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The
Future Battlefield in the Middle East
Azriel Lorber
Because of its limited size and
resources, Israel’s defense doctrine is based on a small standing army
and Air Force that will blunt any attack and enable mobilization of the
reserves.
In theory, Israel is vulnerable to
a surprise attack that may cripple its Air Force and reserve
mobilization. Since Arab air forces have in the past generally failed to
penetrate Israeli airspace, these countries have acquired ballistic
missiles to achieve this goal. Predictions derived from Arab tables of
organization, which are based on Soviet practices, use questionable
numbers. Furthermore, launchers, the number of which will be critical in
any surprise attack, are easy to manufacture and chemical and biological
agents might be employed to achieve meaningful results.
As a
result of a terrorist atrocity or a political upheaval in one of the
region's countries, Israel may be drawn into a war that may start by an
attempt to overwhelm its defenses and population by missile attacks.
Anti-missile defenses will give potential aggressors second thoughts but
are contingent on numerically and organizationally strong defense
systems, capable of repulsing a massive first strike.
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Iraq – The
Preparations for War
Shawn Pine
Despite fielding one of the largest
militaries in the region, Iraq poses a negligible challenge to US forces
in any potential conventional confrontation. A decade of sanctions has
left Iraqi conventional forces in disarray and ill prepared for modern
combat. Iraq’s armored forces and aircraft are less than half the size
they were prior to the 1991 Gulf War.
More important, these forces are
antiquated as compared to US forces. Unlike in 1991, the United States
enjoys an enormous familiarity with the area of operations, potential
targets, and the potential threat. With the possible exception of the
Republican Guard forces, the Iraqi forces are poorly trained, lack
competent leadership, and are suffering from low morale. These factors,
coupled with a decade of technological improvements in US smart weapons,
will ensure that any conventional war will result in a decisive military
victory within a short period of time.
This reality has prompted Saddam
Hussein to try to continue his robust non-conventional weapons
development program. While the UN weapons inspection regime, coupled
with international sanctions, has retarded its non-conventional weapons
development program, it has not prevented Iraq from making substantial
progress in its programs. Currently, Iraq possess a credible biological
and chemical offensive capability and is close (within 1-3 years) to
producing a nuclear weapon. Acquisition of a nuclear weapon will afford
Iraq a deterrent credibility that will allow it to continue its pursuit
of regional hegemony.
The main
challenges to United States military operations are political. The
international community, driven by a fear of war and lucrative economic
deals with Iraq, currently opposes US military operations. Iraq will
attempt to exploit this schism by agreeing to another UN inspection
regime. Iraq estimates that it can hide critical components of its
weapons of mass destruction programs from inspectors and forestall
military operations.
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Assassinating Saddam: The View From International Law
Louis René Beres
Can there ever be any justification
for assassination under international law? As the United States prepares
for war against Iraq, it is clear that “regime change” is an integral
part of the American plan.
Although such a use of force would
seem to violate basic legal norms, exactly the opposite is true. For
several thousand years, in fact, scholars have argued persuasively that
tyrannicide is not only permissible, but indispensable. Today, when
Saddam Hussein is preparing to acquire nuclear weapons, the argument for
lawful assassination is more compelling than ever.
International law is not a suicide
pact. The right of anticipatory self-defense, long-established as part
of customary international law, was reaffirmed recently by the Bush
Administration in its National Security Strategy of the United States
of America (released September 20, 2002).
Here the President expanded upon
the traditional notions, asserting correctly that weapons of mass
destruction reduce the defending state’s obligation to wait until the
danger posed is “imminent in point of time”. Of course the United States
position on this matter of assassinating Saddam extends equally to any
other state which might face Iraqi nuclear aggression. In the case of
Israel, the right to strike first against Saddam likely exceeds that of
the United States.
