Monday, November 27, 2023
From Ian:
Michael Oren: Israel’s choice: Body or soul
Michael Oren: Israel’s choice: Body or soul
If Hamas had only butchered, burnt, and raped 1,200 Israelis and not taken any of them hostage, then Israel could have invaded Gaza and crushed the terrorists without hesitation, flooding their tunnels with seawater. Conversely, if Hamas had killed no Israelis but only taken hostages, Israel could have exchanged them for all the terrorists in Israeli jails. But Hamas, savagely, did both, wholesale murder and mass abduction.Douglas Murray: The Easy Politics of Criticizing Israel
“Forget the military victory,” my daughter exclaimed. “Israel’s only goal must be to free the hostages. If the state won’t do everything to rescue my children should they someday fall prisoner, how can I send them to the army?” To which my son replied, “Without an Israel, you won’t have an army to send them to.” Between my daughter’s position and my son’s, which was I to choose?
This is our fundamental, nightmarish, dilemma. Either we give priority to restoring our deterrence power and returning the more than 200,000 displaced Israelis to their homes, or we focus primarily on securing the hostages’ freedom. Either we convince Iran and its proxies never to attack us again and persuade additional Arab countries to make peace with an indomitable Jewish state, or we fulfill Israel’s oath to never abandon our fellow Israelis. Either we accept an Israel that may well be rendered defenseless or an Israel that our citizens may no longer be willing to defend.
Body or soul, we had to decide, and yet Israel refused to choose either. Instead, we declared a twofold target of destroying Hamas and rescuing the hostages, as though they were not mutually exclusive. And yet, by sheer perseverance and the determination of our troops, we succeeded in pursuing both goals simultaneously. Downgraded and surrounded by the IDF, Hamas opted for a deal. In exchange for a 5-day ceasefire, it agreed to free 50 Israeli hostages.
With that agreement now in effect, Israel has offered to extend it. For every ten hostages released, the IDF will hold its fire for one additional day. If accepted, this deal means that Israel will once again give precedence to saving Israelis over saving the state itself. The choice will once again be delayed.
But for how long? Ultimately, Hamas will not release all the hostages, knowing full well what the IDF will do to it once the last of them is freed. In the end, Israel will almost certainly have to decide whether to destroy the terrorists completely or save the remaining hostages – to choose, once again, between our national body and soul.
Yet a third option exists. There is still time to reframe the goal of the war from annihilating Hamas to securing Hamas’s unconditional surrender. There is still time to offer Hamas free passage from Gaza – recall the PLO’s evacuation from Beirut in 1982 – in return for the hostages’ release. The terrorists can sail off to Algeria, Libya, or Iran. Our captives will be united with their families.
In the novel, Sophie has to make the most unthinkable of all choices, but Israel can be spared that fate. By maintaining the military pressure on Hamas and keeping the door open to further negotiations, we can defend our state and redeem its defenders. Our dual purpose, our body and soul, can be preserved.
My first war in Israel was the 2006 Lebanon war. Since then, I have had an allergic reaction to a number of attitudes that crop up every time Israel is involved in a conflict.Bret Stephens: The Road to a Second Kristallnacht
The first is the tendency of international observers, both friendly and unfriendly to Israel, to offer the country advice on how it should — or should not — conduct its military responses.
Opponents of Israel demand a cease-fire the moment any atrocity occurs against Israel. But that has been the response of Israel’s enemies ever since the creation of the state. Every time Israel’s opponents attempt to wipe it out, they swiftly demand a return to the status quo that existed precisely before the attack. It is the same this time around. None of Israel’s opponents were demanding a cease-fire on the morning of October 7. But, just as the Arab armies did in 1967 and 1973, when they lose — or sense that they’ll lose — they immediately balk at their territorial and human losses and cry “injustice” over them.
Friends of Israel are equally prone to offering the country military advice. Some will fall away as any war progresses, boosting their “mainstream” or “centrist” credentials by calling for a cease-fire some way into the conflict — always before the stage at which Israel can declare victory. For Israel seems to be the only country in the world never allowed to win a conflict. It is allowed to fight a conflict to a draw, but rarely to a win. Which is one reason why the wars keep occurring.
