E. Rowell: A US State Department Fact Sheet on US Security Cooperation with Israel (19 October 2023) has buried within it a description of a 10 year MOU (2019-2028) that provides for billions of dollars of military assistance to Israel provided that Israel purchase these missile defense and other programs from the US. “…through Off Shore Procurement (OSP). Via OSP the current MOU allows Israel to spend a portion of its FMF on Israeli-origin rather than U.S.-origin defense articles. This was 25 percent in FY 2019 but is set to phase-out and decrease to zero in FY 2028.” This means Israel agreed to purchase almost all the military supplies and programs from the US through 2028. In 2019, Israeli military procurement leaders who signed this agreement did not envision that in four years time, Israel would suffer the most devastating attack since the Holocaust, and the signers also did not know the extent to which her sometime ally, the US, would turn against her. But being responsible for national security, they should have considered all possible future ramifications.
But this is nothing new. They have been lying since October 7th — and way before then as well.
By Joshua Hoffman, FUTURE OF JEWISH 2 June 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden (left) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (courtesy: The White House)
On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden gave another Israel-Hamas speech deeply rooted in domestic American politics, but with international implications that whoever wrote his speech does not care for, enjoys lying about, or is just incompetent.
It was not a coincidence that former U.S. President Barack Obama was standing just a few steps from Biden as he delivered this speech — and you can bet your mortgage that Obama personally proofread and signed off on it ahead of time.
Obama, who was a very young president and needed a “job” after completing his eight-year tenure, is running Biden’s Democratic Party, which has been significantly losing in polls to Donald Trump’s Republicans in the run-up to November’s extra-high-stakes presidential election.
Thus, Biden’s speech — comprised of flamboyant lies — was just another feeble attempt to rally the Democrats’ “progressive” and Arab/Muslim bases, with the first presidential campaign debate just a few weeks away (and one that could very well break Biden and his Democrats’ chances of holding on to the White House).
Hence why Biden spent the first seven or so minutes of his speech railing against Trump, before taking a complete 180-degree detour to the Israel-Hamas war. His “update” on his “efforts to end the crisis in Gaza” (there is no “crisis” in Gaza, but yes, there is a war) included lie after lie after lie, such as:
Most of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad will most definitely kill some more, on purpose, if and when a ceasefire agreement is achieved.
Hamas did not carry out October 7th on its own. It was highly coordinated with the Iranians and Qataris, who are very much capable of planning more devastating attacks against Israel. More on this soon.
Diplomatic solutions are irrelevant when one side is one of the world’s top terror groups, which has an explicit platform of relentlessly working to destroy the State of Israel.
Israel being able to “defend itself” is one thing, and Israel being able to win wars that generate much-needed deterrence against the possibility of future attacks is a totally different thing.
What Biden is effectively saying is, “We have no problem with Israel being attacked again and again as long as it can respond — but Israel will not be allowed to win a war that others start against it.”
The Palestinian people have “endured sheer hell” since the 1960s, thanks to their leadership. Since then, Israel has not been “perfect” in dealing with the Palestinians (for no country would be “perfect” in this or any other case), yet for decades world leaders have habitually ignored and overlooked the Palestinians’ institutional terrorism, kleptocracy, and rampant corruption (including obnoxious misuse of “international aid”)
If Biden really cared about “the Palestinian people,” he would demand more from their leaders and hold them accountable. The reality is that he only cares about them at this moment, because it is politically correct for him to do so domestically in America. As they call it in Hebrew: “cheap populism.”
However, none of Biden’s speech on Friday was surprising to me at all. The man has been lying out of his two front teeth about this war since October 7th, first to ensure that he retains the majority of Jewish American voters and Jewish American political donations, and then to increasingly “both sides” this war in desperate appeasement of “progressive” and Muslim/Arab voters.
And Biden is not the only politician lying to their people about Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinians. The Europeans might be even worse, no less the Canadians, South Africans, Australians, South Americans, and many others.
During the last few decades in the West, the new world order with regard to Israel has been: The Jewish state can defend itself, but it cannot be allowed to fully win wars (even those it does not start). Many Jews and Israelis will chalk this up to antisemitism (i.e. double standards for the Jewish state), but this is likely only a small fraction of a much bigger pie packed with many reasons for this “new world order.”
One reason is the Arabs and their disproportionate leverage, both economically (gas and oil) and militarily. We all know that the Arabs hold one-sixth of the world’s wealth and use it to directly influence elections, politicians, policy-makers, and others in positions of power across the West. For example, there is a well-known secret in Washington, D.C. which goes like this: If you walk by the Qatari embassy, your pockets immediately become fuller.
And, of course, Qatar is Hamas’ staunch ally, which means that Western politicians who are on the Qataris’ payroll (and there are many, including many Democrats) are effectively siding with Hamas — if not in intention, then in outcome.
Then there are the Iranian proxies, which are strategically scattered across the Middle East and can effectively do what Hamas (one of them) has been doing: profusely using human shields and disseminating fake news to make it seem as though a “genocide” is taking place in Gaza.
