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Fighting Doesn't Stop during Ramadan: Look at Egypt and Syria's 1973 Ramadan War against Israel

(Wall Street Journal) Elliot Kaufman - There is an idea that it is wrong to fight an Islamic country during the holy month of Ramadan, which this year started Sunday. It's nonsense: Look at Egypt and Syria's 1973 Ramadan War against Israel or Iran's 1982 Operation Ramadan against Iraq. The taboo is a weapon. For more than a month, the Biden administration has set the start of Ramadan as the deadline for a deal to release Israeli hostages and stop the war. "There's got to be a ceasefire because of Ramadan," the president said Tuesday. The president no longer speaks about defeating Hamas, let alone destroying it. Victory is off his list of priorities - and Israelis worry that Biden is the most pro-Israel member of his administration. The administration misread Israel. Its pressure tactics have allowed Netanyahu to rally even his rivals around his positions on Rafah and against unilateral U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state, an idea Israelis find criminally insane right now. The prime minister's chief opponent, Benny Gantz, has publicly agreed with him on both. Israel is united on the questions that matter, and it has the will to outlast the Biden administration. Micah Goodman, a leading Israeli public intellectual, said in an interview, "America is speaking about its own traumas in Iraq and Afghanistan when it says that asymmetric wars are unwinnable. We have a different experience." He cites 2002's Operation Defensive Shield, which broke the Second Intifada and helped end suicide bombings. That, too, had been deemed impossible. "We have the determination and capacity to win," he said.
2024-03-11 00:00:00
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