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Consider the following brief news story from The Hill, a publication most would consider either non-partisan or discreetly partisan: “Biden says Netanyahu isn’t doing enough to get hostage deal.”
According to the lede, “President Biden on Monday said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal, adding pressure on the Israeli leader to reach a cease-fire agreement after six more hostages were found dead in Gaza over the weekend.”
There is no argument here. The Hill notes, “Biden was asked by reporters outside the White House on Monday if Netanyahu was doing enough to reach a hostage release agreement, to which he said, ‘No.’”
Well then, are those mediating the so called “two state solution” to the war in Gaza, and Lebanon, and Yemen, and, derivatively, Iran satisfied that they have put together an agreement that will appease both Israel and assorted terrorists, mostly Shia Arabs?
The answer to this question is – No. The Hill notes, “When asked if mediators are prepared to present a final hostage deal this week to both Israel and Hamas, Biden said, ‘We are very close to that,’ adding, ‘Hope springs eternal.’”
“Eternal” may be the right word. The mediators have been constructing their “two state solution” agreement, it seems, for the entire length of the Hamas-Israeli war. Hamas, under the direction of Iran, has refused any and all peace overtures. And Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu said, following the execution at close range of four hostages held in a Rafah tunnel for nearly a year, “We will not rest, nor will we be silent. We will pursue you, we will find you and we will settle accounts with you. Whoever murders hostages does not want a deal.”
It appears there has been a war in progress between Israel and Hamas ever since Hamas attacked peaceful Israeli citizens enjoying a concert. The four hostages murdered by Hamas were captured during that concert on Oct 7, 2023. Hamas killed about 1,200 people and, The Hill reports, “Roughly 250 hostages were taken captive during Hamas’s surprise assault… About 100 of the hostages were released late last year during a week-long cease-fire.”
The Biden administration, dripping with empathy for the victims, is even now insisting on what appears to be a political point, almost an academic point: Netanyahu is “not doing enough” to bring Hamas, and Hezbollah and the Houthis to the negotiating table. Netanyahu has pledged to rid Israel of continuing assaults by three terrorist groups financed by Iran.
Negotiation, some hands-on political negotiators might insist, is war by other means. But what matters in such negotiations is – who wins the war? As a general rule, the party that wins the war determines the peace in post war negotiations.
The Biden-Harris administration regards any negotiation as an end in itself. This view of things is historically shortsighted but politically opportune. Netanyahu clearly is not interested in his own political salvation and likely will be voted out of office at the conclusion of a successful wider war against Iran supported terrorist agents.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill never survived the political assaults launched against him following the successful prosecution – with the aid of the United States -- of both World War II and the ensuing Cold War against communist domination of Eastern Europe. Churchill lost the political battles, but he won both struggles through sheer force of character.
In the end, those who successfully prosecuted both hot and cold wars advanced the cause of peace for generations. And in the end, peace always secured at a great cost, they were dispensable.
Looking back at the bloodiest century in world history, French philosopher Julian Benda closed his much read book, La Trahison des Clercs (English translation: The Treason of the Intellectuals) with a dreadful prediction. The impulse towards domination of the material world, materialism itself, would produce an all-encompassing species-wide civilization that would completely cease "to situate the good outside the real world." The lust for power as an end in itself would become the primary pursuit of society.
Benda concludes his work with these words: “And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died."
Sometimes it is necessary to wade through blood so that the spiritual nature of the human species will not be lost in vanity and material or political progress alone. Neither Socrates nor Christ gave up their lives so that materialism – a vacuous pursuit of power – should suppress the human drive for honor and the rights of God.
