President Trump’s Mideast moves show why Israeli deterrence is crucial - by Evelyn Gordon

...Despite Iran’s willingness to engage in military provocations, it has shown no desire to risk serious military consequences on Iranian soil. Indeed, it has escalated very carefully, moving up to each new level only after concluding—based on the non-response to previous attacks—that it could do so safely. And so far, it’s been right: Even the attack on the Saudi refineries, its worst to date, drew no military response from Riyadh or Washington. But years of Israeli airstrikes against Iranian and Iranian-affiliated targets have proven that the Jewish state won’t let Iranian aggression go unanswered, and any Iranian escalation will be met commensurately.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
16 October '19..

U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest Mideast decisions cast Israeli airstrikes in Syria and (reportedly) Iraq in a different light. Previously, these airstrikes seemed to be aimed solely at preventing Iran from establishing military infrastructure in both countries that could threaten Israel. But it now turns out they were also sending an important deterrent message: If Tehran attacks Israel, Jerusalem will have no qualms about striking back.

The conventional wisdom has been that even if these airstrikes were necessary for Israel’s defense, they posed a real risk of escalation. And obviously, that remains a possibility.

But given Trump’s latest moves, they may actually be making war less likely by letting Tehran know that Jerusalem—unlike, say, Saudi Arabia—won’t sit with folded hands if it suffers a significant Iranian attack like last month’s strike on Saudi oil facilities. The realization that Israel has both the ability and the will to hit back hard might well deter Iran from launching such a strike, even though it now knows that it wouldn’t be risking an American response.

For this reason, much of the rhetoric about how Trump’s recent decisions will affect Israel is overblown, even though the decisions themselves are unequivocally horrible. Strategically, the U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria abandons that area to very bad actors (Turkey and/or Iran). It’s also a moral atrocity, as it abandons the Kurds to Turkey’s tender mercies despite their having been America’s most loyal and effective partner against the Islamic State. And it signals the world that Washington won’t protect its allies, thereby reducing the incentive to be an American ally. Trump’s inaction after Iran destroyed half of Saudi Arabia’s oil processing capacity sent a similar message.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

PM Netanyahu’s carrot-and-stick policy on Gaza - by Ruthi Blum

What’s clear at this moment, though, is that anyone accusing Netanyahu of “having no policy” is either in denial or just dead wrong.

Ruthi Blum..
JNS.org..
20 August '19..

Of all the criticism lobbed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu these days, the claim that he has been exercising restraint towards the terrorists in Gaza to distract from his legal battles and guarantee victory in the fast-approaching Sept. 17 Knesset elections is the most ridiculous. As any member of the Israeli public and political echelon is keenly aware, the one thing that should worry Netanyahu’s opponents is a war.

This is particularly true today, when Israeli residents of the Gaza-border communities—the “envelope” around the Hamas-ruled enclave—are suffering from an understandable mixture of fatigue and fury. Traumatized by living under daily threat of death and destruction with only minimal respite between rockets, riots and incendiary balloons will do that. Especially considering the fact that while Palestinian children in Gaza attend summer camps where they learn how to kill Jews, the Israeli kids on the other side of the fence spend their vacation listening for Red Alert sirens telling them to take cover in the nearest bomb shelter.

That the politicians to the right of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party have been shouting about a lack of Israeli deterrence makes perfect sense. Though only a handful of such candidates believes in reoccupying Gaza—and the rest don’t really have a viable plan other than applying even more Israeli firepower in the ongoing battle of attrition—all of those running on right-wing tickets are telling the electorate that Netanyahu, whose re-election is the only shot they have at being players in the next government, needs a fierce hawkish push.

But those to the left of Netanyahu also are accusing him of being weak in the face of Palestinian violence. This is not merely hypocritical. It is evidence that even much of the so-called “peace camp” is trying to attract voters who see no chance for peace in the foreseeable future, with or without the soon-to-be-unveiled White House plan.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Let Hamas Lose - by Prof. Eyal Zisser

Similar to its fights with other enemies in the region, Israel's battle with Hamas won't end in some form of a magic knock-out punch. It is an ongoing struggle where the side that is most steadfast, and also capable of self-restraint, will emerge victoriously. Hamas is driving quickly toward a dead end, devoid of hope for a future. Neither a military clash with Israel nor an arrangement with it will alter this reality.

Prof. Eyal Zisser..
Israel Hayom..
02 April'19..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/let-hamas-lose/

Despite the efforts to secure understandings with Hamas for a cease-fire, Israel is struggling to restore peace and quiet along the Gaza border. The rocket fire at Gaza-adjacent communities is continuing unabated, together with violent disturbances on the border fence, incendiary balloons and even infiltration attempts.

