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DC Police Officer Involved in Jan. 6 Lawsuit Reveals He Witnessed Events Via Television
The U.S. and Israel Need to Take Iran On Directly
Make the ayatollahs pay for sowing chaos through their Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies.
By
Naftali Bennett
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, backed by Iran, massacred 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, resulting in full-scale war in Gaza. Hezbollah, also backed by Iran, has launched more than 1,000 rockets at northern Israeli communities since then, risking regional conflagration. Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen are attacking and hijacking ships in the Suez canal, threatening one of the world’s most vital waterways. Militias in Syria and Iraq, with support from Iran, are attacking U.S. bases and—as always—threatening moderate Arab nations.
Notice a pattern? The Iranian regime is at the center of most of the Middle East’s problems and much of global terror. Yet inexplicably, almost nobody is touching it. For the past 45 years, the regime has been the source of endless war, terror and suffering throughout the world. I’ve come to realize that enough is enough. The evil empire of Iran must be brought down.
As a young officer in Israel’s special forces, I spent a great deal of time fighting Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy. I studied its methods and vulnerabilities. I targeted its commanders and fighters. In 2006, as a reservist, I commanded a special search and destroy team in the second Lebanon War.
Only after that war, in which I lost my best friend, did I begin to realize our great folly. We were fighting the wrong battle, and that is exactly what Iran wants us to do.
In the late 1980s, Iran embarked on a simple yet brilliant strategy: Set up terrorist proxies across the Middle East. Fund them, train them and arm them. Let them do the dirty work of fighting and dying.
Iran executed this plan well. There is little direct war taking place between Iran and Israel. Instead, Iran constantly attacks Israel via its proxies in such places as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Gaza and Yemen. Its brutal Quds unit exported terror around the globe. Iran’s terrorist proxies have waged war on every moderate element in the Middle East. They’ve attacked the Saudi oil company Aramco, the United Arab Emirates, the Kurds and Israel on many occasions. The most amazing part: Iran has largely gotten away with it.
There is a new cold war taking place in the Middle East. On one side, there is a corrupt, incompetent and hollow empire—the Islamic Republic of Iran—similar to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. On the other side, there is a thriving, free and strong democracy—Israel (and its allies)—reminiscent of the U.S. in the original Cold War.
When I became prime minister in June 2021, I decided to change this. I told my three security chiefs—the heads of the Israel Defense Forces, Mossad and Shin Bet—that my goal was to avoid, if reasonably possible, local clashes with Hezbollah and Hamas. Rather, Israel’s national-security resources must be focused on weakening our primary enemy—Iran.
There are many ways to weaken Iran: empower domestic opposition, ensure internet continuity during riots against the regime, strengthen its enemies, increase sanctions and economic pressures. But Israel can’t and shouldn’t do this alone. The U.S. should be leading the effort. This doesn’t require a full-scale war, just as the demise of the Soviet Union didn’t result from total war. Rather, the Soviet Union collapsed from internal rot coupled with external pressure applied by the U.S.
As prime minister, I made another decision regarding Iran. I directed Israel’s security forces to make Tehran pay for its decision to sponsor terror. Enough impunity. After Iran launched two failed UAV attacks on Israel in February 2022, Israel destroyed a UAV base on Iranian soil. In March 2022, Iran’s terror unit attempted to kill Israeli tourists in Turkey and failed. Shortly thereafter, the commander of that very unit was assassinated in the center of Tehran.
It turns out that Iran’s tyrants are softer than one might expect. They gleefully send others to die for them. But when they’re hit at home, suddenly they become timid.
The U.S. and Israel must set the clear goal of bringing down Iran’s evil regime. Not only is this possible. It is vital for the safety and security of the Middle East—and the entire civilized world.
Mr. Bennett served as Israel’s prime minister, 2021-22.
And:
As long as Biden is president there will be no cohesive and strong strategy against Iran. Why? because he is a political coward, beholden to China because and also corrupt.
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And:
America Needs a Middle East Strategy
The U.S. can bring the Gulf Arabs closer while doing much more to contain the Iran menace.
By
Seth Cropsey
Nearly two months into Israel’s ground campaign, all eyes are on the Gaza Strip. Yet divisions over Gaza point to a disconnect between U.S. policy and strategic reality. The Middle East is headed toward a major war, for which the U.S. needs a strategy well beyond Gaza.
