In June of 2009, President Barack Obama gave a speech in Cairo, calling for a new era of peace and understanding between the West and the Muslim world. It was a moment of optimism across the region. I watched that speech in Damascus with Khaled Meshaal, a famed leader of Hamas’s military wing. The Israelis had once tried to kill him by dripping poison in his ear; Meshaal’s life was saved by the Jordanians, who said they would sever relations if the Israelis didn’t provide an immediate antidote. The Israelis did.
Meshaal assured me, after the speech was over, that Hamas was ready to talk to Israel. I asked him he had a message for the American government. “Tell President Obama we don’t want to be part of the problem.”
“You could send that message yourself right now,” I replied. “By recognizing Israel’s right to exist.”
He demurred, of course. He believed that “recognizing” Israel was one of the few cards Hamas had to play in a negotiation. He did call Israel by its proper name—not the “Zionist Entity”—during the course of our interview, which I chose to see as a good sign. He gave me a box of candy with a photo of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on the cover. I never ate the candy. And that was my moment of peak optimism: not very optimistic at all. Hamas has never given an inch. Its charter still calls for the eradication of the Jewish people. And now it has committed a world-historical atrocity—an atrocity with a dual purpose, to lure Israel into an overreaction and to kill the possibility of a peace deal with Saudi Arabia.
Several writers I respect—Tom Friedman, George Packer—have warned that the Israelis should take one very important lesson from our 9/11 experience: don’t overreact like we did. I agree. But it’s hard to parse the difference between a reaction and an overreaction: Israel certainly has a right to make every effort to free the hostages and—I believe—to remove Hamas from power in Gaza. It is asking Palestinian civilians to flee south; it is using “knock-knock” missiles—which make a big noise but cause little damage—to warn Gazans that their specific buildings are targeted. But there will be collateral damage, there will be civilians killed and the Global Fecklessness Caucus will take up the cry of moral equivalence, “brutalities” on both sides—even though there is a bright line here: the difference between acts of war, which are inhumane and dreadful but sometimes necessary, and acts of terror, which are unspeakable. This is going to be a very difficult needle to thread.
There is no best case scenario. There are several least worst case scenarios, though: One is that Bibi Netanyahu’s tenure as Israel’s leader ends. His Theory of the Case has proven spectacularly wrong. His focus on weakening the Israeli Supreme Court diverted the attention of an entire country—especially the military and intelligence sectors—away from the need for constant vigilance, which may have enabled the massacre. His unstated policy of keeping the Palestinian Authority weak on the West Bank, and allowing Hamas to build strength in Gaza, was cynical to the point of criminality. His belief that he could make peace with the Saudis without making concessions to the Palestinians was arrogant and foolish.
Another least-worst is that the government that replaces Netanyahu’s will be formed from the Israeli center, excluding extremists, especially the right-wing settlers. And a corollary: that Israel will engage with moderate Palestinians—who do, indeed, exist—to resume real negotiations toward a two-state solution. If they do, the Saudi deal becomes possible once more.
A third least-worst scenario: That the Palestinian leaders finally come to understand that there is no percentage in terrorism, especially if Hamas is routed. This is beyond wishful thinking: the Palestinians have a robust history of sado-masochistic leaders slipping out of deals that they’ve spent months negotiating—they never, as Abba Eban once said, waste an opportunity to waste an opportunity. Bill Clinton probably terrified Yasser Arafat during the near-miss peace negotiations in 2000, when he joked: “Yasser, if this works, you’re going to have to buy yourself a desk.” Arafat never wanted a desk. He liked to bask in the left-wing European salons, play dress up and parade about in a military uniform, a semi-automatic pistol dangling from his hip. He never really wanted the responsibility of governing a country. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, wasted a fleeting moment of good governance and optimism on the West Bank about a decade ago. He is old, inept, pathetic and needs to be replaced in the elections he has chosen not to hold.
A fourth least-worse scenario: Qatar gets religion and stops funding Hamas. Qatar has been sitting unsteady on an electrified fence. It is home to a major U.S. Navy base and home to the exiled Hamas leadership, including Khaled Meshaal. There is some value for the Qataris to continue as a diplomatic intermediary, especially with Iran; there is no value to arming Gaza. There is real value in using its leverage to pressure the Palestinians to negotiate with Israel.
There is little hope that any of this can happen, but there is no hope that anything good will happen while Hamas controls Gaza. I hope the Israeli attack will be efficient, surgical—to the extent possible—brief and successful, especially when it comes to liberating the hostages. The very worst scenario is that the IDF gets stuck occupying hell on earth. I assume the Israelis are too smart for that, but then I assumed that Israeli intelligence was smart enough to smoke out any serious terrorist plot.
Meanwhile, Back Home…
I’ve been impressed with the media coverage of this war. I’ve been especially impressed by Jake Tapper, who seems in a constant personal struggle to keep it together as he hears the stories of the atrocities visited upon the Kibbutzim. He has walked the difficult path between humanity and fairness with dignity and professionalism, as have all the other American journos consigned to the war zone. When you hear Trumpers deriding the LameStream media, think of the CNN and MSNBC and even the Fox reporters on the ground at this moment.
