Most of Tom Friedman’s most recent column is devoted to variations on the idea that Israel today bears little resemblance to the Israel he’s visited before. Having people with whom you are acquainted slaughtered in their beds has a way of doing that.
His conclusion is what I want to focus on:
The sooner Israel replaces Netanyahu and his far-right allies with a true center-left-center-right national unity government, the better chance it has to hold together during what is going to be a hellish war and aftermath. And the better chance that President Biden — who may be down in the polls in America but could get elected here in a landslide for the empathy and steel he showed at Israel’s hour of need — will not have hitched his credibility and ours to a Netanyahu Israel that will never be able to fully help us to help it.
This society is so much better than its leader. It is too bad it took a war to drive that home. Ron Scherf is a retired member of Israel’s most elite special forces unit and a founder of Brothers in Arms — the Israeli activist coalition that mobilized veterans and reservists to oppose Netanyahu’s judicial coup. Immediately after the Hamas invasion, Brothers in Arms pivoted to organizing reservists and aid workers to get to the front — left, right, religious, secular, it didn’t matter — many hours before this incompetent government did.
When in the history of the world has an attack resulted in more moderation? I can’t recall any such instance in U. S. history. The hundreds of attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel have had the opposite effect if anything. The Netanyahu government didn’t just sneak up on a quiet, moderate unware Israeli population. It was the result of endless attacks by people on the West Bank and Gaza on the one hand and the conviction by ultra-conservative Israelis that they were bound by their religion to expand Israel into the West Bank and Gaza on the other.
Quite to the contrary when the United States was attacked by Japan it had the effect of silencing isolationists and people calling for moderation in favor of those who had wanted to make war on Germany for years. The world in which an attack had the outcome of moderating the population might be a better one than our present world but I don’t think it is our present world and I would expect the Israelis to be no different.
Should have added the paragraph preceding that.
“Let me not mince words, because the hour is dark and Israel, as I said, is in real danger. Netanyahu and his far-right zealots have taken Israel on multiple flights of fancy in the last year: dividing the country and the army over the fraudulent judicial reform, bankrupting its future with massive investments in religious schools that teach no math and in West Bank Jewish settlements that teach no pluralism — while building up Hamas, which would never be a partner for peace, and tearing down the Palestinian Authority, the only possible partner for peace.”
Hamas is a bunch of terrorists determined to destroy Israel. Israel should have treated them as such by either seriously trying to eliminate them, or if not feasible prioritizing safety around Gaza. Instead, under the Netanyahu government they prioritized settling the West Bank. They pulled away the military, they supported Hamas against the PLA, they ignored warnings from their intel services. The other stuff is politics and maybe its important in the long run but Israel had a bunch of terrorists living in their midst and Netanyahu and his admin decided at best to ignore them and at worst to support them.
Steve
“When in the history of the world has an attack resulted in more moderation?â€
Seriously? You don’t remember New Yorkers chanting KSA! KSA! After 9/11?? Clearly Israel should offer up their women and children to Hamas.
“When in the history of the world has an attack resulted in more moderation?”
I will take the devil’s advocate position here.
A first example is the Yom Kippur war. Despite being started by the Egyptians, and through Egypt lost on the battlefield; as Wikipedia said, “The Yom Kippur War upset the status quo in the Middle East, and the war served as a direct antecedent of the 1978 Camp David Accords”.
The second example is Armenia / Azerbaijan war in 2020/2023. Azerbaijan started and won both wars and now Armenia has given up its claims to the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh and is trying to resolve any more disputed territories between the two countries.
Of maybe the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.
Of course; the vast majority of aggression does not result in moderation; and I don’t see any common thread on when it does.