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A ‘Long War’ Is Not the Answer to Israel’s Security Problem — and Could Lead to Destruction (PART TWO)
An Israeli soldier stands during a two-minute siren marking the annual Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, at an installation at the site of the Nova festival where party goers were killed and kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, in Reim, southern Israel, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
To read part one of this article, click here.
There are those who exhibit a romantic nostalgia for the hardships suffered by the founders of the state in the War of Independence — back then, we stood alone, the few against many. But after the first ceasefire in the War of Independence, the young IDF was able to strengthen itself and stand in an equal and even better power position than the armies of Egypt and the forces from the north. Note, by the way, that the IDF was largely unable to repel the Jordanian army, which was well equipped and organized.
Although Israel won the war of liberation, it did not even approach the defeat of its enemies and the achievement of complete victory. Determination and faith are important in war but do not guarantee military achievements. Embrace the difficulties of the past if you wish, but don’t expect those difficulties to somehow ensure success.
Ideology is also involved in the attempt to change the security concept. The Israeli right wing does not believe in reaching an agreement with the Palestinians, and is not interested in a binational state. To avoid a resolution is necessarily to choose endless war. According to Minister Bezalel Smotritch, Israel needs a security concept that entails a continuous war against the Palestinians until they are defeated. To this ideological way of thinking, endless war is justified if it has the purpose of eliminating the Palestinian threat to Israel.
In the Iron Swords War, the political leadership defined a goal that is impossible according to Ben-Gurion’s security concept, and the IDF set out to achieve that goal without a plan, a time frame, or the proper means in place. The IDF embarked on the Iron Swords War without a clear vision of what it was trying to achieve militarily, how long it would take, and what means it had at its disposal. A military plan must be based on resources that you know you have. You must never plan on unspecified quantities of capabilities, equipment, and time that are not already available to you.
Hezbollah’s entry into the war, which will occur in the manner chosen by Nasrallah, illustrates the absurdity of the way the Iron Swords War is being conducted. The entire northern region has been evacuated and abandoned indefinitely because the IDF is invested in Gaza and cannot allocate the necessary resources to protect the north.
What will Israel’s strategic situation be if the war in Gaza ends with a hostage agreement but without the Hamas regime having been “deported to Tunis”? Hamas (and the rest of Israel’s enemies) will be jubilant in their victory at having both achieved the release of Palestinian prisoners and survived to tell the tale. Will the price paid by Gaza, and perhaps the prevention of Gaza’s rehabilitation as long as Hamas is in power, be enough to reposition Israel as a regional military power?
Is a new concept of security — one in which every external threat is to be fought by war until its elimination — really required? The elimination of Hamas has not yet been achieved, and Israel has been at war with it for 10 months. How much time, armament, and military equipment will it take to eliminate Hezbollah? And after Hezbollah, what will prevent the forces supported by Iran in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen from continuing to fight? What will their military elimination look like? And what will move Iran to partner up with Abraham Accords?
According to the new concept, it is not possible to rely on deterrence because it always fails. There is also no point in short wars that do not completely eliminate the enemy. But if the goal of war is complete victory, it is mandatory to build a force that can support such an effort. How many days of war should the warehouses be prepared for? Weeks, months, or years?
If it is to enter a new “long war” era, the IDF will have to prepare and equip forces for wars that last years. Will the Israeli economy be able to withstand this? Will it be able to support “the largest army in the Middle East” (like after the Yom Kippur War)? Will the society that carries the economy on its back and serves in the reserves tolerate this? Will Israel continue to be a center of attraction for investors under such an economic structure? Will Israel’s enemies mount another attack like October 7 or just wait for the fruits of the Ben-Gurion concept to collapse? Israel’s “miracle” can be destroyed from within. Israel may have a well-equipped army, but what will happen to the country that relies on it?
In order to avoid ending the discussion on a vague statement that the concept of a long war for total victory and complete elimination of the threat is impossible and unrealistic, we will examine what Israel can still do according to the old concept.
