Israel must end this war — by winning it.

Feeding the enemy, trading hostages for terrorists, and extending the war under the banner of morality are not acts of ethics; they are acts of madness.

An Israeli Air Force Commander speaks at a ceremony. (photo: Israeli Air Force/X)

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This is a guest essay by Bob Goldberg, who writes the newsletter, “The New Zionist Times.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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“Brutal, comprehensive, and swift” is how Henry Kissinger advised Israel on ending the First Intifada.

In the annals of wartime diplomacy, few statements are more jarring — and more correct — than Kissinger’s quiet counsel to then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Cut off the television crews, and do what South Africa did: Fight without apology, win without spectacle.

It was a hard truth delivered in soft tones. But it was truth nonetheless: When war becomes inevitable, the moral thing to do is end it — quickly, decisively, and without self-delusion.

Today, Israel is at war again. This time with Hamas. But unlike 1987, Israeli leadership isn’t being told to finish the job. It’s being told to hold back. To tread lightly. To feed the enemy, negotiate with kidnappers, and seek praise from the United Nations rather than protection for its people.

And while U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have signaled that maybe Hamas needs to be defeated entirely, we have heard that several times over the past year. I hope I’m wrong, but such assertions should not be taken seriously. Instead, the war will drag on. The hostages remain. The soldiers fall. And their families suffer. All for the sake of a delusion: that moral restraint in war means moral success.

It doesn’t. It is immoral.

Let’s start with the most scandalous contradiction in modern conflict: the belief that sending food, fuel, and medical supplies to your enemy is humanitarian. No nation has internalized this inversion more tragically than Israel. Since October 7th, it has been sending aid trucks into Gaza while its citizens bury their dead, its hostages languish in tunnels, and its soldiers fight booby-trapped corridors beneath hospitals. Israel is, in effect, the first country in history to fund both sides of its own war.

The delusion is global. The United Nations hails this arrangement as “restraint.” NGOs trumpet it as “empathy.” The media spins it as “civilized warfare.”

But as former Israeli politician Einat Wilf brilliantly pointed out:

“There are perfectly capable people in Gaza, as we saw on October 7th. That massacre required billions of dollars, years of investment in infrastructure, leadership, strategy, and vision, of the most perverse kind. What it shows is that the people of Gaza are not lacking capacity or resources. Their problem is ideological. It is not a humanitarian crisis; it is a political project of destruction disguised as victimhood. And what does the international system do in response? It keeps funding it.”

Wilf is right. Gaza isn’t starving because it’s poor. It’s starving because its rulers choose tunnels over bomb shelters, rockets over roads, and martyrdom over medicine.

To add insult to injury, by focusing on the situation in Gaza, Western governments and anti-Jewish media make it seem that if Israel would let the UN in, all would be well. In fact, the UN has turned aid distribution into suicidal humanitarianism.

During the Syrian civil war, the UN routed over $23 billion in aid through regime-controlled agencies that funneled food to loyalists while besieging opposition areas. The World Food Programme proudly reported that it fed nearly seven million Syrians in 2021, but neglected to mention that much of that food sustained the same military that gassed its own people in Douma.

In Yemen, UN agencies were forced — yes, forced — to use subcontractors approved by the Houthis rebel council, a regime that murders women for dress code violations and lobs missiles at Saudi civilian airports. Houthis-controlled agencies like the Bonyan Foundation, linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, now act as gatekeepers of humanitarian aid — skimming money, fuel, and food before anything reaches civilians.

After the 1994 genocide, Hutu génocidaires regrouped in UN-run refugee camps in eastern Congo. There, they taxed aid deliveries, built armed militias, and launched cross-border raids into Rwanda — all under UN protection. Goma became a haven not for civilians, but for militias rearming with Western-funded rice.

In 2009, al-Shabaab was skimming an estimated 20–to–80 percent of all food aid entering its zones of control in Somalia. They used stolen UN vehicles for bombings and extracted “customs fees” from aid workers. At the peak of the famine, the UN faced a moral dilemma: Feed starving civilians and enrich al-Shabaab, or cut them off and be called complicit in a humanitarian crisis. They chose the former. Al-Shabaab chose to bomb aid convoys anyway.

