The Hardest Thing About War: Accepting the Hard Truths

Most of us have never served in the military, let alone been personally involved in a war.

While this has almost always been true in America, it’s truer now than ever, as our military has shrunken to a fraction of its traditional size, and as the end of the draft has resulted in generations of families with few or any servicemen at all.

So there are truths that the general population used to know, almost instinctively, that are now unknown and untaught.

Even if one didn’t serve in the military oneself – as I regrettably admit I did not – one used to have some familiarity with wartime. For example, I attended a JROTC high school so I was taught by servicemen for four years. I had grandparents, uncles and cousins who served in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam.

In past generations, almost all Americans had at least these contacts, these opportunities.

Even the veterans who didn’t make a point of talking about their own wartime experience would still take opportunities to share the information that the next generation needs to know.

But with generations being raised with no servicemen in their families, hardly any servicemen in their schools or churches or sports teams or other activities, fewer and fewer Americans are raised with the truths of war in their consciousness.

We see an example of this problem playing out in how many Americans are viewing the situation in Israel today, in how people understand the decision-making affected by casualties, those left behind on the battlefield, and those stuck behind enemy lines.

On October 7, thousands of Hamas demons charged into Israel, focusing on the weakest, the most innocent, the most vulnerable. They murdered civilians – adults and children, elderly people and babies, and they took hostages back with them when they retreated into their spiders’ nests in the Gaza Strip. Over a thousand killed immediately, thousands more left injured, hundreds taken back to Gaza.

Around the world, some of us saw it happen, and instinctively knew what Israel would have to do: immediately stage an overwhelming counterattack, and wipe out Hamas completely, so it can never pose a threat again.

Others saw it happen, and, while recognizing the need for a response, instinctively believed that Israel must wait, must be surgical, must delay until all the hostages are released.

There are families and purported friends of the hostages in Israel demanding meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu to postpone action. There are families and friends in America demanding that the USA join the notoriously anti-semitic UN in pressuring Israel to delay.

It’s out of compassion of course. Isn’t it? Our hearts break for the hostages and their families; we pray they’ll be released safely before their captors are killed.

But THAT’S why the hostages were taken in the first place; because jihadists know how we think. And that’s one reason why the majority of the hostages will never be released. But there are others.

We believe that about 230 hostages were taken back into the Gaza Strip on October 7. We believe they were split up and spread across the territory, to be held by an assortment of terror cells in various underground tunnels, specifically to serve as human shields. Wherever Israel knows there’s a terrorist tunnel, they now know there might be a hostage as well.

Israel must therefore fear destroying the very tunnels they know they need to destroy, because of the likelihood of collateral damage – the accidental killing of her own innocent people as part of the firefight.

Those of us who don’t understand war at all will play into the terrorists’ hands, and demand restraint and delay. Those of us who have some understanding of war know the opposite – that delay only helps the enemy, and we must toughen up and admit the hard truth:

That there is no reason to believe these 230 people are still alive.

We know Hamas kept a few alive at least, so that they could release them and tantalize us with the prospect of more releases, and so that the first to be released would share stories about how extensive, how impossible, the web of tunnels is.

But as every week goes by, the odds increase that fewer and fewer hostages remain. It is to Hamas’ benefit that we assume they’re all alive, but there’s no good reason for such an assumption. Consider:

• Some were injured in the capture, and have likely died of their injuries since.
• Some certainly put up a fight with their captors, and were killed.
• Some were dependent on medication that ran out, and sickened and died.
• Some were old or weak already, susceptible to the usual threats of age and weakness, and have died of heart attack under these conditions.
• Some were tortured or raped by their captors, for information or pleasure, and have died as a result.
• Some refused to eat what they were told to eat, or to record for the cameras what they were told to record, and were beaten or killed when they refused to play along.
• In three weeks, surely some have tried to escape and were killed in the effort.
• And some, very likely, have committed suicide rather than be playthings for these demons.

There is no way of knowing how many of the hostages fall in each of these groups. But if we started out with about 230, if we are realists, we must admit that every week that goes by, fewer and fewer remain to be released.

Israel’s mission is – and must be – to secure the nation for the future, to eliminate the threat that Hamas has been all along. Now that we have seen undeniable proof that allowing Hamas to rule the Gaza Strip was a massive error, now that we see that even unlimited power to build an independent state was not enough to satisfy them, but merely empowered them to pursue their true goal, the murder of Jews and dissolution of the State of Israel – we know what has to be done:

Israel must wipe out Hamas and deal a permanent and powerful blow to its directors in Lebanon and Iran. Israel must not delay any further.

While we hope and pray that many or even most of the hostages somehow manage to survive this, of course, we know that Israel cannot afford to allow that wishful but unlikely assumption to affect its conduct of the war.

Israel must make the hard call of assuming that the hostages are already to be counted among the casualties of October 7.

And the rest of the world must understand and accept that hard call.

Israel has ten million people to protect. Israel would do these hostages – probably, in most cases, these late hostages – no favor by putting their families, friends, and neighbors in jeopardy, through fruitless delays and pulled punches.

Copyright 2023 John F Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant.  A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009.  His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available only on Amazon

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