Pollard: Israel must stop waiting for the next October 7

The murder of Netanel Shakron in front of his teenage son on Erev Yom Kippur exposes the deadly cost of Israel’s decades-long policy of managing Palestinian terrorism rather than defeating it.

By Jonathan Pollard

Netanel Shakron, a Jewish father of six, was murdered by an Arab terrorist in front of his 16-year-old son on Erev Yom Kippur, after the two had gone to the Ein Raya spring near Neve Tzuf to immerse before the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

Although there are already calls for the captured terrorist responsible for this crime to be executed, whether that actually happens remains to be seen.

What is certain, though, is that both our political leaders and the IDF’s General Staff bear a large share of the blame for their continuing failure to eliminate the terrorist threat that claimed Netanel Shakron’s life.

As far as I’m concerned, they could have done far more to prevent attacks like this one if they had been willing to abandon the failed policy of managing terrorism rather than decisively defeating it.

Managing Terror Instead of Defeating It

Ever since we liberated Judea and Samaria in June 1967, successive Israeli governments have had the opportunity to assert sovereignty over the Territories and eliminate the hostile forces that have challenged Jewish sovereignty there.

But this never happened because our politicians have been too afraid of the world’s reaction, while our generals have, for the most part, been either too ignorant of Jewish history or too lacking in faith to appreciate what G-d had given exclusively to us.

And now another Jewish father of six is dead.

In their defense, our civilian and military leaders will undoubtedly claim that they are doing their best to stamp out terrorism in Judea and Samaria. After all, don’t they send highly trained commando teams almost every week into terrorist strongholds such as Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Shechem to seize wanted terrorists?

Unfortunately, as we all know, these high-risk operations are not draining the swamp, so to speak. Within a matter of hours or days, replacements step forward to take the places of their captured or eliminated friends, and the terror cycle continues.

This has occurred so often that we have come to call the process “mowing the grass” due to its futility.

My fellow citizens are not stupid. Most of them understand that such tactics may temporarily disrupt terrorist organizations operating throughout the Territories, but will never defeat them and can create the illusion that the problem is being solved while Jewish blood continues to be spilled.

The Threat We Have Allowed to Grow

But this is not the worst of it. We have also allowed the Palestinian Authority’s security forces to develop into a large, heavily armed force that has received extensive foreign training and whose weapons and training could ultimately be turned against us.

Although the danger posed by such a force has been discussed for years, successive governments and military leaders have failed to neutralize it. Instead, they have left the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, hoping that the rope will hold long enough for them to retire.

Finally, though, people are beginning to wake up to this threat and are demanding that something be done about it.

And the government’s response?

Defense Minister Israel Katz has warned that if the Palestinian Authority’s security forces or affiliated bodies launch, or are found to be preparing, an October 7-style assault, Israel will wage an “all-out war,” eliminate senior figures, destroy terrorist infrastructure and maintain an IDF presence in evacuated areas.

But this raises an obvious question: Why must we wait for another October 7 before acting decisively?

The danger facing the Jews of Judea and Samaria does not consist solely of thousands of armed men storming our communities. It also comes from individual terrorists like the one who just murdered Netanel Shakron.

We call this the death of a thousand cuts, and the cumulative damage it can inflict on our civilian population can be devastating. Anyone who remembers what our lives were like during the First and Second Intifadas should understand exactly where such a process can lead.

The Oslo Illusion

Though people don’t want to hear this, the fact is that ever since the Oslo Agreements were signed, our political and military leaders have persisted with policies that, in my view, have repeatedly resulted in Jewish blood being spilled both in the Territories and in Israel proper.

They haven’t even succeeded in permanently ending the Palestinian Authority’s system of financially rewarding terrorists and their families, yet we are somehow still expected to behave as though the basic assumptions underlying Oslo remain viable, despite more than three decades of evidence to the contrary.

Part of this self-inflicted blindness is caused by the continued unwillingness of our political establishment to acknowledge the catastrophic mistake it made in embracing Oslo in the first place.

More than three decades have passed since those agreements were signed, which is more than enough time to judge the experiment by its results rather than by the promises made when it began.

Another problem with our political and military elites is that ever since the Disengagement, they seem incapable of doing anything decisive one way or the other with regard to the Territories. Their procrastination has become so consistent that it has acquired its own description: “kicking the can down the road.”

This mentality helped create the conditions that culminated in October 7 and continues to cost Jewish lives today.

Wooden Villages in a Fire Zone

Granted, the current government has authorized a lot of new Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, which it clearly hopes will establish a form of de facto sovereignty. In addition, Jewish communities in northern Samaria that were uprooted during the Disengagement are finally beginning to return.

But unless Israel dismantles the terrorist infrastructure surrounding our communities, removes terrorists and those who actively support and enable them, and ensures that the Palestinian Authority can never become a military threat to the Jewish population, all we have done is build more wooden villages in a fire zone.

When and how this murderous stream of Arab violence will finally end isn’t clear. What should be clear by now, however, is that even if we were foolish enough to grant them a state, their war against Jewish sovereignty would not simply end.

Our conflict with them has a profound religious dimension, something our largely irreligious political and military establishment has consistently failed to understand. It concerns sovereignty, identity and, ultimately, whether the Jewish people possess the right to exercise permanent control over their ancestral homeland.

This is ultimately a zero-sum struggle over who will exercise sovereignty over the Jewish heartland, and no amount of diplomatic wordplay can change that reality. One side’s vision will ultimately prevail, and we had better make certain that it is ours.

This means recognizing that terrorists, along with those who actively support and enable their war against the Jewish people, cannot be permitted to remain in a position from which they can continue threatening Jewish lives.

Israel has both the right and the obligation to remove that threat and ensure that it cannot simply regenerate a few months or years later.

I just want my enemies far enough away from me so that I can celebrate Yom Kippur without having to have a 9mm Sig Sauer strapped to my shoulder. Is this really asking too much?

A Yom Kippur Reckoning

Yom Kippur requires Jews to reckon honestly with where they’ve fallen short.

With regard to their disastrously inadequate handling of the legal and political status of the Territories, as well as the continuing terrorist threat there, Israel’s political and military leadership could use some of that same discipline.

Netanel Shakron went with his son to immerse on Erev Yom Kippur. His son came home because his father managed to warn him to run.

Netanel did not.

Fifty-nine years after the Six-Day War returned Judea and Samaria to Jewish control, it is time for us to reassert our sovereignty over our G-d-given heartland, dismantle the terrorist infrastructure there, remove those who wage or actively facilitate war against the Jewish people, and ensure that no Palestinian governing or military authority is ever again permitted to pose a threat to Jewish life.

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