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Is It Possible to Destroy Hamas? Experts Weigh in as US Rhetoric Shifts
Israeli soldiers inspect the entrance to what they say is a tunnel used by Hamas terrorists during a ground operation in a location given as Gaza, in this handout image released Nov. 9, 2023. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
Amid a shift in rhetoric among US officials regarding Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas, there has been growing uncertainty about whether that war aim is feasible.
According to experts who spoke with The Algemeiner, Israel can remove the Palestinian terrorist group from power in Gaza, although efforts by the Biden administration and the international community more broadly to halt Israeli military operations have hurt that effort. However, the experts argued, fully eradicating Hamas from the coastal enclave will be nearly impossible at this point.
Recent comments from top officials in the US State Department have suggested the Biden administration has an evolving view of Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas, which rules Gaza.
On Monday, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said it does not seem likely Israel will be able to achieve “total victory” — in the parlance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — over Hamas.
“In some respects, we are struggling over what the theory of victory is,” he said. “I don’t think we believe that [total victory] is likely or possible and that this looks a lot like situations that we found ourselves in after 9/11, where, after civilian populations had been moved and lots of violence … the insurrections continue.”
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed similar sentiments on Sunday.
“We’re seeing parts of Gaza that Israel has cleared of Hamas, where Hamas is coming back, including in the north, including in Khan Younis,” he said, suggesting Israel’s strategy may not be working. “A lot of armed Hamas will be left no matter what they do in Rafah.”
The Algemeiner asked the State Department to clarify its stance on whether it believes Hamas can be destroyed and whether it is willing to accept the terrorist group staying in power in some capacity.
“The president has made clear the United States wants to see Hamas defeated and justice delivered to [Yahya] Sinwar,” a spokesperson said, referring to the terrorist group’s leader in Gaza. “There can be no equivocation on that.”
But, at the same time, the spokesperson argued, “the only way to completely defeat an idea is to offer a better one. Military pressure is necessary but not sufficient to fully defeat Hamas. If Israel’s military effort is not accompanied by a political plan for the future of Gaza and the Palestinian people, the terrorists will keep coming back and Israel will remain under threat.”
The State Department official added that “we are seeing this happen in Gaza City,” referring to the fact that Hamas terrorists have returned to some areas in Gaza where they had been driven out by Israeli forces.
Israel has not publicly articulated a clear plan for the “day after” Hamas is defeated in Gaza, leading critics to claim that Israel’s operations may ultimately prove fruitless if the terrorists are able to re-occupy areas of Gaza where Israeli forces have left.
Max Abrahms, a tenured professor of international relations at Northeastern University and a consultant to US government agencies, disagreed with the notion that Israel has lacked any kind of a strategy, suggesting those pushing such a claim may have an agenda. “This constant refrain about Netanyahu not having a plan for the day after has been weaponized in order to justify pressuring Israel into halting its military operations in Gaza,” he told The Algemeiner.
Abrahms also argued it is unlikely Israel will be able to fully defeat Hamas at this point.
On one hand, “we’ve seen throughout history many examples of terrorists getting absolutely crushed and never recovering. One example of counter-terrorism working, which is very salient, was ISIS based in Syria,” he said.
“However,” Abrahms explained, “I do not believe that Hamas will be eradicated, even as a terrorist group, out of Gaza.” Some of the blame, he argued, lies on “the international community, including the Biden White House, which has continuously restrained the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] from effectively going after Hamas.”
“The enormous delay before Rafah, as well as the pressure on Israel to draw down its troops out of Gaza, enabled Hamas not only to survive in Rafah, but to reposition itself in northern Gaza,” Abrahms added. “So, it is impossible to imagine, at this point, that Hamas will be eradicated from Gaza, but it didn’t need to be that way.”
Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), told The Algemeiner that she believes Israel can still achieve its war aims. “Removing a group from power,” she argued, “is a much simpler goal than eradicating it, which is actually, certainly in its most absolute sense, unachievable.”
Asked about those who are questioning the prudence of Israel’s military strategy and whether it is conducive to achieving its war aims, she said, “I don’t question Israel’s strategy here. I think, you know, they’ve got a good 76 years of experience in dealing with the enemy.”
