My Word: White flags, red flags, giving in, and giving up - opinion

"Israel doesn’t have a foreign policy, only a domestic one,” Henry Kissinger famously quipped many years ago. But today, it is the US, in a presidential election year, that is determining foreign policy more than ever with an eye on political campaign needs. It’s not just the US. In a year when more elections are taking place than at any time in recorded history, it’s hard to separate local current affairs from foreign news.

All the world’s a stage, as Shakespeare put it, but it’s a theater of global war and terror. And there’s a chorus standing on the sidelines, parroting tired lines disconnected from the plot. This week, I vowed to concentrate on what was going on in the wider world, although obviously, I couldn’t entirely take a break from the war in Gaza, continued rocket and terror attacks, and the plight of the hostages still being held by Hamas and other terrorists.

On Sunday morning, my eyes were drawn to the headline of a Reuters story: “Pope: Ukraine should have ‘courage of white flag’ of negotiations.” The Reuters report noted that Pope Francis “made his comments in an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI, well before Friday’s latest offer by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to host a summit between Ukraine and Russia to end the war.” As the report noted, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that “while he wants peace, he will not give up any territory.” Putin’s Russia, on the other hand, predictably refuses to pull its forces out of the country it invaded without provocation two years ago.

In the interview, which will be broadcast on March 20, the interviewer raised the “white flag” question and the pope reportedly replied, “...But I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people, and has the courage of the white flag and negotiates.”

Instead of concentrating on finding international partners to force Putin’s blood-stained hand to stop his aggression, the pope would like to see foreign powers mediating, even if it means the victim, Ukraine, loses.

“In another part of the interview,” Reuters reported, “speaking of the war between Israel and Hamas, Francis said: ‘Negotiating is never a surrender.’”

The 87-year-old pope was still a young boy when Britain and the Western world thought that negotiating with Nazi Germany – handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler – was a good idea and would prevent war. He’s old enough to know the consequences.

Appeasement doesn’t work

Appeasement doesn’t work. If you give in to the bullies – Putin, the Iranian-backed terrorist organizations (and Erdogan, for that matter) – you don’t save lives. You set the stage for the next round of hostilities.

While we’re on the subject of negotiations, here’s a headline from last week’s Jerusalem Post that should serve as a warning to the “negotiate at all costs” brigade. A report by Yonah Jeremy Bob sported the title, “IAEA Chief Grossi: ‘We have lost track of Iran’s nuclear progress.”

“It is three years since Iran stopped provisionally applying its additional protocol, and therefore it is also three years since the agency was able to conduct complementary access in Iran,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency told the Board of Governors. In other words, while we know that the Islamic Republic of Iran is progressing with its nuclear aspirations and is close to the break-out threshold, we don’t know how close. Back in 2015, when the JCPOA Iranian nuclear deal negotiations were concluded with much fanfare, I was not among those celebrating. I warned that a 10-15-year deal would go very fast. The fact that Iran handed over some of its uranium to Russia did not make me feel any safer. Iran, Russia, and China – currently carrying out joint naval maneuvers – have created an axis of evil together with North Korea, and they threaten exactly those values that the Western world professes to cherish.

There are those who don’t know and those who pretend not to know. Every time I think the UN has reached a new low, it does a limbo act and sinks even lower. Last week, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls Reem Alsalem claimed not to know that Israel was suffering from ongoing rocket attacks, speaking on a day in which an Indian agricultural worker was killed as he worked in Moshav Margaliot in the North. Alsalem has a problem with selective memory and selective vision. While claiming there was not enough evidence to accept that Hamas raped Israeli women and girls during its mass invasion on October 7, she co-authored a report with UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese last month accusing the IDF of committing sexual crimes against Palestinian women and girls, citing unspecified “credible sources.”

Last week, a report by Pramila Patten, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, found “clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, has been committed” by Hamas and concluded that it is probably ongoing against hostages. But even that isn’t enough to convince Alsalem and her ilk.

When the UN Security Council discussed Patten’s report this week, five months after the atrocities were committed, it was the first time the UN had a session devoted to the attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 were massacred and some 240 were abducted. The UN, which doesn’t consider Hamas a terrorist organization, has mandatory sessions every three months to single out Israel.

US President Joe Biden seems to be reading from a set script. He’s missing the information between the lines, the devilish details beyond the cliches and mantras. He also misread the Israeli public. In an interview with MSNBC, Biden warned Israel against taking action against Hamas in its last remaining stronghold in Rafah. Quoting figures supplied by the terrorist organization itself, the president said, “You can’t have 30,000 more Palestinians dead as a consequence of going after” Hamas. “There [are] other ways… to deal with … the trauma caused by Hamas.”

Mr. President, Israel isn’t risking the lives of its soldiers to deal with “the trauma” of Oct. 7. This isn’t some kind of costly therapy. The aim is to prevent another Oct. 7 from happening again, to destroy Hamas’s capabilities while creating a deterrence – which will hopefully also be heeded by Hezbollah in the North. Israel isn’t seeking closure; it’s seeking the return of the more-than 130 hostages who remain in the terrorists’ hands.

Every time he chides Israel, Biden creates less of an incentive for Hamas to end the hostilities and raises the price for the hostages. The warning that Israel would be crossing Biden’s red lines if it continued to take action shows that the US president, like the pope, is misreading the Middle Eastern map. Similarly, the insistence on ensuring ever-larger quantities of “humanitarian aid” be sent into Gaza, where most of it ends up in the hands of the terrorist regime, is no way to end a war; it only fuels it. Building a pier for food delivery and dropping meals by parachute looks good, but demanding Hamas stop the hostilities and release the hostages would be better for all.

In the MSNBC interview, Biden made an effort to distinguish between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the State of Israel. It’s a line that Vice President Kamala Harris has also taken. But the majority of Israelis, even those actively calling for new elections and to oust Netanyahu, are painfully aware that this war is not a personal escapade of the prime minister. When Netanyahu’s political rival Benny Gantz visited the US last week, he was on the same page as Netanyahu regarding the broader goals and conduct of the war, telling US officials that asking Israeli forces to stay out of Rafah now is like telling firefighters that they should only put out 80% of a fire. And, particularly after Oct. 7, only a tiny minority of Israelis believe that it is possible to immediately implement a “two-state solution” and survive.

The flags being waved are red, not white. The global village would do well to pay attention. The pope is not alone in confusing white flags with white smoke while the world burns.