I’m disappointed in the tenor of this piece. You sound like the left here in America, and it is the left in Israel that caused such an enormous problem - and, in fact, Oct. 7- by demonstrating and blocking roads over an internal political issue, thus broadcasting their political divisions for the world to see. You say only America can save the hostages, but it’s not so much America as it is Pres. Trump, who your “left” (and America’s) would disparagingly call “far right”. You subtly exhibit your disdain for the “right wing settlers” in the West Bank, but they are more in line with Pres. Trump than you are (and they have a point). I am so over this “liberal”, “left wing” bent of my fellow Jews. It is wrongheaded and self destructive. Even great minds like yours don’t seem to grasp that. I’m afraid we are doomed to repeat our tragic history because of it.
Agree with your comments. Always easy to have folks with the Monday morning quarterback analysis, especially with the left lean. The division amongst Jews, whether in Israel or abroad continues to remain a huge problem. No easy cure for that one.
The ultra orthodox community, not serving in the IDF and living off taxpayer funds, seems especially maddening. Either cut them off the public teet entirely or make it contingent on serving their country.
PS - and it’s time the world do something about Iran.
I remember the political upheaval in Israel and the diaspora before October 7, 2023. Guess where the dark money was coming from to organize and agitate Israel’s Left? In America Rabbis from some of our largest and most prominent Reform synagogues were denouncing Israeli government policies from the pulpit while progressive Jewish magazines were writing editorials about Do We Need Zionism. It was the perfect storm for a Hamas attack.
Michael, I totally agree with you that Israelis must reject sinat chinam and that its must restore its credibility as the guarantor of the safety of its citizens and Am Yisrael. However, while I understand the desperation felt by Eli Sharabi and hostage advocates, one feels that their pleas do not adequately take into account that it is Hamas who is holding the hostages, not Prime Minister Netanyahu, nor President Trump. You seem to advocate "even our most far-reaching concessions." Of course there are terms that Hamas would accept--release of all security prisoners, complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and an ceasefire agreement with no security provisions, no monitoring of smuggling of arms and no interference with the rebuilding of Hamas' defenses and offensive capabilities. Yet no responsible Israeli government would agree to those terms. Limits must be acknowledged, short of "the most far-reaching concessions."
I agree completely. When I read those words about the need to redeem the hostages no matter what it costs us, I realized that I no longer respected Michael Oren's judgment or advice. The traumatized hostages deserve our utmost sympathy, but we can't let them determine policy that the fate of the nation depends on.
Sam, I would never go so far as to say that I no longer respect Michael Oren's judgment or advice. I still respect both. I just think he used hyperbolic language. He might even agree, as you did, with my comment.
I much admire Michael Oren and I didn't mean my comment as a general repudiation of the man and his views. It's solely on this issue of how far to go in making concessions to Hamas that I find Oren to be somewhat lost in left field.
Until we establish an electoral system that truly represents and fulfills the wishes and needs of the citizenry, not patchwork coalition governments hanging by a thread, a civil service that actually knows its place & works, true equality (obligations & privileges), for all, we haven’t got a chance!!! There is a very active 5th column in our midst and a total lack of understanding as to what constitutes a democracy.
Brilliant once again. These barbarians Hamas, Iran and their ilk look at the long game. Israel must also. End this PHASE of warfare with them, get our hostages out, if possible, demolish their patron Iran, rest, rearm and plan the surprise like the pagers and when they think they’ve got us over the barrel leave them like Amalek in the Torah.
From America, it looks to me like Israel is sinking under similar corruption to what is sinking my country. Democracy-killing corruption.
It broke my heart that saving the lives of the hostages was not the first consideration after Oct. 7. It also broke my heart that Israel didn’t even try to counter the pictorial narrative told by Hamas for the last year plus. Israel will lose US support when Gen Z takes their place in our government. Where has Israel been as American college kids have been taught lies and anti-semitism through the generosity of Qatar & others?
Support for Israel is now considered a hard right political position in America, making it extremely uncomfortable for Liberal Jews like me to publicly support Israel.
I fully believe that the Israeli govt had and has the responsibility to make sure “never again”. But how hard is it to simultaneously counter Hamas/Iran/Russian lies?
I keep reading of American Jews making aaliyah. I’d join them, but Israel feels even more dangerous than America right now, and even less committed to preserving democracy, a necessary condition for the safety of Jews. Where is the secular Israel I visited? Israel seems to have traded kibbutzim for techno-mafia-fascism and I loved it better before.
