Israel deserves an honest leader, Netanyahu and Gantz can't do that - opinion

• Published date: 24 March 2024
• Author: NIR KIPNISS
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Not directly targeting its citizens (not even those complaining today that they have no food for their children – it's a shame they handed out all their baklava pastries on October 7, failing to save some for a rainy day), but rather all Hamas terrorists

Using a variation of Winston Churchill's speech (and again, due to that same trap, we won't mention which the Israeli politicians idolize him), Mr. Israeli would step up in front of the cameras and declare:

"We will fight them in the tunnels. We will fight them in their places of refuge – offered to them by supposed aid organizations. We will fight them in the hospitals, schools, and all the hidden places from whence they operate. Any Gazan who doesn't want to die as a human shield can come out waving a white flag. But there is no ceasefire, and there will be no ceasefire until Hamas is completely destroyed. If this happens with minimum impact on Gaza citizens – wonderful. But to be clear, we will not stop, even if this means that the last Hamas terrorist is the last resident of Gaza."

He would say it and then make good on his word.

The world may have gone into shock. Countries that initially would have supported us would have even tried to block us through every diplomatic avenue at their disposal, including boycotts. And the Arabs would say that a djinn has possessed the Jews, that they have all gone mad. This may have been said in anger, but believe it or not, also in appreciation – admiration, even.

Where would we be today? No more diplomatically beaten than we are already, but with much greater achievements in the region, with the Hamas leadership destabilized and probably even dead, and perhaps even in the midst of normalization talks with neighboring, anti-Iranian countries.

But what about the hostages, you ask? Some of them would pay with their lives and be murdered by their captors (which already happened in quite a few cases), while others would be saved thanks to the captors' desire to save themselves and their loved ones. It is impossible to throw out an estimated number. Alternatively, anyone who thinks that such a war of attrition necessarily translates to the loss of all of the hostages' lives is mistaken.

Now, imagine an entirely different scenario. Prime Minister Israeli stands before the cameras and informs the people of Israel and the whole world that we have been severely hit, that we have prepared graves, that we are mourning, that while those vile murderers deserve to face their...