Si vis pacem, para bellum.
"Let he who wants peace prepare for war."
The Latin adage provides bookends, and a few chapters toward the middle, of the story of the two year Gaza war.
As we discussed here last May, Israel was not ready for war - indeed, a few decades of focusing on low-level counterinsurgency and shooting at rockets had left Israel unready for the vicious grind of modern, conventional (if asymmetric) war. Its military had apaprently forgotten the lessons of the surprise attack of 1973, and had become reliant on surveillance and communication technology that Hamas was able to cripple on October 7, with devastating results:
Some foreign intelligence agencies have suggested that an additional explanation for both the total surprise Hamas achieved, and the apparent paralysis that followed, was a successful hacking of the IDF’s command-and-control networks—possibly by Iran using its Chinese-supplied technology. A hacking would go some way to explain otherwise mysterious logistical derelictions, among them the failure of the Ministry of Defense to organize buses to get reservists to their posts, the IAF’s failure to get helicopters out of repair shops and ready for use, and the Kiriya’s odd failure to send armor units to clear route 232. (A reservist who drove down to Gaza on the evening of October 7 told me how astonished he was not to see long convoys of military vehicles heading south.) If such a hacking took place, the IDF is not only not admitting it but is actively discouraging any speculation on the matter.
One of the more likely explanations for the apparent chaos is the effectiveness with which Hamas hamstrung the IDF’s command-and-control infrastructure in the south. It did this by destroying cellular towers of the army’s communication system along the border and by taking control of Reim Base—the headquarters of the IDF’s Gaza Division and its two brigades.
They bounced back, of course. But October 7 provides an object lesson in living in a bad neighborhood; when someone says they want to kill you, take them seriously. Deterrence is cheaper than rebuilding.
Failure is an orphan, they say, but success has a thousand fathers. So it should come as no surprise that Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State under a Biden regime that failed to deter either the Gaza or Ukraine wars, which spent much of the past two years slow-walking aid to Israel, trying to undercut the Netanyahu government, and upholding Iran as a legitimate power to the point of campaigning on reinstating the failed Nuclear deal, is trying to get a paternity test:
Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Gaza peace deal:
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 12, 2025
"It’s good that President Trump adopted and built on the plan the Biden Administration developed."
🤣 pic.twitter.com/ucyHhwb6BI
Those who've been paying attention were not amused:
“This is delusional,” stated Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Once again, President Trump is cleaning up an epic mess left by Biden, Blinken,” former U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan and former White House adviser Brett McGurk, stated Robert Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation.
“They have the temerity to seek recognition for the chaos they manufactured to a fawning media that applauded it,” Greenway said. “Alice, and her friends in Wonderland, would be aghast. The Cheshire Cat would be proud.”
Blinken was and remains a mouthpiece for the Biden and Obama doctrine - that diplomacy starts with treating everyone, no matter how depraved, as equals on the world stage, recognizing the likes of the Mullahs and Hamas as moral equals to western democracies.
And make no mistake, plenty of diplomacy went into the deal:
And according to senior US officials requesting to speak on background, while mediators worked to get Israel and Hamas closer to an agreement, [Jordan] Kushner and [Steve] Witkoff were two key players involved in closing the deal.
Earlier this week, the pair flew to Egypt to join negotiations between the two delegations, which included discussions about the release of Palestinian prisoners and handing back of Israeli hostages taken during the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
But for all the talk, the three events that turned the tide by stripping away Hamas's allies and financial support network were:
- Operation Grim Beeper and the short, sharp campaign that gutted Hezb'allah in Lebanon, taking its army and 200,000-odd rockets, drones and missiles out of the fight, denying Hamas an ally and a second front against Israel, and led to a chain reaction that took out the Assad regime, and yet another front.
- The 12 Day War, during which Israel and seven US B-2 bombers gutted Iran's capability to wage conventional, nuclear or proxy war, taking out a few more fronts facing the Jewish state.
- The Israeli strike on Qatar, which convinced the Qataris and Turkey that there was neither a hiding place nor, combined with Trump's aggressive turning of economic and political screws, much upside to keeping Hamas alive anymore.
Which underscores the Latin adage that started this piece; diplomacy is good and fine and, when possible, much preferable. War is inherently wasteful and stupid, and never any better than the last possible resort.
But without the ability, and perceived willingness, to go there, what indeed are the stakes to defying diplomatic overtures, over and over?
No rational person believed that Joe Biden would use American military force to squeeze Hamas's benefactors. And it's possible Hamas and its benefactors didn't believe Trump would, either.
Setting that straight is a useful lesson for the the other big audience - in Moscow and Beijing.
