“Hama’s Gaza Victory”: Did Netanyahu capitulate?

Headline from the Wall Street Journal editorial on Friday: “Hama’s Gaza Victory.” And their lead sentence: “The cease-fire leaves the terror group intact and politically stronger.”

“Let us be totally honest: This is not a cease-fire – it is a SURRENDER,” says Shmuel Sackett, spokesman for Moshe Feiglin who seeks “authentic Jewish leadership for Israel.”

From Arutz Sheva, Israeli National News: The Hamas terrorist organization has declared November 22, the day after its ceasefire was signed with Israel, as a public holiday in Gaza. “The Palestinian government announces that Thursday 22nd November is a national holiday of victory and an official holiday,” read a statement issued by Hamas. Hamas invited “all citizens to celebrate this occasion and visit the families of the martyrs and the wounded and those affected by the violence and to affirm national solidarity.”

“Everyone is angry at Netanyahu now for signing the cease-fire,” said Moshe Feiglin, who the New York Times not long ago said brought the Tea Party to Israel. Feiglin faces a vote to become a key member of Likud’s Knesset team on November 25. “I see myself as the representative of Liberty in the Knesset,” he said in a recent TV interview.

“But Netanyahu’s predicament is a precise reflection of post-Oslo Israeli society . . . If Netanyahu had ordered a ground invasion of Gaza, soldiers would have been killed. After a short period of time he would have pulled the troops out of Gaza without significant achievements . . . To remain in Gaza, we first have to renounce the very essence of the idea of partitioning this Land. We have to internalize that this is our Land – exclusively. We must – on a national scale – return to the Land of Israel and our Jewish identity. . . Is Israeli society ready for this type of return to ourselves?

“The Israelis want the best of both worlds: security and normalcy. But it has become quite clear that it is specifically the mental servitude to Oslo, the flight from destiny to the enslavement to normalcy and pragmatism – that has so severely compromised Israel’s security.”

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Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.