Israel must do a much better job convincing Americans to stand against Hamas - opinion

• Published date: 11 March 2024
• Author: ERIC R MANDEL
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

However, the United States has remained a strong ally of Israel in good and bad times, with President Joe Biden showing true grit in continuing to support the Jewish state against anti-Israel voices in his party

Ross Douthat, writing in The New York Times, describes the double standard used against Israel in its war against Hamas compared to the American-led attacks against ISIS. "The world is fine… with American arms supporting a grinding war against a fanatical Islamist movement, leaving cities leveled and thousands dead – so long as the fanatical Islamic movement killed Christians, Yazidis, and Muslims.

"But if an Islamist organization slaughters and rapes and kidnaps Jews, as Hamas did on October 7, then (they argue) a new standard drops: The rules of engagement are suddenly much stricter, you can't demand unconditional surrender, you need a ceasefire now.

"Israel sits at an intersection point for various ideologies: not just overt antisemitism but also the wider anti-whiteness and anti-colonial discourse on the Left that treats it as presumptively guilty, no matter what its enemies might do."

Israel will soon enter the final and most sensitive phase of its war with Hamas, eliminating the terrorist organization's four remaining battalions in the southern city of Rafah, which is filled with hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians. Hamas's leadership is intact and protected, hiding under a shield of Israeli hostages in addition to its usual shield of Palestinian civilians.

Without Israeli control of the Rafah crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor, Hamas's supply lines would remain open, and Israel would have lost this war.

President Biden still says Israel has the right to destroy Hamas but, paradoxically, also calls for a resumption now of the two-state solution, which would be viewed by Israelis as a reward for the terrorists' heinous massacre and taking civilian hostages.

To appease his party's Israel critics, he has disproportionately magnified the threat posed by rogue Israeli settlers in the West Bank, allowing hardline anti-Israel media to redirect attention from the unfinished business of destroying a terrorist entity to a narrative that casts Israel as the obstacle to peace.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was always the master of talking to American audiences. However, today he prioritizes his message to a domestic audience, pandering to extreme elements in his coalition, whose agenda infuriates the administration. Speaking to his...