Israel is now fighting a multi-front war, with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria, Israeli Arabs opposed to the Jewish state, Muslim Brotherhood members and ISIS remnants in the Sinai, and the sinister state that supports, supplies, and directs Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — the Islamic Republic of Iran. Israel is now, and for many years to come, will be fighting for its very existence, but, argues David Weinberg, the Israeli government still has not come to grips with the magnitude and duration of the conflict, and has not called for an “emergency mobilization” of the entire population, as he believes it must. More of Weinberg’s analysis, and his insistence that Israel be put on a “wartime footing,” can be found here: “Brace for impact: As Hezbollah escalates in North, we must prepare for emergency – opinion,” by David M. Weinberg, Jerusalem Post, June 22, 2024:
A cold, calculated analysis of Israel’s strategic situation will reach the conclusion that this country faces a decade of tough warfare on seven different fronts, mainly against Iran and its proxy armies.
Enemy armies and militias are entrenched on Israel’s borders, with Iran actively arming and seeking to radicalize Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, as well as in Jordan.
Full-scale war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is two days or two years away at most, will be an earth-shattering event in particular, bringing inevitable destruction of unprecedented proportions to civil infrastructure in Israel (as well as in Lebanon).
Neither the Israeli military nor home front is sufficiently geared to handle this grim reality. Therefore, the government of Israel must embark on an emergency effort to significantly strengthen the IDF, and to mobilize the public in preparing for long-term struggle in wartime conditions. This requires the enactment of punishing economic decisions and a change of mindset, led by leaders with both grit and vision.
I believe that the Israeli public instinctively understands the dramatic inflexion point where this country now stands and the sacrifices that yet will be required to guarantee the country’s very existence – beyond the enormous sacrifices of people and materiel that already have been made over the past eight months.
And I believe that the Israeli public, young and old across all partisan lines, is yearning – screaming! – for national leadership that will motivate it to participate in an escalating national war effort, despite the severity of the costs involved….
It is time to raid the high schools, university campuses, and senior citizen homes for manpower; to press the entire Israeli public, young and old of all hues and stripes, into industrial and emergency service.
New factories and new rescue/response brigades need to be staffed by every able body. This inevitably will have to include segments of Israeli society that currently are underrepresented in industry and military.
Weinberg is alluding here to both the Haredi Jews and Israeli Arabs. Both groups are currently exempt from military service. This has to end. For the Haredi Jews constitute 25% of the Jewish population, and in twenty years will be 40%, but they have been permitted since the establishment of the state to avoid military service; their argument is that in devoting themselves entirely to religious study, they are keeping the culture of Judaism alive, and further, that by mixing with secular Jews in the military, Haredi Jews might lose some of their commitment to such study. As for Israeli Arabs, Israel is their country, too, and they should be obligated to help it in time of need, if not by serving in the military, then by performing, for the same wages that soldiers receive, and for the same length of time as draftees serve, other kinds of service, such as working as nurses and hospital orderlies, in industrial plants, in education, in agriculture, in childcare, and elder care.
Weinberg’s call for putting Israel on a wartime footing — something it has not yet done — is almost certainly right. A country facing a seven-front war has to do more than mobilize 360,000 reservists to fight. It has to throw every human and material resource into that fight that will continue long after Hamas has been dismantled in Gaza. Israel has to be willing to spend tens of billions of dollars more on its military each year, and to call up 50,000 more soldiers from the ranks of the Haredi, who currently do not serve. It needs to impose a duty of national service on Israel’s Arab population. Israeli Arabs should be encouraged to volunteer for the IDF, but those who do not should be required to spend the same amount of time (two years and six months for men, two years and two months for women), and receive the same wages, as army recruits, performing their national service. That service might take the form of working in hospitals and schools, or in energy plants, or weapons factories — wherever the need is determined by the government to be the greatest.
This emergency mobilization would be similar to what the fledgling state of Israel did in 1948, with a total population of 600,000 Jews, many of them fresh off the boats from European DP camps, when it threw men and women, the young and the old, some of whom had just a few weeks of training, into battle against the regular armies of five Arab states, and despite an arms embargo, managed to defeat them. Something akin to that national girding of the loins needs to be put in place today. Weinberg is optimistic that Israelis will summon up the energy, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, necessary for such a massive collective effort. I hope he’s right.
Tatanka says
The whole non muslim world has to come together and exterminate that vile Islam ideology from the planet once and for all.
John says
They are on side of those Nazis, incl. paid leftist antiBibi emonstrators
Rarely says
Taranka
I’d bet my house you haven’t the slightest idea what that ideology is.
You are most likely and undereducated, underemployed useless piece of garbage who has nothing better to do with your meaningless life than try to harm others.
