No Half-Measures
If you Don’t Want a Regional War, Then You Have to Start Acting to Deter and Prevent it
If there is anything to be gleaned from October 7th, it is that something is not working.
Israel was supposed to have some of the most sophisticated national security and intelligence infrastructure in the world. Not to mention the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu if lacking in every other regard, had battle-tested defense credentials. His cabinet was full of rightwing hardliners, so if the judiciary was politicized and the rule of law in Israel were to collapse, at least the national defense wouldn’t be in danger.
As the threat of global terrorism seemed to have receded, thanks to Trump who kicked ISIS to the ground, and as Biden for his part, pressed forward with a grand bargain to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, for optimists who were willing to ignore Iran’s unconstrained race to build a nuclear bomb, or the Taliban’s integration of Al Qaeda leaders into key positions of its security infrastructure, peace in the Middle East really finally seemed to be in the offing.
Just days before the Hamas invasion, Biden’s national security advisor said, “the Middle East is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” And though the statement is ridiculous in hindsight, back then he wasn’t wrong. But if this invasion means nothing else, it is that something is not working. Something in American Mid-East policy is broken.
And something has to change.
It’s convenient for his critics to blame Netanyahu and his right wing coalition for polarizing the country with his judicial reforms. It’s convenient for liberals, who still believe in a two state solution to blame him for progressively isolating the Palestinians, and the Trump administration that licensed it. However, while these critiques are not without merit, they distract from the worm at the core of what really enabled Hamas. At worst they just provide catharsis for liberals who are genuinely committed to the Jewish state but nevertheless deny there is something gravely wrong with the status quo, who conceal their reluctance for Israel to wage its own war on terror by desperately trying to illuminate the strategic peril that may befall Israel were the IDF to invade Gaza. I’m thinking of smart intellectuals whose hearts are in the right place, like the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman. Or the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, whose “October 7th was Something Different” was one of the most beautiful columns I’ve read of hers since her exquisite, “AI and the Garden of Eden.”
Moreover it is perfectly sensible to underscore that Hamas has set a trap for Israel, and to wonder whether that was the terror proxy’s strategy all along. To be sure whatever the extent of Iran’s involvement, for one— to erode the Jewish state’s global reputation by staging an attack so atrocious that it would force Israel to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians just to eliminate Hamas: would play into the regime’s hands immensely. However, the reason I sit down to write this blog post today is to make the case that those concerns are not a good argument for Israel not to invade, level and reoccupy Gaza.
Faced between a hazardous invasion that would inevitably entail the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees, the executions of hostages, and that may mushroom into a wider regional war; and, on the other hand, doing nothing to secure its future defense or to assuage the losses of a grieving people in agony, who just had a preview in the worst way imaginable of the forces of antisemitic genocide that threaten the annihilation of the Jewish people, to defend against which was the whole reason the Jewish state was established in the first place— with good justification one can argue, Israel has no good options.
But considering as the crippling paralysis of Israel one way or another was part of the intention of the attack, I am inclined to think it would be the worst outcome. And I would argue that it is imperative that Israel and all its supporters not allow themselves to be lulled into the dangerous conceit that just because Israel has no good options, that therefore it has no options.
Strategically, though a ground invasion to engage in urban warfare in densely populated Gaza that would leave the northern front exposed to attack by Hezbollah has its significant risks, Israel has no alternative but to undertake it. So long as Hamas could penetrate its borders, supposed to be some of the most secure in the world, or otherwise threaten its existence whether just in theory or in practice, Israel cannot be safe from either Hamas or any terrorist group unless it takes the utmost measures to eradicate Hamas and deter aggression from the 19 other terrorist groups that surround and explicitly aim to destroy the Jewish state.
Hamas’s founding charter states that its purpose and intent is to wipe Israel from the map. The scale and nature of October 7th makes it not an ordinary act of terror, but an open act of war. As the documents recovered from the planning, according to the WSJ, reveal Hamas’s goal was to “kill as many people as possible,” it is the most overt display of the group’s genocidal intentions. For Israel to decline to eradicate Hamas, it would be no less than a failure to respond to what is in reality, like it or not, an existential priority. And insofar as Israel cannot feasibly dismember and defeat Hamas, except by leveling Gaza, then Gaza has to be reduced to rubble. Come hell or high water.
And you can be sorry, and you should be sorry for the many Palestinian innocents who will be killed as a consequence, but bear in mind, their deaths are on Hamas, not Israel. And Hamas has brought Gazans’ fate upon them, Hamas who staged this disgusting pogrom in the full knowledge that Israel would go to war with them, who now as Israel lays siege to Gaza, obscenely use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Why? Because Hamas thinks that by doing so, it will cause the international community to pressure Israel to back down to protect the Palestinians. Shamefully this already promises to work as we are already seeing Biden administration officials, behind closed doors, patronizingly caution Israel to act with “restraint” and conduct itself with respect for the laws of war, as if it weren’t already in Israel’s interest to regard them. Even if Israel won’t listen to the G-7 if urged to back down, it could help Hamas to fracture the relationship between Israel and its supporters. Biden himself has even had the insolence the other night to say on 60 Minutes that Israel should not occupy Gaza.