In the
best of all possible worlds, assassination could never be regarded as a
proper form of remediation. Yet, we do not live in the best of all
possible worlds, and failure to remove Saddam Hussein by assassination
would result in the killing and torturing of tens of thousands of
innocent civilians. Recognizing this, international law affirms, in
various authoritative forms and sources, that in certain circumstances,
assassination may represent a substantially life-saving use of armed
force in world politics.
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The Crisis of
the Israeli Arabs: What Can Be Done?
Raphael Israeli
Excerpt from the book,
Arabs in Israel:Friends or
Foes?, by Raphael Israeli
Eli Gabbai, Publisher with ACPR Publishers, (Hebrew), 2002,
Hardcover, 280 pages
The
current crisis in the relations between the State of Israel and its
large Arab minority has peaked since the October 2000 events. Added to
this, the flurry of the recent revelations of Israeli Arabs’ involvement
in terrorist activities against the country where they seek equality,
has made devising new measures by the authorities imperative, in order
to avert a major disaster in the not-too-distant future. These measures
can be categorized in two levels of emergency: immediate, pending a
solution, and medium- to long-range with a view to finding a permanent
solution for this festering issue. In the short term, Israel must create
an incentive for the Israeli Arabs to identify with their state, on an
individual, not collective, basis, especially by integrating those who
accept to be integrated, into the national security service and system
of education, in Hebrew, together with all Israeli youth, and then
ensuring full citizenship and participation in all avenues of
advancement in the state; and at the same time depriving those who
refuse to comply of all the perks of citizenship, including the right to
vote and civil amenities, and let them educate their children as they
wish, but at their own expense. In the long run, the fate of Israeli
Arabs, should be linked to the Palestinian entity, with which they claim
affiliation and to which they vow their loyalty. When a Palestinian
entity emerges, they will be allowed to gain its citizenship, while
remaining only as alien residents in Israel, without the right to vote,
so as to neutralize the demographic menace they pose to Israel in the
present circumstances.
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Israel's Information Policy and The Challenge of Ideological Warfare
Joel Fishman
From the time of Ben
Gurion, Israel’s leaders have not recognized the need for a
well-conceived information policy. Traditionally, they have viewed world
public opinion with indifference, passivity, or fatalism. Israel now
faces a new situation: an aggressive ideological assault whose objective
is to undermine and delegitimize the state. Ideological warfare, as
opposed to public relations, represents a compelling danger requiring a
vigorous and focused response. This article defines the concept of
ideological warfare and recommends several responses.
The basic precondition of
making Israel’s case before world public opinion is a clear idea of its
own history and national identity. Because the present derives from the
past, the importance of history as the foundation of information policy
is basic. Accordingly, Israel’s enemies have endeavored to attack its
legitimacy by falsifying both the history of the state and the history
of the Jewish people. When combined with current post-Zionist thinking,
this has created a situation harmful to a positive information policy.
Several major components
of ideological warfare are identified. One is the “Big Lie”, which
English propagandists introduced during the First World War and German
Nazi leaders refined. Repetition, as employed in advertising, is its
principle. A second tactic, combining propaganda with political
agitation, may be found in Israeli domestic politics. Lenin developed
this method in the early 1920s, as a means of destabilizing his
adversaries through an appeal to pacifistic sentiments. Such tactics,
perfected by the foremost totalitarian states of the twentieth century,
represent a threat to Israel, a democracy at war.
Israel has a strategic interest in responding proactively and forcefully
to the very considerable threat of ideological warfare. The government
must speak clearly with one voice. It must challenge misrepresentations
and lies and discredit those who spread them, be they individuals, the
press, governments, international bodies, and NGOs. In the broadest
possible perspective, Israel has a strong interest in maintaining at
home and abroad an ideological environment compatible with its own moral
principles and the defense of its democracy, founded upon the rule of
law and equal standards for individuals and governments.
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Judge Barak,
Egalitarianism, and the Rule of Law
Paul Eidelberg
Although Aharon Barak, President of
Israel’s Supreme Court, ostensibly believes in the rule of law, he
appears profoundly ignorant of its prerequisites.
