It has been six months and one day since October 7. Everyone would like this war to be over. It’s as simple as that. Israel wants its hostages back. It wants Hamas’s leadership destroyed. Israelis would like to go back to October 6, even minus a thousand mothers, fathers, children. Most likely, most Palestinians in Gaza would like this war to be over as well. Even if you recognize the Hamas casualty number as lies; even if you know there is no imminent famine in Gaza; you also understand that this war is a misery for the average Gazan.
Here’s the problem, and funnily enough, it’s one that you will — if you have been paying attention to the world lately — recognize: Goals are critical in a conflict. The big rap on Biden has been that he has been unclear about what the necessary outcome in Ukraine should be, and so support is fading. Fair enough. But the Israelis have not been unclear: Hamas’s leadership must be destroyed, the hostages must be returned… these are the goals. And for Israel, they are immutable. Everything else is just political maneuvering.
This week, we talked to Dan Senor, the host of a wonderful podcast called Call Me Back. He's the co-author of New York Times bestselling books, The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation, and Start-up Nation, the story of Israel's economic miracle; both fantastic, really important books. And much much more.
For the Biden administration, for the last six months, Israel’s goals have been acceptable. But as November approaches and Biden’s relative power to his political advisers and his woke staff wanes, the goals have become less acceptable. Destroying Hamas is a “nice to have.” Releasing the hostages is a “nice to have.” And remember, there are still Americans among those hostages. What has suddenly become an imperative is an end to hostilities. Why? Because this is what Biden’s staff wants, and what they believe the far left of the Democratic Party wants.
Here’s the problem: Biden has tried to personify the Gaza war as a Netanyahu war. That won’t work. Many Israelis don’t like Bibi either, including his own partners in the national security cabinet. But their dislike of Bibi has nothing to do with the conduct of the war in Gaza. It has to do with a long history of animus towards what Bibi has represented in Israel, an antipathy towards the Likud that he leads, and an anger about the Likud’s partners and constituents. It’s never been about the goals of the war in Gaza. So that schtick won’t work.
Where is this going to go? Unclear. But one thing is certain: Israel’s goals will not change. We cannot say the same for Joe Biden.
HIGHLIGHTS
The US just abstained from a UN Security Council resolution that passed calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Does the Biden administration support this resolution?
DS: The US greenlit the passage of this resolution, meaning the administration knew exactly what it was doing. It may have technically abstained, but it knew when it was abstaining that this was going to pass by 14 to 0 in the Security Council. So it effectively greenlit it, supported it, wanted it to pass.
Is the US done giving diplomatic cover to Israel?
DS: Up until two weeks ago, the Biden administration had given Israel tremendous diplomatic cover, vetoing bad resolutions at the UN, and then also deployed military assets to the region, which were important, and supplied Israel with extraordinary military resources to help Israel fight this war. So I really do give them high marks.
I think at some point the administration has become, I think, too influenced by political advisors worried about President Biden's reelection campaign. Now I don't think it's wise political strategy, but that being said, it's political strategy that I think is driving a lot of what they're doing now, and that overtook the foreign policy objectives.
Is the US still supporting Israel militarily?
DS: At the strategic level, they're still supporting Israel. In fact, we even just saw news of this arms transfer a few days ago.
So they're still supplying Israel with what it needs to fight. I think they're basically going to not stand in the way of Israel going into Rafah. So they're doing all the right things still on the strategic level, but they think ... That's one prong. Then the other prong is let's pick public fights with Israel's government, and specifically with Israel's prime minister, in the hope that we can score points at home with their political base, with their progressive base.
And so, the UN resolution was that. It was like, "Hey, watch us. Watch us stick it to Israel. Oh, look over there. Don't look over here while we're supplying them with 2,000-pound bombs. Look over here how we're sticking it to them at the UN."
The problem with it, of course, is there's real implications for the latter. You can't have it both ways. You can't think you're supplying them with the arms and screwing them at the UN and that what they're doing to the UN won't have implications for Israel's ability to fight the war.
Can you explain how the Security Council resolution delinked a cease-fire from Hamas returning Israeli hostages?
DS: That was the part of this that was most upsetting to me. I think the administration had been very consistent and very strong early on that not only were they not going to call on Israel to implement any kind of ceasefire, but that any ceasefire, any talk of ceasefire would only get oxygen if it were conditioned on release of the hostages, full stop. The administration would often point to the importance of those two issues being linked when it would explain why it would veto previous resolutions. Then suddenly they greenlit a resolution that delinks those two issues.
