Joe- I have been saying this for months…Bibi played Biden like a fiddle. Biden didn’t have the backbone to really force Bibi’s hand. He didn’t even have to withhold arms..a simple refusal to veto. Security Council resolutions would have done the trick.
Biden sacrificed his legacy, his presidency and thousands of Palestinian lives to support Bibi and got bupkis in return.
And you have been right for months! I would really like to get the full story from those involved in this human and policy disaster after they leave office. From meetings with those in or close to the administration, it’s clear that Biden was the main driver of this capitulation to Bibi. But I’d like to know how hard others pushed back. If they did.
Or, perhaps circumstances have changed recently that would have made it easier for anyone to get the deal done now, including with a Democrat as the next president, even Biden. In fact, Biden might have been in the best position of any Democrat if he had stayed in and been reelected, because he wouldn't have had to worry about another election and would have been free to take more forceful and controversial action. You might consider that recent events in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, and recent changes to Netanyahu's cabinet, might greatly helped to soften Netanyahu's position on a ceasefire.
Biden had zero intention of ever cutting military aid to Israel. The election was in November and Biden was still sending offensive weapons to Israel as recently as two weeks ago.
However, I think that Trump is being given far too much credit for ending this horrible conflict. When he was President the last time he went out of his way to antagonize the Palestinians at every conceivable opportunity, which is partly why the October 7 Hamas massacre occurred.
The Palestinians were deliberately excluded from the Abraham Accords and it reinforced the narrative that there was never going to be a Palestinian state. This may have significantly hardened the views of more Palestinians than when Barak Obama was President.
Netanyahu obviously thinks that he can get more out of a Trump administration than he did under Biden or he would not have agreed to the deal. Maybe because Trump is affiliated with the Christian Zionist movement that supports expanding the West Bank settlements and expelling Palestinians from their homes.
Also, I am skeptical that after this 42 day ceasefire deal expires that the fighting won’t pick up where it left off and Trump’s policy on Gaza will ultimately be any different than Biden’s. I sure hope that I’m wrong on this.
Trump actually goes further than even many Republicans on this issue because one of his campaign promises was to deport foreign students who partake in lawful and constitutionally protected protests that criticize Israel.
Nonetheless, Biden’s Israel-Palestine policy, overall, has been a
disgrace, in my judgement and, without question, contributed to VP Harris’s loss to Trump, someone whom, due to his ineptitude, recklessness, and malice will likely be a catastrophe for everyone, everywhere.
David- We all enjoy the luxury of being able to comment from the safety of our homes. Motives, plans, theories are all up for grabs.
What isn’t in question are the numbers of dead, wounded and orphaned in Gaza. The devastation is evident and widespread. Bibi didn’t destroy Hamas; he insured its resurgence.
The cycle of violence that started in 1948 will go on until someone realizes that giving the Palestinians something to lose…a home and self determination….will end the violence and give Israel a chance to live in peace with its neighbors.
Beautifully said, Thomas. I cannot possibly express the full extent of my views on an issue as complicated as Israel-Palestine in one reply to an online newsletter essay. But I do believe the manner in which former President Joe Biden and his State Department handled this issue will cast a permanent stain on his legacy as President.
Recent polling suggests that it was the Biden administration's support for Israel, rather than a perceived lack of support, that was a major, if not the major, motivation for Democrats who chose not to vote this time, and this may have cost the Dems the election.
And you don't really know what Biden would have done if freed from the need to consider reelection and thus not needing to cater to one side or the other of the issue.
Interesting take. I believe, however, that Netanyahu wasn't so much afraid of Trump, but wants to make him look good in the hope that Trump will support him fully in the upcoming years. So while I agree that Bibi was the problem, I do disagree with the reason for the change.
I don't think so. There are many ways for Bibi to make Trump good that wouldn't risk his government collapsing. But if you have some evidence to support this thesis, please share it.
Not being involved I have no empirical evidence. But it would seem to me that Trump's threat to raise hell gave Netanyahu cover to keep at least some of the far right members of his government onboard. He certainly needs to walk a tightrope with these guys. But they all know that Trump will likely support their post conflict desires with regard to Golan, the West Bank, and Gaza. If they blew up the deal by leaving the government they might lose Trump- at least for a while.
I'm not convinced that tough talk on the Sabbath is the whole story. Trump must have offered Netanyahu a major sweetener that we will find out about only in due course. I suspect that it has to do with US approval of the annexation of the West Bank. We shall see.
For Israel is a terrible deal. That's why they held off, thinking they could get a better deal. No doubt Trump threatened Bibi to take it. Being transactional, Bibi no doubt offered something in return (perhaps support against Iran's nuclear program).
