Think righteous indignation over Gaza will bring a solution? Think again

Benjamin Netanyahu called it “unintentional,” as if, instead of killing seven humanitarian workers for World Central Kitchen, he had just hit a deer. Brushing aside horrible atrocities as a regrettable side effect of armed conflict had always worked for the Israeli prime minister before. This time it didn’t.

Netanyahu himself seems incapable of parsing the difference, so someone with a few threads of humanity must have gotten to him and suggested that Israel’s world standing was at risk of rolling down the wrong side of a dangerous tipping point.

Soon, Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, was back before the cameras, offering a rare apology and calling the tragedy “a grave mistake.”

“It was a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night, during the war, in a very complex condition,” Halevi said.

As apologies go, it’s something, but not much. How “complex” can the situation be, when your policy is to fire explosives at anything that moves?

What’s left of Hamas must be congratulating themselves every day at succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. Their accurate calculation was that Benjamin Netanyahu was too unreasonable, too inflexible, too irrational and too tone-deaf to act responsibly to an unthinkably heinous act of terror on innocent civilians.

Hamas’ goal was to make Netanyahu go off the rails, respond terribly and make the state of Israel a pariah on the world stage. It was a risky plan; if Netanyahu were smart and measured in his response, it would be Hamas that would become the outcast. But they didn’t seem terribly concerned that Bibi would play this wisely, and on that point they were right.

Like our home-grown authoritarian, Donald Trump, Netanyahu is using power as his stay-out-of-jail card. Indicted on charges of bribery and fraud in 2019, Netanyahu was able to delay his trial and in the interim has tried to gut the power of the Israeli courts that could send him to jail for the rest of his life.

To remain out of prison he needs to remain in power, and to remain in power he needs his far-right base, which explains his intractability on a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue. Even so, from Trump’s Abraham Accords to Biden’s idea that Israel should accept a Palestinian state in exchange for a lasting peace and commerce with the greater Arab world, the outline of a solution was beginning to appear out of the fog.

A relaxation of tensions suited neither Netanyahu nor Hamas and its Iranian overlords, which is why we’re where we are now — in a conflict that the leaders of both sides have an interest in perpetuating.

Righteously indignant college idealists (and I recognize the scent, because I was once one) who have never taken so much as an international relations survey course, insist that we could break this bloody logjam by withholding aid and arms to Israel.

Maybe they’re right, maybe Netanyahu will say “Aw shucks, you got me, I’ll call off the slaughter here and now.” But this fails to consider that Netanyahu, in a political sense, needs the threat of Hamas the way Trump needs the threat of immigrants.

Nor does it consider whom we can depend on in the Middle East if our relations with Israel sour. Not Iran nor Syria, certainly. Not Yemen with its civil war and its shipping terrorists. Not the Saudis and their bone saws. We’ve made a mess of Iraq and lost the trust of the Kurds. Egypt has gone authoritarian, and the Emirates’ loyalties are nebulous. There’s nothing left of Lebanon. Jordan is an ally, but one with limited regional influence.

Further, in between chants, protesters might also ask themselves this: How well have our economic recriminations worked in Russia, Iran and North Korea? Much as we might wish it were so, the Biden administration has no magic switch, monetarily or otherwise, that will make Netanyahu behave as we please.

If this weren’t all complicated enough, Americans who are outraged when Israel bombs Palestinians in Gaza, cheer when Israel bombs Iranians in Syria. Oh that the world were as simple a place as college freshmen seem to assume.

Blinded by huffiness over the anti-democratic pathologies of a foreign ally, they would threaten their own democracy by failing to understand the implications of facilitating the election of an angry, vindictive old man who has made it clear that free and fair elections do not suit him.

Our own democracy might be crippled or killed, but that’s OK, because they will have “made a stand.” That’s ego talking, not compassion.

It is well and good, a duty even, to agitate for humanity and civility overseas — but not at the expense of humanity and civility here at home.

Why isn't capitalism working better? Has it been supplanted by slavery to technology?

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Trump and Netanyahu have a lot in common. Both threaten democracy