The Left's Misguided Call for Cease Fire

Jeffrey Goldberg quotes “the superannuated settler fire-breather” Elyakim HaEtzni, a man I’m not familiar with but I trust is every bit the right-wing radical Goldberg claims, on the war in Gaza:

The goal of the war, he writes, is for Israel “to smash Hamas, and to neutralize its motivation to fire rockets at us – but not to liquidate them completely; Hamas should rather remain, together with Fatah, as two Palestinian terrorist gangs that will prevent each other from becoming a state!”

In their rush to condemn any act of violence, the American left seems to have forgotten that this war is being prosecuted by their ideological allies in Israel — that this war is being waged by people as deeply invested in the peace process as they are. As Martin Kramer explained in this piece earlier in the week, Hamas must be removed from power for the peace process to have any real hope of success. Hamas is not only unwilling to engage in serious negotiations with Israel, but it does not speak for all Palestinians, and will not be allowed to do so. Therefore, it cannot be a partner in peace. Not only that, but Hamas militancy has the effect of radicalizing the Israeli electorate, and pushing it into the arms of Netanyahu’s Likud. There is a precedent for this, as Noah Millman explained earlier this week:

This war has reminded others of the 2006 Lebanon War. It reminds me more of Operation Grapes of Wrath, the 1996 Israeli offensive in Lebanon launched by Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Both wars were launched without much consideration for “what happens then” because both were launched for political reasons: in both cases, a left-leaning government felt it would lose all credibility if it did not respond forcefully to provocation. Indeed, in both cases, that left-wing government feared that such a loss of credibility would bring Binyamin Netanyahu to power in the next election and, in both cases, the government won support from across the spectrum in the United States precisely because the leadership of America’s Democratic Party shared those fears, and wished to prevent their becoming a reality. (And that should answer the questions of those who wonder why, if Democratic voters tend to oppose Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, the Democratic leadership has been pretty lock-step in support.)

The Democratic party leadership seems to understand completely the need for the current Israeli government to hold on to power, and the need for Hamas to be severely weakened, if the peace process is to resume. The left, however, is crying for a cease fire, the result of which would almost certainly be the strengthening of Hamas and Likud. In this case, reflexive anti-Israel bias has blinded the left to the fact that their own aspirations for a negotiated settlement hinge on the success of Israel’s operation in Gaza. Leaving Hamas intact, as the settler quoted above points out, will only push a final settlement even further into the distance.

The Left’s Misguided Call for Cease Fire

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