The possibility that either Yahya Sinwar or Benjamin Netanyahu will change his strategy in the immediate future seems extremely unlikely. Neither leader appears willing to change his course of actions, which could lead to dubious results for both of them. Neither wants his last line of defense to be scuttled.
Netanyahu already over-reached himself in the military campaign in which people are dying because of his unsubstantiated claim to wipe out Hamas. His conceptualization of reality has disappeared under a cloud of smoke emitted from his army’s powerful weaponry supplied by the US, although with some misgivings. Netanyahu has made an enemy of the president of the United States, who rightly accuses him of lying and of not showing a degree of respect to one of Israel’s few remaining supporters. All this in addition to Netanyahu’s chutzpah of comparing himself with the might of Uncle Sam. He is a pawn trying to show that he is as powerful and as impregnable as the king.
President Joe Biden has signed on for more massive military aid, but no one assumes that is because of his love of Netanyahu. As have other presidents of the US, Biden sees Israel as a strategic ally against rigid, undemocratic Arab regimes. On paper at least, Israel and the US share certain basic values, such as democracy, equality before the law, and freedom of the individual. How long these values can be upheld under Netanyahu and his cronies is anyone’s guess. Maybe the material and moral support of the US prevent the erosion of these fundamental values inside an increasingly divided Israel.
Sinwar’s options are apparently just as clear. If he returns all the hostages, he will leave himself and his murderous thugs vulnerable to an onslaught by the massively armed Israeli army. Even if he signs an agreement with Israel about leaving Gaza, he cannot trust that Israel will respect it. In one sense, he has already won the war. He caught the Israeli military by complete surprise. He caused the Israeli government to respond impulsively, leading it to devastate Gaza, like a raging bull let loose on a defenseless population. Hamas has furthermore succeeded in turning much of the world’s opinion against Israel, reverting the obvious disgust with Hamas’s horrific slaughter of October 7 into incredible support for the citizens of Gaza to the extent that Israel’s very existence is held in doubt.
Sinwar is on record as saying that he doesn’t mind dying for the cause of the Palestinians. That’s his right. But it would go against the grain of what leaders do in similar circumstances. It seems hardly likely that he would not want to bask in the glory of his achievements, perhaps by escaping to Qatar or elsewhere and live out the rest of his miserable existence as a red flag before the raging but impotent Israeli bull.
Either way, there is an amazing symmetry between these two leaders, both of whom have proven to be masters of cynicism and to hell with the people.
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism
The head of the Anti-Defamation League of the US, Jonathan Greenblatt, recently gave vent to his feelings regarding the alarming rise of anti-Israeli sentiments not only on his own turf but also around the world, where crowds of people chant pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sound bites for the world’s media to broadcast in our media-conscious universe. It was clear to him that anti-Israel, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism are one and the same. If you are against Israel, it go without saying that you are antisemitic.
But isn’t Israel a legitimate sovereign state and therefore can be criticized if it is perceived as acting in an inappropriate way? There may be a streak of antisemitism among the thousands of demonstrators against the Israeli government’s activities in Gaza and elsewhere. But mainly it is directed against Israel as a state and not necessarily at its Jewish citizens. Israel is being measured against a universal standard of decency and acceptability.
Not surprisingly, Netanyahu echoed Greenblatt’s words by accusing his accusers of antisemitism. This is yet another way of the PM avoiding responsibility for the catastrophe of October 7. It is not, according to him, because we have done something wrong but because of antisemitism. That is the real cause of all these accusations and has nothing to do with Israel’s military action in Gaza.
In Micha Goodman’s analysis of the Book of Deuteronomy, he has Moses warning the people that by entering into the Promised Land, they are facing the challenge of success. As such, they need to show wisdom in their dealings with the population under their command.
This is a challenge that does not seem to have penetrated the minds of our leaders today. ■