Perhaps the three major publications of the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Foreign Affairs. And, as if in an orchestrated choir, leading voices in these publications have urged Israel to exercise restraint in its war against Hamas and U.S. policymakers to pressure Israel to pull back from its declared mission to destroy Hamas as an organized political entity. And those same voices also lashed out at the Netanyahu government and its “far-right” allies, blaming them in part for creating conditions that led to Hamas’ attack and claiming that peace can only be restored with a change in Israel’s government.
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First, as I noted in a previous article, came George Packer in the Atlantic, who urged Israeli leaders to fight a “clean” war because democracies don’t kill civilians, and who called for “profound change from both sides.” Israel, he wrote, must end its “cruel treatment” of Palestinians. And that will only happen when Israel is led by a different government. Then came Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, who urged Israel to refrain from “crazy” escalation of this war, accused the Netanyahu government of fracturing Israel’s politics in a way that invited Hamas’ attack, and called for Israelis to turn against Netanyahu’s government, which is trying to “abduct Israel’s soul.”
Now comes Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing in Foreign Affairs that the Biden administration should restrain Israeli military action in Gaza and move forward with a peace process and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We must “look beyond the crisis,” he writes, and pressure Israel to “offer Palestinians a viable path to statehood.” An Israeli ground invasion will lead to “civilian casualties,” generate “support for Hamas among Palestinians,” and “prompt an international outcry.” It will also reverse Israel’s improved relationships with other Arab states and may lead to an escalation by Hezbollah and Iran.
Haass praises President Joe Biden for his speech in support of Israel — absurdly calling it “poetry.” But he urges the president to warn Israel that a too-aggressive war policy will result in “broad condemnation regionally and globally” and may “create pressure” for Hezbollah to enter the fighting. Haass suggests that the U.S. can deter Hezbollah by warning Iran that we will act to reduce Iran’s oil exports if Hezbollah attacks. He even claims that China might use its leverage with Iran to cause the mullahs to restrain Hezbollah.
Haass is living in a fantasy land. And like Packer and Friedman, Haass aims his slings and arrows at the Netanyahu government, accusing it of embracing “policies that undermined the chance of good-faith negotiation.” The Netanyahu government — even the newly formed unity government — “exists to wage war, not negotiate peace.” It will take a “new government” in Israel, according to Haass, to negotiate peace. A half-century of failure does not deter the choir.
So as Israel responds to the war waged against it by Hamas and Iran — a war that has already taken more than 1,000 Israeli lives and at least 30 American lives — the U.S. foreign policy establishment choir sings the tune of restraint, negotiation, compromise. And while Biden may not be using the language of poets, Netanyahu is using the language of Churchill. “Citizens of Israel,” he announced on Oct. 7, “we are at war. Not an operation, not a round of fighting, at war. This morning, Hamas initiated a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel and its citizens.” “The enemy,” Netanyahu pledged, “will pay an unprecedented price…. We are at war and will win.”
Churchill in May 1940 had to deal with the appeasers in his war cabinet and in the press. Netanyahu will face the same pressure to compromise and negotiate that Churchill faced in 1940. The voices of the U.S. foreign policy establishment choir will undoubtedly be echoed elsewhere, including in Israel. But like Churchill, Netanyahu will ignore those voices who counsel restraint, and will wage war the way Churchill did by seeking “victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.”
