by Jonathan S. Tobin
Israel lacks good options in the war against Hamas, but the condemnations of Netanyahu’s choice says more about his critics than about him.
Once again, Israel is at a crossroads in the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023. The conflict is currently stalemated, with the remnants of the Hamas terrorists who led the assault on southern Israeli communities 22 months ago still in control of about 25% of the Gaza Strip. They are also still holding hostage what is believed to be some 20 live kidnapping victims and the bodies of 30 others.
What’s worse, they’ve orchestrated a food shortage in Gaza and succeeded in getting the international press and much of the international community to buy into the blood libels they’ve circulated about the Jewish state committing genocide and intentionally starving children. With most of the world concentrating on demonizing Israel, Hamas has felt no pressure to negotiate a ceasefire/hostage-release deal that both Washington and Jerusalem thought was likely last month.
As a result, what’s left of Hamas is content to let Palestinians in Gaza go on suffering the privations made inevitable by the war they started for as long as necessary. And the terrorists think all they need to do is hang on and wait for the West to hand them a reward in the form of a state they will only use to continue their century-old war on the Jewish presence in Israel.
Blaming Netanyahu
What can the Israeli government do about this dreadful situation?
None of the options is good. But that hasn’t stopped commentators from offering a lot of advice to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about what he should be doing. Even those who purport to care about Israel often wind up being tripped up by the general disdain with which the pundit class views the Israeli leader.
The impulse to blame and delegitimize him and his political allies is so great that it has distorted the discussion about next steps in Gaza in ways that make it difficult to maintain the distinction between well-meaning yet foolish suggestions and those that are clearly ill-intentioned.
Two prominent examples of such voices are those of New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and Times of Israel editor David Horovitz. The pair, both former editors of The Jerusalem Post, care about Israel. As such, a lot of supporters of the Jewish state who are centrists or political liberals look to them for guidance as to what to think about the situation.
The trouble is that both are also victims of Netanyahu derangement syndrome. No matter what the prime minister says or does, or the choices that he faces, they always manage to find a way to blame him—even when, as is the case now, the fault for Israel’s problems lies with Hamas.
Their endless carping about their least favorite Israeli politician isn’t, in and of itself, that important. But at a moment when it appears that Netanyahu is finally going to make a fateful decision about the next step in the war against Hamas, their efforts to foster the illusion that there is some mythical “third way” option—other than the two obvious choices facing the Jewish state—is particularly unhelpful.
They argue that the prime minister is too blind, cynical or power-hungry to appreciate this path out of Israel’s troubles. Indeed, Stephens goes so far as to write that if Netanyahu chooses a different path forward other than the one he recommends, “no thoughtful person can be pro-Israel without also being against” Netanyahu. That says a lot more about him and other Bibi-haters than it does about the prime minister or the dilemma he faces.
Netanyahu is a flawed individual who has hung on far longer in power than would be optimal in any democracy. But the reason he has won so many elections is that, for all of his shortcomings, he’s someone who has always been willing to avoid magical thinking about Israel’s strategic situation and its enemies.
And though Bibi-haters like Stephens and Horovitz may claim to be sensible centrists who are more clear-eyed about Israel’s dilemmas than the prime minister, their claims that Netanyahu is avoiding an acceptable path to ending the war because of his corruption and malign extremism is as disingenuous and libelous as the smears hurled at the Jewish state by anti-Zionists.
Terrible choices
What are the options facing Israel in Gaza?
It can, as most of its ill-wishers demand, give up on the war to destroy Hamas and, by one means or another, concede that when the dust settles, it will return to ruling Gaza.
That can happen via a negotiated settlement or by Israel withdrawing from most or all of the Strip in the absence of any agreement. Such an outcome might grant Israel’s exhausted armed forces something of a reprieve, and perhaps quiet, or at least slow down the international campaign to demonize and isolate the Jewish state. But it would also mean that sooner or later, Israel would again be faced, as it was on Oct. 6, 2023, by a fortified Hamas-run Palestinian state that is armed to the teeth and ready to make good on its pledge to commit more Oct.7-style attacks replete with the same atrocities.
The most obvious alternative to that dismal prospect is for Israel to finally go into the last parts of Gaza still under Hamas control, wipe out the terrorists and destroy their last strongholds. That would ensure that the Islamist group, whose goal remains the destruction of the Jewish state and the genocide of its population, would be conclusively defeated and remove the threat of additional Oct. 7-style invasions.
The downside to that scenario is that this will likely endanger the remaining living hostages and expose the Israel Defense Forces—whose soldiers, though still dedicated to their mission, are already exhausted from 22 months of war—to more attacks and casualties. There’s also the very real possibility that such an effort will bog down the IDF in a drawn-out guerilla war that will lead to even more international opprobrium directed at Israel and create pressure that will endanger the support Netanyahu is still getting from the Trump administration.
All indications are that Netanyahu is choosing the latter.
Perhaps he is doing so in the hope that this will motivate much of the Arab and Muslim world, as well as other sympathizers of the Palestinians elsewhere, to pressure Hamas to agree to a deal that will, at least temporarily, pause the war and lead to the ransoming of some of the remaining hostages, albeit at the same unfair and exorbitant prices exacted from Israel previously.
