The Israeli army was lean, mobile, and ingenuous. US military aid created a behemoth addicted to new, untested, and tremendously expensive weapons. They often do not work as advertised, become obsolete before seeing battle, and are not cost-effective. An arms race bankrupted the Soviets, and Israel cannot win one, either. Israel can do away with American military supplies and return to its trademark army: technically only moderately advanced but highly trained, motivated, smart, and ready to accept losses. Such a turnaround runs against the vested interests of both the American and Israeli military bureaucracies and military-industrial complexes and would be very difficult. Divestment from the US is the best way to achieve military reform in Israel.

Mobile, tactically superior armies have let empires prevail against numerically larger enemies. The current situation, however, is different. Imperial forces have generally fought other armies; the enemy population was little involved. Conscription changed that. Israel faces virtually unlimited Muslim enemy. Egypt can mass ten million people at the Suez and march them through the Sinai into Tel Aviv. Israel couldn’t kill a significant part of such a crowd. Egypt does not even need an army for that matter: millions of unarmed Egyptians could as well push the Jews into the sea. Implausible? Iran employed exactly such tactics against Iraq: Iran marched its teenagers through Iraqi minefields to clear the mines. Or think of unorthodox measures: how about Egypt sending a five-million-strong army into the Sinai and surrendering it, then rejecting a ceasefire? Israel won’t be able to carry on a war with five million POWs on her hands. Israel cannot always win by mobile warfare.

The doctrine of the nuclear first strike has several advantages and hardly any downside. Relying on nuclear weapons, Israel could substantially dismantle her army. The economic advantages of demilitarization are immense. The nuclear deterrent will be credible if Israel lacks other weapons. An Israeli nuclear response doctrine would practically exclude war with a regular Muslim army. None would risk the retaliation, especially if Israel announces retaliation targets like Mecca beforehand. Israel can also lay collective responsibility on the Muslims countries and promise nuclear retaliation against any or all of them, not only the attacker. Let them police each other.

Nuclear retaliation for terrorist acts is not always reasonable, though an Israeli nuclear threat against Iran would have prevented her war with Hezbollah. We don’t need a huge army to fight terrorists. Israel can retaliate with nuclear weapons against any country that attacks her with a regular army and retain small mobile forces for antiterrorist operations.

Other countries could introduce sanctions against Israel if she counters aggression with nuclear weapons. Such an outcome is extremely unlikely: Muslims won’t attack if they know Israel has only nuclear weapons. In the almost impossible scenario that a Muslim attacks a nuclear-only Israel and Israel retaliates, the West would see that Israel behaved reasonably: with no major forces to counter the aggression, she used her only—nuclear—option to survive. The sanctions, if any, would be half-hearted, temporary, and inefficient. Whatever economic damage sanctions would inflict on Israel, she will save much more by dismantling the army.

The worst sanctions imaginable would last, say, ten years and cost Israel all her exports. That would reduce the GDP by 30% at most, likely much less because of gray exports, import substitution, and reorienting some exports for internal consumption. Israel now wastes about that much on the army. In other words, we are wasting approximately what the worst sanctions might cost us. Given the infinitesimally small probability of the Muslims starting a war with a nuclear-only Israel, the effect of the compound tax rate (save money now, suffer sanctions later) and the relatively short term of the sanctions, a nuclear response doctrine is economically feasible for Israel.

The West might impose sanctions on Israel if she announced a nuclear retaliation policy before she actually used the weapons. Such sanctions would be very weak: the West hesitates to apply them even to illegal nuclear proliferators. Weak liberal democracies hesitate to counter anything but immediate threats. Strong sanctions in response to a mere policy are unlikely. If anything, the West would try to stave off nuclear confrontation by bribing Israel, offering free conventional weapons, and pressuring Muslims not to provoke Israel. Still another option is to announce the policy implicitly. Israel does not formally acknowledge even owning nuclear weapons. She could dismantle the army and leak the information about a nuclear response doctrine. Israel suffered no sanctions when she developed a nuclear bomb.

