Israel doesn't seem to understand that superior power doesn't buy security as long as the adversary's grievance lingers.
The "Israeli model" has long been held up by hawks in the United States as the gold standard for dealing with adversarial nation-states, guerrillas, and terrorists. The storyline goes that Israel is a small country surrounded by aggressive enemies that use unfair measures (including terrorism) to try to wipe it off the face of the map. Therefore, the thinking in Israel is that to survive, the Israelis must use disproportionate tactics to show how tough they are to instill fear in their vicious enemies. This paradigm, practiced by Israel since its inception in 1948, has been tactically sound and strategically disastrous.
It is a myth that throughout its history Israel has been outgunned by the Arabs. During and since the war over its creation in 1948, the Israelis have always had superior military power, resources, and training compared to the Arab states. As a result, oftentimes, Israel has been able to successfully deliver overwhelming and disproportionate blows to its enemies. Despite this tactical strength, Israel's enemies just seem to keep coming back and getting angrier. In other words, overwhelming tactical military victories don't deal with the social and political causes of the intense hate that Israel engenders. Because these root causes remain, Israel will continue to need to take draconian measures to ensure its security — for example, conducting the current heavy military attacks on Gaza.
Israel doesn't seem to understand that superior power doesn't buy security as long as the adversary's grievance lingers. The enemy just gets more desperate and resorts to terrorism — either the suicide bombing of civilians or the firing of inaccurate rockets into Israeli towns from outside. Enlightened opinion in Israel should see the strategic idiocy in decades of living as a powerful armed camp and using a dominant military to either tactically defeat your enemies or quarantine them into giant pens — the West Bank and Gaza — and suppress them. If Israel would settle this 60-year state of war with its neighbors by giving up control over land that was taken by force from the Arabs in 1967, the Arabs and Israelis could grow rich together by conducting cross-border trade and investment and luring lucrative foreign investment from outside the region.
Of course, it is easy for observers outside the region to see how such a settlement of the Palestine problem could be reached on paper; it is much harder to overcome the decades of hatred to actually implement it. And Israel has no incentive to give up control over the land because it has overwhelming tactical military superiority and the support of a superpower. Yet Israel needs to put aside hatred of Arabs and solve the underlying grievance, or violence will continue even if Israel launches a ground invasion of Gaza to take out Hamas.
Military attacks by Israel may cripple its enemies in a tactical military sense, but they only strengthen the Arab hatred and will for revenge. Ironically, Israel's current onslaught on Gaza, coming before the Israeli elections, aims to demonstrate to the Arabs that Israel is still tough subsequent to its last military debacle against the group Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. In that campaign, the Israelis used Hezbollah's rocket attack on northern Israel and the kidnapping and killing of a few Israeli soldiers as an excuse to pummel the entire country of Lebanon with air attacks and conduct a limited ground invasion. Hezbollah's military capabilities were significantly reduced, but its stature and political strength were increased by doing better than expected against the vaunted Israeli military. In the Arab world, you don't have to win, but just do better than expected.
This wasn't the first time that Israeli military action had had a counterproductive effect. In 1982, the Israelis invaded Lebanon to wipe out PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) infrastructure in that country. The Israelis sent the PLO packing, but the continuing Arab grievance then took a more sinister form in the creation of the Islamist group Hezbollah. Hezbollah burnished its resistance credentials by eventually kicking Israel out of Lebanon in 2000.
After the disastrous wars on Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, in which Israel won militarily but ultimately lost politically, one would think Israel would have avoided yet another disastrous disproportionate military response in response to Hamas's rocket attacks on southern Israel. But no such luck. If the definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result, Israel's policy has to be deemed "crazy."
Instead of making peace with the Palestinians and Syrians by eliminating the underlying grievance and giving back their land, or at least answering minor provocations with limited tit-for-tat responses, Israel will likely continue flailing disproportionately against its enemies. This Israeli government policy will make the long-term security situation worse for the Israeli people — with the United States subsidizing and giving the green light to such irresponsible behavior. Same stuff, different year.
First published by the Independent Institute. Republished with permission.
"If Israel would settle this 60-year state of war with its neighbors by giving up control over land that was taken by force…"
Was this not excatly what Israel did in 2005 when it moved out of Gaza? And what was the result of that? Were those rockets and suicide bombs acts of love?
By your standards dropping Little Boy out of a B-29 over Hiroshima caused the Japanese to hate the USA and prolong the war.
Giving back the land from the 1967 war will solve the problem? Not very likely!
This article is set up with a series of feel good statements without any basis in fact. For example the Israeli superiority at the time of the 1967 war. Not so as far as equipment, men under arms, and strategic land holdings. What does that leave? Better training and a motivation to survive when surrounded by enemies that had sworn to kill all Jews.
Today we face a similar situation except the Arab groups have chosen to mass their martyrs and cache their arms in schools and hospitals so that the feel gooders can cry when the arms cache blows up and takes out the civilians that were intentionally placed in harms way by their own terrorist groups.