There's a longer lasting pattern here which merits the attention of my fellow Democrats.
VIETNAM: When I was young I remember piling in to a station wagon with 8 other college kids to make the drive from Florida to New York City to participate in a big anti-war demonstration. We were outraged by what America was doing in Vietnam. But we had not the slightest concern about what North Vietnamese communists were doing. That literally didn't even cross our minds.
IRAQ: Nobody in America was the slightest bit interested in the Iraqi people. That is, until America invaded Iraq, and then we on the Left dove in to a wild orgy of phony concern for the Iraqi people. And at the moment America left Iraq we went right back to not caring at all about the Iraqi people. That is, we never cared about them in the first place.
GAZA: This historical pattern is now repeating itself in the Middle East. So few of us on the Left had any interest at all in the citizens in Gaza so long as they were being ruled by Hamas psychopaths. But then, at the very moment Israel invades Gaza, suddenly we care about the people of Gaza OH SO VERY MUCH!!! And just like in Iraq, once the current war is truly over, we'll go right back to not caring about the Gazans at all.
The point here is this:
Such longstanding phony baloney concern posturing undermines the credibility of the Democratic Party.
"It didn’t have to be this way. If only Biden had understood what Trump seems to have grasped intuitively. To end the war, the key was Bibi all along."
Have to dissent from that conclusion, as Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, they ALL knew the score, but were locked into ,"Israel has the right to defend itself" as corollary to "But Hamas!". Too much groupthink and conventional "Blob" mindset from old-school hands who forever viewed Israel from a "Holocaust" perspective, and as the "West's" man in the ME.
So, no, don't try to sell the "They didn't get Bibi" line...of course they got it, but tried - you know - "reason" with the filthy criminal, and he REPEATEDLY AND WITH GREAT VIGOR told the Yanks to shove it...essentially the Biden team simply lacked the courage to do what was right, and with an eye on the "Jewish vote" in the oncoming election, just ignobly folded.
Netanyahu successfully undermines Iran and it's puppets in a serious way making the Middle East safer for everyone, and you decline to applaud Netanyahu.
Before even taking office Trump solves a problem the Democratic Party could not solve for over a year, and you decline to applaud Trump.
You write as if the war in Gaza was a complete waste of time war crime, when in fact Netanyahu was DOING HIS JOB, by attempting to eradicate the psychopaths who invaded Israel and killed 1200 Israelis. It's not his fault that Hamas hides in hospitals and deliberately engineered this war from the very beginning to create a big Palestinian death toll.
Netanyahu may be an asshole, but he won this war on scale beyond what any of us imagined possible. Netanyahu did what a leader of any country is expected to do, he made his citizens safer by crushing their enemies, in direct response to an unprovoked attack.
Too much tribal chanting Joe. Not in the interest of the Democratic Party.
But he didn’t crush the enemy. He empowered them. He ruined an entire civilization of people. All those innocent people that just wanted to live their lives. Shame on you. 70,000 people are dead. Most of them not Hamas fighters. Most of them average regular people. There’s a reason why 70% of Israelis despise Netanyahu.
Please explain how the poor choice made by smokers should IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER limit our outrage at the rich tobacco company executives who very deliberately engineer and sell a highly addictive product that they know for sure in advance will kill 400,000 of their customers each and every year.
Why are we so determined to give these rich people a free pass for the large scale damage that they do, so that they can get even richer?
Here's why...
What we choose to be outraged about has little to do with logic.
Ha’aretz is a well respected newspaper noted for a clear perspective on global issues; however, in this particular article, its conclusion is not predicated on evidential proof but on a theory based merely on a loose connection of dots supposedly linking circumstantial facets of Middle Eastern politics.
Even accepting that Witkoff’s involvement catalyzed the ceasefire, where is the evidence that Netanyahu caved because Trump wanted it? Throughout the article there is not one hard fact or definitive reason to justify the claim.
Turning to your other arguments, Phil, Israel’s Zionist faction has consistently exacerbated Iran’s ideological conflict with the West, leading it to closer ties with rival nuclear powers the likes of Putin’s Russia. How is the Middle East safer for that?
“You write as if the war in Gaza” started on 7 October 2023 - it started in the mid 1900s with the Zionist’s’ occupation of Palestinian territory and has continued largely unchecked ever since through the apartheid subjugation of one Semitic people by another.
Hamas is neither the instigator or perpetuator of the war; it’s a resistance movement that, far from being eradicated by Netanyahu “doing his job”, grows with each atrocity against its peers and their property.
