Casualties of War

Until a few hours ago I had not heard of World Central Kitchen. From what little I now know about WCK, it seems its staffers are genuine humanitarians, not pretenders hiding behind a charitable label. And they have played an essential role in distributing aid to Gazans.

Last night, seven of its workers who were part of an aid convoy leaving a Deir el-Balah warehouse located in the center of Gaza were killed in an unintentional airstrike carried out by the Israel Defense Forces. It is early hours in the investigation. The IDF has expressed regret and said it was committed to discovering what happened and how.

Understandably, WCK has suspended its work. Other aid groups may follow suit.

The “international community” is tripping over itself to condemn Israel. As if the IDF, which gave its (plainly uncoordinated) support to the WCK, would have purposely killed the aid workers, as if horrible mistakes don’t happen in the fog of war.

The nighttime attack on the logoed car carrying the aid workers caused not only a dreadful loss of life but also a blow to Israeli morale – or at least the morale of this Israeli. On the one hand, we can pinpoint and take out a lot of bad guys in a military compound in the heart of Damascus, but we can’t locate over 100 Israeli hostages within driving distance of Tel Aviv. And now, it appears human error has led to us blowing up a marked aid vehicle.

Our killing of real innocents saps our capacity for resilience, especially because it comes days after the 600^th IDF soldier killed in action was buried and with hundreds still hospitalized with life-changing war wounds.

The entire situation is heartbreaking.

With no scruples, our enemies use medical centers and ambulances as instruments of war. Al-Shifa Hospital was destroyed by Hamas – yet Israel will be vilified. Hamas exploits their civilian population as cannon fodder. As the Islamists see it, martyred Palestinian noncombatants, particularly babies and women, are essential soft power components in the strategy to destroy Israel. That is why civilians were kept out of the vast Hamas underground network below Gaza, where they might have been safe from Israeli bombardment of above-ground Hamas structures.

Hamas launched this war. So far, frustratingly, the polls I have seen show that its onslaught continues to enjoy widespread support among average Palestinians. A war that has claimed untold lives, shattered peace of mind, blasted buildings and dislocated thousands on all sides from Gaza and its borders to the West Bank and from Bab el-Mandeb to Lebanon and its borders. Yet, seemingly, if they could begin October 7, 2023, all over again, they would change nothing. From the Palestinian point of view, did they not with wanton abandon pillage, torture, rape, and butcher? Did they not capture and hold stretches of “occupied Palestine” for days? How intoxicating those first days after October 7 were. What good bloodsport!  

And didn’t the war unleash a tsunami of anti-Israelism? Look how it mobilized the world against the Jews – marching every Saturday in the millions in NY and London and Madrid, indeed everywhere TikTok and Instagram can reach, where a vacuous zoomer mind can be manipulated. And has it not created an axis against the Zionists comprised of wokes, socialists, Muslims, “people of color,” and ultra-right-wingers? Has it not shown the Democratic Party to be a weak reed of support for Israel? Has it not been revealed (as if that were necessary) that the mercurial transactional Donald Trump is a potential problem when (as may be expected) he regains the White House?

October 7 has made campuses treacherous places for pro-Israel Jews – really any Jew who won’t throw a keffiyeh around their neck. Quisling Jews have joined the jackals. Suburban communities – the latest being Teaneck, NJ –are subjected to neo-Hamas demonstrations. Major American highways and train stations are shut down. Campaigners have mobilized a worldwide – from the River to the Sea – intifada campaign to destroy the Zionist enterprise. 

Hamas has already exploited the deaths of the seven innocent aid workers to further its nefarious goals. And Western politicians and legacy media can be expected to jump on the Hamas pick-up truck.

So, yes, this Israeli is exasperated. I am saddled with Binyamin Netanyahu, who has ruined Israel’s brand. He fragmented the country to stay out of prison even before the war. His tally of domestic and international blunders is more than any politician has a right to accrue.

He never had the guts to tell Israelis that “bringing the hostages home” can’t be the goal of the war, for the only way to guarantee the safety of our captives is by opening the floodgates of hell – of releasing killers who make Yahya Sinwar seem like an obnoxious boy scout. That there was no way to cut a deal with Hamas without losing to Hamas.

Yet, in all his duplicity, Netanyahu has held firm in this one thing. Yes, he has mismanaged the war to keep his cabinet together, so no "day after" plans for Gaza. But at least he is not repeating the mistake he made in the Gilad Schalit episode.

He has to go, but I am not joining the protests against him because the protests are a complete mishmash – against the draft-dodging Haredim and for early elections – but also a prisoner-for-hostage exchange.

How can the image of tens of thousands of Israelis protesting the government not give Hamas succor?

And by the way, the polls are now hinting that the Great Charlatan is recapturing some of his old luster  –  that Chuckie Schumer and other international bigwigs’ efforts to pressure Israelis to dump Bibi may be having the reverse effect.

See why I am frustrated?

Israel-Gaza War: Day 163 - Q&A

 

Before October 7, you participated in anti-Netanyahu protests over his judicial putsch, which intended to concentrate power in his own hands. Are you taking part in the renewed anti-government protests such as the one last night?

No.

Presently, there are two streams of protest. One calls for early elections intended to end Binyamin Netanyahu's government. The other is to pressure his government to concede to Hamas's demands for a hostage deal.

The two streams have melded into one.

And since I am against any hostage deal that releases busloads of terrorists, I will not demonstrate against the government. Moreover, I am not comfortable protesting in the streets against Netanyahu in wartime.

A core group of demonstrators has been trying to provoke the police by illegally blocking traffic. It is as if we are not at war, as if the police are not working long hours, as if we are not in Ramadan.

