The argument remains.  On one side are those who credit and feel indebted to President Biden and his administration for the unbridled moral support and the massive military aid, worth millions of dollars, the U.S. is giving to Israel to assist in our war against Hamas (and Hezb’allah).  On the other side, the position is that if this administration had been much tougher with Iran from the outset, actually maintaining the policy toward Iran during the Trump administration, the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel would never have happened.  The Biden administration’s conciliatory gestures and language further empowered Iran, leading to Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel.  This surprise incursion was one of Iran’s tactics to weaken Israel over time through sporadic attacks by its proxies, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezb’allah, and even Yemen.  If not for Biden’s efforts to placate Iran, goes this argument, all the people murdered in that attack would be alive today.  All the hostages taken would be home with their loved ones and friends.

This debate will go on for a long time, I’m sure.  However, I want to relate to the President’s Oval Office speech.  In it, President Biden revealed his continuing misunderstanding of the Middle Eastern mind and culture, particularly that of Islamism.  How so?  Yes, he called Hamas “pure evil,” but like many liberals, he will not allow himself to admit that most Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) are supporters of Hamas. 

If you, too, wish to deny this, then I recommend you open these four links and read these articles.

Why is this reality so widely denied?  I think for two reasons:

1. To recognize this is too painful for liberals; it threatens hope for an eventual peaceful resolution to the conflict.
2. Because denying it creates a practical dilemma.  What position, what action, should Israel (and the democratic world) take vis-à-vis people who are not active terrorists, but who support the terrorist acts of others and may even abet it?

Biden and his advisers are wrong.  Most Gazans do identify with Hamas.  Hamas has won over the loyalties of most Palestinians, even though not all Gazans are terrorists. 

Hamas owns Gaza and all of its residents.  Whether the latter are unwilling victims of Hamas’s cruelty and forced to comply with whatever Hamas demands, or whether they are loyal soldiers and believers in Hamas’s version of fanatic Sunni Islamism, Hamas is in full control of Gaza. 

It is pollyannish and naïve to think there is a chance that the millions of dollars in humanitarian aid that the United States has committed to sending to Gaza will not be immediately commandeered by Hamas for its own use.  Did not Hamas recently steal fuel from UNWRA storehouses?  Was Hamas sanctioned?  Biden threatened that if America’s aid was hijacked by Hamas, he would turn off the spigot.  Would he?

All international humanitarian institutions in Gaza, all social welfare organizations, are under the bootheel of Hamas.  In spite of this, the Biden administration, most Democrat representatives in the U.S. Congress, and human rights groups worldwide continue to blindly pump money and aid into a broken society that is completely under the control of a corrupt and murderous regime.  (Something similar may be said about the Palestinian Authority, although it is not as brazen as Hamas and is willing to play along with Western democracies in order to keep Western contributions flowing.)

Hamas must be destroyed — both its military and its political apparatus.  With G-d’s help, the IDF will see to this.  And what about the day after?

Here the United States and other Western democracies, but not the corrupt United Nations, may act realistically and play a positive role.  Gaza is not Afghanistan; Gaza is not Iraq.  Gaza covers a small area with a relatively small population.  Its economy is also small.  After the war, when Hamas is gone, a coalition of these countries could administer the governance of Gaza.  Their goal would be, in the coming years, to physically rebuild Gaza, rehabilitate its economy, and (here is the greatest task) to wean its population away from fanatic Islamism.  That goal would be the most challenging by far.  It would include successfully inculcating the principles of democracy into the population, a goal that failed miserably in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Perhaps, when the time comes, the bitter lessons learned in those two debacles would be helpful here.

But make no mistake: the people of Gaza are innocent only to the extent that they are not taking up arms against Israel.

Image via Pxfuel.