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Israel Struggles Against Global Amnesia
(Wall Street Journal) Elliot Kaufman - "We pray that one day there will be peace," says Nina Tokayer, half of the Israeli musical duo Yonina. "Sometimes that means eliminating our enemies, who hate peace and want to destroy us. For some reason, a lot of people around the world don't understand that." Israelis don't understand what the world doesn't understand about Oct. 7. Hamas is the Palestinian majority party. It will try to do Oct. 7 again if Israel quits Gaza too early, and it will do worse if Israel surrenders the West Bank. Yet the world demands both, leaving Israelis to conclude that the world has little problem subjecting them to more massacres. Micah Goodman, a leading intellectual of the Israeli center, says, "We had Oct. 7 before - in 1929," when Arab mobs massacred more than 100 Jews across Hebron, Safed, Jerusalem and Jaffa and left more than 300 wounded. "Jews were attacked in the streets, in their homes, with all the terrible atrocities that we saw on Oct. 7." The story the West tells itself is that after the massacre, Israel had the world's sympathy and support. But Israel went too far, and the world turned against it. The truth is darker. Most of the world didn't condemn Oct. 7 or repudiate Hamas. Qatar and Egypt, the mediators, both blamed Israel on Oct. 7. On Oct. 8, China called on Israel to "immediately end the hostilities." Russia still hosts Hamas delegations. None of Hamas's patrons have abandoned it. The big human-rights groups equivocated on Oct. 7 about "civilians on both sides." Ever since, they have pretended the war began on Oct. 8, representing the Israeli effort as pure malevolence. U.S. support for Israel has been essential, but it has strings attached. At every stage of the war, President Biden has worked to slow and scale down Israel's military response. U.S. generals advised Israel not to invade Gaza, senior Israeli officials say. The Americans insisted that raids from the perimeter would defeat Hamas. By January, the Biden administration was pressing hard for a Palestinian state. Never mind that polls show 2/3 of Palestinians support the Oct. 7 attack.