I mention this tendency only because of its utter futility. There is no reason why the IDF or Israel’s political or military class should listen to the opinions of people with little to no skin in the game. Whenever Israel is involved in a conflict, international observers of all varieties waste their energies shouting into the whirlwind.
A far better use of time, it has always seemed to me, is to work out what can be done in your own country.
The October 7 attack has created an exceptional sense of national unity inside Israel. As my friend Melanie Phillips has commented, almost everybody in Israel knows at least one family that has already lost a loved one. Every Israeli knows somebody who has been called up, if he has not been called up himself. The nation will need this unity and purpose in the period to come. Nobody who knows Israel well will be surprised by the fact of this unity.
It is outside the country that things are actually rotten. It is on the streets of New York City and London that local Muslims and young hoodlums have torn down posters of abducted Israeli children. It is in Berlin that a synagogue has been petrol-bombed and houses of Jews had Jewish labels scrawled on their doors. It is on the streets of Milan that Muslim immigrants have chanted that they want the borders open “so we can kill the Jews.” It is on the streets of Europe’s cities and in the halls of American campuses that the most rabid Jew-hatred has spilled out. And it is these factors I should like to dwell on.
We are now witnessing, on a daily and even hourly basis, and on a scale only a few of us thought possible just a few years ago, the same kind of moral and logical inversions; the same “heads-I-win, tails-you-lose” sleight-of-hand reasoning; the same denying to Jews the feelings and rights granted to everyone else; the same preparing of the public mind for another open season on the Jews.The War Against the Jews
You see it everywhere, right here, in front of our noses.
- Israel is told it has a “right” to self-defense — and that every conceivable means of self-defense amounts to a war crime.
- Israel is sternly warned not to “re-occupy” Gaza in the wake of the present war — even after it was previously accused of continuing to “occupy” Gaza long after it had stopped occupying any part of it in 2005.
- Israel is told not to “blockade” Gaza by depriving it of fuel, electricity, and other goods — even after it was accused for years of blockading Gaza when fuel, electricity, and other goods flowed.
- Israel is expected to stop building or to dismantle settlements in the West Bank for the sake of a Palestinian state — and then told that the kibbutzim whose members were slaughtered last month were also “settlements.”
- Israel is asked to give Palestinian civilians time to flee Gaza before its military campaign begins — and then denounced for creating a “nakba” by forcing Palestinians to flee their homes.
- Israel is told that it must scrupulously abide by the laws of war — even as the wanton murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis is treated as a legitimate form of “resistance.”
And then there are the absurdities that Americans are supposed to swallow.
- We are told that “From the River to the Sea” is a call for the creation of a Palestinian state, without any mention that it is principally a call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
- We are told that we must hold Israel to a high moral standard because it’s a democracy, and that we should also denounce it because it’s an apartheid state.
- We are told that we should support calls for “Free Palestine,” and that the vehicle for doing so is a Hamas regime that has stripped Palestinians of every civil and human right, not least by treating them as cannon fodder or human shields in its theocratic death struggle against democratic Israel.
And then, the greatest lie of all: that Israel — the victim of one of the greatest massacres in memory, the proportional equivalent of sixteen 9/11s by American standards, an atrocity that would have been 10 or 100 times worse if the perpetrators had been given the means and opportunity — is, in fact, the real aggressor, the real perpetrator.
The perpetrator, on account of all its alleged crimes before October 7, which meant it got what was coming. And the perpetrator, for having the gall to fight back.
We need to start by calling the current antisemitic wave a war rather than a pogrom. Pogromists preyed upon the powerless; we are far from that. Jews everywhere must realize that they, too, are at war, that the battle is to defend their own homes, and all available resources must be deployed. Antisemitism has torn off its mask, and it is far more widespread, integrated, and bloodthirsty, than many of us imagined. The time has come to prepare a response.
Many people have realized this independently and are spontaneously rising up — the instinctive and creative energy of many donors, activists, and institutions is to be commended. They have moved past fear and into action. But war requires not only many soldiers but also strategic thinking and coordination. To that end, I’d like to suggest a few principles that might be a helpful place to start.
