[A-List] Israel's Last Chance

[Bill Totten]

by Gabriel Kolko

Antiwar.com (March 17 2007)


The United States has given Israel $51.3 billion in military grants since 1949,
most of it after 1974 - more than any other country in the post-1945 era. 
Israel has also received $11.2 billion in loans for military equipment, plus $31
billion in economic grants, not to mention loan guarantees or joint military
projects. But major conditions on these military grants have meant that 74
percent of it has remained in the US to purchase American arms. Since it creates
jobs and profits in many districts, Congress is more than ready to respond to
the cajoling of the Israel lobby. This vast sum has both enabled and forced
Israel to prepare to fight an American-style war. But the US since 1950 has
failed to win any of its big wars.

In early 2005 the new chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force, Dan Halutz,
embarked on the most extensive reorganization in the history of IDF. Halutz is
an Air Force general and enamored with the doctrines that justify the
ultra-modern equipment the Americans showered upon the Israelis. Attack
helicopters, unmanned aircraft, advanced long-range intelligence and
communications, and the like were at the top of his agenda. His was merely a
variation of Donald Rumsfeld's "shock and awe" concepts.

The 34-day war in Lebanon, starting July 12 last year, was a disastrous turning
point for Israel. Until the Eliyahu Winograd Commission, which Olmert set up in
September 2006, delivers its interim report in late April - which will cover the
first five days of the war only - and resolves these matters, we will not know
precisely the orders sent to specific units or the timing of all of the actors,
but there is already a consensus on far more important fundamentals. But the
Israelis did not lose the war because of orders given or not given to various
officers. It was a war of choice, and it was planned as an air war with very
limited ground incursions in the expectation that Israeli casualties would be
very low. Major General Herzl Sapir at the end of February said that "the war
began at our initiative and we did not take advantage of the benefits granted to
the initiator". Planning for the war began November 2005 but reached high gear
by the following March before the expected kidnapping of two IDF soldiers - the
nominal excuse for the war. There is no controversy over the fact that it was a
digitized, networked war, the first in Israel's experience, and conformed to
Halutz' - and American - theories of how war is fought in this high-tech era.
The US fought identical wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - and is in the process of
losing both.

What were the Israeli objectives? - war aims, if you will. While the Winograd
Commission report may clarify this question, at the very least a number of goals
are known already. Halutz wanted to "shock and awe" the Hezbollah and their
allies with Israeli power - all within a few days. There were lesser aims, such
as moving the Hezbollah rockets well away from the borders or even getting its
two kidnapped soldiers returned, but at the very least Halutz wanted to make a
critical point.

Instead, he revealed Israel's vulnerability based, in large part, on the fact
the enemy was far better prepared, motivated, and equipped. It was the end of a
crucial myth, the harbinger of yet more bloody, but equal, armed conflicts or a
balance of power conducive to negotiations. Olmert and his generals very likely
expected to have a great victory within five days, thereby increasing his
popularity with the hawkish Jewish population that is a growing majority of the
voters, to reverse his abysmally low poll ratings, thereby saving his political
career - he received three percent popularity in a TV poll in early March.

There are many reasons the Israelis lost the war in Lebanon, but there is
general agreement within Israel that the war ended in disaster and the deterrent
value of the once unbeatable, super-armed IDF gravely diminished in the entire
Arab world for the first time since 1947. But the Israelis were defeated for
many of the same reasons that have caused the Americans to lose the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan - and in Vietnam as well. Both their doctrine and equipment were
ill suited for the realities they confronted. There was no centralized command
structure to destroy but small groups, lightly armed, mobile, and decentralized,
able to harass and ultimately prevail. The Hezbollah also had highly effective
Russian anti-tank missiles, and the IDF admits that "several dozen" tanks were
put out of commission, if not destroyed, including the Merkava Mark IV, which
Israel claims in the best protected tank in the world - and which it seeks to
export. They also fired around 4,000 rockets at Israeli population centers and
the IDF could not stop this demoralizing harassment. Hezbollah bunkers and
arsenals were largely immune to air attacks, which caused the Israelis to
"stretch the target envelope" to attack densely populated areas, with over 1,000
civilian dead. "Israel lost the war in the first three days", an American
military expert concluded, expressing a consensus shared by many US Air Force
analysts. "If you have that kind of surprise and you have that kind of firepower
you had better win. Otherwise, you're in for the long haul."