Get lost.
maria says
Yes it is the only solution that Israel and the non muslim world can live in peace
andy says
Yes yes yes, Rest of the faiths must let their ego go and unite to eliminate this cancer from the face of the earth. We have the resources. America must join the war in Gaza if Hezzbolla or any other join. Biden is spineless. Americans are sleeping for long with collective amnesia about 9/11.
Philip says
Agreed. Should have been done after 9/11 – one of two times the whole of the Western world has failed in my lifetime.
Mike says
Lord God: Please bless the people of Israel. As for the Islamist terrorists who seek to destroy Her, their glory is their shame. Please enable Israel to utterly confound and defeat them, for Your own glory, and for the benefit of all Mankind, including that of Muslim peoples as well.
Please aid the Muslim peoples in further reform and modernization as well, so that they can live more peacefully and amicably with non-Muslims and with one another.
Please help the ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Israeli Arabs understand that Israel needs their talent, work and contribution to survive and prosper. Please help the Jewish diaspora to understand the critical importance of this as well.
In Your Name we pray. Amen.
Tony Rice says
Well said Mike. And I am surprised to lean Israeli Arabs are not supporting their country, which if they don’t like, have the option to leave, but I thought they are much in favour of where they are.
carpediadem says
Some of them do go to the army, especially since Oct 7, but they are not obligated.
somehistory says
Ezekiel will have fulfillment.
James Lincoln says
Why couldn’t the Haredi Jews serve in noncombat roles as conscientious objectors?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Good question. Since I’m not Jewish, I have no idea what, if any, theological restrictions they have on what they are allowed to do, not by government but by religious institutions
dumbledoresarmy says
Father Gabriel Nadaf is one, among the Arabised Christian community, within Israel, who understands that Christians like him, within Israel, have a much, much better life than that of any Christians under Muslim rule in neighbouring countries (or indeed in any Muslim country anywhere, as witness the horrors to which Christians in Pakistan are routinely subjected); people like him could be encouraged to urge their fellow Christians to sign up and serve. Indeed, I don’t see why young Arab – or non-Arab, e.g. Armenian – Christians, within Israel, should not be obliged to undergo IDF training, and serve in the self-defence of the country, exactly like their Jewish fellow-citizens.
Any who refuse… I do not know whether Bat Yeor’s “The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam”, or her earlier book, “The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam”, or Dr Mark Durie’s continuation and consolidation of Bat Yeor’s research, “The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom”, have been translated into either Hebrew or Arabic but if not, they should be; and surely somebody within Israel could summarise the main points made by these important books, and widely publicise those points, in Arabic, to the Arabised Christian community, to encourage them to recognise the suicidal folly of carrying water for Jihad, and the practical benefit of stepping up and standing shoulder to shoulder with the Jews, in Israel, in order NEVER to be forced back into the living death, the hell on earth, that is Dhimmitude.
Similar points could be made to the Haredi, re. the horror of life – half-life – as a near-slave dhimmi; they should be encouraged to recognise Muslim Jew-hatred as a manifestation of ‘Amalek’; and in response, start channelling their inner Moses, Joshua, Caleb and David!! Even father Abraham led an attack force to rescue people who had been kidnapped….There are already religious zionist israelis who recognise that the war of self-defence against Jihad is “milhemeth mitzvah”, an obligatory war.
I recall, vividly, one report of a group of Israelis, when the Nova jihad massacre was occurring on October 7, who used a tank (the soldiers who had driven the tank into the area, had been killed) to hold off the jihadis and shelter survivors, for hours of fierce combat, before the IDF was able to enter the area and relieve them. As people reached the tank – which was functioning as a beleaguered fort – they were told, “If you can fight, fight; if you can treat (give first aid), treat; if you can do neither, pray!!”
Pray: if you’re not able to fight. If a Haredi is old enough and fit enough to fight then .. they will have to be told by their fellow Jews… FIGHT.
The Muslims within Israel are another matter… there are those who, for whatever reason, sit lightly to their Islam and have served without betrayal: for example, a Bedouin tracker who was murdered on October 7th by the jihadi raiders of Hamas, and whose body was dragged off to Gaza, held hostage like that of similarly-murdered Jews.. but… how many of the Muslims within Israel are, or will become, Fifth Columnists??? I would warn Israelis to be very, very wary of the Muslims. Their opportunities for open or subtle sabotage, when embedded in the civilian or military infrastructure, are very large.
somehistory says
Christians must examine their conscience., in the light of the commands of Jesus. Then each one must decide what to do.
abu taleb says
All muslims’ attempts to destroy the Jews will fail because God has promised and God will keep His promises.
Genesis {12:2} And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: {12:3} And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
OLD GUY says
And America stands where? Old Joe doesn’t know he’s waiting for instructions from Obama.