This is what the IDF is for.
Being merciful to the cruel ultimately makes you cruel to the merciful.
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This is a guest essay written by Forest Rain, an American-born Israeli branding expert and storyteller.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Ours is the most moral army in the world. The people of Israel like that. We want to be moral and good. We don’t like the idea of fighting or killing.
The IDF is the Israel Defense Forces for good reason. We have no desire to attack anyone. The mission of our military is to defend the Nation of Israel — our State and our People. To protect our homeland so that Jewish people everywhere know that, in a world that is dangerous for Jews, there is one place on earth where Jews can defend themselves and are not left to the mercy of others.
The IDF is supposed to fulfill the promise of “Never Again.”
The problem is that the world, including many Jews, have not learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Lessons, sharp and clear (though different for Jews and non-Jews), have been diluted and universalized to the point of being meaningless.
The Hamas massacre of October 7th, 2023 is a harsh reminder.
This isn’t a general issue. It’s a particular issue.
This is about me. My family. My friends. My home. And “Never Again” is now.
For Jews, the promise “Never Again” means that never again we put our safety in the hands of others, no matter how civilized they seem. Never again will we wait for other people to rescue us. It is up to us to be powerful enough to defend ourselves.
For non-Jews, “Never Again” was supposed to be a promise to never again remain silent while Jews are being abused, tortured, and slaughtered. To not remain silent when they see evil occurring. To never again turn away and pretend they don’t see what is happening — no matter how frightened they are of the people committing the atrocities.
Because there will always be someone eager to commit horrendous acts against Jews.
And what happened?
Jews built the State of Israel, powerful enough to defend herself from invading armies, prevent enemy states from building nuclear bombs, and even fly across the globe to rescue Jews, targeted for being Jewish. And then we allowed ourselves to be convinced to hand our security over to other people and let monsters live on our doorstep.
Over and over, we were attacked, innocent people brutally murdered, our country bombarded with missiles and the “civilized” nations of the world told us to stand down, that the “stronger side” can swallow abuse for peace. That the monsters on our doorstep were our chance to live in peace.
And we, because we want peace and hate war, because we want to live in a kind world, decided to believe them.
The problem is that this decision was immoral.
It is one thing to be proud of succeeding in eliminating murderous terrorists without hurting bystanders because that is more moral than carpet bombing. It is another thing to know that the people on your border want to wipe you off the face of the earth and allow them to have hope that one day they will succeed.
We knew the problem existed. We watched it grow. We suffered the results of it when it was still small. Worst of all, we listened when we were told: “The world is condemning you. Don’t retaliate. Lick your wounds and pretend it never happened.” We wanted to be loved.
The Hamas charter states that it will eliminate the Jewish state through jihad. On October 7th, Hamas showed the world what that jihad looks like; they came with GoPro cameras and proudly filmed their actions for posterity. Well-trained Hamas commando units broke through our borders under the cover of a missile bombardment. That opened the way for swarms of regular Gazans, eager to join in.
Crimes against humanity is too mild and technical a term to describe the atrocities they committed. They slaughtered men, women, and children and chopped their heads off. They entered homes, tortured the parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents, gouging out eyes and chopping off fingers — all while eating the family’s food and laughing.
They gang-raped girls and then ripped their limbs off. They ripped open a pregnant woman’s stomach and stabbed the baby. They tied children together and burned them alive. They did more and worse. It is not possible to detail all the horrors.
And then they stole money from the wallets of the people they murdered, looted their homes, taking everything from TVs to tractors, identity cards, and passports. And then they took as many hostages as they could get their hands on — including babies and elderly people, entire families, and dead bodies.
They came with maps and details about homes, how many people in each family, whether there was a dog or not — all spelled out by individual Gazans who Israelis had employed for years, doing construction work and odd jobs in their communities.
They didn’t come as an army trying to conquer an enemy state, soldiers fighting against soldiers. They came as a tidal wave of death, to exterminate everything living in its path and, before doing so, humiliate and create as much suffering as possible.
