Dark days in Israel

As the month of Av 5784 (September 2024) draws to a close, there is a palpable mixture of anger, sadness and depression never before felt here in Israel. The bodies of six of our dear hostages, Hersh, Eden, Ori, Alex, Almog, Carmel (may their memory be a source of blessing), have been brought back to Israel by IDF soldiers. They were massacred by the Hamas monsters, shot at point-blank range, executed like the Nazis executed Jewish martyrs during the Holocaust. And then Roni, Hadas and Arik (may their memory be a source of blessing), three police officers murdered in a terrorist ambush near Hebron. In two days, 9 deaths, 9 funerals, families torn apart (may they be consoled among the mourners of Zion), millions of Israelis in tears in front of their televisions.

A handful of politicians with clouded judgment and appalling intentions immediately pointed the finger at the “usual suspect”, the scapegoat so long reviled: our democratically elected Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu. They are taking advantage of the despair of the population in the face of these senseless murders to inflame the masses and stir up civil unrest. They managed to gather the support of Israel’s main worker’s union, instructing them to paralyze the country and bring the economy to its knees by declaring an illegal general strike starting immediately.

But aren’t they pointing the finger at the wrong enemy? Israel’s real enemy is Islamism in all its forms: Hamas, its current armed wing, Hezbollah not far behind, the Houthis, Islamist Jihad, and above all Iran. To name Bibi as the enemy, is only useful to these crooked politicians in their quest to return to power, they who failed to do so through democratic channels. The WOKE inspired left throughout the Western world, including right here in Israel, has become expert at denying reality and imposing a new baseless narrative – after all, isn’t that what Wokism is all about? Their message is simple: get rid of Bibi and all the problems of the world, including Israel’s problems, will instantly disappear. We will live forever in peace, all the hostages the world over will return to the embrace of their loved ones, Jews and Arabs will love each other like never before, the economy will flourish, and Hamas will govern Gaza with foresight and generosity, etc. etc.

So today, Monday September 2, hundreds of thousands of citizens are taking to the streets, blocking traffic, going on strike, sometimes attacking the police. Ben Gurion international airport is closed for parts of the day, and some of the country’s biggest hospitals are limiting their activity to emergencies only. The violence in the words, slogans and demands of the protesters has led to fears of imminent civil war. With G.d’s help it will not happen, but many fear it may, a feeling never expressed before in modern Israeli history.

Many are wondering what Hamas’s strategy is, why did they kill those 6 hostages, why did they execute them so brutally? The following is only my opinion, but it seems to me that there was no particular strategy to justify this massacre. I believe that the terrorists who were keeping these hostages in a tunnel 20 meters deep became frightened, first after Farhan Alkadi’s release, then when they heard the IDF soldiers approaching towards them on Saturday evening. Perhaps they panicked, certainly they wanted to cover their escape, undoubtedly, they wanted to eliminate inconvenient witnesses. Hence this senseless massacre.

However, the Israelis reaction must have been a very pleasant surprise to the terrorists: all it takes is to kill 6 hostages for Israel to come to the edge of civil war? Not surprisingly, Hamas gloats. The headlines in the Arab press this morning can be summed up as follows: “Israel is on the brink of self-destruction”. Let us all be sure of one thing: if Hamas hadn’t anticipated this causal link before, they understand it very well now, and the fate of the remaining hostages will be made all the more precarious (G.d forbid), even more dramatic: what all these anti-Bibi leftists have confirmed to Hamas is that it only needs to kill a few hostages for the country to engage down the path of gratuitous internal hatred plausibly leading to self-destruction.

Mohamed Sifaoui’s comments on Hamas need to be read or listened to and understood (Mohamed is a well-known Algerian journalist and writer with an acknowledged expertise on Islamism). His message is dense, complex, and accurate. Allow me to paraphrase: 1- Political Islamism, of which Hamas is undoubtedly one of the most active branches at present time, has deadly, hegemonic designs on the whole of the West. Israel is but the first step in this conquest. 2- It is completely wrong to say that Hamas is just an ideology, and that as such it cannot be defeated. Perhaps we need to agree here on the term “defeated”. Sifaoui agrees with Bibi’s strategy: Hamas military capabilities and tunnels (its communication, circulation, and supply routes) must be destroyed, its leaders and as many of its fighters as possible eliminated, and it must be prevented at all costs from returning to power in Gaza or Judea/Samaria. This can be achieved. This must be achieved. 3- Islamist forces, including Iran, now know that בע“ה they will never be able to destroy Israel militarily. The recent humiliations of Iran and Hezbollah, as well as Tzahal’s military advances in Gaza, are here to remind them of this. But seeing the chaos they have created in the north and south of the country, the evacuations of tens of thousands of Israeli families, and above all, seeing the apparent implosion of Israeli society, they may now understand that they can make our country unlivable; they may even set this as a more realistic, albeit still devastating, goal. Remember this term: “unlivable”, we shall talk about it again later. And 4- (in my view, the most important point): if anyone really believes that they can negotiate and reach an agreement with Hamas, then they are grossly, even dangerously, mistaken. There is no example of a democracy reaching a trustworthy agreement with a terrorist movement. Not now, not in the past, as far back as one can look. Emanuel Kant brilliantly demonstrated this 230 years ago, this principle has never been invalidated.

The entire Western World is in peril today, having failed to recognize the threat of Islamic entrism in time. Most developed countries are now overwhelmed by a Muslim minority they have allowed to settle in their midst, and which they have tried to cajole in the hope of securing a loyal electorate. Biden and Harris need the swing states of the Great Lakes region and their very large Muslim population to win the upcoming presidential election, left-wing parties across Europe having lost their traditional working-class electorate are counting on Muslims to keep them on the steps of power, some of these countries are so dominated by immigrant Muslim populations that they have lost cities and counties to the Ouma (see the “Sharia applies here” signs in many English cities). So, yes, the leaders of these countries did persuade themselves, with a certain cunning, that the world (i.e. Israel) must negotiate with Hamas, making ever more generous, ever more suicidal concessions. Thus, they pressure Israel, again and again and again. But there is nobody opposite Israel at the negotiating table. Nothing can be worse than negotiating with yourself: you lose every time.

It is true that Bibi is responsible for the fate of the hostages. This is undoubtedly a crushing burden for him, an enormous weight on his shoulders, on his conscience. He is the democratically elected Prime Minister of the State of Israel. He bears the ultimate responsibility for everything that happens to our beloved country. But he is not only responsible for the 105 hostages in the hands of Hamas, he is also responsible for the 9.5 million Israelis, for their present lives, their well-being and their future. He is also responsible for the survival of the only Jewish state on the planet, the only country guaranteeing the security of all the world’s Jews facing ubiquitous, fast-growing antisemitism. Bibi is negotiating, of course: he owes it to the hostages, their families and our country. But he negotiates as he should, with the necessary firmness, and without ever losing sight of the nation’s best interests. Until other leading politicians understand the true nature of Hamas, and the risks of the international community pushing us into hazardous negotiations, Bibi must remain in place. We all know he is far from perfect, but do we really have a choice?