The Duty of Absolute Victory Over Tyrannical Regimes
The Holocaust teaches a fundamental strategic lesson: Some forms of evil must be completely defeated and eradicated. Even if a partial victory could neutralize the threat and save lives, certain ideologies are so dangerous that they must not be allowed to persist in any governing state.
In World War II, Western Allies lost approximately 70,000 soldiers in battles on German soil, while the Soviets lost 80,000 in the Berlin campaign alone. These 150,000 soldiers might have survived had the Allies accepted a peace treaty that left Germany demilitarized, diminished, and defeated. Such an agreement would have required only one concession: allowing the Nazi state to continue existing. This could have secured a superficial peace, but the Allies rejected it.
At the war’s end, the Nazi regime was willing to negotiate such a "surrender," but the Allies refused. They understood that the Nazi state’s survival, in any form, was unacceptable. To achieve its complete destruction, Allied leaders were prepared to sacrifice 150,000 soldiers’ lives—a decision that also prolonged suffering for German civilians.
This lesson applies even more urgently to the Hamas-controlled state in Gaza.
Hamas’s regime in Gaza surpasses Nazi Germany in its extremism. Its ideology, rooted in violence and intolerance, enjoys significant support among Gaza’s population, arguably exceeding the support for Nazism in Germany. Hamas’s actions, such as the Simchat Torah attack, reflect a reckless and destructive fanaticism that outstrips even the Nazis’ calculated aggression. If World War II was a brutal but strategic endeavor, Hamas’s attacks are dangerously irrational by comparison.
If Nazi Germany’s survival was unthinkable, the continued existence of Hamas’s regime in Gaza is equally unacceptable. It must be completely dismantled as a governing entity. No other outcome can legitimately end our conflict with this regime.
(Eliyahu Ben Asher)
