The Real Message From Biden and Sunak to Israel: Get Moving

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Israel got a warning from London yesterday, but it’s not the one that’s been widely reported.

Benny Gantz, who presents himself as Israel’s opposition leader and is, for now, a member of the triumvirate unity war council governing the country under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been traveling to Western capitals to burnish his credentials for his inevitable rematch against Netanyahu. As of now, Gantz’s party is far ahead of Bibi’s in the polls, but Gantz understands that Israelis need to be able to picture him in the big chair.

Unfortunately for Gantz, his trips to Washington and London haven’t exactly gone as planned. In Washington, he was read the riot act over Israel’s supposed mishandling of aid delivery to Gaza, and the administration made a point of letting Vice President Kamala Harris scold him on behalf of the Democratic Party’s base.

Welcome to the NFL, general.

His next stop was London, where his meetings carried much the same message. But the subtext was very different, and it’s important for Gantz to pick up on such things.

The designated schoolmarm in London was David Cameron, who is currently foreign minister but was prime minister several years ago and is part of the Conservatives’ plan to turn around their polling numbers. Cameron is doing to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak what Gantz is trying to do to Netanyahu: pretending to be prime minister so he can begin shaping policy.

That is why Sunak “dropped in” on the meeting between Cameron and Gantz, so as not to leave the wrong impression about who is in charge. But he still fell into Cameron’s trap because he was forced to play Good Cop to Israel while Cameron believes the role of Bad Cop will have more support among the public.

Poor Benny Gantz might not have had any idea what was going on in the room, but hopefully it was explained to him later. Because the role-playing game conducted by Sunak and Cameron was meant to convey a threat. Cameron sees public opinion as moving against the war in Gaza. Whether he’s right is almost beside the point; this signals a rift in the Tories over Israel.

How should Gantz interpret this? As a reminder that, as far as the West is concerned, Israel does not have all the time in the world to finish off Hamas. Neither Sunak nor Cameron particularly cares how this war ends. Gantz and Netanyahu don’t have that luxury. The reason Hamas is disingenuously manipulating the U.S., Israel, and Qatar on the hostage negotiations is because their only goal is to run out the clock. That’s it—that’s the whole strategy now.

And if that weren’t enough, the Israelis are about to get another fire lit under them at Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight. The president is expected to order the construction of a temporary seaport in Gaza that will be used to ferry humanitarian aid from Cypress.

Why should this inspire Israel to commence the last act of the war? A few reasons. First, because of the motive for the announcement: It shows that Biden is still trying to appease the unappeasable within his coalition. In that, it will fail. Nobody cheering “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is going to change their mind thanks to a hastily constructed port that will simply serve as a more dangerous way of getting aid to Palestinian civilians. Which means when it fails to move the needle of progressive opinion, Biden will try something else to make them happy. Israel needs to accept that this ball is now rolling downhill, and they’re standing at the bottom.

The second reason is logistics: U.S. troops off the coast guiding and guarding U.S. wartime infrastructure projects—i.e., a big fat target—reduce the operational field for Israel.

Lastly, if anything goes wrong and American troops are killed, there is no telling what election-year politics will do with that.

The Democratic National Convention is going to be a powder keg this summer. Now that we are, for all intents and purposes, entering the general election, the war in Gaza will stalk the candidates at every stop, at every press gaggle. Donald Trump is nothing if not mercurial, so the Israelis cannot assume he won’t find counterproductive ways to hit Biden on the issue.

Kamala Harris and the other Americans threw a lot of words at Benny Gantz. So did Rishi Sunak and David Cameron. But they all amount to the same thing: Get moving.

March 8, 2024 | 9 Comments »

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9 Comments / 9 Comments

  1. Exactly. The UK government of both parties are awful. Look how they allow muslims to take over their own country. Native brits are a minority in London. So politicians like the whores they are, shape their policies to conform to whatever group exercises the greatest power. In today’s England the power is with the muslims. Jews in the UK would be smart to leave.

    So, Russia gets toslow walk its 2+ year meat-grinder war with Ukraine, but Israel has to wrap up Gaza in 6 months? And all because it might “influence” the US election, and the anti-semitic Brits say so. Is Israel sovereign or not?

  2. Hi, Raphael. You said,

    Raphael
    March 8, 2024 at 9:19 pm

    So, Russia gets to slow walk its 2+ year meat-grinder war with Ukraine, but Israel has to wrap up Gaza in 6 months? And all because it might “influence” the US election, and the anti-semitic Brits say so. Is Israel sovereign or not?

    I agree, that there is a double standard at work here. The US, rightly or wrongly, has made commitments to both Israel and Ukraine. Either we will keep our word with both, or not. With Kabul Joe in charge, I never really expected we would keep either agreement.

