January 15, 2009
New York Times columnist Roger Cohen is a “smart, driven, liberal, Jewish” male. We know this because he told us so in a recent op-ed.
In another recent column, he told us that he “never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions.” Israel, he wrote, has the right to defend itself from Hamas, “but not to blow Gaza to pieces.” Nor does Israel have the right to “delude its people into thinking that peace is achievable without coming to terms with the deeply entrenched Middle Eastern realities that are Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Charles Krauthammer is a smart, driven, conservative Jewish male. He also has some free advice for Israel. He’s adamant that Israel not settle for a “Lebanon-like cessation of hostilities to be supervised by international observers.” Instead, he’s pushing for “the disintegration of Hamas rule.”
As a Jewish male (somewhat smart, kind of driven, and admittedly liberal) I also have some advice for Israel: Don’t listen to us. There are plenty of SDJM’s (and W’s), some L, some C. And the last thing Israel needs is more advice, especially from those who a) don’t live there and b) can’t possibly know the kinds of things a military, prime minister, and cabinet need to know to make the best possible decisions in their country’s defense.
I’m not taking up the argument about whether Diaspora Jews have the right to criticize Israel. That one’s been settled, and both Right and Left agree on “yes.”
I’m talking about offering strategic advice without fully understanding, or being expected to understand, what can and can’t be achieved on the battlefield as opposed to the negotiating table.
We know that Israel has the right to defend itself. We have evidence that Hamas is a dastardly enemy and that it obscenely hides behind its own civilian population in waging a war of terrorism and public relations.
We know, just by honestly comparing Israel’s actions with similar actions taken by other powers, that Israel is prosecuting its war on Hamas with relative restraint.
We also know that, as smart, driven Jews, we don’t like war, and we are deeply saddened by the deaths of civilians. We are given pause by the reports of Palestinian families suffering under bombardment and deprivation, and troubled by reports — even those we suspect of bias — that Israel has mishandled the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. And we tremble when we see the anger building in Arab capitals and the pressure being brought to bear on Arab “moderates” by their homegrown Islamists.
We can know all these things, and debate them. But we can’t know whether Israel can succeed in silencing the rockets or vanquishing Hamas or changing the equation, because we don’t know what the Israelis know. We can be skeptical, sure — we assured ourselves in 2006 that the IDF knew what it was up to in Lebanon, and even the Israelis admitted they stumbled badly there.
Not only is our knowledge base lacking, but so is our judgment. Some of us have taken our lessons from the post-Vietnam, post-Lebanon ethos that wars are no longer “winnable.” Maybe this is true, but would you be willing to risk your own children’s lives to test the proposition?
Certainly Israel is not willing to negotiate itself quite literally to death.
Others are blinded by a post-Oslo ethos that nothing good ever comes out of negotiation, certainly not in the Middle East. Such folks are willing to fight to the very last Israeli in order to maintain the status quo or “shake up” the region in a way they pray comes out to Israel’s advantage.
In the West, these are all subjects of dueling op-eds. In Israel, the stakes are somewhat higher.
If the Israelis are getting a lot of free advice, it’s in large part because they have not been great in articulating their aims for this war. (While nature abhors a vacuum, the punditocracy absolutely thrives on one.) But that could also be a function of strategy and improvisation, two hallmarks of a successfully prosecuted war. Perhaps Israel had to go in, with guns blazing, to determine what kind of enemy it was facing and how far it could go.
Personally, I’d like to see this war end yesterday. But I’d also like to see Hamas defanged and humiliated to the point that Gazans demand an alternative to their leadership and residents of southern Israel can have their lives back. These may not be compatible goals. I can’t know if they are, any more than Charles Krauthammer can know that Israel can fully rout the terrorists, or Roger Cohen can know that Israel can “come to terms” with Hamas and Hizbullah, whatever that could possibly mean.
This sounds like a formula for detachment. It’s not. We can still rally for Israel, and regret the casualties, and support the people and institutions that share our worldviews, from groups collecting supplies to aid and comfort Israeli soldiers to Israeli human rights groups that are assisting Gazan casualties. We can remind the media of their responsibility to report this war accurately and without bias.
We can do all this and still show a little humility as Israel seeks to silence what smart, driven Jews can agree is an intolerable provocation.
