The Hamas and Bibi Paradoxes
For months, since just after the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel, I’ve been troubled by two “disconnects.” One, which many have already written about, is the gap between how many American Jews and many non-Jewish Americans perceive the massacre and its aftermath.
While Jews are still reeling from what has been described as the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust — one in which infants were shot point-blank, women young and old were raped, and bodies brutally burned and desecrated — for many non-Jews this was quickly overshadowed by the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the humanitarian crisis that ensued. Some may even feel deep down that Israelis “had it coming” by thinking their blockade of Gaza could go on indefinitely without consequences. This sentiment has found its most extreme manifestation in the open calls on many college campuses for the actual elimination of Zionists and the liberation of “Palestine from the river to the sea.”
Suddenly demands for the end of Israel’s longtime occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been replaced by calls for the eradication of Israel entirely. Demands for a return to the 1967 borders have now morphed into strident calls for a return to the borders of 1948. The generation of Biden Democrats who still cling to an idealistic vision of Israel that, in reality, long ago ceased to exist is giving way to a generation of AOCs. They see Israel not as a society of high moral standards, founded by utopian socialists, but as a colonialist oppressor of indigenous people that operates an apartheid system in territories it has controlled for 55 years, where Jews have certain rights (voting, travel on certain roads, funding for settlements, etc.) that are forbidden to Palestinians.
This dramatic shift in perceptions about Israel has stunned many in the American Jewish community and shaken long-term assumptions about the solidity and future of support for Israel in the United States.
But I have been equally alarmed by the widening gap between liberal American Jews and the majority of Israelis in concern for and empathy with the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza — tens of thousands of whom have been slain in the ongoing Israeli bombardment, hundreds of thousands of whom are homeless, and some 2 million of whom face starvation.
Most Israelis view the situation there, to the extent that they think about it at all, as the tragic consequence of the Oct. 7 massacre, and lay the blame entirely at the feet of the Hamas leadership. There is little criticism of the much-revered Israeli army, which failed to anticipate the attack, was slow to respond to it, and which most outside Israel believe has, in response, used excessive force in the extreme, to little practical effect.
While even liberal Israelis seem to have a clear conscience about the widespread devastation their army has caused — arguing that Hamas’ brutal attack is solely to blame — many liberal American Jews are increasingly queasy about the resulting humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Many believe the war has done little to enhance the security of Israelis and, in fact, has complicated efforts both to rescue the hostages and to advance the peace process. Many here are more sympathetic to the popular pleas in Israel to prioritize the rescue of the hostages over the Netanyahu government’s seemingly singular focus on eliminating Hamas.
This divide can most clearly be seen in a divergence in public opinion about whether the Israel Defense Forces should proceed with its advance into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite sharp U.S. warnings not to do so, and risk escalating the collateral slaughter of Palestinian civilians.
At the heart of this division is what I call the Hamas Paradox. On the one hand, Israelis are deluded in their belief that (a) it is possible to eliminate Hamas entirely and (b) even if it is possible that this will prevent the resurgence of something even more terrible. The resentment they have created among Palestinians by leveling Gaza and killing tens of thousands of civilians will haunt Israel for at least a generation.
On the other hand, if Israel does not eliminate Hamas, it will surely attack again, as it has vowed repeatedly to do. So eliminating Hamas is not sufficient to bring about peace (some real hope of Palestinian self-determination is necessary — though, again, not sufficient), but not eliminating Hamas guarantees there will be more violence.
This paradox has come to a head in the question over whether the Israeli army should “finish the job” by entering Rafah, where more than a million homeless Palestinians are taking refuge. President Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have made manifestly clear that they are firmly opposed, unless Israel can present a credible plan for ensuring that such an operation won’t kill thousands more Palestinians. While the U.S. president has said on the record that the Hamas threat must be eliminated, he is now doing all he can to block Israel from accomplishing just that.
The Biden administration hopes that Israel can be lured into forestalling such an operation, in the short term, by securing a cease-fire that brings home dozens of the hostages held in Gaza, and, in the long term, by finalizing a historic deal with Saudi Arabia that would establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The former would deplete the mounting pressure Benjamin Netanyahu is under to bring the captives home; the latter would burnish the prime minister’s legacy.
Yet the cost of achieving these wins would be abandoning the objective of eliminating Hamas and agreeing to the eventual formation of a Palestinian state. Agreeing to either or both would guarantee the collapse of Netanyahu’s government and put him in legal jeopardy, removing the shield of immunity from corruption charges he now enjoys. And thus we have a second paradox, call it the Bibi Paradox: The very steps that would resurrect the prime minister’s battered reputation would also end his tenure and potentially land him in jail.
One must ask what has brought us to this desperate place — where the longest serving prime minister in Israel’s history is now reviled by a large majority of his country’s citizens, and the reputation of Israel, which faces the real prospect of being found by the International Court of Justice to have committed genocide, has plummeted to a historic low?
As I have written before, Netanyahu bears personal responsibility for creating conditions that led to the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. He allowed — and some say facilitated — Qatari funds to bankroll Hamas for many years, he actively weakened the Palestinian Authority, he diverted Israeli troops stationed along the Gaza border to protect West Bank settlers, and he ignored repeated intelligence warnings about Hamas preparations for a major terror operation.
But in a larger sense, his longtime efforts to stall the peace process, while enabling the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and keeping Palestinians in Gaza in perpetual misery, have created the conditions for today’s unfortunate reality. In short, by doing everything possible to expand and extend a Jewish presence “from the river to the sea,” he has undermined Israel’s global reputation, shaken Israel’s security, and spurred new opposition to the viability of the entire Zionist enterprise.
Israelis have lost confidence in their political leadership. They must now shed their illusions that they can restore and preserve their security while continuing to ignore and thwart Palestinian aspirations. Only some accommodation that restores Palestinian dignity and allows them to prosper will ensure that Israelis can one day live in peace and not have to worry when and where the next attack is coming.
As Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid put it in a recent interview with The New York Times, “I understand that in the end what we need is to have two states, living in peace, one next to each other. . . . I want to separate from them,” he said, referring to the Palestinians. “It’s not a favor I’m doing the Palestinians. It’s for my own good.”