Israel Must Not Repeat the Mistake of Releasing Terrorists

It has been reported that Israel is close to reaching a deal with Hamas stipulating that Israel will release hundreds of terrorists--including convicted killers--in exchange for 33 hostages. Allegedly, the price for each released female Israeli soldier will be 50 terrorists. If this deal takes place, it will be an unmitigated disaster not only for Israel and the Jewish people, but for the West, because this will represent a tremendous victory for Hamas specifically and Islamic terrorists in general; it will demonstrate that terrorism works, that Israel is weak, and that if you resist Israel long enough then Israel will surrender. Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blasted the proposed deal as a "catastrophe for the national security of the State of Israel. We will not be part of a surrender deal that would include releasing arch-terrorists, ending the war, and erasing the achievements that cost us so much."

In the wake of Hamas's October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack, I explained the Islamic concepts of Dar al-Islam versus Dar al-Harb, and I defined what victory must look like for Israel: 

1) Hamas is eliminated as a functioning terrorist, military, and political entity.

2) Hamas' state sponsors--including but perhaps not limited to Iran and Qatar--must pay reparations for the killed, for the injured, and for the destruction of property.

3) All hostages held by Hamas must be released immediately and unconditionally.

Israel has fought Hamas--and Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis--for over a year and has failed to accomplish any of the above goals while losing over 800 soldiers in combat. It is not enough to kill a few top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and to kill or capture several thousand foot soldiers, because doing so did not eliminate Hamas as a functioning entity, did not punish Hamas' state sponsors, and did not secure the unconditional release of all hostages.

Israel has a pathetic history of turning not quite victory into total defeat. In 2011, Netanyahu signed off on a deal with Hamas, releasing over 1000 terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas. One of those released terrorists was Yahya Sinwar, the architect of Hamas's October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack during which Hamas killed more than 1200 people and took more than 250 hostages. One lesson that Sinwar learned while he was incarcerated in Israel is that Israel will pay almost any price in exchange for hostages, and that is a major reason that the October 7, 2023 attack included plans to take hostages. Sinwar terrorized Israel in three ways on that day (and ever since, even after Israel belatedly eliminated him): 

1) Hamas not only raped, tortured, and beheaded victims but Hamas livestreamed these horrors to inspire their followers and break Israel's spirit while proudly displaying the barbarism at the heart of radical Islam.

2) Hamas committed mass murder to devastate the Jewish people with a one day death toll not seen since the Holocaust.

3) Hamas took hostages to use as bargaining chips for the release of thousands of terrorists.

The title of Caroline Glick's column about the Shalit deal--"A Pact Signed in Jewish Blood"--says it all, and she wrote some prescient words about Israel's colossal blunder (emphasis added):

Untold numbers of Israelis who are now sitting in their succas and celebrating Jewish freedom, who are driving in their cars, who are standing on line at the bank, who are sitting in their nursery school classrooms painting pictures of Torah scrolls for Simhat Torah will be killed for being Jewish while in Israel because Netanyahu has made this deal. The unrelenting pain of their families, left to cope with their absence, will be unimaginable.

This is a simple fact and it is beyond dispute.

It is also beyond dispute that untold numbers of IDF soldiers and officers will be abducted and held hostage. Soldiers now training for war or scrubbing the floors of their barracks, or sitting at a pub with their friends on holiday leave will one day find themselves in a dungeon in Gaza or Sinai or Lebanon undergoing unspeakable mental and physical torture for years. Their families will suffer inhuman agony.

The only thing we don't know about these future victims is their names. But we know what will become of them as surely as we know that night follows day.

Netanyahu has proven once again that taking IDF soldiers hostage is a sure bet for our Palestinian neighbors. They can murder the next batch of Sinais and Gals, Noas and Ruths. They can kill thousands of them. And they can do so knowing all along that all they need to do to win immunity for their killers is kidnap a single IDF soldier.

There is no downside to this situation for those who believe all Jews should die.

In 2011, Glick predicted the hostage crisis that has taken place in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and it must be emphasized that the current proposed deal will ultimately not be about rescuing 33 hostages but rather about condemning hundreds--if not thousands--of people to be slaughtered. 

It is heart-rending to read the pleas to Netanyahu "Leave no hostage behind," because Netanyahu is compounding the insanity underlying previous lopsided deals by not even bringing every hostage home with this proposed deal. Minister Orit Strock (Religious Zionist Party) declared, "There are prices that should not be paid, certainly not before everything in the world changes, just before we can fight again without any restrictions. Just before the end of Biden's term, to come and make a deal whose exorbitant price suits a period that is almost over--it's not an achievement, it's an injustice and a lack of national responsibility. We need to cry out these things, we need to awaken these things. We need to talk about the hostages who, as it seems now, will be left behind. I call on all my friends in the government, do not ignore this price. Be brave enough to say no to this agreement."

There are still approximately 100 hostages (or bodies) being held by Hamas; what happens to the dozens who are not included in this deal? Netanyahu is betraying Israel and the Jewish people, and in one fell swoop he is poised to wipe out whatever hard-earned gains Israel made on the battlefield, because Hamas' leaders lounging in luxury in Qatar* do not care about the Hamas foot soldiers Israel killed in Gaza; those foot soldiers are just cannon fodder to Hamas, which also not only does not care about Arab civilian suffering but uses (and exaggerates) that suffering for propaganda purposes. 

