What should a nation do when its women and children are murdered and taken hostage.
Israel has the same choice it always had. That choice becomes clearer each year and with each atrocity.
It can carry out another "limited incursion" into Gaza, bomb the homes of some terrorists and then go home, hopefully with the hostages, and wait for something like it or worse to happen again.
Or it can actually go to war and win.
Israel, like America, doesn't win wars anymore. It has operations. It takes out terrorist leaders and occasionally terrorist cells. And then it goes home. But when home is within a stone's throw of where monsters live, then there's no way to go home. Home is where the monsters are.
A war ends with victory. The destruction of the enemy. The Islamic terrorists have been waging a war meant to end in victory since Israel was reborn. Unless Israel fights to win, it will be lost.
What does a war look like? It is not "proportionate" or "limited". It is not based on "deterrence" and does not end with a "truce". If at the end of the war, the enemy still exists, you have not won.
Israel has yet to fight a war against the terrorists. Let alone win one.
It's been 30 years since the Israeli Left sold the myth of peace with the Arab Muslim invaders in Gaza and the West Bank and under 20 years since building walls and defenses was sold as the alternative.
Neither of those were ever a viable option against a genocidal enemy.
The myth of peace and the myth of defense never took into account the reality of who the enemy is.
The enemy is not Hamas, a grand name for an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, backed and financed by Iran, it is a culture that has been out to kill Jews and all non-Muslims since the days of Mohammed.
What we have seen in the Hamas attacks, the murder of elderly women and children, the degradation of a murdered woman's corpse, and all the rest of the atrocities, comes from the same ideology and culture as the one that beheaded prisoners and burned them to death in Syria and Iraq, that raped imprisoned political prisoners so that they would not die virgins in Iran, and that sexually assaulted 12-year-old girls in Iraq by men who declared that rape "brought them closer to Allah." The same one that flew planes into skyscrapers, set off bombs at a marathon and drove trucks into spectators.
These are only a few of the more recent and notable atrocities in over a thousand years of terror.
It is impossible to live in peace with the Religion of Peace except in temporary truces or through strength. And strength does not mean possessing devastating weapons that a nation is too afraid to actually use. It does not mean building walls and hoping that each time the enemy comes, they can be thrown back.
The bloody lesson that is being taught yet again is that playing defense gives the enemy the initiative, the momentum and the choice of battlefield.
The Simchat Torah massacres are being called Israel's 9/11. They have one thing in common which is that both America and Israel came to believe that they could rely on intelligence and occasional targeted air strikes to hold off Islamic terrorists. But the terrorists only have to get it right once. They can and do fail most of the time, but when they succeed, a nation burns. Given enough tries, enough training and enough support, they will eventually succeed. That's simple statistics. And then what is happening now happens.
Playing defense is what leads to 9/11 or the mass butchery of Israelis that happened during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.
Playing defense is slow suicide.
The first rule of co-existing with Islamic Jihadists is that you can't.
You can't make peace with them and you can't have an 'understanding' with them. You can only deter them for so long. Eventually they will break through your defenses. And then planes will crash into skyscrapers and young people will be massacred at a concert. Worse will come if you don't learn those lessons.
Either you defeat Islamic terrorists or they will defeat you. The idea of a middle ground is an illusion that lasts only as long as your capabilities do.
The only thing that works is going on the offensive.
Going on the offensive what was made Israel possible. Draining swamps and making the desert bloom was all well and good, but it was citizen militias and then an early national military that made the country of an oppressed minority into a viable possibility by striking ruthlessly at the enemy.
Until the 1980s, Israel did not tolerate Jihadists within its borders. By the 1990s, it had not only learned to tolerate them, it had made a deal with them. By the oughts, it learned to accept them as a fact of life. Shvitzers with big titles bragged that there was an understanding, that the terrorists knew not to go too far or there would be more air strikes. By this decade, Israelis in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv got used to being in bomb shelters again. Now, the terrorists broke through in a full-fledged assault on Israeli territory beyond the so-called 'Green Line'.
There is big talk now about permanently ending the military capabilities of Hamas. I truly hope that it's sincere because such big talk has been heard before. And then the air strikes kill women and children in Gaza. The world condemns Israel. The United States threatens to cut off support. And it all falls apart.
Sharon's Disengagement from Gaza, as many have noted, has failed. The idea that Israel can isolate Gaza and prevent Hamas from killing more Israelis is deader than the estimated 700 victims. A number that will only continue growing. And it's been dead long before that.
Israel has a choice between eliminating Hamas from Gaza or reliving this Simchat Torah again. And worse.
There are no other choices on the menu. Neither peace nor deterrence will work. Only war.
A war ends when the enemy does.
How many times must we repeat Bialik's 'City of Slaughter' in a country that was built to put an end to such things? How many times must we go down to the graves of murdered women and children who died because we lacked, not the physical courage, but the moral courage, to put an end to their killers?
How much longer must we choose every other option but war while imagining that rejecting war is somehow noble or will spare lives?
How much longer must we live in a fantasy world in which hard choices don't have to be made?
When an enemy wants to exterminate you: your choice is war or death. Peace and deterrence mean death. War means survival.