In light of the difficulties involved in establishing a modicum of calm along the border, some Israelis are calling on the IDF to enter and reconquer the Gaza Strip. The IDF is undoubtedly capable of doing so, but the question is not how many days it would take for the army to defeat Hamas, rather what would happen the day after. More specifically, how much time would Israel have to before it is forced to remove its forces under an onslaught of international pressure? And even if U.S. President Donald Trump fully backs the Israeli government, we must still consider the Israeli public's patience before it starts calling on the government to return the boys home and leave Gaza to the Gazans, or in other abandon them to Hamas yet again.

We can, of course, hope against hope that the Egyptians or even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will agree to govern Gaza on their own. However, we can't realistically expect the Egyptians to voluntarily spill their own blood in a fight to topple Hamas and Abbas is likely incapable of imposing his rule in Gaza, which he lost to Hamas a decade ago.

In Israel, there are those who seemingly want to turn Hamas into Hezbollah. After all, this is the implication of their calls to establish a "Lebanese quiet" along the Gaza border: Completely disengage from Gaza under an umbrella of agreements and understandings with Hamas, similar to those with Hezbollah. To secure complete quiet along the Gaza border, however, Hamas must not only be as strong as Hezbollah but free of the restrictions and blockades currently squeezing it.

To be sure, even those who hail the quiet on the northern border cannot ignore the price: Hezbollah has armed itself with over 100,000 missiles, which blanket the majority of Israeli territory. It's not certain that fleeting peace and quiet on the Gaza border is worth such a price.

It's important to note that the current calm along the northern border could also come with an expiration date, after which we will learn yet again that the missiles in Hezbollah's warehouses haven't rusted quite as fast as hoped, and that the gun from the first act will reappear in the last act shooting.

Question. Does Hamas see Israel’s deterrence waning? - by Israel Kasnett

It is wholly possible that the main reason for Israel’s perceived failure in deterrence is due to Hamas’s dissatisfaction with the status quo, even though the terror group is fully aware of its military inferiority compared to Israel.

Israel Kasnett..
JNS.org..
01 April '19..

Israel is officially engaged in the throes of a low-intensity conflict with Hamas.

The March 25 rocket attack on Israel, which destroyed a home and injured seven members of a family in Mishmeret, north of Tel Aviv, demonstrates that this conflict poses a real threat to the citizens of Israel. And even though Israel pounded Hamas targets in Gaza pursuant to that attack, this week’s attacks—one on Saturday night, which saw five rockets fired at Israel, and another one on Sunday—suggest that Israel’s deterrence has lost some of its power.

Eran Lerman, former deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council, suggests otherwise. He told JNS that “Hamas takes us very seriously.”

He explained that there is a paradox here. Hamas’s behavior reflects an understanding that because it is so weak and Israel so strong, Israel will be careful not to obliterate the terror group because “we can do so easily.”

Lerman said this is a “paradox within a paradox.”

“The reason Israel does not feel obliged to go in and destroy Hamas,” he said, “is because Hamas is not a threat to our existence. It gets on our nerves. It’s an irritant.”

Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told JNS that “deterrence is a tricky notion. Of course, Hamas is afraid of Israel,” but it tests Israel’s tolerance threshold all the time.

Inbar said Hamas understands that Israel does “not want an escalation, particularly at this time before the elections,” and that Israel does not “object to Hamas rule, which weakens the Palestinian national movement.”

He explained that Hamas launched missiles towards Tel Aviv as a threat to escalate in order to get concessions from Israel, immediately announcing that it was a “mistake,” hoping the Israeli response would be tolerable.

“Bearing in mind that Hamas is not very sensitive to the cost Israel exacted, this is what happened. Once in a while, Israel has to escalate its responses to signal that the brinkmanship game could be very risky.”

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Truth be told, the Palestinians are contemptuous of the stupidity and naiveté of the Left - by Dr. Reuven Berko

The Palestinians are contemptuous of the stupidity and naiveté of the Left and see these as an asymmetry that holds their salvation, not to mention a weakness and an Achilles' heel via which they can strike at our people. They have grown up in a society in which the tribal code leaves no room for the weak and thinks nothing of the individual other than as a part of a stampeding herd of a collective. Indeed, in Arab society, the individual is valued only when he or she is attacked by someone from the outside, which means that the tribe's collective deterrence has been attacked and it is under threat.

