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Friday, July 25, 2008
The Last Stand of the West
by Mary Katharine Ham
Note:
America—and the West as a
whole—cannot afford to ignore the
battles waged, lessons learned and
indignities suffered by the Israelis
who share our values and fight to
preserve them in the most
inhospitable of climates.The
following article is from the June
issue of Townhall Magazine. To
subscribe to twelve issues of
Townhall Magazine and receive a free
copy of Andrew Learsy's Over a
Barrel: Breaking Oil's Grip On Our
Future,
click here.
In the hilltop
neighborhood of Gilo in
south-western Jerusalem, the chilly
spring wind sweeps up through the
town of Beit Jala below, bringing
with it the stinging sands of the
West Bank.
An eight-foot-high wall takes the
brunt of the dusty breeze, as it
wings harmlessly up and over the
modern barriers of a conflict as
ancient as the sand it carries. The
wall was built in 2000 to protect
Israeli children in their schools
from sniper fire from the valley
just 100 yards below.
In the days of the second
intifada, Gilo was hit 400 times
over a two-year period by
Palestinian militants, injuring
residents and causing major property
damage. Palestinian terrorists,
moved by Yasser Arafat’s call to
arms, had forcibly overtaken the
homes and schools of Palestinian
Christians in the West Bank town of
Beit Jala to send terror into
Israel, as indiscriminately as the
desert winds that whisper through
the quiet valley.
Decorated by Israelis with
cartoon animals and idyllic family
scenes, the high, concrete sniper
wall of Gilo embodies the struggle
of a people to protect children
while preserving childhood. The wall
is a struggle to be both safe and
free.
The struggle is the same in
Metulla and Qiryat Shemona, where
the goal of the Israeli Defense
Forces’ Northern Command is to give
Israeli citizens near the Lebanon
border a “liveable life” within
sight of the bright yellow flag of
Hezbollah.
The struggle is in the small town
of Sderot in southern Israel, where
children play soccer on short
fields, the better to rush to a bomb
shelter. They have only 15 seconds
to run when a Code Red alarm warns
of another Qassam rocket from the
Gaza Strip.
It’s in Tel Aviv, where parents
let their children walk out the
door, hoping they don’t walk into a
club or a bus whose name will live
in infamy, such as the Dolphinarium
(21 dead, 100 injured in a suicide
bombing, 2001) or Bus 5 (22 dead, 50
injured in a suicide attack, 1994).
A Shared Enemy
It is easy in this, the 60th year
of Israel’s existence, to believe
blithely that the Middle East’s tiny
besieged bastion of Western thought
will continue to endure simply
because it always has. But, what
four hijacked American jetliners
brought home to the United States in
a horrific, towering blaze of
national tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001,
is that we are engaged in the same
struggle.
Radical Islamists had tried to
send the message before: when
Islamic Jihad bombed the U.S.
Embassy in Beirut in 1983, killing
63, and bombed a Marine barracks
killing 242; when Hezbollah killed
19 servicemen at Khobar Towers in
1996; when al Qaeda struck two U.S.
embassies in East Africa in 1998;
and when the same group drove a
dinghy into the U.S.S. Cole, killing
16 in 2000.
We neglected to draw the line
from Sayiid Qutb’s short educational
stint in Greeley, Colo., in 1948 to
the holy war waged against us in
2001. We did not see that the cranky
Egyptian scholar observed American
culture with disdain. It was, after
all, the year Israel won its
independence by defeating four
invading Arab armies—the Arabic word
for the war is “The
Catastrophe”—that Qutb first
developed his distaste for the West.
We did not know that his almost
comic dyspepsia would eventually
metastasize into a declaration of
all modern society as jahiliyya—the
unredeemed period of history before
the founding of Islam—making it open
season for jihad on Jews,
Christians, Westerners and even
secular Muslims complicit in the
maintenance of modernity itself.
Qutb’s “scholarship” boasted such
famous acolytes as Ayman al Zawahiri
and Osama bin Laden, and fueled the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a
branch of which now runs the Gaza
Strip after wresting it violently
from the more moderate Fatah party
of the Palestinian Authority in
summer 2007. That branch is Hamas,
and it now smuggles tons of
explosives per month into Gaza and
has shot more than 2,700 rockets
into the civilian population of
southern Israel since disengagement.
Ayatollah Khomeini, the other
father of radical Islamist thought
and Qutb’s Shia counterpart and
contemporary, founded an Islamic
state in Iran that now unites the
causes of extremist Islamists of all
sects by funding the wars of Hamas
and Hezbollah against Israel and the
terrorism of extremists in Iraq
against Iraqi and American forces.
This article is from the
June issue of Townhall Magazine.
