77 Years of Funerals and Rejected Peace

I did not become hardline. I simply ran out of reasons to excuse their terror amid more funerals.

I did not arrive at my red lines through ideology.

I arrived at them by burying our dead.

For 77 years, outsiders have asked Israelis the same insane question:

“Why don’t you just give them more?”

As if our history began in 1967. As if our borders are an academic feeling exercise. As if our children died because we weren’t polite enough.

We learned something the West never has:

We did not become hardline.  Reality hardened us.

History did not begin in 1967. It began when the Jews came home.

In 1922, the League of Nations Mandate recognized the Jewish right to reconstitute our national home — the original language.

Not “colonize,” not “settle.” Reconstitute. Restore.

Months later, Britain amputated 77% of the Mandate to create Transjordan.  We accepted it.

In 1947, the UN partitioned the remaining territory.

Jews said yes. Arab leaders chose war.

Israel’s first act as a reborn nation was compromise.

Its neighbors’ first act was attempted extermination of 600k Jews three years after the Holocaust.

The conflict did not begin because we “occupied” land.

It began because we existed.

The Palestinian national movement is not about a state beside Israel

Westerners project their liberal fantasies onto Palestinians: statehood, coexistence, “end the occupation.”

Those who actually studied Palestinian political doctrine understand something entirely different.

Former IDF intelligence officer and MK Dr. Einat Wilf stated it plainly:

“The Palestinian demand is not for a state alongside Israel, but for a state instead of Israel. They believe the entire land is theirs.” (Fathom Journal interview, Winter 2018)

That one sentence explains every negotiation failure of the past century.

You cannot bargain borders with a movement whose end goal is the erasure of your country.

Every war we didn’t start. Every peace we offered. Every answer: “No.”

1967

Egypt provokes war.

Jordan and Syria join.

Israel wins — and offers land for peace.

The Arab League responds with the Khartoum Resolution:

No peace. No recognition. No negotiations.

Historian and former Israeli ambassador Michael Orendescribed the core truth in Six Days of War:

“Arab rejection of Israel was not a consequence of the 1967 war; rather, the war was a consequence of Arab rejection.”

The rejection came first.

1973

Egypt and Syria attack on Yom Kippur.

2,600 Israelis killed in 19 days.

We still pursued peace.

The answer remained NO.

Oslo: we gave them institutions, weapons, legitimacy — and they gave us funerals

Oslo created the Palestinian Authority:

• territory

• police forces

• budgets

• international legitimacy

• a seat at the table

Israel got bombed buses, shattered cafés, knife attacks, and over 1,000 murdered civilians.

The United States’ chief peace negotiator, Dennis Ross, wrote:

“We offered unprecedented concessions, including a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.Arafat did not say ‘yes,’ he did not say ‘no,’ he simply walked away.”(The Missing Peace, p. 682)

Ross continues:

“He was not capable of closing. The Palestinian narrative he embraced made it impossible for him to end the conflict.” (p. 676)

Arafat didn’t misunderstand the offer.

He rejected the existence of Israel itself.

Disengagement and the fatal logic of rewarding terror

Israelis remember this in our bones.

Lebanon 2000

We withdrew.

Hezbollah missiles.

Gaza 2005

We uprooted every last Israeli.

Hamas rockets, tunnels, and eventually October 7.

Two generals — neither of them politicians — explain why.

Former National Security Advisor Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror:

“The Palestinians view concessions as weakness and weakness as an invitation to escalate.” (Winning Counterinsurgency Wars, 2015)

Former commander of IDF Military Colleges Maj. Gen. Gershon Hacohen:

“Disengagement did not bring peace because Hamas interpreted withdrawal as surrender.”(Makor Rishon interview, 2019)

Terror unpunished becomes terror rewarded.

We learned that lesson every time we tried to “give peace a chance.”

The world shields Palestinians from consequences — and punishes Israelis for surviving

Name another conflict where the aggressor:

• starts every war,

• rejects every peace offer,

• targets civilians,

• indoctrinates children to glorify murder,

…and is then allowed to demand the original deal as if nothing happened.

International law scholar Prof. Eugene Kontorovich wrote:

“No legal system allows the aggressor to claim the fruits of its aggression — to wage war and then demand the same terms it rejected before the war.” (Wall Street Journal, Aug. 11, 2015)

Only Palestinians are insulated from consequences.

Everywhere else on Earth, rejection has a price.

What reality actually validated

After 77 years, Israelis learned the truth the way burn victims understand heat:

Permanent Israeli security control west of the Jordan is not ideology.

It is the minimum condition for Jewish survival.

Let Palestinians have dignity, commerce, education, and local governance where they already rule:

Areas A and B — roughly 40% of the West Bank under Palestinian civil authority since Oslo.

But there will not be:

• an army,

• demographic warfare,

• or a second Gaza.

If they can live without killing us for generations — then we can discuss a political horizon.

This is not extremism.

It is trauma mathematics.

The moral core

I treat soldiers on my treatment table — injuries of all kinds: shrapnel still in them, strained muscles, torn tendons from clearing kibbutzim, hostage rescues, anti-terror work in Judea/Samaria or active duty in Syria, Lebanon, or Gaza.

The physical pain arrives with another kind: the loss of comrades, the empty beds, the sounds they cannot unhear.

They do not talk about ideology.

They talk about the things they cannot unhear or unsee.

Western universities chant slogans.

Israeli parents collect dog tags.

Students debate “narratives.”

We bury babies, teenagers and adults.

I did not choose these red lines

I am a Jew. I am Israeli. I live in a nation surrounded by movements who openly fantasize about our extermination.

After 77 years of wars we never started, peace offers we made and they rejected, and small graves dug for children who never chose this fight…

I did not become hardline.

I simply ran out of reasons to excuse their terror amid continuing funerals.

Let the remaining two hostages come home.

Let Israel defend itself without apology.

Let consequence finally replace indulgence.

This is the way.