Israel is a tiny country surrounded by a sea of hostile Muslims. They have expelled Christians from the Middle East often before, even though they took decades or sometimes centuries to do it. Israel cannot survive with regular defense arrangements. The Muslims are ready to sacrifice their armies at Israel’s borders. They have failed several times but will try again and again. Their downside is limited: an army, perhaps a few cities, destroyed. Israel’s only chance to shed the Muslims is to increase the downside of aggression. Israel has enough nuclear bombs to wipe the Muslim Middle East out. The Muslims will not attack Israel if they know that a wholesale attack on Israel spells the end of their world. Muslims submit to the strong and would acquiesce to a strong Israel but never to a weak Israel that limits retaliation.

Israelis would feel much safer under a firm nuclear umbrella. Conscription will be short with few or probably no mobilizations. The tax burden will decrease. The economic distortions caused by a huge army will disappear. Her Muslim neighbors will respect a strong and dangerously mad Israel. A nice country it will be.

The United States backs Israel only tentatively. Jewish representatives, not US officials arranged the votes of negligible countries for the UN resolution to establish Israel. In 1947, America did not know or care much about the Middle East. The oil flow was smooth, and no one imagined that someday the US would have to placate Muslims to get oil. The US establishment, culturally and financially close to the Jews, acquiesced in establishing Israel but offered no practical help.

After the Arabs promised to drown the Jews in the sea if Israel were established, America pressured the Jews not to declare their state. The United States fought in many post-WWII wars and supported one side or the other in scores of other conflicts. Israel got no help from America in the 1947-48 war.

The Israeli War of Independence was protracted and bloody. America had plenty of opportunities to intervene. It did not. A little later in 1956, America applied diplomatic pressure and threatened military action to stop an Israeli-Franco-British strike against Egypt. Both Israel and Egypt were economically irrelevant to America, but it helped Egypt, not Israel. America has not hesitated to support colonialist powers against their vassals: France received US aid to fight in Vietnam. Egypt and Vietnam had similar communist regimes, but America supported the Egyptians. Its attitude to Egypt stems from a built-in dislike of Jews. The US establishment does not hate Jews enough to exterminate them but is sufficiently contemptuous of Jews to neglect helping them even in grave danger, whether by bombing Nazi death camps or supporting the newborn Jewish state against six regular Muslim armies.

Post WWII shock cannot explain America’s failure to help Israel. The US jumped into a conflict with the USSR in 1948 over the West Berlin blockade. America risked escalation with an ally over a minor problem with a former enemy. America stood behind the Germans but not the Jews.

The US attitude to Israel changed concurrently with its attitude to China and for the same reason: to counter the Soviets. Dissatisfied with insufficiently orthodox Israeli socialism, her affinity with France, and driven by Russian anti-semitism, the USSR abandoned Israel and stood by the Muslims. The US responded by supporting Israel. The American rapprochement with Israel was a one-man—Kissinger—show, not a culturally or politically predetermined development. In fact, many high-ranking American military opposed cooperation with Israel.

American assistance to Israel has always been meager. It was altogether negligible before 1971, increased in the closing days of the 1973 war, and peaked shortly after the Camp David capitulation. Inflation and the rising cost of the American weapons Israel bought made the assistance insignificant. The aid was important only to big Israeli brass who boosted their egos with expensive, unnecessary military toys from the United States. The changes in aid level show that the US was most interested in Israel at the peak of her strength after the 1967 war, less interested during the cold confrontations with the Soviets in the mid-70s, and uninterested when Israel showed her weakness by giving the Sinai to Egypt.

America, as usual, veiled its realpolitik support of Israel in moral terms, and the moralizing stuck. The aid, eroded by inflation, went on long after its rational basis evaporated.

The problem is that they are like us. Jews abandoned the relative safety of the diaspora for a life full of hardship and dangers in the Promised Land. Neither will Palestinians trade their nationalist ambitions for the Jewish state’s benefits. Israeli jobs give them money, Israel welfare gives them spare time, and Israeli education teaches them—with Jewish examples—that nationalism is noble. They will fight.

They are like us and want the same land. Like us, they do not want to live under foreign laws and alien customs. Like us, they know persecution and fear and dislike oppressors. The things important for us are important for them. The land is too small to negotiate. We want the Judea they are settling now, and they want Jerusalem we are settling. An agreement will be unacceptable to both sides. Both will take an agreement as a springboard for the final battle.

The older generation of Israeli Arabs remembers the wars and the Bronze Age economy and values the Israeli benefits. The new generation takes the benefits for granted and asks for equality—essentially, a share in controlling the Jewish state. For many Arabs, even equality is not enough—they want their country back, regardless of the economic consequences.

