Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman talks to Arutz Sheva about the state of US-Israel relations, says, Biden making it harder to recover hostages, win war, pressure and criticism of Israel 'only because it's an election year.'
Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman spoke to Arutz Sheva – Israel National News about the current state of the US-Israel relationship in light of the recent pressure by the Biden Administration over the war against Hamas.
Ambassador David Friedman commented on the shift in the messages conveyed by the US government from what was felt in Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas massacre, on October 8th and 9th, when the US seemed more supportive of Israel. “It is very unfortunate. Biden made reference to Israel engaging in indiscriminate bombing. This is very, very unfair and not true. I think he said that their conduct was over the top. He started pushing for a two-state solution. He's demanding a ceasefire."
"It's offensive, but the real damage is that it is making it harder for Israel to recover the hostages and win the war, because of the Hamas strategy. They know they can't defeat Israel militarily, so what they're saying is, ‘okay, we just committed this incredible act of barbarity. We're the darlings of the terrorist world. Now can we survive? We're not going to survive if Israel completes this war. The only way we can survive is if America stops Israel from completing the war. So right now they've got a few battalions left in Rafah and they've got their leadership still intact. So now they're watching Biden and they're saying to themselves ‘this guy's going to stop Israel, and if this guy stops Israel, we're going to survive. We don't have to pay that high a price to survive. The price of the hostages goes up and the risk of a bad outcome goes up. No one's paying attention to Biden more than Hamas and he's sending them exactly the wrong signals.”
On the shift between the initial hugs that Israel received, people in Israel were really moved and impressed by President Biden, by the hugs from the US, Blinkin coming here, saying ‘you guys are not alone,’ there was a feeling that the US is really with us, Ambassador Friedman says that he was not surprised, because “I never thought that Biden was really in charge of this. I think that at some level he does have an affection for the state of Israel, but that gives way entirely to his desperation to be reelected in 2024. So, as the politics start to move away from Israel and they always do, I mean every single battle that Israel's been involved with, when they're attack on the first day or two, they get some sympathy. It always changes, assuming that it would be the same thing here, I wasn't surprised. I am disappointed at how abrupt and how extensive the turning has been on Israel. In particular this idea of trying to create a distinction between Netanyahu and the people of Israel. Israel and America have very close relationships and I wouldn't say that there has been no meddling going on over the last 50 years, because it's such a close relationship. Everybody's interested in everybody else's politics, but this sets a new standard. This idea of going after the elected leader of the state of Israel in a war has really set a new low. It really undermines Israel. I don’t think it’s a policy or Biden’s style. It’s all political, because I think he's looking at this and saying, ‘I don't want to turn on Israel. I still have a lot of centrist Democrat voters, who like Israel, but most of them, especially on the left, don't like Netanyahu, so I can thread this needle by being really, really tough on Netanyahu, but by saying, ‘but of course I love the Jewish people and I love the State of Israel.’ I think that's a political calculation. I think he got together with his people and said, ‘all right, how do I work this thing out? How do I support Israel, but keep my voters? If it was just a political calculation under normal circumstances, politics is a very complicated and sometimes a dirty game. But during a war, when Bibi is trying to defend this country against the greatest threat it's had, maybe in its entire history, it’s really inappropriate.”
Addressing reports that the US is holding Israel ‘by the throat’ even in terms of ammunition, something that has never been heard of, Ambassador Friedman says that, “yesterday seven US senators proposed the bill that would end military assistance to Israel. There are circumstances where they didn't like the way the war was going. If they go into Rafah they would lose their access to weaponry. Again, Israel has to win this war. Israel, and only Israel, bears the consequences of losing the war and for a bunch of American Senators 6,000 miles away to try to handcuff Israel, at a time when they're confronting this evil, for political gain; it's only politics. It's only because this is an election year. It's terrible. Just understand that if this was 2023 or 2022 and we didn't have a presidential election coming, none of this would be happening. It's all to cater to a political base that the Democrats can't lose, in order to win in 2024.”
