Monday, January 14, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
The term headlining this post refers to a century-long
conflict in European history when England and France fought what were really a
series of wars over the course of more than a century (from 1337-1453).
The phrase “100 Years’ War” was later applied by historians
to cover a period in which the cause of specific flareups varied (succession
battles, fights over lands, military ambition and hubris) as two powerful and dynastically
entangled European powers battled for dominance, forming distinct national
identities as “England” and “France” in the process.
Remind you of anything?
When most people describe the history of the Arab-Israeli
conflict (or, as Ruth Wisse prefers, the
Arab War Against the Jews), they tend to highlight specific armed
conflicts between nation states that broke out in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 (occasionally
including the 1982 Lebanon war against the PLO in the mix), with skirmishes and
terrorism marking every year between “real wars” involving the armies of nation
states.
Over the last two decades, full-scale wars attached to
specific years and ongoing small-scale assaults on civilians have been
supplemented by organized non-state militaries in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Gaza
(Hamas) attacking Israel with missiles and – most recently – attempting at
large-scale infiltration through tunneling.
Because clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah (2006) and Hamas
(2008, 2012 and 2014) did not involve wars between states, these fights tend to
not be grouped in with 1948, 1967, etc.
Our tendency to use the term “war” to describe certain types
of conflicts blurs the reality that the war between Israel and its neighbors
should really be seen as another 100 Years’ War, one declared against the Jews
decades before Israeli became a reality in which even major wars like 1967 can
be seen as battles in a single, large, ongoing conflict.
If you use the term “war” not to describe any event
involving people shooting at one another, but reserve it for a specific
conflict or set of conflicts designed to accomplish political goals, then wars
can only end with the victory of one side over the other or, in some cases,
reconciliation between belligerents (often motivated by exhaustion or a new internal
or external threat).
When clear victory and defeat is not present, the end of one
conflict is better thought of as a cease fire, during which belligerents take a
time out to repair damage, heal wounds, and prepare for another go when timing
is right. In the case of England v.
France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there was very little reason
to end the war entirely, given that no victory was ever definitive enough to
cause one or the other party to surrender.
So it continued generation after generation until civil war in one
nation (England) led to new leaders finally calling it quits.
Such unending multi-generational conflict can seem unworldly
in a modern age when not squandering resources and lives in warfare confers so
many human and material benefits. Who
would sacrifice not just themselves but their children, their children’s
children and their children’s children’s children in a century of military
conflict when ending it would increase prosperity and hope for so many?
But as we have learned over the centuries, the ambition of
leaders – especially in unfree societies – tends to trump factors such as the
good of citizen/subjects.
And why not? Kings
and tyrants tend to be the last ones to lose their fortunes or lives in the
wars they instigate – and only when they are defeated. In the case of every war that’s racked the
Middle East over the last century (including those that did not involve
Israel), how many Middle East kings, military dictators or mullahs fell in
battle, or even fell from power after losing the many wars they began? With the
possible exception of Saddam Hussein, I’m hard pressed to think of a single
tyrant who started a war dying of anything other than a coup or natural causes.
As we learned in the last century, ideology (both secular
and religious) can motivate a population to continue a multi-generational
conflict. If you think of the Cold War
as an actual war, with so-called “wars” like Korea and Vietnam (as well as
surrogate superpower conflicts between Israel and the Arab states) serving as
battles in that larger conflict, then it was ideology – good and ill – that
motivated the parties to fight it out until one of them collapsed.
The reality that we might be in a conflict ready to enter
its second century can be both bewildering and disheartening to those of us who
can easily see how much suffering would end if Israel’s enemies simply accepted
the fact that a non-Arab, non-Muslim polity was destined to continue on a tiny
sliver of land in the region.
This dynamic distorts perception, leading to the situation
we are in now in which a subset of Israelis, American Jews and non-Jews (and
others) are unwilling to believe in the true source of a century-long conflict,
instead adopt false “narratives” (such as the war being the result of the Jews
not allowing an Arab presence in the land they
control) to avoid having the contemplate being at war with societies ready to
throw a fourth generation onto the bonfire.
Given all this, the most powerful weapons Israel and her
friends can bring to the battlefield are patience and historic understanding, psychological
resources ultimately more important than the latest military gadgetry.