Does the administration still care about the hostages?
DS: The interest in the plight of the hostages and their families is on the decline. I hope it doesn't endure. I hope that there's an uptick in engagement and interest and focus on them. But I've just been sensing generally that for the first few months people were worried about it and people were paying attention, and now it's less and less so. Then when you formally delink the hostage issue from the plight of the hostages from talk of Israel ending the war, I think it's on a continuum.
Again, look at Biden's State of the Union address. So at the State of the Union address, if I were advising President Biden, I would've said have families of the hostages in the gallery, and he didn't. There were family members of the hostages, the Israeli Americans who were at the State of the Union, but they were invited by members of Congress from both parties, Lindsey Graham, Jacky Rosen. Members from both parties invited family members of the hostages. When the White House learned that, they put something in the speech about it. But they weren't planning to do it on their own.
How did the resolution discuss Hamas?
DS: The second thing I think that was incredibly problematic about the resolution is there was no mention of Hamas. In other words, it didn't say Israel's fighting a war against a terrorist organization, which, oh, by the way, it's not an entity that's a member of this body. It is a rogue, genocidal organization. That's who Israel's fighting this war against. And Israel did not start the war.
The way the resolution reads, you would think that the world woke up one day and Israel and Hamas were in this war.
Why is the Biden administration turning on Israel now?
DS: I often ask, what changed? Israel laid out its objectives, the war cabinet, which is not just Netanyahu. As you guys know, the war cabinet's Benny Gantz and Yoav Gallant and Gadi Eisenkot. I mean it's a real cross-section of the Israeli political spectrum. The war cabinet laid out its objectives for this war very early on, and it's been pursuing those objectives with great effect. It's been keeping the administration completely dialed in and up-to-date on what's happening and how they're waging this war, and the administration has been supportive. Then one day the administration says, "No, we've got to switch course." Why? What changed? Obviously what changed was domestic US politics.
What does the administration want from Israel?
DS: Now the administration constantly is saying, "Day after, day after, day after. What's your day-after plan? What's your day-after plan?" You can't even have a conversation about a day-after plan until Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and Gaza, decides it's over. He's losing. This is done. He's not going to emerge from the rubble of Gaza and live to fight another day. It is over. You can't even think about a day-after plan until the leadership of Hamas recognizes that they are on the cusp, they're on the brink of a decisive loss, that they are over.
What happens that the UN, the message sends to the UN is, "Wait a minute. Maybe we're not on the brink. Maybe we are going to emerge from the rubble. Maybe there will be a Hamas 2.0."
So I say to the administration, you want a day-after plan? Drive this war to an end. How do you drive this war to an end? Let Israel win decisively. How do you slow that down? How do you stymie it? Give Hamas hope. What happened at the UN gave Hamas hope.
How is domestic politics shaping Biden’s decisions on Israel?
DS: They think politically, and again, obviously I'm not advising them on politics, the Biden team, but that they think that they can have it both ways, is preposterous. That it is a zero-sum game. That they think that they can ding Israel a little bit enough to win over to mollify the pro-Hamas sympathizers in the Democratic Party, but not too much is to alienate the Jewish voters or people who are sympathetic to Israel. They will never be able to go far enough to mollify the pro-Hamas sympathizers in the Democratic base. They just won't. And anything they do on that dial will wind up alienating a lot of other voters.
So in Michigan, you're right, there is some subset of the electorate that is sympathetic to Hamas. There's also a big Jewish community in Michigan, in the metro Detroit area. In places like Oakland County and Wayne County, or in Pennsylvania. Biden cannot get reelected without winning Pennsylvania. And Biden cannot win Pennsylvania without winning the Philly suburbs. And you can't win the Philly suburbs if you're Democrat if some subset of the Jewish community starts to drop off. Who understands that? Who understands where a state like Pennsylvania is? John Fetterman.
What is John Fetterman doing that is making him so popular?
DS: So the three issues John Fetterman is focused on, the three issues that have defined his first couple of years in the Senate are: tough on immigration, tough on crime, unapologetically pro-Israel. Those are three winning issues for a Democrat. And he's polling way ahead of Biden in Pennsylvania today.
