Though foreign policy and national security experts remain unsure exactly what Hamas thought it could accomplish with its brutal attacks against Israel last weekend, one group of Americans knows exactly why they happened. “I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told Fox News, to show that GOP candidates support Israel while “Joe Biden has been weak.”
Republicans certainly exploited that “opportunity,” rushing to the cameras and social media to insist that the attack was planned and executed not because of the actions of the Israeli government, or internal Palestinian politics, or any long-term plans Hamas has. Instead, Republicans have just one explanation: Hamas attacked Israel because President Biden is “weak.”
Lacking any specific evidence that Hamas’ decisions have anything to do with Biden, Republicans agreed to repeat an obvious falsehood.
The attack “could have been deterred by strong American leadership,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. It happened because Biden has “gone easy on Iran,” claimed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “This is what happens when @POTUS projects weakness on the world stage,” Mike Pence wrote. Sen. Tim Scott added that “America’s weakness is blood in the water for bad actors,” while Asa Hutchinson agreed, saying the attacks are “symbolic of the times we find ourselves in with weak leadership in the White House.”
What precisely this “weakness” consisted of, they couldn’t say. After all, there has been no change in the substance of America’s support for Israel. Lacking any specific evidence that Hamas’ decisions have anything to do with Biden, Republicans agreed to repeat an obvious falsehood: because the White House recently unfroze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue to obtain the release of American hostages held in Iran, which supports Hamas, that means, in Scott’s words, “Joe Biden funded these attacks on Israel.”
This charge isn’t merely “unsubstantiated” or “without evidence.” It’s a lie. The funds are currently with the Qatari national bank; not a penny has yet been released, and they’re going to be distributed for humanitarian purposes under strict supervision.
That the Republican response was depressingly predictable makes it no less inane and dishonest. Unfortunately, it plays right into a common misconception among both American leaders and the public: that foreign countries, foreign groups and foreign individuals are motivated only by what they think of us.
But surely — and stay with me here — Hamas’ relationship to the Israeli government is far more important in its decision-making than vague perceptions about Joe Biden’s intestinal fortitude? It would be ludicrous to think otherwise. Which raises an important question that the GOP candidates ought to answer: If only “strength” can deter a terrorist attack of this kind, do they think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been too soft on the West Bank and Gaza? Is his government, which is full of far-right extremists in key positions, too indulgent and weak?
Of course not. By Republican standards, Netanyahu’s government is brimming with strength: cruel, oppressive, indulgent of violent thuggery on the part of settlers, contemptuous of human rights and committed to crushing any Palestinian hopes for self-determination. Clearly, that version of “strength” has not given Israelis the security they sought.
Obsession with strength has a way of turning people stupid.
Nor was Hamas deterred by what they know — and everyone knows — will be a furious Israeli counterattack. If history is any guide, the Israeli offensive will bring the deaths of multiple Palestinians for every Israeli murdered last weekend. That Israeli response will be “strong,” by Republicans’ criteria, but its inevitability won’t have prevented Hamas from carrying out its plan. Indeed, Hamas’ leaders may have been counting on it.
Obsession with strength has a way of turning people stupid. The belief that what matters is the set of your jaw or the anger in your voice encourages you to turn away from the foundation of security policy: understanding threats and the people who present them. If you think strength is all that matters, you won’t care about what your enemies are after and how they might go about getting it. You’ll also fall prey to an unfortunate American tendency of believing that everything that happens anywhere is mostly about us. But it isn’t. Foreign actors have their own motivations, incentives and goals. We might sometimes factor into their calculations, but getting them to do what we want will always be complicated. This was a large part of the reason the Iraq War was such a disaster. The Bush administration and its advocates were certain that Iraqis would welcome American troops as “liberators” with song and celebration. After all, wouldn’t they see how beneficent we were? Instead, it turned out that people react rather badly to having their country invaded by a foreign power, and Iraq had complex internal politics and ethnic conflicts that we thought we didn’t need to understand. If you asked DeSantis, Scott or any of the other Republicans practicing their angry faces in their bathroom mirrors even the most basic questions about Hamas — who leads it, what its history is, what its goals are, how we might assess its next moves — it would be a shock if any of them had the barest idea. And if they were president right now, what would they do to demonstrate their strength? Drop nuclear bombs on Gaza? Find some new way to punish Iran? Donald Trump already walked away from the agreement that had been constraining Iran’s nuclear program; you’ll recall that he very strongly claimed Iran would come crawling back and give us every concession we wanted. It didn’t happen. No, if they were president they’d be doing pretty much what Biden is doing: reiterating America’s support for Israel, condemning Hamas, and sending more military aid. They’d just say they were doing it strongly, with strength and strongness. And it would make no difference at all.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
