Letting Hamas Grow: Whose Idea, Bibi or Bush?

We need to learn from our mistakes. For this, we need to remember them accurately.

In discussing this, I hold no brief for either Bibi or Bush. My concern is with what is most probably true, and what we need to do going forth from here in the present war.

Bush’s role

It was George W. Bush’s idea to make the Palestinian Authority hold elections in which Hamas could participate, on the argument that this was the road to a democratic peace. After Bush saw the results, he drew back. Too late: his policy enabled Hamas to make its coup and take over Gaza.

Obama’s role

It was Obama’s idea that we shouldn’t support regime change, at least not against our enemies in Iran and China and Russia – although he enthusiastically supported regime change against our allies, as in Egypt and Tunisia (and was forced by the media to very belatedly support it in Libya, and to keep Syria in ongoing civil war rather than let the regime re-consolidate). His advisers were less self-contradictory; they held that Bush’s only mistake was to fail to support Hamas and other enemies after they won the elections, and if we engage with them as friends it’ll tame them.

In practice, Obama supported Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt. Together, they gave Hamas the confidence to start a new Gaza war. Then they imposed the ceasefire on Israel that saved Hamas and made it de facto victor.

Biden’s role

Biden’s idea was to end this war before Israel’s side of it began, and again at every stage where Israel could be delayed. He saved Hamas from a more clear-cut defeat multiple times. It was his Iran policy that had given Hamas the confidence and the equipment to break the ceasefire again on October 7 and start another war.

“But didn’t Netanyahu say…” 

“But, but” – one can almost hear some people chomping at the bit to butt in here – “but didn’t Netanyahu say this was a good way to keep the Palestinians divided?”

Yes, he is reported to have said something like that, once, as a retort in private to a Likud hardline critic. Mossad is also reported to have said similar pseudo-realist things over the years, about letting Hamas build itself up as a counterweight to the PLO. Pseudo-realists in the U.S. also supported other Islamists in the Mideast as an antidote to pro-Soviet nationalists.

This is real. The question is the meaning of it. It was a tempting line for all who called themselves “realists”, yet didn’t want to fight the enemy, or defeat it, or for that matter make a real peace.

Netanyahu does want to defeat the enemy, and probably always did. It is his American handlers who generally did not.

Netanyahu’s Role

We should try to ask honestly what was significance of Netanyahu’s reported statement on Hamas.

The context is crucial. It was publicly visible context, a redundantly visible one, not just a spin on a report about a private conversation. It was this: Netanyahu, like all Israeli leaders before him, had to give in most of the time to most of America’s demands. That is the reality, given Israel’s dependence on America. And tolerating Hamas was the American line. Helping it administer humanely with funds was the way to tame it. Netanyahu had little choice but to got along and tolerate Hamas rule in Gaza, as long as Hamas didn’t attack Israel too much.

“But what about his much-quoted rationalization for this?”

It actually further confirms the point. He’s not permitted, under the American rules, to blame the U.S. for forcing this on him. For him as for all Israeli leaders – and for Mossad and much of the media – it has a psychological effect when they have to start rationalizing the American policy. They have to try to come up with silver linings and compensations for America-imposed mistakes.

That was understandable but harmful. Rationalizing it means perpetuating it, extending it, and reproducing it. He should have just said, quietly and privately, that he was forced to do it. But it is not easy to do this.

Ideas have consequences

The American rationalization for the policy meanwhile meant letting Qatar fund Hamas, in the name of buying it off and calming it down. It fit in with the Clinton-Bush-Obama line, in our post-cold war euphoria, that military force is no longer needed, money and trade will dissolve the fanaticism of our enemies.

The U.S. was making believe all this time that its smiles and trade were in fact working already to dissolve the ideological hostility of our enemies – and not only in Gaza but in the Ayatollahs’ Iran, Erdogan’s Turkey, Communist China, and the re-emerging nationalist Russia. In reality, they were helping our enemies stay in power, rebuild their power when they were down, and redouble their confidence in being our enemies.

This well-known ideology of the time provides the explanation for Netanyahu’s and Mossad’s false policy. It is by far the most plausible main explanation for what happened. It even explains the deflecting retort, when faced by sober Israeli critics of the policy: “if you want to keep the Palestinian areas divided and weak, this is how to do it”.

The actual, naturalistic explanation

Please note that our explanation here is an entirely naturalistic one. It is not a partisan explanation or a devil theory (blame it all on Netanyahu, he’s a dumb hater-schemer). It is the simple reality of Israel having had to go along with American policy. And of American policy, on this matter, being all too naturally dumb. America is far away. It doesn’t have to pay the kind of price that Israel quickly pays for its mistakes. Too often it learns nothing from the harm that eventually ensues to it, and projects the blame instead.

And now, a word about America’s mistakes

America is by far the larger power. It has by far the greater influence on events.

It is the country that needs most to learn from its mistakes and correct them. But it is often the slowest to do so. Its size and distance insulate it from the consequences.

America’s recent presidents have focused, not so much on helping our allies abroad win, but on deflecting the criticism from their own media for the deaths when our allies are winning. Our Presidents have fended off the media by doing opportunistic virtue signaling to our enemies in their rhetoric, and by seeking to split the difference in deals that save the enemy.

Shamlessly taming our allies

Biden imperiously demanded that Israel, and Ukraine also, never talk factually about how Biden was not supporting them properly. Instead he repeatedly demanded that they express only gratitude to him.

It is an attitude that ensured America would not learn from its mistakes.

The public dressing down of Zelensky on this is how Biden tamed him. It was made easier after Boris Johnson was gone from the scene, no longer lending his powerful voice to help Zelensky pressure Biden to start giving real help. It forced Zelensky to tone down his criticisms of the very real, very harmful insufficiencies and delays in American support. Zelensky developed a habit of thanking Biden with embarrassing effusiveness – while getting in a word edgewise on Biden’s policy not being sufficient.

After developing a habit of talking in this double way to Biden, Zelensky continued this habit with Trump, and argued back with him. Trump was not Biden. Trump got furious, adopted Biden’s attitude even harder, and forced Zelensky to kowtow even more.

Obama had done the same thing to Netanyahu as Biden-Trump did to Zelensky.

Israel sneaks a few wins through anyway

Biden let up on Israel compared to Obama. Israel got a longer leash. Trump let up still more on Israel.

That enabled Israel to smash up America’s enemies in Lebanon and Syria as well as Gaza – and get the main smashings in before Biden could act to stop them. And then smashed up our mortal enemies in Iran as well.

Israel did all this for America, even if seeming over America’s dead body – and even if only, now, to get leashed in again by the U.S., permitting America enemies to survive and rebuild their threat to us.

What needs to be done today

The point is to be objective nor polemical in evaluating the past, to draw the true lessons, and to be serious about urgent policy.

We are at a turning point in modern Middle Eastern history.

If we can focus our minds on forming a sound policy at this moment, we will see three things:

* We must oppose Israel where there are good reasons for us to oppose it, e.g. on annexing the West Bank. We must not oppose Israel when our motive is simply virtue signaling to our domestic critics, and to our enemies, who don’t like it for Israel to win; or when we are playing in-between what we call “children” who are fighting. We must not continue running interference against Israeli victories over what are also our own enemies.

* We must permit Israel to complete its current spate of victories, and thank it for defeating  what are also our enemies. It is doing our work for us, just as President Trump says our allies ought to do more often.

* We must give Israel all the requisite support in completing these victories. We must continue the support until the job is finished.