Hamas did not “engineer” a war “to create a big Palestinian death toll” - why would it, knowing that Israel is never punished for its actions by the international community and has long been encouraged by the Anglo-American West to keep stealing Palestinian land and leave Palestinians in worse than refugee status?
That IS the fault of Netanyahu and his fellow Zionist predecessors.
If the Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election because of the Biden administration’s attitude to the Gaza situation, they can blame only themselves.
If Trump won the election for that reason, the American people must prepare to blame only themselves if - or when - his interference in matters Middle Eastern makes the situation far more dangerous yet.
Thanks for your engagement Ian, you make some good points.
It might help somewhat for me to explain that I believe, and have written many times on Substack, that Jews looking for peace and security in the Middle East was a major tactical error, an act of madness almost, that may prove fatal in the end.
But, they are there now, and they didn't start this war. From the beginning Hamas had the option to focus it's energy on serving the many needs of Gazans, instead it chose to focus on stockpiling weapons and planning for the eradication of all Israelis. Their plan in this war was to provoke Israel in to killing lots of civilians in Gaza, with the hope that this would turn the world against Israel, a plan which has worked to a degree.
"Hamas is neither the instigator or perpetuator of the war"
Sorry, this complete nonsense, so preserve my decorum I'm tuning out here.
Thanks, Phil. Your first observation is much appreciated.
Perhaps I did not pay enough attention to your earlier comments that are the subject of your defense in points 2 and 3. I tend to agree that there is some selfish partisan bluster in the to and fro of vehement political discourse surrounding affairs of conflict around the world.
A false belief that all Jewish people unflinchingly support Israel’s stance on Palestine has led to a wholly ignoble fight between America’s major parties to secure “the Jewish vote” and that, in turn, has given rise to scraps, including protests, that can be at least as much as and sometimes more than expressions purely of contempt for a rival internecine ideology than they are of real concern for the people directly affected by the situation on the ground.
Regrettably, many of the arguments are expressed in terms that indicate either lack of study of the full facts behind the conflict over Palestine or prejudice with which one cannot reason.
One such falsehood, again pandering to “the Jewish vote”, is that it’s antisemitic to critics Israel. It’s not.
The Palestinians are semites too and their mistreatment should ever be a reminder that we have a moral duty to end the tooth-for-a-tooth policies that have for far too long defined Middle Eastern issues.
Ian writes, "One such falsehood, again pandering to “the Jewish vote”, is that it’s antisemitic to critics Israel. It’s not."
Well, that depends upon the speaker's particular situation. Some are Jew haters, many are not.
My take is that it at least looks anti-Jew when the protestors are OUTRAGED! when Jews oppress Arabs, but SILENT when Arabs oppress Arabs. The easiest example of this is right next door in Syria. According to ChatGPT....
===========
The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and concluded with the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in December 2024, resulted in significant loss of life. Estimates of the total number of deaths vary, with figures ranging from approximately 580,000 to over 617,000 individuals. The United Nations reported that, as of 2022, at least 306,887 civilians had been killed in the conflict. Additionally, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented that, by mid-March 2022, 25,857 children and 15,761 women had lost their lives. These figures underscore the profound human cost of the war on the Syrian population.
===========
And, as I indicated above, right here in America there are psychopaths who have racked up a bigger death toll than anybody in the Middle East, the American tobacco industry. Near total silence is our response.
Anyway, outrage tends not to follow any rules of reason, and I'm not following them either by expecting that to be the case.
Again, Phil, thanks for continuing to engage with me.
I must agree that the rules of reason are, indeed, absent from the minds of a great plurality of people when professing their outrage at any individual atrocity or another.
Indeed, such is the propensity of the deliberately under-educated and the callow student to conflate prejudice with principle that, all too often, their simplistic outrage exacerbates rather than alleviates a complex problem.
The “speaker’s particular situation” IS important and, sadly, I am confident that a great many critics of Israel are thus only because, for some irrational reason, they hate Jewish people.
Is that why their collective majority has failed to opine with indignation on the civil war in Syria or other conflicts in the region, including those in Lebanon and Kurdistan, for example?
Perhaps but are we granting any such peculiar perspective undeserved credit when we attempt to lead its protagonists to a holistic approach in the consideration of the world’s ills?
As that, in itself, is to ignore the rules of reason, my preference is to face down prejudice one principle at a time, but I am ever cognizant that, for every atrocity in Earthly history, there’s another of equal inhumanity not far away.
It’s a pragmatic approach that risks compromising the purity of my principles but I believe it offers me better odds of convincing at least one doubter than beating him about the head with the proverbial kitchen sink.
You ask, "Is that why their collective majority has failed to opine with indignation on the civil war in Syria or other conflicts in the region, including those in Lebanon and Kurdistan, for example?"
