Posted by
Cary Wesberry on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:39:14 PM
FP: How grave are the dangers facing Israel?
Hornik: Very grave. Recently Israel's chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenasi, warned in a speech to army officers that war may be imminent. Israel's intelligence community relates seriously to the genocidal saber-rattling issuing from Iran and Hezbollah particularly since the Mughniyeh assassination. According to not a few intelligence estimates, Iran will have the bomb sometime in 2008. The fact that, notwithstanding the endless analyses, articles, meetings, Security Council sessions, etc., things have come this far--imminent nuclearization, at most a couple of years away but probably a lot less--is of course appalling.
The freedom, tolerance, creativity, and high living standards of the Western democracies constitute a great blessing, but these countries' inability to cope with threats realistically, their tendency to let catastrophes happen that could have been avoided with just a little resolve and common sense, may be a fatal flaw. So far the Western democracies are failing the test of the Iranian threat and allowing the world to move toward another cataclysm.
In addition to the overarching Iranian threat, Israel is now surrounded by terror-havens in Gaza, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon with belligerent Syria and malign Egypt thrown into the bargain. The terror havens pose tactical and strategic threats in themselves while also being intimately related, of course, to the larger Iranian and other state threats. By "tactical" I mean relatively crude rockets, suicide bombings, and the like; by strategic I mean larger rockets and missiles, and the possibility of WMD infiltration.
Both the Iranian nuclear buildup in itself and the related buildup of Iranian-allied forces on Israel's doorstep pose ultimate dangers.
FP: How is Israel coping with these dangers, and how capable is it of coping with them? Is it still the tough, hardy country of the past?
Hornik: Israel--having called off its recent brief foray into Gaza under U.S. pressure--is essentially doing nothing about the Gaza threat; it's still letting the citizens of southwestern Israel be terrorized by daily rocket and mortar attacks while fighting back in ways that are clearly inadequate. It's also doing nothing about the always-growing Hezbollah threat in Lebanon apart from Olmert's occasional fatuous self-congratulatory pronouncements about what a great success the 2006 Second Lebanon War was. Israel is mostly containing the West Bank threat with constant military and intelligence activity but still tolerating a situation that in the pre-Oslo era would have been considered unthinkable--a West Bank infested with terrorists from various organizations, sometimes in conflict with each other but all sharing the goal of Israel's annihilation.
The recent massacre in a Jerusalem yeshiva by an Arab resident of Jerusalem also underlines the growing threat from radicalized Arabs who are citizens or residents of Israel. Israel has not begun to deal with this threat realistically and coherently and is not capable of doing so under the current government.
Israel's strike against the Syrian installation in September, however, reminds us of the fact that notwithstanding the Olmert government's irresponsibility in the face of the immediate terror threats, there is still seriousness about state-generated strategic threats in Israel's highest military, intelligence, and even political echelons. If Israel was responsible for the Mughniyeh assassination, it further reinforces that fact. The highly capable Ido Nehushtan is replacing the highly capable Eliezer Shkedi as Israel's air force chief. Israel also has a highly accomplished Mossad chief in Meir Dagan. Olmert's cabinet includes people who are capable of seriousness about security like Shaul Mofaz, Avi Dichter, and others. Even the defense minister, Ehud Barak, is capable of seriousness about security though he's basically an unprincipled political operator. I have even less good to say about Olmert, but at least we know from the Lebanon War and the strike on the Syrian facility that he hasn't become a pacifist -- despite some notorious words before he became prime minister that seemed to indicate that.
That the Israeli population, despite its higher standard of living and the corrosive effects of a Left-dominated media, academia, and Supreme Court, is overall as tough and hardy as ever was clearly evident during the Lebanon War--both in the military sphere, where the army showed high motivation despite poor management, and in the civilian sphere, where the population showed great resilience. The Israeli people just need better leadership.
FP: What are Israel's prospects?
Hornik: It depends primarily on what, if anything, will be done about Iranian nuclearization. Even if that threat is eliminated, there is still a worldwide jihadist movement possessing or seeking WMD capabilities that is capable of posing existential threats to Israel and others, with Pakistan a particularly perilous arena. But Iran is currently the primary, overarching threat to Israel, America, and the West. From Israel's geographic standpoint, take Iran out of the picture and Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, Syria, and so on are orphaned children and seriously weakened. Clearly, the U.S. and Israel are the only two parties that might do something about Iranian nuclearization, probably Israel. The election of a pacifistic Democratic dove as U.S. president would not be an encouraging development.
