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Let Gaza Counterfit a Victory

Displaced Palestinians return to Rafah, as a ceasefire deal between Israel and terror group Hamas went into effect, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Mariam Dagga/AP)
In the hours after a ceasefire was announced, the streets of Gaza erupted with celebration, with thousands of Hamas phones and cameras showing them parading whatever cars were left in Gaza, many hands holding up V signs and declarations of victory. Gazans have also attempted to show “victory” in their barbaric hostage release staged ceremonies. Iran, Russia, and their media proxies rushed to post all over that they had won—something we should not try to refute. Here’s why:
Firstly, Israel’s enemies have a rich history of losing by declaring victory or mischaracterizing reality. From the combat in Deir Yassin in 1948, when the Jerusalem Mufti’s propagandists lied to the Arab world, fabricating horrors committed against the Arab population, they spurred a mass exodus of the villages that were besieging Jerusalem, which helped rescue Jerusalem from the deadly siege it was under. The miracle of the Six-Day War was only possible because Egypt broadcasted to everyone that it had won the war, leading Jordan and Syria to enter the war and leading to Israel’s taking of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. To this day, Egypt has an annual “Glorious Victory of October Day,” celebrating their “victory” during the Yom Kippur War, despite the 10,000 Egyptian soldiers killed and 8,300 taken captive during the Yom Kippur War–which they lost.
After a year of crying genocide and pulling at every chord of victimhood and loss, Hamas’s echo chamber was jubilant with triumph. They posted as many pictures as they could, holding their fingers with victory signs to the best of their ability. Unquestionably, once they come back to find their homes, we will see them ask the world for sympathy and hear nonstop cries about the devastating price Gaza has paid during this war, yet now they are declaring victory.
My message to those who stand with Israel is simple: let Gaza declare victory. The enemies of Israel have always claimed false victories to their own detriment. Israel declaring victory runs the profound danger of the same hubris we have seen leading to the horrors of October 7th. Israel should not attempt to declare victory in Gaza lest it become complacent with the existence of Hamas in Gaza or let its guard down. Israel must not declare victory if not for the simple reason that the war continues until the very last member of Hamas.
If the Ayatollahs in Tehran or Gaza’s propagandists want to declare victory in Gaza, let us all embrace it and let them do it–the pictures speak for themselves. The Arab world is already making strong statements about the unfathomable amount of destruction inside Gaza and placing the blame for it where it belongs–the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Arab world knows what happened to Beirut, Syria, Yemen, and every other place that allowed itself to become a proxy of Iran–chaos and destruction have ensued. For Israel to declare victory in Gaza would mean to say the job is finished, which is far from true. So long as Hamas remains in control, so long as there is a single pistol or grenade in Gaza, the job is not over. Let Hamas and the Ayatollahs declare victory while the Middle East does what it has done throughout history: remind those who declare false victories that reality is stronger than fiction.
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