Part of Israel’s Revenge Is To Continue Building, and Growing, and Loving Life, and Being Happy
Israel wins the way it has been winning for over three-quarters of a century, with a strong military but equally important, thriving not just surviving. We could learn lessons from them.

Today was a difficult day to watch Hamas and Gaza “civilians” taunt and humiliate the three female hostages released in exchange for 90 terrorists, many with blood and death on their hands. In total, when this first part of the “deal” is done, if it is done, 33 hostages including the Bibas children and parents (dead or alive, we don’t know) will be released for over 1000 terrorists. There are over 60 more hostages, it’s unkown how many are alive or dead, for negotiation after this first round is completed.
Of course it was great seeing the three women released and reunited with family.
First moments of Romi, Emily, and Doron reuniting with their families. 🎗🇮🇱
📸: IDF Spokespersons' Unit pic.twitter.com/tEVx5G8SnB
— Government Press Office 🇮🇱 (@GPOIsrael) January 19, 2025
As usual, today’s Hamas show of strength was in many ways a Pallywood production, highly managed crowds and cropped video leading one to think there were 10s of thousands of people there. In fact, there were a few hundred as this overhead showed.
I was asked several times today about the optics of Hamas’ obvious strength.
Here’s the real optics:
A few hundred people crammed together to make it look like endless masses.
Today the images from the ground were orchestrated by Hamas, they wanted to project power, everything… pic.twitter.com/PDCeIw3zW7— Lt. Col. (R) Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) January 19, 2025
Videos released of well-fed “civilians” celebrating and “journalists” removing their press vests, put the lie to so much of the Palestinian propaganda campaign.
They lied to you, they’re proud of it, and they’re kind of amazed you bought it. https://t.co/8xT9KTgyZJ
— Haviv Rettig Gur (@havivrettiggur) January 19, 2025
Aljazeera documented how Hamas's al-Qassam Brigade fighters emerged from the Nasser Hospital complex with their weapons and vehicles in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, as soon as the ceasefire went into effect, similar to how they emerged from displacement tents 3 days ago. pic.twitter.com/7rYftKYBlS
— Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (@afalkhatib) January 19, 2025
Well fed, well groomed, iPhones out.
I've been to places in Iran where people suffer far more than these "genocide survivors". 15 months of pure gaslighting.
— 𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) January 19, 2025
The information warfare used to secure Hamas’s survival is unlike anything ever seen in the past. Lie after lie after lie, amplified relentlessly. A complete capture of the flow of information even on Wikipedia. We need to be honest and admit it worked, and understand that such… https://t.co/4VdR7FmXil
— William A. Jacobson (@wajacobson) January 19, 2025
Nonetheless, the deal is horrible at so many levels. We know from the past that these bloodthirsty terrorists go on to commit more terrorism (about 80% will) and to kill. Yahya Sinwar, the deranged matermind of 10/7, was among 1000 terrorists released in the Gilad Shalit hostage deal in 2011. That deal cost thousands of Israeli lives in the ensuing years.
How to explain why decade after decade Israel keeps trading terrorists for hostages? Rachel Gur explains:
Of course it’s a bad deal. Any deal that releases murders is vile but if you believe we had a choice here then you don’t understand the DNA of the Israeli psyche.
We cannot leave them behind. We cannot move on. We must get our people back. No matter what. This is who we are.
The desire to get every last person back is noble and admirable, but it means it will happen again. While I am thrilled and was moved to see the three women freed, there are parents and families who will be traumatized in the present by seeing the killers of their loved ones released, and in the future by having loved ones yet-unkown murdered by the released terrorists. The joys of the current hostage families will be offset by the horror of other families.
On the evening of October 7, 2023, when the toll of the murder spree and hostage taking was becoming clear, I wrote that Israel couldn’t have it both ways, completely destroying Hamas while getting all the hostages back alive:
The carnage and savagry will require Israel to decapitate Hamas. The old normal has to change.
The hostages held in Gaza will not be recovered alive unless Israel gives major concessions and leaves Hamas in power. While of course Israel wants to get them back alive, Israeli military options are severely constrained if that is the goal. Hamas has grown comfortable taking hostages and using them as shields to temper Israeli military responses. The goals of toppling Hamas and getting the hostages back alive are not consistent. Israel faces a tough choice.
Netanyahu and Israel didn’t pick one or the other, they tried to achieve both objectives. It’s too simple to say that it failed — Hamas has been severely damaged in a way it never expected, but it has not been completely eliminated as we saw today. Israel never was given the free hand to finish Hamas off because of pressure mostly from the Biden administration but also because of concern over the lives of the hostages.
So how does Israel as a country continue to live this way?
Part of it is to have a strong military. The intelligence failures that permitted 10/7, and the mistakes in thinking Hamas could reform itself, were intense and not yet fully understood. Yet Israel not only severely damaged Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, it emasculated Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Assad in Syria, and set back the Iranian “Axis of Resistance” immeasurably, clearing the way for a future destruction of Iran’s nuclear program.
The Arabs of the British Mandate of Palestine, who began identifying as a unique Palestinian nationality in the 1960s, could have had their own state in 1936, 1947, 1967, 2001, and 2008, but always rejected it because it is a culture revolving around hatred of Jews.