If the Iron Swords War had been conducted according to the security concept, the following strategy could, for the sake of illustration, have been devised in October:
The IDF will be satisfied with severely hitting Hamas, not the entire territory of the Gaza Strip, while creating a completely demilitarized area in the north of the Gaza Strip. That area will later become the basis for the establishment of an alternative government.
Israel will arrive early at an agreement to free the abductees. This will be at the heavy price of releasing murderers and will allow the survival of some Hamas leaders, but will also allow for the design of a new border area and an obstacle that provides security for the returning residents of the surrounding communities.
As a result of these measures, Israel will maintain international support and perhaps even become a partner in a regional coalition with Saudi Arabia.
The IDF will be left with enough potential to fight Hezbollah — so much so that war might be prevented and an arrangement might be made that allows the residents of the north to return home.
True, this solution does not describe a complete victory, and Hamas would continue to exist. But the conditions would have been created for the establishment of an alternative government, at least in the north of the Gaza Strip, in an area that would begin to recover while the southern part of the Strip remains in ruins. It is possible that the IDF would have had to engage in another round of war in the southern Gaza Strip, but that is Israel’s fate. That is the way it was, and that is the way it will continue to be. The Hamas regime would have probably crumbled in half-destroyed Gaza, and the situation in the southern Gaza Strip would have provided Israel with deterrence at least until the next round.
It could have been a short war, just another round, but one that allowed a return to normality that made it possible to restore and recover.
The last 10 months have made clear that great pain does not confer desired abilities that did not previously exist. Israel is an island nation based on a reserve army. A long war is not a solution to a security problem. It is not possible to achieve complete victory, but we may well achieve complete failure if we pursue victory for too long without considering the limitations on our power, economy, and society.
Col. (res.) Gur Laish served as head of the campaign planning department in the Israel Air Force and as head of the security concept division at the National Security Council. He has a master’s degree in political science from the University of Haifa. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
The post A ‘Long War’ Is Not the Answer to Israel’s Security Problem — and Could Lead to Destruction (PART TWO) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Unveils Its Preemptive Capabilities
Lebanese side of the border with Israel, seen from Tyre, August 25, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
JNS.org – The Israeli Air Force’s major preemptive strike on Sunday, launched a little before 5 a.m. against Hezbollah positions in Southern Lebanon, was a stinging surprise to the Iranian-backed terror army.
However, despite this important achievement, and the welcome activation of preemptive steps, it is important to remember that the fundamental threat to Israel’s north remains in place.
Both Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsor are likely conducting an extensive situation assessment to gauge the damage that Hezbollah sustained, and to plot their next move. Initial signs are that they wish to end this particular episode and regroup for the next stage of their war on Israel.
According to Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, Israel Defense Forces international spokesperson, the operation was a direct response to intelligence indicating that Hezbollah was preparing to launch an extensive missile and rocket attack on northern and central Israel.
The IDF has been closely monitoring Hezbollah and Iran attack capabilities, and remained on the highest state of alert in anticipation of an attack on Israel. For weeks, the Iranian-led Shi’ite radical axis has been threatening to respond to the assassinations of Hezbollah chief of staff Fuad Shukr in Beirut on July 30 and Hamas Political Bureau chief Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.
This swift and decisive action by the IDF, involving around 100 fighter jets, targeted thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers across more than 40 launch areas in southern Lebanon, thwarting what could have been a significant assault on Israel.
Hezbollah was still able to fire hundreds of rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles towards northern Israeli communities on Sunday, but most of its attack was headed off by the IAF’s preemptive move.
Hezbollah’s preparations involved embedding rocket launchers within villages and towns across Southern Lebanon, thereby increasing the risk of collateral damage during any retaliatory strikes.
The IDF, which called Sunday on Lebanese civilians to move away from Hezbollah’s areas of activities, carried out a remarkable operation that not only destroyed a sizeable number of launchers but also proved, at the operational and intelligence level, that Israel is viewing Hezbollah’s activities in real time and can respond quickly to intelligence warnings.
Hezbollah had been preparing to fire rockets and missiles at Israel, with some reports indicating that these were intended to target key strategic locations in central Israel, including security and military installations. Shoshani confirmed that most of Hezbollah’s planned attacks were intended to hit targets in northern Israel, and “some in central Israel.”