They know that we love life and hold it sacred. They know that we honor the dead, putting supreme importance on respectful burial. This is why they hurt us where it would be most painful.
They violated the sanctity of our homes, showing that Jews are not safe anywhere. They violated our past, terrorizing Holocaust survivors and bringing the Holocaust into the present with fire and sending Jews into hiding where they had to hold their hands over the mouths of babies, praying that they wouldn’t make a sound so the monsters wouldn’t find them.
They committed mass rapes of women, grandmothers, and children as more than a by-product of vicious bloodlust; in the context of people who come from an “honor culture,” this is the deepest violation, the theft of our honor, a display of utter disgust and domination, “dirtying” our beloved, grinding them into the earth, and mocking our men who were not able to save them.
Dismembering bodies, scattering them, and burning people is not just a matter of gruesome cruelty. The terrorists were given deliberate instructions to commit these acts by people who understand how serious Jews are about respecting our dead and bringing them to a proper burial.
They know us well and they deliberately used everything we care about most to hurt us.
And after all this, around the world, we are seeing people marching in the streets, chanting their support for the Hamas-led massacre. Jews are being marked in “civilized” countries. Homes marked with Stars of David, businesses smashed, and students humiliated and abused because they are Jews.
“Never Again” is now.
For years we have said that had Israel existed, the Holocaust would never have happened. Now it is time to make sure that is true. That is what the IDF is for.
The IDF must fulfill the promise of “Never Again.” This is not about revenge (though well warranted). This is about the survival of Jews everywhere.
It is necessary to crush Hamas so thoroughly and completely that all enemies of Israel will learn that there is no impunity and no safe haven for those who dream of our extermination.
And that, unfortunately, is just the beginning because they are just one of the monsters on our doorstep. We are surrounded (and they are within our borders) and they are watching us, without utterly crushing them, Israel will not survive.
Without Israel, no Jew, anywhere on earth, will ever be safe again.
Fulfilling the promise of “Never Again” doesn’t look nice on TV. Already the “civilized” nations are telling us to wait, delay, and consider the humanitarian needs of Gazans. It is crucial to retain our morality and fulfill our obligations. Being merciful to the cruel ultimately makes you cruel to the merciful.
Allowing our enemies to have hope that they can succeed in wiping us off the face of the earth is immoral. We allowed this evil to grow too large. It must be stopped now, no matter how bad the process looks, no matter what our “friends” say.
“Never Again” is the moral obligation of the IDF.
The obligation of decent individuals everywhere is to make sure everyone else knows this.
We must address the issue of the "woke" Jews, for they are the one of the enemies from within. "Two state solution" is a phrase that must be dropped from our vocabulary. Israel can't and shouldn't tolerate enemies encroaching on Israeli territory. We must put to rest the labels "occupier", "apartheid", "settlers", "oppressors", and "genocide", because they all represent the Arab lies about who we are; they are all a reversal of reality. We must be united as Jews. Otherwise, the "kumbaya" ideology will be our ruination.
I think it needs to go beyond Gaza. I think Hamas need to be destroyed worldwide. Hamas leaders sitting in Qatar or Istanbul making statements... no! Qatar and Turkey should face heavy sanctions for having them there. Strong arrest warrants put out for them and they face life imprisonment in Israel or the USA. Also, their mouthpieces.
After WW2, we hanged Lord Haw-Haw for spouting pro-Nazi broadcasts. The same should happen now for all the pro-terror pundits - Asa Wlnstanley, Jonathan Cook, Sarah Wilkinson, Electronic Intifada... okay, hanging would be too strong. But STIFF five years sentences for supporting or promoting terrorism.
Free speech! they'll cry... but in this case it's costing lives. Not only in the West, but also Israel. And indeed Gaza, Palestine and other parts of the Middle East... because the more these pundits glorify terrorism and term them freedom fighters, the more Palestinians take up arms and ultimately get killed in the process.
We were hard on Nazism in Germany after WW2... why are we so soft on terrorism?