Israel’s Security and U.S. Power

>> Peter Berkowitz: It is incumbent on the United States to back Israel, the only rights-protecting democracy in the Middle East, against the forces of barbarism in the region.

>> Peter Berkowitz: It's always been part of Israeli strategic doctrine that Israel will defend itself, that Israel will not call on other countries to fight on its behalf.

 

This has been both a noble strategy and a practical strategy. Noble in the sense of its part of governing oneself, taking responsibility for oneself. Practical because it means not depending on others in your time of need. However, even though up until recently it's true that Israel has always fought its own battles, in another sense, Israel has never been independent, has always relied on others.

 

Since its war of independence in 1948, Israel has relied on weapons, munitions, equipment from other countries. In the war of independence, it was mostly Eastern bloc countries since around 1970. Mostly, but not exclusively the United States. And not just aircraft, although the United States is the almost exclusive supplier of aircraft, most prominently F15s, F16s and F35s.

 

But also the majority of Israel's munitions come from the United States. To continue to wage war, Israel is dependent upon staying in the good graces of the United States. So in any wider war, Israel will continue to be dependent on the United States. For what we've seen so far since the October 7 attacks.

 

Intelligence sharing, the continued flow of supplies, we're talking now billions of dollars of supplies have flowed to the Israelis since the October 7 attacks. Missile defense, as we saw in April. And not least, and here is a place where I default, the Biden administration in the international court of public opinion, we, the United States, could have done much more to explain the evilness of Hamas, their deliberate violation of the international laws of war, and the role of Iran in encircling Israel and proceeding with the war for Israel's destruction.

 

How did we get here to where we are today? Well, history is a key to understanding geopolitical affairs. However, history is neglected almost everywhere. When I say almost everywhere, I mean at almost every university. History is neglected, even in history departments. What is neglected is political history, constitutional history, diplomatic history, and most of all, what is neglected?

 

Military history. And if you don't believe me, I have an experiment to recommend to you. Go to your favorite top 10 or top 20 or top 50 universities. Check out the offerings at their history department. Count up how many offerings there are in military history. You won't find many a brief history of Israel focusing now on only one relevant dimension because our time is short.

 

In 1937, under the Palestinian Mandate, before the creation of the state of Israel, when what is now the land of Israel and the West Bank, Israelis call it by the biblical names Judea and Samaria, Yudavash Amron. That area was occupied by Arabs and Jews, different national interests. In 1937, the Peel Commission came to Israel, recommended that this land between, as we say now, the river and the sea, and you all know, you all, unlike so many college students, you all know that the river is the Jordan river and the sea is the Mediterranean Sea.

 

In 1937, the Peel Commission recommended a division of the land. A small part for the Jews, the vast majority for the Arabs. The Jews said, yes, we will take the deal. The Arabs said, no, no deal. We want it all. In 1947, the United nations voted to partition this land between the river and sea, between the Arabs and the Jews.

 

The Arabs were given the majority, little less than the Peel Convention recommended but the Arabs were still accorded the majority of the land, the Jews the minority of the land. The Jews said, we'll take it. The Arabs said, no way. And they launched a war on the new Jewish state.

 

1948. In 1967, in a defensive war against Egypt and Syria, who were pledged to its destruction, Israel seized what's called the West Bank. Again, you can see it marked out along the Jordan river, along the Jordan border. By the way, that area of land had never been part of any sovereign state since actually the fall of the second Jewish Commonwealth.

 

In any case, Israel seized what's called the west bank, it seized the Gaza Strip and it seized the Golan Heights, in this defensive war, Israel, in the aftermath of the 67 war, offered a deal to the Arab states in the region, land for peace. Give back some significant portion of the land we seized in a defensive war.

 

In exchange, peace, how did the Arab League famous reply at Khartoum in the summer of 1967 with the three nos, no peace, no recognition, no negotiations. Israel ended up with more land. You see a pattern. 37, 47, 67. In each case, Arab intransigence produces a larger Israel. Let's jump to the year 2000.

 

Actually. Let's talk about the last four presidential administrations. Each of the last four US presidential administrations has sought to broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Clinton administration a little before most of you were born. I know. So this is history. Bill Clinton, President Bill Clinton failed at Camp David in the summer of 2000 to broker a peace deal.

 

He came close. The Israelis, under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, offered, there's some dispute. Was it 94% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip 95% of the. 96% unclear, but something like that, let's call it 94% of the West Bank. Then head of the PLO, head of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat stormed out of Camp David.

 

Three months later, he launched the second intifada rejecting negotiations leads to war in the Clinton administration. In the bush administration in 2007, 8 there was an effort to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. That effort broke down in September of 2008. The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration, failed.

 

Three months after its failure, war broke out. Israel was forced to to enter the Gaza Strip in Mitah Operta Tukah Operation Cast Lead. Why? Because Hamas was indiscriminately launching rockets at Israeli civilian populations in southern Israel. You can see the Gaza Strip. Those rockets generally had a distance back in those days, probably not more than about 25 kilometers.

