At Open To Debate, the question posed was “Can Israel Make Peace with Hamas?” Given the push for a ceasefire, or a prelude to an end of the war in Gaza with or without the return of hostages, a detail given little thought by “ceasefire now” crowd, this is a very important question, one worthy of a serious and thoughtful debate. These were the sides:

Cenk Uyghur, Founder and Host of the Young Turks Network, argues “YES”

Mosab Hassan Yousef, Ex-Palestinian Militant, Former Israeli Spy, Son of Hamas Co-Founder, and Author of From Hamas to America, argues “NO”

Yousef’s argument, grounded in the reality of Hamas’ ideological hatred of Israel and Jews, based upon his personal experience as the son of Hamas’ co-founder and as a former militant, was illuminating and informative.

Well, absolutely not. Why? Because Hamas is not a political movement. Hamas is a ideological movement that wants to, uh, destroy Israel to build an Islamic state. And they don’t stop there. Their political ambition, their religious [00:06:30] ambition is beyond, uh, the river and the sea. They want a global Khilafa. So how can you satisfy such ambition?

In contrast, the opposition came from Young Turks founder Cenk Uyghur. Assuming that he was at least an adequate, if not the best,* choice to present the pro side, then it’s got nothing.

Yep. So can Israel make peace with Hamas? Of course. Uh, that’s who you make peace with, your enemies, not your allies. Uh, this is actually pretty elementary. Uh, no matter how bad the enemy is, at some point if you want to get to peace, and that’s a big if, then you’re gonna have to do it with your enemies and not allies. So, uh, if Israel wants to do a peace deal Norway, that’s not really gonna help them. Uh, they can get there pretty quickly, but [00:02:30] that’s not the issue at hand. They’re fighting Hamas. That’s who they have to negotiate with and that’s who they have to get to an agreement with.

As fascinating as the truism that you make peace with your enemies may be, that wasn’t the question. Obviously, you make peace with your enemies. Indeed, the enemy is named in the question posed, Hamas. The question was whether Israel can make peace with Hamas, putting aside the question of whether Hamas can make peace with Israel, a detail that wholly eludes Cenk.

Well, then who do you negotiate with? (laughs) Just it’s absurd, the whole… Honestly, this is one of the easiest questions of all time. If you say you don’t wanna negotiate with Hamas, all you’re saying is, “I don’t want peace. I p- prefer permanent war.”

Yet again, the question wasn’t whether Israel “wants” to negotiate with Hamas, but whether Israel can make peace with Hamas. In order to negotiate anything, there must be some mutual overlap where both sides can reach agreement. Does Cenk suggest that Israel can make peace when Hamas’ terms are the eradication of Israel and death of Jews?

Imagine if Hamas said, “Kill 35 times the number of civilians Israel did,” so that would be a giant [00:04:00] number. What are we talking about? Nearly a million people if you took the, uh, uh, 40,000 people that Israel has killed in Gaza and multipl- uh, multiply it by 35 and you can say, “Oh, my God. Israel is… I can’t believe how awful they are.”

And so as terrible as that Hamas attack was, well, their kill ratio was 71%. They killed 815 civilians and 1,139 people overall. They killed a lot of soldiers as well and none of that excuses any of their actions, but when you look at Israel’s kill ratio, if you assume that every man in Palestine that they killed is a terrorist, which is an absurd, unconscionable assumption, Israel still had a civilian, uh, kill ratio of 60%. So when you include the innocent men, that’s [00:05:00] going to be a higher kill ratio of civilians as a percentage than Hamas. So under this logic, the Palestinian should say, “Israel is so evil that we cannot negotiate with them.”

Aside from the obvious false equivalents, that Israel and Hamas are merely two sides of the same coin rather than Hamas being a terrorist organization that invaded Israel on October 7th, raped and murdered, took hostages, then retreated back into Gaza to hide in their tunnels beneath schools, mosques and hospitals or fight using Gazans as shields and propaganda tools, the “kill ratio” has nothing to do with the issue, even if simpletons can’t wrap their heads around the point here.

Israel’s purpose is not to kill some ratio of Palestinians in revenge for 10/7, although a strong element of revenge no doubt is involved. Rather, its goal is to eliminate the terrorist organization, Hamas, so it can’t invade Israel again as it did October 7th, rape, murder and take hostages. The point is to destroy the tunnels, built with whatever foreign aid monies were given for the benefit of Gazans that Hamas’ leaders didn’t stash in their Qatar bank accounts, the command centers and their stock of missiles to be fired into Israel.

It may be entirely fair to question whether Israel could have done a better job of it, reducing “innocent” civilian casualties and providing for humanitarian aid so that at least some of it won’t be stolen by Hamas and will end up feeding innocent Gazan children. But if this is the best argument Uyghur can mount to counter Yousef’s contention that Israel can’t negotiate peace with Hamas because there is no desire by Hamas for peace and any attempt to find a negotiated solution with these terrorists is inherently doomed to fail. When one side has no desire for peace at any price, then no peace can be negotiated.

As for Cenk Uyghur, the best that can be said is he’s shooting blanks. The worst is that he’s dumber than dirt (with apologies to dirt).

*Notably, Open To Debate has yet to ask me to participate in one of their debates, raising the question of whether they are serious in presenting the best arguments or pop personalities. But I digress.