Hamas' October 7, 2023 mass casualty terrorist attack exposed Israel's strategic and tactical vulnerabilities, and this proposed exchange reveals Israel's political weakness: Israel consistently permits her enemies to fight limited liability wars in which her enemies never suffer significant, permanent consequences for their actions. Israel should make it clear that the response to terrorism and war waged against her will not only be total victory on the battlefield but also the enactment of permanent political and demographic changes--Israel should annex Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and Israel should complete the population exchange initiated in 1948 when the Arab and Islamic states expelled almost 1,000,000 Jews. We have seen for over 100 years--dating back to before the rebirth of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel--that a large number of Arabs and Muslims will never accept peaceful coexistence with the Jewish people, so we have passed the point where the obvious solution must be enacted: Jews (and any Arabs/Muslims who will live in peace with Jews) living in Israel, and Arabs/Muslims who are unwilling to peacefully coexist with Israel living in any one of their more than 20 Arab/Muslim sovereign states spread out from Morocco all the way to Pakistan (a legacy of Arab/Muslim colonization of Africa, the Mideast, and Asia).

No self-respecting nation suffering what Israel suffered at the hands of Hamas would leave Hamas intact in Gaza--or leave Gaza under Arab/Muslim control--in the wake not just of the October 7 atrocities but in the wake of 20 years of Hamas atrocities. Israel tried the experiment of letting the Arabs/Muslims rule in Gaza, and the result of that experiment proved that the experiment should never be repeated. Israel must control Gaza to be safe, and Hamas must lose Gaza as a consequence of losing a war that Hamas started.

Imagine if Israel had never given up the land that she captured in self-defense in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. The Arabs/Muslims would be much less inclined to attack Israel if they knew that losing the ensuing war would mean permanently losing land. That is the way that normal nations wage war. Israel has tried to live by a "purity of arms" concept that is neither acknowledged nor respected by the rest of the world that slanders Israel as a genocidal apartheid state--but it is better to be slandered while controlling land and having peace than to be slandered while losing land and having no peace.

The Islamic terrorists boast that they will defeat Israel (and then the West, mind you--never forget that) because "We love death more than you love life." The  foundational documents for Hamas and Hezbollah explicitly state their goal to destroy Israel; unless Israel comes to grips with the reality that this is a kill or be killed situation, Israel's survival is in deep peril. 

*--As I noted in a recent article, it is imperative that President Trump confront Qatar for sponsoring Islamic terrorism and no longer perpetuate the lie that Qatar is a helpful mediator.

Benjamin Netanyahu's Most Important Task

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's place in history will be determined mainly by one thing: whether or not he prevents Iran from using a nuclear weapon to cripple or destroy the Jewish State. A national government has many responsibilities but the foremost responsibility is to preserve the safety of its citizens, for otherwise the national government has no reason to exist (and, upon failing to keep that responsibility, the national government would cease to exist). For her entire existence, Israel has been besieged by enemies who have sworn to destroy her. Many Israeli Prime Ministers have had to make fateful decisions in moments of crisis. In 1981, Menachem Begin took the bold step of disabling Iraq's nuclear program; Begin had survived the Holocaust and he correctly recognized that his most important duty was to make sure that nothing like the Holocaust ever happened again. Israel's preemptive strike against the Osirak facility was roundly condemned at the time but greatly appreciated a decade later during the first Gulf War.

Netanyahu is no Begin and it is not at all clear that he is up to the task of doing whatever is necessary to ensure Israel's survival. Netanyahu already has plenty of Jewish blood on his hands from his first term as Prime Minister, including 10 month old Shalhevet Pass, who was shot and killed on March 26, 2001 by a PLO sniper operating from the very Hebron hills that Netanyahu foolishly surrendered to PLO enemies who have sworn to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.

Forget that the land that Netanyahu gave away is part of the ancient Jewish State. Forget even that the land is part of the Palestine Mandate that was supposed to be part of the modern Jewish State but was instead partitioned by the British and then illegally annexed by Jordan during Israel's War of Independence. Simply remember that the land was used by Jordan in a war of aggression against Israel in the Six Day War in 1967. Israel is under no legal or moral obligation to cede control of that territory to anyone, let alone a terrorist group founded three years before the Six Day War with a charter focused not on "liberating" Palestine but rather on destroying Israel (yes, the territories the PLO purportedly seeks to "liberate" were not controlled by Israel when the PLO was formed).

Thus, the cowardly precedent that Netanyahu set during his first term as Prime Minister hardly inspires confidence that he will stand up to Iran's military and negative public opinion from various quarters in order to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, which is all but inevitable in the wake of the proposed agreement between the United States and Iran.

Caroline Glick optimistically believes that President Obama's disastrous deal with Iran could yet turn into a glorious defeat for Israel:

Last week's publication of audio recordings of former defense minister Ehud Barak discussing of Iran's nuclear program revealed that for the past several years, Israel's military and intelligence brass have blocked operations against Iran's nuclear installations three times. In 2010, 2011 and 2012 the IDF chief of General Staff and senior generals supported by hesitant cabinet members refused to carry out instructions they received from Netanyahu and Barak to prepare to carry out such a strike.

