1. Who knows and what is known
We are all smart, we are all sage, we all know the Tora, the doctrine and the battlefield, the data and the considerations behind every move. We have a strong opinion on everything. There are reliable sources of information, but many of us consume unfiltered information, false and unfounded, and believe rumors that spread like wildfire. We are at war, there is wisdom in silence, and a little humility is an essential commodity.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
All that said, we should remember that up until October 7, in vain, we relied on the wisdom of others, on their view of the big picture, and on the various pieces of information hurled at them. They too are obliged to some humility. So, what do we do? Perhaps we need to employ what literary critics call the "hermeneutics of suspicion," (namely that words may not always be what they seem) and thus we should adopt a suspicious interpretation of the information and texts that we are flooded with, as we understand that behind these words lie various interests, and therefore it is imperative to verify with other sources. But even then, we must remember that we cannot be sure. "He is the Knowledge, the Knower, and the Known," Maimonides wrote referring to God but not to mortal beings. Caveat Emptor.
2. The public diplomacy campaign
I traveled to Italy once again on another public diplomacy mission. I discovered that it is difficult to interest the media in what is happening in Israel. Italy was preoccupied with other issues. In the rest of the world, life goes on, even if here we are in a state of war. What will happen the day after the war, they asked. Can Europe play a similar role in Gaza to UNIFIL in Lebanon? I said that the last thing we needed was a European police force in Gaza. Europe's supreme mission vis-à-vis the Palestinians should be ensuring a real change in how they act towards the State of Israel. We aren't presented as a legitimate nation in their textbooks. What does the younger generation there know about us? Only the incitement against us that it consumes.
Currently, the Palestinian Authority pays millions to the families of murderers with the criteria being the number of Jews they have murdered. This is abnormal. We cannot accept this. If we place the PA in charge of Gaza, it will also pay salaries to the Hamas murderers who raped our daughters, beheaded our babies, and burned our children alive with their parents. By the way, the money for this atrocity also comes from the European Union, which does not control the money routes and repeatedly falls prey to outdated conceptions.
3. Clause 20 of the PNC must be annulled
Is the PA a better partner than Hamas? Three decades have passed since the Oslo Accords, and yet, the Palestinian National Charter– an official document, not a Hamas document – still contains Article 20, a genocidal clause that erases the Jewish people from the family of nations and denies them the right to self-determination. Despite Israel's demands, the clause was never changed: "The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."
There are three parts to this astonishing clause: First, the Palestinians fail to consider the consent of the nations that enshrined the Balfour Declaration in international law at the San Remo Conference. Let us recall that until World War I, the Ottoman Empire ruled the region, and upon its defeat ceded its territories to the victorious powers. In April 1920, they decided to give 99 percent of the area to the Arab peoples, and a few percent – what they called the biblical Land of Israel – to the Jewish people. The British then tore away three-quarters of this territory away from the Jews about a year later, when they gave the Hashemite Kingdom the territory of Transjordan.
In the second part of this clause, the Palestinians deny our historical and religious connection with our land. I tell the Europeans that if the Jews were never in the Holy Land, then they as Christians also have no roots there. Denial of scientific facts is common in the Middle East. Perhaps this is why scientific capabilities are weak among our neighbors. Science requires a search for truth, and thus confronting facts that may not fit our worldview.
4. Erasure of the Jewish people in an official document
The third part of the above clause is the most scandalous of all: It claims that we are not a people (or a nation). Let's repeat that: the newly arrived Palestinians are telling one of the oldest peoples on the planet that it is not a people but only a religion. A religion of course is not entitled to self-determination. According to IHRA definitions of antisemitism adopted by European countries, this is an antisemitic clause. Moreover, it is one whose logical conclusion is genocide, as we experienced on October 7.
You can't buy a car from a person who doesn't recognize you as an autonomous entity, otherwise a moment after the transaction, he will come back and seize the car, even though we already paid for it. It is impossible to sign an agreement with the PA without it first changing its attitude towards Israel in textbooks, in the media, and especially in official documents. Otherwise, it will violate any treaty as soon as it can, just like Muhammad's Hudaybiyya Treaty with the Quraysh tribe.
As is well known, Muhammad, after consolidating power, violated the agreement two years after it was signed. He unexpectedly attacked Mecca and conquered it despite the agreement, and the rest is history. Speaking in 1994 at a mosque in Johannesburg, Yasser Arafat explained why he had signed the Oslo Accords the previous year; as far as he was concerned, Oslo was equivalent to the Prophet of Islam's signing of the Hudaybiyya Treaty. The conclusion from all this must be that the condition for any arrangement or treaty is clear: Palestinian recognition of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in its historic homeland (or in popular parlance: recognition of Israel as a Jewish state).
5. Find the head of the snake
It was Iran that pressured Hamas to launch the criminal attack against us and it was Iran that financed and supplied technology, weapons, and intelligence to its protégés in Gaza. Iran's interest is obvious: An Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia will minimize Tehran's influence in the Middle East. The war between Russia and Ukraine has exposed Europe's energy weakness and the need to find alternative sources of energy other than Moscow. At the same time, Saudi Arabia, which fears Iran, was looking for an alternative route to export oil other than the Straits of Hormuz. It found this alternative in Israel. An oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Israel – and from there to Europe – would undermine Iranian dominance in the region. Add to this the common interest of the Europeans, Americans, and Saudis, and you have a route that bypasses the ayatollahs.
It is important to expose to the world Iran's criminal involvement in the October 7 attack and subsequent hostilities directed against Israel by Hezbollah in Lebanon, by pro-Iranian militias in Syria, and by the Houthis in Yemen. The importance is not only because of Iran's dangerous attempt to obtain nuclear weapons, but so that the Arab states and the Palestinians will realize that Hamas sacrificed the entire Gaza Strip on the altar of Iran's interests, all at the price of a murderous attack on women, children and the elderly, which brought it no achievements other than satisfying its sadistic instincts.
Hamas therefore endangers not only Israel but the future of Europe, as the war has, for the time being, suspended negotiations with Saudi Arabia that have the potential to change the entire Middle East as well as Israel's relations with Europe and the world. In the meantime, fear not; God willing, we will win. Together.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
