And the Biden administration and much of the West seems all too willing to play along.

This article first appeared in the American Spectator https://spectator.org/gaza-hamas-terrorism/

For decades, terrorists have relied on three weapons to fight the West: our technology, our media, and our laws and associated values.

First, they turned our technology against us: on September 11, 2001, they converted civilian jetliners into flying bombs; then and thereafter they used global media access to transmit their messages to the world while denigrating their adversaries; and, finally, they used access to our law courts and the constitutional privileges intended for America’s citizenry to wage total war against our civilization. In essence, our struggle is a Manichean one between imperfect civilization (us) and perfect barbarism (them). And, arguably, we are losing.

A prefatory note: This war did not make for a “clash of civilizations.” Israel’s adversaries do not even engage in the pretense of being civilized. Launching rockets from sites in close proximity to civilians is a war crime, as is targeting Israeli civilians with such weaponry. Deliberately seeking to maximize Palestinian deaths (knowing that the great majority of the global media players predictably will attribute such deaths to Israeli retaliation) is surely another war crime. Even worse, this war crime often takes the form of moving their own civilian population — including children — into places they have been warned that Israel intends to target in short order.

This particular form of atrocity is one perhaps without precedent in human history. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, to take history’s most notorious genocidal trio, actively liquidated those they especially despised and were morally indifferent to countless millions killed in their wars. But they never thought of moving civilians into harm’s way to increase the number of innocent people killed as a means of gaining worldwide support. Their attitude towards such mass casualties was best summed up by Stalin’s infamous formulation: “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Had these murderers seen advantage in using the Hamas tactic, they’d likely have done it. But the reaction overwhelmingly would have been vociferous condemnation, by opinion leaders and the general public alike. Today, many opinion leaders and their publics have maintained a discreet silence in the face of open Nazi-like assaults against Jews, both in Israel and in major American cities, including Los Angeles and New York.

Alas, the only difference now from earlier episodes is vastly increased intensity of Palestinian aggression. In the 2014 Gaza War, Hamas fired 450 rockets in nine days; this latest round saw Hamas fire over 4,000 in 11 days. Israeli intelligence estimates that Hamas has 15,000 rockets, mostly assembled in Gaza with Iranian supervision. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s estimated 15,000-rocket arsenal in 2006 has grown to some 130,000. And the new terrorist rockets are much more accurate and longer-range. Hamas rained rockets on Tel Aviv for the first time, with Ben-Gurion International Airport also in range.

Hamas publicly thanked Iran for sending money and weapons. And Hamas also thanked its friends in the West for their “enormous support.” (Casualty claims aired by Hamas do not factor in those caused by hundreds of its rockets landing inside Gaza.) In all, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacked some 1,000 targets, and even the numbers offered by Hamas show fewer than 300 civilians killed. Had Israel intended to kill civilians, it could easily have killed tens — even hundreds — of thousands; it could have simply flattened Gaza City.

In my 2018 American Spectator article “Palestinian Swastikas: Where’s the Outrage?” I presented numerous examples of Palestinian neo-Nazism, war-crime tactics, and global media complicity. Our current administration publicly equivocating by issuing conflicting statements, while frustrating to the Israelis, is less bad than the openly pro-Palestinian Obama administration (see my late 2016 article, “Obama’s Palestine Punchout”).

This latest conflict was triggered mainly by the success of the Abraham Accords — and the appalling indifference of Team Biden towards them. Those pacts proved that peace with the Palestinians is not a central predicate for Israel to make peace with Arab countries. Round Four truly is Biden’s War, as he waited four weeks to place a call to Israel’s prime minister, before which he had unfrozen Palestinian assets, ditched the Trump approach that had prevented any major conflict in the region, and re-engaged with Iran and the anti-Israel elements at the UN, all without asking for a single concession in return. Instead, Team Biden has opened a concession stand and is serving terrorist customers whatever it can get away with giving them. Tops is Press Secretary Jen Psaki calling the Abraham Accords DOA and not being fired for saying this about the first-ever genuinely amicable peace made between Israel and its territorial neighbors, in 3.75 millennia of Jewish history.

