Is Israel Losing The War?

That is a headline I never thought that I’d be typing. But, as I sit here, more than seven months after the worst attack on our people since the Shoah (Holocaust), anyone objective has to wonder what is really going on in this war.

I have asked a similar question on social media several times over the last few months, and am always met one of two opinions:  “Israel is taking this long to finish off Hamas because it is being strategic” and “It can’t do what it needs to do because the United States won’t let it.”

In my wildest imagination, I never would have thought that after the crimes of October 7, which occurred on Simchat Torah, Hamas would still survive, not just past Chanukah, not past Pesach, but would still exist heading into Shavuot. We are closer to the next Simchat Torah than the previous one.

I may be alone, but I find that unconscionable.

I also want the safe return home of the hostages to be the highest priority.

I have to ask how the most powerful military in the Middle East can’t defeat a much smaller force of terrorists, a group who maniacally follows an ideology that would have seemed antique in the Dark Ages. The answer is not in strategy, or even dependence on the United States.

My opinion is that after this war, Israel needs to divorce itself from any reliance on the U.S. Forgive my language, but they should tell America to shove it, particularly after the way it has behaved over the last several months. Israel is a sovereign nation but treated by most American administrations not as an equal, but as a vassal state, tolerated more than respected. What I see is that the current administration is just as dismissive of Jews, and Jewish lives, as was the Roosevelt administration during the Holocaust.

America needs Israel more than Israel needs America. It needs to grow up, stand on its own, and force America to come to that reckoning on its own.

Meanwhile, apparently out of concern for the people of Gaza, who STILL overwhelmingly support Hamas, the government of Israel has continually and unnecessarily placed IDF lives at risk, and done next to nothing to allow the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis in the north and south to return to their homes. All while more than 12,000 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza, Judea/Samaria, and Lebanon, Iran launched the largest missile volley in history, over 750 soldiers have died, over 3,000 wounded, and most shockingly, 806 Israeli civilians have been killed, all AFTER 10/7.

In the diaspora, the war has been an excuse for the largest outpouring of antisemitism since World War 2. Jews are under attack across the globe. College campuses, especially in the United States, have become “safe spaces” to attack Jews with impunity, openly call for genocide, and propagandize to the rest of the world.

If Israel had ended the war months ago, which it was fully capable of doing, some of this would definitely still be happening, but not with the momentum it has now. NO MATTER WHAT Israel would have falsely, and perversely, been accused of “genocide,” just as it has falsely, and ridiculously, been accused of “apartheid” for the last three decades. But, the pro-jihadist media would not have been able to beat the anti-Israel drum for as long, and as effectively, as it has.

Israel did not turn Gaza into rubble when the wind of public opinion, fueled by the shock of 10/7, would have lessened the propaganda hit, because the government cared more about world opinion, particularly that of the United States, than it did about carrying out its MOST important mission, which is to protect Jewish lives. At all costs.

The blame sits squarely with the Israeli government, not on the Israeli people. The same government that allowed 10/7 to happen in the first place with the moronic idealism that made them believe that peace with Hamas was even possible. It is the same government that did nearly nothing for hours after the massacre began. Jews were being slaughtered while the IDF command did nothing. Some reports are as little as four planes were scrambled by the air force.

These are same people conducting the current war.

It is not within the scope of this article to detail the reasons for things for the heinous strategy change last November which fundamentally changed the way that this war was being fought. Or why Israel continues to negotiate with a terrorist group for whom every single refused deal is a public relations victory (again, manufactured courtesy of the media). Or even the bizarre insistence displayed by the IDF command structure in delaying the attack on Rafah which could end the war (as of this writing, Israel has STILL not launched a full-scale attack on what is, we’re told, the last Hamas stronghold).

However, I do have space to make some points which illustrate some of this.

On May 15, defense minister Yoav Gallant, Defense Minister, and member of the war cabinet, urged the Netanyahu government to:

“Make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip, that Israel will not establish military governance in the Gaza Strip, and that a governing alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be promoted immediately.”

He then demanded that Israel agree that governance of Gaza must be “achieved with Palestinian entities taking control of Gaza, accompanied by international actors.”

Who are those Palestinians? Presumably, the Palestinian Authority with input from Hamas. This is an echo of a nearly identical plan put forward by the Biden administration (which also believes that Israeli cannot win the war in Gaza). So, the group that STILL pays terrorists to kill Jews, would be running Gaza, and this was suggested by the man who was directly responsible for failing to protect the Israeli people on the morning of October 7?  This is the same Gallant who tried to oust Netanyahu last year, and who helped sow the discord that Hamas itself cited as a motivator to carry out the attacks when it did.

You cannot win a war with people like this in charge.

Just as shocking, instead of leaving a fighting force behind in areas already secured by the IDF, they have been withdrawing, leaving those areas to Hamas which then moves back in. A prime example is Jabalia where five Israeli soldiers died in a friendly fire incident on May 16 trying to retake it - for the third time. I am no military expert, but in what war does a victorious army not secure the rear as it advances?  It was Gallant who allowed the IDF Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, to withdraw from towns including Jabalia, Khan Younis, and Gaza City. There have been two major withdrawals from Gaza, the last in April.

That means that the IDF is continually putting its soldiers’ lives at risk to retake strategic targets which previous IDF units had already risked their lives to secure.

According to Likud MK Amit Halevi, the situation is even more dire. In a recent statement, he claimed that Hamas is still a fully functioning military entity.

None of this is what we expected immediately after 10/7. My last column was about how organized American Jewish leadership has failed. To some extent, Israeli leadership is failing too. Jewish leaders must take the protection of Jewish physical lives as seriously as groups like Chabad take the protection of our spiritual (and physical) lives.

This week Israel scaled back its operation in Rafah. This was apparently another attempt to appease the Biden administration. The war will not be won if Israel doesn’t commit to victory. We are now closer to the next Simchat Torah, then we are to the tragic one of 10/7. Even more Jewish lives will be lost if Netanyahu, the rest of the war cabinet, and the IDF leadership don’t start engaging in actions that meet their (mostly empty, in my opinion) rhetoric.

The government must do what it promised to do in October: utterly destroy Hamas.

If they can’t handle this, how will they handle Hezbollah?

Never give in. Never give up.

Am Yisrael Chai


This article originally appeared in Orange County Jewish Life.

Joshua Namm is a longtime Jewish community pro, passionate Israel advocate, and co-founder/co-CEO of Moptu, a unique social platform designed specifically for article sharing and dedicated to the principle of free speech.