Israeli bribes are counterproductive. For decades, Israel has tried to buy Arab loyalty with a tax-free environment, huge municipal projects, medicine, education, welfare, and plenty more. The Israelis have imagined that loyalty can be bought. No. Loyalty to the state is the product of ideological conviction. The welfare bribes only convinced the Arabs that Israel needs them, oppresses them, and is indebted to them. They are not loyal, though they are quiet for the time being, always mindful to complain of inadequate free services and demand more perks.

We are breeding the enemy.

Leftists imagine that if Israel retreats behind the Green Line, peace will follow. Little could be more ridiculous. The Israeli left and the Arabs understand the Green Line differently. The Green Line, as the Arabs see it, goes through Jerusalem. Israel will have to partition her capital. After a few years, demographic changes inside Israel will put Galilee outside the Green Line. Shall we give it away, too?

Retreating and giving way to the Arabs will not bring Israel peace. No country has ever traded land for peace. Israeli compromises embolden the Arabs to ask for more. After obtaining a Palestinian state, they will ask for compensation and the right of return for descendants of the refugees.

Show strength to make peace. States are built on threats, not goodwill. States exploit each other’s weakness and cooperate only as the second-best option. Strength must be unqualified. Arabs see Israel as powerful but weak, because she imposes idealistic moral constraints on herself. There is another way to peace: make cooperation with Israel feasible for the Arabs. Syria arms Hezbollah, and Hezbollah pushed Syria out of Lebanon. Europeans are idealistic and divide the world between friends and enemies. Arabs deal with others as opportunity arises and may cooperate with Israel regardless of the enmity.

The economic cooperation Israel offered earlier means nothing to the Arabs. They can get much more from the major powers that court them and for nothing. Military cooperation matters. The Arabs have bought plenty of low-end weapons from Russia and are now buying from China. Most of them do not significantly endanger Israel. She could mass-manufacture second-tier arms and supply them to the Muslims. Israel has a good military reputation, and Muslims would rather buy from her rather than from China. Ideological expansion is by far the most efficient way to wage war. Nothing breaks the enemy’s will to fight like propaganda.

Arabs do not feel some metaphysical attachment to Islam, just a communal ideology like many others. There are few religious zealots in Muslim countries. The Central Asian countries were atheist during Soviet rule. Western consumerism conquered the minds of the Soviet people and will similarly poison the Muslims. Their religious leaders feel the threat and attack Western ideology. The proper response for the West is to intensify the propaganda rather than to retreat from the Islamic world. Propaganda is a weapon; if you have it, use it even though the other side screams bloody murder. Satellite broadcasting, subsidized movie shows, free glossy magazines—particularly pornographic—will eventually break Muslim anti-Western sentiment down.

Jews moved into the Middle East like someone moving into an inner-city neighborhood full of paupers and bandits. Closing the door is one way to live, rare fights with the neighbors are still better, but the best option is to convert them.

While it is true that the US generally restrained Israel from total victories in Lebanon-2006, the restraint came in handy for Israel. Unlike her previous wars, Israel could not win. The entrenched Hezbollah is nothing like the PLO, which the Lebanese hated. Israel’s only hope for the total victory was to attack Iran and Syria, preferably with nuclear weapons. Destroying the support base is the only way to fight a guerilla army. Israel cannot root out Hezbollah or disarm it; better cut Iranian and Syrian missile shipments. Hardly any Israeli expert believed we could clean Hezbollah out, let alone quickly. The Israeli government killed defenseless Lebanese civilians. Olmert is neither brave nor a visionary and did not retaliate against Iran and Syria. Israel could not win, and US pressure for cease-fire was a welcome face-saving measure.

Israelis tolerate losses, just as Americans tolerated them in WWII but not in Vietnam. When war is necessary and conducted reasonably, people accept losses. We oppose useless wars, useless deaths. Israeli society demonstrated overwhelming consensus for the Lebanese war; even the Left supported the war. The Israeli government, not Israelis, needed the cease-fire to cover its lack of strategy. Beside, Israel needed not suffer heavy casualties in urban combat. The IDF had reasonably good intelligence and could have destroyed Hezbollah’s positions from the air with non-conventional weapons. Israelis generally supported the air attacks regardless of Lebanese civilian casualties. The Lebanese elected Hezbollah with their eyes wide open.

