Did Benjamin Netanyahu Scuttle an Early Deal for the Hostages?

In a recent edition of the Times of Israel, I found this article:

 

 

The article outlines the actions taken by Haim Rubinstein, a media advisor who previously worked for former Member of the Knesset, Ofer Shelah and as a member of the Yesh Atid political party's media team for four elections, immediately after the Hama attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.  

  

According to Rubinstein, he met with the families of the hostages on October 8th, and ultimately, he became the cofounder of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum:

 

 

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum focuses on bringing all of the hostages back to their families and "offers the families holistic medical and emotional support as well as professional assistance, and advances the ongoing efforts locally, regionally and globally". Members of the Forum include the family members and friends of the hostages as well as top security, law, media and diplomacy experts who are volunteering their time to aid in the recovery of the missing Israelis.  The group notes that they are using diplomatic and legal channels to raise public awareness about the hostage crisis.  The aforementioned Haim Rubinstein was the group's original spokesman and announced that he was stepping down as spokesman for the group in early March 2023 to spend more time with his family and because of what he felt was political interference in the Forum, taking on the role of strategic advisor:

 

Let's go back to the recent story in the Times of Israel.  In the April 26th edition of the Times as I provided above, Rubinstein is interviewed about his experiences over the past six months.  Here are some interesting exchanges with my bolds throughout:

 

Question - Did you work with Gal Hirsch or with the Prime Minister’s Office? (On October 8, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Hirsch to act as the coordinator between the families and the government. Rubinstein contends that, at the time, Hirsch’s team didn’t have comprehensive information regarding the number of hostages.)

 

Answer - Gal Hirsch only began functioning after two or three weeks. Until then, there was no one to talk to. I don’t know what his contribution was. As far as I can tell, he just held the microphone in meetings with the families. He told them they shouldn’t hold protests [to push for their loved ones’ release].

 

You need to understand that Netanyahu set up Hirsch’s team because the Prime Minister’s Office didn’t want there to be an external body criticizing the government for its conduct surrounding the hostages.

 

Question - Did you feel like the government was ignoring you?

 

Answer - Absolutely. No representative of the government or the IDF had updated the families of the hostages that the IDF was beginning its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. We couldn’t understand how it could be that the families weren’t getting updated on the ramifications this could have for them.

 

Question - How did you deal with this?

 

Answer - On that day, October 26, I called on the families to come to Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. At the assembly, we announced that the prime minister and the defense minister must meet the families, but there was no response to that from Netanyahu’s or Yoav Gallant’s offices.

 

So we said that if we didn’t get an immediate response, the families would camp outside the Kirya IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv.

 

After that, Gallant promised in a statement to meet the families the next day. We told him we weren’t willing to wait. That evening, Netanyahu’s office announced that he would meet the families’ representatives.

 

Here is the key exchange:

 

Question - What was the atmosphere like? (at the aforementioned meeting with Netanyahu)

 

Answer - We left the meeting very disappointed because Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war. He didn’t promise anything regarding the demand to return the hostages. He merely said a military operation in Gaza was needed to serve as leverage for the hostages’ release.

 

We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the Strip, but the government rejected the offer.

 

Rubinstein also notes that the first hostage deal took place 53 days after the beginning of the war but that the second deal has taken over 200 days to complete for the following reason:

 

"The main reason is the prime minister’s refusal.... There is no doubt that Netanyahu is preventing a deal. Netanyahu knows that if he goes to elections at this time he won’t be able to form a new government, and he is motivated by cold political considerations."

 

Rubinstein states that he believes that the moment the hostages are released, far-right members of the coalition government Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir will claim that the price paid for the release of the hostages was too high, thus collapsing Netanyahu's current coalition government.