 

All right, that's two. 3. The Obama administration the Obama administration strove from 2009 to 2014 to broker a peace agreement. First under Special envoy George Mitchell, then under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then under Secretary of State John Kerry. All three efforts failed. When Kerry finally gave up three months later, war broke out between Israel and Hamas.

 

Once again, Israel was forced to enter the Gaza Strip to silence the rockets that were being shot by Gaza, once again in blatant violation of the international laws of war against Israel, against Israeli civilian populations. This was followed by the Trump administration, which Josh mentioned. I had the honor to serve as an advisor to Mike Pompeo.

 

In one respect, the Trump administration was like the Biden was like the previous administrations, Clinton, Bush, Obama, it put forward a peace plan, in this case, a much more elaborate, well developed peace plan, which also failed. But there was a big difference. First, before the peace plan was put forward, the Trump administration quite appropriately moved the Israeli Embassy, sorry, the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem.

 

It had already proclaimed Jerusalem Israel's capital, or I should say recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Countries have the right to define their own capital. And the Trump administration had also already recognized Israel's sovereignty, a practical fact, over the Golan Heights, a block of land in the very uppermost northeast tip of Israel, land also taken by Israel, this case from Syria in its 1967 war.

 

The Trump administration had gained the trust of the Israelis by supporting them in their just request. But at the same time, the Trump administration had won the support of Gulf Arabs, our longtime partners in the Gulf and contrary to Secretary of State John Kerry. You can find this online as well.

 

2016 interview Brookings Institution Secretary Kerry in 2016 is asked, is it possible, since we keep failing at brokering peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, is it possible to go differently, to try and get a kind of a regional agreement and on the basis of that regional agreement, broker peace?

 

Kerry answered with not one, not three, but four noes. Count them. When you go to YouTube and find Kerry 2016 Brookings Institution interview, he said, absolutely not, impossible. Well, by Secretary of State Kerry's standards, the Trump administration accomplished the impossible. It brokered Abraham Accords in the summer of 2020, which normalized relations between Israel, Saudi Arabia and.

 

Sorry, skip that. That's wrong. Not Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia green lighted Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Several countries entered afterward. Why do we use the term normalization? Whereas in connection to Egypt in Jordan we speak of peace treaties? Because technically, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were never at war with Israel, but they also had never established proper diplomatic relations with Israel.

 

So this was a tremendous achievement on the one hand. On the other hand, still four presidents, four efforts to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians for failures. Okay, a little more background to the October 7 attacks. Between 2019 and 2022, five elections took place in Israel, five elections after the third election.

 

Sorry, that's an anecdote I won't share from the State Department. In any case, Israel conducted five elections. That it had to conduct five elections is testimony to how divided the country had become. Divided by what? We don't have time to go into the details, but I can tell you this.

 

Problems shared by Western style liberal democracies around the world. Starting with the divide between well educated, highly credentialed elites and working class, ordinary people. We have a version of this in the United States. Britain has a version of this. You see versions of this in France, in Germany, elsewhere in Western Europe, with Netanyahu representing in many ways the less well educated, less well credentialed, more traditional population and the elites, the lawyers, the doctors, the business executives, as it happens, also the high tech entrepreneurs, and in Israel's case, the Air force pilots on whom the country depends on being in the opposition.

 

So the country is bitterly divided. Netanyahu's side basically wins the first three elections, closely, closely conducted. The opposition wins. The fourth governs for a year. Netanyahu comes back to power in November 2022. However, the country is so divided and so much of the center To Wright is now reluctant to serve with Netanyahu, that he's forced to construct a government which I'm confident is contrary to his predilections with two of the most extreme elements in the Israeli population, the Israeli Jewish population.

 

You all know that 20% of the Israeli citizenry is Arab, the ultra orthodox and the religious ultra nationalists. Suffice it to say that in early January 2023, this coalition proposed a judicial overhaul which tore the country apart. It was the dominant indeed, it was the all but exclusive issue in Israeli politics from January 4, 2023 until 6:30am October 7, 2023.

 

I'll only say now that the Israeli Supreme Court, by far the most progressive Supreme Court in the Western world, was badly in need of reform. But the reforms that were proposed were themselves extreme. The October 7th attack. Just a few details about them as they begin to wrap up, a few of the horrific details you all know, you follow the news.

 

On that morning, at 6:30am Hamas unleashed a barrage of thousands of rockets of southern Israel. Concurrently, several thousand jihadists broke down, stormed through, flew over, sailed around the security barrier that Israel had built with a primary mission of massacring civilians. Massacring, I mean, killing people in their beds, killing parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents, raping, mutilating corpses, taking civilians, kidnapping civilians, holding them as hostages.

 

Every single one of those acts, including those thousands of missiles aimed at civilians. A violation of the laws of war. A quick remark about Israel's intelligence lapses. There were three main ones. Israel had scattered reports that Hamas was planning some kind of attack. But as often happens, as happened in the United States, the reports about very disturbing developments on the ground have to move up the chain of command.