I don't think anti-Jewish sentiment is really the main driver of the failure to care about Arabs other than the Palestinians. It's more the chronic logic failures of we leftists going back to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. We typically get outraged about the wrong people.
But, the failure to care about Arabs other than Palestinians certainly can LOOK like Jew hatred.
There's a larger topic here that interests me as a wannabe writer on Substack. Our outrage focus on Gaza, while largely ignoring the horrors in Syria, demonstrates how wrong the group consensus can sometimes be. Imho, it's the job of writers to see such contradictions in the group consensus, and try to shed some inconvenient light on them.
Thankyou for responding, Phil. It seems we might be forced to agree to disagree.
Israel’s statehood began in war, after a campaign of Zionist terrorism in the post-WWII 1940s that led to the abandonment of Palestine by the British with the acquiescence of USA.
Despite subsequent declarations of criminality by United Nations, the Israelis continued to evict Palestinians from their homes to found “Jewish settlements” in the West Bank and were never held to account for those crimes.
Just as resistance movements always arise when their country is occupied - think, for example, of the French in WWII and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, even the Patriots in 18th-century North America - the Palestinians were bound, sooner or later, to spawn organizations dedicated to the overthrow of their oppressors.
And, just as always occurs, those resistance movements were quickly condemned as “evil terrorists” by the very state that was conducting its own terrorism against them.
Even in the 1980s, when my parents visited “The Holy Land”, there were walls separating Palestinians from Jewish-occupied areas, roads that Palestinians could not use and checkpoints to ensure they remained in their designated enclaves.
Hamas is one of several organizations formed to resist that abomination and it is therefore not nonsense to assert that it is neither the instigator nor the perpetuator of the war.
Your decorum would be much better preserved - and served - by tuning IN to that circumstance and admonishing rather then lauding the Israeli state for its apartheid regime, which causes more problems for good Jewish people around the world than they deserve.
Hi again Ian, disagreement is acceptable here, I'm ok with that, no problem. I would summarize my view this way.
1) There is some truth in your points, agreed. It's a complicated situation for sure. There are no angels in the Middle East. But...
2) There is no evidence that the moralizing finger pointing BY BOTH SIDES that's been going on since before I was born will ever bring peace and security to anybody in the Middle East. I shouldn't have become involved in it either, it's all a total waste of time.
3) Generally speaking, I see stated concerns for the Palestinian people to be mostly phony baloney BS.
As example, if Hamas were to achieve all it's goals and impose yet another Arab psychopathic despotic regime upon the Palestinian people, none of today's protestors would keep protesting. They wouldn't give a shit, just as they don't really care about the millions of other Arabs currently trapped in such regimes.
As example, where were the outraged protest demonstrations when Assad was destroying Syria in the most brutal fashion imaginable, or when the Iranian regime shoots it's own people down in the streets, or the Saudis chop up the bodies of critics in their embassy etc etc etc?
Sorry, just too much phony baloney concern for me...
What did Trump have to concede to get Bibi to relent. Neither of these men do something for nothing or for the good of their people unless there's something in it for them personally.
Did Netanyahu really believe that Israel completely destroying Hamas was a realistic goal? Didn't Israel's successes in killing many Hamas members and leaders, substantially degrading Hezbollah's capabilities and will to fight, successes against Iran, and the overthrow of Assad in Syria lead to conditions that now enable Netanyahu to be more amenable to a ceasefire? You also mention recent changes to Netanyahu's cabinet that tend to dilute the power of the more extreme cabinet members. Might that not have also created conditions enabling Netanyahu to be more amenable to a deal? Even assuming Trump had some role in getting the deal done, might not the many important circumstances I mention have also greatly helped, as well as Biden's design for the deal?
Perhaps my little parable puts (some) things in perspective.
Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Once upon a time there were three villages. In the middle of the villages was a well the villagers shared. Each village coveted their precious allotment. Constant squabbles erupted over access and rights. Sometimes outright violence resulted through selfish actions and deceit. One day the well ran dry, threatening the villagers’ livelihoods. They decided to cooperate in finding a solution. They poured their collective resources into digging an irrigation trench from a nearby lake. They dowsed for water and dug another well. They celebrated their good fortune and new water sources. Soon, though, they were back to their old ways.
Joe- I have been saying this for months…Bibi played Biden like a fiddle. Biden didn’t have the backbone to really force Bibi’s hand. He didn’t even have to withhold arms..a simple refusal to veto. Security Council resolutions would have done the trick.
Biden sacrificed his legacy, his presidency and thousands of Palestinian lives to support Bibi and got bupkis in return.
