It's time for an Axis of Reason

The world may be tired of the Middle East. But confronted with the Houthis, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Hamas, we need one last effort to make things better.

At 2:30 a.m. Thursday morning, I was jolted awake by sirens echoing through my six-story apartment building in central Tel Aviv. Half-asleep, neighbors and family trundled into the stairwell, a sort of safer space. Moments later, a thunderous explosion shook the city. We went back to bed assuming it had been another interception, a routine event in the reality we now live. Wrong.

By morning, it emerged that a school in Ramat Efal, just four miles southeast, had been hit directly. The blast devastated the building, rendering it unusable. The school’s petting zoo was destroyed, and its animals, including rabbits and birds, were killed. Had the attack occurred during school hours, it would have children instead.

In response, as we slept, Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Houthi-controlled ports in Yemen. According to the Israel Defense Forces, these strikes have severely disrupted the Houthis’ operational capabilities, targeting missile launch sites and crippling three key ports. We shall see; most regional and military analysis do not believe the Houthis will be deterred. They may be over 1,000 miles away, but they are a fanatical mafia, they don’t care about consequences to their people, and they are something close to the last criminal standing in Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.”

Over the past decade of so, the Houthi-caused civil war has killed almost a half million people in Yemen (most by disease, many in fighting); in the past year-plus they have fired 200 missiles at Israel and countless drones, supposedly out of solidarity with the Palestinians; and they have badly disrupted about a third of global maritime container traffic with attacks on vessels headed to the Suez Canal, costing Egypt billions of dollars in revenue which it can ill afford.

The Houthis have spent a fortune on this madness (much of it provided by Iran) in a country in which the annual per capita GDP is some $600, around 1% of Israel’s. Obviously, the Yemeni people should revolt against their maniacal Islamist captors; but they’re too busy starving, dying of cholera, and chewing khat leaves, a sort of street narcotic.

The outside world should act. This should not be an issue for Israel alone. It is a disgrace that the Houthis have been tolerated for so long, and that the United States (and Britain) sufficed with a few half-hearted airstrikes. The international community should adopt a comprehensive strategy that could include the following components:

• Sustained military campaigns, wiping out the Houthis’ missile capabilities and destroy their supply chains – as Israel did, largely, to Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent months.

• Enhanced maritime security to protect red Sea shipping lanes endanger global trade. A multinational coalition must bolster naval patrols in the region to ensure the safety of commercial vessels.

• Economic and diplomatic pressure through sanctions targeting Houthi leadership and their Iranian sponsors.

• Addressing Yemen’s humanitarian crisis: The Houthis’ power thrives in the vacuum of Yemen’s failed state. Supporting reconstruction and governance in non-Houthi-controlled areas is crucial for undermining their influence.

Instead, President Biden’s cautious approach has allowed the situation to fester. Donald Trump may be a simpleton, but there are times when it is useful to have a leader who doesn’t overthink. If Biden doesn’t do something in the month he has left, I imagine the incoming administration will identify a potential win, and move in. They’d be doing the poor Yemenis a favor.

Why did the Houthis fire at Tel Aviv now? Well, conceivably they are frustrated at being thwarted in Syria (by some perhaps nicer ex-jihadis).

Incredible as it may seem, the Houthis over the past year have had the chutzpah to deploy hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of their number to Bashar Assad’s benighted Syria, where the plan appears to have been to try to invade Israel through the Golan Heights. Another possibility, intelligence had feared, was a move to the south, to destabilize Jordan, and perhaps enter Israel through the 200-mile border these countries share.

The new authorities in Syria, it seems, are intent on preventing any such thing. It is not clear exactly which members of the various militias Assad allowed to roam free in the country are still there – but it seems they are not welcome to cause more mayhem at this time. So in a sense, the missile attack could be seen as a Houthi howl against the dying of the jihadist light.

That would be ironic, of course, because the new Syrian authorities are themselves suspect given the Al Qaeda affiliation of the dominant rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has been at pains to persuade that he has moderated. But the world remains suspicious, and the fact is that the group ran an Islamist local government in the northern province of Idlib which it controlled for years.

That is why Israel moved to destroy much of the Syrian military’s capabilities last week, and that’s why Israel has occupied a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan which had been evacuated by the UN force whose station is had been for 50 years. The total area controlled by Israel seems to be about 300 square kilometers, and Israeli officials say the measure is temporary, until the situation in Syria becomes more clear.

To his credit, al-Sharaa’s statements on this matter too have been fairly moderate, and he is manifestly not looking for conflict with Israel.

