It doesn’t take a military or political genius to chart a reasonable path for the United States after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. While the Israeli government will make its own decisions, we can support it and offer our counsel, which right now includes urging it to keep in mind the long-term consequences of the war it is waging. As President Joe Biden told Israel on his recent visit, though it should seek justice, “while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it.”
Other voices — especially among the Republicans running for president — are advising nothing of the sort. This war is bringing out the worst in those looking to replace Biden in the Oval Office. In fact, they are not only telling Israel to act with maximal force and minimal regard for the lives of Palestinian civilians, but they also want Americans to feel some of that same rage and fear.
When a president confronts an overseas crisis — even one in which we are only indirectly involved — we want our leader to be both right and smart.
As the death toll from the Israeli bombing of Gaza crosses 5,000, some are explicitly hoping for it to get even more brutal. “For those who do evil, the wrath of God should be the consequence,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said while campaigning in Iowa. “And I hope it comes with some Israeli and American hardware.”
For others, mere disregard for Palestinian lives has been insufficient; instead, they have labored to emphasize their contempt. Former President Donald Trump bragged that he had banned refugees from the Middle East and Africa when he was president, and “In my second term, we’re going to expand each and every one of those bans.” He also promised to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to pro-Palestinian rallies.
“We cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “If you look at how they behave — not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic.” While I can’t ascertain the true depths of DeSantis’ love for the Jewish people, it seems he and his campaign saw an opening to attack former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, falsely suggesting she wants to bring Gazan refugees to America. Haley, he said, is “suffering under the illusions … that somehow people in that part of the world just yearn to live in American-style democracy and freedom.” Haley, for her part, angrily rejected the claim that she has displayed sympathy for civilians in Gaza.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has taken an especially chest-thumping approach: He told “Meet the Press” that if he were in the Oval Office, he’d tell Hamas, “You’ve got 12 hours to turn American and Israeli hostages loose or we are coming to get them” with U.S. special forces. How this American incursion is supposed to work when we have no idea where those 200 hostages are being held, and they are presumably spread around Gaza, he didn’t say.
Meanwhile, Scott joined Trump and DeSantis in proposing that foreign students studying at American universities be deported if they voice the wrong opinions about Israelis and Palestinians. Anything but the most brief and perfunctory expression of consideration for the Palestinian civilians currently being starved and bombed is immediately attacked as weak and contemptible, evidence that one might be secretly allied with them.
The course they advocate is almost guaranteed to make Israel less safe over the long term. No one would have expected American conservatives to suddenly locate a concern for the lives of innocent civilians, but they are failing a test with both moral and practical dimensions. When a president confronts an overseas crisis — even one in which we are only indirectly involved — we want our leader to be both right and smart. At the moment, the Republicans are neither. The course they advocate is almost guaranteed to make Israel less safe over the long term. While we don’t have a comprehensive understanding of Hamas’ plan, it was likely its intention to draw Israel into a quagmire in Gaza that spreads into a regional war. The unspeakable brutality of the Oct. 7 attacks — families murdered in their homes, concertgoers slaughtered in a field, hundreds taken hostage, including children and the elderly — could only have been undertaken with the knowledge that it would provoke a furious Israeli response that would result in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians. And so it has. Even if there is no wider war, Israel is preparing to follow its massively destructive air assault with what is likely to be an equally destructive ground invasion. If it succeeds in destroying Hamas, it will then have little choice but to create an indefinite military occupation in Gaza, one that is likely to be oppressive and at least occasionally bloody. Then either Hamas will reconstitute itself, or some other movement will emerge in its place. It will not be able to offer Palestinians genuine hope, but it will be able to offer them a vehicle for revenge. With little else to see in their future, many will accept. Unless Israel finds an alternative, that is what it faces. Biden may not be able to convince the Israeli government to find a different path, but we can be sure that if one of the Republican candidates is in the White House a year and a half from now, that person will counsel Israel to embark on more crackdowns, more violence and more reprisals. The result will be only more suffering for Palestinian and Israeli civilians alike.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
