opinion
The War on Terror:
Offense or Defense?
Yoram Ettinger
I slamic and Palestinian terrorists consider Israel to be
a critical beachhead — and proxy — of the United
States in the Middle East, and a significant collaborator
with the pro-U.S. Arab regimes. They perceive the war
on “the infidel Jewish state” as a preview of their more
significant war on “the infidel West” and attempts to
topple all pro-U.S. Sunni Arab regimes.

Therefore, Islamic and Palestinian terrorists have
been engaged in intra-Arab subversion, while system-
atically collaborating with enemies and rivals of the
United States and the West (e.g., Nazi Germany, the
Soviet Bloc, Ayatollah Khomeini and Asian terror
organizations to name a few). The more robust Israel’s
war on terrorism, the more deterred the terrorists in
their attempts to bring the “infidel” West to submission.

Both Palestinian and Islamic terrorism is inspired by
1,400-year-old Islamic values, still being spread today
via K-12 hate education, mosque incitement and official
and public idolization of terrorists.

Terrorists have astutely employed 1,400-year-old
Islamic tactics such as the taqiyya, which promotes
double-speak and dissimulation as a means to mislead
and defeat enemies — and the “hudna,” which misrep-
resents a temporary, non-binding ceasefire with
“infidels” as if it were a peace treaty.

Islamic and Palestinian terrorism is politically, religiously
and ideologically led by despotic and rogue regimes
that reject Western values such as peaceful coexistence,
democracy, human rights and good-faith negotiation.

Such terrorism is not susceptible to financial or
diplomatic incentives. This terrorism is driven not by
despair, but by hope – the hope to bring the “infidel”
into submission. The terrorists view goodwill gestures,
concessions and hesitancy as weakness.

The terrorism is not driven by a particular Israeli or
U.S. policy but by a fanatic vision. Thus, Islamic terror-
ism afflicted the United States during the Clinton and
Obama Democratic administrations, as well as during
the Bush and Trump Republican administrations.

The U.S. State Department has embraced a “moral
equivalence” between Palestinian terrorists — who
systematically and deliberately target civilians — and
Israeli soldiers, who systematically and deliberately
target terrorists. It emboldens terrorism, which threat-
ens all pro-U.S. Arab regimes, undermining regional
stability, and benefiting U.S. rivals and enemies, while
damaging the United States.

War on terrorism
The bolstering of deterrence — rather than hesitation,
16 APRIL 20, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
restraint, containment and goodwill gestures, which
exacerbate the violence — is a prerequisite for defeat-
ing terrorism and advancing the peace process.

The most effective long-term war on terrorism —
operationally, diplomatically, economically and morally
— is not a surgical or comprehensive reaction, but a
comprehensive and disproportional preemption, target-
ing the gamut of terroristic infrastructure and capabilities;
draining the swamp rather than chasing the mosquitos.

Containment produces a false, short-term sense of
security, followed by a long-term security setback. Far
from mitigating terrorism, it adrenalizes it, providing
time to bolster its capabilities — a tailwind to terror and
a headwind to counter-terrorism. It shakes confidence
in the capability to crush terrorism. Defeating terrorism
mandates the obliteration of capabilities, not co-exis-
tence or containment.

Seeking to avoid a multi-front war (Hamas, the
Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah and Iran), a policy of
containment erodes Israel’s posture of deterrence,
which brings Israel closer to a multi-front war under
much worse conditions. Israel’s posture of deterrence
is also eroded in the eyes of the relatively-moderate
Arab countries, which have dramatically enhanced
cooperation with Israel due to Israel’s posture of deter-
rence against mutual threats.

A policy of containment also derives from White House
and State Department pressure, subordinating national
security to diplomatic priorities. It undermines Israel’s
posture of deterrence, which plays into the hands of anti-Is-
rael and anti-U.S. rogue regimes. Precedents prove that
Israeli defiance of U.S. pressure yields short-term tension,
but long-term strategic respect, resulting in expanded
strategic cooperation. On a rainy day, the United States
prefers a defiant, rather than appeasing, strategic ally.

The comprehensive 2002 Israeli counter-terrorism
offensive, and the return of Israel Defense Forces to the
headquarters of Palestinian terrorism in the mountain
ridges of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) — and not
defensive containment and surgical operations — resur-
rected Israel’s effective war on Palestinian terrorism, which
substantially curtailed terrorists’ capabilities to proliferate
terrorism in Israel, Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula.

