Israel's Real Existential Threat

October 26, 2023

Israel’s siege, evacuation, bombing, and planned invasion of Gaza rattles the world. On October 7, it was brutally attacked and ever since has undertaken tough retaliatory actions aimed at destroying Hamas, the terrorist group controlling Gaza that massacred 1,400 innocent Israelis. No one can argue against Israel’s right to defend itself, but many inside and outside the country criticize the ferocity of its counter-attacks. Nearly half of housing across Gaza has been reduced to rubble, thousands of Gazan civilians have died or been injured, and one million have been displaced to the southern half of the territory. Gaza is now the largest refugee camp in the Middle East and a looming humanitarian disaster that the United Nations and others scramble to avert. And Israel’s neighbors, including allies, recoil at its fierce reprisals and worry these will widen the war and topple their regimes. But blame is misplaced. This is Iran’s war against Israel and the Arabs too.

Gaza City destruction. The Times of Israel

On October 25, Israel agreed to delay its ground invasion at the request of America, hoping to contain the war. But it was too late. Iran’s terrorist proxies attacked American and coalition troops 13 times at bases in Iraq and Syria, injuring two dozen, and now more American troops are being sent to the region to bolster existing missions. The only “good” news that day was an announcement by President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that they would resurrect a deal, derailed by the massacre, to “normalize relations” between Saudis and Israelis and finance Palestinian economic development. The two leaders also promised to try and maintain stability across the region and to expedite humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

But geopolitically, Israel faces a gang-up by Iran and Russia as well as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez who abandoned his neutrality by describing Israel’s defense as “collective punishment” and a “clear violation of international humanitarian law”. This divide has paralyzed the UN from delivering aid: Moscow has called for an humanitarian ceasefire (which Israel is against) while the U.S. has called for pauses to allow aid to enter Gaza. Meanwhile, very little help is getting into southern Gaza.

The crisis has fuelled a damaging narrative, even among Arab moderates, that Israel and the West are guilty of racism. “When October 7 happened, the world immediately and unequivocally stood by Israel and its right to defend itself and condemned the attack that happened,” commented Jordan’s Queen Rania on CNN, “… but what we’re seeing in the last couple of weeks, we’re seeing silence in the world. Are we being told that it is wrong to kill a family, an entire family, at gunpoint, but it’s OK to shell them to death? I mean, there is a glaring double standard here. It is just shocking to the Arab world.”

The neighbours

Israel’s closest neighbors are nervous and have reason to be. They are unstable and also victims of Iran’s years of terrorist and war activities. Lebanon is essentially a failed state and tries to wrestle with a political and economic crisis. Its population of 5.593 million includes 1.5 million Syrian refugees, 211,000 Palestinian refugees, and 81,000 migrants from other parts of the region. Estimates are that most Lebanese residents, roughly 3.9 million, require humanitarian assistance. Their government is riddled with corruption and is dysfunctional. The country has been without a President for one year because its power-sharing constitution, written by France, requires a president who is a member of the Maronite Catholic sect; a prime minister who is Sunni, and a parliament speaker who is Shiite. Several attempts to elect a president have been blocked by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group that is also a powerful political party in Lebanon.

In fact, Hezbollah is described as “a state within a state” and launched into politics during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, between Muslims and Christians. It is driven by its opposition to Israel and the West and is now more powerful than Lebanon’s military. Hezbollah has an arsenal of 150,000 rockets and works with Hamas and other Iran-backed terrorist organizations in Syria.

One of many refugee camps in Jordan. This one houses 80,000. AFP via Getty Images

Jordan is equally precarious. It has a population of 11 million, half of whom are Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes after the creation of Israel in 1948. Two million of these Palestinians are still registered as refugees, as are 660,000 Syrian refugees, and all live in poverty. But Jordan is one of the few Arab states with a peace agreement with Israel, but its large Palestinian population – and ongoing violence in the West Bank against Palestinians by radical “settlers” – places enormous pressure on its Royal family to condemn Israel.

Egypt has also been at peace with Israel since the Yom Kippur war in 1973, but is now being pushed to accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza and place them in its desolate Sinai desert. This was suggested by an Israeli minister who also stated that Israel will walk away from Gaza once Hamas is destroyed. Egypt’s President rejected the notion out of hand. Like Lebanon, Cairo is in the midst of a financial and currency crisis and is already one of the world’s most densely populated countries. Roughly 90 percent of Egypt’s population of 109 million are crowded into cities and towns along the Nile River. And the rest of the country is mostly wasteland.

But the biggest blow to Israel’s place in the sun is Turkey’s reaction to civilian casualties in Gaza. The two countries have enjoyed a strong and growing bilateral relationship, except for a brief diplomatic spat that was mended in 2022. Turkey hosts millions of Syrian and Ukrainian refugees and is an important member of NATO. And just months ago, Israeli rushed huge amounts of humanitarian aid to help Turkey during its earthquake. But now the gloves are off, likely due to Turkey’s own concerns about Muslim extremists in its midst.

On October 25, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled a trip to Israel and delivered a scathing indictment of Israel for its behavior. He said, according to Ankara’s AA News Broadcasting System, that “`the Jewish people know well that Türkiye is the only land that has been without antisemitism for centuries’, he added, referring to its welcoming Jews driven out of other countries during both World War II and the Ottoman era… he noted that almost half of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza are children. Erdogan said this showed that `the aim is deliberate brutality to commit crimes against humanity’. Western countries consider Hamas as a terrorist organization, he said, but added: `Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but a liberation group, a mujahideen group that struggles to protect its lands and citizens’.”

There was no mention of Iran.

Iran’s financial investment in Middle East chaos

Now Israel battles Hamas and world opinion, but the principal culprits — Iran and Russia — continue to get off scot-free. They finance and train terrorists and prevent solutions to the Palestinian problem in order to destabilize the Arabic world in the Middle East. Iran denies direct involvement, and so does Russia but it now controls a chunk of Syria, ceded by its dictator for helping him stay in power.

Biden tries to get aid into Gaza, and convinced Israel to delay its ground invasion because he believes its government lacks clear, definable goals and will widen the war. Meanwhile, awful headlines continue and Hamas hides in tunnels or has left town. The region roils and Israelis remain governed by a radical prime minister they overwhelmingly dislike. A statement by Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong, after the latest UN dust-up over aid, best sums up Israel’s dilemma, its real existential threat, and a path forward. “The way Israel exercises its right to defend itself matters,” she said. “It matters to civilians throughout the region, and it matters to Israel’s ongoing security.”