Interviewed on September 28, 2024, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stated on American television that Israel’s objective as quite clear, and uncompromising:
He said: “We need to remove the threat of Hezbollah once and for all.”
He was unquestionably right. And yet, how farcical. Unless there is another Israeli politician named Naftali Bennett – and we researched extensively and could not find another – the same Bennett was Alternate Prime Minister of Israel on October 27, 2022, serving alongside then-Prime Minister Yair Lapid, when Israel signed the Israeli-Lebanese Maritime Border Deal. Yes, that controversial deal that was brokered faster than a used car salesman getting the “okay” from his manager for a sale that was certainly not to the advantage of the foolish buyer.
The agreement was brokered by the US State Department Energy Advisor Amos Hochstein and transparently and quite poorly presented as a victory for Israel and Lebanon. It was not.
While it was intended to take advantage of an Israeli coalition government whose clock was rapidly ticking to its end – and axiomatically – to bolster its chances in the coming Israel elections on November 1, 2022, it was instead a victory for Hezbollah.
We researched if there was another spokesman for the US State Department by the name Amos Hochstein, and once again, we could find no other. Yes, he is the same career diplomat who is now traveling as frequently as deemed necessary by his masters in Washington, DC to broker a cease-fire between Israel and – well, anyone who Israel was targeting in its endeavor to prevent enemy rockets and missiles from landing on Israeli civilians.
In 2022, Alternate Prime Minister Bennett surrendered his common sense to Hochstein. By ignoring Hezbollah’s virtual control over Lebanon, and the opposition opinion of Israel’s right-wing nationalist camp, Bennett supported the deal: “Not all that is good for Lebanon is bad for Israel. There are instances where it is possible both sides benefit. I saw value in reaching a deal….. Now, we have reached a deal under different circumstances and through a different path than planned. Still, under the current circumstances, it is right to approve.”
So we drew the obvious conclusion. With elections looming, the Biden Administration was seeking to determine Israel’s fate by throwing its support behind the failed year-and-a-half long Bennett-Lapid tenure to lead Israel. With this pyrrhic diplomatic victory, the Antony Blinken-run foreign policy was determined to put its finger on the scale to prevent a return to power of a Benjamin Netanyahu-led coalition government that would not be as compliant as that of Lapid. And Bennett.
Today, serving as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Energy and Investment, after his stint as the head of Biden’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, Hochstein once again promises to offer a cease-fire deal that will serve to quiet the region, and offer a measure of “security and stability” to all parties in Lebanon.
Reminder for those slow learners. This is the same Hochstein who promised as much with the maritime deal in October 2022; while Hezbollah was salivating at the prospect of newfound natural gas revenues that would supplement (via Lebanon) the tens of billions of dollars – and tens of thousands of missiles – provided by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those weapons aimed at Israel – the country of Hochstein’s birth – just incidentally.
One must wonder: Did these American negotiators actually go to school to advance their arbitration and mediation skills? We aren’t certain, because Hochstein’s profile is so rich with multiple long-winded previous titles that the only mention of scholarship was as a non-resident Fellow at the Harvard School’s Belfer Center.
Perhaps it is better subject for some future op ed, but one wonders if he (or his US State Department colleagues) ever took time to devote any study of Hezbollah’s ideological manifesto or the charters and political platforms of either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. It could be quite readily done between breakfast and brunch.
Assuming that the pursuit of true scholarship – or the need to understand the players of the region – Hochstein might engage in a quick study of the Koran. That of course might take a few hours more. But certainly enough to dampen his optimism of an easily brokered cease-fire that would bring either security or stability. Certainly not to the people of Israel.
Hochstein, as a seasoned-foreign policy player, you might rightly assume, is also a strong supporter of the 2-State solution – that illusion which is in essence, a delusion.
But we digress.
Back to Naftali Bennett, and his many impressive interviews of late on American television and other related podcasts.
Following his inglorious tenure as prime minister, heading a party with only six Knesset seats that took over in a brilliant coup of the coalition-building system (an opinion that certainly ought to be shared by Israel’s Left or Israel’s Arab Knesset party Ra’am), Bennett’s previous campaign promise that he would be “ten percent more right-wing than Bibi Netanyahu” was a bubble that quite readily burst, disappointing many of his own constituents, but not his newly-acquired supporters in Washington.
Biden, Blinken and Hochstein among them.
Fast forward.
October 7. Nothing here can be stated that will add to better understanding the madness of appeasement. Of “the concept.” Most sane people understand all too-well. And then, October 8. When Hezbollah joined the fray. And the rockets and missiles rained down from the north.
As for Naftali Bennett. Well, he is saying all the right things again. And often quite eloquently. But we with a memory that refuses to fail us, cannot help but roll our eyes. Especially because much of the nation has been speaking about the next election, quite prematurely; and, despite the fact that this democratically elected coalition has two more years of shelf-life and that Israel is in the midst of a multi-front existential war with a large proportion of its population in active service.
In an interview with CNN’s Jessica Dean on September 28, Bennett offered this: “Hezbollah right now is temporarily badly harmed and injured, but if we let go of them now, they will just recover and hit us back in two or three or five years; that’s something none of us want to do.” He added that this could be achieved with or without a ground incursion by Israel into Lebanon.
The only thing that Bennett was absolutely right about was his definitive comment: “We need to remove the threat of Hezbollah once and for all.” That – we hope he has finally come to understand – cannot be done by allowing the Bidens, the Blinkens, or the Hochsteins to have any say in the manner by which Israel prosecutes the war.
And certainly not Kamala Harris – who could not find Lebanon on a map of Lebanon – who demands a cease-fire while waiting in the wings with her own foreign policy Svengali (viz., Phil Gordon) and his own long resume – waiting to impose a solution as part of that generations-old State Department enterprise “to save Israel in spite of herself.”
Israel does not need to be lectured to – however rich the resume is of those who dare to. We simply need to reach back one hundred-and-one years ago, when Zeev Jabotinsky cautioned us in The Iron Wall (1923): “We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph, or Simon, or Ivan, or Achmet, agree with it or not.”
Or Amos.
Meir Jolovitz is a past national executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, and formerly associated with the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.