It’s been an absolutely soul-deadening day. First, last night at around 3 AM an IDF Blackhawk helicopter on a rescue mission to evacuate a wounded soldier crashed near the Philadephi Corridor. Two wonderful soldiers are confirmed dead: Sgt. Daniel Alloush, 37, and Sgt. Tom Ish-Shalom. A third, a female officer, was trapped in the cockpit. A heroic rescue attempt was launched to save her, which included taking off the door of the plane which was crushed, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a war, in the middle of enemy territory. She was taken out, given first aid, and transferred to a hospital in critical condition. Seven additional soldiers were injured in the crash and evacuated. This is the first accident of a Blackhawk in Israel in the last 30 years. It was not downed by enemy fire. The crash is under investigation.

Then there was the ramming of a huge fuel tanker by a terrorist in the Benyamin region which killed another soldier, Geri Gideon Hanghal, 24. The terrorist was “neutralized.”

After that, I read the following in Abu Ali, who can usually be counted on to be pretty accurate: “Today in the Arab media I came across the attached (disturbing) quote from the commander of the fire center in the Southern Command: “We need at least a year to defeat Hamas. Our goal is to eliminate Hamas’s ability to launch rockets.”

I looked up the original interview on Army Radio, and hearing the whole thing I was even more disturbed. Let me explain. The IDF’s current activities – airstrikes and spot raids for a limited period of time – cannot overpower Hamas. Since 10/7, Hamas leadership has shown that the suffering of its population will not cause it to wave a white flag. Within the strip, as I have expanded here in the past, there are tens of thousands of armed men, Hamas operatives and their loyalists, who are embedded in the population and preserve Hamas’ rule. At the current rate of about 30-50 deaths per day (where about 35% are terrorists, according to previous averages) Israel will not be able to eliminate the critical mass that preserves the rule of Hamas even in five years. The population is not rebelling against Hamas precisely because of those tens of thousands of armed men.

The international community is putting pressure on Israel and will not allow starvation of the population or more significant pressures than Israel is already exerting, certainly not for a year or more. Yet, from the interview with this IDF commander, it is not evident that a change in the nature of the activity is expected, at least according to what is implied.

In an article I published here about two months ago, I wrote that Israel should start cleaning up area cells in the Gaza Strip. The IDF must completely clear Hamas operatives area by area, demarcating them and maintaining a new routine of life for the residents of the Gaza Strip. This should have already started. This would also give Israel legitimacy and peace on the international level at the same time as the continued cleansing of the territory. “Purification before liberation” is a slogan of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. You just have to apply it to them in Gaza.

In contradiction to this analysis, Defense Minister Yoav Galant visited an IDF unit today, and presented them with a letter from a senior Hamas operative to the brothers Sinwar, Yahya and Mohammed. The writer, who was killed in July by Israeli forces, wrote the following:

“To the respected and beloved Sinwar brothers, please consider the following: We are keeping our remaining equipment and weapons, as we have lost 95-90% of our rocket capability; 60% of our personal weapons; at least 70-65% of our anti-tank weaponry from missiles and rockets, and most importantly we lost at least 50% of our holy warriors, between martyrs and wounded, and now 25% remain. The last 25%. Our people have reached a state where they can no longer tolerate them. They are broken on a mental or physical level. We pray to Allah to guide us on the straight path, your brother Abu Muhammad (Raphae Salama)”.

Gallant told the soldiers: “He cries out for the help of the Sinwar brothers, but of course they cannot save him. Why? Because we are continuing the effort that started in October step by step, reaching all the senior Hamas officials. He wrote this to the Sinwar brothers. We’ll get to them too.”

I hope and pray.

The horrific video released of the condition in which the six murdered hostages were kept by Hamas savages has traumatized the entire country. I would like to ask this: If such a video were released by Al Jazeera of the conditions of young Muslim women and Muslim civilian men kidnapped and held hostage by the IDF, would there not be a world-wide condemnation? Why is it that Egypt and Qatar, who are supposed to be “moderating” the hostage negotiations, have issued no statements of protest and disgust? Why is it that everyone in the world is willing to see our people tortured and hurt this way with no reaction whatsoever? Are we really back to 1936? And how can we Jews live in the world surrounded on all sides by such heartless, causeless, savage hatred?

I have given this some thought. I just happen to be reading a book by Elizabeth Gilbert called: “The Signature of All Things.” The protagonist is a botanist, and she comes to these conclusions: “The world is plainly divided into those who fought an unrelenting battle to live, and those who surrendered and died. This was a simple fact… Anything less than a fight for endurance is a refusal of the great covenant of life.”

Today is September 11. We all remember the horrifying losses of that savage attack on innocent Americans.

We are also coming up to the anniversary of the vicious, heartbreaking attack that started this war. Our hearts ache for the losses we sustained, and for our people who are in still in the hands of the barbarians. We have Hezbollah on our border. Hamas still armed. The terrorist threats from the West Bank, Jordan, Iraq, Iran. Random, daily murders on our roads and checkpoints. We are nowhere near the end. But after a year where we have, with God’s help, managed to heroically, and basically single-handedly, fend off the worst people in the world, we are, perhaps, further along towards our goals. As Churchill said: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Whatever we have gone through, whatever we will be asked to go through in the future, we will not abandon “the great covenant of life.” We will live, and prosper, and hold onto our homeland and our humanity and our future.

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The same cannot be said of our enemies, who are not motivated by the love of life, but by hatred and death. They will go the way of their predecessors, Hitler’s hordes, appearing in the annals of history as a footnote; degenerate villains wiped off the face of the earth in the most just of battles.

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