 

Think about this for a moment.  According to Haim Rubinstein, Benjamin Netanyahu chose political survival over making a very quick deal to free all of the hostages just days after they were taken by Hamas.  Surely Washington must have been aware of this and, if not, why not?   One would have to wonder why President Biden and his minions are choosing to back Israel's murder of over 34,000 Palestinian civilians and supply Israel with billions of dollars worth of weapons to fight this war if, indeed, the war was not necessary in the first place....unless Israel just wants to eliminate Gaza and expand its own boundaries yet again and members of Congress don't want to alienate their backers in Big Defense.

But you won't hear this in the North American or European mainstream media, will you?

Netanyahu and Hamas - Revealing the Tangled Web

On October 9, 2023, this article appeared on the Haaretz website, the longest running newspaper currently in print circulation in Israel:

 

Here's the key quote from the analysis:

 

"Effectively, Netanyahu’s entire worldview collapsed over the course of a single day. He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians. His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.

 

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”"

 

As I posted earlier this week, Israel's leadership has a long history of embracing the "the enemy of my enemy must surely be my friend" philosophy when it comes to Hamas.  So, how's that working out for thousands of innocent, injured and dead citizens of Israel and Gaza?

The tangled web between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas is revealed.

Benjamin Netanyahu - Dragging the World Into a War Against Iran

At the recent meeting of 62 world leaders in Warsaw entitled "the Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East", despite the fact that the meeting was touted as a Middle East peace summit, Iran became the focus of discussion even though this was how the meeting was touted by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Poland's Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz:

"This meeting -- bringing together more than 60 nations and representatives from the European Union and NATO -- is historic for showing our seriousness and unity of purpose. We will discuss violent instability in Syria and Yemen, as well as efforts to achieve a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Further sessions will feature discussions on missile proliferation, energy security, emerging cyber-based threats, counterterrorism, and humanitarian aid. Our broad goal is to hear every nation's unscripted, candid ideas for how to make progress on these issues, and more. As our fellow foreign ministers know, multilateral meetings are often pro-forma exercises in giving prepared statements. Not this one. Our hope is that real conversations will drive real action."

In the op-ed by Pompeo and Czaputowicz, the topic of Iran was only very briefly mentioned here:

"We expect each nation to express opinions that reflect its own interests. Disagreements in one area should not prohibit unity in others. In the past, for example, our two nations have taken distinct positions on the Iran nuclear deal. Despite these strong differences of opinion, the US-Poland relationship remains strong. This cooperation is a model for what we hope all countries attending the Ministerial will commit to. Establishing a consensus on many -- and perhaps most -- issues is more than possible."

Here is the outline of what was to be accomplished in the meeting from the U.S. Department of State website:

Once again, Iran is only mentioned once and in a very casual way:

"The Secretary will provide an update on the situation in Syria and discuss other U.S. priorities in the region, including concerns regarding Iran’s destructive activities."

While, according to the State Department and Secretary Pompeo, Iran was allegedly not going to be the focus of the meeting, this is what Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters upon his departure from Israel:

"This is a very important international conference in Warsaw. The focus is Iran. This brings together Israel, the US, and countries in and beyond the region.  I think that the holding of this conference in which Israel, the US, various countries around the world and from the region sit down in one place, in one hall and discuss one topic which, in my opinion, is the most important for our national security, is a very important achievement."

In addition, a tweet by Netanyahu proclaiming the importance of the event stated the following:

"From here I am going to a meeting with 60 foreign ministers and representatives of countries around the world against Iran. What is important is the encounter, and a meeting not secretly or secretly, because there are many. This is in fact an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries that sit with Israel to advance the common interest of a war in Iran."

Here is the tweet in Hebrew:

The English language tweet was quickly deleted (but not before the internet remembered it) and was replaced with this one which was somewhat more oblique when it came to declaring war with Iran:

Here is what appeared on the website of the Israeli Prime Minister the day before the meeting in Warsaw took place:

Here's what he had to say about the conference in general and the pro-Israeli/anti-Iran stance that was taken by his fellow world leaders at the meeting, be they Arab or other:

In closing, here is the statement from the Co-Chairs of the meeting, outlining the accomplishments made and, once again, noting that Iran is only briefly mentioned by Foreign Minister Czaputowicz:

"The European Union and the United States share the conviction about the role of Iran could and should play in the Middle East and in the wider world, but we are concerned about possible results of Iran’s nuclear program as well as the unconstructive role of the country in the region. We univocally condemn intolerable actions of Iran beyond its own territory, including Europe, which met with additional EU sanctions.