Meanwhile, the international discourse around Israel’s actions remains riddled with hypocrisy. Turkey maintains a prolonged occupation of northern Syria, ostensibly targeting Kurdish factions that pose no credible threat to its borders. Turkish forces regularly conduct deadly strikes, killing dozens of Kurds. This goes largely unchallenged by the international community. In contrast, Israel’s surgical strikes in Syria—conducted to preempt threats and protect its citizens—have been notably precise, with minimal reported casualties even according to Syrian media. But the UN leadership — which gave Iran a pass as it supported the butcher Assad and sent troops all over Syria — is cross wiht Israel, very cross indeed.

This is far from the sole reason for the wagging fingers, but much of it can be blamed on Israel’s failure to communicate. Despite having a strong case for its actions, Israel continues to falter in its public diplomacy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration have opted for grandiose public relations stunts, such as UN speeches, that often come across as political theater rather than anything meaningful. They have plainly failed to clearly articulate Israel’s security concerns or its rationale for engaging in Syria.

The comments by the Israeli deputy foreign minister (a suit so empty that dignifying her by citing her name seems wrong) branding Syria’s new leadership as “wolves in sheep’s clothing” reflect this lack of strategic coherence. Instead of leveraging high-level press conferences or diplomatic outreach to outline Israel’s actions and goals, the government has relied on vague soundbites, leaked quotes and reactive military spokesmen. That erodes Israel’s credibility and allow detractors to frame its actions as aggressive. But it is par for the course for the notoriously undiplomatic Netanyahu government, which is a calamity for its people.

And the government’s inability to communicate extends to the ongoing hostage release talks with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

I wrote earlier this week that there are now mounting signs that some sort of hostage release deal – the first in 13 months – is brewing. But it is becoming clear that the anticipated deal will not encompass all the remaining 100 captives (about half of whom are believed to be dead). This partial arrangement reflects a calculated reality: Hamas has dropped its demand for Israel to cease military operations and withdraw entirely from Gaza for the first stage, but this concession does not extend to later phases. To secure the release of all 100 remaining hostages, Israel would need to agree to terms that effectively end the war, a prospect that remains untenable for the current government.

The Israeli public, weary of conflict and desperate for closure, has been vocal in demanding a comprehensive deal. Families of hostages and demonstrators across the nation are calling for an end to the suffering in near-daily protests. However, this yearning for resolution collides with the deeply rooted dysfunction and self-serving interests of Israel’s political leadership.

Netanyahu has maneuvered Israel into a position where extracting itself from Gaza while ensuring Hamas is removed from power is almost impossible. This dilemma stems from the government’s own actions — its staunch opposition to any discussions about restoring the Palestinian Authority (PA) to Gaza. For the far-right factions that control the coalition’s fate, the PA represents a threat to their ideological vision of permanent Israeli control over Gaza, despite the ongoing bloodshed and instability this creates. Consequently, the only realistic alternative to Hamas—a revitalized PA administration—has been deliberately sidelined.

The war, with all its devastating consequences, serves as a smokescreen for the prime minister’s pathological obsession with political survival. Netanyahu could do the right thing, get out of the way and allow for a day-after plan to emerge in Gaza which would enable an end to the war without Hamas remaining in power. But that would involve risking the collapse of the government which enables him to machinate delays in his trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Just this week, Netanyahu orchestrated a delay in his testimony by convincing judges in a closed session of the urgent need to visit troops on the occupied Syrian Golan (or to stage a photo op).

Netanyahu is obviously banking on his ability to sell even a partial hostage release to the public as another victory. As a result of this cynical ploy, hostages will continue to die in captivity, as will soldiers and Palestinian civilians in the war – but his government will stumble on. As it does, it will continue sabotaging Israel’s legal system and institutions as well; Netanyahu’s is the Putin playbook, perfected by Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

The Israeli people have borne the brunt of government mismanagement, from the tragic failures of October 7 to the ongoing war. Israelis are exhausted—not just from the immediate conflict but from the previous year in which Netanyahu project to make Israel authoritarian. It has caused a devastating schism that threatens the country’s very survival.

The irony is that Israel, a nation with extraordinary military, scientific and economic capabilities, cannot conjure up the political imagination to get rid of this cabal. As Hannukah approaches, the Jewish people may need an even bigger miracle.

It is absurd to think that anything good can come from the re-elevation of a miscreant like Trump. Moral people squirm in their seat at the sight of such a vile person being handed power. It’s a failure of democracy at a level that I cannot find in the last 91 years. Yet perhaps something good will come of it—and it has to do with the above.

In the end, there is a serious argument for the world taking one last stab at fixing the Middle East, however tired it may be of the region. The Houthis need to be crushed, and Syria should be nudged away from the Islamist “axis of resistance.” Israel, too, will need tough love.

It is time for an Axis of Reason.