Calling for “peace” is a very easy and shallow signal of virtue, and frankly childish. In a grown-up world, it is obvious that peace isn’t always possible and sometimes civilisation has to fight savagery, or surrender to it. Hamas – and the general genocidal culture of the Palestinian people – will not be overcome with flowers in gun barrels.
So let’s be realistic and consider what will happen if there is a ceasefire.
Firstly, Hamas’s actions won’t have had any major consequences for them. Where are their fighters now? Do we see them among the casualties the Hamas “Ministry of Health” puts on display for the world’s media? No. They are likely hiding in basements under hospitals and schools or in the “spider web” of tunnels they have built under Gaza with aid money and material meant for building civilian infrastructure. This material was, of course, provided by gullible Western charities thinking that this will promote… peace. Hamas will declare “victory” and the public of Gaza will cheer them. As before, any personal loss will be declared the price of martyrdom and a sacrifice worth making in a holy quest to kill the Jews.
Secondly, Hamas will simply regroup and, a year or two from now, we’ll be back here after another outrageous attack on Israeli civilians that will shock the world for 2 days before the world’s media starts blowing the dust off the same scripts they have used in every other flareup of violence Hamas has provoked over the years: “restraint”, “proportionality”, “peace”, “ceasefire”, “humanitarian crisis”, “collective punishment”, “peace” (again), with a new batch of talking heads nodding sagely on the news programmes.
Thirdly, a “ceasefire” really only means that Israel must stop firing. Who is going to secure an agreement from Hamas? And how long will it hold? Hamas will welcome a ceasefire (by Israel) and use it to restock food and fuel supplies. It is thought that the fuel in Gaza is being used by Hamas to run generators powering the air-conditioning needed to keep the tunnels serviceable. If they run out of fuel, they will have to come above ground. Only a fool would think that the aid pouring in during a ceasefire won’t go to bolstering military capabilities first. Hamas have never put the interests of Gazan civilians first, and – if polls are to believed – the civilians of Gaza are happy that they don’t.
Fourthly, Israel needs time. Let’s face it, after spending 2 decades trying (and failing) to sort out the Insurgency and Taliban respectively in Iraq and Afghanistan, the calls for a “ceasefire” in Gaza came in less than 2 weeks. What hypocrisy leads western sanctimony to take 20 years to try and solve a potential threat halfway across the world, but get impatient because Israel hasn’t sorted out an existential threat right on its border in 20 days? It is a sad fact that civilians die in wars. There has been no war without civilian casualties. Expecting Israel to somehow root out Hamas – the government and military of a neighbouring territory – without harm coming to anyone is absurd and impossible to achieve. In this sense “ceasefire” effectively means “leave Hamas alone”.
Israel likely knows this and hopefully has decided that another 1400 Jewish lives in 2025 isn’t worth making the Western chatterati feel better in 2023.
If you support a “ceasefire” now, don’t kid yourself that you’re “saving lives”, you’re not. You’re simply deferring some regrettable loss of life now for greater loss of life later. The issue of Hamas – which by all accounts is evolving into another ISIS – needs to be settled now. Today. They are not a reasonable group of honest actors with whom any negotiations for “peace” can be had. The only solution is their utter destruction.
So ask yourself: “what is the point of a ceasefire?”
If your answer is that you ‘just want the killing to stop’ because it upsets you, then turn off the TV.
If you think that a ceasefire is a necessary precondition to “dialogue… towards peace”, then ask yourself who you will be talking to, how reasonable and willing to compromise they are, and how much they desire peace themselves. The answer is ‘Hamas’, and if I have to explain to why this is an intractable problem to reaching these objectives, you either haven’t been paying attention or you’re an idiot.
If you think that a ceasefire is desirable because it will help Hamas – and it will – then I thank you for your honesty. But you’re an enemy of civilisation.
