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Sherwin Pomerantz

 Time to Stop the War  

As Israel continues to fight its 375-day multi-front war, one would have to be blind not to recognize the following facts:

  • We seem to have successfully undercut Hamas’ ability to wage war and have done serious damage to Gaza’s infrastructure as well.
  • In Lebanon, we clearly have successfully eliminated the top three levels of Hezbollah leadership sufficiently to cause what’s left of the leadership to suggest that it is time to talk about an end to the hostilities.
  • Our land incursion into southern Lebanon seems to be somewhat successful in the attempt to clear a swath of land north of the Israeli border of any villages that could be used as bases from which to attack Israel.

 All of that is positive but…..

  • Significant barrages of rockets and UAVs continue to bombard central and northern Israel from Lebanon on a daily basis.
  • Sporadic rockets continue to be launched at Israel from Gaza.
  • Iran’s proxies in Yemen and Iraq join in the fireworks from time to time and lob rockets and UAVs at us as well.
  • We continue to lose Israeli troops in battle as well as from rocket fire as we saw earlier this week when a UAV hit a dining hall on an army base in Binyamina killing 4 and injuring 67.

As if all of this was not enough reason to find a way to end the war, those of us living here also have no idea what our end game is either in the north or the south.  If the political and military echelons know what it is, they have not shared it with us nor have they stated they even know what it is other than vanquishing the enemy, which tends to mean different things to different people.

However, in addition to all these reasons to end this war, a segment on Monday night’s NBC Nightly News really got me in the “kishkes” as they say.

The host of the show, Lester Holt, interviewed Jonathan and Rachel Polin, whose son Hersh was murdered by Hamas after almost a year in captivity in Gaza.  A strapping six-foot tall 23-year-old weighed just 115 pounds when he was buried, a victim of starvation as well as other things we will probably never know.

But the segment of the interview that has been on my mind all day is when Rachel opined that from her perspective, her late son Hersh, and all of the others hostages and their families, were simply “pawns in a game” as she termed them.   She then went on to say that “in chess, pawns are expendable and so” in her opinion, “Hersh was expendable.” No mother should ever ever have to think of her child in those terms……never!!!!

You can see the clip here:

When we Israelis begin to feel that our lives and those of our loved ones are nothing more than pawns in a chess game, that to our leadership we are “expendable,” whether it is true or not, it is time for the war to end.  Continuing the hostilities will simply rip the fabric of this country even further apart than it is today.  The level of immigration as reported in this morning’s press is already at twice the normal average and growing.

It would be a permanent blot on Jewish history if we know how the bloodshed, the dislocation and the depression can be addressed and then fail to do so. This government failed all of us on October 7th of last year by not protecting us from the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust…..we cannot allow them to do so now as well.  They know how to stop the war, so just do it.

About the Author
Sherwin Pomerantz is a native New Yorker, who lived and worked in Chicago for 20 years before coming to Israel in 1984. An industrial engineer with advanced degrees in mechanical engineering and business, he is President of Atid EDI Ltd., a 32 year old Jerusalem-based economic development consulting firm which, among other things, represents the regional trade and investment interests of a number of US states, regional entities and Invest Hong Kong. A past national president of the Association of Americans & Canadians in Israel, he is also Former Chairperson of the Board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and a Board Member of the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce. His articles have appeared in various publications in Israel and the US.