ISRAEL, RALLY TO THE FIGHT
“Take the win.” That was the advice given by Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to Israel Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz, when discussing his country's response to Iran's drone and rocket attack of last weekend. Joly cribbed her notes from U.S. President Joe Biden, who spoke the same words to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The United States has made it clear that it wants to avoid further escalation, as have other G7 nations in a communique issued on Sunday.
A few thoughts on this. First, there is no win to take. Iran's 300 rockets and drones were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome and its allies, chiefly the United States. This isn't a “win.” The goal wasn't to take out targets, it was to flush out supporters and gather intel on Israel's response capability.
Second, Joly is in no position to give advice to anyone. The Liberal government doesn't stand for principle: it plays domestic politics under the guise of righteousness, lecturing the rest of the world while currying favour with voting groups at home. Its failure to recognize Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization is one example; Canada's vote at the United Nations supporting a ceasefire on Dec. 13, 2023, another.
Israel should instead take advice from a more timeless source: Sun Tzu's The Art of War. It lists the first essential for victory as “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”
War isn't always won on the battlefield — Tzu shows how the greatest victory is defeating your opponent without fighting them at all. You use their strengths against them. You weaken them from within. And you get allies to help you do it.
This is, ironically, exactly what Israel's enemies are doing to the West. The West's greatest strength — its veneration of freedom — has been turned into its greatest weakness. Nowhere is this more evident than Canada. Our
Iran may be cheering its `victory' but it committed a grave error.
governments and law enforcement allow demonstrators who wish Jews dead, who violate our hate laws, the “right” to occupy our streets, deface Jewish places of worship, and terrorize Jewish schools. They allow hatred to run rampant online and on university campuses.
Because of this, Hamas supporters, aided and abetted by their backers in Iran, represent a threat not just to Jews but to law and order. And they do so on the back of public opinion, which has turned against Israel, casting it as a colonial aggressor, and against Jews, erasing their history of persecution and statelessness. It is the nightmare that Holocaust survivors, their descendants and supporters worked so hard to prevent: the revival of antisemitism.
Which is why Israel has two wars on its hands: the war against its enemies and the war for hearts and minds. It cannot win the first if it loses the second.
An aggressive military response is exactly what Iran wants, to allow it to play the victim and give it the excuse to send a second, potentially more deadly strike against Israel and Jews around the world. Make no mistake — the true aim of Iran's mullahs is not only to wipe Israel off the map, but the Jewish people wherever they happen to be. And while Israel has an Iron Dome, its diaspora does not. Jews in other countries depend on those nations to keep them safe.
Iran's attack cannot go unanswered, but the shape of that response is critical. Israel needs allies, including other Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia whose Sunni monarchy has no love for Iran's Shi'a regime. Israel should also leverage the fact that China, whose expansionist designs present the gravest threat to Western democracies, failed to condemn Iran for its attack, and that Russian weapons are helping Iran harden its defences against Israeli airstrikes.
Iran may be cheering its “victory” but it committed a grave error. It exposed what the war in Gaza is really about: a power struggle between the new axis of China, Russia and Iran and the West. Israel needs not to take the win, but the window of opportunity, to rally its allies in this fight.