Will year two of the war mark the moment when Israel takes off the gloves and takes the battle directly to Iran?

Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK/PRASHANTRAJSINGH

For the past year, Israel has bravely battled Iranian proxies on multiple fronts while millions of Jewish citizens hunker down in sealed rooms and run-down shelters.

Will year two of the war mark the moment when Israel takes off the gloves and takes the battle directly to Iran? Does Israel have any other choice at this point?

At press time, we were on the verge of a major conflagration following Iran’s second missile attack on Israel in the past six months.

When Israel strikes back, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to do, can it inflict a decisive blow to make the price of further retaliation prohibitive? Or will an Israeli punch and Iranian counterpunch escalate into the all-out regional war that the Biden administration is pressuring Israel to avert?

Unless Netanyahu is willing to go it alone, Israel must walk a fine line. It will need ongoing American defense backing to subdue Iran, and US veto power on the UN Security Council to deter one-sided resolutions that could isolate Israel and force a premature cease-fire.

Israel can walk that line without stumbling if it continues its uncompromising approach to defending its vital security interests, and if it applies shrewd judgment as to when, where, and how to defy US advice, well-meaning or not.

“To me, the total war scenario is a no-go, because Israel’s many enemies in the US in politics and academia will accuse us of dragging the US into a war that’s against America’s interests and that the American people don’t want,” said Dr. Dan Schueftan, director of the University of Haifa’s National Security Studies Center, who advocated a more cautious approach during a moderated interview with Dr. Roi Yozevitch, a podcaster, lecturer, and researcher at Ariel University.

Having said that, Dr. Schueftan contends that Israel often achieves its best results by defying US wishes on a smaller scale. The Biden administration publicly opposed both the IDF invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza in May and last week’s incursion into southern Lebanon. By defying the US on both, Israel has Hamas on the ropes and has wiped out a massive percentage of Hezbollah’s military capabilities in just two weeks with minimal casualties and property damage inside Israel.

At the start of the new week, the IDF issued evacuation orders in northern Gaza before embarking on a new offensive to dismantle terrorist infrastructure. The latest IDF offensives are designed to contribute to Israel’s long-term security and pave safe passage for more than 100,000 Jewish evacuees to return to and rebuild their homes and their lives in border communities.

Dr. Schueftan is a seasoned analyst of the US-Israel relationship and all of its nuances.

Since 1977, he has briefed and consulted with senators and members of the House of Representatives and has served as a consultant to Israeli decision-makers, including the top echelon of the Prime Minister’s Office, foreign and defense ministries, and the National Security Council.

He says Israel has often ignored US requests when they ran counter to its best interests. It’s nothing to be afraid of. This advice applies more than ever right now, as the IDF continues to pound Hamas and Hezbollah into the sand to prevent them from regrouping militarily

A Series of Blunders

Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion rejected President Truman’s pressure to repatriate Arab refugees who fled after the 1948 War of Independence.

Two years after Israel’s miraculous victory in the 1967 Six Day War, the Israeli cabinet rejected a proposal by US Secretary of State William Rogers to trade the land they captured in that war for “peace.”

“If we had taken the Arab refugees back, we would have had a civil war by now, and we wouldn’t exist,” Dr. Schueftan said. “And if we had listened to America [in 1969] and accepted the Rogers Plan, we would have received a worthless treaty in return.”

Dr. Schueftan also cited a laundry list of American failures that haunt Israel to this day. They include President Bush urging Israel to show restraint during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which allowed Hezbollah the next 18 years to augment its rocket arsenal. Bush’s second-term Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressured Israel in 2005 to allow Hamas to participate in Palestinian Authority elections — a major blunder that brought Hamas to power in short order.

Schueftan leveled major criticism against the Biden administration for empowering the Houthis. Just three weeks after Biden took office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken officially removed the Houthis’ designation as a foreign terrorist organization on humanitarian grounds, despite their support from Iran and their links to Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Blinken had to reverse course earlier this year and relabel the Houthis a “specially designated global terrorist group” following their attacks on ships that closed shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Facilitating an Exit

DR. Schueftan says it’s part of a pattern: “America has hallucinated many times in other places, trying to bring democracy to Iraq, women’s rights to Afghanistan. And now they want peace for the Palestinians.”

To achieve that peace, the Biden administration has consistently pressured Netanyahu to announce a “day after” plan for Gaza — and this is where Dr. Schueftan contends Israel could shrewdly align its interests with America’s. The US wants to exit the Middle East to focus more on China. If the US leaves, someone needs to fill that vacuum. He contends the only way to do that is to assemble a triumvirate of nations: Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and each is indispensable.

“Egypt has the legitimacy [in the Arab world], Saudi Arabia has the resources, and Israel has the military strength,” says Dr. Schueftan. “It’s not as if the US would become dependent on Israel. But by taking the lead on this, Israel could defend itself and serve US purposes [by creating a climate of stability that allows them to leave].”

And the more Israel asserts itself now in the current conflicts, the more it can gain the upper hand in devising future solutions.

“Israel’s biggest challenge since its founding is to continually strengthen relations with the US, mainly in defense and security, while at the same time not listening to what they tell us,” Dr. Schueftan adds. “We have to force America to make peace with the idea that we’re going to oppose them until it begins to dawn upon them that we’re fighting seriously to win this war.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1032)