The war has been dragging on for seven months; Hamas and Israel are negotiating.
This wasn’t ever going to be easy.
Hamas is a massive terrorist organization, internationally funded, that delights in the mass murder of innocent civilians and wants the nation of Israel utterly destroyed. Their chant is “From the river to the sea,” meaning that they want to take all Israeli land from Israel and kill the Jews who currently live there (and presumably the muslims and Christians as well, who make up about a quarter of the population).
Israel, by contrast, is a legitimate country in the family of nations, a parliamentary republic in which all its citizens (including muslims and Christians) can both vote and hold office themselves. Israel does not want its innocent civilians killed by Hamas, so Israel has committed to demolish Hamas by the end of this war.
There’s not a lot of common ground here, on which to build a peace treaty – but the West is obsessed with the idea of peace, and has apparently completely forgotten the longstanding rule that always peace depends upon the eradication of terrorists, so the West is pressuring the combatants toward signing some kind of ceasefire.
The West does have internal debate here. Those who pay attention to the news – and to history – are fully on the side of Israel, knowing that Israel must destroy Hamas in order for there to be any worthwhile resolution to this thing. Many in Western governments, however, are siding with their anti-semitic muslim minorities, and are pressuring Israel to cancel the necessary focus on Rafah so that Hamas can survive as a functioning source of terror in the future.
What is unclear is how many in the Western electorate are fully aware of this diabolical double-dealing by their governments. Do American Jewish and Christian voters in particular, for example, fully realize that the Biden-Harris regime is doing everything possible to save Hamas, to keep this powerful, homicidal, maniacal terror network healthy enough to continue to attack innocent civilians in the future?
The odds are, this reality has escaped many in the electorate. At least, the press is doing its best to ensure that result.
One clear example of this is how the approach to Rafah has been covered in the Western media.
Israel is certain that the last major holdout of tens of thousands of serious Hamas militants is in the Rafah area. Israel offered – through public statements and leaflet drops – for the civilians of Rafah to evacuate safely to an approved refugee region along the Mediterranean, so that Israel could focus its fire on the Hamas militants who would remain. (It continues to be difficult to imagine any military in history trying as hard as Israel has to avoid unnecessary civilian deaths in this war).
But how has the press reported this effort? The Western press discourages Israel from pursuing the militants in Rafah. The Western press speaks negatively of the refugee areas that have been set aside to protect the fleeing civilians from Rafah. One would think the Western press is on the side of Hamas, supporting the longstanding Hamas strategy of keeping innocent women and children close at hand to hide behind, as human shields. Why else would the mainstream Western press oppose their safe transport out of harm’s way?
As the week of May 5 began, the press announced that Hamas had agreed to ceasefire terms, but Israel is still going forward with the plan to attack Hamas at Rafah. Obviously, the goal here is to make Israel look ungentlemanly, going ahead with an attack when the other side has agreed to a ceasefire.
But is that true?
Of course not. In fact, among the non-negotiable absolutes from Israel’s perspective is that living hostages taken on October 7 must be freed, and Hamas must understand that they can no longer remain in power over the so-called palestinian people of the Gaza Strip. These are basic requirements, and anyone familiar with the history of Hamas must concede its necessity.
Well, reportedly, Hamas began the week saying they have agreed to a ceasefire negotiated by Egypt and Qatar, in which they would retain leadership over the so-called palestinians, Israel has to abandon the plan to attack the remaining Hamas militant concentration at Rafah, and Hamas can return dead bodies instead of living hostages.
What was Israel supposed to do?
Israel basically said thanks, but… you can’t divert that far from the understood fundamentals in a template that is already well-known. Hamas claimed the right to buy some more time, by making an offer that it knew Israel wouldn’t – couldn’t – accept. It’s worse than no offer at all.
So Israel is moving on Rafah, carefully looking for Hamas terror units (and supplies), to neutralize. That is their mission, as it must be.
For decades, almost for generations in fact, Israel has suffered near-daily attacks by Hamas, ranging from the lobbing of concrete blocks into crowds of pedestrians, to rocket fire, to suicide bombings in stores, restaurants and public squares. Israel is finally taking the time to deal with this enemy definitively, as it must.
But the Western press, which normally covers such attacks so the world knows about it, has abandoned the cause of generations of Israeli victims. The Western press is now clearly siding with the so-called palestinians: carrying their message, even repeating their spin, trying to give the rest of the world the idea that Hamas is negotiating in good faith, and Israel is unjustly refusing to honor a well-intentioned ceasefire.
Well, the truth isn’t hard to see.
The bloodthirsty tyrants of Hamas – who spent generations using their own people as human shields, squandering international charity by the billions, impoverishing their own people – are reverting to type, disregarding rational peace offers and instead proposing things nobody would consider, just to buy time for their criminal membership.
The only thing that has kept Israel from pulverizing the military locations of Hamas in Rafah already is the possibility that Israel might get back some still-living hostages from October 7. Every Israeli has these victims in their hearts at all times; the hostages’ potential survival animates their every thought.
Do the leaders of Hamas have any such motivation? Do they think, day and night, of ways to save their own people and improve the lives of these generations of permanent refugees?
Of course not. Hamas has one goal in mind – the destruction of Israel. So Hamas will do everything that they think will help them accomplish that goal – including putting their own people in danger by refusing to let them evacuate a known bombing target site, and including collaborating with the Western press to put out a false narrative that they’re ready to accept Israeli ceasefire terms.
Believe nothing you hear from Hamas or their mouthpieces, from Al Jazeera to your local network affiliate. They haven’t reformed, retired, or retreated. They’re just stalling, so they can attack Israel again, as soon as possible.
Copyright 2024 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, in either paperback or eBook. His latest book, “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Three,” was just published in November, 2023.
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