More than 7,000 projectiles
Shoshani highlighted that Hezbollah has fired more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and explosive UAVs at Israel since October 2023.
This is a reminder of the intolerable situation in northern Israel created by this Iranian proxy.
Taking advantage of Israel’s two-front conflict and the stretching of its military resources, Hezbollah has been able to turn an entire section of northern Israel a no-go zone for civilians for 10 months. Some 60,000 Israelis remain internally displaced.
For Sunday’s intended attack, it appears that Hezbollah was planning to fire a combination of precision-guided ballistic missiles, UAV swarms and unguided rockets at valuable targets in Israel, such as military targets in the heart of a central Israeli city.
According to the Alma Research and Education Center, Hezbollah has thousands of precision projectiles, including the Iranian-supplied Fateh 110 missiles that have a range of 350 kilometers and which, if fired from Southern Lebanon, can hit central Israel. Altogether, Hezbollah is believed to possess some 250,000 warheads, 150,000 of which are mortar rounds and 65,000 of which are rockets with ranges of up to 80 kilometers.
By demonstrating its willingness and ability to conduct large-scale operations preemptively, Israel sends a clear message to Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran: Any significant imminent threat to Israeli civilians will be met with preventative force.
The question that remains is how Israel plans on restoring security to its north.
Hezbollah’s deep entrenchment in Southern Lebanon’s Shi’ite community, its conversion of some 200 southern Lebanese villages into bases of attack, and its ideological commitment to representing Iran’s Islamic Revolution all ensure that the threat will persist until Israel decides to deal with it strategically.
The international community also has a role to play in addressing the Iranian/Hezbollah’s jihadist war. Hezbollah and its Iranian patron threaten to drag Lebanon into a broader conflict, with devastating consequences for its civilian population.
The post Israel Unveils Its Preemptive Capabilities first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Nepotism or Normal?
The Titanic at the docks of Southampton. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – Isn’t it ironic that in our own advanced, enlightened and progressive generation, more murder and mayhem is going on around the world than in ancient and primitive times? Chaos and anarchy reign while wars and terror hotspots dot the global landscape. Are sophisticated moderns really more vicious and violent than the cavemen of old? That’s for another discussion, but it is a sad irony indeed.
Alas, Cowboys and Indians and war movies have nothing on the TV news we watch on our screens daily. Just the other day, 38-year-old Gidon Peri was murdered by a Palestinian who attacked him with a hammer to his head.
Beyond the immediate danger zones lies the risk that we who may be somewhat removed from the battlefields may well become desensitized by the non-stop feed of terror, stabbings and massacres. Our brains are bombarded continuously with wars, murder and violence. There is a very real concern that the constancy of it may well leave us unmoved, inured and almost immunized to bloodshed. We see so much of it regularly that it becomes commonplace and “normal”; our feelings of compassion and sensitivity may be weakening.
We need to reaffirm our abhorrence of violence. We remain a peace-loving people, despite the IDF’s military prowess and our heroic soldiers’ courageous tenacity and commitment to protecting our land and its people.
Over 3,000 years ago, the Jews taught the world about the sanctity of human life. The Ten Commandments and our moral code formed the basis and culture of numerous societies. But there are still too many who deny the sanctity of life and worship death. We taught the value of life to the world, and they have become a death cult, glorifying the ghastly. Is it conceivable in our wildest imaginations that IDF soldiers, or any Jews, would or could have perpetrated a bloodthirsty massacre like Oct. 7? The grisly savagery was so mind-boggling that I struggle to look at the photos.
It is therefore paramount that we, the moral community, exercise the utmost vigilance to maintain our own sensitivity in the face of the visual onslaughts we are exposed to daily.
This brings me to the cynical accusations leveled against us that we Jews do not feel compassion for others. They say we “only care for our own” and do not actually extend our compassion to other people. We don’t care about the innocent men, women and children in Gaza. We only care for our own.