To subscribe to twelve issues of
Townhall Magazine and receive a
free copy of Andrew Learsy's
Over a Barrel: Breaking Oil's Grip
On Our Future,
click here.
President Bush has always
advocated, wisely, taking terrorists
at their word, famously using Osama
bin Laden’s words in a 2005 speech
to stress that among terrorists
“there is no debate” about Iraq
being central to the War on Terror.
In that spirit, these are the
words of Hamas MP and Cleric Yunis
Al-Astal preached on Al-Aqsa TV in
April: “Very soon, Allah willing,
Rome will be conquered. … Today,
Rome is the capital of the Catholics
… this capital of theirs will be an
advanced post for the Islamic
conquests, which will spread through
Europe in its entirety, and then
will turn to the two Americas, and
even Eastern Europe.”
Make no mistake, it is the same
fight. From the craggy hills of the
West Bank to the lush heights of
Golan, Israel is a testing ground
for their tactics, a proving ground
for their martyrs and a potential
foothold for their bloody
philosophy. The West cannot afford
to ignore the battles waged, lessons
learned and indignities suffered by
those who share our values and fight
to preserve them in the most
inhospitable of climates.
Close Quarters, High
Stakes
As an American, standing in
Israel in 2008, it is hard not to
simultaneously despair at the
conundrum of our ally and admire the
determination of its people.
From the desert hills of the West
Bank, one can see Jerusalem, the
sky-line of Tel Aviv and the
Mediterranean Sea, a mere nine miles
across the country from an area
filled with its mortal enemies.
If one could look overhead and
see the missile ranges of Israel’s
neighbors painted red against a
brilliant blue sky, they would be as
inescapable as the sun’s blaze.
Hezbollah’s Zelzal-2 reaches 130
miles, deep into Israel’s south
where it meets up with the 12– to
24-mile range of Katyushas in Gaza.
The entire country and surrounding
regions are easily inside Iran’s
ballistic missile capabilities and
nuclear aspirations.
“You can literally fight a battle
in the morning and pick up your kids
from kindergarten in the afternoon,”
said a lieutenant colonel in the
Israeli Army.
Those are the stakes.
The proximity has advantages and
disadvantages. Israeli forces have
cultivated human intelligence of
varying ethnicities and Arabic
dialects for years. Today, U.S.
Marines travel to Israel twice a
year for desert warfare training
with the IDF, and the two countries
share both intelligence findings and
techniques, but there have been
times when the U.S. has not always
learned the lessons it should have
from its old friends.
Gideon Ezra, former Deputy Head
of the General Security Services in
Israel and a current member of the
Knesset with the centrist party of
Kadima, knows well the value of
human intelligence and the dangers
of operating without it.
“I knew when you went into Iraq,
you didn’t have enough Arabic
speakers,” he said, shaking his head
ruefully. “Without intelligence, you
can’t learn. Intelligence is No. 1.
We know, personally, everyone
there,” he said, referring to
Israeli operations in the West Bank
and Gaza.
When Israel makes a mistake,
either in tactic or negotiation, the
consequences are visited immediately
upon its civilian population.
Israelis don’t have the luxury
Americans are sometimes accused of
indulging in—“going to the mall
while the Marines go to war.” The
Jerusalem mall could become the
front lines within seconds.
“The departure was three years
ago and then our lives changed,”
said Sderot resident Chen Abrams of
Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza
Strip in 2005. “More than 60
missiles a day. … Life stops and it
stops for a long time,” said the
mother of one, who has decided to
stay despite the barrage, though 10
percent of the town’s population has
already left and more than 60
percent say they would if they had
the means. Experts are afraid the
ever-increasing threat of a nuclear
strike from Iran could have the same
effect on the entire country,
effectively eliminating the state of
Israel without having to nuke it.
In 2005, Israel ordered about
8,500 Jewish settlers to evacuate 21
settlements in Gaza, land occupied
since the Six-Day War of 1967. The
process was gut-wrenching, grown IDF
soldiers weeping as they pulled
fellow countrymen forcibly from
their family homes. The cost was
high, but the reward was a chance at
peace.
Standing in Sderot today, one can
see just two miles away the flat,
dirt expanse left by the razing of
Jewish settlements is now filled
with Hamas training camps.
“Today, to say that Gaza Strip
should be demilitarized, it sounds
like a bad joke, ” said Brig. Gen.
Yossi Kuperwasser of the IDF
Reserves, with a bitter laugh.
Kuperwasser, after years of hopes
lifted and crushed, has the same
assessment of the West that
Churchill had of Americans: It “can
always be counted on to do the right
thing ... after it has exhausted all
other possibilities.”
In the north of Israel, civilians
watched the same thing happen in
Lebanon. When Israel withdrew to the
internationally recognized borders
from its security zone in southern
Lebanon in 2000, it precipitated the
arms build-up by Hezbollah that led
to the 2006 war.
