“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” Hegel’s famous observation, in the preface to his 1820 masterpiece Elements of the Philosophy of Right, is true: an era can indeed be fully understood only as it passes away. But the recent New York Times interview with outgoing Secretary of State demonstrates that Antony Blinken hasn’t – shall we say – got the memo.
On the surface, his observation about the best way to deal with Hamas was obvious. “Whenever there has been public daylight between the US and Israel and the perception of pressure building on Israel, we’ve seen it, Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a ceasefire and the release of hostages,” he said. “With this daylight, the prospect of getting a hostage and ceasefire deal over the line becomes more distant.”
No shit, Sherlock. But this is precisely the opposite to the approach that the Joe Biden administration took throughout the war. How did Blinken think that the “daylight” appeared so many times between the US and Israel? Did it magically descend in an answer to the prayers of Hamas? No. It came from you, Mr Blinken. It came from you and your boss.
Forgive the frustration, but I and other commentators pointed this out ad infinitum – I once dubbed the 46th president “Hamas’s useful idiot” – to precisely no avail. Let’s cast our minds back. At the height of the war in Gaza, the United States took up an infuriatingly vacillating posture towards the Jewish state. On the one hand, aircraft carriers were sent when they were needed, the flow of crucial weapons continued mostly without interruption, and intelligence cooperation was sound. In the realm of rhetoric, however, Biden led the way by “publicly criticis[ing] Israel much more than he criticised Hamas,” as I pointed out in the Telegraph back in August.
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