Israel, Iran, war & peace

Some basic truths on hard realities

Israel recently launched ‘precise strikes’ on military targets in Iran in response to its ongoing attack on the tiny nation, either directly or through its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and so on. 

Having just initiated this latest military response by Israel, it is too early to properly comment on it. In the hours and days ahead we will know much more and say much more. However, a few quick things can be said:

• Peace is a good thing, but sometimes the only way to achieve or maintain peace is to be willing to fight for it.
• In a fallen world, the use of force will often be necessary.
• Like every other nation, Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend itself.
• What happened on October 7 of last year cannot be allowed to happen again.

The conflict in the Middle East has been going on for decades now, but in terms of the past year or so, we must keep this very brief timeline in mind:

• October 6, 2023 – A ceasefire was in place, although that did little good.
• October 7, 2023 – Hamas attacks: 1200 Israelis killed, 257 taken hostage, with 97 still remaining there.
• October 8, 2023 – Israel declares war on Hamas.
• April 13, 2024 – Iran launches its first direct attack on Israel.
• October 1, 2024 – Iran fires dozens of missiles into Israel.
• October 26, 2024 – Israel retaliates against Iran.

The truth is, Israel is not just fighting to protect itself, but is fighting on behalf of the West. If Israel – the only functioning liberal democracy in the region – ever falls to the terrorists, the West will be in a much more dangerous place.

Earlier this month a piece by Gerard Baker appeared in the Wall Street Journal titled ‘Israel defends itself — and may save Western civilization’. It is worth quoting from. He begins:

How will we ever repay the debt we owe Israel? What the Jewish state has done in the past year – for its own defense, but in the process and not coincidentally for the security of all of us – will rank among the most important contributions to the defense of Western civilization in the past three-quarters of a century.

 

Having been hit with a devastating attack on its people, beyond the fetid imagining of some of the vilest anti-Semites, Israel has in 12 months done nothing less than redraw the balance of global security, not just in the region, but in the wider world.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Monday (September 30) in comments directed to the Iranian people that there was nowhere in the Middle East beyond Israel’s reach, two days after the military killed the leader of Iranian-backed Lebanese…

He offers some detail on what Israel has been facing for the past year from Iran and others, and then concludes with these words:

But that wider conflict was perhaps always inevitable, given Iran’s stated objectives and its consistent efforts to achieve them. We can say two things tentatively about that long-feared wider confrontation. First, the strategic tactical, intelligence and technological genius Israel has demonstrated over the past year might have done so much damage to Iran’s proxy armies and their military and political leaders that they will be ill-prepared and equipped for the bigger struggle to come, and Israel – and, let’s hope, reliable allies – better placed to defeat its enemies. Second, having observed this Israeli superiority over that time and eagerness not to bring the destruction on itself a wide war would surely bring, perhaps Iran will be deterred.

 

Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few, Winston Churchill said of the men of the Royal Air Force after they had repelled Hitler’s Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. (Reminder to some recently confused “conservatives”: The former were the good guys; the latter the real villains.)

 

We should echo those words today as we watch in awe what a country smaller in area than New Jersey, with a population less than North Carolina’s and an economy smaller than that of Washington state, has done for all of us.

 

As Israelis solemnly mark a year since October 7, we should not only redouble our expressions of sympathy and solidarity. We should show them our gratitude, and if we are willing to be really honest, acknowledge a little of our own shame.

War is sometimes necessary

There will be of course, plenty of Israel-haters, anti-Semites, and anti-Western leftists who will strongly disagree with these sentiments, and who will now be going berserk over this latest move by Israel to defend itself. Some of them are committed pacifists, while others are just committed anti-Israel extremists.

Some will have a commitment to peace at all costs, and a resistance to all military actions. They see war as inherently immoral, and do not recognise the right of individuals and nations to defend themselves. There are massive libraries filled with countless volumes on these matters, but perhaps a few key quotes – out of so many – on this topic might be in order here.

The following quotes are old and new, by religious and non-religious authors. They should be considered when we follow things like the current conflict in the Middle East.

Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus:

‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’ 

John Stuart Mill:

‘War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and …has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.’

G. K. Chesterton:

‘While a good peace is better than a good war, even a good war is better than a bad peace.’ 

Winston Churchill:

‘England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame and will get war.’

Reinhold Niebuhr:

‘Pacifism either tempts us to make no judgements at all, or to give an undue preference to tyranny.’ 

George Orwell:

‘People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.’ 

George Orwell:

‘Turn-the-other-cheek pacifism only flourishes among the more prosperous classes, or among workers who have in some way escaped from their own class. The real working class . . . are never really pacifist, because their life teaches them something different. To abjure violence it is necessary to have no experience of it.’

C. S. Lewis

‘The doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils. But I do not think they are. I think the suppression of a higher religion by a lower, or even a higher secular culture by a lower, a much greater evil. … Of course war is a very great evil. But that is not the question. The question is whether war is the greatest evil in the world, so that any state of affairs which might result from submission is certainly preferable. And I do not see any really cogent arguments for that view.’ 

J. R. R. Tolkien:

‘War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.’

Frank Turek:

‘One thing is for certain: Christians contradict scripture and common sense when they say no war or use of force can ever be justified. As terrible as it is, war is sometimes the least bad choice available. In other words, it’s not that Christians are for war; it’s that we’re against the alternative – the oppression and death of the innocent. And in a fallen world like this, sometimes the use of force is necessary to protect the innocent. Without it, we wouldn’t even be able to love our friends.’

Thomas Sowell:

‘The fact that the Reagan approach, which many among the intelligentsia saw as likely to lead to war, led instead to the end of the Cold War, while the Chamberlain approach that was supposed to lead to peace led instead to the biggest war in history, has made no dent in the vision of the anointed.’ 

Dennis Prager:

“War is not the answer’ if the question is, let us say, ‘What is the square root of eleven?’ But if the question is, ‘How do we stop enormous evils in the world?’ the answer is, unfortunately, quite frequently, ‘War.’ Nazi and Japanese racist genocide were ended by soldiers shooting people, and by bombers bombing people, not by people who believed ‘war is not the answer’.” 

Further reading on Israel

There are numerous volumes that demonise Israel and speak against its right to exist and defend itself. Fewer volumes exist seeking to defend and promote this beleaguered nation. Here are some examples:

• Chafets, Ze’ev, Double Vision: How the Press Distorts America’s View of the Middle East. William Morrow, 1985.
• Dershowitz, Alan, The Case for Israel. John Wiley, 2003.
• Frantzman, Seth, The October 7 War. Wicked Son, 2024.
• Friedman, David, One Jewish State: The Last, Best Hope to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Humanix Books, 2024.
• Gilder, George, The Israel Test. RVB, 2009.
• Levy, Bernard-Henri, Israel Alone. Wicked Son, 2024.
• O’Neill, Brendan, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation. Spiked, 2024.
• Prager, Dennis and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism. Touchstone, 1983, 2016.
• Senor, Dan and Saul Singer, The Genius of Israel. Constable, 2023.
• Simon, Jake Wallis, Israelophobia. Constable, 2023.
• Smith, Mark, Israel Disarmed. Bombardier Books, 2024.
• Spencer, Robert, The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace. Bombardier Books, 2023.
• Tishby, Noa, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. Free Press, 2021.

Bill Muehlenberg teaches ethics, apologetics and theology at several Melbourne Bible Colleges. His independent blog, Culture Watch, has over 5,000 articles commenting on the major cultural, social and political issues of the day.