By Donald H. Harrison
LA JOLLA, California – Ido Aharoni Aronoff, who served from 2010 through 2016 as Israel’s consul general in New York City, holding the rank of ambassador, said Monday night that the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas “rewrote the rules” of how Islamist terrorism must be fought.
“There is no escape from the inevitable conclusion that if Israel cannot tolerate Hamas along the southern border, Israel cannot tolerate Hezbollah on the northern border either,” he told more than 300 persons at a StandWithUs-sponsored speech on Monday evening, Nov. 20, in the social hall of Congregation Beth El.
“Hezbollah must be taken out also,” he declared. “So, we are not waiting for Hezbollah to provoke Israel anymore and I think that the Israeli government already made it clear that Hezbollah will be taken out. … It will require a much heavier effort on the part of the Israeli Air Force to destroy the underground infrastructure built in southern Lebanon where they keep their thousands and thousands of precision missiles.”
Aharoni, who now has a private consulting business that advises U.S. companies on business and philanthropic opportunities in Israel and vice versa, also said that pro-Israeli forces in the United States must “name, shame, and go after” the 10 percent of the U.S. population he estimated that blames Israel first and supports Hamas, Hezbollah, and other allies of Iran. “The effort has to rely on our ability to exercise our leverages,” including utilizing the law and business connections, he said.
“We have footage of all the demonstrations; we have pictures of the people who are tearing down the pictures of the hostages,” he added. “We need to identify their names, data base their names, all those people who participate in these atrocities … They need to be named. We need to know who they are. What is their name? Where do they work? Connect to their social media so that everything they do is monitored by AI software, so that when they apply for a new job, their employer will be notified. ‘Hello, you just hired a nurse who called for the annihilation of Israel; she tore down pictures of nine-month old hostages …’ You think people will hire her? Employers don’t like controversial employees.’”
Asked by an audience member how Israel should handle the “head of the snake,” meaning Iran, Aharoni responded, “This is not for Israel to handle. I am sad to say we don’t have the military capacity to do it.” Instead, he said, “there is no doubt in my mind, the West headed by the United States will have to take out Iran’s regime because without bringing them down, you haven’t solved anything.”
Ultimately, he added, “it’s the West versus the rest.” He added that leaders of other Western countries know what happened to Israel on October 7th “could happen at any moment to their country.
Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th because it is “an agent of chaos – chaos for the sake of chaos,” Aharoni said. “Look at Iran: In Syria, they support the regime against the people. In Bahrain, they support the people against the regime.” Everything goes, so long as they produce chaos and instability. “What was the purpose of attacking two targets in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s? What was the purpose of attacking the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish Community Center, killing tens of people, many of them Argentinians? No purpose, other than chaos. What do you do with an enemy that represents a cult of death? When you read the literature of Hamas, of ISIS, of Islamic Brothers and others, you can see the kind of words they use. It’s all about dying and killing.”
The second intifada was marked by suicide bombing; the 9-11 attacks on the United States was a mega suicide bombing, he said. “What do you do with an enemy that wants to die? It is not a fair game when it comes to a Western, pluralistic, liberal democracy like Israel.” The answer is “something that the Western world doesn’t understand yet. Whenever you are facing a game-changing event, you have to rewrite the rules of how we fight terrorism.”
Aharoni said the Hamas attackers didn’t care what the politics were of the people they killed. They murdered people on October 7 because they were Jews or because they were associated with Jews, such as the foreign workers as well as Israeli Arabs who were employed on the kibbutzim near the Gaza border. “They killed Vivian Silver (who) devoted her life to help the Palestinians in Gaza … She would take people from Gaza, cancer patients, and brought them to Israeli hospitals to be treated. She was involved in every and any pro-Palestinian movement in Israel. They murdered her too.”
He suggested that something changed for U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders (Ind-Vermont) on Oct. 7. Sanders did not join other left-wing Democrats in calling for a ceasefire. “It dawned on him that as much as he would like to criticize the Israeli government, as many Israelis do – it’s perfectly fine – if he was there on October 7th, they would have killed him too,” Aharoni speculated.
Aharoni said that the Israel-Hamas conflict is part of a well-coordinated effort orchestrated by Russia and Iran – and to a lesser extent China and Turkey –“to bring to an end the era of American dominance … We have to understand the context (which is) to create a multi-polar system, whereas instead of having America as the dominant force, we will have several sectors of force and power in the world and the world will be managed through the act of balancing between those powers. … You may think it is about Israel and Hamas but what it really is, is a part of a much larger effort to undermine the United States.”
The tone of the evening was softened somewhat by a performance by Shany Zamir, a singer who was an Israeli representative, placing 6th, in the 2013 Eurovision competition. She sang a dramatic version of the “Star-Spangled Banner” as well as “Hatikvah” from a microphone on stage, and later, at the piano, sang “One Day/ Yom Echad” and other popular favorites.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com