Since late November, the Biden administration’s approach to the Gaza war has been to issue generic statements of discontent for domestic audiences absent policy action. Washington and Jerusalem disagree on their visions of postwar Gaza. The administration sees the Palestinian Authority as the most viable partner for governance there. Israel can’t accept this, given the authority’s corruption, incompetence and unpopularity in Gaza and the West Bank. A Palestinian Authority-governed Gaza would relapse into Hamas-style radicalism, if not direct Hamas rule.
Oct. 7 was the first step in a new phase of Iran’s campaign against Israel and America. Iran is a revolutionary regime akin to Napoleonic France or the Soviet Union. Tehran’s goal since 1979 has been to export the Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East. Israel’s military power and the U.S.-Israel relationship are the main impediments, as they are the only two actors that can seriously damage Iran.
Tehran’s strategy, shaped by now-dead Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, is a broad campaign of state capture. In Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, Iran has sponsored proxies with the goal of co-opting the security services and building an alliance called the Axis of Resistance. Axis members have diverse goals but are united in their hatred of Israel and the U.S.
The axis can’t defeat Israel conventionally. It has to grind Israel down in a war of attrition, imposing overwhelming political, economic and societal costs. Winning requires disrupting the U.S.-Israel alliance, since as long as Washington backs Jerusalem’s survival, Israel will be too strong to undermine.
Iran’s actions since Oct. 7 have accelerated its attrition war. Israel’s mobilization and deployment of armored assets to the north deterred immediate Iranian intervention. Yet Iran has deployed and now maintains some 100,000 Iraqi fighters in Syria. It has mobilized Hezbollah and placed the Syrian Arab Army’s most cooperative elements on a war footing. Whatever happens in Gaza, this threat remains.
Hamas’s role in the plan is clear. Its control of Gaza was a useful pressure point against Israel, raising the potential for encirclement. But the real prize is the West Bank, home to three million Palestinians and bordering Jordan’s two million Palestinians. The desiccated Palestinian Authority has lost control of many urban areas in the West Bank. During November’s hostage-prisoner swap, Hamas organized parades throughout the West Bank, including in the authority’s Ramallah stronghold.
Iran’s expanding presence in Syria poses a continuous threat to the West Bank, given back-channels that can move weapons and ammunition from Damascus through Jordan. A Hezbollah rocket bombardment and ground incursion are possible.
The Iranian presence in Syria and Lebanon also menaces Jordan. Any threat to Jordan is a threat to Israel, since a hostile Amman would mean Israel is encircled. Hence the threat in the West Bank and the threat to Israel’s north have merged.
Iran’s stronghold in Syria is this strategy’s linchpin. Without Damascus as a supply hub, Iran would struggle to maintain forces in Lebanon and pressure on the West Bank. Israel has manifest cause to conduct a lightning strike to the north, employing an air-power-heavy campaign and ground war to achieve a swift victory. Iran understands that only the U.S. can restrain Israel, forcing it to fight the slower war of attrition that favors Iran.
Already, Tehran has sowed divisions between Washington and Jerusalem. The Biden administration refused to name Iran as directly responsible for any events leading up to or following Oct. 7 or the 100-plus attacks on U.S. Mideast bases since that day. Over the weekend, the U.S. finally accused Iran of an attack. The Chem Pluto, “a Liberia-flagged, Japanese-owned, and Netherlands-operated chemical tanker” bound for India, was hit 200 nautical miles from the Indian coast, according to the Pentagon. Given the location, a drone launched from Iranian territory likely conducted the attack. Washington’s fixation on Gaza is deliberate myopia. The U.S. still views the current situation as a crisis to be managed, not a strategic competition to be won.
Prudent policy could prevail if the U.S. frames the competition properly. The struggle for the Mideast, which is likely to escalate, is part of the broader struggle for Eurasian control that pits the U.S. and its allies against revisionist China, Russia and Iran. Just as the U.S. has a strategic stake in Ukrainian victory, it has an equal stake in deterring Chinese intervention in Taiwan and defeating Iran’s bid for dominance. Geopolitics requires a horizon beyond crisis management. The sooner Washington adopts this perspective, the better the odds of coherent strategy.
The U.S. can isolate Iran’s proxies in Syria and Lebanon. It could conduct an air campaign in Syria in response to Iranian attacks on U.S. bases, employing its two regional carrier strike groups and other assets in the Arabian Peninsula. The goal is eroding Iran’s combat capacity.
Washington can also can resurrect sanctions against Iran. The U.S. has let several financial sanctions lapse in pursuit of a chimerical détente that Tehran views with contempt. Refreezing Iranian assets and pressuring third-party clearinghouses such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to isolate Iranian money would hamper Tehran’s ability to project power in the short term. A few months of such pressure crippled Iranian exports in the late 2010s and ate into the regime’s resources. Working with Europe on a comprehensive technological monitoring program to disrupt Iranian and Russian cooperation also would help Ukraine.