There is no doubt that one of the main reasons they opposed lawful instructions was their faith in Obama's security pledges...

Had Netanyahu kept his criticism of Obama's decision to give Iran a free hand to develop nuclear weapons quiet, the generals might have shrugged their shoulders and expressed gratitude for the shiny new weapons Obama will throw at them to "compensate" for giving nukes to a regime sworn to annihilate the country.

By making his opposition public, Netanyahu alerted the nation to the dangers. The top commanders can no longer pretend that US security guarantees are credible. Now they will be forced to kick their psychological addiction to worthless American security guarantees, accept reality and act accordingly.

Better eight years late than never.

The Americans weren't the only ones paying attention to Israel's fight. Israel's Arab neighbors also saw how Netanyahu and Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer left no stone unturned in their efforts to convince Democratic lawmakers to oppose it. And the regional implications are already becoming clear.

As the Saudis' willingness to stand with Israel in public to oppose this deal has shown, our neighbors have been deeply impressed by the diplomatic courage Israel has shown. If and when Israel strikes Iran's nuclear installations, our willingness to openly oppose the administration will weigh in our favor. It will impact our neighbors' willingness to cooperate in action aimed at removing Iran's nuclear sword from their necks and ours...

Obama's success will backfire first and foremost because thanks to Netanyahu's move to spearhead the public debate in the US, today two-thirds of Americans oppose the deal. Since Iran will waste no time proving just how devastating a mistake Obama and his fellow Democrats have just made, Obama's success makes him far less free to enact further steps against Israel than he was before the deal was concluded. The public no longer will give him the benefit of the doubt.

Moreover, since the deal is as bad as its opponents say it is, and given that most Americans oppose it, Obama's successor will face no impediments in canceling the deal and adopting a new policy towards Israel and Iran.

Hopefully Glick's analysis will be proven correct but it is disconcerting and alarming that on three occasions Netanyahu gave orders to destroy Iran's nuclear program only to see those orders disregarded. Since when do the inmates run the asylum? If that report is true, those generals should have been fired and put on trial for treason. Generals enact policy but they do not create it. What those generals did is the equivalent of a coup d'etat and, contrary to Glick's take on the situation, this suggests that Netanyahu talks a good game but lacks the power to put his ideology into action in a meaningful way. What kind of leader is disobeyed three times by his generals and takes no action?

Netanyahu is deluded if he is counting on meaningful help from the Saudis or any other Arab country. The Saudis may privately cheer if Israel destroys Iran's nuclear program but the Saudis will not help Israel to do so and the Saudis will publicly condemn Israel's "aggression" if Israel uses military force against any Arab or Muslim country, even if that country is an enemy of the Saudis.

Let no one misunderstand what is at stake here. Just like Adolf Hitler announced his program of genocide against the Jewish people very clearly in Mein Kampf, it is documented well past the point that any reasonable person could doubt that the destruction of Israel is a central policy goal of Iran:

The 1948 Genocide Convention lists incitement to commit genocide as a war crime. Much of the Iranian language regarding Israel can certainly be legally defined this way.

A common motif of incitement to genocide is the dehumanization of the target population. The Nazi weekly Der Stürmer portrayed Jews as parasites and locusts. In the early 1990s in Rwanda, Hutu propaganda described the Tutsis as "cockroaches." Before Saddam Hussein's operations against the Iraqi Shia population in 1991, his Baath Party newspaper characterized them as "monkey-faced people." Similarly, former President Ahmadinejad has called Israeli Jews "cattle," "blood-thirsty barbarians," and "criminals," while Iranian state-owned websites have explained why the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its population would be justified. Dehumanization has also appeared in other forms, such as demonization, in which the target population is labeled "Satanic"--a theme repeatedly used by Iranian leaders to describe Israel.

In fact, according to Prof. Gregory Gordon, who served as a legal officer for the first post-Nuremberg prosecutions for incitement to genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Iranian calls for Israel to be wiped off the map are "even more direct than much of the language from the Rwandan cases."

The following summary of Iranian leaders' anti-Israel statements from 2013 demonstrates the consistency of the regime's rhetoric, the clarity of its intentions, and the certainty of its beliefs. On top of all this, the statements serve as a reminder of the nature of a regime that is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability.

It is worth reading that article in its entirety to see all of the quotes--in English translation and in the original Persian--but here is a typical one from the Iranian Ministry of Defense: "If once the destruction and demise of occupying Israel was an impossible and unobtainable dream, today thanks to the historic and intelligent actions of Imam Khomeini, it has become possible and is actually in the process of occurring."

Iran intends to build nuclear weapons and it intends to use those weapons to destroy Israel, even at the cost of Muslim lives. Netanyahu's failure to protect Jewish babies from being intentionally targeted by Arab snipers is tragic but pales in comparison to what will happen if he is disobeyed by his generals for a fourth time. Nearly 40 years ago, Netanyahu's brother Yoni lost his life while leading a mission to rescue Jews from a hijacked airplane thousands of miles from Israel. Back then, Israel understood her duty and her responsibility and acted with energy and courage. Now, with the stakes infinitely higher, Netanyahu must not fail.