How successful has the IDF been in destroying Hamas?
DS: What has been extraordinary about what the IDF has been able to accomplish is the systematic breakdown of the military structure of Hamas. We all tend to think or have historically tended to think of Hamas as just this ragtag terror organization. It is a light infantry army. It is organized into 24 battalions. The battalions are each assigned a geographic area within Gaza. There's a real command structure. It is a sophisticated army with sophisticated capabilities that were mostly smuggled in via Egypt over the last 15 or so years. And so what Israel's been doing is systematically breaking down these battalions. That is to say they're not killing or capturing every member of Hamas, so to your point, some of them will be out there causing trouble.
But breaking down the structure, the governing structure and the military structure of this military organization is very important. That's what Israel's been doing. And it can't finish it until it goes into Rafah because at least, so we're told, about four battalions and four of the most powerful battalions within the Hamas structure are there, and a bunch of hostages are probably there, and the leadership of Hamas, or at least Sinwar is probably there.
The reason the administration has gotten into his head that Rafah should be avoided, an IDF operation into Rafah should be avoided just because the high concentration of Palestinian civilians, there are about 1.3 million Palestinian civilians there. And the administration just can't fathom how Israel conducts this operation without there being a massive human catastrophe in Gaza, or in Rafah.
Now, I think the administration with time, their tolerance for human suffering, human Palestinian civilian suffering with time, their tolerance for it has gone down. And so now they're looking at Israel conducting this operation where 1.3 million civilians are, they just don't understand how Israel's going to do it. And so, what a lot of the back and forth between the war cabinet and the administration has been about how Israel is going to do it. And I don't think Israel is going to persuade the administration that they can do it without totally avoiding human suffering. They'll try to minimize it, but they can't obviously avoid it because it is Hamas' choice to fight behind civilians. It's not Israel's.
The administration loves to separate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the rest of Israel. Is this really Netanyahu’s war?
DS: I could make the argument that of the war cabinet members, Netanyahu is the most cautious. In other words, Gallant, if you listen to what Gallant wants to do, Gallant wanted to wage a preemptive strike against southern Lebanon against Hezbollah in the early days after October 7th, so Israel would've been in a two-front war from day one. I'm not saying that was a good idea or a bad idea. I'm just saying Benny Gantz is where Netanyahu is on how to fight this war, if not to the right of him.
And obviously, Gantz and Netanyahu hate each other personally. They are political rivals. Literally, the animus between these two men, and yet they're completely aligned on the policy of the war. And the way this war cabinet was structured is there are several observers in the war cabinet, but there are three people who have votes, which are Netanyahu, you have Gallant, who's the defense minister, and Benny Gantz, who's the leader of a rival political party to Netanyahu's party.
No major decisions about the war cannot be made without a vote of those three men.
Can you explain how Hamas is using civilians as human shields?
DS: There are two thinkers on this issue that I encourage your listeners to seek out. One of them is John Spencer, who's the head of urban warfare at West Point, who's one of the foremost authorities on the history of urban warfare.
And he basically says that he has never seen a military have to fight the kind of war or the urban warfare war that Israel is fighting. It's not like the US-led coalition fighting ISIS in Mosul.
I mean, he just goes through the history. There's nothing quite like it, because he can't think of another military that has had to fight an enemy that has developed a tunnel system like Hamas has done in Gaza. 300-plus miles of tunnels.
Are the civilian casualty numbers coming out of Gaza correct?
DS: I just recorded an episode on my podcast, which will drop in a few days, with this guy, Abraham Wyner, who's a data science professor at Wharton, who did this very interesting essay, and he wrote it for Tablet Magazine, analyzing the casualty count numbers, and basically shows that the numbers provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, they don't make any sense.
Qatar not only has a close relationship with Hamas, but also funds lots of other pro-Islamist groups. Why has the US not broken off its relationship with Qatar?
DS: I think the Qatar dynamic is really complex for a number of reasons that I think may partially answer your question, not the least of which is the Israelis and the Americans, and I hate to say what I'm about to say, but the Israelis and the Americans, for the longest time, were on board with this arrangement. And I know it. I know it. I mean, I've spoken to Israeli officials who were involved in cultivating the relationship. Administrations of both parties for a couple of decades have been part of this arrangement.