Most critically, the administration should publicly accept the need for Israeli military action in Syria and Lebanon in the next year. By shifting rhetoric from support for Israel’s anti-Hamas campaign to support for Israel’s anti-Iran campaign, the U.S. can signal its enduring commitment to a peaceful Mideast. This will position the U.S. as the only viable partner for the Gulf Arabs. It will open other opportunities with Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. that the administration has sought without success since the Ukraine war began. America must move the Arab world toward Washington, not leave it on the sidelines.
Mr. Cropsey is the president of the Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is author of “Mayday” and “Seablindness.”
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Finally:
Biden Endangers U.S. Troops
Three more American service members are hurt, as U.S. bases became enemy drone catchers.
By The Editorial Board
It was going to happen sooner or later: American service members would be seriously hurt as Iran-backed militias conduct lethal target practice against U.S. bases in the Middle East. When will President Biden do his duty as Commander in Chief and protect Americans deployed abroad?
Iranian proxies have attacked U.S. forces in the Middle East about 100 times since October, and on Monday an explosive drone made it past U.S. defenses at a base in Iraq. Two Americans were wounded and a third is in critical condition.
The Administration conducted retaliatory strikes on three facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy group responsible for the attack. Defense secretary Lloyd Austin issued a statement saying his “prayers” are with the wounded. Which is nice, but Mr. Austin isn’t a chaplain. The U.S. defense chief’s job is to deter such attacks and defend his troops from being too-easy targets for Shiite militias.
The White House response was worse. The National Security Council’s Adrienne Watson issued a statement announcing the reprisal and insisted that the “President places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm’s way.”
This is demonstrably false, and the bromide is insulting. Mr. Biden’s highest priority, whispered by the White House every day, is avoiding escalation with Iran or its proxies. Mr. Biden is afraid—we use that word advisedly—of being involved in a larger conflict, which might not be popular in an election year. But that anxiety is now interfering with his core obligation to defend U.S. forces.
Iranian front groups have been trying to kill U.S. troops for months. Yet Mr. Biden offered the military equivalent of a wrist slap after Americans suffered traumatic brain injuries in attacks this autumn.
The Administration may want the public to think the latest retaliatory strikes were more substantive than the previous pinpricks on weapons stores. U.S. Central Command took the unusual step Monday night of saying that the strikes “likely killed” a number of militants. But the Associated Press, citing Iraqi officials, says the U.S. killed all of one militant. Some 18 were wounded.
Americans who sign up to serve in uniform know the risks, but serving as drone catchers because Washington refuses to deter the enemy isn’t supposed to be among the occupational hazards. And Mr. Biden’s token strikes haven’t deterred Iran’s proxies in Iraq or anywhere else.
The Houthis, another Iran-backed military, are also unimpressed with the new U.S. coalition to protect commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The terrorists are escalating despite U.S. restraint in response. The U.S. military said Tuesday afternoon that American ships and fighter jets had shot down no fewer than 12 drones, three antiship ballistic missiles, and two land attack cruise missiles, ostensibly at multiple targets. All were fired by the Houthis in a 10-hour period.
Does that sound like an organization worried about how America might respond? The U.S. hasn’t punished the Houthis for taking the world economy hostage, though the U.S. knows the location of Houthi launch sites, radars, weapons and military leadership. The Houthis are betting the U.S. and friends lack the political will to punish their piracy.
Behind all of this is Iran, though the White House refuses to speak this truth or do much about it. Mr. Biden frets that Iran could accelerate its nuclear program, or further unleash its proxies and create trouble for Iraq’s government that hosts U.S. military trainers and anti-ISIS intelligence assets. Tehran is exploiting the U.S. fear of escalation to its own benefit.
The irony is that the biggest tonic for disorder in the Middle East would be restoring American deterrence. That would mean warning Tehran that its military and nuclear assets are at risk if it doesn’t call off the proxy dogs. For all the Biden fears of Tehran, the recent empirical record—the U.S. strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, for instance—counsels that Iran backs down when it faces severe costs for its assaults.
Restoring deterrence in the Middle East would require the Biden Administration to admit that its approach to Iran hasn’t worked and demands a course correction. The alternative is a continuing spiral of violence the Administration says it desperately wants to avoid. And sooner or later more Americans will be in critical condition, or dead.
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As I have said all along, Corporate Boards and public Corporations, in a capitalist society, must adhere to their profit motive. They owe stockholders their best efforts at maximizing profits legally.