So far, Israel has drained Hezbollah some, but Hezbollah won the PR battle for Muslim minds and will recover very soon. Potential donors and volunteers are numerous. In the best-case scenario, hostilities will resume, and even the Israeli government will be forced to do something meaningful, perhaps clear a buffer zone in South Lebanon. Any solution short of dismantling the Lebanese state and sharing the land among Israel, Arab Christians, and Syria would not be sustainable. In the worst case, the Israeli government will give in to Hezbollah’s major demands: a Palestinian state and evacuation of Judea and Samaria. The missiles pouring from Gaza and Lebanon showed many Israelis what they tried to forget: that no concessions bring peace with Muslims. Popular acceptance of to the evacuation of Judea and Samaria has dwindled, though the Left still favors withdrawal. Their attitude is unrelated to international politics or military considerations. The Left fight their real political enemy, religious Jews, even at the cost of collaborating with the Arabs. In the worst tradition of Jewish self-hatred, Israel’s Left wants to gentilize the Jewish state. Abandoning Judea and meekly submitting to Muslim goodwill is the Left’s way of humiliating religious and nationalist Jews. The Israeli Left, uniquely, includes both US-style democratizers and Soviet-style socialists; any ideology is good for them so long as it undermines the Jewish character of Israeli society. The Israeli government controls the media and has a powerful grip on people’s minds. The government also controls huge groups of voters through extensive welfare programs. Neither reason nor popular opinion matters in Israeli politics. Olmert & Co. will likely continue to press for withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.

Israel’s objective is not peace. Jews can live peacefully in New York. Israel was founded because the Jews want to live on their land, and Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are Jewish lands. Hardly any country ever traded religiously or ideologically critical land for peace; to the contrary, scores of countries have fought over even minor land disputes. Israel, a foreign body in the Middle East, will never be at peace; no country is permanently at peace. Preparing for imminent war, it is better to be bigger than smaller. Beside, no concession can bring Israel peace: the giveaway of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria will only prompt the Muslims to press for the right of return for descendants of the 1948 refugees, compensation, partitioning of Jerusalem, autonomy for Arab communities in Israel, and normalization of Israeli Arabs, particularly giving them ministerial portfolios. Full normalization means letting an Israeli Arab become Israeli Minister of Defense. The current minister is a Peace Now activist.

The Israeli welfare state is a sacred cow. No major party can afford to estrange the immense number of voting spongers: elderly Russians who never worked in Israel and big, religious (often) Sephardic families that depend on monthly government checks rather than jobs. The voters on welfare use the political apparatus to milk Israel’s middle class.

Israeli welfare payments to Arab families are the apogee of stupidity. We actually pay Israeli Arabs to have more children and make Israel still less Jewish. Israeli politicians think they can buy Arab loyalty with welfare, but the Arabs despise their stupid benefactors. Israeli welfare lets the Arabs breed in economic safety. Welfare recipients with plenty of spare time are often marginalized and radicalized. Israeli welfare payments to Arabs are buying her a fifth column.

Israeli society is deeply stratified. The interests and economic inputs of the rich, the intelligentsia, the Ashkenazi, the Sephardim from Arab and African countries, and the Arabs are incompatible. Only relatively monocultural countries survive. Political parties that address everyone, address no one. Niche parties only underscore and eventually deepen differences among the various groups. The highly fragmented parliament is bent on compromise and mutual bribery rather than on establishing a common denominator.

The Israeli economy is pitiful even for a country at war, certainly for a Jewish country. The GDP figures, not altogether impressive, are misleading. Consumable income (the money available after living expenses) matters and—rather bizarre for a Jewish state—is minuscule.

There is no solution to the welfare problem in the current political framework. Underproductive Israelis do not care that their welfare checks sink the economy. The middle class will have to go into the streets and ignite a media outcry in order to make the Knesset listen.

A crisis is something exceptional. The Israeli political landscape, a permanent exhibition of intellectual misery, is better described as degradation.

A country that votes for a party as amorphous as Kadima or for a person like Olmert, whose two sons deserted the army, evidently lacks political choices. Such a lack is odd for the opinionated Jewish population.

