David Shalom is a former leader of Betar and Likud-Herut in the UK . He was later an activist in Aryeh Eldad's Hatikvah party in Israel. A trained scientist- holding master's degrees in Chemistry and Nano-materials he has worked in the Information and Technology sector between Israel, the UK and India for the last 17 plus years Israel signed a hostage release deal with Hamas, brokered by the Qatari government and with the support of the Biden Administration. Although priceless hostages were freed as a result and the Israeli government vows to resume the war, this remains a very dangerous deal and epitomizes the warped, thinking and conceptions that led to the massacre and failures Israel suffered on the 7th October. The very essence of making deals with Hamas is illegitimate as it is a collection of war criminals and terrorists responsible for multiple atrocities and poses an existential danger to Israel. This repeats the decades of failed policy of dealing with terrorist organisations that started in 1993 in the Olso accords with the PLO and culminating in recent times with the Israeli government being regularly in contact with Hamas and enabling the transfer of billions of dollars in materials, fuel and actual cash to the terrorist enclave. Making deals with the devil only strengthens the enemy and weakens Israel and the cause of justice. Negotiations grant a stamp of legitimacy to the terrorists and provide incentives for them to increase their attacks and blackmail Israel further. It also creates a very dangerous and false equivalency between terrorists- hundreds of which are set to be released- and innocent civilians kidnapped by terrorists. The current deal will at most only free 50 of the 235 or more hostages and possibly more as Hamas cleverly tries to extend the ceasefire. The deal also gives the Hamas days of “cease-fire” ; time it will use to re-group, re-arm and set traps for Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Time that Hamas will seek to lengthen as much as possible to increase international pressure on Israel to end the war without finishing the job of destroying and defeating Hamas and its jihadist allies in Gaza. During this pause Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip are vulnerable to attacks from Hamas – especially given Israel’s agreement to cease aerial support for 6 hours everyday- and these will definitely come as Hamas will not respect the deal if and when they spot an opportunity to kill and maim Israeli troops. Following the pause in fighting, foreign powers including the US Administration will inevitably pressurize Israel to end the war. The Israeli left will also join this pressure. Without conquering all of Gaza- including the South of the strip- the Arabs will be able to declare they have won the war. They will continue to attack Israel and represent a huge existential level threat. Following the massive security failure on October the 7th , where nearly 3000 armed Hamas and Gazan terrorists invaded Israel and murdered 1400 people, many in Israel -especially on the Right- have mentioned the “failed conception” ("Conceptzia") that led to the breakdown. But what exactly is this conception and have Israelis woken up from these delusions and illusions that led to the failure? The failed “conception” or more correctly “consensus” was based on a belief that the Arabs could be bribed into giving up their genocidal aims. Bribes ranged from actual cash- that was delivered to Hamas in suitcases- to more importantly – handover of lands. The Israeli government handed over Gaza and ethnically cleansed the Jewish population there for the benefit of the “Palestinian” Arabs in 2005. It was a complete failure. The Arabs used the territory to build an army, to produce hundreds of thousands of missiles- which it has launched non-stop against Israeli civilians for nearly 20 years. They used the money to build terror tunnels – an underground city in fact- the “Gaza Metro” to allow their fighters and leaders alone to hide after their attacks. And of course, they used the money to indoctrinate and Nazify their population through their education system and via extensive media and social media propaganda- to adopt the most extreme anti-Semitic ideology and form an Islamist fascist society. The failure to understand that the Arabs have no interest in building a state “a Mediterranean Singapore” is based on a lack of understanding of their Islamist ideology, that glorifies violence and jihad- religious war- and glorifies warlords in current times and from the Islamic history. Hamas is just another branch of the international Islamist terrorist movement that includes amongst others, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko-Haram and dozens of others whose worldview is conquest of the world and the imposition of Sharia Law as clearly expressed in Hamas’ founding charter and that of the Moslem Brotherhood that their ideology originates from. Their hatred of Israel is based on religious sources that sees the Jewish people as being inferior to the Moslems, as being at best second class or “dhimma” peoples who should be defeated and ultimately destroyed altogether or at least live under the jackboot of Moslem overlords with very limited rights. The only solution for such enemies is to defeat them in war. This means military defeat, it means psychological defeat, and finally removal of the hostile Arab population from the Western Land of Israel (from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea). Israeli leaders lack an understanding of the Arab psychology and this is typified by the uniform worldview of most of Israel’s military leaders- who are ignorant of Arabic and Islamic history. A basic understanding would have led Israel to immediately carpet bomb Gaza- with 100 or so planes- on the 8th of October Gaza- and would have led to tens of thousands of Arab dead on the first day of the war- and would have served as a lesson for the Arabs after the massacre. Instead Israel has been bombing Gaza for over 6 weeks and 15,000 terrorists have died. This is a great achievement in terms of accuracy and intelligence but is a failure in terms of deterrence and achieving a goal of defeating the enemy and its morale. The Arabs in Gaza are nazified, they are the same people who voted for Hamas and Hamas sprouted from their society. They are one and the same nation. The idea that killing several thousand terrorists will be a long-term solution is part of the failed conception/consensus. The vast majority of the population must be resettled outside of the Gaza Strip. The Arabs have enough land and massive natural resources to take in 1 or 2 million of their brothers in a few months. Israel must aim for this solution if it is serious about changing the reality and neutralizing the threats from Gaza. Israel will have to rule the Gaza strip militarily and create security zones of at least 5km on all sides with no Arab population close to Israeli villages and towns in the South. If Israel has really changed its “conceptions” it must officially declare that its policy is that there is no future for ALL the Gazans in the land. It should demand from hostile powers like Qatar, Iran and Turkey to take in their brother Moslems. It must put pressure on Egypt to open the borders to let the Arabs leave as a first stage of this transfer. Finally a change of “concept” will not come without a thorough reform of both the Israeli military and the reduction of the powers of the leftist Supreme Court- the court that has harmed Israel’s right to defend itself multiple times and just today decided it “could not interfere” to stop the release of 300 convicted terrorist criminals from prisons today. A change of consensus would be to understand that territorial surrenders in Gaza, Judea and Samaria – from Oslo to the "Disengagement"- led to the current crisis and massacres of October 7th. Another is to realize that the war must continue. And that also means ignoring US attempts to control how it is waged.
