Tag: enemy

The regional instability has changed Israel's security outlook in a number of ways, said Chief Intelligence Officer Brigadier General Ariel Karo, most notably in recent months in the Sinai Peninsula. Moreover, he said, the nature of the IDF's enemies is not always entirely clear, with the lines between military and terrorist groups blurred.

As far as most Palestinians are concerned, the "friend of my enemy is my enemy." Palestinians hate the US because of its continued support for Israel. The Palestinians want the US to endorse all their demands and force Israel to give them everything. As one of the leaders of a recent anti-US demonstration explained, "The US will remain our enemy for as long as it does not fully support the Palestinians."

Over the years, in several of my columns in The Jewish Press, I have examined the critical bases of Israeli nuclear deterrence. Recently, in consequence of the growing threat of Iranian nuclearization, increasing attention has been directed toward pertinent issues of enemy rationality. With this in mind, the following three-part column will seek to explain the impact of "irrationality" on Israel's deterrence posture, and also the vital differences between prospective Iranian irrationality and "madness."

There exists a new type of Israeli, who sees a moral equivalence between Israel's fallen, and those of the enemy.

Israeli Chief of Staff Major General Benny Gantz has ordered Israel Defense Force soldiers to ramp up their covert operations in enemy countries, according to an interview published in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

Hamas terrorist Omar Abu Sanina was released from Israeli jail last year, as part of the deal to free Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity....

The Palestinian news agency Ma'an reprts that Islamic Jihad leader Sheikh Nafeth Azzam on Monday urged PA President Mahmoud Abbas to walk out on...

Every Friday night at the Shabbat table, Jewish men display their hakarat hatov for their particular "woman of valor", by singing an ode to her that describes in great detail her many meritorious attributes and activities.

When this farce began, only a limited rural area near the Gaza Strip was being hit. Each time the range was extended there was talk that a red line had been crossed. But it is now clear that these lines in the sand had no meaning. Today over a million Israelis are in range of the weapons already launched from the Gaza Strip.

Reality: Those who are, or will soon be, governing Egypt view themselves as being at war with Israel for all practical purposes. It matters relatively little that there is still a peace treaty. In Cairo, there are no thoughts of peace.

The resolution read, "Egypt after the revolution will never be a friend of the Zionist entity, the number one enemy of Egypt and the Arab nation." It also supported Palestinian resistance "in all its kinds and forms."

In recent years, Israelis have been choosing to fly to the Far East through Arab states which do not recognize the State of Israel, according to Israel Channel 2 News. Israel's Foreign Office says that those enemy countries prohibit the entry of Israelis – but Israeli passengers report no special problem at those stops, and they get to save as much as $500 per ticket.

Once we recognize that the enemy is not acting against us based on rational reasons, but out of a pathological hatred, it is our duty to act on our conclusion and strike at the enemy, disregarding world opinion.

It turns out the FBI is using training materials that are inaccurate and offensive to Muslims. So the bureau's chief told an assembly of Muslim organizations about the removal of about 1 percent of the total number of training documents produced by the FBI. Except it also turns out that some of the folks Mueller assembled were not themselves so inoffensive…

According to a Gallup poll released Monday, Americans rank Iran as the US'  top enemy. The poll, which was conducted February 2-5, asked: "What one...

MK Yisrael Eichler makes comments in response to Livni's condemnation of ultra-orthodox sector.

Tibi's rhyming rebuke included a not-so-veiled derogatory reference to fellow MK’s mother

Earlier this year Israel passed a law that would strip Israelis of their citizenship if convicted of espionage or treason. Condemned for this by countries all over the world, almost all of whom have far harsher anti-treason laws than Israel, the Israeli government has yet to apply the law to anyone.

The Middle East is ablaze with political revolution. Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Syria – the list of countries keeps growing. All is quiet, however, on the Israeli front. The question is: Why?

JERUSALEM – A number of Israeli high school students on the verge of being inducted into the IDF publicly called on Prime Minister Netanyahu not to trade high-profile terrorists for them in the event they fall into enemy hands.

Declaring Palestine. It is a core issue for Israel that has come up in my columns before. But now, the enemy's operational tactics have been changed and fine-tuned. This month, Palestinian Authority leaders will seek formal creation of their independent state via the "good offices" of the United Nations.

Israel's persisting legal obligation to abrogate the Oslo Accords, as we have seen, stemmed from certain peremptory expectations of international law. Israel, however, also has substantial rights of abrogation here that bind its behavior apart from any such expectations. These particular rights derive from the basic doctrine of Rebus sic stantibus.

This article was originally published in The Jewish Press on May 20, 1960.

IDF planners working on an improved strategic paradigm will need to understand the following: Removing the bomb from Israel's "basement" could enhance Israel's nuclear deterrent to the extent that it would enlarge enemy perceptions of secure and capable Israeli nuclear forces. Such a calculated end to deliberate ambiguity could also underscore Israel's willingness to use these nuclear forces in reprisal for certain enemy first-strike and retaliatory attacks. From the standpoint of successful Israeli nuclear deterrence, IDF planners must proceed on the assumption that perceived willingness is always just as important as perceived capability. This, again, may bring to mind the counter intuitively presumed advantages for Israel of sometimes appearing less than fully rational.

The presence of any force multiplier may create synergy. Again, in the matter of Israel, we must acknowledge the antecedent "geometry of chaos." Understanding this more fully, IDF fighting units could conceivably become more effective than the mere sum of their respective parts.

By its improved use of correlation of forces thinking, Israel will need to seize every available operational initiative, including certain appropriate intelligence and counterintelligence functions, to best influence and control each enemy's particular matrix of expectations. This is a tall policy order, especially as these multiple enemies will include both state and sub-state adversaries, often with substantial and subtle interactions between them. Moreover, in an age of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, the consequences of certain IDF planning failures could be literally intolerable.

Any chaotic disintegration of the world system wouldfundamentally transform the Israeli system. Again, recalling the remarkable Swiss playwright, such a transformation could ultimately involve total or near-total destruction. In anticipation, Israel will have to orient its strategic planning to an assortment of worst-case prospects, thus focusing much more deliberately on a wide range of primarily self-help security options. This point simply cannot be overstated.

Nuclear deterrence, ambiguous or partially disclosed, is essential to Israel's physical survival. If, for whatever reason, Israel should fail to prevent enemy state nuclearization, it will have to refashion its nuclear deterrent to conform to vastly more dangerous regional and world conditions. But even if this should require purposeful disclosure of its nuclear assets and doctrine, such revelation would have to be limited solely to what would be needed to convince Israel's enemies of both its capacity and its resolve.

Project Daniel understood that international law has long allowed for states to initiate forceful defensive measures when there exists "imminent danger" of aggression. This rule of anticipatory self-defense was expanded and reinforced by then-President George W. Bush's issuance of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Released on September 20,2002, this document asserted, inter alia, that traditional concepts of deterrence would not work against an enemy "whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents...." As Israel is substantially less defensible and more vulnerable than the United States, its particular right to resort to anticipatory self-defense under threat of readily identifiable existential harms is beyond legal question.

It is highly unlikely, The Group reasoned, that any enemy state would ever calculate that the expected benefits of annihilating Israel would be so great as to outweigh the expected costs of its own annihilation. Excluding an irrational enemy state, a prospect that falls by definition outside the logic of nuclear deterrence, all state enemies of Israel would assuredly refrain from nuclear and/or biological attacks upon Israel that would presumptively elicit massive counter-value reprisals. Naturally, this reasoning would obtain only to the extent that these enemy states fully believed Israel would actually make good on its threats.