Thank you for sharing what seems to be one of the earliest accounts of what was happening behind the scenes during this war. Unfortunately, Ilan, your dual loyalty is palpable. The US never really loses its leverage with Israel. We just choose not to use it, primarily because our government is full of dual loyalists who put Israel’s interests over our own. Second, Hamas, which was sustained by Israel for the past 15 years would’ve negotiated a ceasefire within the first 2 months of the war. They had nothing to gain by delaying.
The Biden Administration failed to seize the opportunity to capitalize on Biden’s popularity amongst Israel’s public.
What exactly was Biden’s apparent state of mind at the time?
PBS November 21, 2024: “Today, the world's top war crimes court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for what the court called crimes against humanity for intentionally depriving Gazans of food and directing attacks against civilians.”
Statement from President Joe Biden, November 21, 2024, on Warrants Issued by the International Criminal Court: “The ICC issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous.”
Almost anyone, anywhere in the world, with a smartphone could easily find perfectly clear and irrefutable evidence of extensive war crimes committed by the Israeli military against the people of Gaza.
Was Biden unable or unwilling to see that? And/or, was he somehow kept from seeing it, by those who surrounded him in the White House? Were you unable to grasp the level of destruction being wrought on Gaza by the IDF? And, as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, what could you personally have done better?
Of course the correct strategy would have been to apply suffocating pressure on Netanyahu. And the right time to do that would have been at the start of December 2023, when the first hostage deal broke down. That deal should never have been allowed to end, and Biden missed a golden opportunity to force an end to the war. Every Israeli knows that Bibi’s only strategic objective is self preservation. It does not seem that Biden operated with this in mind. Once you realize that Netanyahu is exactly the same as Trump in the aspects of narcissism and self aggrandizement, your strategy needs to shift accordingly, and Biden’s did not. Quite simply, publicly he gave Bibi the respect that Bibi should not ever be given.
Some folks will say that an early cease fire would have prevented the demise of Hezbollah and the weakening of Iran. But in fact the top Israeli brass wanted to strike Hezbollah very early on, around October 11, and Bibi (and perhaps Biden too) prevented this. Bottom line, despite the best intentions, Biden completely failed on this war, even if it was “his deal” that is now being implemented.
Good article, I enjoy the author's pespective. I also think the author could reach back abit further in history and recount his thoughts on the treatment of Gaza by Israel over the last 10 > 15 years and explore Israel's policies that led to Hamas's increased influence in Gaza. This did not begin with the Oct attack.
You think since 1948, when Israel became a State, and slowly encroached year after year on Palestinian land, war after war, truce after truce, Biden could prevent this? I heard Netenyahu say, he wants every Palestinian dead.
Ilan, thank you for writing this in a public forum. It's a rare opportunity to hear from someone who "was in the room where it happens", so to speak, so soon after the events in question.
Can you explain if the general mindset of the Biden FP team on the Israel/Arab issue leaned more towards managing the status quo vs actually solving the issue? I ask because it seemed pretty incoherent to me. From the left one could ask why the Biden admin didn't simply demand the end of West Bank settler violence and expansionism with a credible threat attached of suspending all military aid, from the right one could ask why in the world the US has forced Israel to tolerate the loaded gun of Hezbollah on their northern border, when that could also easily be solved by a credible threat of decapitating the Iranian energy industry.
I will read your longer article but I will base my comment here solely on this article.
This is another version of a “mowing the lawn” strategy October 7 had discredited. You argue that Hamas had been degraded when Israeli strategic decision makers had concluded Hamas was an existential threat and degrading its fighting abilities was no longer an option.
Former Defense Minister Gallant has recently given interviews in both Hebrew and English that call into question your narrative. He says that had his strategy of Hezbollah first not been opposed by the Biden administration the tactical success Israel enjoyed following the “use it or lose it” pager bombs and the radio bombs would not only have decapitated Hezbollah but it would have removed 15 thousand Hezbollah soldiers from the field. The radios were larger and contained larger explosives. Most of the radios exploded in warehouses.
Had the US not opposed Gallant’s strategy for fear of “an expanding theater of war” Israel’s North would not have to have been evacuated, Assad would have been removed one year sooner, Hamas would have given up on its faith in a regional war sooner.
Gallant further explains that Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin questioned Gallant’s request to have munitions the Biden Administration had requisitioned from Israel for the Ukraine. Why, he asked, would Israel need advanced weapons in its fight with Hamas? Austin and his security advisors could not grasp that Hezbollah and various forces in Syria were part of Iran’s proxy forces combatting Israel. Those weapons were important tactically in that larger war. That lapse showed that Biden and his security advisors fatally misunderstood the conflict and inhibited Israel when they should have stopped playing domestic politics, politics that failed, and freed Israel to take on Hezbollah and Iran. It was Israeli success against Hezbollah and Iran that caused Assad to fall, Hamas to rethink its strategy of stalling.
