Ariel Sharon's suicidal policy By Louis Rene Beres
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From Prof. Louis Rene Beres
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Tuesday, March 22, 2005
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Ariel Sharon's suicidal policy
By Louis Rene Beres
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Posted: March 22, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
In 1784, when the Age of Reason had almost run its course, the philosopher Immanuel Kant defined enlightenment as "man's emergence from self-imposed darkness," and offered as its motto, Sapere aude - "Dare to know." Yet, few took this command very seriously, and Diderot, in a moment of rare lucidity, exclaimed to Hume: "Ah, my dear philosopher. Let us weep and wail. ... We preach wisdom to the deaf, and we are still far indeed from the age of reason." Today, the world - always full of noise - is still largely a desert of understanding, and the vast majority of nations continue to endure as if by accident. A "splendid" example of this unreason, especially in respect to its current prime minister, is the always-imperiled state of Israel.
Recently codifying its newest policy of surrender - Sharon's policy of "disengagement" - Israel now desperately needs enlightenment. Despite its extraordinary technical and industrial successes, the Jewish state must either "dare to know" about its enemies' relentless commitment to another Jewish genocide, or it must make ready to disappear. Exeunt omnes. Of what use to Israel is the light of reason if there are not enough eyes to see the light, or if those leaders with eyes resolutely keep them shut? The French philosophers liked to speak of a siecle des lumieres, a century of light, but Israel in the early 21st century already remains mired in the bruising darkness. Manipulated shamelessly from official Washington, Prime Minister Sharon now does not dare to know what looming catastrophes are in the making.
What should the prime minister now dare to know? First, he must learn to recognize that Israel can disappear. Such learning, in turn, will require that he begin to feel, as palpably as possible, the unendurable pain of Israel's plausible removal. Today, even after the obvious failure of Oslo and in the midst of the successor crime now quaintly called a "Road Map," Sharon is unaware that he does not have time on his side. For Israel, the consequences of an unreciprocated "peace process," however named, are apt to be quick and apt to be fatal.
Second, Prime Minister Sharon must now recognize that things are as they are. The Arab world will always despise Israel, at least for the foreseeable decades. It follows that Israel must now reconcile itself to the persistent absence of peace and to the corollary persistence of war. It must prepare to conduct operations against shifting coalitions of Arab and certain other Islamic states, and to defeat such coalitions. Strategically and tactically, this means an obligation to fight offensively, to structure its Order of Battle accordingly, and to strictly resist all policies founded upon the principle of "Land For Nothing." It also means having: a) the political courage and operational tools to carry out, as needed, appropriate pre-emptions against certain developing WMD assets in particular enemy states, b) the will to resume immediately an essential defensive policy of "targeted killing" of terrorist leaders, and c) the legal awareness that such pre-emptions and assassinations can be entirely permissible expressions of anticipatory self-defense under international law. An enlightened Israel must understand that international law is not a suicide pact.
Third, the prime minister must decide, soon, if he wishes Israel to become a genuinely Jewish state, or whether he wishes it to become nothing more than a state of the Jews. Now, after Oslo and during the convoluted cartography of the Road Map, the Jewish character of the state of Israel is withering daily. Readily observable and difficult to deny, this is an especially ironic debility, one that should call into question the very reason for maintaining such a painful statehood.
Too often in its brief modern history, Israel has abandoned itself to bland conformance, to manifestly ordinary imitations that would make it the same as all other states. But Israel is not the same. Not surprisingly, whenever it has rejected the lifeblood of its own Jewish particularity, Israel has exuded a kaleidoscope of contradictions that drive it to misfortune. In the end, such a determinably characterless presence in the world may even create a condition of absolute indefensibility for which no military capability could ever compensate. And with "disengagement," Prime Minister Sharon positively ensures such a presence.
To be a faithfully Jewish state may, in world-historical terms, be altogether insignificant. Indeed, it may be absolutely nothing, infinitely nothing. And yet - yet - this is the only true and ultimate significance of Israel, so much so as to make every other element of national meaning entirely an illusion. Israel is the state in which there still dawns the possibility of a thoroughly unique and redemptive consciousness. Before Israel can experience enlightenment, it must first understand that its never-ending struggles for existence are never merely a matter of ordinary politics and strategy, but rather an absolutely special and sacred task.
Tragic drama instructs us to recall that the spheres of reason, order and justice are painfully limited, and that no progress in science or technology can ever really compensate for the "otherness" of the world. For Israel, the time has now come to escape knowingly from the primeval forest of diplomatic evasion and to acknowledge, fully, that its enlightenment has intellectual, military and spiritual dimensions. Only when the Jewish state is fully committed to progress along each of these interdependent dimensions can it reasonably hope to survive and prosper. To begin this indispensable commitment, it must quickly reject Prime Minister Sharon's suicidal policy of "disengagement" and proceed to finally recognize the still openly genocidal intentions of its still multiple and unapologetic enemies.
Louis Rene Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and articles dealing with international relations and international law. His work on Israeli security matters is well-known to Israel's prime minister and to its military and intelligence communities. Beres is a professor of international law at Purdue University.
© 2005
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