Don't Flinch - Look at Yazan Kafarneh and the Suffering Palestinian Children

Is your heart made of stone? If it isn't, you need to give a thought to Yazan Kafarneh, the ten-year-old cerebral palsy Palestinian boy whose sufferings and skeletal image have become the newest ploy in Hamas's propaganda war against Israel.

Hamas and the activist aid groups that collaborate with it say some 20 Gaza children like Kafarneh have already died from malnutrition and dehydration. And for once, I have no reason to doubt them.

The deplorable humanitarian conditions in Gaza are wrongly (but intentionally) being blamed on Israel – not Hamas – including by the Biden administration. That and the approaching "holy" month of Ramadan are being used as leverage to force Israel to…what precisely? 

To halt its military campaign and agree to an indefinite ceasefire. This would give Hamas breathing room to regroup and reassert its control over Gaza. Billions of aid dollars would flow into the Strip, which the terror group would again siphon. UNWRA, the Palestinian-infiltrated relief agency that is forbidden to resettle refugees, would be reconstituted. And in the fullness of time, Hamas – which is committed to Israel's destruction, not a Palestinian state alongside it – would be ready to fight again.

In return for snapping up this opportunity for a devastating strategic defeat, Israel would get back some of its 130 or so captives, or their remains the good citizens of Gaza are still holding. That's hardly all. Israel would need to release from its prisons the next generation of Mohamed Deifs, Yahya Sinwars, and Marwan Iss's, who would mastermind in the fullness of time their own onslaught.

From the perspective of the "international community," we had better capitulate before Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, prayer, and reflection. It is also, as anyone familiar with contemporary Islamic civilizations knows, a period of intramural bloodletting and violence against non-Muslims.

Several near-certainties accompany Ramadan: in Islamic countries, the stock market climbs; in Jerusalem, the already amplified pre-dawn adhān, or call to prayer, becomes even more piercing than usual; and there is a rise in Muslim bloodletting.

No doubt, for many of the faithful, Ramadan is a period of quiet reflection and spiritual serenity. For others, however, especially in places where large numbers of Muslims cross paths with Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, or Jews, it is an occasion for barbarity.

It is said that the gates of hell are closed during Ramadan, funneling martyrs to heaven with ease.

Jihadist groups tend to conduct more terrorist attacks during Ramadan than on non-Ramadan days.

No amount of ecumenical goodwill can change the fact that Ramadan is a blood-soaked period. 

Yahya Sinwar is not rushing to surrender so that suffering Palestinians can enjoy a tranquil Ramadan in Gaza. But if Western patsies want to believe Ramadan is like Lent or the Chinese New Year, he's not about to disabuse them. 

That said, Israel should do nothing to make it easier for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists to mobilize uninvolved believers in the struggle against it who would use Ramadan as a cudgel. Hence, we should tread lightly on the Temple Mount. We don't need to further expand the Gaza conflict to the rest of the land of Israel. Hamas does. 

In Gaza, Ben Caspit, a veteran pundit, has suggested that we call the Ramadan ceasefire bluff and hold off taking Rafiah – the last Hamas stronghold – until after the month is over. I am agnostic on this matter as I am not privy to the minutia of the military situation. I just worry about how long the IDF can remain in a holding pattern while the Palestinian population of Gaza is living under Hamas-generated Hobbesian conditions.

The US decision to drop aid by parachute and build a makeshift pier off Gaza is the Biden administration's way of shaming Israel. They want to make it look like Israel is holding up aid to Gaza. 

In just the past 24 hours, even as Hamas is shooting at us, we sent a 28-truck convoy carrying food into northern Gaza. Likewise, we coordinated with UNICEF and WHO missions to refuel Al Ahali Hospital and water pumping facilities. Israel also facilitated the airdropping of 288 packages of humanitarian aid. The IDF controls the airspace over Gaza.

Israel is facing a relentless diplomatic and propaganda blitz. The Arabs who control the UN General Assembly are mustering votes to suspend Israel's membership. The Biden/Harris 2024 campaign, which is struggling to achieve a come-from-behind victory against Donald Trump, is losing its woke, Jewish-quisling, Muslim, and African American base because of the president's military backing for Israel. Western media intones the vacuous two-state solution mantra religiously as if the Palestinian Arabs want to live alongside a national homeland for the Jewish people. As if Israel is primarily responsible for the failure of the two-state approach. 

Internally, Binyamin Netanyahu shows no sign of stepping down, and his political survival remains his first priority.

Israel's non-messianic, non-apocalyptic population (still, I venture, the majority) is growing weary with the prime minister's political partners. Last night, the Supreme Spiritual Leader of the Shas Party, who also happens to be on the state payroll as Sephardic Chief Rabbi, declared that if his constituents were forced to do any form of national service, including the army, he would advise them to relocate to the Galut. Twenty years or so of Netanyahu's rule has created a Hardal and Haredi Political Golem that is out of control.

Meanwhile, Iran is waiting in the wings, watching our divisions and the fatigue the Biden White House is displaying in Gaza. If Israel is forced to abandon its mission of defanging Hamas and ensuring it cannot rule the Strip, that will bring relief to Hezbollah, which controls the failed state of Lebanon. Nasrallah's shock troops remain positioned to strike Israel when the Teheran mullahs give the order.

In the final analysis, Israel's fate is not in its own hands. We are burning through our ammunition and military supplies. We can't sustain a war against the Iranian Empire without US backing. Moreover, one of the unintended consequences of the Hamas attack on October 7^th is that it catalyzed a global tsunami of anti-Israelism and antisemitism from New York to Melbourne and from Pretoria to London.

Yet this much is clear: Defeat in Gaza – meaning leaving Hamas capable of fighting another day and the Palestinian polity emboldened in its zero-sum goal of Israel's destruction – will only make things worse for the Diaspora.

This is the unadorned reality as we begin the Day 156 of the Gaza war. Yazan Kafarneh does not deserve to suffer. Yet those responsible for his misery - and the sufferings of the other innocent Palestinian children in Gaza - are about to get away with it unless the US administration comes to its senses.