A Cease-Fire Now Would Be Bad for the Future Hopes for Peace
Statement of the Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley Regarding Calls for an Immediate Cease-Fire Between Israel and Hamas."
The Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley, while sharing the goals of those who hope for long-term peace, opposes calls for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Any such calls, no matter how well-intentioned, must be considered in the context of the specific facts surrounding the current situation.
Calls for an immediate cease-fire ignore the fact that as of October 6th, there was a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Moreover, relations between Israel and numerous neighboring Arab countries were improving, with possible new peace agreements being discussed. In part to pre-empt any such peace agreements, Hamas violated the existing cease-fire on October 7th with a massive, unprovoked cross-border attack by ground, air, and sea that brutally murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 Israelis and foreign citizens. Prior to their torture, slaughter, and kidnapping by Hamas, these Israeli and other victims were living peacefully within the internationally recognized borders of Israel, with the civilian victims going about their daily lives in their homes and villages or attending a youthful peace-themed music concert far removed from any sites of any military significance.
Calls for an immediate cease-fire ignore the fact that in their attack on October 7th, Hamas terrorists murdered, raped and tortured Israeli men, women and children with the explicit purpose of fulfilling the publicly stated goal of Hamas: the destruction of Israel. Hamas makes no secret of its long-term goal, stating in its charter/covenant the intention to “obliterate” Israel, “so-called peaceful solutions…are in contradiction to the principles” underlying Hamas, any Arab country that enters into a peace agreement with Israel commits “high treason, and cursed be he who perpetrates such an act,” and setting out a lengthy list of antisemitic stereotypes regarding Jews (completely unrelated to Israel) and inciting its followers to “fight Jews and kill them.” Moreover, Hamas apparently took pride in its brutal slaughter, live-streaming much of the October 7th torture and killing of innocent civilians, including posting the horror on the social media accounts of many victims in order to further traumatize and terrorize. And in the two months since the October 7th attacks, leaders of Hamas have publicly announced their intention to repeat attacks on Israeli civilians if given the opportunity, until Israel is destroyed.
To put the scale and impact of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack in context relevant to those of us here in the United States who lived through the horrible 9/11 terrorist attack that killed 3,000 innocent people, with Israel’s population roughly 1/30th the population of the United States, on a per capita basis the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack would be analogous to 36,000 Americans being brutally murdered and 7,200 Americans being kidnapped. And the suffering is felt not only by the Jewish citizens of Israel, but also by the more than 1 million Arab citizens of Israel who enjoy full legal rights in the country—Hamas’ terror attacks do not distinguish between Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens.
No country—especially a democracy like Israel where Jewish, Arab, and other citizens are allowed to vote and expect their lives to be protected from unprovoked Hamas attacks and Hamas promises of future attacks—can be expected to sit on its hands and wait for the next promised terrorist attack. For this reason, ISRAEL IS AT WAR WITH HAMAS, NOT THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. Moreover, Israel is not fighting this war for the purpose of revenge or retaliation—rather, it has been forced to fight this war to ensure that Hamas never has the opportunity to repeat the atrocities of October 7th again and no longer is able to implement its publicly stated goal of trying to “obliterate” Israel and its citizens.
In the context of the war that Hamas started with its October 7th terrorist attack, critics of Israel’s efforts often ignore the fact that Hamas intentionally embeds itself amongst the civilian population of Gaza, including integrating its military operations, tunnels, and weapons within the civilian infrastructure of hospitals, homes, and mosques, thereby committing a double war-crime. Hamas uses its own civilians as human shields while firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian areas of no legitimate military significance with the clear intention of murdering and traumatizing more Israeli civilians. Further, knowing that Israel has no choice but to eliminate the rocket-launchers and Hamas military operations intentionally directed at Israeli civilians, Hamas’ integration of military operations within its civilian areas has the apparent intention by Hamas of causing deaths within the Palestinian population itself (not to mention the Palestinian civilian deaths caused by Hamas’ own rockets misfired from civilian areas). Unlike Israel and other democracies—indeed, many non-democratic countries—Hamas disgustingly appears to view the deaths of its own people, Palestinian civilians, as creating a military advantage, knowing that it will focus international attention on Israel’s defensive military actions rather than the inhumane actions of Hamas. And Hamas does this while the Hamas leadership and its terrorists hide in tunnels underneath Gaza.
Furthermore, critics of Israel’s efforts to defend itself often falsely accuse Israel of genocide. The Israel Defense Forces has taken extensive measures to avoid civilian casualties, including warnings to civilians to evacuate areas of Gaza in which Hamas is embedded and that will become combat zones, and the opening of humanitarian corridors so Gazans can move to safe areas, even as Hamas’ strategy of embedding military operations within civilian areas sometimes limits the effectiveness of Israeli’s efforts. In contrast to Israel’s efforts to focus on Hamas military targets, as noted above Hamas uses every opportunity to intentionally kill Israeli civilians who are not anywhere near legitimate military targets, and proudly boasts a charter whose stated purpose is the indiscriminate murder of Jews and the complete destruction of the State of Israel. Yet critics of Israel’s war efforts often make no reference to Hamas’ actions and future goals meeting the textbook definition of genocide.
Critics of Israel’s efforts to defend itself often fail to recognize that for more than two decades, Hamas and its backers in the government of Iran, have done everything possible to sabotage the hopes for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In 2005, Israel completely withdrew every Israeli citizen (indeed, every Jew) from Gaza, and left Gaza under the complete control of the Palestinian Authority with the hope that it would lead to peaceful co-existence. Yet by 2007, Hamas had seized control of Gaza, leading to 15+ years of Gaza being led by a terrorist organization whose charter forbids any discussion of long-term peace, and who have indiscriminately fired more than 40,000 rockets at Israeli civilians living in cities and villages of no military relevance while diverting untold millions of dollars of foreign assets meant to aid the Palestinian population and instead repurposing it into Hamas weapons, tunnels and other military infrastructure embedded within its civilian areas.
Finally, in calling for an immediate cease-fire, critics of Israel often draw a false moral equivalency between on the one hand Israel, which is fighting an admittedly difficult war for the long-term protection of its Jewish, Arab, and other citizens that was forced on it by Hamas under circumstances that Hamas has created to maximize civilian casualties, and on the other hand Hamas, which for obvious reasons is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom.
It is important to repeat that Israel is at war with Hamas, not the Palestinian people. We are all God’s children and the loss of life on both sides of the conflict is distressing. However, as President Biden stated on November 18th, “As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace. To Hamas’s members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.” While it would be wonderful if there were a way to eliminate Hamas without the need for war and the suffering it brings to innocents on both sides, Hamas’ stated intention to repeat the atrocities of October 7th if given the chance and its continued, imminent threat to Israeli citizens—both Jewish and Arab alike—leave no other realistic option.
At this point in time, the Israel Defense Forces are on the verge of defeating Hamas. Therefore, the call for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas would be the equivalent of calling for a cease-fire in World War II when the Allied forces were on the verge of defeating Nazi Germany. We hope and pray that, with Hamas no longer ruling Gaza (and Palestinian residents there no longer suffering from the denial of civil and other rights at the hands of Hamas), reasonable voices among both Palestinians and Israelis can one day find a path that leads to peaceful co-existence.