Finish what *they* started

Israel has a moral duty to complete its war goal of destroying Hamas

Yesterday was a horrible day for Jews around the world. We learned that the Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, were brutally murdered in captivity. There was the coffin of their mother, Shiri, that arrived in Israel with another corpse inside. There were the remains of Oded Lifshitz desecrated with the message that every inch of Palestine would be reclaimed. There were the black coffins stamped with the victims’ “date of arrest”—10/7—and the macabre ceremony. There was the Gazan fervour and excitement. The large turnout and lively music.

What is the appropriate response to the Gazan death cult and their latest display of barbarism? In the short term, of course, it is emotion. Sadness, anger, rage, and revenge. The grief we experience is both personal and collective and it transcends national boundaries. It won’t pass soon.

But Israel cannot afford to wallow in emotion for too long. It must do one thing and that is to destroy the death cult that attacked it. That means in the first instance destroying Hamas, which is not only a strategic aim of the war but at this point, a moral duty. The crimes committed by Hamas and the broader Gazan death cult are crimes against man and they require that the perpetrators face total defeat. There will be no peace or justice unless this is done.

Yesterday was not the justification for that moral duty. That justification was already strong, indeed unquestionable, by 10/7. But as of yesterday, there can be no excuse; no moral confusion, except by those who are evil, cowardly, or irredeemably befuddled. A new prescription for vision correction must be filled. Israel must see clearly, not through blurry, smudged, or rose-coloured glasses. See what must be done and see to it that it is done.

This is what the Israeli people deserve. This is what the Jewish people worldwide deserve. And this—because the crimes committed by the Gazan death cult are crimes against humanity—is what humanity deserves. Those on the side of humanity don’t care what those against humanity have to say about it. We do not want to reach a compromise. We are not responsible for explaining time and again why the intentional murder of a kidnapped baby for the crime of being Jewish is not the same as the unintentional killing of children put in harm’s way by the very same depraved terrorists who started this war without just cause and to murder as many Israeli civilians as they could. What is needed to survive and heal is total victory over evil, the pure evil that the Gazan death cult displays.

Hamas must be eliminated. Palestinian Islamic Jihad must be eliminated. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine must be eliminated. Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade must also be destroyed. The Arabs of Gaza, who revel in the intense suffering of Jews, must be psychologically broken. You can call it deradicalization if it makes you feel better, or de-Nazification, if analogy is your cup of tea, but in plain terms, their will to destroy Israel and the Jews must be broken once and for all.

We all need this

This must happen not only for the sake of Israelis or even the sake of Jews worldwide but for the sake of humanity. We cannot undo the crimes against humanity that the Gazan death cult undertook on 10/7 and that it continues to undertake, but we have a moral duty to end its reign of terror and heal the world.

Israel is principally responsible for undertaking this duty. It is responsible for leveraging the goodwill of the United States. It must not fail to capitalize on opportunities flowing from that goodwill under the current administration that may not later be present. Since risk positively correlates with reward, Israel cannot afford the luxury of risk aversion, turning away from a rare window of opportunity.

Israel’s decisions not only affect Israelis; they affect Jews worldwide. Some might read this statement as a call for restraint. After all, Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas, Iran’s other proxies, and Iran itself has been met with a spike in worldwide antisemitism. Life in Israel after 10/7 has changed but so has life for Jews in London, Paris, New York and Toronto, and the list goes on.

But that reading would be wrong. The spike in antisemitism occurred swiftly after 10/7 and despite the just cause of Israel’s military actions and the IDF’s unprecedented efforts to minimize civilian casualties in urban warfare against an enemy that uses the most vulnerable as expendable human shields. The spike in antisemitism worldwide was not released by Israel’s military actions, which were just and necessary, but by the antisemitic bloodlust that Hamas’s savagery released.

The wave of antisemitism will not be quelled by pacifism nor by diplomatic pressures that bring Israelis back to two-state negotiations with genocidal maniacs. Jews in the Diaspora will have to fight antisemitism at home, as they have been doing every day since the day after 10/7 when Jew hatred erupted. We will handle our responsibility through grassroots efforts, as we have and will continue to do, but we need Israel to undertake its moral responsibility and achieve its strategic goal.

We need Israel to defeat Hamas and win this war unambiguously. Gaza must not be allowed to continue being a breeding ground for a death cult mentality. That mentality, too, must be destroyed, repudiated, and stigmatized for the good of mankind. Only then will Jews in the Diaspora have the fighting chance they so desperately need to win the war against the Jews raging in their cities.

Only then will the antisemites who cloak themselves in fake moral virtue be seen for what they are: vile hatemongers, twenty-first-century brownshirts, and battalions of naive dupes who proudly stood for torture, murder, hostage-taking, and lies.