By Victor Rosenthal
War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.William Tecumseh Sherman
The recent tension between the US and Iran is being watched very closely here in Israel, because it could well be the trigger for our next war.
I am convinced, to my very great sorrow, that this war is unavoidable. The 130,000 rockets and longer-range missiles under Iranian control in Lebanon will not be left to rust away, nor will those in Gaza. Our enemies – Iran and its proxies, as well as Hamas and the PLO – are not interested in peace.
Iran has spent billions and struggled for decades in its attempt to become a nuclear power, and to establish regional hegemony. We are not only a bone in the throat of their Islamic sensibility, we are physically in their way. They won’t give up without a fight, and they believe they can win.
US President Trump thinks he can break them with sanctions. But the Iranian regime doesn’t care what happens to its civilian population. If they are willing to shoot their people down in the streets (and they have demonstrated this), they will let them suffer. At some point they will be on the verge of going nuclear, and when that happens, someone will have to stop them. It is not a question of if there will be war. It is a question of when – and of precisely what will set it off. And once it starts, no matter who starts it, Israel will be in the thick of it.
It will almost certainly be a multi-front war. Iran has its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. The Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and Judea/Samaria have demonstrated, over and over, that they do not want a state of their own. They want our state, without us. No amount of money will persuade them to become other than who they are. By themselves they do not have the strength to challenge us, but in the context of a general conflagration, they will take the opportunity to cause as much damage as possible.
Numerous experts have predicted that this will be a terrible war, for our soldiers, for our home front, and for our enemies. Indeed, the home front has been mostly spared since our War of Independence in 1948. This time, our enemies – understanding our lack of strategic depth and believing that they can break both our spirit and the support system of the IDF – will concentrate on bringing the war to us, with rockets and ground invasions.
Hezbollah has the ability to launch thousands of rockets per day, far more than can be intercepted by Iron Dome or our other antimissile systems. In 2006, when they had far fewer and less sophisticated rockets, they threw the northern part of the country into a panic. Degrading their launch capability will take time, and in the meantime rockets will be exploding into our homes. Those who have safe rooms or access to nearby shelters are lucky, but many Israelis – like my daughter – live in older buildings which do not have such facilities. Large-payload missiles may bring down whole buildings, in which case safe rooms will be little help. Missiles that can hit densely populated urban areas will create mass casualties.
We know that both Hamas and Hezbollah plan cross-border incursions to kill and kidnap Israelis, maybe even to capture smaller communities. IDF ground forces will be spread thin, and they will have to worry about terrorist “operations” by Arabs from Judea and Samaria as well.
The sheer inevitability of this war weighs on us. We know it will happen; we are expecting it from week to week. Although people here don’t talk about it often, it’s never far from their consciousness. We know that some of our friends and neighbors, maybe even ourselves, will not survive. Others will lose their homes and all their possessions. We know too that numerous young soldiers and some older reservists will not come home alive to their families.
There will be funerals, and horrendous wounds. As is often said, in Israel all the soldiers are everyone’s children. It will tear us apart. It will make us angry. It won’t however, cause us to flee the country, as our enemies hope.
Will we prevail? We’d better. Otherwise Israel, and ultimately the Jewish people, will disappear. Losing the war would be a disaster on the scale of the one in the year 70 CE, and I doubt that the conditions exist for our people to survive another two-millennium diaspora.
I think the outcome will depend primarily on one thing: leadership. In 2006, we could not defeat Hezbollah, because the team of Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz, Tzipi Livni, and Dan Halutz was incompetent from top to bottom. Do we have the leaders that we need today? Do we have a Churchill to stiffen the home front against a blitz, or officers who will take the initiative like Arik Sharon did when he crossed the Suez Canal in 1973? We’ll find out.
We have the desperation – and advantage – of having no place else to go. Our enemies cannot imagine how much firepower is available to the IDF, and if it is unleashed they will not be able to stand against us. In its recent operations, the IDF has gone out of its way to minimize enemy civilian casualties. This next war might begin that way, but at some point Hamas and Hezbollah’s use of civilian infrastructure as a shield will leave us no other option but to put that concern aside.
When relatively accurate rockets with large payloads start striking industrial targets and big cities, for example, the launchers in Lebanon will have to go – regardless of what they are built next to or inside of. It’s pretty certain that most of southern Lebanon will end up a slag heap, and parts of the Gaza strip will meet the same fate.
