As I've said, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, having now survived three attempts to reform a government without him, is using last weekend's Hamas assault as proof that Israel doesn't have time to try to oust him again. Whether or not that works, we'll see. Vox's Zack Beauchamp:
In the past 24 hours, two reports out of Israel have pointed to a striking conclusion: that the failure to prevent Hamas’s murderous assault on southern Israel rests in significant part with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
First, the Washington Post’s Noga Tarnopolsky and Shira Rubin wrote a lengthy dispatch on the many policy failures that allowed Hamas to break through. They find that, in addition to myriad unforgivable intelligence and military mistakes — especially shocking given Israel’s reputation in both fields — there were serious political problems. Distracted by both the fight to seize control over Israel’s judiciary and their effort to deepen Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Netanyahu and his cabinet allowed military readiness to degrade and left outposts on the Gaza border in the south unmanned.
“There was a need for more soldiers, so where did they take them from? From the Gaza border, where they thought it was calm ... not surprising that Hamas and Islamic Jihad noticed the low staffing at the border,” Aharon Zeevi Farkash, the former head of the Israel Defense Forces’ military intelligence, said in comments reported by the Post.
Second, a columnist at Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper unearthed evidence that Netanyahu has intentionally propped up Hamas rule in Gaza — seeing Palestinian extremism as a bulwark against a two-state solution to the conflict.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
These exact comments have not yet been confirmed by other sources. But the Times of Israel’s Tal Schneider wrote on Sunday that Netanyahu’s reported words “are in line with the policy that he implemented,” which did little to challenge and in some ways bolstered Hamas’s control over the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Schneider notes, “the same messaging was repeated by right-wing commentators, who may have received briefings on the matter or talked to Likud higher-ups and understood the message.” Some Netanyahu confidants have said the same thing, as have outside experts.
Put together, these two pieces tell a larger story: that the strategic vision of Netanyahu’s far-right government is a failure.
The notion that Israel can deliver security for its citizens by dividing and conquering Palestinians, crushing them into submission as a kind of colonial overlord, is both immoral and counterproductive on its own terms. Recognizing this reality will be crucial to formulating not only a humane response to Hamas’s atrocity, but an effective one.
America failed to recognize this over two decades ago. What should have been the end of the political careers of anyone named Bush or Cheney turned into a second term and a second war that took two decades to extinguish, only for Israel to basically decide that planned incompetence was the way to go to save Bibi's neck when it should be his downfall.
Of course, Hamas did decide to butcher several hundred Israeli civilians and take several hundred more as hostages, so it's not like they are blameless here. But it's looking more and more like Bibi opened this particular gateway to hell and then deliberately looked the other way as the monsters came through.
You'd think it would cost him his job. Instead it's looking like we could be in for a major war in the Middle East again.
President Biden said Tuesday that Americans were among the hostages being held by Hamas, in addition to 14 U.S. citizens who have been killed, and he vowed that the United States would stand by Israel as it responds forcefully to the surprise attack on its soil.
Biden, who did not provide a number of U.S. hostages, added that Israel has not only a right but a “duty” to respond to the onslaught by Hamas, which has left hundreds dead. His speech was the first official confirmation that Americans were being held captive, although officials had earlier suggested that was likely to be the case.
“As president, I have no higher priority than the safety of Americans being held hostage around the world,” Biden said. “Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond and indeed has a duty to respond to these vicious attacks.”
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said that the administration could not confirm the number of hostages but that at least 20 Americans were missing. Sullivan stressed that did not necessarily mean there were 20 or more U.S. hostages.
Overall, between 100 and 150 people are being held in Gaza, according to an Israeli official, and Hamas has threatened to execute civilian hostages if Israeli airstrikes continue.
Biden, delivering remarks from the State Dining Room in White House, flanked by Vice President Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, spoke in unusually vivid terms about the assault itself.
“There are moments in this life when pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed in this world,” he said, referring to “stomach-turning reports of babies being killed” and “women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.”
We'll see.
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