How Israel’s Withdrawal from Lebanon Gave Rise to Today’s Middle East

Fifteen years ago last Sunday, Israel announced its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, ending an eighteen-year war. The move emboldened Israel’s enemy, Hizballah, and provided a model for terrorists throughout the region, writes Mitch Ginsburg:

At the time [of the withdrawal] there seemed to be a problem—that the war was killing more Israelis than it was saving, roughly two-dozen soldiers per year on average—and it seemed that the problem could be solved by retreating. . . .

Yossi Kuperwasser . . . was, in May 2000, the chief intelligence officer of the IDF central command. Hizballah’s ability to oust Israel from Lebanon, he said, was “wind in the sails” of the Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank, which, four months later, launched the bloody second intifada.

Palestinians, he said, would tell him often that two-dozen dead soldiers a year for several years in a row was an attainable goal for the Palestinian groups if it proved sufficient to pry Israel off certain parcels of land. He said he would always tell his Palestinian peers that there was a big difference between the West Bank—the land of the Bible, . . . in which Israel had built civilian settlements—and Lebanon, which was neither settled nor part of the promised land.

Today Hizballah is considered by many to be the strongest non-state actor in the world. It has upward of 100,000 rockets in its possession and veto power in Lebanon’s national government. Would it have reached this position without an Israeli withdrawal? Would the second Lebanon war [in 2006] have been necessary?

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: First Lebanon War, Hamas, Hizballah, Israel & Zionism, Israeli Security, Second Intifada, Second Lebanon War

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society