LEERLO EN ESPAÑOL

צפו בסרטון בעברית

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The following presentation tries to understand the events that happened and are happening in the Middle East. It is based on what I believe are facts. They are from respectable sources. I am not judging. I am trying to speculate about whether there is logic to Netanyahu’s and Hamas’ decisions and where it might lead.

The Question

Why the incredibly atrocious, brutal attack by Hamas on October 7? Why the raping? Why murdering children in front of their parents? Why the indiscriminate killing of women, old people, babies? Approximately 1,200 people were murdered in one day. As a percentage of the population, if such an atrocity had happened in the United States, it would have meant approximately 41,000 people cruelly butchered in one day.

Why such a planned, intentional, Holocaust-reminding massacre? Why was it a surprise, although The Wall Street Journal reported that Abbas Kamel, then the head of Egyptian intelligence, warned Israeli officials before October 7 that a major invasion from Gaza might be coming? According to recent reports, Kamel visited Israel shortly before the attack and later personally warned Netanyahu by telephone. There are also reports that the President of the United Arab Emirates warned Netanyahu. (The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office denies that such warnings were given).

And, also, why did Netanyahu react slowly to the attack? For hours, civilians were being murdered and kidnapped. Netanyahu has argued that the response was late because he was not woken up from his sleep, but according to the timeline released by his own office, his military secretary informed him at 6:29 a.m. that an attack from Gaza had begun. The security agency Shin Bet’s records reportedly put Netanyahu’s arrival at the military headquarters to manage the response at 8:22 a.m., two hours after the invasion started. In the meantime, a blood-boiling massacre was going on.

The Speculation

Has Hamas concluded that it could not defeat Israel militarily, despite the repeated bombardments of Israeli communities across the border and subjecting the Israeli population to indiscriminate terror? But if it succeeded in turning the world against Israel and isolating it economically, scientifically, medically, and, most importantly, militarily, it might have a chance.

How? Conduct the most horrendous attack possible. Make it resemble the Holocaust as much as possible. Cause Israel to OVERREACT. (Hamas publicly announced it is ready to sacrifice one million Palestinians to win this war.) Hamas would broadcast how destroyed Gaza is, how Israelis kill children, how miserable and hungry the children are, etc. (Some of this information, I believe, was generated by AI.) Have the misinformation and propaganda distributed through social media, some of it, I speculate, financed by Qatar, and use every available media resource to stimulate anti-Israeli and antisemitic sentiment that already exists worldwide. Israel will be sanctioned. Isolated. And without world support, weakened enough to be defeated.

Could it be that Netanyahu allowed October 7 to happen? He is not a criminal or a traitor in disguise. On the contrary, maybe he had the courage to do the unthinkable. To allow the attack, the murderous event, and use it to bring lasting peace to the Middle East. How?

Could it be that Netanyahu believed that the worse the attack, the more it would unite the Israeli population and give him the legitimization to attack Hamas with overwhelming force and remove it from being an active hostile enemy. No opposition would dare to stop him from doing so.

Could it be that he believed that the massacre would create an Israeli resolve not only to destroy Hamas, but to destroy Gaza. People of Gaza, having lost their homes, might seek to move to another country. Gaza would stop being a base from which Israel was repeatedly attacked. And if Palestinians abandon Gaza, there would be space for Israelis to move in.

The horrendous attack would not only legitimize the destruction of Hamas but would also justify Israel cleaning up its northern border, defeating Hezbollah, bringing peace with Lebanon, and attacking Iran to topple its government, which supports both Hamas and Hezbollah.

Maybe he considered it a prudent strategy, especially if he could convince Trump and the United States to join Israel against Iran.

Why did this strategy develop rather than what might have been a much more effective strategy for Israel to follow: DO NOT react militarily to the massacre. Broadcast worldwide the pictures of the massacre and elicit the support of the world against Hamas, isolate it, and thus eliminate it as a player on the scene.

