Netanyahu Doesn’t Care About World Opinion
Israel's prime minister is defying red lines and humanitarian concerns.
Paul Ronzheimer, the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO, had two separate reports in the latter last evening attacking the Israeli prime minister. Which is striking, given the firm’s rather staunch pro-Israel stance.
“Netanyahu vows to defy Biden’s ‘red line’ on Rafah.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to press ahead with an invasion of the city of Rafah on the southern border of the Gaza Strip in defiance of United States President Joe Biden, who has warned such an offensive would be a “red line.”
Amid signs of increasing frustration with Netanyahu, the U.S. president told MSNBC on Saturday that he opposed an escalation of the conflict into Rafah, and that he could not accept “30,000 more Palestinians dead.”
Relief organizations have warned that an attack on Rafah on the border with Egypt — now a refuge for about half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population — would result in widespread civilian casualties. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it would be “a humanitarian catastrophe.”
When asked on Sunday whether Israeli forces would move into Rafah, Netanyahu replied: “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.” The prime minister was referring to the murderous Hamas raid that killed more than 1,160 people in Israel and triggered the war.
Without naming them, Netanyahu claimed he had the tacit support of several Arab leaders for driving ahead with the onslaught against Hamas.
“They understand that, and even agree with it quietly,” he said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company. “They understand Hamas is part of the Iranian terror axis.”
[…]
Israel’s prime minister also doubled down on his rejection of the possibility of a Palestinian state — a topic that pits Israel against most of the rest of the world.
“The positions that I espouse are supported by the overwhelming majority of Israelis who say to you after October 7: ‘We don’t want to see a Palestinian state,’” he said.
Netanyahu also directly addressed criticism from Biden, who has said the Israeli leader is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.”
Netanyahu hit back, saying while he didn’t know “exactly what the president meant,” if Biden was saying he was contravening the wishes or interests of Israel, he was “wrong on both counts.”
“[The Israeli people] also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats a Palestinian state. That is something that they agree on,” Netanyahu said.
When asked about the European view that there cannot be peace without a two-state solution, Netanyahu replied: “Yeah, they would say it. But they don’t understand that the reason we don’t have peace is not because the Palestinians don’t have a state. It’s because the Jews have a state. And in fact, the Palestinians have not brought themselves to recognize and accept the Jewish state.”
Even in the case of what he described as a change of Palestinian “leadership” and “culture,” Netanyahu still insisted Israel should have full security control of all Arab territory west of the River Jordan.
Still, Israel’s leader was careful in his criticism of his American counterpart, and even more circumspect when asked whether he would prefer Republican candidate Donald Trump. “The last thing I want to do is enter the American political arena,” he said.
For Biden it’s becoming increasingly important not to alienate the left wing of the Democratic Party in the run-up to the U.S. election in November. At the same time, polling indicates Israel continues to enjoy widespread support among U.S. voters.
“Netanyahu denies Palestinians are starving“
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied people are starving in Gaza and blamed Hamas for the lack of humanitarian aid entering the occupied territory.
Hunger and malnutrition are widespread in the Gaza Strip. The United Nations warns that famine is imminent, with the organization’s expert on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, accusing Israel of starving Gazans deliberately. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s has said people in Gaza are closer to dying than to living.
Responding to these claims, Netanyahu said: “We don’t have that kind of information. That’s not the information we have. And we monitor it closely.”
“More importantly, it’s not our policy. Our policies are to put in as much humanitarian aid as we could,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company.
The U.N. has determined that one in six children under the age of two in northern Gaza are suffering acute malnutrition and emaciation. The World Health Organization has also said children are starving to death in northern Gaza.
[…]
Netanyahu said he had suggested a maritime route for aid from Cyprus in a conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden two weeks after the war began, countering assertions Israel has resisted sea-borne aid.
Asked why more aid isn’t reaching Gaza by land, Netanyahu said: “Hamas is coming at gunpoint and stealing the food.
“Humanitarian deaths and starvation is, for us, it’s a tragedy. For them, it’s a strategy. They think that this will help them place more pressure on Israel to stop the war, leave them in place so they can repeat the October 7 massacre.”
