Barely an hour after Israel confirmed it had killed Yahya Sinwar, Hamasâ leader and the architect of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, tđhe Very Smart People in Washington, DC jumped in withâ helpful advice.
âIsrael,â former ambassador and Clinton confidante Dennis Rđoss , âshould say it will end the warꊾ.â
Vice President Kamala Harris agreed. A few hours later, she delivered a brief saying the exact same thing: “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza.”
Others in the thicket of Democrat-friendly think tanks jumped in to amplify đthe same message: Now that the bad guy is dead, Israel should lay down its arms and engage in peaceful diplomatic negotiations.
It’s a talking point weâre likely to hear more and more these coming days â and itâs wrong, warped, stupid and dangerous.
It doesnât rྲeally take a Churchill to understand why.
Just look at the instantly iconic picture of the slain Sinwar, laying lifeless in the rubble as three robust Israeli soldiers tower over his soot-covered corpse, and youâll realize that Washingtonâs insistence on diplomacy at any cost is nonsense: Sometimes, war is precisely the answer.
And sometimes, especially when youâre fighting a genocidal terror group hell-bent on raping your wđŽomen, beheading your children and eliminating every last civilian, you canât and shouldnât stop until you win.
Not that youâd get any of that if you listened to Team Biden-ęŚHarris.
âWe have got to reach a cease-fire,â the vice ę§president told reporters just last week.
âWeâve got to de-escalate.â
It wasnât just talk: As Israelis were struggling with more deadly Hezbollah rockets and ongoing attacks from Hamas in Gaza, the Biden administration ramped up its threats of cutting off weapons shipments to Israel, increased pressure on Jerusalem to refrain from a major attack on Iran ađ§nd repeated the mantra, best expressâąed earlier this year by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, that a cease-fire is âthe only credible path forward.â
If you want to knowꌥ how things turn out for those who take the administrationâs sage advice, just ask any Afghan wâhat lifeâs been like these last few years.
Israel couldâve suđşccumbed to the same pressure, and let the DeđŚšmocrat dodos push it into premature surrender.
It could have caved when Harris threatened it with âconseđ quencesâ should the Israeli army go into Rafah.
It couldâve agreed to cede control đof the Philadelphi âŚcorridor, Gazaâs border with Egypt, giving Hamas a major pathway to smuggling fighters and munitions.
Had it done so, Sinwar â who wđas killed in Rafah, not far from the Philadelphi corridor, reportedly with wads ođf cash and a fake passport on his person and likely while attempting to flee into Egypt â wouldâve been sipping sweet tea from the safety of some shelter and doubling down on planning the next murderous attack.
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Thankfully, the Jewish state made a veđry different choice.
Withstanding immense pressure, not just from Washington but from its many domestic cronies in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vę§owed to đ°fight on.
Instead of agreeing to engage yet again in negotiations with two terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, that have been brazenly violating agreements and flouting internationally imposeđd restrictions for decades, Netanyahu had the IDF eliminate Hezbollahâs top leadership, take out its commander Hassan Nasrallah and make sure that Hamasâ Sinwar, too, died like a dog.
In doing so, Netanyahu and Israel taught Amerđica a lę§esson our spineless and rudderless elites desperately need to learn: Winning is possible.
Winning is desirable.
Winning is good.
True, war comes at a terrible price.
But refusing to fight and insisting that diplomacy is the only acceptꌌable route only serves to embolden our worst enemies, prolong the misery of innocent people on all sides and ensure that the war weâll eventually have to fight will bđe much deadlier.
âIn killing Sinwar, Israel gaꊾve the world another reminder about not politics or military strategy, but basic human nature.
When someone marches into your home, rapes your daughter and burns your baby alive, the normal human response isnât to weep and then slouch towards the negęŚotiations tâ able.
Itâs to pick up a gun and go seek justice.
Itâs the sort of logic Americans inherently understand, and one more reason why so many are rejectinđˇg the defeatist and delusional policies of an administration committed to absurd abstractions rather than concrete victories.
America has very real foes taking very real steps to jeopardize our national secuârity interests, Iran first and foremost among them.
Instead of kowtowing to our murderous enemieâs, hereâs hoping we take a page out of Israelâs playbook and refuse to budge until theyâre all đŚlying dead in the dirt.
Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.