Israel's Improbably Great Year
It has been one tough year for Israel, but 2024 has also been one of extraordinary achievements for the Jewish state. It proves that good things happen when Israel is strong.
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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
In 2024, Israel pulverized its enemies, put its diplomatic foes in place, humiliated its arch-enemy Iran, and reasserted itself as the region’s most powerful state.
And the Jewish state did this by not listening to the international community’s garbage advice.
Israel has rediscovered the eternal truth, which is that Israel does well when it is strong and does poorly when it acts meekly and defers to those nations and institutions that are hostile towards the Jewish People.
Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion understood this. It is why he said:
“It doesn’t matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn’t matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive.”
This is why the days of weak Jews are over, and why I sit 65,000 feet to the right of Attila the Hun when it comes to matters of Israeli and Jewish security.
Israel is more than just a Jewish protectorate; it is the Jewish homeland where Jews have sovereignty to govern and act in their own interests. As a small nation surrounded by hostile neighbors, Israel has long known that its survival depends on credible deterrence.
Every time Israel forgets this, violence and terror ensues. Hamas’ vile attack on October 7th last year was just the latest and most gruesome example. Every time Israel shrinks and concedes land in a quest for peace — in Gaza, in Lebanon, and in Judea and Samaria — Palestinian Islamist terror fills the void. Those who think Israel should cede land as part of a two-state solution are living in a delusion.
Israel needed to do more than re-establish its deterrence credentials; it needed to remember that in the tribal Middle East, a strong Israel commands respect, while a weak one is just a passive target.
Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan came when they acknowledged that Israel was too strong to defeat, and the Abraham Accords were brokered when the region acknowledged Israel was here to stay.
A return to this kind of thinking over the past year is why Israel has achieved its greatest military achievements since the 1967 Six-Day War — and reminded the world that it is a military, technological, and intelligence superpower.
Let us tally the military achievements.
Israel has destroyed Hamas as a fighting force in Gaza and killed its evil leaders. The Israel Defense Forces has hugely weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon to the point that it could not keep its ally Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, and Israel’s air force has destroyed Iran’s air defense and missile building capabilities, leaving the Islamic Republic the most vulnerable it has been in decades.
It was not just what Israel achieved, but the way it achieved them that matters. Israel has long been a master of intelligence, clandestine operations, assassinations, and daring operations. The mystique behind this has long been part of Israel’s deterrence.
After the intelligence failure that allowed October 7th to happen, Israel restored its aura by:
Assassinating Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh at a safe-house in Tehran
Infiltrating Hezbollah and destroying its leadership with exploding pager and walkie-talkie operations that were straight of “Mission Impossible,” and
Showing its air force could slide through Iran’s air defenses undetected and at will.
Jerusalem achieved these enormous strategic victories by not listening to the Americans and the Europeans who kept saying Israel could not go into Gaza, not go into Rafah1, not fight in the tunnels, not push Hezbollah back from the border, not attack Iran, and should seek a ceasefire that was not in Israel’s security interests.
It was just bad and cowardly advice from the West, which knows less about the Middle East than I know about Polynesian flutes. This is why Israel is winning its battle with Islamist forces, while dithering and gerontocratic Europe is losing that fight.
Israel’s latest success has been its opportunistic destruction of the Syrian military unopposed as the Assad regime collapsed. While turbulent times lie ahead for Syria, Israel has hugely reduced the military threat from Syria as a state.
Israel has done more than win on the battlefield, too.
It has finally stopped playing the stupid game of pretending that the United Nations is a meaningful or credible body. Israel’s banning of the terror-tainted United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was long overdue, and there is no reason for Israel to care one iota about anything anyone says about its absolutely correct decision.
Why Israel played along with the corrupt and racist UN for so long is a mystery. I have argued before that Israel should quit the UN. The body is on its last legs as the post-World War Two international order collapses upon itself, so Israel might as well get a first-mover advantage.
Israel has also stopped acting like an insecure state that needs everyone to be its friend to shore up its legitimacy. Jerusalem’s decision to close its embassy in Dublin was correct, and Israel should start treating other racist critic nations with similar disdain and downgrade relationships with those who are insincere about having positive relations.
While Israel is finally treating the UN and critical countries with the contempt they deserve, it can boast the significant achievement of having kept the Abraham Accords together.
This deserves more recognition. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco have maintained diplomatic relations with Israel through what has been a stern test. While these states are delighted that Israel is taking out the region’s trash and putting it into a compressor, their populations are still very pro-Palestinian and their leaders have not bowed to local pressure.
In the Middle East, where strength equals respect, no one wants to have weak allies. Israel’s display of strength has therefore strengthened the accords — and the foundations to expand them are in place, especially as the region is being reshaped after the Assad regime’s collapse in Syria.
Finally, Israel has shown its seven-front war against Iran and its Islamist proxies must be won on the battlefield and not in the media or online.
The mainstream media has been repeating Hamas’ lies, alleging a range of gross and untrue allegations against Israel and creating the illusion that what dominates the online world is somehow real and matters.
It does not matter what leading writers at the poorly edited New York Times and The Guardian think, or how big a font they use when slandering Israel in their headlines. It matters only that Israel wins the real war.
While it has been a year of great achievements, the Great Game continues. More than 100 Israeli hostages remain in Hamas’ hands, Hamas is still governing Gaza despite being a spent military force, Iran is weakened but still malevolent, the Houthis in Yemen are still lobbing missiles at Israel, Palestinian Islamist terror remains a problem, and the politics of Syria and Lebanon remain uncertain.
However, Israel has shown what happens when it acts strongly and unapologetically to pursue its own interests.
All good things flow from Israeli security.
A city in the southern Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt
I agree on every front! The UN has no credibility and Israel should be the only country deciding for Israel! Mazel tov! 🇮🇱🤍💙💪🏻🙌🏻
The UN is an antisemitic fraud.