The tragedy of the Palestinians is that whereas other Arab countries have their own separate identity, their own history, the Palestinians have been constructed only around the negation of Zionism, only around resistance to a Jewish state,
says @EinatWilf in a V24 interview. pic.twitter.com/zz2tRGXkDP
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 18, 2025
Hamas terrorist leading children in chants of "Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Yahud" — a well-known rallying cry to murder Jews.
This is a deeply ill society.pic.twitter.com/HFNzpsxIR6
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) January 19, 2025
But the military isn’t the only way.
Continuing to build, and growing the country, and loving life, and being happy also is the Israeli way. Despite all its problems, Israel is the 4th happiest country in the world, after Finland, Denmark, and Iceland (the U.S. is No. 15). Among economically developed OECD countries, Israel has the highest birth rate (a measure of happiness) by far, the only OECD country exceeding replacement levels.
Israeli Jewish and Arab birthrates are about the same, with religious Jews having the highest at over 6. But even ‘secular’ Jews in Israel have a birth rate of 2.2 children per woman, seen nowhere else in the developed world. Christian and Druze birthrates are also high compared to other developed countries.
Israel wins the way it has been winning for over three-quarters of a century, with a strong military but equally important, thriving not just surviving. We could learn lessons from them.

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Comments
I have posted that I thought this was a rotten deal and that letting all these killers loose would result in far more future Israeli deaths than the number of hostages still alive. However, I have had some second thoughts on Israel making it. The population of Gaza is about 2 million and more than half are under 20. Because of the brainwashing, that means that every year Hamas can likely demographically replace all that Israel can kill – unless Israel vaporizes Gaza. Unless Israel want to be in a perpetual state of active war, perhaps this deal, the USA really squeezing Iran (again) and Mossad going after any remaining leaders of Hamas not killed is the best that can reasonably be hoped for?
The headline seems to speak of a ” let bygones be bygones” attitude. The videos of the hundreds of hostile “Palestinian civilians” surrounding the freed Israeli women speaks the truth that the Palestinian culture of hate for the Israelis is alive and well. The idea that there were innocent Palestinian civilians was nor more true then that were innocent German or Japanese civilians of so long ago. It is obvious, at least to me, that this infection of hate will continue until one or the other is conquered. The peace deal simply extends the date.of reckoning
Israel and the USA should treat Hamas the same way we treated the NAZIs during WW2. B52s firebombing Hama. No one should feel sorry for Hamas and the residents of Gaza. They can surrender if they want to end the war, otherwise they will have to accept the hell they started.
It doesn’t count as any sort of revenge but simply ordinary human obligation, offering another chance at mutually beneficial trade. If Israel stops offering that then there’s no moral point to the religion.
Yes. why don’t those stubborn vengeful Jews stop worrying about their own survival and just turn the other cheek. You know, the way the U.K., the U.S., Germany and other Christian countries have always done.
Excellent post. Thank you.
One has to believe there is more to this deal than we’ve been told. Perhaps Trump has assured Netanyahu that the US will act to cut off Iran’s money and, accordingly, Hamas’ principal source of funding. Or, knowing that Hamas will violate the cease fire sooner rather than later, perhaps the Israelis have been assured that once a serious violation occurs, Israel will be “weapons free.” I’m sure there are other possibilities that have not — and should not — be publicized.
I hope you’re right.
Nah, ain’t buying it.
30 to 1 and not all of the hostages/bodies is not a positive example.
The left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) continually calls the IDFs actions in Gaza a “genocide”. Perhaps it’s time for one. (mostly kidding)
I hope that Israel learned a lesson from having the evil Hamas butchers. Every village along the border should b e prepared to resist attackers.
The villages should be fortified with mines, barbed wire and concrete fire resistant buildings. The residents should be armed and ready to defend themselves with military equipment. Maintain a minimal guard around the village 24 hours a day.
As of right now Israel is in a critically weak position that frankly makes future viability questionable.
The west is almost entirely against it, the American consensus on Israel is about as dead as the dinosaurs, the total list of non-western countries on Israel’s side is Modi controlled India and it is anything but clear that Modi’s party could win elections without Modi who is not an immortal, and it has been exposed as unable to win a war.
We are highly unlikely to get another Hamas attack for years because Hamas needs to rebuild and incorporate lessons from the endless failures to produce collateral damage during this conflict before the next but rest assured Israel like every other country is incapable of existing alone and Israel is perilously close to being in the position of Apartheid South Africa but roughly 1000 times worst (which college was full of ANC flags?).
If Israel can’t either win back the west or win over non-western nations…..I also do not even know that Israelis are trying instead of just throwing up their hands and wrongly saying the world is destined to hate us (which is the definition of a self fulfilling prophecy).
The diplomatic fallout of the war is massive.
Mizrahi Jews who have no western ties, and have lived in Israel all of their lives are paying money for lessons in order to sound like they are either Americans or Europeans thinking that will make them more palatable to a western audience being told Jews are colonizers……
Israel’s twin enemies are bad ideas for winning over people, and self fulfilling prophecies that prevent even trying.
Disturbing Details Emerge: Recently Released Hamas Hostages Were Being Held in U.N. Compounds
One of the many reasons those in Gaza hate Israelis is because Israel goes on living and being relatively successful. Believe the term is “making the desert bloom”. Shows what failure the surrounding cultures are, as their members, economically speaking, are miserable.