Israel, Wake Up!

by Victor Rosenthal    October 10, 2021

Hamas has produced a blueprint for “post-liberation Palestine” which describes how they will create the new state of “Palestine” after the Jewish state is destroyed.

It explains how they will variously slaughter, dispossess, or enslave the Jews of Israel, and acquire their property. “This is an issue that requires deep deliberation and a display of the humanism that has always characterized Islam,” they write. Indeed.

This is not a hoax or a propaganda stunt. It is a serious document which tries to grapple with the very real problems that the new regime will have to solve if it is to inherit the land and the wealth that is in the hands of the despised Jews today. It was created by a committee appointed by Hamas leader Yahya Al-Sinwar. The translation to English that is linked above was carried out by the highly reliable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), who summarize it as follows:

The conference published a concluding statement listing “ideas and methods of operation [to be implemented] during the liberation of Palestine” after Israel ceases to exist. This list included, inter alia, a call for drafting a document of independence that will be “a direct continuation of the Pact of ‘Umar Bin Al-Khattab” concerning Byzantine Jerusalem’s surrender to the Muslim conquerors which took place apparently in 638; a definition of the leadership of the state until elections are held; recommendations for engagement with the international community and the neighboring states; a call for preparing in advance appropriate legislation for the transition to the new regime; a call for establishing apparatuses to ensure the continuation of economic activity once the Israeli shekel is no longer in use and to preserve the resources that previously belonged to Israel; and a call for compiling a guide for resettling the Palestinian refugees who wish to return to Palestine.

The conference also recommended that rules be drawn up for dealing with “Jews” in the country, including defining which of them will be killed or subjected to legal prosecution and which will be allowed to leave or to remain and be integrated into the new state. It also called for preventing a brain drain of Jewish professionals, and for the retention of “educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry… [who] should not be allowed to leave.” Additionally, it recommended obtaining lists of “the agents of the occupation in Palestine, in the region, and [throughout] the world, and… the names of the recruiters, Jewish and non-Jewish, in the country and abroad” in order to “purge Palestine and the Arab and Islamic homeland of this hypocrite scum.”

These are the minutes of a latter-day Wannseekonferenz. And they must be taken seriously, just as Hitler should have been.

I am overreacting, you say. We could turn Gaza into a parking lot in ten minutes. Hamas is a joke and Yahya Sinwar is its punchline.

Well, yes and no. Of course we could turn Gaza into a parking lot; but will we? Sinwar and other Palestinian Arab leaders – like Marwan Barghouti, who is living comfortably today in an Israeli prison, but who could become the next President of the Palestinian Authority – are not expecting that Hamas could successfully conquer Israel by itself. What they are waiting for is the next regional war, when Israel finally confronts Iran and Hezbollah. In the chaos resulting from thousands of rockets falling on Israel from Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and perhaps Iran and Iraq – including rockets with precision-guidance systems and armed drones – along with a probable invasion by Hezbollah in the North, the situation will be out of control. At that time, uprisings in Judea/Samaria, human wave attacks from Gaza, and an intifada by Arab citizens of Israel, could bring about a military and social collapse.

Israel, they believe, is already suffering a political collapse. Like former PM Ehud Olmert, we don’t want to win. Why else, Arabs think, would our government try to make an “arrangement” with Hamas rather than crushing it? Why have we virtually stopped construction in Judea and Samaria? Why do we allow illegal Arab settlements like Khan al-Ahmar to remain? Why has the government continued to transfer funds to the PA while it pays terrorists to murder Jews? Why do we allow Germany and other EU countries to send hundreds of millions of Euros for Arab construction in the part of Judea and Samaria that is supposed to be under Israeli civil control? Why have we allowed the Wakf free reign to destroy antiquities on the Temple Mount? Why are Jews still not allowed to pray silently there? And why have leftist cabinet members traveled to Ramallah to meet with Mahmoud Abbas?

Our government is a sharply divided coalition which includes an anti-Zionist, Islamist Arab party as well as one that represents the extreme Left. Although the majority of Israelis hold right-of-center ideologies, the right is split over the personality of Binyamin Netanyahu, and there is no popular figure for it to coalesce around.

