At a time when the American Jewish community is staggered and lost, and starting to question the sagacious leadership of Jeffrey Goldberg, Marty Peretz, and Michael Oren, the Times runs a horrifyingly ethnocentric piece by Israeli military historian Benny
Morris, justifying the slaughter of Palestinians because Israel feels "the walls closing
in." Why does Israel feel this way? Because, Morris says, Arab states refuse to accept its existence and opinion is changing in the west.
The main problem with this argument is that it is inaccurate. (To plagiarize a smart friend's email) Has Morris ever heard of the Saudi peace initiative? Does Israel have no agency? Is it only a victim of Arab perfidy? One really wonders! Why couldn't they run something by Tom Segev or Gideon Levy alongside it. Or, better, instead of it!
Morris tries to rally American Jewish support for the Gaza slaughter by invoking Israel's fears in 1967. But as military scholar Mike Desch points out:
It may in fact be
true that the public in Israel
are deeply worried, but the real lessons of 1967, as a spate of recent
books (e.g., Segev's 1967) makes clear, are 1) Israel was never really
in danger (and large segments of the national security establishment
understood that full well) and 2) the victory it won was pyrrhic in the
literal sense. It set the stage for Israel's most intractable long-term
security problem: the occupation which constitutes the only
"existential" threat it faces to its character as a Jewish and
democratic state.
Meanwhile, today's piece in Ha'aretz on Israel's military options shows that Israelis are starting to realize that there is no happy ending to this war, that Israel won't realize its objectives. The same doubts creep in to the headline on the front page of the NYT-– "On Fourth Day of Gaza Battle, No End in Sight"– and also the WSJ, where a piece by Zionist Bret Stephens (he once challenged Ian Buruma's right to criticize Israel by hectoring him, "Are you a Jew?") is surprisingly candid about the matter.
…the storm will pass. Then the green flag of the [Hamas] movement will fly
defiantly over the tallest building left standing, its prestige hugely
boosted — and Israel's commensurately diminished — throughout the
Muslim world.
Another military friend explains the problem:
"The key point to keep in mind is that shock and awe — aka modern airpower — looks great during the first few days of combat, but it hardly ever produces a decisive victory, especially against an adversary that is comprised of guerrilla forces like Hezbollah and Hamas. Then, you come face to face with the big question: should we send in ground forces? Israel pulled out of both southern Lebanon and Gaza,
because each had turned into a hornet's nest. Do you really want to go
back in there? I think not. And if you do, you are quickly going to be
up to your eyeballs in alligators. Bottom line: Israel is in deep
trouble here. Its only hope is for the US to intervene and shut this
one down quickly before it becomes apparent that Israel has gotten
itself into a pickle. But that won't happen because the Conference of Presidents and AIPAC and the rest of the lobby make it
impossible for Sam to do anything but act as a cheerleader."