Mother Jones is a solid publication which follows journalistic ethics. Jew hate isn’t a left/right issue. The sooner the Trumpers accept that, the better we Jews can protect each other.
I saw the same article elsewhere. Since people like me have only seen mother jones once my whole old ass life. When I just looked at Frau Katze’s link. Can’t remember where I read it might have been National Review.
thanks, but it’s more than a wing, Frau. Would it be your recommendation that those of us who oppose the antisemitism on the right embrace the antisemitism on the left? Fraulein.
As an American Israeli who spends half the year here in Israel, and the other half in Washington, DC, I can say that I feel much safer and happier in Israel (and I've been here almost throughout the war) than I do in DC. When was the last time you were here for any length of time? The different in climate is palpable.
Your sentiment is understandable, and I share the pity and hope for the hostages. But sentiment must be balanced by hard realism. Releasing thousands of hardened Palestinian terrorists? How many Israelis will die tomorrow at their hands? Leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza? Have we learned nothing?
Exceptionally thoughtful and coherent analysis of Israel’s current existential crises as well as a strategically practical and ideologically compelling approach to addressing the crisis.
Notwithstanding a few doubts over the past year about Michael Oren’s loyalty to political affiliations at the expense of the national interest, his more recent columns -and this one in particular- restores my longstanding faith in Oren’s military, political and moral clarity.
I can’t imagine anyone who would make a better candidate for leadership of Israel’s government at this crucial juncture. I wish he would enter the political arena and restore Israel to its original path.
I have a question about your "firstly..." and I would like to hear your answer. I suspect that many others would also. Do you believe that Hamas will actually release all of the hostages?
Ever since Israel was born again in the aftermath of the genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazis have Jews not fought to the death against those who have come
to kill them. October 7 was no exception and in the time since October 7, Israelis have honored “Never Again”. Israelis have battled their mortal enemies in an effort to release their families from the grips of Hamas and defend the Jewish State from the onslaught of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Islamic Jihad and Iran (HHHII+). The plus can stand for UNRWA or South Africa, (readers choice) “Never again” has been defended with honor. Good Bless the IDF and the Israeli civilians who ran into fire, not away.
Again and again governments will provoke their citizens to commit pogroms against Jews but never again will the response from the Jewish community be anything but unrelenting.
our 9/11. But comparing it incessantly to the Holocaust has always stuck me as absurd. Not only is the loss of 1,200 or so infinitesimal compared to 6,000,000. The situation of the Jews today—basically half invulnerable in America and half invulnerable in Israel is equally crazy to compare to the complete helplessness of Europe’s Jews before Hitler’s merciless scythe. Pro-Palestinian college demonstrators pose no life and death threat to campus Jews whatsoever, however obnoxious their bullying. We’re not talking about Kristallnacht here. And unless someone can figure out how to deliver a terrorist nuke to Tel Aviv (much less probable than an asteroid destroying the earth), Israel bestrides the entire Middle East like an impregnable Colossus, thanks to all our untold billions of military aid to this tiny country. So let’s be clear: surely no honest, rational Jew on earth thinks the Jews of America and Israel, despite the constant danger of terrorism from American Nazis and Muslim terrorists, sincerely believes there is any chance whatsoever of a second real Holocaust.
@Fred White. You must understand that the possibility of another Holocaust is an abiding concern for every jewish mind in a way others find hard to understand. That is what @Michael Bell meant by your mind. The Islamists and other sundry jew haters are irrational and are willing to immiserate and destroy themselves to destroy jews. Look at the Third Reich. Look at the Houtis. Look at Hamas.
When you consider the loss of 1200 Jews infinitesimal…you don’t get it, as most goys don’t get it. When your history is about attempt after attempt to end your race, a failed attempt to do so that results in 1200 deaths, which is comparable to the death of 200,000 Muslims, it’s not infinitesimal.
