The Ceasefire Illusion and the Long Disease of Jewish Denial
There’s a moment every cancer patient dreads more than diagnosis itself — that fragile instant when the doctor says, “Stage One.” The words are meant to comfort: It’s early. It’s treatable. You have time. But anyone who’s lived through it knows that “Stage One” is still cancer. It’s not the absence of danger — it’s the quiet before it explodes.
Israel, too, has been living in its Stage One for decades. Every ceasefire, every truce, every so-called peace process has been nothing but a medical illusion — a temporary remission of a disease the world refuses to name. The cancer is not Gaza. It’s not even Hamas. The true malignancy lies in the ideology that sanctifies death, glorifies hatred, and feeds its children the fantasy that killing a Jew is holy.
The world, with its infinite moral vanity, still insists that this is a conflict between equals. But the conflict is not between Israel and Gaza. It’s between civilization and barbarism. Between life and the worship of death. And yet, the diplomats and editorial boards prescribe the same familiar therapy — “ceasefire,” “restraint,” “confidence-building measures.” As if human decency were a kind of chemotherapy that might make the cancer see reason.
But cancer doesn’t reason. Cancer spreads.
From 1949’s “armistice” to Oslo’s “peace process,” Israel has been asked to mistake breathing for healing. Each truce was a ritual of denial, an exercise in global self-deception: “We’ve contained it,” the world said, as the next generation of children in Gaza were taught to hate.
After 1948 came the “temporary” armistice lines that froze Israel inside a coffin of geography.
After 1967 came the promise of “land for peace,” and we discovered that surrendering land brought neither peace nor love, only proximity to rockets.
After 1973 came “disengagement.”
After Oslo came “hope.”
After every massacre came “restraint.”
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Stage One in 2025 — just another round in the same unhealed wound. |
Every ceasefire is Stage One — the illusion of control, the pause mistaken for progress. The tumor sleeps; the world applauds. And then it wakes up again — more aggressive, more resilient, more convinced that Israel lacks the moral will to finish what it starts.
Israel’s wars have never been against one enemy, one border, or one generation. They are against an idea — the idea that the Jew must never be sovereign, that Jewish blood is cheap, and that Jewish power is a cosmic mistake.
That idea has metastasized. It has spread from Gaza to Europe’s capitals, to American universities, to NGOs dressed up as human rights crusaders. The hatred that once wore the uniform of the Egyptian army now wears the mask of “intersectionality.” The rockets have become hashtags, the tunnels have become boycotts, but the ideology is the same: erase the Jew, delegitimize his nation, sanctify his suffering only when he’s dead.
The West doesn’t even recognize its own infection. It still clings to the myth that this is a conflict about borders. But no border will ever satisfy those who believe Israel itself is the disease.
The Torah saw this pathology long before the diplomats did.
“Do not show them mercy, nor shall you make covenant with them” (Devarim 7:2).
Because misplaced compassion — mercy for the cruel — becomes cruelty to the merciful. Rambam wrote that when life is threatened, mercy becomes sin. Pikuach nefesh docheh hakol — the preservation of life overrides everything.
The world worships moral symmetry. The Torah rejects it. There is no equivalence between a nation defending its citizens and a cult that trains its children to die for Allah. Yet every ceasefire pretends there is. The result is predictable: the world rewards pathology and punishes survival.
The pattern repeats: the headlines change, the enemy’s name changes, the years pass — but Israel remains in permanent Stage One. The diagnosis never progresses because the world never allows the cure. “Proportional response,” they lecture, as if morality were measured in matching body counts. “Peace process,” they insist, as if coexistence were possible with those who see your existence as a sin.
Stage One in 1948.
Stage One in 1967.
Stage One in 1973.
Stage One in 2009.
Stage One in 2014.
Stage One in 2021.
Stage One in 2023.
And now, again, Stage One in 2025 — just another round in the same unhealed wound.
Every ceasefire has been another denial of diagnosis. Every truce, another postponement of the inevitable surgery. The world prefers Israel “contained.” It cannot stomach a Jewish state that cuts out its own cancer without permission.
Real peace, like real healing, requires clarity. It requires the moral courage to destroy what threatens life, not manage it. Israel must finally stop believing that evil can be persuaded into remission. It cannot. Evil doesn’t compromise; it consumes.
The world calls it “de-escalation.”
Heaven calls it procrastination.
Israel has tried the treatments: restraint, diplomacy, land concessions, apologies, press releases. None have cured the disease. The only cure is the same now as it was in Sinai: moral certainty. To defend life without apology. To stop measuring survival by the standards of those who prefer Jews quiet, weak, or gone. Stage One is the moment of mercy — when there’s still time to act. Stage Two is the obituary.
Israel stands again at the edge of that decision. It can live in remission — endlessly negotiating with its own destroyers — or it can choose life. U’vacharta ba’chaim. “And you shall choose life.” (Devarim 30:19)
But choosing life sometimes means refusing a pretend peace. It means refusing to pretend that a ceasefire with death is anything but suicide by increments.
Because history has taught this patient one brutal truth:
There is no peace with cancer.
Only cure — or collapse.
And the time to choose has come again.
Because make no mistake: it’s just a matter of time.
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