Turning to his support for former President Donald Trump, whose administration he served under as ambassador, Friedman said, “To put this support in the right context, because people ask me sometimes, ‘what do you think is the worst risk that Israel faces? Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Is it Iran? And I say the biggest risk to Israel geopolitically is that America ceases to lead the world. That's the biggest risk to Israel. So when I say Trump is better for Israel than Biden, in the first place it's because Trump is better for America than Biden, because Trump will lead America. Because Trump will keep America out of wars. Because Trump will project the strength and influence of the United States in a way that will end wars before they start and make people fear America before they engage in military adventurism. That's what makes Trump fundamentally better for Israel than Biden.”
Ambassador Friedman continues, “On this specific issue, his track record is like no other, whether it's Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Pompeo Doctrine, the Abraham Accords. I mean no one's done for Israel what Trump has done and he'll continue on that path, I believe.”
Some people on the right fear that Trump gave Israel so much and that during his second term he may want something as a payback. Ambassador Friedman is not sure, “What the payback would be. I mean I guess the fear would be that Israel would make peace with the Palestinians under terms that are unfavorable. He knows the enemy that Israel is confronting. He made it very clear that Israel should finish the job against Hamas. He understands Abu Mazen and those that follow him. He understands that 80% or more of the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, not in Gaza, support Hamas and support the attacks of October 7th. He understands terrorism. He understands evil. He led the fight against ISIS, and we defeated ISIS. I don't think there's anything in his background or anything that he has said that would suggest anything but continued support for Israel.”
Trump is seen by some as having ‘problematic relationship’ with Netanyahu over the latter's call to congratulate bIden on his election victory in 2020. Ambassador Friedman says that, “I haven't had a conversation with him in months about Israel and in particular Israeli politicians. He's very quick to offer his views. I think in the aftermath of October 7th, he was stunned by the failures of Israel and they were massive. They were unprecedented and to date none of us have a good answer for how they happened and he recognized that just as I did, just as everybody did and I think he reacted to that. I think he felt great disappointment and shock that this could happen to Israel. Such a primitive attack against Israel could have such devastating consequences. So, I think it has caused him to have some doubts about the leadership, but at the end of the day whoever the democratically elected leader of Israel is, will be a friend to Trump. I don't have any doubt.”
Explaining what he believes is behind Biden’s pressure for a Palestinian state now, Ambassador Friedman stated that pressuring Israel to give a Palestinian state basically as a result of October 7th, “is exactly the wrong response. It's exactly the wrong outcome. It rewards terror. It says that terrorism can be excused and put into a context. It can be resolved through concessions and appeasement. This will be the template for terrorists around the world, terrorizing their particular communities and expecting to be rewarded for it. So it is exactly the wrong message. In particular in Israel it's going to be undoubtedly an existential threat to the state, because again, it's a state of people. It's not a hypothetical state. It's a state of people and these people have already voted and 80% of them or more are saying ‘we support the October 7th attacks. How do you sit side by side with a terrorist state that is so close to Israel's major population centers. Israel will never agree to it and we saw, to their credit, that the Knesset took this up and voted 90 something to 10, to reject the unilateral imposition of a state.”
Against the criticism of many that Netanyahu is currently refusing to talk ‘about the day after,’ or ‘what he wants to happen in the Gaza Strip, in Judea and Samaria,’ for example, Ambassador Friedman says that, “the day after, and the day after that, is all still about security and ensuring that October 7th doesn't happen again. I mean, if people want to talk about some Jeffersonian reconstruction of a democratic institution, we're so far from that. I mean it would be silly to discuss it and frankly there would be so little political consensus on that, you're just driving wedges into the unity that's been reestablished after this past summer. So, it doesn't make any sense to talk about it now. It makes sense to secure the territory and then start thinking about it. That to me is the day after. Any more pressure on Israel to go beyond that is foolish.”
