MESSAGE
| DATE | 2023-12-01 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] the defeat of civilization
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Hamas Seizes the Advantage
After the massacres of Oct. 7, the burden is now on Israel to end the
war in Gaza.
Daniel Henninger
By Daniel Henninger
Nov. 29, 2023 6:10 pm ET
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Wonder Land: After the massacres of Oct. 7, the burden is now on Israel
to end the war in Gaza. Images: Reuters Composite: Mark Kelly
As predicted, events since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 have unfolded in
a way that puts Israel, the victim of the mass slaughter, at a
significant political disadvantage.
News reports say Egypt and Qatar, the two nations involved in
hostage-release negotiations, are pushing for a long-term cease-fire.
The Biden administration, we may assume, will support this goal.
In short, Hamas’s planners and fighters look likely to survive without
personal accountability for the 1,200 killed on Oct. 7. Instead, the
burden will fall on Israel to assent to talks with Hamas, whose goal
remains removing the rest of Israel’s more than nine million people.
Credit is due Hamas—and its partner Palestinian Islamic Jihad—for
figuring out the utility of modern sensibilities, especially in the U.S.
Initially the world was shocked that Hamas kidnapped young children and
pregnant or elderly women. This week’s dramatic release of 4-year-old
American Abigail Idan is exemplary. Hamas murdered her parents, then
took the child to Gaza.
Hamas understood that the unprecedented horror of its Oct. 7 attack
would melt away amid daily media attention to the unbearable horror of
these vulnerable hostages and the realities of war inside Gaza.
Responding to the second horror has forced Israel’s army to stand down,
possibly putting other Israelis at mortal peril from attacks by Hamas
and Hezbollah.
Professional terrorism has come a long way. One of the earliest acts of
Palestinian terror, by a Hamas precursor called Black September, was the
kidnapping of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, televised to
the world. It ended with the deaths of athletes and terrorists. In 1985,
Hezbollah and Abu Nidal terrorists hijacked two separate airliners and
attacked airports in Rome and Vienna.
Ultimately the world took precautions, internalized these terrorist
attacks, and in some sense learned to live with them. The post-9/11
airport-security lines have become an accepted annoyance. But by
kidnapping babies, children and grandmothers, terrorism had finally hit
on a tactic the world could not absorb.
For the record, the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276
schoolgirls in 2014, which led for awhile to the global social-media
campaign #BringBackOurGirls. It accomplished little. Some 100 girls
remain missing, and those terrorists, now affiliated with Islamic State,
continue their assaults.
No one can be unmoved by the reunions of the Israeli hostages with their
families. But it is impossible not to miss a second dilemma. Israel said
Tuesday its goal remains to dismantle Hamas. But how, when the current
standoff gives Hamas an incentive to hold some hostages indefinitely?
Meanwhile, running alongside are anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian
demonstrations like those in New York City the past week. Protesters
glued themselves to Sixth Avenue, blocking the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade. Hours later, they vandalized the facade of the
New York Public Library’s main building, doing an estimated $75,000 of
damage.
On Saturday, they moved on the Museum of Natural History—closed in
anticipation—demanding to be let inside to see exhibits of the
“colonizers,” burning an Israeli flag and shouting that the police
officers protecting the museum were equal to the “KKK.”
As we went to press, these activist groups planned to wreck the
Wednesday evening lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. A
social-media post said, “Bring your flags, signs & keffiyehs,
mobilization, not celebration!” Apparently baby Jesus is also complicit.
Add the campus demonstrations, and this constitutes Joe Biden’s
Democratic youth base, which is pushing the president and his party
toward equivocal support for the state of Israel.
The intensity of these demonstrations calls to mind the early 1970s,
when some members of the left-wing group Students for a Democratic
Society tipped over to become a domestic terror group called the Weather
Underground. They blew themselves up while making bombs in a Greenwich
Village townhouse.
In the U.S., we have arrived at a familiar crossroads. Amid a growing
atmosphere of civil disorder, much of it organized, we can either stand
back and live with it or push back, deciding that the potential price to
our own security eventually could be too high.
New York again illustrates the challenge. The police detained some of
the rampaging pro-Palestine protesters, but there’s little prospect of
Manhattan’s progressive District Attorney Alvin Bragg prosecuting them.
After the city’s George Floyd protests (including store lootings), which
ran almost daily for weeks, state Attorney General Letitia James filed a
lawsuit—against the New York City Police Department for mishandling
activists.
Right now cops and demonstrators, not to mention store-smashing thieves,
know the previous structure for maintaining order is dormant.
A word returning to fashion in national-security circles is
“deterrence.” Deterrence is a bow to the dangers of accommodating
disorder. The Netanyahu government’s accommodation of Hamas in Gaza was
a deterrence failure. Communist China’s military expansiveness is a
deterrence failure, as are the attacks by Iran’s proxies on U.S. forces
and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Virulent antisemitism on U.S. campuses
is a deterrence failure. The border is a deterrence failure. So is urban
crime. It adds up.
As an entry point for discussion on how to avoid calamity, a simple
proposal: Start doing the opposite. Relearn deterrence.
Write henninger-at-wsj.com.
Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the November 30, 2023, print edition as 'Hamas Seizes the
Advantage'.
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