Those who think that these words are hyperbolic or should only be of concern to Jews ought to recall the path that Hitler took. Hitler signed treaties with England and with Russia when it suited him and then he broke those treaties when it suited him. He initiated genocide against the Jewish people while the world reacted with indifference, at best--but Hitler's ultimate goal was not just to destroy the Jewish people but to conquer the world. Similarly, Iran's plan involves not just the destruction of Israel but a world-wide jihad. Iran's words and deeds should be taken seriously not just by Israel but by the entire world.

The New Antisemitism and the Violence it Incites

For a brief period after the Holocaust, public expressions of blatant antisemitic beliefs were viewed with disfavor in Western society. That polite deference out of respect for the six million Jews massacred by Nazi Germany and her many accomplices gradually waned and, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks declares in the Wall Street Journal, has now largely disappeared:

This year, Europe's Jews enter Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, with a degree of apprehension I have not known in my lifetime. Anti-Semitism has returned to Europe within living memory of the Holocaust. Never again has become ever again.

Two principles of legal writing that I have learned in law school are "Is this true?" and "If this is true, why does it matter?" It is easy to document the reemergence of antisemitism in Europe; orthodox Jews in France are justifiably afraid to publicly demonstrate their faith lest they be accosted on the street and Rabbi Sacks cites a 2013 survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights that revealed that nearly one third of Europe's Jews are thinking of emigrating specifically because of antisemitism (that number is 46% in France and 48% in Hungary, two of many European countries whose native populations enthusiastically participated in the Nazis' program to kill every Jew).

The next question is "Why does the reemergence of European antisemitism matter?" Rabbi Sacks explains:

Historically, as the British Tory MP Michael Gove points out, anti-Semitism has been the early warning signal of a society in danger. That is why the new anti-Semitism needs to be understood--and not only by Jews.

Anti-Semitism was always only obliquely about Jews. They were its victims but not its cause. The politics of hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. It wasn't Jews alone who suffered under Hitler and Stalin. It is hardly Jews alone who are suffering today under their successors, the radical Islamists of Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Islamic State and their fellow travelers in a seemingly endless list of new mutations.

The assault on Israel and Jews world-wide is part of a larger pattern that includes attacks on Christians and other minority faiths in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia--a religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing. Ultimately, this campaign amounts to an attack on Western democratic freedoms as a whole. If not halted now, it will be Europe itself that will be pushed back toward the Dark Ages.

Many proponents of the new antisemitism attempt to cloak their hatred beneath alleged concern for human rights. They claim that they do not hate Jews but that they merely disagree with Israel's policies. Rabbi Sacks states that no one should be fooled by such rhetoric:

Human rights matter, and they matter regardless of the victim or the perpetrator. It is the sheer disproportion of the accusations against Israel that makes Jews feel that humanitarian concern isn't the prime motive in these cases: More than half of all resolutions adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council since 2006 (when the Council was established) in criticism of a particular country have been directed at Israel. In 2013, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a total of 21 resolutions singling out Israel for censure, according to U.N. Watch, and only four resolutions to protest the actions of the rest of the world's states.

Anti-Semitism has always been, historically, the inability to make space for differences among people, which is the essential foundation of a free society. That is why the politics of hate now assaults Christians, Bahai, Yazidis and many others, including Muslims on the wrong side of the Sunni/Shia divide, as well as Jews. To fight it, we must stand together, people of all faiths and of none. The future of freedom is at stake, and it will be the defining battle of the 21st century.

The new antisemitism threatens not only Jews and not only the State of Israel but rather it threatens civilization as a whole. Israel's enemies are barbaric in thought and in deed and if they are not confronted they will wreak havoc throughout the world. Sadly, even many Jews and the State of Israel fail to recognize this truth. On November 18, two Arab terrorists entered a Jerusalem synagogue and killed five people: Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, Rabbi Arye Kupinsky, Rabbi Kalmen Levin, Rabbi Moshe Twersky and Master Sergeant Zidan Sif, a police officer who died in the line of duty while trying to protect the synagogue.

In Responding to the Slaughter, Caroline Glick describes how--in contrast to Israel's weak, ineffective policies--a strong, proud nation would deal with barbarians who butcher rabbis in a house of worship and how a strong, proud nation would respond to the cheering populace that enthusiastically praises those barbarians:

The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred. The only difference between the past hundred years and now is that today our appeasement-oriented elite is finding it harder to pretend away the obvious fact that we cannot placate our enemies.

No "provocation" by Jews drove two Jerusalem Arabs to pick up meat cleavers and a rifle and slaughter rabbis in worship like sheep and then mutilate their bodies.

No "frustration" with a "lack of progress" in the "peace process," can motivate people to run over Jewish babies or attempt to assassinate a Jewish civil rights activist.

The reason that these terrorists have decided to kill Jews is that they take offense at the fact that in Israel, Jews are free. They take offense because all their lives they have been taught that Jews should live at their mercy, or die by their sword...

With regard to the individual terrorists, the government has made much of its intention to destroy the homes of terrorists. While it sounds good, there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of this punitive measure, which is a relic of the British Mandate.

Rather than destroy their homes, Israel should adopt the US anti-narcotics policy of asset seizure.