In my 2015 American Spectator article “Will Our Values Make Us Seek Peace With Genocide?” I cited figures from an Israeli scholar’s compilation of 330 Palestinian public opinion polls:

While 93 percent think use of chemical weapons by Israel would be a crime, only 25 percent think that in the converse case of Palestinian use against Israel. He notes that various polls over the past decade show solid Palestinian majorities favoring naming streets after terrorists (61 percent), stab or run over Israelis (78 percent), supporting terrorism inside Israel proper (by a 6 to 1 margin), opposing a two-state solution (over 80 percent v. 12 percent for), and holding an unfavorable opinion of Jews (94 percent). A majority sees no Jewish state in 30 to 40 years.

At some point, perhaps a similar survey now of hundreds of polls will yield useful data. Piecemeal reporting of small numbers of individual polls cannot yield comparably reliable data.

A better clue to Palestinian intentions comes from a major UN speech laying out the Palestinian case. In another 2015 piece of mine, “Rocks on Rosh Hashanah: Golda Was Right,” I noted that Palestine Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas proclaimed in his 2015 address to the UN General Assembly fall session that the “Palestine revolution” — PA-speak for the origin of modern Palestinian nationalism — dates to early 1965. That’s NOT a misprint: 1965. On New Year’s Day 1965, the PLO launched its first terrorist attack on Israel, targeting the National Water Carrier. This came when the entire state of Israel was within the 1949 Green Line — there were zero Israeli settlements then, as these all came after the 1967 Six-Day War. Thus the territory the Palestinians seek to “liberate” is inside Israel proper and would thereby extinguish the Jewish state.

Which brings us to the loopiest argument of all regarding the present conflict: The Palestinians should be supported out of sympathy for the underdog because they are vastly less powerful than the Israelis. Really? By this insane illogic, after Pearl Harbor the world should have been sympathetic to Japan, clearly the underdog in a war that they started with the United States.

Our ancestors were not foolish enough to make such an absurd argument. Nor did our sins — real and imagined — during World War II make Americans of that era think they were not entitled to prevail against monstrous totalitarian enemies. For our time, alas, the jury is still out.

Bottom Line. Who won what and for how long? It is unclear at this writing how the latest conflict actually turned out. Likely it will be weeks, perhaps months, before the open issues below can be fully answered.

(1) Was strong pressure put on Israel by the U.S. in the closing hours of the war to force the Friday 2 a.m. ceasefire?

(2) Were clandestine commitments made by the U.S. to Hamas/PA?

(3) Did one or more Abraham Accord signatories tell Israel that further fighting would stall implementation of the Accords?

(4) How many casualties did Hamas really suffer (it had to be more than the publicly reported numbers)?

(5) Did Israeli public attitudes decisively influence the Benjamin Netanyahu/IDF decision to avoid major ground operations?

(It should be noted that to its credit the administration says it will go through with the $735 million in military aid it has proposed to send Israel. If they mean this and fully follow through, this will prove a major plus.)

One major question appears to have been answered. How far short did Israel fall from its goal of destroying the entire Hamas war/terror infrastructure? Figures just released by the IDF command strongly suggest that Israel did not get anywhere near reaching its primary strategic goal:

Israel estimates that it destroyed 15 to 20 percent of Hamas’s rocket arsenal and some weapons production facilities. It claims to have killed about 200 Hamas operatives and eliminated 30 percent of the tunnels under Gaza used for sheltering militants, housing command systems and moving weaponry around.

One Begin-Sadat Center postwar assessment named Israel the tactical, quantitative winner, but Hamas the strategic, qualitative winner. In this reading, Israel followed the “economic-pragmatic … minds” school of strategy, while Hamas followed the “resistance camp … hearts” school. Due to the change of U.S. administrations, Israeli domestic political paralysis and the overall post-COVID weakness in the West, Hamas prevailed. It re-established the Palestinian Arab relevance in the region and increased the support it got from abroad.

But a second assessment concluded that Hamas lost because it alienated Gaza’s population by using them as human shields. The analysis notes that when called out to celebrate a Hamas victory, not one single member of the general public joined in the post-conflict celebration. To wit:

There are two basic reasons why Hamas is in total disconnect with its Gaza constituency (excepting the 50,000 families who form the hard core of Hamas and are in its employ as a result of Qatari largesse).

