WHAT IS BIDEN TELLING BIBI?The US president goes to Israel as Gaza City is razed to the ground
The White House and Central Intelligence Agency are again at odds, as they have been during Ukraine’s losing war with Russia, over the facts on the ground as President Joe Biden suddenly decided to fly again to Israel, supposedly at the request of Benjamin Netanyahu, the beleaguered Israeli prime minister. Biden showed that, as he put it, he would “have the back” of Israel by moving two American carrier battle groups to the region, along with thousands of US troops. It would have been better had he done what America has often done: announced that his administration would begin airlifting water and food for the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Gaza who had been ordered out of the south by Israel and sent to a border gate with Egypt that, as Netanyahu and his colleagues had to know, would not be opened. Biden’s trip comes at a time of international outrage after the most important hospital in Gaza City was destroyed, with hundreds of deaths, by an Israeli bomb or an errant missile launched by Islamic Jihad. The president said he was primarily delivering a message of restraint. If so, the president was completely in the dark about Israeli intentions. In an interview Sunday with 60 Minutes, Biden was asked if it was time for a ceasefire in Gaza. Biden ignored the question and said that the Israelis “have to go after Hamas. Hamas is a bunch of cowards. . . . They put their headquarters where civilians are and buildings and the like . . . but the Israelis are gonna do everything in their power to avoid the killing of innocent civilians.” He said he was discussing the possibility of a safe zone—a humanitarian corridor—for residents of Gaza City who fled after being warned that Israel was intent on destroying everything in the city. Asked if Hamas “must be eliminated entirely,” Biden said yes and added that there “needs to be a path to a Palestinian state.” A Palestinian state is not on Israel’s agenda. There are intelligence analysts in Washington who estimate that Netanyahu, who is emerging as the strongman in Israel’s new emergency unity government, has no intention of letting any member of Hamas survive. They believe he does not care about the troubles of the Gaza City residents who fled south toward Egypt and now find themselves with no food or water and confronted with the reality that economically stricken Egypt has no interest in opening its border to a million or more refugees in need of food, housing, and medical care. Netanyahu’s attitude, as assessed by the intelligence analysts, I was told, amounts to a determination “to wipe out Hamas.” One knowledgeable official told me that “Gaza City is in the process of being turned into Hiroshima with no nuclear weapons used.” At some point, he said, American-made bombs in the Israeli arsenal, including those known as “bunker busters,” may be targeted on the underground tunnel systems where Hamas manufactured the weapons and conducted planning for the horrific attacks in southern Israel on October 7. The daily Israeli bombing of Gaza City has led many in the Middle East and Europe to conclude that it was an Israeli bomb that hit the Gaza City hospital. Under the Israeli plans, there would be no need for a massive ground invasion, but I was told by the official that Israeli troops would be needed for hunting down those Hamas members underground who choose to surrender. The orders, the official said, would be “shoot on sight.” Surrender would not be an option. The official told me that the Hamas soldiers who would emerge from the tunnels desperate for food were seen by the Israelis as starving rats who would be met with poisoned food. The fate of the nearly two hundred hostages, most of them Israeli but known also to include a few Americans, was left unsaid. In the American intelligence view, the Hamas raid failed in every way. “There was a belief by Hamas,” I was told by the official “that the success of their raid, which was planned over two years, was going to rally the Arab world to their cause. They thought Hezbollah”—the powerful Lebanese party controlled by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut—“and the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] in the West Bank, would support them.” The American assessment is that the Hamas leadership began planning the attack two years ago and “Now,” the official said, “was the right time.” He explained that the Hamas leadership was "absolutely afraid,” that the ongoing talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia would lead to further isolation of the groups opposing Israel. The most vital supporter of the Hamas raid, I was told, was the Iranian government, whose leadership in Tehran was directly involved, in terms of money and materials for the October 7 attacks. “The Iranians,” the official said caustically, “want to attack Israel with every Palestinian they can find.” But “Iran did not realize how much murdering of civilians there would be. Hamas was crazed by blood.” The Arab scholar Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, recently published an essay in the Telegraph detailing four ways the Hamas raid violated Islamic law. Hamas murdered innocents, including women and children; it destroyed a town; it did not give fair warning; and it took civilians as hostages. Cole quoted the Prophet Mohammad: “Do not kill weak old men, small children, or women.” There were similar reactions from Hezbollah and in Damascus. Despite Western fears, I was told, there has been no sign that the Hamas uprising served as an inspiration to Israel’s enemies. “In the Great Game” the official said, “it was a chess game in which Hamas was a pawn.” Netanyahu’s plan, the official told me, called for the Israeli Army to kill all members of Hamas they can find, destroy the tunnel system—perhaps using American-made bombs that can penetrate dozens of meters underground before detonating—and then barricade what was once Gaza City at its southern end. Israeli soldiers would be assigned to go block by block in the destroyed city to look for stragglers. Care would be taken to ensure that no Hamas stragglers escaped to the Mediterranean Sea. In recent days, the Biden administration has deployed two American carrier groups, with squadrons of F-15, F-16, and A-10 combat jets, more than 10,000 Navy personnel and 2,000 Marines into the region in a show of support for Israel. “All the American services are jumping on it,” the official told me, “but Israel is saying, ‘Go Back. We don’t want your stuff.’” He went on: “There are no better pilots today than those in the Israeli Air Forces. Bibi’s got it under control and no Israeli is going to worry about the fate of the citizens of Gaza.” So, asked the official, “Why is Biden banging on the door? Is the president going to tell Bibi: ‘You can’t do this’? Leave the Gaza refugees standing out on the border with Egypt.” The official did not answer his rhetorical question. But he did ask if one reason for the president’s sudden trip “just might to keep the Ukraine war off the front pages?” Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Seymour Hersh, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. © 2023 Seymour Hersh |