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A ‘Long War’ Is Not the Answer to Israel’s Security Problem — and Could Lead to Destruction (PART ONE)
An Israeli military convoy moves inside the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from Israel, June 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The October 7 disaster shattered many beliefs and concepts in Israeli society, and the war Israel has been waging since that day differs from the wars of its past.
David Ben-Gurion and Ze’ev Jabotinsky believed that rounds of war in which the enemy is smashed against an “Iron Wall” would eventually cause the countries of the region to come to terms with Israel’s existence; this would in turn cause them to change their strategy and choose the path of peace, as did Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Jordan’s King Hussein. Ben-Gurion’s understanding that an end to the conflict cannot be forced, and that Israel cannot develop and advance in a state of continuous war, led him to the security concept that was in effect until October 7, 2023.
Israel’s security concept has to address a fundamental problem: that the country 1) exists within a hostile region that does not accept its existence, and 2) cannot maintain a large army on a daily basis while advancing economically and socially. The solution — until October 2023 — was to maintain a small regular army to address ongoing security challenges; try and postpone wars by deterring enemies from exercising resistance; and maintain a large and agile reserve army that is mobilized on the basis of intelligence alerts. Because the mobilization of the reserves stalls Israel’s economy, this security concept required that wars be short.
The first commandment of Israel’s security concept was that Israel would never be able to force an end to the conflict on its antagonists because it is simply too small relative to the collective Arab and Muslim world. This approach created the dynamic of cycles of short wars.
Israel was destined to mobilize for a significant clash once every few years, to beat the enemy in a short and powerful war, and thereby gain a few years of relative calm. Israel used these periods of calm, together with the assets it gained during the wars (time, territory, deterrence, strategic stability) to transform from a tiny young country into a regional military and economic power.
But the periods between the rounds of war — that is, the “routine” phase of the security concept — were never calm from a security point of view. In fact, since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, not a month has passed without a security incident in one of the conflict areas. Israel’s routine security situation is in fact a routine of limited conflict.
Throughout its short history, Israel has never been able to completely eliminate any of its enemies. Ten days after the end of the Six-Day War — Israel’s greatest victory, in which it achieved the total disintegration of the Egyptian army — Egypt renewed fire.
Israel’s strategic success in expelling the PLO from Lebanon following the Lebanon War did not eliminate Palestinian hostility from Lebanon, and it certainly did not prevent Hezbollah’s development and indeed acceleration of strength. Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and the transition from Yasser Arafat to Abu Mazen, who changed his predecessor’s policy of support for terrorism, did not lead to the elimination of Palestinian terrorism. To this day, the IDF is required to carry out operations almost every night to fight Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria.
Israel made good use of the routine periods and turned itself from a small, weak, resource-poor country into a regional power in every respect. Along with strengthening economically, Israel also strengthened militarily. It hit the enemy repeatedly, sometimes so severely that it caused them to weaken and change. But as expected, Israel has failed to force an end to the conflict on its enemies. As Ben-Gurion said, “We cannot have a final battle.”
It can be argued that if Israel is fated to go to war at intervals over and over again forever, then all the Sisyphean security activity during the routine periods is unnecessary — in other words, it fails to bring results, as war inevitably breaks out again anyway. But Israel’s ongoing defensive and offensive military effort makes it possible to postpone the next war and maintain a tolerable level of violence during the routine periods.
Why does Israel allow the other side to arm itself more than it can be expected to tolerate? Why not act before the other side is dangerously well-armed? The answer is clear. Israel uses the routine periods to build and develop. Overly frequent wars might make it more difficult for Israel’s enemies to strengthen, but they would foil the part of Israel’s strategy that depends on the periods of routine. The “addiction to peace” — as the Israeli desire to extend the routine periods is sometimes called by opponents of the Ben-Gurion security concept — is not a sign of the concept’s weakness, but a by-product of its implementation.
If Israel cannot force an end to the conflict on its enemies, and its enemies include those who wish to act against it with violence, what prevents those enemies from acting all the time and arming themselves without limit?
If Israel cannot keep its entire army mobilized and active and must be content with a small regular army, what prevents its enemies from attacking it every day that the army is not mobilized? Why hasn’t every day of Israel’s existence been an October 7?
This is where deterrence and early warning come into play.
Israel’s enemies are usually deterred from starting a high-intensity war against it because Israel has proven that it is stronger than they are, and that a high-intensity war would hurt them more than they are willing to suffer. Deterrence keeps wars from starting and helps Israel maintain a tolerable level of violence during the routine periods. But deterrence is not supposed to, and should not be expected to, prevent war from ever breaking out. Nor is it meant to completely prevent any violence from ever occurring during the routine periods.
