Irrational, injurious, ignoble: Islamism puts Israel at peril - opinion

"There is something inside us that yearns not for reason, but for mystery... for whisperings of the irrational” – Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1952)

For capable scholars and policy-makers, it would be best to examine Israel’s national security at conceptual levels. Such an examination should acknowledge that the most conspicuous source of power in world politics is a refined, substantial, and diversified military arsenal, but that this source can never be automatically counted upon because human beings generally regard personal death avoidance as more rewarding than anything else. The highest form of power is not a matter of tangible assets, strategy or tactics. It is “power over death.”

Ironies abound. By definition, the promise of immortality must be drawn from religious faith rather than science. Nonetheless, “whisperings of the irrational” have hardly ever impaired this promise as an effective factor in diplomacy or deterrence. Quite the contrary. For assorted Islamist aggressors and terrorists, siding with anti-reason has likely been pleasing and cost-effective.

Altogether unhidden, Israel’s jihadist enemies draw palpable power and purpose from an almost primal loathing of reason and rationality. If this power should ever be joined with weapons of mass destruction, most ominously nuclear weapons, Israel could have to face the ultimate triumph of anti-reason. 

ON THIS matter of world-historical urgency, Israeli scholars and policy-makers should think creatively beyond the usual parameters of weapons, strategy, and tactics. Above all, their guiding question ought to be expressed as follows: How can Israel best convince Iran and its relevant proxies that the faith-based murder of “unbelievers” could never offer the murderers “power over death?” Though Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Hezbollah, and other Iranian surrogates think of war, terror, and genocide against Israel as ennobling expressions of religious sacrifice, they need to be made aware that such thinking is destined to fail – even amid military victory.

Not a noble pursuit

What sort of “faith” can self-righteously encourage the rape, torture, and murder of criminally abducted hostages? Can still-virtuous nations seriously believe that such crimes against humanity are intended to ensure Palestinian sovereignty? In law, all law, “Rights can never stem from wrongs.” Ex injuria jus non oritur.

Looking to Israel’s expanding war in the North, what should the state do when it finds itself confronted with religion-driven enemies who are captivated by “whisperings of the irrational” and seek personal immortality by “martyrdom?” 

Irrationality need not signify weakness. Though it is a lascivious faith, jihadism is still capable of wreaking overwhelming human harm. To prevent such harm, Israel’s decision-makers ought never to forget that the true object of Islamist terror sacrifice is never “the Israeli.” It is “the Jew,” always “the Jew.” The difference here couldn’t possibly be more important.

Israel’s most immediate policy concern will be the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, a conflict in which the terrorist patron state of Iran could display ever-greater commitments to “whisperings of the irrational.” Such defiling dynamics of anti-reason would continue to hold sway in Islamist politics at both state and sub-state levels. 

There will be variously coinciding matters of law and justice. Under authoritative international law, jihadist perpetrators must be distinguished from their counter-terrorist adversaries by their willful embrace of mens rea or “criminal intent.” Though Israel correctly regards the harms it is forced to inflict upon noncombatant populations as the unavoidable costs of counter-terrorism, Iran and its sub-state proxies target Israeli civilians with criminal intent and a boisterously witting ecstasy.

In international law, both customary and codified, responsibility for Israel-inflicted harms lies with the jihadist side for many reasons, but most notably on account of the terrorists’ continuous resort to “human shields. Such resort is unambiguously criminal. The pertinent crime is known as “perfidy.”

A perilous future

ISRAEL COEXISTS with all other states in an international “state of nature.” Despite being subject to irrational promises, Islamist states and their proxies fully accept the proposition that “sacrificing” specific “others” (most plainly, Jews) offers powerful “medicine” for their own personal deaths. Among other things, this proposition reflects a grim and growing “triumph” of anti-reason.

For the foreseeable future, such triumph, though intolerable, remains plausible. For Iran and its intersecting proxies, attempts to avoid personal death by killing designated “others” will remain futile but consequential. While the legacy of Westphalia, the 1648 treaty creating modern international law, codifies reason and rejects anti-reason, almost no one pays any attention.

Regarding Pyongyang, the already-nuclear North Korea could sometime come to the aid of a still pre-nuclear Iran. Years back, it was North Korea that built a nuclear reactor for another Iranian ally, Syria. This reactor was subsequently destroyed by Israel’s September 2007 Operation Orchard, defined as “anticipatory self-defense” under international law.

Iran, as mentor to jihadist forces, represents the juridical incarnation of anti-reason. A state of Palestine would add power to these dissembling forces. Considered together as “synergistic,” Iran-Palestine could soon present Israel with an irremediable hazard.

What next? To deal with primal jihadist foes, enemies that lasciviously seek “power over death,” Israel’s only prudential strategy should be based on a deeper understanding of its enemies’ “whisperings of the irrational.” In carrying out its indispensable operations against Hezbollah, Jerusalem ought never to forget that its core adversary is the state of Iran, not any Iranian sub-state proxy. For Israel, keeping Iran non-nuclear should represent the most immediately overriding national security obligation.

In considering wider political or diplomatic concessions to Iran or other jihadist enemies, Jerusalem should bear in mind that enemy operations (both war and terror) are never truly about ending an alleged “occupation” or legitimizing Palestinian sovereignty. A Palestinian state could never satisfy Iran or kindred Islamist adversaries. Instead, it would become a “force-multiplying” peril of potentially existential magnitude.

The writer is emeritus professor of International Law at Purdue University lberes@purdue.edu