Biden and Blinken are bullies and likely to prove un-reliable friends. What would George Bush have done, after 9/11, if some other nation told him to cease firing?
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Wish Bolton was back in government in a meaningful position.
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Israel Faces Pressure to Yield to the ‘Terrorist Veto’
The strategic consequence of any pause, truce or cease-fire is to increase Hamas’s odds of survival.
By John Bolton
There is a tension between Israel’s two objectives of eliminating Hamas as a political and military force and recovering the innocent civilians kidnapped on Oct. 7. Weighing these competing priorities, Israel decided to pause its anti-Hamas military campaign in exchange for the return of some hostages. This policy’s wisdom is debatable.
A greater hazard, however, imperils Israel’s legitimate right to self-defense. I call it the “terrorist veto,” and with every passing day, Israel’s chances of escaping it diminish, notwithstanding Friday’s resumption of hostilities. For many people, the not-so-hidden goal of the hostage negotiations is to focus international attention—and emotions—on pausing hostilities indefinitely and tying Israel’s hands militarily. Whether labeled a pause, truce or cease-fire, the strategic consequences are objectively pro-Hamas. Using human bargaining chips and fellow Gazans as shields, Hamas seeks to prevent Israel from eliminating its terrorist threat.
Success for Hamas means merely surviving with a limited presence in Gaza, particularly a Gaza rebuilt as it was before Oct. 7. This result is a terrorist veto, even if military-pause supporters resist this painful but accurate term.
If the Hamas veto succeeds, other barbarians such as Hezbollah and Tehran’s mullahs (the ultimate enemy here) can insulate themselves from the consequences of their terrorism. Even worse, the terrorist veto can be copied by barbaric nation-states, with victims of aggression rendered unable to vindicate their sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ukraine and Taiwan come to mind as potential victims of this new paradigm.
President Biden and others deny trying to block further military action, but that is precisely the effect of their policies. On Wednesday CNN said Mr. Biden’s policy rests on three pillars: releasing the hostages, stepping up aid into Gaza, and figuring out what happens after the war. No mention of eliminating Hamas. Meantime, some Democratic senators are pressing for conditions on aid to Israel to restrict its military operations, to which Mr. Biden has alluded positively.
However the arguments for prolonging the initial or subsequent pauses are made, Israel will face three potentially debilitating consequences if it ceases or limits its military campaign. First, despite strong statements by many Israelis, in government and out, the country’s resolve is weakening. Right after Oct. 7, Jerusalem perhaps was prepared to hear U.S. military advisers caution that subduing resistance in Mosul and Fallujah took between nine months and a year. Then, Israelis might have been committed to a long struggle, but it seems unlikely they still are after this initial pause. Declining Israeli resolve guarantees that Hamas won’t be eliminated.
Cease-fire advocates argue that because Israel persuaded a million Gazans to move south before its initial campaign, Gazan “civilian” casualties in further operations in the south will dwarf previous casualties. Although Hamas and Iran initially placed Gazans in harm’s way, international recrimination will unfairly fall on Israelis, further sapping their resolve.
Second, because Hamas, Iran and their allies likely gain more militarily from the pause than Israel, the human costs to Israeli’s military will rise, as will domestic opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s objectives. It may be impossible to count incremental Israel Defense Forces casualties due to the pause, but the tally could exceed the number of hostages released.
Third, the greater the pauses or limitations, the more time Hamas’s surrogates worldwide have to increase anti-Israel pressure on their governments. In turn, many governments will lean on Israel to accept less, probably far less, than Mr. Netanyahu’s stated objectives.
The White House is urging, post-hostilities, turning over responsibility for Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. That utterly ignores its dismal performance in the West Bank, where the authority has been ineffective, corrupt and covertly supportive of terrorism. By some accounts Hamas is now more popular in the West Bank than Gaza. Extending Palestinian Authority control would put Israel back under the threat that surged on Oct. 7. The only long-term solution is to deny Hamas access to concentrated, hereditary refugee populations by resettling Gazans in places where they can enjoy normal lives.
Winston Churchill’s observation that “without victory, there is no survival” directly applies to Israel’s crisis. Victory for Israel means achieving its self-defense goal of eliminating Hamas. Anything less means continuing life under threat, with Tehran and its terrorist surrogates confident that when Westerners say “never again” they don’t really mean it.
Mr. Bolton is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” He served as the president’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.
And:
Hamas Seizes the Advantage
After the massacres of Oct. 7, the burden is now on Israel to end the war in Gaza.
By Daniel Henninger
Wonder Land: After the massacres of Oct. 7, the burden is now on Israel to end the war in Gaza.
As predicted, events since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 have unfolded in a way that puts Israel, the victim of the mass slaughter, at a significant political disadvantage.
News reports say Egypt and Qatar, the two nations involved in hostage-release negotiations, are pushing for a long-term cease-fire. The Biden administration, we may assume, will support this goal.
In short, Hamas’s planners and fighters look likely to survive without personal accountability for the 1,200 killed on Oct. 7. Instead, the burden will fall on Israel to assent to talks with Hamas, whose goal remains removing the rest of Israel’s more than nine million people.
Credit is due Hamas—and its partner Palestinian Islamic Jihad—for figuring out the utility of modern sensibilities, especially in the U.S. Initially the world was shocked that Hamas kidnapped young children and pregnant or elderly women. This week’s dramatic release of 4-year-old American Abigail Idan is exemplary. Hamas murdered her parents, then took the child to Gaza.