Other organizations, in our society, have a social responsibility.
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The DEI Rollback of 2023
States start to limit programs that sow racial and political division.
By The Editorial Board
The diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy on campus has proliferated in recent years, but there are signs it’s finally meeting resistance. The latest good news is from Wisconsin, where public universities will pare back some DEI programs and freeze them going forward.
Under a deal shaped by Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the state approved $800 million in pay raises for university staff and for plans to build a new engineering building at the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. In exchange, the university will freeze all DEI hiring, eliminate a third of DEI positions on campus, and create an endowed chair to teach “conservative political thought, classical economic theory or classical liberalism” at UW Madison. At least now there will be one conservative.
That’s a step forward at a school that has as many DEI staffers as history professors, according to Jay Greene at the Heritage Foundation. The DEI infrastructure is entrenched, but after an initial negative vote and negotiations, the UW Board of Regents approved the deal 11-6.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called the deal “obnoxious” and “B.S.,” according to WISN-TV. But lawmakers have an obligation to taxpayers not to fund policies that practice racial favoritism or promote hostility to equal opportunity.
Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt recently signed an executive order to stop funding many of the DEI programs in that state’s government. The order instructs universities to “review” DEI positions and programs and “restructure” or “eliminate” those not necessary for compliance or accreditation. The order specifies that executive state agencies cannot use state “funds, property or resources” for programs that “grant preferential treatment based on one person’s particular race.”
The order also prohibits the use of state money for DEI mandates or loyalty oaths that discriminate on the basis of racial identity or ideological viewpoint. Those litmus tests have been used to toxic effect in hiring at universities as well as state agencies. But the order protects “the academic freedom of any particular faculty member to direct the instruction within his or her own course.” So no censorship complaints, please.
The ideology of DEI was sold in the name of opportunity for all, but in practice it has become a cudgel for political conformity and racial grievance. It feeds the progressive narrative on campus that America is a land of oppressor and oppressed, as the explosion of antisemitism on campus has illustrated. Let’s hope more state legislatures follow the lead of Wisconsin and Oklahoma.
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The Peace Processors Return
By Elliott Abrams
Posted By Ruth King
The true believers in a ‘peace-minded Palestinian state’ are clapping their hands, but no one in Israel believes in this Tinker Bell.
Middle East peace processing is a great career, or has been for a small but resolute group. Never successful but never daunted, immune to reality, unaffected by wars or elections, they never flag. That means they never stop going to nice conferences and writing articles about “the two-state solution.” Not even now.
The slaughter of Israelis by Hamas on October 7 has greatly affected Israeli opinion. Israelis on the left, including some of those living in the kibbutzim that were attacked, have understood the meaning of the event: A Palestinian state today is simply too dangerous. A couple of weeks ago, President Isaac Herzog of Israel, a former head of the Labor Party, called upon the United States to stop talking about this:
What I want to urge is against just saying ‘two-state solution’. Why? Because there is an emotional chapter here that must be dealt with. My nation is bereaving. My nation is in trauma. In order to get back to the idea of dividing the land, of negotiating peace or talking to the Palestinians, etc., one has to deal first and foremost with the emotional trauma that we are going through and the need and demand for a full sense of security for all people.
Dismissing Herzog’s appeal, two of the longest-serving peace processors, former State Department officials Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller, are at it again. In an article in Foreign Affairs dated December 22, Kurtzer and Miller want to “create an independent Palestinian state” as the only solution to conflict in the Middle East.
Here’s how: Their plan “would require the PA to run fair and free elections in the West Bank and Gaza and to convince voters that it really will aim to end Israel’s occupation and create an independent Palestinian state. Should it succeed, Israel would also need to demonstrate its commitment — in words and actions on the ground — to advancing a two-state outcome.”
They acknowledge there will be Israeli resistance: “Israel’s electorate had shifted to the right well before this war. Hamas’s terrorism may well encourage a further radicalization of the Israeli population.” Now think about that characterization. Some Israelis were not keen on an independent Palestinian state because they’ve been living with Palestinian terrorism and intifadas and rockets from Gaza for decades. Now that view is called “radical” and if more Israelis feel that way after the massacres of October 7, that isn’t common sense or self-defense; it’s “further radicalization.”
Our two peace processors do throw in a small bow to reality. They acknowledge that “addressing legitimate Israeli security concerns” must be part of the picture — but they give no sense of what they think those concerns might be and how they might be “addressed.” They acknowledge that “even if Netanyahu leaves office, no other current top politician in Israel appears eager to embark down a path of peace. And there are no Palestinian leaders with the gravitas and political weight to engage seriously with Israel in the aftermath of the conflict.” But they do not draw the obvious conclusion from those two sentences: Well, okay, so that’s dead.
