https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/netanyahu-and-the-road-to-victory?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=netanyahu-and-the-road-to-victory
Elliot Kaufman published in the Wall Street Journal on December 20 an interview he had just conducted with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s a riveting read. At three key moments since October 7, 2023, Netanyahu was given advice by the Biden administration on the conduct of the war against Hamas, and then on the war against Hezbollah. In all three cases, Netanyahu ignored that advice and went ahead with what turned out to be moves essential to the IDF’s success. More on Netanyahu’s road to victory can be found here: “Benjamin Netanyahu: The Inside Story of Israel’s Victory,” by Elliot Kaufman, Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2024:
…”The Americans said to me, ‘If you go into Rafah, you’re on your own, and we’re not going to send you the critical arms,’ which is tough to hear,” Mr. Netanyahu says. Internally, others argued that Israel was too reliant on U.S. munitions to risk fighting on. “That’s a legitimate case,” Mr. Netanyahu says. “But if we don’t go into Rafah, we can’t exist as a sovereign state. We’d become a vassal state and we won’t survive. The question of arms will fix itself, but the question of our independence will not. That’s the end of Israel.”
In Rafah, Israel cut off Hamas’s supply route [for weapons] and later killed Sinwar, its chief. The Biden administration imposed a de facto arms embargo on Israel, delaying weapons shipments.
Just as Netanyahu rejected the American advice not to conduct a ground invasion of Gaza but instead to stick to airstrikes, he rejected the American pressure not to enter Rafah, which was accompanied by a threat to withhold some weaponry. He was told that the people in Rafah would not evacuate, for there was “no place” for them to go, and that such an operation would cost 20,000 lives. The Americans were wrong on both counts. Within a few weeks, almost one million civilians had evacuated, as directed, from Rafah, and went to the town of Al-Mawasi on the coast, near Khan Younis, an area where the IDF would not attack. And instead of 20,000 casualties in Rafah — the number that the Americans feared would result from the operation — there were only a few thousand, both combatants and civilians.
“The U.S. withheld critical weapons,” Mr. Netanyahu admits, but he appreciates the pressure Mr. Biden was under. “It’s not easy to be president, let’s face it, with these very radical fringes in his party. It wasn’t easy to do what Mr. Biden did,” including helping Israel in its defense against Iranian missile attacks, he says….
For Israel, it’s a return to form. “Power isn’t merely guns, missiles, tanks and aircraft,” Mr. Netanyahu says. “It’s the will to fight and seize the initiative.”
Iran’s nuclear program now looks vulnerable. “I’m not going to talk about that,” Mr. Netanyahu says. When I say I’ve never heard him so reticent on his favorite subject, he responds cryptically: “I’ve always said the jury’s out, still out on all of us, and I don’t exclude myself.” It is perhaps on this that he expects to be judged.
