The Impossible and the Messianic Right

“When faced with a choice between the impossible and the unacceptable, people will choose the impossible.” — A rabbi friend.

Everyone is asking what Israel’s plan for the “day after” in Gaza. The answers break down into two categories: The Right wants Israel to run it, preferably with new communities of Jews and, even better, without the current inhabitants. The Americans and the Israeli Left want someone else – i.e. not Israel.

The Right is labelled “messianic” by the Left. They mean that as an insult. The Right are largely religious to some degree, so they must believe in fairy tales, magic and miracles. The Left believe in facts and science and blah, blah, blah.

But whose plans are actually impossible fairy tales?

Suggestions on the Left range from a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority to the local clans, to Arab countries, like the UAE or Saudi Arabia, or perhaps a Western country. All these “solutions” have two things in common:

1. Ruling Gaza in a way that benefits Israel is completely antithetical to the other party’s interests.
2. They’ve all been tried and failed.

At least 75% of Arabs in the Arab-controlled areas support fighting Israel – and specifically Hamas’s actions. This is across the board – Judea and Samaria and Gaza. Any entity coming in is facing a hostile populace that will demand to rule itself, so it can continue attacking Israel. That ruling entity will be asked to forcefully stand in the way of the Gazans – to kill and be killed – to keep the Arabs from fighting Israel, which means for a fight that isn’t theirs. People don’t act against their own interests without a miracle, and which deity is going to do this?

There is also the element of insanity here – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

We’ve tried a foreign force, even a Western one. The British ruled this land from 1917 until 1948. They faced the same issue, the Arabs attacked the Jews AND the British. How did the British respond? They forcefully put down the Arab Revolt in the 1930s, destroying whole villages. They penalized the Jews – removing them from Hebron after Arabs massacred the community; preventing Jewish immigration in the face of Nazi persecution and preventing Jews from buying real estate or establishing settlements. Lastly, they looked for any way to get out of here, finally succeeding in 1948 and by the end, neither the Jews nor the Arabs missed them.

We’ve tried the PA. In Gaza, the PLO (which is the ruling power of the Palestinian Authority, or PA) lost electorally in 2006 and were then forcibly overthrown by Hamas. Nothing would prevent that from happening again. In Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank), the IDF conducts daily raids to apprehend or kill terrorists – often those who are commanders of the Palestinian Authority security services. The PLO also believes in fighting Israel, no less so than Hamas.

Before and during the British Mandate the clans did rule over the Arab populace, but they are not a separate entity from the populace and they never had a problem with massacring Jews, unless there was some larger threat. They also have no incentive to help Israel.

Have we, or anyone else, ever tried anything that worked? Yes, but you aren’t going to like it…

I feel the need to insert a disclaimer here to keep myself from getting arrested (Israel does not have a right to free speech), or from having this article removed – advocating for the following is considered racist in Israel and may be illegal. Therefore, I’m only stating facts, not advocating for anything.

In 1948, an estimated 800,000 refugees left the new State of Israel. Whether forced out or frightened out, it makes no difference. At the end of the war they were gone, and couldn’t cause any terror. The facts on the ground actually changed world opinion. Most nations now accept that “Green Line Israel” (territory conquered in 1948) belongs to Israel. The Europeans build businesses there (like Carrefour) and the Americans do not advocate building freezes in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Yet, to the “Palestinians”, a.k.a “The Resistance”, Tel Aviv is just as much an illegal settlement as Yitzhar.

So what would make expelling Gazans to Egypt impossible? That Egypt doesn’t want them? The military would just have to get them over the border, and not let them back. That seems doable. The US might stop arms shipments to us? It’s not clear that they could because of internal politics. It’s not clear that they won’t stop anyway, since the Biden administration does not want a war in Lebanon. Even if they did, it’s not clear we couldn’t do without them and rely on dumb munitions with more carnage.

In reality, the Left – and their American patrons – want the impossible and believe that a miracle will somehow make others (the PA, the UAE, Egypt, etc.) act against their stated interests. The Right wants the possible, but unacceptable. As I stated in the disclaimer, it is unacceptable to say there are Arabs who should be expelled; that the majority of the Arab populace wants to destroy the Jewish State; that the majority of Arabs are not just pining to be released from tyranny, after which they will all join us in a round of Hatikvah.

If expulsion is unacceptable, then what is acceptable? The status quo. A certain number of Israeli Jews killed per year, plus an October 7 every so often. How can I say that? Because it is what we are doing.