US President Donald Trump’s unprecedented record of pro-Israel diplomatic and defense moves and his commitment to Israel remains undeniable. Any of the other candidates in recent years for US presidency would not have matched, and most of those likely to be presidential candidates in 2028 are unlikely to match, Trump’s staunchly pro-Israel record.

Therefore, Israel must appreciate and work with Trump as best possible over the next two years to lock-in further gains (as Martin Oliner this week correctly argued in these pages).

But the fact that Donald Trump does not do ideology is problematic. His exceptionally transactional approach to political and foreign affairs – thinking that money, dealmaking, and the force of his personality can fix everything and lead to swift peace everywhere – is refreshing but also dangerous. It leads him to ignore the villainous nature of people like Ahmed al-Sharaa and Zohran Mamdani.

I can understand to some extent Trump’s buttering-up of the new Syrian president Sharaa (aka Mohammed Al-Jolani). America has a strategic interest in drawing Syria into the US orbit, and away from Russia and Iran. Israel shares this aspiration (although doubts that Sharaa is a reliable partner).

I can understand to some extent Trump’s love fest with Saudi and Emirati leaders, which stems from strategic reasons (as above) alongside Trump’s great desire for mega-investments in America from these extremely wealthy countries.

Israel shares Trump’s aspiration for expansion of Abraham Accord-style regional partnerships with the Saudis (although it should not and will not pay the diplomatic high price for such accords that the Saudis apparently are currently demanding).

But Trump’s buddy-buddy-like meeting in the Oval Office with Mamdani, the incoming mayor of New York City, upsets me terribly. As does Trump’s non-response to virulent antisemitic voices emerging in a significant branch of his own political party.

Mamdani represents a broad cultural shift in America in which opposition to Jewish peoplehood has become a mark of moral virtue. Mamdani’s victory means that it is legitimate to slander Israel with allegations of genocide and tar all Jews with insinuations of apartheid and “white” slave-mastering; that it is kosher to wage Marxist and Islamist class warfare against Jews and Zionists.

Tucker Carlson of the extremist MAGA right-wing represents the rise of Nazi-like and Christian supersessionist thinking in radical Republican circles.

So I cringe and cry when President Trump sits in his Oval Office chair silently by as Mamdani brazenly accuses Israel and its main backer, the United States of America, of genocide and war crimes. As if this was not any offense to Trump and to America, as if this were not an outrage against Jews and Israelis, and as if this weren’t an assault on truth and decency.

I shudder when Trump has nothing to say about Carlson’s consorting with Holocaust-denying and outright Jew-hating creeps like Nick Fuentes. As if this did not happen, as if this has no major impact on public discourse in the mainstream political party that Trump claims to lead.

IN TRUTH, Trump may not have been listening to either Mamdani or Carlson. He has, as we have learned, a wooden ear for all things ideological. He thinks that only the practical political act is meaningful, that all leaders can be cajoled or wedged into his lane by the force of a deal.

Now it is true as Trump loyalists have said that there is value in wearing one’s ideology lightly. This allows for the flow of fresh thought, frees one up to react to crises in unexpected and novel ways, and keeps your enemies guessing.

But in the long term, Trump’s ideological truancy is rigorously wrong. Rejection of moral limits in politics and ignorance of ideological currents in global affairs lead to incoherent or corrupt policy or both. Combine this with narcissist craving for deals that ostensibly prove one’s “greatness,” and you have a recipe for bad results. You open the door to gargantuan strategic mistakes and to deep ideological rot.

The two immediate theaters where such bad policy results are emerging are the Russia-Ukraine and Hamas-Israel conflicts.

Ukraine is being abandoned by Trump to Russian ravaging, and Israel is being handcuffed in its existential war with radical annihilationist Islam.

Kyiv is expected to permanently relinquish Donbas to Russian conquest, and Jerusalem dare not make a military move without Trump’s approval. Neither Ukraine nor Israel can upset the transactional-on-steroids, global and regional “peace” deals that Trump is driving.

In the Middle East, it is ridiculously inappropriate to declare “peace in our time for the first time in 3,000 years,” while imposing a flawed freeze on the situation. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran have not been sufficiently defanged or deterred.

In Gaza specifically, Trump seems to be dialing back from demands for real disarmament of Hamas and instead pushing for rapid reconstruction while overseeing the free flow of humanitarian aid straight into the hands of Hamas. Equally upsetting is Trump’s internationalization of the conflict in Gaza by inviting-in Egyptian and Turkish troops and offering the snake-like Qataris a central role in controlling territory bordering Israel.

Alas, Trump’s non-dogmatic methodology for “solving” conflicts, refreshing in some contexts, is deleterious here. It ignores the fact that major actors in the regions like Turkey, Qatar, and Iran apply an ideological-hegemonic prism to regional affairs, and are in fact fighting a civilizational against America and the Western world (and of course against Israel).

It ignores the need to distinguish between good and evil, between victim and perpetrator, between necessary escalation and all-out civilizational collapse.

In this regard, the Jewish People and the State of Israel are this generation’s great generator of moral purpose. We are attempting to awaken the West from suicidal slumber, from dangerous cultural and strategic malaise; to help Trump and the West defend against the worst radical actors on the world stage and rout the insidious forces that threaten to undermine Western righteousness from within.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom 05.12.2025

There is no satisfactory solution to the haredi draft issue. Ultra-Orthodox young men cannot be forced into IDF service. And the phony draft law presented by the new chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee, Boaz Bismuth, certainly won’t do the job. It is a draft evasion law, not a pathway to realistic shouldering of the national security burden by the haredi community.