Israeli dissent is dying out under the burden of hopelessness. We have tried every conceivable option: we fought the Arabs, accommodated them, offered economic cooperation, isolated ourselves behind the wall, defied world opinion, abided by the UN resolutions—and are still at war. Bewildered Israelis no longer trust their common sense and look for wise politicians to solve the unsolvable. Wisdom is hard to ascertain, and well-connected, well-financed politicians are presumed wise. A similar phenomenon exists in the economy: when customers cannot ascertain the quality of services, they opt for the largest providers.

Israeli voters are mostly reasonable and often prefer even vaguely realizable programs to big parties or popular TV idol leaders. Thus the support for the lunatics who destroyed Gush Katif: hey, we haven’t tried to appease the enemy by dismantling our towns, so let’s try that. (Actually, Israel tried that in the Sinai and got a nuclear Egypt with a hostile parliament dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.) Thus the Russian aliyah voting for Lieberman: perhaps we can better the Jewish state by making it culturally Russian or somehow peacefully resettle the Arabs from Gush Etzion who do not want to leave it.

Israelis vote for those absurd schemes only because they have no realistic political plans. No major party has come up with the basic platform: reduce the compound tax rate to 35% and the income tax to 15%, dismantle the welfare state and relegate charity to private donors, shorten the conscription period, and make the army lean by legitimizing a nuclear first strike, deport Arabs from Israel, Judea, and Samaria to Jordan through economic incentives and limited application of power, annex core Jewish territories. Plain and doable. Resolve needed.

Governments that jump on the bandwagon of criticizing Israeli brutalities in Lebanon forget the skeletons in their own closets.

France stocks close to three millions skeletons from its recent wars in Indochina and Algeria. Add French Jews shipped to Nazi death camps with enthusiastic support of the freedom-loving French people—freedom from Jews, that is.

China need not go abroad to satisfy its lust for blood. Mao’s government killed around fifty millions of its people, and the current semi-democratic government murders enough dissidents in jails to be timid talking about Lebanon.

Russia is another story.Incessantly murdering its own people and conquering its unfortunate neighbors for centuries, Russia never forgot to exterminate the Jews. Russians, including the Ukrainian variety, killed proportionally more Jews than did the Nazis. To that end, the Russians helped the Nazis as much as they could. They started by partitioning Poland so the main Jewish population centers fell to the Nazis. After the war, the diligent Russians tried to finish the Nazi job: in 1952, the Soviet government instigated pogroms and began deporting Jews to Siberia, exactly the place the Nazis initially earmarked for us.

The British had the good sense of voicing their humanitarian concerns mildly. So we need not recall how the Brits killed Chinese civilians in the Opium Wars or the Irish just recently.

The American president made nodded ritually to public opinion and said something good about Lebanese civilians. Perhaps he forgot how his father presided over the turkey-shoot of the fleeing, defenseless Iraqi army in 1991. Or maybe public opinion forgot about Dresden, Hiroshima, Vietnamese defoliation campaigns, and numerous other situations when Americans specifically targeted civilians.

The world tried to exterminate the Jews by various means for two millennia. Now the moral world chooses moral means. It wants Jews to be moral. Specifically, to be suicidally moral, to turn the other cheek to Muslims who are only doing what the Christians tried for centuries—kill off the Jews. So the Muslims are obviously right, and Israel is wrong to oppose them. The politically correct Christian world cannot say so much and concedes to Israel a ghetto-sized country, another maidan field where Jews should wait patiently while the firing squad gets ready. Jews should not make so much fuss about a few hundred missiles a day showering their ghetto. Hey, the Lebanese guerillas do not target American or Russian towns (imagine the kind of restraint the United States or Russia would show). Hands off the Lebanese people, Jews! Lay your hands on yourselves.

[A year ago the Israeli government evicted religious Jews from Gush Katif, the oasis the Jews made in the Gaza desert with their own hands. The Jews of Gush Katif paid plenty of taxes and produced a viable chunk of the Israeli GDP and exports. The Israeli army did not guard Gush Katif, The Jews there protected themselves. Seeking to placate the West and the Arabs, Sharon and his government not only abandoned Gaza but also forcibly removed the Jews living there in their own houses. The result, as virtually every security expert predicted, was an escalation of Arab violence. They seized on Israel’s weakness and bombarded Southern Israel with thousands of rockets.]

The campaign to save Gush Katif was a public relations disaster. It could have been conducted along Save Darfur lines, picturing barbarous attackers versus ethical, hard-working settlers, corrupt politicians versus Jewish pioneers. Instead, the organizers mixed two mutually exclusive approaches: calling for help and pressuring the government. Each approach discredited the other.