In Ethiopia, both Ethiopian federal forces and Tigrayan rebels were accused of blocking, looting, and redirecting aid supplies. As in Gaza, aid trucks became pawns on a strategic chessboard. World Food Programme warehouses were raided. Trucks went missing. Rebels distributed food not by need, but by allegiance.

In each case, the same pattern emerges: Humanitarian aid, designed to alleviate suffering, becomes a mechanism for prolonging it. In this context, in this struggle, Israel’s supply of food, medicine, and other materials is suicidal.

Here’s a fact you won’t hear at the next UN Security Council session: International law is not stupid. Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention permits aid to pass, but only under strict conditions: that it reaches children under 15, pregnant women, and the wounded, and that it is not diverted for military use. If there is credible concern that the aid will help the enemy, the besieging power may refuse it.

Let me repeat: Israel is not obligated to supply fuel, food, or water to Gaza. And certainly not when that aid is rerouted to Hamas tunnels or used to shield hostages.

Here’s Einat Wilf again:

“International humanitarian law was not written by pacifists. It was written by people who understood that wars must be waged, and wars must be won. It is stupid — yes, stupid — to supply your enemy while they’re trying to kill you. And Israel is being pressured to do just that.”

Indeed, the pressure has consequences. Every aid truck into Gaza buys Hamas another hour — every delay in total victory results in more IDF casualties, more hostage videos, more funerals.

Which brings us to the most dangerous moral mirage of all: hostage deals. Since October 7th, Israel’s war policy has been paralyzed by a single goal: the return of the hostages. Now, let’s be clear: The rescue of hostages is a sacred duty. Pidyon shvuyim (the redemption of captives) is considered one of the highest mitzvot in Jewish law.

But Jewish tradition is not naïve. The Mishnah (Gittin 4:6) teaches that captives must not be redeemed for more than their worth. Why? Because of tikkun olam, to prevent public endangerment. As the Talmud explains, paying excessive ransoms encourages more kidnappings and burdens the community. It’s not just a financial warning; it’s a warning against strategic collapse.

Ronen Shoval, Dean of the Argaman Institute, put it to more bluntly:

“The prioritization of hostage recovery above all else is a mistake. It signals to Hamas that kidnapping Jews is worthwhile. Hamas uses hostages as shields. They will not release them except through force. The longer we wait, the more soldiers die. The more children become orphans.”

And they have. The war has dragged on not because of a lack of military capability, but due to a lack of political will. Shoval again:

“Israel’s position right now is the worst of all: Soldiers are dying, the hostages remain, aid is flowing to Hamas, and there are no orders to win.”

This is not a war; it is a slow-motion hostage negotiation with gunfire in the background. The so-called “hostage deal” on the table — cheered on by European diplomats, editorial boards, and a small chorus of Israeli protestors — is not a plan to free all the captives. It is, at best, a theater of concessions designed to spare Hamas the fate it richly deserves.

Months have passed. Thousands of lives lost. Cities reduced to rubble. And what have we seen from Hamas? Not a single act of good faith. Not one verifiable list of hostages. Not one gesture suggesting an intent to end this horror. Just perpetual stalling, extortion, and ghoulish media manipulations.

But the real tragedy is not Hamas’ behavior; who expects morality from a genocidal death cult? The tragedy is that Western leaders and Israeli Far-Left voices continue to indulge the fantasy that if we just bend a little more, surrender a few more principles, offer another ceasefire, or release another batch of murderers, then, maybe, just maybe, Hamas will keep its word.

Meanwhile, unhinged voices in the West and Israel insist, as a headline in the Far-Left Ha’aretz blared, “Bring Back the Israeli Hostages, at Any Price.”

But the fact is, you cannot simultaneously provide a long ceasefire and unlimited humanitarian assistance (some are now urging Israel to flood Gaza with aid) and expect to destroy Hamas’ rule in Gaza and get all the hostages back. Each objective sabotages the other when pursued together.

