“You can't beat an idea" is a gross self-deception

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fter weeks of debate, Israel’s cabinet firmly shut the door on further negotiations with Hamas that would lead to a partial hostage release and voted to send the IDF into Gaza City, Hamas’s largest remaining stronghold. If Israel had paid attention to what its most stubborn enemies were saying about negotiations, it would have made the same decision, earlier and more decisively.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a US nonprofit that closely monitors Arabic-language media, reported last week on a particularly vile commentator — Abdullah Al-Amadi — whose résumé includes roles as a former media advisor to the Qatari government and “honorable mention” on the “Our Experts” page of Al Jazeera’s website. MEMRI notes that Al-Amadi is notorious for his extremist views and often uses his column and his X account to spread anti-Semitic content and incitement to terror against Israel and Jews.

Last month, Al-Amadi encouraged his readers not to be disheartened by scenes of death and destruction in Gaza. As one who considers the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, to be a momentous historic achievement in bringing an end to the “Zionist era,” he wrote that Muslim “rights cannot be restored through fruitless negotiations, hollow conferences, and empty promises.” Instead, they require “victims, blood, and martyrs.”

Al-Amadi is influential and his writing is widely circulated in jihadist circles. If the enemy believes negotiations are fruitless, why go down that path?

While Israel may have viewed previous negotiations as being fruitful in freeing nearly 80% of the hostages, both living and deceased, the cabinet now believes there is no way to free the remaining captives unless Hamas is brought to its knees. President Trump agreed and last week urged Israel to act swiftly and finish the job fast.

The decision to invade Gaza City was never taken lightly, apart from the legitimate concern for the lives of the remaining hostages. Gaza City is the most urban and well-defended of Hamas’s strongholds. The risk of IDF casualties is high. I once attended one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s media briefings, where he defended himself against criticism that he was too cautious before ordering military action. He asserted that you must be careful when considering this, because you can never truly know the outcome or all the consequences in advance.

A prerequisite for attacking Gaza City is taking the proper measure of caution alongside meticulous strategic planning. Having said that, when the IDF brass telegraph hesitation and fear and leak that to the media, it’s bad for morale, it feeds the fervor of the weekly anti-war demonstrations that have turned more disruptive, and it’s also not their role.

The IDF’s job is to lay all the military options on the table and, of course, thoroughly detail the risks of each option. But it’s not their job to lobby the public and the press or to leak information from strictly confidential meetings, even if government ministers are equally guilty leakers.

To ultimately defeat Hamas, the IDF must overcome some deeply rooted defeatist tendencies.

Absolute Victory Achievable

Avi Bareli, a historian and researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, wrote an op-ed for the Sunday edition of Israel Hayom, in which he contends that following the Oslo Agreements of the mid-1990s, the IDF began teaching its officers that it is impossible to completely defeat terror and guerrilla armies embedded within a sympathetic population without committing war crimes. Officers also learned that Islamic jihad is an idea, and “you can’t beat an idea.” Bareli argues all of this suited a leftist “spirit of Oslo” outlook that Israel had no choice but to comply to some extent with its enemies’ demands.

He labeled all this a gross self-deception.

The Allies’ victory over Germany in World War II ended Nazism as a dominant political ideology. Bareli provided numerous examples of how legitimate governments have defeated guerilla forces: the rebel Communist armies in Malaysia and Greece, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, ISIS, and al-Qaeda. Closer to home, Jordan’s King Hussein crushed the Fatah Palestinian terrorists in 1970, while the IDF expelled Palestinian terrorists from Lebanon a decade later.

“Absolute victories over Arab terror and guerrilla warfare are achieved here time and time again,” Bareli wrote.

Bareli distinguishes between an “eternal victory,” which belongs to the Messianic era, and a “complete victory,” which is doable. A complete victory in Gaza would entirely uproot Hamas, both militarily and politically, and create conditions in which jihadists cannot easily rebound, even if we can’t pound them into extinction.

“We can — and must — achieve a complete victory in the Gaza Strip now, and afterward, differently, also in Samaria and Judea,” Bareli writes. “After the military victory, open the gates of Gaza for emigration.”

Not so Fast, Tom

Twice last week, Israel demonstrated that it can pick its battles to deter and defeat adversaries. The IDF launched an attack near Damascus, which, according to foreign press reports, impeded  Syrian forces from dismantling listening devices Israel has placed to monitor enemy movements. The IDF also capitalized on intelligence indicating that the Houthis’ prime minister and most of his top political and military leadership were attending a meeting in their stronghold of Sanaa, eliminating most of them in a daring series of airstrikes.

Israel needs to sustain maximum military pressure on multiple fronts. It also must make it clear — even to its strategic ally, the United States — that the era of wishful thinking leading to unilateral Israeli goodwill gestures is over.

Tom Barrack, who wears two hats as President Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria and Lebanon, recently crafted a five-page plan outlining steps Lebanon could take to disarm Hezbollah and what Israel should do to reciprocate, with one fatal flaw, according to Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

“Barrack failed to consult Israel before committing it to this Lebanese-American proposal, expecting the Jewish state to adhere to a plan it never reviewed,” wrote Abdul-Hussain, adding that it’s evident who the bad guys are and what the solution is. “Expecting Israel to offer concessions when Lebanon has provided nothing beyond a cabinet vote [to disarm Hezbollah] is absurd.”

Jonathan Spyer, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, wrote in the Middle East Forum’s weekend newsletter that Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said his government has no intention of using force against Hezbollah, and even if they had the will, they don’t have the means to coerce Hezbollah. “Only Israel’s ongoing [military] campaign to prevent Hezbollah’s rebuilding of its forces is likely to be effective,” Spyer wrote.

Regarding Syria, Prime Minister Netanyahu visited an Israeli Druze community last week and reaffirmed Israel’s policy to maintain demilitarization in the region between Damascus and the Golan Heights, to protect the Syrian Druze community there, and to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid.

Said Bibi: “I told President Trump: We both believe in the same idea — peace through strength. First comes strength; peace will follow.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1077)