Either approach could work. Tens of thousands of demonstrators could break into the Knesset and hold it, forcing the government to accommodate the settlers’ demands. Power begets respect, and mainstream Israelis would prefer resolute settlers to peaceful settlers. The media portrayed the settlers as a violent crowd, and the gap between popular expectations and the settlers’ actual behavior was huge. Fear gave way to contempt, and few Israelis actively supported Gush Katif. People vote only for solutions they perceive as realistic. They do not support futile struggles. The settlers should have positioned themselves as a force able to change government policy.

On other hand, the settlers could have pled for help, presenting themselves as hard-working Jews who made an oasis in the desert. Supporters of Gush Katif should have distributed photos of lovely Jewish villages and gardens in Gaza.

It was critical to oppose the government propaganda with figures, but the settlers delivered no objective information to other Israelis. Many mistakenly believed that the settlements needed constant protection, that the settlers got their houses free from the government, and paid no taxes.

Going door-to-door personally to convince people may be effective but may also be counterproductive. Israelis evidently disliked agitated religious zealots knocking their doors. A huge PR campaign of half a million house visits was lost.

Propaganda requires high-quality literature with thoughtful analysis, not largely hysterical pamphlets which persuade only their authors. A Jew does not evict a Jew was such a ridiculous slogan, so evidently untrue, so lacking in rational content that the failure was predictable.

Organizers of the Gush Katif protests should have downplayed the demonstrators’ religious background. It is probably okay for Jews to stop praying in front of cameras for a few days and substitute sports caps for religious kipas during demonstrations or house visits. Instead, the demonstrators positioned themselves as a religious mob and forfeited help from secular Israelis.

Again, any approach may work if carried out resolutely. If the settlers did not want to hide their religiosity, they should have proved it with the action Israelis expect from deeply religious Jews. The settlers could have tried to burn themselves in their houses or to commit mass suicide by other means. Ideals cost lives.

Millennia of powerlessness made Jews rely on pity. In the diaspora, only gentile courts could pass death sentences, and the Jews could not carry out the capital punishments prescribed by the Torah. To save face, the Talmudic rabbis developed an extensive due process that made sentencing for capital offenses impossible. They also emphasized mercy and tolerance. Their approach contradicted the Torah which demands evil be expunged from society swiftly and ruthlessly.

Criminal or apostate Jews must be dealt with, not forgiven with the silly explanation that Jews do not kill Jews. Of course they do. An apostate Jew was the first victim of the Maccabean war, and the Mishnah describes the Sanhedrin sentencing Jews to clubbing, asphyxiation, stoning, and burning. Reluctance to punish Jewish offenders puts the offenders in charge. Jewish law prescribes killing informants specifically because they endanger the entire community if hostile gentiles generalize their allegations. Sharon’s government endangered Israelis by conceding Gaza to Palestine, as the shower of rockets from Gaza shows.

The cowardly supporters of Gush Katif refused to make the ultimate moral choice, to shoot at the apostates who came to evict them. The government dismantled Gush Katif only because there was no efficient opposition. Arabs fight for their land, and Israeli incursions into Lebanese and Palestinian villages often become urban combat. The Gush Katif settlers could have fought for every house. Some casualties would occur on both sides, and Jews would have shot at Jews. That is not unthinkable: the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel bombing and claimed more Jewish than British lives; Ben-Gurion and Rabin killed the Irgun fighters on Altalena. Violent opposition to Sharon’s traitor government would have stopped the Gush Katif evictions. The Israeli government is over-sensitive to the media and would not have flattened Gush Katif with artillery or stormed it with elite troops—especially since many troops were settlers. If the settlers had escalated the conflict into a fight, the government would have backed down, and the casualties would have been few. People may fight for their houses, all the more for their land. Instead, the settlers demonstrated.

Politics causes deaths. More Jews died in terrorist attacks provoked by Israel ceding Gaza to the Arabs than would have died fighting for Gush Katif. More Jews will suffer from rising anti-semitism provoked by Jewish weakness than would have been wounded in Gush Katif. Instead of ignoring the facts and choosing moral idealism, honest Jews should have minimized the Jewish death toll and suffering—opposed the government forces violently.

