As we approach the second anniversary of the massacre, there is nothing to report except speculation and hope. 48 hostages remain in the lair of Hamas and until they are home they are not home.
Trump’s 20 or 21 point plan has been accepted by Israel and our Arab neighbours, but it is not yet accepted by Hamas. Hamas has not surrendered and Hamas has no intention to surrender. They may need a breathing space now as the support of the surrounding Arab countries is dwindling and their main sponsor Iran is facing sanctions and being threatened by both the US and Israel. So Hamas may concede to lose the battle in the hope of winning the war or the resistance as they like to call it.
For Israel there is a metaphoric “light at the end of the tunnel” but whether or not we can pull the hostages out of the real tunnels, is yet to be seen. Everyone thinks that we must first bring home the hostages, both dead and alive, and then take a breath and address the future security issues.
No one is under the illusion that Hamas are going to disappear into the annals of history. There is also Islamic Jihad, who are not party to any talks and clearly state they will not agree to peace with Israel. The Houthi in Yemen remain a problem. They sent rockets on the centre of Israel during and after Yom Kippur and yesterday evening they sent a drone to Eilat sending tens of thousands running to shelters as the debris fell on the city .
Israel has lost the propaganda war and judging by the marches in Europe and Australia, in support of the Palestinians, who mostly support Hamas, they have lost the battle for hearts and minds.
The Islamists within these countries have pressured governments to recognise a Palestinian state, and the lefties and Jew haters have turned the temperature up to such a degree that Jews are being murdered at prayer, and the very next day anti Israel marches are allowed.
Any respect or sympathy for the Israeli victims of either the massacre or the war has evaporated and morphed into some fantasy that the world’s problems will also evaporate if only the Jewish state was destroyed. It’s difficult to accept that countries like the UK are actually allies when they allow these hates marches every weekend to bring their cities to a standstill.
No one sat down and discussed peace with Hitler, and none of the allies concerned themselves with the welfare of the enemy during WW11, but Israel continues to ferry humanitarian aid into Gaza daily, as the world demands that Israel should feed Hamas.
The Gazans are lucky that they have garnered so much world sympathy, as if they were fighting any other country, no one in Europe would so much as blink an eye, and they would be left to starve, just as Sudan is being left to starve and the Druze massacre in Syria was pretty much ignored.
Of course, the civilians in Gaza are victims, but they are victims of their own choice and of the terrorist government that they have supported for over 17 years. The children suffer because of their parents, the brothers and uncles that continue this ongoing fight with Israel. That responsibility cannot be passed to Israelis who are struggling to safeguard their own children. Israelis that only want peace. Israelis that have offered a Palestinian state on numerous occasions, only to be met with Intifada, rockets, car rammings and stabbings.
The choice now lies with the Gazans to choose peace and rebuild and to stop this endless blood letting. They have to accept that after 77 years since the War of Independence when two sovereign states were slated to emerge from the British Mandate (but of course the plan was never accepted by the Arab world) , that they are never, ever going to return to the homes of their ancestors. Their ancestors either ran away so the Arab nations could destroy the fledging Israeli state, or they sold up and left or they were chased out in the battle. That’s war - the victor wins and the loser loses. Don’t start wars if you don’t want to lose.
In the same way, we are never going to return to Poland, Germany, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and all those other Eastern European countries that Jews were driven from. The nearly 1 million Jews thrown out of Arab countries are not going home to Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt or any other county that expelled their Jews. It just isn’t going to happen.
Only Germany has paid reparations and still millions and millions of dollars of art and jewellery remain in the hands of others, stolen from Jews. Everyone who survived the Holocaust and those expelled from their homes have had to move on and survive.
Today we have the modern state of Israel, built with the blood sweat and tears of these early Jewish settlers, a safe haven where no one is expelled for being Jewish , Christian or Muslim. But it is going to remain a Jewish State under Jewish law as both the Christian and Muslim world have a long history of turning on their Jews and that is never going to happen again.
May all enjoy a peaceful Succot and may this be the last days of that the hostages are held in the dark hell of Hamas and return home to the light.