Rightly did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert state that Syria and Iran represent, along with their Hizb’allah proxy, an “axis of evil” determined not only to wipe out the Jewish state, but to bring the entire Judeo-Christian West to its knees.

Amazingly, a growing number of senior Israeli ministers now want to treat with one of the main components of the axis - Syria. And this just days after Syrian dictator Bashar Assad delivered his most venomous warning yet that the Jewish state had better meet his nation’s demands or face a war of annihilation.

According to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, handing over the Golan Heights and signing a piece of paper with Syria will cause the latter to drop its anti-Israel affiliation with Iran and other nasties.

For some reason, many Israelis continue to think they can deal with the Middle East on a state-to-state basis, apparently ignorant of the fact that their Islamic enemy is one, united in its desire to see the “Zionist entity” eliminated. This is evidenced by the fact that the issue of Israel alone is able to cause Sunnis, Shi’ites, Wahhabis, etc to set aside their differences for a common cause.

Israel now risks traveling the route taken by a Neville Chamberlain-led Europe prior to World War II, when it attempted to appease Hitler by sacrificing Czechoslovakia. We all know now, of course, that the concession only whetted Hitler’s appetite for conquest.

It would seem natural that the more powerful of two opposing forces would dominate the cycle of escalation in any conflict between the two. But Israel’s just-ended war with Hizb’allah - fought in a world of up-to-the-minute newscasts and political considerations - has discredited that theory.

Every new Israeli move in the war was immediately met by a Hizb’allah escalation - Haifa was hit for the first time; then Tiberias; then the Jezreel Valley; then Hadera. And just the threat of escalating the conflict by launching long-range missiles at Tel Aviv is certain to have affected Israel’s decision making.

To one degree or another, Hizb’allah’s escalation capabilities helped to shape the way Israel fought this war. Hizb’allah effectively employed strategic deterrence against Israel.

Israel must turn this situation around if it is to have any chance of scoring a decisive victory in the next round. Israel, not Hizb’allah, must dominate the escalation cycle.

Failing to take this lesson to heart will only further whet the Islamic world’s appetite for Israel’s demise, which more and more voices are saying is just around the corner after the debacle in Lebanon.

Having been on the frontlines of or in a position of national leadership during every one of Israel’s major and minor wars with the Arab world, Ariel Sharon was largely recognized as the father of the Jewish state’s doctrine of strategic deterrence.

But Sharon was the last of his generation, and today’s leaderhip appears more concerned with perceived diplomatic successes than with maintaining that deterrence. Continue reading »

Israel’s many wars and mini-wars have several things in common. The same Muslim foe (though often wearing different masks), Israel’s unfortunate total reliance (at least for now) on the power of the IDF to win the day, and a deep national sense that even if to the rest of the world the battle appears to be nothing more than a border skirmish, much more is really at stake.

Another thing they all have in common is the inevitability that the United Nations, Europe and even the United States will at some point accuse Israel of employing “disproportionate force.”

The argument, however, seems to be bereft of all logic, especially coming from the US, where the doctrine of “overwhelming force” is the cornerstone of today’s military tactics.

At the Pentagon they understand that unless one side or the other is capable of employing force disproportionate to that of its enemy and actually does so, then there can be no victory. The status quo would be maintained in perpetuity, or at least until the Muslims’ were capable of launching a first strike that left Israel largely unable to respond.

The West today owes its freedom to the fact that no one was holding back America and Britain from employing “disproportionate force” against the Nazis and Imperial Japan during World War II. Likewise, it is in everyone’s best interest that Israel be permitted to truly defeat the forces of Islamic terror and tyranny surrounding it.

Make no mistake about it, as things currently stand, Israel has lost its war with Hizb’allah. Despite Defense Minister Amir Peretz’s ludicrous announcement Sunday that Israel has won the war, not one single stated military objective has been met.

Two Israeli soldiers are still in captivity, Hizb’allah is demonstrating once again today that it is still very capable of pounding northern Israel, and IDF troops and armor are being taken out in worrying numbers by a well-armed and highly-trained enemy.

Some in Israel will point to the terms of the UN-imposed ceasefire, which calls for Hizb’allah to withdraw north of the Litani River, as an achievement. But who is naive enough to believe the terrorists will really withdraw? Or that a sympathetic French-led force and the Shi’ite-dominated Lebanese army will actually enforce that stipulation?

No. Israel has lost. And Hizb’allah knows it. More concerning, the wider Muslim world knows it.

