ISREAL IS UNDER ATTACK

Lee Smith


Last week, Hamas fired hundreds of rockets
and missiles at targets throughout Israel,
including the nuclear reactor at Dimona. Two
of the three M-75 missiles targeting Dimona
missed the mark entirely, but one had to be
brought down by Iron Dome, Israel’s
antimissile shield. The U.N. considers an attack
on a nuclear reactor an act of nuclear
terrorism, which in this case might have taken
a catastrophic toll on Israel’s population—as
well as the Palestinians.
And now Obama is offering to play honest
broker and negotiate a ceasefire between this
terrorist group and our ally Israel. Why not?
Just last month, the Obama administration
helped usher Hamas into a Palestinian unity
government. It’s not as if the White House
didn’t know whom it was dealing with. Hamas
hadn’t changed its stripes or its founding
charter, which calls for unending war on
Israel until the Jewish state is erased from the
pages of history. Even as the administration
was telling Jerusalem to give Palestinian
Authority president Mahmoud Abbas a little
time to work out all the kinks with his new
unity government, Hamas was preparing for
war.
While the administration was showing the PA
how to get around U.S. laws that prevent
American money from going to terrorists,
Hamas was fortifying its tunnel network. It
moves men and materiel and missiles through
those tunnels, like the medium-range M-75s,
and the long-range M-302s, designed by Iran
and launched last week on trajectories that
reached as far as Haifa, Israel’s northernmost
major city.
Surely the White House had intelligence about
the tunnels and the missiles, both of which
were clear evidence of Hamas’s intentions—
terror and war. The problem isn’t that the
administration didn’t know, but that it didn’t
care. The White House has its own peculiar
ideas about the Middle East, which is why
America’s regional standing, from North Africa
to the Persian Gulf, is in shambles.
The Obama administration’s map of the Middle
East might as well be of the Hobbits’ Middle
Earth because it bears no relationship to
reality. Every corner of the region is yet
another realm of wondrous fantasy governed
by magical thinking. A Fatah-Hamas unity
deal? How productive! Coordination with
Qassem Suleimani and the Quds Force in Iraq?
That’s refreshing! An agreement with the
Islamic Republic over its nuclear weapons
program allowing them to keep 10,000
centrifuges? This will bring the clerical regime
back into the community of nations!
The White House cannot be bothered with
Middle Eastern reality. Several weeks ago, the
administration was warned that the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was on the verge
of taking over a strategically important Syrian
city, Deir al-Zour, close to the Iraqi border. As
the Daily Beast reported, the Syrian opposition
told administration officials like U.N.
ambassador Samantha Power that they were
surrounded by ISIS forces and running out of
ammunition. Without support, it was only a
matter of time before the city and key supply
routes fell into ISIS’s hands. The Syrian
opposition’s warnings fell on deaf ears.
Evidently, it does not matter to the White
House that a terrorist organization with
enormous reserves of cash now controls
territory on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi
border, or that its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
calls this territory the “caliphate.”
Last week the White House’s Middle East
coordinator, Philip Gordon, visited Tel Aviv to
speak at a conference where he encouraged
Israel to take bold steps for peace, to “end the
occupation and allow for Palestinian
sovereignty, security, and dignity.” Soon after
his talk, the conference hall had to be vacated
because the territory in Gaza that Israel ceased
to occupy in 2005 allowed Palestinian militants
to rain missiles on Israel’s largest city. This
episode, a perfect illustration of the Obama
administration willfully ignoring reality,
should provide a lesson, wrote David Horovitz.
“Our closest friend,” he wrote in the Times of
Israel, “should be just a little less arrogant in
telling us what we need and don’t need to do
in order to keep ourselves safe.”
Meanwhile, Hamas’s campaign shows no sign
of ending any time soon. According to Israeli
strategists, Hamas’s rate of missile fire is
considerably slower than it was two years ago
when Israel mounted Operation Pillar of
Defense to stop Hamas rockets. The rate
suggests to Israeli officials that Hamas is trying
to conserve its arsenal. As the Washington
Free Beacon reported, the Israeli Air Force is
targeting missile factories as well as tunnels,
but that may not be sufficient.
In 2012, Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu put 40,000 ground troops on the
border to show Hamas how far he was willing
to go to get a ceasefire. This time around he
may have to go further to check a Hamas
campaign that is qualitatively different from
that of 2012. Some Israeli analysts, like former
head of military intelligence Amos Yadlin,
argue that a ground operation is “necessary,
almost essential” to uncover the tunnel
networks, which may prove impermeable to
air attacks.
If Hamas is pacing its missile fire, it means
they’re in it for the long haul. If they’re
crossing red lines by firing missiles at Dimona
as well as Ben Gurion airport, it means they’re
going all out. The question is why.
Some analysts point to likely Iranian
involvement— indeed use of the long-range
M-302, not previously in the arsenal of Hamas,
underscores that suggestion. It’s true that
Hamas’s relations with Iran have been
somewhat cooler since they fell out over the
Syrian civil war (Hamas sided with their Sunni
co-religionists; Tehran has thrown its full
weight behind the Assad regime). But the
Iranians have a lot of cards to play in Gaza,
including Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian
factions, as well as Hamas itself. As Israeli
analyst Shimon Shapira commented recently,
“Iran is more than capable of going over the
head of Hamas’s political leadership and
arming its military commanders directly.”
If Iran is not in fact driving the campaign, then
Hamas may be putting on a demonstration for
Tehran of how helpful it can be to the Islamic
Republic. With Hezbollah tied down in Syria
fighting alongside Assad, Hamas is more useful
to Iran than ever—especially since Hamas is
now in possession of long-range missiles
capable of striking anywhere inside Israel,
making it another tool of Iranian deterrence
should the Israelis consider striking Iran’s
nuclear weapons facilities.
In other words, the strategic picture of the
Middle East hasn’t changed one bit. As the
Obama White House seeks to sign a permanent
deal with Iran by July 20, the key threat not
only to Israel but to American interests
remains .  .  . Iran. Too bad the Obama
administration can’t come to grips with that
reality.