From Foreign Policy magazine comes a breathtakingly obtuse article by Jon Hoffman of the Cato Institute. The article’s title, “Israel Is a Strategic Liability for the United States,” only hints at the venom that Hoffman directs at Israel.
The piece is a lengthy denunciation of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel and of Israel’s conduct of the war against Gaza, which–astonishingly–never once mentions Hamas’s October 7 massacres, or the fact that Gaza started the war. In Hoffman’s view, it is as though Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly took it into his head to massacre Palestinians. The article is too long to deconstruct fully, but here are few typical excerpts:
What exactly the United States gets in return for this unidirectional relationship remains unclear.
Proponents claim that unfaltering support is critical for the advancement of U.S. interests in the Middle East. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example, once referred to Israel as the “eyes and ears of America” in the region. While intelligence-sharing may have some strategic value, the past five months of war in Gaza have made clear the numerous negative effects of the relationship, namely how Washington’s emphatic embrace of Israel has undermined its strategic position in the Middle East while damaging its global image.
That’s it: no further discussion of Israel’s role in intelligence beyond the grudging admission that it “may have some strategic value.”
ISRAEL’S CAMPAIGN of collective punishment in Gaza has been historic in scale.
This is libelous. Israel is fighting a war, not engaging in “collective punishment.” Hoffman swallows Hamas’s propaganda, hook, line and sinker.
According to the Gazan health authorities, the official death toll across the enclave is now roughly 32,000 people, the vast majority of whom are women and children.
Actually, most of them are (or were) Hamas fighters. Real experts on urban warfare, which Hoffman plainly is not, say that Israel has achieved a historically low ratio of civilian to military deaths. And that is without taking into account the difficulty of distinguishing civilians from terrorists in the corrupt culture of Gaza.
Across the strip, civilian infrastructure has been systematically decimated, and starvation and disease are spreading rapidly.
This is what happens when you start a war. Hamas’s fighters hide within civilian infrastructure, hospitals being a notorious example, so naturally such infrastructure is damaged. And of course, it is Hamas that has the power to bring destruction and disease to an end by surrendering.
It’s difficult to fathom that this war could get worse, but all indicators point in that direction, as Israel insists that it will continue to push into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite U.S. objections, where more than 1.5 million Palestinians—exceeding half the population of Gaza—have fled.
Again, no acknowledgment that Hamas started this war, and that Israel needs to attack Rafah because that is where many thousands of Hamas fighters have now congregated. Can the conflict be ended at this point? Sure, Hamas just needs to surrender. The idea that the hardship that Hamas has brought on its own people somehow requires Israel to accept defeat in the war is ridiculous.
Israel has demonstrated no long-term political strategy in Gaza beyond the systematic destruction of the enclave and killing of its inhabitants. Netanyahu—whose support has reached all-time lows, and who faces growing protests calling for early elections—seems to know that once this ends, his time in power is over.
I don’t know that Israel needs to have a “long-term political strategy in Gaza.” Israel does not have the ability to dictate Gaza’s political future long-term; what it needs to do is win the war by destroying Hamas. If it doesn’t destroy Hamas, Gaza’s long-term political future will be more of the same.
And it goes without saying that Hoffman hates Netanyahu. Like many others, he tries to portray Israel’s war as the creature of the allegedly-unpopular Prime Minister, when in fact it is supported by the overwhelming majority of Israelis. Why? Because of what they experienced on October 7–which Hoffman doesn’t even have the decency to mention–and because of their knowledge that if they don’t destroy Hamas, it will happen over and over again.
There is more at the link, but it is all of the same tenor. To the extent that the Cato Institute is part of the American right, its take on the Gaza war and on the Israeli state is an embarrassment.
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