The rule of law ultimately depends
on reverence for law. Reverence, however, is a species of veneration,
and veneration is for things venerable, i.e., old. Yet Judge Barak
contends that Israel’s Basic Laws should be easily changed. But if Basic
Laws can be easily changed they can hardly be “basic” or become old and
venerable.
There is a more profound defect in
Judge Barak’s mentality: his judicial decisions are radically
egalitarian. Egalitarianism implies not only equality between
individuals but also between generations, which is obviously
subversive of reverence, the precondition of the rule of law.
Judge Barak’s activism is a logical
consequence of his egalitarianism. The democratic assumption that all
generations are all equal enlarges the scope of his power. History
indicates, however, that the generations of mankind are not equal, that
genius flourishes in some generations and not in others, indeed, that
great lawmakers are even rarer than philosophers. How many generations
have produced a Moses, or, in modern times, a James Madison?
Whereas Judge Barak would have
Israel’s Basic Laws readily amendable, Madison warns that frequent
amendment would “deprive the government of the veneration which time
bestows on every thing, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest
governments would not possess the requisite stability.”
Madison
deemed reverence for law essential to good government. However, since
egalitarianism is subversive of reverence, it must in some instances be
subversive of good government! Accordingly, wise statesmen have limited
the application of equality by requiring extraordinary majorities to
amend a nation’s constitution. This is an essential precondition of the
rule of law. Israel, of course, has no constitution, which very much
accounts for the fact that the rule in this country has become the
rule of Judge Aharon Barak.
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Islamic Terror
in Southeast Asia
K.P.S. Gill and Ajai Sahni
The idea that there has
been a “shift” in the “locus of terrorism” towards South Asia is
currently being vigorously propounded. This paper would analyse trends
in terrorism and sectarian violence in this region in the context of
the hypothesis that it is more accurate to speak of the spread or
expansion of the sphere of terrorism, rather than any “shift”.
Indeed, as terrorists secure even limited successes in one region,
their methods are adopted in others, threatening an ever-widening
spectrum of nations and cultures.
Extremist Islam is at
the heart of this malignant expansion and, while terrorist activities
and safe havens may manifest apparent and transient shifts as a result
of tactical and strategic exigencies, the locus of the ideologies that
inspire this brand of Islam has remained firmly fixed.
South Asia comprises
the largest concentration of Muslims in the world, and has a long
history, both of communal confrontation and violence, on the one hand,
and of co-existence within an eclectic culture that has accepted
differences, on the other. This duality is ingrained in the unique and
diverse set of practices and beliefs that comprise Indian Islam. But
Indian Islam is, today, under a deep and penetrating attack, a
“hardening” of beliefs that may lend itself to the extremist jihad
in an uncertain future. This is compounded by a process of
“encirclement” and massive demographic shifts that deepen the danger,
particularly along India’s eastern borders.
This paper would assess
the threat of Islamic terrorism within the context of these broad
parameters. Specifically, it would focus on the following:
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The geopolitical
context of the Islamic extremist threat to South Asia.
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Islam in South Asia –
demographics, politicisation, schools and overview of sectarian
conflicts.
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Extremist Islamic
terror in South Asia, including the role of Afghanistan/Pakistan;
the conflict in Kashmir; and the growth of militant Islam in other
parts of the subcontinent, including India’s northeast.
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The strategies of
subversion, including patterns of demographic shift, the systematic
establishment of mosques and madarsas, and the “hardening” of
Islam throughout the region.
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International support and
linkages of Islamic extremism in South Asia.
