Israel must not end war yet despite Sinwar success - opinion

When Israel’s soldier-heroes killed Yahya Sinwar, President Joe Biden declared: “This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” Vice President Kamala Harris agreed, echoing Biden that “Israel has a right to defend itself, and the threat Hamas poses to Israel must be eliminated.”

Even Thomas Friedman, who has spearheaded The New York Times’ condemnation of Israel’s war and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for supposedly prolonging the campaign for political reasons, acknowledged: “it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.” 

Yet somehow, these military geniuses – like most others – failed to add four words: “and I was wrong.”

But they were – and still are.

They were wrong by constantly pressuring Netanyahu and Israel to end the war – months ago. They were wrong by opposing Israel’s entry into Rafah, where Israeli soldiers caught Sinwar in the broad net Israel needed to cast so wide and for so long after Hamas’s bloodbath.

They were wrong by unfairly politicizing Netanyahu’s stubborn determination to crush Hamas. And they were – and are – wrong, to treat this war as some video game that only kills really, really bad guys, with no innocents getting caught in the crossfire as the fight ends quickly and painlessly.

Urban warfare is grueling – especially with Hamas terrorists cowering behind Palestinians who also hate Israel. Don’t forget: “There has rarely been a military campaign like this, with Hamas leaders living and moving through hundreds of miles of tunnels, organized in multiple stories underground, determined to protect themselves with no care for the civilians suffering above ground.” Guess who said that? Biden last week.

Israelis appreciate the munitions America has supplied, and Biden’s tremendous moral support. Still, the obsessive attempts to restrain Israel terrify me as an American historian.

SUCH MORAL and strategic confusion does not bode well for America’s defense posture. It telegraphs weakness to America’s enemies, who see the disdain with which too many pro-Israel Democrats treat Israel, along with so many Americans’ impatience with the kind of sustained conflict required to defeat evil. 

Sinwar’s reign of terror ended only because Netanyahu and Israel defied conventional wisdom and world opinion – including most American leaders and many American Jewish leaders. Deploying unremitting, prolonged pressure on Gaza worked. The Wall Street Journal headlined: “Israel Killed Sinwar by Forcing Him From the Tunnels.”

The IDF has destroyed over 40,000 military targets this year. 

Nevertheless, both Southern Lebanon and Gaza still overflow with weapons depots, command-and-control centers, and Jihadists vowing to destroy the Jewish State. Consider the stockpile’s scale.

Imagine the courage, military prowess, weaponry and determination required to eliminate so many threats – while also actively repelling attacks. And maybe, just maybe, Americans and others should question their “conceptzia” – (mis)conception. They, too, tolerated this buildup. 

They then decided the war could be lightning short. And, even now, many resist learning the lessons of the need to grind down the enemy, a valiant effort that eventually ensnared Sinwar.

Alas, refusing to incorporate new, inconvenient, politically incorrect facts into their worldviews, Biden, Harris, and Friedman instantly returned to the same stale rhetoric they used to try to restrain Israel for months. 

Harris, whose words most count now, insisted: “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza, and it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”

We in Israel crave those goals. But this year has confirmed that achieving them requires a long, bloody process – and much more patience.

Indeed, we cannot “end the war in Gaza” until “Israel is secure.” And if the Gazans are truly innocent, they should turn on Hamas and force it to surrender, while freeing the hostages. 

Until that happens, Israel must maintain the military pressure, and prepare its security zone along the Gaza border, including taking Gazan territory, so the Palestinians learn that every future attack will result in more territorial losses.

MEANWHILE, let’s end the hostage negotiation farce – by exposing the self-destructiveness of Israel’s Hostage Deal movement. Politicizing the issue keeps raising Hamas’s price to free the hostages. 

The movement should only protest – and harass within the limits of the law – Qatari and Turkish diplomats, as well as those in North America, Australia, and Europe. Qatar and Turkey host and bankroll Hamas. Bibi-bashing may feel good – but it’s counterproductive.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sinwar kept “urging” Hamas officials “to refuse a hostage deal. Hamas had the upper hand in negotiations, Sinwar said, citing internal political divisions within Israel, cracks in Netanyahu’s wartime coalition and mounting US pressure to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.”

 A more unified global front against Hamas might have freed the hostages sooner; it remains the only way to end their suffering, which weighs on all people of conscience.

In short, we, who want this war to end yesterday, must keep fighting tomorrow and tomorrow, until the aggressors – Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran – cave in. 

Only then, once Israel is secured, will those Palestinians who actually want “dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination” – rather than Israel’s destruction – have a shot at making progress, too.

The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream was just published.