Better the devil you know
It’s a question I’ve long asked myself: I’d sit with Hamas to get the hostages back, but not with Bibi?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers greetings in Jerusalem at an August 13 reception hosted by Newsmax, a right-wing US media company. (Ronen Zvulun/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Israeli society is riven by many issues, but right now, none so much as the hostages.
A relatively large majority of Israeli respondents to mainstream opinion polls say their government should do whatever is necessary to immediately get all the hostages back. This means primarily ending the war in the Gaza Strip, reaching a long-term ceasefire, and withdrawing the IDF back to or close to the pre-October 7, 2023, lines – which has been the basic demand of Hamas since Day 1.
I find it hard to believe that anyone here does not want the hostages back. Those who are against a deal say it would leave Hamas in place and thus endanger Israel and Israelis everywhere in the long term. Can’t argue with that. But what they are really saying is that to this end the hostages can be sacrificed if necessary.
Not much can infuriate me more. Not even the passionate propagators of political poison who would have us believe that people who favor a deal are defeatists, Hamas-lovers (and therefore, by extension, Jew-haters) and even traitors. We hear this dangerous drivel daily on the country’s pro-Bibi broadcast media, and it might just be a matter of time before it gets someone killed.
But not all of those who are against a deal are like that, so I have to confront them with logic. My argument goes thusly: After close to two years, 50 hostages – 20 still believed to be alive, or so we’re told – remain deep below ground in dank, dark and airless Hamas tunnels, most likely starving and sick. They cannot wait.
We endanger them by renewing the war, which is what those who are against a deal want to see in the belief that broader and stronger military action either will convince Hamas to let the hostages go or will fully destroy it, at which point we might find at least some of our people or at least some of their bodies. Maybe.
I can’t say they’re wrong. Like most things around here, it’s a question of priorities: Live hostages and others to bring home for burial now, versus the chance of getting any of them back in return for the chance of better protecting our people next time.
So yes, I’ll sit with the devil Hamas to get our hostages back as soon as possible, knowing that the main impediment is its demand to remain in charge of the Gaza Strip. Which brings me to my question: If I’m willing to do business with one side that has blocked deals, why wouldn’t I be willing to do business with the other?
IT’S NO SECRET THAT Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been dithering on hostage deals. In his case it’s for political reasons. He needs a government that will back his plan to neuter the country’s judiciary, most acutely because he stands the chance of going to jail or being deemed unfit to again stand for office due to his ongoing corruption trial.
Two of the political parties willing to provide such backing are intent on furthering their own goals of reestablishing Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and driving out its current inhabitants. To achieve this there can be no deals with Hamas, only a war to the very end – with Hamas and pretty much the rest of the world.
Netanyahu, who long ago gave up any ideologies he may have had in favor of the pragmatism that can keep him firmly ensconced in office, insists in public – especially in English, a language in which his hardcore base has little grounding – that he has no desire to resettle Gaza. Yet the idea of extending the war serves another of his goals: evading the establishment of an official commission of inquiry into what led to the war, why it has gone on for so long, and just who is responsible.
So there are two impediments to Netanyahu immediately bringing back all the hostages: 1) his fear of being held accountable, and 2) his fear of jail or an end to his political career.
Regarding the first, to this day he has successfully ignored the findings of a previous commission of inquiry that found him ultimately responsible for inadequate planning and infrastructure at a 2021 religious festival that led to a stampede killing 45 ultra-Orthodox men and boys. It was the deadliest civil disaster in Israel’s history.
These findings were announced in March of last year, well into the current war. Netanyahu’s initial response – similar to his excuse for not establishing a commission of inquiry over the leadup to October 7 and its aftermath – was that conducting a war is far more important than answering to any claims of inadequacy.
War or no war, he certainly can’t have not noticed the predicament of his good friend Donald Trump, who, mired in no wars whatsoever, simply chooses to ignore all findings issued against him. Trump knows that while the US Constitution covers a lot of ground, the matter of enforcement is another issue completely.
Israel lacks a constitution. So cue far-right Minister of Internal Security Itamar Ben Gvir. Ben Gvir insists it is within his right to issue direct orders to the country’s police, even the lowliest officer walking a beat – and you can be sure that many within the ranks know on which side their bread is buttered.
Then cue the far-right messianist David Zini, a former IDF general who is Netanyahu’s choice to head the Shin Bet, the security service charged not just with providing intelligence to safeguard Israel, but with safeguarding Israeli democracy against internal forces that would prefer to see the system’s demise. Zini has said his first allegiance would be to the prime minister, not to the state. And if that prime minister’s hands are tied by right-wing, messianic extremists? Well….
CLEARLY, BOTH HAMAS and Benjamin Netanyahu pose threats to the State of Israel. I’d like to be rid of both. But at what price? And since my primary and immediate concern is the hostages – not Israel’s continued existence, not its status as a democratic state and not the fact that Netanyahu can be voted out of office, all of which are under threat but can still be addressed and safeguarded – my question is this: If I’m willing to sit with Hamas to make a deal, why is it considered verboten to offer Netanyahu a way out of the hostage morass?
His narrowminded, obstreperous base? His fanatical coalition partners? His luxury-loving, puppeteer wife? His libel-prone son living safe and well padded in Miami? His trial? The fact that he’s lying if his lips are moving?
We’ve dealt with worse.
One of the things often said by those who favor a deal with Hamas is that following a ceasefire, it won’t be long until the first rocket flies out of the Gaza Strip, at which point you go right back to doing what you were doing before having obtained the release of the hostages. Might not the same argument be made about Bibi?