If thousands die in Israel, tens of thousands will lose their lives in Lebanon and Gaza, or anywhere else from which our enemies fight. If the Arabs of Judea and Samaria rise up, their communities, too, will be razed, and they’ll find themselves homeless, another nakba.
War, it’s well-known, is hell. This one will be, too. But we must ensure that it will be a bigger hell for our enemies than for us.
Sometimes it takes a war to change things that otherwise would be frozen forever. WWI changed the face of Europe and the Middle East, brought down the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Czarist empires, gave freedom to some peoples and a new kind of slavery to some others. WWII facilitated the destruction of Europe’s Jews, the creation and use of atomic weapons, and the establishment of a Soviet empire in Eastern Europe – but also ushered in the United Nations (not an unmixed blessing), the American civil rights movement, the end of the British Empire, and the creation of the State of Israel.
Maybe, in addition to a new regime in Iran, the next war will bring about the end of Hamas and the PLO, and even the creation of the long awaited Palestinian state – in Jordan, where it belongs.
Felix Quigley Said:
I was right then and am right now. You are always wrong…. Re… aiding Syrian casualties at the border? Guess you never heard of nor understand Intel. gathering and PLANTING OUR ASSETS INTO ENEMY ENVIRONMENTS?
Philippe Said:
Israel prioritizes. We can grow all the wheat we need if necessary….Thru desalinization, we have solved our strategic water problem. We have the land…
The only real hold America has over Israel today is the supply chain of aircraft and aircraft parts. That's why Israel went to Germany and not America for its Nuke armed subs. America does not control our ICBM-nuke armed Jerhico Rockets. Israel has all the tanks she can use and older tanks can be canabalized and or reconditioned and retrofitted as necessary…. Israel produces most of her weapons needs without American input. We are still ahead of America in drone technology and are outselling them by a wide margin to third parties. Even America just purchased a major drone order from Israel. Israel has between 400-500 operational nukes and that should be considered our major offensive weapon and it puts every major Muslim AND WESTERN CAPITAL on our target list. Arabs may have the oil but we got the matches. Israel will not be the 2nd country in the ME to use Nukes.
I admit that I don’t know of any magic formula to enable Israel to achieve security, the permeant defeat of its enemies, and genuine, lasting peace. But I am convinced that two necessary componants for victory are major changes in Israel’s internal power structures, both governmental and nongovernmental, and vastly improved, and vastly better funded public relations.
If the international “conversation” can be changed, then the iDF would have the free hand it needs to crush our enemies militarily. At present, I don’t think it has a free hand, because the non-Muslim powers, which in a rational world would be on our side, are restraining us from defending ourselves effectively. The Arabs and their foreign backers spend an astonishing 100,000 thousand times more on anti-Israel propaganda annually than Israel spends on public relations. That must be changed.
@ Bear Klein: I agree, Bear. I do follow them. They are among the very Jews in Israel who are doing a good job, given their limited media access, to informing the outside world and tother Israelis of the truth about Israel. We need many, many more Women (and Men) in Green.
@ Adam Dallgiesh:
I suggest you read Sovereignty Journal 11. I just re-read it and it is very interesting. There are some governing plans for Israel in it.
https://womeningreen.org/sovereignty/
@ Adam Dallgiesh:The Women in Green have some stuff in English and their “Sovereignty” Publication is also translated. If you do not read it or follow them it would allow for more insight from afar. Some things that go on in Israel are not reported in English.
https://womeningreen.org/sovereignty/
Obviously, Israel needs to step up military and economic pressure on our enemies as well. But in doing that, we will also have to be able to accurately access the likely responses of “neutral” countries, like the EU countries, Russia, China,or even the United States in the event of a future Obamist administration. It will be necessary to have accurate intelligence as to what responses can be expected of the these powers, how damaging to Israel they are likely to be, and to what extent Israel can cope sanctions that foreign trading partners, aid givers and arms suppliers may choose to impose. We will also need to have an economic management team, domestic arms producers, etc. with plans to carry on despite possible sanctions, and find ways to evade them.
None of this can be accomplished with an inteligence service able to make accurate assessments of foreign reactions to each and every move. And that means firing the leftists who now direct the Mossad, and replacing them with people capable of making unbiased, non-ideologically driven assessments.