The differences between us may be about methods. The European Union believes that maintaining the peaceful character of the Iranian nuclear program calls for keeping the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, in place. The United States abandoned this agreement and imposed sanctions. But in our opinion, in the opinion of Poland, it is only through joint actions in the framework of trans-Atlantic community or, more broadly, the global community of democratic states that we can effectively limit negative trends in the Middle East."

Interestingly enough, even though Russia is a key player in the Middle East since its involvement with the Syrian civil war, it was not planning to attend.  It is also interesting to note that Turkey, Qatar, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority as well as Iran and Iranian opposition groups were not invited to attend or turned down the opportunity to attend.

Obviously, Benjamin Netanyahu believed that the focus of the high level Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East was getting Arab nations onside with the goal of waging war against Israel's existential enemy, Iran.  In contrast, while we don't know what went on behind closed doors, it certainly appears that there was no agreement between Europe and the United States about the methods that should be used to punish Iran for its so-called breaches of the JCPOA and that Israel stood along with the United States as the only two major proponents of an all-out war against Iran.

Using the Islamic State to Counter Iran - The Israeli Solution

Updated October 2017

Before you start reading this posting, I must apologize for its length.  Since the subject has a lot of "moving parts", I wanted to be certain that I presented all of the background necessary to understand the importance of main focus of this posting, an article that appeared on a Middle East think-tank website that outlines Israel's position on the eradication of the Islamic State.

A relatively recent piece on the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) by Professor Efriam Inbar provides us with a rather different viewpoint on the continued existence of the Islamic State.  Since most of us have not heard of BESA, it was founded in 1993 by Dr. Thomas Hecht, a Canadian Jewish community leader as an independent and non-partisan institute affiliated with the political science department at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel.  Since its founding, it has been directed by the aforementioned Professor Efriam Inbar, an authority on the Arab-Israeli conflict and an expert on Israeli strategic doctrines, national security issues and nuclear matters.  Most interestingly, in 2009, BESA was chosen by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the venue from which he would publicize his key diplomatic policies.  Now, let's look at the recent offering of Professor Efriam Inbar starting with the opening two paragraphs:

"US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently gathered defense ministers from allied nations to plan what officials hope will be the decisive stage in the campaign to eradicate the Islamic State (IS) organization. This is a strategic mistake.

IS, a radical Islamist group, has killed thousands of people since it declared an Islamic caliphate in June 2014, with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its de facto capital. It captured tremendous international attention by swiftly conquering large swaths of land and by releasing gruesome pictures of beheadings and other means of execution."

Let's look at a bit of background first.  Back in January 2016, Ashton Carter met with his counterpart, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Paris and announced the following:

"ISIL is a cancer that’s threatening to spread. And like all cancers, you can’t cure the disease just by cutting out the tumor. You have to eliminate it wherever it has spread, and stop it from coming back."

He also stated the following:

"Any nation that cares about the safety of its people or the future of its civilization must know this: The United States and strong partners like France will continue to lead the fight, but there can be no free riders....Our campaign to deliver ISIL a lasting defeat, at its source and wherever it rears its head, is far from over. But the outcome is certain.  Our campaign will continue to adapt and build on our success, as ISIL’s territory decreases, its resources dwindle, and local, capable forces gain the capacity to not only win on the field of battle, but to lay the foundation for lasting security in the region, and a more secure future for the world.”

