When Hamas attacked civilians in southern Israel on October 7, the world was aghast, and sympathies were with Israel, the victims, and their families. And it was clear that something would have to be done about Hamas. But thanks to the actions of the Netanyahu regime, Hamas has achieved more than anyone might have imagined, and Israel has lost far more. Yet Israel remains on the same course, oblivious to its cost. What has been accomplished?
First, who’s Hamas? The “Islamic Resistance Movement” is an extremist group that favors a strict Muslim theocracy “from the river to the sea”, getting rid of the entire State of Israel in the process. And their support does not primarily come from the Arab world, but from Iran and its religiously-extremist regime. Iran is the non-Arab rival of the Arab world and supports violent, destabilizing forces in Arab countries, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Assad regime in Syria. Hamas does not represent most Palestinians. They “won” an election in Gaza with a small plurality at a time when the rival PLO faction was weakened by scandal, and they were quietly kept in power there by Israel itself, by Netanyahu, because it kept the two regions of Palestine under separate management and because Hamas would obviously not be a good partner to a two-state peace process. Which Netanyahu of course opposes. Hamas doesn’t have a serious modern military, but has thousands of lightly armed supporters and its homemade rockets land rather randomly across Israel.
Second, who runs Israel? The Likud-led alliance of far-right parties is an extremist group that largely favors a strict Jewish theocracy “from the river to the sea” (they may call it “the Biblical Land of Israel”), getting rid of the Palestinians in the process. So like Hamas, they do not believe in a two-state solution. They only differ on which population gets to keep the entire land while expelling (or worse) the rest. And deep down they probably both know that their goal is unattainable, while permanent conflict is, so that is really their aim.
So in a direct military confrontation between the two, it’s no contest, but this isn’t really a battlefield situation. Instead, it appears that Hamas strategically lit the fuse on October 7 and let Israel blow itself up. Israel showed off the true colors of its leadership, desiring to take back Gaza without its population or anything else intact, and, per the Revisionist Zionist ideology of Jabotinsky, giving zero value to Arab lives. This doesn’t go over nearly as well nowadays as it did a century ago.
Look at what Hamas has accomplished:
- Israel is now a pariah state, with few friends. Its standing in the world is roughly similar to Russia’s. Who would have expected that on October 8?
- American support for Israel has plummeted. While the far-right evangelicals are rooting for more war, as they see war in Israel as a necessary stage for “Armageddon” and the Second Coming, many others see it as a neighborhood bully committing war crimes against the innocent population of Gaza. Contrast with 1967 when almost everyone supported Israel against invasion. Future American military aid to Israel will be harder to pass.
- The Jewish community in diaspora is divided — its long-time instinctive support for Zionism in general, dating back to Labor Zionist (Ben-Gurion, Meir, Peres) days is unacceptable to many, especially younger and more liberal Jews, whose Jewish values of justice and peace are very different from Israel’s values of conquest and war.
- Israel’s detente with the monarchies of the Arab world, as expressed in the Abraham Accords, is on ice. The Saudis had been close to recognizing Israel; now the price they want for it is unlikely to be met. The “Arab Street” is unlikely to tolerate more such deals for the foreseeable future, and even monarchs know how hard to push against that. Those monarchs who did sign up with Israel may be weakened by eroding popular support.
- Israeli used to be the “startup nation”, where tech-oriented businesses formed rapidly and sometimes led in world markets. Now Israelis who start companies are incorporating elsewhere. It’s not even a decent business address any more. As an example, one Israel company that I’ve worked with now lists its headquarters in England and its web site has no Israeli addresses.
- American universities are in turmoil. This again makes support for Israel in America harder, but also disrupts secular education, which Hamas, as a fundamentalist movement, does not support. And it weakens demand from foreign students for a US higher education.
- Egypt’s relationship with Israel is strained. It looks like Israel’s plan is to liquidate Gaza by killing enough civilians until Egypt opens the gates and lets the survivors in. Egypt doesn’t want Hamas and it doesn’t want the Gazans. They did not want the Gaza Strip back when they got Sinai back, and don’t want the Palestinians, who are mostly descendants of those displaced in 1948 by the Nakba. The Palestinians don’t want to be Egyptian either and the plurality who supported Hamas in the first place would support the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to the regime’s detriment.
- Israel’s integration into its neighborhood, via improved relationships with its neighbors one by one, has been set back, and Israel’s own political will to make peace has been set back. The divide is thus widened for generations to come. Israel is also thus less likely to be integrated into an expanding European economic zone.
- The Democratic Party in the US is weakened and divided, this war being a bit like Vietnam, where old and young see things very differently. The Democratic Party is the one more in favor of a two-state solution.
- No doubt more, which others may think of.
Hamas didn’t do this on their own. They just got Bibi to do it for them, for Israel to self-immolate in the blood of Gazans. Hamas does not care about Palestinian civilian lives any more than Israel does. They are, after all, religious fanatics who believe in martyrdom and its rewards, and whose main support comes from Persian religious fanatics. Palestinians are their pawns. And war tends to bring out the extremism in populations. It can be self-perpetuating. Again, that favors Hamas vs. the PLO factions among Palestinians in general, just as it favors Likud over the smaller pro-peace factions in Israel, who would threaten Hamas’ relevance.
But don’t think Bibi did this all by mistake. He benefits too. While his own personal standing is down because of the “failure” of Israeli intelligence on October 7 (which is suspicious, given what we already know), he is unlikely to be forced out of office so long as the war continues. So his interest is in staying at war as long as he can, so he can take advantage of his immunity from criminal charges. (Perhaps this should be a message to us too, that presidential immunity can encourage warmongering too.) And the division among Democrats strengthens Bibi’s ally, and fellow Steve Bannon client, Trump.
Israel needs to be saved from itself. Supporting its war effort is like giving crack to an addict. Hamas has already won a huge victory and Israel’s supporters are foolishly and self-destructively making it bigger.