Haredi leaders are not budging. Despite October 7, despite the near-existential threat situation Israel finds itself in across seven fronts, despite the attendant acute military manpower crisis, despite the enormous sacrifices in dead, wounded, and displaced, and despite financial deprivation, household disruption, and emotional trauma experienced by so many Israeli families religious and secular alike – haredi leaders remain adamant that “yeshiva boys” cannot be drafted in any minimal way (whether they are really learning Torah full time or not).

These leaders are overwhelmingly cut-off from the war reality that “mainstream” Israel is living, purposefully and devastatingly so. Alas, they are disconnected, even unfeeling towards the broader public – as several condescending critical statements and recent interviews of the highest-ranking rabbis and their spokesmen have sadly made clear.

(For a particularly revealing and infuriating example, see the interview given three weeks ago by Yisrael Friedman, editor of the main haredi newspaper Yated Neeman, to the Religious Zionist newspaper Makor Rishon.)

I no longer believe that this can be changed even if the most drastic punitive measures were applied (and they won’t be) – like a complete cut-off of government funding for everything haredi from schools that don’t teach basic secular subjects to the massive subsidies that non-serving Kollel families enjoy in municipal taxes, health insurance, school tuition, daycare, and more.

I just don’t see solutions on the horizon for the constitutional, political, and social crisis over haredi draft exemption (even though I believe that there are pathways to a better place in the very long term along the lines of haredi “hesder” yeshivas, which are growing very slowly).

There are certainly no solutions that will adequately address the IDF’s immediate needs, which is about 10,000 new soldiers a year, including at least 6,000 full-time combat soldiers in the 18-24 age cohort. No “change government” headed by the current opposition leaders is going to be able to fix this, even if such an alternative government were to be voted into office next year. That’s the miserable reality.

WHAT REMAINS is adoption of a moral stance as a matter of principle; the proclamation from every platform of the sociological and ideological suffering of serving Israelis – the echoing of their scream.

And within the religious world, it is extraordinarily necessary to defiantly distinguish distorted haredi interpretations of religious ideology regarding military service from authentic Torah ideology in this regard. This is an obligation for the sake of the “honor of Torah” as well as it being an emotional and social imperative.

In these pages in June 2024, I debunked at length four pseudo-foundational concepts that haredi ideologues cite in defense of their refusal to participate in “carrying the burden” of military service. Today, we’ll let the voices of Religious Zionist heroes and heroines sound the siren.

Listen to Noa Mevorach of the Religious Zionist “Shutafot LaSheirut” movement (Partners in Service), speaking earlier this year to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. She held up her husband’s conscription notice for reserve duty – his fifth tour of IDF reserve service since the Simchat Torah (October 7, 2023) invasion of Israel and the massacres led by Hamas.

“The blood of great Torah scholars from my community who went to battle for Israel over the past year, the husbands of my friends who were killed in battle and whose kids are orphans – cries out from the ground,” exclaimed Mrs. Mevorach.

“I hear the discussion here in this committee where it is repeatedly said that haredi men cannot be drafted except by consensus, that they cannot be drafted against their will, that force won’t work. And that the great goal of the proposed new draft legislation is to softly and slowly reach a 50% draft of haredi men over the next ten years.”

“Behold my husband’s fifth draft notice! I ask every member of Knesset to consider this: Why am I not eligible for a 50% discount too, for a 50% reduction in the army burden placed on my husband and on the shoulders of my family? Give me a 50% reduction! “

“I’ll take either the holidays of Tishrei (Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Succot) or the holidays of Nissan (Pesach) in this cutback, so that my husband can be home for 50% of the holidays and we won’t have to sit at the holiday table alone or go to my parents.”

“Why am I not eligible for 50% savings? Who decided and with what authority was it decided that one particular population in the State of Israel, the haredi public, is entitled to a 50% discount? I also want the option to choose such a bargain!” concluded the valiant Noa Mevorach.

This week, a large group of (mostly religious) bereaved families published a petition aimed at members of Knesset from Religious Zionist and traditional backgrounds, in opposition to the Bismuth draft evasion proposals.

Among the signatories are Rabbanit Avivit Granot (mother of Amitai z”l), Rabbi Benny Kalmanson (father of Elhanan z”l), Hagai Lober (father of Elisha z”l), Rabbi Yonatan Sltoki (father of Yishai z”l and Noam z”l), Rabbanit Rachel Goldberg (widow of Rabbi Avi Goldberg z”l), Yair, Sarah, and Shira Schwartz (the family of David z”l), Haya Hexter (mother of Yakir z”l), Tovah and Ariel Shinkolevsky (parents of Yakir z”l), Miriam and Aharon Haber (parents of Zecharia z”l), Zvika Greenglick (father of Shauli z”l), Haim and Leli Deri (parents of Saadia z”l), Tzofia Dickstein (mother of Ivri z”l), and twenty other families.

“We call upon MKs from religious and traditional backgrounds to reject the current draft (evasion) proposals on ideological grounds. This is not the way of Torah! ‘Every person must participate in a milchemet mitzva, a war of commandment and merit’ – so teaches our tradition, and so we taught our sons; Torah teaching that unites the People of Israel and does not divide the nation.”

