This week, 69 years ago, U.S. leaders decided they had no other choice but to end the war against Japan in one fell swoop: the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Three days later, the U.S. confirmed the kill, destroying Nagasaki with another atomic bomb. No, the U.S. did not call the residents of these cities beforehand to warn them. There were no "knocks on the roof" to tell them to leave their cities, which were about to be wiped off the face of the earth. This is how a superpower acts when it has lost tens of thousands of its soldiers far from its shores.
Hamas is not the Imperial Japanese Army and Israel is not the U.S. Yet still, something can be learned from the processes the U.S. and Japan went through during World War II. Japan then, like Hamas now, knew its fate was sealed. Japan deployed a secret weapon -- kamikaze pilots, who took thousands of American lives. But in the end, Japan paid a terrible price and was defeated.
Hamas has dragged Gazans into the same abyss that millions of Japanese were dragged into. Unlike the U.S., which fought far away from home, the Israel Defense Forces' fight against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists can be viewed from the windows of homes in Netiv Haasara, Nahal Oz and Nirim. Our soldiers are fighting for their homes as their families watch on. There is no war more just than the one we are currently fighting against Hamas in Gaza.
Thus, in addition to quiet, a cease-fire must lead to the demilitarization of Gaza, which was included in past agreements signed by the Palestinians in Washington and Cairo.
It would be delusional to think Hamas would voluntarily disarm itself. Hamas must be demilitarized by force!
Egypt, the country which currently has the most effective leverage on Hamas in Gaza, has a key to play in promoting Israel's demand that the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza be dismantled. Israel must insist that future diplomatic negotiations be conducted with a single Palestinian authoritative body, which governs both in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza. No more peace talks with only with the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.
Listening to the U.N. drumbeat, it appears Richard Goldstone will soon be summoned for reserve duty. If, God forbid, this does happen, we must avoid the mistakes we made during the investigation that followed Operation Cast Lead. This time, we must take an active and aggressive role in providing data and facts to the investigators. Let's remove the masks from the faces of U.N. Relief and Works Agency employees, who today are mostly Hamas members. On top of every sack of flour in UNRWA warehouses in Gaza, there are now sacks of explosives and rockets.
Let's show the mosques, hospitals and health clinics that have been turned into terrorist command centers and weapons storage sites. Let's expose the chemistry labs at higher education institutions that have been used to produce propellant for rockets and mortar shells. Let's reveal the cement that was supposed to be used to build homes for refugees, but was instead poured to reinforce the terror tunnels. Let's help investigators see Gaza through a catheter and understand that Hamas has become a monstrous cancerous tumor. Israel has tried to reduce the size of this tumor with three radiation treatments (Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Defense and Operation Protective Edge). But the malignant tumor now must be removed -- either by an Egyptian diplomatic surgeon or an Israeli military one.
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