Good historians abhor premature evaluation. Sweeping conclusions about Israel’s military outcomes in Gaza, today, mid-war, are foolish. It’s like the Democrats who assessed Kamala’s victory – after her successful debate 55 days before Election Day.
Still, today’s clashing interpretations regarding Gaza will shape how Israel proceeds in the coming months to win conclusively – which entails freeing the hostages and further neutralizing any threats from Hamas and other Gazan terrorists.
Particularly tedious are Netanyahu’s worshipers, who credit him for any successes, while excusing every failure. To them, the prime minister had nothing to do with the pre-October 7 “conceptzia,” the calamity, or any hesitations afterwards – despite years of insisting he was in charge, that he had tamed Hamas, and that only he, “Mr. Security,” could guarantee Israelis’ safety.
Equally monotonous are the Joe Biden Zionists. These slavish Democrats only see the impressive support Biden and America initially offered – and the massive munitions America supplied. The narrative overlooks the herky-jerky starting-and-stopping America imposed, too. How do you win a war you keep pausing, while indulging your enemy with humanitarian aid, and agonizing over their casualties?
The war president Biden forced Israel to wage is not the necessary, disciplined, ruthlessness America and its allies unleashed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Biden’s dithering should worry anyone concerned about how America will fight tomorrow’s wars. He never educated Americans to understand that war is hellish, chaotic, and bloody – especially urban warfare against Jihadists like Hamas.
Most confusing – and confused – are Israeli-based Bibi-bashers. They simultaneously complain that:
• Netanyahu so needed revenge after October 7, he betrayed and abandoned the hostages;
• October 7 left Netanyahu too paralyzed to fight decisively, North and South;
• Yet Netanyahu keeps prolonging the war because that’s the only way he can stay in power.
THE CONTRADICTIONS they swallow would give most people indigestion. These days, the star of the anti-Bibi narrative is Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister. Gallant threw Netanyahu under the bus, recently, on Dan Senor’s popular “Call Me Back” podcast. Gallant claimed: “We could have eliminated all the chain of command of Hezbollah immediately,” days after October 7, and neutralized “the missiles and the rockets all over Lebanon as we did in September.”
While acknowledging that President Biden didn’t “like the idea of the war being expanded,” Gallant mostly blames Bibi. This confirms the longstanding “Chicken Bibi” stereotype of his critics.
Trying to undermine Israel’s prime minister, in English, in wartime, reflects poorly on Gallant’s character – and Israeli political norms.
Each narrative starts with a truth without reaching the whole truth. Yes, throughout much of 2024, Netanyahu bravely resisted American pressure, eventually fighting hard enough to crush Hamas, smash Hezbollah, humiliate Iran, and watch Syria’s regime collapse under the pressure. Yes, following October 7, Biden supported Israel impressively. And yes, especially in retrospect, Netanyahu prolonged the war by succumbing to Biden’s demands and failing to neutralize Hezbollah quickly.
Sifting through these conflicting interpretations highlights how much America constrained Israel. Constantly pressuring Israel to feed the Gazans fueled Hamas while reducing civilian pressure on Hamas to surrender. Constantly pressuring Israel to limit firepower limited Israel. Ironically, it prolonged the hostage’s agony – and the Gazans’.
This war vindicated the military theorists who teach that in an age of total war with totally evil enemies, the only way to fight is to fight to win. Seeking a draw, or a managed outcome, trying to keep the war in proportion, is an immoral position that only sounds virtuous. Once you go to war, fight full throttle – otherwise you risk your own troops, and drag out everyone’s suffering.
ALTHOUGH PREMATURE, this debate is crucial. Two dozen live hostages remain in Gaza. Hamas is regrouping. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump, the Israeli hostages’ suffering genuinely infuriates him. Unless Hamas releases all the hostages, Israel may start fighting in Gaza again. This time, for everyone’s sake, Israel should seize territory and hold it, crush Hamas unapologetically, and deprive Hamas of the humanitarian aid shipments the terrorists keep stealing.
Such an assertion of power won’t be pretty. But it will end the war – and the suffering – far faster than the on-again, off-again dithering that somehow has been cast as the right way to fight urban warfare against this evil enemy.
This is the position of West Point’s urban warfare expert, John Spencer. He blames Egypt for not providing refuge to Gazan civilians – as sympathetic neighbors normally do – especially when they have vast deserts. This allowed Hamas to use “the population and hostages as human shields.” Spencer criticizes America’s intense pressure on the IDF not to enter “Rafah for months, demanding civilian casualties be reduced to zero, demanding bombing of military targets be reduced because of perceptions, demanding halts in operations beyond daily four-plus hour pauses because of humanitarian concerns based on unverified data.”
Spencer's advice
During the next round, however, at least Israel won’t be worrying about simultaneous threats from the North. Most importantly, “Hamas is also not the Hamas of October 2023–February 2024 with five brigades, 24 battalions, 20,000 rockets, fully stocked units, decades of experienced leaders, trained forces, defensive positions.” It’s now untrained, poorly-led, under-provisioned and desperate.
Still, Spencer advises, to win, the IDF must “actually seize and clear terrain” and “hold areas to prevent Hamas rebuilding.” Ultimately, “Hamas can absolutely be defeated with military force” but Israel needs determined leaders – and American support – to do what it needs to do, what it should have done already, what the world needs it to do.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath, were just published.