Tom
And you have been right for months! I would really like to get the full story from those involved in this human and policy disaster after they leave office. From meetings with those in or close to the administration, it’s clear that Biden was the main driver of this capitulation to Bibi. But I’d like to know how hard others pushed back. If they did.
Me too. Who was the aggressor in all those closed door meetings? There's always a bully.
Or, perhaps circumstances have changed recently that would have made it easier for anyone to get the deal done now, including with a Democrat as the next president, even Biden. In fact, Biden might have been in the best position of any Democrat if he had stayed in and been reelected, because he wouldn't have had to worry about another election and would have been free to take more forceful and controversial action. You might consider that recent events in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, and recent changes to Netanyahu's cabinet, might greatly helped to soften Netanyahu's position on a ceasefire.
Biden had zero intention of ever cutting military aid to Israel. The election was in November and Biden was still sending offensive weapons to Israel as recently as two weeks ago.
However, I think that Trump is being given far too much credit for ending this horrible conflict. When he was President the last time he went out of his way to antagonize the Palestinians at every conceivable opportunity, which is partly why the October 7 Hamas massacre occurred.
The Palestinians were deliberately excluded from the Abraham Accords and it reinforced the narrative that there was never going to be a Palestinian state. This may have significantly hardened the views of more Palestinians than when Barak Obama was President.
Netanyahu obviously thinks that he can get more out of a Trump administration than he did under Biden or he would not have agreed to the deal. Maybe because Trump is affiliated with the Christian Zionist movement that supports expanding the West Bank settlements and expelling Palestinians from their homes.
Also, I am skeptical that after this 42 day ceasefire deal expires that the fighting won’t pick up where it left off and Trump’s policy on Gaza will ultimately be any different than Biden’s. I sure hope that I’m wrong on this.
Trump actually goes further than even many Republicans on this issue because one of his campaign promises was to deport foreign students who partake in lawful and constitutionally protected protests that criticize Israel.
Nonetheless, Biden’s Israel-Palestine policy, overall, has been a
disgrace, in my judgement and, without question, contributed to VP Harris’s loss to Trump, someone whom, due to his ineptitude, recklessness, and malice will likely be a catastrophe for everyone, everywhere.
Shavua Tov,
David Hurwitz
Chicago, IL
David- We all enjoy the luxury of being able to comment from the safety of our homes. Motives, plans, theories are all up for grabs.
What isn’t in question are the numbers of dead, wounded and orphaned in Gaza. The devastation is evident and widespread. Bibi didn’t destroy Hamas; he insured its resurgence.
The cycle of violence that started in 1948 will go on until someone realizes that giving the Palestinians something to lose…a home and self determination….will end the violence and give Israel a chance to live in peace with its neighbors.
Beautifully said, Thomas. I cannot possibly express the full extent of my views on an issue as complicated as Israel-Palestine in one reply to an online newsletter essay. But I do believe the manner in which former President Joe Biden and his State Department handled this issue will cast a permanent stain on his legacy as President.
Recent polling suggests that it was the Biden administration's support for Israel, rather than a perceived lack of support, that was a major, if not the major, motivation for Democrats who chose not to vote this time, and this may have cost the Dems the election.
And you don't really know what Biden would have done if freed from the need to consider reelection and thus not needing to cater to one side or the other of the issue.
Interesting take. I believe, however, that Netanyahu wasn't so much afraid of Trump, but wants to make him look good in the hope that Trump will support him fully in the upcoming years. So while I agree that Bibi was the problem, I do disagree with the reason for the change.
I don't think so. There are many ways for Bibi to make Trump good that wouldn't risk his government collapsing. But if you have some evidence to support this thesis, please share it.
Not being involved I have no empirical evidence. But it would seem to me that Trump's threat to raise hell gave Netanyahu cover to keep at least some of the far right members of his government onboard. He certainly needs to walk a tightrope with these guys. But they all know that Trump will likely support their post conflict desires with regard to Golan, the West Bank, and Gaza. If they blew up the deal by leaving the government they might lose Trump- at least for a while.
I'm not convinced that tough talk on the Sabbath is the whole story. Trump must have offered Netanyahu a major sweetener that we will find out about only in due course. I suspect that it has to do with US approval of the annexation of the West Bank. We shall see.
Another possibility is a greenlight to attack Iran's enrichment plants and nuclear-weapon-related facilitaties.
For Israel is a terrible deal. That's why they held off, thinking they could get a better deal. No doubt Trump threatened Bibi to take it. Being transactional, Bibi no doubt offered something in return (perhaps support against Iran's nuclear program).
