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| Haaretz publisher, Amos Schocken (TOI) |
Because that is exactly what Haaretz publisher, Amos Schocken said in a recent interview. Adding that Israel is indeed imposing a cruel apartheid regime on Palestinians and should be sanctioned.
He has since ‘clarified’ those comments and tried to explain what he ‘really meant’. I’m not buying it. He meant what he said when he said it. And is now trying to weasel out of it in order to reclaim the legitimacy of his publication, Haaretz, as an objective news source Which it is anything but.
Schocken is the face of the extreme left in Israel. The very same extreme left that hates Netanyahu and has been using the hostages in Gaza as an excuse to keep protesting him even at a time of war. While there are a lot of people not on the left that have been joining them in sincere concern for the hostages, it’s pretty clear that these protests are led by a Netanyahu hating left that began protesting long before October 7th of last year.
They are all screaming for a deal with Hamas that would free the hostages. That would mean ending the war, getting out of Gaza, and releasing 1500 Palestinian terrorists. Many of them murderers of Jews. Last time Israel did something like that is was for far less terrorists – one of whom was Yahya Sinwar.
This shows that the left hates Netanyahu so much that they are willing to risk the release of another Sinwar who would surely attempt another October 7th.
It is true that there are many protesters that are not leftists and have joined them - understandably thinking only of the hostages and their families. They are motivated by sincere and deep compassion. But that apparently blinds them to the dire consequences of their demands.
To say that people like Amos Schocken might be seen as ‘the enemy within’ is not as far fetched as one might have thought before he made those comments. He might think his views are the moral ones. But so do those ‘freedom fighters’.
The war must continue on all fronts. Israel has no choice but to proceed toward victory over the ‘freedom fighters’. They will not cease in their goals of genocide for the over 7 million Jews in Israel until they succeed or are thoroughly defeated.
The left (which is comprised of the aforementioned ‘Schocken’ type leftists in Israel, European leaders, and the left leaning majority of Democrats in congress - including its Jewish members) all believe that wars do not solve anything. Thus invoking John Lennon’s words to ‘Give peace a chance’. As though it is the only way forward.
Which brings me to Jonathan Rosenblum’s latest column in Mishpacha where he made this very reference. Jonathan correctly dismissed that claim in ways that I find irrefutable. The only way forward for Israel is with victory over an existential enemy. Not with a compromise that allows them to live and fight another day. To demonstrate why this is so, I am going to quote extensively from his column:
The decision to assassinate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah marked a sea change for Israel. Lee Smith described that change in “Killing Nasrallah” (Tablet Magazine, September 28, 2024): “Not only have they finally liquidated an adversary they’ve long been capable of killing, they’ve turned a deaf ear to their superpower patron of more than half a century.”
As Smith colorfully put it, Netanyahu came to realize that “heeding Washington’s advice on the conduct of war is like taking counsel from the angel of death. Just as the US is no longer willing or able to win the wars it commits Americans to fight, the Joe Biden administration won’t let US allies win wars either.”
LET US CONSIDER what Israel has achieved since September 17, when approximately 3,000 pagers blew up in the hands or pants pockets of the Hezbollah operatives to which they had been distributed, disabling all of them in one second. A second attack on Hezbollah’s fallback communication system — walkie-talkies — eliminated many more the next day.
Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British Expeditionary Forces in Afghanistan, termed the rapid attrition of Hezbollah forces in the two weeks leading up to Nasrallah’s assassination “unprecedented.” And Professor Charles Lipson, writing in the Spectator, described the Israeli campaign against Iranian proxies as the “most dazzling combination of real-time intelligence, high technology, and precise military action in the modern era.”
Israeli intelligence has apparently penetrated everywhere in the constellation of Iranian proxies, including in Iran itself. On July 31, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was blown up in a Tehran guest house belonging the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), while in Iran to celebrate the inauguration of the new president.
The preceding day, July 30, Fuad Shukr, one of the founders of Hezbollah and designated an international terrorist by the US State Department, was eliminated in Beirut. The Wall Street Journal reported that Shukr had received a call earlier in the day telling him to move from his second-floor office to his home on the seventh floor, where he was killed by an Israeli drone. Israel appeared to have infiltrated Hezbollah’s internal communications network.
Fear of Israeli eavesdropping led Nasrallah and six of his closest top aides to meet in person on September 27, when Israeli planes dropped 80 tons of bombs on the building in which they were gathered. According to some reports, $1.5 billion dollars in cash held by Hezbollah from its drug-running operations was also incinerated and 2,000 pounds of gold melted down in the attack, severely straining Hezbollah’s finances. Israel has continued since then to target all those places where Hezbollah is hoarding its cash.
Nasrallah was irreplaceable, but Israel has made any succession as difficult as possible by eliminating several potential successors in the weeks following his killing. In addition, Israel eliminated a number of senior military commanders in the week leading up to Nasrallah’s assassination, including Ali Karaki, Hezbollah’s senior military commander after the killing of Fuad Shukr, and Ibrahim Aqil, head of operations. The latter two were both eliminated in Israeli strikes in Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.
There is a lot more Jonathan points out in favor of pursuing victory that is difficult if not impossible to refute. And therefore a must read for anyone that cares about the welfare of the Jewish people. I defy anyone to provide a counter argument half as persuasive as is Jonathan’s for Israel to continue fighting until they win.
What will victory look like? I leave that up to the nation that will be most affected by victory versus defeat. And surely NOT the Biden administration nor the candidate running for president from that administration. They are all of the mistaken notion of ‘Give peace a chance’. Last time Israel gave peace a chance it resulted in barrages of rockets being fired randomly at them - until October 7th when all hell broke loose. Israel can ill afford to give that kind of peace a chance ever again.
Whether Trump is the answer to that is not clear. But Harris’s answer to that is clear. And a cease fire now is not it!