Approaching 70 Days of War * plus Addendum * Netanyahu Must Resign

 “You have not been blogging lately,” a regular reader dug.

“I have nothing new to say,” was my response.

פונדעסטוועגן 

Nevertheless. Alright. 

For those of you just returning to the Milky Way Galaxy, I have been making the same boringly consistent points since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel with butchery, rape, and pillage. And I am happy - in a manner of speaking -  to reiterate.

Israel’s mission in this war of no choice needs to be to defang Hamas and make it improbable for it – or any other Palestinian force in Gaza or the West Bank – to pose a military threat to Israel. The rest is commentary.

***

The November 24 to November 30, 2023 ceasefire in which Israel exchanged violent incarcerated Palestinian prisoners for kidnapped civilian captives was a mistake. We lost precious time. The enemy regrouped and reinfiltrated areas that had been cleansed.

All the while, the international “community” grew more restless over the fate of Hamas. As a matter of course, the time Jews are given to defend themselves, much less go on the offensive, is limited. Some of that valuable time was irretrievably spent during the moratorium.

Like all Israelis, I was relieved to see the return of captives – children, women, the elderly, and some men. That said, the war’s goal should not be to free captives but to crush the enemy.

Exchanging Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel for some of our captives, I warned, would raise the morale of the enemy and strengthen Hamas. It did. Like previous prisoner deals, I warned that more lives would be lost than saved. Sure enough, when combat resumed, the pressure on the IDF to fight under impossible constraints (not imposed on any other army) only intensified.

***

This morning, the Washington Post complained that we were not using the type of bombs its editors would employ were they responsible for battling Hamas.

***

Aside from the Rabin-Peres-initiated September 13, 1993, Oslo Accords, the worst self-inflicted strategic damage done to Israeli security was implemented by Binyamin Netanyahu on October 18, 2011, when he released some of the most blood-thirsty killers in Israel’s prisons in exchange for one captive IDF soldier.

This same Netanyahu is culpable for the October 7 catastrophe. Being amoral, he has shirked all responsibility. Watch the old wizard accuse those of us who opposed his regime change putsch for what happened. He will blame the general staff, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, and IDF Intelligence. He has already reproached Yitzhak Rabin. Likud cult members remain under the spell of his enchantment and, with the help of Channel 14 agitprop, will lap up his lies.

Now, Likud and its Hardal and Haredi confederates have passed a national budget laden with patronage as if the times called for politics as usual. For example, the country will now spend more on Haredi schools than any other educational network.

From Start-Up Nation to Dumb-Down Shtetl.

Many of the sociopathic brutes Netanyahu set free went on to rebuild Hamas in Gaza, including Yahya Sinwar, who was serving four life sentences. Others proceeded to conduct terror operations in the West Bank. Still, others have played a role in Hamas “outside” operating from Turkey and Qatar.

Today, Netanyahu talks about Gaza as if he has just arrived on the scene. As if someone else has been shtuping Hamas with satchels full of Qatari money.

***

Since October 7, Israeli soldiers - young men and women just out of high school hoping to maybe one day see the world and later study at university, reservists who have left their jobs as doctors, principals, software engineers, grocers, and tour guides - have fought and died for our survival. 

How it pains us that even as Israeli blood is spilled,  callow Jewish American and Jewish British turncoats have been marching for the enemy "as Jews" נאָך.

I have no interest in changing their minds only to express my opprobrium. May they be cursed to live under Islamist rule!

They have made their morally relavatist beds. And they will be tarred forever by their October 2023 choices. These wretched, juvenile-minded quislings are so desperate for acceptance in the woke world. To march with the masses. To chant, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be [Jew] Free.” They were raised, educated, and acculturated in a sea of woke. They have little, if any, Jewish education. What precious little Jewish literacy they do have has accentuated the Holocaust and Tikun Olam. Either their teachers were themselves ignoramuses, or they willfully misunderstood the significance of the Shoah and the meaning of Tikun Olam.

