New York Times website main page, October 8, 2023. Click to enlarge.

That The New York Times is unabashedly liberal is of no surprise to anyone, but at least the Gray Lady does cover the news. My normal first read of newspapers is The Philadelphia Inquirer, which showed exactly one story concerning the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, on the website main page.

The Times had eight stories, covering the story from several different angles. Two clearly-labeled opinion pieces, by Thomas Friedman and Bret Stephens, added to the Times coverage, while none of the Inky’s columnists seemed interested in the story, the most important story of the day.

Hamas’s Control of Gaza Must End Now

by Bret Stephens | Saturday, October 7, 2023

It’s easy to note the parallels between Hamas’s attack on Israel on Saturday morning and the Yom Kippur war, which began 50 years ago Friday.

Now, as then, Israel seems to have been taken almost wholly by surprise by an enemy whose capabilities it appears to have badly underestimated. Now, as then, Israelis have sustained losses — at least 250 dead, over 1,400 wounded and dozens of hostages taken in just the first few hours of fighting — that go far beyond anything they suffered in recent years. Now, as then, there looms the prospect of a wider and deadlier war — the last time with the Soviet Union, this time with Iran and its proxies in Syria and Lebanon.

Now, as then, Israel’s military, intelligence and political leaders can soon expect hard questions about their failure to anticipate this attack. The Yom Kippur war helped end the Labor Party’s iron grip on power in Israel. This war might yet do the same for the Likud’s.

There are parallels on the Arab side, too. Like Egypt’s and Syria’s in 1973, Hamas’s aims in this war almost surely have strategic purposes that go beyond killing, maiming and terrorizing Israelis.

Hamas is attacking Israeli civilians in a way that is clearly calculated to provoke a devastating Israeli response, one that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel promises is coming. Large numbers of Palestinian casualties will probably derail a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia — not just by inflaming Muslim opposition to the Jewish state but also by giving Israel’s far right a stronger argument to oppose any accommodations with Palestinians as a price of the deal.

Ahhh, the benefits of digital publication, and the fact that columnists are no longer limited to the standard 750 words; Mr Stephens got 980 words to make his case.

But there are additional parallels that augur less well for Hamas.

In 1973, Israel was able to recover from its initial setbacks to destroy its enemies on the battlefield, leaving them incapable of ever again posing a serious threat to Israel. And, with the help of U.S. diplomacy from both Republican and Democratic administrations, the Yom Kippur war led to the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.

This war, too, can lead to a similar outcome among Jerusalem, Riyadh and Washington, provided all sides adopt the same watchword: Liberate Gaza.

There’s much more, of course, most of it being Mr Stephens telling us how it is in everybody’s interest to dislodge and defang Hamas from its control over Gaza. Israel, the cockamamie “Palestinian Authority” under “President” Mahmoud Abbas, Egypt, which sees Hamas as just another wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which it ruthlessly suppresses, Saudi Arabia, which distrusts Hamas due to its links to Shi’ite Iran, the United States, which for some reason sees the “Palestinian Authority” as an eventual partner for peace, really everybody wins, right?

Could Israel finally dislodge Hamas from power and invite Saudi Arabia, Egypt and maybe the United Arab Emirates to deploy a substantial peacekeeping force to the strip? That would serve Israel’s interests in toppling an enemy and the Arab states’ interests in diminishing a rival.

Could the Palestinian Authority resume civil control over the strip, with security furnished by Arab states and economic aid from the gulf states, Washington and Brussels? That would give Ramallah the control over Gaza it has lacked for 16 years, strengthen secular forces in Palestinian politics and free Gazans from extremist tyranny.

Could Israel and Egypt ease their restrictions on Gaza’s economy and the movement of its people in exchange for guarantees that the strip won’t again turn into a haven for havoc? That would give the Saudis the opportunity to show that any agreement they make with Israel would help ordinary Palestinians.

Here is where Mr Stephens errs. He, like so many others, view the Gazans as tyrannically controlled by Hamas, and if only Hamas were rooted out and gone, everything would be peaches but the cream.

That ignores reality. In the end, Hamas, like every other power group, depends upon the support of the population to exist and survive. Like every other guerrilla group, Hamas depends on the “ordinary Palestinians” to provide them with food, with clothing, with shelter and concealment from their enemies, with transportation and logistics, everything Hamas needed to launch Saturday’s — the Sabbath’s — attacks.

And it’s more than that. With Hamas’ control over Gaza came their control over education in that area: an entire generation of children have grown up under Hamas’ system of hateful propaganda, have absorbed the lessons of the extremists. Mr Stephens, like so many others, don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, that Gaza is Hamas and Hamas is Gaza. Yes, Hamas took control of Gaza following the 2007 Battle of Gaza with al Fatah, but that occurred after Hamas won the Palestinian elections of 2006. Fatah and Hamas fought to retain control of the Palestinian “Authority”, but the fact that Hamas won those elections indicates that they had plurality (44.45% of the vote) support of the Palestinian people. After expelling Fatah from Gaza, Hamas’ system of propaganda and ‘education’ simply cemented their control over the populace.

What Mr Stephens is asking, and what many others sincerely hope would happen, is for the people in Gaza to be governed by people they do not choose for themselves, to oust the ruling party which they already support. They are asking for Gaza to be occupied in a way it has not been occupied since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the Israeli evacuation of Gaza in 2005.

What could possibly go wrong?

And can the Biden administration make itself a vital partner in the diplomatic effort, bringing to fruition what the Trump administration started with the Abraham Accords, just as the Carter administration brought to fruition what the Nixon and Ford administrations started after the Yom Kippur war? That would be no small victory for a president who dearly needs one.

It’s too soon to tell how closely this war will resemble the one that nearly destroyed Israel 50 years ago. It’s not too soon to start thinking about how this disaster could have the best possible outcome.

The best possible outcome?

The best possible outcome would be the complete removal of all Arabs from Gaza, Judea and Samaria! I have said it many times before: the Israelis should have, following the Six-Day War of 1967, expelled every last Arab from the lands they conquered, pushed them all into Jordan, annexed and taken over the lands they seized, and given themselves shortened, more defensible borders. It would have been horrible, a humanitarian disaster not all that distantly related to the expulsion of the Indians from the American southeast between 1830 and 1850, but it would have been over decades ago, and not left Israel with the situation it has faced since 1967, as the occupying authority over people who hate them. Israel is great, militarily, but let’s tell the truth here: they have proven to be poor conquerors.

That time has passed, but Hamas have given the Israelis the excuse to force all of the Gazans out, if only there were a place to put them. Egypt borders Gaza on the southwest, but does not want them, and hems them in just as securely as Israel’s border with Gaza. And any other expulsion would have to forcibly transport the Gazans elsewhere, and that elsewhere could not be Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank. They would have to be dumped off in Jordan . . . and Jordan certainly does not want them.

Let’s face it: nobody in the Arab Middle East wants the Palestinians!
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Related articles:

• Robert Stacy McCain: Israel and ‘The Godfather’
• Robert Stacy McCain: Hamas Attacks Israel
• Deanna Fisher: Hezbollah Attacks Israel, Will Anyone Wake Joe This Time?
• Nina Bookout: Iran And Hezbollah Support Hamas Terrorist Attack On Israel
• Deanna Fisher: Blinken Gives Palestine Money For Food, Then Gaza Starts A War
• John Hinderaker: Israel’s Pearl Harbor
• Zoë Strimpel: Why are the usual suspects still making excuses for Hamas? They are anti-Semitic murderers
• New York Post Editorial Board: Democratic Socialists of America cheer murder and kidnapping of Israelis at hands of Hamas terrorists

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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.