How Many Irreplaceable Men Must Die Before Enough Children Die To Force The World To Stop Israel? by Mahmoud Zahar (PreOccupied Territory) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, September 04, 2025

How Many Irreplaceable Men Must Die Before Enough Children Die To Force The World To Stop Israel? by Mahmoud Zahar (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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How Many Irreplaceable Men Must Die Before Enough Children Die To Force The World To Stop Israel?

by Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas co-founder, senior official, semi-retired

Ankara, September 4 - When we embarked on this glorious Al Aqsa Flood operation nearly two years ago, the Resistance did not expect events to play out exactly as they have. We assumed that, as every other time the violence got too out of hand, the international community would compel the Jews to cease fire while we celebrated the Islamic victory inherent in causing Jews to suffer, regardless of the cost to us. But we do know the cost: the number of precious fighters we lose in the effort to put our kids in harm's way in sufficient quantity to spark international condemnation of the Zionists and get them to halt their operations without achieving anything decisive. And that cost, contrary to our assessments, has proved higher than anyone expected, and the losses may well affect our ability to govern effectively. Now we must ask: How Many Irreplaceable Men Must Die Before Enough Children Die To Force The World To Stop Israel?

Every other time, the images and stories of suffering women and children, most of them fabrications, met the requirements of the reflexive antisemitism of the West, giving them a pretext to threaten the Jews to pull back, and have nothing to show for their casualties and expenditures. Sometimes we even kept the hostages we took!

Not this time. Our allies betrayed us. Hezbollah failed to open a second front concurrent with our operation, and by the time they did, the moment had passed. We made less progress on the seventh of October than we had assumed we would - the Zionists are still not demoralized and fleeing! How many years of shooting ourselves in the foot will it take for us to win?

Of course we are not to blame. That would be shameful, and shame is for others. We do not admit error. Perish the thought of any change in assumptions, strategy, or, Allah forbid, values! Every failure must be because of betrayal, not through any shortcoming of ours! Thus the Nakba, the Naksa, and every catastrophe since. We will have our vengeance on those who force us to sacrifice more men than we intended, so that more of our children die than we expected, so that it takes longer for the world to force Israel to leave us alone so we can do October 7 all over again in a few years.

Maybe we should get our allies in the NGOs and UN to demand that Israel allow in replacement fighters.