In addition to the incoherence of the hostage-above-all ideology, there’s a missing reality check: Hamas will never release all the hostages. Never. They are its human shields, its bargaining chips, its insurance policy. To Hamas, hostages are not people; they are currency. And the moment you signal that kidnapping Jews is a winning strategy, you invite not just more terror, but a marketplace for it.

To leave Hamas intact, especially with control of humanitarian aid flowing through its tunnels and couriers, is to embolden that ideology. It is to fund it. Subsidize it. Reward it.

Every truck of fuel, every bag of flour, every ceasefire day spent resupplying Gaza is a gift to the very people who promise to repeat October 7th “again and again.” This is not conjecture; Hamas leaders explicitly said it.

What message does it send to Hezbollah, to the Houthis, to the next terror cell waiting in the wings when Israel trumpets its determination to bring back every hostage at considerable cost of blood, treasure, and social stability? That Jewish lives are negotiable. That terror works. That if you are cruel enough — if you dismember babies on camera — eventually, the West will tire and Israel will fold.

Let us be clear: Hostage rescue is a sacred duty, but not at the cost of making hostage-taking a national sport. Indeed, the Mishnah forbids paying excessive ransoms because it destroys the social order. Why? Because once you show you’ll pay any price, you’ll be made to pay every price. Again. And again.

The cost of this “hostage-first, Hamas-intact” strategy has been paid several times over.

As of July 2025, 895 Israeli soldiers, officers, and reservists have been killed in this war, including the initial massacre and ongoing operations. There 315 widows and widowers who will spend the rest of their lives speaking to tombstones. There are over 600 orphans who will never again celebrate holidays with a parent.

The Defense Ministry announced on Sunday that the number of injured in the current war has surpassed 16,000, including amputees, those with brain injuries, and hundreds who lost eyes, limbs, or mobility. They are not just numbers; they are men and women who will never hold their children with both arms again; they are newly paralyzed veterans who once stormed enemy lines but now struggle to climb stairs.

Combat-related PTSD cases soared in the first months of the war. Over 1,600 soldiers began showing signs of psychological trauma by January 2024, and 76 percent were sent back to the front lines after receiving “treatment in the field.” The suicides continue — quiet, solitary casualties of a war we refuse to finish.

It is painful to say, but I believe it to be sadly true nevertheless: Placing a premium on releasing all the hostages (a delusion as deep as that which brought Oslo Accords into being) ignores a costly moral calculus: that trading temporary respite for enduring threat ensures more death, more captives, more war. Hamas has never bargained in good faith. It has played the hostage card with masterful cruelty, extracting fuel, food, ceasefires, and diplomatic paralysis in exchange for mere lists, photos, and promises.

It is time for a brutal truth: a war not waged to win is a war waged to lose. Feeding the enemy, trading hostages for terrorists, and extending the war under the banner of morality is not moral; it is madness. The kind of war that ends terror is not the one that wins applause at the UN; it is the one that breaks the enemy’s spine and sends a message: never again.

Henry Kissinger, though controversial, understood this. The best wars, morally and practically, are the ones that end quickly. The worst are those prolonged by false mercy. Humanitarianism that fuels murder is not compassion; it is complicity.

We are told to pity Gaza. To fund its people, rebuild its infrastructure, and treat its leaders as partners. But Gaza, as Einat Wilf warned, is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a militarized theocracy, armed to the teeth, fanatical in purpose, and funded by those who still believe that all suffering is innocence.

It is not.

Hamas, and the many Gazans who support Hamas and eagerly participated in and cheered the slaughter and circus like release of previous hostages, chose suffering and have weaponized death, destruction, and deprivation. It is not Israel’s legal or moral responsibility to resupply Gazans any more than it was the Allied Forces duty to care for Germans or Japanese civilians left to live among the ruin and rubble wrought by their respective death cults.

It is time to end the illusion. End the hostage deals. End the fuel transfers. End the food and medicine deliveries. End the other countries that condemn Israel and yet shut their borders to Gazans. End UN complicity in terror.

And end the war the way just wars are meant to be ended: by winning it. Wars end not through charity but through clarity — by defeating the enemy, breaking its will, and ensuring it cannot rise again.

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