On Ambassador Friedman’s new approach that he is proposing for Judea and Samaria, which some say connects to what Mike Pompeo presented here in Israel, and which he presented in Nashville, Tennessee, he says, “I proposed it, because when Biden proposed the two-state solution, everyone was saying that if not this, you have to have some alternative. So I felt the need to do it then in Nashville, because it was an organization of 5,000 Christian broadcasters and they would get the message out to a very broad audience. Before I talk about the specifics, I think that what's happening now is that, for the first time maybe in my lifetime, the convergence of theology, geopolitics and national security, is leading us to the same place. The theology has always been there. The theology among those who believe in the land of Israel is that God gave this land to the Jewish people. He promised it to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to the prophets. Places like Shilo and Beit El and Hevron, these are places that are deeply intertwined into the Jewish DNA of our people, in our history. So, theologically, we should keep the land. But now for the first time, you look at the politics. Well we know now that a two-state solution doesn't work. We know it because we gave it a try in Gaza. Gaza was effectively a Palestinian state. We gave them a lot of money, not a single Jew on the ground, not a single soldier on the ground and yet what did they do with all the money? They build terror tunnels and rockets So we know that a Palestinian state fails. So the politics now tells us we have to come up with something else and the reality is that if you look all around the region, the only potential for Palestinians in Judea and Samaria to have more prosperity and more dignity is to somehow be able to cooperate and coexist with Israel, which is the only successful country in the region. Its GDP per capita is more than ten times everybody else's. Now the national security is the reality that Israel cannot leave the Palestinians to their own devices. They left Gaza to its own devices and under our noses they created the greatest homecourt advantage in the world, in terms of ground combat. There's no other place where you could attack anywhere in the world, where you would confront the type of terror tunnels, this 350-mile spiderweb of terror tunnels that you have in Gaza. So we now know that from a national security perspective Israel must be on the ground. So for Israel to be on the ground in Judea and Samaria is the only way to keep the entire area peaceful, not just for the Israelis, but for whatever number of Palestinians, and it's not a small number, want to live in peace with Israel and are themselves being terrorized by Fatah, and by Hamas and by Islamic Jihad.”
Ambassador Friedman continues, “We’re talking about full sovereignty. If you listen to those ugly demonstrations all around the world where people say ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,’ so they're half right. What I would say is ‘from the river to the sea Israel will be free,’ I think that really is the right approach. Again I say this with a desire to create a win-win circumstance. This isn't a situation where Israel's going to grab all the land and the Palestinians should just pound sand, or continue to live sub-optimal lives. It’s that with that sovereignty comes a responsibility. It's an expensive responsibility and to me the way to move this forward is to expand the Abraham Accords. The Abraham Accord countries were concerned about the quality of life of the Palestinians. We need to explain to them that it's not going to get better by creating a Palestinian state; it's going to get worse. It will be better if Israel has sovereignty over the region and they can help absorb healthcare and schooling into their infrastructure. Israel has to make sure that the schooling and education is consistent with the values of coexistence. That is the sovereignty. It's a win for everybody. It's not something where you take the parts that you want and you just leave the rest and leave people to their own devices.”
This situation would result in the Palestinians having a right to vote for the Knesset, which Ambassador Friedman explains as, “you have Israel just coming out, of God willing, this massive military threat to its existence. You're not going to swap a military threat for a demographic threat, where it makes it even easier, just by voting for Israel to no longer be a Jewish state. That can't work, but at the same token, I look at Puerto Rico as an example, because Puerto Rico is the territory of the US. They don't vote in our national elections. They don't get any electoral votes. When I was a kid, the biggest terror group in the US was called the FALN. There were the Puerto Rican nationalists who engaged in terrorism to create Puerto Rican independence. They're not around anymore. Puerto Rico lives happily within its construct as being a territory of the US. They vote in local elections, but they don’t vote in the national election. Why? Because the benefits they get from their association with the US exceed whatever detriments of not voting. The best example is there are a lot of hurricanes in Puerto Rico and when there's a hurricane, the US comes and helps. It’s a win-win. In the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians they are not going to vote in the national elections of the state of Israel, but Israel will commit itself to helping them achieve the benefits of living in a first world country.”
A situation like this exists already in Jerusalem, where Israel is taking care of Palestinians who are not really citizens, and Ambassador Friedman says that, “that's true sovereignty. In Jerusalem they have become permanent residents. My vision would be that they would be permanent residents in Jenin and Ramallah as well, meaning there’s not going to be a risk of them being thrown out of their country. They could get travel documents that would enable them to leave. All subject to the overriding security protocols, but that is what it means to be a sovereign.”
Ambassador Friedman continues to explain that, “This is all part of the big picture of the Abraham Accords, which concern broadening Israel's relationship with the Arab world. It is important to these countries that they can say in good conscience that they did not abandon the Palestinians. So the next step is to convince the Arab world that you're not abandoning the Palestinians by not giving them a state. If anything, given the history of the Palestinians, who have never successfully self-governed, whose leadership has been, at best, corrupt and giving them their own state is not going to help the Palestinian people, enabling them to live side by side with Israel in peace, working on a common economy, working on common goals. That is how you help the Palestinians and that's where the Gulf countries should be investing.”
