On Jewish powerlessness
While Israel’s military brass and political leadership dither about whether and how the country responds to Iran’s attack, the Israeli public has seemingly made up its mind.
Gidon Ben-Zvii
According to a poll released this week by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 74% of the Israeli public opposes a counterstrike ‘if it undermines Israel’s security alliance with its allies.’ A mere 26% are in favour of an attack even if it damages ties with Israel’s allies.
The country is questioning the legitimacy of defending itself following a massive barrage during which the Islamic Republic launched three hundred missiles and drones at Israel. Out of fear of alienating allies and further damaging international public opinion, Israelis are seemingly opting for a path of least resistance policy vis a vis Tehran.
Yet this decision not to decide at the present time, to opt for short-term quiet at the expense of long-term safety, security – even freedom – has not been followed by a collective sigh of relief. Rates of depression, anxiety, and PTSD are rising rapidly. This disconcerting trend began because of the October 7 Hamas massacre – after which Israel was almost immediately urged by friends around the world to exercise restraint.
As such, the national malaise is palatable.
But while Iran’s attack, during which 170 drones, more than thirty cruise missiles and over 120 ballistic missiles were launched, was unprecedented as it pertains to the modern state of Israel, this manifestation of powerlessness is not new, but rather an outgrowth of the Jews’ tortured history.
Indeed, Israel’s accommodationist reaction to a direct assault by the Islamic Republic, effectively outsourcing its security to allies near and far, recalls Ruth Wisse’s eye-opening analysis of the historic Jewish relationship to power.
In Jews and Power, Wisse contends that to survive as a distinct group in the diaspora for almost 2,000 years, Jews implemented a strategy of accommodation to overcome political weakness and existential vulnerability. Without a land to call its own, 100 generations of exiled Jews sought to live as ‘a light unto the nations’ by seeking protection from their rulers.
This coping skill for a people without their own land, government, or army succeeded. Across time and space, great civilizations arose, thrived, declined, and disappeared into the fog of history. Yet the Jews insisted on existing, proving remarkably apt at adapting to the whims and caprices of their host societies’ centres of power.
But this accommodationist approach has, Wisse maintains, left the modern state of Israel at a loss when confronting a ‘…political tradition of conquest and expansion’ that characterizes the Islamic world, specifically in the Middle East.
And as we are seeing in the hours and days after the Islamic Republic’s attack on Israel, accommodation so as to survive in exile has morphed into an aversion by a sovereign democratic state to exercising power, even though Iran’s actions amount to nothing less than a casus belli necessitating an immediate military response.
Israel’s leadership is proving to be overly deferential to the United States government, the modern version of the Jewish peoples’ primary benefactor du jour. The unique reaction to even the prospect of Jewish power can be contrasted with Washington’s approach to Ukraine in the latter’s war against another authoritarian bad actor, Russia.
Has the Biden Administration at any point urged Ukrainian restraint in the face of Russian aggression?
The oft-repeated fear that an Israeli military response to Iranian aggression will provoke a regional war is a contemporary take on the ‘political imbalance…Jews had in the diaspora,’ to paraphrase Wisse. Once stateless and powerless, today’s 7.2 million Jews living in Israel are now being accused of being too strong for their own good.
For a split second, it looked as if Israel was going to break the diaspora mould and retaliate immediately against Iran. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reverted to form after US President Joe Biden told him that the US will not support any Israeli counterattack against Iran.
Biden told Netanyahu the joint defensive efforts by Israel, the US and other countries in the region led to the failure of the Iranian attack, according to the White House official.
“You got a win. Take the win,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu.
How is this a win? Living in perpetual fear of the next attack order by the Iranian mullahs while depending on the goodwill of foreign governments, is an unprecedented reimagining of what victory is.
Despite the country’s miraculous success against the Iranian missile barrage, when Israel’s defence systems neutralized 99% of the attack, Tehran succeeded in establishing new red lines in its war against the Jewish state. Whereas the Islamic Republic had been content with outsourcing its anti-Israeli posture to ‘axis of resistance’ proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, it is now emboldened to take a more active role.
And continued operational passivity in exchange for such goodies as a reimposition of sanctions on Iran by the United States and uninterrupted military aid will only ensure that Jewish self-determination, as manifested in Israel’s freedom to act in response to attacks on its sovereignty, is sacrificed at the altar of merely surviving another day.
In the fateful days ahead, Israel has a decision to make: either fully embrace all the responsibilities that come with national sovereignty or continue to default to the accommodationist mechanisms employed by persecuted, despised diaspora Jews.
Before Israeli independence was reestablished in 1948, shifting political winds, wars, and economic upheavals inevitably resulted in one-time allies and protectors in Europe turning on the Jews in their charge over the course of centuries.
Time will tell if history is about to repeat itself…
Gidon Ben-Zvi is an accomplished writer who left behind Hollywood starlight for Jerusalem stone. After serving in an IDF infantry unit for two-and-a-half years, Gidon returned to the United States before settling in Israel, where he aspires to raise a brood of children who speak English fluently – with an Israeli accent. Ben-Zvi contributes to The Algemeiner, The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post , Truth Revolt, American Thinker and United with Israel.