I suggest that to play the victim did not fit the Israeli state of mind. Jewish people do not capitalize on their sorrow. They do not exploit the pain of their people. Second, Jewish people are a traumatized people: two thousand years of persecution, pogroms, the Inquisition, the Holocaust. People who are traumatized live in fear, and people who live in fear turn to power to solve their problems. A belief developed that if the Palestinians are beaten to the core, they will surrender and accept Israel’s existence.

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The Outcome

For Israel, the price of this strategy—if there was one, as I speculate—was heavy. According to the Israel Defense Forces, 970 soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the war, and 6,424 have been wounded. In addition, Israel’s Defense Ministry reported in July 2026 that approximately 26,200 wounded members of the IDF and security forces were being treated by its Rehabilitation Department, with about 65 percent dealing with psychological distress or post-traumatic stress. If the same proportions were applied to the population of the United States, the number would be 868,000 people. It is a tremendous burden on the economy and on society.

The strategy of defeating Hamas and Hezbollah and toppling the government of Iran has not been achieved. Maybe nobody else could have succeeded either. Defeating a nation or a religious movement is very different from defeating an army. America retreated from Afghanistan after twenty years of trying, and before that, the Soviet Union withdrew too.

Hamas' alleged strategy worked. The Israeli overreaction has caused Israel to be accused of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Worldwide demonstrations against Israel erupted. Israeli students hide in their rooms, scared of being hurt. Synagogues are being attacked. Hotels refuse to register Israelis. My family would not speak Hebrew on the street, fearing for their well-being. Educational and medical institutions severed ties with Israeli institutions, and countries imposed economic and military sanctions on Israel.

To carry out a full-scale war against Hamas, Hezbollah, and eventually Iran, Netanyahu needed his coalition to support him. To keep the coalition together, he had to deliver what his coalition partners demanded.

Some ultra-Orthodox political factions represent communities in which many men refuse to serve in the military. Netanyahu had to accommodate their demands and exempt them from military service. It is causing rage among those serving and dying.

The parties of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have their own religious and political goals: annexing or permanently controlling territory in the West Bank, forcing Palestinians to leave, and expanding Jewish settlements in their place. Their goal is to recreate the country God promised the Jewish people. Netanyahu had to accommodate them, too. He ignored the Jewish settlers terrorizing the Palestinians, making the situation in the West Bank ready to explode, with Hamas growing rather than shrinking.

The coalition remained together, but the self-interests driving the political parties in the coalition were splitting the country, disintegrating it, making Israel weaker.

How about Hamas? Hamas was not defeated. On the contrary, it got stronger. For every Hamas fighter killed, new ones emerge—his children, brothers, cousins, neighbors. U.S. intelligence estimates reported in January 2025 that Hamas had recruited between 10,000 and 15,000 new fighters since the beginning of the war.

Hezbollah is weaker, granted, but not defeated, and the government of Iran has not fallen. On the contrary, it got more vigilant and used the Strait of Hormuz to get the United States to seek a solution since it is now the Iranians who hold the cards and have the upper hand.

Quo Vadis now?

Israel cannot fight a prolonged war. Israel does not have the necessary supply of soldiers to fight multiple wars on multiple fronts and for an extended time. It has increased the length of compulsory military service to the maximum possible, and reservists have carried an extraordinary burden, some serving for over a year. It cannot go on indefinitely. The reservists are family people and working people. Their prolonged absence is damaging families and devastating parts of the economy.

No large pool of volunteers from abroad is expected to come and fight for Israel either. The Jewish population worldwide is approximately only fifteen million, and a significant part of the ultra-Orthodox population refuses to serve in the military.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, can fight like the Arabs fought the Crusaders for a hundred years. They can rely on support from the Muslim world. The Muslim population worldwide is measured at 2 billion, 25 percent of the world population; one in every four people on this planet is Muslim. Muslim countries or movements can potentially supply volunteers. When Yugoslavia was falling apart, foreign Muslim fighters came to fight alongside the Bosnians. Furthermore, there is a chance Israeli Arabs will join Hamas, creating terror from inside Israel, too. Why and how?