“On October 7 and in the two years since, our sons, brothers, and husbands sallied forth to defend the nation, in the name of Torah, out of mutual responsibility for all Israelis, out of responsibility for the fate of the Nation of Israel. They left home and did not return. The pain that we feel is endless, and this requires us to speak out.”

“We do not seek to end Torah study. On the contrary, we know that Torah is the lifeblood of our people. But the Torah of Israel does not allow one to exempt himself from the burdens of the public; it obligates everybody to collective responsibility. This is the Biblical commandment ‘Do not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake.’ All the much more so when your neighbor is fighting to save you!”

“Specifically out of respect for Torah and those who study it, it is difficult for us to hear people using Torah to justify exemption from military service along with exemptions from basic social and economic obligations. A nation cannot survive if a third of its citizens enjoy all benefits of society without shouldering its obligations. Not today, and not in the future.”

“Therefore, the basic minimal requirements for new draft legislation involve true participation of the haredi public in national service with strict enforcement, and the denial of government budgets to the haredi public until this happens. Do not vote for the current legislation, which allows for continued draft dodging, involves more feeding at the trough, does concrete damage to Israel’s national security, and insults the Torah tradition by which our loved ones lived and died.”

“At this historic moment we say to our representatives in Knesset: Stiffen your spine and speak proudly in the name of Torah in the Land of Israel. Do not assault our common values, do not degrade our tradition, do not disappoint all those who have paid the highest price for defense of Israel and for the resilience of our people.”

Published in The Jerusalem Post, 28.11.2025.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

Charles Dickens famously began his 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities with the above dichotomous description of reality. Such a bifurcated reading seems to apply to Israel’s current strategic situation too. We seem to be living in two different worlds based on two divergent worldviews with two contradictory conclusions.

From one perspective, Israel is winning on all fronts. It crushed Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis with American support, and proved to everybody in the world that it can bounce back from stinging collapse to reasserted regional dominance.

Israel has reset its defense policies to prioritize offense against all threats, real-time and developing. No one says boo as Israel daily bombs enemy emplacements and reinforcements in Lebanon, Syria, and even Gaza. Washington runs cover on this for Israel. President Trump is wising up to the chicanery of Hamas and Turkey too.

Moreover, Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio just drove through a UNSC resolution that accepts the indefinite halving of Gaza with Israeli control of the eastern section; insists on total demilitarization, disarmament, and deradicalization of the remaining Palestinian-held Western half; makes clear that there is no legal or practical obligation to create a Palestinian state (thus pushing back against French President Macron and others who have “recognized” a hallucinatory, non-existent state); and does not define peace as contingent on Israel territorial withdraws in the West Bank.

On the contrary, the administration has justified/legitimized intensified Israeli settlement in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.

The United States is willy-nilly driving Saudi-Israeli normalization, coming sooner or later, with clear linkage between Saudi moves towards Abrahamic peace with Israel and the goodies like jets and nuclear facilities promised to the Saudis. The administration also promises to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge, even if it sells F-35 jets to Riyadh five years down the line.

Washington is tightening sanctions on Iran and probably will rejoin Israel in striking at Iran’s still-dangerous nuclear and missile facilities again this year. In the meantime, Trump is massively replenishing Israel’s armaments for the next wars. Trump is also scheming smartly on the broader strategic stage, acting to bring Kazakhstan and other Asian powers into alignment with America (and Israel) and away from partnership with Russia, China, and Iran.

And oh yes, Trump’s practical, Israel-friendly diplomacy played a key role in securing the near-miraculous release, all-at-once, of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

And finally, can you imagine how perilous the Mideast situation, and Israel’s, would have been if a radical progressive Democratic candidate had won the US presidential election?

ON THE OTHER HAND, perhaps Israel’s strategic situation ain’t so rosy. Radical Islam – including Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Turks and Qataris – is on the rebound. The world is doing little to stop Iran’s nuclear rebuilding, Hezbollah’s rearming, or Hamas’ re-asserting of dictatorial control in Gaza.

Israel’s borders remain porous; thoroughly penetrated by Iranian-supplied drones delivering weapons to terrorists and criminal gangs. Terrorism is on the rise in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria – fueled by the massive numbers of hardcore Palestinian terrorists just released from Israeli prisons.

And Trump? He thinks he can reshape the region by hucksterism and braggadocio alongside mega-business deals, ridiculously declaring “peace in our time for the first time in 3,000 years,” and handcuffing Israel in the process. Israel dares not make a military move – not even a local strike on remaining Nukhba cells underground in eastern Gaza – without Trump’s approval. Israel must not upset the transactional-on-steroids, egocentric, big money “peace” deals that Washington is advancing!

It seems that Trump does not want to disappoint his dictator buddies in Ankara and Doha, nor his new dictator buddy in Damascus either. Nor his “best friend” from Riyadh, whose wobbly Saudi throne could “blowback” F-35 jets against Israel in an Islamic coup situation.

It is almost as if Trump is ignorant of the enduring ideological, transnational/religious nature of conflict in the region, thinking instead that money and the force of his personality can fix it all.

So, Trump is imposing a flawed freeze on the situation. He is “Bibi-sitting” Binyamin Netanyahu, preventing Israel from finishing the job in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. He already seems to be dialing back from demands for real disarmament of Hamas and instead pushing for rapid reconstruction in Gaza. American troops headquartered at the new “Civil-Military Coordination Center” in Kiryat Gat essentially are overseeing the free flow of humanitarian aid straight into the hands of Hamas.

