The holidays are over. Passover, the holiday of freedom from oppression, has come and gone with our nation still oppressed and no freedom for our kidnapped.

I have given up trying to stick my head in the sand and find some comfort for the terrible state that mankind is in, and along with it, our people.

There was another time in which the world was filled with “Hamas.” The bible uses that exact term to describe the state of mankind preceding Noah’s flood. But since the rainbow – the Divine promise to never again destroy the world for the sins of mankind – I can’t help wondering how the present disastrous surrender to the forces of evil is going to pan out.

All of these things happened slowly, building up over decades. Only our current shock and surprise are quick.

While we were sleeping, the current situation on college campuses has been carefully orchestrated by terrorists for decades. An article by Gary Wexler in the Jewish Journal describes an encounter he had many years ago in Israel with a Palestinian who outlined exactly how they would achieve what is happening today:

“….we will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists. Just like you spent your summers on the kibbutz, we will bring college students to spend their summers in refugee camps and work with our people. Just like you have been part of creating global pro-Israel organizations, we will create global pro-Palestinian organizations. Just like you today help create PR campaigns and events for Israel, so will we, but we will get more coverage than you ever have… how will [we]make this happen, how we will pay for this? Not with the money from your liberal Jewish organizations who are now funding us. But from the European Union, Arab and Muslim governments, wealthy Arab people and their organizations. Eventually, we will not take another dollar from the Jews.”

The speaker, Ameer Makhoul, was arrested by the Shin Bet as spy for Syria in 2010. His cover has always been “human rights” activist. He is still out there, spouting his hate in sheep’s clothing.

But he was right. They did it, while we were sleeping. The way they planned their murderous invasion of our kibbutzim on the Gaza border and turned into ISIS. We had no idea that was coming our way. No idea. We were sleeping, hiring Gazan workers who turned out to be spies who provided maps to everyone’s homes; letting them build underground tunnels; ignoring all the warning signs on the border and telling watchtower observers overlooking the border with Gaza to shut up when they voiced their concerns.

Could it be that the Israelis in charge of this military and civilian disaster grew up in Shimon Peres’ New Middle East, painting doves? The people in the kibbutzim donated their time to ferry Gazans to Israeli hospitals for treatment. All of us got used to rocket fire from Gaza, acting like it was a nuisance, like mosquitos, instead of premeditated murder. But since the Iron Dome prevented it from actually killing anyone, we allowed ourselves to deny that our neighbors were mass murderers, thinking that like dangerous animals, we could tame them with our endless goodwill.

I believe that if we want to survive, if we want Israel to survive, we have to wake up from our pleasant decades long nap. We have to refuse to release a single jihadi murderer from our jails, and most of all, we have to institute the death penalty for Nukba forces and carry it out. A new movie describes the crematorium created for Eichmann. I’m sure we can dust it off. Those who incinerated our families, our women and children, deserve no less.

We have to learn, at long last, how to live in the Middle East, and to play by the rules of their making. As they tried to fill us with terror by their acts, so must we fill them with terror so they never try it again. We have to make an example of Rafah. Nothing should be left standing. Anyone who stays, must pay for it with their life. Even as I write this, I hear the liberal American Jewish handwringing. It’s deafening. Sorry not sorry. I didn’t create this world, but by all that is holy, I now understand what is necessary to live in it. I’m not going to sacrifice my children and my grandchildren to the stupidity of posturing fools who cling to terms like “co-existence” and “treaties” and even “mutual understanding.” October 7 was their answer to decades of Peace Now. It’s over.

Israel – strangely enough – is now in a position, perhaps more than any other nation on earth, to actually go to war with these perpetrators of evil, and to win.

But to do so, she must untie its hands from those who would prevent us from doing what must be done.

There is not a single international organization whose purported purpose is to pursue justice and human rights that actually stands for justice and human rights today. Every single one of them has capitulated to Islamic barbarism. The United Nations is a sad joke, where misogynistic dictatorships head women’s rights forums; whose head shamelessly panders to Hamas and partners with Iran, championing its evil agenda and demonizing Israel. The ICJ has made a mockery of its role by threatening our army with indictments. Where are the arrest warrants for Sinwar and Haniyeh and their trained baby beheaders and rapists?

It is within this framework that the tiny Jewish state must now carve out its strategy to withstand and survive the vicious, unjust worldwide campaign to prevent her from going into Rafah and finishing off Hamas. It is within this framework that Israel now waits for Hamas to decide if its proposal to free its hostages is “good enough.” It is within this framework that the Biden administration is now spending millions on constructing a port that will bring who-knows-what to the murdering savages of Gaza and their brainwashed women and children who are dedicated to another October 7 if they live that long.

The Israeli government is now sitting back passively waiting for the Hamas decision. After everything we have been through, everything we have sacrificed, our beautiful sons and daughters, our fathers and mothers, and we are waiting, waiting, for them to decide.

In recent polls, 89 percent of Israelis, and 72 percent of Americans are in favor of an invasion of Rafah. This is what we read in our holiday Torah portion yesterday:

“I pursued my enemies and crushed them;
I did not turn back till they were destroyed.
I crushed them completely, and they could not rise; they fell beneath my feet.
You armed me with strength for battle; you humbled my adversaries before me.
You made my enemies turn their backs in flight, and I destroyed my foes.
They cried for help to the Lord, but there was no one to save them; but he did not answer.
I beat them as fine as the dust of the earth;
I pounded and trampled them like mud in the streets.”

Samuel 2, 38-43

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