“Israel will vanish by its 80th year,” Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah said in a recent televised address.
“Israel will vanish by its 80th year.”
Hassan Nasrallah
Nasrallah, like all of our enemies, is a great student of Israeli society and current events. They know that despite their advanced weaponry, they are not able to launch a successful war against Israel but they know that they can provide a tactical blow that helps an Israeli society as split as it has ever been to pull apart even further.
As Middle East analyst Jonathan Spyer recently noted “[Iranian] President Ebrahim Raisi, quoted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked Tasnim news outlet, said that the “Zionists are fighting each other and are in a hurry to destroy themselves.”
“[Iranian] President Ebrahim Raisi, quoted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked Tasnim news outlet, said that the “Zionists are fighting each other and are in a hurry to destroy themselves.”
Jonathan Spyer
Robust and raucous internal debates being exploited by Israel's enemies
Israel is a liberal democracy and that will not change, so it has always been subject to robust and even raucous internal debates. That is part of our strength but the splits in our society in recent months are being seen as a golden opportunity by our enemies.
It is no coincidence that rockets from almost unprecedented events, like rockets launched from inside Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and even from the territory of Syria, have landed in Israel.
These attacks, joined by almost daily terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria, rockets from Gaza and saber-rattling in Iran, mean that not only do they see this as a decisive moment for arguably the first time in recent memory but these groups and regimes are also beginning to work in concert.
We hear about rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Syria being welcomed back into the Arab family of nations, Hamas leaders liaising with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the much-vaunted Hamas-Fatah reconciliation. The message is clear. While we become more disunified, our enemies see their unity as a strategic weapon to achieve their goal of finally defeating Israel.
This might sound fanciful but clearly, that is the belief of our enemies and with belief comes a severe dent in our deterrence. When our enemies hear about Israel Air Force pilots potentially refusing to serve, about people leaving and taking their billions of dollars with them, they are emboldened.
AS WE approach Israel’s 75th Independence Day, we must take a leaf out of those who reestablished Jewish sovereignty in its indigenous and ancestral homeland.
In the early and middle parts of the 20th century, there were major ideological disagreements. There was fighting between the Labor and Revisionist camps. The Arlosoroff Affair and the attack and sinking of the Altalena and many other occasions had the ability to drive our people to civil war and put an end to the dream of Israel. However, wise heads prevailed and our leaders on both sides of the aisle put the national project before ideology and sentiment.
We need to recapture this spirit. We are not a weak nation whose future is in doubt as it was then. We are a powerful country with one of the strongest armies in the world. Our army is not some sector of society separate from the rest, it is our army. We serve in it and we send our sons and daughters to serve in it with one goal: the defense of the country and its people and to defeat our enemies.
We can have our disagreements but they should not distract us from the call of the day: to achieve victory over our circling enemies.
To paraphrase Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion: We must assist the IDF to win the war and we must continue our internal debates as if there were no war.
Our debates and disagreements can and should continue but they should be completely separate from winning the war that has been raging for over 100 years. A war our enemies feel whose tide is turning towards them for the first time in decades.
To win, we must have a unity of purpose and of spirit. Our enemies know that our unity is one of our secret weapons and has allowed us to progress and develop despite the wars of annihilation they have aimed at us on countless occasions.
We need to regain this fortitude and unity because with unity, there is no victory. Our enemies understand this very well and are taking active steps. We must also understand this even more quickly to demonstrate in word and deed that we will not just be celebrating our 75th or 80th Israel Independence Day but for many decades and centuries to come.
The writer is the director of the Middle East Forum Israel office.