Devastating Chronologies: Israel, Time, and Power

by Louis René Beres (July 2015)

Facing an increasingly complex configuration of terrorist foes, Israel has been focusing diligently on all of the usual strategies for remediation. At the same time, Jerusalem has overlooked the core importance of chronology to pertinent enemy belief systems and policies. Over time, this omission could prove manifestly perilous.

In the Middle East, certain principal linkages between time and power warrant prompt and serious examination. On the surface, most conspicuously, the struggle between Israel and the Arabs is about space. Largely ignored, however, is that this relentless conflict is also about time. Indeed, while seemingly counter-intuitive, the chronological dimension of this conflict is actually more critical to understanding war and peace in the region.

For Israel in particular, history really does matter. By rejecting all measurable chronologies as little more than linear progression, the early Hebrews had already approached time with refined intellectual sophistication.  That is, an approach containing the inherently-perplexing idea of time as qualitative experience. For these early Hebrews, chronology was normally understood as something subjective, as a living human property, and as a  human property logically inseparable from its personally infused content.

For present-day Israel, the conceptual space-time relationship has two basic dimensions which need to be better understood, in Jerusalem, of course, but also in Washington.

In the Middle East, “last things,” or eschatology, must remain genuinely central to Israeli strategic understanding and military planning.

In this way, these enemies reason, believers may choose rationally to live forever.

This very same attention to time ought to be taken up soon in Washington.

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