Andrew Fox
Tablet, Aug. 12, 2024
“… many Western analysts are incapable of seeing the conflict through anything but the lens of post-9/11 operations.”
There is desperation in Western media to declare Israel’s campaign in Gaza, Operation Swords of Iron, a failure. Over the past several months, there has been a steady supply of analysis beating the same drum: Israel is not winning. Hamas remains intact. The Israeli government has no plan. The very notion of a military victory is illusory. And so on. It’s a genre unto itself—one which, unsurprisingly, tracks precisely with the official talking points of the Biden-Harris administration and other Western governments that have been trying to bend Israel’s operation against Hamas to fit their own failed paradigms.
The latest installment came in last week, courtesy of CNN. An acme of the genre, the article cast aspersions on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim, which he made in his address before Congress last month, that “victory is in sight.” Instead, CNN claimed that of 24 Hamas battalions, only three are considered “destroyed” and another eight are combat effective, with 13 having only a “moderate” reduction in their fighting capability.
CNN was merely repeating talking points from months ago. In December, The Washington Post ran an article titled “Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas. Yet the group remains largely intact,” and NBC News published “Israel says it has degraded 10 out of 24 Hamas battalions and killed thousands of fighters. But Hamas is still fighting and its top leaders are still alive.” In May, CNN itself claimed that Israel’s military strategy was failing because the IDF had renewed fighting in northern Gaza, which raised “doubts about whether Israel’s goal to eradicate the group in the enclave is realistic.” … [To read the full article, click here]