But old peace processors never die, nor do they ever allow mere logic to upset them. Kurtzer and Miller conclude that it’s up to the United States to turn floss into gold: President Biden “can make it clearer to the Israelis that the continued strength of their relationship with Washington rests on Israel understanding that it cannot reoccupy Gaza, and that their ultimate security guarantee will be a peace agreement with a similarly peace-minded Palestinian state.” In other words, cram it down their throats.
The last few words in their formula are breathtaking: “a similarly peace-minded Palestinian state.” This is the greatest example in history of the Tinker Bell effect. Remember the scene in Peter Pan: “If you believe, wherever you are, clap your hands, and she’ll hear you. Clap! Clap! Don’t let Tink die! Clap!” Wikipedia describes the Tinker Bell effect as “the phenomenon of thinking something exists only because people believe in it.” What better description of the phenomenon can there be than thinking that Israel will be secure because there will be “a similarly peace-minded Palestinian state.” Kurtzer and Miller are clapping their hands, but no one in Israel believes in this Tinker Bell.
This is not a calumny against Palestinians. Opinion polls show that many do want peace, though many do not. In a December 13 poll by the most reliable Palestinian pollster, roughly three-quarters of respondents said Hamas was correct to launch its attack, and Hamas was the most popular political party or group. It gets worse: “When asked about the best way to end occupation and establish an independent state, the public was divided into three groups: a majority of 63% . . . said it was armed struggle; 20% said it was negotiations; and 13% said it was popular non-violent resistance.”
And what are the “most vital Palestinian goals” when pollsters asked?
43% believe that the first most vital Palestinian goal should be to end Israeli occupation in the areas occupied in 1967 and build a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. By contrast, 36% believe the first most vital goal should be to obtain the right of return of refugees to their 1948 towns and villages, 11% believe that the first and most vital goal should be to build a pious or moral individual and a religious society, one that applies all Islamic teachings and 7% believes it should be to establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights of Palestinians.
Seven percent think building a Palestinian democracy is vital. Building a Palestinian state gets the top result — but recall that most Palestinians think the way to do that is “armed struggle.” The “right of return” means ending Israel as a Jewish state by having millions of Palestinian “refugees” move there. The U.N. agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, says there are 5.9 million Palestinian refugees.
In some highly abstract sense, it is true that Israel’s “ultimate security guarantee will be a peace agreement with a similarly peace-minded Palestinian state.” That is true in the same sense that America’s “ultimate security guarantee” would be a similarly peace-minded China and Russia. But like this imaginary Palestinian nirvana, they don’t exist. Fantasies do not provide security guarantees.
From everything we can see about Palestinian politics and public opinion, basing Israeli security on dreams about Palestinian pacifism is nuts. Moreover, Iran has under way a vast effort to build proxy forces and strengthen every terrorist group — from the Houthis to Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Hamas — to attack Israel by stocking the groups with guns and money. That is the problem with the two-state solution: No one can explain how a sovereign and independent Palestinian state will not constitute a grave security threat to Israel (and Jordan as well, by the way). Kurtzer and Miller certainly don’t explain it; like all the peace processors, they wish it away, conjuring up a mythical Palestine that loves peace. If you believe, clap your hands!
This is going to be a hard sell in Israel. It ought to be an equally hard sell in Washington.
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How can you call them skeptics?
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Israel’s skeptics just don’t want it to win
Those peace-process advocates who say it’s impossible to eliminate Hamas both overestimate the terrorists and fail to understand the existential nature of this war.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN (JNS)
Even before the dust settled over the ruins of communities in southern Israel that were devastated by the Hamas Oct. 7 atrocities, the usual chorus of Middle East “experts” was sounding notes of caution about any effort to respond to the popular Palestinian group responsible for those crimes. Israeli forces were still mopping up the Palestinian terrorists who had crossed the border that Shabbat morning on the holiday of Simchat Torah, when they raped, mutilated, tortured and murdered more than 1,200 persons, including entire families. But the main concern of the American foreign-policy establishment, as well as the international community, was centered not on the victims or the hostages dragged back into Gaza but on their growing realization that Israelis were going to draw some harsh conclusions from the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first said that the objective of his nation’s response to the war that the terrorists began on Oct. 7 was to eliminate Hamas, his comments were put down as rhetoric intended for a traumatized Israeli public and not a serious policy. Richard Haas, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, spoke for his fellow members of the foreign-policy establishment on Oct. 10—weeks before Israel’s ground offensive into Gaza began—when he warned that there was no defeating Hamas.
