The claim that Israel's judicial battle led to the Hamas attacks

It's unsubstantiated and very likely false

When news of Hamas’ attack on Israel first broke, the Biden administration called for restraint by both sides. Soon thereafter, the administration adjusted its tune, and for a while — maybe 36 hours — I didn’t hear, either from the administration or the mainstream media, about the need for restraint or a “proportionate” response by the Israelis.

Now, however, this kind of talk is resurfacing. Indeed, Secretary of State Blinken posted (and then deleted) a message calling for a cease fire between Israel and Hamas. Soon, I suspect we’ll be hearing full-throated calls for restraint and proportionality from the liberal establishment and its media wing.

In the meantime, a different liberal talking point about Hamas’ terror has emerged. We’re told that Hamas pulled off its unprecedented successful attack because of the Netanyahu government’s attempt to limit the power of Israel’s Supreme Court. This attempt, the story goes, caused protests which (1) distracted Israel, thus causing an intelligence failure and (2) led Hamas to think it could get away with attacking a badly divided nation.

David Ignatius pushes that line, with a few qualifying words thrown in, here. The Washington Post’s editors eschew the qualifications. They state with certainty:

We now know that Israel’s own internal divisions, sparked by the extreme right-wing parties in Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, and by his plan to overhaul the nation’s judiciary along lines favored by those radical forces, created an opportunity for the country’s enemies.

If this were a conservative talking point, the Post would call it “unsubstantiated,” or worse. The Post presents no evidence that the internal divisions sparked by the Israeli Supreme Court’s assertion of power unknown in any democracy and the governing coalition’s attempt to rein in that power had anything to do with Hamas’ attacks.

The Post’s claim isn’t just unsubstantiated; it’s also implausible. Are we to believe that soldiers and police officers who would otherwise have been protecting villages along the border with Gaza were pulled off that assignment to provide security at peaceful protests against Netanyahu’s action? Are we to believe that intelligence officials assigned to monitor activity in Gaza were pulled off that assignment to monitor peaceful protesters? If so, the fault doesn’t lie with Netanyahu, but with the military and intelligence elites, most of whom are anti-Netanyahu and his ruling coalition.

However, I don’t believe either one of these scenarios occurred, and I’ve seen no evidence to support them.

Suppose the U.S. had been attacked 9-11 style while President Trump was defending himself against the bogus charge that he colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. Would the Washington Post say that the anti-Trump feeding frenzy — in which the Post led the charge — and the Mueller investigation diverted U.S. attention from the terrorism threat?

Such a claim would be more plausible than the view that the fight over Israel’s Supreme Court diverted attention from Hamas. After all, Trump had to lawyer up and spend a great deal of time defending himself against baseless claims that he colluded with Russia. Top Trump aides were diverted, too.

But, to answer my question, the Post would not have argued that the Russia collusion hoax contributed to a terrorist attack. Nor would such a claim likely have withstood scrutiny.

What about Ignatius’ suggestion that the divisions resulting from the fight over the Supreme Court might well have encouraged Hamas to believe it could get away with this attack? This, too, is unsupported and implausible.

Hamas understands Israelis well (better, I fear, than younger generations of Israelis understand Hamas). Thus, it probably understood that the one thing that could unite this quarrelsome people is a terrorist attack of the magnitude of this one.

(And, of course, it has united them. Those reservists who scandalously threatened not to report for duty unless they got their way in the judicial struggle? From what I’ve heard on Fox News and CNN, essentially all of them are reporting for duty to avenge Hamas’ attacks.)

There’s no reason, then, to suppose that the divisions of this year caused Hamas to think Israel would fail to rally behind Netanyahu and strike back powerfully. Hamas just wanted to hit Israel as hard as it could.

The sad reality is that Hamas periodically attacks Israel as a matter of course. No explanation beyond its thirst for Jewish blood is required here.

If one were required, though, the most plausible explanation would be that Israel was close to a “normalization” agreement with Saudi Arabia. Thus, Iran, which was behind Hamas’ attack, wanted to start a war now.

To say that Hamas periodically attacks Israel as a matter of course is not to deny that this attack is unlike any we’ve seen before. And to say that Israel wasn’t asleep at the switch because of the fight over its Supreme Court is not to deny that Israel was asleep at the switch.

This was a massive, and almost surely inexcusable, intelligence failure. The Netanyahu government should, and I assume will, face a reckoning for it once the war is over.

Israel’s intelligence elite which hates Netanyahu and his coalition government (as Ignatius, who knows that elite well, pretty much acknowledges) should face a reckoning, too. The intelligence community is always the main culprit when there’s an intelligence failure.

Whether Israel’s intel community will face a reckoning seems less clear. Blaming Netanyahu-generated divisions for Hamas’ attack may be one way to shift blame from where it most obviously belongs.

Whether here or in Israel, members of the deep state often walk away unscathed from fiascos they help produce.