But don’t think too much of Fox, which has been trying to make Gaza into a domestic U.S. controversy. Item Two for Bret Baier on the third night of the war was that Joe Biden hadn’t said anything about Gaza that day. The President had made a strong statement two days earlier, the day of the massacre…and he made another strong statement the very next day. Ditto for Tony Blinken, whose visit to Israel was a model of diplomacy, strength and compassion—his every word well chosen.
And there are the nitwits across the political spectrum here, who have made fools of themselves. On the right, there was a coalition of the useless, who sought to blame Gaza on the Biden Administration’s “appeasement” of Iran. This was led by Tim Scott, who demonstrated his unreadiness to be President: “All money is fungible,” he said in a stupid mischaracterization of the Iran hostage negotiations, which placed $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil revenues into a US controlled fund for non-governmental humanitarian relief causes in Iran. “After the negotiations had finished,” Scott went on, “The first thing the Iranians said was, ‘You can’t tell us what we can do with the money…”
Except they couldn’t and didn’t. The money, which resided in a Qatari bank, was quickly refrozen. Not a penny had been disbursed. It sits as leverage to nudge Iran away from its relationship with Hamas. So, the current status of Biden’s Iran hostage deal: We got six Americans released. Iran got…nothing.
On the left, there was the usual dilettante chorus—the students at Harvard and elsewhere, who demonstrated in favor of murdering infants, raping young women and taking Israeli peace activists like Vivian Silver hostage. (Silver devoted her life to accompanying very ill Gazans, especially women, to get treatment in Israeli hospitals.)
And, of course, the Black Lives Matter chapter in Chicago, which posted cartoons on social media of gleeful Palestinian terrorists attacking the music festival in their para-gliders and the words, “I stand with Palestine.” Black Lives Matter later emitted a grudging semi-apology saying it wasn’t “proud” to have done so, but still expressing solidarity with the Palestinian “mothers” and other victims—but not, in a pointed omission, Israelis. BLM thus reinforced its reputation as a left-wing scam operation that exists only to oppose police violence—who doesn’t?—while ignoring that vast number of black lives lost to black crime. If it ever had a raison d’être—and that was tenuous at best—it no longer does.
Finally, there’s Michelle Goldberg, who seems growing impatient with the excesses and stupidities of the left. She expressed her frustration in the New York Times:
The left has always attracted certain people who relish the struggle against oppression primarily for the way it licenses their own cruelty; they are one reason movements on the left so reliably produce embittered apostates. Plenty of leftists have long fetishized revolutionary violence in poor countries, perhaps as a way of coping with their own ineffectuality. Che Guevara didn’t become a dorm room icon only for his motorcycle and rakish beret.
Well said. But I would add: We should all be thankful for the ineffectuality of the extreme left, just as we should be terrified of the growing strength of the populist right, in America and Europe.
Kevin Phillips RIP
For a disastrous few months in 1992, CBS News twinned Kevin Phillips and me as commentators on the presidential election. We proved unreliable. I was expected to be the lefty, speaking in favor of Bill Clinton—but I couldn’t do that when Clinton did or said things that were hapless or wrong. Phillips was worse. He was the famous architect of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, but he was making a transition in 1992 from the populist right to the populist left. He disdained the elitist incumbent, George H.W. Bush.
Kevin died of Alzheimers this week, leaving behind a quote that—to my moderate mind—defines the worst way to look at politics:
“The whole secret of politics,” he told the journalist Garry Wills during the 1968 presidential campaign, “is knowing who hates who.”
Actually, these days it’s the reverse: finding out who is willing to cooperate with who, in order to salvage our democracy.
“One is that Bibi Netanyahu’s tenure as Israel’s leader ends. His Theory of the Case has proven spectacularly wrong. His focus on weakening the Israeli Supreme Court diverted the attention of an entire country—especially the military and intelligence sectors—away from the need for constant vigilance, which may have enabled the massacre. His unstated policy of keeping the Palestinian Authority weak on the West Bank, and allowing Hamas to build strength in Gaza, was cynical to the point of criminality. His belief that he could make peace with the Saudis without making concessions to the Palestinians was arrogant and foolish.”
Oh! -- “and don’t overreact like [the US] we did”; ie, start fake wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, punishing people who weren’t involved in the actual terrorism. I think Netanyahu expected to consolidate his power with this attack on Israel. I have a very cynical attitude toward a man who played footsie with Putin and tRump.
Once more, the so-called “Palestinians” are being used as a shield for the actual aggressors--and they do it because they’ve been raised on 80years of disinformation. These people were originally poor folk from neighboring countries trying to qualify for handouts from international relief organizations. The real question is: With the excessive wealth of certain nations--Saudi Arabia, and such--where is a sincere effort to support their fellow Muslims by those with the means to do it?
Three quick points.
First, I assume Trump praising Hamas/Hezbullah has been a lead story on Fox, right? (I don't watch but I assume they are still fair and balanced).
Second, there has to be a time at some point where we finally talk about creating a Palestinian State or entity. Hamas and the PA are horrible but Israel's treatment of the Palestinians (and their own Arab population) does kinda suck and we should be able to acknowledge that without being accused of supporting butchering babies. Both sides should recognize the humanity in the other.
Third, I cannot imagine what it is like to have been in the area where the massacres happened. I can't imagine being a witness, I can't imagine thinking it was OK to perpetrate this, and I can't imagine trying to cover it after the fact. I have avoided all videos and photo-essays on the topic. I don't need the nightmares.
PS -- Nice comments on Kevin Phillips.