To the Israeli Press, Pronouncements by Generals Are Non-Political So Long as They’re Politically Correct

Over the years, some former Israeli security professionals—retired generals, heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, and so forth—have come out strongly in favor of plans for the Jewish state to cede control of all or part of the West Bank. When they express such positions publicly, their views are inevitably feted in the Israeli and English-language press. But when Gershon Hacohen, a major-general in the IDF reserves, made the opposite case in a recent article, he received sharp criticism from the former Mossad director Shabtai Shavit. Hacohen writes:

Shavit dismisses my opinion . . . as a “political treatise” undeserving of publication by an academic research institute. He derides the BESA Center for Strategic Studies, which published the paper and where I serve as a senior research associate, as “painted since its foundation in political colors, as expected given its [large] number of skullcap-wearing associates.” Had Shavit done his due diligence, he would have quickly learned that even by the parameters of his perverse logic, the BESA Center should be painted by quite different “political colors” given that over 80 percent of its research associates are not “skullcap-wearers.”

This mindboggling stigmatization notwithstanding, this is not the first time I have been accused of subordinating professional considerations to a political agenda. . . . The formula is clear: officers who downplay the security risks of territorial withdrawals do so on “professional” grounds; those who underscore the dangers attending such withdrawals are driven by “political” considerations. . . .

In reality, it is difficult to find national decisions—in the social, economic, political, educational, and security fields, among others—that are completely value-free and made on professional grounds alone. A medical prognosis is a strictly professional matter; public health-policy decisions reflect a socioeconomic worldview and value system.

This in turn means that when former security officials justify far-reaching territorial concessions “because the preservation of certain values overrides the importance of land,” they do so from a clear political vantage point. As such, they have no intrinsic advantage over fellow citizens who hold a different view.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Israel & Zionism, Israeli Security, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF