Israelis react to the Israel-Hamas deal.
"I fear that Israel may have bought itself a great many problems for the future, but pessimists are not always right, even in the Middle East."
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Victory celebrations broke out across Gaza and the world as soon as the ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Gazan military groups was announced.
Previously undercover Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters donned uniforms and helmets, previously hounded young boys and men came out cheering their success at killing Jews. For in their minds, they emerged victorious.
There is no doubt in my mind that there are many, many more women, men, and children who did not share in these celebrations. Who suffer from their government and Israel’s attacks on their armed forces equally. Whose feeling can be defined not by victory but by relief.
And yet we should at the moment focus instead on those voices representing the government of Gaza, those armed forces who survived the war and who have vowed to carry out many more October 7th-style attacks. Because there is no way that they do not intend to carry out their threats. Because if history provides any guidance, they plan to do so before they hit middle age. Which is to say, soon.
Now is the time to prevent that future campaign. Even while civil society seeks to heal some of its wounds, even as the current Israeli coalition goes through its own struggle following the ceasefire agreement, even while civilians bury their dead and heal their wounded, those of us who are neither caring for the victims and their families nor serving to physically protect Israel from future attack need to start thinking forward to break the brand the Palestinians have so successfully used to gain international support to help them gain this victory: the brand of victim.
Victims are subjects acted upon, powerless to overcome the overwhelming force of the victimizer, the oppressor. Victims do not invite their harm, do not seek to perpetuate it. There is no justification in making someone, something, a victim.
Victims suffer casualties due to events they cannot control. Victims struggle to survive powers that act upon them without their permission. Victims do not celebrate victory. Victims mourn. They thank the heavens for their survival, and, often with the support of others, do their best to never become victims again.
Not so, combatants. Not so, parties to a conflict. Not so, societies at war.
War, struggle, conflict occurs when at least two parties are unable to reconcile their differences through other means. Either party could, at any point, surrender. Agree to the other’s position. Accept the other’s terms.
There were actual victims in this war. The individuals terribly ravaged and murdered on October 7th. Many and possibly most of the civilians wounded and killed on the battlefields of Gaza. They had not invited such violence upon themselves. They suffered because of the unwillingness of the government of Gaza to surrender, despite Israel’s clear military advantage. Because of the unwillingness or inability of the people of Gaza to replace their government as did the people of Syria.
Yet that is only part of the story. Because the reason Gaza’s government held out was because their leaders rightly understood that the world would have their back. Resupply them. Provide them with the resources they needed to hold on. To force Israel to accept unreasonable terms. They knew global elites would ensure their government’s survival.
The Genocidaires of Gaza achieved this level of global support by establishing themselves as victims, as objects in another’s story, as the meek of the earth needing saving. They did so because they captured the narrative by capturing the narrators. They did so by leveraging tens of billions of dollars of oil-profit-paid media, university chairs, campus organizing.
Our only chance to prevent a future war is to break that support, to stop the flow of material and immaterial support to the government of Gaza, to build an international coalition immune to future influence campaigns that will provide the whining warriors of Gaza the confidence they will need to gain before their next attack.
Now is not the time to defend Israel in the media, not the time to explain the Israeli position, not the time to justify the existence of the Jewish state. Now is the time to ensure the world recognize that victims do not celebrate victory. That the only way to protect innocent lives is to utterly defeat and replace the government in Gaza.
— Ariel Beery, “A Lighthouse”
‘I hope I’m wrong about the hostage deal.’
I fear that Israel may have bought itself a great many problems for the future, but pessimists are not always right, even in the Middle East.
As for what we know of the deal, I can only say that I am deeply ambivalent about it. It is a mitzvah to redeem hostages and, sadly, it has often been necessary throughout Jewish history. Nor can we ignore the horrendous suffering the hostages are undergoing. Clearly, everyone wants to bring them home and there is great virtue in finally doing so.
At the same time, I have a terrible feeling that history is repeating itself. The 2011 Gilad Shalit deal1 gave us the release of Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7th, along with hundreds of Palestinian terrorists. Indeed, in many ways, the deal was the dark origin of October 7th itself. Now, hundreds more terrorists are being released, though it is unclear how many will return to Gaza.
At the same time, there is a good chance that the deal will leave Hamas either in charge of Gaza or with considerable power and influence. We know Hamas will declare victory because it always does, but a far worse prospect is a Hamas that simply rebuilds and readies for another massacre.
None of this may happen, but it is deeply worrisome for many reasons. For example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have agreed to this deal because he still clings to his failed conceptzia2 that led to October 7th itself. He has long believed that the best strategy is to keep the Palestinians divided, with Fatah in charge of the Palestinian communities of Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) and Hamas in charge of Gaza.
This divide and conquer strategy was conclusively crushed on October 7th, but Netanyahu is a man of considerable ego and sometimes hubris. He may still believe in his strategy. He could be seeking to preserve it by allowing a badly enfeebled Hamas to continue to control Gaza while ensuring the IDF can prevent it from becoming a serious threat again.
I doubt very much that this will work. Hamas is a genocidally antisemitic organization. It will not stop until it is stopped. Israel’s primary war aim was to stop it. If this deal holds, it will not have done so — at least not completely.
I do not know what the implications of this will be in the long term. Israel has taken security control of strategic areas of Gaza, and this may be sufficient to guarantee the security of its southern border. The post-October 7th security establishment has adopted a far more aggressive strategy and will likely undertake preemptive action against any future threat.
Moreover, it is not unlikely that both Netanyahu and Trump want to turn to the Iran threat. In this context, continuing major military operations in Gaza despite the crushing of Hamas is an unnecessary distraction. So, ensuring at least short-term calm in Gaza, even if Hamas remains alive, is necessary.
