Israel Lost The War

That is why Hamas won't surrender.

Monday, June 2. From the NY Times: “Though the proposed new deal would officially last for 60 days, Hamas pushed for a clause that guaranteed “the continuation of negotiations until a permanent agreement is reached.” That wording would technically allow for the 60-day cease-fire to be extended indefinitely” sinking Israel’s determination to keep the war going until full ethnic cleansing is achieved.

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The Israeli right believes it won the “war” with Hamas. It destroyed Gaza, killed thousands of fighters, and wiped out much of Hamas’s leadership. Its supporters—especially the American/Israeli political class—insist the war must end in Hamas’s surrender, just as Germany and Japan surrendered in 1945, or the Confederacy at Appomattox.

But that’s ridiculous because Israel lost and Hamas won.

You need to understand that Hamas and the broader Palestinian resistance never believed they could defeat Israel on the battlefield or the streets of Gaza. October 7th was not a military campaign aimed at victory. It was a provocation, and thanks in part to Netanyahu’s criminal hollowing out of Israel’s security apparatus it exceeded their expectations.

On that day alone, Hamas achieved more than any Arab army or resistance group had in eight decades—not in moral terms, but in sheer impact. And let’s be clear: the horror of that day was real. The civilians slaughtered, the children kidnapped—these were crimes. Had the war ended on October 7th, Hamas would be remembered only as a band of butchers. The Israeli dead would be mourned globally. Hamas would be condemned, and nothing else.

But the war didn’t end.

It continued, and for nearly 600 days now, Israel has responded not by targeting the perpetrators, but by obliterating Gaza—flattening entire neighborhoods, bombing hospitals, schools, mosques, killing 60,000 people, including more than 16,000 children. It has starved civilians. It has destroyed the social and physical infrastructure of an entire people.

Israel’s moral high ground, such as it was, evaporated. So did global sympathy. The Israel that once basked in Western adoration has become a pariah, accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice with criminal warrants out for the arrests of Netanyahu and his top ministers. Outside of paid lobbyists and the ideologically and religiously indoctrinated, no one is buying what Israel’s government is selling. Its credibility is in ruins. Even its invocation of the Holocaust—once sacrosanct—now rings hollow.

If Hamas had dared to hope to provoke exactly this unraveling, it worked. Whether or not they planned it, they broke Israel’s image. They shattered its diplomatic standing. They forced the world to confront the question: What kind of state responds to atrocity with an infinitely greater one? What kind of a place is Israel anyway? Who are these people?

That isn’t to say Hamas “won” in any traditional sense. They brought hell down on their own people, few of whom had any say in it. The cost has been catastrophic for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Innocent blood has been spilled on both sides, and it is heartbreaking.

But on the cold ledger of political outcomes, the truth is stark: Israel lost. It lost the “war,” and it lost the world. Including young Jews.

And that’s why Hamas won’t act like the defeated. Because they’re not. And I wouldn’t expect them to allow themselves to be dictated to by the war criminals of the Israeli government or the idiots (Trump, Vance, Rubio or Witkoff) who, by some terrible fluke, are in charge of US foreign policy.