Well, this is but one of the many Big Lies that Jews have had to contend with over the ages. Like all of them, it is wrong, unjustified and utterly absurd. In fact, I can quite easily argue and demonstrate that Jews care more for others than those “others” care for their own. Golda Meir’s famous line comes to mind immediately: “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate ours.” How true this remains to this day. Hamas gleefully trains children to become suicide bombers. Little children with machine guns and suicide vests are pictured regularly in their propaganda. This is their “nachas.”
As for Jewish tradition, the Talmud teaches: “We support the non-Jewish poor together with the Jewish poor.” Indeed, we have done so forever. Any objective observer will see it empirically, too.
I remember some years ago meeting the head of the United Jewish Communities of New York when he was here on a visit to South Africa. He told me how proud he was that he managed to persuade a Jewish donor in Manhattan to donate $1 million to Israel. But his pride was shattered when the next morning he read in the New York Times that the very same fellow had just donated $9 million to Columbia University (we won’t discuss Colombia University’s behavior after Oct. 7).
How many American universities, hospitals and other community centers have been supported with massive donations, sponsorships and endowments by Jewish donors? The list is endless.
Then there’s the other guilt-inducing practice that when we hear a tragedy has occurred, G-d forbid, we ask, “Were any Jews involved?” Do we only care about our own? Is it morally correct to even ask that question?
So, please allow me to assuage your guilt.
Let’s imagine you were on the Titanic. You managed to get into a lifeboat and there are people’s heads bobbing up in the water. You can’t possibly save them all from drowning. Then you see your own brother in the water. Would you say it was immoral to offer your brother your outstretched hand first before saving a stranger? Or is that, in fact, the morally correct thing to do?
Is there a moral dilemma here? In my humble opinion: no, not at all.
Charity begins at home. True, we mustn’t only give to our family. We are expected to extend our charity beyond our family to our community, in ever-widening circles if we can. But family does come first. That is a completely correct and appropriate moral duty and obligation.
We Jews are all family. We are sons and daughters of our founding patriarchs and matriarchs, and brothers and sisters literally, traditionally and emotionally. We help the world big time. But we need make no apologies whatsoever for helping our family first.
We fully accept responsibility to help causes beyond our own, but our first obligation is surely to our own brothers and sisters. For this, we have no regrets and no explanations should be necessary.
I am not at all impressed by the world agencies whose job it is to help countries and communities in need. They who claim to be “equal” in their distribution of charity and care to the needy seem to be rather discriminating when it comes to Israel and Jews. When you care “equally” about everyone, it seems you may well end up caring about no one.
So we, Israel and the Jewish people, will continue to be the most moral nation on earth. We shall carry on looking after our own and the rest of the world too.
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Who Are the Anti-Zionist Jews?
Members of extreme anti-Zionist group “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Photo: NGO Monitor.
JNS.org – As a teacher of Zionism, one of the more frequent questions I receive is about anti-Zionist Jews.
Zionism is a modern movement built on age-old values that stand for the right of the Jewish people to determine their future in a state in the Jewish people’s historic homeland—the Land of Israel. Zionists maintain that the denial of these rights is antisemitic by nature because it advocates for discriminating against the Jewish people. But I am often asked: If there are anti-Zionist Jews, how can anti-Zionism be considered antisemitism?
The question isn’t without merit, but it assumes that Jews can’t express antisemitic viewpoints or be antisemitic in general. While antisemitic Jews are an odd phenomenon, there’s no reason they can’t exist. At the same time, there are Jews who agree with the values of Zionism but maintain that Zionism’s goal of establishing a Jewish state should not have been pursued at this time due to ancillary reasons having nothing to do with Zionist values.
Jewish opponents of Zionism have diverse views, but there are three main categories of anti-Zionist Jews: 1) Jews who promote a more assimilationist position and are concerned that Zionism can bring on charges of dual loyalty and increase antisemitism. 2) Jews who are fearful of fighting for Jewish rights. They prefer an existence that doesn’t advocate for change and are satisfied with a less-than-ideal reality rather than one that could better their standing in the world. 3) Torah-observant Jews who maintain that Zionism is inconsistent with Torah values either because of its secularism or its timing before a Messianic era.