Finally, there is your assertion that there is a Palestinian partner for peace. Who might that partner be? Today’s Times ( hardly the most friendly media outlet towards Israel and Jews ) who reported Egypt and Qatar oppose plans for rebuilding a Gaza without Hamas.
Who is removing Hamas if not Israel’s IDF? Hamas does not care how many civilian casualties there are or the extent of damage to infrastructure. It suits Hamas’ grand strategy to trade the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza for would public opinion against Israel.
What evidence is there that either Israel’s electorate or Gazans favor a two-state solution? Polling of Palestinians -by Palestinians- shows that Palestinians want a single state solution where they win demographically. The second Intafada killed any possibility for an Israeli peace process. 140 suicide bombs targeting Israeli youth took that off the table.
Netanyahu was purchasing peace by allowing Qatar’s money into Hamas, something you know. After October 7 the only internal political issue was Israeli trust in Netanyahu to prosecute the war in the national interest rather than his need to remain in power and out of jail. No Israeli poll I have seen takes issue with prosecuting Hamas to its last terrorist. There are plenty of evidence that Israeli reserves detested the brakes the Biden Administration placed on Israel. It is very possible to argue that rather than trying to pursue a post war policy of a Gaza without Hamas The Biden policy would enable Hamas to survive the war and commit Palestinian future and Jewish lives to a world with Hamas firmly in control.
I read your essay as fantasy. Would that the dream was real but the evidence is more in your mind than found in reality.
You caught me completely by surprised by your personal reply (via email) to my comment as well as how quickly your responded and even more so by the inclusion of the link to your previous article. I have downloaded it and plan on reading it over the week-end.
As you point out so well. the conflict in the Middle East is both complex and complicated. I can appreciate how difficult it must be to work on a equitable solution that balances past wrongs and mis-steps on both sides. Your writings get past the bumper sticker slogans & sound bits and revels the "nuts & bolts" work that illustrates the obstacles facing real progress.
Thank you and I look forward to learning more. I find your perspective fascinating.
Was really Biden mentally strong enough to be able to take decision? sorry if it seems provocative it snot the intention here , from the public point of view it seems unlikely . How state department weighed into the decision ? Will we understand why so many destruction were allowed , it was inevitably lead to the current situation of the likelyhood of an expulsion .
Thank you for sharing what seems to be one of the earliest accounts of what was happening behind the scenes during this war. Unfortunately, Ilan, your dual loyalty is palpable. The US never really loses its leverage with Israel. We just choose not to use it, primarily because our government is full of dual loyalists who put Israel’s interests over our own. Second, Hamas, which was sustained by Israel for the past 15 years would’ve negotiated a ceasefire within the first 2 months of the war. They had nothing to gain by delaying.
The Biden Administration failed to seize the opportunity to capitalize on Biden’s popularity amongst Israel’s public.
What exactly was Biden’s apparent state of mind at the time?
PBS November 21, 2024: “Today, the world's top war crimes court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for what the court called crimes against humanity for intentionally depriving Gazans of food and directing attacks against civilians.”
Statement from President Joe Biden, November 21, 2024, on Warrants Issued by the International Criminal Court: “The ICC issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous.”
Almost anyone, anywhere in the world, with a smartphone could easily find perfectly clear and irrefutable evidence of extensive war crimes committed by the Israeli military against the people of Gaza.
Was Biden unable or unwilling to see that? And/or, was he somehow kept from seeing it, by those who surrounded him in the White House? Were you unable to grasp the level of destruction being wrought on Gaza by the IDF? And, as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, what could you personally have done better?
Of course the correct strategy would have been to apply suffocating pressure on Netanyahu. And the right time to do that would have been at the start of December 2023, when the first hostage deal broke down. That deal should never have been allowed to end, and Biden missed a golden opportunity to force an end to the war. Every Israeli knows that Bibi’s only strategic objective is self preservation. It does not seem that Biden operated with this in mind. Once you realize that Netanyahu is exactly the same as Trump in the aspects of narcissism and self aggrandizement, your strategy needs to shift accordingly, and Biden’s did not. Quite simply, publicly he gave Bibi the respect that Bibi should not ever be given.
Some folks will say that an early cease fire would have prevented the demise of Hezbollah and the weakening of Iran. But in fact the top Israeli brass wanted to strike Hezbollah very early on, around October 11, and Bibi (and perhaps Biden too) prevented this. Bottom line, despite the best intentions, Biden completely failed on this war, even if it was “his deal” that is now being implemented.
Good article, I enjoy the author's pespective. I also think the author could reach back abit further in history and recount his thoughts on the treatment of Gaza by Israel over the last 10 > 15 years and explore Israel's policies that led to Hamas's increased influence in Gaza. This did not begin with the Oct attack.