Israel tries to strengthen its deterrence capacity not to prevent war but to keep war away for as long as possible, on the understanding that war will eventually break out. At the same time, Israel invests a continuous effort in defense to make it difficult for the other side to cause it harm during the routine periods. Defense cannot, and clearly does not, prevent all violence.
Israel invests a great deal of effort in intelligence, the first purpose of which is to warn of the enemy’s intention to go to war. Because early warning might fail, Israel built a routine defense system designed to stop an attack in the event of such a failure.
Defense needs to respond to both threats from the borders and terrorism that occurs during the routine periods. This dual role — protection against low-intensity violence and an “insurance policy” in the event of a failure of early warning — can create confusion about the defense mission and even the scenario for which the defense is being prepared.
This seems to be what happened on October 7. The IDF failed to recognize the potential for a major Hamas raid on the Israeli villages and towns near Gaza. The IDF is prepared to prevent infiltration, not invasion. Whether the failure was in the IDF’s understanding of the intelligence or in the degree of protection afforded by the new barrier it built around Gaza, the IDF’s preparations did not take into account the possibility of a breach of the barrier or the potentially broad dimensions of such a raid. The IDF did not prepare for this scenario and did not prepare orders or routines for such a case. The Intelligence Division did not build a warning model to protect against such a move, and therefore did not provide warning. Weak preparation, and the failure to prepare a response in case of surprise, allowed Hamas to penetrate the border and carry out the October 7 attack, with all its catastrophic consequences.
But were there elements in the Hamas attack that Israel had no ability to defend against? Had Hamas discovered operative tools against which Israel could not prepare a defensive response? Did Hamas prepare in a way that Israeli intelligence could not discover?
The tragedy is that the answer to all these questions is no.
Has anyone in Israel ever believed that Hamas is interested in peace? Was anyone surprised to learn that Hamas still opposes Israel’s very existence and believes it should be violently resisted until it is destroyed? Did anyone in Israel think the IDF could deter Hamas to the point of forcing it to end the conflict — a principle that is contrary to the first commandment of the security concept?
The horrific harm inflicted on Israeli civilians on October 7, the taking of hundreds of captives, and the appearance of the loss of Israeli power caused Israel to go to war. The object of that war is to make clear that Hamas made a grievous mistake and to renew Israel’s strategic positioning in the arena. But did the magnitude of the blow inflicted on Israel suddenly make it more capable than it ever believed itself to be before the war? Did the catastrophic failure of Israel’s defense and early warning system paradoxically make Israel so strong that it can now force its enemies to end the conflict?
Did the atrocities committed by Hamas in its attack somehow make the IDF strong enough to eliminate the threat of Hamas from Gaza, bearing in mind that Israel has never been able to eliminate any of the threats that surround it? Did the terrible damage suffered by the surrounding communities make Israel’s economy and society so strong that Israel can suddenly conduct a long and intense war?
The shock and sense of rupture caused by October 7 led many to think that the Hamas attack had irreparably broken Israel’s security concept. Israel’s deterrence and early warning both failed, and Hamas was not deterred. Hence: it is no longer true that Israel cannot have a final battle. It is possible to go to war to eliminate Hamas once and for all — to wage a final war and achieve a complete victory.
We will try to formulate this alternative “October 8” concept of security. According to this view, Israel cannot ignore threats against it. It should act decisively and continuously towards the complete elimination of its enemies and their replacement with political elements that accept Israel’s national policies and goals. Thus, the goal of the war in Gaza should be the complete elimination of the military power of Hamas and the dissolution of its civilian rule in the Strip, until it can be ensured that it no longer poses a threat to the surrounding settlements.
Let’s ignore for the moment the endless consequences of this concept when applying it to Lebanon and the other arenas. Gaza is a limited geographical space with a topography that supports maneuvering. But even if it were possible to achieve complete victory in Gaza, what would it look like? Full and lasting Israeli control over the territory, à la Judea and Samaria?
After 10 months of war, the IDF has occupied most of the Gaza Strip and destroyed countless buildings and terrorist and tunneling infrastructures. Hamas still exists and functions, though it is unable to launch significant military operations. But it is possible that the manner in which the IDF used its force was wrong.
Even if the IDF had acted differently, it is not clear how Hamas fighters can be eliminated when they withdraw and assimilate into the general population. How can every last Hamas fighter be eliminated when they are the ones who choose whether to fight or blend into the crowd? A similar logic applies to buildings and infrastructure. The IDF has shown no mercy to buildings and tunnels in Gaza. It has used an unprecedented quantity of aerial weapons and explosives on the ground, and the number of homes it has destroyed is enormous. Notwithstanding claims that the Americans withheld armaments from the IDF, they provided Israel with tens of thousands of bombs that it did not possess at the beginning of the war. Could yet more infrastructure have been destroyed?
