The Unanimity Problem
The Unanimity Problem
“The whole world is demanding that Israel withdraw. I don’t think the whole world, including the friends of the Israeli people and government, can be wrong.”
United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan - April 8, 2002
The central text of rabbinic Judaism, the Talmud, contains a teaching that finds unanimity inherently suspect, as it suggests a lack of critical thinking, the existence of bias, and groupthink. Indeed, in capital cases, if all the judges of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish judicial and legislative body during the Second Temple period, found the defendant guilty, he was to be acquitted. This brings to mind UN General Secretary Kofi Annan’s confident assertion of 2002 as Israel fought the Yasser Arafat-orchestrated terrorism onslaught of the Second Intifada in the West Bank:
“The whole world is demanding that Israel withdraw. I don’t think the whole world, including the friends of the Israeli people and government, can be wrong.”
Um…
Israel has been the focus of almost unanimous international condemnation over the last 22 months, which has intensified into anger over the past few weeks, and erupted as outrage over the past few days following Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s announcement of Israel’s intention to assert control over Gaza City and ultimately the entire Strip.
Is this plan smart? I don’t know enough to know. Very few beyond the political and military decision makers in Israel do, and there’s deep division among them. There seem to be legitimate strategic arguments both for and against. And it is not entirely clear precisely what the plan is.
Much of the international outcry seems to reflect an interpretation of the strategy as one for permanent Israeli occupation of all of Gaza, and maybe even a precursor to annexation and resettlement of the Strip. The Israeli government, on the other hand, avoids the use of the word occupation, let alone a permanent one, speaking instead in terms of temporary control to be handed over to a consortium of moderate Arab states once Hamas’s military capabilities are eliminated. That’s assuming the takeover happens at all.
To understand the details of and rationale behind Israel’s next steps, a good place to start is with the man who bears ultimate responsibility for them, Bibi Netanyahu. A couple of nights ago, Fox News’ Bill Hemmer conducted a 26-minute interview with the Prime Minister in his office, which you can view here. Netanyahu explained that
Israel intends to take over all of Gaza to eliminate Hamas, but will not keep control save for a security perimeter.
This effort is part of the effort to this point to apply military pressure to gain the release of the remaining hostages, just as it has gained the release of 148 live hostages to date
The virtual leveling of Rafah was the result of Hamas booby trapping virtually every building, requiring the IDF’s intentional detonation once the buildings were empty. Also, before the IDF’s pursuit of Hamas, the city’s civilians were evacuated in 6 days, and thus virtually none were killed
There is a “humanitarian surge” that will continue into the future
There are 5 principles of “the day after”
Hamas lays down its arms
Gaza is demilitarized
All hostages are released
Israel maintains responsibility for overall security, and
Gaza is governed by a civilian authority that is not Israel, is willing to live in peace with Israel, and which will give Gaza a different future
Accusations that the IDF is killing Palestinian civilians trying to access food are exaggerated and often false
Israel’s trajectory of the last 22 months has been from suffering the horrific attacks of 10/7 to winning a 7-front war and being in a position to “expand the peace” by expanding the Abraham Accords and creating a different Middle East.
IDF soldiers are confident they can “liberate Gaza from these murderers” while separating the civilians from the combatants.
“The so-called credible media” engages in almost systemic distortion and vilification
People will ultimately see the truth of the Gaza war and how it compares to other urban wars, which were not nearly as complicated.
Five or six countries are likely to join the Abraham Accords.
Needless to say, Netanyahu’s rendition of the new plan for Gaza is neither the only one out there nor uncontested. As a journalist from the right, Amit Segal’s reporting on Friday offered particularly credible insight into its critique. The biggest criticism is that it is not a plan to defeat Hamas, but rather a tactic to pressure Hamas to agree to a partial hostage deal, which, if successful, will stop the operation and cause the IDF to withdraw. The operation is expected to take three months and involve three divisions, generating great concern that it will bring heavy costs in human lives, both IDF and Palestinian, and in Israel’s international standing. Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff, argued it is too high a price to pay to pressure Hamas.
