I
don’t want to jump feet-first into the savage quicksand of Israel and her
adversaries, but I have some observations about the Hamas attack, absent
politics.
First,
the intelligence failure. It’s
astonishing that the Israeli security services missed the signals; Hamas may
have kept planning for the offensive under wraps, but the best you can say is
that the Israeli intelligence community was
asleep at the wheel, complacent if not derelict. They pride themselves on active countermeasures
– and the U.S.
shares satellite coverage and electronic intercept – so how did Hamas hit them
so hard, and so suddenly?
The
word “surprise” is being over-used, in this context. Netanyahu’s current governing coalition
includes some rabid right-wing
fundamentalists, who not only reject the two-state solution, but reject basic
human rights for the Palestinians in general.
(It should be pointed out that Fatah, the political wing of the PLO,
accepts in principle Israel’s
right to exist; Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s destruction, and Jewish
genocide.) If you listen to the inflammatory
rhetoric of the present administrator of the West Bank,
once investigated by Shin Bet for suspected sedition, you couldn’t be blamed
for thinking he represents an existential threat to Palestinians as a
people. This isn’t to make excuses, or
to suggest any kind of moral equivalency with Hamas, only to say that the
terror attacks shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Another
thing is that Israel
is obliged to respond – has already responded – with brute force. Civilian casualties are only going to
mount. This is a cruel consequence of
the years of war. You can argue the
rights and wrongs of occupation, of resistance and intifada, but the intractable reality
is unyielding grievance, and more innocents die.
Then
there’s the presence of other actors, in the wings. The
confrontation states have never given a rat’s ass about the Palestinians; the
cause is just a stick to beat Israel
over the head with. Syria has been meddling in Lebanon for
fifty years, and hope is lost. Hezbollah
and Hamas, once Syrian clients, are now supported by Iran. The mullahs have of course disavowed the
Hamas terror strike, saying they support Hamas in their struggle, but had
nothing to do with this specific attack.
I call horse feathers. Hamas stockpiled
tens of thousands of missiles in preparation for this. The obvious suspicion falls on Tehran. Talk on the street says officers of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard met with Hamas in Beirut to plan the ground game.
Israel won’t
sit on its hands if the Iranians are even remotely implicated. A strand of DNA, a single nose hair recovered
from the crime scene, and Iran’s
balls will go on the block. It will not be pretty.
On a
more political front, the disarray in Congress can only sidetrack an effective
American response. The lack of a Speaker
means the House can’t take up military aid to Israel,
or Ukraine, or Taiwan. (Has everybody forgotten about the Chinese and
their Pacific ambitions?) We’ve just
sent a carrier battle group to the eastern Mediterranean. But as it happens, the Navy doesn’t currently
have a Chief of Naval Operations, because Tommy Tuberville, Republican senator
from Bumwad, has put a hold on flag rank promotions - in response to a Defense
Department policy on abortion.
This
is insane.