Hamas understood that the unprecedented horror of its Oct. 7 attack would melt away amid daily media attention to the unbearable horror of these vulnerable hostages and the realities of war inside Gaza. Responding to the second horror has forced Israel’s army to stand down, possibly putting other Israelis at mortal peril from attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah.
Professional terrorism has come a long way. One of the earliest acts of Palestinian terror, by a Hamas precursor called Black September, was the kidnapping of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, televised to the world. It ended with the deaths of athletes and terrorists. In 1985, Hezbollah and Abu Nidal terrorists hijacked two separate airliners and attacked airports in Rome and Vienna.
Ultimately the world took precautions, internalized these terrorist attacks, and in some sense learned to live with them. The post-9/11 airport-security lines have become an accepted annoyance. But by kidnapping babies, children and grandmothers, terrorism had finally hit on a tactic the world could not absorb.
For the record, the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in 2014, which led for awhile to the global social-media campaign #BringBackOurGirls. It accomplished little. Some 100 girls remain missing, and those terrorists, now affiliated with Islamic State, continue their assaults.
No one can be unmoved by the reunions of the Israeli hostages with their families. But it is impossible not to miss a second dilemma. Israel said Tuesday its goal remains to dismantle Hamas. But how, when the current standoff gives Hamas an incentive to hold some hostages indefinitely?
Meanwhile, running alongside are anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrations like those in New York City the past week. Protesters glued themselves to Sixth Avenue, blocking the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Hours later, they vandalized the facade of the New York Public Library’s main building, doing an estimated $75,000 of damage.
On Saturday, they moved on the Museum of Natural History—closed in anticipation—demanding to be let inside to see exhibits of the “colonizers,” burning an Israeli flag and shouting that the police officers protecting the museum were equal to the “KKK.”
As we went to press, these activist groups planned to wreck the Wednesday evening lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. A social-media post said, “Bring your flags, signs & keffiyehs, mobilization, not celebration!” Apparently baby Jesus is also complicit.
Add the campus demonstrations, and this constitutes Joe Biden’s Democratic youth base, which is pushing the president and his party toward equivocal support for the state of Israel.
The intensity of these demonstrations calls to mind the early 1970s, when some members of the left-wing group Students for a Democratic Society tipped over to become a domestic terror group called the Weather Underground. They blew themselves up while making bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse.
In the U.S., we have arrived at a familiar crossroads. Amid a growing atmosphere of civil disorder, much of it organized, we can either stand back and live with it or push back, deciding that the potential price to our own security eventually could be too high.
New York again illustrates the challenge. The police detained some of the rampaging pro-Palestine protesters, but there’s little prospect of Manhattan’s progressive District Attorney Alvin Bragg prosecuting them. After the city’s George Floyd protests (including store lootings), which ran almost daily for weeks, state Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit—against the New York City Police Department for mishandling activists.
Right now cops and demonstrators, not to mention store-smashing thieves, know the previous structure for maintaining order is dormant.
A word returning to fashion in national-security circles is “deterrence.” Deterrence is a bow to the dangers of accommodating disorder. The Netanyahu government’s accommodation of Hamas in Gaza was a deterrence failure. Communist China’s military expansiveness is a deterrence failure, as are the attacks by Iran’s proxies on U.S. forces and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Virulent antisemitism on U.S. campuses is a deterrence failure. The border is a deterrence failure. So is urban crime. It adds up.
As an entry point for discussion on how to avoid calamity, a simple proposal: Start doing the opposite. Relearn deterrence.
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Review of "Unwoke" Chapters 7&8
Today those in Hollywood who want jobs must yield to Cultural Marxism and accept subtle anti-American screed slipped into films. Talented authors, unwilling to write woke nonsense, run the risk of being black listed.
Cruz writes angry leftists are everywhere in Hollywood slipping woke messages into scripts and movie goers are unknowingly subjected to these subliminal messages. To be eligible and pass muster, Academy Award Films now must meet rigid "diversity" standards. No wonder Disney has tanked and will suffer permanent damage. They allowed themselves, in pursuit of garbage, to go off the rails.
NEO-MARXISTS HAVE PURPOSELY INFILTRATED POLITICAL STATEMENTS INTO EVERY FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT.
Cruz concludes we must re-take entertainment because it is ubiquitous and dangerously subtle but it will not be easy because it has been totally captured by the Neo-Marxists who have also taken over much of scientific research as well as medicine. Medical students are being taught to treat patients differently based on their race.
Here again, Cruz argues we must re-take our universities in order to restore integrity to the field of science and various other professional endeavors..
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BIBI has unleashed Mossad instructing them to eliminate Hamas' leadership wherever they are living.
He has withdrawn Mossad from Qatar (see attached.)
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Mossad director David Barnea has recalled the Mossad team from Qatar due to a collapse in negotiations with Hamas.
A statement from the Prime Minister's Office read: "Hamas has not fulfilled its part of the deal, which included the release of all woman and children on a list it received and approved."
According to a source involved in the procedure, the team was recalled after it was clarified, with finality, that Hamas did not intend to release the women and children it still holds. An Israeli source added, "We are continuing to fight with all our strength."
Israel is demanding that Hamas fulfill its previous commitment to release all women and children in exchange for releasing women and children being held as security prisoners in Israel. According to the IDF, there are 17 women and children in Hamas captivity, and only after they are returned will Israel be willing to discuss further exchanges that may include the release of grown men, in exchange for adult security prisoners and then for soldiers.
Despite the collapse of negotiations, Barnea thanked CIA director William Burns, the director of Egyptian intelligence, and the Prime Minister of Qatar for "exceptional attempt at mediation to free 84 Israelis and 24 foreign captives.
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