Oddly, the link to the Axel Springer interview is actually to the first of the two POLITICO reports.
Aside from the clickbait headlines, there’s no obvious reason to gin up two reports from one interview. Still, they draw attention to the obvious tensions between Netanyahu—and Israel’s Gaza policy writ large—and the Biden administration’s preferences and big parts of American and Western public opinion. Netanyahu is, to say the least, not a likable fellow and he doesn’t bother to sugar coat his policies for the latter audience.
At the end of the day, he prioritizes Israeli security and, frankly, his own continuance in power, over all other considerations. To a large degree, that’s understandable. Still, while Hamas is surely doing its best to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties—just as it did Israeli civilian casualties on October 7—the world is naturally going to blame Israel for the sheer scale of them. This is especially the case given that unclear connection between the havoc being wreaked in Gaza and the ostensible war aim of rooting out Hamas for good.
I’ve believed from the start that people were wildly over-estimating the ability of the United States to control Netanyahu.
That we have maintained any influence at all over this self-serving bastard is down to Biden’s early support. Absent that Bibi would have simply pushed Gazans into the Sinai. I don’t know that anything is off the table for this man, maybe excluding nukes, then again, maybe not. The anger directed at Biden is misplaced and unjust. Early (almost immediate) accusations of ‘genocide’ showed a failure of imagination, because genocide, the real thing, might well have occurred.
In movies you see hostage negotiators bring in the bad guy’s wife to try and talk him down. That’s us: the last link Netanyahu had to any restraint.
And lest we be too self-righteous, the 1200 raped, mutilated and murdered Israeli victims of Hamas adjusted for population would be about 45,000 Americans. We lost 3000 on 9-11, and invaded Afghanistan with the support of all our friends and allies, then threw in Iraq because, hell, why not?
As I’ve said from Day One, this is a fucking tragedy and people who think ‘calling’ for this or that facile solution, do not know who and what they’re dealing with.
Just as the rest of the world can love and respect the American people but deem Donald Trump an irredeemable asshole whose policies and priorities are dangerously wrong, the same can be said of the Israeli people and Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu believes he can dismiss the concerns of Biden and the rest of the western world…let’s see him do it without our weapons and money. (And his “I wouldn’t get involved in American politics” is pure BS. He stood in front of Congress and lectured then President Obama to raucous cheers from GOPer reps. No one plays the “if you don’t like ME you don’t like Israel” card better than Netanyahu.)
Fixed it for you.
Imagine that the GOP won’t win the 2024 elections (which is at least a 50-50 proposition). In that case, he will have significantly, perhaps irretrievably hurt Israel’s standing with its single most important ally. That’s pretty far removed from prioritizing Israel’s security.
Netanyahu is looking out for himself. And he believes his best bet is to maintain support from the most radical elements in Israeli society as Trump takes over from Biden later this year.
He doesn’t care that if that fails, Israel will be royally fucked. Not just in the longer term (which is all but unavoidable if a country goes full fascist), but in the short term, too.
ETA:
Perhaps not so striking if one (justly) recognizes that Netanyahu is bad for Israel.
Bibi says:
Ok. Didn’t it happen largely because the guy in charge of security was pursuing Biblical fantasies in the West Bank, and left the south of the country undefended and vulnerable?
So, the first measure to insure something like October 7 never happens again, would be to remove that incompetent moron from his post. Wouldn’t it?
@Kathy:
In a rational world, yes. In this one, I think Netanyahu believes that he can restore his political future, and his legacy, by removing the Palestinians from Gaza and de facto annexing Gaza to Israel. And he will probably succeed.
As I keep pointing out, it’s not just Netanyahu. He’s extremely unpopular in Israel, but the goals of destroying Hamas and opposing an independent Palestinian state are not.
One can’t ignore Israeli public opinion here and just whine about Bibi as if he is the only person driving the bus. There is, after all, a unity government and a war cabinet running the war. If what Bibi was doing was contrary to the unity government and a majority of the Israeli’s, he’d be out in a heartbeat.
10/7 was a systemic shock to Israeli society, and people in the West need to deal with the fact that the fundamentals have changed. Changing the government’s behavior requires convincing not only the leadership to take a different approach but also the Israeli people. Ultimatums are not going to do either.