Haas said that while Israel might be allowed to strike back at Hamas, it should put any notion that the Islamist group that has governed Gaza as an independent state in all but name since 2007 could be eliminated. It was, he said, “an ideology as much as an organization,” and ideas can’t be killed. No matter how wrong Hamas had been to breach the border and commit mass murder, any response on Israel’s part was doomed to failure because of the military problems involved in a campaign that would involve urban warfare and smoking terrorists out of a tunnel network that was more extensive than the New York City subway system. Sounding a familiar cliché of critiques of most post-World War counterinsurgency campaigns, every blow struck at Hamas and the civilians it hid behind would “create more terrorists.”
A three-part plan
Two months after Israel’s ground campaign against Hamas began, Netanyahu laid out his war aims in an article published in The Wall Street Journal. According to him, there are three “prerequisites for peace:” the destruction of Hamas, the demilitarization of Gaza and the de-radicalization of the Palestinian people. But neither the foreign-policy establishment nor their favorite publication is buying any of that.
Three days after that piece was published, a front-page New York Times article labeled “analysis” made it clear that the “experts” are still convinced that the Israeli war against Hamas is unwinnable. While most attacks on Israel’s war effort have focused on the question of Palestinian civilian casualties, this was treated as a side issue. Instead, the piece contained the usual litany of arguments about the difficulties Israeli troops face, the strength of Hamas and its ability to fade into the Palestinian population, and the talk about the campaign “radicalizing” another generation of Arab youth.
Hamas was, the Times article asserted, similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan in that it could withstand military setbacks and still bounce back. Some have compared Israel’s goals to the successful campaign conducted by the United States and its allies to defeat ISIS in Iraq. However, the article declared that Hamas was stronger than their fellow Islamists and is “organic” to the Palestinian population because of the popularity of its commitment to continuing the war against Israeli “occupation,” rather than accepting some kind of accommodation with the continued existence of the Jewish state.
Probing deeper into Israel Defense Forces’ problem, the lineup of experts quoted also claimed that despite the obvious progress it had made in two months of fighting, Hamas was far from defeated. And that it would take far more time, treasure and blood than the Jewish state could possibly expend to root the terrorists out from every inch of Gaza.
The conclusion to be drawn from this dismal evaluation was that the Israelis had to concede defeat and, as the Times’ chief Netanyahu-basher—columnist Thomas L. Friedman—wrote last week, the Israelis need to realize that his three objectives are unrealistic. They must, he crowed, pack up their troops, leave Gaza and “go home.” And if the Israelis don’t do so soon, then President Joe Biden should apply some “tough love” and make them do. He suggested that America, as Friedman has been urging his entire career, use all its leverage to force Israel to accept defeat and a new peace process that will bring into existence a Palestinian state that will end the problem once and for all.
The skeptics are right that the IDF is still a long way from complete victory in Gaza. Hamas is far from defeated and likely has considerable forces still able to fight in the parts of the tunnel network that have not yet been destroyed by the Israelis. No one in the Israeli military was under any illusions that the problem of eliminating an enemy dug in so deep and which had been preparing for years for just such a confrontation would be solved quickly. In addition—and despite the constant carping from the international community and the Biden administration—the care that the IDF takes in trying to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible has slowed the campaign and exposed Israeli troops to danger, which is why the toll of casualties has been so high in recent weeks.
Overestimating and misunderstanding Hamas
Still, the notion that the Gaza tunnel complex is an impregnable fortress that cannot be destroyed or that Hamas gunmen are so skillful, daring and clever that they cannot be killed or captured in the small geographic area (which is getting smaller with every week) in which they are holed up is nonsense. More than that, those making such arguments are not, as they claim, simply speaking with wisdom gleaned from decades of failed counterinsurgency campaigns by Western armies against popular local groups.
To the contrary, they are confusing the Palestinians’ war to destroy Israel with a conventional insurgency against a foreign occupier even though that is the way this struggle has been framed by the Western corporate press for decades.
Their motives in making such arguments are also disingenuous. They’ve argued for a generation that the only solution to the conflict is territorial compromise and the creation of a Palestinian state. They are just as clueless about the meaning of Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault as they were about the terrorist offensives launched by PLO chief Yasser Arafat in response to the Oslo Accords and joint U.S.-Israel offer of statehood and peace to the Palestinians in 2000. They refuse to accept that an Israeli military victory is not only possible but desirable because to do so would be to admit that people like Haas and Friedman have been wrong all along. The same is true for the diplomats and politicians, like Biden, who have spent their entire careers claiming that the formula for peace is pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.
