Oct. 22, 2023 — Israel next faces the compelling existential urgency to undertake a very horrible ground invasion into Gaza. Had she done it fifteen or even ten years ago, it would have been like the way Ariel Sharon crushed the “Palestine Authority’s” PLO and Fatah (same thing) in Jenin and throughout Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) in 2002 during Israel’s “Operation Defensive Shield” that substantially ended the Second Intifada. But Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu later chose an approach Israelis came to call “mowing the lawn.” Instead of fiercely responding to terror by land, Israel would aerially bomb strategic Hamas targets in Gaza to set them back by approximately three years. Every Triennial or so, the cycle would repeat: Hamas would launch a war, and Israel would “mow the lawn.”
Recall that Israel handed all of Gaza unilaterally to the Arabs and Abu Mazen (the “Palestine Authority” chief, Mahmoud Abbas) in 2005. The Gaza “occupation” ended 18 years ago. Gaza’s population responded by electing Hamas to uproot Abu Mazen’s “West Bank” Fatah terrorists, effectively demonstrating that Gaza and “the West Bank” are two completely different entities, not one “unified Palestine.” Two decades and six wars later, the policy of “lawn mowing” has allowed Hamas to build an unprecedented nationwide terror infrastructure of tunnels, sniper nests, drone and missile factories, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Russian Cornet and Iranian Dehlahvieh anti-tank missiles, rockets and bombs. Gaza is worse than Faluja or Afghanistan. Eighteen years of Israeli dallying, and fearing worldwide condemnation if she would invade Gaza, allowed Hamas to build a Bora Bora meticulously. This means many Israeli boys may not come home alive from Gaza or may be permanently disabled during the imminent ground war. It will be a ground invasion that, no matter how successful, will be horrible.
Historically, Israel has fought handcuffed by her own superimposed military ethic known as “tohar ha-neshek” (purity of arms). This policy has cost countless Jewish lives as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers act with such excessive care to “fight with purity” — that is, not to hurt non-combatants — that they get killed by snipers and by apparently “innocent civilians” who in fact are carrying rifles or grenades under their long white robes. Therefore, anyone who even whispers “tohar ha-neshek” this time around will be reviled. The green light must be given Israel’s armed forces to shoot and grenade and bomb as they feel they must.
Be prepared for messy pictures that will send thrills up the legs of BBC reporters seeking to vilify Jews and Israel. If Arabs fire from an ambulance, Israel will take out the ambulance. If from a school, they will take out the school. If from a residential apartment building, take out the building. If thousands must be killed inadvertently as collateral damage of Hamas hiding behind human shields, this time they will take out human shields.
In preparation for the Gaza incursion, Israel must do its preliminary best to eliminate as many snipers’ nests and attack tunnels as it can. Weapons depots must be destroyed from the air. Rockets, grenades, anti-tank missiles must be spotted as best as Israel’s intelligence can and obliterated before her boys march in. Those tunnels must be closed off on both ends, whether by bombing all ingresses and egresses, or flooding or smoking them.
Gaza in its entirety must be blockaded completely. Not only no electricity and fuel but also no food, no water, and no medicine. There are more than 200 hostages now in Gaza. Historically, Arab terrorists hold Israelis until they induce lopsided exchanges. In the 1985 Jibril Agreement, Israel released 1,150 Arab terrorists in return for three Israelis. In the Gilad Shalit exchange, Israel had to release 1,027 Arab terrorist prisoners. Not this time. If it takes 500-1,000 Arabs to equate one Jewish life — think about that — Israel would have to release all Arab prisoners she holds to get only some of the Jews back. Israel must be firm this time. Her full blockade should be comprehensive — again: not even water, food, or medications until all hostages are free. Let Gazans die in the streets if the hostages are not freed — all 200 plus Hadar Goldin, Oron Shaul, and Avera Mengistu.
There will be horrible accounts in the left media and 100,000-Arab demonstrations in London and Paris, augmented by the depraved and morally perverse college students of America’s elite training grounds for tomorrow’s anti-American revolution and next Civil War here in America, condemning Israel. A simple solution: stop reading the left media and watching the BBC and America’s equivalent anti-Semites. Ignore them all. After all, people have been falsely accusing Jews for two thousand years of wantonly shedding innocent blood: Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, William of Norwich, the Blois French Blood Libel, the Black Death, Pogroms. Jews are born with a Blood Libel target on their backs. Rashida Talib and her Dearborn Arabs, Ilhan Omar and her Minneapolis Somalians, and Ocasio and her Bronx Puerto Ricans are new participants in this proud history.
No amount of outside condemnation should deter Israel in her battle plan. Don’t aim to kill innocents, but if they get in the way, they become collateral damage. When governors of Florida and North Carolina warn residents to evacuate before a predicted hurricane, car lines stretch for miles as people race to get out. They are not idiots. When Washington State did the same before Mount St. Helens blew, everyone got out except for one nut, Harry R. Truman, who became an American icon and got himself incinerated to death a week later when the volcano erupted as predicted. In the same manner, every Arab in northern Gaza has been warned to evacuate.