Given that Hamas seems to believe that continued suffering in Gaza is to its advantage, the odds of this threat leading to an agreement seem slim. Netanyahu also knows that the chances of third parties like the Arab states that recently called on Hamas to lay down its arms being willing to take responsibility for Gaza are also a fantasy.
Which means that Netanyahu’s choice is simple: surrender to Hamas or go all in to defeat it. But that’s not how some pundits see it.
In particular, Stephens is claiming that there is a third way involving, as former Prime Minister Naftali Bennet has claimed, Israel’s maintaining of a perimeter around Hamas-run areas from which the IDF can squeeze it; withholding of construction materials and arms that the terrorists can use to continue the war; and flooding of the remaining Islamist-ruled areas with food, so as to answer the demands for Israel to prevent starvation in the Strip.
This option, which is also endorsed by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer in an article in Commentary magazine, would allow Israel to “declare victory” and thus escape from the trap of an endless unwinnable war in the streets of rubble-strewn Gaza.
That sounds sensible, but it would no more solve Israel’s long- or short-term problems than the surrender option.
By choosing to complete the destruction of Hamas, Netanyahu is showing that he understands, even if he is too politically astute to say so explicitly, some basic truths about the conflict that his critics are choosing to ignore or deny.
Three unavoidable truths
One is that the belief that Israel can improve its image abroad, or answer the lies about its causing starvation in Gaza, by choosing sensible policies is a myth. Netanyahu has made some mistakes in conducting the war, one of which was the thought that Hamas had a lower tolerance for Palestinian suffering than Israel. But the demonization of the Jewish state’s war policies, which began the day after Oct. 7 rather than as a result of some policy blunders, illustrates that the claims of “genocide” and “starvation” have nothing to do with Israeli actions.
Israel was already being falsely accused of “occupying” Gaza prior to Oct. 7, despite the fact that it had withdrawn every soldier, settler and settlement from the Strip in 2005. And it was being labeled as guilty of starving Palestinians even before there was an actual food shortage there manufactured by Hamas.
Those lies will continue to be spread even if Israel gives up the effort to destroy Hamas. Any decision based on the hope that its image will improve by some act of generosity or appeasement is a dangerous delusion.
The second truth is one that has also been obvious since the war began: Hamas will never willingly release all of the hostages it took on Oct. 7. Israelis desperately want to free those who remain alive and their continued plight is a festering wound at the heart of the nation. But Hamas will not give them up in exchange for anything but an internationally recognized Palestinian state that will be used as a platform to continue the war against Israel.
The two war goals of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages have always been mutually exclusive. It is Netanyahu’s job—and an unenviable one, given the pressure he is put under by some of the hostage families and their many sympathizers—to choose to defend Israel’s security.
The third truth is that it is simply untrue that “declaring victory” is consistent with conceding Hamas control over any part of Gaza.
Hamas has suffered tremendous losses to its military forces and ability to shoot rockets and missiles at Israel. But hanging back and letting it stay where it is in a portion of the Strip is simply a formula for an eventual return to the status quo ante of Oct. 6, 2023, which means not merely that the terrorists will be right to claim that they have won the war they started, but that they will continue it.
The option Stephens and other Netanyahu-bashers propose as an alternative to occupation of all of Gaza would bring with it all the problems that a complete takeover of the Strip would entail–with none of its benefits, such as destroying Hamas and preventing it from dominating Palestinian politics.
Like it or not, and the IDF’s leadership understandably dreads the job that lies ahead, there’s no way to ensure that Gaza doesn’t return to being a Hamas fortress without occupying all of it and ensuring that Israel is in charge of its security for the foreseeable future. The naysayers notwithstanding, military experts like John Spencer still insist that defeating Hamas is possible and necessary. They should be heeded.
Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners may fantasize about resettling Gaza and say things about the Palestinians that are hard to defend. But that doesn’t mean they are wrong about the need to prevent anyone but Israel from being in charge of the Strip.
Hate Netanyahu all you like but there’s no third way around those facts.
Some may think that the best way of defending Israel from the blood libels that are now being mainstreamed by the international media is by joining in the smears of Netanyahu. They seem to think that putting all the blame on him and his allies for the continued suffering caused by Hamas will give a pass to the IDF and the rest of the country. But Israel-haters hate all Israelis and Jews, not just Netanyahu. By choosing to try for a decisive victory in the war against the terrorists, rather than a compromise that will give them an undeserved triumph, Netanyahu is choosing the least bad of all the available options.
As was the case during the first year of the war when he had to contend with a hostile Biden administration, Netanyahu deserves great credit for not bending to foreign pressure and insisting on the Jewish state continuing its efforts to defeat its foes. He needs the same fortitude now.
One can be pro-Israel without being a fan of the prime minister’s. But the idea that one cannot support the Jewish state without also wishing to see its courageous and democratically elected leader toppled by undemocratic means is to mistake Netanyahu or Trump derangement syndrome for a sensible outlook on the Middle East. Those who engage in such dishonest advocacy, whether they intend it or not, are helping those forces seeking to isolate and demonize Israel rather than help it.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek
and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American
political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle
East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think
Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin
Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and
YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor
and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.
He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other
writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and
foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia
University.
Source: https://www.jns.org/bibi-bashing-and-the-quest-for-a-mythical-middle-way-in-gaza/
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