There's a longer lasting pattern here which merits the attention of my fellow Democrats.
VIETNAM: When I was young I remember piling in to a station wagon with 8 other college kids to make the drive from Florida to New York City to participate in a big anti-war demonstration. We were outraged by what America was doing in Vietnam. But we had not the slightest concern about what North Vietnamese communists were doing. That literally didn't even cross our minds.
IRAQ: Nobody in America was the slightest bit interested in the Iraqi people. That is, until America invaded Iraq, and then we on the Left dove in to a wild orgy of phony concern for the Iraqi people. And at the moment America left Iraq we went right back to not caring at all about the Iraqi people. That is, we never cared about them in the first place.
GAZA: This historical pattern is now repeating itself in the Middle East. So few of us on the Left had any interest at all in the citizens in Gaza so long as they were being ruled by Hamas psychopaths. But then, at the very moment Israel invades Gaza, suddenly we care about the people of Gaza OH SO VERY MUCH!!! And just like in Iraq, once the current war is truly over, we'll go right back to not caring about the Gazans at all.
The point here is this:
Such longstanding phony baloney concern posturing undermines the credibility of the Democratic Party.
"It didn’t have to be this way. If only Biden had understood what Trump seems to have grasped intuitively. To end the war, the key was Bibi all along."
Have to dissent from that conclusion, as Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, they ALL knew the score, but were locked into ,"Israel has the right to defend itself" as corollary to "But Hamas!". Too much groupthink and conventional "Blob" mindset from old-school hands who forever viewed Israel from a "Holocaust" perspective, and as the "West's" man in the ME.
So, no, don't try to sell the "They didn't get Bibi" line...of course they got it, but tried - you know - "reason" with the filthy criminal, and he REPEATEDLY AND WITH GREAT VIGOR told the Yanks to shove it...essentially the Biden team simply lacked the courage to do what was right, and with an eye on the "Jewish vote" in the oncoming election, just ignobly folded.
Netanyahu successfully undermines Iran and it's puppets in a serious way making the Middle East safer for everyone, and you decline to applaud Netanyahu.
Before even taking office Trump solves a problem the Democratic Party could not solve for over a year, and you decline to applaud Trump.
You write as if the war in Gaza was a complete waste of time war crime, when in fact Netanyahu was DOING HIS JOB, by attempting to eradicate the psychopaths who invaded Israel and killed 1200 Israelis. It's not his fault that Hamas hides in hospitals and deliberately engineered this war from the very beginning to create a big Palestinian death toll.
Netanyahu may be an asshole, but he won this war on scale beyond what any of us imagined possible. Netanyahu did what a leader of any country is expected to do, he made his citizens safer by crushing their enemies, in direct response to an unprovoked attack.
Too much tribal chanting Joe. Not in the interest of the Democratic Party.
But he didn’t crush the enemy. He empowered them. He ruined an entire civilization of people. All those innocent people that just wanted to live their lives. Shame on you. 70,000 people are dead. Most of them not Hamas fighters. Most of them average regular people. There’s a reason why 70% of Israelis despise Netanyahu.
Ask Hezbollah if they feel empowered.
The following is not directed at you personally, but at a culture of phony concern.
400,000 Americans are killed EVERY YEAR by the tobacco industry. For decades. Many more around the world.
And nobody gives a shit.
Here's why. Tobacco is not the currently fashionable trendy virtue signaling fad. So nobody cares.
Smoking tobacco is a choice.
Please explain how the poor choice made by smokers should IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER limit our outrage at the rich tobacco company executives who very deliberately engineer and sell a highly addictive product that they know for sure in advance will kill 400,000 of their customers each and every year.
Why are we so determined to give these rich people a free pass for the large scale damage that they do, so that they can get even richer?
Here's why...
What we choose to be outraged about has little to do with logic.
Ha’aretz is a well respected newspaper noted for a clear perspective on global issues; however, in this particular article, its conclusion is not predicated on evidential proof but on a theory based merely on a loose connection of dots supposedly linking circumstantial facets of Middle Eastern politics.
Even accepting that Witkoff’s involvement catalyzed the ceasefire, where is the evidence that Netanyahu caved because Trump wanted it? Throughout the article there is not one hard fact or definitive reason to justify the claim.
Turning to your other arguments, Phil, Israel’s Zionist faction has consistently exacerbated Iran’s ideological conflict with the West, leading it to closer ties with rival nuclear powers the likes of Putin’s Russia. How is the Middle East safer for that?
“You write as if the war in Gaza” started on 7 October 2023 - it started in the mid 1900s with the Zionist’s’ occupation of Palestinian territory and has continued largely unchecked ever since through the apartheid subjugation of one Semitic people by another.