Dr. Reuven Berko..
Israel Hayom..
26 December '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/understanding-local-tribal-code/

Time and time again, we hear about how ineffectual Israel's targeted killings of terrorists and demolitions of terrorists' homes are as a method of deterrence and punishment.

According to this moralistic approach, the proper response to Palestinian murderousness would be for us to imprison terrorists in comfortable conditions, give them an education and medical care, and then free them in deals amounting to blackmail or after they serve part of their sentences, since they are "the future leaders with whom we will make peace."

Those who espouse this approach think that murderers should be treated to improved finances and guilt-ridden negotiations with Israel (over the "crimes of the Nakba") and unilateral messages of peace. They prefer this over killing the killers and razing their homes, since they will just build new homes and new terrorists will spring up.

The moralists couldn't be more wrong. The Palestinians are contemptuous of the stupidity and naiveté of the Left and see these as an asymmetry that holds their salvation, not to mention a weakness and an Achilles' heel via which they can strike at our people. They have grown up in a society in which the tribal code leaves no room for the weak and thinks nothing of the individual other than as a part of a stampeding herd of a collective. Indeed, in Arab society, the individual is valued only when he or she is attacked by someone from the outside, which means that the tribe's collective deterrence has been attacked and it is under threat. In response, tribe members will take vengeance on individuals from the attacker's side.

Our volatile region – in which rape, murder, destruction and bloodshed are always the bread and butter of the Arabs who invaded the Land of Israel – has produced defense mechanisms that have led to a violent code of behavior that shaped and shapes the lives of the villages and nomadic tribes here.

Expecting Hamas to honor agreements with the Jewish state it wants to annihilate is inexcusably naive - by

...a crushing and devastating blow to Hamas will pave the way for a truce that would not be a victory for the terrorists. Such a truce would survive much longer than a half-baked truce that survives only several months until another extortion scheme.

Prof. Efraim Inbar..
Israel Hayom..
13 November '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/in-the-middle-east-you-win-with-fear/

The past six months have brought us violent demonstrations along the Gaza Strip border, cross-border infiltrations, rocket fire and incendiary kites and balloons. This means that a so-called "agreement" or truce is not a viable option.

We cannot trust Hamas to keep the calm. Only when Hamas is afraid of IDF retaliation, which has yet to come, will calm prevail. Israelis tend to overlook the fact that in the Middle East, it is fear, above everything else, that governs how people act.

Unfortunately, from time to time, we must give our enemies a violent reminder, lest they continue terrorizing us. The very fact that Hamas continues its actions unabated shows a lack of deterrence, without which no truce is worth the paper it is signed on. Expecting Hamas to honor agreements with the Jewish state it wants to annihilate is inexcusably naive. Extortion that leads to an "agreement" is a prelude to more extortion.

The assumption that boosting the quality of life for Gazans will reduce Hamas' violence and hatred is fundamentally flawed. There is no place on this planet where there is a direct correlation between quality of life and terrorism. This holds true in the Palestinian case as well.

Recent polls show that Gazans are actually less hostile toward Israel than are their brethren in Judea and Samaria, where the quality of life is better. Perhaps the suffering in Gaza has taught them that prolonged conflict with Israel comes with great pain. While it is true that it takes time to change the behavior of large groups of people, what ultimately makes a population embark on a new political path is the degree to which it suffers. Germans suffered immensely during the two world wars and have since shed their violent past. Egypt also realized that a peace deal with Israel trumps more violence.

The goal of war is to inflict pain on the other side, to make it change its behavior. There is no point in giving Hamas candy while it fights against us. The exact opposite is true: It should be forced to pay a heavy price for its aggressive behavior. This is the message Israel should be sending Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and other enemies. To survive in the Middle East, Israel has to make it clear that it will inflict unimaginable pain on anyone who attacks it.

The Time to Restore Deterrence in Gaza is Now - by Isi Leibler

Hamas has repeatedly pledged that it will not halt the border protests or cease the launch of balloons. Would any other country tolerate this situation, responding only with tit-for-tat destruction of empty Hamas facilities, causing minimal disruption?

Isi Leibler..
Israel Hayom/Opinion..
30 October '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/restore-deterrence-in-gaza-now/

Israel was created as a haven for the Jewish people. It has an obligation to protect all its citizens, yet it has failed to do so for the residents living close to the Gaza Strip border.

The time has come to say to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman: Enough is enough.

To summarize the situation:

Hamas' unyielding objective is the destruction of the Jewish state and murder of Jews.

Most Gazan residents are unemployed and impoverished but foreign aid has been diverted to military purposes.