I will write something about Gaza’s history in the future. But also wrote this 60 page report back in 2018 that gets at a lot of this. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/backgrounds/documents/CNAS-Report-Gaza-final-v2-web2.pdf
You think since 1948, when Israel became a State, and slowly encroached year after year on Palestinian land, war after war, truce after truce, Biden could prevent this? I heard Netenyahu say, he wants every Palestinian dead.
Ilan, thank you for writing this in a public forum. It's a rare opportunity to hear from someone who "was in the room where it happens", so to speak, so soon after the events in question.
Can you explain if the general mindset of the Biden FP team on the Israel/Arab issue leaned more towards managing the status quo vs actually solving the issue? I ask because it seemed pretty incoherent to me. From the left one could ask why the Biden admin didn't simply demand the end of West Bank settler violence and expansionism with a credible threat attached of suspending all military aid, from the right one could ask why in the world the US has forced Israel to tolerate the loaded gun of Hezbollah on their northern border, when that could also easily be solved by a credible threat of decapitating the Iranian energy industry.
I will read your longer article but I will base my comment here solely on this article.
This is another version of a “mowing the lawn” strategy October 7 had discredited. You argue that Hamas had been degraded when Israeli strategic decision makers had concluded Hamas was an existential threat and degrading its fighting abilities was no longer an option.
Former Defense Minister Gallant has recently given interviews in both Hebrew and English that call into question your narrative. He says that had his strategy of Hezbollah first not been opposed by the Biden administration the tactical success Israel enjoyed following the “use it or lose it” pager bombs and the radio bombs would not only have decapitated Hezbollah but it would have removed 15 thousand Hezbollah soldiers from the field. The radios were larger and contained larger explosives. Most of the radios exploded in warehouses.
Had the US not opposed Gallant’s strategy for fear of “an expanding theater of war” Israel’s North would not have to have been evacuated, Assad would have been removed one year sooner, Hamas would have given up on its faith in a regional war sooner.
Gallant further explains that Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin questioned Gallant’s request to have munitions the Biden Administration had requisitioned from Israel for the Ukraine. Why, he asked, would Israel need advanced weapons in its fight with Hamas? Austin and his security advisors could not grasp that Hezbollah and various forces in Syria were part of Iran’s proxy forces combatting Israel. Those weapons were important tactically in that larger war. That lapse showed that Biden and his security advisors fatally misunderstood the conflict and inhibited Israel when they should have stopped playing domestic politics, politics that failed, and freed Israel to take on Hezbollah and Iran. It was Israeli success against Hezbollah and Iran that caused Assad to fall, Hamas to rethink its strategy of stalling.
Finally, there is your assertion that there is a Palestinian partner for peace. Who might that partner be? Today’s Times ( hardly the most friendly media outlet towards Israel and Jews ) who reported Egypt and Qatar oppose plans for rebuilding a Gaza without Hamas.
Who is removing Hamas if not Israel’s IDF? Hamas does not care how many civilian casualties there are or the extent of damage to infrastructure. It suits Hamas’ grand strategy to trade the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza for would public opinion against Israel.
What evidence is there that either Israel’s electorate or Gazans favor a two-state solution? Polling of Palestinians -by Palestinians- shows that Palestinians want a single state solution where they win demographically. The second Intafada killed any possibility for an Israeli peace process. 140 suicide bombs targeting Israeli youth took that off the table.
Netanyahu was purchasing peace by allowing Qatar’s money into Hamas, something you know. After October 7 the only internal political issue was Israeli trust in Netanyahu to prosecute the war in the national interest rather than his need to remain in power and out of jail. No Israeli poll I have seen takes issue with prosecuting Hamas to its last terrorist. There are plenty of evidence that Israeli reserves detested the brakes the Biden Administration placed on Israel. It is very possible to argue that rather than trying to pursue a post war policy of a Gaza without Hamas The Biden policy would enable Hamas to survive the war and commit Palestinian future and Jewish lives to a world with Hamas firmly in control.
I read your essay as fantasy. Would that the dream was real but the evidence is more in your mind than found in reality.
Ilan,
You caught me completely by surprised by your personal reply (via email) to my comment as well as how quickly your responded and even more so by the inclusion of the link to your previous article. I have downloaded it and plan on reading it over the week-end.
As you point out so well. the conflict in the Middle East is both complex and complicated. I can appreciate how difficult it must be to work on a equitable solution that balances past wrongs and mis-steps on both sides. Your writings get past the bumper sticker slogans & sound bits and revels the "nuts & bolts" work that illustrates the obstacles facing real progress.
Thank you and I look forward to learning more. I find your perspective fascinating.
John H. McNally
Was really Biden mentally strong enough to be able to take decision? sorry if it seems provocative it snot the intention here , from the public point of view it seems unlikely . How state department weighed into the decision ? Will we understand why so many destruction were allowed , it was inevitably lead to the current situation of the likelyhood of an expulsion .
No, we know