Torah again. And worse.
There are no other choices on the menu. Neither peace nor deterrence will work. Only war.
A war ends when the enemy does.
How many times must we repeat Bialik's 'City of Slaughter' in a country that was built to put an end to such things? How many times must we go down to the graves of murdered women and children who died because we lacked, not the physical courage, but the moral courage, to put an end to their killers?
How much longer must we choose every other option but war while imagining that rejecting war is somehow noble or will spare lives?
How much longer must we live in a fantasy world in which hard choices don't have to be made?
When an enemy wants to exterminate you: your choice is war or death. Peace and deterrence mean death. War means survival.
Israel has the same choice it always had. That choice becomes clearer each year and with each atrocity.
It can carry out another "limited incursion" into Gaza, bomb the homes of some terrorists and then go home, hopefully with the hostages, and wait for something like it or worse to happen again.
Or it can actually go to war and win.
Israel, like America, doesn't win wars anymore. It has operations. It takes out terrorist leaders and occasionally terrorist cells. And then it goes home. But when home is within a stone's throw of where monsters live, then there's no way to go home. Home is where the monsters are.
A war ends with victory. The destruction of the enemy. The Islamic terrorists have been waging a war meant to end in victory since Israel was reborn. Unless Israel fights to win, it will be lost.
What does a war look like? It is not "proportionate" or "limited". It is not based on "deterrence" and does not end with a "truce". If at the end of the war, the enemy still exists, you have not won.
Israel has yet to fight a war against the terrorists. Let alone win one.
It's been 30 years since the Israeli Left sold the myth of peace with the Arab Muslim invaders in Gaza and the West Bank and under 20 years since building walls and defenses was sold as the alternative.
Neither of those were ever a viable option against a genocidal enemy.
The myth of peace and the myth of defense never took into account the reality of who the enemy is.
The enemy is not Hamas, a grand name for an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, backed and financed by Iran, it is a culture that has been out to kill Jews and all non-Muslims since the days of Mohammed.
What we have seen in the Hamas attacks, the murder of elderly women and children, the degradation of a murdered woman's corpse, and all the rest of the atrocities, comes from the same ideology and culture as the one that beheaded prisoners and burned them to death in Syria and Iraq, that raped imprisoned political prisoners so that they would not die virgins in Iran, and that sexually assaulted 12-year-old girls in Iraq by men who declared that rape "brought them closer to Allah." The same one that flew planes into skyscrapers, set off bombs at a marathon and drove trucks into spectators.
These are only a few of the more recent and notable atrocities in over a thousand years of terror.
It is impossible to live in peace with the Religion of Peace except in temporary truces or through strength. And strength does not mean possessing devastating weapons that a nation is too afraid to actually use. It does not mean building walls and hoping that each time the enemy comes, they can be thrown back.
The bloody lesson that is being taught yet again is that playing defense gives the enemy the initiative, the momentum and the choice of battlefield.
The Simchat Torah massacres are being called Israel's 9/11. They have one thing in common which is that both America and Israel came to believe that they could rely on intelligence and occasional targeted air strikes to hold off Islamic terrorists. But the terrorists only have to get it right once. They can and do fail most of the time, but when they succeed, a nation burns. Given enough tries, enough training and enough support, they will eventually succeed. That's simple statistics. And then what is happening now happens.
Playing defense is what leads to 9/11 or the mass butchery of Israelis that happened during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.
Playing defense is slow suicide.
The first rule of co-existing with Islamic Jihadists is that you can't.
You can't make peace with them and you can't have an 'understanding' with them. You can only deter them for so long. Eventually they will break through your defenses. And then planes will crash into skyscrapers and young people will be massacred at a concert. Worse will come if you don't learn those lessons.
Either you defeat Islamic terrorists or they will defeat you. The idea of a middle ground is an illusion that lasts only as long as your capabilities do.
The only thing that works is going on the offensive.
Going on the offensive what was made Israel possible. Draining swamps and making the desert bloom was all well and good, but it was citizen militias and then an early national military that made the country of an oppressed minority into a viable possibility by striking ruthlessly at the enemy.
Until the 1980s, Israel did not tolerate Jihadists within its borders. By the 1990s, it had not only learned to tolerate them, it had made a deal with them. By the oughts, it learned to accept them as a fact of life. Shvitzers with big titles bragged that there was an understanding, that the terrorists knew not to go too far or there would be more air strikes. By this decade, Israelis in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv got used to being in bomb shelters again. Now, the terrorists broke through in a full-fledged assault on Israeli territory beyond the so-called 'Green Line'.
There is big talk now about permanently ending the military capabilities of Hamas. I truly hope that it's sincere because such big talk has been heard before. And then the air strikes kill women and children in Gaza. The world condemns Israel. The United States threatens to cut off support. And it all falls apart.
Sharon's Disengagement from Gaza, as many have noted, has failed. The idea that Israel can isolate Gaza and prevent Hamas from killing more Israelis is deader than the estimated 700 victims. A number that will only continue growing. And it's been dead long before that.
Israel has a choice between eliminating Hamas from Gaza or reliving this Simchat Torah again. And worse.
There are no other choices on the menu. Neither peace nor deterrence will work. Only war.
A war ends when the enemy does.
How many times must we repeat Bialik's 'City of Slaughter' in a country that was built to put an end to such things? How many times must we go down to the graves of murdered women and children who died because we lacked, not the physical courage, but the moral courage, to put an end to their killers?
How much longer must we choose every other option but war while imagining that rejecting war is somehow noble or will spare lives?
How much longer must we live in a fantasy world in which hard choices don't have to be made?
When an enemy wants to exterminate you: your choice is war or death. Peace and deterrence mean death. War means survival.
