But beware. It\u2019s moral-equivalence-central worldwide. Baby-stealing has been normalized. The world treats Hamas terrorists as rational actors trading goods, not monstrous human traffickers treating people like poker chips.<\/p>\n Even when The Washington Post doesn\u2019t call lawfully imprisoned Palestinians \u201ccaptives,\u201d the rhetoric of \u201cexchange\u201d equates pure souls named Ella or Avigail whose only crime is being Israeli, with twisted terrorists who happen to be young or female \u2013 one planned to be a suicide bomber, another stabbed her neighbor for being Jewish.<\/p>\n Every capitulation to Hamas blackmail \u2013 that\u2019s what it is!!! \u2013 should remind everyone: Negotiating with terrorists breeds terrorism. Everyone, especially US President Joe Biden, must remember that beyond 161 innocents still caged, Hamas\u2019s mass manipulation holds 9.3 million Israelis hostage, too.<\/p>\n When so many accuse Israel of discounting Palestinian lives because this enlightened, life-affirming democracy will trade multiple Palestinian terrorists for one civilian, some blur the moral clarity in Israel\u2019s position \u2013 validating Hamas\u2019s lies.<\/p>\n Remember that on\u00a0October 7<\/a>\u00a0the \u201cterrorist group Hamas unleashed pure unadulterated evil in the world.\u201d Its \u201cstated purpose for existing is the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people.\u201d We cannot retreat, because \u201chistory has taught us that when terrorists don\u2019t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don\u2019t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction…. And the cost and the threats to America and the world keep rising.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s changed since October 19, when President Biden said those words?<\/p>\n Actually, the moral, diplomatic, and existential stakes have only escalated. Hamas confirmed every Israeli fear the West dismissed, and then some. Having made Gaza one big fortress of evil, Hamas leverages Palestinian and Israeli suffering into a worldwide anti-Zionist propaganda barrage. Yet despite being absolutely responsible for the death of thousands and the misery of many more, every Hamas lie becomes a truth believed among too many Westerners.<\/p>\n Hamas claims Israel still \u201coccupies\u201d\u00a0Gaza,<\/a>\u00a0after Israel withdrew from every inch of Gaza in 2005. Even The New York Times, describing \u201cthe subterranean maze\u201d stolen international humanitarian aid built, reports that Hamas\u2019s tunnels \u201cextend across most if not all of Gaza, the territory they control.\u201d If Hamas \u201ccontrols\u201d the \u201cterritory,\u201d how can Israel occupy Gaza?<\/p>\n Hamas complained about Israel\u2019s evil \u201cblockade,\u201d overlooking Gaza\u2019s Egyptian border. Somehow, all this cash, weaponry, and material to build its citadel of sadism arrived, suggesting it wasn\u2019t much of a \u201cblockade\u201d either.<\/p>\n Hamas accuses Israel of violating international law by bombing hospitals, mosques, and kindergartens. But when you use your hospitals and mosques and kindergartens to store weapons, let alone develop command-and-control centers there, or hold kidnapped innocents or slaughter Israelis there, you lose the international legal protection genuine sanctuaries deserve.<\/p>\n We need a language shift. Shifa and Rantisi are Hamospitals, not hospitals. Call mosques with rocket-making factories Hamosques. Schools filled with weapons caches, and propagating hate, are killergartens, not kindergartens. The organization often facilitating this is UNRuin not UNRWA. And hostages are pawns.<\/p>\n Confront cynical supporters of these homophobic, theocratic, autocratic, rapists and murderers. Only sloberals \u2013 not liberals \u2013 rationalize stealing babies or beheading them. And only feminasties \u2013 not feminists \u2013 stop believing abused women\u2019s testimonies while losing their voice against gendered violence and rape culture when Israelis are victimized.<\/p>\n MOST DANGEROUS are the self-defeating \u201cceasefire\u201d demands, without acknowledging that Hamas started the war, and must be degraded militarily. A clear victory is the best way to free the remaining hostages, along with millions of others threatened by Hamas, including 9.3 million Israelis, and hundreds of millions more who will suffer if Hamas isn\u2019t punished severely for behaving brutally.<\/p>\n Yes, it\u2019s personal. When Biden or anyone else says \u201cceasefire,\u201d I hear them say: \u201cI\u2019m willing to kill your kids in Israel so we can feel good about ourselves in America.\u201d When J Street, while condemning Hamas \u201cunequivocally,\u201d supports \u201cconsideration of alternative strategies and tactics for removing Hamas from operational control of Gaza that minimize harm to Palestinian civilians,\u201d you wonder how any serious person could write such claptrap. Who doesn\u2019t wish that \u201calternative strategies\u201d worked?<\/p>\n Whenever Israel defended itself against Hamas militarily, J Street led the charge demanding an immediate ceasefire. Everyone errs politically, sometimes. That\u2019s excusable. But it\u2019s unconscionable to fail to adjust, to ignore new information, say, after the savagery of October 7.<\/p>\n This morning, I saw three young Israeli students standing behind a wall of photos at a bus stop. Each snatched innocent sears my soul. But we need a reality check. Most of the first few dozen released seemed physically healthy.<\/p>\n Many of the remainder, if alive, have probably been wounded badly or abused horrifically. Israel \u2013 backed by America \u2013 must end the salami tactics, even though it saved 40 lives.<\/p>\n If Hamas doesn\u2019t account for every last hostage \u2013 and offer some deal to free them all \u2013 Israel\u2019s campaign to liberate Gazans, Israelis, and the world from this menace and neutralize Hamas militarily must continue. A tough, focused, sustained war against Hamas, backed by America and the West, is the only way to free those pawns not pictured on those heartrending posters \u2013 everyone else in the free world.<\/p>\n The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, an American presidential historian, and, most recently, the editor of a three-volume set, Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0Negotiating with terrorists breeds terrorism, but a tough, focused, sustained war against Hamas, backed by America and the West, can free the rest of the world from the terrorist organization<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[446,377,383],"class_list":["post-12467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-war","topics-swords-of-iron","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13058,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12467\/revisions\/13058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Breeding terrorism<\/strong><\/h3>\n
This is personal<\/strong><\/h3>\n