The aftermath of Oct. 7 should have been a moment when the establishment needed to stop and admit that they had been wrong.
The Palestinians have rejected every compromise peace offer that would have given them statehood for the last 75 years. And that’s not because, in Israeli statesman Abba Eban’s memorable phrase, they “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” It’s because they don’t see a peace that would give them a state as an “opportunity” if it means accepting the legitimacy or even the existence of a Jewish state, no matter where Israel’s borders are drawn. Oct. 7 was—like the suicide bombings and other examples of Palestinian terrorism that were launched in the fall of 2000—an indication of Palestinian intentions, not frustration with negotiations that hadn’t succeeded.
Nor can Israel simply pack up and leave as the Americans did in Afghanistan, Iraq and nearly 50 years ago in Vietnam. Gaza isn’t halfway around the world from Israel. It’s next door, and a policy of allowing Hamas to maintain its military capability—a matter of consensus among Israel’s military and intelligence establishment, and supported by the leaders of the opposition as well as Netanyahu—was a fatal error. Hamas was never going to be satisfied with merely being the lords of an Islamist tyranny in the Gaza Strip or even seeking to extend its hegemony someday to Judea and Samaria.
The current war wasn’t caused by the Israeli “occupation” of Gaza simply because it wasn’t occupied on Oct. 6. The Israelis withdrew every settlement, settler and soldier from Gaza in the summer of 2005 in the vain hope that doing so would, if not give the Palestinians a chance to build their own state in peace, at least contain the conflict. Hamas’s objective on Oct. 7 was not advancing the two-state solution that its supposedly more moderate Fatah rivals have repeatedly rejected. It was in continuing and winning the Arabs’ century-old war on Zionism in which they hoped to roll back the clock, eliminate Israel and slaughter its population. And committing mass slaughter of the Jewish people remains popular among Palestinians, as their own polls show even after Oct. 7 and the subsequent consequences for the people of Gaza.
That’s why Netanyahu is right to speak of not just demilitarizing Gaza—something that will, whether Israelis like it or not, require the continued presence of the IDF there for the foreseeable future—but de-radicalizing the Palestinians. The experts worry about future radicalization of Palestinians caused by the current war. But they fail to explain how much more radicalized the Palestinians can become if the current generation is capable of not just carrying out the unspeakable atrocities of Oct. 7, but cheering them and holding them up as a “proud victory” for Palestinian nationalism.
Not a conventional insurgency
The IDF would be on a fool’s errand if the objective were, as it was in counterinsurgencies elsewhere, to win the “hearts and minds” of the Palestinians. But to frame the war in this context is a mistake. As much as Hamas will try to survive, and ultimately win, by guerilla warfare, the situation in Gaza is much more like that of Berlin in 1945 than it was to conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. As the Palestinians have made clear, the war is not one of occupiers and the occupied, but an existential one between two nations. Hamas is no more or less an idea than the National Socialist Party of Adolf Hitler. And it can only be destroyed in the same manner that the Nazis were wiped off the map: by their complete military defeat and the realization on the part of the Palestinians that, like the Germans, they needed to abandon the delusions and the genocidal ideology of their leaders if they hope to have any semblance of a normal life. Palestinians must give up a conception of their national identity that is inextricably linked to hatred of Jews and denying them a state in their ancient homeland.
The realists who are claiming that Israel can’t win this war aren’t just pointing out the acknowledged difficulty of Israel’s military problem. They are really arguing that Israel shouldn’t be allowed to win because doing so will prove their formulations about imposing a two-state solution on the region was a disastrous and costly mistake.
At this point in the campaign, Israel remains a long way from victory, and even after it is achieved, Netanyahu’s goals of de-radicalization will take far longer than that. Should Biden succumb to the pressure from the antisemitic intersectional wing of his Democratic Party, and cut off the flow of arms and join the international community in condemning the war—steps that, thankfully, he has not taken, even as he speaks out of both sides of his mouth on the subject—then an Israeli victory will likely be impossible. But anyone who genuinely desires peace should be dismissing the tired repetition of failed policies by the likes of Haas and Friedman, and rooting for the Israeli prime minister’s objectives to be achieved. The only path to peace is to be found in a decisive end to the war in which the Palestinians will be forced to rethink their objectives. Anything else merely condemns both Jews and Arabs to another generation of bloody and futile conflict.