But the loss of vitality is not only political, it is physical and spiritual. Today, Israelis are fat, with 26% of them obese (although not as fat as Americans, at 36%). Virtually all construction workers are Arabs. Agricultural workers are Thai, Filipino, or Arab; the sunburned kibbutzniks of the early years, who also comprised most of the IDF’s special units, are long gone. Today about 12% of Israel’s population are Haredim, who are in poor physical condition and don’t serve in the army. The word “Zionism” is most commonly used ironically. In the days of Ben Gurion and Rabin, the Zionist Left was well-represented in the fighting units of the IDF. Today’s post-Zionist Left, which dominates our media, academic, and legal arenas, often advises young people to avoid the draft.

Israeli Arabs hold the Jewish state in contempt. In a recent incident several Israeli policemen were beaten by members of a private Arab security company. During the riots (which many called “pogroms”) in mixed Arab/Jewish towns that took place in May during the most recent conflict in Gaza, Jewish homes and businesses were burned, Jews were beaten and even murdered. The police were unable to control the Arabs, and in many cases were nowhere to be found. The foreign and left-leaning Israeli media focused on a small number of Jews that responded violently, and presented the events as “Jewish-Arab clashes.” They were not. They were anti-Jewish riots.

Is there any wonder why Arabs, both in the territories and among our citizens, believe that our days as rulers of this land are numbered?

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have been preparing their people for conflict since their establishment. Their educational, cultural, and religious systems all send the same message of grievance and loss of honor, as well as vicious antisemitic hatred. The number of young Palestinian Arabs who are prepared to risk death or imprisonment to murder Jews at random is a testament to their success. “Palestinian refugees” in several countries receive similar messages from UNRWA schools.

Israeli Arabs do not receive similar indoctrination, but virtually all of them share a sense of grievance and dispossession that alienates them from the state. As the May riots showed, many of them are prepared to act violently on behalf of their beliefs, even when the country is only involved in a minor military confrontation. What could happen in a regional war?

In the case of simultaneous massive rocket attacks, invasions, and insurrection, IDF ground forces and police would have to protect the Jewish population as well as fight our enemies. But some doubt that they are prepared even for their traditional task of repelling enemy armies. The former IDF ombudsman, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick, produced a report in 2018 that was highly critical of ground force preparedness and capabilities. IDF officials dispute his charges, but the controversy continues.

Israel is a small country. The scenario in which she could be overwhelmed is not impossible, even by technologically inferior enemies. There are plenty of examples in which powerful Western armies have been defeated by determined third-world opponents. And they are determined, while we are conflicted.

Throughout history, there are examples of conflicts between cultures over a particular land. One side always wins; and through dispersal, murder, slavery, absorption, or all of these, the other one disappears. In this case, Hamas has explicitly expressed the will of the regional Arab Muslim culture to displace the Israeli Jewish one. This will is not likely to be dissipated by concessions on the part of the Jewish culture. Such concessions only increase the contempt in which it is held.

The struggle between cultures for Eretz Yisrael has been going on since roughly the beginning of the 20^th century. The Arabs have always understood its elemental nature, but many Jews have believed that the conflict can be “solved” so that the cultures can coexist. That would be like “solving” the geological phenomenon of tectonic flow. The struggle will continue until one of the cultures disappears from the land, possibly in a final military confrontation as Yahya Sinwar hopes.

The Arabs have a vision and have never stopped aggressively fighting for it. The Jews, on the other hand, seem to have lost theirs – it was called “Zionism” – because, in part, they do not recognize the struggle for what it is: a zero-sum conflict over every inch of our homeland. They do not understand that it will not be resolved in the UN or Washington or Brussels. It will be decided here, on the land, in Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley, Gaza, Tel Aviv, on the Temple Mount, in Sheik Jarrah, Khan al-Ahmar, the Galil, the Negev, Lod, Acco, Yafo, and everywhere else Jews and Arabs face each other over the question “whose land is it?”

Military power is necessary, but not sufficient, for victory in this struggle. First we need to wake up and see it for what it is, in all its savagery; and then we need to start fighting to win, at every point of contact. Our enemies already are.