Robert O’Brien: ‘This wasn’t just an attack on Israel, it was an attack on America’

Former Ambassador Robert C. O’Brien is a leading voice for a “peace through strength” approach to foreign policy. He began his career as an attorney handling government claims against Iraq arising out of the first Gulf War. Later, as national security adviser to former President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2021, and as the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs from 2018 to 2019, O’Brien played a pivotal role in the Abraham Accords, formally normalizing diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and several other predominantly Muslim nations, and helped bring some 55 American hostages home.

Early Saturday morning, Hamas terrorists broke through protective fencing surrounding southern Israel’s small border communities and began slaughtering Israeli families, hundreds of young people dancing at a music festival, and other civilians along the road. Israel government officials report that Saturday’s massacre left at least 1,300 dead, mostly civilians, and thousands more injured. Between 100 and 150 people, including children and elderly individuals, were reportedly taken hostage by Hamas and brought into Gaza. And U.S. authorities confirmed Tuesday that 27 American citizens were killed in the attack and 14 are missing, possibly taken as hostages.

On Sunday, Israel formally declared war against Hamas. Over 1,500 Palestinians have been killed since Israeli airstrikes targeting Hamas strongholds began, according to the interior ministry of Gaza.

O’Brien spoke with Deseret News on Thursday about the nature of Hamas’ attack, how to rescue the American hostages and why he thinks the U.S. should lend Israel its unwavering support in the coming months and years. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Deseret News: The Israeli-Palestine conflict has a long, violent history. Can you help our readers understand why the events of the last week were so unprecedented and shocking?

Robert O’Brien: We’ve always seen a conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but we’ve never seen mass murder on this basis before. The deliberate targeting by Hamas of women and children, the elderly, the horrific reports of infants being slaughtered, is beyond the pale. We’ve never seen anything like this before, in scale or in depravity. This brings up the worst of ISIS, but almost makes ISIS look good compared to what Hamas did this past weekend.

And so Israel, which is a safe haven for the Jewish people, all of a sudden the Israelis and the Jewish people feel very exposed. And I think that the response in Gaza is going to be devastating.

DN: What is the appropriate response for Israel, a sovereign country that has been attacked this way?

RB: The response from Israel has to be to eliminate Hamas. You can’t have a government run an area like Gaza that’s committed to mass murder and atrocities against civilians. This is a holocaust-like attack on Israel.

Unfortunately, Israel is gonna have to undertake a very difficult operation in Gaza to eliminate Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it’s partners in this crime, and that’s not going to be easy. And unfortunately, Hamas enjoys support from many people in Gaza. So I think Israel is going to do its best to avoid civilian casualties and abide by the laws of war, but it’s going to be a very difficult fight.

DN: How should we be wary of media coverage of this war going forward?

RB: We’ve stood by Ukraine for a year and a half after a brutal Russian invasion. We’re going to have to stand by Israel for just as long. There’s no whataboutism or bothsideism here. The reality is Israel is trying to destroy a terrorist group. And civilians may be killed as collateral damage, but civilians aren’t being targeted by the Israelis.

Hamas is using civilians as human shields as it’s launching rockets against Israel and attacks against Israel from mosques and hospitals and schools. And Israel has every right to defend itself. But the nihilism and just terrible ideology of Hamas, in their mind, makes it justifiable for them to suffer civilian casualties rather than meet the Israelis in open battle.

When Hamas attacked Israel, they weren’t attacking a military base and civilians were killed in the crossfire. They attacked civilians. In fact, they destroyed a military base so there’d be no response and destroyed several police stations so there’d be no response so they could go on a wanton rampage of murder and orgy of violence against civilians.

You won’t see the same thing from Israel. But sadly, civilians will die in Gaza because that’s where Hamas locates themselves is among the civilians.

So there’s no comparison between the two sides. But unscrupulous media and propagandists from Russia, from China, from the Middle East will attempt to use and capitalize on civilian collateral damage in Gaza to weaken Israel and antisemites here will seize on it and use it as well.

DN: How is this hostage situation different than others that you have seen before? Have you seen toddlers, babies and elderly women taken as hostages?

RB:  No, I’ve never seen it before. You have to go back to the worst of Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front to find similar tactics. Even ISIS, which was engaged in brutality and beheadings and burning people alive — they did take women hostages like Kayla Mueller and murdered her — but I’m not aware of anyone taking infants and beheading infants or burning families alive together or executing children in front of their parents and then cutting the parents heads off.

I mean, these things are so despicable it’s hard to even repeat them.

DN: How should the U.S. approach rescuing American citizens taken hostage?