You need to read more carefully, Michael. I said 1,200 was “infinitesimal” compared to 6 million. Obviously, not in an absolute sense. What was wrong with my math? When the US lost 3,000 or so on 9/11, horrible and uniquely shattering as that was, it was nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of Americans killed in WWII, and no Americans rushed to compare it to those losses to magnify 9/11. Like Oct 7, it was horrible enough without exaggerating. And its horror was not minimized by not exaggerating. My other point was that despite very upsetting campus bullying etc. here, and horrible, murderous neo-Nazis, half the world’s Jews are in zero danger of annihilation here—zero—and the other half is just as safe from mass annihilation in Israel, unless someone can figure out how to nuke Tel Aviv, in which case all of Israel’s overwhelming military might will obviously be useless and all bets will be horribly off. But most odds makers would clearly bet on Israel to stop all nukes.
I am married to a wonderful Jew—my best friend, needless to say, if you’ll pardon the expression. And I deeply feel for the anxieties Jews have felt since Oct 7. But, frankly, both the Gazans and Palestinians on the West Bank have obviously suffered a great deal more. Holocaust or no, no Jew is somehow magically more valuable or more tragic when slaughtered than any innocent Gazan or Palestinian on the West Bank (Hamas is different), virtually all of whom were living much, much poorer, more unpleasant, more unjust lives than neighboring Jews even before the post-Oct 7 massacre, in what one of my all-time favorite Jews, the diplomat Aaron David Miller, with classic, bitter, wised-up Jewish irony has called “the much too promised land.” In that land, the Jews have shown the world they, not Hamas or the other Palestinians, are the ones with all the aces. It’s clearly the Palestinians, not the Jews, who are the underdogs, in a situation in which Jews offer them no hope of a way out of their misery. Just like the Apaches vs. the Europeans here, once upon a time.
The problem with your argument is not that you are a non-Jew as some suggested, regardless of who your spouse is: Many Jews in America are indifferent to the subject of Israel. The problem is the framework within which you think, and I have read your posts here for a while.
Jews are not the reason that much, if not all of the Middle East, is devoid of democratic values.
Jews are not the reason Arabs in Gaza and West Bank are poor or destitute, or live “unjust” lives as you put it. The Palestinian Arabs have perfected the narrative of victimhood into an art form, engineering almost a fanatical cult of followers. Typically, the gullible libs unknowingly and antisemites intentionally buy into the Muslim agenda knowing full well that all non-Muslims, women, other minorities are treated very inhumanely wherever Muslims are majority. That’s true through the Middle East, has been for quite some time. In the West, Muslims always demand tolerance and welfare from non-Muslims but never offer the same in return to the non-Muslims. It's always the non-Muslim’s fault.
In Israel, there will be no lasting peace until the Palestinians themselves repudiate jihadism and find a way to relinquish their victimhood and Jew hatred. And you, Mr. White, you can do whatever math you want, comparing and contrasting each and every number by trying to persuade everyone that there is no danger to Jews anywhere. No matter.
Dr. Oren's latest published article, "Never Again" and "Again", is very telling, as I can read the frustration and the anger over the terrorist incursion of October 7, and the self-reflection of rationalizing how anything like that could happen to Israeli citizens inside their own country. I'm certain there is frustration and bitter finger-pointing at the IDF, the government, and any other Israeli institution the people want to accuse. The reality is that Iran-funded Hamas terrorists invaded the country, killed Israeli citizens, ransacked kibbutzim and kidnapped innocent, unarmed civilians (mostly) to hold for ransom and other demands (like releasing cold-blooded, ruthless murderers in Israeli jails). It is not my place to assess blame or to say who or what organization was responsible. But, I agree with Dr. Oren when he states that Israel cannot live with terrorist armies amassed on their borders. I also agree 100% with his assessment that ALL hostages MUST be returned home NOW.
I agree with everything said in the article with this proviso: Compromise is not a one-sided affair. The secular center-left, a minority of the electorate, must also yield.
I’m disappointed in the tenor of this piece. You sound like the left here in America, and it is the left in Israel that caused such an enormous problem - and, in fact, Oct. 7- by demonstrating and blocking roads over an internal political issue, thus broadcasting their political divisions for the world to see. You say only America can save the hostages, but it’s not so much America as it is Pres. Trump, who your “left” (and America’s) would disparagingly call “far right”. You subtly exhibit your disdain for the “right wing settlers” in the West Bank, but they are more in line with Pres. Trump than you are (and they have a point). I am so over this “liberal”, “left wing” bent of my fellow Jews. It is wrongheaded and self destructive. Even great minds like yours don’t seem to grasp that. I’m afraid we are doomed to repeat our tragic history because of it.