    God help us!

  3. Brilliant analysis byRav Fischer. However, I don’t agree that Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan were political hacks. Meir, at any rate, obtained the money that Israel needed to win the war of Indepence, first by convening of American Jewish ‘heavy hitter” business moguls, then wheedling millions of dollars outof them, and then smuggling ou the checks past customs in her purse. Israel would not have won the War of Independence without her feminine maneuvers.

  5. Did Israel get permission to free the Entebbe hostages?
    Or for that matter, did Israel get permission to declare independence or bomb Saddam’s reactor? Op-ed.
    Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer
    Mar 7, 2024, 1:15 PM (GMT+2)

    I wish Israel had great political leaders of historic moment. Few countries do. Actually, despite his catalog of prior failings (amid his many successes) — highlighted by October 7 proving what many of us (but not the IDF or its Intelligence) warned for years about merely “mowing the grass” and letting in concrete, steel, and Qatari millions — Binyamin Netanyahu still stands as the best Israel’s got now. That thought is humbling.

    Maybe Menachem Begin would be better, but he is not with us now. Nor is Yitzchak Shamir. Neither Bezalel Smotrich nor Itamar Ben-Gvir has a chance in the world at the top spot, although they are tough, and we cannot waste precious time dreaming — although we certainly can vote for their parties. Thank G-d they are in the cabinet, something inconceivable until the past election left Netanyahu with no other choice but to invite them in.

    Who else is there? Ehud Barak elicits images of treason and terrible mistakes (he made the IDF smaller and “smarter” and stopped Israeli arms manufacturing saying it could rely on the US). Ehud Olmert brings shame to his name. Yair Lapid, “head of the Opposition,” is so bad that even the opposition after October 7 has abandoned him for Benny Gantz. Lapid’s two claims to history: (i) Israel’s shortest serving prime minister, and (ii) handing Israel natural gas resources to Hezbollah. Honorable Mention to Naftali Bennett for putting him there. At times it seems that, if he were not so darned anti-religious and irrascible, Avigdor Liberman would be better than most runner-ups to Bibi.

    So, seriously, who is there? Israel cannot even designate a ceremonial president of consequence. Herzog? The right man for the wrong time. All Israeli political roads lead back to incompetent political hacks like Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and Ehud Olmert’s war-time Defense Minister. Remember that guy? Peretz? A labor union organizer at the cockpit during the disastrous Lebanon war.

    Frankly, in a sea of mediocrities and less, Benny Gantz is almost not too much worse than the others. That’s the best that can be said for him: as choices go, there are worse. He had no business recently traveling to America, acting as though he is prime minister, but he acquitted himself reasonably while in the States. Maybe he wanted to disabuse Kamala Harris and Jake Sullivan of the idea that, if they drive out Netanyahu, they then will have a pliable sucker whom they can manage right away. They now know Gantz is not a pliable sucker who can be controlled instantly. He is a pliable sucker who would stand firm for a few days, maybe a week or two, before getting intimidated and suckered into pursuing a Biden-Harris-Blinken-Sullivan course of suicide.

    Gantz will not declare a “Palestine” alongside Israel tomorrow, but he would in time. He would freeze building new Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and even would return to closing some down. He would fail to stop illegal Arab construction in Area C, the Galilee, and the Negev. He is, in short, one more Israeli general who transitioned from the battlefield to become a blustering politican who thinks he actually is as great as the soldiers in his unit told him he was.

    Alas, military conflict and political war are different. You cannot bulldoze the enemy in negotiations; instead, you need a different kind of courage, strength, and internal fortitude to be able to look the enemy — and erstwhile “friends” — in their eyes and repeatedly say “No.” That takes strength, as a Biden threatens to cut weapons while tens of thousands of traitors assemble in Tel Aviv on a Saturday night to give succor to the enemy by demanding that the government of Israel capitulate and resign.

    To look at Biden’s peons and Lapid and Barak and their tens of thousands and to say: “I will not budge until I get a list by name of every hostage alive, and we get a phone call or Zoom to satisfy ourselves they are alive. We will not allow any food or water or medicine until our hostages are returned” – that takes strength. Anyone can say it once or twice, but to stick to his guns? The only politician around today capable of doing that is the one who holds office and is so far behind in many polls that he has no choice but to invent the persona of the courageous leader his followers thought he was. Necessity is the mother of invention.

    Israelis have a terribly foolish penchant for electing bombastic generals who lack political greatness to head their civilian governments. Name an Israeli general who, after all his hype, brought the political greatness of a Winston Churchill. Almost Begin, but he cracked after Aliza died. Maybe Shamir, but that 1985 hostage deal? Israeli generals who enter politics are not George Washington or Judah Maccabee.

