After all that has happened in Gaza since October 7th, what we saw this past week is that the Palestinians still don’t believe they lost.
Thousands of Gazans were sacrificed in a war started by their reprehensible leaders. They were left defenseless above ground as Hamas fighters hid in tunnels. There wasn’t even one bomb shelter built for them to flee to. The tons of aid that was trucked in was hijacked by Hamas and sold off at inflated prices.
They suffered months of bombing, of displacement, of hardship and of suffering.
And now, as they flock back to their homes in the northern part of the strip, they see for themselves what Hamas has brought upon them.
The scale of the destruction is immense.
Just this past Thursday, after a visit to Gaza, President Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said, there is “almost nothing left” and rebuilding could take 10 to 15 years.
The Palestinians of Gaza, now that there is a ceasefire, are coming face to face with the reality of what their war has cost them, with its mountains of rubble and miles of misery.
Yet they continue to praise the Hamas death cult and embrace the terrorists.
All you have to do is watch the videos of two petrified young women and an 80-year old man, the freed hostages from this past week, being forced to run a gauntlet of ecstatic Gazans. Men, women, children cheering and jeering.
What are they cheering for? What are they celebrating? Their “victory” over the Jews.
Their delusion comes from the terrorist leaders of Gaza, the UN, UNRWA, the EU and so many others, who have told the Palestinians they are victims of Israeli colonialism, apartheid and occupation. They’ve been indoctrinated with the belief their land was stolen from them by the Jews and they have the right to return to the homes they left more than 75 years ago.
And, they have the useful idiots in the west glorifying their so-called resistance and delegitimizing Israel.
Delusionally, they believe Israel is just another October 7th away from collapse.
The Palestinians’ refusal to internalize what has befallen them is underpinned by a bottomless hatred for Jews that is passed down from generation to generation. That fact was articulated surprisingly well this past week by Senator Lindsey Graham.
Graham said, “The most radicalized population on the planet is the young people in Gaza. From the time they are born to the time they die they are taught to kill and hate Jews.”
What Graham said is backed up firsthand by the freed hostage, Liri Elbag. Liri told her father, as she recuperates in an Israeli hospital after her release from Hamas hell, “Dad, there are two million terrorists [in Gaza], make no mistake. I sat with eight and four year old children who were cursing the Jews.”
Their hatred runs so deep. Their delusions run so deep.
If you argue that the Israelis are to blame, that they’ve inflicted so much pain on Gaza that it makes peace impossible, history tells us that’s not true.
What Israel has done in Gaza is no where near the brutality and destruction inflicted on Japan and Germany in World War II by the United States and the allies.
The number of German civilian deaths due to the war, is estimated to be about 800,000.
German cities like Dresden were cruelly, and some say needlessly, bombed into oblivion.
But on May 7th, 1945, in Reims, France, Germany surrendered to the allies. The war ended, the German people made peace. They accepted defeat.
We know all too well what happened to Imperial Japan.
The United States dropped two atomic bombs that brought the war to an end. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized. Tokyo was also leveled in a firestorm of American bombing.
Estimates of Japanese civilian deaths in World War II are in the two to three million range.
But on September 2, 1945, the Japanese military surrendered aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The Japanese people made peace. They accepted defeat.
General Douglas MacArthur virtually wrote their new constitution and created a parliamentary democracy.
In Germany, the painstaking process of denazification was undertaken in all layers of German society and government. There were some Nazis that slipped through the cracks and who weren’t punished, but a viable and a peaceful German democracy was established.
In defeat, there was an acceptance that things had to change. There was a will for peace. That’s clearly not the case in Gaza.
So, the politicians and the diplomats can blah-blah all they want about the “day after” in Gaza, of a rebuilt and reimagined Gaza. But at the heart of the problem are the people of Gaza. They are no closer to accepting defeat and embracing peace than they were a year and a half ago.
They still chant victory! and vow there will be more October 7th’s.
After all the death and destruction, after all the heartache and pain, that’s the cruel reality, the real reality if you will, of the war in Gaza.
The Palestinians are no closer to living in peace with the Israelis because they cannot accept defeat and turn to peace.
And that’s why this war will not be the war to end all wars in Gaza. One side won, but the other side refuses to admit it lost.