The problem, though, was not merely a new Arab prowess, though changes in their
morale and fighting organizations should not be minimized. Halutz' drastic
reorganization of the IDF since early 2005, one that was supposed to attain the
promises of all its American-supplied equipment, "caused", in General Sapir's
words, "a terrible distortion". The IDF was an organizational mess, demoralized
as never before, and on January 17 2007 Halutz resigned, the first head of the
IDF to voluntarily step down because of his leadership in war. Had he not
resigned he would have been fired. His successor quickly annulled his
reorganization of the IDF, which is now sorely disorganized. 
The American way of warfare had failed.


The Next War

The Lebanon War is only a harbinger of Israeli defeats to come. 
For the first time there is a rough equivalence in military power.

Technology everywhere is now moving far faster than the diplomatic and political
resources or will to control its inevitable consequences. Hezbollah has far
better and more rockets - over 10,000 short-range rockets is one figure given -
than it had a few years ago, and Israel's military intelligence believes it has
more firepower than it had last spring, before it was attacked. Israel has
failed to convince Russia not to sell or give their highly effective anti-tank
missiles to nations or movements in the region. They fear that even Hamas will
acquire them. Syria is procuring "thousands" of advanced anti-tank missiles from
Russia, which can be fired from five kilometers away, as well as far better
rockets that can hit Israeli cities.

If the challenges of producing a realistic concept of the world that confronts
the mounting dangers and limits of military technology seriously are not
resolved soon there is nothing more than wars to look forward to. The IDF
intelligence branch does not think a war with Syria is likely in 2007; other
Israeli military commentators think that any war with Syria would produce, at
best, a bloody standoff - just like the war in Lebanon last summer. Israel has
about 3,700 tanks and they are all now highly vulnerable. Its ultra-modern air
arm, most of which the US has provided, only kills people but it cannot attain
victory.


The New Israel - A 'Normal' Nation

In the past, wars produced victories and more territory for the Jews; 
now they will only produce disasters for everybody. The Lebanon War proved that.

Zionism was a concoction of Viennese coffee houses, Tolstoy's idealization of
labor, early ecological sentiment in the form of the wanderfogel that influenced
Zionism but various fascistic movements as well, militarism, and varieties of
socialism for parts of it, including bolshevism. Jews sought to go to Palestine
not only because of the Holocaust but also the changes in American immigration
laws in the first half of the 1920s. Without the vast sums the Diaspora provided,
Zionism would never have come to fruition. Every nation has its distinctive
personality reflecting its traditions, pretensions, and history's caprices, and
in this regard Israel is no different. It exists but it is becoming increasingly
dangerous to world peace - and to itself.

Zionism always had a military ethos, imposed only in part by Arab hostility, and
from the inception of Zionism's history its political and military leaders were
one and the same. Generals were heroes and they did well in politics. The logic
of force merged with an essentially Western, colonialist bias. Its founders were
Europeans, and it was an outpost of European culture until the globalization of
values and products made these cultural distinctions increasingly irrelevant. It
always has been a militarist society, proud of its fighters. And notwithstanding
the Cold War and the increasing flow of arms from the US, which, merged with its
e'lan, meant it won all its post-1947 wars until last summer, it still retains a
strong element of hysteria about the world it faced. And it is often messianic -
especially its politicians - because messianism is very much influential among a
growing portion of the religious and traditional population.

Israel has ceased being "Zionist" in the original sense of that ideology. 
For the sake of ceremony it retains Zionism as a label, just as many actual or
aspiring nations have various myths which justify their claims to a national
identity. But it is a long way from the original premises, in large part because
its war with its neighbors - especially the Arabs who live in its midst or
nearby - made its military ethos dominant over everything else.

Israel today is well on its way to becoming a failed state. Were it not for the
fact that this outpost of fewer than five million Jews is a critical factor of
war and peace in a much larger and vital region it would not be important or at
all unusual. But it is terribly confused and has a very mixed identity; the US
has since the late 1960s protected it. World peace now depends on this place,
its idiosyncrasies, personality, and growing contradictions.

