Israel attacks only when attacked - and the Jordanian border is proof - opinion

Hardly a day goes by without a major news item on either BBC, CNN, or The New York Times media sites condemning Israel for what they perceive as its destructive actions either in Gaza, Lebanon, or in Judea and Samaria. 

“Palestinian parents fear for children’s lives at school as settler attacks grow,” reads the headline on BBC on September 8.

Two days previously, the NYT featured an opinion piece. “It’s Not Just the West Bank Settlers. It’s Israel,” and on September 3, CNN published a very critical piece on “Israeli flags and flattened homes” in Lebanon.

The cumulative effect of these articles embeds in the reader an image of a country bent on wreaking havoc indiscriminately on its neighbors, disproportionate to the damage wreaked on Israel by enemies from neighboring territories.

Israel’s border with Jordan, at least double the length of either its border with Lebanon or Gaza, proves that Israel attacks and destroys infrastructure only when attacked. And this has been true for over half a century, ever since Jordan “hosted,” albeit under tremendous duress, Palestinian terrorist organizations, which used the country as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against Israel.

Israel then reacted to these attacks with the same, if not greater, ferocity than reported today in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel systematically destroyed Jordan’s bread basket on the other side of the Jordanian valley from which terrorists launched their raids, forcing the local agrarian population to leave the area and seek refuge in Jordan’s high-ground, inland, urban areas. Israel hoped to force King Hussein’s hand in ridding his country of these subversive elements.

The showdown indeed took place beginning in September 1970 and culminated a year later in the summer of 1971, when the last terrorist groupings fled to Syria and Lebanon, and many of them to captivity in Israel to avoid the more dire fate that awaited them were they to remain in Jordan.

Was Israel then (or now) driven by vengefulness, inhumanity, or racism?

That hardly a bullet has been fired from Israeli-controlled areas in the direction of Jordan for over a century, zero buildings destroyed, zero civilian injuries or deaths (except the rare instances of neutralizing terrorists who crossed the border), is proof that Israel attacks only when attacked.

The moment the Jordanian state regained control of its territory and has worked since then to prevent Jordanian land from being a launching pad against Israeli citizens, Israel’s considerable guns fell totally silent on its eastern front.

Israel’s tenacious policy of attacking only after being attacked holds despite very painful exceptions that took place in the last half century: for example, when a Jordanian soldier in 1997 massacred seven young schoolgirls who were enjoying the scenery in the “Island of Peace” park along the Jordan River.

Indeed, King Hussein personally made a visit to the devastated families. This holds despite Jordan’s frequent condemnations of Israel at the UN. And Israel not only refrains from attacking Jordan, but it also provides Jordan with precious sweet water it lacks as part of the peace treaty both sides signed in 1994.

Attacking when attacked

It's the sticks that Israel answers with sticks.

Sticks are, of course, a euphemism for what transpired on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its attack and subsequent massacres from Gaza urban areas, often less than three miles from their prey in Israeli towns and kibbutzim. Israel’s destruction of Gaza urban areas adjacent to the border from which the Hamas terrorists launched their attacks is not an act of vengeance but a preventative move to prevent such launching pads in the future.

This is not, of course, to deny that many Israeli citizens harbor feelings of vengeance against an organization that recorded its atrocities (on body cameras), something even the Nazis refrained from doing, backed up by a considerable swath of the population that cheered them on, participated in the looting, and jeered the captured hostages.

Many Israelis believe that the Jewish state has a moral obligation to avenge lives (including Muslim Israelis and Thai workers massacred on October 7), in contrast to the killing of Jews by perpetrators never brought to justice in the Diaspora, but this is not government policy.

And as long as Hamas continues to be the major political force in the area Israel hasn’t taken over, the destruction is likely to continue until Israel destroys the organization. For the time being, at least, there is little likelihood that the guns will fall silent as they did over the Israeli-Jordanian border.

This is also true of Lebanon. Just as in Gaza in 2005, so did Israel completely withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, only to discover that Hezbollah, Iran’s deadly proxy, built up a military infrastructure in virtually every other house in Shi’ite villages across the border.

CNN, BBC, and the NYT might inveigh against this destruction and displacement, but the inhabitants have only Hezbollah – a proxy fighting its master’s war despite being over six hundred miles away – to blame.

Unfortunately, many of these inhabitants continue to support Hezbollah. Since the state of Lebanon is so weak (it hasn’t been able to exercise its decision to oust the Iranian ambassador from Beirut), Jordan’s happy ending does not look like being repeated in Lebanon anytime soon.

The lesson from the Israeli-Jordanian border is clear. A judicious reader of Israeli actions in Lebanon and Gaza has all the right, even the moral necessity, to be pained by the scenes of destruction. But hardly by condemning Israel. Israel only attacks when attacked. 

Its citizens much prefer to invent drip irrigation, widely adopted by Israel’s neighbors to their great benefit, share their knowledge in desalination, and invent life-saving pharmaceuticals than destroy infrastructure.

Israel and its citizens participate in destruction only when they are attacked and will continue to be attacked were they not to take these necessary measures.

The writer is a senior researcher at JISS and professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University.