I started writing this a few days before the IDF lit Shabbat candles on Nasrallah’s turban, but it is in theme.
The world loves dead Jews. They all come to Yad Vashem to shed a tear and lay a wreath in the same way that they travel elsewhere to see a leaning tower, a statue with a torch, a coliseum, and a large clock that plays the opening melody in “Peter Pan.” They love dead Jews. They remember them, memorialize them.
And their beautiful thing is that most of them don’t even have to come to Jerusalem to lay wreaths and shed tears for dead Jews because they already have murdered so many Jews themselves, for centuries, that they can save the airfare and lay wreaths and shed tears at one or another Jewish cemetery or Holocaust museum in their own backyards or along the Rhine or Seine.
The world has less patience for live Jews. They mask their words, and most Jews are too oblivious to realize that many of their “friends” actually despise them. So many Jews buy the baloney. In a world of diplomacy, sensible people simply do not say “I hate you people and want you all dead.” They are more elegant and speak in subtleties that only skilled and trained interpreters and translators can help other Jews better understand.
When a British person wants to say “car trunk,” he says “boot.” When he wants to say “elevator,” he says “lift.” When he wants to say “truck,” he says “lorry.” See? It’s that way.
When a New Yorker says “Your mother,” he is meaning “I respectfully disagree with you.” A Texan says it differently:“That dog won’t hunt.” When an Israeli says “Al lo davar” (eh, it’s nothing, really!), he is saying “One day, you will make it up to me.”
And when a non-Jew wants to see Jews dead, or — at best — does not care one way or another, he says: “It’s time for Israel to enter into a CEASEFIRE.”
Read old newspapers. View old videos. In all of recorded history, no non-Jew ever asked Jews or their antagonists to enter into a ceasefire when Jews were losing. Never happened. Not during the Holocaust. Not during any of Israel’s wars. Not when Jewish kids get pummeled and abused at American colleges. When Jews are losing, everyone turns the other way. Many are happy and want the Jews dead. Many others — not just a few, but many others, good people — feel bad for the Jews, pray to their gods for the Jews, and even teach their kids that it is wrong to beat up and murder Jews because Jews are kind-of similar to everyone else.
But when Jews are winning, as when Israel’s Irgun, Lechi, and Haganah — ultimately the Palmach and Tzahal (IDF) — emerged capable of kicking out the British and then defeating the seven invading Arab armies, it was then that the United Nations sent Count Folke Bernadotte to bring about a CEASEFIRE. He came with a beautiful plan: the Arabs would get almost everything except for two Jews’ backyards, a patio, and some sand. Haifa port would be internationalized. Also Lod airport. Also Jerusalem — all of it. After a brief interregnum, it would be a matter of international oversight as to whether any more Jews even could enter the country any more. In other words, Jerusalem, Haifa port, and the international airport at Lod would end up under Arab sovereignty, with a ban on future Jewish immigration even into the truncated Jewish section.
All he wanted was a CEASEFIRE. The Lechi did not agree. So they did not cease firing — and, G-d bless the late Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir and his men — on him. That problem solved.
By 1967, it was war again. Early word was that Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Egyptian air force were destroying Israel from one side while Syria was massacring Jews from the north. The news of the slaughter was so enticing that King Hussein of Jordan came in for the ride. In New York, the United Nations knew only what the Arabs were proclaiming to the media.
Only Chaim Herzog, then Israel’s U.N. ambassador, knew the Arab governments all were lying, as they always do. (Remember the denials recently, assertions that Mohammed Deif had not been eliminated? And that Haniyah had not been in the house? Or that Nasrallah survived? They always lie until they can’t hide it anymore.) So Ambassador (later President) Herzog kept the actual truth of Israel’s stunning successes on the ground a secret at the U.N., a task particularly easy to perform.
Why? Because Israel knew the U.N. would not call for a ceasefire as long as they believed the Arabs were driving the Jews into the Sea. And Israel wanted extra time to keep winning, to keep driving the Arabs back, and to emerge (despite the perpetually politically cowardly Dayan) with all of Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the Golan and the Sinai and Gaza. Indeed, the moment “the cat was let out of the bag,” and the world realized that Israel was winning and had reached Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount), the Security Council raced to demand a . . . CEASEFIRE.
The same in 1973. Remember? It seemed Sadat had taken Israel by surprise on Yom Kippur and was marching on Jerusalem, while Syria was racing to Jerusalem from the north, and brave Dayan was experiencing a nervous breakdown and Golda Meir was pocketing her cyanide tablets. Remember? No one called for a ceasefire then.
But, then, Ariel Sharon — when he was a national military hero, before he became a corrupted politician — built that pontoon bridgehead across the Suez, and started threatening to march toward Cairo, and Israel suddenly had Egypt’s Third Army totally surrounded for slaughter. Remember? Suddenly, Kissinger — the Bernie Sanders of his day, other side of the political aisle but same kind of Jew, brother of another mother — was there demanding a CEASEFIRE. Rescue the Egyptian Third Army to kill the Jews another day and lay the groundwork for giving Sadat (i) the Etzion air base, (ii) the Alma oil fields, (iii) the Abu Rudeis oil fields, and all the rest of Sinai.
And so it is, and so it was, and so it will be. Half a century later, Yair Lapid, a talk show host without a high school degree, was giving precious Israeli gas resources and territory to the, uh, late Hassan Nasrallah. (Assistedy by Naftali Bennett.)