***

An automatic UN majority votes against Israel in the General Assembly. Britain abstains. France sometimes abstains but mostly votes with the Arabs. Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak talk the talk, but when push comes to shove, they thrust the Zionists under the bus.

UN chief António Guterres’s brownnosing of Hamas didn’t happen in a vacuum. He’s done his arithmetic. There are 56 Organisation of Islamic Cooperation members who also hold UN seats. Twenty-two of whom are correspondingly member states of the Arab League. Add in assorted shithole countries. Then factor in Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China and their satellites.

If you were Guterres, whose side would you be on?

***

Some closing thoughts:

Joe Biden is already the most pro-Israel president in the history of the relationship. That amazes me, but it is the case.

Yet his agenda and Israel's priorities are not congruent. He wants us to finish off Hamas to save the PLO. No matter what, though, he wants to end the war before the 2024 US Presidential Election season begins in earnest. 

We need to do what is best for us.

***

Speculating about what happens next is premature because victory is far from assured. That said, it would be daft to turn over the Gaza Strip to Mahmoud Abbas and his PLO (again).

There can be no peace with security that is dependent on the corrupt Palestinian Authority.

The PA has allowed the towns and cities of the West Bank, which it is supposed to administer, to fall into a Hobbesian state of nature. Since 1993, it has not dismantled one refugee camp. Its UN-funded schools taught hate and antisemitism.

***

Israel, it is true, failed to come up with a consensus strategy to protect our security interests in the West Bank. While we dawdled, the ethos of the Hilltop Youth permeated the national religious settler community and metastasized into a messianic strain of fanaticism that has seen the old-line Dati Leumi vanquished by Hardal. But let me leave this fashla for another jeremiad.

While the craving for “peace now” brought us Oslo and the second intifada, Hardal’s messianic parties are in their own La-La-Land of the Apocalypse (with Red Cows grazing, goats and sheep ready for Temple sacrifice - and caravans hitched to resettle the Gaza Strip).

All that, too, for another time.

                                                                                ***

For the foreseeable future, Israel is deeply mired in this war. Thousands are dislocated on our northern boundary with Hezbollah-occupied Lebanon. We know that sooner rather than later, Hezbollah will have to be pushed back beyond the Litani River and that the UN won’t do it for us. Thousands more are dislocated along our frontier with Hamas-Gaza. Both Hezbollah and Hamas continue to attack our civilians with rocket fire and anti-tank weapons.

Our country is traumatized. Though "life goes on," a dark cloud hangs over us.  It is hard to concentrate. We dread the 6 AM news when the names of the fallen are made public. More and more, we are hearing about soldiers who have suffered life-changing wounds. Virtually every extended family (in the population that serves and pays taxes) has someone who has been doing reserve duty.

On top of it all, Israelis and pro-Israel Diaspora Jews are dumbfounded by the tsunami of anti-Israelism and antisemitism sweeping the world, by the power of intersectionality that neatly pulls together all our enemies: white Nazis, Black chauvinists, Islamists, socialists, craven university presidents, and woke things. 

The worst of the worst are the quislings of Jewish ancestry who slither into the enemy’s rancid bed, expecting that collaboration will buy them acceptance.

What a torment, 69 days long...

***

On the dawn of Day 70 of our ongoing collective nightmare, victory remains as imperative as on day one. Israel must come out of this conflict as the Strong Horse. Otherwise, the days of the Third Commonwealth are numbered.

 December 17, 2023

Addendum.

Netanyahu I signed Oslo II. Netanyahu II opposed Oslo. Netanyahu I formerly accepted the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state. Netanyahu II opposed it. Netanyahu I allowed Hamas to finance its tunnels and weaponry. Netanyahu II opposed it. Netanyahu I and his confederates tolerated and even glorified Elor Azaria and made excuses for Aviad Frija. Netanyahu II opposed such behavior and had his heart broken when he learned that undisciplined IDF units shot dead Israeli captives who held their hands up, waving a white flag, and when one survived, lured him out and shot him too.