The unstable ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and the release of more Israeli hostages, along with Israel’s freeing of hundreds of Hamas thugs ready to return to duty, does not resolve the key challenge facing the people of Israel — ending the deadly threats from Tehran and its “axis of resistance.” Though weakened by Israeli blows over the last year, Tehran, Hamas and Hezbollah are working to rebuild efforts to try to destroy Israel and eliminate the Jews.
Both the outgoing Joseph Biden administration and the incoming administration of Donald Trump pressured the Israeli government to agree to the three-stage ceasefire deal that began Jan. 19.
Hamas is using the ceasefire to salvage its brutal dictatorial rule in Gaza, reconstruct its battered forces and leadership, and begin preparing its next pogrom. Hamas remains true to its roots among forces that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East. It remains true to the goals in its 1988 founding covenant: kill the Jews and impose an Islamist caliphate in Palestine.
Israeli troops will remain in southern Lebanon at least until Feb. 18, three weeks past the original 60-day timeline set for their withdrawal in another wobbly ceasefire deal. The Israeli government explains that Hezbollah and the Lebanese army have not complied with the agreement to withdraw all Hezbollah forces from the south and destroy its weapons there.

And the reactionary bourgeois regime in Tehran retains the capacity to drive ahead on its nuclear program so it can produce nuclear weapons.
Hamas used the Jan. 25 release of Daniella Gilboa, Liri Albag, Naama Levy and Karina Ariev to further its goals. When Hamas attacked Oct. 7, 2023, the four female Israeli unarmed military spotters had been stationed along the Gaza border.
The video of Levy, bloodied, being pulled by the hair and forced into a Hamas vehicle in Gaza was seen around the world. It’s one of the photos on the front cover of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class published by Pathfinder Press.
On their release, Hamas made the four women wear military uniforms and stood them before a banner that celebrated the “Al Aqsa Flood” — the name Hamas gave to the Oct. 7 pogrom — surrounded by masked armed members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad before they were handed over to the Red Cross.
Their point was to reaffirm their intention to carry out more pogroms, as well as promote the myth that the 250 people Hamas kidnapped Oct. 7 were well-treated prisoners of war. In reality the vast majority of the 1,200 people Hamas murdered, the hostages they took, and the women they raped and mutilated that day were civilians.
Doctors in Israel said that some of the recently released hostages were suffering from malnutrition. More information on the brutality the four suffered has still not been made public. Hostages previously released or freed have reported widespread sexual abuse by the Hamas thugs.
Hamas: Obstacle to Palestinian rights
As soon as the ceasefire began, Hamas thugs left their hiding places, grabbed their weapons, paraded around Gaza and began openly escorting aid convoys. Despite its heavy losses, there is still no organized alternative to Hamas’ rule. It presents itself as a defender of Palestinian national rights. In fact it is the biggest obstacle that Palestinian workers and farmers face in being able to win those rights.
On Jan. 23 Hamas death squads executed 11 Gazans and shot 17 in their feet, claiming they were “traitors.” Its real purpose was to warn any Palestinian who dares to challenge Hamas’ reactionary course.
That’s not new. Hamas took over the government of Gaza in 2006, after winning a narrow plurality in elections, and then smashed all opposition in bloody fighting. Hamas busted strikes, restricted women’s rights, tortured its opponents and diverted aid meant for the people of Gaza to its war against Jews.
During the Oct. 7 anti-Jewish pogrom, the Hamas death squads also killed dozens of Arab citizens of Israel and immigrant workers from Thailand, the Philippines and other countries. Among those killed were Osama Abu Madiam and his cousin, Ghaliya Abu Madiam, who were working on a farm near Gaza. Ghaliya was wearing her Muslim head scarf and Osama yelled out to the attackers that they are Arabs.
“You’re more Jewish than a Jew,” one of the thugs shouted before gunning them down and wounding Osama’s 5-year-old son, who survived.
A showdown looms
By the end of the ceasefire’s second stage, whose terms are still being negotiated, all the remaining living hostages are supposed to be released in exchange for Israel releasing hundreds of imprisoned Gaza residents and Palestinians accused of terrorism. Many are seasoned terrorists who will rejoin the war against Jews.
The third stage is even vaguer.
From the outset, Hamas has been committed to destroying Israel. Israel’s existence had become inevitable in the aftermath of World War II. Before, during and after the Nazi’s genocidal slaughter of 6 million Jews, London and Washington slammed their borders shut to Jewish refugees who had survived the Holocaust.
At the same time, openings to extend the socialist revolution in Europe were betrayed by the Stalinist regime in Moscow and parties it controlled. Real opportunities for workers to take power into their own hands and to chart a road to end Jew-hatred were lost.
Jews had nowhere to go. That history is central to understanding why Israel exists as a refuge for Jews today.
IDF chief of staff to resign
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi announced Jan. 21 he was resigning as of March 6. “On the morning of October 7, under my command, the IDF failed in its mission to protect Israel’s citizens,” Halevi wrote, admitting “my responsibility for this terrible failure.”
In reality his letter is a cover-up. He says not one word about the conscious decision by leaders of the IDF, the Shin Bet and the Mossad to keep Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the dark for well over a year on growing signs Hamas was planning a major attack. They hid a 40-page Hamas document discovered in 2022, outlining detailed plans for the attack. In the months before Oct. 7 IDF spotters like Gilboa, Albag, Levy and Ariev had sounded the alarm about unusual activity by Hamas forces. Higher ups brushed it aside.
On Oct. 7, with evidence mounting an attack was imminent, Halevi took no measures to reinforce the border. The military and police officials decided to not wake and inform Netanyahu.
They feared correctly that he would order a major attack on Hamas. These officials are part of the middle-class meritocracy inside Israel who look toward the capitalist rulers of the United States. But for the U.S. ruling class, Jews are expendable. Washington’s interest is to advance U.S. economic, military and political interests in the region.
The Biden administration opposed Israeli troops entering Rafah to strike Hamas, opposed Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, and demanded Israel not attack nuclear sites in Iran. The top leadership of the Israel Defense Forces echoed the Biden administration’s rationalizations for why Israel should end the war without having dismantled Hamas.
In an article that reflects those views, Israel-based Ynetnews said Jan. 17 that “the time has come to renew dialogue with the Palestinian Authority … and to initiate talks on a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.”
But this is not a war between Israelis and Palestinians. It’s a war to defeat the efforts of Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran, which are organizing to carry out another Holocaust. The Palestinian Authority, widely hated by most Palestinians, has been complicit in fostering Jew-hatred.
Netanyahu understands that if Israel is not prepared to act alone, there could be a world without Israel.
The battles to decisively defeat the plans of Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran to destroy Israel still lie ahead.