Comments
Terrorists whose actions, whose nature, whose belief system and morals are the most awful example of what a human can be. They do not deserve sympathy. We can’t even put ourselves in their shoes and try to see their side. They don’t have a side. Hate and evil are not a legitimate platform to examine for worth or understanding. Full on rejection of all they entail is the only logical and moral response, not only for Christians and Jews, but for anyone with a functional intellect.
ReplyDeleteThe Israeli gov't is, and has always been, more concerned with what the so called international community thinks than its own constituents. It's more afraid of losing any love and validation from them than getting slaughtered by Hamas. The left identifies with progress Europe and the Arabs. The right now identifies with Trump (who wanted us to give up land), Christians (and their money). Co-dependence on a national level. We are in a #bittercycleofterror.
ReplyDeleteחדירה לישראל 2.0: מה קורה באמת? / Invasion of Israel 2.0: What is really happening?
Excellent!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. The people who need to listen won't, but we must speak anyway. G-d bless you.
ReplyDeleteBlah blah blah. What is now obvious is the following:
ReplyDelete1. The strategic defense paradigms of successive Israeli governments is now dead.
2. The strategic political paradigms of successive Israeli governments is now dead.
3. American influence over Israeli defense and political decision making is now dead.
4. The American model of exercising control over both sides of the conflict, to its personal economic and political advantages, is now dead.
5. Netanyahu's political life is now over with his American centric bias. It is crowned in failure and copious Jewish blood, as is this US administration.
6. The two state fiction used as a cover to permit terror and cultivated to service the development of diplomatic careers as exercises in political masturbation is dead.
Gaza should be razed and its people dispersed back into Egypt. Aggressors that lose wars they start always lose territory as well. The fiction of 'palestine' must be brought to a unilateral end. If America wants another failed Arab terror state so badly, let them have Texas.
JontyD
Just brilliant
ReplyDeleteBoth true and tragic.
As a Christian, the Judea-Christian fundamentals of our privileged,blessed lives is solely due to the G-d that honours you as His People. And we who got to know it, after a mendicant rabbi of yours blew the doors off the Turquoise Temple under real Roman occupation.
The Green Health Cathedral of today is the same thing Clearly Israel has to go, according to the Globalists. The likes of Barak etc well placed to turn your nation into Schwabia. And Israel as we knew it before COVID and judicial activism of late would never have let this happen.
Amen! There is no peace to be had with a death cult that is sworn to wipe you out of existence. Israel, you must END THIS!
ReplyDeleteIf we don't 'deal' with the Amalekites, once and for all, they will keep coming for us. It is a multi-generational hatred that does not lessen with the passage of time. Much of the West have lost their will to win. My prayers are that Israel has not. Truly this is as good a 'Now of Never' moment as they're ever going to get. If Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are not shown the error of their ways we are all lost. I see the DSA 'wind-up' boys and girls protesting in the streets, supporting Hamas and the PLO. Stay safe out there, Daniel.
ReplyDeletee
"Shvitzers" is an interesting usage, but I don't know I would have employed it in this context; makhers. I think, might have been more appropriate.
ReplyDeleteThank you.You're one of the few, if not the only one who has made note of [Ariel] Sharon's Disengagement from Gaza: aka probably the biggest mistake ever made by an Israeli politician; Israel has paid (and will continue to pay) for this for decades until the Jihadis bring their defintion of peace to the rest of the Western world.
The other cause of this murder, rape, and general mayhem rests with the brilliant Israeli government that has, unlike the Swiss, disarmed its citizenry leaving them totally defenseless against just this type of incursion.
Just as a sidenote: the once, much vaunted Israeli intelligence services have been infiltrated by sincere leftists who believe that since they hold "peace" near and dear to their little hearts, the people, who read and believe that the Qur'an is a compilation of precise instructions from Allah that must be followed, must sincerely believe the same; it's just that their definitions aren't quite all that similar.
This article is excellent and strikes right at the heart of this tragic event. There will NEVER be peace, as Mrs. Meir stated, until they learn to love their children more than they hate us!
ReplyDeleteIf you said to a Jew in 1945 that there will be peace between Germany and the Jewish state, that Jewish and German soldiers will train together – you would be called ‘myshigine’, but:
Deletehttps://www.timesofisrael.com/luftwaffe-israeli-air-force-conduct-first-joint-exercise-in-germany/
https://youtu.be/oPsjjHvt7_w
We particularly need to go after the headquarters, not just the field office in Gaza.
ReplyDeleteThe older I get the clearer it becomes. Darker, dumber people crave killing lighter, brighter people whist the latter rationalize the former's brutality.
ReplyDeleteFunny – you wrote “It's been 30 years since the Israeli Left sold the myth of peace with the Arab Muslim invaders in Gaza and the West Bank”, but it was Ariel Sharon who gave back Gaza strip to Hamas. Was Ariel Sharon ‘Israeli Left’?
ReplyDeleteAnd how come Israel is at peace with Muslim Egypt, Muslim Jordan and Muslim United Arab Emirates, and Muslim Bahrain?
IMHO the problem is with fundamental faith.
Today, Hamas is a religious fundamentalist organization whose members not only kill innocent Israeli civilians, but also hang in their homes portraits of murderers responsible for murdering innocent people and who believe that Israeli cities should be wiped out.
Disclaimer: any similarity to the statements/behavior of Israeli ministers Ben Gvir or Btzalel Smotritz, if any, is completely coincidental.
Yes, Israel should fight Hamas, but in a smart way, not in religious fundamentalists who believe that killing innocent woman and children is the solution to military and moral victory.
The problem is we're not willing to win. And so we keep talking about how we can achieve a manageable state short of victory. We also dwell on the "innocent women and children" of our killers, while they enjoy killing ours.
DeleteCan we win under these conditions?
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