Israel is at war on multiple fronts. Only, it doesn’t seem to know. Israel has been at war for over 100 years. Only, it seems to want to forget.
Only over the last few days, Israel has been attacked from Lebanon, Gaza and Syria, and Israeli civilians and foreign tourists have been murdered around the country, including on the streets of Tel Aviv and a family was tragically and mercilessly gunned down while traveling on vacation.
In any other context, each one of these incidents on their own represents a casus belli to go to war and every single fair-minded person around the world would understand and respect Israel’s need to strike back and defend its citizens from further harm and bloodshed.
Unfortunately, we seem to choose to stop the situation from escalating further.
Nonetheless, Israeli citizens are screaming out and demanding action. The situation has already escalated out of control, and our enemies don’t see a call for calm as strength, they see it as a weakness.
There is a reason that even Syria, that has not dared lay a hand on Israel despite the Israel Air Force’s almost daily bombing of its, Iran’s and Hizbollah’s military facilities and capabilities, has joined in the action. If Syria believes Israel to be weak enough at this point, then we are facing a very big problem.
Our leaders should have only one option, and it is the call of the people at this time.
Let the IDF win!
The “Let the IDF win” slogan was first coined by Uri Ariel, the head of the Yesha Council during the Second Intifada, created to protest the decision-making of the political leadership to behave with restraint in the face of unrelenting terror.
Eventually, after the Passover Massacre in March 2002, when 30 civilians were murdered and 140 injured during a Palestinian terrorist attack on a hotel in Netanya celebrating the Passover meal, the government launched Operation Defensive Shield.
While it is true that the Second Intifada did not completely end after the operation, it certainly put a massive dent in the Palestinian terrorist group’s ability and desire for further attacks.
We cannot wait for another Passover Massacre to say – enough!
We might not have an attack which murdered thirty in one go, but we are edging steadily closer to that number of Israeli’s murdered since the beginning of the year, and we are only at the beginning of April. The people of Israel should not have to wait for the ‘big one’. They need to feel protected now.
The international community calls for restraint at the end of every condemnation, but our
needs need to be prioritized over what some diplomatic functionary sitting thousands of miles away with his or her finger dispassionately on the ‘copy and paste’ buttons of their computer think. We must say enough is enough now. We must take out all of our strategic plans from their dusty drawers that provide various levels of response to various events and enact them at their strongest and highest levels. We need to let the IDF win, against all of our enemies on all of our borders, against all threats.
Our enemies have been feeling far too emboldened, with some predicting Israel’s demise within a few years. It doesn’t matter if that appears incredible, it is a seeming reality to an increasing number of our enemies. Israel needs to act like it is at war because it is. Our enemies are already on the battlefield, preparing for their next strike, just the latest in its decades of murderous attacks.
Israel needs to end this over 100-year war against its existence as the indigenous and ancestral homeland of the Jewish People.
Israel needs to defeat its enemies and force them to understand that it is permanent, and it is powerful.
Israel needs to, finally, and resolutely, let the IDF win.
