Of all the clauses and subclauses the Board of Peace and Israel are now discussing regarding Gaza and the sham known as "Hamas' disarmament," one is particularly outrageous: the demand that Israel stop, even temporarily, eliminating the Nukhba monsters and other terrorists who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre.
The very willingness to discuss the matter is problematic. The fact that these targeted killings are now also subject to the approval of the IDF chief of staff and the political leadership shows that Israel is already partly acceding to the demand. Until Aug. 4, such operations required only the approval of a regional command chief.
True, this is probably not a security issue. The monsters who beheaded, burned, murdered and raped men, women and children on Oct. 7 may very well pose no "immediate threat" at present. But it is unquestionably a moral issue of the highest order, and Israel has an obligation to say that it has such a commitment as well. Crimes against humanity and genocide must not be subject to negotiation, whether with the Board of Peace or with the US.
The most recent of the 2,562 participants in the massacre eliminated by the special Israel Defense Forces-Shin Bet task force known as NILI were Abdallah Adnan Taha Abu al-Tayf, in the Deir al-Balah area, and Salem Jamal Abd al-Rahman Abu Labad, a Nukhba Force cell commander who took part in the assault on Kibbutz Nir Oz. Both were killed on Aug. 2.
Since then, despite operational opportunities, the targeted killings have been suspended to allow negotiations over the fiction of Hamas' disarmament, an idea about as appealing and realistic as the notion of turning Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East.
The moral harm caused by suspending and delaying the elimination of Nukhba terrorists is, first and foremost, a betrayal of the families of the hostages, the families of those murdered and the families of the soldiers who fell.
Those families were promised that anyone who took part in the atrocities of that day was marked for death and would be hunted every day for the rest of his life until he was eliminated. That commitment was not another empty promise. It was a sacred moral vow that Israeli society made to itself and to those around it from the ashes of Oct. 7.
That vow, bound together with the vow to bring the hostages home, must not be broken, even in the face of intense American pressure or pressure from the mediators, Turkey and Qatar, patrons of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Unfortunately, that promise is now in doubt. Let us hope we are proved wrong.
After 11 Israeli athletes were murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel launched Operation Wrath of God and relentlessly hunted those who sent the terrorists and senior members of the Palestinian Black September terrorist organization, pursuing them for months and years across the globe. Many of them were eliminated.
Morally, Israel's obligation today is even greater than it was then, both because of the nature of the massacre and because of its scale. According to assessments by Israeli security officials, some 400 Nukhba terrorists who participated in the massacre remain at large and have yet to be killed or arrested. There are also thousands more from among the supposedly "uninvolved" civilian population who came to finish the job, burning and looting, and in some cases murdering Israelis and taking part in the abductions.
None of them must be made part of any agreement or understanding with Hamas or any other party. There must be no temporary immunity and no permanent immunity, no escape arrangements and no territory that becomes a safe haven for them. Instead, Israel must follow the injunction in the spirit of King David's words in Psalms: "I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed."
