Efraim Inbar has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and is a widely respected professor internationally and in Israel. In Tuesday’s Times of Israel he has a column on “What many westerners don’t get about the Gaza war.” But before I discuss his column, I want to introduce you to his pre-October 7 thinking. In 2017, he wrote a piece advocating that Israel cut off Gaza’s electricity: Gaza in the dark not so terrible. His argument was prescient in some respects. He pointed out that “Hamas needs electricity to build terror tunnels and produce weapons.” He also noted that “Hamas remains popular in Gaza, and all polls show that Gazans support continued violence against Israel,” which proved true when Hamas actually launched its attack.
In this piece he technically argued that Israel should not provide free electricity to Gaza, yet the full context shows his problem wasn’t about getting reimbursed but providing the service at all in light of Hamas’s threat of “an explosion” if it did not receive it.
While Israel does not desire escalation, it has no reason to fear it. Israel is the stronger side. Moreover, the essence of war is a competition to inflict pain on the opponent in order to change patterns of behavior. Pain has a positive value in that it affects the learning curves of the warring sides. Israel has made use of force to teach the Palestinians that aggression against Israel does not pay, and that continued support for Hamas can be costly.
Another round of violence – one that exacts a high cost from Hamas and the Gazans – may lead them to more peaceful behavior. It is true that it is difficult to influence the learning processes of large collectives, but it is by no means unprecedented. For example, it took much suffering in WWI and WWII to transform Germany into a less militaristic and belligerent society. While not politically correct, such treatment might help turn the Palestinians into peaceful neighbors in the long run…
…Israel has no choice but to reject Hamas demands, even if that refusal brings about another round of violence that will add to the suffering in Gaza. Even the friends of the Palestinian national movement should realize that it is time for some tough love for Gaza. Maybe a bit of darkness will help the Gazans see the light.
This casual attitude towards violence is unsettling, but he wasn’t wrong about Hamas’s intentions. I say this in the interest of fairness. I will also say in fairness, that Hamas’s ascendence in Gaza was seen as desirable by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party because it politically divided the Palestinians in the West Bank from the Palestinians in Gaza and made it impossible to make progress on a two-state solution. As for the Gazans’ support for violence against Israel, this was certainly exacerbated by the blockade of Gaza that was imposed after Hamas seized power. When it comes to Israel and Palestine, it doesn’t really pay to play the game of ‘Who Started It?’ The embrace of violence by both sides is what must stop.
Of course, Prof. Inbar thinks I am a naive westerner, as he explains in Tuesday’s column.
Western risk aversion and fears of escalation are counterproductive. In many places, restraint is often construed as a fatal weakness and may invite aggression. Contrary to prevalent Western attitudes that view the use of force as uncivilized and anachronistic, Middle Easterners see it [as] a legitimate option in the toolbox of international actors. In this part of the world, in many situations, escalation is the best way to put an end to violence.
As you can see, his pre- and post-October 7 views on “the use of force” are perfectly aligned. But in his piece he also endeavors to teach Westerners a history lesson. And in his telling of history, everyone to the east of Israel is and forever has been a “barbarian.’
In civilizational terms, the Eastern Mediterranean has historically served as the frontier between the West and the “barbarians” coming from the East. In antiquity, the Persian attempt to expand westwards was stopped by the Greeks. Centuries later, the Venetians halted Ottoman advances. Over time this border fluctuated, reflecting the balance of power between the various force[s] battling for its control.
Today, it is Israel that prevents the Eastern Mediterranean from falling under Islamic hegemony.
This argument is made in the service of winning Western support for Israel’s war in Gaza, including the scale and tactics of the war. Somehow, it’s supposed to be in the West’s interests to stop Islamic hegemony in the Islamic world, which stretches from Indonesia to Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean. He makes a telling choice of words in the following passage, too:
Alongside its religious opposition to the Jewish state, Iran has established a network of proxies to attack Israel, an American ally and the only state in the region powerful enough to oppose Tehran’s imperial and Islamic impulses.
I understand that the Iranian government is run by Shi’a mullahs who are trying to export a Shi’a revolutionary political movement, but it’s weird to condemn a Muslim country for having “Islamic impulses.” Maybe if he’d written “Islamist,” it wouldn’t strike such a sour note.