It all comes down to making massive personel changes within Israel to make an all-out, successful offensive against our enemies possible. And that won’t happen without a more sophisticated, effectivenational campwithin Israel. Bennett and Shaked, despite their blunders, have at least made a start in this direction.
@ Bear Klein: But Bear, how will just talking to each other, and not to the outside world, make that “right time” ever come about? If the national camp continues its pattern of talking only to each other, this “right time” will never come.
The national camp has got to develop a strategy to reach out to the international public and even liberal Jews, not by compromising their values and policies, but by learning to grasp their concerns, intellectual concepts, values, etc., and finding the right words to reach out to them. While doing that, helping them to understand that Israel is not the Bad guy in this conflict, and that the our Arab and Muslim enemies (not necessarily every single Arab) are the true enemies, not only of us, but of humanity as well. And yes, we must develop strategies for reaching out to the Arab public as well, appealing to their self-interest, and helping them redirect their anger to the true sources of their problems–not Israel, but their own reactionary, backward-looking, corrupt “leaders.”
At times, we may have to avoid discussing our long-term goals with some of these audiences, instead emphasizing to them ways that they can help “bring peace to the Middle East (for European and American audiences), or how they can prosper by cooperating with Israel (for Arab audiences). (Deceitful? Horror of horrors! We Jews should never lie of keep secrets! We must tell everyone, including our enemies, everything we are thinking all the time!). In addressing sceptical audiences, we must stress our immediate goals, ones they can identify with. Later, after we have educated them, we can start to introduce them to our long-term goals.
This public relations strategy must start with a systematic, all -out effort to alter the power structure in Israel, in a way will separate the unelected leftist elites from the levers of power and the decision-making process. Only then will it be possible to reach out to the outside world to enlist their support for Israel.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
We are setting the foundation of ideas which will need to be implemented at the right time. This is not a five minute plan or instant oatmeal.
@ Bear Klein: I would like all this to happen, too Bear. But what is your strategy to accomplish it in view of the determined opposition of the ‘international community” (including probably, a post-Trump USA) as well as entrenched interests and power structures within Israel?
My fellow national-campers seem exclusively fixated on what ideally, should be done, while ignoring the crucial question of “how can it be done.” As a result they are totally ineffectual and communicate only with each other. My image for them is that of a hobby horse rocking back and forth, but not moving anywhere.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:These pre-military academies are producing lots of good soldiers and officers. Liberman is talking nonsense at this point.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:Yes when Israel has mutual interests they can work with Arab regimes. Israelis now work with some local Arabs as certainly are not all terrorists. They are doing this with the Gulf Countries now because of the mutual enemies of Iran and Hezbollah.
How did we get to this point with Egypt. We beat them in numerous wars and had captured the Sinai. In 1973 Sharon’s army could have walked into Cairo there was no more Egyptian Army in its way. Their armies were either totally defeated or trapped on both sides by Israel. A costly war to Israel but an overwhelming defeat to Egypt and Syria also.
So they were beaten it had gotten too expensive to keep fighting Israel. Sadat was smart to negotiate to make peace. Stability and Peace by Victory! The Egyptians are not friends with the Israelis and they do not like us. They have not morphed into friends. Al-Sisi is pragmatic and needs the US and Israel for security. If Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood) had stayed in power the situation would be vastly different. Then people would be saying Begin was a fool for giving up the Sinai. In fact some articles had been written to that effect when Morsi had been in power.
Israel now needs to destroy Hamas, PA and Islamic Jihad at the appropriate time. There is no land to trade as this our land both in legal and historical rights and security needs plus the goal of these groups is to destroy Israel and not to make peace with it. The hope of possibly being able to do this in the future MUST be destroyed and any hope by them of a Pal-State west of the Jordan River must be quashed. The terrorists and their supporters must be decimated with no hope of regrouping for future war. These terror groups which are the largest and most powerful Pal-Arabs are not going to morph into friends of Israel.
Those peaceful Pal-Arabs that want to leave should be assisted in this endeavor. Those that wish to demonstrate loyalty to the state of Israel and co-exist in peace should be allowed to do so.
