"Israeli Leaders are Missing Key Point`" is the title of an article that appeared on October 23 in a leading Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star. Written by columnist Linda McQuaig, the article refers to an iconic speech made by the late Israeli military and political leader Moshe Dayan, in 1956, as a eulogy for Roi Rotberg, a member of Nahal Oz, a kibbutz located near the Gaza border. Palestinian terrorists ambushed and killed Roi and displayed his mutilated body in the streets of Gaza.

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McQuaig`s quote from the eulogy is as follows: "Why should we complain of their hatred for us? Eight years have they sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and seen, with their own eyes, how we have made a homeland of the soil and villages where they and their forbears once dwelt."

To McQuaig, Dayan`s words indicate a sensitivity and understanding for the Palestinians that current Israeli leaders lack, a sensitivity that should encourage the Israelis to respond to Hamas' atrocities of October 7 with restraint.

In reality, Dayan's message has nothing to do with restraint. His eulogy stresses the need for vigilance and military readiness. In light of the Hamas terror attack, it is just as relevant for Israel today as it was then.

The eulogy was in Hebrew of course (it consists of only 285 words) and while the words quoted by McQuaig appear in one translation, another version excludes them.

However, there is no question that Dayan did say the following:

"The millions of Jews, annihilated without a land, peer out at us from the ashes of Israeli history and command us to settle and rebuild a land for our people. But beyond that furrow that marks the border, lies a surging sea of hatred and vengeance, yearning for the day that tranquility blunt our alertness, for the day that we heed the ambassadors of conspiring hypocrisy, who call for us to lay down our arms."

He goes on, saying that Roi's yearning for peace deafened him to the sounds of the murderers who were waiting in ambush.

The Hamas attack of October 7, took place after a period of relative calm. Several commentators (for example, Samia Nakhoul and Jonathan Saul, Reuters), note that the surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, on the holiday of Simchat Torah, succeeded because, like Roi, the Israelis were lulled into a sense of complacency, encouraged by the Hamas ruse of appearing to have lost interest in military confrontation.

As I read the McQuaig column, three historical twists stood out. First, in 1956, when Egypt administered Gaza (Jordan ruled the West Bank), armed Palestinians (Fedayeen) were encouraged to attack Israelis. Today, the Egyptians, who along with the Israelis share a border with Gaza, want nothing to do with Gaza or Hamas.

Second, as anyone who has watched the recent movie "Golda" knows, Moshe Dayan was the minister of defense of Israel at the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War when an attack by the armies of Egypt and Syria caught Israel by surprise and came close to overwhelming Israel's defenses.

Third, and saddest, is that Nahal Oz, Roi Rotberg's kibbutz, was one of the primary targets of the Hamas terrorists on October 7. While the details are still uncertain, it is clear that many kibbutz members were murdered and or taken hostage.

McQuaig may be correct in saying that it is difficult to completely eliminate Hamas, or bring Israel permanent security. However, it is also important to recognize that Hamas, like other jihadist groups, such as the Islamic State, a-Qaida, and Boko Haram, is not interested in compromise. Its primary interest is in eliminating Israel.

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Thomas Friedman's recent New York Times article "A hard no to this peace deal" is yet another in a series meant to derail the Biden administration's effort to broker a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Two points stood out in this one.

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Friedman claims that Israel's government is not normal (his italics) and therefore Israel cannot be a stable US ally or Saudi partner. Not normal to whom? How do you define normal when it comes to politics? An element of volatility has always defined Israeli politics because the proportional representation nature of Israeli democracy means that all governments are coalition governments.

Ironically, Friedman's own country, the US, is going through a difficult period characterized by increasing political polarization. It has been suggested that Saudi interest in reaching out to countries such as Russia and China is partly due to mistrust of the US as an ally.

Moreover, is the government of Saudi Arabia normal? Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy ranked 150 out of 167 countries on the 2022 Democracy Index compiled by the Economist (Israel ranked 29, one spot ahead of the US). Until recently, Saudi women could not even drive a car!

Friedman also claims that the Netanyahu government's aim is to forget the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and annex the West Bank. Like Mr. Friedman, I believe in a two-state resolution, and I too think that annexing the West Bank would be a mistake. But what about some context? Do the Palestinians want a two-state solution?

In the same article, Friedman refers to the 1936 Peel Commission partition proposal. This was a proposal that would have allocated just 17 percent of Mandatory Palestine to a Jewish state and a much larger portion to a Palestinian state. Faced with the danger that would later become the Holocaust, the Zionists reluctantly accepted, while the Arabs of Palestine would not even agree to meet with members of the Commission.

This same inability by the Arab world to accept the existence of a Jewish state occurred after 1947, when, as Friedman notes, the UN voted to partition Palestine. Arab rejection of Israel as a state appeared again in 1967, after the Six-Day War when the Arab League resolved that there would be no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations with Israel.

Intensive negotiations toward a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians have included the Oslo Accords of 1993 and two occasions, 2000 and 2008 when far-reaching concessions offered by Israel toward a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank were rejected. In fact, the Palestinian suicide bombers of the Second Intifada (1987-1993) contributed to the demise of the Israeli political Left and the rightward shift of Israeli politics.

Today, the two million Palestinians of Gaza are hostages to Hamas, a terrorist organization that has no interest in a two-state solution, while Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinians in the West Bank, questions the historicity of the Holocaust. Nor does Hezbollah, a terrorist-Iranian proxy in Lebanon, or the Government of Iran, support the existence of the Jewish state.

The American historian Daniel Pipes is correct when he said, in a 2023 Jerusalem Post interview with Seth Frantzman, that the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians will only end when the Palestinians give up their goal of eliminating Israel.

Today, the conflict has evolved to include a Palestinian-led international effort to delegitimize Israel. Perhaps Mr. Friedman does not get the meaning of the slogan "from the river to the sea," but I do.

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