And world opinion – Israel is accustomed to being singled out, and it knew outside pressure would increasingly mount from the first day of the conflict.
Netanyahu cares about Israeli security like Trump cares about American security. So Netanyahu does not give a damn about Israeli security.
Netanyahu has made Israel less secure than ever. He has antagonized allies, alienated wide swaths of the West, helped incite the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, deliberately funded and boosted Hamas to undermine Palestinian moderates, tried to destroy the independence of the Israeli judisrcy, supported terrorism in the West Bank, and left Israel a sitting duck for the 7 Oct attacks that decimated the Israeli peace movement.
If it turned out Netanyahu were an Iranian psy op designed to destroy Israel from within, his choices would make much more sense.
But, it is also Israel’s right to undermine its own security by co-signing Netanyahu’s victim-mentality intransigence, just as the US will own the self-defeating consequences of a second Trump term should we go down the path of rightwing extremism and narcissistic retribution.
It’s not Americans’ job to save Israelis and Palestinians from their own bad decisions, and vice versa. Authoritarianism, fascism, and stubborn far right stupidity have consequences.
As I commented about the Econtalk with Micheal Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, historically, when Israel has acceded to US demands in regards to dealing with threats, they end up weaker in later negotiations. When they do what is needed, the US and European “experts” respect them. So giving into Biden isn’t a winning strategy.
In the end, Israel can release the video footage of the October 7th attacks that everyone who has seen it say altered their lives.
And we have this from a September Pew Report
Basically, Arab-Israeli sentiment has fallen the most to be only a few points more than Jewish-Israelis, which has also declined.
Who thinks the opinion has gone up since October?
@DK:
It’s also not Americans’ job to support Israel while it does so. Our influence is limited — contrary to the beliefs of a somewhat disturbing number of kids on the left, Biden cannot declare a ceasefire, or call upon the elder gods to stop the fighting, or otherwise solve the entire problem.
But, we can stop giving aid and support to Israel.
And the plan Biden announced at the State of the Union to put US troops at risk with a pier delivering aid… I do not trust Hamas to not try to drag the US into this, and dead Americans is going to require a response, and that’s going to make things worse. Maybe we can get the French to do it.
@Andy:
In the aftermath of Oct. 7, the possibility of any sort of Palestinian state is a hard reject in Israeli public opinion. Na ga hoppen, regardless how popular the idea is outside of Israel.
@charontwo:
The choice for Israel, is a Palestinian state or Israel as a pariah state. Risks for Israel either way.
Biden will likely be the last Dem president that will be considered a strong supporter of Israel. If trump is the next president (shudder), he’s all about transactional diplomacy and the Saudis’ have already made a $2B deposit. Bibi can’t count on the rest of the R’s either, as the party has retreated to isolationism similar to the 1930’s.
@Gustopher:
I think Israel has an extensive weapons industry. I know they’ve made some of their own fighter jets, tanks, artillery, small arms, ammunition, drones*, etc. Aside from that, they’re not fighting a stronger enemy that poses an immediate existential threat, or who can even take and much less hold territory.
So, nothing the US can do will result in a ceasefire if Bibi et. al. don’t want one. And America has even less influence over Hamas.
Biden could send troops to drive the Israelis out of Gaza, and to act as peacekeepers on a forced cease fire. Aside the fact that Israel has nukes, the chances of that happening are so low as to require an atomic fore microscope to make them out.
*As I recall, it was Israel that first developed drones for battlefield uses, mostly for surveillance at first.
@Kathy:
All the more reason why we don’t have to be involved.
I can think of no likely US involvement that does not make things worse.
We’ve been air dropping expired MREs and killed five people when a parachute didn’t open.
(Had we killed a Hamas leader by dropping a crate of expired, non-Halal MREs on his head from 2,000ft, I would be cheering. Or if we were way off and got Netanyahu.)
@Gustopher:
To what end?
The so-called “pro-Palestinian” movement is as good as Bibi at alienating allies. It has made a notable dent in US support for Israel, assisted by Israel’s missteps, but this still has not created enough political space for Biden to fully break with Israel without significant backlash that could aid Trump or the 2028 Rethugliklan nominee.
