Time To Go?
As an Orthodox Jew who has spent my whole life in Brooklyn and has been raising my family here for the last 15 years, I am shocked to be finding myself thinking about leaving. The idea of Mamdani becoming mayor terrifies me (see “Farewell, New York?” by Jonathan Braun in the Sept. 19 issue), and I know it’s not paranoia but the awful reality of what he stands for and what the city will become under his leadership. I am not sure yet where we will go – my wife and I are constantly discussing it and weighing the possibilities – but it seems that few places could be worse for Jews than New York City under a rabid communist antisemite.
What shocks me even more, though, is how many of our friends and neighbors and even family members seem to be totally in denial about what is happening and making no plans for what they will do when everything goes downhill. I worry for our community and all the other Jewish communities here in New York, but people have to face what is happening and not, chas v’shalom, pay the price for sticking their heads in the sand.
Ari Gutman
Via E-mail
Bibi Gets His Deal
Regarding your editorial in last week’s Jewish Press “The Trump Peace Plan Revisited” (October 10): It was the kind of cynicism that poses as sophistication – the belief that Benjamin Netanyahu was continuing the Gaza war for his own political purposes. That the Israeli prime minister would never end it. That he couldn’t end it.
The line was promulgated first by other Israelis. For most of these Netanyahu critics and rivals, the argument didn’t discredit Israel’s cause, whose justice was obvious to them. They merely thought the benefits to Israel of fighting on were no longer worth the cost. To foreign observers this distinction was lost. It became the conventional wisdom of the U.S. liberal establishment that Israelis and Palestinians were dying for no reason other than to keep “Bibi” in power.
Mr. Netanyahu has accepted a deal to end the war, and on the terms he always said he would: the release of all hostages and the dismantling of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. The Trump deal promises this and, unlike previous proposals, leaves Israeli troops in a position to enforce it should the international stabilization force fail to do so. In that case, President Trump says that Israel will have his “full backing” to act. Given his record, Israelis have reason to believe him. That wasn’t the case with President Biden.
The stories suggesting that Mr. Netanyahu had to be strong-armed into these favorable terms are themselves to Israel’s advantage. As the prime minister has long maintained, any “day after” plan for Gaza with his name on it would face strenuous opposition throughout the Arab world.
The sour-grapes argument today is that Israel could have had this deal at any time. It isn’t true. Hamas had always demanded Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza in exchange for the hostages. That way Israel would forfeit much of its leverage before any Hamas disarmament took place. None would be likely to follow and Hamas might well have secured the postwar future it desired.
Intent is difficult to determine. It could be that after the failure of Oct. 7, 2023, Mr. Netanyahu believed he needed a total Israeli victory to redeem his personal legacy for the history books, or at least for the next election. He doubtless also believed that his government’s survival was in the national interest and made compromises to keep it afloat.
Such intermingling of motives is normal in politics, but what if Mr. Netanyahu was right? Give him the benefit of hindsight and look at the previous junctures at which he was condemned for not bringing the war to a conclusion.
Political survival had to be the explanation, critics charged. But isn’t it good for Israel that Mr. Netanyahu didn’t buckle under the pressure before Israel had taken Rafah, killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar there, and cut off Hamas’s arms smuggling route from Egypt? That he didn’t settle for peace and quiet while Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and missile arsenal still loomed over Israel like a sword of Damocles? While the Iranian nuclear program was still intact and advancing toward a bomb?
By holding three-quarters of Gaza and closing in on Hamas’s capital beginning in August, Israel pressured the terrorists into agreeing to terms they had long resisted for a partial hostage deal. But when Mr. Netanyahu then rejected that, insisting on a deal to return all the hostages at once and disarm Hamas, it was dismissed as a pipe dream – including by the Israeli defense establishment. Finally, Mr. Netanyahu’s critics seemed to have their proof that the prime minister was deliberately prolonging the war. His Sept. 9 strike on the Hamas negotiators in Qatar only confirmed it.
A month later, that pipe dream has been christened “the Trump deal” and Hamas has agreed to it. That strike in Doha is believed to have sent the Qataris spinning; after Mr. Trump’s placations, they leaned on Hamas to take the deal.
You don’t have to believe that Mr. Netanyahu planned it all out; I don’t. And the costs of the long war were all too real. But by continuing to fight, the prime minister kept Israel’s options open to achieve its war aims and smash the Iranian proxy axis and nuclear program when the opportunities came around. Ultimately, he secured better terms for the hostages’ release and the war’s end. So who’s being political?
Brian Goldenfeld
Thousand Oaks, Calif.