First, Gaza’s residents know that Hamas deliberately operates from within the dense neighborhoods in which they live. Though the civilian population is rarely directly hit by the Israeli army, which does everything possible to prevent collateral civilian damage, the psychological toll of being used as a human shield is nevertheless considerable. Israel’s 6,500 strikes mostly involved missiles with a 500 to 750 kilo payload. Israelis now know that Hamas missiles with a payload one-twentieth of that have a nerve-racking impact that can be heard and felt over an area of four to five kilometers (16 to 24 square kilometers). A rocket strike from an Israeli plane with a payload 20 times that amount has a much greater impact, which means half of Gaza’s residents are affected by every strike. Those residents endured that effect 300 times over 12 days, 25 times a day — a level of punishment perhaps only fully understood by Israelis in the “Gaza envelope.”

Even worse is the feeling that for the past 17 years, Gaza’s residents have borne the brunt of repeated rounds of fighting alone. Whereas in the rounds of massive violence that occurred in 1987 and 2000, the burden was equally shared with Palestinians in Jenin, Nablus, Jerusalem, and Hebron, in the past 17 years (during which time terrorism in those places sharply declined) the residents of Gaza suffered over 95% of the psychological and material burden and loss of life of “liberating” Palestine. [Emphasis mine.]

Which of these contrasting assessments proves true may not become clear for some time. And future events could reverse one or more of the above perceived consequences.

But above all, one thing already seems crystal clear: Terrorists have succeeded anew in hijacking our technology, media, and laws and values for hostile use against the nation that is by far America’s — and the free world’s — best ally in the Mideast.

Our ancestors would never have stood for this. They were made of far sterner stuff. We may be able to win while tying one hand behind our back. But can we do so if we tie up both hands, and mute ourselves to boot? We seem determined to test that proposition.

John Wohlstetter is author of Sleepwalking With the Bomb (Discovery Institute Press, Second edition 2014).

This article first appeared in New Direction The European Journal: https://newdirection.online/the-european-journal/article/gaza_crisis_2021

By: Geoffrey Van Orden

Since 1948, Israel has had to fight for its existence in at least four major conventional wars, defending its small and vulnerable territory, half the size of Denmark, while surrounded by hostile neighbours. In living memory of the horrors of the Holocaust, suffering years of terrorism, Israelis have every right to feel under threat and defend themselves. Above all, Israel seeks recognition by Palestinians of its right to exist as an essentially Jewish state if progress is to be made in the creation of a viable and internationally acceptable Palestinian state. The Hamas leaders that in June 2007 seized from the Palestine Authority de facto control of Gaza, vacated by Israel in 2005, fundamentally oppose this.

Ordinary Palestinians feel aggrieved that, from the start, they have had a raw deal, particularly over land. They want peace, security and prosperity for their children but have been ill-served by their political leaders who have been weak or oppressive and more interested in power, money and their purist political legacy, than in their people’s future. For years, Israel has sought a reliable and effective Palestinian leader they could talk to and who had authority throughout the Palestinian areas. As one member of the Knesset put it to me, “the Palestinian leadership never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. This failure costs lives, always disproportionately more by the Palestinians. Years ago it was put to me that everyone knows the shape of a future peace settlement. It is just a question of how many tragic body bags between now and then.

All the time that Palestinian extremists and terrorists were tolerated, often supported, by Arab governments, they felt legitimised and able to blame the people’s plight on Israel.  Their target is public opinion, in the West, in Israel itself, and in the wider Muslim world. Gradually there has been a shift in attitude by arab governments, conscious that their own people also want a more prosperous future and that Israel was not the threat and could even be a key to that better future. In quick succession, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain  all recognised Israel in 2020, following the example of Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.  This has been a massive strategic gain for Israel, potentially at risk if civilian casualties of the current counter-attack against Hamas and its close relative, the even more murderous Islamic jihad, were to grow and provoke an international reaction. Nevertheless, these same countries share Israel’s concerns about Iran. They also have worries over the influence within their own populations of the Moslem Brotherhood, to which both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have foundational affiliation, and which supports terrorism and subordination of the state to its own extreme interpretation of the doctrines of Islam.