And, by the way, if every past Israel-Arab Hostage Release has been an exchange at which one Israeli has equaled between 383 Arabs (Jobril Agreement) and 1,027 Arabs (Shalit Exchange), then the Hamas murder of 1,200 Jews on Shabbat Sh’mini Atzeret of October 7 equals the loss of between 459,600 Arabs (Jibril Formula) and 1,232,400 Arabs (Shalit Exchange). Israel must not target a single innocent Gazan. Torah law would not permit indiscriminate purposeful random shootings of pure innocents. Jews are not Germans, a people who have done that. Or French. Or Italians. Or Spanish. Or Portuguese. Or British. Or Irish. Or Russian. Or Ukrainian. Or Chinese. Or Africans. Etc. So Jews are not the entire rest of the world. But there inevitably will be collateral damage, and anti-Jewish media will bewail “proportionality.” At the exchange rate the Arabs themselves have dictated, no one has the right to speak of “proportionality” for the purposeful murder of 1,200 Jews until at least 459,600 Arabs inadvertently and unintentionally are killed as well.
Israel will be compared to Hitler Germany, and Israel’s ground invasion will be compared to Hitler’s blitzkrieg. But the Nazis here are the Hamas-ISIS subhuman vermin who raped women alongside others they murdered, slaughtered as many as 40 babies at a time, beheaded men, women, and children, and burned corpses. They cut fetuses out of living women’s wombs, and then slaughtered both. They put babies in ovens to bake while alive. Even Hitler did not do that.
For that same reason, Israel now must begin conducting public Nuremberg/Eichmann War Crimes trials. Every Arab in Israeli prisons with a murder conviction needs to be tried publicly, the same as Eichmann was and as the West tried 21 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany and six German organizations. These War Crime trials will educate. Although previously convicted for murder, new charges should be proffered against such Arabs for “Crimes Against Humanity.” Especial charges should be brought against Hamas Massacre perpetrators, if they can be brought back alive. Those convicted should be incarcerated secretively as Eichmann was. Israel already has, from its Hadar Goldin negotiations, Hamas lists of prisoners they want returned. As convictions come, Israel should announce that, for every Jewish hostage Hamas kills, Israel will execute the next ten Arab War Crimes murderers on the list. Or Israel can just skip the Nuremberg/Eichmann trials, and make the announcement. Israel can kill them as she did Eichmann and America did Bin Laden: no fanfare, just dead and dumped in the Mediterranean or incinerated with the trash.
Finally, Israel must “let the cat out of the bag” and break the secret news to Joe Biden, the European Union, and the United Nations: no way is there ever going to be an independent Arab country in Judea and Samaria on Israel’s east but west of the Jordan River. The “Two-State Delusion” already has been dead and even cremated. Now, with the Hamas Shabbat Sh’mini Atzeret Massacre, the remaining ashes have been buried. No Arab leader or negotiator will agree to allow the 850,000 Jews of the eastern communities of Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria to remain permanently in “Palestine.” Yet, no Israeli government can logistically — or dare — remove them. They barely could uproot and relocate 8,500 from Gush Katif in 2005. By contrast, Judea and Samaria are home to 850,000 Jews: one hundred times the number forced out from Gaza in 1985. Impossible to uproot even if they would try. Impossible to relocate even if they would try. Impossible to build housing, schools, and infrastructure overnight for one million dispossessed people. And no Israeli government could survive agreeing to such madness.
Moreover, even Tel Aviv’s socialist Ashkenazi elite class — Israel’s quintessential peaceniks — face the reality that a “Palestine” entity opens a third front if Israel gives dictator and terrorist-in-a-suit Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) what Ehud Barak gave Hezbollah’s Nasrallah in Lebanon to Israel’s north, and Sharon gave Hamas in Gaza to the south. Missiles and rockets will rain everywhere over Israel all day and night, from the north, from the south — and from the east — covering every centimeter from the Golan and Galilee in the north to Beersheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Sderot in the south. Rapists, beheaders, and baby killers from newly independent “Palestine” will be in Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Ra’anana, Petach Tikvah, Hadera, and Haifa just as at the kibbutzim of the south. Arabs already are building rockets in Jenin on the “West Bank.” Accordingly, the Hamas Massacre has taken “Two-State” off the table, even if Biden and Harvard students don’t know yet, and Israel can and must continue populating Judea and Samaria to one million in the immediate months ahead
These are things that come next (e.g., a strangling blockade followed by a ground invasion), others that ought to come next (e.g., Nuremberg/Eichmann Trials) — and some that never will come (e.g., a “Palestine” polity). Plain and simple. Let it be.
Published by the writer here on October 23 in The American Spectator. These were his predictions and analyses more than two months ago, before the ground incursion ever began.
