With Help From
Major Itamar
Ben David
By Justine Hemmestad
President Biden’s recent
bowing out of the upcoming
presidential election, and his
diagnosis with Covid 19, may
throw a wrench into Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this
week.
American politics will also
play a major role in how the
visit transpires. The Re-
publicans accuse President
Biden of not supporting Is-
rael enough in its war with
Hamas. Democrats think he
should be doing less.
But if plans remain the
same, Ron Kampeas of The
Jerusalem Post reports, PM
Benjamin Netanyahu will
stand before the United States
Congress at 2 pm on Wednes-
day to request America’s sup-
port for Israel.
This will be the fourth
time Netanyahu has ad-
dressed congress, more than
any other world leader.
Though Senate Majori-
ty Leader Chuck Schumer
aggravated and offended Is-
raelis when he said that Net-
anyahu is failing as a leader,
he co-signed the invitation.
“Part of the goal is to try to
show that with all that’s been
said, with all the protests,
Netanyahu is still the leader,
still has support, he still has
strong relations with Ameri-
ca,” Yonatan Freeman, an in-
ternational relations specialist
at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, told the Reuters
news agency.
Netanyahu will defend his
war strategy before congress,
and argue against Biden’s
decision not to deliver large
bombs to Israel while the IDF
is fighting in crowded areas
of Gaza.
This, as Hamas’ assertion
of large civilian death tolls
are reported and repeated by
world news outlets.
My friend Major Itamar
Ben David asserts that Hamas
releases exaggerated civilian
death tolls as a tool of war. He
says, “It is completely made
up and used for one purpose
and one purpose only - to put
international pressure on Is-
rael.”
The more Hamas can acquisition the media, the more
civilians can be swayed to believe their narrative of “...the
West is bad and the Palestin
ians are good; the powerful
are bad and the powerless are
good.”
John Spencer, Chair of
Urban Warfare Studies at
Modern War Institute at West
Point, says, “The Hamas run
Gaza Health Ministry esti-
mate of over 34,000 civilian
deaths does not acknowledge
a single Hamas fighter death
(nor any deaths due to the
misfiring of thousands (20%)
of Hamas or other terrorists’
rockets that have landed in-
side Gaza or Hamas friendly
fire, Hamas killing civilians,
or deaths by natural causes).
It is literally supposed to be
every death in Gaza since Oc-
tober 7th.
“The IDF estimates it has
killed about 13,000 Hamas
operatives. That would make
it a 1 to 1.5 or 1.6 ratio. But
even the Gaza Health Minis- try recently announced they
could not verify over 11,000
of their reported 34,000
deaths. So, combined with
historical Hamas exaggera-
tions, the combatant to civil-
ian death ratio is more likely
1 to 1 which would be histor-
ically low for high intensity
urban warfare.
“The real truth is that no
one knows how many civil- ians have died in Gaza, es- pecially not Hamas. There
has never been a war/battle,
especially an urban battle,
where anyone could track the
civilian deaths on a day-to-
day basis and especially not
down to the single digit. It is
impossible. A year after the
2016-2017 Battle of Mosul,
the Iraqi government did not
know how many civilians had
died in the battle with esti- mates from 11,000 to 40,000.”
Hamas also classifies their
own fighters who are 18 or
19 years old as “children,” a
stretch that Ben David says is
“ridiculous.” Hamas doesn’t
“differentiate between com-
batants and the rest of the
population.”
Ben David says the ob- jective should have already
been met, while more Israelis
should have been trained in
order to attack Lebanon and
Iran at the same time.
Those threats should
have been dismantled by last
Spring, he says. “If Israel,
immediately after October
7, had launched a pre-emp-
tive attack on Hezbollah, to
crush Hezbollah’s infrastruc-
ture and missile storage, to
paralyze Hezbollah, then we
would not be in a position
where we have 60-70,000
Israelis evacuated from the
north.
“Hezbollah would have
been pushed back and Israel
would have a more defensive
line, citizens up north won’t
be targeted the way they are;
then go to Gaza (and starting
with Rafah would make a lot
more sense), then we would
have been in a much better
position to also attack Iran.”
Ben David tends to say that
Iran wasn’t very prepared,
even taken by surprise, in re- gard to Hamas’ October 7 ter- rorist attack on Israel.
Given that weak ness,
Hezbollah or the Houthis
wouldn’t have been embold- ened to attack afterward if
Israel had crushed their ene- mies to begin with, he points
out. Israel has the capabili- ties to paralyze Iran, which
should have been done early
on in the war.
Though “Israel can with- stand a years’ long war, the
country is not built for long,
exhausting wars of attrition
that Iran wishes to impose on
us,” Ben David says, “that’s
the part that is detached from
reality; though Israel is fully
capable, it’s not in favor of the
country.”
Israel’s foundational pow-
er would allow it to return to
normal after vanquishing its
enemies “relatively fast.”
When Netanyahu address-
es congress on Wednesday,
Americans can think of the
war in a holistic way: Sev-
en battlefronts, with proxies
backed by Iran, seeking to de-
rail the Israelis.
During Netanyahu’s last
congressional visit in 2015,
John Boehner was Speaker of
the House and the speech was
announced the day after then
President Obama outlined his
policy for Iran in the State of
the Union.
As a result, 60 Democrats
boycotted when Netanyahu
addressed congress, since
they recognized the Net-
anyahu/Boehner collusion to
shake up the Obama presiden-
cy to be disrespectful. This
time, Netanyahu said that he
intends to stress Israel’s bi-
partisanship in his speech.
Net a nya hu says that
America must know that Is- rael will remain its strongest
ally in the Middle East, “re- gardless who the American
people choose as their next
president.”
However, Netanyahu’s
plans to meet Biden on Mon-
day may now be up in the
air, given President Biden’s
Covid diagnosis, and his
meeting with Vice President
Kamala Harris may be more
consequential than formally
thought. Harris was not going
to attend Netanyahu’s speech
since she would be cam- paigning, but all of that has
changed.
PM Netanyahu “wants
the Israeli public to believe
that he is very much still
very welcome in the United
States. And this shows that
the American people are with
him,” said David Makovsky,
director of the program on
Arab-Israel Relations at the
Washington Institute for Near
East Policy.
Netanyahu will also be
joined by rescued hostage
Noa Argamani and her father.
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