The Blogs

Efraim Inbar

Efraim Inbar is president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) and head of the program on Strategy, Diplomacy, and National Security at the Shalem Academic Center.

This is a re-posting of a post written for the The Blogs of the internet news site, The Times of Israel, by Efraim Inbar, in which he enumerates the ways in which Israel, the bastion of democracy in the Middle East, by carrying the war to the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations, is protecting the West from the dangers of radical Islam. His article is a cogent argument for remaining determined to support Israel in the face of the sustained violent antisemitic protests, which, having erupted as a result of Israel’s retaliation against the cowardly attack of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, have forced the hand of the progressive wing of the U.S. Democratic Party and that of university administrators to reveal their antisemitic leanings in the name of humanitarian aid for the suffering Palestinian aggressors.

There are also the rogue states of China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia that are cooperating with and tacitly or otherwise encouraging the two terrorist organizations by supplying weapons in order to weaken and eventually remove from the Middle East the presence of the West and its support for Israel in the face of the continuing existential threat to its survival. These have been the geopolitical considerations involved since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

But these should not be the primary reasons for remaining true to the committment we, the United States of America made, by dint of the decision of President Harry Truman, to recognize the newly formed state of Israel, a decision by which most dramatically and vividly was fulfilled Ezekiel’s prophecy in the Bible of dry bones coming to life. This is the absolute crux of Christianity – that the God in Whom we believe does indeed exist, the eternal Yahwah, and that He is faithful to His promise to save a people for Himself through the Second Person of the Trinity, Yeshua. This spiritual hope is ultimately based on faith, imbued in the one called by the Holy Spirit; however, how can we as Gentiles be assured of this escatological eventuality if this Eternal, Great God is unable to fulfill His promise to Abraham, and successively to Isaac and Jacob, to make the former a great nation, more than the sands of the sea? David, the progenitor of the God-Man Yeshua, was also given this promise. Yahwah sent Yeshua to reconcile sinners to Himself; those who are Gentile believers will be “grafted in” to the vine of a believing Israel. Without the latter, the promise to the Gentiles cannot be fulfilled; therefore, Satan is doing everything he can to make sure this doesn’t happen. Yet, his doom is sure.

So is that of the one who turns his back on Israel. Yahwah has made that clear in His Word when He told Abra[ha]m that “I will bless the one who blesses you and I will curse the one who curses you.” This obviously applies beyond Abra[ha]m to the nation which he fathered. Consider the nations of the world that actively drive forward an anti-Israel policy, then how their domestic and foreign policies in general are floundering. The latter situation is a consequence of the former, which is directly linked to a largely atheistic approach to life. The United States has been blessed because it chose to stand behind Israel; however, these days of blessing are rapidly coming to an end as on at least two occasions, under Democratic administrations, the U.S. NATO representative was ordered to abstain on UN votes critical of Israel, votes that were in fact critical to Israel. Only an intervening four-year Republican administration slowed the headlong rush to follow the other nations of the world into the abyss.

Needless to say, present-day Israel reflects the prevailing attitude of the majority of Jews (it would seem) that Jewishness is nothing more than an ethnic millstone requiring observance of distinctive traditions that set them apart, but that have no bearing on a belief in God or in any way signify having been set apart for His special purpose and attention.

But this by no means nullifies the promise Yahwah made several millenia past. In fact, recent U.S. history has been inextricably bound, knowingly or not, to Yahwah’s purpose for His people, Israel. Ipso facto, the United States has been blessed beyond measure. But it is evident that as the population becomes evermore atheistic, not even gnostic, in its approach to life, this hardness toward true spiritual matters is reflected in a hardening of its heart toward Israel, which, whether or not it realizes yet, Yahwah is using as the latter-day fulcrum by which to judge and condemn the nations of the world and their leaders, with one-time benefactor, the United States of America, among them.

Irban’s article begins below:

By standing up to Iran and its proxies, Israel prevents the Eastern Mediterranean from falling under the control of radical Islam

The Gaza war is not just a regional conflict; it reflects the primary challenge to the American dominated international order, headed by the quartet of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Hamas in Gaza uses Russian, Chinese and Iranian-made weapons and has built tunnels modeled after those of North Korea. Iran seeks to hasten an American drawback from the Middle East, a goal shared by Russia and China.