In addition to Trumpism Part II’s disastrous effects on Americans, Europeans, and Western democracy, a renewed MAGA-Netanyahu alliance would be significantly worse for Palestinians and Israelis — but great for Bibi. No doubt the evil Netanyahu like the Nazi Putin is praying for Trump’s return.
If Biden or a Democratic successor did have the wherewithal to abandon Israel in the next several years, it’s not all clear this shift would change Israel’s policy or save Palestinian lives.
One, Israel aid is already stalled in Congress, yet the Gaza campaign continues apace. Israel may not need additional US aid to wage war its current war in Gaza and future war the West Bank.
Two, there is a strong possibility that the US cutting off support would destroy the limited leverage and influence Americans have inside Israel. The outcome could be an Israel that is more illiberal, extreme and violent.
There is a childish notion on the left that Biden could stop Israel’s war machine by picking up the phone and telling Bibi “No more aid.” I doubt you or anyone here agrees it’s so simple. ‘Just pick up the phone’ IR is not a real thing.
American power is awesome but not unlimited. Our allies and enemies have agency, and their own priorities and powers.
@DK:
I don’t that’s a likely outcome. I don’t think we have nearly the amount of leverage that we think we do with this relationship. Netanyahu is not ordering mass slaughter either because he doesn’t want to, or he fears the internal backlash to the images, or he’s decided that simply starving Gazans is an easier way to get the same result.
I do think that having the US pull away may cause the rest of the unity government to pull away from Netanyahu, as losing American support has been unthinkable.
As far as internal US politics goes — Republicans will be claiming Biden is weak on Israel no matter what he does, unless he gives a national address with the skull of a dead Palestinian child on his desk, so I don’t think it matters. (And if he did have the skull of a Palestinian child on his desk, they would claim he’s a war monger, and a pedophile, and the head of the Biden Crime Family, etc… once the attacks lose all relationship to reality, I think it frees Biden’s hands in a damned if you do or damned if you don’t sort of way)
Also, we give a lot more than just military aid. Hold up all of it, as in the end, money is fungible and anything we give them means that they can put more into the “war” effort. Some of this aid is outside the President’s discretion, but I’m ok with even just a delay as that works its way through the courts — the target for the message is the rest of the Israeli cabinet. (Plus a recent precedent reaffirming the limits of the Presidency as we near a possible second Trump administration seems like a good idea)
Carrots aren’t working. It’s time to at least stop giving carrots, or give fewer carrots. I don’t think we can actually get to the stick.
I would just add that while Netanyahu has widespread support in Israel he has a major part in shaping Israeli opinion. He is telling people that Gaza is not starving, Hamas would take the food anyway and that they can find and kill all of Hamas so that 10/7 never occurs again. Israelis are accepting and believing that message. I wonder what kind of support current policies would be if he sent out the following messages… Some in Gaza are starving and we know Hamas is well stocked in supplies already but we want to punish all Palestinians. We cant find and kill all of Hamas since we dont know where they are. We could kill hundreds of thousands and not kill all of Hamas. We have killed a lot of their leadership but now we are just hoping when we drop bombs. If we really dont want another 10/7 we should do what we should have done all along and keep a strong military presence around Gaza since we know Hamas are terrorists dedicated to killing Jews. This means we will need to slow down or halt the settlements.
Steve
@Gustopher:
It might be a clarifying moment for progressives were they to see Hamas try to blow up the dock we build to feed their people. Hamas is evil. This war, this ongoing tragedy is their fault. They pulled the trigger. They committed the murders. They raped. They mutilated. They deliberately hid behind civilians, the people they pretend to care about. Hamas fed Gazans to the Israelis. And yes, Netanyahu and the fucking settlers and their pols score an ‘assist.’ They sure as hell helped set the stage.
US media did a terrible disservice to the American people by covering up the raw footage of what Hamas did. The Left did a politically stupid, emotional thing by instantly siding against Israel. Purely as a matter of psychology, when your friend has been traumatized, blaming him for his rage, and his insistence never to be victimized again, is stupid. All you’re doing then is telling him to go rogue. But of course college kids raised on BDS and reflexive anti-Americanism along with their abject ignorance of history, not to mention psychology, had them leaping to defend the ‘underdog.’
