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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