The critical danger of these overwrought considerations for the Palestinians would be only to incentivize and license the perpetuation of terrorism, or genocide by means of terrorism, against Israel. Indeed that is what the historical record already shows, because every time Israel has ceded land for the sake of the Palestinians and nourishing hopes for a two-state solution, Israel was subsequently attacked or invaded. If October 7th means nothing else, it is that the two-state solution is over and policies that put the Palestinians at their forefront have to end.
The two-state solution was once a noble idea, but it has run its course and shipwrecked itself on the rocks of attempted holocaust. The Palestinians that elected terrorists to govern them and would do so again blew it, and government by the antisemitic and corrupt Palestinian Authority that financially rewards the families of terrorists considered martyrs with American money can be no reasonable substitute for Hamas and should be considered out of the question. Israel is justified not just to reoccupy Gaza but to conduct whatever raids necessary into the West Bank and annex the territory. Palestinians can continue to live in Israel in small enclaves under Israel’s constant surveillance, or they can leave. Forced relocations should no longer be an outrage forbidden by the international community, but they should be considered a reasonable if unfortunate consequence of the necessity for Israel to guarantee its national security.
And as far as American policy goes, Israel should be given full sanction, as Israel should give no quarter, to pursue to the bitter end the destruction of the existential threats who surround it. If Biden really meant to communicate his full-throated support for Israel, then he would have endorsed what should be no less than Israel’s own War on Terror, though the magnitude in this case is greater, because unlike 9/11, October 7th was a genocidal pogrom. Israel and the Jews, not just in Israel but globally, are in a war not just to defend their way of life, but they have been plunged into an existential struggle for their survival as human beings.
This means of course that Gaza should be leveled and reoccupied indefinitely if not permanently. The IDF should do to Gaza what the US did to Iraq and Afghanistan, but, learning from our mistakes, they would be advised to do us one better: send in a lot more troops, and never pull out. And Biden should say, if Israel has to go to war with Hezbollah, the US would be obligated to intervene. He should also completely reverse policy on Iran and hammer the regime with sanctions for the attack Iran enabled via its proxies and starve the Iranian economy. Since plausible deniability is the whole purpose of Iran’s proxies, the US is justified to make that deniability a liability. And Biden should say that any attack on US forces and any escalation on the part of Hezbollah would warrant a strike on Iran’s oil refineries and nuclear enrichment facilities and the assassination of IRGC Quds force leaders.
You cannot support Israel and put the safety of Palestinian civilians, or ridiculous hopes for a two-state solution, and avoiding a wider regional war, all at the top of the agenda all at the same time. That is sheer hypocritical madness. You can be either for Israel, or you can be a coward who stands for nothing. After October 7th who in the hell are you to still tell Israel how to fight a defensive war and to what lengths? At some point we have to let Israel fight and decide the outcomes of the wars it fights on its own terms.
According to the logic of the Biden administration’s absurd policy of deescalation— If Israel shouldn’t occupy Gaza, then why should Ukraine take back Crimea or the Donbas? Hey you know what? Why don’t we give Putin Bakhmut and Kharkiv? Why not cut aid to Ukraine and just give Putin Ukraine actually? How about we give Putin Georgia and Molodova? Hm maybe Putin has a point about NATO. Let’s pull out of that too while we’re at it. It couldn’t hurt to give him the Baltics and Poland too. Why not? Here’s an idea maybe we just really weren’t nice enough to the Palestinians. Maybe Israel should sign over the West Bank to Hamas.
Do you want to avoid a regional war and spare civilians? Why don’t you just surrender then?
— Jay
"You cannot support Israel and put the safety of Palestinian civilians, or ridiculous hopes for a two-state solution, and avoiding a wider regional war, all at the top of the agenda all at the same time. That is sheer hypocritical madness."
Indeed you cannot. In particular, "hopes for a two-state solution" may as well be run through the shredder. Hamas has ensured by its butchery that there will be no independent Palestinian state for a long time—if ever. Why would Israel ever agree to the creation of an independent terrorist enclave masquerading as a sovereign state?
Nor can the safety of Palestinian civilians in Gaza be prioritized—though to be sure, the IDF should do what it can to minimize civilian casualties while pursuing its objective, the destruction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The Biden Administration should concentrate on two things: supporting Israel on Gaza, and deterring Hezbollah and Iran from widening the war. But that might require steel on target, and I'm not confidence that Biden has the backbone to do that. However, he's (mostly) said the right things so far, and I'm willing to wait and see how it goes.
There is a really good video conversation between Vladislav and Jason Jorjani released earlier today on the subject of Iranian Israeli relations that has elements Jay and Thomas are going to love and other elements that Jay and Thomas are going to HATE(such as a liberal democratic Iran should be able to keep much of it's nuclear program).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIYYs3JUWJ4