1. War is brutal – Sounds trite,
but the jingoists forget. Eight of our soldiers were killed on Shabbat morning
in an RPG attack on their explosive-laden APC in the southern Gaza Strip. Another
died from wounds incurred Erev Shavuot in a booby-trapped building blast. By
the close of the weekend, one more had been killed in yet another explosion.
Our war of no choice has forced us to kill not just armed jihadists
but also inadvertently noncombatants who were in the wrong place at the wrong
time. In practically all wars, civilian casualty rates are consistently
and inevitably high – as often as not, more innocents die
in war than bad guys.
Humanitarian crises often follow in the wake of war. Each
side is responsible for looking after its own homefront. Except, peculiarly, in
the case of the Palestinian Arabs.
2. The veneer of civilization is thin. The Palestinian
Arabs launched Operation Al-Aksa Flood on October 7 with military precision that
cadets at West Point will be studying for years to come.
Yet the blitzkrieg was about more than inflicting a martial
blow against Israel. Integral to the onslaught was its barbarism. High on amphetamines,
the Islamists raped, pillaged, and burned. Scores of ordinary Gazans followed
behind the Nukhba forces to participate in the bloodlust. Long months afterward,
forensic pathologists in Israel were still working to identify victims'
remains. That's how vicious the massacre was.
While Hamas gunmen were still on Israeli territory and before
the IDF was able to mobilize its citizen-soldier reserves – anti-Israel
campaigners swarmed into Times Square, carrying Palestinian flags and chanting "Resistance
is Justified," "Globalize the intifada," and "Smash the
settler Zionist state."
They smelled Jewish blood. They sensed Israel's vulnerability.
The prospect that the Zionist enterprise was a paper tiger was too tempting to
ignore. And if Israel was going down, then maybe the Diaspora was vulnerable
too – the identifiably Jewish Jews. The pro-Israel Jews. The condescending civil
rights Jews. The philanthropic museum Jews. The white Jews.
The tsunami of anti-Israelism and antisemitism rather than
ebbing has, with time, only consolidated and intensified. This mass hysteria of
Jew-hating has burned through large swathes of Western civilization.
3. This is how Nazi Germany and its enablers did it. Like many of my baby
boomer contemporaries, I have studied a fair amount about the Holocaust and the
events leading up to WWII. Watching a clip of feverish, kaffiyeh-wearing,
COVID-masked Gaza campaigners crowding into a NYC subway carriage last week on
the way to Union Square (their usual protestdemonstrationsgelände) gave
me a visceral sense of how an advanced cultured polity can be whipped asunder by
frenzied mobilization.
The university encampments, assaults against cultural
institutions, vandalism at homes of prominent Jews, attacks on religious Jews
on the streets, along with the incremental purging of "Zionists" from
woke media, recall the Weimar Republic.
I know that history doesn't literally repeat itself, but who
wants to test that truism?
4. Neither a uniform nor rank connotes wisdom. We have a splendid
military that reflects Israel at its human and technological best. Yet the disgrace
of October 7 runs deep and wide. The strongest army in the Middle East could
not muster one Apache helicopter gunship on the morning of Black Saturday.
What's no less worrying is the number of infiltrations of
military bases since October 7; this exposes a poorly supervised IDF.
The multiple examples of soldiers misbehaving in Gaza (today,
two soldiers idiotically posing holding bras to their chests in a Gaza residence)
amplified on social media points to an army where discipline is way too slack.
The IDF can carry out a pinpoint strike hundreds of miles
from our borders but can't find a terror mastermind hiding a short driving
distance from the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. Let's say our military prowess
is uneven.
Historian Stephen Ambrose, in his biography of Dwight
Eisenhower, says Ike hated to be surprised.
"As a general
rule, the easiest way to achieve complete strategic surprise is to commit an
act that makes no sense or is even self-destructive. In 1941 it made no sense
for the Japanese to initiate a war with the United States; thus the surprise at
Pearl Harbor. It made no sense for the Germans to invade Russia; thus the surprise
of Operation Barbarossa. In 1944 it made no sense for Hitler to use up his
armor in a hopeless counterattack, rather than reserve it for the defense of
the Rhine; thus the surprise in the Battle of the Bulge."
So, in fairness to our decision makers who were taken by
surprise on October 7 – the Hamas onslaught made no sense. That it would leave
Gaza devastated was foretold.