All assets directly or indirectly tied to terrorists, including their homes and any other structure where they planned their crimes, and all remittances to them, should be seized and transferred to their victims, to do with what they will.

If Israel hands over the homes of the synagogue butchers to the 24 orphans of Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky and Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, not only will justice be served. The children's inheritance of the homes of their fathers' killers will send a clear and demoralizing message to other would-be killers.

Not only will their atrocities fail to remove the Jews from Israel. Every terrorist will contribute to the Zionist project by donating his home to the Jewish settlement enterprise...

Israel should also revoke citizenship and residency rights not only from terrorists themselves, but from those who enjoy citizenship and residency rights by dint of their relationship with the terrorists.

Wives who received Israeli residency or citizenship rights though marriage to terrorists should have their rights revoked, as should the children of the terrorists...

The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.

There is an authentic Jewish response to barbaric terrorism and it is the response that any thinking, feeling person would advocate: total war. In the wake of the Jerusalem synagogue massacre, Rabbi Mordechai Tzion described why total war is just and essential:

We must remember that we are dealing with an enemy. We are at war. During war we are not merciful to the cruel.  One who is merciful to the cruel is cruel to those who require mercy (Tanchuma, Parashat Metzora 1. Yalkut Shimoni Shmuel 1 #121).  We are the merciful and they are the cruel, and when you are merciful to the cruel, you are cruel to your brothers and sisters. This is a war like any other war.  There is a concept of the total war which means that, while we do not look for wars (we are a Nation which loves peace, searches for peace, and loves all people), if someone attacks us, we respond with all our might...

I remember a joke--although it is certainly not a times for jokes--from Meir Uziel, a comedian and grandson of former Chief Rabbi Ha-Rav Ben Tzion Uziel: In the competition for Ms. Ethical among the 200 nations of the world, we always come in last place, since we are the only ones who show up!  We must certainly be ethical, but to our brothers, not the enemy.

During the Second World War, the Allied powers destroyed neighborhood after neighborhood in Berlin, because everyone understood that there was no other way to wage war. Did King Hussein of Jordan deal with Black September with child gloves? No, he killed 17,000 Palestinians and ended his Intifada once and for all. President Assad killed 21,000 Palestinians in one month when there was an uprising in Syria. And when Hamas wanted to take over Gaza, they killed many, many people. This is the language they speak and understand. This is how we must deal with them.

I remember that a terrorist once attacked a woman in Neveh Dekalim. She lay down on the baby carriage to protect her baby, and he stabbed her fifteen times in the back.  By some miracle, someone came and shot him and saved her.  Later, an unethical reporter interviewed the rescuer on the radio and asked: "How do you feel after killing a person?"  He responded: "The thing which I killed was not a person."  I remembered this and quoted it various times.  I once met someone and I said "shalom."  He said: "You don't know me but you quoted me.  I am the person who killed that thing which was not a person."  I said: "Yashar Koach--Way to go.  Your actions followed what the Rambam says in Moreh Nevuchim (vol. 1 #7)."  The Rambam discusses the "demons" mentioned in the Gemara.  He says that a "demon" looks like a person on the outside, but is a wild animal on the inside.  It is more dangerous than a wild animal in that it has intellect.  People periodically ask me: Is the theory that we came from animals true? I answer: "I do not know. I was not there. The question, however, does not bother me. What bothers me is whether we have left being animals."

Michael Freund also understands that the time and place for diplomacy/concessions by Israel toward her barbaric enemies has long passed:

Armed with guns, knives and a meat cleaver, our “partners in peace” shot, slashed and stabbed their victims, leaving pools of blood and horror in their wake, before being eliminated by the police.

It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable deed.

This act of Palestinian brutality was so heinous that even Israelis hardened by decades of terror responded with disbelief. Indeed, anyone still thinking of giving the Palestinians a state should take a long, hard look at the disturbing photos of the synagogue slaughter that are circulating online.

In one such picture, a Jewish man lies dead on the synagogue floor, wrapped in his tallit and tefillin and surrounded by blood stains, evoking scenes reminiscent of the days when the Cossacks massacred our people. It is a startling and distressing testimony to the savagery of our foes, to the bestial depths of inhumanity to which the Palestinians are willing to descend in their war against the Jewish state.

After all, what kind of human being wakes up in the morning, grabs a few weapons, and then walks into a house of prayer intent on maiming and murdering innocent people? Guns were not sufficient for these savages. They employed axes and knives, which are far more intimate and bloody weapons, the kind that require physical contact with the victim rather than the less personal act of pulling a trigger.

If it is possible for a person to strip away the Divine image with which he was created, then the Palestinian terrorists who perpetrated this attack have surely succeeded in doing so.

Frankly, I am tired of the meaningless mantras and barren babble of many of our politicians. The time for tough talk is over. Now is the time for tough action, for measures that will change the course of events and punish those behind this evil deed.

For God's sake, Jerusalem, Israel's capital, is under attack. Stabbings, stonings, premeditated vehicular attacks, rioting on the Temple Mount and now an assault on a synagogue.

The only way to stop this spiral of violence from spinning further out of control is to go to the source, to the root of the problem.

Simply put, it is time to topple the Palestinian Authority (PA) and declare to the world once and for all: there will never be a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.