    Ehud Barak may be Judas, but that’s it. Saint Isaac (Rabin) almost destoyed the country with his deals with Arafat after bribing Knesset traitors to vote against the platforms on which they ran. Raful Eitan, a great general, was in way over his head when picking his slate that included traitors. And back to Saint Isaac: Imagine: “Let’s give Yassser Arafat a government of his own, with control over his own television stations, radio stations, newspapers, schools, summer camps, police, and security. Hey, an even better idea: Let’s give him guns and rifles! Yeah, that’ll bring peace. Swell idea. And don’t forget to keep passing along taxes we collect for him so he has the money to remit monthly stipends to the families of his Arabs who murder Jews.” Only an Israeli general could mastermind such a clever peace plan.

    Indeed, the entire mess along all three of Israel’s land borders came from three recent bombastic generals whom Israelis foolishly selected to lead them in peacetime: Saint Isaac, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon. Look at each border. Whose bright idea was the “Palestine” Authority? Yitschak Rabin. And whose idea to just walk out of Southern Lebanon without even negotiating concessions, leaving a vacuum for Nasrallah and Hezbollah to fill? Ehud Barak. And which genius drove out 8,500 Jews from Gaza to give Arabs their own polity in the land of Israel, north of Egypt? Ariel Sharon. What came of it?

    Such smart and clever generals these be. Maybe they should have spent a year or two learning Talmudic logic in a Kollel.

    Israel’s security problems stem from having put faith in G-dless bombastic generals, who rose through the military ranks by virtue of politics and not greatness. Dayan and Saint Isaac were no Patton or MacArthur. Thank G-d Motta Gur defied orders from Moshe Dayan in 1967, by feigning never to have received his boss’s command to stop marching to the Temple Mount. Sorry, I forgot to bring the recharger. My bad.

    So history records Rabin’s despicable role shooting at the members of Irgun on the Altalena who were bringing desperately needed weapons to defend Jerusalem. The ship and its weapons cargo was sunk, along with heroes like Abrasha Stavsky and almost Menachem Begin. And part of Jerusalem was lost.

    Gen. Ehud Barak? “Mister Security”? He even offered Arafat the Temple Mount.

    And Gen. Sharon? Truly great and heroic on the battlefront, but the single major reason for 1,200 dead on October 7, women raped, people decapitated, babies put in ovens. More than anyone else, it was Sharon. A shame he did not live to see the fruits of his Disengagement. If he had, he would have died of a stroke.

    In time, others also will be called upon to answer.

    -How did they allow all that concrete and steel, assuring everyone they were watching closely?

    -How did all those tunnels get built when we were told the Mossad was watching every centimeter and had new technology that could detect it all?

    -Why were Gazans allowed, for years, to float incendiary balloons onto Israeli farms with impunity?

    -Why was Qatar allowed to send in those stacks of cash? Why does Israel continue giving Gazans electricity, food, water, meds, and succor?

    -Why did they not get cut off when Hamas would not return Avera Mengistu and the bodies of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul?

    “But Israel needs allies. Needs America. Cannot go it alone.” Really? Then apply to be America’s 51st state. And better hurry before the Democrats annex Puerto Rico first and then D.C. Or maybe Putin will accept Israel as a Republic in a new Soviet Union?

    Israel went it alone when she declared independence. The United Nations did not create Israel any more than she created England. Jews drove out the British. When the U.N. sent Count Folke Bernadotte to impose a U.N. plan that would have left Israel without her own airport in Lod and harbor in Haifa, with Jerusalem internationalized, the Lechi assassinated him. The man who gave the order became prime minister of Israel in the 1980s. When the British hanged Jews in Israel, the Jews grabbed and hanged some British sergeants. The man who gave that order also became prime minister. Neither the U.N. nor the British approved. Lord Moyne was assassinated. The British military headquarters in the King David Hotel was blown up. No one gave permission.

    Who gave Ben-Gurion permission to declare a country? Not Truman. Truman had no choice but to vote “yes” at the UN — and then embargoed all weapons to Israel as she fought for her life. Therefore, mostly Jewish and some Irish kids and the Italian mafia combined to run guns to Israel illegally out of Jersey City.

    Who gave Begin permission to bomb Saddam’s nuclear reactor? Not Reagan; he condemned it the next day.

    Who gave permission to fly into Entebbe and rescue Idi Amin’s hostages? No one.

    Who gave Israel permission to grab the five gunboats from France, after DeGaulle reneged on the contact? No one.