What we Israelis failed to consider, though, is that for
Palestinian Arab leaders, what matters is keeping their cause (a state from the
River to the Sea) at the forefront of world attention. Whether it is killing
athletes at the Olympics, smashing the skulls of babies against a rock, blowing
up a university café, or hijacking jetliners – the world will not pull back in
revulsion. It will pay attention. It will ask, "What is the root cause of
this behavior?" and it will blame the Jewish state.
5. Our political regime needs changing. Binyamin
Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for the better part of 16 years, is blameworthy
for October 7. The IDF high command and the domestic spy chiefs are culpable.
Recall that on the day before October 7, Netanyahu was
trying to carry out a putsch under the guise of judicial reform. And that he
was told for nearly six months that his behavior was undermining Israeli
deterrence.
So, we need to do more than rid ourselves of the corrupt,
smug, power-hungry, and inept. And we certainly should not replace them with
their pale imitations, the likes of Yossi Cohen, Avigdor Leiberman, or Ayalet
Shaked.
Above all, we need a system that takes human nature into
account. Israel's political system requires structural refinement. We deserve a
constitution that protects us from the passions of raw majority rule and
irresponsible elites. Some variant of constituent representation is called for.
We need to separate Synagogue from the State. We need a
regime that incentivizes the many tribes of Israel to accommodate each other. To
live and let live. Even if that is anathema to the haredim.
Presently, the system is not designed to incentivize anyone
to think of the greater good and to vote for broad-based nonsectarian parties.
Instead, there is every incentive to support extremist or parochial or single-issue
parties. Our electoral system gives bad actors – Itamar Ben Gvir, Bezalel
Smotrich, Aryeh Deri, Yitzhak Goldknopf, and Moshe Gafni – disproportionate
influence.
Moreover, if we change the constitutional regime, more
citizens would be obliged to share in the burden for the upkeep and protection
of the Zionist enterprise. There would be no financial or political incentives
for Arabs or the insular ultra-Orthodox to avoid doing their bit. Whole
communities that shirked any form of national service (in hospitals, nursing
homes, schools, agriculture, sanitation, public works) would find themselves
cut off from the state's social welfare safety net.
6. The masses are asses. Watching men in skirts
and snowflake adolescents marching across the Brooklyn Bridge alongside jihadists
and woke people of various hues made me understand that too many people today
feel obliged to have a political opinion about the Arab-Israel conflict.
Political ignoramuses, regardless of age or dysphoria, can
lead perfectly fulfilling lives. It used to be that Joe Sixpack enjoyed staying
home watching sports. Alas, social media has transformed politics into a
reality show. Demagogues and nefarious movements use social media to co-opt the
dimwitted to serve as their useful idiots. Further, it fosters the manipulation
of even well-meaning and erudite folks to serve what they naively think is a just
cause.
Mobs are dangerous. Mobs comprised of stupid people
mobilized by demagogic messages are particularly hazardous to Jews.
7. Disregard world leaders when they say, "Israel has a
right to defend itself." It is vacuous dribble. When Western
Europeans invoke this pablum, they probably mean it – literally. If Hamas crosses
into Israel again, we can defend ourselves. However, if Hamas or Hezbollah
shoot at us from their territory, we would be prudent to focus on trying to
intercept their rockets, missiles, and drones. Should we go on the offensive, some
random Arab civilian could get hurt, and that takes us into "disproportionate"
or maybe even "genocide" territory.
7b America does not
have Israel's back. The Biden administration has been as
supportive as we have a right to expect. It has resupplied our arsenal and
given us substantial diplomatic covering at the hostile UN. Thank you!
However, US and Israeli interests are not in harmony. We
need to ensure Hamas can not attack again. For that to happen, we need to
control the Philadelphi Corridor, maintain a buffer area near our Negev
settlements, and retain the capability of going in and out of Gaza as military
requirements dictate – maybe for years to come.
The Biden administration needs us to stop fighting – certainly
by the Democratic National Convention in late August. We are not free agents. We
are hugely dependent on the US. That said, if we don't exercise sovereignty
when our life as a country depends on it – then what is the point of a national
Jewish homeland?
8. Anti-government Israeli demonstrators are deluding
themselves. Hamas does not crave a ceasefire. Nor is it interested in
a one-for-one prisoner exchange. Hamas claims not to know how many of our
captives are even alive. So, we are negotiating blindly.