Equally upsetting is Trump’s internationalization of the conflict in Gaza by placing US troops in Israel and inviting Egyptian and Turkish troops into Gaza. (Israel must prevent this!). Hamas denies that it ever agreed to disarm or accept an “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) in Gaza, but Trump wants Israel to swallow the delusion that Azerbaijani and Indonesian soldiers will waltz into Gaza under ISF auspices and then Hamas will melt away.

Worse of all is that after two years of heroic battle against Hamas, and with tough battles ahead against Hamas in the West Bank, Trump expects Israel to swallow the re-tabling of Palestinian statehood as a possible “pathway” to peace in the future. UNSC resolution 2803 introduced by the US even references the rotten French-Saudi declaration on a two-state solution and the even worse “New York” plan voted on in the General Assembly.

How disappointing, especially when this comes from the Trump administration! October 7 should have been a super-final nail in the coffin of the Palestinian statehood boondoggle, not a spur to a Security Council resolution that revives it!

So where are Israel’s strategic-diplomatic gains? What happened to mass emigration of Gazans and recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria?

Alas, one gets the feeling that President Trump is riding on Israel’s hard-fought battles to advance his own, narrower, secular-materialist goals.

And despite his super pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli address to the Knesset just a few weeks ago, Trump now is turning a blind eye to rank antisemitism and anti-Zionism growing in the MAGA wing of his Republican party, by refusing to sideline hate-purveyors like Tucker Carlson and Groypers like Nick Fuentes.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Israel must maneuver with wisdom and caution through these muddy times, contending with confounding narratives and bewildering alternatives. Above all, Israel must act with determination to protect its core interests against foe and friend alike.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, 21.11.2025

With almost all Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza now freed, and before Hamas seizes more hostages, Israel must reconsider its policy on this matter and take decisive steps to settle the score.

First of all, it is time to acknowledge that reasoned public debate on this important issue has been squelched by the overpowering campaign of the Hostage Family Forum – in support of the mass release of Palestinian terrorists in exchange for Israeli hostages bechol mechir, “at any price.”

Any deviation from the politically correct line – “bechol mechir” – as dictated by Einav Zangauker and company led to doxxing, silencing, even violent shaming. Public discourse was distorted by the very well-funded megaphones of Kaplan Street.

After all, everyone knows – because this has been true in every previous case – that released Palestinian terrorists assuredly will strike again, with God-only-knows how many Israeli casualties in the future. The release of over 2,000 terrorists, including hardened and experienced Palestinian mass murderers, certainly will incentivize future kidnappings, pour gasoline onto the terrorist fires already raging in Judea and Samaria, and catapult Hamas towards its intended takeover of Judea and Samaria.

Thus, repeated deals over the past two years to release Palestinian terrorists for Israeli hostages held in Gaza might have been the most necessary thing in the world to do, but it also may be the most disastrous thing Israel has done. The cost will pay out over a prolonged period, and it will be steep.

Up until this year, the 2011 deal for Gilad Shalit was the worst: More than 1,000 terrorists including Yahya Sinwar were released in exchange for Shalit. In fact, almost the entire Hamas command structure that planned the Simchat Torah (October 7, 2023) assault on Israeli towns and cities, which killed over 1,200 Israelis on one day, was made up of terrorists released in the Shalit deal.

Mahmoud Qawasameh, for example, a terrorist released in the Shalit deal, planned the kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrach, and Gilad Shaer in Gush Etzion in 2014. He was re-arrested by the IDF earlier this year while hiding out with other terrorists in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and released again in last month’s US-brokered hostage deal.

In fact, under the Trump administration’s hostage and ceasefire 20-point plan, Israel released more than 1,950 Palestinian terrorists, including 250 who were serving life sentences for deadly attacks, as well as an additional 1,700 more Palestinians arrested since October 7, 2023. This is on top of a previous batch of about 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners released by Israel back in February as part of an earlier deal to free some Israeli hostages.

And once again, like all previous times, the Israeli “security establishment” confidently (and I say, misleadingly) has assured Israeli politicians and the public that it “will know how to manage the situation,” i.e., how to track the terrorists and crush any nascent return to terrorist activity without too much harm done. But this has never proven to be true. Every deal involving the release of terrorists has led to much bloodshed, planned and carried out by these released terrorists.

So much so that two decades ago, Israeli leaders decided that a stop had to be put to this precarious situation. A committee headed by former Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar was appointed in July 2008 to recommend to the government principles for conducting negotiations for the retrieval of prisoners, hostages, and missing persons.

Its conclusions, apparently very restrictive (meaning that no more mass terrorist releases would ever be possible under Israeli law and policy) were purposefully held back until after Shalit’s release in 2012 and then classified as “top secret” – and were never formally adopted by any government. Several legislative proposals based on Shamgar principles have since been floated, but somehow they have always flopped.

One example: Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid proposed legislation in 2015 that would make it illegal to free more than one terrorist for any one Israeli civilian or soldier held hostage. Unfortunately, that bill never passed.

Alas, in the face of such Israeli delinquency, Hamas and its jihadist compatriots have learned that kidnapping Israelis pays handsomely. And so, it is only a matter of time, almost an inevitability, that they will attempt to snatch and torture more hostages.

