By Christina McIntosh
Louis Rene Beres writes in the Jerusalem Post
This is a BRILLIANT article/ opinion piece. To paraphrase Henry Higgins, “He’s got it, he’s got it, by god I think he’s got it.” If enough people in Israel – esp in govt and the IDF upper echelons – can only clue in on what Rene Beres has come to understand, it could be a gamechanger.
‘The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and kill them….”Sahih Muslim, Book 41, cited at The Charter of Hamas (1988)
Israel is loathed by its jihadist enemies because it is a Jewish state, not because it is Zionist. For these enemies, both state and sub-state, Israel is never more than the individual Jew writ large. It matters not at all to Iran, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, etc., if Israel agrees to political compromises and territorial surrenders. For these recalcitrant foes, Muslims are still obligated to “fight the Jews, and kill them…” For them, a Jewish state in the Dar al Islam (the world of Islam) – any Jewish state – represents an inherently intolerable abomination.
It follows that before Israel could ever experience any tangible relief from jihadist war and terror, it would first have to acknowledge the true sources of adversarial loathing. Significantly, these sources have absolutely nothing to do with being an “aggressor” or “occupier.”
In the Islamic Middle East, doctrinal antisemites have remained faithful to their most primal hatreds. Essentially, this is because the antisemite, individually and collectively, responds not to any authentic qualities of “The Jew” or the Jewish state, but to his own overwhelming fears and anxieties.
Iran-backed terror-crimes have nothing to do with achieving Palestinian sovereignty or statehood. For the wrongdoers, what is actually being sought are the primal ecstasies of human barbarism. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists gang-raped and tortured male Israelis as well as females, infants and young children as well as adults. The perpetrators were excited by their monstrous crimes, and by the fact that these crimes could be committed without any civilizational restraints. Moreover, as self-declared “martyrs,” they expected their crimes to spawn paradisaical rewards of immortality.
In significant measure, Hamas and related jihadist groups seek to inflict death upon “The Jew” because they compulsively fear death.
What is Israel to do? To begin, Israelis must finally understand that past is prologue, that “Death to Israel” is simply a new phrase for ancient hatreds. Leaders of the Jewish state who are still hoping for successful geopolitical processes should not be deceived. Aware that Israel’s geopolitical future is linked to its Jewish historical past, these leaders should never expect safety from any “civilized” acceptance of diplomatic concessions or compromises, but from a judicious commitment to national power based on intellect, reason and “mind.”
In all world politics, but especially in the Middle East, we are present at the gradual unveiling of a secret, one in which the core truth of what is taking place is left unacknowledged. For the immediate future, Iran will accelerate its preparations for chemical/biological/nuclear war. Unaffected by any parallel public commitments to “ceasefires,” these preparations will proceed on their own murderous track, culminating, if left unobstructed, in more existential aggressions against Israel. It follows, inter alia, that Israel should not close its eyes to potentially synergistic dangers of Palestinian statehood and catastrophic regional war.
At this late stage, Israel ought urgently to acknowledge that a larger and protracted war with Iran is all but inevitable, and that this war should be waged while Iran is still “pre-nuclear.” The single greatest danger to Israel lies in a nuclear Iran, an unprecedented prospect that will not “go away” on its own. The real survival task for Israel, therefore, is not war avoidance with Iran, but its opposite. This is the case whether or not Iran is presumed a rational enemy, and only while Iran is not yet nuclear.
Now, Israel’s leaders should finally understand that the existential enemy is not anti-Zionism (that is deflecting Islamist rhetoric), but antisemitism. For Israel, the true enemy sentiment is always an underlying hatred of “The Jew.” Though this hatred makes no intellectual sense and is based entirely on crudely manipulated fears, it remains the authentic adversarial reality with which Israel must capably engage.
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One Response
To acknowledge that the real source of the conflict is ISLAMIC antisemitism means to point the finger at the religion of Islam which is shared by two million Israeli Arab/Moslem citizens. Israel cannot do this because Israel’s only hope for internal calm is to mollify, not antagonize, those Moslem citizens. This is an insoluble dilemma. Israel needs to go after the Islamic Republic of Iran without point to the fact that Iran is Islamic.