Thursday, September 19, 2024
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: Hoist with their own devices
Melanie Phillips: Hoist with their own devices
Today’s developments suggest, however, that Israel hadn’t yet finished its task of disabling the enemy before any such all-out attack. There may therefore be more such disabling attacks to come as a precursor to the long-promised war to finish the job.Jonathan Tobin: Why is Hamas so confident that it’s winning?
And then, of course, there’s Iran. The regime in Tehran must now be in a state of panic. Not only is Hezbollah, the proxy army whose missile batteries form the principal threat to Israel from the Iranian regime, now on its knees for the moment as the result of Israeli out-of-the-box thinking. The Iranian regime will be wondering that, if Israel can pull off this kind of tactic against Hezbollah, what might it be about to do to themselves and their spear-carriers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps?
Of course, we don’t yet know what Israel’s strategy actually is. We know that the Biden administration is putting Israel under enormous pressure not to wage all-out war on Hezbollah. Maybe Israel is buckling to that pressure. There have also been reports that the pager attack was indeed intended as a pre-emptive strike for an all-out assault on Hezbollah, but Israel was forced to make it a stand-alone event because it had become compromised by some Hezbollah operatives becoming suspicious of their pagers.
Despite all that, maybe we’ll see that all-out attack very soon. Israel has long feared such a war, though, because of the certainty of thousands of Israeli victims from enormous barrages of Hezbollah rockets and other weaponry that might overwhelm Israel’s defences. We don’t know whether the events of the past 36 hours have reduced that threat. But there may be no better opportunity than this to take that gamble.
What has long been crystal clear, however, is that Hezbollah has to be defeated once and for all. And so does Iran. The October 7 pogrom put steel into the Israeli public’s backbone. Never again must Israel face the threat of another October 7 or worse. The endless war of attrition by Hezbollah must be stopped. And the head of the snake in Tehran must itself be lopped off. The Israeli public will stand for nothing less.
What has also been clear is that the Biden administration has been doing everything it can to stop Israel from defeating its mortal enemies.
Israel has long observed that — contrary to the west’s moral cretins who so falsely claim that Israel’s responses to Hamas are themselves war crimes — it has used only a fraction of its firepower against Hamas and Hezbollah and that it has far more up its sleeve than anyone can imagine. In the past 36 hours, we’ve seen some evidence of the dramatic surprises that Israel can indeed spring.
But this has also shown us that, given what it does indeed have up its sleeve, Israel could have finished off Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran too long ago if it hadn’t been prevented from doing so by America — which has been intent instead on appeasing and empowering Iran, creating a state of Palestine in Gaza which would become yet another Iranian terror proxy, and cynically weaponising the grievous plight of the hostages to force upon Israel a ceasefire which would led to the survival of Hamas.
Claiming U.S. ‘recognition’Clifford May: Hamas is an idea
But above all, Hamas views American pressure on Israel as its ace in the hole. As Mashaal pointed out, the way that the hostage negotiations have been handled by Washington has amounted to American “recognition” of Hamas as a diplomatic partner as opposed to a despised and outlawed terrorist organization. He’s right about that.
While it’s not clear just how closely they are observing the presidential election or counting on one outcome over another, they obviously prefer Harris’s stand in favor of an “immediate ceasefire” to former President Donald Trump’s comments, which amount to a green light to Israel to “finish the job” of eliminating the terrorists.
Hamas’s military position inside Gaza is not completely eliminated, but it is a shadow of its pre-October self. And there are even reports now starting to circulate about Gazans drawing some obvious conclusions about the high cost of letting Hamas lead them into disaster after disaster. Even as Israel’s focus is increasingly turning towards its northern border and the imperative to stop the Hezbollah fire that has depopulated a large area in the direct line of terrorist fire, the need to continue the work of demolishing tunnels and rooting out remaining Hamas elements is not over. It may take years—something that discourages Israelis, and that infuriates Biden and Harris. But the notion that there is any realistic alternative to continue fighting that would ensure Israeli security—whether in the form of a ceasefire/surrender or bringing international forces into Gaza to stop Hamas—is a pipe dream.