We must be careful not just to focus on one terrorist attack or even the entire war to destroy first Israel and then Western civilization. It is important to remember and honor the men who were massacred. Zidan Sif bravely fought against the terrorists until they killed him. The four rabbis who were killed were scholars, gentle men of peace; they left behind 24 orphans. The following is reprinted from of the November 21, 2014 newsletter of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim/Jerusalem Chai:

A Plea from the Families of the Kedoshim Murdered this past week by Arab Terrorists

 









The widows and orphans of the four Rabbis who were murdered by Arab terrorists this past Tuesday in Yerushalayim issued a letter calling for national solidarity and unity.  

With broken hearts, drenched in tears shed over the spilled blood of holy men--the heads of our families. We call on our brethren wherever they are--let us come together so that we may merit mercy from Heaven, and let's accept upon ourselves to increase love and camaraderie between each individual and each community.

We ask that every person accept upon himself on this Sabbath Eve (Parshat Toldot, November 21-22, 2014), to set aside the day of Shabbat as a day of unconditional love, a day during which we will refrain from words of disagreement and division, from words of gossip and slander.

May this serve to elevate the souls of our husbands and fathers who were slaughtered while sanctifying God's name. God will look down from the heavens, see our suffering, wipe away our tears and put an end to our tribulations. 

May we merit seeing the coming of our Moshiach speedily in our days. Amen

Signed with a torn heart,

Mrs. Chaya Levin and family

Mrs. Bryna Goldberg and family

Mrs. Yaacova Kupinsky and family

Mrs. Bashy Twersky and family

The Jewish people have always wanted to live in peace with their Arab and Muslim brethren. Through hard work, sacrifice, ingenuity and toughness, the Jewish people have created an oasis literally (in terms of making the desert bloom) and figuratively; as Israeli UN Ambassador Prosor recently noted, "Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, less than half a percent are truly free--and they are all citizens of Israel. Israeli Arabs are some of the most educated Arabs in the world. They are our leading physicians and surgeons, they are elected to our parliament, and they serve as judges on our Supreme Court. Millions of men and women in the Middle East would welcome these opportunities and freedom."

The Arab terrorists who entered that synagogue with hate in their hearts and murder on their minds did not kill the so-called "peace process." That "peace process" never existed in the first place. Judaism is a religion of peace and the rabbis who were massacred were men of peace but none of that matters to Israel's enemies, who will not rest until every non-Muslim is subjugated or killed. This brings us full circle to the beginning of this article: Jew-hatred is the early warning signal of a society in danger; the world's reaction (or, sadly, non-reaction) to the Arab/Islamic world's systematic effort to destroy the Jewish State and to massacre individual Jews is a sorry reflection on the current state of the world.

Caroline Glick Describes Why Barack Obama's Mideast Policy is Misguided

Few writers speak truth to power about the Mideast as clearly and emphatically as Caroline Glick. President Barack Obama's policies vis a vis Israel, Iran and the PLO are misguided and destined to bring misery not just to the Mideast but to the whole world, as Glick masterfully explains in her most recent column. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon has been harshly criticized by the Obama administration for privately expressing grave concerns about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's bizarre obsession with forcing Israel to make concessions to the PLO but Glick notes that Ya'alon's assessment of Kerry's ignorance about the true nature of the Mideast political situation is echoed even by Israel's Arab enemies; Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab nations are very upset about the United States' reluctance to do anything to stop Iran's rapidly developing nuclear weapons program.

Glick astutely observes that U.S. officials feel free to publicly blast Ya'alon even though they held their tongues not long ago when Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal told journalist Jeffrey Greenberg, "There’s no confidence in the Obama administration doing the right thing with Iran. We’re really concerned--Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Middle Eastern countries about this." The Obama administration is not the least bit afraid that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have the courage to challenge their policies and/or speak up in support of Ya'alon; they know that Netanyahu will hang Ya'alon out to dry just like Netanyahu has betrayed the voters who thought that he would uphold the anti-terrorism principles that he espoused for years in his eloquent speeches and books, words that now seem hollow because of his consistent failure to implement them in his policy decisions.

Glick describes why Obama's Mideast policies are viewed with contempt by friend and foe alike:

Syria is a humanitarian and geopolitical nightmare with global implications.

Rather than do everything possible to strengthen moderate forces in Syria, like the Kurds, and cultivate, train and arm regime opponents who can fight both the Assad regime and al-Qaida rebels, Kerry has devoted himself to demanding that Israel release more Palestinian terrorist murderers from prison.

Rather than protect Lebanon from the predations of Iran and Syria to ensure its independence, Kerry is holding marathon meetings with Netanyahu to try to coerce him into helping the PLO build another Jew-free terrorist state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Rather than try to blunt the growing power of Hezbollah--Iran’s terrorist army--in Syria, the US’s policy is inviting Iran, the party most responsible for the war, to join the phony peacemakers club at Geneva.

As for the rest of the region, from Tunisia to Bahrain, from Egypt and Libya to Iraq, and Yemen, Kerry and the Obama administration as a whole are content to watch on the sidelines as al-Qaida reemerges as a significant force, and as Iran undermines stability in country after country.

Then of course, there is Iran itself, and its nuclear weapons program.