Will anyone be surprised if, after the complete victory in Gaza is achieved and Hamas is defeated, there continues to be a threat of terrorism from Gaza, including the occasional rocket launch? Can this be prevented? And if not, what is the advantage of continuing the war without end?
The IDF has been at war at varying levels of intensity for 10 months now. The regular soldiers are fighting almost continuously, and the reserve forces are already in their third round of action. Is this not enough? Is there no limit to the hours the engine of the IDF machine can continue to function? And is there a correlation between the prolonging of the war in Gaza and the problematic strategic situation in the north?
Supporters of the alternative view claim that Ben-Gurion’s view no longer provides security. According to them, avoiding a complete victory stems first and foremost from weakness. But their new concept ignores the reality of the difficulty that would be involved in achieving either the means or the international support necessary to prosecute such a long war. When asked what Israel should do about the lack of armaments, their answer is often that Israel will simply have to achieve independence in the field. But how can a war be waged right now with armaments that we do not yet have? And can Israel really afford to ignore its need for American military and political assistance? Can Israel stand alone against all the threats that surround us, which are not only military but also political and economic? Can Israel survive without American support at the UN? Can it survive a global boycott?
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 ONE) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Netanyahu Expects to Meet Trump Next Week in the US
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he expects to travel to the United States next week for meetings with President Donald Trump, after a “great victory” in the 12-Day War with Iran last month.
Netanyahu said in a statement ahead of a cabinet meeting that the visit will also include talks with other top US officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“We still have a few things to finalize in order to reach a trade agreement in addition to other matters,” he said, referring to Trump’s tariff plans. “I’ll also have meetings with congressional and Senate leaders and some security meetings.”
Trump last month announced a ceasefire ending the hostilities between Israel and Iran.
The US president said last week that his administration would send letters to a number of countries notifying them of their higher tariff rates before July 9, when the duties are scheduled to revert from a temporary 10% level to a range of between 11% and 50% announced on April 2 and subsequently suspended.
The U.S. initially set a 17% tariff on Israeli goods sold in the United States.
The post Netanyahu Expects to Meet Trump Next Week in the US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts
Gazans receiving humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Col. Richard Kemp
A recent Haaretz exposé accusing the Israeli military of ordering troops to fire at unarmed civilians near food aid sites in Gaza relied on mistranslation, selective quotes, factual omissions, and contradictions to construct a narrative of unprovoked Israeli violence, according to independent observers interviewed by The Algemeiner.
Debunking the claim of indiscriminate fire by the IDF, the experts instead described widespread fear of Hamas, not the Israeli military.
The Haaretz report quickly gained traction in international media. Titled “’It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid,” it was cited by outlets such as NPR, CNN, and Reuters, .
British military analyst Andrew Fox criticized the article for its framing and language. One of the discrepancies he pointed to was the shift in the English version of the story from soldiers firing “towards” civilians, as stated in the Hebrew original, to “at” them. The original Hebrew subheader also specified that soldiers were told to fire “towards” crowds “to distance them” from the aid sites, suggesting the shooting took place as a means of crowd control.
“It’s a matter of intent,” Fox told The Algemeiner. The phrase “‘at civilians’ means they are trying to kill them. It’s misleading because they’re firing warnings to avoid harm rather than shooting to cause harm.”
“Warning shots are something all armies do — we did in Afghanistan — but when you pull the trigger there’s always a risk of harm, and that’s not great,” explained Fox, a think tank researcher and former British Army officer. “Still, there’s a huge difference between that and deliberately targeting civilians.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said that “shooting towards,” as in the original Hebrew, was “quite reasonable as a means to exercise crowd control in a war zone.”
“It is highly unlikely the IDF would be ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians unless they directly endangered them,” Kemp told The Algemeiner, citing Israel’s interest in the success of US-backed humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza. “The IDF rigidly follows laws of war. It makes no sense for the IDF to want to damage aid efforts. They cooperate with and facilitate [the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] and want it to succeed. The ones who want it to fail are Hamas because it deprives them of control and funds. If anyone has been doing this shooting, it would be Hamas. They have the motive the IDF do not.”
There were other discrepancies in the original headline and its translation. Whereas the Hebrew version reads “Soldiers testify: IDF deliberately shoots towards Gazans near aid collection points,” the English version not only omitted any reference to mediating testimony or attribution, but also framed the event as an empirical fact: “IDF soldiers ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid.” Further, the phrase “waiting for humanitarian aid” may carry specific legal implications under international law, suggesting heightened vulnerability, whereas the Hebrew version referred more vaguely to crowds “near aid collection points.”
