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Israel Fights Wars Knowing It Values Life, While Enemies Seek ‘Power Over Death’

Flames seen at the side of a road, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, close to the Israel border with Lebanon, in northern Israel, June 4, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ayal Margolin

Though the most evident source of human governance is power, true power can never stem from war-making stratagems or capacities. In principle, at least, consummate power on planet earth is immortality, but such power is intangible and must be based on faith rather than science. All things considered, the promise of “power over death” holds primary importance in world politics. This is especially the case in the jihadist Middle East.

There are relevant particulars. The consequences of this sort of thinking represent a lethal triumph of anti-Reason over Reason. Such triumph, in turn, expresses the continuing supremacy of primal human satisfactions in war, terrorism and genocide. On this matter of world-historical urgency, scholars and policy-makers should consider the probing observation of Eugene Ionesco in his Journal (1966). Opting to describe killing in general as affirmation of an individual’s “power over death,” the Romanian playwright explains:

I must kill my visible enemy, the one who is determined to take my life, to prevent him from killing me. Killing gives me a feeling of relief, because I am dimly aware that in killing him, I have killed death … Killing is a way of relieving one’s feelings, of warding off one’s own death.

Whatever the standards of assessment, all individuals and all states coexist in an “asymmetrical” world. Certain state leaderships accept zero-sum linkages between killing and survival (both individual and collective), but others do not. Although this divergence might suggest that some states stand on a higher moral plane than others, it may also place the virtuous state at a grave security disadvantage. As a timely example, this disadvantage describes the growing survival dilemma of Israel, a still-virtuous state that must unceasingly bear the assaults of utterly murderous adversaries.

What should Israel do when it finds itself confronted with faith-driven enemies who abhor Reason and seek personal immortality via “martyrdom?” As an antecedent question, what sort of “faith” can encourage (and cherish) the rape, torture and murder of innocents? Must the virtuous state accept barbarism as its sine qua non to “stay alive”?

There are science-based answers. What is required of still-virtuous states such as Israel is not a replication of enemy crimes, but decent and pragmatic policies that recognize death-avoidance as that enemy’s overriding goal. For Israel, this advice points toward jihadist enemies. Of special concern is a soon-to-be-nuclear capable Iran and Iranian terror-group surrogates (e.g., Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah), notably anxious to acquire “power over death.”

Israel’s most immediate concern will be the expanding war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, a conflict in which the terrorist patron state (Iran) could display greater commitments to Reason than its associated fighting proxies. Nonetheless, even this relative reasonableness would devolve into brutish expressions of anti-Reason. What else ought Jerusalem to expect from adversaries who take palpable delight in the killing of “others?”

For Israel, there will be moral, legal and tactical imperatives. Though Reason will never govern the world, civilized states ought not plan to join the barbarians. In the best of all possible worlds, national and terror-group leaders could rid themselves of the notion that killing variously designated foes would confer immunity from mortality, but this is not yet the best of all possible worlds.

For the foreseeable future, the defiling dynamics of anti-Reason will continue to hold sway in Islamist politics. In Will Therapy and Truth and Reality (1936), psychologist Otto Rank explains these determinative dynamics at a clarifying conceptual level: “The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the Sacrifice, of the Other. Through the death of the Other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of being killed.”

Israeli analysts will recognize here the elements of jihadist terror, of martyrdom-directed criminality that closely resembles traditional notions of religious sacrifice. In authoritative world law, moreover, jihadist perpetrators are always differentiable from counter-terrorist adversaries by their witting embrace of mens rea or “criminal intent.

Though Israel regards the harms it that unfortunately comes to noncombatant Palestinian Arab populations as the unavoidable costs of counter-terrorism, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah intentionally target Israeli civilians. Under international law, both customary and codified, the responsibility for Israel-inflicted harms lies with the jihadists because of their documented resort to “human shields. In law, such resort is unambiguously criminal. The pertinent crime is known formally as “perfidy.”

At a minimum, every virtuous state’s law-based national security policies should build upon intellectual and scientific forms of understanding. Ipso facto, a virtuous state’s “just wars,” counter-terrorism conflicts and anti-genocide programs should be conducted as contests of mind over mind. These contests should never be regarded as narrowly tactical struggles of mind over matter.

Israel together with all other states coexist in an international state of nature, a perpetually unstable condition that 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes correctly called a “state of war.” Despite being patently unreasonable, barbarous states and their fighting proxies subscribe to the proposition that “sacrificing” specifically reviled “others” (Jews) offers powerful “medicine” against their own deaths. Among other things, this proposition reflects a grimly ominous “triumph” of anti-Reason over Reason.