Hamas is neither the instigator or perpetuator of the war; it’s a resistance movement that, far from being eradicated by Netanyahu “doing his job”, grows with each atrocity against its peers and their property.
Hamas did not “engineer” a war “to create a big Palestinian death toll” - why would it, knowing that Israel is never punished for its actions by the international community and has long been encouraged by the Anglo-American West to keep stealing Palestinian land and leave Palestinians in worse than refugee status?
That IS the fault of Netanyahu and his fellow Zionist predecessors.
If the Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election because of the Biden administration’s attitude to the Gaza situation, they can blame only themselves.
If Trump won the election for that reason, the American people must prepare to blame only themselves if - or when - his interference in matters Middle Eastern makes the situation far more dangerous yet.
Thanks for your engagement Ian, you make some good points.
It might help somewhat for me to explain that I believe, and have written many times on Substack, that Jews looking for peace and security in the Middle East was a major tactical error, an act of madness almost, that may prove fatal in the end.
But, they are there now, and they didn't start this war. From the beginning Hamas had the option to focus it's energy on serving the many needs of Gazans, instead it chose to focus on stockpiling weapons and planning for the eradication of all Israelis. Their plan in this war was to provoke Israel in to killing lots of civilians in Gaza, with the hope that this would turn the world against Israel, a plan which has worked to a degree.
"Hamas is neither the instigator or perpetuator of the war"
Sorry, this complete nonsense, so preserve my decorum I'm tuning out here.
Thanks, Phil. Your first observation is much appreciated.
Perhaps I did not pay enough attention to your earlier comments that are the subject of your defense in points 2 and 3. I tend to agree that there is some selfish partisan bluster in the to and fro of vehement political discourse surrounding affairs of conflict around the world.
A false belief that all Jewish people unflinchingly support Israel’s stance on Palestine has led to a wholly ignoble fight between America’s major parties to secure “the Jewish vote” and that, in turn, has given rise to scraps, including protests, that can be at least as much as and sometimes more than expressions purely of contempt for a rival internecine ideology than they are of real concern for the people directly affected by the situation on the ground.
Regrettably, many of the arguments are expressed in terms that indicate either lack of study of the full facts behind the conflict over Palestine or prejudice with which one cannot reason.
One such falsehood, again pandering to “the Jewish vote”, is that it’s antisemitic to critics Israel. It’s not.
The Palestinians are semites too and their mistreatment should ever be a reminder that we have a moral duty to end the tooth-for-a-tooth policies that have for far too long defined Middle Eastern issues.
Ian writes, "One such falsehood, again pandering to “the Jewish vote”, is that it’s antisemitic to critics Israel. It’s not."
Well, that depends upon the speaker's particular situation. Some are Jew haters, many are not.
My take is that it at least looks anti-Jew when the protestors are OUTRAGED! when Jews oppress Arabs, but SILENT when Arabs oppress Arabs. The easiest example of this is right next door in Syria. According to ChatGPT....
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The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and concluded with the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in December 2024, resulted in significant loss of life. Estimates of the total number of deaths vary, with figures ranging from approximately 580,000 to over 617,000 individuals. The United Nations reported that, as of 2022, at least 306,887 civilians had been killed in the conflict. Additionally, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented that, by mid-March 2022, 25,857 children and 15,761 women had lost their lives. These figures underscore the profound human cost of the war on the Syrian population.
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And, as I indicated above, right here in America there are psychopaths who have racked up a bigger death toll than anybody in the Middle East, the American tobacco industry. Near total silence is our response.
Anyway, outrage tends not to follow any rules of reason, and I'm not following them either by expecting that to be the case.
Again, Phil, thanks for continuing to engage with me.
I must agree that the rules of reason are, indeed, absent from the minds of a great plurality of people when professing their outrage at any individual atrocity or another.
Indeed, such is the propensity of the deliberately under-educated and the callow student to conflate prejudice with principle that, all too often, their simplistic outrage exacerbates rather than alleviates a complex problem.
The “speaker’s particular situation” IS important and, sadly, I am confident that a great many critics of Israel are thus only because, for some irrational reason, they hate Jewish people.
Is that why their collective majority has failed to opine with indignation on the civil war in Syria or other conflicts in the region, including those in Lebanon and Kurdistan, for example?
Perhaps but are we granting any such peculiar perspective undeserved credit when we attempt to lead its protagonists to a holistic approach in the consideration of the world’s ills?
As that, in itself, is to ignore the rules of reason, my preference is to face down prejudice one principle at a time, but I am ever cognizant that, for every atrocity in Earthly history, there’s another of equal inhumanity not far away.