A policy of containment intensifies terrorists’ daring
and feeds vacillation and the self-destructive “don’t
rock the boat” mentality. It erodes steadfastness and
feeds the suicidal perpetual retreat mentality.

The addiction to containment is one of the lethal
byproducts of the 1993 Oslo Accord, which has produced
a uniquely effective hothouse of terrorism, highlighted
by the import, arming and funding of some 100,000
Palestinian terrorists from Tunisia, the Sudan, Yemen,
Lebanon and Syria to Gaza, Judea, Samaria and eastern
Jerusalem, who have unprecedentedly radicalized the
Arab population of pre-1967 Israel, established a K-12
hate education system, launched an unparalleled wave
of terrorism, and systematically violated agreements.

The bottom line
The 30 years since the Oslo Accords have featured
unprecedented Palestinian hate education and ter-
rorism. It has demonstrated that a retreat from the
mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria has boosted
terrorism; that the Palestinian Authority is not commit-
ted to a peace process, but to the destruction of the
Jewish state; and that terrorism requires a military, not
political, solution.

A successful war on terrorism requires preemptive
offense, not defense, containment and reaction; fight-
ing in the terrorists’ trenches is preferable to fighting in
one’s own. No Israeli concessions could satisfy inter-
national pressure; and diplomatic popularity is inferior
to strategic respect. Avoiding a repeat of the critical
post-Oslo errors requires a comprehensive, dispropor-
tional, decisive military campaign to uproot — not to
coexist with — terroristic infrastructure.

The historic and national security indispensability of
the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria — which
dominate the 8-mile to 15-mile sliver of pre-1967 Israel
— and the necessity to frustrate Palestinian terrorism,
requires Israel to eliminate any sign of hesitance and
vacillation by expanding the Jewish presence in this
most critical area. This will intensify U.S. and global
pressure, but as documented by all prime minis-
ters from Ben-Gurion, through Eshkol, Golda Meir,
Begin and Shamir, defiance of pressure results in the
enhancement of strategic respect and cooperation.

The Palestinian track record during the 30 years
since the 1993 Oslo Accord has highlighted the violent,
unpredictable and anti-U.S. nature of the proposed
Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, which would
force the toppling of the pro-U.S. Hashemite regime east
of the river. It would transform Jordan into an uncon-
trollable, chaotic state in the vein of Libya, Lebanon,
Syria, Iraq and Yemen, triggering a domino scenario in
the Arabian Peninsula (south of Jordan), which could
topple the pro-U.S., oil-producing Arab regimes. This
would reward Iran’s ayatollahs, China and Russia, while
severely undermining regional and global stability and
US economic and national security interests. ■
Yoram Ettinger is a former ambassador and head of
Second Thought: A U.S.-Israel Initiative. This article
was first published by The Ettinger Report.




Israel
at Nearly Half of the World’s Jews
Live in Israel
JNS.org Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
A t the start of 2022, there were 15.3 million
Jews in the world, 7 million of whom, roughly
46% of all Jews worldwide, resided in Israel,
Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics revealed on April
16. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Jews numbered
16.6 million, and 449,000 (3%) resided in the land of
Israel. Just under 10 years later, in 1948, the world’s
Jewish population had diminished to 11.5 million; of
them, 650,000 (6%) lived in Israel.

Among Diaspora Jews, about 6 million live in
the United States, 442,000 in France, 392,000 in
Canada, 292,000 in Britain, 173,000 in Argentina,
145,000 in Russia, 118,000 in Germany and another
118,000 in Australia, according to the report.

Ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which
begins on the evening of April 17, the CBS also
revealed that 147,199 Holocaust survivors or victims
of antisemitic actions during the Holocaust are living
in Israel.

Of those survivors, 61% are women and 39% are
men. A small number, 4.5%, immigrated to Israel
before the establishment of the state, between
1933 to 1947; 31.7% immigrated during the large
Israelis wave fl ags at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City on the eve of Jerusalem Day on May 9, 2021.

aliyah wave following the state’s establishment
(1948 to 1951); 29.7% immigrated between 1952
and 1989 and 34.1% came since the 1990s, during
the wave of aliyah from the former Soviet Union.

In a 2021 survey, 87% of Israel’s survivors said they
were either “satisfi ed” or “very satisfi ed” with their
lives, similar to the 88% of Jews and others above
the age of 75. However, 17.3% of Holocaust survivors
said they felt lonely often, compared to 12.6% of Jews
and others 75 and older. ■
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 17