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Islamic Judeophobia: An Existential Threat (II)
Robert S. Wistrich
The Islamic terrorist perpetrators
of the September massacres speak a language of hatred for America, the
West, Israel and the Jewish people: their mental structures and
world-views have striking analogies with Nazism. The attacks were
greeted with rapture in many parts of the Muslim world, including in the
Palestinian Authority. Muslim immigrants have carried these attitudes,
exacerbated by media coverage of the Middle East conflict, to their
Western hosts, resulting in an increase in anti-Semitic assaults on
Diaspora Jewish communities (especially in Europe).
Blame for Israel has been
ubiquitous throughout the Muslim world. In this context, the present
intifada has made it plain that Palestinian, Arab/Muslim grievances
against Israel cannot be satisfied by territorial and political
concessions. The antagonism lies far deeper and goes well beyond the
issue of “settlements”. It extends to the entire Jewish national
project. A culture of hatred has arisen which has become an end in
itself. This image of the Jewish state as the incarnation of
malignant evil naturally encourages the idea that all the Jews of Israel
should be wiped out.
One finds a growing readiness among
Muslims to believe that the Jews consciously invented the
“Auschwitz lie”, the “hoax” of their own extermination, as part of a
plan for world domination. Holocaust denial gives Arabs a radical
challenge to the moral foundations of the Israeli state, their scapegoat
for their inability to achieve political unity, economic development and
other goals.
In 2002,
clearly very little has changed in the basic repertoire of Islamic
Judeophobia, but it has become more widespread, intense, radicalized and
militantly religious in character. Daniel Pearl was executed because to
be born a Jew has become for many Islamic fascists, as it was for Hitler
and the Nazis, an a priori reason to be executed.
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WMD in the Hands of Muslim Despots
Editorial
It is sufficient for one
cubic centimeter of anthrax germs, which has penetrated the ventilation
system of a large concert hall, to annihilate thousands of patrons
within 48 hours. The infusion of one liter of botulinum,
one of the deadliest toxins in nature, into the water sources of
a metropolis such as New York would probably cause the death of
millions. In extreme contrast to nuclear development, which costs
billions of dollars related to acquiring uranium from outside elements,
and requires a scientific infrastructure that generally is not available
to Third World countries, chemical and biological weaponry is available,
cheap, and no less deadly. The kill ratio of 30 liters of an anthrax
germ solution is equal in value to a nuclear explosion of 20 kilotons
such as used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Thus, with the end of the
Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the removal of the
threat of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD), not only did the “end of
history”, in the naive formulation of Frances Fukuyama, fail to
transpire, but in fact the potential increased of an incomparably
greater danger – the danger of weapons of mass destruction in the hands
of Muslim civilization. This is indeed a “clash of civilizations” as
Samuel Huntington aptly defined it. Islam, which has characteristics of
Nazism, is more dangerous than either the Nazi terror or the Communist
evil, since it does not draw its spiritual sustenance from a passing
ideology but rather from the principles of jihad, which it
derives from the categorical imperative of the Qur`an. Devoid of any
traces of morality, it sanctifies murder for its own sake with cries of
“Allah is mighty!” It now has the tools to implement its evil designs.
It is, indeed, an entire
civilization encompassing every fifth person in this world, and it makes
no difference whether he is a shahid on the altar of Islamic
fundamentalism, bin- Laden-style, or a “hero of the revolution”
of the socialist Ba`ath Party of Saddam Hussein; a serial-killer
from Arafat’s Fatah or a “human bomb” of the Hamas kind.
The Americans understood
this well on September 11, 2001, when no fewer than fifteen murderers
out of the nineteen were Saudis – their “allies” – and, concurrently,
Iraq’s buildup of weapons of mass destruction has been approaching the
level of critical mass.
Yet Iraq is only the tip
of the iceberg. Egypt and Libya do not lag far behind Saddam Hussein;
nor do Syria and Iran. The Muslim core developments radiate out in their
impact to potential allies such as North Korea, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.
