Iran Smirks All the Way to the Bank
October 7 marks the greatest failure of Israeli intelligence in modern Israeli history. But there are arrows also pointing to the massive failure of American intelligence. In the WSJ, Garry Kasparov thrusts at CIA Director William Burns and National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan, both of whom “were shown to be clueless.”
Not Everyone Was Caught Flatfooted
The anti-Zionist movement mobilized right away, and not only in the Arab world. As the first images of terrorism emerged, America’s activists began organizing on behalf of the attackers. Soon they were in the streets and on campuses across the country. They chanted the genocidal mantra “from the river to the sea.”
Many leftist organizations, college student groups and professors, and even some elected officials, hailed the terror attack as resistance, exposing their moral bankruptcy and horrifying the liberal American Jews who had considered them allies.
Mr. Kasparov comes to a “painful realization,” overdue as it may be.
The left’s anti-Semitism doesn’t get the headlines of neo-Nazis with torches, but is more dangerous because it take subtler forms.
Those who won’t go as far as endorsing Hamas’s terror attacks will tell you Hamas doesn’t represent Gaza. Then why are they protesting Israel, and not Hamas, which started this war? Why hasn’t the Palestinian Authority condemned the genocidal crimes of Hamas, its sworn enemy?
Muslim Leaders Don’t Want a Peaceful Solution
At a rally in Istanbul on 28 October, why would President Recep Tayyip Erdogan call Hamas “freedom fighters” and Israel a “war criminal.”
Like many other autocrats, Mr. Erdogan sees conflict as a way to distract his people from economic hardship and his domestic failures. That’s especially easy when Israel is involved, which is why the last thing the region’s Muslim leaders want is a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian problem.
Moscow hosts Hamas delegations and boasts that Russians taken hostage in Gaza are getting favorable treatment. China’s Baidu web service erased Israel’s name from its online maps, an ominous echo of Islamist threats to wipe Israel from the map.
In September, the U.S. agreed to pay Iran more than $6 billion to release five American hostages. Smirking all the way to the bank, the ayatollah’s ministers finalized their plans for the biggest victory of all, one they never cease discussing: the destruction of the state of Israel.
Messrs. Burns and Sullivan, continues Mr. Kasparov, failed to realize that we are at war—a single war against dictatorships and terrorists.
Just as Russia’s armies began to lose ground in Ukraine, Hamas attacked Israel, and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro prepared a referendum asserting territorial claims over a large part of neighboring Guyana.
A Fiasco in Global Leadership
Mr. Kasparov accuses the synchronized surge of anti-Israel sentiment and Hamas’s ability to wage such a war as symptoms of a failure in American global leadership.
Over the past three years, the Biden administration has blundered from one geopolitical disaster to another. Messrs. Burns and Sullivan lost Afghanistan, bungled the withdrawal, and then abandoned Ukraine to Russia—saved only by Volodymyr Zelensky’s heroic stand in Kyiv.
Now, they have been outplayed by Iran as well. In September, the U.S. agreed to pay Iran more than $6 billion to release five American hostages. Smirking all the way to the bank, the ayatollah’s ministers finalized their plans for the biggest victory of all, one they never cease discussing: the destruction of the state of Israel.
It’s War, Stupid: A Way of Life Under Attack
Whether fighting anti-Semitism at home or standing up to terror and invasion abroad, America’s leaders and the American people must realize their way of life is under attack.
You can lose a war you refuse to acknowledge exists. In fact, you are sure to.
