To capture the enormity of Hamas’s October 7 massacre, many, including President Biden, have likened it to Israel’s September 11. “For a nation the size of Israel,” the president said, “it was like 15 9/11s.” But the president and others are now summoning the analogy not to empathize with Israel but to restrain it—which says more about Washington’s gnawing doubts about the war on terror than about how Israel should fight Hamas.
The initial impulse to link Hamas’s rampage to September 11t seemed apt. From the scale of the surprises to their grisly images and staggering death tolls, the attacks share a common horror. Above all, it was a natural expression of empathy: Americans had experienced mass terror before and stood with Israel in its despair and determination.
Within days, however, the 9/11 analogy morphed from one of condolence to caution. Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s former speechwriter, tweeted that “the U.S. should have learned from 9/11 the profound cost of being guided by anger and fear. I hope that is what we are telling the Israeli government.” In the Atlantic, the journalist George Packer wrote that “if Americans now have anything useful to tell Israelis, it would be: Don’t. Don’t let your justified fury replace reason.” President Biden soon adopted this theme, warning Israelis not to be “consumed” by their anger and make the same “mistakes” as a post-9/11 America “enraged” by al Qaeda’s terror.
These admonitions share something in common: They are less about 9/11 than 3/19, the date on which America invaded Iraq in 2003. To President Biden and the Washington commentariat, an Israel gripped by wrath threatens to stumble, bereft of strategy, into a latter-day war on terrorism generally, with attendant costs and quagmires.
Yet America’s reaction to 9/11 has little to teach Israel about how it should respond to 10/7. To begin with, although the United States devoted much effort to ensure that Islamists could not strike America again, it was never in danger of foreign invasion. Israel, by contrast, confronted a several-battalion-strength onslaught, akin to al Qaeda not only destroying the Twin Towers on 9/11 but capturing lower Manhattan, butchering civilians, and firing rockets at greater New York. The threat to Israeli sovereignty remains acute, with the possibility that Hezbollah could also attempt to seize Israeli cities. Moreover, when the United States tired of Afghanistan and Iraq, it had the option to leave on its own terms. Israel enjoys no such luxury with Hamas, separated from it only by a far-too-thin fence. Most fundamentally, however much America’s withdrawals from the Middle East harmed its credibility, Hamas’s assault is an existential threat to Israeli deterrence.
Indeed, the fact that President Biden and others are using America’s post-9/11 reaction to lecture Israel says more about Washington’s policy proclivities than Jerusalem’s. The analogy suggests that the greatest danger is not the evildoer but the reaction by its victim. This notion is in keeping with the core, misguided lesson learned by the Washington foreign-policy establishment in the wake of the war on terror: The problem is not them, it’s us. Washington’s initial struggles during the war on terrorism induced despair among a generation of policymakers, causing them to look inwards and transforming Islamist terrorists into props for American soul-searching. They assumed that the United States did not understand the “complexities” of the Middle East. They cast about for grievances to unearth, byzantine court politics to unravel, “moderates” to bolster and “hardliners” to oppose—or, more lately, appease. Most of all, they feared that a military response to terrorism would only stoke future grievances. As former President Barack Obama intoned this week, an Israel that, like the U.S. after 9/11 does not “heed[] the advice of [its] allies” and persists with its initial steps to counter Hamas could “further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel,” and hamstring “peace and stability” in the Middle East. By this logic, waging and even threatening war against terrorists is hopeless; the best course is to cut deals and concede.
Yet what motivates Hamas and other Islamist groups is not victimhood, but victory. Just listen to Hamas. During the 10/7 attack, its terrorists adorned bodycams to broadcast their savagery with elation and pride. Much like Hezbollah and other Islamist groups, its propaganda videos do not feature downtrodden Gazans but operatives striking Israeli forces. Israel attempted concessions with Hamas, such as permitting roughly 20,000 Gazans to enter Israel each day for work. But because Hamas thrives on success rather than grievance, conciliation bred war.
The real risk, then, is not that Israel will overreact to the Hamas attack; it will fight according to the laws of armed conflict, as it has to a greater degree than most Western powers, including the United States. It’s that Israel will underreact, restrained by a pontificating, war-weary Washington, and revert to buying off and bargaining with Hamas and its ilk. If it does so, the analogy to America’s post-9/11 policy would ring unfortunately true.