"…making peace with the Palestinians and Syrians by eliminating the underlying grievance and giving back their land…"
To do this Israel must immediatly "sign over the deed" (so to speak) to all of their current territories and then, Jim Jones style, commit national mass suicide. That would pretty much fulfill the professed "underlying grievance" and criteria of Hamas, et al.
The only minor problem that might pose is that a whole generation of would-be suidice bombers ("martyrs") would be denied their quota of celestial virgins. Just imagine the still-unquenched sexual frustation that would leave behind!
…"suidice" => "suicide"…
oops :)
Israel needs to set aside hatred of the Arabs? What about the Arabs? Why is their hatred justified? Ahh, because of Israeli occupation, right? Well, case closed. Israel is the aggressor, the Arabs are justified, and Israel should give them their land back. Simple. If only this explanation had a basis in reality. It would make for a great peace plan!
Meanwhile, back in the real world: all of the land Israel currently "occupies" was captured when they were subjected to a multi-front war begun by a coalition of their Arab neighbors. The source of Arab hatred for Israel is not the "occupied" territory. If it was, they wouldn't have attacked the burgeoning Israeli state in the first place. In addition, they would have been satiated by the return of Gaza and demonstrated their desire for peace thereafter, rather than launching rockets into Israeli towns. But why let facts get in the way of a really good story? It's those damned Jews picking on those poor, minority Arabs as a proxy of the bloodthirsty, imperialistic United States. World peace could be achieved very simply by eliminating the Israeli state and appeasing Muslim terrorists. Peace for our time!
CNN Journalism 101 for Anti-Israel Reporting: A staged scene in a Gaza hospital.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32393_A_Staged_Scene_in_a_Gaza_Hospital
History teaches Ivan that Ivan learns nothing from History.
It is Dr. Eland who doesn't seem to “understand” it has nothing to do with "lingering [Palestinian] grievances". Every effort to date to address ‘Palestinian grievances' has been spurned by the Palestinian leadership with the enthusiastic approval of the Palestinian rank-and-file. Every concession accepted has only spawned fresh demands for redress, belying Muslim assertions it is they who are denied any compromise. This complicity in unrelenting warfare and an unwillingness to settle for anything less than a piecemeal dismemberment of Israel is flatly ignored by the Western media, policymakers (and similar useful idiots), despite being celebrated in the middle-eastern press.
He is similarly wrong on just about every other 'fact' he recites. For example, where he claims “It is a myth that throughout its history Israel has been outgunned by the Arabs” (carefully excluding the 1948 Israeli war for independence), in fact Israel has always been outgunned in conventional weaponry and troop strength (see Global Security links below). What Eland fails to mention here is that, in some of the actions in which Israel participated (e.g., 1956 action against Egypt), Israel was not a principal belligerent and it was they (England, France, and U.S.) that outgunned Egypt. It is by this kind of omission Eland can make what are factual yet fatuous remarks. Other mistakes include:
“The storyline goes that Israel is a small country surrounded by aggressive enemies that use unfair measures (including terrorism) to try to wipe it off the face of the map” – characterizing this as a “storyline” fools the reader into thinking its logical opposite is true; i.e., Israel is a) not a small country and/or b) is not surrounded by aggressor enemies using unfair means to eradicate it. Minus the dismissive “storyline goes”, the rest of the sentence reads as a perfect statement of fact.
“the thinking in Israel is that to survive, the Israelis must use disproportionate tactics to show how tough they are to instill fear in their vicious enemies … has been tactically sound and strategically disastrous ” – in fact, the thinking (i.e., strategy) in Israel is nothing like what Eland claims and is usually much closer to what he implies it ought to be. It is repeated appeasement (mostly forced on Israel by its erstwhile allies) and an excessive self-restraint that has proved disastrous for Israel.
“Despite this tactical strength, Israel's enemies just seem to keep coming back and getting angrier” and “overwhelming tactical military victories don't deal with the social and political causes of the intense hate that Israel engenders. Because these root causes remain, Israel will continue to need to take draconian measures to ensure its security” – the two statements are not as logically connected as he makes them seem. Eland merely assumes social/political issues must be dealt with for any conflict to be resolved. The main reason any enemy keeps coming back is that his strategy (mainly thanks to useful idiots) is basically working. Where, in all of this, is the Muslim and Palestinian responsibility for solving problems which they, far more than Israel, create in the first place. Let’s see: Palestinians attack Israel, forcing Israel to defend itself, leading to Palestinian casualties, which then become a Palestinian grievance used in justifying the initial Palestinian attacks. How convenient! How many wars have ended lastingly (more than a generation) other than by the victor addressing the deficiencies of the loser; and since when did that become the sole responsibility of the aggrieved party? I can name many wars settled but not to the satisfaction of the losers: Vietnam, Russian and Chinese communist revolutions, Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, Roman conquests of Gaul and Britain, Muslim conquests, Mongol invasions, Norman Conquest, Carolingian consolidation, &c. Many Muslims now living in Israel have made a separate peace with Israel that does not involve eradicating Israel. These ‘Palestinians’ (see http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=1028 ) suffer none of the debilities claimed by and for the remaining belligerent Palestinians. They not only have the best living standard of all Muslims in the middle-east (ever), they also share participation in Israel’s government and public largess. By his inclusion of what is purely socialist tripe (i.e., 'war is the product of social injustice'), Eland reveals a socialist sympathy out of all sense with his ‘libertarian’ protestations.
