Is it a Just War or Just a War that Israel is Currently Waging?

Civitas, 20 July 2006

A curious case of combined myopia and amnesia seems to have afflicted those western commentators who currently accuse Israel of being engaged at present in unjust, because disproportionate, military activity in Lebanon and Gaza.
According to those afflcited by this malady, while Israel might well have every right to the world’s sympathy as well as to undertake limited reprisals for having suffered the recent kidnapping of three of its soldiers, the scale of death and destruction she has inflicted in response to these kidnappings, especially on the civilian population of Lebanon, is out of all proportion to the enormity of these kidnappings, and can only serve to worsen its long-term security by radicalising still more of those who have been at the receiving end of her response.

Those suffering from this condition are prone to offer various suggestions as to the action Israel should instead be taking. At the core of their prescriptions lies the suggestion that, for Israel to regain the high moral ground she once occupied in her long-running conflict with her neighbours, and which, on their view, she badly needs once more to regain, she must discontinue her bombardment of Lebanon at once, withdraw her forces from Gaza, and declare an end to all hostilities.
Any subsequent kidnappings of her soldiers or bombing ofattacks on her citizens, on this view, would then be so clearly morally unjustified, as would only serve to increase sympathy and support for Israel among the international community. To endure such assaults stoically, so those holding this view go on to claim, is the price that Israel has to pay to retain, or more accurately regain, the world’s unequivocal support in her conflict with the Palestinians.
Why expression of such sentiments so clearly betray myopia on the part of those espousing them is that they so manifestly fail to take into account the bigger picture beyond the kidnappings, outside of which Israel’s response to the kidnappings does not begin to make strategic or moral sense, but within which it does.
Clearly, if all at stake for Israel were a few intermittent kidnappings of her soldiers and assaults on her other citizens by isolated cells of extremists, then Israel would be wholly unjustified in taking military action on the scale she has.
Sadly, Israel faces a far more severe threat to her security than that.
Instead of having been rewarded with any form of peace dividend for having disengaged from Gaza last year, all Israel has received from the Palestinians in return is for them to have elected to power a party whose founding charter commits it to Israel’s total destruction and who, in office, have manifestly failed to discourage, let alone prevent, a steady stream of incursions into Israel leading to acts of aggression against her citizens by Palestinian militants.
As for Hezbollah , although undoubtedly Israel would immediately cease hostilities in Lebanon were her kidnapped i soldiers returned and were the rocket attacks from that quarter to cease, it is equally certain that these kidnappings and attacks were carried out with the help and support of Syria, if not upon Syria’s express orders, who in turn would not have given it without active encouragement from Iran which, like Syria, has also supplied rockets to Hezbollah, and which, like Hamas and Hezbollah, has publicly declared itself committed to Israel’s destruction. Unlike either they or Syria, however, Iran is also quite far advanced towards developing a nuclear capability which Israel cannot afford to ignore.
Given Iran’s hostile posture towards Israel and the apocalyptic form of Islam to which its leadership subscribe, Israel has every reason to think that country currently presents as great a threat to her security as Saddam Hussein was considered to do in 1981 when, with the world’s approval or at least with that of the sane part of it, Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq.
If these threats were not enough, stoking up the fire of hostility towards Israel still further is Osama Bin Laden who has declared himself no less implacably committed to Israel’s destruction as the Iranian leadership and Hamas and Hezbollah all profess themselves to be.
Only in light of these considerations, does the scale of Israel’s response to the kidnapping of her soldiers make sense. The reason why she is busy destroying by air and sea-power so much of Lebanon’s infra-structure is not to inflict on its people any kind of collective punishment for having failed to contain Hezbollah, as some have surmised. Nor is she doing so to destroy or reoccupy the country, as others have claimed.
What Israel is currently doing is prepare the ground for a further and strategically much more important assault against Syria and possibly then Iran which first requires that she should habve neutralised Hezbollah before she can begin. For as long as these two countries remain able and willing to support organisations like Hezbollah, Israel cannot become or remain safe from attacks by organisations like Hezbollah and which are likely to become far more dangerous once Iran has acquired a nuclear bomb with which toi suppluy her proxies in Lebanon. .
It is, therefore, with a view to being able to attack Syria and Iran that Israel is taking the military action she currently is, and why the US is giving her such a free rein to do so. Only in light of this wider game plan can the severity of her current action in Lebanon begin to make strategic or moral sense. In light of it, her purpose in destroying so much of Lebanon’s infrastructure is the entirely legitimate one, notwithstanding the collateral loss of civilian life and property caused by it, to prevent Hexbollah from being able to take any action against her while Israel is engaged in the far more serious undertaking of neutralising a greater enemy of hers of whom Hezbollah is but the mere client and servant.
Israel, morevoer, would be perfectly justified in attacking Syria and Iran, should she have good chance of succeeding in any military action against them, given how actively they have supported Hezbollah by supplying it with rockets, and especially given Iran’s avowed intention of destroying Israel.
The amnesia suffered by those whose concurrent myopia prevents them seeing what Israel is currently up to in Lebanon is revealed by their conveniently forgetting that, before the 1967 War, the international community could impose or otherwise secure a peace settlement in the Middle East than it has since proved istelf able to. They also seem to have forgotten that, since 1967, a form of militancy has grown up in the Muslim world that is a source of much stronger Muslim animus against Israel than was ever apparent before then and of which Israel’s occupation of the territories occupied in 1967 was not the principal let alone the sole cause, not matter how irksome her occupation might have been to their Palestinian inhabitants, and to the world-wide Muslim community more generally.
The fact is that, apart from Jordan, and possibly also Egypt, Israel’s Arab neighbours have never been willing to accept Israel’s right to exist in peace with them. Until they all unequivocally do so, especially the Palestinians, Israel has every right to dictate the pace and extent of her withdrawal from the occupied territories. Apart from these territories constituting a bargaining chip in terms of securing recognition from thre other side of Israel’s right to exist in peace with her neighbours, they put a healthy distance between her cities on the Mediterranean seaboard and those who remain intent on driving her population into the sea beyond.