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Year in whoppers: National Security Adviser is caught clueless, the NY Times relies on Hamas and more
By Post Editorial Board
Yet again, the media, President Biden, his staff and others dropped shocking statements completely detached from reality throughout 2023. Here are our picks for the absolute worst of them.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
#1 “The Middle East . . . is quieter than it has been for decades.”
— National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Foreign Affairs, November/December (print edition)
We say: Sullivan was bragging of Team Biden’s accomplishments in an essay sent to print Oct. 2, just five days before Hamas’ monstrous attack on Israelis set the region aflame.
If America’s national security adviser can be so clueless, be very afraid.
#2 “We ended cancer as we know it.”
— President Biden, July 25
We say: Though Biden has no qualms about telling massive lies even when he’s lucid, this couldn’t possibly have been one of those moments. Best chalk it up to dementia (unless he cured that, too!).
#3 “Age jokes can’t diminish Biden’s unrivaled experience and wisdom.”
— The Hill, Dec. 11
We say: Clearly writer John Kenneth White is talking about some other President Biden, not the one now in the White House. Or maybe he’s he’s suffering from the same cognitive decline as the president (see #2, above).
#4 “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say
— The New York Times, Oct. 17
We say: No, it wasn’t an Israeli airstrike but a failed Palestinian rocket, and it didn’t hit the hospital but a nearby parking lot.
Yes, the Gray Lady later apologized for relying so heavily on Hamas terrorists as its source.
But the damage was done, sparking massive protests worldwide and inflaming antisemitism that has yet to abate.
And this is supposed to be “the paper of record”?
#5 “Let’s always take a moment to also see what we have achieved thus far, while we clearly see the moment that we are presently in. So we have achieved a lot.”
— VP Kamala Harris, June 23
Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech at The Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, on June 23, 2023.
We say: If Joe Biden is reelected and can’t make it through a second term, Harris would become leader of the Free World. That’s quite a “moment” to be in.
#6 “In the Hanukkah story, the Jewish people were forced into hiding. No one thought they would survive.”
— Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Dec. 11
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff got the story of Hanukkah completely wrong in a tweet this month.
We say: Kamala’s kookiness must run in the family. Hanukkah is about Jews celebrating a military victory, not cowering in fear, as the veep’s hubby suggested.
And to think the White House tapped Emhoff to help fight the rise in antisemitism.
#7 “Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink.”
— The Washington Post, July 13
We say: Hmm, wonder why they didn’t throw in locusts, boils, vermin and slaying of the first born. Here’s a free tip: Any time you see the phrase “planet on the brink,” you can be sure you’re reading pure hype.
#8 “We have seen the effectiveness of our approach [to the border].”
— Homeland Security boss Alejandro Mayorkas, May 10
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the Biden administration’s approach to the border crisis has been effective.
We say: Actually, Mayorkas was telling the truth. Team Biden’s goal, after all, is clearly to hoover in as many migrants as possible from around the world. It’s been amazingly effective at that, with record-setting millions crossing the border on President Biden’s watch.
#9 “We have been [in Israel] for more than 1.5 million years.”
— Palestinian National Council President Rawhi Fattouh, May 22
We say: Are people like Fattouh truly that ignorant — or do they just think everyone else is?
The modern-day Homo sapiens (never mind Palestinians) wasn’t even around until 300,000 years ago.
And “Palestinians” didn’t see themselves as a people, distinct from other Arabs, until the past century or so.
#10 “There would be no climate crisis if there was no racism.”
— Jane Fonda, May 27
We say: Seems like the actress-activist hasn’t made much progress from her days as Hanoi Jane.
“Climate crisis” worriers blame carbon fuels — which humans of all races (and all levels of racism) burn.
#11 “People Are Getting Real Heated Over a Gas Stove Ban That Isn’t Even Happening.”
— The New Republic, Jan. 12
An article in The New Republic claimed that the gas stove ban “isn’t even happening” despite the growing legislation meant to outlaw natural-gas hookups. Christopher Sadowski
We say: Not happening? New York City outlawed gas hookups in new buildings in 2019, and New York state followed suit this year.
Other jurisdictions have moved in that direction, too, and Team Biden’s hints about such a ban prompted legislation in Congress to prevent it.
#12 “Biden is extremely well-liked.”
— MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski, Feb. 10
We say: True, MSNBC is basically an arm of the Biden White House. But the president hasn’t seen an approval rating over 50% since soon after taking office, per RealClearPolitics poll averages.
It was under 45% in February and stands at 40.4% today.
Even Democrats don’t want Joe to run for reelection.
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