Israel's sense of being menaced

Israeli historian Benny Morris

Benny Morris, famous as one of the New Historians in Israel who write Israeli history in a way that debunks some treasured national mythology - although in this political outlook he's very much like what we in American call "neoconservatives" - writes on "Why Israel feels itself threatened" in Por qué Israel se siente amenazado El País 17.01.2009.

He writes that many Israelis still today feel themselves as vulnerable as the feeling that prevailed just prior to the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel launched a preemptive war when Arab armies were massing against them and they feared an imminent attack. He argues that the persistence of this perception is something that requires explanation:

Los israelíes o, mejor dicho, los judíos israelíes están reviviendo lo que sintieron sus padres en aquellos días apocalípticos. En la actualidad, Israel es un Estado mucho más poderoso y próspero que entonces. En 1967 tan sólo había unos dos millones de judíos en el país (actualmente hay cerca de 5,5 millones), y el ejército carecía de armas nucleares. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de la población mira con recelo hacia el futuro.

[The Isrealis, or better said, Israeli Jews are experiencing again what their parents felt in those apocalyptic days [of 1967]. In reality, Israel is a much more powerful and prosperous state than it was then. In 1967, there were only two million Jews in the country (presently it's around 5.5 million), and the army is supplied with nuclear arms. Nevertheless, the major part of the population looks at the future with misgiving.]

He breaks down his answer to why it is so systematically into points and sub-points. He sees two meta-reasons and four specific reasons. The meta- or general reasons he gives as (1) despite peace agreements with Egypt, the Arab and Muslim worlds have never really accepted Israel's existence; and, (2) Western opinion is turning more and more against Israel. In connection with the latter point, he sees the instrumentalization of the Holocaust as a justification for Israel's actions as being of decreasing utility: "La memoria del Holocausto está cada vez más difuminada y resulta poco útil." [The memory of the Holocaust is ever more blurred and consequently less useful.]

He expands on the first point in his book, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008), Morris writes:

For almost a millennium, the Arab peoples were reared on tales of power and conquest. Ottoman subjugation ate away at the Arabs' self-image; even more destructive were the gradual encroachment and dominance of (infidel) Western powers, led by Britain and France. The 1948 War was the culminating affront, when a community of some 650,000 Jews - Jews, no less - crushed Palestinian Arab society and then defeated the armies of the surrounding states. The failure was almost complete. The Arab states had failed to "save" the Palestinians and failed to prevent Israel's emergence and acceptance into the comity of nations. And what little Palestine territory the Arabs had managed to retain fell under Israeli sway two decades later.

Viewed from the Israeli perspective, however, 1948 wasn't the irreversible triumph it at first appeared. True, the state had been established, Zionism's traditional chief goal, and its territory had increased; true, the Arab armies had been crushed to such an extent that they would not represent a mortal threat to the Jewish state for two decades.

But the dimensions of the success had given birth to reflexive Arab nonacceptance and powerful revanchist urges. The Jewish state had arisen at the heart of the Muslim Arab world - and that world could not abide it. Peace treaties may eventually have been signed by Egypt and Jordan; but the Arab world - the man in the street, the intellectual in his perch, the soldier in his dugout - refused to recognize or accept what had come to pass. It was a cosmic injustice. And there would be plenty of Arabs, by habit accustomed to think in the long term and egged on by the ever-aggrieved Palestinians, who would never acquiesce in the new Middle Eastern order. Whether 1948 was a passing fancy or has permanently etched the region remains to be seen.

This neoconservative-type generalization about Arab humiliation echoes the highly dubious theories of Bernard Lewis. Not to get all postmodern here. But it's probably less valuable for any realistic historical perceptions of Arab history than it is a reflection of the perception of Israeli hardliners about the Arabs.

The four specific causes he gives El País op-ed are as follows:

• The perceived menace of Iran, which Morris apparently sees as being as great as Israeli politicians make it out to be. For an example, see Stephen Walt, Is Iran a bigger challenge than the global economic crisis? Bibi thinks so. Foreign Policy blog 01/29/09; Walt does not share the doomsday vision of Iran.

• A growing threat from Hizbullah in Lebanon.

• The threat from Hamas.

• The demographic dynamics of the territory that includes Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Unless a two-state solution can be established soon, Israel will have to choose between being a democratic state and a Jewish state, because the relative growth rates of the Arab and Jewish populations will soon make it impossible for Israel to be both. Jimmy Carter discusses this issue succinctly on the PBS Newshour, Carter Reflects on Middle East Conflict, Obama's Diplomatic Road Ahead 01/28/09

And, in what could be considered a third meta-factor, he argues that Israeli triumphalism in the wake of the War of Independence (1948), the Sinai invasion (1956), the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War (1973) has been challenged over the years by far more ambiguous and frustrating experiences in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. Going from being overconfident to feeling vulnerable can lead to threat inflation in the minds of policymakers and the public.

As Morris recognizes even as he defends it, the notion of Israel as existentially threatened (i.e., threatened in its existence as an independent state) by military enemies seems incongruous with Israel's actual military power. American policymakers don't have to accept the Israelis' sense of threat as being fully rational or realistic. But the fact that such a strong feeling is driving Israeli policies is in itself a fact that has to be taken fully into account.

Tags: benny morris, israel