In his book Arc of a Covenant, Walter Russell Mead wrote: “In 1919, 31 of the most influential Jews in America, led by the former ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, presented a petition to Woodrow Wilson as he left for the Paris Peace Conference requesting him to oppose the Balfour Declaration: ‘We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State.’”
These Jews preferred living in a non-Jewish state with Jews who aspired to be more like their non-Jewish neighbors than in their own independent nation.
Many of these Jews exist today, yet an interesting phenomenon has developed with this group. Those who call themselves Zionists but practice a life that is more like the non-Jews around them than the independent Jewish lives of those in Israel. Mead wrote: “Herzl expected an unfavorable response to his [Zionist] pamphlet, and the Jews of Vienna did not disappoint him. A few weeks after publication, Herzl noted in his diary that “The Jews of the upper-class, educated circles … are horrified by me.”
It was not just that the idea of a Jewish “return” to a homeland where no Jewish state had existed for almost 2,000 years struck most sensible Jews as a fantasy rather than as a serious political proposal; it was that most Western Jews had long ago renounced the idea that the Jews were a nation. They thought of Jews as a race of people sharing a common descent or as a religious community.
Every society and community includes individuals who prefer to be viewed with favor of those around them rather than fight for their own rights and independence. They either fear independence and change or are frightened to stand up for their own rights.
Early Zionists denigrated the Jews in their community who acted this way as “Galus Jews” or “Weak-kneed Jews.” The Zionist ethos holds that Jews should stand up for themselves and demand that the nations of the world grant the Jewish people the rights all nations enjoy. Zionist Jews wouldn’t stand for the anti-Zionist Jews who were afraid to stand up for themselves and demand what rightfully belonged to the Jewish people.
Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, a Rabbi who lived at the turn of the 20th century, once said: “The Zionists attract Jews to their movement by dressing it up as ‘the mitzvah of settling in Eretz Yisroel.” Rav Chaim likened Zionists to sane people who had drunk from a poisonous well that caused them to become insane and try to convince the sane people that they are, in fact, insane. His main objection to Zionism was its move away from complete devotion to the observance of Halachah. Other rabbis maintain that Jews are prohibited from governing the Land of Israel until the Messianic era.
Dr. Theodore Herzl and Rav Chaim Soloveitchik lived at the same time. They couldn’t have been more different. Yet both revolutionized the Jewish world. Dr. Herzl’s Zionism created the State of Israel and Rav Chaim created the Brisker Derech (methodology of analysis).
As a self-declared Brisker, I don’t feel comfortable critiquing Rav Chaim’s position and prefer Rabbi Aaron Zimmer’s explanation of Rav Chaim’s position on Zionism.
In psychology, learned helplessness is a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try, even when opportunities for change are available. For over 2,000 years, the Jewish people had learned helplessness and assumed they couldn’t return to Israel without a Divine command leading to the Messianic era.
Dr. Herzl, a journalist and man of the world, witnessed the political reality around him changing. He understood that the global community’s focus on liberation and move away from colonialism set the ideal conditions for the Jewish people to return to their homeland and establish their own state.
Rav Chaim and many rabbis opposed to Zionism weren’t aware of global trends and couldn’t see that the time had come to return to the Land of Israel. They saw Zionism as a movement bent on veering Jews away from the Torah with false promises of a return to Zion.
Dr. Herzl was able to take advantage of global trends and actualize the 2,000-year-old dream of the Jewish people to return to the Land of Israel.
The existence of anti-Zionist Jews troubles the Zionist community for numerous reasons, but most of all because they provide support for the antisemites of the world who mask their Jew-hatred with the “legitimate” veneer of anti-Zionism.
Anti-Zionist Jews exist on the fringes of Judaism and aren’t representative of today’s mainstream Jewish community, which overwhelmingly identifies as Zionist and supports the State of Israel. They should be given as much credence as racist black people and self-hating Catholics.
Those who point to the anti-Zionist fringes of the Jewish community and play them off as mainstream to legitimize their hate reveal themselves as antisemites.
The post Who Are the Anti-Zionist Jews? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.