They assuredly will do so, unless Israel resolutely changes policy – defying the overwrought campaigns that until now have distorted clear strategic thinking on this matter.

DIRECTLY RELATED to the urgent necessity for a new strategic policy on handling terrorists and terrorist demands is the need to severely punish Nukhba terrorists – those barbarians who were the rapists, torturers, and executioners of October 7, many of whom proudly filmed and broadcast their atrocities.

Some 250 such sub-human Palestinians have escaped judgement until now – not one has yet been indicted – because Jerusalem feared that prosecuting them would derail efforts to free the innocent Israeli hostages held by Hamas. And so they wait peacefully in Israeli jails for a next hostage-terrorist release deal.

Now is the time to harness the full force of Israeli justice against them. In my mind, this means setting up a special court for genocide and war crimes, and applying the death penalty in some cases (with life imprisonment for the rest with no possibility of release).

This is because the monstrous attacks in which these butchers participated should not be treated merely as acts carried out by an assortment of isolated terrorists, with each terrorist tried only for his individual share of slaughter according to pinpoint evidence against him.

Rather, they need to be hauled up before an Israeli court of justice and indeed before the virtual tribunals of the world as Islamo-Nazis who knowingly were carrying out an attempt to slaughter all Israelis and exterminate the State of Israel – as Hamas leaders clearly planned and openly boasted about.

Consider this an Israeli version of the Nuremberg trials of 1945-46 against Nazi leaders, whose purpose was not only to mete out resounding justice against Nazis but to expose and record for posterity Nazi plans, ideology, and crimes. So too with Hamas. Its annihilationist agenda must be unmasked and delegitimized; its denialist supporters shamed; and its spirit crushed.

The war crimes trials of the Nukhba will provide a platform for the survivors of the southern Israeli towns and cities that were targeted by the terrorists, and for the survivors of the Nova festival massacre too, to testify in court while their searing recollections of being attacked are fresh, and before Palestinian and global anti-Israel denialism takes further root.

The war crimes trials must also inevitably expose the enthusiastic support that Hamas received from the Palestinian Authority, from Turkey and Qatar, from radical Moslem organizations (many parading as benevolent Islamic “charities” in the West), and from foul fellow travelers around the world.

I can hear the pragmatic-cautious and liberal-humanist objections already. It will be argued that show trials and death sentences only create more Palestinian “martyrs” fueling further Islamo-Nazi war against Israel; and that executions are not in keeping with “Jewish values.”

I say that the “pragmatic” objection is poppycock, and the “humanist” (or faux “Jewish”) objection a disgrace.

A show trial with death sentences would be worthwhile, effectual, and exceedingly ethical. It would affirm Israel’s intentions to win its wars against all enemies and would assert the Jewish People’s commitment to leading the world in a moral battle against true evil.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, 14.11.2025

Reading the international press, and reading much of the overwhelmingly left-wing Israeli press, you inevitably get the impression that the threats to stability in Judea and Samaria stem from settler violence and settlement housing starts.

You would not know about the real sources of instability – which are sharply escalating Palestinian terrorism, a wild rash of Palestinian arson attacks, and surging illegal Palestinian construction in zones of strategic importance to Israel.

Israel must get a handle on these matters by acting forcefully against the terrorism and wildcat building, and it must buttress its long-term claim on Judea and Samaria by building strategically in accelerated fashion, especially in the Jerusalem envelope and Jordan Valley.

Everybody knows that Nablus and Jenin (and Tulkarem and Qalqilya and more) have become dens of hard-core, Iranian-supplied terrorist cells. The threat of terrorist assault from the western Samaria seam line into central Israel is concrete too, and already there have been scattered shootings over and through the security barrier into the Bat Hefer and Mount Gilboa areas.

The discharge of jailed terrorists into Judea and Samaria, part of the hostage release deal with Hamas, already is adding fuel to this fire.

So much for the Oslo Accords promise of a demilitarized and deradicalized Palestinian autonomous entity.

(And if you think that Indonesian and Azeri troops, alongside “neutral” Palestinian Authority administrators, and American, Egyptian, and European monitors sitting in an air-conditioned control center in Kiryat Gat are going to do any better in demilitarizing and deradicalizing Palestinians in Gaza – you’re apparently using hallucinatory drugs!)

Additionally, there are at least 90,000 defiantly built Palestinian homes and shanty towns that have cropped up illegally in Area C of the West Bank in recent years, almost all of which can be considered strategic threats to Israel.

These structures actively are changing the map of Area C, purposefully placing Palestinians in areas that never before had an Arab presence, dividing the settlement blocs, encroaching on access routes (forcing the Israeli government to pave bypass roads to the bypass roads, which leads to accusations of land expropriation, etc.) – all in an attempt to prevent any future logical division of the territory into neighboring polities (for those who still believe in the wisdom of this).

In the seamline buffer zone (meaning adjacent to the security barrier that Israel constructed mostly along the Green Line over three decades) stretching from the northern tip of the Jordan Valley to Ein Gedi in the south, Palestinians and their European backers have built more than 17,000 illegal structures within a one-kilometer radius of security and border barriers.

In the Jerusalem envelope, Palestinians have grabbed over 2,600 dunam of land, and over the past decade built 1,500 unauthorized buildings in Shuafat and Kafr Akab alone, some 20 stories tall. (These were built without license and supervised engineering standards. God help residents of these buildings if an earthquake hits Jerusalem.)

