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Israel’s biggest battle is against delegitimisation says IDF colonel
Israel faces military threats on its northern and southern borders, from Iran, and in cyberspace. Though the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is strong and finds solutions, the greatest threat is one of legitimacy, said former IDF representative Colonel Hanny Caspi.
STEVEN GRUZD
“For short range missiles, there is the Iron Dome. The terror tunnels can be found, shown, and destroyed. We have the bravest soldiers. But the main challenge is legitimacy, and attempts to delegitimise the state of Israel. Israel isn’t always ready to cope with this threat.”
The world’s most sophisticated weaponry cannot be deployed when Israel’s enemies use women and children as human shields, and civilian homes, schools, and hospitals to stockpile weapons and house missile launchers. Israelis are quickly labelled as bloodthirsty child killers, causing worldwide outrage.
Caspi trained as a lawyer and served for 27 years in the IDF. Among many other prominent roles, she has been IDF representative to the Knesset; defence and military attaché to the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg; and IDF representative to NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Caspi was speaking about the “Security challenges facing Israel today: presenting the Israeli narrative” at the Rabbi Cyril Harris Community Centre at Great Park Synagogue in Johannesburg on Tuesday night.
“We have sophisticated stuff, but can’t always use it,” she said, referring to the legitimacy issue. She has fought (successfully) to get IDF generals to accept delegitimisation as a real and dangerous threat.
“The struggle for legitimacy is a war against Amalek,” she said, evoking the biblical enemy of Israel, who knew all its vulnerabilities and exploited them. “BDS [the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign] against Israel is the Amalek of today.
“The conflict with the Palestinians is a local conflict turned global,” she said, and false narratives that delegitimise Israel are winning the propaganda war. Easy slogans like “occupation”, “free Palestine” and “apartheid” resonate, whereas Israel’s story takes much more nuanced explanation. “The internal debate in Israel fuels the Palestinians’ narrative,” she said, as does the brainwashing of Palestinian children in the “hate industry” through biased school textbooks, the glorification of martyrdom, and anti-Semitism.
To illustrate fake news and unfounded propaganda, Caspi quoted a recent article that debunked false claims by a left-wing Israeli writer that Israel killed Palestinian children in the hundreds and thousands. It was soundly refuted by real data that showed far lower casualty numbers, even with military operations against Gaza, and the use of children in the frontlines of violent protests at the Gaza border fence.
She related the old joke that G-d told Moses to lead the Israelites from Egypt to Canada, so they’d have the United States as their neighbour. But Moses was a stutterer, and he kept mumbling “Canaan” rather than “Canada”, so Israel landed up in a very tough neighbourhood.
In terms of conventional threats, “Israel thankfully has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but don’t confuse that with peace,” she said, describing the enmity and resentment these countries still show to the Jewish state.
Israel faces an existential threat from Shi’ite Iran, a state that has repeatedly vowed to obliterate it. The radical regime wants to remain in power at all costs, export the Islamic revolution, and destabilise the region by supporting insurgencies and terrorism. Iran is probably the most dangerous threat to international peace today.
Caspi outlined the strength of Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon and now Syria. She denounced the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, installed after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, as “worthless”, continually deferring to a Lebanese government that tips off terrorists about upcoming operations. She said Israel needed to be less fixated on Hezbollah, putting the onus on the Lebanese government to reign it in, “but perhaps there are egos among the IDF generals who want to confront Hezbollah”.
Shi’ite Iran even supports Hamas, a Sunni movement in Gaza, because they are fighting a common enemy – Israel. Hezbollah learned from Hamas to dig tunnels into Israel before these were exposed and destroyed in January 2019.
On Gaza, Caspi outlined the sad history of the region, saying that Egypt refused to take back Gaza in the 1979 Camp David Accords because it wanted this crisis-ridden, densely-populated area to be a festering problem for Israel. It certainly continues to be that, nearly 15 years after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.
Caspi concluded with two apt quotations from Israeli prime ministers. Golda Meir said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Benjamin Netanyahu said, “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”
She urged the audience to be informed ambassadors for Israel in the ongoing war for legitimacy. She pointed out that Israelis sometimes take it for granted that everyone is familiar with the intricacies of the Middle East. “When we give them information, we explain the second floor, without giving them the foundations. We need to show the world our truth.”