An Open Letter to Those Demanding a Ceasefire

"All we Israelis want is a permanent peace. Not another temporary ceasefire. We've had enough of those."

photo: John Cameron

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Dear Esteemed Ceasefire Enthusiasts,

Greetings from Israel, where we woke up just before 7 am on Saturday, October 7th, 2023 to rockets being fired indiscriminately at Israeli cities, plus the cherry on top of a full-scale invasion into several Israeli communities and towns.

Contrary to public opinion, the attacks were not orchestrated by antisemitic aliens who have nothing to do whatsoever with the Palestinians, although we are not ruling out that beings in outer space also detest us Jews.

In reality, it was Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and everyday Gazan civilians who invaded Israel, massacred some 1,200 people (the worst single-day attack on the Jewish state, ever) and kidnapped more than 240 others — on an important religious holiday for Jews, called Simchat Torah. Apparently, the Arabs have a knack for attacking Jews on our most cherished days (see also: the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 2002 Passover massacre).

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan is coming up in March, and some sections of the Muslim world will likely use this time to engage in virulent terrorism, bigotry, vandalism, and maybe even a “peaceful” protest or two.

In Israel, most of us appreciate plurality of religion, which is why, even though Israel is the Jewish state, we also welcome Muslims (predominantly Sunni), Christians, and perhaps those you may have never heard of: Druze and Baháʼí.

Meanwhile, across the rest of the Middle East, you will basically only find Muslims who insist that everyone respects the sanctity of their religious days (while not returning the favor).

Many of you ceasefire enthusiasts are therefore calling for a break in the action in Gaza before Ramadan starts. If not, Israel will probably be blamed for fighting Muslim terrorists who rape, pillage, maim, mutilate, and murder children, girls, women, and the elderly in the name of Allah — but definitely cannot be bothered during Ramadan.

The thing about calling for a ceasefire now or anytime soon is that it would force Israel to cease so that Palestinian terrorists (with their many supporters in Gaza, the West Bank, and across the world) can fire. All we Israelis want is a permanent peace. Not another temporary ceasefire. We’ve had enough of those.

As for you ceasefire enthusiasts, it is unclear to me if you find tolerable that Palestinian terrorists recklessly target innocent civilians, but my parents never taught me that it is acceptable to overlook a belligerent terror group which carries out the most heinous crimes against humanity, in the name of “resistance” and “liberation.”

Certainly there are those who believe Palestinian terrorists have nothing to do with all the uninvolved, harmless Palestinians — that there are 30,000 operatives in Hamas’ “military wing” and the other five million folks are plainly innocent because “we said so.” Never mind that multiple Palestinian polls from a variety of sources have shown that, since October 7th, a healthy majority of Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank support Hamas and what they perpetrated a few months ago.

I am familiar with the argument that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are merely afraid to say something bad about Palestinian terrorists; hence the skewed data in these polls. Fair enough, but why then are virtually none of the estimated six million Palestinians living across the world not demonstrating against Hamas in any protest-loving Western capital, or on any liberal-minded university campus?

Instead, many of these Palestinians and their friends are not just clamoring for a ceasefire, regardless of the remaining abductees, but they are chanting, “Gas the Jews!” and “Globalize the intifada!” while flaunting Jew-hating signs. Not all you ceasefire enthusiasts are participating in these chants, but how many of you are shouting them down?

I am all for people having their inalienable rights, and even their right to self-determination if they know how to behave themselves. And prior to October 7th, I was in the camp of those Israelis who would love nothing more than a peaceful two-state solution that hopefully could, once and for all, end this emotionally exhausting Israeli-Palestinian saga.

Now, it appears that many Palestinians do not share in our genuine desire for shared humanity, two states for two peoples side by side, and so many of you ceasefire enthusiasts are indulging these Palestinians by wrapping your arms around the genocidal slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

Please help me understand something: If you so are fanatically calling for a ceasefire because of the death and destruction in Gaza, while also parading around this slogan which historically and still to this day means the Jewish state’s death and destruction, what does that make you exactly? Surely anything but a flaming hypocrite, right?

The other thing that I still cannot understand is why you ceasefire enthusiasts are so overwhelmingly obsessed with the Palestinians.

I mean, I get it, they have contributed so much to our world in so many different fields; they have won so many Nobel peace prizes; they have made every country to which they have immigrated so much better; they somehow found a way to miraculously achieve refugee classifications that apply to no other group of refugees, ever, anywhere, past or present…

And I am sure you know that the Palestinians unbelievably managed to survive Israel’s rampant practices of genocide and ethnic cleansing. My goodness, we Israelis are just so utterly incompetent at trying to get rid of the Palestinians, yet for some strange and unexplainable reason, we do not have any issues with the Lebanese to our north, the Jordanians to our east, the Egyptians to our southwest, the Moroccans, the Emiratis, the Bahrainis, the Saudis…

I still cannot comprehend how we racist, oppressive, violent settler, white colonialist Zionists — of all people — made peace with every Arab country that desired it.

