Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a bad decision, both morally and strategically, when cutting off all humanitarian aid into Gaza in March.Louisa Gouliamaki/Reuters
There were always two fronts to the war in Gaza. The first and obvious was the ground war: the mission to destroy Hamas and retrieve the hostages kidnapped on Oct. 7. The IDF has simultaneously carried out operations to decapitate Israel’s other enemies: an enormously sophisticated pager attack in Lebanon where devices carried by Hezbollah’s top brass were suddenly detonated, and a 12-day attack on Iran that took out the regime’s top military officials, its nuclear scientists, and, with assistance from the U.S., its nuclear infrastructure.
When this war ends – which could be a long way off if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu follows through on his plan to occupy Gaza, despite opposition from the Israeli public and from hundreds of former Israeli security officials – Israel will be able to claim military victory. Hamas has been decimated; the architect of the Oct. 7 attack, Yahya Sinwar, was eliminated last year. Hezbollah’s leaders are dead or in wheelchairs. Israel picked off Iran’s senior commanders one by one, and revealed the regime itself to be something of a paper tiger. Israel has retrieved 148 hostages alive out of the 251 people taken on Oct. 7, and it has recovered dozens more bodies of those taken captive. If the war ends tomorrow, it won’t be an unequivocal success for Israel; Hamas as an entity has not been destroyed, and Israeli intelligence believes there are still 20 hostages alive in Gaza. But from an objective, strategic, military perspective on this war, Israel has won.
Where it has lost, however, is on the other front: the front neglected by Mr. Netanyahu and his coalition partners, who have been so singularly focused on their military objectives that they didn’t notice – or care – that Israel was slowly turning into a global pariah state. That front is the information war: the one that Hamas plays so expertly by exploiting Palestinian suffering (its leaders have admitted civilian death is part of its strategy), and one that Mr. Netanyahu has largely ignored over the course of the last 22 months. Some will insist that Israel would have lost on this front no matter how it waged this war, and maybe that is true to some extent, but there are degrees of loss. Yes, there were various fringe groups and activists that accused Israel of genocide mere days after Oct. 7, but it didn’t have to be that nearly two years on, roughly half of Canadians, for example, would believe that that is true.
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The single worst decision Mr. Netanyahu made, both morally and strategically, was to cut off all humanitarian aid into Gaza back in March, following the expiration of a ceasefire deal over which his far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened to resign. Cutting off aid was a gift to his coalition partners and a death sentence for Palestinian citizens, who would understandably start hoarding supplies, which would send the price of everyday goods skyrocketing. Israel defends this decision by insisting that food aid is stolen, which, by the UN’s own data, does happen routinely, and also by pointing out that in no other war would a country be expected to provide aid to its enemies’ civilians. That is also true, but it also doesn’t matter: not to kids hungry for their next meal, and not to the world, watching in horror. Mr. Netanyahu chose to win the argument, rather than the information war. Hamas wasn’t winning this war with flour, but Israel was losing it by withholding it.
The crisis was compounded by Israel and the U.S. assuming responsibility for the delivery of aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which put even more of the onus on Israel to see to the well-being of Palestinians. As a result of the reports of hunger emerging from Gaza, France, Britain, Malta and Canada have now announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu still has an ally in U.S. President Donald Trump, but the bipartisan consensus on Israel that existed in Washington as recently as under U.S. President Joe Biden’s tenure is gone. Even some Republicans are now starting to turn on Israel. A Pew poll from March found that Republicans under 50 were about as likely to have a negative view of Israel as positive, which represents a significant shift from just three years ago.
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Mr. Netanyahu’s perception might be that the game is rigged – that Israel will always be held to an impossible standard, and that the international press will never report the situation fairly – and perhaps that’s true. But Israel cannot afford not to play. This country, more than most, needs friends internationally. Its military wins will be ephemeral; Israel’s enemies always seem to rise up, rebuild and attack again. But Israel’s reputational loss will be generational. Mr. Netanyahu has lost on this front, and badly.