Bedfellows

This week, to my horror, I found myself agreeing with Benjamin Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham. I rarely agree with Netanyahu, and I absolutely despise Lindsey Graham. In politics, a trade filled with hypocrites, Graham is one of the most blatantly two-faced politicians in US history. When opposing a Senate confirmation for Obama's pick of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in the last year of his presidency, Graham said that if the Republicans ever voted to confirm a Supreme Court Justice in the last year of a presidency he would eat his words. Then he and his Republican Senate colleagues did just that, they voted to confirm Amy Coney-Barrett, not in the last year of Trump's presidency, but in the last weeks. After January 6th, in an impassioned almost tearful speech on the Senate floor, Graham said about the violence and Trump’s role, 'count me out' and 'enough is enough'. A few weeks later he was down at Mar-a-lago kissing the ring and saying "The way I look at it, there is no way we can achieve our goals without Trump." He counted himself back in.

I don't believe that withholding from Israel one or more shipments of 2,000 pound bombs - which, according to every military analyst I've heard, are fairly unusable and ineffective in densely populated urban areas - is going to have much of an impact on Israel's plan for Rafah. And I do not believe that President Biden, Anthony Blinken and their advisors have any other motive for doing what they are doing other than what they truly believe is in Israel's best interest. I think they believe, for good reason, that a full scale invasion into Rafah would be a humanitarian catastrophe, and that it would do further damage to Israel's international standing (although it's hard to believe Israel's reputation could suffer any more damage than it already has.) Probably, Biden is also thinking about the pro-Palestinian progressive wing of his party, and how more very bad news out of Gaza would impact his electoral prospects in November, although I doubt this is a major consideration so early in the game. 

I also believe the US decision is wrong in a number of important and far reaching ways beyond the 2-tonne ordinance: 

1. The US should be advising their ally on military tactics and strategy based on their experience, know-how and assessments, not withholding the tools their ally deems necessary to fight a war that it considers existential. In this case, the ultimate decision must always remain Israel's and the US should respect that, and support it. 

2.  The US is sending the wrong message to its allies, and an even more wrong message to its (and Israel's) enemies. The message to allies is, don't count on us to back you up fully. Not even under the gravest circumstances, in an existential conflict. The message to enemies is how easily the US caves under public pressure, how readily they abandon allies. With Hizbollah threatening Israel’s north  this potentially changes their calculus for attack. The same with the Houthis and even more so Iran. It undermines Israel’s efforts at deterrence and makes the region less stable.

3. The public feud is playing into Netanyahu's domestic political hand. It makes him look like a strong defiant leader, someone who will defend Israel's interest even if it means opposing Israel’s greatest ally. Israeli hardliners and hawks will use this to their political advantage and the Israeli public opinion may move further to the right on security.

4. It frames the international public discussion in all the wrong ways. It makes the focus of discourse the type of weapons being used by Israel to prosecute the war, and not the crime and immorality of Hamas using the entire population of Gaza as a weapon of war-making ie. a human shield. It plays into the false narrative that Israel is the aggressor and Hamas the helpless victim.     

This decision by the US has broad ramifications. Agreeing politically with a hypocrite like Graham, and a Machiavellian like Netanyahu makes a progressive peacenik like me uncomfortable. On the other hand maybe, in these highly partisan times, it also means I’m open enough to consider the other side when it makes sense.