If the war in the Gaza Strip ends this week — not a sure thing — it will be followed by a long battle about its lessons. Here are mine:
“Believe people when they tell you who they are.”
Maya Angelou’s classic warning should have been believed in 1988, when Hamas declared in its founding covenant its intention to slaughter Jews. Instead, Israel continued to tolerate Hamas out of a combination of ideological convenience — it suited Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to have a divided Palestinian polity — and international reluctance to topple the group. That was until Oct. 7, 2023, too late for the 1,200 people slaughtered that day.
Brilliant technology is never an adequate substitute for sound strategy.
Successive rounds of fighting between Hamas and Israel never altered Israel’s policy of containment toward Gaza. Why? Because, as Yaakov Katz, a co-author of the new book “While Israel Slept,” wrote me, technologies like the Iron Dome gave Israel the false sense “it was impenetrable.” Yet when Oct. 7 came, Israel’s high-tech marvels in signals intelligence, missile interceptors, smart fences and underground barriers proved useless against Hamas’ low-tech paragliders and bulldozers.
“Weakness is provocative,” said Donald Rumsfeld. So is the appearance of weakness.
Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ late leader, already believed Israel was weak when he and hundreds of other Palestinian prisoners were released for the sake of a single Israeli hostage. But Israel had never looked so weak in the months that preceded Oct. 7, thanks to the Netanyahu government’s push for judicial “reform” that looked to millions of Israelis like a lunge toward authoritarianism.
Israelis are better than their government.
Nobody typifies this better than Noam Tibon, a retired general in his 60s who, with his wife, Gali, drove to the rescue of his son Amir and his son’s family in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which had been overrun by Hamas. “We understood that if we will not go and get them, nobody will,” the elder Tibon told The New York Times. Noam fought his way into the kibbutz, rescuing his family. There are scores of similar stories. The Talmudic injunction “All of Israel are responsible, one for the other” — that is, communal responsibility — is what saved the Jewish state on Oct. 7.
Palestinian suffering is undeniable. Hamas is its principal author.
For those who spent the past two years chanting “ceasefire now” at anti-Israel rallies, they neglect to mention that there was a ceasefire before Oct. 7, 2023, which Hamas violated in the most grotesque way possible.
As for those who rightly decry the suffering of Palestinian civilians, they must equally rue the fact Hamas continually and deliberately put ordinary Gaza residents in harm’s way by waging war beneath, behind and between them. This war could have been ended at any time in the past two years by Hamas laying down its arms, which even now it is reluctant to do. Why did so many so-called peace protesters never make any demands of Hamas?
There will be no Palestinian state if Hamas or other militant groups survive as a military or political force.
Feckless diplomatic gestures, such as the recent recognition of a Palestinian state by France, Britain and other countries of diminishing relevance, will do nothing to pressure or persuade Israelis they should replicate their Gaza experience — withdrawal followed by endless war — on the vastly greater scale of the West Bank.
The only viable path to a sustainable Palestinian state is a cultural revolution among Palestinians that ends the fantasy of Israel’s destruction. That’s as much the work of educators and imams as of Palestinian politicians and foreign diplomats. And it requires an end to Hamas or any armed group prepared to enforce a militant orthodoxy over other Palestinians. What are Britain and France prepared to do for that?
Want influence over the policies of Israel? Hug it close.
Why did Netanyahu acquiesce to Donald Trump and call off attacks on Iran, or agree to Trump’s 20-point peace plan? Because most Israelis believe — based on his decisions to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and bomb Iran’s nuclear sites — he’s the best friend they’ve ever had in the White House. If leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Keir Starmer wanted to be similarly effectual, they’d take the lesson.
For all its undoubted horrors, this war may ultimately be remembered as liberating.
Liberating for the Lebanese, who, for the first time in two generations, have a realistic chance to free themselves from Hezbollah’s insidious control over their politics. Liberating for Syrians, who would not have been able to topple Bashar Assad’s regime if Israel hadn’t first decimated Assad’s Hezbollah helpers. Liberating for the Druse of southern Syria, who are being protected by Israeli military. Liberating, potentially, for Iranians, whose leadership is now at its weakest point in decades thanks to the military humiliation it experienced at Israeli and American hands in June. Liberating for Gaza residents who suffered under Hamas’ willingness to start wars it knew would bring suffering.
For Jews, within or outside of Israel, the war should also be a warning.
After more than 3,000 years of history, the Jewish condition remains the same: precarious. And while friends and allies are nice, something else hasn’t changed: We are alone. Survival means living with it.