“Israel doesn't seem to understand that superior power doesn't buy security as long as the adversary's grievance lingers. The enemy just gets more desperate and resorts to terrorism — either the suicide bombing of civilians or the firing of inaccurate rockets into Israeli towns from outside” – This is pure ‘blame-the-victim’ drivel. Of all the insufferable charges Eland makes against Israel, this ranks among the vilest. Clearly, none of us (Eland included) can possibly have as good an appreciation of the links between Palestinian intransigence and desperation as does Israel. Equally clear is that Israel, far more than Eland, understands the source of that desperation; a desperation created, maintained, and exploited by Muslim factions beyond Israel’s ability to influence. Long before Israel became a state, Muslim clerics and mullahs railed against a Jewish homeland and threatened an undying hatred. For this (and only this) the Palestinians are kept in thralldom as a weapon wielded against Israel. For this, a false history has been constructed and continually augmented; which has become a substitute reality wholeheartedly accepted by the Palestinians. More than anything, it is this fiction that keeps the Palestinians angry with Israel, incapable of compromise, and desperate to destroy Israel in the false belief it will free them from misery.
There is a lot more Eland gets wrong (just about every thing he wrote here), but this should be enough to dissuade sensible folks (regardless of political persuasion) against taking him seriously. Seemingly, he doesn’t even get the difference between socialism and libertarianism; the former of which he attributes as being the latter. To Eland, every response Israel makes is disproportionate and, therefore, unjustified. He applies the same illogic to the United States and has (everywhere) disparaged our ‘disproportionate responses’ to 9/11 and terrorism; never once acknowledging a right or measured response regardless the provocation. What amazes me is he holds and has held prestigious and highly classified positions in think-tanks (Cato, Independent Institute), government (intelligence, budget), and academia (GWU – economics and national security); despite his relative ignorance in each. Eland poses as civil-libertarian, analyst, MBA, Ph.D, pundit, psychic, and all-around genius. But (and this is a very large ‘but’), if a non-expert, non-genius like me can dig up better information (and from mostly liberal sources) than Eland presents with a minimum of effort all of which points to contradictory conclusions, just how serious are we supposed to take him? Makes you wonder just who is in charge of the asylum.
Sources & Notes
Eland’s [auto-?] biographies
http://www.cato.org/people/eland.html
http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=487
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Eland
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ivan_Eland
Force comparison:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/israel/index.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/syria/index.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/egypt/index.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/gulf/index.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hizballah.htm
In 1948, Israel was attacked by a powerful six-nation Arab coalition with minor contingents from an additional 11 countries of the Arab League. The Arab League army consisted of 80,000 fully-armed and heavily armored regulars, plus an indeterminate number of well-armed irregulars variously estimated between 5,000 and 15,000 men. Moreover, the Arab League boasted a real air-force while Israel had a handful of planes resurrected mainly from scrap heaps and donations. Israel had roughly 65,000 people trained to fight, but, of these, only about 19,000 fully armed. The rest either had antiquated, faulty equipment with a few rounds they could fire in a pinch or followed close on the heels fighters picking up weapons as they fell. In some instances, the enemy was fooled into thinking Israeli contingents were armed when, in fact, they were utterly defenseless. Moreover, the Jews were split into non-cooperating factions until it became clear they must fight or fall together well into the fighting (the Arabs began unified, but fell to blaming and squabbling over command as the war unfolded). The remainder of the Israeli population (young, old, infirm, &c) was employed providing support services (medical, transportation, communications, camouflage, &c) to actual fighting forces. It is only by stretching the facts to include these ‘support personnel’ the Arabs claim having lost to an ‘overwhelmingly superior' Israeli force (entire Jewish population of 600,000), but that was only to save face. The truth is Arab military forces outgunned the Israeli militias by 4:1. Even allowing the multiplying effect of unarmed reserves rearming on the fly (those that weren’t killed before arming), this still gave the Arabs a better than 3:1 advantage in fighting effectives. The only real advantages the Israelis enjoyed consisted of interior lines, grit, and the determination that comes of having nothing more to lose.
In the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars, Israel was again and similarly attacked by a superior Arab force composed of Egypt, Syria and Jordan; with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria contributing money, troops and arms. Israel was able to “successfully deliver overwhelming and disproportionate blows to its enemies” not because it had greater firepower, but because it was more effective, disciplined and coordinated in the application of said firepower; and because its enemies were ineffectual, undisciplined and poorly coordinated.