    No other country needs permission to live. They do what they have to do, and they apologize later: “It is more blessed to ask forgiveness than permission.”

    George Washington accepted nothing short of complete surrender. General Cornwallis of England was so ashamed that he sent his Number Two to give up. When Washington was told Cornwallis would not appear himself, he sent his own Number Two to accept the capitulation.

    Lincoln could have saved thousands of innocent civilian lives — including the innocent hungry children — if he simply had accepted a “Two State Solution” for peace: the Union and the Confederacy. Instead, he approved Gen. U.S. Grant starving out the foe. Grant imposed a brutal siege on Vicksburg, starving and parching them, until they gave up on July 4, 1863. Lincoln was not ashamed or apologetic; rather, he elevated Grant to command all northern armies. It was said that Grant’s initials — “U.S.” — stood for “Unconditional Surrender.” And he got it. How? He starved and sieged Petersburg. Then he starved and sieged Richmond, while his General William T. Sherman burned down Atlanta.

    And what about the innocent civilians, the women, the poor hungry children? Well, what about them? It was war time, existential war to save the country. Apologies later.

    Israel should not be sending food and water and meds.

    Gazans want food? Release the hostages.

    They want water? Release the hostages.

    They want meds? Release the hostages.

    The United Nations does not matter. Their UNRWA is rife with Hamas terrorists. Obama masterminded and pushed through U.N. Security Council resolution 2334 that declared it illegal for Israel to be at the Western Wall, not to mention the Temple Mount, Rachel’s Tomb, and the Cave of Machpelah. So what? Really: so what? Jack Lew will tell on Israel?

    Soon enough, Obama was out, and Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, and declared the Jewish communities of Judea and Samria legal.

    And now Biden, Blinken, and their Court Jew, Jack Lew, say it is illegal again? So what? They will pass through the pages of history, as have Obama and Carter. Lew will be back in Manhattan getting a Yeshiva University plaque as Hofjude of the Year. Let him enjoy it while Israel outlives them all and continues populating Judea, Samaria — and Gaza.

    Israel has no truly great leader on the horizon right now. But there is a remarkable tradition in Jewish lore that, before any great leader passes, G-d already has set in place just the right person to succeed him and continue the mission. Our Patriarch Yitzchak was ready to succeed Avraham. Yaakov was in place to succeed Yitzchak. Joshua was positioned to succeed Moshe. Elisha to succeed Eliyahu. And so on.

    New great leaders are ready to lead when they are called. The nation’s challenge: to know where to look and whom to select.

    To receive Rav Fischer’s Weekly Extensive Torah Commentaries or to attend any or all of Rav Fischer’s weekly 60-minute live Zoom classes on the Weekly Torah Portion, the Biblical Prophets, the Mishnah, Rambam Mishneh Torah, or Advanced Judaic Texts, send an email to: shulstuff@yioc.org

    His 10-part exciting and fact-based series of one-hour classes on the Jewish Underground liberation movement (Irgun, Lechi, and Haganah) and the rise of modern Israel can be found here at bit.ly/474Wnyg. In it, he uses historic video clips of Irgun, Lechi, and Haganah actions and decades of past Arab terrorist atrocities, as well as stirring musical selections from the underground and video interviews of participants, to augment data, statistics, maps, and additional historical records to create a fascinating, often gripping, and scholarly enriching educational experience about issues that remain deeply relevant today as Israel engages in an existential war in Gaza against Hamas terrorism.

    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/386374

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  6. So, Russia gets to slow walk its 2+ year meat-grinder war with Ukraine, but Israel has to wrap up Gaza in 6 months? And all because it might “influence” the US election, and the anti-semitic Brits say so. Is Israel sovereign or not?

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  7. Fuck Sunak and Cameron. Of course they don’t care, because it’s not their rotten country that will suffer the consequences if hamas prevails. I hate Britain. Israel is expected to end the war quickly while simultaneously careful not to kill civilians. They are being placed in an impossible situation while fighting for their survival.

    How should Gantz interpret this? As a reminder that, as far as the West is concerned, Israel does not have all the time in the world to finish off Hamas. Neither Sunak nor Cameron particularly cares how this war ends.

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  9. Israel has made big mistakes and lost many soldiers which it did not need to lose. Need to start today as if it was October 8.

    1. Blow down border and force all civilians into Sinai

    2. Clear Gaza of Hamas

    3. Move Fatah out to Palestine (Jordan)

    State clearly to all NO MORE NONSENSE

    GAZA IS JEWISH BY RIGHT

    ONLY JEWS WILL LIVE THERE

    (I remember the commander saying that to his men on the seashore of Gaza and it was INSPIRING to see and hear)

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