Israel is a profoundly divided society and its politicians are venal cynics.
Many nations - and surely the Palestinian leaders until Hamas, by default, 
took over - are no different. As Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former foreign minister,
describes it, on one side there are economically disadvantaged Oriental Jews,
Russian nationalists who were motivated above all by a desire to leave the USSR
(an appreciable minority is not Jewish), and Orthodox Jews of every sort united
only by their intense dislike of "assimilationists"; on the other hand we have
secular Jews, some leftists and modernizers, more skilled and of East European
parentage who were once crucial in the formation of Zionism. There are an
increasing number of "Jerusalem-Jews", as Ben-Ami calls them, motivated to come
primarily by economic incentives, and they are bringing the Right to power more
and more often. They fear the Arabs who live in Israel. "Tel Aviv" Jews are
assimilating to a global, modernizing culture, more akin to the "normal"
existence the early Zionists preached, and they are also the emigrants out
because they have high skills. Israel now has as many people leaving as
immigrate to it, and North America alone is home to up to a million of them.

Some indications of these trends range from the banal to the tragic. There are
all varieties of punks, gays, everything. As for the ultra-Orthodox, some have
placed "curses" on those who advocate disengaging from any settlements in the
West Bank or Gaza; they will be punished by heaven. One of four ultra-Orthodox
Jews believes this is precisely why Sharon was struck with a coma. Martin van
Creveld, professor of military history at the Hebrew University and friend of
many IDF leaders, whose fame was made studying the role of morale in armies,
thinks the morale of the conscripts in the IDF is "almost to the vanishing
point; in some cases crybabies have taken the place of soldiers". "Feminism" 
in the armed forces has intensified the rot, but "social developments" have
destroyed much of the army - as have officers "who stayed behind their computers"
last summer.

Never before has Israel been wracked by so many demoralizing scandals. The
president of Israel just resigned because of rape charges against him, Prime
Minister Olmert is being investigated by the comptroller's office on four
charges of corruption, the new chief of police was once accused of accepting
bribes and fraud and his appointment has created an uproar, and other sordid
cases too numerous to cite. Israel is "stewing in its own rot", a Haaretz writer
concluded; the police, retired judge Vardi Zeiler commented after heading a
committee to investigate the state's operation, were like Sicily and the state
was on its way to becoming a mafia-style regime.

In this anarchy wars are motivated for political reasons but now they are lost
because the society is disintegrating and - again to quote a Haaretz writer -
the government "lacks both direction and a conscience". Worse yet, its leaders
are incredibly stupid and Olmert can only be compared to Bush in political
intelligence. There is a consensus among Israeli strategists that the Iraq War
was a disaster for Israel, a geopolitical gift to Iran that will leave Israel in
ever-greater danger long after the Americans go home. "Israel has nothing to
gain from a continued American presence in Iraq", the director of the Institute
for National Security Studies of Tel Aviv University stated last January. The US
ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein from Iraq and created an
overwhelming Iranian strategic domination. Its campaign for democracy has
brought Hamas to power in Palestine. "It's a total misreading of reality", one
Israeli expert is quoted when discussing America's role in the region. American
policies have failed and Israel has given a carte blanche to a strategy that
leaves it more isolated than ever.

Notwithstanding this consensus, on March 12th Olmert told the American Israel
Public Affairs annual conference by video link "Those who are concerned for
Israel's security ... should recognize the need for American success in Iraq and
responsible exit". "Any outcome that will not help America's strength ... would ...
undercut America's ability to deal effectively with the threat posed by the
Iranian regime ..." His foreign minister was even stronger. "Stay the hell out
of it", a Haaretz writer concluded. No group is more antiwar than American Jews,
Congress - in its own inept way - is trying to bring the war to an end, his own
strategists think the Iraq War was a disaster - and Olmert endorses Bush's folly.


The Syrian Option

It is in this context that the peace of the region will or will not evolve.
Olmert will do what is best for his political position domestically, and
retaining power will be his priority - no less than his predecessors and most
politicians everywhere. It is not at all promising. But for technical, social,
and morale reasons Israel will not win another war. At every level, it has
become far weaker. It can inflict frightful damage on its enemies but it cannot
change the fundamental balance of all forces that lead to victory.

Making peace with Syria would be a crucial first step for Israel, and although
the Palestinian problem would remain it would nonetheless vastly improve
Israel's security - and disprove the Bush's Administration's contention until
very recently that negotiations with Syria or Iran on any Middle East question
involves conceding to evil. The Israeli press reported in great detail the
secret 2004-05 Israel-Syria negotiations, which were very advanced and involved
major Syrian concessions - especially on water and Syrian neutrality in a host
of political controversies with the Palestinians and Iranians. It also reported
that Washington followed these talks closely and that it - especially Cheney's
office - opposed bringing them to a successful conclusion. At the end of January
many important members of Israel's foreign policy establishment publicly urged
reopening these talks.