Ambassador Friedman concludes the interview by remembering October 7th, “it was very difficult for me. I had some of my grandchildren with me and we were going in and out of shelters and my oldest granddaughter who's about 13 said to me ‘why are people trying to kill us, they don't even know us? What is it about them that are trying to kill us?’ I just thought back and said ‘I'm not from the generation of the Holocaust. My parents’ generation is the generation of the Holocaust. I thought we were past this already and here I am explaining to my granddaughter that there are people who just want to kill Jews, because they are Jews. So that was depressing and it was hard for me to watch. As I learned more about the level of barbarity that took place, I was so sad and angry at the same time. Since then what I would say is this. The people of Israel are truly the greatest people in the world. They really are. I mean what they've done to take care of each other, to rebuild people's lives, to look after the wounded, to comfort the grieving. People have just stopped everything to help each other and it's extraordinary. It makes me so proud to be Jewish, that this is how we've reacted to it. We just have to finish the job. We have to win this war decisively, not just because we want to eradicate Hamas, but because we need to send a message to the world that Jewish blood is not cheap, and if this ever happens again, the response will be overwhelming again.”
If Trump goes back into the White House and following his experience of October 7th, Ambassador Friedman believes that, “There is no question that he would go back into public activity. I think post October 7th my desire to serve is far greater than it was before. I haven't spoken about this with the President. This is his decision and he tends to make these decisions much closer to inauguration day, than just during a campaign. But, if given that opportunity, it would be my honor to do whatever I could do to help. I just want to help. I don't have anything specific in mind. Obviously, I have a track record in one particular job, but I just want to be in a position to help as best I can.”
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Schumer, Schiff and Nadler are sleazy.
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Zionist Organization of America | ZOA is Horrified by Schumer Treating U.S. Ally Israel Like a Banana Republic Demanding Replacement of Israel’s Democratically Elected Govt. - Zionist Organization of America
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
Senate Majority Leader Schumer often calls himself a “Shomer Israel” – guardian of Israel, and did so again at the outset of his lengthy speech on the Senate floor on March 14, 2024. Following the speech, ZOA received numerous calls from American Jews and pro-Israel Americans expressing their shock at Schumer’s dangerous statements, which attacked Israeli democracy and Israel’s fight for her existence against Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terrorists.
ZOA and the American Jewish and pro-Israel communities are horrified that Schumer is improperly interfering with Israeli democracy by calling for new, premature elections in Israel to try to unseat Israel’s democratically elected prime minister and Knesset, almost three years before the current Israeli government’s four-year term ends. That sort of divisive interference with a foreign government should be unthinkable. Schumer also failed to mention that Israel is now governed by a broad-based war cabinet, and that Israelis are united in the need to destroy Hamas’ terror army and bring the hostages home.
Schumer also gave succor to Israel’s enemies by wrongly labeling as “major obstacles to peace” Israel’s democratically-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, other Israeli ministers, and the 500,000 peaceful Jews living in Judea/Samaria (whom Schumer falsely and insultingly called “far-right wing extremists” and “right wing zealots”). Schumer also promoted the Biden administration’s actions against them.
Further interfering with Israeli democracy, sovereignty and safety, Schumer called for the U.S. and Arab nations to pressure Israel to give up her lawful land to create what would be a Palestinian Iranian-proxy terror state that endangers Israel’s continuing existence (the so-called “two-state solution”). Schumer threatened to cut off U.S. support if Israel did not comply, saying: “the U.S. Government should DEMAND that Israel conduct itself with a future two-state solution in mind. [minute 36:05] We should not be forced into a position of unequivocally supporting the actions of an Israeli government that include bigots who reject the idea of a Palestinian state.”
Thus, according to Schumer, anyone who sensibly rejects creating a Palestinian terror state on Israel’s land is a “bigot.” That means that Schumer is calling 85% of Israelis and a high percentage of Americans “bigots”!
Schumer also ignored the last century of history, and absurdly asserted that the prospect of a state would magically make the Palestinian Arabs peaceful – but that more terror would result if Israel takes real, sensible anti-terror actions, such as tightening Israeli security control. Schumer incredibly stated: “With the prospect of a real two-state solution on the table, and for the first time genuine statehood for the Palestinian people, I believe they will be far more likely to support more mainstream leaders committed to peace.”