Alongside its religious opposition to the Jewish state, Iran has established a network of proxies to attack Israel, an American ally and the only state in the region powerful enough to oppose Tehran’s imperial and Islamic impulses. Israel stands as a Western bastion in the region, resisting this quartet.

Today, it is Israel that prevents the Eastern Mediterranean from falling under Islamic hegemony. Jerusalem is engaged in a war to destroy Hamastan, a radical Islamist statelet on the Mediterranean shores. Israel has helped Egypt, a Mediterranean state, to fight the Islamist insurgency in Sinai. The Muslim Brotherhood, which ruled Egypt for a little more than a year remains the strongest political force in the country, and under certain circumstances could potentially regain power.  To Israel’s north along the the Mediterranean shore lies Lebanon, where Hezbollah, a Shiite proxy of Iran, is the true ruler; Israel seems intent on defeating Iran’s main arm in the region. Syria envelops Lebanon to the north, along the Mediterranean, and from its east, and Israel is fighting the Iranian presence there.

Israel’s alignment with Greece and Cyprus helps balance the power of Turkey, a country that has been led for more than two decades by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an Islamist who encourages the Islamization of Europe and has hosted both ISIS and Hamas. Moreover, Turkey eyes control of the Eastern Mediterranean’s gas riches. Iran and Turkey have an interest in weakening the Western presence in the Eastern Mediterranean to facilitate access to and influence over the Muslims in the Balkans, as well as to control the routes of illegal immigration into Europe. West of Egypt along the Mediterranean coast is Libya, where the Tripoli faction in the civil war is penetrated by Islamists and aided by Turkey.  Russia too flirts with Islamic radicals such as Hamas and favors a reduced Western role in the Eastern Mediterranean to deny Europe access to the region’s energy resources.

The Gaza war is also a manifestation of Iranian ambitions to take over a region that was once part of the Persian empire. Iran’s mullahs have sought to wage perpetual and unbridled holy war against Western civilization and to place the Middle East and beyond within its orbit. Many of the region’s militias have been trained, equipped and supported by Iran and act against Israel and Western interests. Iran and its proxies are the main challengers to the status quo and actively threaten the national security of pro-western Arab states. The Arab states fear Iran, while Hamas is an anathema to their rulers. In Yemen, the Houthis interfere with freedom of navigation in the Bab El Mandeb strait, a vital maritime choke point, through which a significant portion of global trade passes. Recently, Cyprus, an island in the Eastern Mediterranean and a member of the European Union, was added to the list of states threatened by Hezbollah – the Islamist organization that controls Lebanon.

Western risk aversion and fears of escalation are counterproductive. In many places, restraint is often construed as a fatal weakness and may invite aggression. Contrary to prevalent Western attitudes that view the use of force as uncivilized and anachronistic, Middle Easterners see it a legitimate option in the toolbox of international actors. In this part of the world, in many situations, escalation is the best way to put an end to violence. Only escalation can bring an end to Hezbollah’s war of attrition against Israel or the blocking of the Bab El Mandeb strait by the Houthis.

Israel understands that readiness to escalate and bear additional costs signals determination to attain necessary goals. Therefore, being perceived as willing to escalate helps deterrence. Fear of retaliation serves to cool tempers all over the world. This is the rationale for the threatening behavior of the bully in a tough neighborhood such as the Middle East. Deterrence must be maintained over time by the occasional use of force. This is its only lubricant; empty words do not work.

Finally, the Gaza war has revealed again the Palestinians’ true colors. Their real problem is not where the border between the Palestinian state and the State of Israel lies, but the very fact that there is such a border, as so many Palestinians believe that there is no legitimacy for a Jewish nation-state. Indeed, all polls show that the Palestinians have not relinquished their revisionist dreams and are not capable of becoming peaceful neighbors of the Jewish state. Palestinian Authority spokespersons have refused to condemn the Hamas atrocities of October 7, insisting instead that Hamas is part of the Palestinian body politic.

In addition, the Palestinians have failed miserably to meet the Weberian test of statehood – monopoly over the use of force. They established two weak, corrupt and fragmented polities. The current Palestinian political trajectory is leading toward a civil war waged by a variety of militias, as seen in other Arab states, or to a Hamas dominated entity. Pushing for Palestinian statehood at this stage will only increase the chances for a deadly Israeli-Palestinian war in which both sides will suffer, but the Palestinian pain would undoubtedly be greater. The status quo, while far from ideal, is probably the less destructive option.