Netanyahu’s horrible blunder

And why it was avoidable

Headline on the lead story of the is March 15, 2024, edition of The Washington Post:

Israel faces crisis of its own making as chaos and hunger engulf Gaza

Below you will find an opinion piece that I wrote for Medium.com three weeks after the horrible massacre of Israel civilians by Hamas and the beginning of the retaliation launched by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I make no claims to prophetic powers. I was only stating what to me seemed the obvious.

Here’s the commentary, verbatim:

From my earliest awareness of the State of Israel, I have thought of it as one of the smartest nations, if not the smartest, on Earth, a country with more high IQs per capita, per square mile, than any other.

I thought this 1) because I know a lot of very bright Jewish people personally, and 2) because of what the Holocaust survivors and Zionists from around the world made of the arid, rocky slice of ground they converged upon after World War II.

Now, as the retaliation against Hamas terrorists continues in Gaza, I find myself wondering if an understandable urge for vengeance has temporarily blinded Israel’s leadership or if those leaders are just stupid.

Israel is losing sympathy, losing the public-relations war, by the hour. Its airstrikes on targets in Gaza are reducing block after block to rubble and killing Palestinians by the hundreds. The death toll has already far exceeded that of the ruthless, barbaric attack by Hamas that started the war.

In defense of its retaliation, Israel has begun to show selected journalists a video that demonstrates just how savage and horrible the attacks on kibbutzes and a music festival actually were. I didn’t need to be convinced. I could extrapolate from the “softened” video I’d seen on newscasts from the beginning. People were running, screaming, begging. I didn’t — and don’t — need to see a beheading to get it. Hamas is hate incarnate.

Israel has a right to defend its citizens. A right and an obligation. No sane, honest person would argue otherwise. But Israel, armed as it is, is fully capable of overkill. From what we’re seeing on the newscasts and on the Internet, it’s exercising those capabilities to a degree that is nightmarish for Palestinians — and terrible in the long run for the Israelis themselves.

President Biden and other world leaders, both in the region and in Europe, keep urging to the Israeli government to proceed with greater caution, take it slower, allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, perhaps even declare a cease fire.

And then what do we see on TV but the aftermath of a strike on a Gazan refugee camp that may — may — have killed a high-ranking Hamas leader and strategist but, as we can clearly see from the collapsed buildings and overwhelmed hospitals, definitely injured or killed hundreds of others, including children.

Spokesmen for the Israeli government insist we can’t take Hamas’s word for the casualty figures, calling them inflated. But even if Hamas is quadrupling the totals, inflating 50 to 500, the toll is still unacceptable.

Does the Israeli leadership not recognize that the excuse sounds like Vladimir Putin’s pooh-poohing the reported deaths in besieged Ukraine — or worse, and even more grotesque, Holocaust deniers who say, “Oh, it was more like 60,000, not 6 million.”

To make matters even more terrible, the stated goal is delusional. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at news conferences of eliminating Hamas’s membership completely, destroying the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Gaza City from which they hide and plot massacres — and eventually, after they’ve purged the scourge, rebuilding.

Surely he and his backers know that even if they kill every single Hamas terrorist now breathing, they will eventually have to deal with a new generation of embittered Palestinians who’ve lost spouses, parents, friends, children — and with surviving children who’ve been traumatized and scarred by the pulverizing barrage.

What idiocy not to recognize the Palestinians who survive the destruction are unlikely to be grateful and forgiving when the rebuilding begins, assuming that it does.

And what of Israel itself if its military achieves Netanyahu’s stated goals?

Over the past two or three decades, the country’s right-ward tilt and expansionism have given even some longtime supporters, myself included, pause. Now, the scenes of buildings reduced to dust and Palestinian men and women carrying bleeding children from the ruins are on view worldwide night and day.

Yes, it is a cold-blooded, unconscionable Hamas strategy to put Israel in an untenable position, to use human shields, even fellow Palestinians, and to hide its men and munitions in mosques and schools and hospitals. But Israel’s continuing assault and unconvincing efforts to downplay or justify the civilian damage is costing it support the world over.

It’s not even as though Jews around the world are diehard backers. I have Jewish friends who are appalled by the casualties and are lobbying for a cease fire, a different strategy, and more aid for innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire.

God, what a horrible, tragic mess. Rapprochement, a two-state solution, peaceful-coexistence — it all seems more like castles in the air now. This war looks eternal.

Author’s note: The death toll in Gaza, not counting people in danger of starvation, is now above 30,000.