A ceasefire in Israel puts Jews at risk of annihilation at the hands of Hamas

On Oct. 7, a family of four—a mother, father, and two children—were having breakfast in their kitchen when Hamas terrorists broke into their home, bound their hands, and set them on fire such that they watched one another burn alive.

We are Jews. They put us in ovens when we had no power. They burn us alive when we do.

On social media, in guest opinion columns, at rallies around the country and the globe, voices are calling for a ceasefire as the only way to protect the lives of millions of Palestinians in Gaza. I understand. I, too, mourn the loss of innocent life, especially the children. The loss of entire families in Gaza fills me with grief. I have supported peace my whole life.

While calls for a cease-fire are loud, few seem to have any clarity about what conditions a cease-fire should require. Hamas’ record with cease-fires is less than reassuring: On Oct. 7, Hamas broke a cease-fire in order to launch a horrific attack on Israeli civilians during a national holiday.

Senior Hamas officials have openly said they aim to repeat these terror attacks “over and over” until “Israel is destroyed.” In its own words: Oct. 7 is “just the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth…”  Hamas is openly admitting to the world that it will never abide by a ceasefire.

Another view: Why a ceasefire is the only way to protect the lives of millions of Palestinians in Gaza

Will a cease-fire finally hold Hamas accountable?

Hamas launched this war by massacring close to 1,400 Israelis in an unprovoked attack that targeted innocent civilians. What concession would you argue must Hamas face in order to secure a cease-fire, both in acknowledgment of the horror they’ve inflicted on Israel, and to ensure the group would actually observe such an agreement?

Would you demand Hamas surrender? Agree to extradite its leadership to stand trial? Free the over 240 hostages taken from Israel? Hold elections — a basic democratic responsibility it has refused to fulfill time and again?

And let’s just say that Israel agrees to a cease-fire. Will you hold Hamas accountable on the international stage — for their crimes against Israelis and Palestinians alike? I hear it repeatedly chanted that “Palestinian lives matter” — but where have the voices been as Hamas has executed and tortured Palestinians, and used a fortune in international aid money to fund weapons to use against Israel rather than basic humanitarian systems for the territory they govern?

Will the call for care for Palestinian lives finally include accountability for the terror group that has destroyed so many of them?

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Making peace with Hamas would be a suicide pact for Israel

While we are on the subject, I missed the posts, memes and tweets put out when tens of thousands of Palestinians were suffering during the Syrian Civil War, or when Jordan was revoking Palestinian citizenship and discriminating them in masse, or when Palestinian refugees suffer in Lebanon. I’m sure those posts exist, otherwise it would seem critics only care when it relates to Israel, that Palestinian lives only matter when it allows for the dehumanizing of Jews.

Hamas’ charter states, “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Those of you who call for a ceasefire—do you truly believe Hamas will abide and refrain from fulfilling their charter? Because if you don’t, the call for a ceasefire is a call for genocide against the Jews. The call for a ceasefire isn’t a choice to save children. It’s a choice of whose children should die, and the choice you’re making is: the Jewish ones.

A mentor of mine once taught: “Most of us want morality to be about choosing between right and wrong. But I have learned that moral choices are never between right and wrong. Moral choices are between right and right... and between wrong and wrong. It is right to kill terrorists who declare their genocidal intent, along with their preference to die instead of negotiating a peaceful solution. And it is right to preserve the lives of innocent people trapped by a regime that weaponizes their deaths.”

I do not wish for one more Palestinian civilian to die. And … Hamas has vowed to slaughter Jews until the Jewish State itself is “annihilated.”  Why does the world expect Israel to sign a suicide pact and become the author of its own annihilation?

I pray for peace for Israelis and Palestinians. And I pray that the relationships we in the Jewish and Muslim community locally have built over more than two decades will be strong enough to navigate and support each other through the tremendous pain yet to come. I pray that it will be possible.

Rabbi Laurie Rice serves Congregation Micah in Brentwood, Tennessee.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Israel-Hamas war: Calls for ceasefire put Jews at risk of annihilation