 

And as they move up the chain of command, they get watered down. By the time they reach the decision makers, they become mere suggestions, possibilities, probabilities. That's on Israel. Second, the fence. The security barrier was never designed to stop thousands of jihadists. It was designed to provide intelligence and notification if one person, one attacker, 10, 20, seek to cross into Israel.

 

A failed conception. And third, there were too few troops on the borders. In the case of of intelligence failure and offense failure, we could discuss why that was then. Fourth, there was the larger conception that Hamas didn't really want to attack Israel, that Hamas had become more interested in taking care of the social and economic needs of its people, that Hamas had learned to live with Israel.

 

And this by orchestrating the delivery of millions of dollars a month from Qatar to Hamas, Israel could ensure Peace and quiet. And maybe even, as some of Netanyahu's critics suggest, the Netanyahu government sought to divide Gaza, ruled by Hamas, from the west bank, ruled by the Palestinian Authority.

 

Israel's war aims, when they speak precisely most of the time, are to destroy Hamas ability to wage war, destroy Hamas ability to govern and return the hostages. At this point, probably no more than 40 or 50 are still alive, of the more than 100 are said to be in Hamas's hands.

 

Quick remark or two about the war and the universities. Late in the afternoon on October 7, that means around midnight in Israel, by which time we had a pretty good idea that massacre, a massacre had taken place, 34 student groups at Harvard University issued a letter, public letter, public statement, holding Israel, I think I now quote, entirely responsible, close quote, for the massacres being perpetrated against it.

 

How is that possible? When have you ever heard of a nation or a group of people being held entirely responsible for massacres perpetrated against it? This is in a world in which I thought all of us were against blaming the victim. How could the rules of discourse and the judgment be changed so dramatically?

 

It's interesting. If you look through the list of student groups that signed this letter, only two or three or four of those student groups have anything to do with Middle east politics. Say, okay, those groups anti Israel, pro Hamas, which by the way means pro jihadist, anti Western.

 

But what about those other groups, some of which have. Some of which have purposes that have nothing to do not only with Middle East politics, but with foreign affairs. Why did they sign on? Could it be anti Semitism? Well, I won't rule that out exclusively, but there's another dimension that we have seen on campuses since October 7, which also should not be underestimated.

 

Many of the attacks on Israel are motivated in the first place by anti-Americanism. What do I mean by anti Americanism? Have any of you ever heard of the term post colonialism, post colonial studies? I know you have. What are post colonial studies in effect differs a little bit if you're studying in Britain.

 

If you're studying in Britain, post colonial studies are, by and large anti British studies. But if you're studying in the United States, post colonial studies are, by and large anti American studies. They teach that the principal source of instability, injustice, evil in the world is the United States of America through its rapacious colonial practice and ambitions.

 

And guess who gets to be considered America's number one representative in the Middle East, Israel. So the fury at Israel is often sublimated and actually very often not sublimated. Hatred of the United States and that for which it stands. Okay, I will offer a few, I'll close with a few final comments about the Biden administration.

 

Where it's to be congratulated, where it's to be faulted. The Biden administration's initial instincts were sound. I think that's because Joe Biden's initial instincts were sound. I think that's because he is an older kind of democrat. He stood with Israel early. He dispatched two carriers to the region early.

 

He uttered a don't. I wish he had said more, but take the don't. He's presided over a steady flow of weapons to Israel, many billions of dollars. He joined in an alliance in April to help Israel repel this unprecedented assault. 350 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Where to fault the Biden administration?

 

One, there have in various areas been a slow walking of weapons, put pressure on Israel. Second, this has to do with public relations. Have you noticed the Biden administration always puts the onus on Israel to reach a ceasefire agreement? But Hamas started the war. Actually, they broke a ceasefire.

 

Every one of their military acts is a violation of laws of war. In my view, the Biden administration from the first day ought to have been saying we have two conditions for a cease fire, Hamas surrender unconditionally and release the hostages. Second, the Biden administration has played into the general worldwide proclivity to hold Israel responsible for Palestinian suffering.

 

Palestinian suffering in the Gaza Strip is real. It's tragic and it's Hamas fault, because of decisions Hamas has deliberately made, Israel has gone to extraordinary measures to minimize civilian suffering. And third, the Biden administration has been completely ineffective in explaining to the American people that Israel is not merely engaged in a battle, a war with Hamas.

 

In fact, Hamas is one front in this seven front war Israel faces against Iran's ring of fire. I conclude, whether the United States likes it or not, at the moment it confronts, it is involved in a worldwide strategic competition with the Chinese Communist Party. This struggle pits freedom in democracy, liberal democracies, flawed though we may be, against the cruel authoritarianism in the light of the China challenge, and not only the China challenge, but in light of the China challenge, it is incumbent on the United States to back Israel, the only rights protecting democracy in the Middle east, against the forces of barbarism in the region.

 

Thank you, and I'd be delighted to answer a question or two.