The prospect of Israel’s entry into Gaza City alone may be the pressure needed to wrestle a deal out of Hamas. There is a “flurry of diplomatic activity” to try to end the war and thus head off Israel’s plan. US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Qatar’s Prime Minister in Ibiza over the weekend, and there are reports of intense discussions between Israel, Egypt, Qatar, and the US. That said, an Israeli official was quoted as saying that “the gap between Israel and Hamas regarding ending the war is huge, so talking of a comprehensive deal is likely to be pointless at this stage.”
The lack of unanimity among Israel’s decision makers is something that longstanding Jewish thought deems healthy. On the other hand, the international community, riding a building wave of political inertia for the last 22 months, is nearly unanimous in its condemnation of Israel’s announced next steps, as it has been of Israel’s conduct of the war to this point and, more recently, the humanitarian crisis, at least as portrayed by Hamas, the UN and the media. Germany, a stalwart supporter of the Jewish state, in significant part for obvious historical reasons, is the latest Western nation to get swept up by the wave, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz announcing the suspension of the sales of arms to Israel that could be used in Gaza.
There is one important country that has resisted the geopolitical pull of the crowd, ours. While conceding “some disagreement” with Jerusalem’s prosecution of the war in Gaza after the Israeli cabinet decision, US Vice President JD Vance asserted that we share Israel’s objectives, and President Trump indicated that it is for the government of Israel to determine how they are best achieved. Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, have made their strenuous disagreement with the approach of French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer quite clear. The State Department made a point of posting on X Rubio’s assessment that the proclamation of France’s intention to recognize a Palestinian state has “actually made it harder to get peace.”
Huckabee had a considerably less diplomatic reaction to Starmer’s following suit with Macron and his criticism of Israel’s decision to take control of Gaza City:
“So Israel is expected to surrender to Hamas & feed them even though Israeli hostages are being starved? Did UK surrender to Nazis and drop food to them?… If you had been PM then UK would be speaking German!”
The United States’ willingness to ignore shallow groupthink in favor of reaching conclusions based on an objective assessment of the facts and their logical application to the issue at hand was recently demonstrated in still starker terms. Instead of parroting the international pablum about Palestinian statehood, last month the United States State Department imposed sanctions denying visas to PLO members and PA officials for violating a litany of international commitments and “undermining the prospects for peace.”
As if to validate the ancient Jewish suspicion of unanimity, Israel’s former Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, and the head of West Point’s Urban Warfare Institute, John Spencer, in an excellent piece posted on X, reveal the often contradictory divide between politics and facts on the ground. As the first paragraph sets out perfectly:
“No military is more publicly condemned today than the Israel Defense Forces. Yet behind closed doors, few are more studied. Western generals and defense officials routinely seek Israeli briefings, request access to doctrine and tactics, and pursue cooperation on training and technology. These efforts continue even as their political counterparts issue statements of moral outrage and condemnation. The contradiction reflects more than a double standard. It reveals a deeper divide between political perception and military reality, between external messaging and internal understanding, between illusion and experience.”
Over the last 22 months, the IDF has hosted dozens of foreign military and defense delegations to study Israeli military tactics and practices, including those for distinguishing between civilians and combatants and civilian harm mitigation. “Meanwhile, many of their political counterparts deliver rehearsed remarks emphasizing restraint, proportionality, and civilian protection, often with little connection to the operational context or ground realities they were just briefed on.”
Gallant and Spencer offer an exceptional survey of the history and operational reality of urban warfare, including Gaza, to underscore the “strategic dissonance” between them and the performances of politicians catering to the ideologies and moods of their audiences. They contend,
“If democratic leaders continue to separate what they know privately from what they say publicly, the result will not be greater morality. It will be greater suffering and failure. Silence will not deter enemies. Illusion will not protect civilians. And condemnation, without context or consistency, will not produce peace.”
The hard lessons of war must be faced, not avoided. Military professionals understand this. It is time for political leaders to do the same.
..Political leaders too often avoid difficult truths…In many capitals, political performance overrides professional understanding.”
It turns out the sages of the Talmud knew a thing or two about human nature.