Israelis want justice, not peace.
October 7th was not just an act of war; it was an attempt to break Israeli morale. Instead, it did the opposite.
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For decades, Israelis have longed for peace.
From the moment of the modern State of Israel’s founding in 1948, the country has extended its hand in peace to its neighbors, including the Palestinians, often at great cost to itself.
Time and again, Israel has entered negotiations, withdrawn from land, and made overtures in the hope of achieving coexistence. And time and again, those hopes have been met not with reciprocation, but with rockets, suicide bombings, intifadas, and — most horrifyingly — events like the Hamas-led massacre and kidnappings of October 7, 2023.
On that Black Sabbath, the world saw in the starkest terms the true nature of Israel’s enemies. Hamas did not target Israeli soldiers. Hamas did not stage an insurrection in the hopes of gaining sovereignty. Hamas, in the most brutal, medieval manner possible, invaded Israel with one goal: to kill and abduct as many Jews as possible.
The horror of that day — men, women, and children slaughtered in their homes; elderly Holocaust survivors dragged into captivity; entire families burned alive — was not a failure of Israeli security alone. It was the culmination of decades of a Palestinian leadership and society that has refused peace, opting instead to glorify terror.
In fact, the bestial crimes carried out by thousands of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists on October 7th were so unspeakable, authors of a new report have given it a unique name because at no time in history had this exact type of crime been committed. They call it “kinocide” — the targeting of families, describing it as a new crime against humanity.1
Genocide, as practiced by the Nazis, is directed against a group of people — “national, ethnical, racial or religious,” according to the United Nations’ 1948 Genocide Convention — but “kinocide” is a specific type of assault against a group, using the relationship between family members and their emotional, identity, cultural, symbolic, material, and other bonds, as a way to maximize the intended harm of the attack.
The Myth That ‘Both Sides Want Peace’
For years, a certain naïve strain of Western diplomacy has clung to the idea that Israelis and Palestinians both fundamentally desire peace, and that if only the right conditions were met, an agreement could be reached.
This is false to the nth degree.
The vast, vast majority of Israelis want peace. Palestinians by and large, as represented by their leadership, want Israel’s destruction. This distinction is the key to understanding why no peace agreement has ever lasted and why, despite Israel’s best efforts, it has been forced to become a nation that fights for survival rather than one that simply enjoys some sense of normalcy.
It is not for lack of effort that peace has not been achieved. In 1947, the Jewish leadership accepted the United Nations Partition Plan, despite the fact that it offered a tiny, indefensible strip of land surrounded by hostile Arab states. The Arab world rejected it and launched a war to annihilate the nascent Jewish state.
Turns out, for those who care not just about feelings but also facts, Israel has offered the Palestinians a state on at least six occasions, including in 1937 (the Peel Commission), 1947 (the UN Partition Plan for Palestine), 1967 (the end of the Six-Day War), 2000 (Camp David Summit), 2005 (Israel’s unilateral pullout from Gaza), and 2008 (an improved version of 1990s Oslo Accords).
The most notable offer, in recent history, was in 2000 when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza to the Yasser Arafat-led Palestinians, including shared sovereignty over Jerusalem. Arafat responded not with counteroffers, but with the Second Intifada — a wave of suicide bombings that killed over a thousand (mostly civilian) Israelis.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, forcibly removing Jewish settlers from their homes in a painful and deeply divisive process within Israeli society. The response? Just months later, Hamas violently took control of Gaza and turned it into a jihadist launching pad for thousands of rockets and terror attacks against (mostly civilian) Israelis.
At every turn, Israel has sought to find some compromise, some agreement that would allow it to live in peace. And at every turn, the Palestinians and their allies have responded with war, terror, and the wholesale rejection of Israel’s right to exist.
Justice, Not Peace
After October 7th, something changed in the Israeli psyche. Again, the vast majority of Israelis have always wanted peace, but now they want something else even more: justice.
Justice for the families who were slaughtered in their homes. Justice for the young women raped and paraded through the streets of Gaza like trophies. Justice for the children whose bodies were found bound and executed. Justice for the hostages who remain in Gaza’s tunnels, likely subjected to horrors beyond imagination. Justice for the Israelis who have spent their lives building a nation out of the desert, only to be told by the world that they are somehow the aggressors in this conflict.
For too long, the world has treated Israeli suffering as an afterthought. International bodies rush to condemn Israeli airstrikes but remain silent about Hamas’ war crimes. Human rights organizations scrutinize Israeli self-defense measures but refuse to hold Palestinians accountable for decades of incitement and terrorism. The United Nations, a body ostensibly devoted to global peace, provides platform after platform for those who openly call for Israel’s destruction.