1. Protect Jews everywhere. Every community is now an outpost and every Jew a soldier — and none should be left behind. Technology allows us to stay connected instantaneously. We need to build more obvious communication channels to share resources, ideas, tools, and political and psychological support. Every Jewish institution also needs physical security — professional security and hardening of Jewish targets, and essential volunteer guards, including the shomrim long present in Haredi communities. We must also consider more “kinetic” forms such as armed civilian defense organizations if policing is inadequate to the moment.
2. Recognize our enemies. Do not be afraid of that word. Every person who actively takes part in demonstrations demonizing Israel, who refuses to condemn Hamas’s actions, who rips down posters, who calls for the annihilation of Israel, or who makes excuses for barbarism is endorsing the butchery of Jews everywhere. Many of them would gladly replicate Hamas’s behavior if given the chance. Recognize the bloodlust in their calls and in their eyes. They are enemies of our people.
3. Recognize our own power. We need not fear the mob. We need to assess threats, allocate resources, and fight back. When faced with the attacks of October 7, Israelis immediately overcame their divisions, regrouped, and came together in full force both militarily and in civil society. Diaspora Jewry must do the same. The potential for unified Jewish power is immense: Jewish organizations, philanthropists, and activists working in concert can channel resources, aggressively deploy known weapons, and develop new ones to test on the battlefield. These include legal action and new legislation; intelligence-gathering; civil defense; rapid-response teams on campuses and in neighborhoods; and the creation of a cross-communal “war room” to monitor the operations of our enemies, gather intelligence, assess threats, and share experiences and new ideas across the Jewish world.
4. Shift the balance of fear. Wars are not won solely by playing defense. Jewish institutions should be focusing now on taking the fight to the enemy and working to shift the balance of fear. This has already begun with donor revolts, public shaming of students who support Hamas or people who tear down hostage posters, and more. The principle should be clear: It is not the Jews who should be afraid. It is those who take the side of barbarism, who indulge in terrorizing spectacle, who must be made to fear instead. (It’s starting to work — notice how many protesters and poster-rippers are now wearing masks.) Those who hold positions of power but who sit on the fence because they fear the mob, including many university administrators, should be made to fear the side of moral clarity even more.
5. Recognize our friends. Jews have friends — and the current crisis has provided a powerful litmus test of this friendship. Taking advantage of such friendships means crossing previous political, cultural, or religious divides. It no longer matters if someone is a Republican or a Democrat; an Asian parent or an Evangelical Christian. As the Israelis have done so stunningly, we need to drop our differences, create new alliances, and muster all the support we can get.
6. Demand our rights. Jews have rights and are protected by law, like any other group. We must demand — loudly — that those protections be enforced, and that those who violate our rights or the law be punished. On campuses and in private institutions, where codes of conduct and organizational value statements also pertain, we must demand that Jews be treated like any other group. Those who violate behavioral standards and value systems must be punished, and the hypocrisy of fence-sitting and mob-fearing leaders — corporate, academic, or governmental — must be called out every time.
7. Adjust our philanthropic priorities. Mobilizing donations to Israel is worthy and helpful. But recognizing that this is a global war also means funding the Diaspora’s war effort — including campus groups, media and social-media strategies, educational and advocacy efforts, community-relations initiatives, and Jewish communal institutions writ large. Together, these have the grassroots reach both to mobilize Jews and allies and to act as nodes in the broader Diaspora war effort. They can also provide the intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and communal support needed to sustain our troops.
8. Fight the long-term battles now. What we are seeing, especially in elite Western circles, is the product of half a century of investment in anti-Western and antisemitic ideas. These have been heavily funded and have spread across our institutions. Every false narrative about Jews, Israel, and the West can be traced to books and essays written long ago, whether in Moscow, Paris, or Columbia University. It’s time for us to fight the war of ideas as well — but with our own long-term strategy. We need a multifaceted approach to investing in Jewish culture (film, TV, museums, public history); intellectual life (journals, books, think tanks); and scholarship and academia (where we must wrest back the study of Jews and Israel from those long captured by anti-Israel and anti-Western ideas. A war that was launched through books cannot be won with billboards and banner ads alone.