Iranian financial and military support has created a military infrastructure throughout the Strip utilizing mosques, hospitals and schools as weapon storage bases and launching sites.

Hamas dispatches terrorists into Israel to murder Jews. Those who succeed are hailed as heroes and financially rewarded.

Hamas has built many tunnels to infiltrate terrorists behind Israeli lines. The IDF possesses sophisticated equipment that has identified and destroyed most of the tunnels.

Hamas orchestrates a protest campaign that, since March 30, regularly brings thousands to the Israeli border for "peaceful demonstrations" that include hurling firebombs, firing weapons, throwing rocks and storming the border. The IDF seeks to avoid lethal responses, but when endangered, it has taken firm action. Over 200 Palestinians – many identified as Hamas operatives – have been killed.

The Palestinians have been floating balloons into Israel carrying flammable material and bombs. To date, they have destroyed thousands of acres of agricultural land, impoverishing many farmers in the area.

Mutual hostility has led the PA to cut funds for electricity and fuel for Gaza's residents and to threaten the salaries of civil servants in the Strip.

Under such circumstances, Hamas became desperate and intimidated and announced it was willing to enter a temporary truce with Israel if the blockade of goods and services was lifted.

Egyptian-mediated negotiations have led to little progress, although recently, statements have been repeated that a truce was about to be implemented.

In the meantime, the world has become accustomed to the border protests and incendiary balloons. Many – including some misguided Jews – are accusing us of needlessly killing "peaceful demonstrators."

Hamas has repeatedly pledged that it will not halt the border protests or cease the launch of balloons.

Would any other country tolerate this situation, responding only with tit-for-tat destruction of empty Hamas facilities, causing minimal disruption?

Question: Where is the IDF finesse? - by Brig. Gen. (res.) Zvika Fogel

I understand the difficulty of making the decision to go to war. But I don't understand the lack of creative ideas and initiative. I get the feeling that security officials don't believe in our capabilities and, maybe worse, don't believe in the righteousness of our path and in our right to not only defend ourselves but also to launch an attack to ensure our continued existence and quality of life.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Zvika Fogel..
Israel Hayom..
28 October '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/where-is-the-idf-finesse/?redirected=310959

That's it, enough! I have realized that none of the defense establishment leaders sitting in the situation assessment with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a war. No one is recommending an operation, nothing. The defense minister, the chief of staff, the head of the Mossad, the head of the Shin Bet security agency, and the head of the National Security Council apparently think that victory is impossible, that we can't defeat the enemy in the Gaza Strip.

They are certainly telling themselves, "With our luck, and Iron Dome to protect us, why get dragged into a war? We have excellent pilots and unmanned aircraft that know how to make noise, frighten, and destroy. If we can't create deterrence, let's at least show them that we have more weapons than they do. … So for now, it's better to let the guys in Gaza use up their stocks of rockets and mortars."

Soon, the fires in our fields will be put out because they'll no longer have balloons and condoms to which to attach fuses and send over the fence, and we'll stop inhaling smoke because they won't have any more tires to burn. Pretty soon we'll block the underground tunnel and undersea threats so we can keep sending them fuel that will be used strictly to produce electricity and construction materials to build homes because that will create employment for the Palestinians of Gaza.

I realize that everyone in charge of our security is recommending to the prime minister that we not fall for the Islamist provocation, because we have the strength to withstand it after 70 years of this stuff.

Other than that, who will we be fighting against – the lightning that happened to cause a rocket that happened to be aimed at Beersheba to be fired? Or against the Islamic Jihad, which is merely an organization supported by Iran and is trying to stir up discord between us and our friends in Hamas, and also ease the pressure in Syria? In short, our defense and security leaders are pushing a strategy of leaving things as they are?

Choosing the Right Strategy with Hamas: Make Concessions or Fight? - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

What should the strategy regarding Hamas be –make concessions or initiate a fourth round of fighting? It is best for Israel to prolong the negotiations as long as possible, concede as little as possible, and wait until the sanctions against Iran come into full force. Then Israel should prepare for the next big round – not to defeat Hamas, but to tame it and keep the Palestinians divided.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 960..
27 September '18..

Israel’s leading politicians, Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been engaged in a fierce debate with Minister of Education Naftali Bennet over how to react to Hamas’s venture since the March of Return to change the status quo – from Hamas’s relative submission to a return to the situation of tit-for tat attacks and counterattacks that prevailed for most of the period between Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007 and the third large round of fighting in the summer of 2014.

