The Hamas terror organization isn’t defeated, and in fact, “they think it’s a victory,” Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said in a video interview that PragerU, a conservative nonprofit, aired on Tuesday.
The former diplomat and military historian predicted that there will be “greater terrorism in the future” from the security prisoners that Israel freed in the ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Israeli society can accept the deal because “by redeeming our hostages, we’ll be much better and stronger and able to meet that challenge,” Oren told Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU. “If we fail to redeem the hostages, we’ll be weaker even though we may face a much weaker Hamas.”
The Jewish state was left with “no good choice,” and it had to opt for “the lesser of two massively nightmarish scenarios,” he added.
Oren also said that he is disappointed with the Biden administration’s war aims, citing a recent speech that then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave at the Atlantic Council. Oren questioned whether the Biden administration really wanted to win and said that the Israeli military gave Washington a “strategic advantage that is beyond the wildest imagination of many American policymakers.”
But instead of letting the Israel Defense Forces do what it needed to do, the Biden administration chose to “hamstring it,” Oren said.
The former envoy told PragerU that Israel must have a place in Gaza’s post-war security structure.
“I’ve been around too long to see too many peacekeeping forces leave the minute there’s actually peace to keep. They work very well when there’s no peace to keep,” he said. “We cannot outsource our fundamental security.”
