All literary people have heard of "Waiting for Godot." (Don't ask me; I'm not a literary man.)
All men of good will are now waiting, with bated breath, for Rafah. We have been waiting for Rafah for quite some time now. What is meant by "Waiting for Rafah?" It means we are waiting for the IDF to smash into this city, the last powerful redoubt of Hamas, located in Rafah, in the south of Gaza. There, waiting like rats in a trap, are some four battalions of Hamas, comprised of about 1000 terrorists, for a total of roughly 4000 of these scum. If they stay as intact as they now are, if Israel can be persuaded to leave them in situ, they will remain a serious threat to engage in yet another atrocity of the October 7, 2033 level. It is thus imperative that they be completely neutralized.
Why is Netanyahu waiting to attack and pulverize them? The IDF is way more than a match for these murderous scoundrels. One reason is that there are some one million civilian Gazans also located in that metropolis. An all-out invasion would spell the deaths of many of them, at least some of whom are innocent. The Biden Administration of the United States (with friends like these who needs enemies?) is adamant that no such offensive take place; if it does, dire threats will endanger Israel at the hands of its erstwhile ally. Egypt is adamant that the women and children in this beleaguered city not be allowed into the Sinai Peninsula under any circumstance. The usual whiners in Europe, and, to be fair, all around the world, are equally determined to turn Israel into a pariah state if it proceeds with its self-defense in this manner. The United Nations, as is its wont, is engaging in apoplexy at the prospect that Israel will invade, capture its hostages, and end this war.
The US has not won a war in the last 80 years. Sorry, Grenada just does not count. And yet the administration of this country has had the effrontery to advise Israel on the best practices to conduct hostilities. Anthony Blinken has visited this country on numerous occasions, forbidding this, demanding that, and making a general pain in the neck of himself. Has America no shame?
Why are we waiting? We are waiting for Rafah until Israel can have its cake and eat it too: invade, while minimizing damage to civilians. One good sign is that this country has recently come by some 40,000 tents, which hold a dozen or so people each. They can in this way house more than half a million people in refugee camps in the Negev Desert. It is imperative, however, that only the Arab elderly, along with women and children, be allowed therein. Hamas fighters do not necessarily adhere to uniforms, and to allow them into Israel, proper, would be a disaster on too many levels to even contemplate. Fighting-age Palestinian men should be strictly prohibited from access to this new development.
This will not be an easy task, as Hamas is a master of use its civilians as shields, something the rest of the world does not fully consider.
Thank goodness to two Israeli patriots, who keep the ship of the Israeli state on the correct defensive posture. Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, warned Mr. Netanyahu that if he "decides to end the war without a broad attack on Rafah to defeat Hamas, he won't have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister". And in the view of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, "we have to increase the pressure on Hamas in Gaza, which is the only way to bring back the [Israeli] hostages and destroy Hamas".
The heroic Prime Minister Netanyahu has set a date for the invasion of Rafah. In doing so, he is cocking a snook against the Biden Administration of the US and against much of the rest of the world. If this is not courageous, nothing is courageous. Let that date be sooner rather than later. The hostages can only hold out for so long. Let that date be yesterday.