Part II: To Win a War, Fight One
As highly civilized people, we're lost touch with some basic concepts. Like war.
We complain that we never win wars anymore, but that's because we don't fight them. Instead we have limited interventions against insurgents. We try to stabilize failed states. Sometimes we go in, take out a few terrorists and then go back home. Veterans, whose wounds are very real, sit around wondering what it was all for. So do the families of the men who died fighting in a war that was never a war.
To win a war, you have to fight one.
If your enemy is fighting a war and you're fighting something less than a war, the enemy will win.
Police actions, nation building exercises and the like have vague and poorly defined objectives, while wars have very clear ones.
Wars are either won or lost. That's why modern governments rarely like fighting them. Or doing anything that has clear and measurable results. Once you declare a war, you know you have to win.
We fight things that are not wars to 'stabilize' regions. Wars are not fought for stability, but destruction. To win a war, destroy the enemy. That's what the United States did in WWII, raining mass death and destruction on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in ways that still make modern liberals cringe.
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind," RAF Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Arthur Harris bluntly stated.
"The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that," Patton told the Third Army.
FDR's obsession with taking the war to Japan led to the Doolittle Raid. One of the bombs from that raid hit a school. “It is quite impossible to bomb a military objective that has civilian residences near it without danger of harming the civilian residences as well. That is a hazard of war," Doolittle had warned.
That is what war is. It's why wars should not be fought lightly. But when you fight them, fight to win.
A just war is based on a fundamental moral clarity about your enemies, not your tactics. War crimes are a meaningless term except when applied to violations of an agreement between the two combatants or civilians that are not a party to the conflict. That is not the case in Gaza. And is rarely the case when fighting Islamic terrorists.
The United States met the Japanese torture, execution, abuse, medical experiments and cannibalism of our troops with increased determination to win at any cost. This was the cost for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were not war crimes, this was how a regime of monsters that committed unspeakable atrocities was finally forced to surrender.
That is what fighting to win means.
Winning against Hamas does not mean dropping a few bombs on buildings, staging a limited incursion, taking out a few Hamas leaders and then letting Turkey and Egypt negotiate a truce. That's not a war.
Winning means destroying Hamas, its leaders, its terrorists and its supporters by any means necessary, and securing the territory they operated from so that it can be used to stage similar attacks.
Can Israel fight and win such a war? Yes, it can.
Will it? That's the question.
Israel, like America, has tried not fighting wars. That is what led to the horrors of the High Holy Day attacks. It may want to fight and win a war before it's too late.
Part III:The Jewish Religious Response to the Simchat Torah War
(This is a commentary on what the Jewish religious response should be. Some terms may be unfamiliar.)
Today, I deviated from the synagogue 'nusach' by reciting Tachnun. If there is any time to call out to G-d, to ask for His Mercy, to fall on our faces in prayer, it's this one.
We cannot afford to continue running on autopilot politically, militarily or religiously. Too many synagogues responded to the attacks with some recitation of Tehilim if even that. When they should have taken down the parochet, declared a fast day and cried out to G-d, the singing and dancing went on. While women were raped and children were caged, we in the USA stuffed our faces at lavish kiddushes. Our only defense is that we did not know all or the worst of it. Hatanu. We erred. Myself among them. That excuse is gone.
We should have been told, but now we know. And we must do more.
In times past, we would declare a communal fast day. This was true for both Jews and Americans in general. From the day of King Shaul fighting the Philistines to Purim, fasts went together with battles. Rabbinic figures should consider declaring a communal fast. I personally will be fasting and I would encourage those whose health permits them to fast. And if not to fast, to give up something, to avoid eating out and simplify. We can all do something to appeal to G-d and to feel something of the pain that our brothers and sisters, thousands of affected families, along with the captives are feeling now.
It is above my pay grade to pontificate on religious matters and I do so at grave religious risk. So I will refrain from going much further except to say that the attacks took place the day after the 'sealing of the din'. There may be no coincidence in that. We must fight and win this war, but we must also turn to G-d.
And we must reconsider our deeds and our lives.
For months, Israel has been tearing itself apart. As did the Jewish world. There is no stronger supporter of judicial reform than myself. Or an opponent of the Left. But if the Israeli Left is willing to unite to actually destroy Hamas (rather than another operation that inflicts some injuries and sets the stage for another war) than unity should be welcomed.
Many of the murdered and captured were not the usual targets. They came from leftist families and from the echelon of the elites. Perhaps the Israeli Left is now willing to reclaim Gaza and end Hamas.
If they are, then unity should be welcomed, not just for political, but also for religious reasons. After months of tearing ourselves apart, we have suffered one of the worst blows in Israel's history. If there is any hope for us, it's that we learn something from it.
Unity begins with empathy. We must feel to cry out to G-d and we must feel to connect with our fellow man. Bein Adam Le'Makom and Bein Adam Le'Chavero both require us to feel, not to just disconnect, and to go about the numb routines of our lives.
During the Holocaust, life went on as usual for most American Jews. While millions were killed, people went to restaurants (sometimes even kosher ones), had cozy family nights and voted for FDR. Much later, they began obsessively building Holocaust museums and memorials.
Let us not be like them.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.