Defeatism is a built-in
liability of democracies that has characterized the past one hundred
years. George Santayana’s familiar maxim that “those who cannot remember
the past are condemned to repeat it,” is once again fulfilling itself
before our eyes. Again, as in the past, it is France that stands at the
forefront of the “peace camp”, the defeatists, the greedy, the
anti-Semites. In partnership with it is Germany. The two (funded by
Swiss banks) are the main exporters of components of weapons of mass
destruction to the dictatorships of the Middle East.
Thus the determination of
President Bush, who has the wide support of the American public, to
uproot the regime of Saddam Hussein, is a source of wonder and hope.
Eliminating Hussein means much more than removing a habitual criminal.
Stripping Iraq of weapons of mass destruction will be a warning signal
to Damascus, Cairo, Teheran, and Tripoli.
What for
the United States is a long-term strategic calculation is for Israel an
existential necessity. The Jewish state is not exactly a superpower that
stretches over half a continent on the other side of the planet, and it
does not have an army of two million equipped with the best of strategic
systems. Israel is a microstate surrounded by enemies that are sworn to
its destruction, who are hundreds of times larger in territory and
population. The destruction of the regime in Baghdad and the
neutralization of the Iraqi threat therefore constitute additional very
important elements in ensuring its survival.
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The Bali Difference
Steven Plaut
I certainly do not mean to
detract for an instant from the horror and outrage over the Bali
bombing, but at the same time I cannot leave without comment the
dramatic differences in the reactions of the world to the Bali bombing
and the countless Arab atrocities against Jews.
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Not a single media outfit has
referred to the perpetrators of the Bali bombings as “activists” or
“militants”. Not even the BBC and CNN. Indeed, both
uncharacteristically used the “T” word to refer to the bombers.
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If it turns out that the car
bomb was triggered by suicide terrorists, no one in the world will
include those dead terrorists in the total body count of the “tragic
affair”.
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Not a single commentator has
been insisting that if the terrorists resorted to such violence,
then surely they must have legitimate grievances.
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Not a single commentator has
been insisting that if the terrorists resorted to such violence,
then surely they must be fighting for a just cause.
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Not a single commentator has
been insisting that if the terrorists resorted to such violence,
then surely it must be because they are so desperate and mistreated.
And no one demanded that Australia ask itself what it has done wrong
to earn such hatred.
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Not a single commentator has
been insisting that Indonesia and Australia need to open dialogue
and negotiations with the terrorists because – after all – there is
no military solution to the problems of terrorism.
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The Nobel Prize Committee has
not suggested that the perpetrators of the bombing be awarded a
Peace Prize.
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Meretz party chief Yossi Sarid
has not suggested that the poems composed by the perpetrators be
taught in Israeli schools.
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Israeli professors from the
Left have not yet organized petitions to demand that the demands of
the bombers be met.
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Jimmy Carter has not rushed to
Bali to endorse the demands of the bombers.
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Israeli leftist lawyers have
not yet offered to defend any of the bombers caught and indicted.
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Student demonstrators in
Berkeley did not stage mock street theater representations of the
bombings, showing the Australians as villains.
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Britain’s Chief Rabbi did not
declare that only withdrawal from occupied Australia is the
solution.
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Tikkun’s Mikey Lerner did not
refer to the bombings as “unrest” and demand that we all feel the
pain of the bombers.
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The University of Michigan and
Colorado College have failed so far to organize Solidarity with the
Bali Bombers Conferences.
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Canada has not confiscated any
leaflets that declare that Australia has the right to exercise
self-defense against the terrorists.
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The newspapers have not been
telling Australians that they brought it all on themselves for being
racist and insensitive and obstinate.
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No one has yet proposed
allowing the terrorists to set up their own state in New South
Wales.
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No one has described the Bali
bombing as “resisting occupation”.
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No progressive churches or
synagogues have offered to host the spokeswoman for the Bali
bombers.
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No one has described the Bali
bombers as moderates who need to be cultivated lest really radical
Islamist terrorists gain power.
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Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin
have not yet offered the bombers parts of Jerusalem.
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