The reality of Palestinian politics
As the Times article makes clear, Hamas will never budge from its demands that Israel hand back Gaza to them. And as long as they are useful to their cause, they will hold onto many of the hostages, despite the belief among some Israelis that it is Netanyahu’s stubbornness or political ambition that is the obstacle to their freedom. Moreover, Hamas leaders are right to believe, despite the understandable anger in Gaza, that the basic equation of Palestinian politics remains unchanged. Over the last century, Palestinian groups and leaders have always gained credibility primarily by shedding Jewish blood. Hamas thinks that it will eventually reap a great benefit from the atrocities of Oct. 7 in the form of broad support that will enable it to topple and replace Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party in Judea and Samaria as well as Gaza. All they have to do to cash in on that is to survive the war, and they think they’ve found the formula to enable them to do just that.
If left to carry out its tasks without foreign interference, the IDF will eventually eliminate Hamas, though that task will not be accomplished easily or quickly. It can certainly prevent it from returning to power in Gaza, thus ensuring that its reign of terror over Israel as well as Palestinians is over. Still, Mashaal and the rest of the terrorist group are counting on feckless American politicians, ideologically motivated leftist demonstrators and political activists, a media that is always prepared to demonize Israeli efforts at self-defense, as well as war-weariness and anguish about the hostages inside Israel to guarantee their survival. We may hope that they are wrong about that, but it’s easy to understand why the terrorist leader is confident that he can outlast the Israelis … with American help.
Their goal is to kill the Zionist idea. Which is what exactly?
Prior to 1948, Zionism was the belief that Jews had the right and should have the opportunity to exercise self-determination in part of their ancient homeland.
There were reasonable arguments against this idea—not least that it would prove too arduous. For one thing, most of what was to become Israel was either desert or malarial swamp.
Following the re-establishment of the Jewish state—and a failed war launched immediately thereafter by the Arab countries surrounding Israel—Zionism took on a different meaning.
If you agree that Israel—the only democratic society in the Middle East, the only nation-state in the region where Jews, Muslims, Druze, Christians and other ethnic and religious groups enjoy a broad spectrum of rights and freedoms—has a right to continue to exist then, congratulations, you are a Zionist.
If, on the other hand, you demand the eradication of Israel “from the river to the sea,” if you support mass-murdering Jews or are indifferent regarding that eventually, then you may consider yourself an anti-Zionist.
Borrell has expanded upon his assertion that you “don’t kill an idea” by adding that “you have to provide an alternative that’s better.” His better idea is (did you guess?) a “two-state solution.”
As he must know, Hamas forcefully rejects such a compromise based on its theological conviction that any territory ever conquered by Muslims—as the land the Romans re-named Palestine was by the imperialist/colonialist army that marched from Arabia in the 7th century—is a waqf, an endowment from Allah to the Muslims for eternity.
I might also note that a proto-two-state solution was what existed after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Two years later Hamas violently ousted the Palestinian Authority and seized power, tolerating no competitors or dissenters.
Huge amounts of aid poured in from “the international donor community.” The United Nations provided social services such as health care and education, which soon included anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish indoctrination.
Hamas spent its energies building a mammoth and elaborate subterranean fortress to be used for the “military solution” it was planning. Hamas leaders have sheltered in it, surrounded by hostages abducted from Israel.
Above the tunnels, Gazan civilians have served as human shields. Hamas leaders knew from the start that Israelis would be blamed by U.N. officials, faux “human rights organizations,” much of the media, and others for those human shields who were killed.
Keener minds than Borrell’s have pondered terrible ideas and what to do about them. In World War II, Churchill sought to if not kill, at least cripple Nazi ideas. He understood that required defeating Nazis on the battlefield.
Of course, there are still Nazis, neo-Nazis and Nazi apologists in Europe and America.
One of their fundamental ideas, a Europe “cleansed” of Jews, has morphed into the idea behind the Tehran-led multifront war being waged against Israel—a Middle East “cleansed” of Jews.
Borrell is neither a Nazi nor a jihadist. But he and many others are helping keep a genocidal idea alive.
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