To add insult to injury, the international media frames every Israeli action as an aggression, while portraying Palestinian terrorism as a tragic consequence of so-called “occupation” — ignoring the fact that Hamas’ atrocities occurred not in “occupied” territory, but inside Israel’s internationally recognized borders.
This asymmetry is not lost on Israelis. It has bred a cynicism that has grown sharper with every war, every terror attack, every biased UN resolution, and every academic in the West who thinks boycotting Israeli whatever is an act of moral courage.
But most of all, it has hardened Israeli resolve. October 7th was not just an act of war; it was an attempt to break Israeli morale. Instead, it did the opposite. Israelis are no longer interested in fragile truces with entities that celebrate their murderers. We are no longer willing to endure another decade of terrorist rocket fire in the name of a peace process that leads nowhere. We are done apologizing for our existence.
We want justice.
A Reckoning for the Palestinian Leadership and Their Enablers
If the world genuinely seeks peace in the region, it must abandon the failed paradigm that treats Israel and its enemies as moral equals. There can be no peace while Hamas exists. There can be no peace while the Palestinian leadership educates its children to hate Jews, glorifies terrorism, and funds murderers with international aid money (i.e. their official “pay-to-slay” policies).
There can be no peace as long as Western governments, NGOs, and media outlets continue to treat Palestinian violence as somehow justified, while holding Israel to stupid standards of restraint.
It is time for a reckoning.
The international community must decide whether it truly supports peace — or whether it merely enjoys scolding Israel while turning a blind eye to the horrors committed against our people.
If peace is truly the goal, then justice must come first. Hamas must be dismantled. The Palestinian Authority must be held accountable for decades of corruption and incitement. The Arab world, which has made promising steps toward normalization with Israel, must decide whether it will continue coddling Palestinian rejectionism or finally demand real reform.
Israelis are prepared to live in peace with anyone who truly seeks it. The Abraham Accords — which saw Israel establish diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan — proved that Israel is not the problem in the region. Oh, and we also have longstanding peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.
The problem is those who refuse to accept a Jewish state in any borders. Israel cannot negotiate with those who see every Israeli child as a target, who chant “From the River to the Sea” as an anthem of annihilation, and who view peace agreements not as settlements, but as temporary strategies on the path to Israel’s destruction.
The Future of Israel’s Fight for Justice
There is a common saying in Israel: “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more war. If Israel put down its weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”
This is not hyperbole; it is the grim reality that Israelis understand all too well. Peace is not achieved through wishful thinking. It is achieved when evil is confronted and defeated.
The world may call for a ceasefire, but Israelis know that a ceasefire without justice is simply a pause before the next iteration of barbaric terrorism. The world may demand negotiations, but Israelis know that negotiations with those who celebrate October 7th as “resistance” are futile. The world may urge “both sides” to come together, but Israelis know that only one side — Israel — has ever truly sought peace, while the other has exclusively sought Jewish blood.
Justice is not revenge. Justice is ensuring that those who commit atrocities cannot do so again. Justice is holding accountable the enablers of terrorism, whether they be Hamas leaders in Qatar, Iranian backers in Tehran, or Western activists who excuse mass murder in the name of “resistance.” Justice is ensuring that no Israeli child ever has to grow up in a country where a neighbor across the border is plotting their slaughter.
October 7th was a wake-up call. Israelis will not forget, and we will not forgive. If the world truly cares about peace, then it must first care about justice. Until then, Israel will do what it has always done: defend itself, unapologetically, against those who seek our destruction.
“Hamas’s ‘kinocide’: A new crime against humanity revealed.” The Jerusalem Post.
"There can be no peace while the Palestinian leadership educates its children to hate Jews, glorifies terrorism, and funds murderers with international aid money (i.e. their official “pay-to-slay” policies)."
The problem isn't Hamas, it's "Palestinianism". The whole identity is an artificial construct maintained for the purpose of destroying Israel. As long as people who identity as "Palestinians" exist, the war will continue.
Great article, Joshua. I feel personally that unless we adopt the same restraints we put on Germany post WW2 - banning of Nazism which in the case of Gaza and West Bank equates to banning of Islamic extremism - then there can be no peace. Both Hamas and Fatah need to be dismantled and more moderate leaders step up to the plate. Anyone espousing extremism or hate for Jews/Israelis would immediately be disqualified from electoral selection. This is what happened in Germany, and in 1949 there were only three very moderate parties standing for election - not a Nazi in sight - and they rebuilt Germany. The same moderates need to come forwards in the Palestinian territories, and all extremists shoved out into the cold. The only way forward!