There’s a line somewhere in Herman Wouk’s “The Winds of War,” in which one of the Henry family, Victor or Byron, responds to demands on Germany as, ‘Isn’t that pretty arrogant, demanding that Germany accept a defeat no one has actually inflicted on them?’ I may have been slightly imprecise with the quote, but I did get the sentiment correct.

And so we come to Hamas and the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs. From London’s The Telegraph:

Hamas leader says hostage deal is ‘all or nothing’

Yahya Sinwar has reportedly insisted on a lasting ceasefire and the release of all Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile figures

by Nataliya Vasilyeva • 21 December 2023 • 7:33 PM

Jerusalem — Hamas’s de-facto leader has said he will only agree to a new truce if it guarantees the release of all Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails, according to reports.

Al Arabi Al Jadidi, a Qatari newspaper, on Thursday quoted an unnamed Egyptian official saying the “leadership of Hamas” had rejected Israel’s offer of a temporary truce in exchange for the release of several dozen Israeli hostages.

Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, insisted on a lasting ceasefire and all Palestinian prisoners being released, including several high-profile figures, the newspaper reported.

Simply put, the distinguished Mr Sinwar is demanding that Israel accept a defeat that no one has inflicted on them. Good luck with that!

Sinwar also reportedly demanded that Israel halt its combat operations in Gaza before the deal goes into effect.

Hamas later on Thursday said it would reject any deals to free more hostages until Israel stops bombing Gaza.

“If Israel wants its prisoners alive, then it has no other options but to stop the aggression and the war,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing.

Let’s tell the truth here: Hamas are directly threatening to kill the remaining hostages if the Israel Defence Force does not halt operations and let Hamas survive. As the #woke^[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading left keep whining that the IDF are committing “genocide,” one wonders if it has penetrated their thick skulls that Hamas are threatening the war crime of killing prisoners?

Oh, that’s different, somehow.

There comes a point at which Israel, at which any nation which has some of its citizens held hostage, to force that nation to do something against its own national interests, has to decide that the hostages are simply the unfortunate casualties of war.

The United States learned a hard lesson on this in the 1980s. President Reagan, nice guy that he was, thought that he could win the freedom of American hostages held by the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, through a convoluted arms deal with the terrorists’ sponsor, Iran. And it worked: we got our hostages back.

But we also established a value for taking hostages, and while President Reagan got those captured people back, Hezbollah simply turned around and seized new hostages.

So it is for Israel. Perhaps there could be some sort of cease-fire agreement, and Hamas release all of the hostages they’ve seized, but at the cost of allowing Hamas to survive, and get its top terrorists back. And the next time Hamas tries something — and there will always be a next time with these savages — Hamas will know: there’s real value in seizing civilian hostages.

According to The New York Times, Israel counts 129 people as still being held hostage, though they believe that 21 of them are already dead.

It would have to be a cold-blooded, and horrible, decision to have to take, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ‘war cabinet’ have to decide that these people should all be counted as dead, and not only continue but intensify their attack on Hamas. Israel needs to just plain kill every Hamas leader they can find, regardless of where they are — Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar — and take the actions necessary. Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and all of the top Hamas people need to assume room temperature, to let those younger men who believe they can rise to the top of Hamas that, if they do, they’ll go to meet their 72 virgins.

Israel is a Western democracy, and as conservative as the government are, they are still constrained by the cultural morés of their culture. But Hamas, the ‘Palestinians,’ and the Arabs in general are not part of Western civilization, and we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that they think or act or respond as those of us in the civilized world do.