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Over the past two months, members of the CUFI Action Fund Team have been in and out of Israel on a number of occasions. In fact, one of the authors of today’s Update is there right now. As a result, we have had the opportunity to see snapshots of Israel and its people, to feel the air and listen to the voices. Here’s what we’ve seen.

**Israel is Healing**

The elation that the world saw in Israel just a few weeks ago, when the last of the living hostages held by Hamas were released, has been followed by a new reality; one in which Hamas continues to behave with barbarity, sadistically delaying the release of the remains of those murdered in Palestinian captivity. 

This wound remains open and will not close until the last individual’s remains are returned home. This includes the body of Lt. Hadar Goldin (z’’l) of the IDF Givati Infantry Brigade, who was killed over a decade ago fighting in the tunnels of Gaza, and whose remains have been held by Hamas ever since.

But the return of the deceased, tragically, is not the end.

On Tuesday, a Hamas sniper killed Master Sgt. (res.) Yona Efraim Feldbaum (z’’l). In response, Israel targeted 100 terrorists including 30 commanders.

Israel’s strategy to keep the relative calm in Gaza is simple: Jerusalem will respond with overwhelming force to each and every potshot Gazan terrorists take.

That is how every other free nation on earth acts when attacked, so why should the Jewish state have a different set of rules?

**Israel’s Inalienable Rights**

Save criminals and the like, all human beings enjoy the right to life and liberty. Likewise all democratic nations have a right and responsibility to protect the life and liberty of their people. And for Israel, a country whose existence was not mandated by the UN or some treaty amongst men, but rather by God, her inalienable rights do not just extend to simple self-preservation.

Jerusalem’s sovereignty is not a matter for international debate. Israel’s borders will be determined by Israel’s government. While we do not take a position on what those borders should be, we adamantly oppose international pressure on the Jewish state – including American pressure.

Last week, the Knesset advanced a symbolic measure aimed at expressing support for formally annexing Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria into Israel.

Inside and outside Washington, at the highest levels of government, the reaction to the measure was as negative as it was unnecessary.

Without commenting on the utility of symbolic measures in general, the simple truth is that Jerusalem, and Jerusalem alone, will decide if, when and how to apply Israeli sovereignty to Jewish communities in the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria.

**But What About Two States for Two Peoples?**

As has been reiterated on numerous occasions since the horrors of 10/7, the Palestinians had full autonomy inside Gaza starting in 2005.  That means that the thousands of 16–23-year-old sadists who raped and murdered their way through southern Israel on 10/7 either were not even born by the time Israel had left Gaza or were babies back then.

There were no Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip on 10/07 or in the two decades prior. This isn’t new. The Yasser Arafat’s Fatah (yes, the ones who ran the PLO/PA) conducted their first (failed) terror attack in 1964, before there were any renewed Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and before Israel liberated Jerusalem.

Clearly, for the Palestinians, where Jews live isn’t the issue – it’s that they’re alive at all.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has long been rooted in an inorganic hatred associated with a manufactured “Palestinian” culture whose raison d'etre is the genocide of the Jewish people.

Multiple Palestinian generations have been bottle-fed and then mainlined Jew-hatred so strident that there can simply be no serious discussion of a Palestinian state. CUFI supported President Trump’s peace proposal during his first term, but one cannot have two states for two peoples when the Israelis define victory as peace and prosperity, and the Palestinians find victory only in death or destruction.

Sincerely,

The CUFI Action Fund Team

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