Iran attacks, Israel "wins"

The warped logic of holy war

Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash

“You got a win,” Joe Biden reportedly told Benjamin Netanyahu in the aftermath of Iran’s weekend attack on Israel. “Take the win.” Meaning: show restraint because retaliation could spark a broader war. A “win” in this instance comprises an unprecedented act of hostility against the Jewish state from Iranian soil, a barrage of 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles neutralised at a cost of more than $US1 billion to Israel alone, minor damage to an air force base in the south, civilians spending a sleepless night in bomb shelters, a seven year-old Bedouin girl from the Negev desert fighting for her life after shrapnel from an intercepted missile fell on her home. 

Hilarious what counts as a win in that part of world — or at least what others might deem a win for Israel — which isn’t to suggest I’m lacking material for my gratitude journal, if I was the type who had such a thing. The missiles were resoundingly intercepted with the help of Israel’s allies — Israel still has allies! — the US, Britain, France, even Jordan, with a handful of moderate Sunni Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia, lending a hand in the background, and from here we see the outline of an alliance between the Jewish state and countries with a shared interest in countering the Islamic Republic’s projection of power in the region. 

Take the win …

Nothing against Biden, even if, as has become apparent in recent weeks, it’s his own necessary win in Michigan, with its sizeable cluster of Arab and Muslim voters come November that’s driving rhetoric from the White House. Just as Albo and Penny Wong’s rhetoric on the Middle East is skewing so much to western Sydney it’s giving me whiplash. Still, I’m counting in good faith Israel’s abundant winnings. Hard to keep track of the bounty sometimes. That the state exists at all is an outrageous windfall. That it wants to exist without the persistent threat of elimination from the Islamic Republic, its jihadist proxies and its Greek chorus of useful idiots at Columbia, Sydney Uni et-al is obviously pure greed. 

Israel will, according to the reckoning of its national unity war cabinet, take the win or not, exact payback or not, do it now or do it later. I have no useful advice to offer. I’m just intrigued at this notion of “winning” and how it means different things to different people and something different again to the Islamist. 

I’m not bothered by the 100 percent authentic, spontaneous eruption of joy and firecrackers post attack from the ordinary Persian on the streets of Tehran. But it ought to trouble anyone invested in the future of liberal democracy that a US President said “don’t” and the rogue state did it anyway. At this stage I’d chalk that up as a “win” for Iran, and suspect Ukraine and Taiwan would do the same.

As I watched the surreal footage of Israeli air defences intercepting the Iranian missiles over Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, I found myself imagining a direct hit. No better metaphor, I thought, for Tehran’s chief export, jihadism, with its veneer of concern for the sacred.

Let’s remember that Iran’s attack was not to avenge the blood of innocents in Gaza. Not at all. As the Israelis like to say, the Iranians would happily fight the Zionist entity “to the last Arab.” The thousands of dead children weren’t emphasised in Tehran’s official justification for the attack, only the Israel Defence Force’s alleged strike early this month on a building adjacent to its consulate in Damascus that killed seven military officials. Not that Iran’s brain fog on the subject of Gaza’s children worried the 400 pro-Palestinian protesters in Chicago who moments after the attack broke out in chants of “Hands off Iran!”

Iran’s regard for the children of Gaza is as fervent as Hamas’s regard for Gaza’s children. They are highly valued for absorbing Israeli missiles and thereafter serving as a propaganda tool to broadcast the supposed depravity of Zionists, a strategy that’s proven stunningly successful.

As the world heaps opprobrium on Israel for its conduct of a defensive war — putting aside, for now, the question of how much blame the Netanyahu Government should wear for the humanitarian disaster in Gaza — Hamas sits back and names its price for a ceasefire. Last week the terror group reportedly claimed it wasn’t sure it could even produce 40 live civilians to satisfy the terms of a proposed truce, which it later rejected in any event. It has since issued a counter-offer: first a permanent ceasefire, then, maybe, a staggered release of hostages.

Take the win?

Dead Israeli hostages are Israel’s fault, say many good and smart people. Just as dead Gazan children are Israel’s fault alone. Never mind that from the billions in international aid Hamas diverted to a military tunnel network more vast than the London Tube they couldn’t build a smattering of civilian shelters to protect Gaza’s children from the Israeli air strikes they spectacularly provoked.

In a concession to cultural sensitivity I acknowledge that from the jihadists’ perspective they’re doing these kids a favour, fast-tracking their path to martyrdom where a bounty of obliging virgins await. Notice how self-satisfied Hamas’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh appeared last week when told — assuming the footage wasn’t staged — that three of his sons and at least four grandchildren were killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza city. Cool as, he was. Cracked a half grin. Later he told Al Jazeera he was grateful to God “for the honour he has given me in the deaths of three of my children and my grandchildren.” He grabbed that win. 

**

It can be hard for the average Westerner to appreciate the sincere commitment of today’s social media savvy holy warriors. Before October 7 even Israelis found the threat hard to grasp; protected by the Iron Dome from the frequent rocket fire, and, unlike Gaza’s population, well-serviced with bomb shelters, they settled into complacency about the murderous regime next door. Their terrible excuse for a government went one worse, actively bolstering Hamas in a cynical divide-and-conquer strategy to undermine Fatah and the aspirations for Palestinian statehood. 

No more: the intolerable has come into sharp focus in Israel. I was there last month on a media trip — yes, one of those pro-Israel “junkets” that hundreds of my colleagues, and indeed the journalists’ union, believe turns the otherwise sceptical reporter into lifelong Zionist stooge. My colleagues would say I was a lost cause to begin with, and they’re not wrong. Not only on account of my unwavering belief in the cause of Jewish self-determination, but also because I hold certain default positions on the subject of jihadism. On jihadism I entertain little nuance because I see little nuance to entertain.

I will write about my trip soon; I haven’t thus far partly because since my return, life or more accurately, death in the family has thrown me off course. I’ll be writing about that too. 

For now, I’ll just say that I found Israel more pensive and introspective than ever before. As the defence establishment described it, since October 7 the state has been fighting Iran’s proxies on six fronts: in Gaza, on the West Bank — where an IDF crackdown on alleged Hamas cells coupled with Palestinian and settler violence makes for a volatile landscape — Yemen, home base for Houthi rebels, Syria and Iraq from where Shiite militia have launched rocket and drone attacks, and Lebanon, the most nail biting theatre of all.

Hezbollah initiated hostilities on October 8 in solidarity with Hamas. The Shiite militia’s relentless firing of rockets and anti-tank missiles is calibrated to fall just under the threshold for all-out war, in which event its 150,000 warheads, including long-range missiles, could overwhelm Israel’s air defence systems and reduce large parts of Tel Aviv to rubble. Since October 8 about 70,000 residents from Israel’s north are internally displaced and seven civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks. This is what the absence of war looks like.

There is of course a 7th front: Iran, the head of the octopus. The cold war that’s now hot in which the Jewish state has apparently tasted victory.