“Israel has a right to defend itself, but …” Supporters of Israel have grown accustomed to hearing some formulation of the preceding sentence whenever Israel takes security actions, with the “but” typically being followed by criticism of Israeli actions that in actuality question its right to self-defense.
When new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, visiting Jordan, was asked if the U.S. viewed Israeli actions in response to violence along its southern border as excessive, his response stood in stark contrast. He simply said: “We do believe Israelis have the right to defend themselves and we’re fully supportive of that.” End of statement. No “buts” about it.
Pompeo was not alone. Officials throughout the Trump administration echoed support for Israel and laid blame on Hamas as the media and the international community rushed to condemn the Jewish state.
“The responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas,” White House deputy press secretary Raj Sjah said. “Hamas is intentionally and cynically provoking this response. And as the secretary of state said, Israel has the right to defend itself.”
In a U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley elaborated on Hamas’s orchestration of the violent border riot, and challenged other countries on their double standard toward Israel.
“No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has,” she argued. “In fact, the records of several countries here today suggest they would be much less restrained.”
The Trump administration’s unequivocal support for Israel, coming as the president followed through on his pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, represented a radical change in policy in the region.
The preceding administration began with former President Barack Obama vowing to create “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel and ended with allowing an anti-Israel resolution to pass through the Security Council and with former Secretary of State John Kerry delivering an 80-minute harangue blaming Israel for the lack of peace in the region. This doesn’t even get into the way that the Obama administration systematically deployed anti-Semitic tropes against critics while selling the Iran deal.
The Trump administration is acknowledging reality and demonstrating moral clarity.
The media have been portraying the events in Gaza as a massacre of unarmed civilians by Israel, in response to mostly peaceful protests against the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
None of this is accurate. The riot that broke out along the border was orchestrated by the terrorist group Hamas and telegraphed ahead of time, with Hamas’ leader in Gaza boasting of a mass breach of the Israeli border. It was the culmination of weeks of actions along the border, and not simply a reaction to the embassy opening. The rioters were brandishing weapons, including Molotov cocktails and kites designed to fly onto Israeli territory and light crops on fire. They were encouraged to break through the border fence, and coached on where to find local Israeli communities to carry out attacks should they succeed.
As the media loudly reported mass civilian casualties, terrorist groups were lining up to take credit. Hamas claimed that 50 of the 62 killed were members of the group, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed three. The armchair counterterrorism experts on social media argue that there must have been a better way for Israel to avoid firing live ammo. But they don’t offer any other solution to how Israel should react without using lethal force when thousands of people, including those eager to carry out terrorist attacks, are trying to storm into their country.
The international community will also like to blame Israel, which withdrew from Gaza 13 years ago, for the living conditions in the crowded strip of land along the coast. Yet what have the Palestinians done during that time?
Ahead of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, American Jewish donors spent $14 million to purchase over 3,000 greenhouses and handed them over to the Palestinians. Weeks later the Associated Press reported mass looting, with Palestinians, “walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.”
Palestinians then decided to elect Hamas to run Gaza, the terrorist group that had killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings. We hear a lot about the plight of the Palestinians, yet Hamas has channeled scarce resources into terrorism. Since taking over, it has spent money building rockets, started devastating wars with Israel, constructed vast networks of tunnels to smuggle in weapons and to attempt to infiltrate Israel, and now is turning to organizing mass riots and launching kite bombs. Had they dedicated all the money and ingenuity into building up the elements of a state instead of coming up with creative new ways to kill Jews, Palestinians would have had their own country by now.
Obama’s strategy of trying to condemn Israel to gain credibility in the Arab world for a peace deal was a miserable failure. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was promoted by the Obama administration as a man of peace, has taken to regularly giving speeches denying the Holocaust (expressing views that were well known even when he was being pushed by the Obama team). Meanwhile, Obama’s strategy of re-orienting the Middle East to empower Iran alienated the traditional U.S. Arab allies in the region.
Now Trump has changed course, restoring the traditional U.S. relationship with Israel, as well as with Arab states led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Whereas Obama and Kerry saw Jews building homes as the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, Trump and his team see Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism, as the central threat.
Trump’s full-throated support for Israel and decision to withdraw from the disastrous nuclear deal have earned him credibility both in Israel and in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who have just as much to fear from Iran. Whether this will create more receptive conditions for peace when the administration unveils its plan is impossible to know. It’s quite possible that Palestinians are just so dedicated to killing Jews that they will never accept any peace deal, as has been the case every time they have been offered a state in the past. But in the meantime, at least the U.S. will be demonstrating moral clarity and standing with Israel when it takes actions to protect its people.