It’s a pragmatic approach that risks compromising the purity of my principles but I believe it offers me better odds of convincing at least one doubter than beating him about the head with the proverbial kitchen sink.
You ask, "Is that why their collective majority has failed to opine with indignation on the civil war in Syria or other conflicts in the region, including those in Lebanon and Kurdistan, for example?"
I don't think anti-Jewish sentiment is really the main driver of the failure to care about Arabs other than the Palestinians. It's more the chronic logic failures of we leftists going back to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. We typically get outraged about the wrong people.
But, the failure to care about Arabs other than Palestinians certainly can LOOK like Jew hatred.
There's a larger topic here that interests me as a wannabe writer on Substack. Our outrage focus on Gaza, while largely ignoring the horrors in Syria, demonstrates how wrong the group consensus can sometimes be. Imho, it's the job of writers to see such contradictions in the group consensus, and try to shed some inconvenient light on them.
Thankyou for responding, Phil. It seems we might be forced to agree to disagree.
Israel’s statehood began in war, after a campaign of Zionist terrorism in the post-WWII 1940s that led to the abandonment of Palestine by the British with the acquiescence of USA.
Despite subsequent declarations of criminality by United Nations, the Israelis continued to evict Palestinians from their homes to found “Jewish settlements” in the West Bank and were never held to account for those crimes.
Just as resistance movements always arise when their country is occupied - think, for example, of the French in WWII and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, even the Patriots in 18th-century North America - the Palestinians were bound, sooner or later, to spawn organizations dedicated to the overthrow of their oppressors.
And, just as always occurs, those resistance movements were quickly condemned as “evil terrorists” by the very state that was conducting its own terrorism against them.
Even in the 1980s, when my parents visited “The Holy Land”, there were walls separating Palestinians from Jewish-occupied areas, roads that Palestinians could not use and checkpoints to ensure they remained in their designated enclaves.
Hamas is one of several organizations formed to resist that abomination and it is therefore not nonsense to assert that it is neither the instigator nor the perpetuator of the war.
Your decorum would be much better preserved - and served - by tuning IN to that circumstance and admonishing rather then lauding the Israeli state for its apartheid regime, which causes more problems for good Jewish people around the world than they deserve.
Hi again Ian, disagreement is acceptable here, I'm ok with that, no problem. I would summarize my view this way.
1) There is some truth in your points, agreed. It's a complicated situation for sure. There are no angels in the Middle East. But...
2) There is no evidence that the moralizing finger pointing BY BOTH SIDES that's been going on since before I was born will ever bring peace and security to anybody in the Middle East. I shouldn't have become involved in it either, it's all a total waste of time.
3) Generally speaking, I see stated concerns for the Palestinian people to be mostly phony baloney BS.
As example, if Hamas were to achieve all it's goals and impose yet another Arab psychopathic despotic regime upon the Palestinian people, none of today's protestors would keep protesting. They wouldn't give a shit, just as they don't really care about the millions of other Arabs currently trapped in such regimes.
As example, where were the outraged protest demonstrations when Assad was destroying Syria in the most brutal fashion imaginable, or when the Iranian regime shoots it's own people down in the streets, or the Saudis chop up the bodies of critics in their embassy etc etc etc?
Sorry, just too much phony baloney concern for me...
What did Trump have to concede to get Bibi to relent. Neither of these men do something for nothing or for the good of their people unless there's something in it for them personally.
One man’s opinion
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Did Netanyahu really believe that Israel completely destroying Hamas was a realistic goal? Didn't Israel's successes in killing many Hamas members and leaders, substantially degrading Hezbollah's capabilities and will to fight, successes against Iran, and the overthrow of Assad in Syria lead to conditions that now enable Netanyahu to be more amenable to a ceasefire? You also mention recent changes to Netanyahu's cabinet that tend to dilute the power of the more extreme cabinet members. Might that not have also created conditions enabling Netanyahu to be more amenable to a deal? Even assuming Trump had some role in getting the deal done, might not the many important circumstances I mention have also greatly helped, as well as Biden's design for the deal?
Perhaps my little parable puts (some) things in perspective.
Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Once upon a time there were three villages. In the middle of the villages was a well the villagers shared. Each village coveted their precious allotment. Constant squabbles erupted over access and rights. Sometimes outright violence resulted through selfish actions and deceit. One day the well ran dry, threatening the villagers’ livelihoods. They decided to cooperate in finding a solution. They poured their collective resources into digging an irrigation trench from a nearby lake. They dowsed for water and dug another well. They celebrated their good fortune and new water sources. Soon, though, they were back to their old ways.