Judea and Samaria are not the West Bank they are inherently Jewish.
Agree!
Agree with your comments. Always easy to have folks with the Monday morning quarterback analysis, especially with the left lean. The division amongst Jews, whether in Israel or abroad continues to remain a huge problem. No easy cure for that one.
The ultra orthodox community, not serving in the IDF and living off taxpayer funds, seems especially maddening. Either cut them off the public teet entirely or make it contingent on serving their country.
PS - and it’s time the world do something about Iran.
I remember the political upheaval in Israel and the diaspora before October 7, 2023. Guess where the dark money was coming from to organize and agitate Israel’s Left? In America Rabbis from some of our largest and most prominent Reform synagogues were denouncing Israeli government policies from the pulpit while progressive Jewish magazines were writing editorials about Do We Need Zionism. It was the perfect storm for a Hamas attack.
Michael, I totally agree with you that Israelis must reject sinat chinam and that its must restore its credibility as the guarantor of the safety of its citizens and Am Yisrael. However, while I understand the desperation felt by Eli Sharabi and hostage advocates, one feels that their pleas do not adequately take into account that it is Hamas who is holding the hostages, not Prime Minister Netanyahu, nor President Trump. You seem to advocate "even our most far-reaching concessions." Of course there are terms that Hamas would accept--release of all security prisoners, complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and an ceasefire agreement with no security provisions, no monitoring of smuggling of arms and no interference with the rebuilding of Hamas' defenses and offensive capabilities. Yet no responsible Israeli government would agree to those terms. Limits must be acknowledged, short of "the most far-reaching concessions."
I agree completely. When I read those words about the need to redeem the hostages no matter what it costs us, I realized that I no longer respected Michael Oren's judgment or advice. The traumatized hostages deserve our utmost sympathy, but we can't let them determine policy that the fate of the nation depends on.
Sam, I would never go so far as to say that I no longer respect Michael Oren's judgment or advice. I still respect both. I just think he used hyperbolic language. He might even agree, as you did, with my comment.
I much admire Michael Oren and I didn't mean my comment as a general repudiation of the man and his views. It's solely on this issue of how far to go in making concessions to Hamas that I find Oren to be somewhat lost in left field.
Until we establish an electoral system that truly represents and fulfills the wishes and needs of the citizenry, not patchwork coalition governments hanging by a thread, a civil service that actually knows its place & works, true equality (obligations & privileges), for all, we haven’t got a chance!!! There is a very active 5th column in our midst and a total lack of understanding as to what constitutes a democracy.
Brilliant once again. These barbarians Hamas, Iran and their ilk look at the long game. Israel must also. End this PHASE of warfare with them, get our hostages out, if possible, demolish their patron Iran, rest, rearm and plan the surprise like the pagers and when they think they’ve got us over the barrel leave them like Amalek in the Torah.
I love today’s newsletter.
From America, it looks to me like Israel is sinking under similar corruption to what is sinking my country. Democracy-killing corruption.
It broke my heart that saving the lives of the hostages was not the first consideration after Oct. 7. It also broke my heart that Israel didn’t even try to counter the pictorial narrative told by Hamas for the last year plus. Israel will lose US support when Gen Z takes their place in our government. Where has Israel been as American college kids have been taught lies and anti-semitism through the generosity of Qatar & others?
Support for Israel is now considered a hard right political position in America, making it extremely uncomfortable for Liberal Jews like me to publicly support Israel.
I fully believe that the Israeli govt had and has the responsibility to make sure “never again”. But how hard is it to simultaneously counter Hamas/Iran/Russian lies?
I keep reading of American Jews making aaliyah. I’d join them, but Israel feels even more dangerous than America right now, and even less committed to preserving democracy, a necessary condition for the safety of Jews. Where is the secular Israel I visited? Israel seems to have traded kibbutzim for techno-mafia-fascism and I loved it better before.
There’s a wing in the Trump movement that’s antisemitic.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/kingsley-cortes-wilson-defense-department/
Could you find a more Left Wing radical publication than MotherJones if you tried?
Mother Jones is a solid publication which follows journalistic ethics. Jew hate isn’t a left/right issue. The sooner the Trumpers accept that, the better we Jews can protect each other.
If you defend Donny, you hurt Jews. Period.
Mother Jones ethics?....LOL.
I saw the same article elsewhere. Since people like me have only seen mother jones once my whole old ass life. When I just looked at Frau Katze’s link. Can’t remember where I read it might have been National Review.
Could you possibly be a bigger moron? I seriously hope you aren’t a Jew, because if you are, we’re doomed. Jackass.
Liberalism ahoy.
thanks, but it’s more than a wing, Frau. Would it be your recommendation that those of us who oppose the antisemitism on the right embrace the antisemitism on the left? Fraulein.
As an American Israeli who spends half the year here in Israel, and the other half in Washington, DC, I can say that I feel much safer and happier in Israel (and I've been here almost throughout the war) than I do in DC. When was the last time you were here for any length of time? The different in climate is palpable.
"It broke my heart that saving the lives of the hostages was not the first consideration after Oct. 7."
IMO Israel should have declared the hostages collateral damage.
Aren’t you a sick disgusting fuck? Congrats for being lower than a worm.
Your sentiment is understandable, and I share the pity and hope for the hostages. But sentiment must be balanced by hard realism. Releasing thousands of hardened Palestinian terrorists? How many Israelis will die tomorrow at their hands? Leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza? Have we learned nothing?
To claim to be liberal, but you aren't. You are morally compromised. That is probably why you are feeling uncomfortable.
Exceptionally thoughtful and coherent analysis of Israel’s current existential crises as well as a strategically practical and ideologically compelling approach to addressing the crisis.
Notwithstanding a few doubts over the past year about Michael Oren’s loyalty to political affiliations at the expense of the national interest, his more recent columns -and this one in particular- restores my longstanding faith in Oren’s military, political and moral clarity.
I can’t imagine anyone who would make a better candidate for leadership of Israel’s government at this crucial juncture. I wish he would enter the political arena and restore Israel to its original path.
I have a question about your "firstly..." and I would like to hear your answer. I suspect that many others would also. Do you believe that Hamas will actually release all of the hostages?
Blue and white! Others cannot be counted on to care for the needs of Israel.
Ever since Israel was born again in the aftermath of the genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazis have Jews not fought to the death against those who have come
to kill them. October 7 was no exception and in the time since October 7, Israelis have honored “Never Again”. Israelis have battled their mortal enemies in an effort to release their families from the grips of Hamas and defend the Jewish State from the onslaught of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Islamic Jihad and Iran (HHHII+). The plus can stand for UNRWA or South Africa, (readers choice) “Never again” has been defended with honor. Good Bless the IDF and the Israeli civilians who ran into fire, not away.
Again and again governments will provoke their citizens to commit pogroms against Jews but never again will the response from the Jewish community be anything but unrelenting.
It has already relented, because hostages.
our 9/11. But comparing it incessantly to the Holocaust has always stuck me as absurd. Not only is the loss of 1,200 or so infinitesimal compared to 6,000,000. The situation of the Jews today—basically half invulnerable in America and half invulnerable in Israel is equally crazy to compare to the complete helplessness of Europe’s Jews before Hitler’s merciless scythe. Pro-Palestinian college demonstrators pose no life and death threat to campus Jews whatsoever, however obnoxious their bullying. We’re not talking about Kristallnacht here. And unless someone can figure out how to deliver a terrorist nuke to Tel Aviv (much less probable than an asteroid destroying the earth), Israel bestrides the entire Middle East like an impregnable Colossus, thanks to all our untold billions of military aid to this tiny country. So let’s be clear: surely no honest, rational Jew on earth thinks the Jews of America and Israel, despite the constant danger of terrorism from American Nazis and Muslim terrorists, sincerely believes there is any chance whatsoever of a second real Holocaust.
I’m a bit worried about Iran.
What a creepy liar YOU are to claim there’s no chance of a “second real Holocaust”. Why the word “real”? Was the Holocaust not real?
Why am I responding to a POS garbage troll? I don’t know.
From the mind of a goy, no offense meant.
Do you disagree with the substance of my comment, or are you only irrationally prejudiced against goys?
@Fred White. You must understand that the possibility of another Holocaust is an abiding concern for every jewish mind in a way others find hard to understand. That is what @Michael Bell meant by your mind. The Islamists and other sundry jew haters are irrational and are willing to immiserate and destroy themselves to destroy jews. Look at the Third Reich. Look at the Houtis. Look at Hamas.
