Israel's 5 wars
31 July 2024
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This post highlights Bret Stephens’ recent column:
Israel is engaged in 5 wars:
The first war — the war Israel is now waging against Hamas and its allies in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran itself — is about security. Israelis want to be able to live safely in their homes without fearing they could be rocketed, pillaged, killed or kidnapped with barely a moment’s warning. The threat of a major escalation on Israel’s northern border has turned entire cities into ghost towns and displaced more than 60,000 Israelis from their homes.
That’s the proportional equivalent of roughly two million Americans forced out of their homes by the threat of terrorism. Those who condemn Israel now for its allegedly disproportionate response to the attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah would be a little more intellectually honest if they asked themselves what they would demand of their own governments if they were in the same situation.
The second war fuels and explains the first. It’s about existence. Israel’s most strident critics insist that the current conflict is about Palestinian existence, about Israel’s alleged refusal to grant a Palestinian homeland. But that’s a historically ignorant claim — and a dishonest one. Israel agreed to a Palestinian Authority in 1993, offered a Palestinian state in 2000 and vacated the Gaza Strip in 2005. When campus protesters at Princeton chanted, “We don’t want no two states, we want ’48,” they weren’t asking for Israel to accept a Palestinian state. They’re demanding Israel’s abolition.
The third war is metaphorical. . . How exactly do the people who say Israel has “the right to defend itself” propose that it do so against an enemy that entrenches itself beneath civilians in hundreds of miles of tunnels? What’s their strategy for lawful urban warfare against an enemy that fights unlawfully from hospitals and mosques and homes? Despite their notional acceptance of Israel’s right of self-defense, are they really calling for anything more than a unilateral cease-fire?
The fourth war is global, ideological — and fundamental. It’s the war against antisemitism. . . Today, it’s no surprise to see those who cheer Hamas’s aims are assaulting synagogues in Berlin or Los Angeles. Hatred of Jews will always find a convenient explanation or excuse; Israel is the latest, but hardly the first.
Finally, there’s the war within the state of Israel and among the Jewish people worldwide. Source
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