 |
Netanyahu, Biden |
According to an Associated Press report printed in the
Hartford Courant on 7/25/2024 under the title “Netanyahu defends push for ‘vIctory’”,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “defended Israel’s war in Gaza and
condemned American protesters in a scathing speech to Congress Wednesday that
triggered boycotts by many top Democratic lawmakers and drew thousands to the
Capitol to condemn the war and the humanitarian crisis it has created.”
The above lede to the story contains a logical
impossibility.
Netanyahu’s “scathing speech” could not have “triggered the
boycotts” because the boycotts preceded the speech. We say A caused B only when
A precedes B. The boycotts, it is apparent, were intended to deflate points
made in the speech by Netanyahu, principal among them that peace can only
follow the extirpation of Hamas in Gaza.
Democrats protesting the speech by their absence feel that a
negotiated peace between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis in
Yemen, all client terrorist organizations supported by Iran pledged to destroy
the state of Israel, is possible in the middle of a war in which Israel, in the
person of its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to militarily
destroy Hamas.
That proposition falls on very stony ground for any number
of reasons. The so-called “two state solution” ushering an Eden-like era of
peace in the Middle East, hotly promoted by the boycotters, is a project that
has been tried and failed numerous times.
The center piece of Netanyahu’s address before the U.S.
Congress is that the peace longed for by the congresspersons who boycotted his
speech is possible only after Hamas has been utterly extirpated.
That is a proposition that cannot be removed from Israel’s table. And when
Israel first declared war against Hamas, many of the present boycotters approvingly
seconded the proposition. A majority of them still regard the destruction of
Hamas as a precondition of peace in the Middle East.
A brief review of the history of the Middle East and a glance
at a map by those boycotting Netanyahu’s address before a “split U.S. Congress”
should convince the boycotters that Israel is surrounded by enemies pledged to
destroy the state of Israel. In recent days, Gaza has become a launching pad of
destruction for the above named terrorist groups, all of them supported by Iran,
a Shia-Persian state that has since the Iranian Revolution numerous times
pledged to destroy both Israel and the United States.
The word “existential” has often been misused by polemicists
– as in former President Donald “Trump represents an existential threat to
democracy,” but it applies perfectly to Israel and its embittered enemies.
U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, we are told, “avoided the
address,” as did Democrat Vice President and president-in-waiting Kamala
Harris. DeLauro’s objection to Netanyahu’s address is preceded by a rambling
attestation of loyalty to the state of Israel.
“My record shows,” DeLauro proclaimed, “that I am a strong
supporter of Israel and understand its unique security needs… I believe that
October 7th was the worst attack on the Jewish people since the
Holocaust. Hamas cannot be allowed to govern Gaza, and the release of hostages
must be a part of any ceasefire.” But does she believe the Israeli government
should be permitted to prosecute the war on Hamas successfully?
“I am shocked,” DeLauro claims, “by the ongoing Israeli
military campaign in the Gaza Strip, spearheaded by Prime Minister Netanyahu
that has been indifferent to the loss of Palestinian lives and settler
violence. For these reasons, I will not attend the joint address.”
Well now, who says A must say B -- except on those occasions
when the shock of reality overcomes rationality.
Netanyahu confronted many of DeLauro’s misgivings in his address to the Congress.
The Israeli military has not been “indifferent” to the loss of civilian
lives. Indeed, it has gone to extraordinary lengths to mitigate the loss of civilian
life in Gaza. There has been no Dresden bombing in Gaza, and many lives have
been lost because Iranian supported terrorists have used Gazans civilians as
human shields.
Netanyahu’s message to the Congress – like Winston
Churchill’s much earlier post-World War II congressional message warning of the
dangers of a post-Hitlerian Stalinist suppression of freedom throughout newly
liberated Eastern Europe – is simple and logical, “We win, they lose.”
Surely the party of democracy and liberty – the party of
Roosevelt and Truman, the first free world leader
of note to recognize the state of Israel 11 minutes after the state’s creation
-- understands that he who wins the war shapes the ensuing peace.
Comments