Do you know what else is mind-boggling? Many (Jewish) Israelis regularly vacation in Jordan, Dubai, and Egypt — and we live in Israel with more than the two million Arabs (of whom 1.6 million are Muslims) that are weirdly full Israeli citizens, even though we keep being told that Israel is an apartheid state.

I guess we suck at systemic segregation, oppression, and discrimination more than genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The point I am trying to make is that, aside from all these indisputable facts, it is just a tad bit bizarre to me that you ceasefire enthusiasts do not give to other underprivileged groups of people around the world even a fraction of the time and attention you dedicate to the Palestinians.

As someone who is genuinely a believer in sharing humanity with those who want to share it with me, I would feel exorbitantly awful to offer the Palestinians so many of my thoughts and prayers, while disregarding (or even not knowing about), for example, the Kurds, the Catalans, the Basques, the Rohingya, the Baluchis, the Yemenites, the Syrians, and the South Africans.

Why the South Africans? Well, irrespective of the likelihood that you were thrilled when South Africa’s government found the gall to charge Israel with genocide at the World Court, one person in South Africa is assaulted every two minutes, a woman is raped every 12 minutes, and someone is murdered every 19 minutes. Forget about the fact that four of the 20 most dangerous cities across the world are also in South Africa. I have no doubt, though, that it depends on the context.

And what about the Iranians, whose government is mysteriously the chief sponsor of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah?

In fact, I am not sure if you know but there have been virtually no anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian demonstrations en masse in Iran since October 7th, as opposed to the massive crowds that have thronged Arab, European, and North American cities in support of your beloved Palestinians.

You know what I like about the Persians? They are actually smart, well-reasoned, sophisticated people. Thus, their reluctance to take to Iran’s streets is due to the fact that most Iranians refuse to play the game of their Islamic fundamentalist regime.

A survey conducted in late 2022 found that, among around 200,000 Iranian respondents both inside and outside Iran, 81 percent of those inside the country were opposed to the Islamic Republic, and 99 percent of those abroad.¹ Even when pro-Palestinian protests have been organized by the Iranian government, turnout has been relatively low. The Palestinian cause is an obsession of Iran’s regime, not of its people.

Meanwhile, a recent wartime poll among Palestinians showed a rise in support for Hamas — you know, the world’s fifth-most active terror group — which appears to have increased even in the devastated Gaza Strip.²

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In mathematics, there is something called the “transitive property.” (I am aware that many of you ceasefire enthusiasts think math is inherently racist, so please forgive me ahead of time.) This property suggests that if two quantities are equal to the third quantity, then all the quantities are equal to each other.

For instance, if you profusely support the Palestinians, and the majority of Palestinians support Hamas, then you, my ceasefire enthusiast friend, support Hamas. Yikes.

Unimaginably, it gets worse: All of you ceasefire enthusiasts who have been kindly donating to “humanitarian” organizations in Gaza, that money is most probably going to Hamas according to a multitude of reports about how the terror group manipulates the guise of “humanitarian” organizations to fundraise for terrorism.

So you are not just supporting Hamas with warm and fuzzy words and social media posts; you are actually financing a terrorist organization whose charter includes things like:

• Hamas is an “Islamic Resistance Movement” that consists of “Muslims who have given their allegiance to Allah.”

• “Allah is its goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur’an its constitution, jihad its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”

• The role of women is to be homemakers and child-rearers, providing education and moral guidance to men and being the “maker of men.” (Shout out to all the feminist ceasefire enthusiasts out there.)

Truth be told, however, your verbal and/or financial support of Hamas does not bother me. There are worse things in the world. Rather, what bothers me is that you will not just come out and admit that Hamas tickles your fancy.

Or could it be that, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, being a bonafide antisemite (a Jew hater) is unfashionable? Could it be that the culturally trendy masquerade of “anti-Zionism” makes it easier for you to espouse your deep-seated loathing of the Jews? Could it be that you think we Israelis are a link in the chain of the “oppressor” class that should be dismantled in the name of liberating their “oppressed” counterparts?

Could it be that you are trying to impose your Marxist or communist agendas on the rest of society, even though Marxism and communism have a zero-percent success rate? Could it be that you believe Islamic terrorism is not the problem (which defies all relevant data sets), but rather the systems that Islamic terrorists oppose are terrorist?

Could it be that you think decolonization and safe borders apply to everyone, except for the Jews? Could it be that you have no bones to pick with the Jews, just with Zionists, even though the vast majority of Jews everywhere support Zionism, defined as the Jews’ right to self-determination in our indigenous homeland? Could it be that you are a diehard humanitarian advocate for essentially every group of people so long as they are not Jewish?

Perhaps, though, we can end on a positive note: Since many of you ceasefire enthusiasts claim that the Israelis are “living on stolen land,” I will be happy to vacate Israel as soon as you and everyone else in the world “living on stolen land” agree to do the same.

In the meantime, Am Yisrael Chai.

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1. “Why Iranians are not demonstrating en masse for Gaza, despite official rhetoric.” The Times of Israel.

2. “Palestinian poll shows a rise in Hamas support and close to 90% wanting US-backed Abbas to resign.” Associated Press.