Iran has likely communicated to the Americans, Europeans, and possibly others that, if Israel is allowed to win this war against Hamas outright, the Iranians (via their proxies) will start a wider war against Israel’s enablers in the Middle East and possibly elsewhere.
How do we know this to be true? Just two weeks ago, senior U.S. officials reportedly held indirect talks with Iran in Oman, regarding the potential for escalation in the Middle East following last month’s hostilities between the Islamic Republic and Israel.
This is precisely the Iranians’ strategy: We will fight a war against you that does not include Iran proper, thus absolving the Iranians of ultimate responsibility and even attacks on Iranian soil.
To add insult to injury, any wider war in the Middle East, started by Iranian proxies, will promise to turn naive, gullible Westerners against their governments via propaganda and inhumane combat tactics designed to make Western governments look horrible in the eyes of these naive, gullible Westerners.
Some Westerners argue that a war with Iran is inevitable — and now might be the time to topple their Islamist regime, one of the world’s most oppressive — but large parts of the West are against another Western-led war in the Middle East following the failed escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan. And no democratically elected politician is interested in committing political suicide by doing something that a large part of their society does not want.
Israel is not void of lying politicians as well. The idea of “total victory” against Hamas, while justified and honorable, simply does not align with greater geopolitical and international interests which are outside of the Jewish state’s control. There is no question that Israel has the military capabilities to uproot Hamas (as a governing and military power) from Gaza, but this war is not just one fought between two militaries.
Diplomatically and geopolitically, Hamas is winning this war, in part for reasons that are outside of Israel’s control.
Plus, neither you nor I know to what extent Israel is dependent on other countries for military equipment and weapons, which is ultimately Israel’s fault for putting itself in a position whereby it cannot control its own destiny (if “controlling one’s own destiny” is even a realistic concept in today’s over-globalized world).
And we also do not know what other types of leverage different countries hold over Israel, but we can be sure that these other types of leverage exist and have been promised to be used against Israel if it does not comply with whatever demands are being levied against the Jewish state, even as politicians publicly declare their “ironclad support” for Israel.
At the same time, not one of Israel’s “critics” can suggest a way to destroy Hamas in Gaza with fewer casualties than the IDF is doing. Which means that not one of these so-called critics agree that Hamas must be destroyed. Those who want Hamas to survive are the ones who are immoral. Not Israel.
Still, politicians are trying to convince people that this is Israel’s “Iraq and Afghanistan” and some have even called it “Israel’s Vietnam War” — a comparison that is so absurdly foolish, I will not grant it any more words other than these: Israel is not in a counterinsurgency or counterterrorism campaign.
“Stop comparing the war against Hamas in Gaza to the wrong context looking for moral judgement,” wrote John Spencer, an urban warfare expert who served for more than 25 years in the U.S. military, reaching the rank of major.1
One of the reasons that many Western politicians are completely missing the boat about this Israel-Hamas war is that they are looking at IDF tactics through the lens of Western counterinsurgency, the doctrine that U.S. and European militaries applied in the failed campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the “global war on terror,” Western tactics were to seize a chunk of territory and clear it of enemies through military force. The plan was then to hold the territory through forward operating bases and try to conduct alternative governance in those areas while providing security.
In the case of this Israel-Hamas war, Western critics have almost comically misunderstood what the Israeli military is trying to do. The flaw in Western analysis is always the same: “We wouldn’t do it that way.”
Yet the IDF has absolutely no intention of using the clear-hold-build tactics the West tried in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why would it? Those tactics were an unmitigated disaster in both campaigns, which ended in humiliating defeats at the hands of technologically inferior armies.
Israel’s strategic aims are defeating Hamas and securing the Gaza border with Israel to prevent a repeat of October 7th. “Never again is now” is not just an empty slogan. IDF operational design is built around making sure that October 7th can never happen again. Absent the possibility of any enduring political solution, that is simply what success looks like.
Israel’s war cabinet has received significant domestic and international criticism for their lack of a “day after” plan for governance in Gaza, which has been echoed in recent days by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet member Benny Gantz.
“IDF planners are therefore faced with designing operations to achieve a loosely defined goal, with no clearly articulated strategic end state for the operation from their political leadership — in part perhaps because the ‘end state’ may be unsatisfying to Western ears,” wrote Andrew Fox, a longtime officer (now retired) in the British Army, who reached the rank of major.2
“If you look at what is possible, what the best version of ‘success’ looks like, and what Israel is doing,” Fox added, “I contend that in Gaza we are seeing a masterpiece of operational design within severe politically imposed limitations.”
“Militarily, the IDF is hamstrung by international pressure to slow operations, and uncertainty about what comes next in Gaza — a choice that may at least partially lie outside of Israel’s control. For our part, Western critics need to eat humble pie and accept that, on the evidence of the last 20 years, our tactics are not to be recommended. What we are seeing in Gaza is not a failure. It’s a quite brilliant IDF operational design, within the bounds of what is realistically possible.”
This is the bottom-line truth. Anyone who tells you otherwise has no clue what they are talking about — or is simply a professional liar.
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