The scenario is well known from other revolutions: undermine the basically friendly army with propaganda and shoot a few notable high-ranking enemies. It made sense and justice to punish odious Jews like Niso Shaham, head of the Negev regional police, who ordered the demonstrators in Kfar Maimon beaten.

A hundred or so cases of conscripted soldiers refusing to evict the settlers would have created a wave in the army, and many would have refused. The polls show that about half of Israeli youth opposed withdrawal from Gaza. If half the army refused to carry out eviction orders, the other—leftist—half would be rendered inoperative. Using the army against Israeli citizens is surely illegal, and the settlers could have marshaled lawyers to explain that to the soldiers—and cause them to disobey orders.

Propaganda among the troops is especially easy in Israel where conscripts go home frequently. It takes years to dispirit an army, however, and the isolated attempts to talk to the troops near Kfar Maimon and elsewhere came too late.

The Israeli government evicted Jews from Gaza instead of Arabs from Galilee for a reason: fearful, snobbish bureaucrats serve their foreign sponsors. They do not want a media outcry about the poor Arabs and want to be seen as opponents of religious fundamentalism, even if it’s Jewish. It made almost no sense to conduct demonstrations in Israel: The Sharon government was unresponsive. Rather, the demonstrations should be held in Washington, especially since unlike Israel America does not censor slogans. Demonstrators could have blocked traffic in Washington, impossible in Jerusalem because of the police. The United States financed the withdrawal, and demonstrations in Washington would be politically reasonable. The Jewish mob would be far less religious than in Israel, and American media are relatively free.

The settlers were wrong to trust the rabbinical establishment. The Rebbe said that the land of Israel should not be surrendered, but his Chabad followers objectively sided with the Israeli government. When the police were tearing out the nostrils of Jewish demonstrators, most rabbis kept preaching non-violence.

Opinionated rabbis often ran the PR themselves instead of hiring professional PR firms. The results were not just meager but often quite the opposite. The homemade PR, like any bad advertisement, alienated the audience.

Opposing the rabbis would mean losing funding, because they have sponsors. The defenders of Gush Katif, however, need little money. When the police stopped hundreds of chartered buses, the supporters came to Gaza on their own, in cars and regular buses. Almost everyone brought food and water. Considerable money could be raised from the common people in Israel and abroad, as shown by the If you believe, plant a seed! campaign. Many small sponsors would have created pro-Gush Katif sentiment among the population.

We can blame the treacherous Israeli government for the surrender of Gush Katif, but we must also blame ourselves.

Kennan’s doctrine of containment let the United States do away with the Soviets. In a nutshell, Kennan called for zero tolerance for the enemy and opposing every expansionist move with a countermove. That is essentially the Jewish tit-for-tat law.

The unrelenting approach may seem unnecessarily harsh and wasteful, but it is not. Enemies learn that their hostile actions are blocked immediately and reduce hostilities to show level. The critical part is to oppose every move, so the enemy cannot hope to gain the advantage and relents.

Tit-for-tat requires retaliation, not blocking moves. In Jewish law, criminals are punished at once, not jailed long-term. In relations between people, punishment works as prevention. Not so with guerillas because they are dispersed and can’t be punished. Similarly, the United States could not punish the Soviets for Cuba or Angola. When punishment is impossible, containment is the next best solution.

Israel cannot isolate Hamas or Hezbollah fighters and punish them. She can, however, counter their moves. When Palestinians fire rockets from Gaza, Israel should try to block the hostilities rather than retaliate. Scorching a wide buffer zone in Gaza is preferable to the unsystematic destruction of Gazan towns.

According to the doctrine of containment, Israel should have blocked Hezbollah’s construction works in South Lebanon and opposed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards upon their arrival in the Beka’a. Kennedy did not wait for the Soviets to finish installing missiles in Cuba. He escalated and ended the conflict.

Containment works only when one party escalates the conflict beyond the other’s tolerance. Otherwise, the enemy wages a war of attrition. Guerilla warfare is cheap, and Israel now spends at least $20M a day in Lebanon. Given such a ratio of expenses, a string of provocations would bankrupt Israel. Her containment response must be overwhelming to discourage repetition and deny the enemy any PR gain which the prolonged war with Israel brings.

Israeli resolve would position her as a master, a crucial point in Arab mentality. A powerful, resolute Israel would live in peace with the Arabs most of the time.