National Review Online
Tuesday, December 05, 2023
With Israelis in a grueling fight against a
dangerous terrorist enemy, Vice President Kamala Harris was dispatched to Dubai
to deliver a scolding of our close ally for the benefit of Arab leaders. Her
remarks were morally weak and untethered from reality.
In the immediate wake of the October 7 Hamas assault,
and again when we gave President Biden credit for his visit to Israel, we argued that the
true test of his administration’s pledges to have Israel’s back would come over
time, during the slow and arduous — but necessary — process of destroying
Hamas.
As time has dragged on, the public comments in support of
Israel from administration officials have become more subdued, while the
tongue-lashings about Israeli conduct and calls for restraint have become more
frequent.
On a visit to Israel last week, Secretary of State Antony
Blinken criticized Israel for inflicting too many civilian casualties and
reportedly instructed the Israel Defense Forces that the
successful tactics they employed in northern Gaza should not be used in the
south, which is now where Hamas jihadists and operational leaders are believed
to be holed up. He also said Israel didn’t have the “credit” to carry on their
mission for several more months. One wonders if 1,000 more dead Jews would be
needed to buy Israel more time from Blinken.
In remarks in the United Arab Emirates after meetings
with leaders of the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, and the Hamas-sponsoring Iranian ally
Qatar, Harris delivered a version of the same message. It was rooted in the
same failed Obama-era strategy of trying to show “daylight” with Israel in the
groundless hope that it will earn more trust in the Arab world. She reiterated
the administration’s “steadfast conviction” that “Israel has a right to defend
itself” but then insisted, “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.
Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from
Gaza are devastating.”
The reality is that Israel is going above and beyond its
responsibilities to minimize civilian casualties given that it is fighting an
enemy that operates from hospitals, U.N. buildings, schools, and residential
neighborhoods. Hamas operates this way as a matter of strategy, and among the
objectives of that strategy is eliciting just the reaction that it has from
Harris. Israel has provided regular warnings to civilians in areas it plans to
target, even though it knows doing so will also alert Hamas fighters. It has
allowed trucks of humanitarian aid into Gaza, even knowing that the aid will be
diverted to Hamas and that Hamas will steal fuel intended for its people so it
can fire rockets at Israel. Israelis have put more troops in harm’s way by
carrying out a methodical ground invasion rather than simply fighting from the
skies. The measures that Israel has taken to protect Palestinian civilian lives
have put the lives of their own soldiers and civilians at greater risk and have
meant that the operation is taking longer than it would without such
precautions. And yet, they are getting attacked by the Biden administration
simultaneously for not being surgical enough and for taking too much time —
even after having been pressured by the U.S. into pausing combat operations.
Instead of blaming Hamas for the toll on civilians in
Gaza — both for launching the war and for using its own civilians as shields —
the vice president put the onus on Israel.
Even if one were to look past Harris’s moral obtuseness,
her understanding of Gaza — and outlining of the administration’s hopes for its
governance after the war — show a lack of understanding of reality.
Harris said, “We cannot conflate Hamas with the
Palestinian people.” As a matter of the laws of war, this is a truism; as a
statement about public sentiment among Palestinians, it is an absurdity. On
October 7, Palestinians were seen taking to the streets to celebrate the attacks. When a dead Israeli was dragged
out from a car in Gaza, a crowd started stomping on his dead body; elsewhere, a crowd cheered as Hamas terrorists paraded a semi-naked dead
female body through the streets of Gaza (who we now know to be the murdered
German-Israeli Shani Louk). Polling also supports the idea that the scenes were
representative of the prevailing sentiment among the population. Three-quarters
of Palestinians approved of the October 7 attacks, according to a
November poll from the Arab World for Research and Development.
Additionally, Harris said after the war, the
administration wants to see Gaza and the West Bank unified under a
“revitalized” Palestinian Authority and envisions a two-state solution. This is
wishful nonsense.
When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it handed over
control to the PA. Within a year, Gazans elected Hamas over the corrupt PA, and
within two years, Hamas drove the PA out of Gaza. In the poll taken last
month, 90 percent of Gazans said they had a negative view of
the PA. On top of this, PA president Mahmoud Abbas is 88 years old, and nobody
knows who or what will come after him — no small thanks to his refusal to hold
an election since winning his “four-year term” nearly 19 years ago. While one
could understand why the current U.S. administration might have a soft spot for
octogenarian leaders, the idea of America imposing an unpopular and corrupt
government with an elderly leader on a volatile region with a history of terrorism
is a recipe for disaster.
As for the Biden-Harris vision for a two-state solution,
it is a receding fantasy that Western leaders like to promote so they have
something to say about a conflict that offers no easy answers. According to the
same poll, just 17 percent of Palestinians said they supported a two-state
solution, compared with 75 percent who preferred a Palestinian state “from the
river to the sea” — i.e., without Israel.
Instead of genuflecting before Arab autocrats, the Biden
administration should deliver one simple message to Israel in its war against
Hamas: Get the job done.
No comments:
Post a Comment