The Rationale behind the Israeli Raid in Syria:

Restoring Deterrence, Sending a Moral Message

In the wake of the Israeli air force raid on a training base for the Iranian revolution’s Palestinian proxies—Ramadan Shalah’s Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)—the usual buzz of condemnation arose, enveloping Israel as well as the courageous support extended to us by the Bush administration.

 It is easy enough to tell the government of Israel and the IDF high command—and the White House—what they should not have done. Stock phrases fall like raindrops from the well-balanced pens of wise men (and women) responsible for editorial pages the world over (and Israeli papers join the fray): Why does Israel “perpetuate the cycle of violence?” What good will this pattern of “tit for tat” ever do? Doesn’t this raid into Syria “expand the scope of the conflict?” Why doesn’t Israel first exhaust the diplomatic or the UN options? Doesn’t U.S. support encourage “wild elements” within the Israeli cabinet?

Let us, in response, leave aside (if only for the moment, for the pain is too deep) the fact that we have just buried two whole families, including four children, and another three-year-old is now fighting for his life with a piece of heroic jihadi metal lodged in his brain, while large elements in the Arab world celebrate this ghoulish act as a “martyrdom operation.” (Even a reporter for the BBC in Arabic used this foul term yesterday morning in reference to the murder in Haifa.)

Let it also be granted that the world has the right to hold Israel to impossible standards of maturity and restraint, while Arabs speaking about “revenge” are regarded as quite normal—a form of reverse racism that the Arabs themselves should have protested long ago.  Still, the arguments listed above—even if their underlying assumption is that the Israeli defense establishment should be spoken to as if it were a group of obtuse toddlers squabbling in a kindergarten, in need of the adult supervision of editorial writers—deserve an answer.

A short version of the answer would be, more or less, that Israel’s actions are not nearly as mindless as the editorialists’ language implies: This is a war (to be more precise, a campaign in the “War on Terrorism,” better defined as WWIV); and wars have reasons and purposes well beyond “a cycle” of “tit for tat.” No, it is not the raid that expanded the scope of conflict; it was expanded long ago by the Syrian practice of harboring murderous organizations. Yes, we did first exhaust all other options, including the breathtaking peace proposal made by Ehud Barak in March 2000. And no, American support does not encourage the radical far right in Israel; it helps the political centrists argue that we are not alone and should therefore do our best to maintain the moral underpinnings of the special relationship. To turn against Israel in the midst of our agony has been a European practice for years—precisely the reason why the Europeans, and their friends in the Israeli political spectrum, have all but lost even the last vestige of their influence.

Moreover, the moaning about Israel’s mindless countermeasures fails to reckon with the most elementary imperative of all Israeli leaders and commanders since the days of David Ben-Gurion—namely, the need (rooted in a state of virulent enmity, and rarely discussed in polite company, where the very concept of an “enemy” is abhorrent) to create, maintain, and at times restore our deterrent posture. Until the happy day when the Middle East becomes like the Midwest, it is our ability to deter which prevents the region, at any given time, from becoming even more “nasty and brutish” (to use Hobbes’s fierce language). This deterrent posture extends from murky Arab assumptions about a “doomsday weapon” all the way down to the demolition of the murderers’ homes; and while it is obviously not a catch-all solution, it is still a vital element in guarding our future.

True, some attacks do continue, but Hamas and the so-called “Al-Aqsa Brigades,” Fatah cadres, have already been deterred—to some extent, and by different measures—and it was PIJ that “took up the slack” in the murder of babies and children in Negohot on Mt. Hebron, and now in Haifa: well-aimed blows at any prospect of normality, which organizations such as the PIJ abhor the most.

Meanwhile, we shall never know how many more acts of violence, from terror attacks to all-out war, would have befallen us—but did not—were it not for our  deterrence. At its core is the perception that Israel is serious about exacting a price from those who would kill Israeli citizens or train the murderers or shelter them. Any attempt to follow the present wave of cheap advice would lead, by leaps and bounds, to the collapse of Israeli deterrence. A defense concept that can only be implemented when the editorial writers approve is no concept at all.