Our planet’s survival task is primarily an intellectual one, but unprecedented human courage will also be needed. For the required national leadership initiatives, Israel could have no good reason to expect the arrival of a Platonic philosopher-king among its retrograde enemies. For humane and Reason–based governance to develop, enlightened citizens of Islamic countries in the Middle East would first have to cast aside historically discredited ways of thinking about world politics and international law and do whatever possible to elevate empirical science and “mind” over blind faith and “mystery.”

Ironically, the legacy of Westphalia (the 1648 treaty creating modern international law) codifies Reason. We may discover murderous endorsements of anti-Reason in the writings of Hegel, Fichte, von Treitschke and various others, but there have also been voices of a very different sort. For the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the state is “the coldest of all cold monsters.” It is, he remarks in Zarathustra, “for the superfluous that the state was invented.” In a similar vein, we may consider the corroborating view of Jose Ortega y’Gasset in the Revolt of the Masses. The 20th century Spanish philosopher identifies the state as “the greatest danger, always mustering its immense resources “to crush beneath it any creative minority which disturbs it….”

Amid all that would madden and torment, the modern state and its proxies often “live” at the apex of anti-Reason. Before this self-destroying existence can change, humankind would first have to accept (1) the Reason-backed “sentence” of universal mortality or (2) the continuing supremacy of anti-Reason. If the second assumption is chosen, it could only make sense in a world wherein traditionally compelling promises of immortality were successfully “de-linked” from “religious sacrifices” of war, terrorism and genocide.

As the first choice is inconceivable for a species that has never generally accepted personal mortality, the second choice offers Israel its only realistic decisional context. To be sure, national and global survival amid anti-Reason can hardly be reassuring, but, at least for now, it represents the world’s only plausible prospect. As for convincing aspiring Islamist perpetrators that inflictions of war, terrorism or genocide on “others” could never confer “power over death” – this task becomes the single most important obligation of all civilized states and peoples.

Because the necessary starting point for all calculations is a world of anti-Reason, Israel will need to understand that political concessions (e.g., territorial surrenders and a Palestinian state) could never satisfy their lascivious foes.

Embracing a world of anti-Reason, these enemies are shaped by what Nietzsche calls “a world of desires and passions.” For them, such a world gives a green-light to the sordid pleasures of criminal barbarism so prominently displayed on October 7, 2023.

In essence, Iran, as mentor to the barbarians, represents the juridical incarnation of anti-Reason. A state of Palestine would add to the Iran-backed forces of anti-Reason. Iran-Palestine would present Israel with a unique existential hazard. Potentially, this hazard would be irremediable.

What next? To deal with conspicuously primal foes, enemies that seek “power over death,” Israel’s only prudential and law-based strategy should emphasize calibrated military remedies. In carrying out its soon-to-be-expanded operations against Hezbollah, Jerusalem ought never to forget that (1) its core adversary is Iran, not an Iranian terror-group proxy; (2) keeping Iran non-nuclear is an immutable national obligation; and (3) a Palestinian state could never satisfy Jerusalem’s adversaries and would inevitably become a “force-multiplying” peril of unprecedented magnitude.

Louis René Beres is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue. He is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war. A version of this article was originally published at JewishWebsight.

The post Israel Fights Wars Knowing It Values Life, While Enemies Seek ‘Power Over Death’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid

A member of the Emergency Response Division holds an Islamic State militants flag in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani/File Photo.

A US Army veteran who flew a black Islamic State flag on a truck that he rammed into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans shows how the extremist group still retains the ability to inspire violence despite suffering years of losses to a US-led military coalition.

At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the Islamic State “caliphate” imposed death and torture on communities in vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises across the Middle East.

Its then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by US special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims.

The caliphate collapsed in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.

Islamic State responded by scattering in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The U.N. estimates it at 10,000 in its heartlands.

The US-led coalition, including some 4,000 US troops in Syria and Iraq, has continued hammering the militants with airstrikes and raids that the US military says have seen hundreds of fighters and leaders killed and captured.

Yet Islamic State has managed some major operations while striving to rebuild and it continues to inspire lone wolf attacks such as the one in New Orleans which killed 14 people.

Those assaults include one by gunmen on a Russian music hall in March 2024 that killed at least 143 people, and two explosions targeting an official ceremony in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed nearly 100.