I’m glad to see more people here acknowledging that it is not as simple as a cease fire, or as simple as threatening Israel. Might have been nice if they’d figured that out months ago, rather than telling me what a bad, bad man I am for pointing it out. But I welcome converts.
I’ll repeat. This is a fucking tragedy without any kind of obvious solution. Anyone who thought we could snap our fingers and stop this was naive. There were and still are, worse possibilities than even this horrific mess. Israel has killed 30,000 Gazans and that is what in Middle East terms, is called restraint. Restraint brought to you by the slim majority of Israelis still able to listen to their conscience, and the courage and competence of Joe Biden.
Of course not.
@Michael Reynolds:
That was more about your ugly habit of false antisemitism accusations hurled at anyone who points out Israel’s many missteps, criticizes Israel’s violent extremism and religious fanatic terrorism, or questions blindly unconditional US support of Netanyahu.
You can call for a ceasefire and also know that getting there won’t be simple as Biden making a phone call. That’s doesn’t require a contradiction in position. If criticism of the US policy towards Israel is tempering here and elsewhere, it’s because pro-Israel Americans like Biden finally figured out he needs to be more vocal about opposing Netanyahu, pushing for humanitarian aid, and trying to broker a ceasefire. That’s the main difference between now and months ago.
So you might well still be a terrible person maybe, don’t break a bone in the rush to nail yourself to that undeserved cross 🙂
@Gustopher:
The MRE’s weren’t expired, and the last time I checked, the failed parachute wasn’t from a US airdrop, although that may have changed.
@Kathy:
The US and Israel have several advanced weapons co-development projects. Unlike, for instance, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi, and most every country we merely export weapons to. Israel is different because it is a partner like a small handful of other close allies. The projects with Israel – at least those that are known to the public, are all related to air defense and include the Iron Dome, the Arrow ABM system, Iron Beam – a system like the Iron Dome intended to use lasers instead of missiles, and a couple of others. These have been very important in expanding US capabilities.
@Sleeping Dog:
Even with all that’s happened so far in this war, Israel still has the support of the vast majority of the American people. If Democrats want to dump Israel, it would politically be a very stupid move.
@Michael Reynolds:
One of the unique tragedies of this war is that no one wants to allow civilians to escape the conflict. Urban warfare always comes with a high civilian toll, and the toll is going to be higher when civilians are purposely trapped in the conflict zone.
This war is unique compared to any recent urban conflict in that not only have civilians not fled, they’ve not been able to flee, or even allow the choice. And everyone agrees they should not be able to flee, even those, like the dumb BDS college kids you mention, who claim to care about them.
– Hamas does not want them to leave – they want their human shields and martyrs.
– Israel doesn’t want anyone crossing its borders but would probably be fine if civilians left.
– Egypt and the rest of the Arab world are united in not wanting to give refuge to one single Palestinian from Gaza. Egypt rolled part of its army to the border and threatened to gun down anyone from Gaza who tried to cross. You don’t hear the BDS crowd talk about that – ever.
– No Western government wants to accept them as refugees.
Lefties and BDS types in the US try to take the moral high ground by offering the argument that they can’t leave because Israel will never allow them to return. While that is theoretically possible, it’s far from certain, and the fact remains that argument trades the theoretical potential of a permanent exile for the certainty of the horrors of urban warfare under Hamas rule. Regardless, what right do BDS lefties have to make that choice?
Just about everyone, except me and a handful of others, it seems, agree that Palestinians in Gaza are better off being trapped in a brutal, existential urban war than being allowed to have the choice to flee. Cynical as fuck.
@Michael Reynolds:
Hamas may be horrible, but they didn’t come out of nowhere. They gained power because of conditions in Gaza, and held power because Israel propped them up.
If you keep millions of people in the conditions of a blockaded Gaza for decades, you are going to have a massacre when you let your guard down. Hamas may have done the killing, but the Israeli government made it inevitable.
