Game over in Gaza

Someone has to say this, so it might as well be I on the eve of my seventy-ninth birthday. I will not bother detailing the rampant antisemitism pouring out of every site on the globe. From Obrero, Sweden to Canberra, Australia Jew hatred is on the march militant. It streams from the mouths of governments and influencers on the internet. Tik Tok. Instagram. Commentary on X and Substack. It lodges in schools from kindergarten on, has found a home in the Beijing Daily, shines in bright lights on the stages of music festivals. Glastonbury. Coachella. Eurovision. The Canadian Prime Minister recently claimed Muslim values are Canadian values. Soon the mayor of New York will be saying the same for his city. Then there is the UN. Doctors Without Borders. Amnesty International. Queers for Palestine. The late pope, the new pope. Chile. Columbia. Benighted South Africa. Not to mention the Muslim world as far south as Indonesia. On and on the list goes, where ignorance and stupidity wrap themselves in the mantle of pity and virtue until the whole world has gone as crazy as the Church militant did for the 1500 years following Constantine’s embrace of Christianity. One would almost forget that the latest outburst of blood lust started in the Arab Muslim world’s prime real estate market for Jew hatred outside of Ramallah: the Gaza Strip.

What’s the point? you will ask. Only to signify that the West is finished. That modernity is over. Even if the world by some miracle manages to recover, the last two years have witnessed the return of blood libels in modern garb so far beyond the pale it is difficult to imagine how people will be able to live with themselves. One thought after the Holocaust never again, but it just goes to show you never say never. Human beings have an enormous capacity for evil, for sheer rottenness, as the Bible has always shown us, and the penchant to throw themselves under a train is always there. Thus modern society, heading for death like Anna Karenina. Post-modern society, if you like, the bastard outcome of modern society that has failed to understand itself and value its achievements. Who knows what will come after? I do not, but I do know modern society is over and beyond redemption. Which brings me to one of my beefs with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim that Israel is not only saving itself in its current multi-front war; it is also saving the West. A laudable and understandable claim, but quite untrue, if only for the simple reason that the West cannot be saved. So better the Prime Minister should concentrate simply on saving Israel as the Jewish homeland. Perhaps something new for humanity will emerge from that, as once it did long ago. If so, that will be the bonus prize. For now, it is enough if he can save the Jews.

Which brings me to the garbage we have to read every day about a potential ceasefire in Gaza. There is nothing like an event that has not happened to clog the airwaves and the internet. Pundits have already been at work promising the war in Gaza that is hardly a war might end in days, in weeks, all depending on what the Israelis do, what the Americans want, diplomacy and analysis mixed in with hyperbolic claims about impending humanitarian disaster piling upon the humanitarian disaster that has already occurred. More blood libels, but who cares? People not only no longer do not know how to read; they do not even know how to decipher pictures on TV or YouTube. Keffiyehs and watermelons are about as much as they can digest these days. I no longer pay attention. I read about a possible ceasefire in which Hamas will graciously release 10 hostages of the 20 still alive and can only think: what a joke! Is this really a war? Can Israel, which sends planes thousands of miles to bomb Iranian military installations, not take care of the hoodlums in Gaza? The terrain is difficult, they say. Civilian population. Underground tunnels. Diplomatic pressure. Yadda yadda. The fact remains that no one is going to go to war against Israel on behalf of Gaza, other than the overfed under forties of western society who will march down their boulevards chanting calls to globalize the intifada in lockstep with their Muslim handlers.

So this is what I suggest the government of Israel do if it wants to put an end to the war in Gaza and get the remaining hostages back. I suggest they issue an ultimatum to the people of Gaza - yes, the people of Gaza, who supported Hamas, joined them in invading Israel and perpetrating the carnage of October 7 and then hid the hostages in their houses, the very ones who screamed on western news outlets here comes another nakba when the IDF came in with the troops - and give the people of Gaza 24 hours to send back the hostages and raise the white flag of surrender, Hamas members in tow, or face total destruction. And to show the people of Gaza that Israel means business, the Israeli government should demolish the Al-Aksa mosque and adjoining buildings, the very Al-Aksa in whose name Hamas launched this war, and issue the following statement. “We have no wish to do you any more harm than necessary. But we will not suffer any more losses of our soldiers in order to make your lives easier while you hold our citizens hostage. So unless you return our hostages within 24 hours and surrender unconditionally, we will send in our army to destroy you as we have just destroyed your beloved Al-Aksa mosque. For now it is only a building that we have demolished; but if you do not accede to our demand we will destroy the entire Gaza Strip and you shall most likely perish in the process. Diplomatic pressure will not weaken our resolve nor halt our attack. Yours is the choice and yours the responsibility for what will ensue. If war is what you want you will have war, brutal and unconditional and unaccompanied by any aid or mercy.”