When you consider the loss of 1200 Jews infinitesimal…you don’t get it, as most goys don’t get it. When your history is about attempt after attempt to end your race, a failed attempt to do so that results in 1200 deaths, which is comparable to the death of 200,000 Muslims, it’s not infinitesimal.
You need to read more carefully, Michael. I said 1,200 was “infinitesimal” compared to 6 million. Obviously, not in an absolute sense. What was wrong with my math? When the US lost 3,000 or so on 9/11, horrible and uniquely shattering as that was, it was nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of Americans killed in WWII, and no Americans rushed to compare it to those losses to magnify 9/11. Like Oct 7, it was horrible enough without exaggerating. And its horror was not minimized by not exaggerating. My other point was that despite very upsetting campus bullying etc. here, and horrible, murderous neo-Nazis, half the world’s Jews are in zero danger of annihilation here—zero—and the other half is just as safe from mass annihilation in Israel, unless someone can figure out how to nuke Tel Aviv, in which case all of Israel’s overwhelming military might will obviously be useless and all bets will be horribly off. But most odds makers would clearly bet on Israel to stop all nukes.
I am married to a wonderful Jew—my best friend, needless to say, if you’ll pardon the expression. And I deeply feel for the anxieties Jews have felt since Oct 7. But, frankly, both the Gazans and Palestinians on the West Bank have obviously suffered a great deal more. Holocaust or no, no Jew is somehow magically more valuable or more tragic when slaughtered than any innocent Gazan or Palestinian on the West Bank (Hamas is different), virtually all of whom were living much, much poorer, more unpleasant, more unjust lives than neighboring Jews even before the post-Oct 7 massacre, in what one of my all-time favorite Jews, the diplomat Aaron David Miller, with classic, bitter, wised-up Jewish irony has called “the much too promised land.” In that land, the Jews have shown the world they, not Hamas or the other Palestinians, are the ones with all the aces. It’s clearly the Palestinians, not the Jews, who are the underdogs, in a situation in which Jews offer them no hope of a way out of their misery. Just like the Apaches vs. the Europeans here, once upon a time.
The problem with your argument is not that you are a non-Jew as some suggested, regardless of who your spouse is: Many Jews in America are indifferent to the subject of Israel. The problem is the framework within which you think, and I have read your posts here for a while.
Jews are not the reason that much, if not all of the Middle East, is devoid of democratic values.
Jews are not the reason Arabs in Gaza and West Bank are poor or destitute, or live “unjust” lives as you put it. The Palestinian Arabs have perfected the narrative of victimhood into an art form, engineering almost a fanatical cult of followers. Typically, the gullible libs unknowingly and antisemites intentionally buy into the Muslim agenda knowing full well that all non-Muslims, women, other minorities are treated very inhumanely wherever Muslims are majority. That’s true through the Middle East, has been for quite some time. In the West, Muslims always demand tolerance and welfare from non-Muslims but never offer the same in return to the non-Muslims. It's always the non-Muslim’s fault.
In Israel, there will be no lasting peace until the Palestinians themselves repudiate jihadism and find a way to relinquish their victimhood and Jew hatred. And you, Mr. White, you can do whatever math you want, comparing and contrasting each and every number by trying to persuade everyone that there is no danger to Jews anywhere. No matter.
It’s not over till the fat lady sings, and she’s on stage
Dr. Oren's latest published article, "Never Again" and "Again", is very telling, as I can read the frustration and the anger over the terrorist incursion of October 7, and the self-reflection of rationalizing how anything like that could happen to Israeli citizens inside their own country. I'm certain there is frustration and bitter finger-pointing at the IDF, the government, and any other Israeli institution the people want to accuse. The reality is that Iran-funded Hamas terrorists invaded the country, killed Israeli citizens, ransacked kibbutzim and kidnapped innocent, unarmed civilians (mostly) to hold for ransom and other demands (like releasing cold-blooded, ruthless murderers in Israeli jails). It is not my place to assess blame or to say who or what organization was responsible. But, I agree with Dr. Oren when he states that Israel cannot live with terrorist armies amassed on their borders. I also agree 100% with his assessment that ALL hostages MUST be returned home NOW.
I agree with everything said in the article with this proviso: Compromise is not a one-sided affair. The secular center-left, a minority of the electorate, must also yield.
What would "realistic peace options with our neighbours" be?
How might Israel have acted so as to not let the hostages, held in tunnels by Hamas, down?
Honest questions.