Israel's 9/11
Israel appears poised to repeat the same mistakes the U.S. made in response to a massive terrorist attack
The brutal attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel October 7 has been rightly condemned across the American political spectrum. There is no justification for what these militants have done, with the death toll in Israel at 700 and rising, over 2,000 injured, some critically, and over 130 Israelis taken hostage.
“This is Israel’s 9/11,” Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdal told the Security Council during an emergency meeting this Sunday. The death toll is actually larger as a proportion to Israel’s population of some 9.3 million people (compared to 332 million in the U.S). Thus, 700 Israelis killed would be the equivalent of 21,000 Americans killed in an attack.
We must stand with Israel at this difficult moment. Full disclosure: We have family in Israel. Thankfully, all are safe, but many of them took shelter in their safe rooms over the weekend.
Beyond the horror, shock and sorrow, the attack and what comes next also compares to the 9/11 terrorist assault in three important ways.
A massive intelligence failure
No one can explain right now how the government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to detect such a massive Hamas operation before it began. The conservative Jerusalem Post asks “Is it the greatest intelligence failure in Israeli history?” The liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in a major editorial, says bluntly: “The disaster that befell Israel…is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. [He] completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”
His failure is strikingly similar to the failure of the George W. Bush administration on 9/11 and may help dispel the myth that right-wing governments are better at national security.
In 2001, senior officials in the Bush administration were focused on what they saw as a serious threat of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Five senior officials traveled to Moscow in 2001 to try to convince Russia to dissolve the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and promised they could then deploy a massive system that could defend the United States from attack.
Both the technology and the threat were inflated. But in a myopic pursuit of this policy, Bush ignored intel briefings in August titled, “Bin Liden Determined to Strike in U.S.” Then-Senator Joe Biden gave a speech on September 10, 2001 that warned of the folly of ignoring the terrorist threat. If we spend billions on missile defense, he said, "we will have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat, while the real threats come into this country in the hold of ship, or the belly of a plane."
Similarly, Netanyahu’s far-right government focused not on defending Israel’s borders but on ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the occupied territories. As Ha’aretz notes:
After his victory in the last election, he replaced this caution with the policy of a “fully-right government,” with overt steps taken to annex the West Bank, to carry out ethnic cleansing in parts of the Oslo-defined Area C, including the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.
This also included a massive expansion of settlements and bolstering of the Jewish presence on Temple Mount, near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as boasts of an impending peace deal with the Saudis in which the Palestinians would get nothing, with open talk of a “second Nakba” in his governing coalition. As expected, signs of an outbreak of hostilities began in the West Bank, where Palestinians started feeling the heavier hand of the Israeli occupier. Hamas exploited the opportunity in order to launch its surprise attack on Saturday.
Blaming a Geopolitical Adversary
Rather than examine the strategic and tactical failures that left the country vulnerable, Israeli officials are force-feeding the crisis into their existing paradigm. They are blaming Iran.
US supporters of the far-right Israeli government were also quick to blame Iran and blast the Biden administration for the deal it made to free American hostages held by Iran. They claim, without merit, that the $6 billion of Iranian funds transferred to Qatar as part of the deal actually funded the Hamas attacks. In fact, not one cent has been released yet and it is only allowed to be transferred to third-party vendors for humanitarian supplies and medicine. Still, it is impossible to tune into FOX and not hear this claim and attempt to shift blame onto Biden.
It echoes then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who began blaming Iraq for the attacks mere hours after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. He was backed up by a neo-conservative echo chamber eager for war with Iraq. “Rumsfeld's response tells us all we need to know about what went wrong with our government's policies in 2001,” I wrote at the time. “We were unprepared for the threats we faced, were slow to comprehend the meaning of the attack, and in planning our counterattack, almost immediately began focusing again on the wrong threat.”
A Massive Military Response
By all accounts, Israel is preparing a massive air and ground invasion of Gaza. Israeli air attacks have already leveled dozens of building in Gaza and killed several hundred Gaza residents. A ground invasion of Gaza — with 2.2 million people densely packed into an area twice the size of Washington, D.C. that some describe as a giant open-air prison — could result in thousands of casualties. This is exactly what the far right in Israel wants.
For some, this war could be the fulfillment of their efforts to eliminate Palestinians from land controlled by Israel “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in March of this year.
There is no justification whatsoever for Hamas murdering innocent civilians with machine guns and grenades. Nor is there any justification for Israel murdering innocent civilians with planes and missiles.
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour — who is not allied with Hamas — told the UN Security Council that the “messages of Israel's right to defend itself will be interpreted by Israel as license to kill, to pursue on the very path that led us here." "317 Palestinians or even more were killed in a single day, including children, some of them just a few months old, or entire families who were killed together," said Mansour, "Will this bring security? Will it advance peace?"
There is no justification whatsoever for Hamas murdering innocent civilians with machine guns and grenades. Nor is there any justification for Israel murdering innocent civilians with planes and missiles. International law is clear: One side’s war crimes do not justify war crimes by the other side.
Biden administration officials are working to both support Israel and prevent escalation of the crisis. While no one can deny Iran’s history of aiding Hamas and it is certainly part of the picture, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN on Sunday, “We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship.”
The attack has likely killed administration hopes of an Israeli-Saudi mega deal. Now officials are working to prevent a wider, regional war.
Lessons Lost
While targeted attacks on Hamas leadership are certainly warranted, a full-scale invasion of Gaza may be just what Hamas wants. Osama bin Landen also launched his attack in part to provoke the U.S. into a war that he thought would bleed and weaken America.
In many ways, although he did not live to see it, bin Landen got what he wanted. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, his doomed occupation of Afghanistan, his torture centers and indiscriminate killing of civilians squandered the world’s support and sympathy after the 9/11 attacks and began the long decline of America’s global standing.
Israel should not make the same mistake. Instead of using the attack to justify its existing extremist agenda, Israeli officials should analyze its intelligence failure, its misallocation of troops and its strategy guided by radical ideology instead of the nation’s security.
The “long and difficult war” that Netanyahu now promises will not protect Israel, it will weaken it.
The best I’ve read around such a thorny and divisive subject. Thank you.
Israel needs to retaliate but in a measured way. They can try to wipe out Gaza but it will only perpetuate the 75 year long circle of violence. They have peace with Egypt and Jordan because brave people were willing to negotiate. The Palestinians are not going away. A two state solution will remove most of their rationale for continued attacks. Terrorists will still try to stir the pot but a Palestinian homeland will greatly mitigate the issue. What Israel is doing now has never worked. It is a sop to the right wing but wil do little to solve the problem. It certainly will give Hamas and Hezbollah recruits for the foreseeable future. Sadly, I believe my grandchildren will be reading the same headlines in another 75 years.