Though five weeks of fighting
dented Hezbollah’s capabilities and
sent Hassan Nasrallah to “live like
a worm in the ground,” according to
a major in the Israeli Army,
withdrawal has allowed a build-up of
rockets that will not go unfired.
This article is from the
June issue of Townhall Magazine.
To subscribe to twelve issues of
Townhall Magazine and receive a
free copy of Andrew Learsy's
Over a Barrel: Breaking Oil's Grip
On Our Future,
click here.
Even so, news broke this spring
that Israel, working through Turkey,
may be willing to restart peace
talks with Syria. The cost to Israel
would be the Golan Heights, captured
in the ’67 war, a strategic and
aesthetic high point of Israel’s
holdings. The reward, ostensibly,
would be peace with a longtime
enemy, though the outlook seems
grim.
This is the twisted, exasperating
road to peace in the Middle East,
lined with potholes, corkscrews and
roadside bombs, and Israel walks it
because it must. They will not kneel
in front of enemies, but they have
determined they’ll be ready to sit
down with them.
For most citizens, the withdrawal
from Gaza illustrated Jewish
willingness to endure pain for
peace. The Left supported it at the
time, the Right opposed it. Today,
Left, Right and Center are joined in
seeing the aftermath of
disengagement as an illustration of
Palestinian willingness to endure
pain to prevent the very thing they
claim to want.
Hamas regularly bombs border
crossings where Israel ships
humanitarian aid to Gazans. It
attacks the fuel depot inside
Israel, which supplies 70 percent of
the power to Gaza. It threatens the
Palestinian Authority’s grasp on the
West Bank and renders negotiations
meaningless.
The people
we’re dealing
with don’t
believe in
solutions,”
Kuperwasser
said. “There’s
a game going
on. Everyone
has a role and
reads from the
script, but
everyone knows
it’s just a
game.”
Winning Like
Westerners
And yet,
Israel
continues to
practice
restraint with
Palestinian
communities
and other Arab
neighbors who
seem more and
more willing
to cast off
the two-state
solution in
favor of a
single
solution for
the Jews.
The
security fence
between the
West Bank and
Israel is a
counterin-tuitive
example of
their attempts
to coexist.
Israel’s
critics call
it the
“apartheid
wall” and
bemoan the
separation it
causes between
the people of
the region.
But it was not
the wall that
caused the
rift.
The first
suicide attack
of the second
intifada
happened in
December 2000.
In March 2002,
100 people
died at the
hands of
Palestinian
terrorists,
the worst an
attack on a
Passover seder
at a hotel in
Natanya
killing 29 and
wounding 140.
They sent
the
traditional
murderers—angry
young men,
unemployed and
marginalized—but
they also sent
17-year-old
girls to blow
up
supermarkets,
two brothers
of 12 and 8 to
blow up a Gaza
settlement.
All of Israel
stood agape at
this new form
of evil.
The assault
was
particularly
shocking given
that Prime
Minister Ehud
Barak had
moved further
in the
direction of
Palestinian
demands at the
recent Camp
David talks
than any of
his
predecessors,
even putting
the division
of Jerusalem
on the
negotiation
table.
Palestinians
refused
sweetened deal
after
sweetened deal
without even a
pause in the
violence. It
was a barbaric
gambit to
bring the West
to its knees
by bringing
death to its
door.
By 2004,
Israel had
decided to
block its
doorway.
Today, a
400-mile
barrier
prevents 95
percent of
Palestinian
terror
attacks,
according to
Israeli
Defense Force
officials.
In the
center is an
electronic
intrusion-detection
fence, which
warns the IDF
of breaches.
When a
would-be
terrorist
trips the
fence’s
detection
system, the
IDF is
signaled and
responds
within
minutes. In
many cases,
the tracking
is done with
the help of
Bedouins and
Druze, tribal
desert
denizens who
are part of
Israeli
society and
offer their
ancient
expertise in
reading the
desert’s clues
to the modern
task of
counter-terrorism.
Most recently,
the Bedouin
Desert
Battalion
foiled an
attack from
Gaza on
Passover Eve.
A mere 4
percent of the
barrier is
made of
concrete,
though that’s
the section of
it you’ll see
most
frequently in
news reports.
The concrete
wall is
reserved for
densely
populated
areas and
along highways
where
motorists
would
otherwise be
subject to
sniper fire.
The
struggle is
constant to
minimize its
impact on
Palestinians
while
protecting
Israelis. The
fence boasts
44 gates to
provide
Palestinian
farmers access
to their
crops. Israel
has replanted
thousands of
olive trees
for
Palestinian
farmers, to
protect them
from the route
of the fence.