Despite the counterterrorism pressure, ISIS has regrouped, “repaired its media operations, and restarted external plotting,” Acting US Director for the National Counterterrorism Center Brett Holmgren warned in October.

Geopolitical factors have aided Islamic State. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has caused widespread anger that jihadists use for recruitment. The risks to Syrian Kurds who are holding thousands of Islamic State prisoners could also create an opening for the group.

Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack or praised it on its social media sites, although its supporters have, US law enforcement agencies said.

A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been growing concern about Islamic State increasing its recruiting efforts and resurging in Syria.

Those worries were heightened after the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the potential for the militant group to fill the vacuum.

‘MOMENTS OF PROMISE’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Islamic State will try to use this period of uncertainty to re-establish capabilities in Syria, but said the United States is determined not to let that happen.

“History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence,” he said.

A U.N. team that monitors Islamic State activities reported to the U.N. Security Council in July a “risk of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East and increased concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to mount attacks outside the country.

European governments viewed ISIS-K as “the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe,” it said.

“In addition to the executed attacks, the number of plots disrupted or being tracked through the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe, and potentially as far as North America is striking,” the team said.

Jim Jeffrey, former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat Islamic State, said the group has long sought to motivate lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans.

Its threat, however, remains efforts by ISIS-K to launch major mass casualty attacks like those seen in Moscow and Iran, and in Europe in 2015 and 2016, he said.

ISIS also has continued to focus on Africa.

This week, it said 12 Islamic State militants using booby-trapped vehicles attacked a military base on Tuesday in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland, killing around 22 soldiers and wounding dozens more.

It called the assault “the blow of the year. A complex attack that is first of its kind.”

Security analysts say Islamic State in Somalia has grown in strength because of an influx of foreign fighters and more revenue from extorting local businesses, becoming the group’s “nerve centre” in Africa.

‘PATH TO RADICALIZATION’

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and US Army veteran who once served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the New Orleans attack, the FBI said on Thursday.

Jabbar appeared to have made recordings in which he condemned music, drugs and alcohol, restrictions that echo Islamic State’s playbook.

Investigators were looking into Jabbar’s “path to radicalization,” uncertain how he transformed from military veteran, real-estate agent and one-time employee of the major tax and consulting firm Deloitte into someone who was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” an acronym for Islamic State.

US intelligence and homeland security officials in recent months have warned local law enforcement about the potential for foreign extremist groups, such as ISIS, to target large public gatherings, specifically with vehicle-ramming attacks, according to intelligence bulletins reviewed by Reuters.

US Central Command said in a public statement in June that Islamic State was attempting to “reconstitute following several years of decreased capability.”

CENTCOM said it based its assessment on Islamic State claims of mounting 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate which would put the group “on pace to more than double the number of attacks” claimed the year before.

H.A. Hellyer, an expert in Middle East studies and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said it was unlikely Islamic State would gain considerable territory again.

He said ISIS and other non-state actors continue to pose a danger, but more due to their ability to unleash “random acts of violence” than by being a territorial entity.

“Not in Syria or Iraq, but there are other places in Africa that a limited amount of territorial control might be possible for a time,” Hellyer said, “but I don’t see that as likely, not as the precursor to a serious comeback.”

The post New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says

US President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this White House handout image taken in the Oval Office in Washington, US, April 4, 2024. Photo: The White House/Handout via REUTERS

The administration of President Joe Biden has notified Congress of a proposed $8 billion arms sale to Israel, a US official said on Friday, with Washington maintaining support for its ally.

The deal would need approval from the House of Representatives and Senate committees and includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells, Axios reported earlier. The package also includes small-diameter bombs and warheads, according to Axios.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Protesters have for months demanded an arms embargo against Israel, but US policy has largely remained unchanged. In August, the United States approved the sale of $20 billion in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.

The Biden administration says it is helping its ally defend against Iran-backed terrorist groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

The post US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag

Illustrative. An undated picture of (from left) Liri Albag, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, and Karina Ariev held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, that was made public by their families on July 16, 2024. Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum

i24 NewsThe Palestinian terrorists of Hamas on Saturday released a video showing signs of life from Israeli hostage Liri Albag.

Albag’s family requested media not to share the video or images from it, asking journalists to respect their privacy at this moment.

Albag, 20, is a surveillance soldier stationed at the Nahal Oz base, was abducted on October 7 by Palestinian jihadists.

The post Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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