While Palestinians have been suffering in Gaza and the West Bank, Arab citizens of Israel have participated extensively in Israeli society. They are members of parliament. They are serving in the judiciary and diplomatic service. They are doctors, professors, businesspeople, and professionals.

If the Israeli Arabs do not actively support the Palestinian cause, and if Israel were ever defeated, the Israeli Arabs would be regarded by Palestinian extremists as traitors. There is sometimes no deeper hatred than the hatred between people who consider each other brothers. See Croats against Serbs. See Ukrainians against Russians in the Second World War. The Arab citizens of Israel who had participated fully in Israeli society might be among those slaughtered first.

After the October 7 massacre, there is more resistance than usual to collaborating with the Arab population of Israel, ignoring the fact that the Israeli Arabs are between a rock and a hard place. If they side with Hamas, they will be severely punished by Israel. If they side with Israel, they will be slaughtered by Hamas.

The prudent thing is for Israel to embrace them politically. Israel, however, hurt by the October 7 massacre, with deep anti-Arab sentiment, is doing the opposite and, in my judgment, pushing the Israeli Arabs to become terrorists, too.

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Where does it lead us?

In my judgment, Israel cannot survive in the long run by continuing indefinitely with the present strategy of fighting the Palestinians with overwhelming force, facing accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide, becoming increasingly isolated from the international community, exhausting its soldiers, and potentially pushing its own Arab population toward radicalization.

As the conflict continues—even if it is no longer open warfare but continuing terror and confrontation—many Israelis will leave. In 1948, Israelis were willing to die to establish the State of Israel, and that willingness continued for decades. But this willingness is fading. General Itzhak Brik claims that 150,000 potential soldiers are not serving their military duty, finding creative ways to be exempt. Whoever can get a foreign passport, just in case there is a need to leave the country, is getting one. Recent Tel Aviv University research found that approximately 1,370 medical doctors left Israel for at least a year between 2023 and 2025. The 2025 number is still preliminary. There is an unvalidated rumor that already a 250,000-strong Israeli community exists in Portugal and a large one is building in Greece, not to mention the large community in Los Angeles and in New York. On the other hand, Palestinians have no place to go. According to ChatGPT, based on recent demographic estimates, there are approximately 7.3 million Palestinians living in Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip combined. Where can they go? The Arab countries do not want them, and those that have them persecute them. Jordan murdered over a thousand of them, and so did Lebanon. Europe is feeling overwhelmed with the Muslims it already has and is trying to stop the inflow. Africa is struggling to feed the people it already has and does not need several more million mouths to feed. So the Palestinians, unlike the Israelis, have nowhere to go and have repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary willingness to die for their cause. Palestinians have glorified those killed in the struggle.

What kept the Jewish nation alive through two thousand years of persecution, annihilation, and expulsion was HOPE. Jewish prayers preserved the dream: “Next year in Jerusalem.” Well, that dream risks becoming a nightmare of continuous warfare, and there is no clear light at the end of the tunnel: a peaceful solution to the Palestinian problem.

A two-state solution is a scary solution to many Israelis because, in no time, the new state can become Hamas-ruled and hostile. Yes, there is talk of having international guarantees that the new Palestinian state will be demilitarized. What guides international relations is self-interest, and if the interests change, Israel can be abandoned and sacrificed in a heartbeat. See what happened in Srebrenica during the dissolution of Yugoslavia. United Nations forces were inactive while slaughter was going on, although they were sent there to prevent it from happening. Furthermore it is not easy to demilitarize a nation. One can do to an army but not to individuals who get up in the morning and leave home in search of Jews to kill.