Olmert dismissed Syria's gestures categorically after they became public. 
"Don't even think about it" was Secretary of State Rice's view of a treaty 
when she saw Israeli officials in mid-February. But though Mossad supports the
obdurate Rice-Olmert view, military intelligence argues that Syria's offers are
sincere and serious. Moreover, intelligence's head warned that Syria is growing
stronger and peace was very much to Israel's interest. He was supported by most
of the Foreign and Defense ministries, including Minister of Defense Amir Peretz.
Olmert demanded, and got, their acquiescence.

A treaty could be finalized with Syria within four to six months, Alon Liel,
former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry who negotiated with the
Syrians, reported the Washington Times on March 7. Liel was asked to come to the
US embassy in Tel Aviv about this time and tell the entire political staff of
his talks. The reports in Haaretz, which included the draft treaty, were by then
quite definitive. Then the Knesset, Israel's parliament, invited Ibrahim
Suleiman, Syria's representative to the talks, to speak to the foreign affairs
and defense committees. Such invitations are very rare, not least because Syria
and Israel are legally in a state of war. But if the Syrians and Israelis go to
war again, the normally hawkish Martin van Creveld concluded at this time,
Israel "could wreak much destruction, but it could not force a decision". 
In three or four years the Syrians would be ready for a protracted war that
would prove too much for Israel. After running through his bizarre alternatives,
and the state of the IDF's morale, van Creveld concluded that reaching a peace
with Syria was very much to Israel's interests - and that even the Americans
were coming to the position that talking to Syria and Iran (as the
Baker-Hamilton panel had recommended last December) was rational.

Syria has been attempting desperately to improve its relations with Washington,
if only to forestall some mad act on the US' part. When Israel attacked Lebanon
last July, Elliott Abrams, in charge of the Middle East at the National Security
Council, along with other neocons in Washington, urged it to expand the war to
Syria. At the end of February Syria renewed its appeal to the US to discuss any
and all Middle East issues with it in "a serious and profound dialogue". 
For over two years it has made similar attempts; Baker knew all about these.
Talking to alleged adversaries is perhaps the most fundamental point of
difference between Cheney, his neocon alliance, and Rice, and it covers North
Korea, Iran, and many other places. The debate is less the nature and goals of
American foreign policy but how to conduct it - by the application of material
power and even the threat of war versus more traditional means, such as
diplomacy.

In the past several weeks, taking her cue from the Republican Establishment in
the Iraq Study Group last December, Rice has been winning points in this debate
but her successes are fragile. Cheney is a powerful, determined and cunning man
who knows how to succeed all too well with the president.

America's overwhelming problem is Iraq and, above all, Iran, and apparently 
the Bush Administration has now decided that Syria can help it in the region.
Ellen Sauerbrey, an Assistant Secretary of State, was in Damascus on March 12,
nominally to discuss refugees but she heard from the Syrians "that all the
questions are linked in the Arab region and that a comprehensive dialogue is
needed on all these questions". Syria has also mobilized the European Union,
which now favors a return of the Golan Heights to it. On March 13 the US
ambassador to Israel publicly stated a bald lie that the Americans had never
"expressed an opinion on what Israel should or should not do with regard to
Syria".

It is now entirely in the hands of the Olmert government whether to negotiate
with Syria.

Israel has ignored Washington on at least four very important issues, 
starting with the Sinai campaign in 1956, and acted in its own self-interest.
The Americans were Olmert's alibi but he can use them no more. There are other
crucial issues, such as the Saudi plan for the resolution of the Palestine
question, and never has Israel had a greater need for peace than at the present.
Instead, like the US, its head of state may be the worst in its history,
motivated by short-term political advantage and a consummate desire to retain
power.

But the Syrian option is there for the taking. If there is war then the brain
drain out will accelerate and migration in will fall; demography will take over.
Israel will then become the only place in the world a Jew is in danger precisely
because he or she is a Jew. If this opportunity is lost there will eventually be
a mutually destructive war that no one will win - the Lebanon War proved that
Israel must now confront the fact that its neighbors are becoming its military
equals and US aid cannot save it.

Indeed, America's free gifts enabled Israel to begin a war last July with
illusions identical to those that also caused the Bush Administration to 
embark on its Iraq folly.

_____

Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of
the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another
Century of War?, and The Age of War. He has also written the best history of the
Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical
Experience. His latest book is After Socialism.


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