Netanyahu and Lieberman want to reach understandings with Hamas to restore the relative calm that prevailed for nearly four years since 2014. They are willing to make humanitarian concessions and probably acquiesce to a sizeable prisoner release of hard-core terrorists in order to restore the calm, even temporarily. Bennet, by contrast, is bitterly opposed to making concessions and seeks a fourth round of confrontation that will considerably weaken the organization.

The merits of the debate are difficult to assess because of the wisdom of both approaches on political and military grounds. The question, of course, is which of these strategies would be better for Israel at this particular point in time.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Restraint has a better reputation than its sister, appeasement, but in the end the result is the same - by Vic Rosenthal

...Restraint is portrayed as the wiser, more mature policy than confrontation. It has a better reputation than its sister, appeasement, but in the end the result is the same: more violence, not less.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
09 July '18..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2018/07/restraint-the-strategy-of-defeat/


There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others. – Niccolo Machiavelli

It’s been reported that indirect negotiations are underway with Hamas for the release of two Israelis and the bodies of two soldiers that they are holding. Germany and Egypt are said to be involved in the negotiations. Needless to add, part of the price for their release will be the freeing of murderers associated with Hamas who are now in Israeli jails.

Some say that one reason the IDF is not taking stronger action (read: any action at all) against the terrorists that are launching incendiary devices that have burned thousands of acres in southern Israel is the sensitivity of these negotiations. Another reason is that officials are worried about tension of the northern borders and would prefer to avoid a two-front war. And the IDF also wants to finish the enormously expensive anti-tunnel barrier they are building along the frontier.

I understand the arguments for this policy. But it is wrong in every way.

Deterrence is created by conditioning the enemy to expect a painful response to aggressive behavior. If we train them to expect a minimal or no response, then they escalate their aggression, and it becomes the status quo. Today it has become normal that Hamas is burning our land. It has become normal for them to hold on to any Israeli, dead or alive, that they can get their hands on.

We have things backwards. We are the stronger power, and thus Hamas should be the ones begging for negotiations. Instead of using our power to force them to release hostages and stop setting fires, we deliberately restrain ourselves and thus allow them to control our behavior.

We are not deterring them. They are deterring us.

Will There Be A Serious Response To Fire-Kites Only After Israeli Deaths? - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

...Poorly run communities only install a traffic light after a kid gets run over and killed at the intersection. We apparently won't stop the fire-kite launchers until someone gets killed.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
13 June '18..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73293

There have been huge Israeli losses caused by the Gaza fire-kites.

Losses that go beyond lost income to farmers due to burned crops and fire damage to other property.

Trees planted by the founders of communities have been burned down and recreational areas will take many years to be restored.

But since, as of this writing, no one has been burned to death as a result of the fire-kites, the IDF declines to act to stop the fire-kite launchers.

(Excellent) Iranian drone, Israeli counter-strike: Probing defenses is the new normal - by J.E. Dyer

...Anything that thwarts the revolutionary regime in Iran can be held to have a salutary effect. But the more such effects there are, the more Iran will shift tactics and try to create problems where problems are advantageous to Iran. That’s not a caution against thwarting Iran. It’s a reality check. I think Iran pulled this latest stunt because things aren’t going the mullahs’ way at the moment. But the right response for the U.S. and Israel is to slap back hard when the revolutionary regime tries to create new problems.

J.E. Dyer..
Liberty Unyielding..
12 February '18..
H/T Elder of Ziyon

In the wake of Saturday’s intrusion by an Iranian drone into Israeli air space, which was followed by Israeli strikes on targets in Syria and the shootdown of an IAF F-16I, the commentary has been predictable.

This is unquestionably “big.” The last Israeli warplane lost in combat was more than three decades ago, in the first Lebanon war in 1982. (A helicopter was lost in 2006.) Judging by Syrian regime-friendly reporting and themes in social media, regime forces are over the moon about their achievement in bagging an IAF “Sufa.”

But it’s also the biggest counter-strike by Israeli forces in Syria since the civil war erupted there in 2011. The IAF has conducted comparatively large-scale strikes on logistic and infrastructure targets in the last several years, interdicting, among other things, deliveries from Iran and convoys to Hezbollah. But counter-strikes against weapon systems involved in surveillance of, and attacks, or potential attacks, on Israeli targets or territory, have been very limited.

In fact, the Israeli attack package on Saturday was also limited, compared to what it could have been. Especially after the F-16I shootdown, Israel could have justifiably chosen to attack more targets – but did not. In not retaliating further for the F-16I shootdown, the Israelis de-escalated first.

I assume they did that because their tactical intelligence told them Iran and Syria were not about to escalate further.

