For Hamas, Survival Is Victory
Plus: The virtue of cheer in grave times.
Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza seems on the brink of major escalation, with last-ditch ceasefire talks in Egypt in danger of collapse and Israel openly making preparations for its ground invasion of Rafah. Our military affairs fellow Will Selber has thoughts below. Happy Monday.
Doha’s Ghosts Hover Over Gaza
Over the last month, President Biden pressured both Hamas and Israel to make a second hostage deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled most of his forces out of Gaza following the tragic World Central Kitchen strike and increased humanitarian aid. Due to pressure from Biden, Qatar “is open” to kicking Hamas’s leadership out of their country.
Then there were the reports this weekend that Israel had given Hamas a one-week ultimatum: agree to their latest terms, or Israel would finally commence its Rafah operation. CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to Doha to conduct an emergency meeting with the Qatari Prime Minister as the deal appeared to be “near collapse.”
While we all wait to see how this fluid situation unfolds, it’s important to remember our last experience in “helping” our allies negotiate with a terrorist organization.
During America’s final year in Afghanistan, I spoke with hundreds of senior Afghan officials, generals, activists, and ordinary soldiers, all fighting on the front lines of the war on terrorism. They all thought President Donald Trump’s ill-fated Doha agreement was a mistake.
That’s because it was a surrender agreement.
We excluded our Afghan allies from our negotiations with the Taliban, as we did with our South Vietnamese allies. We forced our Afghan allies to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000 Afghan soldiers. Nearly all of these Taliban prisoners returned to the battlefield. During the Taliban’s final blitzkrieg, they freed Islamic State terrorists who killed 13 American service members at Abbey Gate.
We prevented our Afghan allies from launching offensive operations but promised them help fighting an “active defense” campaign. In turn, the Taliban launched a brutal assassination campaign that targeted Afghan Air Force pilots, commandos, activists, and journalists.
The Taliban promised they wouldn’t attack U.S. forces as we “retrograded” from the country. In turn, the Taliban launched indirect fire attacks on our bases, but we fooled ourselves into believing these were “rogue Taliban elements.”
We fooled ourselves into believing there wasn’t a military solution to the conflict. The Taliban had one and executed it with stunning effectiveness. Their Pakistani ISI allies remained on the battlefield, ensuring their proxies were victorious.
In essence, like we did in Vietnam, we pressured our Afghan allies into a bad deal that led to their demise.
Why did we fundamentally misunderstand our enemy’s intent when they told us repeatedly they were not interested in forming an inclusive government with our Afghan allies?
“We often assume our adversaries share our values, but they do not,” Sara Harmouch, a Lebanese American terrorism expert, told The Bulwark. “However, they understand how to exploit our values against us, having studied us closely.”
It’s important to remind ourselves that terrorist organizations do not have our values, even if we wish they did. This is critical as we enter a make-or-break moment in Hamas’s war with Israel. While the situation remains fluid, it seems Hamas will not accept Israel’s deal, which Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called “extraordinarily generous.” In response, they are killing Israeli soldiers with attacks from Rafah.
Hamas wants an explicit end to the war in return for fewer than 40 hostages. But that’s likely a bridge too far for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Why? Because Hamas has repeatedly told the world they intend to continue launching pogroms like the one on October 7 until Israel is wiped off the map.
Moreover, Israel has played this game before. In 2011, Israel exchanged 1,000 prisoners for one hostage, Gilad Shilat. Yahya Sinwar, the October 7 attack mastermind, was released in that exchange. That deal and others like it gave Hamas time and space to make the most extensive tunnel network in modern military history. Those tunnels are the reason why this campaign has proven so bloody.
Many people understandably blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for this predicament, as we blamed Afghan Presidents Ashraf Ghani and Hamid Karzai before him. Others blame the IDF for launching a poorly designed campaign, as the DoD did with Ukraine’s “failed” counter-offensive.
While both Netanyahu and the IDF have made mistakes, they are not Hamas. We sometimes forget this when our allies don’t act as we want. But they often understand our shared enemies better than we do because they live in the neighborhood and listen and study them intensely, something we routinely fail to do.
Hamas isn’t interested in peace. They’re interested in surviving this episode, claiming victory, and relaunching more pogroms.
A deal might be salvageable if we pressure the Israelis into making it, but such a deal is a mirage and will not lead to peace.
Why?
Because Hamas, like the Taliban, is a terrorist organization, and they don’t share our values. They want to kill Jews, regardless of what we offer them. Even the most attractive aid package will not prevent them from being a genocidal terrorist organization.
—Will Selber
Let’s Go Knicks
When I went to sleep last night, I was undecided between two topics for this morning newsletter: the altogether farcical auditions to be selected Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate, and the often farcical but also disturbing protests on college campuses. Then I woke up this morning to reports that Israel had ordered an evacuation in Rafah as a possible prelude to a major ground operation and that Vladimir Putin had ordered nuclear-weapon drills as he continues his attempt to gobble up Ukraine. And somehow my planned topics seemed a little . . . inconsequential.
Instead, I thought of a comment Fred Kagan made, almost in passing, in our recent conversation on Ukraine: We’re in a world at war, and we don’t really want to come to grips with that fact.