And every single day, Palestinians and their extreme left-wing Israeli anarchist allies torch the grazing grounds of cattle in the central Binyamin and Samaria highlands where pioneering Israelis have established a string of some 130 ranches (in Hebrew: havot); or as Western media and hostile NGOs call them, “wildcat settler outposts.”

The grass and brush that grows in the vast and mostly unsettled parts of Binyamin and Samaria are “natural gold” for feeding these herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. Burning the pastures is outright warfare, designed to firebomb Jewish “settler sheep” off the land and drive settlers from the area.

This is not too different from the devastation caused by thousands of incendiary balloons and kites sent over the Gaza border by Hamas since 2018, firebombs that destroyed tens of thousands of acres of nature reserves and farmland in southern Israel. (Experts say it will take years to rehabilitate the burned farm fields in southern Israel.)

SINCE DECLARATION of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is not in the cards anytime soon, and alone this anyway won’t do much to improve the situation, what needs to be done now?

First, IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth needs more troops, resources, and support for the aggressive counter-terrorist strategy he has adopted. This involves near-nightly interdiction raids into terrorist hideouts in large cities with brigade-level power and heavy engineering and air strike support. It also increasingly involves targeted assassinations (as opposed to arrests or re-arrests) of key terrorist operatives.

Second, the government needs to encourage young families to move into existing and expanded Judea and Samaria cities and towns by building homes rapidly and cheaply. Try caravans and high-rise buildings. Alas, it has simply become too expensive to move/live in Ariel, Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim, and other localities from which there is easy access to Gush Dan and Jerusalem work centers.

In this regard, the government must continue to cut the red tape that encumbers more massive settlement in Judea and Samaria. While it is considered politically incorrect these days to credit Minister Betzalel Smotrich with anything, here he can be saluted. He has brought about the legalization or establishment of 50 towns involving 45,000 potential building starts, invested NIS 7 billion in roads (that serve Israelis and Palestinians), secured the placement of dozens of towers for cellphone and other communications, and processed through legal approvals of 30,000 dunams as state land.

He now needs to initiate the planning of new strategic arteries like Highway 80 which would run from Arad in the Negev to Mishor Adumim; an international airport in the Horkania Valley between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea; and a major rail route through the Jordan Valley.

Third, the government should take over responsibility for key fields of governance in Areas B and C that long have been criminally neglected by the Palestinian Authority, like sewage treatment and management of waste dumps.

Fourth and supremely important, Israel must take control of Arab schools and classrooms in the broad Jerusalem envelope, where the teaching of hostile-towards-Israel materials is rampant. A recent report by the Ministry of Education found that dozens of eastern Jerusalem schools not only use PA textbooks but also teach physics through calculations of slingshot velocity and distance against Israeli troops, and teach literature through the genocidal poetry of Egyptian Islamist ideologues.

SO I ASK: As Israel heads into an election year, which of the candidates for prime minister is truly going to build in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and who is going to bury the building in years more of sterile peace processing and doomed attempts to achieve “international consensus”? Who can most be trusted to capitalize on the opportunities before Israel for de facto advancement of long-term diplomatic and security control of Judea and Samaria?

Is Binyamin Netanyahu finally serious about significant building in the E-1 quadrant (something that is critical for Jerusalem’s growth and security) or is he just pumping out pre-election promises that will fizzle in the face of global diplomatic pressures and International Criminal Court threats?

Would his challengers Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisencott, Naftali Bennett, and Yair Lapid dare to finally build in E-1 and the settlement blocks, as they have claimed in the past? Or do they head a political groupings so riven with contradictions (including affiliation with parts of the hard Left) that would prevent movement in any coherent direction?

Could Yisrael Beytenu czar Avigdor Liberman be trusted to stand for building or deciding anything other than stoking his own ego and purveying a cynical hate-fear agenda, and then selfishly forcing Israel into yet another election campaign?

Published in The Jerusalem Post, 31.10.2025, and Israel Hayom, November 1, 2025.

Main Points:

• For its first four decades, Israel’s realist security doctrine transformed it from a small, threatened community into a powerful state with defensible borders. Its decisive victories led to the removal of existential threats, brought it to regional power status, and made it an asset for the United States.
• The principles of this doctrine are: understanding the root of the conflict as hostility toward Jewish sovereignty, maintaining an offensive and initiative-based approach that emphasizes controlling territory, and self-reliance.
• From the late 1980’s on however, these principles were abandoned in favor of an idealist doctrine which called for peace with undefeated enemies, a defensive posture after unilateral withdrawals, and an increased reliance on international actors.
• The policies that resulted led Israel’s security into a downward spiral in which the hope for peace led to withdrawals, which caused a loss of deterrence, emboldening its enemies, and triggering renewed attacks.
• The end result was a situation in which Israel was surrounded from north and south by terrorist armies, capable both of raining missiles across the country and of conventional invasion, while Iran steadily progressed toward nuclear weapons, crossing every red line set by Israel.
• The Iron Swords War clearly exposed the costs of abandoning the realist doctrine and reaffirmed its relevance. The re‑implementation of some of its principles has already begun, and the question is whether Israel will succeed in embedding them permanently in the current era.

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Surely every sane and feeling person shares in the joy resulting from the freedom obtained this week for Israel’s hostages, who have been held barbarically in Hamas dungeons for two horrible years. I never dared imagine that Hamas ever would free all live hostages, and therefore the breakthrough release is even more amazing, gratifying, and uplifting.

