Learning the Lessons of Israel’s Long, Unnamed War in Lebanon

The upcoming twentieth anniversary of the IDF’s withdrawal from Lebanon has sparked much discussion about the nameless war that lasted from 1985 to 2000, during which the Jewish state held on to a strip of territory in the southern part of Lebanon, together with its local allies, and fought a protracted, low-grade conflict there. Having served as a battalion commander on the ground in this conflict, and later having overseen units involved in it, Gershon Hacohen admits that, in hindsight, he did not pay sufficient attention to the strategic dilemma Israel faced:

The IDF found itself pulled in three different directions by three different goals. The first and most important: to secure our ‎communities in [northern Israel from PLO and Hizballah rockets and terrorist infiltrations]. The second: to ensure that [Jerusalem’s ally], the South Lebanese Army (SLA), remained intact ‎and to secure the civil population in the security zone while minimizing harm to IDF and SLA troops. ‎The third: attacking Hizballah’s forces and reducing its battle capabilities. Hizballah identified the ‎tension playing out between those three missions and maximized the potential that lay with keeping it ‎running high.

Starting in the early 1990s, when Hezbollah entrenched itself in a way that allowed it control over ‎southern Lebanon, a major change took place. While the IDF was still defending border communities . . . from incursions by terrorists, Hizballah was focusing its activities toward a goal, ‎openly declared, of liberating its homeland [from Israeli occupation]. Secretly, . . . under the direction of Iran, Hizballah wanted to end the Israeli presence in south ‎Lebanon and thereby strike a blow to Israel’s image of military superiority by underscoring its ‎inefficacy in either winning or defending all its vulnerabilities.

For years, the IDF has been criticized for supposedly neglecting the desire to achieve victory. The ‎expression “Let the IDF win” is a simplistic slogan that prevents an in-depth understanding of the [problem at hand]. A renewed look at the war in the security zone provides a vital lesson ‎in understanding the change that Hizballah instituted in how wars against Israel are fought, . . . at a ‎time when it is urgent to form the concept of Israeli security necessary for victory.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Hizballah, Israeli grand strategy, Israeli Security, Lebanon, PLO, South Lebanese Army

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