For decades Israel’s deterrence was based on the Arabs’ belief that the IDF was simply too powerful to be beaten. But this conflict, which saw a small band of terrorists use easily-obtained anti-tank missiles to inflict crushing losses on a mighty military machine, has ended that myth.

Israel, so long as it fights by the world’s rules, can be beat. That lesson will not be lost on the Arabs and Iranians the next time they decide to pick a fight. And it won’t be long before they do.

Kofi Annan and his buddies at the UN are daily fretting over the mounting humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, pointing to the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Israel’s military operations against Hizb’allah.

Meanwhile, the two million residents of Israel’s northern regions who have either been forced from their homes or into cramped bomb shelters by incessant Hizb’allah rocket fire are virtually forgotten. With the conflict dragging on longer than most had hoped, many can no longer afford to stay away, and find themselves forced to return north, full of fear and despair, putting themselves and their children in harm’s way.

Forgive me for playing the anti-Semitism card once again, but this smacks of precisely the attitude of the international community as Jews were being slaughtered in their millions by the Nazis during World War II. Then, too, the world did its best to ignore the Jewish humanitarian crisis until it had no choice but to acknowledge it due to the horrendous death toll.

Israel’s ability to deter Muslim terrorist aggression against its people is on the line in a big way in southern Lebanon. If Hizb’allah survives its fight with Israel, terrorists everywhere will get the message that they can hit the Jewish state hard without fear of suffering annihilation in response. They will understand that Israel will never be allowed to do to them what America is doing to Al Qaeda and its allies.

Eli Hertz summarizes the issue well:

“Unfortunately, Israel’s power of deterrent against ‘low signature’ guerrilla warfare that uses Palestinian civilians as shelter and terrorism as a political weapon has been diminished by a host of factors, external and internal: Israel’s isolation in the international arena (and apologists for Arab terrorism abroad and at home) are interpreted as an ‘insurance policy’ that Israel’s hands will be tied or partially tied in its response.

“In addition, despotic leaders’ misunderstand democratic debate and Israeli society’s genuine strengths and weaknesses and they misread limitations on the use of force stemming from Israel’s Jewish and democratic ethos. Well-intentioned policy decisions Israel has taken to defuse conflict and avoid friction have ‘boomeranged’ - perceived as cowering feeble-heartedness, undermining Israel’s power of deterrent.”

No one likes to see innocent civilians suffer, especially those who are held hostage by and oppose the actions of the terrorists in their midst. But if Israel does not put aside all other concerns and smash Hizb’allah now, this particular battle is just going to continue repeating itself, ultimately at the cost of far more civilian lives on both sides.

A prominent Israeli leftist who formerly advocated surrendering land to Israel’s enemies has seen the error of his ways as a result of the aggression pouring out of Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Playwright Yehoshua Sobol said in a recent radio interview:

“I was wrong when I thought that withdrawing to border lines would bring peace.”

Friday he went even further, slamming those handfuls of Israelis who are demanding an immediate cessation of hostilities against Hizb’allah:

“Anyone who supports an immediate cease-fire is essentially supporting Hizb’allah and it is beyond me how anyone from the Left can come out supporting such a group.”

It is a shame that it takes such tragic circumstances to get these people to wake up, but at least they do wake up. Too bad Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who continues to push his “realignment” agenda, cannot be made to open his eyes.

Ha’aretz military correspondent Ze’ev Schiff rightly points out that Israel has no choice but to win its fight with Hizb’allah, and must resist international pressure for a ceasefire that would result in any alternative outcome.

Hizb’allah at this point is simply fighting to survive. If it can come out of this mini war with even some of its fighting capability intact, it will be seen as having won a great victory by confronting Israel and then outlasting the Jewish state’s response.

This, Schiff warns, will create “strategic parity between Israel and Hizb’allah.”

In its early days, Israel paid dearly in four full-scale wars to establish a deterrence that has for decades held its foes in the wider Muslim world at bay. But if it now fails to actually defeat Hizb’allah, the perception of Israeli strength will be shattered, and other more powerful enemies will be greatly tempted to implement their “final solution” to the “Zionist problem.”

There is much talk lately of what is the “root cause” of the current fighting in Gaza and southern Lebanon, with much of the world pointing an accusatory finger at Hamas and Hizb’allah.

Former IDF chief Moshe Ya’alon took that one step further by pointing out that the Hamas and Hizb’allah aggression and provocations originated from areas Israel had completely vacated, disproving the long-held belief that “Israeli occupation” is the “root cause” of the wider Middle East conflict. Continue reading »