“The idea that we should be sitting here in Washington, DC, and suggesting that the Israelis are fools,” she said, is incorrect and counterproductive.
The post Is It Possible to Destroy Hamas? Experts Weigh in as US Rhetoric Shifts first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada
Vancouver police arrested and released one person at the home of Charlotte Kates, director of the terror group Samidoun, in a dramatic raid on Nov. 14. The raid was conducted […]
The post Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, US, March 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer
President-elect Donald Trump won an overwhelming majority of the votes in New York City (NYC) precincts that were at least a quarter Jewish, according to a data analysis by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a prominent Washington DC-based political group.
RJC presented data on Friday affirming the notion that Trump won a higher proportion of the NYC Jewish vote than in previous elections, potentially signaling an ideological shift in the traditionally-liberal voting bloc. According to RJC data, Trump received the “overwhelming” majority of votes in precincts with a Jewish population of at least 25%.
Trump’s 2024 performance among Jews in NYC seems to mark a substantial improvement over the 2020 and 2016 elections, contests in which the president-elect struggled to make inroads among Jewish voters.
Voting data from the 2024 election also indicate that there was a significant shift among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. President-elect Trump also enjoyed greater success in heavily-Jewish enclaves of deep-blue cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, according to data compiled by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and the Los Angeles Times, respectively.
Trump’s increased success among Jewish voters in the Big Apple comes amid simmering anger over surging antisemitism across the country.
In the year following the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel, college campuses have become embroiled in an unrelenting onslaught of protests opposing the Jewish state. Moreover, many Jews have expressed dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, suggesting that the president has not been a firm ally of the Jewish state.
Over the past year, NYC has been ravaged with raucous, often-violent anti-Israel demonstrations and an unrelenting spate of antisemitic hate crimes.
Columbia University, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the world, became a poster-child for the anti-Israel campus movement, erecting encampments and holding protests calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Many NYC public schools came embroiled in scandal after teachers presented students with lesson plans that accused Israel of committing “apartheid” and “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Though most national Democrats continue to express support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists, some figures in the party have, over the past year, adopted a more adversarial posture toward the Jewish state, often citing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as a key reason.
High-profile Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) have suggested that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” against Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign targeting terrorists since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Earlier this year, a group of dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, urging him to “reconsider” approving offensive arms shipments to Israel.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. While courting Jewish voters, Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them once he retains office in January.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
The post Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge
Screenshot of masked men who attempted to rob Jewish man in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Thursday. Photo: Screenshot
The Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York was the target of another attack on Thursday evening, as three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood.
Footage of the incident was shared on X/Twitter by Yaacov Behrman, liaison of Chabad Headquarters and founder of the Jewish Future Alliance (JFA) nonprofit. It shows the men, whose faces were concealed by hoods and ski masks, chasing the man into the street and through the neighborhood after attempting to accost him.
No arrests have been made.
“He doesn’t give in easily, and I don’t think they got anything,” Behrman tweeted. “The Jewish Future Alliance is deeply concerned not only about the increase in crime but also the fact that, once again, the perpetrators were wearing masks. We need to reinstate mask laws.”
The explosion of an antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn has set the Orthodox Jewish community on edge in recent weeks.
Last Tuesday, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. According to multiple accounts, the assailants were two Black teenagers.
That incident was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. Before then, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily neighborhood, which is heavily Jewish, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
Most recently, a masked man was caught on video approaching a visibly Jewish father walking with his two sons and grabbing one of the children in broad daylight. He was unable to secure possession of the child, whose father fought back immediately and did not let go of his son. Police later identified the man as Stephan Stowe, 28 — a suspect gang member with an extensive criminal history which includes 33 prior arrests — and charged arrested him attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
In each case, the suspect was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
Black-on-Jewish crime is a social issue which has been studied before. In 2022, a report published by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) showed that Orthodox Jews were the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in New York City and that 69 percent of their assailants were African American. Seventy-seven percent of the incidents took place taking in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings, just two resulted in convictions.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” AAA founder and former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) told The Algemeiner. “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”
The problem has become acute in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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