Protesters are being manipulated. Many have not thought out the consequences of a mass prisoner release. They don't know that today's Hamas leaders in Turkey, Qatar, and Gaza are primarily alumni of Israel's prisons whom Netanyahu or one of his predecessors released in previous hostage-taking deals.

As much as I want Netanyahu to leave the political stage, I will not lend a hand to strengthening the enemy in wartime. Besides, he can only be removed if elements in Likud are willing to take him down. However, he has largely purged his party of internal opponents. Yaov Gallant, the defense minister, is the only one who has openly challenged him. And Gallant is culpable for October 7 no less than Netanyahu since he – ultimately – did not quit after publicly warning that Netanyahu had undermined our deterrence with his judicial putsch. When push came to shove – Gallant caved.

Netanyahu could be dislodged if the Hardal messianic parties (of Ben Gvir and Smotsrich) and the non-Zionist Haredi ultra-Orthodox parties essential to his coalition pulled their support. These two camps could fall out over Haredi draft dodging. For now, they have no interest in bringing Netanyahu down.  

You voted for Yair Lapid in recent elections. How does his support for releasing terrorists from Israel's prisons in a hostage deal sit with you?

Badly. Lapid has been clear. He wants to trade some of the most notorious terrorists in Israeli prisons, many serving multiple life terms, for the hostages, living or dead. He says, "No deal will be an easy deal, but a deal that will bring the kidnapped home is worth the price…There is no victory without them returning. We can't move forward without them being home."

So, I would find it hard to back him when Yesh Atid runs next. I think the alpha and omega of victory is defanging Hamas and making sure it can't govern the Strip or take over the West Bank. We can't overcome the Hamas Idea because it is embedded in what it means to be Palestinian, but we can keep Hamas (and the other armed groups) from posing a military threat. And doing so would send an unmistakable signal to Hezbollah.

Western governments and the prestige media profess to support Israel's right of self-defense. On Day 163 of the October 7 War, do you believe them?

Leaders and editorialists have convinced themselves that Israel can supernaturally overcome Hamas and Islamic Jihad without harm to Palestinian non-combatants (who are the group's primary backers, cannon fodder, and human shields). Israel can somehow win, goes fabulist thinking, by declaring a unilateral ceasefire and pulling out of Gaza, by turning the Strip over to a PLO 2.0, and by enabling the creation of an armed sovereign Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank that a bridge or tunnel would link.

This is delusional. We need to be far more creative than a PLO 2.0. I favor a trusteeship for Palestine funded by the Gulf States. One that would build Palestinian political institutions and develop a new Palestinian political culture.  

I ask myself why the West and Big Media oppose Israeli defensive measures like building a buffer zone between Gaza and Israel. They oppose cutting off Rafiah from Egypt (the point where all the tunnels cross into the Sinai); they oppose, in short, anything that would actually secure Israel from further attack.

At best, they are lying to themselves.

Should Israel be doing a better job in humanitarian aid?

Israel is constantly held to a double standard not applied to other member states of the UN. Hamas is responsible for the people of Gaza, not Israel.

Yet, Israel continues to allow the flow of food and fuel to the Strip even though this undermines our effort for regime change in Gaza. We do this to abate enemy suffering. We know if the situation were reversed, they would starve those they had not butchered.

Hamas and other Gazan actors either hijack humanitarian deliveries or engineer them into confrontations with Israel. International aid intended for free distribution is being sold. Palestinian society has little history of self-help because that would undermine its culture of victimization. And since the UN is barred from permanently resettling Palestinian refugees even within Palestine, the Sisyphean cycle of aiding the Palestinians never ends.

I have little doubt that sea-borne aid from UNICEF will also wind up being sold or controlled by clans or Hamas.

The best way to help Gazans is to help Israel overcome Hamas so that food, fuel, and material can once again flow in from Israel as they did before October 7.

So, instead of conspiring with Iran behind the scenes and leaning on Israel, which the Biden administration has been doing in secret talks in Oman – it should be sending a clear message that the US supports Israel's efforts to defang Hamas.

Ideally, Jerusalem should have a plan in place for who runs Gaza after we leave. But that would be too much to expect from Netanyahu, who habitually kicks complex problems down the road.

Finally, what did you make of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's call on Netanyahu to resign? And his claim that the good Palestinians and good Israelis want peace but that Hamas and Bibi and the settlers are in the way.

I was chagrined that Schumer pretended he doesn't get that the Palestinians don't want a state alongside Israel. He is right that Netanyahu should go, but his intervention's impact will be counterproductive. It helps Netanyahu stay. Some settlers are fanatics, and some settlements are genuinely problematic but in the final analysis, the crux of the problem is Palestinian intransigence.

Isn't it curious that Schumer's call on Mahmud Abbas to resign got no attention? That's because everyone understood his critique of the Palestinians was just a cover for his attack on Netanyahu.

Why Schumer (who is unarguably a friend of Israel) played along with the psychological warfare orchestrated by the Biden WH is anyone's guess – perhaps fear that the Democrats will further hemorrhage Muslim, woke, and African American voters, constituencies that surveys show have an antipathy toward the Zionist enterprise. If the  Biden-Harris ticket loses to Trump, it will be because Joe Biden abandoned the border with Mexico, led from the left, and having failed to inspire confidence, did not have the courage to step aside, giving a moderate Democratic governor a chance to lead the party against Trump. 

Biden showed courage and decency in backing Israel at the start of the war, and Israelis are grateful for that. He was a profile in courage. He just did not have the stamina to go the distance.