Israel Won the Battle

You heard me correctly.  Me, the person who’s devastated that our leaders capitulated and signed a “truce” with our good ol’ buddies, Hamas, said “we won.”

To backtrack for a moment, a ceasefire is a joke.  The IDF had the clear upper hand, and could’ve undertaken a mission to retake security of the Gaza Strip.  It would’ve been an Operation Defensive Shield 2.0, Gaza-Style.  The operation would’ve been long and costly.  There would be lots of casualties.  By no means do I discount that.  I very much adhere to one of Golda Meir’s best lines, “A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.”  But just because it’s tough and costly doesn’t mean it’s the wrong answer.

Instead, we gave in.  Israel wasted lots of money by calling up tons of reservists, who threw everything aside to serve their nation, just to be not needed.  Sure, we attacked some major targets.  But Hamas is not an animal that you just need to cut off the head to kill it.  Hamas is like a monster.  Cut off multiple heads, and they grow more.  Destroy their weapons and they work even more fervently to get them.  This is by no means the first truce Israel has signed with Hamas.  Yet it won’t be the last.  While Israel is trying to recover, Hamas is digging new tunnels and starting to amass new weapons.  It may not be a couple of days or even weeks, but it won’t be long before we’re at it.

Israel had a golden opportunity to actually retake security control.    Retaking security control would have been huge.  It would have meant that millions of Israelis can live normal lives.  The fact that we accept that residents of the South live in fear of missiles is an absolute travesty, and a moral failure of every single Israeli government that has allowed the situation to perpetuate, whether on the Left or on the Right.

So why do I say we won?  Because Hamas failed.  Their charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish people and the Jewish State.  Yet here we are today, going on with our lives.  Last night, as the ceasefire was being announced, I was sitting at a chuppa, the ceremony of a Jewish wedding.  At that moment, two people were wed “like the law of Moses and Israel.”  An unbreakable chain that dates back thousands of years.  We Jews have been getting married the same way since before we entered the Land of Israel.  Sure, different Jews have different customs, and some customs have changed over time.  But at its very core, we marry the same way.  And since the second Temple was destroyed, we break a glass to commemorate the loss of our holy Temple.  A Temple that once stood in Jerusalem, and will God willing stand there again.

And though Hamas (along with their Islamic Jihad partners and others) tried so very hard to wipe us off the map, there were yesterday, celebrating a beautiful Jewish wedding, the same way we’ve celebrated for 3,000 years, and the same way we’ll continue to celebrate for another 3,000 years.

You can try all you want, and use whatever form you want (weapons, genocide, even the media, PR campaigns, UN bid, etc.) to defeat us.  But we aint going anywhere!