No one doubts the ability of Israel to win a war with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but it has been less successful at winning the propaganda battle. In any case it will see diminishing returns from its military interventions. Its objectives need to look beyond the destruction of terrorist offensive capabilities and the previous festering status quo, and move towards a better future.

The unstable domestic political situation in both Israel and the Palestinian areas have contributed to the current crisis. The elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council, originally scheduled for 22 May, followed by a Presidential election in July, provided inspiration for Hamas to stir trouble. I observed the last elections to the PLC in January 2006, which saw a victory for Hamas  (winning 74 seats to 45 for the ruling Fatah party) which apparently surprised some but not those of us on the ground. Faced with a similar outcome in 2021, and in the midst of another crisis, the hapless Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, has again postponed elections, but he can’t put them off for ever. The fact is, his authority does not extend to Gaza, that half of his domain where Hamas has imposed its rule.

Following an inconclusive General Election in March, the fourth in two years, Israel’s government is in limbo. Yair Lapid has been given until early June to cobble together a coalition for government otherwise there will be another General Election. Benjamin Netanyahu, still on trial on corruption charges, remains as interim Prime Minister. The latest Gaza crisis throws all this up in the air. Netanyahu’s tough stance will strengthen his hand in an election. And that election becomes more likely as Lapid may now face difficulties securing a key potential coalition partner, Mansour Abbas’s United Arab List.

The paradox of violent crisis situations is that the people want peace but put their trust in those they think most robustly defend them. They buy the propaganda of their own side. We saw this in Northern Ireland where the softer Unionist politicians were squeezed out and a harder-line loyalist DUP found itself coming to power with the terrorist political front that is Sinn Fein. Fatah is entrenched in corruption and ineptitude and is kept in power by the generosity of Western and Arab governments, mainly because it is not Iranian-backed Hamas. Palestinian voters often remarked to me that they had no idea where all that foreign money went because they never saw any benefit from it, “Fatah were those people in big black cars and fancy villas”. Meanwhile, Hamas, in familiar Moslem Brotherhood fashion, were showing their welfare side, providing medical and schooling for the people and their own harsh brand of law and order, while keeping up the war against what they portrayed as the “little Satan”, Israel.

Israel prospers as a nation, with world-leading research capabilities and inventiveness, not least in provision of water desalination and irrigation that could be of enormous value in lifting the prospects of the poverty stricken Palestinian areas. There is hope for the future if certain steps are taken.

Without external political, financial and humanitarian support, neither Fatah nor Hamas can sustain their positions. The Hamas terror campaign relies on Iran for finance, training and weapons and on the international media and extremists within the Muslim diaspora for propaganda. These links need to be broken. Neither the US nor the Europeans should weaken sanctions on Iran until it ends support for terrorism. Substitute sponsors must be discouraged. And greater effort needs to be made to communicate to the arab street – through broadcasts and social media – to explain the realities behind the continuous turmoil and poverty in the Palestinian areas.

Israel needs to act with generosity in relation to its borders and the definition of the Palestinian areas without compromising its security. It should support a novel status for East Jerusalem. It would also participate in an international programme for reconstruction – that elusive “Marshall Plan” for the region  – to which the Arab nations and the democracies would contribute.

The sclerotic Fatah will need to find a new leader, willing to enter into negotiations, eager to reach agreement, and credible in both the West Bank and Gaza. He will need to renounce violence and the promotion of hatred, and, above all, recognise the state of Israel (more or less the conditions for international recognition of a Palestinian government set by the Quartet of US, UN, EU and Russia).

Distasteful as it may be, this search for a new leader may include the likes of 61-year-old Marwan Barghouti, who has spent the last 17 years in Israeli prisons following conviction for murder. Rejected by the Fatah old-guard, he retains popularity across all the Palestinian areas. He is no Mandela. International comparisons are never wholly accurate and outcomes from talking to terrorists are mixed. Turkey was prepared to negotiate with PKK terrorist leader Ocalan while he was imprisoned. The Colombian government came to terms with the FARC guerrilla movement in 2016.  Britain accepted former Irish Republican terrorist leaders into government in Northern Ireland.