But that doesn’t mean Iran’s gambit was a one-off. It certainly doesn’t mean that it represented no real danger, or that Israel overreacted.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

To not take terrorists alive - by Vic Rosenthal

...What matters is that we are engaged in a war that has been waged against us since long before the founding of our state, whose objective has always been to prevent Jewish sovereignty anywhere in our homeland. Our enemies are not confused: they want total victory, and they understand what that means in a practical sense. We need similar clarity, because for the Jewish people, this is an existential war.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
12 January '18..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2018/01/shoot-to-kill-not-to-neutralize/

Every time there is a horrific terrorist murder of a Jew because he or she is a Jew, I am compelled to write one of what I am calling my “outrage posts.”

I’m outraged that this can continue, over and over. Every time, I write that we need a death penalty, or that we should fire a cruise missile at the center of the town that the murderers came from and then build a Jewish town on the ruins. Every time, I write that the perpetrators will almost certainly be caught, but the chances are good that they will survive their arrest and get more-than-humane treatment in an Israeli prison, and their families will receive a monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority paid for by the US, the EU and even Israel. And every time, I am reminded of the Shalit deal, where a kidnapped soldier was traded for more than a thousand terrorists, including mass murderers.

Yesterday it was Rabbi Raziel Shevach, a 35-year old father of six children, mohel and volunteer medic, murdered in a drive-by shooting on Route 60 near Shechem, in Samaria. Because he was a Jew.

You can’t look at this picture without wanting to cry. Unless, of course, you are a member of Hamas, which announced that they “bless the heroic Nablus operation,” the murder of Rabbi Shevach; or if you belong to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, which praised the “skilled and experienced” terrorist who carried out the “operation” and escaped.

This will undoubtedly contribute to the death penalty debate which is currently taking place in the Knesset. I have always favored a death penalty for terrorist murderers, but now I’m not so sure. If such a law passes it will surely include all kinds of safeguards and chances to appeal to the Supreme Court, and who knows what else. It will certainly take time before all the options are exhausted. This is Israel, after all, which aspires to be Berkeley, California, and you know how long it takes (forever) to get a murderer executed in California.

A death sentence that could be executed within a few weeks after the crime would be great. For that matter, so would a real life sentence without possibility of early release. But neither of these are likely.

Lost deterrence thanks to the High Court, and those who pay the price are the terrorist victims and their families. - by Lital Shemesh

...As the Midrash says, he who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate. When will the government realize this? Demolishing the homes of terrorists is not just punishment and revenge; it is a way of preventing similar terrorist attacks in the future.

Lital Shemesh..
Israel Hayom..
02 January '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/lost-deterrence-thanks-to-the-high-court/

The slaughtering of the Salomon family members in Halamish last July will be remembered for many years to come. A terrorist killed three family members and wounded another woman. He wanted to kill everyone who was present in the home, including children, but was stopped.

Last week military prosecutors asked that the killer be given three consecutive life sentences for the murders and another life sentence for the attempted murders. At the sentencing hearing, the terrorist could be seen flashed a wide smile for the cameras. He is now going to get tens of thousands of shekels from the Palestinian Authority. His home is still standing, because the state has decided to destroy only one floor so that the rest of his family members would not be affected. But let's not forget that five of his family members were convicted of being an accessory to a crime because they failed to act despite knowing his plan.

The Salomon family petitioned the High Court of Justice and asked that the rest of his family home be demolished, but their request was denied. Yes, his family members should be treated with compassion despite his attempt to destroy an entire family, but we should also show compassion for future victims of terrorism.

Under Israel's emergency statutes, the military can demolish structures where terrorists had resided. Former Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein once wrote: "The defense establishment has shown that there is indeed a good reason to believe that such action does, in fact, deter terrorists from carrying out similar activity and the supporting evidence is overwhelming compared with other indications."

But the High Court of Justice has for years chosen to walk down a different path, imposing many restrictions on using this measure. This has undercut the state's deterrence and its efforts to fight terrorism.

Reconsidering Israel's "Quiet For Quiet" Policy In The Wake of Regional Developments - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

...The longer we postpone demolishing the military threat that has built up during "quiet for quiet" the greater the danger that attack capability is used as part of a larger operation against us.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
16 November '17..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=72892




As costly as it may be to act now, it could very well be the best choice of action.

"Quiet for quiet" has been Israel's operative policy ever since PM Ehud Barak's hasty retreat from Lebanon. Israel limits itself to attacks in the north against equipment still in Syria. "Quiet for quiet" applies once equipment reaches Lebanon, regardless of its nature.

