There are two clocks ticking at the Kirya Military headquarters in Tel Aviv. One is the operational clock that synchronizes between all combat units in the IDF and helps them operate according to the same timeline, with goals set by commanders that need to be met based on operational directives.
The second clock is more fluid and has to do with the countdown to when the international legitimacy for Israel’s ground offensive runs out. This is not something that can be easily measured and this week, we received a few examples of why.
Ian Bremmer is one example. A bestselling New York Times author and editor at Time magazine, Bremmer tweeted on Wednesday to his 760,000 followers, that Israel’s bombing of a building in Jabalya, which eliminated a top Hamas commander and caused the destruction of a tunnel that capsized additional buildings, was a “war crime. Period.”
The next day, Bremmer tweeted the video of Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad telling Lebanese TV that Hamas plans to repeat the October 7 attacks again, and again, and again until Israel is annihilated. This time, Bremmer tweeted: “Can’t imagine any country tolerating living next to a territory governed by this person.”
People want Israel to wipe out Hamas without civilian casualties. This is impossible
Bremmer is not the only one suffering from a split mind on Israel. Piers Morgan, the veteran TV host, tweeted to his 8.6 million followers after the Jabalya attack that “even if a Hamas commander was there, it is outrageous and indefensible.” Two days later, again after watching the Hamad video, Morgan wrote: “Disgusting… brazen… and of course, the reason Israel needs to wipe out Hamas.”
Morgan and Bremmer are not alone. A lot of people today in the world understand that Israel can no longer live alongside Hamas after the massacre that it carried out in Israeli communities and that it does need to be “wiped out.” Their problem is that they want to see the war fought in a clean sterile way which unfortunately does not exist, not in Gaza and not in any war that is fought today in an urban setting.
WHEN HAMAS hides inside an apartment building or runs its battalion’s operations from a tunnel underneath a residential complex, what do these people want Israel to do? They say that Israel should defend itself, and that they understand why Hamas needs to be destroyed, but when Israel does exactly that – while trying to minimize civilian casualties by giving people three weeks to flee northern Gaza – they bounce back to the war crimes allegations.
The reason is sadly because while the world says that Israel has the right to act in self-defense (not that we need their permission), when it comes to realizing that right and actually fighting, the world suddenly has an issue.
It is like the growing calls now for a ceasefire. If Israel were to agree to a ceasefire, it would be handing Hamas a clear victory. The terrorist group that murdered 1,400 people in the worst ways known to man, would enter a ceasefire with most of its fighters alive, most of its military infrastructure intact, and still in possession of 240 hostages. How does that make sense?
On the other hand, it is going to be hard for Israel to continue ignoring these calls. President Joe Biden, on Wednesday, urged for a “pause” in the conflict, and other White House officials are said to be asking the president to take a tougher stance with Israel. The pressure will be hard to withstand and while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could try to partially ease it by allowing in more humanitarian aid to southern Gaza, additional attacks like the one in Jabalya are going to continue to sway international opinion.
What we need to realize is that at the root of these calls is a simple misunderstanding of what Israel is going through. While people express sympathy for what happened on October 7, that is very different than supporting Israel’s anti-Hamas offensive. It is as if there are people in the world who want to see Jews weak and attacked. The moment Jews stand up and fight for themselves – even in a battle that cannot be more justified – these people turn away.
By reacting this way, people are playing into Hamas’s exact strategy. Hamas wants civilians killed so it can provoke sympathy from the West and get world leaders to crack down on Israel. They want buildings to capsize into tunnels that are destroyed so that people then die and they can then blame Israel. This is part of a sophisticated information war in which Hamas sacrifices its own people.
THE MISUNDERSTANDING runs deep. Take Thomas Friedman from The New York Times as another example. This week he wrote a column making a distorted comparison between the current Israel-Hamas war to India and Pakistan, claiming that when India decided not to retaliate to the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, that was a demonstration of strength and that Israel would be smart to study this response.
Putting aside the absurdity of that comparison – to start, Hamas is not a state actor like Pakistan that can be engaged diplomatically – the column continued down a path of utter disconnect when Friedman wrote that Israel should pause and reflect on where it is going.
“I want to see Hamas’s leaders come out from their tunnels under hospitals and look their people, and the world’s media, in the eye and tell everyone why they thought it was such a great idea to mutilate and kidnap Israeli children and grandmothers and trigger this terrible blowback on the children and grandmothers of their Gaza neighbors – not to mention their own,” he added.
In other words, not only should Israel not be retaliating to the Hamas attack and not be attacking Hamas targets, it should allow Hamas fighters out of tunnels so that Friedman and others can hear from them why they did what they did. Can it get more absurd?
Let me clarify for Friedman what the Israeli government plans to do if the Hamas murderous leaders come out of their tunnels: it will eliminate them, and if I’m not mistaken that’s exactly what America did in its years of war against Al Qaida and ISIS.
It is time to stop thinking about Hamas through an American-western lens. That was the exact error we all made for the last 20 years. Doing so plays straight into their hands.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and the immediate past editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.