This is understandable. A peaceful world is a wonderful thing. Which is why some of us have been so exercised by the refusal of many to come to grips with the fact that it’s the U.S.-led world order that has made possible the relative peace of the last 75 years.
A reasonably stable and successful liberal democracy is also a wonderful thing. Which is why some of us have been so exercised by the fact that the American people—half of them, at least—don’t really want to come to grips with the fact that authoritarianism is a clear and present danger here at home.
And we don’t quite want to come to grips with the fact that wishing for a world at peace and enjoying life in a liberal democracy, aren’t the same as establishing peace or securing liberal democracy.
These are the big tasks before us.
On the other hand, for most of us life can’t and shouldn’t be all big tasks. Life goes on, in its mundane and varied ways. And that’s fine. We’re allowed, even with storm clouds of great moment gathering, to be interested in the sad fate of Cricket, the wirehaired pointer who died too young—and we’re allowed to laugh at this from Saturday Night Live. We’re allowed to turn away from Ukraine and Trump, and follow the campus protests and consider the implications for our colleges and our politics. (See in this context today’s excellent piece by A. B. Stoddard.)
Some of us are even allowed to notice that the New York Knicks are moving ahead in the NBA playoffs. Could this be the year they recapitulate the glories of my youth, the championship seasons of 1970 and 1973? Could this be the year they win an NBA crown for the first time in five decades?
Is it alright to think about sports in a sober time? Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought so, in an even more serious time.
In January 1942, a month after Pearl Harbor, baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis sent Roosevelt a handwritten letter asking if major league baseball should keep on operating during the war.
FDR answered the next day. Emphasizing that he was offering only his personal opinion, not a government diktat he said he was for continuing to play ball. “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going,” Roosevelt wrote. The American people, the president argued, “ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.”
We’re not now facing anything like World War II, and I don’t mean to exaggerate the gravity of the moment before us. Still. With democracy at risk at home and a world at war, these are serious times, which require us to be more serious than we’ve been in quite a while.
But first I do want to say, before tonight’s game with the Pacers (and with all due respect to my colleague Tim Miller and his revered Nikola Jokic): Let’s Go Knicks!
—William Kristol
Catching up . . .
Israeli military warns thousands in Rafah to evacuate: New York Times
Trump’s criminal trial speeds along, with few key witnesses remaining: New York Times
Fewer black Americans plan to vote in 2024, Post-Ipsos poll finds: Washington Post
Columbia cancels commencement amid campus protests: Axios
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff to meet with Jewish college students at White House: Politico
Quick Hits: Where’s the Trump Clan?
There’s an interesting split-screen to be seen at Trump’s New York trial. A substantial portion of Trump’s legal defense rests on painting an image of the former president as doting family man—so that his lawyers can argue the payments made to Stormy Daniels weren’t about protecting his election chances, but rather sparing pain for his wife and children.
This dynamic was on clear display during Friday testimony from Trump’s longtime aide Hope Hicks. The prosecution asked searching questions about how Trump felt news of the payoff would affect his political chances: “Mr. Trump’s opinion,” Hicks responded, was that “it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”
Meanwhile, defense lawyers zeroed in on the family-front damage the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal stories would have done in their cross-examination, and Hicks spoke to that too: “President Trump really values Mrs. Trump’s opinion, and she doesn’t weigh in all the time, but when she does, it’s really meaningful to him. And, you know, he really, really respects what she has to say. So I think he was just concerned about what her perception of this would be.”
All this highlights the oddity of the fact that, except for a visit from second son Eric, Trump’s family has been absent from the courtroom throughout his trial. Politico notes this morning:
In the opening weeks of Trump’s criminal hush money trial, the former president has attempted to brandish his family-man bonafides amid a slew of salacious testimony.
First, he pleaded with the judge to allow his attendance at his son Barron’s high school graduation later this month, a concession Justice Juan Merchan finally made last week (“Forced to miss my son’s graduation,” read the attendant fundraising email). Then, he lamented not being able to celebrate his wife Melania’s birthday with her, saying nothing of the fact that she could have jetted to see him (“I wish I could be with my lovely wife on her birthday, but instead, a CROOKED prosecutor has me STUCK IN A COURTROOM!” that solicitation read.) And then, as the doting grandfather, Trump posted to Truth Social a photo of him with his grandchildren next to a golf cart, all of them dressed in white.
“With Donald, everything is transactional, including his family relationships,” said David Cay Johnston, the Trump biographer and investigative journalist. “Lots of people have had their spouses who know they’re going to be humiliated show up in court. But not Donald.”
Cheap Shots
Political damage control is more art than science:
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Noem narrated the audiobook!! How is that not brought up any time she acts surprised at what is in her AUTOBIOGRAPHY?!
The conceit that the American President, any American President, is going to solve a geopolitical crisis that is 7 decades old is laughable.
I was watching some news coverage of Trump's trial this morning. I keep coming back to a comment someone posted on social media: Donald Trump cheated on his first wife with his second wife. He cheated on his second wife with his third wife. He cheated on his third wife with a Playboy model mistress. Then he cheated on the mistress in a one night stand with a porn star. What a guy.