Netanyahu’s head is on the block

In the Qu’ran (Koran), the Muslim holy book, there are 103 verses that instruct Muslims to fight and to kill for Allah, the god of Islam. The Qu’ran informs its Muslim adherents that they are to kill all infidels (non-Muslims) wherever they find them, especially the Jews who are the “sons of pigs and monkeys.” If this writer has said it once, he has said it 500 times, “There is no peace, there will be no peace, and there can be no peace until Jesus returns to rule and reign from Jerusalem.” It is just not going to happen all the while more than a billion Muslims are taught to hate and kill non-Muslims, especially the Jews whom their god Allah has cursed. There are verses in the Qu’ran that says that a believer (a Muslim) must “not kill another believer” and must not “kill any man without good cause.” That, of course, leaves the door wide open for a Muslim to kill whomever he wants. Thus the Sunni Muslims are killing the Shia Muslims and vice versa throughout the Middle East because neither sect believes the other is a believer and should be killed wherever they are found. Get the point? Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims.

Hamas, the terror organization that controls Gaza, kept firing rockets until the last moment until the ceasefire. It proved a capacity for resilience to Israeli airstrikes even though it was the population of Gaza that paid a heavy price for Hamas’s resilience. It should be remembered, however, that neither the IDF nor the Israeli government sought at any point to bring Hamas down. Some members of the government, together with the majority of the Israeli public, wanted Hamas taken down, but that was not Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s objective. He wanted to weaken Hamas by hitting it very hard, but he also wanted to ensure Hamas’s capacity to survive – to enable it to continue to serve as the Gaza leadership address, a partner to deal with. With ISIS on Israel’s eastern border, Hamas on its southern border and Hizb’allah on its northern border, toppling Hamas could open the way for hell itself to come to Israel’s borders.

Many Israelis are hot under the collar with Netanyahu for not toppling Hamas, but Netanyahu is not a fool, he is very pragmatic. Netanyahu was a captain in Israel’s most elite commando unit – he understands war. Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonathan, led the same unit, the crème de la crème of Israeli commando units, in the famous Entebbe raid named Operation Thunderbolt. The raid took place 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from home and it freed the 103 Jewish hostages that were being held by Idi Amin after a plane with 248 passengers was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and flown to Entebbe airport. All the non-Jewish passengers were freed upon the plane’s landing. The daring raid captured the attention of the world and a movie was made and appropriately called Operation Thunderbolt.

There are numerous intangibles that we know nothing about, but which clearly affected Netanyahu’s decision to accept the ceasefire. The IDF had destroyed Hamas’s attack tunnels; had killed up to 1,000 terrorists, including top commanders; it had destroyed thousands of rockets, rocket launchers, arms depots, and weapon manufacturing facilities; it had knocked out hundreds of terrorist command centers; and it had foiled a number of terrorist attacks on Israel from the land, from the sea, and from the air. When asked if Israel would “get a long term calm,” Netanyahu said, “I think it is too early to tell. But I can say

that the blows to Hamas, and our ability to keep them from rearming by supervising the borders, increase the chances that this will be achieved. If there isn’t quiet and Hamas again starts a ‘drizzle’ of rocket fire on any part of the country, we will respond harder than we have until now. We are prepared for all possibilities.”

However, most Israelis oppose the ceasefire with Hamas, they are unhappy with the truce and feel less secure than before Gaza operation. In one poll 59 percent of Israelis said they were dissatisfied with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s performance. Another poll on Channel 10 television found that 55% were satisfied with Netanyahu. The Channel 10 poll indicated that a large portion of the dissatisfaction with Netanyahu came from him not going far enough in the war. Seventy- five percent said he should have toppled Hamas.

A majority of respondents said war would restart in under a year, and 37 percent predicted it would happen in less than six months. Yet another poll showed Israelis believing that the IDF emerged as the victor in Operation Protective Edge even though Israel as a nation did not. Sixty-one percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the IDF had won while Israel had lost. Respondents expressed frustration with the cease-fire that ended the operation with Hamas still in power in the Gaza Strip. Fifty-eight percent said the IDF should have been allowed to continue the operation in order to degrade the terrorist organization’s military abilities and called the truce a mistake that wastes the achievements of the Israeli armed forces. Current Israeli discontent could affect Netanyahu’s chance of getting elected again. He won the war with Hamas, now he must win the war with the Israeli people – his head is on the chopping block.

There are Israelis on both sides of the divide – for and against the ceasefire. It is understandable that those who live in the Gaza periphery areas are concerned that Hamas, as has been its wont over the years, will only wait a few months or a few years at best, before renewing its quest to destroy Israel. Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’s terror chief who lives in Qatar, the “Club Med for terrorists” threatened on August 28 to resume fighting if Hamas’s demands are not met. He also said that “the ceasefire was a loss for Hamas” and that Gaza will never disarm its “sacred” weapons. Apparently, after only two days of calm we have returned once again to square one.

As an interesting aside, Israel’s Channel 2’s Ehud Ya’ari reported that Hamas folk are also unhappy with the ceasefire. Amad Al-Almi, a senior Hamas official who represented Gaza in Egypt during the ceasefire negotiations with Israel, evidently returned to Gaza to less than satisfied friends and coworkers. His fellow terrorists attacked him with baseball bats and broke both his legs. The reason for the attack on Al-Almi is not known, however, it was yesterday that Khaled Mashaal told the Hamas leadership that the ceasefire agreement is a loss for Hamas. Readers can now guess why Al-Almi, as the Hamas negotiator, got such a rousing welcome on his return from Cairo.

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