Blessed be the dealmakers and peacemakers, indeed! The relief they have brought to the hostage families, indeed to the entire nation of Israel and Jewish communities worldwide, is overwhelming.

At the same time, one can only explode at the nasty narratives, distorted political predictions, and self-foolery that have accompanied the dealmaking and are now making the diplomatic rounds.

The first piece of awful and unfair discourse is the denial of any credit to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the hostage release deal. The “say” in most international media and much of the left-wing-dominated Israel press is that US President Trump raped Netanyahu into agreement; that Netanyahu was dragged kicking and screaming into the accord. Worse yet is the allegation that Netanyahu could have freed the hostages in a similar deal one year ago but refrained from doing so for narrow political reasons.

Neither accusation is accurate. Netanyahu deeply desired this hostage deal and end-of-war arrangement for myriad reasons, mainly because now was the right time to cash-in on the IDF’s achievements in Gaza (which have gone as far as possible for this year given operational and diplomatic restraints) and on Israel’s powerful strikes in Tehran and Doha.

The front-loading of the deal – whereby Israel’s gains (hostage release, all hostages) came first and Israel’s gives (mainly military withdrawals and allowance for some rebuilding in Gaza) are backloaded and dependent on Arab good behavior – is a sweet arrangement that was not at all possible one year ago.

The political nastiness which negates Netanyahu’s navigation of the accord to completion on Israel’s preferred terms is matched by a second piece of bias – the over-attribution of credit to US President Donald Trump for the accord.

Of course, Trump is a hero of the day. Without his Machiavellian maneuvers and masterful playing of regional actors, alongside explicit threats and promised rewards, no deals could have been reached. And Trump’s forceful backing for Israel through regional and international challenges as expressed so wholeheartedly in his Knesset speech this week, must be acknowledged as miraculous.

But the slavish, over-the-top tributes to Trump that were everywhere (including the front pages of this newspaper) also bore an offensive odor, a stink of spite, a cruelty directed at Israel’s own leaders, a slap-down to Netanyahu in particular.

At least Trump had the honesty and grace to accord great credit to Netanyahu in reaching this blessed moment and to the brave soldiers of the IDF and their families.

A third distortion in evaluation of the accord is the near ignoring of the price paid by Israel, namely the release of thousands of bloodthirsty, convicted Palestinian terrorists. One can count on the fingers of one hand the number of stories in global media, and in much of the Israeli media, about the murderers released and the dangers this entails to every Israeli and Jew.

Dealing Palestinian terrorists for Israeli hostages might be the most necessary and moral thing in the world to do, but it also may be the most disastrous thing Israel can do. The cost will pay out over a prolonged period, and it will be steep.

The released terrorists assuredly will strike again, with God-only-knows how many Israeli casualties in the future. Their release certainly will incentivize future kidnappings, pour gasoline onto the terrorist fires already raging in Judea and Samaria, and catapult Hamas towards its intended takeover of Judea and Samaria. We know this to be a fact because this has been the case with every previous terrorist release.

But you wouldn’t know this from most “expert” evaluations, political figure statements, and international reportage this week.

A fourth and infuriating aspect of the diplomatic situation brought about by the agreement is the feral rush of countries, especially European countries, to rebuild Gaza. The “international community” is revving-up donor conference after donor conference to raise funds for Gazan rehabilitation – even under de facto Hamas rule. The talk this week was of $70 to $120 billion in funds to provide Palestinians in Gaza with “human dignity” and “humanitarian relief” – with passion and concern that would be admirable if it weren’t so counterproductive at this point.

The world-at-large still has said nothing at all about Hamas’s use of women and children as human shields, hospitals as weapons depots, or United Nations schools as launchpads for rockets. It has said little at all about Hamas’s violent seizure of humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza or its targeting of Palestinians approaching aid centers operated by the US- and Israel-affiliated Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

The world is incapable of admitting that Hamas’s dictatorial and genocidal regime in Gaza is responsible for every bit of ruin suffered by Palestinians, and it has nothing but platitudes to offer about how this time it might be different.

But what really gets my goat is that nobody around the world is talking about raising even one penny for rehabilitation and reconstruction of Israel; of Israel’s southern and northern areas that have been depopulated and devastated by Hamas and Hezbollah attacks over the past two years and even the past decade. Not a penny for the battered people of Israel – war widows and orphans, terrorized civilians, traumatized soldiers, and battered businesses. Except for Jews abroad, nobody is prioritizing relief and aid for Israel.

Sure, with the war over, Western countries will now return to buy Israeli technology and weapons for their own benefit, and cooperate in science and the arts too, but lavish sympathies and abundant budgets are reserved for the attacking Palestinians not the attacked Israelis.

The fifth thing that angers and frightens me about the new diplomatic accord is its distorted political predicate which “internationalizes” Gaza.

Under the accord, Egyptian soldiers or EU cops will disarm Hamas troops, and Qatari or Turkish officials will rein-in and replace Hamas officials in Gaza. This is nonsensical. A bad and costly joke.

No Western figure like Tony Blair or an international “Board of Peace” chaired by President Trump is truly going to guarantee demilitarization of Gaza, never mind assure good governance and peace education. Only Israeli troops might have completely stripped Hamas of its weapons, and only a full-on occupation of Gaza by a foreign power (like the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II) might end the corruption, violence, and hatred deeply embedded in Gazan society.

