Why Israel Matters

by G. Murphy Donovan (January 2024)

 

… in our war with the Arabs we have a secret weapon — no alternative. —Golda Meir

 

If you follow American media on any platform, you can’t help but wonder if Israel matters anymore. America, indeed the world, was indignant for a week or two after the 7 October Hamas atrocity. Yet as soon as Netanyahu started to do what needed to be done, the worm turned. Today, Israel is the villain, an oppressor scouring the sewers of Gaza in an effort to eliminate just the most proximate Arab/Muslin terrorists, just one local incarnation of what is in fact a global threat.

Israel is fighting to preserve civilization as we know it and the world is counting body bags as if someone actually knows how many it will take to defeat Hamas.

Indeed, even John Mearshiemer, normally a voice of common sense on conflicts like Ukraine, now argues that Hamas is not an existential threat to Israel. In the short run, Mearshiemier may be right. Gaza is small potatoes, another tactical episode in the jihad, a global conflict, now racking up wins for both Shia and Sunni on both sides of the Islamist ledger.

Given the contemporary “clash of civilizations,” it’s more than a little ironic that the same western coalition that insisted on the unconditional surrender of global political fascism now believes that it can live with the global religious fascism of Islam.

And let’s not be naïve, Afghanistan was a humiliating defeat for the West, especially the U.S., another win for the jihad, a win for Sunni religious fascism. Just as Iran and Yemen are wins for Shia terrorists. There’s no putting lipstick on Islamic pigs. The future of the West is not just brown, it may be dark—and theocratic.

Clearly, religious fascism has more than a toehold in global politics. Indeed, the first casualty in the Hamas war was the Abraham Accords, a sure win for the Shia. In any Muslim calculus, Hamas is a pawn for both sides of the Islamic divide. Gaza and Hamas are clearly expendable.

Israel is now admonished to be more “proportional,” humane, or moderate in the pursuit of Hamas, as if it is possible to discriminate between the guilty and innocent in the fire and smoke of combat. Yes, Israel will discriminate, just soon as the IDF has a metric to separate terrorists, haters, and the so-called “innocents” of Gaza.

The only pragmatic ethic that matters in war is winning or losing.

The moral high ground is irrelevant if  you lose. The 500 million Arabs and 2 billion Muslim can afford to lose a hundred Gaza sized conflicts, Israel can only afford to lose one.

Israel matters because civilization matters. Muslim sectarians are exploiting the crisis precipitated by Hamas on 7 October. Each knows that Biden is weak and politically vulnerable. Biden’s motives may have more to do with the threat from the American left than the threat from Islamists.

Radicals on both sides of Islam’s schism know also that the Pentagon will throw Israel under the bus to save basing rights for the US Navy in Qatar. Ironically, the US Navy and the Hamas high command coexist in Qatar. Both luxuriate as guests of a corrupt Sunni tribal autocrat playing two ends against the middle.

In many ways, the Gaza conflict is just one of many proxy wars where the real belligerents are sponsor states like Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States. Unfortunately, by attempting to pander to both sides of the Islamic schism, American timidity puts Israel in jeopardy. Most Israelis realize by now that the “two state solution” is America’s rhetorical bone thrown to Islamic partisans. Alas, neither the internal Palestinian divide nor the Israeli/Arab rift will be resolved by creating another radical terror state. In truth, sovereignty for any radical Palestinian state guarantees its demise.

Yet Israel is still ground zero for both Sunni and Shia terror. By proxy, zealots on both sides of the Islamic divide have historically sought to undermine the Jewish state. Ironically, should Hamas succeed; every secular or royal autocrat in the Ummah would be at risk. Religious and/or Islamist political terror is more of a threat to establishment Ummah, than it is to the West or any Jewish government.

If the choice is between Jewish Zionism and Shia/Houti religious recidivism, it‘s a good bet that the Sunni world and Arabia chooses golf, tennis, and another Grand Prix.

The unconditional defeat and/or surrender of Hamas is a win/win end game for Israel, the world, and the Ummah.

 

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G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of Intelligence and national security,

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