When Macron or England’s Keir Starmer or David Cameron or America’s Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Rashida Tlaib calls for a CEASEFIRE, they are not jockeying for a Nobel Peace Prize. Rather, they are sounding the clarion call, the shofar sound to the world: “The Jews are winning! We have to stop them! CEASEFIRE!”
It is incumbent on Israel’s leaders — or, at least, on the voters if that’s the only way to lead the leaders — to understand that, when others press Israel to cease fire, that is their inadvertent code word saying “You Jews right now are winning — something fierce. And if you don’t stop soon, you’re liable to end up with a total victory this time, only the second time (besides 1967) in the past 2,000-plus years. So cease your danged fire, Jews. Fool us once; shame on you. Fool us twice; shame on us.”
It is important to know how to say “To He** With You!” It is incumbent to know that, when you have on the ropes the mortal enemy who swears he never ever will make a true, lasting, permanent peace (not just a sulha) with you, that is when you do not back off, feed him, give him “humanitarian” squat, or restore his electricity and gas. Instead, you do what you can to finish him off.
You adopt a slogan: “Peace in Five Minutes After Our Hostages Are Returned and All Arms Are Laid Down.”
How hard is that? “Peace in Five Minutes After Our Hostages Are Returned and All Arms Are Laid Down.”
I have the humility to recognize that I am not on Israel’s inner (or outer) war cabinet. There are things I do not know and cannot know. But I am of a mind with others who do have access: Avigdor Liberman, an outstanding former Israeli Defense Minister, knows. Naftali Bennett, an outstanding former Israeli Defense Minister, knows. Gideon Sa’ar, who has been in security cabinets and observed war cabinets, knows. I don’t trust any of those three on the broader matters of governance, so my orientation is toward Smotrich-Ben Gvir.
But I know they are not going to be Prime Minister or Defense Minister at this time, and I am serious here. I know that Liberman, Bennett, and Sa’ar all have been saying what this column is advocating. Israel must pummel and pulverize so hard now — especially now, especially now that the world is callingfor a CEASEFIRE, which can only mean that Israel is winning like crazy.
I wrote this before Nasrallah experienced s’kilah (crushing by stones), s’reifah (inhalation of fumes and the unbearable heat of burning temperature), hereg (physically blasted in the head), and chenek (choking), all at once. Now, the entire command of the Radwan Force — the Dirty Dozen animals who were the shock troops trained to perpetrate a northern October 7 — have been zapped. Now, all but one of the animals on the chart of Hezbollah commanders — also, like a nine-animal zoo — have been zapped. Some by water and some by fire; some by stones toppling on them above ground and some crushed by boulders in tunnels below; some by strangulation and some by plague.
Hezbollah now is a snake without a head, a tongue, and missing half its body. It is a lion without claws or teeth. The remainder can’t even communicate with each other. Cell phones? Zap! Pagers? Zap! Walkie Talkies? Zap! All they have left are smoke signals and carrier pigeons.
I cannot understand why now would not be the time to crush them. There is no downside.
The International Court of Justice? Israel already is “guilty of war crimes.” What else they got — failure to register firearms? Disorderly conduct?
The International Criminal Court? They already are issuing arrest warrants. What else they got? Assault and battery? Intentional infliction of emotional distress? They have used up all their tools.
The General Assembly of the U.N.? They already have voted that Israel better get out of Hevron, Bethlehem, and the Temple Mount area and the Kotel. Big deal. Obama and Kerry, backed by Jack Lew, already got that one — Security Council Resolution 2334 — through in December 2016. Been there, done that. To He!! With Them. With all of them.
And America? Let Blinken keep flying in with new peace plans. Big deal. Let Biden keep telling the media “We are very close to a CEASEFIRE. Only hours away. Minutes. Seconds. We’re just waiting for Sinwar to finish his shower, assuming he is alive.” Big Deal; Biden is history.
Kamala Harris, in general a deer stuck in the headlights, has absolutely no clue what to think — because, although she manifests the demeanor of smartness, also has manifested that she cannot think independently. She is the incarnation of Artificial Intelligence. Her advisors will tell her: If she backs Israel, she loses Michigan. If she opposes Israel, that may give Trump Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Ohio. It will be system overload, totally neutralizing her for at least the next four months until January 21.
Right now — October 2024, Tishrei 5785 — the time could not be more propitious for tripling and quadrupling Israel’s fierceness in Lebanon and Gaza. No downside. Huge upside. I readily acknowledge that I am not privy to the secrets others do. But, I — and more than 50 percent of my people — have been correct each and every time we have said that we know more than the hapless 5-star and 10-star and 100-star former Israeli generals in politics from Dayan on June 6-7, 1967; to Rabin on September 13, 1993; to Barak on May 24, 2000; to Sharon on August 15, 2005; to Gantz and Eisenkot and all the other generals-become-political-hacks and their convoluted “concepts.”
I do not see what there is to lose by winning. As October 7, 2025m rolls along and then Simchat Torah 5785, these days should not be a time primarily for mourning and kaddish and yahrzeit, but a time for Shehecheyanu (celebrating the miraculous) and a history-shattering reversal in the two-millennia script. That day in the calendar should be the day of crushing those who sought to make October 7 a day of sorrow and mourning into a day of merriment and joy, with smoke torching over and under Gaza and Lebanon, as the last box on the chart get slapped with those red banner-labels that say “Mechusal” (Eliminated).
May Year 5785 be for us a year of blessing more wonderful than we can imagine. From the River to the Sea, may all of western Israel be free, and may we merit seeing the rebuilding of all Jerusalem, from the tunnels at the Kotel to the Temple Mount, speedily in our days.
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