RB: The first thing the U.S. should do is let Iran know, whether directly or through a third party government like Switzerland or Qatar, that we’re holding the Iranian leadership responsible for what happens to these Americans. Hamas won’t shoot off a BB gun without permission from Iran and the Quds Force. And so Iran needs to understand that there’s going to be a very heavy price to pay.

Now, the problem is we lack credibility with Iran now because we just paid them a $6 billion ransom for five Americans, and so that made us look incredibly weak. But we need to let the Iranians know that that deal is off the table. We should re-freeze that $6 billion in assets. There’s some reports that may have happened today after I called for it a week ago.

The other thing we need to do is we need to deploy our special operations forces forward to Egypt and Israel and Jordan, so that they’re on standby, so that if we do get any intelligence on where the American hostages are being held — they’re probably not all held together, they’re probably dispersed — but if we identify even one of them, we should be able to send in our special forces, who are incredibly well trained for hostage rescue, to supplement what the Israelis are doing.

DN: How have America’s foreign policy missteps, particularly in Iran, possibly contributed to the violence and instability in and around Israel? 

RB: The Trump administration made a policy of America First and peace through strength and we didn’t have these problems. We were tough on our adversaries and we instilled confidence in our partners. Under this administration, sadly, for them and for America, they took a different view. They decided to appease our adversaries and thought that would buy them goodwill.

And what did we see as a result? ... We had Afghanistan and then Ukraine, and then we had the Chinese spy balloon fly over America for a week long. ... Then most recently with Iran, we paid a $6 billion ransom, or you can call it unfreezing assets, you can say it was for humanitarian purposes. But the Iranians themselves said they’d use the money anyway they damn well pleased.

I said at the time, paying ransom for hostages, it relieves the suffering of the hostages and their families, which is good, and I welcome our Iranian American hostages home, but what it does is it creates a market for future hostage taking. ... The other thing it does is it creates a fund for terrorists. When you give malign actors, kidnappers, money, they use it for other malign activities. And I said, we should expect future terrorist attacks.

I said both of those things at the time and never thought they’d be so quickly and so vividly illustrated by what we’ve seen in southern Israel with this invasion from Gaza.

So unfortunately, the administration still doesn’t want to admit what happened. And they have spent as much time defending their ransom payment to Iran as they have berating Hamas for killing Americans, taking American hostages, not to mention what they’ve done to Israel. And there’s been almost no criticism of Iran.

So it’s an extremely dangerous time, and America, unfortunately, is perceived by her adversaries as being very weak.

DN: You’ve said in the past, in response to criticism of Israel, that “it’s our closest ally in the region. And it’s a beacon of liberty.” Why do you think the U.S. should show support of Israel?

RB: We’ve shown unwavering support for Israel since 1948, and Israel’s been a safe haven for the Jewish people. And anyone who claims that the Jewish people don’t need a safe haven only needs to look at the protests that took place in London recently, and Sydney, and even in our own country, in New York and Detroit, with people marching, chanting, “Gas the Jews,” to understand that the Jewish people need a homeland, and a place where they can be safe. And unfortunately that homeland wasn’t safe this weekend.

So No. 1, we need to safeguard Israel because it’s a homeland of the Jewish people who have suffered immensely over thousands of years.

No. 2, Israel is a strategic ally of the United States. They’re our best ally in the middle East.

No. 3, they’re an important technology hub for the world.

No. 4, Israel is a democracy. They believe in liberty, freedom, the rule of law, religious freedom.

Christians, Muslims, and Jews are free to practice their religion without restriction in Israel — the only place in the Middle East where there’s true religious freedom and tolerance. And so we’ve got a duty to, not just for national security, not just for our economy, not just because of Jewish history, but because of our shared values to stand by Israel. And in this case, they’ve been brutally attacked and anything Israel is going to do in response is purely self defense. We’ve got to stand by them and defend the principle of sovereignty and protect the standard of democracy.

And the last thing I’ll say is that this wasn’t just an attack on Israel, it was an attack on America. Hamas knows full well now, even if they didn’t know at the time, that they’ve taken Americans hostage. When you take Americans hostage as a terrorist organization, you make yourself the enemy of the United States.

I’d like to see some more comments from the administration that terrorists can run but they can’t hide from the United States if you take our citizens hostage. If you kill our citizens, there will be punishment and retribution for that as well. So it’s not just standing by Israel. Hamas made this Hamas versus America. And if we don’t stand up for our citizens and protect them, we’re going to see this happen time and time again. People are going to lose respect and lose any fear of the United States and that’s going to be dangerous for Americans to travel abroad, as many Utahns do.