Diehling with Iran

The Washington Post has dueling op-eds about Israel’s war against Hamas. Jackson Diehl predictably tells Israel that it’s on the wrong path in Hard Lesson for Israel. Charles Krauthammer disagrees.

Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip is failing, but there may be a silver lining. The war against Hamas is proving — once again — that the Middle East’s extremist movements cannot be eliminated by military means. If the incoming Obama administration absorbs that lesson, it will have a better chance of neutralizing Iranian-backed groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and of eventually brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.

This opening paragraph is rubbish. For example here’s Hanan Greenberg from Yedioth Ahronot:

According to figures collected thus far by Israel’s defense establishment, Hamas’ military infrastructure has sustained a serious hit, but their rocket capabilities still exist. A number of Hamas commanders have been killed or wounded during fighting, making it increasing difficult for their military wing to function properly.

The defense establishment has also noted that Hamas has been exercising caution in clashes with IDF soldiers. Hamas is tending not to put their forces at risk in areas in which they may fail. The IDF hit some of Hamas’ senior commanders, while those who have survived have gone underground. In many instances, the IDF has taken precaution not to target some of these commanders in their various hiding places, many of which are in heavily populated areas, when there is significant risk that innocent civilians could be hurt.

And I believe that Noah Pollak’s assessment that the rockets from Lebanon are a sign that Tehran is scared that its client is losing is correct.

After Israel killed Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantisi, Jonathan Schanzer wrote:

The March 22 targeted assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was designed by the Israelis to strike a major blow to Hamas. Many nations condemned the attack, however, and critics further claimed that the missile strike against Hamas’ paraplegic spiritual leader only strengthened the hand of Hamas.

A few weeks later, despite an outpouring of support from around the Arab world, Hamas does not appear any stronger. In fact, after the subsequent assassination on April 17 of Yassin’s successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Hamas appears even more off balance.

This is something Schanzer expanded on recently:

Take, for example, Israel’s targeted assassination of Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, and Ismail Abu Shanab in 2004. With its top leadership eliminated in a span of only a few months, Hamas was in utter disarray. Specifically, after Yassin’s death, Hamas never found a religious leader to fill the void. His death made Hamas increasingly vulnerable to the widely held perception that it was simply a group of violent terrorists with no religious mandate.

The assassinations of Hamas’ top leaders also sparked what might be called a locality crisis. After the deaths of Rantisi and Abu Shanab, Hamas appointed its new leader in secret so that Israel would not be able to assassinate him easily. Meanwhile, the new public face of Hamas became Syria-based Khaled Meshal, who quickly became a liability. The longer the most recognizable Hamas leader was based in Syria, the more potential there was for Hamas to experience friction and fragmentation between local Gaza fighters and the decision makers abroad. This also gave Hamas the unmistakable appearance of being an international terrorist organization rather than a local and organic “resistance” group, as it always purported to be.

And, of course, there was Operation Defensive Shield, which destroyed most of the terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria. But analysts like Diehl won’t discuss such successes because it would explode their carefully constructed narrative.

Diehl continues.

Israel’s bet was that it could substantially reduce Hamas’s military capacity and then force it to accept a cease-fire with improved terms for Israel. Hamas, predictably, has refused to play by those rules. It has defined victory as its own survival; by that standard, it has no incentive to agree to a new truce unless it receives major benefits in return, such as an end to Israel’s economic blockade.

First of all this ignores a very important detail. Israel’s leaders didn’t get up one morning and decide to rid Gaza of Hamas. Israel belatedly responded to an increasing threat – that’s threat not “provocation” – from Hamas. Allowing Hamas to continue building its arsenal and fortifications was intolerable. (And Israel would still have agreed to an extended ceasefire, if Hamas hadn’t rejected the idea.)

Maybe Hamas has defined victory as survival, but has anyone else? Why should Hamas’s definition of victory be valid? Is Diehl using his op-ed space to boost Hamas’s fortunes? (Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that Diehl considers to be non-violent and reform minded.)

Later Diehl writes:

The trap that Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have created for themselves lies not just in Hamas’s ability to withdraw its fighters and rockets into mosques, schools and densely populated neighborhoods, where they could probably survive weeks of bloody fighting or go underground. The larger fallacy is the persistent conceit among Israeli leaders that Hamas can somehow be wiped out by economic strangulation or force of arms.

So Diehl presents Israel with an unpalatable choice. But wait. He writes that Hamas can withdraw into mosques. Consider what Elder of Ziyon observed:

In other words, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have made an official tactic out of using civilians as human shields and out of shooting at Israel as civilians. They are proud that the number of apparent (and real) civilian casualties has increased in recent days.

Their war policy is to violate the Geneva Conventions brazenly and officially. Their aim is to maximize the number of civilians killed in Gaza.

First Diehl acknowledges matter-of-factly that Hamas will violate war crimes and then he lectures Israel that Israel cannot defeat Hamas. But there’s something about the juxtaposition of the two ideas that’s troubling. Diehl takes it for granted that Hamas will violate international law and yet he declares it invincible. And why?

