Israel's 9/11: II
There could be a light at the end of every tunnel, but you should put the end in in advance
I guess Ari forgot how consumed by rage he and the boss were at the time. When you spend your life conveying bogus emotions, you can lose track, even if you’ve been taking notes:
His postings provide incredible insight into what the day was like for President George W. Bush and his inner circle, including the shock and anger they felt upon learning of the attacks.
Fleischer said he took detailed notes that day, and many of his postings include direct quotes from the president.
"We're at war, Dick, and we're going to find out who did this and we're going to kick their ass," Bush, who was in Florida, told Vice President Dick Cheney in one of their first phone calls after the attack.
It’s very weird to hear the Biden White House now echoing what I thought were some pretty adventurous thoughts on my part a couple of weeks ago, to the effect that the lesson Israel should apply from 9/11 to 10/7 is to not do what the US did: don’t confuse your understandable desire for revenge with a high-minded quest for justice, be aware it won’t really achieve anything, work to understand the situation, try to punish your enemy as little as your public will let you get away with, stay cool, boy.
When I was in Israel yesterday, I said that when America experienced the hell of 9/11, we felt enraged as well, and while we sought and got justice, we made mistakes. So I caution the government of Israel not to be blinded by rage.
He meant some very specific mistakes, as W. Bush’s old lying press secretary well understood, the declaration of a “global war on terror” which would “not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated”; the staging of the war’s first battle in Afghanistan, originally as a hunt for the terrorists of Al Qa’eda, which quickly turned, as Al Qa’eda disappeared into the wilderness, into the war against the Taliban government for “regime change” that the Taliban won 20 years later; and of course the harassment and obtrusive surveillance and worse of pretty much the whole of the Muslim community in the US, citizens and noncitizens, and the attendant increase of hate crimes against Muslims on the part of private individuals, though that’s always hard to sort out from all the other hate crimes, against Black people, Jews, people of East Asian origin, people with alternative sexual orientations, and so on.
The frequently announced Israeli aim to eradicate the Hamas organization—to “crush and destroy it”—might be in that realm of impossible promises, as the Washington Post reported last week
Even if Israel does kill every Hamas leader in Gaza and collapse every tunnel, “destroying” the organization may not be possible, experts said. Hamas has leaders who are exiled but active and known to move around between Beirut, Istanbul and Doha, Qatar. And Hamas supporters can be found not just in Gaza but also throughout the West Bank, and elsewhere.
and I’m not sure how able the IDF is to locate all the leadership and all the tunnels, given past experience. Then there’s the nightmare of ground combat in which there will be terrible casualties on both sides and among the innocent, in particular the 200-odd hostages Hamas has seized.
It’s still possible that they could take my advice: face the political fact that what the public needs is primarily revenge for the massacre of 1,400 committed by Hamas fighters on October 7, like the American public on September 11—get it over with quickly and move on, especially to freeing the hostages.
In a manner of speaking that’s what they’ve already done in the first two weeks, destroying 11,000 buildings in northern Gaza and killing some 4,000 civilians, half or so women and children (along with, very likely, some undetermined and undeterminable number of militants, not to mention hostages) and rendering at least 100,000 homeless, according to this study reported Thursday in The Economist
That’s close to three Palestinian-identified victims for every one on the Israel side. Of course Hamas “slaughtered” the 1,400 one at a time, with horribly direct cruelty, while the IDF coolly dropped fire on its 4,000 without any personal contact, and the latter has been drowned out in any case by the between 100 and 300 killed in the courtyard of Ahli Arab Hospital, probably not by Israeli forces (the smaller the number the more emotionally the news audience responds, almost always), but it’s still true.
I’m happy to see the new center-left members of the Israeli war cabinet are starting to think about the future, as The Times of Israel reports, if apparently in closer consultation with the Americans than the Likudniks:
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz and fellow party member Gadi Eisenkot, who entered the coalition last week to form an emergency wartime cabinet, have demanded the creation of a Gaza exit strategy and have tasked a committee with drawing one up, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel earlier this week.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has also been privately pressing Israel to flesh out its exit strategy, Israeli and US officials have said.
And also, of course, to see two (American) hostages slipping out of Gaza and 20 trucks of desperately needed supplies (nowhere near enough) slipping in, Maybe there’s really a light at the end of all these tunnels, and the militaries simply don’t recognize it, because it’s the light of peace.
Thank you for this writeup. It has been disconcerting the past week to see (apart from events themselves) how wildly the people in my social media circles misread Biden. I'm seeing a lot of self-described liberals saying stuff like, "I believed there was a difference between Biden and Trump -- now I have proof there's not!" and "Democrats: Genocidal fascists too -- but with a smile!" and "I am filled with utter rage at Biden!" Eesh.
A lot of these commenters must be Russian chaos agents, but most are sincere morons. I wish I could put it more nicely, but I can't. You don't have to know much about diplomacy and reality to know that Biden can't just call up Netanyahu and say "No." And you don't have to be a strategic genius to see that he didn't send the carriers over to scare Gazans, he sent them to back off outsiders who might try to expand the war -- yada yada yada, everyone who reads this substack understands, I'm sure, so I'll shut up. I just wanted to say, Yas, thanks for being clear-eyed on this, I really needed this post, because my social media is full of ignorant shouting, and it was starting to accumulate into despair for me.
I do see a lot of evidence Biden is working very hard to talk Israel down and keep the neighbors out of it, and I do believe that in the end we will have, thanks to him, a lot fewer dead children in Gaza -- at least.
I'll megadittos gromet. It's been a while since Americans had their hit of bloodlust from 9/11, so it's disturbing to see it flare up so easily. Biden must know he can't stop the freight train of revenge, so he's trying to remind Israel they need a plan for when the train pulls in the station. Even if Isreal "destroys" Hamas (and I'll know they're serious about that when they send teams to Qatar to pick up/take out the leaders) it's not like there's a shortage of replacements. Odds are this is Bibi being Bibi, bellowing and distracting from his problems. This is the downward spiral of violence and revenge Israel and the Palestinians have been on for a while now, and it looks like Israel is incapable of changing course, still.