And the theory was, let's just take the Hamas piece, because I know less about it is true that they have all these bad actors, the Taliban, there, and they have relationships with Tehran and Turkey and a lot of other problematic countries for the United States. But as it relates to Hamas, as short-sighted as it may have been, there was this general understanding that it was in the US and Israel's interest to at least have their eyes on some entity that communicates with Hamas, which is this Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh who run the non-Gaza based part of Hamas, so they run it out of Doha.
And it's better that they have eyes on those folks and access to them indirectly, rather than them disappearing and going to set up their offices in somewhere like Beirut, or Tehran, or Istanbul.
Is Israel going to go to war against Hezbollah in Lebanon?
DS: I think Israel is going to get more aggressive about taking out officials tied to Hezbollah or people supporting Hezbollah. But I don't think they're in a rush to go to war against Hezbollah for a variety of reasons. One, they do have to finish off Rafah, and that's going to take some time, finish off Hamas, and I don't think they want to be in a two front war, A. B, They're having a hard enough time with the administration dealing with finishing this war with Rafah. I think the last thing they want to do now is inject into their dialogue with the administration, the possibility of a northern front, and what that would entail.
How soon will it be until Israel feels as though they have to fight Hezbollah?
DS: Now, obviously, it's a dynamic situation, and Israel could say, "We have no choice. And Hezbollah is getting more aggressive, and we've got to deal with them now." Like I said, it's dynamic, and things can spiral out of control. But I don't believe Israel's in a rush. They're preparing for war with Hezbollah, but they're not in a rush to fight a war with Hezbollah.
Read the transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Israel cancels diplomatic visit to U.S. after U.N. vote demanding cease-fire (Washington Post, March 25, 2024)
U.S. Says Israel Has Agreed to Try to Reschedule Canceled Trip (New York Times, March 28, 2024)
Dan Senor on the details of the UNSC ceasefire resolution (Twitter, March 26, 2024)
Bring them home . . . or not — Biden just sold out Israeli hostages at the United Nations (New York Post, March 25, 2024)
Press Statement on U.S. Abstention from UN Security Council Resolution on Gaza (State Department, March 25, 2024)
Dan Senor: Biden’s two-pronged Israel Strategy - with Bret Stephens (Call Me back Podcast, March 28, 2024)
Dan Senor: I Would Not Have Israel Make Its Security Decisions That Determine How To Deal With Existential Threats Based on Kamala Harris Reading of a Map (Fox Radio, March 26, 2024)
US Criticism of Israel encourages Hamas, Netanyahu says in Fox News interview (Times of Israel, March 11, 2024)
Hamas welcomes UN Security Council resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire (Reuters, March 25, 2024)
Netanyahu nixes Rafah talks after US allows UNSC resolution demanding Gaza ceasefire (Times of Israel, March 25, 2024)
Biden’s Shameful Betrayal of Israel at the United Nations (National Review, March 26, 2024)
Visiting Tehran, Hamas leader extols ‘unprecedented political isolation’ of Israel (TImes of Israel, March 26, 2024)
Majority in U.S. Now Disapprove of Israeli Action in Gaza (Gallup, March 27, 2024)
Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll: Foreign Policy (March 25, 2024)
About the Book: The Genius of Israel (Senor and Singer)
About the Book: Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (Senor and Singer)
I just finished reading Jonathon Haslams' "The Spectre of War--International Communism and the Origins of WWII" It is about how fear of International Bolshevik revolution made it possible for appeasement of Hitler. But it is also about how ideological states like Communist, Fascist, Nazi don't act like normal states and this was part of the failure of democracies. They would sit back and think these new type of states would sooner or later come around and they never did.
In his conclusion he writes ... "the Islamist revolution, as with the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, did not just peter out. It had been a long time coming and it did not lack ready tinder. The" moderates" did not take the place of the " extremists"... Moreover, as in 1919,the fanatics proceeded to spread the revolution abroad with a speed, a vigour, a discipline and a determination that took everyone aback. " He writes that industrial capitalist democracies made the same mistake as before, assuming that these states are run by like minded rational actors.
Appeasement didn't work in the past and it is not working now. Unfortunately, part of the reluctance to face this threat came after WWI, people were tired of war. This is also the case now, after several mistaken wars, the people we should engage militarily, the Islamist and the Russians, are quite able to push the anti-war buttons.