At a press conference held after the July 20, 2016 meeting with 30 leaders and defence ministers from around the globe, Mr. Carter stated the following:

"I want to begin by thanking all of my counterparts, all of the ministers of defense from all of the nations represented here today at another one of our full counter-ISIL meetings of defense ministers from the entire coalition.

This is something we've done and we're going to do periodically, and I thank them for joining us as we continue to rigorous evaluate, plan the next steps of and further accelerate our campaign to deliver ISIL a lasting defeat...

As I said earlier today, our coalition's military campaign plan has three objectives.  First, to destroy the ISIL parent tumor in Iraq and Syria.  That's necessary, but it's not sufficient.  As recent attacks remind us, ISIL safe havens threaten not only the lives of Iraqi and Syrian people, but also the security of our own citizens.

And the sooner we defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria, the safer our countries will be.  

So our second objective is to combat ISIL's metastasizes everywhere they emerge around the world.  And third, and most important, to help protect our homelands."

When you combine the comments from both meetings, it is pretty clear that the American Secretary of Defense will be satisfied with nothing short of complete eradication of the Islamic State wherever it exists.

Now, let's go back to Professor Inbar's perspective on the issue, remembering that his organization is closely linked with the current Israeli Prime Minister:  

"But IS is primarily successful where there is a political void. Although the offensives in Syria and Iraq showed IS’s tactical capabilities, they were directed against failed states with weakened militaries. On occasions when the poorly trained IS troops have met well-organized opposition, even that of non-state entities like the Kurdish militias, the group’s performance has been less convincing. When greater military pressure was applied and Turkish support dwindled, IS went into retreat.

It is true that IS has ignited immense passion among many young and frustrated Muslims all over the world, and the caliphate idea holds great appeal among believers. But the relevant question is what can IS do, particularly in its current situation? The terrorist activities for which it recently took responsibility were perpetrated mostly by lone wolves who declared their allegiance to IS; they were not directed from Raqqa. On its own, IS is capable of only limited damage.

A weak IS is, counterintuitively, preferable to a destroyed IS. IS is a magnet for radicalized Muslims in countries throughout the world. These volunteers are easier targets to identify, saving intelligence work. They acquire destructive skills in the fields of Syria and Iraq that are of undoubted concern if they return home, but some of them acquire shaheed status while still away - a blessing for their home countries. If IS is fully defeated, more of these people are likely to come home and cause trouble.

Moreover, a weak and lingering IS could undermine the attraction of the caliphate idea. A dysfunctional and embattled political entity is more conducive to the disillusionment of Muslim adherents of a caliphate in our times than an IS destroyed by a mighty America-led coalition. The latter scenario perfectly fits the narrative of continuous and perfidious efforts on the part of the West to destroy Islam, which feeds radical Muslim hatred for everything the West stands for."

Let's get to the real goal of Professor Inbar's rather interesting logic of allowing a much-reduced Islamic State to continue to exist:

"The West yearns for stability, and holds out a naive hope that the military defeat of IS will be instrumental in reaching that goal. But stability is not a value in and of itself. It is desirable only if it serves our interests. The defeat of IS would encourage Iranian hegemony in the region, buttress Russia’s role, and prolong Assad’s tyranny. Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus do not share our democratic values and have little inclination to help America and the West.

Moreover, instability and crises sometimes contain portents of positive change. Unfortunately, the Obama administration fails to see that its main enemy is Iran. The Obama administration has inflated the threat from IS in order to legitimize Iran as a “responsible” actor that will, supposedly, fight IS in the Middle East. This was part of the Obama administration’s rationale for its nuclear deal with Iran and central to its “legacy,” which is likely to be ill-remembered." (my bold)

Let's go back to 2015.  Here's what Benjamin Netanyahu had to say about the nuclear deal with Iran:

In light of his concerns about a nuclear Iraq from July 2015, here is what he had to say as a private citizen about another so-called nuclear threat in the region to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on September 12, 2002:

Let's repeat what he said:

"There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons – no question whatsoever and there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately."