The very
route of the
fence is open
to petitioning
by
Palestinians.
In 2004, the
Israeli
Supreme Court
sided with
eight
Palestinian
communities
over the army,
ruling that
the fence had
to be moved to
prevent
further
interference
with the lives
of
Palestinians.
There was a
legislative
attempt to get
around the
ruling, but
then-Prime
Minister Ariel
Sharon
declared,
“There is a
court ruling,
and we shall
will it out.”
Palestinians
have access to
the Israeli
Supreme Court,
to an almost
ludicrous
degree, in
fact. An IDF
legal
adviser—the
equivalent of
an American
JAG—tells the
story of a 2
a.m. bombing
of a suspected
weapons cache
in Gaza
interrupted by
a last-minute
petition to
the Supreme
Court by the
owner of the
house to be
bombed. IDF
troops were on
the ground,
evacuating the
area and
wiring the
building when
a secretary of
the Supreme
Court called
the legal
adviser to
halt the
operations. A
Supreme Court
judge had to
be roused from
sleep to hear
a telephonic
brief about
the target in
question and
decide whether
to grant an
injunction
stopping the
operation.
“I think we
play really
safe,” the
legal adviser
said. “But
even with all
these
limitations,
we win.”
A
“Liveable
Life”
For Israel,
that’s the
bottom line:
to defend
itself while
preserving its
values, to win
while
remaining
Western. Even
the more
cynical of
Israeli
military
commanders
will tell you
as
Kupperwassen
does, “I
believe in the
West. I
believe we
will prevail.”
On the
northern
border, a
major with the
Northern
Command is
determined to
provide a
“liveable
life” to the
citizens in
his charge. He
looks to the
hills of
Lebanon and
says that the
second
intifada had
shown them the
worst they
could see, and
they had
survived.
In
Jerusalem, a
17-year-old
aspiring
musician
slumps in his
chair over
Sabbath dinner
when he talks
about putting
his dreams on
hold to serve
his required
stint in the
Israeli Army.
His mother
shrugs her
shoulders and
explains that
he was born
into a world
of war. When
she took him
home from the
hospital, it
was during the
First Gulf
War. The
hospital
provided her
with a tiny
baby gas mask
for him.
They are
not resigned
to this life,
but ready to
live through
it to another,
more peaceful
time. They are
not
inconsolable
in the face of
busted
negotiations,
but interested
in reaching
new ones that
last. The
struggle of
Israel and the
West in this
fight is not
about despair,
but
determination.
It may also be
about
patience, a
virtue about
which the
Jewish people
have plenty to
teach to other
Westerners
exhausted by
seven years of
bloody
conflict
against
radical Islam.
As Yaacov
Lozowick,
Israeli
scholar and
archivist at
Israel’s
Holocaust
Museum wrote
in his, “Right
to Exist:”
“My own
opinion is
that we have
150 years to
go. The Muslim
world resisted
the Crusaders
for 200 years
until they
finally gave
up and left.
From their
perspecive, we
are a second
wave of
Crusaders,
uncalled-for
invaders from
West. … We
have resisted
their pressure
for 50-plus
years, which
is more than
they expected,
but they
remember that
the first time
around it took
longer, and
they can wait.
Perhaps we
will need to
outlast the
Crusaders
before they
begin to
understand
that we are
another
story—that for
us, 200 years
is as nothing
when compared
with 2,000. If
that’s what it
takes, so be
it.”
For
Americans, 200
years is all
we know. In
the years to
come, when
missiles may
gain range,
grievances may
gain ground
and enemies
may gain new
tools of
destruction,
we will see
the lessons of
Israel’s long
struggle
echoed in our
tactics. We
will see her
technology
echoed in our
tools and her
call for
restraint
echoed in our
debates. And,
if we are
successful,
we’ll always
see the spirit
of that
colorful
sniper wall in
Gilo reflected
in our
determination
to remain safe
and free, to
walk the
frustrating
line between
security and
freedom even
when our
enemies do
not, and to do
it well enough
to win. Until
one day, at
long last, all
the wind
carries from
Beit Jala to
Gilo, from
Gaza to
Israel, from
the Middle
East to
America, is
sand.
Editor's note:
Mary Katharine
Ham's feature,
"Last, Long
Stand of the
West," which
appeared in
the June issue
of Townhall
Magazine was
written with
information
and interviews
gathered
during a March
trip to Israel
for American
journalists
paid for by
the American
Israel
Education
Foundation.
The AIEF is a
supporting
charity
affiliated
with the
American
Israel Public
Affairs
Committee (AIPAC).
FROM:
http://townhall.com/Columnists/MaryKatharineHam/2008/07/25/the_last_stand_of_the_west |
