Major General Daniel Hagari has been a talking point on X this week. He’s a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. You may have seen him in press conferences, interviews and video clips trying to tell the world the truth about Gaza: hundreds of miles of terror tunnels beneath the homes and streets, brimming with weapons, workshops and schools.
He talks about Hamas’ connections to UN facilities, its headquarters in the basement of a hospital, missile launchers in residential areas, etc. He has done a fantastic job exposing Hamas and the war for what it is, and until this week seemed like a really trustworthy guy.
Hamas is not just an idea. It is now not just an entity. It is a government!
in He said in an Israeli television interview: He said that it is impossible to destroy Hamas because “Hamas is an idea.” I want to address some of the major issues I have with his statement.
First, Hamas is not just an idea. An idea grows and grows until it becomes almost a thing. Hamas is the demonic embodiment of a timeless and ageless continuation of hatred. It is a culture of death and child sacrifice. It is one of the worst evils that humanity has ever produced.
Nazism was more than the ideas expressed in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union was more than Marxist nonsense. To be sure, all of these ideas were at the heart of these regimes, but the ideas people, People who turn them into substance.
Should we have given up on eradicating the Nazi part of Nazi Germany? Should we have stopped at the gates of Berlin? Should we have allowed Stalin to conquer the world? Should we have ended all policing, as they are starting to do in America, because someone is always going to steal or murder?
I’m here in the Mountain West and I just mowed my front lawn to keep rattlesnakes away from my house. Snakes will always be around, but does that mean we shouldn’t make an effort to keep them away? Can’t we at least get rid of the snakes under our kids’ feet? Or are we just going to say, “There will always be snakes, so what’s the point?”
Are we really saying that we would have been better off if we had left the Nazis in power, or if the Soviet Union hadn’t lost the Cold War? The ideas behind those evil regimes are not dead, and they probably never will be. But Nazi Germany is dead. The Soviet Union is dead. And the world is immeasurably better off for it.
What about Hamas? It’s not just an idea. It’s not just an organization now. It’s a government! Shouldn’t we try to eliminate all of its members, deny them control of territory, and eliminate their ability to harm others ever again? If Hamas ends its relationship with Israel, do you think it will also end its relationship with the Jewish people?
I believe that Hagar’s comments are a great morale boost for Hamas and its friends Hezbollah and Iran, and a great morale scourge for Israel. When one of the leaders of the Israeli military says that they are fighting a war that they cannot win, what does that say to Israeli soldiers? If you are fighting and you don’t believe that you can win, do not have win.
Think of all those who have fought and died and bled, of the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are still forced from their homes almost nine months later, of the millions who fear and pray for their relatives and friends in uniform, and the millions more who understand that if Hamas does not die today, if we do not slay this snake and mow the lawn, it may come back tomorrow, and maybe bring its friends with it. And the next time may be even worse than the last.
Was his message approved by the government? Because the government is supposed to control the military, and the security cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing power one of its war aims. Of course, the IDF is fully committed to this.
The Major General’s message should scare everyone, not just Israelis. At best, this is just politics. Israelis trust the IDF up to the rank of colonel. Anything above that is a political appointment. Israelis don’t trust the IDF, just like we don’t trust our own army. We trust our soldiers, but when you get to the top of the Pentagon, it’s all politics. The same goes for the Israeli army.
At its worst, this is a sign of another very serious breakdown in the moral fiber of the West. This is not a refugee issue. It is not a territory issue. This is a question of good and evil. This is an existential question facing our civilization, not only for Israel but also for the West. The West is full of supporters of Hamas and its clones. They are marching in our cities!
Do you think a reinvigorated Hamas is a good thing for America? Our common enemy has openly declared its will to defeat the great devil. They say Israel is the little devil. We are the great devil, and they will soon have us in their sights too. If Israel loses this war, the world will be darker. But that is not the end. They will have the rest of us in their sights too. We must rise up. We must defeat the monster and defend our home.
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