Now, let's put all of this together.  The organization that Professor Inbar heads functions as the mouthpiece for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the same man who used his power (as a civilian) to convince the United States that they had no choice but to eradicate Saddam Hussein because he represented the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, directly conflicting with the Israeli role as the region's sole nuclear power.  As the coalition forces discovered during the Iraq war, Prime Minister Netanyahu was dead wrong about Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, however, his insistence on the removal of Saddam Hussein did have one unintended consequence, it led to the birth of the Islamic State.  Now, we have Benjamin Netanyahu insisting that the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran is once again destabilizing the region, allowing Iran to develop its nuclear weapons and increase its control of the region.  To counterbalance Iran's influence, BESA, Netanyahu's "mouthpiece", is suggesting that ISIS be allowed to exist in a much reduced form.  BESA clearly states that the real enemy in the region is Iran, a fact that, in their opinion, seems beyond the comprehension of the Obama Administration, and that the unlikely total defeat of the Islamic State that is the goal of the Americans and their friends will lead to one thing; an increase Iran's hegemony in the region.

I find it fascinating to see that an Israeli think-tank would take the position that the Islamic State should be allowed to exist in a reduced form to provide a political balance against Iran, Israel's avowed enemy-of-the-day in the Middle East.  While I think that the odds of completely defeating the Islamic State are very small, I think that the logic of allowing a form of the Islamic State to continue to exist simply to counter Iran is an extremely self-centred viewpoint on the part of Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran's Moving Nuclear Target Date

Let's open by looking at a speech given to the United Nations General Assembly by Benjamin Netanyahu on September 27, 2012:

Go to the 25 minute and 10 second mark where Benjamin Netanyahu begins to explain Iran's nuclear program using what can only be termed a Warner Brothers cartoon-like bomb:

"In the case of Iran's nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium and Iran has to go through three stages.  The first stage, they have to enrich enough low enriched uranium.  The second stage, they have to enrich enough medium enriched uranium.  And the third stage, the final stage, they have to enrich enough high enriched uranium for the first bomb.  Where's Iran?  Iran has completed the first stage.  It took them many years but they completed it and they are 70 percent of the way there.  Now, they are well into the second stage.  And by next spring, at most, by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move onto the final stage.  From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb."

He goes on to state that the information that he has provided is not secret and has not been gleaned from military intelligence, rather, they are taken from public reports provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

From the timeframe given by Israel's Prime Minister, Iran would have finished the medium enrichment program by mid-2013 and have developed a bomb by the end of 2013 at the latest.  This means that, according to Benjamin Netanyahu in 2012, Iran should have developed a fully functional nuclear weapon nearly one and a half years ago or within eighteen months of his speech to the United Nations.

Now, let's look at what Benjamin Netanyahu had to say about the deal signed with Iran by P5+1 in mid-July 2015:

At the 3 minute and 21 second mark, he makes this comment:

"By not dismantling Iran's nuclear program, in a decade, this deal will give an unreformed, unrepentant and far richer terrorist regime, the capacity to produce many nuclear bombs, in fact, an entire nuclear arsenal with the means to deliver it.  What a stunning, historic mistake."

So, Iran's nuclear program didn't meet Benjamin Netanyahu's late 2013 deadline so he readjusts and  proposesnew time line, a decade-long period for the development of Iran's first bomb.  Given that the recent agreement limits Iran's enrichment capacity and research and development for 15 years and that inspections and transparency measures will remain in place for as long as 25 years, it looks like Benjamin Netanyahu's concept of time as it relates to Iran's nuclear program is, once again, off base.

Interestingly enough, while it's barely worth the paper that it's written on, the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 recognizes only five states as possessors of nuclear weapons (nuclear weapons states or NWS); China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.  Three states, India Pakistan and Israel never joined the NPT and according to the Arms Control Association, it is believed that Israel possesses between 80 and 100 nuclear weapons with fissile material for up to 200 additional weapons.