In Israel, Hamas, and the Islamic Concepts Dar al-Islam Versus Dar al-harb I briefly described what Israel's minimum goals should be in her war versus Hamas:
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.
Then, after the war ends, any Hamas leader who survives this war should be put on trial for crimes against humanity both for the attacks against Israel and for using Arab citizens and Israeli hostages as human shields.
It is important to understand how Hamas became powerful enough to inflict such a devastating attack on Israel, because only through understanding the root causes can one figure out the best path out of this morass. As I explained in Gaza is Not an "Open Air Prison," Israel administered--but did not annex--Gaza from 1967-1993 before withdrawing from approximately 80% of Gaza after signing the Oslo Accords. In 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew Israel's military forces from the rest of Gaza and he also ordered the dismantling of Israeli communities in Gaza that housed more than 8000 Jews. This plan was known as "Gaza First," and it was conceived by fools whose shortsightedness is directly responsible for enabling Hamas to commit atrocities not just this past week but (on a smaller but still horrific scale) for the past several years. Those of us who replied to "Gaza First" by asking "And then what?" were branded as extremists, but--tragically--our perspective has been vindicated by current events. The twin assumptions of "Gaza First" could not have been more wrong:
(1) It was assumed that unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza would lead to peace.
(2) It was assumed that if Arab terrorists attacked Israel from Gaza after Israel withdrew then the outside world would understand that the Arabs are the aggressors and that Israel is entitled to defend herself.
Hamas' anti-Jewish atrocities invalidated the first assumption, and the growing calls for a ceasefire now that Israel is gaining the upper hand invalidated the second assumption. Would anyone have dared call for a ceasefire after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor or after Nazi Germany conquered most of Europe but before those tyrannical regimes were completely defeated? In any "normal" war it is understood that attacked countries are expected to fight back until the attacker unconditionally surrenders--but a different standard is applied to Israel because, quite frankly, Jewish blood is cheap in the eyes of the rest of the world.
It must be noted that even though many people and nations around the world have expressed support for Israel and the Jewish people we are also seeing irrefutable confirmation of what many of us have asserted for a long time, namely that Antizionism is Antisemitism, as Gary Willing eloquently explains:
Before October 7, 2023, it was possible to think that many who supported the anti-Israel cause were simply naïve useful idiots who had fallen for a propaganda campaign initiated decades ago by the Soviet Union and continued today by the United Nations and NGOs that used to stand for human rights. Surely, these "peace activists" wouldn't support acts of genocide, the murder of babies and Holocaust survivors, right?
Wrong.
The demonstrations in support of the Palestinian Arab "cause" which followed the first reports of the massacre in New York City, in London, in Sydney Australia, were demonstrations in support of evil, in support of ISIS clones, of modern-day Nazis.
On Sunday, the Democratic Socialists of America held a rally in Manhattan in celebration of the massacre. Hundreds of people gathered to pay tribute to the worst of humanity. Participants chanted "globalize the Intifada," a call that can only be interpreted as the desire to expand Hamas' atrocities to Jewish communities across the world.
These glorifiers of evil chanted "700," the number of confirmed fatalities from Hamas' massacre at the time of their demonstration of inhumanity. They chanted "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free," the favorite chant of Hamas supporters who wish genocide on the millions of Jews in the State of Israel with no regard for its recognition by the UN in 1948. One of the speakers spoke at length of how happy he was that 260 "hipsters" were murdered at a music festival for peace.
In London, Islamists marched and drove through the streets in celebration of the massacre, chanting "Allahu Akbar" and setting off fireworks. One Hamas admirer called the massacre "victory," "beautiful" and "inspiring." "We need to celebrate these acts of resistance because this is a success," she said.
In the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green, the windows of a kosher restaurant were smashed, and "Free Palestine" graffiti was written on an overpass just feet away from the restaurant.
Perhaps the most despicable demonstration of evil occurred in an orgy of hate outside the famous Sydney Opera House in Australia. There, Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun told the 1,000 who gathered to show their hatred of Jews, "I'm smiling and I'm happy. I'm elated."
"It's a day of courage. It's a day of pride. It's a day of victory. This is the day we've been waiting for!" he said with no shame, about the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians, of God-knows how many babies. This man has a master's degree in human rights.
The hate-fest continued as the demonstrators demonstrated their support not only for the Hamas massacre, but for the Holocaust itself, and their desire to see the Holocaust repeated. "Gas the Jews," they chanted over and over again, along with "f-ck the Jews."
This is what the anti-Israel movement is, and what it has always been...
The mask is off. The true purpose of the global anti-Israel movement was to facilitate the kind of slaughter we saw on Saturday. That is why they are celebrating now. That is why they make excuses for an act of genocide and seek to hamstring Israel hoping that Hamas will do it again and again until Israel and its millions of Jews are no more.
There are two sides--the side of those who seek to finish what the Nazis started, and the side of basic human decency. Whose side are you on?
It cannot be emphasized enough that Israel's enemies--including Iran, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority--actively deny that the Holocaust happened while aspiring to create a second Holocaust to kill every Jew in the world. I mentioned the Palestinian Authority because many people pretend that the PA is a moderate organization. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is a product of the Soviet system who wrote a dissertation asserting that the Zionist movement is just as culpable for the Holocaust as the Nazis, making arguments that have become quite fashionable among contemporary leftist antisemites/anti-Zionists.
Unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza has been an unmitigated disaster for Israel, culminating in the worst single day massacre suffered by the Jewish people since the Holocaust followed not by the sympathy and support for Israel and the Jewish people that the architects of "Gaza First" expected but rather by an enthusiastic and joyful outpouring of vile antisemitism by people who are proud to publicly show their true colors--and those people include members of the U.S. Congress, most notably the execrable "Squad." Anyone who ever again votes for a member of the "Squad" is either a fool or an unrepentant antisemite. What purpose is served by supporting "leaders" who are singlemindedly focused not on governing the U.S. but on promoting genocidal antisemitism? These hypocritical self-proclaimed "progressives" cannot possibly be stupid enough to believe that any of their cherished causes are embraced by Iran and Hamas; the reality is that their main cause is antisemitism, and any other cause does not really matter to them: supporting Hamas in no way helps Black people, women, gay people, poor people, or any other community that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, or Rashida Tlaib claim to represent--but supporting Hamas provides aid and comfort to a group that promotes killing Jews and that is more than enough to garner the Squad's unconditional affirmation and support.
Other than Iran smuggling a nuclear device into Gaza for use against Israel, it is difficult to imagine a worse outcome for "Gaza First" then what we have seen for the past 18 years culminating in Saturday's atrocities. We must hope that the crimes against humanity just committed by Hamas shocked Israel into a clear understanding of what must be done next, regardless of how much the U.N., Human Rights Watch or anyone else will complain.
If Israel talks tough but then settles for killing a few Hamas leaders before signing a ceasefire that leaves Hamas intact then this war will be a major victory for Hamas and a devastating, humiliating defeat for Israel, with consequences that will reverberate for many years. No, Israel must completely fix the "Gaza First" mistake, and that can only be accomplished by eliminating Hamas--not "punishing Hamas," not "hitting Hamas hard," not "teaching Hamas a lesson."
Hamas must be eliminated, the same way that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were eliminated. Daniel Greenfield is right on target with his vision of what Israeli victory must look like:
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...
We fight things that are not wars to "stabilize" regions. Wars are not fought for stability, but destruction. To win a war, destroy the enemy. That's what the United States did in WWII, raining mass death and destruction on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in ways that still make modern liberals cringe.
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind," RAF Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Arthur Harris bluntly stated.
"The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that," Patton told the Third Army.
FDR's obsession with taking the war to Japan led to the Doolittle Raid. One of the bombs from that raid hit a school. "It is quite impossible to bomb a military objective that has civilian residences near it without danger of harming the civilian residences as well. That is a hazard of war," Doolittle had warned.
That is what war is. It's why wars should not be fought lightly. But when you fight them, fight to win.
A just war is based on a fundamental moral clarity about your enemies, not your tactics. War crimes are a meaningless term except when applied to violations of an agreement between the two combatants or civilians that are not a party to the conflict. That is not the case in Gaza. And is rarely the case when fighting Islamic terrorists.
The United States met the Japanese torture, execution, abuse, medical experiments and cannibalism of our troops with increased determination to win at any cost. This was the cost for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were not war crimes, this was how a regime of monsters that committed unspeakable atrocities was finally forced to surrender.
That is what fighting to win means.
Winning against Hamas does not mean dropping a few bombs on buildings, staging a limited incursion, taking out a few Hamas leaders and then letting Turkey and Egypt negotiate a truce. That's not a war.
Winning means destroying Hamas, its leaders, its terrorists and its supporters by any means necessary, and securing the territory they operated from so that it can't be used to stage similar attacks.
Incessant media focus on conditions in Gaza is puzzling. During World War II, did Western media outlets concern themselves with conditions in the Axis Powers Germany, Japan, and Italy? No--it was understood that if the leaders of those countries wanted to spare their citizens from further bombing then they would unconditionally surrender. Hamas can restore food, water, and power to Gaza right now by surrendering on the terms listed above. If Hamas decides to follow in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler and Emperor Hirohito--who preferred to see their civilians die than to surrender--then that is a choice for which Hamas will have to answer to the voters who elected them to power, and who cheer in the streets every time that Hamas kills a Jew.
After a November 18, 2014 terrorist attack during which two Arab terrorists killed five Jews in a Jerusalem synagogue, I quoted Caroline Glick's description of how a strong, proud nation would respond regardless of which direction the fickle winds of world opinion blow:
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.
Glick's proposed measures in response to a terrorist attack that claimed five lives are a good starting point for what Israel should impose on individual terrorists and terrorist groups moving forward after every attack. The days of accepting "minor" terrorist attacks and "just a few rockets" landing in Israel must end forever.
Greenfield's description of a war that is fought until the enemy is destroyed is a blueprint for what Israel must do after Hamas slaughtered more than 1300 people.
If Israel declares victory but there is one Hamas leader left free to fulminate about how Hamas will "liberate Palestine from the river to the sea" then Israel's self-proclaimed victory will in fact be a bitter defeat that will lead to a massacre even worse than the one Hamas just perpetrated, as Greenfield noted:
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.
This is not a pleasant message to deliver, and it is a message that many people do not want to accept or even hear--but rest assured that if Israel does not fight until achieving the kind of victory Greenfield and Glick described then Israel will suffer more mass casualty events, and mass casualty events perpetrated by radical Muslims will spread to other Western countries.
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