An open letter to Netanyahu: Heed Biden’s warnings - comment

Dear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

Suffice it to say that you and I have not always seen eye to eye.

Setting aside issues such as the haredi draft law, support for ultra-Orthodox parties’ policies, judicial reform, support for the LGBTQ+ community, or treatment of the Arab-Israeli community, your approach to the Israel-Hamas war has been rotten from the start.

I can understand your genuine motivation at first. It was a necessity to attack, injure and weaken Hamas so that nothing like October 7 would ever happen again. But what now?

What is the next move for Israel?

It is beyond clear that the IDF is not going to rescue all of the remaining hostages. Hamas has been irreversibly damaged.

The operation, at this point, only further stretches Israel’s justification, making it thinner and thinner until it will no longer be deemed permissible on the international stage.

I spoke on this week’s JPost Podcast about the Doctrine of Double Effect (DoDE), a principle taken from international political thought described by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as “the permissibility of an action that causes a serious harm, such as the death of a human being, as a side effect of promoting some good end.”

This is the principle that, until now, allowed Israel to continue in this operation, despite Palestinians unrelated to the conflict – those Gazans unaffiliated with terrorist organizations who are being impacted on the ground by the humanitarian crisis – being killed as sort of a “side effect” of the operation intended to eliminate Hamas.

However, one criterion for implementing this doctrine is proportionality. You have skirted around this issue, which is bringing about international scrutiny. If we continue on this trajectory, it will lead to our moral failings, not to mention the loss of crucial connections around the world.

Do you wonder why the US is turning against us? Look closer.

US PRESIDENT Joe Biden, in a joint press conference at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday, told Hamas that they must accept the hostage proposal crafted in Cairo earlier this week.

Biden is speaking to a known terrorist organization, urging it to align itself with Israel’s demands. He is doing that for Israel.

Last week, the president urged the leaders of Egypt and Qatar to pressure Hamas terrorists to agree to a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal ahead of a fresh round of talks this weekend in Cairo.

His support for Israel has been ongoing for a long, long time – and you know this, Bibi. There is no room to question this.

So when Biden puts pressure on Israel to stop what it is doing, it does not come from a place of lack of support for the Jewish state.

During a terse half-an-hour call last week, Biden warned you that the US will change its policy toward Gaza unless Israel takes immediate steps to better protect Palestinian civilians there. This conversation followed the incident in which the IDF killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen, including an American citizen.

Indeed, Israel has been opposed to an external investigation on this matter, but why would we? If we want to argue that this incident was an accident – as part of our prioritizing the safety of innocents in this conflict – then we should certainly confirm that we did not intend to kill aid workers.

And now, Democrats in the US are calling on Biden to halt weapons transfers to Israel due to opposition about how we are handling the ongoing war.

Note that other than in extreme cases within the party, these calls have come very late in the conflict – six months in – proving that they do not stem from opposition to Israel altogether, but rather to what has recently been happening on the ground.

For example, former House speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi signed a letter last week, alongside several other congressional Democrats, to the president and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging a halt to weapons transfers to Israel.

This comes from the understanding that we are inching toward the line where proportionality no longer stands – Where the DoDE is lost, and with it, our moral standing in this war.

So, Bibi, stop arguing that this stems from US hate towards Israel, and definitely not from the Democratic Party. This convinces no one. 

While Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is a progressive movement, it is on the very end of the spectrum. The majority of the Democratic Party supports the State of Israel.

If you continue down this path, you will cause irreversible damage to the US-Israel relationship, one that we desperately need – no matter how much your fellow coalition partners deny this.

The writer is deputy editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.