Tonight, Saturday night, thousands have gathered in Tel Aviv to demand the end of the Israel government which is standing in the way of a ceasefire that will hand Hamas its victory. Just yesterday, Nasrallah, head of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, celebrated the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon in 2000, also brought about by Israeli public protests led by the “Four Mothers.” We are our own worst enemies.

The government’s renewed expression of desire for a hostage release deal have been met by Hamas with the clear answer that Israel must first surrender.

I ask my fellow Israelis shouting in the streets tonight: Should we surrender? Should we offer our enemies who want to wipe us off the map that victory too? Should we trade the lives of many future victims, for the lives of our hostages, the way we did for Gilad Shalit? What is your answer?

Our soldiers, our 18-21 year olds, have been in Gaza for months. This is the longest war of Israel’s existence, comparable only to the War of Independence. Ten thousand soldiers have been injured, physically and mentally. Hundreds have been killed, each one an irreplaceable loss to their families and to all of us in Israel. The present service of regular army troops is comparable to the service of U.S. soldiers who fought in Mosul and Afghanistan. But U.S. servicemen were much older than our young recruits, who are doing a miraculous job, cleaning up Rafah, advancing neighborhood by neighborhood, destroying the last battalions of Hamas, its weapons, its commanders.

The world seems united to join with Hamas and prevent us from achieving this victory over terror, a terror which is coming for them next. I cannot understand why this is so. The Labor Party in Britain, which is poised to take over the government in the next elections, has thrown its support behind Iran and Hamas by backing the ICC indictment of Israel. In passing this indictment, the ICC headed by British lawyer Karim Khan apparently leaned on a panel of “advisors.” According to Melanie Phillips’ recent article, one of them was “lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy, a longtime left-wing campaigner and honorary patron of the London-based charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians, who told told the House of Lords: ‘The current conflict between Hamas and Israel follows decades of terrible conduct, by both the IDF and Hamas, before, during and after 7 October.’”

Phillips: “So in the view of this doyenne of ‘human rights,’ Israeli soldiers who desperately tried to fight off the Hamas stormtroopers, even while they were continuing to perpetrate depraved atrocities against Israeli women, children and men, were guilty of ‘terrible conduct’ in doing so. It is hard to fathom the obscenity of such a condemnation.”

Hard indeed.

I agree with Melanie and others who have pointed out that Hamas’ genocidal attack has “actually galvanised the global attempt to destroy Israel altogether.”

All one has to do is look at the timing of Spain, Ireland, and Norway in recognizing the non-existent Palestinian State, whose only goal is to destroy the Jewish State, to steal our land, our rights, and our history and murder our people.

Spain especially has a long history of such attempts. The Spanish Expulsion and the Inquisition (which lasted hundreds of years) was equivalent to the Holocaust in terms of its cruelty. Yet, every town in Spain has managed to monetize a judenrein “juderia” for tourist dollars. I would think, in the light of this history, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz would have been ashamed to be filmed chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” But shame is not a commodity that is widespread in the modern woke world.

I wonder at the wisdom of renewing negotiations with Hamas next week, with the pressure of the International Court of Justice in The Hague breathing down our neck and Hamas now in the last stages of fighting for its survival as the IDF closes in on them. The psychological pressure of the hostages is working on all of us, as Hamas in its cruetly knew it would when the kidnappings took place. They are the only card Hamas has left. If we are foolish enough, and weak enough, and short-sighted enough, to allow them to do this, then we are truly lost.

I pray it doesn’t happen. That we show the resilience of our soldiers in surviving this war and protecting our future. As MK Smotrich put it: “The State of Israel is at war for its existence. In sad times in history we could not stand on our own. Today, the Jewish people have independence and the ability to defend their lives.

Those who demand that the State of Israel stop the war, demand that it decree itself to cease to exist. We will not agree to that. If we lay down our weapons, the enemy will reach the beds of our children and women throughout the country. We continue to fight for ourselves and for the entire free world. History will judge who today stood by the Nazis of Hamas.”

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