If you throw lawn darts up in the air, is it the fault of gravity that you get stabbed, or is it your own fault?
Israel is an oppressor state that keeps 1/3 of the people in its borders as non-citizens who have no rights. For decades the policy of the Israeli government has been to periodically “mow the lawn”, bomb the shit out of Gaza, keep it under a brutal blockade and sanctions regime, and steal land in the West Bank. Every Israeli citizen benefits from this oppression.
And, if we excuse Israeli government for their response because 1200 of their preferred people got killed, does that mean we should excuse the Palestinians if they kill 750,000 Israeli citizens? (Using the current exchange rate of 25-30 vengeance killings for each person killed, and not bothering to do the math. If we went by percentage of population, calculations would be different of course)
In summary:
Hamas: not good, must be destroyed.
The State of Israel: not good, must be destroyed. I hope that there can be a better State of Israel, but they have to dismantle the oppressor state apparatus.
@Andy: “Regardless, what right do BDS lefties have to make that choice?”
Wow, those college kids sure are powerful! Imagine that they are making the choice for Gazans to stay in Gaza, and because of that the Gazans are forced to stay! It’s like the only people with any agency is a handful of young people who disagree with your politics. Must be hard to be as intelligent and experienced in the world as you, and yet find yourself stymied by the political might of a couple hundred sophomores.
@Michael Reynolds: “It might be a clarifying moment for progressives were they to see Hamas try to blow up the dock we build to feed their people.”
It might also be a clarifying moment if the leader of Hamas went on TV and ripped off his Ethan Hunt-style mask to reveal the decaying face of the 150 year-old Hitler. Or maybe even the Red Skull.
Fiction is generally far more satisfying than real life in this way…
@wr:
If you had bothered actually to read my full comment, you would have noticed that the bulk of my ire is focused on governments who are the ones actually trapping Gazans, not dumb and largely useful idiots in the US that you align with politically who happen to be enablers – enablers which do happen to be an influential force in Democratic politics and are seeming to have some effect on the administration.
And naturally, your contribution here is to complain about me criticizing your ideological allies and useful idiots while ignoring the bigger issues raised about them and most every government supporting policies that that trap Gazans in a war zone.
@Andy: “And naturally, your contribution here is to complain about me criticizing your ideological allies”
Of course you think they’re my ideological allies. After all, I committed the heresy of expressing the idea that they should be allowed to hold a different opinion than yours, so I must agree with them.
And you were horrified that “lefties” in the US were trying to force their “choice” on the poeple of Gaza, as if a bunch of college sophomores had any power here.
And honestly, sorry if you think I’m not concerned about the same things as you, but I’m getting pretty tired of the “I don’t have a solution for this crisis, but I am the only one bold and honest enough to say I don’t have a solution so everyone should shut up and listen to me” caucus.
Andy- Its a big world so I am sure someone somewhere in the US claimed that people should not be allowed to leave Gaza. However, what i have read is people saying they should not be forced to leave. That they shouldn’t have to leave because Israel is bombing everything. As to the rest of the world for sure no one wants them. As far as Israel letting them back if they leave you are downright Pollyanna-ish. No Netanyahu lead govt, or similar, would let them come back if they could stop it. Last, in every war in recorded history some of the civilians stay behind no matter the circumstances. Best you can hope for is that offered the chance to leave some would be able and willing to do so but you would still have people left.
Steve
@Michael Reynolds: You see, here is where you lose me, you keep referring the rape violence that was perpetrated and though the UN commission (unlike the NYT) was able to corroborate (barely) some of the actions, it has not been shown that Hamas, as evil as they are, was behind a vast plan to use rape as a weapon nor we know how common or rare it was and how many terrorists were involved. However, what has been shown is that the Israel government and its citizens have knowingly planted false stories on the matter, and you know this, and yet you keep at it, for who knows what reason. To be clear, one rape is one rape too many, and sadly, a common weapon of war, but my sense is that Israel is using the allegations to inflame passions much like Kuwait did back then, and either you are falling for the propaganda or purposefully peddling it. Since you don’t strike as naive, then probably the latter which why you lose so many people here. At least you are not pushing the beheading babies garbage, maybe that’s a bridge too far.