The first time??? The Arabs were given extremely generous offers of a state on Israel’s land numerous times throughout the past 75 years (including in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2008 and 2014). Each time, the Arabs rejected a state and instead went to war to destroy Israel or began another Intifada to murder and maim thousands of Israelis.
And that’s not all.
Schumer also overstated Hamas’ inflated Gazan casualties as “immense.” Wharton and other statisticians have shown that the Hamas figures are grossly exaggerated. Schumer also falsely demanded that Israel “must prioritize the protection of civilian casualties when identifying military targets.” No international law requires prioritizing civilians of an enemy in war time.
In fact, Israel carefully follows international law for every operation, which requires weighing the prospective military advantage against the potential expected casualties. Israel often calls off important operations when expected casualties may be too high. Many Israeli soldiers have died as a result of Israel’s care in preserving civilians. Prof. John Spencer of West Point and Britain’s esteemed Col. Richard Kemp this week stated that no army in history has done more to protect enemy civilians than Israel. And these Gazan civilians are not so innocent—they elected Hamas and 72%-85% of them support and praise the October 7th massacre, rape, murder, torture of innocent Jews. Thousands went into the streets of Gaza cheering and handing out candy. Even the nurses and doctors in the Gazan hospitals joined in.
Israel’s protection of civilians is so exemplary that despite Hamas using civilians as human shields, the number and ratio of Gazan civilians killed (approximately one civilian casualty for each of the 13,000 terrorists killed) is the lowest in the history of warfare.
Schumer also outrageously libeled Israel by falsely claiming that “so many Jews” are “horrified” by “our sense that Israel is falling short of upholding these distinctly Jewish values that we hold so dear” of protecting human life. And Schumer even claimed that due to “far-right extremists in his coalition,” Netanyahu is “too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza.” We gasped when we heard that last outrageous libel.
“So many Jews” are actually horrified that Schumer is libeling Israel’s excellent record of preserving and protecting civilians.
Schumer also portrayed Israel’s efforts in Gaza as motivated by “revenge,” “anger” and “trauma” – instead of acknowledging that Israel’s sole, rational motivations are protecting Israeli citizens from the Hamas terror army that vows to launch more October 7ths, and bringing the hostages home.
Schumer also referred to a “cycle of bloodshed and revenge” – a misleading, morally-deficient phrase that equates Palestinian Arab terror attacks with Israel’s efforts to stop those terror attacks.
In addition to libeling Israel’s leadership, the peaceful Jews living in Judea/Samaria, and Israel’s law-abiding efforts to stop the vicious Hamas terror army that vows to destroy Israel, Schumer downplayed the daily horrors perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority. For instance, Schumer merely stated that the PA “incites instability through the martyr payment system.” Schumer did not explain that the PA’s “martyr payment system” refers to the PA’s payment of $400 million per year of reward payments and pensions to Arab terrorists to murder Jews. These PA “pay to slay” have resulted in Arabs murdering scores of Jews, and daily terror attacks on Jews in Judea-Samaria and elsewhere in Israel. “Pay to slay” is one of the most serious obstacles to peace. The Palestinian regime even paid the Hamas murderers of 10-7 lifetime pensions.
Schumer’s speech also employed serious falsehoods to promote his dangerous Palestinian state agenda.
First, Schumer claimed that only a “minority of Palestinians [] support Hamas and demonstrate other forms of extremism.” In fact, the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research (PCPSR) December 2023 poll revealed that 72% of Palestinians support Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israeli civilians; 70% of West Bank Palestinians support “armed struggle” against Israel; 60% of Palestinian Arabs want Hamas to remain in control of Gaza after the war; 85% of West Bank Palestinians support Hamas role during the war; and 81% support Yahya Sinwar’s role (the mastermind of the October 7 atrocities).
Second, Schumer falsely claimed that “on the Palestinian side,” former PA prime minister Salam Fayyad is “a model of responsible leadership.” In fact, Fayyad recently stated that his longstanding and current view is that the PLO/PA (which the U.S. is promoting to rule both Gaza and Judea/Samaria) must be expanded to include Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad! And that the PA/PLO cannot rule Gaza unless it includes Hamas and PIJ. Also, just three weeks ago, Fayyad praised Brazilian President Luiz Inácio da Silva as an “international hero” for libelously accusing Israel of committing atrocities that haven’t been seen since Hitler killed the Jews.