That same policy, according to which the enemy can literally do anything and everything in preparation to attack Israel without being subject to an Israeli response, was extended to the Gaza Strip after PM Sharon's retreat.

Defense ministers, IDF chief of staff's and prime ministers all embraced "quiet for quiet", confident that it would be child's play for the mighty IDF to neutralize whatever assault capabilities the enemy managed to amass under "quiet for quiet".

But that was only part of the story.

Building Houses Will Be a Better Deterrent - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

...To be clear - I am not saying that the inconvenience of having one's house blown up doesn't have some deterrent effect. Just that there are better deterrents.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
18 August '17..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=72707

This morning the home of terrorist Adel Hassan Ahmad Ankoush, was blown up.

The idea is that the move will deter others.

Nothing is stopping the Palestinians from replacing the dead terrorist's house.

This in addition to the financial rewards the dead terrorist's family receives from the Palestinian Authority.

To be clear - I am not saying that the inconvenience of having one's house blown up doesn't have some deterrent effect.

Just that there are better deterrents.

Open Letter to Gen. Eyal Zamir - Your Assessment of Hamas is Disturbing

...Far be it from me to claim that this is an easy challenge. But with all of our special forces, technology and intelligence I am confident that we are up to this challenge. The next round we have to get it right. And its your job to make it happen.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
20 April '16..






Dear Gen. Eyal Zamir - Southern Command

Today you claimed that Hamas is "deterred" by its experience in the last round and then noted that Hamas is preparing for the next conflict.

I sincerely hope that you said that only for public consumption.

Because if you genuinely believe that Hamas is deterred then this indicates that you and the people briefing you are profoundly clueless.

As you yourself noted, Hamas is preparing for the next war.

And thanks to the "quiet for quiet" arrangement with Israel, they are preparing for the next round under ideal conditions.

They can openly train forces for the next round - today they even had a live fire exercise - confident that the IDF won't interfere.

They can openly develop, test and manufacture weapons - confident that the IDF won't interfere.

They can even fly various platforms practicing in earnest for the day that these platforms will cross into Israel - confident that the IDF won't interfere.

No. Hamas is not deterred. They are patient.

I daresay that when I compare the behavior of Israel to that of Hamas that we are the deterred party.

Can Hezbollah be disarmed without war? Unfortunately, we don’t live in that kind of world. - by Vic Rosenthal

...Can Hezbollah be disarmed without war? In a perfect world, that would have happened in 2006, as a consequence of a better UN Security Council resolution. We don’t live in that kind of world.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
21 February '16..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2016/02/its-a-mad-mad-world/


Si vis pacem, para bellum [he who desires peace, prepare for war] – Vegetius

Anyone older than about 30 remembers the “balance of terror,” or in academic terms, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). This meant that the US and the Soviet Union each had enough deliverable nuclear weapons to utterly destroy the other, and systems in place to respond after an attack was launched but before it struck, or weapons that could survive a first strike (“second-strike capability”).

MAD proponents reasoned that as long as both sides knew this, it would be illogical to attack first. And if neither side attacked first, then there would be no nuclear war.

There were some interesting implications. For example, if one side had an effective antimissile system, then it might assume that it could survive an attack by the other side, and might be tempted to make a preemptive strike. Another paradox was the moral dilemma of the man with his finger on the button after it was determined that the other side had already launched its ICBMs. Should he retaliate? His country was already doomed, so why increase the suffering by destroying his enemy?

Many things can destabilize a MAD standoff. I mentioned antimissile systems, but shelters for population and hardening of infrastructure could also have that effect. There are also political factors, as we shall see.

Regardless of the logic or illogic of MAD, it seems to have worked for several decades, from the 1960s until after the breakup of the Soviet Union (it’s not clear if it still applies between the US and Russia or China).

A form of MAD appears to be in place today between Israel and Iran/Hezbollah, although nuclear weapons are (as far as I know) not involved yet. Hezbollah has more than 100,000 short, medium and long-range missiles, and probably attack tunnels under the border. These weapons pose a serious threat to Israel. Israel, in turn, has the ability to completely destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon as well as to turn the southern part of the country – where most of Hezbollah’s missiles are embedded in civilian neighborhoods – into a wasteland, using conventional weapons.

The damage to both countries in the event of a full-scale exchange of fire would be great, although it would not approach the devastation that a nuclear war between the US and the USSR would have wrought. But the logic is similar in that mutual deterrence will be maintained as long as the expected damage would be unacceptable to both sides.

