Here’s what we know about Israel.
It has been, like the United States, a bitterly divided nation. But not now. In the mutual interest of their survival, Israelis are united. The political parties that otherwise oppose almost everything Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands for have come together with their adversary in the face of this common threat.
Eventually there will be recriminations because, as with the Yom Kippur war exactly 50 years ago, the Israelis were caught flat-footed. Israel’s intelligence services clearly failed to see what was coming, and the government’s preparations for the defense of its homeland were painfully poor. But there’s no time for that now. They have to win this war.
Here’s what we know about Hamas.
It has proved itself to be not just a potent force, but a sophisticated force.
Its militants not only staged their surprise attack from land, sea, and air, but they even successfully attacked Israel’s internet, which made coordination on the ground more confusing. Intelligence estimates are that although Hamas has fired several thousand rockets in the first 24 hours of the war, it has more than a hundred thousand stockpiled to keep the war going. What I learned from people the times I covered Gaza was that not all of its two million inhabitants support the ideology of the terror group that runs it. But thanks to contributions from its benefactors, Hamas provides food and medicine and other support that citizens can’t get anywhere else. Given the choice between a more moderate ideology and a meal on the dinner table, people will go for the meal every time.
What’s more, as Israelis have banded together, it probably is true on the Palestinian side too. Although the issues are complex, the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank believe that under Israeli control, they are second class citizens. The longer that a population feels oppressed and occupied, the more radical they themselves become.
Given the imbalance in military might, the Israelis almost certainly will defeat their enemy. Netanyahu promised on television last night, “We will turn all the places that Hamas hides in and operates from into rubble.” But he also told his citizens, “We will win but the price will be heavy.”
It will be heavy for both sides.
Already, the death toll in Israel is in the hundreds, injuries reportedly in the thousands, and it’s still rising as you read this. At least several dozen Israeli soldiers and civilians— what Israel’s spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, the IDF, called “a significant number”— have been captured and taken to Gaza and now are hostages. There is no telling what is happening to these people, or whether all of them will ever be freed to return to their homes. What we do know is that Hamas says they are spread out throughout Gaza. And that the history of hostages in the hands of Hamas is ugly.
That will complicate retribution for Israel. Historically Israelis are like Americans. Their mantra in a war is, no man left behind. The military spokesman said yesterday, “I can assure you that the IDF will be focused on getting each and every Israeli back.” They might pay any price. I once covered an exchange where Israel gave up more to get back the bodies of captured soldiers than their enemy gave up to get their people back alive. If Israel has any hope of getting hostages back alive from their captors, an Israeli incursion on the ground in Gaza will likely take the welfare of those hostages into account.
An incursion also would be shaped by a hard fact of urban warfare: when an army goes into an enemy’s neighborhood, it can lose its advantage. It’s the people of the neighborhood who know every safe house, every alleyway, every arms cache, every ally. The advantage is with the fighters on their own home turf. And in a territory with some of the most densely packed populations on earth, Israel’s risks will be even bigger.
In the case of Hamas, it has invited fire and fury on itself.
There hasn’t yet been a clash between the terror group and the Israeli Defense Forces where the casualties on the Palestinian side weren’t higher, usually much higher. But at the same time, an Israeli incursion could end up swelling Hamas’s ranks. It is in situations like this that terrorist groups do their recruiting. They give power to young men who’ve lost their home and have no job and scrounge for food and feel no purpose. They become their family.
This already is the most explosive war in the region in fifty years. In that time, thousands of citizens on both sides have been killed and many more injured. But it had been a slow-simmering conflict. It isn’t any more.
Yesterday President Biden told Netanyahu, “We stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the government and people of Israel.” But Hamas has its own backers— Iran and Hezbollah, and donors from the Gulf— and with their help, it might keep the fight alive for a long time. No one can be certain about that. But the one thing that does seem certain is that for years to come now, Israel will not be the same. As the Israeli defense minister put it, “What was before will be no more.”
Some people might find it hard to take sides. But here’s some help. One side, for all its flaws, is the only democracy in that whole part of the world, while the other side still officially advocates pushing the Jews into the sea. One side, in the interest of decapitating the terror group, will inevitably kill civilians too, but the other side has shot civilians in their cars and pulled them from their homes and now holds them hostage. If those are the choices, it shouldn’t be hard at all.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Shame on those who created Israel in the midst of their blood enemies with the Balfour Declaration in 1948 and expect anything less than endless war. We should have given them Texas!
Since Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel in 1948, the rest of the world has had to watch, often in horror, as the centuries-old religious conflicts continue. The first Jewish state in 2000 years merely provided a clear bullseye for those who "hate" the Jewish-now Israelis. Every "terror organization" on the planet will rush to take part in punishing them for daring to exist. Blame the British, if you wish, for ultimately closing out Palestine and the Palestinian people from having a State of their own. Both they and the Jewish people had clear historic claim to the area. I'm not able to see a definative "right" or "wrong". The spoils of war are seldom a basis for peaceful co-existence. As for 'no man left behind' the Americans pointedly dropped that from our operating principles when we skulked out of Afghanistan; also leaving a treasure trove of weaponry to be brought to bear against Israel today.