Fayyad’s “responsible leadership” also included sponsoring PA summer camps where children’s groups are named after leading Palestinian Arab terrorists including Dalal Mughrabi (who murdered 37 Jews including 12 Jewish children); calling for boycotting Israeli goods; ignoring Israeli sovereignty and organizing massive Palestinian construction projects on Israeli state lands; calling for the mass release of convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists/murderers from Israeli jails; and comparing Israel’s security fence (needed to stop thousands of Palestinian terror attacks on Israel) to the Berlin Wall.
Schumer could point to no other allegedly peaceful Palestinian Arab leaders. Notably, the PCPSR December 2023 poll found that Palestinian Arabs’ most-favored candidates to replace Mahmoud Abbas as head of the Palestinian Authority are, first, convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti (who is serving five life sentences in Israel for murdering Jews) and second, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Schumer’s false praise of Fayyad as a “model of responsible leadership” is especially concerning because Fayyad is reportedly a candidate for ruler of Gaza and/or a senior position in the U.S.-planned “renewed” Palestinian Authority.
Third, Schumer insulted every Jew and the Jewish faith itself, by impugning the motives for Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av last year. Jews visit the Temple Mount because it is the Jewish people’s holiest site. It is where the Jewish Temples stood for approximately 1,000 years, and where Jews from throughout the land made pilgrimages three times every year. Tisha B’Av – which commemorates the destruction of the Temples – is a prime day for visiting the Temple Mount. Solomon constructed the Temple on the Temple Mount to be a place of prayer for all nations. And Ben G’vir visited the Temple Mount as an act of love and unity, saying “On this day, at this place, it is important to always remember – we are all brothers. Right, left, religious, secular.”
Yet, Schumer ignored all this, and instead claimed that Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount was “a move only intended to antagonize the Muslim population” and “a brazen show of force towards Palestinians.” Doesn’t Schumer believe that Jews, too, have a right to pray on Judaism’s holiest site?
Schumer also claimed that “during this current conflict, [Ben Gvir] has facilitated the mass distribution of guns to far-right settlers, exacerbating instability, fueling violence.” In fact, the daily violence comes from the Palestinian Arabs. The few guns in the hands of Jews living in Judea/Samaria are needed for self-protection. For instance, when three Arab terrorists recently ran down the road between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem, shooting, killing and wounding Jews sitting in their cars who were stuck in a traffic jam, armed civilians helped stop the terrorists’ deadly shooting spree.
Fourth, Schumer also wrongly claimed that Arabs would outnumber and outvote Jews in a one-state solution – a claim based on fraudulent demographic data. In his zeal to promote a Palestinian terror state, Schumer also ignored other alternative proposals, such as former Ambassador David Friedman’s recent sovereignty/peace plan.
It is also remiss that Schumer spent so much time leveling false accusations at Israelis, while failing to name Iran as the major obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
We hope and pray that Majority Leader Schumer will reconsider and retract his dangerous statements, and live up to being a Shomer Israel.
And:
Israel Has No Choice but to Fight On
By Bret Stephens
On Saturday, President Biden warned that Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the war in Gaza was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.” The Israeli prime minister replied the next day that Biden was “wrong.” The rift between the two leaders means that Israel risks losing its most important pillar of military and diplomatic support.
I’ve argued that Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas as an effective fighting force. Here I imagine a conversation with an intelligent critic of that view.
Thousands of Gazan civilians, many of them children, have now been killed, bombed in their homes or out of them. Now they face a humanitarian catastrophe in the form of medicine and food shortages, even starvation.
How can you possibly justify it?
Like all wars, this one is horrible and heartbreaking. But I blame Hamas, not Israel, for the devastation.
Look, Hamas is a terrorist group whose leaders should face justice for the massacres of Oct. 7. But it isn’t Hamas’s bombs, missiles or artillery that have leveled Gaza. It’s Israel’s.
Right. And Hamas, which started the war, could put a halt to that rain of fire tomorrow. It rejected a six-week cease-fire that would have paused the fighting and allowed much more aid in exchange for the release of roughly 40 of the remaining 100 Israeli hostages. It could stop the fighting for good by simply surrendering.
