It’s Not About The Goal – It’s About Murdering Jews

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi Addresses troops (IDF)

In the past two weeks, since Hamas enacted its barbaric attack on Israeli civilians in which at least 1,400 people have now been killed, the political pundits and professional “experts” both on the news channels and in the print media – like CNN and The New York Times – have needed to find some sort of rational or logical explanation for what was done. Unfortunately, there is probably no such explanation and beheading people, burning whole families alive, including babies, and some things that cannot even be mentioned here might simply be the actions of a group of people who hate Jews and do not wish to exist peacefully alongside Israel.

A popular claim is that this attack had something to do with Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to actually accept the “two-state solution” for the conflict, in spite of his having accepted the establishment of an Independent Palestinian State. Somehow, this is why Hamas, in its charter – written long before Netanyahu came to office and never changed since the Oslo Accords were signed 30 years ago – calls for the killing of Jews everywhere and has never accepted such a solution.

Hamas wants only a “one-state solution” – i.e. no Israel at all.

People like Tom Freidman and his ilk have been so quick to find ways to blame Benjamin Netanyahu for what happened that they did not bother to take the time to see the inherent contradictions in their own arguments.

Apparently, they say, this all happened because Netanyahu and his “hardline right-wing” government were not really interested in the two-state solution. This motivated Hamas to attack. So, what did it do – Hamas pretended to be interested in the economic development of Gaza and fooled the Israeli government into allowing funding to flow into Gaza from abroad for its rebuilding while it actually plotted this attack.

So the Netanyahu government, a government that does not want peace and is to blame for the attack because of how it oppresses the Palestinians in Gaza, is culpable here because it allowed countries like Qatar to provide funding for the rebuilding of Gaza and the improvement of the lives of the people there. What?

The pundits also think Hamas, in its attack, had a plan: Hamas wanted to make Israel overreact and harm Gazan civilians so that this would destroy the Abraham Accords – peace that was made between Israel and four Arab nations like the UAE. This is what happens when people have an irrational need to find rationality amidst barbarism.

Such people also seem to think that Hamas struck when it did because of the growing talk recently of possible normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Never mind the fact that it has been widely reported that the attack took years to plan.

Then there are the nay-sayers who are warning Israel against launching a ground assault on Gaza, or occupying the area for any time. They make comparisons to the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. They also compare what is going on right now to Israel’s second war in Lebanon in 2006 fought against the terrorist organization Hezbollah after it enacted a cross border raid killing IDF soldiers on patrol.

But at that time Israel had an accidental Prime Minister – Ehud Olmert – who had been in office for less than a year and held office only because his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, fell into a coma. Before that, he only held domestic cabinet portfolios and was the Mayor of Jerusalem.

The government’s Defense Minister at the time was the then Labor Party leader Amir Peretz who not only had no prior experience to justify his appointment to that post but had never even served as a cabinet minister before.

And the IDF Chief of Staff at the time was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz who previously served as the commander of the Israel Air Force. No other IDF chief of staff had come out of either its air force or navy, not before or since.

Today, Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, is a former general. Its emergency “war government” includes Benny Gantz, a former IDF Chief of Staff and former Minister of Defense.

Also, in 2006 there was no goal set, no definition of what a victory in the war would be, exactly. The IDF was rushed into action in a ground invasion as Hezbollah unleashed a barrage of thousands of rockets at northern Israel, something Israel’s intelligence agencies did not know it could do at the time.

The IDF this time has already taken two weeks to build up its forces, including reservists. There are an estimated 300,000 soldiers massed near the border with Gaza. And the IAF has been carrying out relentless air assaults on Hamas’ terror infrastructure in Gaza during that time.

As to what happened to America in Afghanistan and Iraq, these experts warn that Israel does not want to get bogged down in Gaza in a prolonged occupation like what happened to the American military in those countries. But there is no real comparison here.

The Americans and their allies never had an exit strategy from those nations. The goal in Afghanistan was the destruction of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But they failed in that task and got bogged down in an extended occupation.

As for Gaza, it is a much smaller area than all of southern Lebanon, and it is certainly smaller than either Iraq or Afghanistan. And those three nations all border others hostile to both Israel and the US – Iran and Syria. So, aid to the terrorists there came through in abundance across wide open, long borders that could not properly be secured. This is not the case in Gaza.

Perhaps the news channels and the newspapers should stop filling their air time and pages with “experts” giving unfounded opinions and engaging in speculation and instead concentrate on ensuring that the truth about what Hamas is is reported.