Israel says "maybe" to a cease-fire

And "maybe" means "no"

There is a political science joke I heard from my father when I was a kid (you could not tell it now) that went like this:

What’s the difference between a lady and a diplomat?

If a lady says no, she means maybe. If she says maybe, she means yes. And if she says yes, she’s not a lady.

If a diplomat says yes, he means maybe. If he says maybe, he means no. And if he says no, he’s not a diplomat.

When the U.S. and other countries proposed a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel’s immediate reaction was an undiplomatic “no.” Now it says “maybe,” but it still means “no.”

To understand why, think of the October 7 attack as the equivalent of Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, there was never going to be a cease-fire Instead, the United States was determined to defeat Japan (and Germany, which declared war on the United States in response to the U.S. declaration of war against Japan). The Allied goal was the surrender of the Axis powers. Killing civilians was part of that process, sometimes unintended but not always.

Does the analogy fit?

Perhaps some people believe that Japan deserved what it got after Pearl Harbor, but Israel’s enemies have justice on their side. In that case, the analogy does not fit.

That claim is not persuasive to me, and it certainly is not persuasive to Israel. Israel’s enemies have shown that they do not want to live in peace with the Jewish state, under any terms.

Did the United States over-react to Pearl Harbor?

One can argue that Israel should not treat its enemies as harshly as the United States treated Japan. In hindsight, there are those who believe that fire-bombing Tokyo and using nuclear weapons went too far. If we had it to do over again, we should be more restrained, and Israel should learn from that.

It is fair to say that Israel should not inflict as much harm on the population of its enemies as the United States inflicted on the people of Japan. But I do not think that it intends to.

Even a more restrained United States after Pearl Harbor would not have agreed to a cease-fire. It would not have stopped short of total victory.

Can Israel achieve victory?

One can argue that Israel’s enemies are too strong, so that Israel must accept something less than total victory. The list of Israel’s enemies includes Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. But it also includes Iran, which backs those forces and has declared its intentions to wipe Israel off the map. And the list includes many hostile groups around the world, mostly Muslims and leftists.

Decisive victory for Israel requires changing the regime in Iran. That is a tall order. Iran has almost 100 times the area of Israel, and almost 10 times the the population. It is far from Israel. Its proxies are close enough to attack Israel, and Israel has no equivalent means of attacking Iran.

So this objection is that Israel simply does not have the means to do to Iran what the United States ultimately did to Japan. If the regime in Iran is going to change, that will be an internal process.

But the high cost of total victory does not imply that Israel should settle for a status quo in which Hamas or Hezbollah remains intact, able to fire rockets and to re-group and re-arm. Israel seeks to change the status quo.

The United States and European union have no credibility in promising Israel that the status quo will change after a cease-fire. Those countries did nothing to stop the militarization of Gaza and Southern Lebanon. Instead, they outsourced the peacekeeping task to the United Nations, which instead wound up aiding and abetting the militants.

No Substitute for Victory

General Douglas MacArthur famously said, “There is no substitute for victory.” Israelis are currently in that frame of mind. So when world leaders call for a cease-fire, Israel can at best reply with a diplomat’s “maybe.”