Now that many countries, especially the United States, are pressuring Israel to agree to a ceasefire and end the war with Hamas, someone should take the time to wonder whether Israel’s enemies have any real motivation to end the war.
If we are honest, we would have to admit that the answer is no. Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and Qatar have every interest in prolonging this war with their stated goal of destroying the Jewish state. To them, ending it now would be tantamount to surrendering when they are as close as possible to achieving their goal.
They have never led thousands of soldiers into Israel, massacred an entire community, and kidnapped some 250 hostages — a monumental feat by any standards — and they are leading us to where they want to be.
It would be foolish for them to believe that this was only the beginning of their efforts toward the annihilation of the world Jews, beginning in their own homeland, but looking back at what they had accomplished, one cannot help but believe that all this energized and strengthened them.
Of course, few consider that they are acting on delusions of grandeur, but to understand their thinking one must take into account that their enemies feel a great weakness in the fact that Israel seems extremely motivated to please the United States by complying as far as possible with their wishes, which are clearly expressed for political reasons.
And that’s the problem. Israel, being a civilized country, democratically run, values its allies, who by and large support Israel. They don’t want to jeopardize that special relationship.
At the same time, Israel’s enemies do not share common values such as freedom, civil rights, and humanitarian principles, and therefore have no incentive to cooperate, find common ground, or exercise restraint, because these are perceived weaknesses that terrorists will never exploit.
As a result, their approach is to go for the throat until they have punished and demoralized Israel for daring to fight back despite the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Sadly, that reality is being overlooked or willfully ignored by the same people who are crying out “cease fire now” in an attempt to force an end to a war that is doing little to reduce the enemy’s ability to inflict further harm.
In his column, “Biden Speech, Hamas Action,” Jerusalem Post reporter Liat Collins hints at the absurdity of this, pointing out that in a recent speech, US President Joe Biden took credit for the Israeli proposal to return the hostages, saying, “Clearly, it is easier to get Israel to comply than to force the Hamas terrorist organization to act.”
Collins states the obvious: “Despite all the US talk about a ceasefire, Iran and the terrorists it supports continue to demand the elimination of the Jewish state by any means necessary: more rocket attacks, massacres, cyber attacks, international isolation through law and pressure. The ultimate goal is to drive the Israelis out from between the river and the sea. Hamas has no peace plan. They do not want peace.”
Any honest person must come to the same conclusion: that waging war, causing many casualties and horrific carnage, is an acceptable price to pay for Hamas, Hezbollah and others who wish for our demise.
Subhuman creatures have no conscience about inflicting brutality on their fellow beings, and never show regret, contrition, remorse or remorse. That is the hallmark of barbarism, which defies all sane understanding, and delights in inflicting pain.
Abandon ceasefire demands
This is why those who call themselves civilized nations need to abandon their calls for a ceasefire, especially when they are fighting self-proclaimed killers who will stop at nothing to seize control of their own countries in order to spread their twisted religious and political ideology that they believe all inhabitants of the planet should adhere to. Frankly, it is not in their interest to preserve the enemies of civilization and humanity, because they will come at them eventually.
These terrorist and hateful regimes cannot be contained, they can only be eradicated, or the consequences will be exactly as they have already been. Residents of northern and southern Israel are still unable to return to their homes, fearing the daily rocket attacks.
No one can live in peace under such dire conditions, which means Israelis are being pushed to the center of the country and are practically ghettoized, as was done in European cities under the Nazi regime. Should Israel allow such a shameful history to be repeated?
In fact, our leaders’ naive belief that we could somehow contain terrorists, no matter how evil, if only we respected and cooperated with them, offered financial incentives, and treated them as an accountable, democratically elected and credible government. October 7 was their revenge, a harsh lesson for failing to understand their relentless determination to kill us.
We may not make that mistake again, but we may be just as vulnerable. We are on the brink of making another mistake, pressured to end a necessary war before we achieve our goal of ridding the world of the greatest evil of our time.
Civilized nations may not thank us for fighting for them at this time, but once we are victorious and peace is brought, they may finally have time to thank us for our work. That is certainly better than the alternative.
The author is a former elementary and middle school principal in Jerusalem. She is the author of Mistake-Proof Parenting, which is based on the time-tested wisdom of Proverbs and is available to purchase on Amazon.