Both sides are working to prevent the other side from unbalancing the equation. So Israel is deploying antimissile systems and (at least talking about) hardening infrastructure, while Hezbollah is trying to improve the accuracy of its missiles so that they will be a threat not only to civilians but to Israel’s airfields, command and control systems and critical infrastructure; and to obtain surface-to-air missiles, and other weapons. And then there are the political and psychological factors that can affect deterrence.

This is where it gets devilishly complicated.

Hezbollah is a non-state actor. It isn’t clear to what extent it acts independently and to what extent it takes orders from Iran. Naturally, the Iranian regime doesn’t care as much about the consequences of war to Lebanon as it would care about its own population and infrastructure. Put another way, Iran is willing to accept a lot more damage to Lebanon than the Lebanese themselves would – but nobody is asking them.

Israel Thinking Half Out Of The Box - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

This isn't the window to kick the can - it's the window to act.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
21 January '16..

Israel faces challenges on many fronts.

And there's a stark difference between Israel's performance in the north as compared to the handling of the Gaza Strip and general Palestinian challenge.

First a word of praise about the north:

Israel is thinking.

The topography of the border with Lebanon has been dramatically altered to make cross border operations considerably more difficult.

Resources have been devoted to both develop and practice massive coordinated responses if we find ourselves in a slugfest with Hizbullah.

And most important, for the time being we have succeeded in reaching an understanding with Russia about Israeli operations despite the presence of Russia's top S-400 defense system.

Yes, the Russians have every interest in the world - both commercial and military - not to have Israel demonstrate that there are ways to operate in the theatre despite the S-400's. But by the same token, Israel has every interest in the world to save this vital "bag of tricks" for a more critical operation rather than reveal to Russia now what holes there are in the S-400 so that Russia can upgrade it.

The Gaza Strip, unfortunately, appears to be a completely different story.

Let's be clear: Hamas isn't deterred. It's patient.

Iran’s anti-Semitism: Too deep for deterrence?

...assume, prudently, that the Iranian regime means what it says about Jews and their “Zionist entity.” Then apply Snyder’s warning: Ideas have consequences. The idea of anti-Semitism is uniquely durable and remarkably multiform. It can express a mentality that is disconnected, as in Hitler’s case, from calculations of national interest. Hence an anti-Semitic regime can be impervious to the logic of deterrence. Much, including Israel’s calculation of what military measures are necessary for its safety, depends on the nature of Iran’s anti-Semitism.

George F. Will..
Opinion/Washington Post..
30 October '15..

Yale University historian Timothy Snyder is indebted to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently made Snyder’s new book even more newsworthy than his extraordinary scholarship deserves to be. And Netanyahu is indebted to Snyder, whose theory of Hitler’s anti-Semitism is germane to two questions: Is the Iranian regime’s anti-Semitism rooted, as Hitler’s was, in a theory of history that demands genocide? If so, when Iran becomes a nuclear power, can it be deterred from its announced determination to destroy Israel?

Netanyahu recently asserted, again, that a Palestinian cleric was important in Hitler’s decision to murder European Jews. Netanyahu said that on Nov. 28, 1941, when Hitler supposedly preferred to expel Europe’s Jews rather than exterminate them, Haj Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem, met with Hitler and urged him to “burn them.”

Certainly the mufti favored genocide; he certainly was not important in initiating it. Mass murder — the Holocaust — accompanied the German army, especially after the September 1939 outbreak of war, and especially after the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Granted, it was not until the January 1942 Wannsee Conference that the “final solution” became explicit. But by the time Hitler met the mufti, approximately 700,000 Soviet Jews had been shot. Snyder, not Netanyahu, should be heeded concerning the Holocaust’s genesis.

Attempts to explain Hitler’s obsession with Jews began with the idea that he was unfathomable, a lunatic “Teppichfresser” (carpet eater). The comforting theory was that no theory can explain Hitler because he was inexplicable, a monster, a phenomenon without precedent or portent.

In 1996, however, Daniel Goldhagen’s book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” argued that the explanation for the genocide was acculturation — centuries of German conditioning by the single idea of “eliminationist anti-Semitism.” This cognitive determinism reduced Hitler to a mere catalyst who unleashed a sick society’s cultural latency.

This drew a rejoinder from Christopher Browning, author of “Ordinary Men” (1992), a study of middle-aged German conscripts who became consenting participants in mass-murder police battalions in Poland. Browning noted that protracted socialization — centuries of conditioning — could not explain the Khmer Rouge’s murder of millions of Cambodians or the Chinese slaughter of millions of Chinese during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.