FP: If you could advise the U.S. and Israeli leaderships on how Israel could best cope with the threats it now faces, and how the U.S. could help best, what would you recommend?
Hornik: America wants stability in the Israeli sphere; it doesn't want relatively small-scale clashes between Israel and Arab forces--let alone the larger wars into which such clashes could escalate--that are beamed all over the Middle East and aggravate anti-Israeli, anti-American, and anti-Western sentiments. America's obsession with pressuring Israel into territorial concessions, while strengthening the Fatah terror movement as a supposedly constructive force, directly contradicts the American goal of stability and reflects blindness at best and a cynical, acknowledged or unackowledged agenda of sacrificing Israel at worst. I won't go into the issue of America's oil dependency on Arab regimes and what to do about it, but so long as America pursues a relationship with these regimes, it's worth realizing that they're not motivated by idealism but by economic and possibly strategic considerations and are not in need of constant spectacles of American leaders, diplomats, and functionaries supplicating Fatah leaders, paying protection money to the PA, training PA terrorist forces, and so on. If America feels it has to show its concern for the "Palestinian cause" it can do so by supporting fair and empirically based proposals for a solution like MK Benny Elon's plan instead of in effect embracing the Islamist and Arab-nationalist program of whittling Israel down to indefensibility and destruction.
American can best promote stability in the Israeli sphere, while reaping the strategic, intelligence, and other benefits of having Israel as a strong ally, by helping Israel be militarily and territorially strong and helping it exercise deterrence. This includes, of course, Israel operating according to normal international principles such as exercising the obligation to protect its citizens and treating attacks on them as intolerable rather than as realities to be indefinitely endured.
As for Israel, it desperately needs leaders who are not marionettes of a U.S. policy of appeasing the Arab world at Israel's expense. Israel needs to emphasize the fact that it has already given up all of Sinai and, for the time being, Gaza, while giving up a substantial amount of control over the West Bank, and all it has received in return is intensified terrorism, weapons smuggling/buildups, peril, and hatred--the last not only in the Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim spheres but throughout the world. Having already more than fulfilled its obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 242 of "withdrawing from territories," Israel should make no further territorial withdrawals from the post-1967 lands it still has in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and should work to destroy both the Hamas and the Fatah menace and reassert military control of both Gaza and the West Bank, while being ready to restore partial civilian control to Palestinian parties absolutely conditional on the security situation.
Apart from this Israel should continue the endeavor of revamping its armed forces and strategic approach that it began in the wake of the Second Lebanon War--a restoration of capability and deterrence that apparently already succeeded in 2007 to dissuade Syria from initiating hostilities with Israel on the Golan Heights.
On the Iranian front, it's clear by now that sanctions, while they could possibly have worked with enough international cooperation, will not work because sufficient international cooperation does not exist. America needs to pursue a military or regime-change solution to the Iranian threat, not mainly to protect Israel but to protect the West in general and itself. If America does not do so, Israel, which presumably does not have the capacity to effectuate an Iranian regime change, has to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat militarily so as to ensure its own survival.
Hit the link above to read the whole interview and discover how it is that Mr. Hornik came to his conclusions. His conclusions are dead-on by the way. Israel faces extremely difficult decisions that must be made sooner rather than later. I'm in complete agreement with Mr. Hornik's assertions of the actions that Israel must take. It is indeed a fact that if the United States does not execute regime change inside Iran, Israel will be forced to use military force to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities. For this reason, and other, my country ultimately has difficult decisions to make as well.
As I've stated before; Israel's leadership is criminally negligent verging on treason. Their complete lack of action in defending Israel against Palestinian monsters who murder Jews with joy is indefensible. We've seen over the last few days Jews rioting in the streets because of the cowardly decisions made by Israeli leaders. Instead of fighting the terrorists, they literally aid and provide them a haven from which to cause even more destruction. Refusal to send a strong message to the Palestinians is a deathwish and is rapidly becoming intolerable to the Jewish people of Israel. It's my belief the Jews won't live with insanity for much longer.