After the six-party nuclear deal with Iran was concluded on Monday, Iran’s leaders declared victory over the US. They boasted that the most dangerous components of their nuclear weapons program are unaffected by the deal they just concluded with the Americans. They laid a wreath on the grave of Hezbollah arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, who masterminded the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 243 US servicemen. And they forced Lebanon’s Sunnis to accept a Hezbollah-dominated government.

Obama administration officials publicly accused Ya'alon and Israel of being "ungrateful" but Glick sets the record straight:

Americans are getting the same message from allies throughout the Middle East. Under Obama, America’s regional policies are so counterproductive that the US has come to be seen as the foreign policy equivalent of a drunk driver.

As the US’s strongest ally, and also as a country that has depended for decades on US support, Israel is a passenger in the back seat of the car. On the one hand, we are happy for the ride. On the other hand, the administration’s driving is endangering our survival.

The United States and the rest of the world will long rue the fact that Barack Obama was granted two terms to misguide U.S. Mideast policy--but Israelis have to hope and pray that their country merely survives long enough to rue that fact, because even though Iran's nuclear program is a global threat it is an existential threat primarily for Israel, a reality that Netanyahuu can ill afford to ignore for much longer. 

Israel is Paying the Price for Two Decades of Strategic Blunders

Proponents of Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip used to call their plan "Gaza First," meaning that this would be a test of Arab willingness to live in peace with Israel: in theory, Israel would withdraw from Gaza and all would be well in the world, while if the Arabs continued to attack Israel then no one in the international community would criticize Israel for fighting back against unprovoked aggression. Critics of this strategic concept retorted "Gaza First--and then what?" It seemed patently obvious to anyone who has a shred of common sense--or the slightest acquaintance with Middle East history--that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza would neither lead to peace nor grant Israel any credit from the international community. Caroline Glick points out that the critics of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza have been completely vindicated:

Israel is in a strategic trap. And it is one of its own making. Starting with the Rabin-Peres government’s decision to embrace the PLO terrorist organization as a peace partner in 1993, Israel has been in strategic retreat. Each incremental retreat by Israel has empowered its worst enemies both militarily and diplomatically and weakened the Jewish state militarily and diplomatically.

Glick argues that Israel does not have any good choices now:

Israel has only two options for dealing with the ever-escalating threat from Gaza. It can try to coexist with Hamas. This option is doomed to failure since Hamas seeks the annihilation of the Jewish people and the eradication of Israel. Recognizing this state of affairs, in a public opinion survey taken on Wednesday for Channel 2, 88% of Israelis said that a cease-fire with Hamas will either not hold at all or hold for only a short time.

74% of Israelis opposed accepting a cease-fire.

The other choice is to destroy Hamas. To accomplish this Israel will need to invade Gaza and remain in place. It will have to kill or imprison thousands of terrorists, send thousands more packing for Sinai, and then spend years patrolling the streets of Gaza and arresting terrorists just as it does today in Judea and Samaria.

Whereas the first option is impossible, the latter option is not currently viable. It isn’t viable because not enough people making the argument have the opportunity to publish their thoughts in leading publications. Most of those who might have the courage to voice this view fear that if they do, they will be denied an audience, or discredited as warmongers or extremists.

Glick notes that writers who criticized Israel's appeasement strategy were shunned by both left wing and right wing publications:

All commentators who warned of the strategic calamity that would befall Israel in the aftermath of a withdrawal from Gaza were marginalized and demonized as extremists.

Glick concludes:

The millions of Israelis who opposed the withdrawal from Gaza do not seek personal vindication for being right. They didn’t warn against the withdrawal to advance their careers or make their lives easier. Indeed, their careers were uniformly harmed. 

They did it because they were patriots. They felt it was their duty to warn their countrymen of the danger, hoping to avert the disaster we now face. They should be listened to now. And their voices should be empowered by those who shunned them, because only by listening to them will we develop the arguments and the legitimacy to do what needs to be done and stop fighting to lose, again and again and again.

Caroline Glick Contrasts Yitzhak Shamir with Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir--who passed away last week--by saying that Shamir "was from the generation of giants that founded the State of Israel." Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick agrees with Netanyahu in principle but she insists that a larger point must be made about the particularity and rarity of Shamir's greatness:

But to do Shamir's memory the justice it deserves it is important not to obscure his personal greatness by bracketing him inside his generation. This is true for two reasons.

First, it was not inevitable that Shamir became a strong, dedicated, successful leader. Many in his generation were not...

The other reason it is wrong to view Shamir as a mere product of his times is because by doing so, we effectively say that there is no point in emulating him. If he only became the person he became because he lived through the times he lived through, then his story has nothing to teach us about what it means to lead, or to live a meaningful, good life in the service of a goal greater than ourselves. And this cannot be true.

Glick brackets those eloquent remarks with choice vignettes about two other men who occupied the Prime Minister's office (I refuse to say "served as Prime Minister" because the only thing these criminals served is their own greed and perceived self-interest). Here is her description of Shimon Peres (about whom Moshe Sharett correctly prophesied in 1957, "I will rend my clothes in mourning for the State if I see him become a minister in the Israeli government."):

During Shamir's tenure as prime minister in the unity government with then-foreign minister Shimon Peres and the Labor Party from 1986 to 1988, Peres sought to undermine his leadership and bring about his defeat in the 1988 elections by collaborating with foreign governments against him.

