Israel Chose, and the World Changed
John Podhoretz for Commentary.org
The great delusion of post-Marx history is that change results from vast impersonal forces rather than the workings of individual human actions and unforeseen circumstances. What history records is the way free will and sheer contingency gum up the works of the Great Machine of Progress.
Would there have been an Arab Spring without a fruit vendor in Tunisia setting himself on fire in 2010? What if Derek Chauvin had taken the day off on June 20, 2020? What if there had been a blizzard on January 6, 2021?
And…what if Yahya Sinwar had hit his head on a pipe in a tunnel on October 6, been concussed, and hadn’t given the order to move on the kibbutzim and the Nova festival on October 7? Had he hit his head, would we be living in a world today in which Hamas has been all but destroyed, in which Hezbollah has been literally and perhaps fatally crippled, in which Iranian strikes against Israel have led to the mullahs losing their air defenses while steeling themselves for the loss of their nuclear program—and with the Assads gone from power in Syria after 53 years of ghoulish evil the likes of which the world has rarely ever witnessed?
All for the want of a horseshoe nail.
You could argue that a war conducted by Israel to destroy Hamas was always in the cards, just as the Israelis demonstrated they had thought the same with Hezbollah, since, beginning in 2015, they planned to destroy the Iranian catamite army by creating a shell import-export company that specialized in communications devices—and then laid in wait to activate the plan.
The war happened, though, because Sinwar made it happen. It was different north of Israel. The Jewish state chose the time, manner, and place of the pager detonation. They chose. It didn’t just happen. Impersonal forces didn’t move the levers in Gaza or in Lebanon. Leaders did.
Now, why Israel waited as the country’s north was depopulated and the financial, logistical, and psychological costs of that depopulation mounted will be matters of controversy there for the coming generation. Clearly its leaders believed they had to deal with Sinwar’s unprecedented blow first. And clearly they were managing world opinion, which is to say American opinion.
Israel knew it needed to win the war with Hamas, and that there was no way to conclude the war with Hamas without turning north and taking out Hezbollah. And I think Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet (as much as they all hated and hate each other) knew that the United States under Joe Biden simply did not want Israel to win. Biden and Co. may have wanted Israel to prevail in some fashion—but not if it was going to be too much of a pain in the Democratic Party’s ass.
At some point, Israel could not manage this ludicrous balancing act—prevailing without winning—and it moved. That was a choice. Human choice. And that choice led to other choices. Choices to make it clear that the Iran-backed terrorists had no quarter. Think you’re safe in Tehran? Think again, Haniyeh. Think you’re in the clear in Beirut? Bye-bye, Nasrallah. Think you can strike Israel without consequence from Tehran? No more defenses, mullahs. Think you just stay in Syria and keep sending weaponry through the Levant to your boys south of the Litani River? Say goodbye to Syria, Khamenei.
None of these events was inevitable. Rafah could have gone uninvaded. The pagers could have remained in Hezbollah pockets. Israel could have “taken the win,” as Joe Biden urged, wrongly, as was true of everything he has ever urged. It’s often said that the side that starts and loses a war does so out of a misperception of risk. The misperception that has led to this epochal change in the Middle East has to do with the way foolish Muslim fanatics and equally foolish American liberals view the Jews.
Here’s how they should view us:
We’re the eternal people.
You’re just the nomads.
Photo: Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File