The overall tenor of Inbar’s argument is that the West has always been fighting uncivilized peoples from Persia and for more than a millennium it has been pressed by murderous Muslims. What’s worse is that these Muslims are now joined by Russia, China and North Korea in an Axis-of-Evil, and that therefore any measure, any tactic, taken against the people of Gaza is justified and should be supported. Concerns about human rights or political self-determination are anachronistic and counterproductive. The main thing is to be a bully.
Israel understands that readiness to escalate and bear additional costs signals determination to attain necessary goals. Therefore, being perceived as willing to escalate helps deterrence. Fear of retaliation serves to cool tempers all over the world. This is the rationale for the threatening behavior of the bully in a tough neighborhood such as the Middle East. Deterrence must be maintained over time by the occasional use of force. This is its only lubricant; empty words do not work.
While he doesn’t say it, this is the rationale for the indiscriminate and disproportionate destruction of Gaza and tens of thousands of its inhabitants. It’s bizarre that he thinks this “cools tempers all over the world,” but it has its own internal logic. No one wants to be the next Gaza.
Lastly, I want to address his conclusion:
…the Palestinians have failed miserably to meet the Weberian test of statehood – monopoly over the use of force. They established two weak, corrupt and fragmented polities. The current Palestinian political trajectory is leading toward a civil war waged by a variety of militias, as seen in other Arab states, or to a Hamas dominated entity. Pushing for Palestinian statehood at this stage will only increase the chances for a deadly Israeli-Palestinian war in which both sides will suffer, but the Palestinian pain would undoubtedly be greater. The status quo, while far from ideal, is probably the less destructive option.
Here he once again pulls a trick of blaming the Palestinians for having a split government between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas but, as the Times of Israel has reported extensively, this has been the goal of Netanyahu’s policy ever since Hamas came to power in Gaza.
In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
I know this is an inconvenient fact, but it must always be asserted. Perhaps Inbar didn’t support providing electricity and water to Hamas, and maybe he didn’t agree with letting Hamas receive generous payments from Arab Gulf patrons, but those policies were pursued in part to ensure that Hamas was able to govern Gaza and maintain the political split between Gaza and the Palestinian Authority-run West Bank. The purpose was to forestall progress on a two-state solution, and now Inbar uses this gambit once again in the service of that argument.
And, so, with no support for a two-state solution, Inbar recommends “the status quo” as the least “destructive option.” The status quo has less suffering for the Palestinians than any alternative.
To an outside observer like me, it’s unfathomable that any learned professor can argue that the status quo is what the West should support. This is in today’s news:
An overnight Israeli airstrike on an area that Israel itself had designated as a humanitarian zone for displaced people in southern Gaza killed and injured dozens of Palestinians, according to local officials in the besieged enclave. Israel said the operation targeted Hamas fighters there…
…Eyewitnesses said at least five missiles struck the area, according to the group. The explosion created three large craters, Gaza Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said.
The group said its crews were facing “great difficulty” in retrieving victims – many of whom were believed to have been sleeping at the time of the strikes – due to a lack of resources…
…Israel’s military said the operation was carried out with the direction of the Israel Security Agency and the Air Force, and that steps were taken to mitigate civilian harm “including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional means.” The military did not say whether it warned civilians in the area…
…Two weapons experts told CNN the visual evidence from the scene of the assault in Al-Mawasi suggests 2,000-pound bombs were used.
“The significant damage and the size of the craters align with the expected effects of aerial bombs weighing several hundred kilograms,” Patrick Senft, a research coordinator at Armament Research Services (ARES), said on Tuesday.
Israel claims it killed some high-level Hamas operatives, and perhaps that is true. It also dropped several 2,000 pound bombs on a tent city of refugees who were told to relocate there for their safety. It did this and then told the world with a straight face “that steps were taken to mitigate civilian harm.”
I cannot and will not support this. This is not something that will change from some half-ass retelling of 2,500 years of civilization’s history. What is needed is not more apologetics from supposedly distinguished professors, but true vision and moral leadership, including from leaders on both sides of the conflict.
