Threats to Israel’s Existence

There is one aspect of the Gaza mess that hasn’t drawn enough attention: that there was nothing inevitable about the success of the Hamas attack. There was ample warning, but the defense was too complacent and the government was too preoccupied with its own priorities (the judicial takeover and the draconian measures on the West Bank) to pay attention to what mattered.

There’s nothing new about this statement, but the necssary conclusion doesn’t tend to follow — that the Hamas attacks did NOT put Israel in a war for its existence. The attack should have had far fewer consequences — a setback for Hamas. The reason it wasn’t was complacency and government corruption. The attacks became the horrendous incident they were only because of the past and present failures of Netanyahu governments. The outcome of any subsequent such attack depends primarily on whether Israel addresses those failures —arguably more so than on Hamas.

It was always strange that Israel would respond to the Hamas attack by doing exactly what Hamas clearly wanted them to. I won’t say options were easy, but it didn’t have to be this. As we’ve noted before, the only way to understand it is to recognize that Netanyahu’s interests and Israel’s interests were not the same. As a distraction from his responsibility, Netanyahu had every incentive to turn the Hamas attacks into the biggest incident he could possibly create.

At this point it’s not even clear how much all the death and destruction has contributed to the “complete destruction” of Hamas. More generally it’s certainly hard to conclude Israel’s position has become more secure.

We all have to come to terms with that fact that the apparently self-evident statement that Israel was in a war for its existence was actually — primarily — Netanyahu’s self-serving lie.

Originally published at http://ontheoutside.blog on November 25, 2023.