"Our hearts burn with pain for the hostages,” said President Isaac Herzog on Motzei Shabbat after the Arabs released two hostage videos.
My heart burned with a different emotion. Rage. Rage at the Israeli government that has let these hostages rot away in Gaza for almost two years now. I could barely watch the video of Ram Braslavski. He is whimpering like a six-year-old child. He is a broken man.
Why aren’t we raining down terror on Gaza at this very moment? How are we allowing the Arabs there to live in peace while one of ours is turning into a walking skeleton? How in the world are we feeding these monsters!
“But they’re innocent!” Oh, really. Until a Jew can walk in the middle of Gaza without fear of being lynched, no one there is innocent. And they need to be crushed - now.
No more debates, discussions, negotiations, or political calculations. No more tears or prayers. Outrage and action! That’s what we need.
“But what should we do?” people ask. I don’t know. Ask the Druze what they would do. Ask the mafia. Use your imagination. It’s not difficult.
“There’s no price we wouldn’t pay to get the hostages back,” everyone says. Oh, but that’s not true. As former MK Moshe Feiglin has pointed out, when people say that, they mean a price that would hurt Israel. They don’t mean a price that would hurt the Arabs or violate the rules of post-modern morality.
That needs to end. We need to stop playing defense and start playing offense. We need to start treating the Arabs like Amalek. No mercy. No distinctions. The Arabs understand one language. Violence. They will give up, just like they did in 1967. But only after we terrify them.
People debate whether we should release 1,000 Arab prisoners to get the hostages back. I have a better idea. Kill 1,000 Arab prisoners - a day - until they’re released. Kill 10,000 Gazans a day if need be and bury them in pigs’ skin. Take a page from the old Russian playbook and kidnap the family members of Arab terrorists and begin executing them. Announce that we will kill the kidnappers either way, but if they surrender the hostages now, we will do them the favor of killing them painlessly and allowing them to receive a proper burial.
Do whatever it takes.
“But it’s not the Jewish way,” people claim.
Who said? Have they never read the sixth verse of Sefer Shoftim? We cut off the big toes and thumbs of one of the Canaanite kings. Why? Says the Ralbag: “To cast fear on the other [Canaanite] kings so they would be afraid to fight Israel.”
How about Tehillim 137:9? “Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” Why does the psalmist praise the crushing of skulls of Babylonian babies? Because the punishment fits the crime - “midah k’neged midash” - writes the Rashbam. “They did the same to us.” The Radak admits that the deed is “cruel,” but the Babylonians were cruel to us and therefore deserve to be punished in like fashion, he writes.
How about Sefer Shmuel (II:8:2)? King David wages a war against the Moabites and, at its conclusion, capriciously kills two-thirds of the captives. In the words of Tanach, he “measured them with a rope, laying them down on the ground and measuring two ropes’ length to be put to death and one rope’s length to be kept alive.” Why? The Abarbanel offers a simple answer. David wanted to send a message to the other nations: Don’t mess.
And the Midrash says that it was in revenge because when he fled Saul, David had left his family with the Moabites for safekeeping as his great-grandmother Ruth was a Moabite princess and he trusted them, but they killed his parents and siblings.
It’s high time we embrace our Biblical heritage.
Of course, one of the hallmarks of the Jewish people is compassion, but compassion for whom? Our enemy? How about showing compassion to Ram Braslavski? And if that requires acting cruelly to animals in human form, so be it. “When a man doesn’t have mercy on the wicked and is cruel to them, he performs a great mitzvah and worships G-d with the evil inclination,” writes Rabbeinu Yonah.
I’m well aware that if Israel acts like its Arab neighbors, it may suffer international sanctions. That’s fine. The world will get over it. Besides, we don’t owe “the world” anything. We do owe something, though, to the hostages. They’re our boys. And we need to get them back. Now. Not next week or next month. Now. At any cost - to the Arabs.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the former chief editor of The Jewish Press and the author/editor of 10 books. He is also the creator of an online writing course: “Ten Tips to Drastically Improve Your Writing.”