Has Peace For Israel Always Been Unreachable?: The Message of 1 Samuel 15: 2-3
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/opinion/israel-palestinians-netanyahu-flydubai.html
This op-ed by Bret Stephens in The New York Times, ironically printed on October 7, the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since World War II, lays out the challenge for Israel, Israelis, and Jews everywhere.
Stephens tells the story of Avinatan, an Israeli hostage of Hamas in Gaza for 738 days who Stephens interviewed. Here is what the ex-hostage told Stephens.
“Three days before I got released the Hamas commander told the 33-year old Nvidia engineer: ‘Listen, Avinatan, say hi to your family, then pack and move to Europe or the U.S. because as long as Israel exists, we will do October 7 over and over again.’”
Since the Oslo Accords, there has been the tacit assumption that a solution can be devised that will carve out a Palestinian state for the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank that will result in peace with the Israeli Jews. This is the essence of the two-state solution.
I myself have harbored such a belief for many years now. I am beginning to consider that such a belief is both naïve and dangerous. It is naïve because a significant and bellicose portion of the Arabs who live in what was formerly the British Mandate of Palestine will settle for nothing less than all the land “from the river to the sea” and will never allow there to be a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. My former belief is dangerous to the Jewish people because it is frankly delusional and facilitates our own destruction to think that there can ever be peace with these violent and blood-thirsty Arabs—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—all supported by the non-Arab state of Iran.
Further along in his piece, Stephens separates Israelis into the entitled and those who serve. The entitled include the young ultra-Orthodox men who do not serve in the military, but enjoy the protection of that military. Then there are the settlers who believe they have the right to the entirety of the land “from the river to the sea” because God gave it to them and that they can use violence against indigenous Arabs without legal consequences from the current Israeli government. Then Stephens adds Bibi Netanyahu to the entitled because the prime minster will not face his own criminal justice system on corruption charges nor empanel a commission to investigate the intelligence and military failures that led to the October 7 massacre.
Those who serve in Israel, the vast majority of Israelis including many non-Jews, is everyone else including all the young Israelis who have served in the IDF. Much like in the United States, Israel has a problem with the abundance of political power of the entitled and the lack of that power among those who serve.
Unlike the United States, however, the Israelis also have to contend with the many Arabs around them, some bankrolled and egged on by Iran, who want to kill them.
The downfall of past Israeli governments has usually emanated from within such as the capture of Israel by the Romans in 70 C.E. after internal turmoil. But, there is also a great deal of anti-Israel sentiment around the globe today which, of course, comes with anti-Semitism.
The lesson for today, and I mean a lesson for myself, is that there will never be any arrangement in the former British Mandate of Palestine that will satisfy the many militant Arabs of the region if a Jewish state is part of the arrangement. In other words, perhaps it is time to stop kidding ourselves that a two-state solution (i.e., “land for peace”) is possible. Since a one-state solution that includes everyone in the region as equal citizens would signal the end of a Jewish state, that is unacceptable to all Jews as well.
Now there is a Biblical precedent for such a dilemma.
In Samuel 1 15:2-3 it says (Oxford Annotated Bible) “Thus said the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish what Am’alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Am’alek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’”
When King Saul spared Agag, the king of the Amal’ekites and captured and kept some of the best livestock, God was not happy. Saul had not obeyed the Lord. To make a longer story shorter, many verses later, David arises, kills Goliath, and goes on to be king. Saul was a failed king of Israel.
I am definitely not suggesting that the solution to the hostilities in and around Israel today is genocide, even if the world’s left wing thinks that is what is happening in Gaza. Quite literally, Hamas wants to kill us all. Of course, Israel has to fight back. And we must never forget that Hamas is a duly elected government in Gaza. Thus, October 7 was an act of war and it should be of no surprise that many non-combatants die in war. That does not make the killing of civilians in Gaza genocide. It does make what Israel is doing militarily an answer to having been attacked.
There have been so many occasions when past Israeli governments have offered the Palestinian Arabs their own state. The Palestinian leaders have rejected every offer. Now the Iranian proxies established in the lands surrounding Israel in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, and Lebanon want to eradicate the Jewish state.
To establish peace in this part of the world, prior to any effort to form a Palestinian state in the West Bank or in Gaza, the Arabs are simply going to have to accept the existence of the state of Israel, accept that it is Jewish state, and pledge to never wage war or “intifada” on the Jews of Israel again. Then once they have leaders who can do that and keep the pledge, the Israelis might be able to come to an arrangement for an Arab state on its border.
But as long as the memory of October 7 remains and as long as Hamas and other Arabs pledge to commit additional massacres on Israeli Jews, don’t be surprised if some entitled West Bank settlers commit violence on Arabs they believe have no right to the land they are living on. These settlers remember the words of 1 Samuel 15.
Much like the United States, Israel was born in blood, begun by people who were chased out of every place else. Future Israelis came on the Exodus. Future Americans came on the Mayflower. Both groups were on the run. Both groups will run no more.