And even if a two-state solution is established under pressure from foreign forces, it will not bring peace. Israel released Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. It even removed Jewish settlements from the border. Israel permitted millions of dollars to be transferred from Qatar to the Palestinians in Gaza, I assume in order to build their economy. It was used to build underground tunnels and buy ammunition to attack Israel. Hamas does not want peace. They are committed to destroying the Jewish state and kicking the Jews out, like Salah ad-Din kicked the Crusaders out. This war is a religious war.

One state will not be accepted by Israel. The Jewish people will become the minority in no time. A Jewish state where Jews can feel safe becomes a bygone dream.

The solution appears to be to continue the situation as is, but as we have discussed, the situation as is is not tenable, and it will only get worse. I see no factors that show that it will become better.

At a point of total despair—when the feeling becomes: We cannot continue like this, and there is no hope—I worry that Israel might consider using its nuclear weapons in an attempt to impose a final military solution to the problem. It would not be the first time such an option was considered. During the Yom Kippur War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan proposed that Israel prepare its nuclear capability for a possible demonstration. Prime Minister Golda Meir rejected the proposal. With a right-wing government, the old or a new one, with no hope of finding a solution, and with the situation deteriorating, is it possible that a future Israeli government might act differently and push the button?

And if it ever did so, the Third World War between religions, as Professor Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University, in his influential 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order predicted, will become a reality. And it will be a nuclear war.

In 1947 by scientists associated with the University of Chicago, including people involved in developing the atomic bomb, Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, founded the Doomsday Clock, claiming that a nuclear war will happen. The question is not whether but when and where. Is it the Middle East that will ignite this nuclear Third World War?

This scenario is so scary that many Israelis, to Israel’s detriment, refuse to even consider it a possibility and live in denial. The coffee shops in Tel Aviv are fully booked. The international a is mobbed with travelers going abroad for vacation. Many people stopped watching the news and refuse to discuss the situation.

There is a metaphor on how to boil a frog. If you put it in boiling water it will jump right out but if you put it in cold water and slowly raise the heat one degree at the time, the frog adapts to the changes till it boils to death.

Is that what is happening?

I pray that my speculations are wrong.

Is there a way out?

I have a potential solution I strongly believe in that can make the Middle East the new Switzerland. It requires active involvement of world powers because Israel and the Palestinians alone, with their constellation of political powers, are incapable of carrying it out.

First, Israel should take responsibility for solving the Palestinian problem. No one else will solve it and if it is not solved the tragic development I predict might be a reality.

The solution, I believe, is a two-state solution, but interdependent. Like the European Union. Have a common ministry of internal security to control both extreme nationalistic parties and make them illegitimate. Israeli messianic parties were delegitimized once.

Have a common ministry of education that fosters mutual respect and recognition and have a ministry of economy and industry whose role is to develop and nurture joint Palestinian-Israeli ventures.

Moreover, Israel opens a trust and pays a significant, generous amount of funds for the benefit of the Palestinian nation to pay for the land, properties, and the suffering of the Palestinians. Then, Israel invests the same amount in this trust, thus making Israel and the Palestinians a fifty-fifty partnership, and uses this partnership to rebuild Gaza as a first-class tourist destination and the West Bank as a religious tourist destination. In other words, make Palestine successful so the Palestinians have something to lose if there is a war. Make Israel involved in making Palestine a success, and by paying the sum for the Palestinians, remove the demand for the right of return.

I am fully aware that this potential solution has zero chance of being implemented given the state of mind the two nations are in now, but if Israel, which should lead the reconciliation project, does not do something similar that at least leads to peace, the prognosis of total destruction in the region is a highly probable outcome.

This alternative solution is not a just solution. I am not looking for justice. I am looking for a solution that might work.

The paradigm shift necessary for this alternative solution to be even considered is to stop looking at whose fault it is, to stop following God's instructions, and to follow reality on the ground and seek a solution that takes into account the cultures of the parties involved.