Israel’s quest for survival
by : Derwin Pereira
Israelis who suffered the terror attack carried out by Hamas on October 7 last year would characterise the war that followed as retributive justice.
There are three parts to that war: the elimination of Hamas leaders; the ground offensive in Gaza; and now the offensive in Lebanon.
In July, three leading figures wedded to the destruction of Israel were eliminated. They were Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing who was one of the masterminds of the October attack; top commander Fouad Shukur of the Iran-sponsored terror group Hezbollah; and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed by a missile in Tehran that hit him in the state guesthouse where he had been staying following his attendance at a swearing-in ceremony for Iran’s new president.
As for actual battles, there is no doubt Israel’s military operations against Hamas in Gaza have exacted a heavy toll on the Palestinian populations in terms of the destruction of infrastructure and worse. Around 43,000 people have been killed and almost 100,000 injured in Israeli attacks since October 2023.
These are terrible statistics, but Israel is not fighting an ordinary war. Hamas is embedded firmly in Gaza. Its members are militants but they do not wear uniforms; they are indistinguishable from the non-combatant civilians among whom they live. Hamas ritually uses civilians, including women and children, as a shield. Regrettably but understandably, civilians pay the real price when shooting begins between the two sides.
In Lebanon, Israel and the Iran-sponsored terror group Hezbollah have exchanged fire along the border between the two countries and in the Golan Heights. Israeli airstrikes have also targeted Hezbollah throughout Lebanon and in Syria. The conflict signifies the largest escalation of the Hezbollah–Israel conflict since the Lebanon War of 2006.
Retributive justice
This conflict needs to be placed in the context of the heinous attack on southern Israel in October last year in which a marauding tribe of mediaeval invaders killed 1,200 innocent people and stole 250 hostages into the Gazan night. What has followed since then is the unfolding of the theme of retributive justice. The principle is simple. Since violence directed against the state is wrong, it cannot be wrong for the state to use countervailing violence against its enemies.
A state, which is set up to protect the lives, property and freedom of its inhabitants, is legitimately allowed to use violence against those who would break it from within or destroy it from without.
Within the state, the administrative apparatus, the police and the internal intelligence agencies are mandated with preserving the order without which there would be no law, no law for citizens seeking to resolve their political disputes constitutionally and peacefully. Threats from outside the state have to be countered by the military and external intelligence agencies that must protect the borders of the nation and the lives of citizens within them.
Both internally and externally, the coercive agencies of the state must abide by the control and directions of elected representatives, whose deliberations constitute the effective functioning of what is known as democracy.
That is so in Israel, a democracy in the Middle East. In Israel, governments come and go. Elsewhere in the region, governments come when they can and sometimes try to take their states with them when they go. Witness near-state-breaking political convulsions in Iraq and Libya, to mention just two iconic examples of the region’s claim to democracy.
Democratic Israel has the right to protect its way of life against its enemies. That is so particularly given the precarious nature of Israeli existence.
Israeli exceptionalism
Israel was founded on the premise of non-existence. The Holocaust was an attempt to erase the Jewish signature on human existence. While many oppressed peoples have gained statehood ultimately, only Israelis have done so on the threat of near-total extinction. The Holocaust occurred because the Creator had turned his face away from His Chosen People for a moment. What if He does so again? Even for a moment? This fear underlies the tenacity with which Israel defends itself.
The existence of Israel is a non-negotiable good for the Jewish people. There are many states that oppose the Israeli government of the day. There are even friendly states that disagree vehemently with particular Israeli decisions and actions. They are not enemies of the Israeli people and their state. They voice their opinions at the United Nations and elsewhere, but they do not make the UN an enemy of Israel.
Enemies take the form of biological foes such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, which are opposed to the very existence of Israel. Given half a chance, they would complete the work that the Nazis began. Why should Jews allow them to do so?
What complicates issues for Israel diplomatically is the presence of a great deal of international hypocrisy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Call Israel a Zionist state, abuse it as a racist state, or accuse it of genocide – and you will have a ready audience on your side. But how often has anyone called Hamas and Hezbollah fascist entities or Iran a proto-typical Nazi state because of its desire to free the Mideast’s vast map of the contours of a small Jewish state?
These are the realities with which Israel must deal every day. On most days, its enemies are planning and preparing to strike it while preserving a show of outward calm, negotiating with Israel when necessary, and making it seem that everything is normal. That fake normalcy is called peace.
This is the peace that many people and their countries want, even if they are not directly inimical to Israel’s abiding national interests. They are not bothered by what Israel’s detractors wish to do it: They simply wish to wash their hands of the “Jewish problem”, ignoring the counter-intuitive reality that the so-called Jewish problem is actually a gentile problem.
Every time a terrorist threat is neutralized, the world wakes up to the realization that Israel is real.
It would be idle to believe that Israel will not face additional threats in the short term because of the current war. It will. But the short term is just that: short. In the long term, which is what matters to the ancient land of Israel, the destruction of its enemies as they come is the only way for the nation to move forward.
However, war cannot be the goal. Ultimately, the only viable future lies in a two-state solution where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognised borders.
That goal seems hopelessly naïve now. But let us not lose hope. Nothing is permanent. Change is natural. And another name for change is time.
The writer is founder and CEO of Pereira International, a Singapore-based political and strategic advisory consulting firm. An award-winning journalist and a graduate alumnus of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, he is also a member of the Board of International Councillors at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.