Iran is certainly a more immediate existential threat than Hamas, so an argument can be made that finally annihilating Iran’s Nazi regime is worth the price of ceasefire.
Moreover, Israel’s reestablishment of its deterrence, decimation of Hezbollah, and the defeat of Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy have been enormous gains. Even with the concessions made in the deal, Israel can certainly claim some kind of victory. An even bigger victory against Iran may well be in the offing.
Certainly, I am overjoyed that the hostages are coming home. I do not celebrate the deaths of our enemies, but I am glad that justice has finally been meted out to Sinwar, Muhammad Deif, Hassan Nasrallah, Ismail Haniyeh, and all the other monsters Israel has dispatched to whatever hell may or may not exist. I am satisfied that Israel has, in many ways, only enhanced its power and deterrence as a result of the war.
Nonetheless, I must say that I am worried. I fear that by stopping short of Hamas’ total annihilation, we may have bought ourselves a great many problems for the future. Pessimists usually turn out to be right in the Middle East, but not always. So, I hope, very deeply, that I am wrong.
— Benjamin Kerstein, “No Delusions, No Despair”
‘This is unbearable — a truly soul-crushing choice.’
This week, a “deal” (what an awful word to describe the bargaining of the fate of our poor kidnapped Israeli civilians) was announced.
Gradually, Israeli women, children, elderly Holocaust survivors, and men who were kidnapped into Gaza by the Nazi-idolizing monsters Hamas are to be released in a slow trickle. In exchange, the deal includes (among others) the release of convicted, devilish terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands from maximum-security prisons in Israel.
Some, who have lost their moral compass, normalize this “trade-off” as if there is a moral equivalence between a 9-month-old baby kidnapped from his bed into terror tunnels in Gaza and a heartless terrorist who took a hammer and went on a killing spree, smashing the heads of Israeli civilians simply walking down the street.
Redeeming captives (פדיון שבויים) is a great Jewish mitzvah and stands as the highest moral priority for Jews. It is so deeply important to us that we go above and beyond to secure even the bodies of our civilians who were murdered and kidnapped dead by the same Hamas terrorists who carried out the October 7th genocide. These monsters trade human beings like cattle in a slaughterhouse. This is the face of our barbaric enemy.
We are now debating whether our brothers and sisters should remain chained, starved, sexually abused, beaten, and morally broken in Gaza’s terror tunnels, or if our military should withdraw from Gaza altogether — thereby enabling Hamas to rebuild itself and resume its vast terror activities against our civilians. This includes releasing arch-terrorists from our prisons in Israel, who will likely return to terrorism and attempt another mega-terror attack akin to the October 7th atrocities.
This is unbearable — a truly soul-crushing choice. Israelis are torn, facing this impossible dilemma. Families of victims murdered by the very terrorists set to be released in this deal are devastated. And who can judge them? They want the hostages home as much as anyone else.
Yet, seeing the monsters who killed their loved ones granted freedom and welcomed in Gaza as heroes is undeniably a dagger to the heart. Their pain must be acknowledged and spoken about. It is real, legitimate, and impossible to ignore.
This mechanism of kidnapping civilians has become a repeat strategy because it yields results, ending in more bloodshed and tears for Israelis. This is one side of the fatal coin. On the other side are those who could easily have been us. Releasing our civilians from Gaza’s death camp is a holy mission. Its importance cannot be described in words or measured in numbers.
FYI: The fact that we were pressured — primarily by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration — to fuel Gaza with “humanitarian aid” that funded and revived Hamas (who have repeatedly stolen the aid) daily is one major reason our hostages remain in captivity for so long. They were kidnapped from their homes, within Israel’s borders. We cannot abandon them again. That is the bottom line!
Our military accomplishments in Gaza and across the Middle East are undeniably unprecedented in their scale and long-lasting consequences — and this is only the beginning. With Donald Trump back in the White House, the Islamic Republic of Iran knows that Israel has the right partner to finally strike their nuclear facilities. The same goes for Iran’s proxies, including Hamas.
Moreover, Israel can and must hunt down every terrorist it releases back to Gaza as part of the hostages deal and reunite them with a 72-year-old virgin. There’s much more to discuss regarding the attack and protection mechanisms Israel should implement immediately upon signing this deal, but those conversations belong behind closed doors, with those in charge of strategy and execution.
I’ll finish with this: We are praying for the safe return of our beloved Israeli civilians. We hope they won’t come back as empty shells, shadows of their former selves after enduring such horrors. We will hug them, support them, and give them time to process — even though such atrocities can never truly be processed.
As for those who cheer for dead Jews and side with evil, we must, with humility, leave their fate to the hands of God and the pages of history.
The Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange followed a 2011 agreement between Israel and Hamas to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 prisoners.
A word coined by the Agranat Commission of Inquiry into the failures of the Yom Kippur War to describe the groupthink that paralyzed Israel before the war
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I love how everyone thinks Trump is playing 4 dimensional chess. He is not. Trump promised no more wars. He isn't going to do anything about Iran. He simply wanted to screw Bibi over and used that kapo Wilkof to do it.
I think that Israel has regained a deterrence that they had lost. But we shall see just how long that lasts. Keeping an eye on Iran and Syria is a big job. but I think Israel can do that now. She is in a good position. It is also up to the world to take care of Gaza. Not Israel's problem except to keep killing hamasniks.
As far as the world is concerned, there is no publicity campaign that will support israel. it doesn't matter how many hostages come back in body bags or as shells of themselves.The world hates Jews, they especially hate Jews who won't go quietly to their death. The latest poll on antisemitism shows that. Israel and the world Jewish community need to do what we need to do in order to survive, whether the world likes it or not.
I totally get the ambivalence in Israel about this deal. In fact, I feel it myself.