I Think I Agree With Radu

Submitted by Alex (United States), Jan 17, 2009 at 10:59

"I agree with this analysis but put it differently – not that the Israeli elites are too Western but that they don't know enough about and are not interested in their enemy. Instead, they project their own attitudes onto the enemy – the easy, deceptive way to conduct war."

I think I would actually lean more towards Radu's phrasing of the problem. Israeli leaders are more familiar with their enemies than are Western leaders with the same enemies--in terms of language skills, geographical and cultural proximity, a longer history of dealing with these enemies--and they once actually upheld and fulfilled the doctrine of victory that Dr. Pipes recommends.

I think the problem with the self-defence doctrine of Israel's current leadership is less psychological projection onto the enemy of Israel's own goals than that Israeli leaders are afraid to define their own goals in the first place, after years of caving to American pressure to rely on more technologically-oriented defence aid and to ignore the role of hostile regional nation-states in militarizing rejectionism of Israel.

Also, I must admit that I do not trust Anthony Cordesman's analysis of anything relationg to Israel. He is a great analyst, but for some reason he often overly emphasizes civilian casualties that Israel accidentally in its military operations against terrorists. The evidence of popular perceptions in Gaza is very scant (to my knowledge), and so I see no reason to believe that "At least to date, the reporting from within Gaza indicates that each new Israeli air strike or advance on the ground has increased popular support for Hamas and anger against Israel in Gaza."

It may be possible that Gazans, because they are suffering from this conflict, may be beginning to learn to not support Hamas and groups like it. Similar dynamics helped compel Sunni tribes in Iraq's Anbar province to help US troops substantially reduce the terrorist presence there.

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