Teaching Thomas

In “Israel’s goals in Gaza,” Thomas Friedman sees Israel’s war against Hamas as a teaching action. No, really.

I have only one question about Israel’s military operation in Gaza: What is the goal? Is it the education of Hamas or the eradication of Hamas? I hope that it’s the education of Hamas. Let me explain why.

Friedman educates us:

There have always been two camps in Israel when it comes to the logic of peace, notes Gidi Grinstein, president of the Israeli think tank, the Reut Institute: One camp says that all the problems Israel faces from the Palestinians or Lebanese emanate from occupying their territories. “Therefore, the fundamental problem is staying — and the fundamental remedy is leaving,” says Grinstein.

The other camp argues that Israel’s Arab foes are implacably hostile and leaving would only invite more hostility. Therefore, at least when it comes to the Palestinians, Israel needs to control their territories indefinitely. Since the mid-1990s, the first camp has dominated Israeli thinking. This led to the negotiated and unilateral withdrawals from the West Bank, Lebanon and Gaza.

So the answer is “leave.” Israel withdrew from Jericho, Jenin, Tulkarm, Bethlehem, Kalkilye, Nablus, Jericho, and Ramallah in late 1995, only to watch Arafat allow various terrorist organizations to thrive. It took operation Defensive Shield to fight and rollback the terror capabilities that were built in its absence.

Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 allowing Hezbollah to build up its forces and threaten northern Israel. Then it launched a war in 2006 that forced Israel to respond.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas used the opportunity to build up its threat against Israel, until Israel finally responded three weeks ago.

It would seem the result of Israel’s “fundamental remedy of leaving” has served to enable its “implacably hostile” enemies to build their abilities to strike at Israel. I’d hardly consider this a proof that the “remedy of leaving” solution works.

Friedman continues:

Israel’s military was not focused on the morning after the war in Lebanon — when Hezbollah declared victory and the Israeli press declared defeat. It was focused on the morning after the morning after, when all the real business happens in the Middle East. That’s when Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: “What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?”

Here’s what Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, said the morning after the morning after about his decision to start that war by abducting two Israeli soldiers on July 12, 2006: “We did not think, even 1 percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not.”

Yes Friedman wrote his oh-so-clever “morning after the morning after” column shortly after the war. And yet Hezbollah has spent the time since the war re-arming and forcing itself into the Lebanese government. It might be that the Hezbollah values its political power and is unwilling to jeopardize it by attacking Israel. However overnight thee Katyushas were fired near Kiryat Shmona last night. Remember also that like Hamas, Hezbollah is a client of Iran, and may be looking to draw Israel away from destroying its fellow client. So it’s far too early to conclude that Israel’s northern border is now secured. It’s an “implacable hatred” thing and Friedman wouldn’t understand.

In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims. Now its focus, and the Obama team’s focus, should be on creating a clear choice for Hamas for the world to see: Are you about destroying Israel or building Gaza?

I’m sorry but I missed something. What is it about the Hamas charter that Friedman doesn’t understand? Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas has built up its offensive abilities to strike at Israel. Taken together with the commitment to destroy Israel written into its charter, I think that the answer to that last question is rather obvious. Hamas is about destroying Israel. It had its opportunity to build Gaza and didn’t.

But that requires diplomacy. Israel de facto recognizes Hamas’s right to rule Gaza and to provide for the well-being and security of the people of Gaza — which was actually Hamas’s original campaign message, not rocketing Israel. And, in return, Hamas has to signal a willingness to assume responsibility for a lasting cease-fire and to abandon efforts to change the strategic equation with Israel by deploying longer and longer range rockets. That’s the only deal. Let’s give it a try.

Hamas was sending a message? That’s ludicrous. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas had every opportunity to build a civil society to leave in peace with Israel. It built smuggling tunnels to bring in materiel for attacking Israel. Or to put it another way it chose Katyushas over butter. It demonstrated its neglect of the well being of the people of Gaza. There’s nothing ambiguous for Friedman to misconstrue.

As I’ve pointed out above, Israel has given terrorists three opportunities to build up their forces against Israel and three times the terrorists have taken those opportunities to build up their capabilities to attack Israel. So the idea of trusting Hamas has been given a try. It failed. Miserably.

Barry Rubin wrote:

If Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, progress toward peace is impossible. No peace, no dismantling of settlements (on the West Bank, they’ve already been dismantled in the Gaza Strip. Remember? When Israel withdrew completely and turned the Gaza-Egypt border over to the Palestinians?]. No peace, no Palestinian state. No peace, no serious economic construction and stability. No peace, no resettling of Palestinian refugees in a country of their own.

Second, Hamas is a disaster for Palestinians as a ruler. It is creating a repressive Islamist state where freedom will be extinguished, women treated as third-class citizens, and children will be brought up to be suicide bombers. While Hamas has had social welfare programs to recruit supporters and support the families of those it has ensured would be martyrs, it has no interest in educational, health, infrastructure, and job creation or anything but waging war.

Friedman’s doesn’t just wear rose colored glasses, he’s wearing blinders. He is so beholden to the idea of negotiated settlements that he can’t see that with some enemies they don’t work. At this time, the Arab world does not accept Israel’s right to exist. The Palestinians certainly don’t. For him to expect Israel to “teach” Hamas a lesson and leave it at that is ludicrous.

And it’s not just that Friedman is oblivious to the behavior of terrorist groups, it’s that he hasn’t learned from his own mistakes. In 2004 Friedman wrote:

With that U.N.-approved pullout, Israel completely reversed its situation: It went from holding the strategic and moral low ground, to holding the strategic and moral high ground. When Israel was occupying south Lebanon it was embroiled in a guerrilla war in which it could never use its vast military superiority. It was going mano a mano with Hezbollah. Worse, any Hezbollah attack on Israel was seen by the world as legitimate resistance. Once Israel was out, it could use its superior air power to retaliate for Hezbollah attacks — and the world didn’t care.

”Sure,” say the critics, ”But the Palestinians saw the Israeli withdrawal as a sign of weakness and it triggered their Intifada II.” Well, maybe the Palestinians did watch too much Hezbollah TV. Their mistake. But I’ll tell you who didn’t misread Israel’s withdrawal: the people it was directed at — Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria.

Hezbollah knows it can’t launch any serious attack on Israel from Lebanon now without triggering a massive retaliation in which Israel’s air force would destroy all the power plants of Beirut. This would bring down the wrath of all of Lebanon on Hezbollah — because the Lebanese public would not consider an unprovoked Hezbollah attack on Israel as legitimate, or worth sacrificing for, now that Israel is out of Lebanon and Lebanon’s sovereignty is restored.

And two years later Hezbollah ignored the problem of launching an “illegitimate” war against Israel and did just that.

Thomas Friedman: the columnist who keeps on fooling himself.

UPDATE: (via memeorandum) In a perfect example of a blind idealist leading a blind terror apologist, Glenn Greenwald seizes upon Friedman’s silly description of Israel’s war aims to conclude that Israel – not Hamas or Hezbollah – is guilty of terrorism. Clearly Greenwald’s hatred of Israel is matched only by his ignorance of international law. Israel is doing all it can to minimize civilian casualties while Hamas is operating from civilian areas, making it culpable for the collateral damage. Israel, of course, is targeting terrorist targets attempting to degrade the threat that Hamas posed. Trusting Friedman to interpret Israeli actions was foolish for Greenwald, though it served his immoral purposes to attack Israel’s actions.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.