The subheader — which claimed soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed civilians “even when no threat was present” — conflicted with the body of the text, which acknowledged that Israeli soldiers were wounded near the aid distribution zones. One sentence, appearing for the first time in the 21st paragraph, stood out: “There were also fatalities and injuries among IDF soldiers in these incidents.” The piece offered no explanation for how such casualties could occur if, as the article claims, no one else present was armed.
Elsewhere in the article, a soldier is quoted describing the IDF creating a “killing field,” supposedly involving heavy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers. But if such weapons were used with lethal intent, as Fox pointed out in a Substack post, the casualty rate would be far higher than the one to five reported per day. “That’s not a massacre,” he wrote, going on to quip that the only massacre to take place was one of “journalistic standards by Haaretz.”
“Could some soldiers accidentally miss and hit someone?” Fox wrote. “Yes. That is tragic and warrants investigation. However, the article itself acknowledges that the IDF is already examining those incidents. To jump from that to ‘deliberate killing fields’ is not responsible reporting. It is narrative laundering.”
The lack of video footage of the alleged mass shootings near GHF sites raises questions, given the large volume of media typically produced from Gaza, according to Fox, who noted that Hamas has repeatedly circulated images and clips for propaganda purposes.
“Every Gazan has a mobile phone, and numerous videos of other events have been released,” he wrote. “Why is there a total absence of any credible footage of these supposed IDF combined arms assaults on queuing civilians?”
Kemp, who visited two of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites in the days following the report’s publication, described hearing distant gunfire but reported that the aid operation proceeded mostly without disruption.
Col. Richard Kemp at humanitarian aid site with Gazans. Photo: Provided
“None of the Gazans there showed any concerns [about the IDF] whatsoever,” he said. Many of the civilians identified Hamas, not the IDF, as the main threat to the aid effort — a dynamic not acknowledged in the Haaretz report — telling Kemp they could not return home for fear of being recognized and targeted by Hamas.
“I must have spoken to at least 50 Gazans at each site,” he said. “Many told me they feared Hamas and Hamas threatened them if they used the sites.”
Kemp added that the atmosphere was chaotic but manageable, with GHF workers — most of them local Gazans — interfacing directly with the crowds. He described people smiling, holding up food packages, and expressing gratitude for the aid.
“The overwhelming impression was how grateful they were to be getting free aid for once, as opposed to buying aid looted by Hamas and sold at a premium,” he told The Algemeiner.
Many Gazans at the GHF sites who spoke to Kemp voiced hatred for Hamas and praised the US-backed aid effort, with some chanting “kill Hamas” while others said “I love America” or expressed admiration for President Donald Trump. The alignment between Hamas and UN criticism of the food program was “shocking,” Kemp added, particularly given the visible gratitude expressed by many recipients.
“They associate this aid program with the US,” he said. “They seem to like it, whereas Hamas and the UN seem to be its greatest enemies.”
The post Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS
Illustrative: Supporters of Hamas gather for a rally in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Reuters/Joel Carrett
Two former Australian nurses who were charged over a viral video in which they allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients have been banned from working under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), four months after being suspended from their jobs at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney.
Earlier this year, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, both 27, gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night shift conversation with Israeli influencer Max Veifer.
The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They are now also prohibited from working with or providing any services — paid or unpaid — to NDIS participants for two years.
This latest ban, which took effect on May 9, applies nationwide and prohibits Nadir and Abu Lebdeh from working with NDIS participants or performing any role for or on behalf of NDIS providers in any Australian state or territory.
Abu Lebdeh was charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, she faces up to 22 years in prison.
Nadir was charged with federal offenses, including using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offense, as well as possession of a prohibited drug.
Currently, both of them remain free on bail and have not yet entered any pleas, with a court appearance scheduled for July 29. They’ve been prohibited from leaving Australia or using social media while their cases proceed.
According to Nadir’s lawyer, the video was captured “without the consent and knowledge” of his client, and he intends to argue for its exclusion from court.
“We will be challenging the admissibility of the video recording because it was a private conversation which was recorded by the person overseas without my client’s consent and without his knowledge,” Nadir’s lawyer said. “That video recording was made secretly overseas and was unlawfully obtained.”
This incident, which drew international attention, occurred amid a surge of antisemitic acts across Australia since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began in October 2023, with Jewish institutions targeted in arson attacks and businesses defaced.
Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, with the escalation continuing amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran.
According to a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s Jewish community experienced over 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadrupling from 495 in the prior 12 months.
The number of antisemitic physical assaults in Australia rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
The post Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS first appeared on Algemeiner.com.