The concept being in the long that the situation of the remaining Arabs will be acceptance of the situation and just living their lives with peaceful co-existence with the Jewish State of Israel. There will likely be a few exceptions because of the nature of the Jew hatred found among Muslim-Arabs.
@ Bear Klein: Bear, this would seem to sup my main point in our debate , elswhere on Israpundit, that Israel can sometimes work with Arab regimes and even some “Palestinians” when mutual self-interest is being advanced. It is possible to make mutually beneficial deals with some Arabs under certain conditions. Indeed, this is necessary for Israel’s survivial and ultimate victory over its Arab enemies.
The peace that Menachem Begin negotiated with Egypt 40 years ago has mainly held up over these years, even though it has been a cold peace, and hasn’t changed the hotile hearts and minds of most Egyptians. Yet forty years into it, the present Egyptian government is giving us some help with some of our security problems, because it is in the Egyptian government’s self-interest.
Menachem Begin was a statesman with vision. Wish we had one in office now.
Rabbi Rafi Peretz, 7-2-19 INN
Important that everybody read this artilcal in today’s Arutz Sheva about the Avigdor Leiberman’s vicious attack on the religious Zionist movement’s pre-military-service yeshivas. Minister (and rabbi) Peretz points out that many graduates of these yeshivas have been killed over the years fighting for their country. Thousands of them have served honorably in combat units. The religious Zionists have never requested exemptions from military service for their yeshiva students.
Yet MK Lieberman wants to shut down these yeshivas. Crazy. If Israel is to win the next war, whenever it comes, Leiberman must be kept out of it. He used to be a patriot. But he seems to have gone stark raving mad over the past year. Minister and rabbi Peretz points out that many graduates of these yeshivas have been killed over the years fighting for their country. Thousands of them have served honorably in combat units. The religious Zionists have never requested exemptions from military service for their yeshiva students.
Israel fights ISIS wherever it may threaten it, just like it does with any terror group. In the Sinai ISIS has threatened Israel so it coordinates with Egypt in fighting it.
If Sunni terrorists fight Shia terrorists without bothering Israel, it will sit back and watch the fight. If they were to destroy each other Israel would not care.
Hamas sources claim that Israeli intelligence used Palestinians to spy on the ISIS offshoot operating in the Sinai Peninsula.
Israel is using its intelligence to assist the Egyptian army with its war on terror, thwart the passage of arms deliveries to the Gaza Strip, and prevent the entrenchment of ISIS on its border with Egypt.
In spite of the Egyptian army’s success in significantly lowering the level of terror of the ISIS offshoot in northern Sinai, it has not managed to eradicate the organization, which, according to security sources in Israel, still has some 2,000 fighters in northern Sinai. Full article at http://jcpa.org/israeli-intelligence-infiltrates-isis-in-the-sinai/
I am in debate on a post on Jihadwatch with real enemies one called Gravenimage. These nasty people even refuse to defend Serbs against the Jihad.
All these things happening now have to be placed against the REAL background that Netanyahu supported ISIS as did Yamit to very little opposition it must be said.
Netanyahu has prepared the ground for nothing.
Surely Martin Sherman can see that supporting ISIS, I think medical help at the border, places Israel in a bad light.
. https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/A-shocking-night-for-Syria-594211
IDF is ready for war.
@ Frank Adam: You are right, Frank, that Israel faces a lot of external constraints to taking strong action against its enemies. Yes, it is dependent on aid and trade from abroad and its trading partners and even arms suppliers have put a lot of pressure on the Israelis not to take firm actions to defend themselves from the Arab aggressors.
But the Israeli government has gone too far in internalizing the unfair criticism that Israel has been subjected to from abroad. Now, when for the first time in Israel’s history, and maybe the last time, there is a President of the United who is giving them uneqivocal, largely unconditional support, they have a rare opportunity to confront the aggressors. But they have no intention of availaing themselves of this rare opportunity, which will end when Trump leaves office, probably in the not-too-distant future. The internal constrainsts on Israeli action, created by a the usurpation of power by unelected, pro-Arab , anti-military and pacifist lawyers, and the stinginess of the Knesset in refusing to provide adequate funding for the IDF adds another layer of self-disempowerment. These internal constrainsts on action, largely the result of Israelis internalizing the slanderous critici sectors of the U.S government, has now hobbled Israel’s defense capabilities even more than the direct impact of foreign pressure.
