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| Netanyahu and Biden -- Avi Ohayon, Israeli Government, via Associated Press |
Hamas is one of three terrorist entities supported financially and ideologically by Iran, one of three permanent enemies of the United States. The other two are Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China.
Not only is Hamas a terrorist fox in the bosom of Israel, it
is the once and once-only elected government
of Gaza-Palestine, supposedly one of the “two states” often mentioned by
American politicians when they begin prating about a “two state solution” to problems
in the Middle East.
It has become clear in recent days that the Biden
administration favors the much sought after, politically mystical “two state
solution.” That is, the Biden administration looks kindly on the treacherous
fox in the bosom of Israel that threatens to destroy it and had on October 7,
2023, through its aggressive military actions, very publically declared open
war on Israel.
Following the brutal surprise attack on Israel by Hamas, Prime
Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu -- loathed by both the Biden
administration and that of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama -- --
rightly declared war on Hamas, vowing to destroy it root and branch.
There has been evolution in the Biden administration’s solid
support of Israel.
Biden early announced his support of Israel but lately has
hedged his bets by also supporting a pause in the war or a temporary cessation
of hostilities. Strategists who know something about war have denounced them both
as strategic measures that will allow the enemies of Israel – Iran, Hamas,
Hezbollah and the Houthis, an Islamist political and military organization that
emerged from Yemen in the 1990s -- to regroup in order to continue their
unremitting destruction of the Israeli state.
Try to imagine what then General Dwight Eisenhower’s response
might have been had then President Franklin Roosevelt decided, prior to the
landing at Normandy, that he would yield to political opponents who were
encouraging him to make “negotiation not war” with a German Chancellor on the
run.
Those who fear the widening of the war have managed agilely
to leap over the whole history of Iranian supported aggression. The war already
had been widened by Iran ever since Israel withdrew troops and Israelis from
Gaza way back in 2005, when Hamas replaced The Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO or Fatah) as Gaza’s governing institution. Israel’s current
response to Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthi aggression is an honest and
forthright answer to a widened war.
Hamas, an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood movement,
established itself in 1987, but it had been active in the Gaza strip as early
as the 1950s. Following the defeat of Fatah in a series of violent clashes in
June 2007, Hamas has governed the Gaza portion of the Palestinian territories.
Its first attack against Israel, the abduction and killing of two Israeli
soldiers, occurred in 1989.
Of Iran's 89 million inhabitants, 99 percent are Muslim,
according to a 2023 census. A sizable majority, 88 percent, embrace Shia Islam,
and 12 percent are Sunni, according to a 2016 census.
Biden is waging a reelection campaign; Netanyahu is waging a
war against the real, persistent and ideologically committed enemies of Israel,
many of them trained and armed by Shia Iran. The two ambitions clash at
important points.
Wars are either won or lost. Campaigns are either won or
lost. And the loss of a war or political
campaign removes the loser from making important decisions that undoubtedly
affect the fate of nations. Peace negotiations are either successful or unsuccessful.
And the most successful peace negotiations are undertaken by those who have
successfully won wars.
The map of Europe, the peace of Europe, following World War
II, was decided by those who won the war. The unity of the United States was
decided by Abraham Lincoln, who successfully
prosecuted a bloody insurrection by slave holding states. The peace that
followed was decided at Antietam and Gettysburg, two of the bloodiest battles
of the Civil War.
Wars and the victors of wars matter. Successful negotiations
– more properly, the choices of those who will shape the peace – are, more
often than not, decided on battlefields. All history cries out to us -- to lose
the war is to lose the peace that follows war.
Successful foreign policies are shaped by politicians who
are wise enough to discern enemies from friends. American voters in November
2024 will have an opportunity to decide who will shape the peace in the Middle
East -- the friends or enemies of Israel. And the same calculus applies to
Eastern Europe, now holding its own in a defensive war with Vladimir Putin’s
Russia. Who wins the war wins the peace. We can only hope they will choose
wisely.
Victor Davis Hanson’s written
commentary is widely available through distribution agencies, but he cannot be
found in most Connecticut newspapers. The author of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the
Peloponnesian War and The Second
World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won is
particularly luminous on the matter of war and its consequences.
Hanson is not certain the American Republic will survive
recent assaults upon it by neo-Marxist pedagogues or, for that matter, the
a-historical architects of American foreign policy. And patriots who have
survived Ivy League universities in recent days tend to agree with him. Yet the
man makes too much sense to be included among the commentariat in our state’s
newspapers.
Go figure.
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