Israel’s Dwindling Moral High Ground

Today on TAP: Netanyahu’s Gaza attacks are rapidly squandering precious global goodwill.

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For a few days after the barbaric mass executions of hundreds of civilians by Hamas in border kibbutzim and at a music festival, Israel had something that has been missing in recent decades—the world’s sympathy and support. Critics who had been critical of the occupation of the West Bank by settlers suspended their antagonism to express outrage and solidarity.

The Eiffel Tower was lit up Israeli blue with a large Star of David. In the U.S., President Biden expressed solidarity and support in unambiguous terms.

Progressives who had criticized Israeli policies expressed appropriate outrage at the far left’s condoning the Hamas massacre. AOC declared, after a pro-Palestinian rally at Times Square blamed Israel for provoking Hamas, “The bigotry and callousness expressed in Times Square on Sunday were unacceptable and harmful in this devastating moment.”

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, in an eloquent column calling for a “decent left,” wrote, “It is not just disgusting but self-defeating for vocal segments of the left to disavow … universal ideas about human rights, declaring instead that to those who are oppressed, even the most extreme violence is permitted.”

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But Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, whose arrogance and blunders left Israel open to the Hamas massacre, is rapidly squandering a moment of global goodwill and moral high ground. A large majority of Israelis correctly blame Netanyahu for leaving the Gaza border defenseless by moving most of the Israeli army to defend illegal West Bank settlers who never should have been there in the first place.

A recent poll, published in The Jerusalem Post, finds that an astonishing 86 percent of respondents blame the Netanyahu government for allowing the massacre to happen, including 79 percent of the governing coalition supporters.

With his back to the wall, Netanyahu and his war Cabinet have vowed vengeance. “Every Hamas member is marked by death,” he declared Wednesday night, a threat he can’t possibly deliver on. Israel has already unleashed mass air strikes directed at Gaza residential neighborhoods based on the premise that Hamas leaders hide out there, leaving an incredible 300,000 Gazans homeless.

These attacks have already killed more Gazan civilians than the number of Israelis killed in the initial Hamas massacre. They have also killed U.N. relief workers and local medical teams.

Netanyahu is on the verge of launching an invasion of northern Gaza to destroy Hamas as a fighting force. Israel’s military has told all civilians to evacuate northern Gaza, home to 1.1 million people, within 24 hours. It’s a dubious military proposition that is unlikely to produce the safe return of Israeli hostages. The U.N. has called the evacuation “impossible” and likely to trigger “devastating humanitarian consequences.” Israeli president Isaac Herzog essentially said today that there was no such thing as an innocent civilian in Gaza. Global public opinion is rapidly shifting to a condemnation of Israel’s disdain for civilian lives, which reduces Israel to the same moral level as Hamas.

Yesterday, AOC warned against Israel’s strategy of cutting off water and electricity to Gazan civilians: “This is collective punishment and a violation of international law. We cannot starve nearly a million children to death over the horrific actions of Hamas, whose disregard for Israeli, Palestinian, and human life overall could not be more clear.” While most of the mainstream U.S. media have focused on the appalling details of the Hamas attacks, NPR has been excellent at reminding listeners that Gazan civilians are also human beings.

For now, the public statements of Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken have expressed unalloyed support of Israel. One has to hope that their private conversations with Netanyahu caution that Israel must not reduce itself to Hamas’s level of barbarism and warn that U.S. aid is conditional on Israeli behavior, including a reversal of West Bank settler policies.

None of this will solve the longer-term challenge of restoring a genuine peace process. But at least it will damp down the risks of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, a regional war, and the reversion of Israel’s role to pariah state.

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