Unlike al-Qaeda, Hamas is not merely a terrorist organization but a social and political movement with considerable support. Its ideology, however repugnant to Israel and the West, is shared by a considerable slice of the population in every Arab country from Morocco to Iraq. Because it is extremist, it thrives on war, the suffering it inflicts on Palestinians, and the anger generated by the endless, graphic and one-sided coverage of the Middle East’s satellite television channels. Every day this war continues, Hamas grows politically stronger, as do its allies in other countries and its sponsor, Iran.

Yes, but if the past three years are any indication the social services are a distant second to the terrorism. As Diehl acknowledges later, Hamas was losing popularity before the war started because if failed to deliver a better life for those it ruled – blaming Israel only works for so long before you have to deliver – but he assumes that now Hamas is stronger because it’s being attacked.

Here Diehl’s saying that though there may be some people who are offended by Hamas’s ideology, it must be tolerated. Maybe Hamas goes stronger, not because its so popular among its own people, but because naive Westerners tolerate it. That his own implicit support of Hamas might help the terrorists, seems to have escaped him.

I’ve already noted a number cases that suggest otherwise. And the NYT has another case (h/t Elder of Ziyon)

He was told that there were more serious cases than his and that he needed to wait his turn. But he insisted. “We are fighting the Israelis,” he said. “When we fire we run, but they hit back so fast. We run into the houses to get away.” He continued smiling.

“Why are you so happy?” a reporter asked. “Look around you. Don’t you see the misery that you are helping to cause?”

I realize that there aren’t that many reports that the people of Gaza are getting fed up with Hamas, still it’s remarkable that there are any such reports at all. And there seem to be more cases of ordinary people who have lost patience with Hamas, than who are happy with the way their elected government is behaving.

Edward Luttwak offers another possiblity:

The only possible explanation is that people in Gaza have been informing the Israelis exactly where Hamas fighters and leaders are hiding, and where weapons are stored. No doubt some informers are merely corrupt, paid agents earning a living. But others must choose to provide intelligence because they oppose Hamas, whose extremism inflicts poverty, suffering and now death on the civilian population for the sake of launching mostly ineffectual rockets into Israel. Hamas completely disregards the day-to-day welfare of all Gazans in order to pursue its millenarian vision of an Islamic Palestine.

If Diehl has some proof that Hamas is benefiting politically from the war, he doesn’t mention it; he just supposes it.

More from Diehl:

Though Israel must defend its citizens against rockets and suicide bombings, the only means of defeating Hamas are political. Palestinians, who have no history of attraction to religious fundamentalism, have to be persuaded to choose more moderate leaders, such as the secular Fatah. In the meantime, Hamas’s existence must be tolerated, and it should be encouraged to channel its ambitions into politics rather than military activity. That means, yes, elections — like those Hamas won in 2006, when it took control of the Palestinian legislature.

It’s funny that it takes Diehl about 3/4 of his essay to acknowledge that Israel “must defend its citizens” but after spending a significant part of the essay arguing that Israel was wrong to fight, his acknowledgment rings hollow. Still Diehl refuses to condemn Hamas’s violations of international law and the damage it inflicts on its own people. Seemingly he’d continue to tolerate Hamas at the expense of Israel’s population.

Diehl concludes:

Egypt was working on brokering a deal between the two Palestinian parties. A split began to emerge in Hamas between leaders who wanted to make that deal and extend the peace with Israel, and Iranian-backed hard-liners who wanted to draw Israel into a fight. Israel probably could have ensured that the moderates won the argument by offering to lift its economic blockade of Gaza in exchange for a continued cease-fire. It then could have focused on negotiating a two-state settlement with Abbas and on improving life for Palestinians in the West Bank, while Hamas absorbed the blame for the unremediable misery of Gazans.

Instead, Israel took the Iranian bait and chose to fight. Now, bogged down, suffering casualties and inflicting many more, creating terrible pictures for television, it will have to accept an unsatisfying settlement — or prolong its agony indefinitely. It should settle so that the leaders chosen by Israeli voters in an election next month will have the chance to work with a fresh American administration on a smarter and more effective strategy for countering Iran and its clients — one grounded in politics rather than bombs.

Israel took no bait. Israel responded to a threat. An intolerable threat. Again, describing the two week old war as taking “bait” mocks Israel’s right to self-defense. Yes, the pictures on television are terrible, but it is the result of Hamas’s actions. If instead of explaining away Hamas’s depravity, Diehl would condemn it and explain why Israel’s actions are justified, he would be helpful. Instead he is effectively defending Hamas.

And Israel’s strike against Hamas doesn’t strengthen the terrorist organization or its masters in Tehran, it weakens them.

A year and a half ago, Deborah Howell then-ombudsman for the Washington Post defended the papers decision to offer op-ed space to a Hamas spokesman on grounds that it “provoked.” Of course, the Post didn’t really need to go to anything so drastic, when it has a writer on its staff willing to defend Hamas’s outrages against international law, against Israel and against its own people.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.