Actually, the situation (matzo) is far grimmer than even Vic paints it. There have been articles in the Hebrew press, including one in the Hebrew edition of Ynet by a reporter with close connections to the IDF, that the IDF is unprepared for war. Columns by Dr. Martin Sherman have made a similar assessment. (Ynet did not translate the artilce into English; did they think that the outside world wouldn’t have people who could translate the Hebrew? In fact summaries of the article promptly appeared in the Arab press).
Over the past five years the IDF has been “downsizing,” in response to a Knesset committee report aimed at saving money. Directed by former chief of staff Gabi Eisenkott, the IDF laid off nearly all of its verteran officers and men with combat experience, including 100,000 reservists ans well as tens of thousands of regular soldiers. The soldiers that remain have little combat experience, and there are not enough of them to mount a major combat operation on the ground. Yet it will be extremely difficult to defeat Hezbollah and Hamas without such an operation.
Unelected lawyers, appointed by their predecessors when they, their predecessors, retire, and who cannot be fired by anyone, not even the Prime minister or the IDF chief of staff, have gained complete control over the IDF. Answerable only to the miliary’s Advocate General, a near pacifist, the lawyers are assigned to every IDF unit down to the batallion level. They consistently oppose any operation that is likely to cause heavy cicilian casualties or even heavy casualties to enemy soldiers. The IDF is reduced to bombing empty buildings, after warning the Hamas soldiers to flee.
While Vic thinks that Israelis will not leave if Israel takes heavy casualties, he is wrong. THe rate of emigration from Israel is very large, considerably exceeding the immigration rate.
A disproportionate number of the emigrants are young men of military age who want to dodge the draft. And a disproportionate number of these young men are highly educated and skilled, and frm highly educated families–the kind of young men who have been the backbone of the IDF officer corps, and especially its specialized units that use and service high-tech weapons.
As for political leadership, there are certainly no Churchills in Israeli politics–only petty men and women with no larger vision, no ability to call the people to heroic sacrifices. They are only interested in petty disputes and constant backbiting with each other. Bibi has for years done nothing about the security crisis, hoping it will somehow go away if he shows “restraint” and pays bribes to Hamas to maintain a so-called “calm.” He keeps paying them bribes and they keep waging their war of attrition, ignoring their promises of “calm.” (they won’t even in theory agree to a cease-fire).
Facing extremely well-armed and increasingly well-trained and well-rrganized enemies with a poorly led military in a state of decline, ruled by left-wing pacifists and ineffectual, undermotivated politicians, it looks like Israel’s fate is sealed. At this point, perhaps only intense daily prayer is all we oldsters can do to try to save Israel from its numerous enemies and itself.
This dangerous talk in a small country dependent on a Superpower patron for the supply of wheat and the top of the battlechain weapons – engines for tanks and fighter aircraft even if these are on the way out before drones and rockets.
You are also being unfair to Premiers and Ministers of Defence who had to bend to US and others’ pressures even as Ben Gurion had to bend to external pressures to leave Sinai in 1949 and 1956 and Lebanon in 1978 and in 2000.
It is time to recognise that Eshkol played a very canny stand off against the Soviets in 1967 and that if certain stands can be taken now it is because of the Arabs exposing themselves by “missing opportunites” – dropping catches in the same way that Israel could stay in Sinai after 1967 till Egypt came crawling because the US enforced withdrawals of 1949 and 56 had palpably NOT worked.
Stop cat calling “leftie;” remember that Israel is still dependent on the US for wheat and export markets – as the measures against Iran show; and think up a political scenario in which Israel will not be blamed unduly for defending itself.
The leadership question is central , until a clear right wing – patriotic – zionist government comes out we are just burying our heads in the sand . The blue-white is nothing solid , just a power hungry club thirsty for Bib’s demise . The left is even more miserable ; surrender is their best concept . No renewal in sight .
You hit the biggest bully first, hard and with no mercy. If that’s iran then teharn must be wiped out hour 1.
That sends the message to the others ‘your next’ the IAF has to repeat 67 wipe out. I dont know much about what’s what but does not Israel have a cross between regular style heavy bombs but with an atomic % that would do not the damage of a full a bomb but 30 – 50% . But then how do you stop the atmospheric result falling back into Israel?
NO warnings no threats just do the deed.