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Treating cancer can be difficult and painful, especially when the cancer is resilient and hard to remove. Quitting treatment midcourse in those cases can be deadly because of the near-certainty that the cancer will return.
So it is with Israel’s battle against Hamas, a cancerous threat to Gazans and Israelis alike. Israel cannot allow the terrorist organization to persist anywhere in Gaza, including in the southern city of Rafah. Stopping the war in midcourse with the “permanent cease-fire” urged by Israel’s critics, leaving Hamas untouched in Rafah, would invite the terrorists to regroup, rearm and metastasize, spreading throughout Gaza again.
Yes, Rafah is also a city where more than 1 million Gazans displaced by the war have taken refuge. Israel is devising a plan to allow residents to relocate before the offensive begins. But remember: None of this would be necessary if Hamas simply surrendered. Instead, it continues waging war while hiding behind civilians.
Israel says Hamas has stationed at least four battalions — several thousand fighters — in Rafah. If they are allowed to remain armed and undefeated, Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar would declare a glorious victory, and the clock would immediately begin ticking down on another Oct. 7-style massacre of Jews. For 17 years, Hamas has run Gaza, creating an underground terrorist fortress and little else. Israel tried coexistence. The world knows what that brought about on Oct. 7.
“Let’s be clear,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli officials on Sunday. “If we stop the war now before all of its goals are achieved, it means that Israel has lost the war, and we will not allow that. That is why we must not give in to these pressures, and we will not give in to them.”
On Fox News on Sunday, Netanyahu also forcefully addressed the call last week by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), and endorsed by President Biden, for Israel to hold new elections. “It’s wrong to try to replace the elected leaders of a sister democracy, a staunch American ally, at any time,” Netanyahu said, “but especially during a time of war.”
Exactly. Israel must remain focused on the urgent task at hand: eliminating Hamas. I’m reminded of the letter that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant dispatched, amid the Union Army’s heavy, bloody campaign in 1864, to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Henry Halleck: “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”
Israel has no choice here; if only Biden, Schumer and Israel’s other putative allies in Washington would realize that.
Since the 2000 presidential election, Democrats have been slowly losing their grip on Jewish voters, from Al Gore gaining 79 percent of Jewish support to Biden’s 68 percent in 2020. Plenty more, if they are supporters of Israel, may bolt the party. That would be unfortunate for Biden, whose trip to Israel after the Oct. 7 massacre and military support stirred a surge of support for the president among millions of Americans, Jewish or not, who support Israel.
But Team Biden’s early and strong support for Israel has steadily eroded as worries over anti-Israeli sentiment among Democrats on the left has grown. Yet attacking Netanyahu, as Biden and Schumer have done, may also have political costs at home as Democratic leaders appear to be trying to have it both ways. It’s more likely that the Biden administration’s backing of Israel will further weaken as Democrats panic over the prospect of losing the left, as well as Arab American voters in swing-state Michigan, in the fall.
Hamas must be dug out of Rafah. Israel faces a long counterinsurgency campaign, after Rafah is occupied, as it goes about destroying what it estimates is Hamas’s more than 300 miles of tunnels in Gaza — bigger than the London Underground. Republicans should remain resolute in their support for Israel, and Democrats must realize: They’re either for victory or for restoring some version of Hamas’s 17-year rule — meaning a deadly threat to Israel and perpetual misery for Gazans.
Former defense secretary Robert Gates once wrote of Biden: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” That was in 2014. Now add in the bungled execution of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2022, the Biden administration’s inability to deter Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and now this fecklessness on Israel, with the president using his recent State of the Union address to press Israel to change its war strategy.
That gets you to half a century of “wrong” from Biden and his closest advisers. For once — just once — Biden should reject his unfailingly wrong instincts and stand with Israel, in deeds and in words.
Why Israel must go into Rafah and finish Hamas
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19.03.2024
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Treating cancer can be difficult and painful, especially when the cancer is resilient and hard to remove. Quitting treatment midcourse in those cases can be deadly because of the near-certainty that the cancer will return.
So it is with Israel’s battle against Hamas, a cancerous threat to Gazans and Israelis alike. Israel cannot allow the terrorist organization to persist anywhere in Gaza, including in the southern city of Rafah. Stopping the war in midcourse with the “permanent cease-fire” urged by Israel’s critics, leaving Hamas untouched in Rafah, would invite the terrorists to regroup, rearm and metastasize, spreading throughout Gaza again.
Yes, Rafah is also a city where more than 1 million Gazans displaced by the war have taken refuge. Israel is devising a plan to allow residents to relocate before the offensive begins. But remember: None of this would be necessary if Hamas simply surrendered. Instead, it continues waging war while hiding behind civilians.
Israel says Hamas has stationed at least four battalions — several thousand fighters — in Rafah. If they are allowed to remain armed and undefeated, Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar........
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