Hamas may not want to stop the fighting, but there’s little we can do about that. Israel can stop its assault, and thus spare Palestinian lives. And because Biden has leverage on Israel, he should use it.
The best way to get Hamas to stop fighting is to beat it. If Israel were to end the war now, with several Hamas battalions intact, at least four things would happen.
First, it would be impossible to set up a political authority in Gaza that isn’t Hamas: If the Palestinian Authority or local Gazans tried to do so, they wouldn’t live for long. Second, Hamas would reconstitute its military force as Hezbollah did in Lebanon after the 2006 war with Israel — and Hamas has promised to repeat the attacks of Oct. 7 “a second, a third, a fourth” time. Third, the Israeli hostages would be stuck in their awful captivity indefinitely.
Fourth, there would never be a Palestinian state. No Israeli government is going to agree to a Palestinian state in the West Bank if it risks resembling Gaza.
All that is speculative. The reality is that children are hungry, the sick aren’t getting medicine, innocent Palestinians are being killed, now. It’s wrong to avert theoretical harms by causing actual ones.
It might be more speculative if this weren’t the fifth major war that Hamas has provoked since it seized power in Gaza in 2007. After each war, Hamas’s capabilities have grown stronger and its ambitions bolder. At some point this had to end; for Israelis, Oct. 7 was that point.
Maybe, but why can’t Israel be much more judicious in its use of force?
Do you have any specific suggestions for how Israel can defeat Hamas while being more sparing of civilians?
I’m not a military expert.
I’ve noticed that whenever Israel’s critics lecture the country on better calibrating its use of force, they don’t have any concrete suggestions. Are Israelis smart enough to fight better, but too stupid to appreciate the diplomatic consequences of not doing so?
Maybe they’re thirsty for vengeance.
The reality of urban warfare is that it’s exceptionally costly and difficult. The United States under Barack Obama and Donald Trump spent nine months helping Iraqi forces flatten the city of Mosul to defeat ISIS, with results that looked even worse than Gaza does today. I don’t remember calls for “Cease-Fire Now” then. Hamas has made it even more difficult for Israel because, instead of sheltering civilians in its immense network of tunnels, it shelters itself.
Even so, that doesn’t relieve Israel of the obligation to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
It’s not as if Israel is not lifting a finger. On Sunday alone, 225 truckloads of aid entered Gaza through Israel, according to the Israeli military. But you seem to think that the government of Israel’s primary responsibility is to the welfare of the people of Gaza. It isn’t. As with any government, its obligations are to its own people.
Israelis are mostly doing fine now. It’s Palestinians who are dying.
Israel has spent the last five months degrading Hamas’s military capabilities to the point that it seems to have run out of rockets to fire at Israel. And around 200,000 Israelis are living as refugees inside their own country because its borders aren’t secure. No country can tolerate that. Israel didn’t come into existence to showcase the victimization of Jews. It came into existence to end their victimization.
Well, since you’re alluding to the Holocaust, it surely can’t be in Israel’s interests to be seen perpetrating a version of it in Gaza. Just look at the worldwide explosion of antisemitism since Oct. 7.
That analogy is false and offensive on many levels. Israel is fighting a war it didn’t seek, against an enemy sworn to its destruction and holding scores of its citizens hostage. If Israel had wanted to wipe out Gazans as Germans sought to wipe out Jews, it could have done so on the first day of the war. Israel is fighting a tough war against an evil enemy that puts its own civilians in harm’s way. Maybe there should be more public pressure on Hamas to surrender than on Israel to save Hamas from the consequences of its actions.
As for antisemitism, the war hasn’t generated a torrent of antisemitism so much as it has exposed it.
Probably a mix of the two. Still, you make the mistake of imagining that Hamas can be defeated. You can’t kill an idea, particularly by generating the terrible resentments that are surely brewing in Gaza and throughout the Arab world.
By that logic, the Allies should have spared Germany because National Socialism was also an idea. You may not be able to kill an idea but you can defang it, just as you can persuade future generations that some ideas have terrible consequences for those who espouse them.
So what do you suggest the Biden administration do?
Help Israel win the war decisively so that Israelis and Palestinians can someday win the peace.
Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues. Facebook
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