An end to violence and rapid movement towards a sustainable peace settlement would obviously be good for Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Middle East. It is also in all our interests as the situation there becomes steadily more dangerous and as we confront so many other major threats to the security of the democracies.

Geoffrey Van Orden is a distinguished Fellow of the Gold Institute for International Strategy,  former British Conservative leader in the European Parliament and founder of New Direction. He has been visiting Israel and the Palestinian areas for over 40 years.

By: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Senior Fellow

Originally appeared in the NYPost: https://nypost.com/2021/05/18/no-the-gaza-flare-up-didnt-kill-trumps-wildly-successful-abraham-accords/

America’s foreign-policy establishment and peace-process industry are having a field day: The latest round of fighting between Israel and the terror group Hamas, they insist, has sounded the death knell for the Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered peace treaties between the Jewish state and several Muslim nations.

Leading the Schadenfreude Brigade was White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who on Tuesday declared from her podium: “We don’t think [the accords] did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.” The peace-processors failed for decades to make Mideast progress, and the Gaza flare-up gives them and their DC mouthpieces (like Psaki) a cheap chance to crow, “I told you so.”

Reality disagrees, however.

The monumental agreements signed last year will continue to flourish, because their foundations remain solid — whereas doing things the peace-processors’ way will return America to the failures of the past.

The peace-process industry (or syndicate) represents the elite’s thinking on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the wider Middle East. It is composed of former diplomats, left-leaning think tanks, nearly all of corporate media and academia and the wealthy donor class that underwrites their work.

The maverick Trump administration’s Mideast breakthroughs in the final months of 2020 gravely threatened the interests of this group. After all, the Abraham Accords challenged several key assumptions of the peace-processors: above all, the notion that Arab reconciliation with Israel could only be achieved after resolving the Palestinian question.

This belief springs from the false notion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the central drama of the region, linking it to all other problems, which will finally find their panacea only in a “two-state” solution.

Equally destructive is the peace-processors’ belief that a solution can be found by leveling the playing field between America’s regional allies and bad actors like the Palestinians. Put simply, they believe that for negotiations to succeed, Israel must be weakened, while Palestinian leaders must be empowered. There is no evidence for why this should be the case, but that hasn’t stopped peace-processors from summiting the commanding heights of American foreign policy for decades.

It’s easy to see how President Donald Trump and his advisers wounded the egos of these processors with the Abraham Accords. The accords started from diametrically opposed assumptions: that the Palestinian drama isn’t central to the region and that diplomacy requires bolstering, rather than weakening, allies. And they succeeded brilliantly.

The accords won’t soon die, because all of the structural reasons that made them possible remain intact. For starters, the Iranian threat that impelled Arab leaders to embrace their former archenemy, Israel, is still there.

Plus, the economic benefits of the rapprochement are too tangible to ignore, including opportunities in tourism, civil aviation, science, technology and innovation, energy, water, environment and agriculture, food security and more.

Then, too, the Arab elite increasingly views Jews as indigenous to the region. Both the UAE and Bahrain correctly pride themselves as nations of tolerance, and they take pride in extending that tolerance to the region’s Jews. Communications technology is also fostering more dialogue and relationships beyond the control of diplomats or the state.

While Arab leaders sympathize with the Palestinian people, the accords showed that Mideast states have wearied of a corrupt and intransigent Palestinian leadership. For four years leading up to the accords, the unmistakable message to Palestinians and their leaders was that the proverbial train was leaving the station, and it was in their interest to get on board, rather than cling to the slogans of the past; the Palestinians didn’t get the message.

These fundamental dynamics remain beyond the grasp of the dangerously deluded peace-process industry, which remains bent on pulling the region backward, all to fit its disproved theories. There is plenty of more work to be done to expand the peace and normalization framework. This work will continue, regardless of predictable regional forces that periodically lash out and in spite of those who gleefully mistake this beginning for the end.

Matthew RJ Brodsky, a former adviser to the Trump administration’s Middle East peace team, is a senior fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy.