Israel's ambassodor to the US -- on Hamas and Iran

http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/35688/indispensable/

            Billy Blogblather challenged me in regard to what I knew about the Six Day War and I mentioned that I had read in 2005 read Michael Oren's Six Days of War, June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East.  At the time this volume was considered the best one on that war, but after saying that I wondered if there were now one better.  I did some checking and this is apparently still the best history of that war.

            As we know, Michael Oren is now the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.  His knowledge about the Gaza Flotilla, the activities of Hamas in Gaza as well as the likelihood of war with Iran may be unsurpassed.

            The above is the entire article posted on the Israeli site "Tablet," and I'll quote a several passages that bear upon what we have been discussing and comment below. 

            "The attention given the flotilla incident left Oren almost relieved to answer questions about the Iranian nuclear program. How long, I asked him, can Israel afford to abide by a process managed by the United States before it gets off the bus and decides it has to act alone against Iran?
            “It definitely is a managed process,” said Oren. “And we signed on to it. President Obama’s tactics follow a linear trajectory—first there was outreach, then compromise, and now we’re at the threshold of what we hope will be effective sanctions. We’ll see what the Russians and Chinese do.
            "I noted that there are many people, not only in U.S. and Israeli policymaking circles but also among our Arab allies, who believe it is too late for sanctions. Oren has doubts: “Even a whiff of sanctions spurred the Iranians to sign on with the deal the Turks and Brazilians offered,” he said. Nonetheless, the ambassador admits that right now it’s hard to know the exact signs that will tell Israel sanctions aren’t sufficient and that Jerusalem will have to go it alone. “I believe that President Obama’s position on Iran is far more muscular than is widely perceived,” he said. “He has said he is determined to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon and I do believe he is.”
            “A strong American disposition is an Israeli strategic interest,” said Oren. I asked him if Washington’s role in the region is changing, whether the United States has the same leverage that it did a decade ago. “It’s in the middle of a withdrawal from one conflict [Iraq], and a pledge to withdraw from another [Afghanistan],” Oren said, “and this is perceived in the Middle East with antennae well attuned to shifts in power. . . .”
            "Nonetheless, among Israeli officials like Mossad chief Meir Dagan there’s a growing belief that the White House is disburdening the United States of its involvement in conflicts, and I asked the ambassador if he believes that the process of unburdening includes Washington distancing itself from its conflict-prone Israeli ally. Even before the flotilla incident, Israel’s stock had seemed to be dropping inside the Beltway. Israel’s wars with Hezbollah in summer 2006 and Gaza in the winter of 2008 to 2009 alienated segments of the U.S. intelligentsia, including American Jews, who were flummoxed, they said, that the Jewish state did not abide by higher moral standards than other countries, including the United States. However, those same two wars left Washington worried that Israel can no longer get the job done. Once a strategic asset whose unrivaled power (coupled with unconditional U.S. support) kept peace in the eastern Mediterranean, Israel has become, according to Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of the pillars of the Beltway’s think-tank community, a strategic liability.
            "Oren disagrees. “We are aware that this is a certain body of thought in the Washington bureaucracies and the think-tank world, but it is not so with the American people or policymakers,” he said. “Israel is the only democratic American ally in the Middle East that can field a highly trained combat-proven army in 12 hours.”
            "Indeed, among other things, the Mavi Marmara incident revealed that the Turks are not the friends of Washington that they once were, leaving only Israel as capable, and willing, to stand by the United States as a reliable ally in the Middle East. “The U.S. can leave Vietnam confident that North Vietnamese tanks are not going to roll through U.S. cities,” said Oren. “But with the Middle East you’re not going anywhere because it will follow you—to Times Square, to the airspace over Detroit. Israel is described as the U.S.’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East. If the U.S. had an Israel in the Persian Gulf it might not have had to land troops in Iraq twice over the last two decades. Israel is the indispensable nation.”
            "Jerusalem may have a chance to remind Washington of the fact in the coming months. When I remarked that many Israelis are expecting war this summer, Oren made no efforts to dispel it as a rumor. “We are concerned about this,” he said, explaining that with sanctions coming up at the United Nations, the Iranians may once again try to spark a war in Lebanon, as they did when their nuclear program was referred to the U.N. Security Council in 2006. “We face a different situation than we did in 2006, and it is much worse,” Oren said. “Hezbollah has rearmed so that it now has 42,000 missiles that can hit Eilat,” Israel’s southernmost city. In 2006, the Israelis destroyed all of Hezbollah’s long- and medium-range missiles during the war’s opening salvo, but now, said Oren, “Hezbollah has hidden all of its medium- and long-range missiles under schools and hospitals. They internalized Goldstone.”
            "In other words, while it was widely reported during the course of the Gaza war that the Hamas leadership was hiding out in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, Israel knew that an attack on a hospital would earn it the opprobrium of the international community. Even then Israel still wound up facing the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, commonly known as the Goldstone Report. For Israel, a third Hezbollah war is about cleaning up its backyard regardless of whether or not the Party of God’s sponsors in Tehran enrich enough uranium to build a bomb. The United States also has a vital interest in its ally disabling the asset of an Iranian adversary that challenges Washington’s half-century hegemony in the Persian Gulf—an interest that may or may not be more important to the Obama Administration than its efforts to seek rapprochement with the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims."
            COMMENT:  It is the rather common technique of the Islamists as it was of Saddam Hussein and his forces to take advantage of the West's squeamishness about the shedding of innocent blood.  Saddam Hussein installed many of his weapons under hospitals and schools.  And you may recall that a group of pacifists went to Iraq to become human shields against the impending American attack, but when Saddam's forces learned that they did not wish to die to protect any of Saddam's weapons, they were sent home.  There is speculation that since Israel is going to be blamed even when it tries its utmost to avoid collateral damage, that they may as well change priorities and give the highest one to the saving of Israeli soldiers' lives.
            While Oren gives no hint of a war with Iran, he thinks one with Hezbollah and Hamas likely: "When I remarked that many Israelis are expecting war this summer, Oren made no efforts to dispel it as a rumor. “We are concerned about this,” he said, explaining that with sanctions coming up at the United Nations, the Iranians may once again try to spark a war in Lebanon, as they did when their nuclear program was referred to the U.N. Security Council in 2006. “We face a different situation than we did in 2006, and it is much worse,” Oren said. “Hezbollah has rearmed so that it now has 42,000 missiles that can hit Eilat,” Israel’s southernmost city. . . ." 
            I have been concerned about the "pacification" of the West.  This process weakened Britain and especially France before WWII.  By putting a protective umbrella over Western Europe during the Cold War, the U.S. perhaps unwittingly fostered the feeling in Europe that war could always be avoided.  This process exists in the U.S. as well.  It had something to do with Obama's election even though he may be "more muscular" than is commonly believed by the pacifists who voted for him.  But what surprises me is that Israel has the same process at work.  Oren doesn't speak of it, but the Israeli soldiers of today (according to other reports I've read) do not measure up to the Israeli soldiers that fought, say, in the Six Day War.  Whether these reports are accurate is debatable.  As a Marine I often hear that modern day Marines can't measure up to Marines from "the old corps."  This is largely if not entirely meant as a joke -- something an old-time Marine says to a newly minted one.  And perhaps the same sort of thing goes on in the Israeli army, but the Israeli "war" against Hezbollah in 2006 has caused some of us to wonder if Israeli's survival instincts are as strong as they once were.  If as Lee Smith suggests and Michael Oren doesn't contradict, Israel will this coming summer be at war against both Hezbollah and Hamas, we shall see if the modern-day Israeli soldier measures up to the Israeli soldier of old.