Now what is so difficult about that? It cuts to the chase. It assigns responsibility to those who are responsible. It also tells the world that you can be as antisemitic as you want, you can threaten us as much as you like, but Israel is here to stay. It is our homeland, the only Jewish state in the world and the only one where Jews can be safe from reprisal on your part. As for the enemies that surround us, that attack us and murder us on a daily basis, to them too we shall put an end, so that at least in Israel Jews shall be able to sit, each man, woman and child under their metaphorical fig tree and not be afraid. That way, when the Jews in the Diaspora have had enough of being slandered and attacked by their neighbours, they will have a haven to come home to, proving that in certain exceptional cases you can go home again.

Of course my simple solution will put an end to the many pundits who today run podcasts and earn a living off the never-ending war in Gaza and the accompanying never-ending delirious Palestinian cause. It will finally put a lie to the diplomatic dance and the surrounding expert chatter promising us again a new Middle East, an economic investment in peace coupled with an understandable indulgence of “moderate” Arab regimes who would like to make peace with Israel but cannot because of the street which these regimes have indoctrinated for so long. All this is pure poppycock, twaddle to protect the interests of the rich and powerful as so often throughout history, which winds up indulging prevarication under the dress-up of diplomacy and historical analysis. How about for once a simple bit of honesty? If you want peace with the Jewish state, you make peace and act to ensure it. And if you don’t, well then you don’t, but then beware. Because when you talk out of two sides of your mouth you risk unleashing the dogs of war, as the people of Gaza did on October 7 2023. After that it will be too late to moan and wail and call for diplomatic solutions. And if you think you can impose such solutions, the current situation in Gaza should tell you otherwise.

Of course, the Jews in Israel would have to agree with me for my proposal to work; and right now I do not see that the events of the last two years have shifted mindsets enough for that to happen. The same clowns who dot the political landscape still seem to suck up all its oxygen, if ongoing opinion polls are correct. The mindless left deep state still holds a monopoly in the literary and legal confraternities, in academia and media, even if not as extreme as the Oslo mentality of yesteryear. The Jewish state is not as Jewish as it could be, not as proudly Zionist, not as rooted in its Biblical heritage, not as knowledgeable about its millennial history as holiday pronouncements would lead one to believe. Lately I have been reading Simon Dubnow’s monumental History of the Jews. It makes for fascinating reading, if only to remind me how often we repeat behaviour that is millennia-old. The times of the Judges in ancient Israel were fractious enough. The kingdoms which followed were rent by division: between tribes, between priests and royalty, between schools of thought that made their way into Talmudic academies once the kingdom was lost. Sometimes I think that the trauma of the Jewish people harks all the way back to Sinai, where the people said we will do and we will listen when Moses handed them the covenant, then proceeded to break the first commandment as soon as he tarried on the mountain. Which raises the question: are we Jews ready to sign on to the covenant that made us a nation or do we prefer to remain a tribe with all the family ties and dissensions that come with it? My penchant is for the nation, for Israel as the nation state of the Jews, and for the Torah which bequeathed it to us. Which is why I now tell Bible stories, retell them actually, so modern Jews will become fervent Zionists, understand that a strong Israel is the only antidote to antisemitism (Dubnow’s books offer enough proof of that), and that means doing what has to be done to make it game over in Gaza.

P.S. Having written all this I checked my old files and realized I had written much the same thing on my website which no longer exists when Hamas and Israel went to war in May 2021. And then I saw that I had again written the gist of what I had to say here in my substack post of October 14, 2023 called Gaza and what to do about it. It is comforting to see I stick to my guns. It is less comforting to see that my advice still goes unheeded though little has changed, except for the fact that Jew hatred has exploded exponentially in the last two years. I suppose I can always comfort myself by remembering that Jeremiah had much the same problem. Perhaps my readers have some suggestions. If they are sixty or under I suggest they get out of Dodge as quickly as possible.