In the first piece we published after Hamas’s attack on Israel last Saturday, Noah Pollak was quick to recognize the parallels between October 7, 2023 and September 11, 2001. In both cases, an illusion of security was shattered; a fiercely ideological enemy targeted civilians; and the magnitude of the horror transformed the nation—and the geopolitical paradigm.
If there’s anybody who knows about the decisions the United States made after 9/11, it’s Condoleezza Rice, who was national security adviser on the day of that attack, and went on to become secretary of state. I was already scheduled to talk to Secretary Rice for Honestly this week, but I threw my old questions out and instead we had an urgent conversation about the present crisis and the changing global order.
You can listen to that conversation, which includes her defense of America’s response to 9/11, here:
But 9/11 should also serve as a cautionary tale for Israel in its moment of crisis, argues George Packer, a staff writer at The Atlantic. In a piece we’re republishing in The Free Press today, he writes that the comparison between 10/7 and 9/11 “might lead to unexpected places.” For more on how Israel might learn from America’s policy mistakes, scroll down to read his piece in full.
For more coverage of the war in Israel, read Daniel Pearl’s cousin Ilan Benjamin on why his hope for peace is dead.
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What, pray tell, is NEW about the usual Axis of Evil. China, Russia, Iran and their client armies.
Ned Lazarus in the Atlantic wrote an essay asking the question whether there was any alternative to a ground war in Gaza. I think not, and this is why:
Palestine is a region. It is not a state, not a country, and not an ethnic people group. It was promised to the descendants of Abraham both in Genesis and Exodus, and that promise is core to Israel's claim to the land and the fight against that claim. The result is the crucible of misery that is Palestine today, and in which Israel finds itself.
Over millennia it has been a place of passage and settlement for Jews, Arabs, Christians and others. It has been conquered, ruled, and lost by Phillistines, Persians, Assyrians, Romans, Ottomans and others. More recently the land, the people, and the conflict today reflect the outfall of British and European policy which lead to artificial and poorly defined borders, ill defined policies for governance, and displacement of people through proxy power struggles between the Hashemite rule in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. The result has been a vacuum of authority and leadership within the Arab population that has given them the PLO, Hezbollah, and now Hamas which has neutered the Palestinian Authorities ability to govern Gaza. Splinter terrorist groups spawned from the PLO and the Black September Jordanian conflict are now embedded in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. They are a threat to both Israel and their Arab neighbors. Since the 2006 Palestinian elections factional infighting between Fatah and Hamas has upended all potential peace settlement negotiations not only offered by Israel, but brokered through international diplomacy involving both the west, the arab world, and the UN. Both Jordan and Egypt have no interest in destabilizing their governments through allowing immigration or conferring citizenship to stateless Palestinian arabs, as they fear those actions would be a conduit for Hamas and other groups to expand and foment uprisings against both Jordan and Egypt. To that end, Israel is literally stuck in the middle figuratively and literally. Politically the way forward to peace can only happen through further negotiations and treaty extensions with Jordan and Egypt both who play a vital role in any settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel must accept that it will require removal and resettlement of Israelis currently living in illegal settlements in the West Bank. Those settlements only comprise 15% of the Jewish West Bank population. The expansion of settlements has not added to Israel's security, but rather has been a political move that destabilizes the situation and stretches the capacity of the IDF to protect those residents. Relocating these settlements would not destabilize the Jewish west bank population, which currently is 77% Palestinian Arab, but would bridge the chasm of conflict and address the Palestinian presence and acknolwedge support for a two state solution. In exchange Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, and Israel must cooperate to begin a new era that would lead to security for Israel, safety and the end of Hamas oppression of arabs in Palestine, and a pathway for restoration of Gazan Arab citizenship to the stateless residents in Gaza. Only Jordan and Egypt can take the lead to do this. Israel can be a partner, but in the end, peace is primarily an Arab solution. Without this vision there is no hope for peace that would replace hopelessness with a new era of economic development and improvement in wealth, health, and education for the West Bank and Gaza.
None of this is possible unless Hamas is eliminated. There is no other alternative.