Israel’s jihadi enemies remain dedicated to ritual violence and corollary conceptualizations of terror as religious sacrifice. No awareness of this can be found in Trump’s plan for regional peace.
By LOUIS RENÉ BERES |
Proudly, on repeated occasions, US President Donald Trump has declared the final destruction of Hamas and a trouble-free era of regional peace.
Aside from being factually incorrect on multiple levels (e.g., Hamas forces are already re-establishing themselves in Gaza, and Trump’s promised international stabilization force would be drawn largely from Israel’s enemies), the American president misses a larger point: Hamas is merely the most visible expression of a much deeper ideology. This embedded system of belief links “religious sacrifice” to the presumed conquest of personal death.
In tangible matters of foreign policy, especially counter-terrorism, Israel must build conscientiously on firm foundations of probing scholarship. These are never challenges that can be handled ad hoc by the glaringly shallow prescriptions of an American president. In essence, while Trump declares eternal peace for Israel, he has no meaningful understanding of pertinent history, strategy or law. Even if Israeli leaders could reasonably ignore this conspicuous deficit, they should never undervalue the primacy of jihadi ideology.
Jihadi ideology will remain
Also worrisome is that Mr. Trump offers his “Board of Peace” arguments on the basis of “attitude, not preparation.” In the final analysis, all useful preparations against war and terror must be based on coherent theoretical foundations. “All theory,” says philosopher Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), is a “net.” “Only those who cast, can catch.”
Trump’s bombastic declarations of peace notwithstanding, jihadi violence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and the West Bank (Judea/Samaria) will accelerate. Whatever happens to Hamas in Gaza, jihadi ideology will remain the core problem for Israel. Ipso facto, Jerusalem should become more fully aware that Israel’s fundamental security problem lies in the malignant fusion of Islamist tribalism with variously belligerent claims of sacredness.
To clarify this complex sentiment, 19th-century German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel could be brought to mind: “The State is the march of God in the world.” This prescient observation now applies to a continuously reconfiguring amalgam of jihadi terrorist groups, not just to certain Islamic states or sub-state Hamas.
Nuclear problem
Looking ahead, Israel’s political leadership will need to consider another ominous fusion: the plausible coming-together of nuclear capability with adversarial irrationality. This uniquely fearful prospect should be anticipated not only in Iran and Pakistan, but also in North Korea.
There is more. By definition, world politics are systemic. What happens in North Asia, as an obvious example, could impact war and peace in Europe or North America. At the same time, nothing truly scientific could be said about relevant probabilities. According to logic and science, determining the odds of a unique or unprecedented event is a contradiction in terms.
Israel ought never hope to fix the “Hamas problem” until its leaders understand the human bases of jihadi insurgencies. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu focuses too heavily on political, tactical or operational issues, Israel could find itself exacerbating the most deeply perilous threats. Should Jerusalem focus on Hamas threats per se, Israel could unwittingly strengthen various other jihadi foes throughout the region.
At one level, these calculations should prove easy to understand. Any disproportionate harm consciously directed toward eliminating a particular Sunni terror group could simultaneously benefit assorted Shi’ite adversaries. Israel’s core enemy is never one jihadi enemy as such, but a sweeping ideology with disparate, intersecting, and reciprocally-related terror offshoots. Ultimately, it is this underlying ideology that Israel must “defeat.” Significantly, there is absolutely nothing in US President Donald Trump’s alleged peace that could help bring this about.
Trump’s plan misses the point
Summing up, Israel’s most basic enemy is not Hamas, but a wider movement that holds unshakably fast to virulently seductive claims of unreason. Though Jerusalem would certainly prefer adversaries against which Israel could appeal to reason, it is never a state’s prerogative to decide enemy inclinations to rational decision-making. To be sure, Israeli leaders ought never flee from reason themselves, but should learn to deal more effectively with all jihadi enemies who listen intently for whisperings of immortality.
From the beginning, primal violence in world politics has been driven by tribal conflicts between and within nations, and by correspondingly “sacred” promises to compensate the faithful with freedom from death. This inherently lethal incentive, whether explicit or implicit, is not limited to the present historical moment. Recalling the philosopher Hegel, it was in some sense already evident in foundational policies of the Third Reich.
Israel’s jihadi enemies remain dedicated to ritual violence and corollary conceptualizations of terror as religious sacrifice. No awareness of this uncompromising dedication can be found in US President Trump’s declared plan for regional peace. It is a plan without a scintilla of policy-relevant merit.
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