Time for Israel to climb down the tree - comment

It’s all over but the shouting.

Brutally attacked without justification on October 7, Israel has done everything in its power to repel the sadistic terrorism emanating from Gaza.

Israel has lost support

The issue of whether we went overboard in our assault on Hamas or held back too much – both views are held in Israel – is no longer a relevant question. That’s because Israel has lost the support of the world in its effort to secure its southern border, free the more than 130 hostages held alive or dead in Gaza, and eradicate Hamas.

It doesn’t matter anymore if we prove that Hamas is doctoring the numbers of civilian fatalities, or that the army has the lowest civilian-to-terrorist ratio of fatalities in any war.

 It doesn’t matter if the IDF continues to uncover Hamas strongholds in hospitals or schools, or tunnels under cemeteries.

It doesn’t matter to the world that Hamas is still holding all those hostages after more than 160 days – just look at the ‘Ceasefire Now’ buttons at the Oscars.

And it doesn’t matter that Hezbollah has declared war on Israel and 200,000 Israelis are displaced in the North.

The world no longer cares, and they want the war to end. We lost Europe long ago and we’ve now lost Schumer, with Biden quickly following.

An offensive in Rafah – with a likely spike in civilian deaths – will propel that feeling to the extreme.

The media in the US is no longer interested in stories out of Israel – only out of Gaza, where the F (famine) word is bandied about by everyone from the UN to the Vatican.

Despite launching this totally justified war, there is now no way that Israel can emerge unscathed in its stature in the international community.

There is a general agreement around the world that, despite what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeats about ‘total victory,’ no matter how much Israel soldiers on, how many Hamas commanders are killed, and how much the terror infrastructure is decimated, the idea of Hamas cannot be killed off.

Israel must now decide what is more important – to save the lives of as many hostages as possible or to continue to go after the remaining Hamas battalions and Sinwar. If we agree to a deal with Hamas, we can still say we gave it our best shot and the 200-plus soldiers who fell in Gaza will not have died in vain.

But at some point – which is now – Israel can’t continue to buck the international community and not risk turning into a pariah state. Our ties with the US are frayed, with EU states belligerent and with international bodies like the UN downright hostile. Being right – which Israel is – doesn’t necessarily mean being smart.

Israel has already won the war on the battlefield. Hamas is a shell of what it was. But it is suffering a terrible loss on the battlefield of diplomacy. And with the current configuration lining up against Israel’s continuation of the war into Rafah, it’s time for a reassessment of what’s been achieved and what could be lost.