According to top secret documents from 1988 first disclosed by Yediot Aharonot's Shimon Schiffer in June 2011, Peres collaborated with then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to destabilize Shamir's government. Peres also sought US assistance in subverting Shamir and fomenting his electoral defeat. Aside from that, in breach of both Israeli law and the expressed wishes of Shamir, Peres dispatched his emissary, then-Foreign Ministry director general Avraham Tamir, to Mozambique for secret meetings with Yasser Arafat.

Throughout his career, Peres, who is also a member of Shamir's generation, has distinguished himself as a politician who prefers his personal gain over that of his nation.

Glick does not state what should be obvious: Peres is the kind of "leader" that a proud country of sound mind and strong judiciary would hang for treason--but that is a subject for another article.

Glick also details the graft, criminality and incompetence of Ehud Olmert:

In a poetic coincidence of timing, as Netanyahu eulogized Shamir on Sunday morning, Netanyahu's immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, entered a courtroom in Tel Aviv for the start of his criminal trial related to the so-called Holyland Affair. Olmert is accused of taking bribes from the developers of the capital’s architectural monstrosity cynically named "Holyland," during his tenure as mayor of Jerusalem...

Unlike Shamir, Olmert is perfectly prepared to abandon the public interest to advance his personal comfort. During his tenure as premier, rather than stand up to US pressure for Israeli concessions of land and rights to the Palestinians, Olmert preemptively capitulated...

Olmert defends his behavior through a mixture of lies and self-justification. At The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on April 29, Olmert claimed that the Second Lebanon War was the greatest military victory in Israel's history. Apparently he thought we had forgotten about every other war Israel has fought. So, too, Olmert claims that he had no choice other than to submit to US pressure regarding the Palestinians.

Shamir's record is a standing rebuke of Olmert's excuses for his failures.

Glick acknowledges that Shamir twice caved in to pressure from the United States--first when he did not order Israeli retaliations in response to Iraq's Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War and soon after that when he agreed to attend the Madrid Peace Conference--but she opines that Shamir's concessions did not have long term negative consequences (I disagree somewhat because the precedent of Israel not responding to an attack was very risky, but I fully realize that Shamir may have felt that he had no other option given President George H.W. Bush's hostility toward Israel). Glick believes that those concessions by Shamir gave him the leverage to make the arrangement with the United States that resulted in one million Soviet Jewish emigrants moving to Israel instead of coming to the United States, a crucial influx of brain power and manpower that could yet save Israel (assuming that the Jewish State finds some miraculous way to avoid being annihilated by Iran). Glick makes a final, most important point: even though Shamir was often criticized for his stubbornness, powerful countries like China and India resumed their diplomatic relations with Israel during Shamir's tenure in office. Glick observes, "By standing up for his country, he earned the respect of the world--not just for himself, but for Israel as a whole. And in international affairs it is far more important to be respected than liked."

Glick concludes:

It is important to recognize that Shamir was the product not only of his times, but of his values and of the choices that he made throughout his extraordinary career. The greatest compliment one can pay another person is to say that he is a model to be emulated, and that his life should serve as an example for what a good life can and should be.

We were blessed to have had him as our leader. And his memory should be a blessing in the annals of Jewish history.

Caroline Glick Declares that Netanyahu's Deal is "A Pact Signed in Jewish Blood"

The title of Caroline Glick's newest Op-Ed piece for the Jerusalem Post--A Pact Signed in Jewish Blood--speaks for itself. Glick rightly declares that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's deal to release over 1000 terrorists to obtain the freedom of illegally abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit speaks volumes about Netanyahu:

At best, Netanyahu comes out of this deal looking like a weak leader who is manipulated by and beholden to Israel’s radical, surrender-crazed media. To their eternal shame, the media have been waging a five-year campaign to force Israel’s leaders to capitulate to Hamas.

At worst, this deal exposes Netanyahu as a morally challenged, strategically irresponsible and foolish, opportunistic politician.

Those are harsh--but quite correct--words from someone who used to work for Netanyahu and who defended Netanyahu publicly long after I came to the conclusion that the smooth-speaking Netanyahu can serve Israel well as a representative to the U.N. but is completely ill-suited for the task of being Prime Minister. Glick concludes:

What Israel needs is a leader with the courage of one writer’s convictions. Back in 1995, that writer wrote: "The release of convicted terrorists before they have served their full sentences seems like an easy and tempting way of defusing blackmail situations in which innocent people may lose their lives, but its utility is momentary at best.

Prisoner releases only embolden terrorists by giving them the feeling that even if they are caught, their punishment will be brief. Worse, by leading terrorists to think such demands are likely to be met, they encourage precisely the terrorist blackmail they are supposed to defuse."

The writer of those lines was then-opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu wrote those lines in his book, Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists.

Israel needs that Netanyahu to lead it. But in the face of the current Netanyahu’s abject surrender to terrorism, apparently he is gone.

I don't know what happened to the Netanyahu who wrote those words or the Netanyahu who once brilliantly presented Israel's case to the U.N. and to biased media members across the globe but Israel will rue--and might not survive--the day that it elected Netanyahu to the country's highest office.