So, what will internationalization of Gaza accomplish? It will handcuff Israel, making it impossible to operate against a resurgent terrorist threat there. That always was the main motivation behind the long-standing Palestinian attempt to “internationalize” the conflict, to bring-in foreign monitors and troops – to constrain and curb Israel.

Which brings us to the self-foolery and arrogance of the accord which once again hints at Palestinian statehood in the future. As if this is at all realistic or wise in the medium-to-long term; as if Palestinians in Gaza (and in Judea and Samaria) have demonstrated any willingness whatsoever to reconcile with Israel.

The blabbering at this moment about Palestinian statehood is the very essence of victory for Hamas terrorism and incentivizes more acts of massacre. Merely mentioning Palestinian statehood now gives Hamas more sway in Palestinian politics than it ever had, especially in Judea and Samaria.

But don’t confuse the “international community” with facts – like the support of three-quarters of Palestinians in the West Bank for the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, or the support of governors in the Palestinian Authority for terrorism and the active participation of its Fatah Party in the wave of terror attacks threatening central Israel.

Instead of pushback against the increasingly genocidal Palestinian national movement, we get more perilous pablum about the “urgency” of Palestinian statehood. Instead of action to retaliate and truly deter Hamas from ever raising a hand against a hostage again, we get diplomatic rewards for Palestinian intransigence and violence.

International wags should ask themselves: Is their effort to bolster Palestinians with “recognition” of faux statehood and with oodles of aid money helping Palestinians mature? Or is it merely deepening Palestinian dependency, perpetuating Palestinian victim-martyrdom identity, prolonging the campaign to demonize Israel as a genocidal monster, and in the end, just plainly and unabashedly weakening Israel?

Alas, one suspects that the latter motivation, tinged with a smidgen of deep-seated antisemitism, is the main impulse.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, 17.10.2025

Israel has a tendency to execute impressive military feats that often end in strategic failure. This time it’s the opposite: a tactical failure – but a strategic gain. Indeed, the near-hit against the Hamas leadership assembled in Doha earlier this month led to a rare display of unity across the Arab world, the kind of unity that only condemnation of Israel can produce.

Even more significant is that this was a display of solidarity with Qatar, which in recent years has been largely shunned by the Gulf states that rightly see it as the primary promulgator of Islamist ideology that threatens their regimes. 

Reactions to strike

At the emergency summit in Doha this week, attended by nearly all Arab states, participants condemned what they described as a “dangerous escalation” and demanded that the international community and the UN formulate a response and hold Israel accountable. Yet, the harsher that the Arab states’ public condemnation of Israel became, the more glaring was their unwillingness to translate those denunciations into any concrete steps.

In practice, this summit stemmed from the need of Arab states to salvage the honor of one of their own, who was humiliated by the Jewish state. Beyond this, however, it became clear that the strike could not undo the Gulf states’ interest in countering the Islamist threat represented by Hamas and supported by Qatar, nor their interest in avoiding a military confrontation with Israel.

The Trump administration also hurried to distance itself from the operation, with the president stating that it “does not advance Israel or America’s goals” and that he “felt very badly about the location of the attack.”

He said he had tried to warn the Qataris about the strike but that “unfortunately, it was too late to stop the attack.” Still, the fact that the administration took no punitive measures against Israel speaks much louder than Trump’s written message.

Even during his visit to Israel this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted that the strike had stirred tensions, but emphasized the need to move forward, support Israel, and focus on the Hamas threat and the hostage issue. The practical American message was continued backing of Israel, even if accompanied by diplomatic discomfort.

In Israel, some fear the strike pushed normalization with Saudi Arabia further away. Yet this process is, in any case, in a state of arrest until after the war in Gaza ends. In the future, Israel’s demonstration of operational capabilities may actually serve as a catalyst for deepening relations, since it strengthens Israel’s image as a regional power with unparalleled capabilities.

Sending a strategic message

The strike’s main achievements, however, lie in the messages it conveyed. Israel broadcast that its precision operational capabilities extend far beyond its borders, and that it is determined to pursue its enemies wherever they may be. It also signaled a willingness to act with deception and surprise – which may anger its adversaries but in practice strengthens its deterrence.

In addition, an Israeli shift in its approach to Qatar is long overdue. It must recognize Qatar as the hostile state that it is, despite the current security cooperation between Qatar and the United States. The strike demonstrated that Israel will no longer pretend that its enemies’ most significant supporter can also serve as a trusted mediator, working to preserve peace and stability.

Furthermore, it taught us that although Washington does seek to maintain its security cooperation with Qatar, it will nonetheless not prevent Israel from acting against Hamas on Qatari soil, nor punish it for doing so.

Beyond this, the act also reverberated in Turkey – also a host of Hamas’s leadership – which realized that its own territory is not immune from an Israeli strike. This possibility adds an important layer to the delicate balance of deterrence with Istanbul.

Finally, the most direct message was at Hamas itself: Israel will no longer allow the terror organization to stall Israel’s military progress in Gaza through endless negotiations that lead nowhere. The strike did not torpedo any potential hostage deal because Hamas has made clear that it will not agree to any deal that can meet Israel’s minimum requirements.

Instead, the unambiguous message to Hamas is that your end is approaching, and it will come soon – either through surrender or through Israel’s decisive action.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, on September 25, 2025.