Those who are rallying "to bring home the hostages now"
are essentially calling for the release of thousands of sociopathic Palestinian
killers. I mean the kind of Hannibal Lecters who'd sexually mutilate the
Israelis they've murdered. And the master terrorists who sent them on their
missions. Hamas says thank you for your unwitting assistance.
Freeing its "resistance fighters" was the demand
that Mohammed Deif made on Day 1 of the war. I can visualize a grinning Yehya
Sinwar doing his meet and greet as each bus in a long convoy disgorges its jihadis
in Gaza City. Maybe he'd spring Marwan Barghouti, leader of the Aksa Martyrs
Brigades during the second intifada. The media calls Barghouti a moderate and a
fitting president of Palestine. I don't doubt his fitness. Still, there would
be a lot of blood to airbrush
out of his bio.
A mass prisoner release would solidify Hamas as the
legitimate representative of the Palestinian Arabs. It would take over the
Palestinian Authority and get Fatah's seat at the UN and its embassies
worldwide. I would rather see us pull out of Gaza without a hostage deal than
have that happen.
The rosy conceit that it doesn't matter who gets freed since
we can hunt down and re-incarcerate the prisoners is risible. The Hamas leaders
in Qatar, Turkey (which runs West Bank operations), and Gaza were mostly
released in Netanyahu's Shalit deal. How's the hunt for Sinwar going so far?
9. "As-a-Jews," those self-haters of Jewish
extraction who cite their Jewishness in joining the jackals are the vilest of
the vile.
This has been one of the most painful times in our lives as
Israelis and Jews. Friends, family, and former colleagues abroad who cared were
in touch to inquire about my well-being. It meant a great deal. And those who
didn't reach out signaled their attitudes loud and clear.
But there is a special place in my purgatory reserved for
the quislings of Jewish extraction who melded with the enemy. Your perfidy is a
permanent stain through which you will always be viewed. No Arab kafiyyah or
COVID-like facemask can disguise your treachery. Your heartless and ostentatious
renunciations during our darkest hours are unpardonable. Apostates, you are,
and apostates, you will die.
Once you've served your purposes, the jihadists and woke
commissars will turn against you. When that happens, you'll get no sympathy
from this quarter.
10. A land
offensive in south Lebanon against Hezbollah would be a mistake. We are
taking an awful beating in the north. The urge to embark on a Third Lebanon War
is palpable. I get it.
Unfortunately, right now, we are
not in a position to take on Hezbollah. On the bright side, we may not be
deterring, but we are hurting Hezbollah. Hundreds of their gunmen have been
liquidated. We are destroying some of Hezbollah's vast infrastructure.
And contrary to the impressions of
exasperated Israelis, life is not peachy in South Lebanon while we suffer.
Read Sheren Falah Saab's story in
Friday's Haaretz on the dislocation and
suffering along the Lebanese border with Israel. Digest with care the partisan BBC
dispatch by Ali Abbas Ahmadi from Alma
al-Shaab, a Christian hamlet, about the travails of the people of that town.
Hezbollah does not care a whit
about the Christians (or Sunnis) and uses their territory to launch attacks
against Israel. However, it does its best to shelter the area's Shi'ites.
Our main leverage is to undermine
Hezbollah's claim to be Lebanon's protector. If we do go to war with Lebanon,
Beirut would need to look like Gaza. The US and the "international
community" did not let us win the Second Lebanon War, and they would
probably behave similarly in any future war. I grant that the transactional policies
of any second Trump administration are not possible to predict.
Finally, there is a convincing
analysis of the Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter Lazar Berman, in which
he argues that now is not the time to fight Hezbollah.
"The
challenges the IDF would face in Lebanon would be orders of magnitude greater
[than it has faced in Gaza against Hamas]. Hezbollah has far more advanced
anti-tank weapons and attack drones. Fighting in prepared defenses in open
territory, they would be able to target IDF forces from kilometers away.
Moreover,
reservists would be facing their third and fourth rounds of service this year.
They would mostly show up, but the strain on families and businesses would be
even greater."
My view is that if we handle our
disentanglement from Gaza with uncharacteristic wisdom – i.e., we do not take
advice from the Americans, we do not capitulate, and we offer Gazans an
alternative to Hamas perhaps a PLO 2.0 – we can ameliorate the immediate threat
from the north.
***
These are all interim lessons. And my education is continuing.
