The Gaza war: The external justification process
The wave of protest against Israel in American and European universities reveals some concerning facts about the external justification process of war. In international relations theory, the justification process adopts two distinct forms of implementation: the internal one, necessary to achieve national unity, or in other words, the “Rally Round the Flag effect,” and the external one, which, especially nowadays due to the internalization of information through social media, is obligatory to avoid international isolation etc.
Since day one of the horrific 7/10, thousands of Israelis and Jews from all around the globe have been flying toward Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv to participate in defending their country from the jihadists. However, the external justification process was not as solid or thorough as the momentum required. Perhaps Israel thought that the horrendous scenes of the civilians murdered by Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were enough to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the Westerners. Or, it undermined the impact of restless minorities that nowadays have turned many Western capitals and university campuses into pro-Muslim Brotherhood venues.
Some might say that this anti-Israeli stance is a result of the well-expected ferocity of the IDF operations in Gaza. Allow me to disagree with the above view because the first wave of Western reaction by journalists and academics during the first hours after the attacks was equally balanced between those who were arguing that 7/10 was a pure crime by the jihadists and that Hamas was deliberately opening Pandora’s Box to blockade any step of bringing the Israelis and the Arabs even closer since the historical signing of the Abraham Accords, and the other side who was supporting the appalling view that Israel brought 7/10 upon itself due to its conduct toward the Palestinian side. The latter approach reveals the depth of contemporary anti-Israelism in certain circles with a public stance. It also shows how extended the infiltration of pro-jihadi elements in Western academia and journalism is that in the name of a dubious and somewhat distorted form of liberalism, they are ready to compare and contrast the level of responsibility of a sovereign Western state and a group of terrorist organizations. Israel seems to have lost the “war of external justification” mainly because it took for granted that the Western world would immediately understand the level of the Thucydidean fear that the 7/10 produced in its structure. However, in war, nothing must be taken for granted, especially when this has to do with the hearts and minds of the younger people of the Western world who consider the Holocaust as a mere past event instead of a monumental act of barbarity, or know nothing about the diplomatic process for the appearance of the Israeli state and what followed after that.
While Israel developed a top army, a vibrant economy, and a multicultural society that strives hard to include everyone who wishes to live peacefully, it did not give the importance that it should to its external image as a Western state. With distinctive, sometimes almost hubristic, doses of indifference regarding what was going on in the rest of the Western world, Israel undermined the spread of the grassroots mechanisms that the Palestinian side had managed to build in the nucleus of the Western world. Today, this has resulted in various American Ivy League universities offering a venue to those elements of the Palestinian community who do not aspire to peace and prosperity but publicly demand the destruction of the Israelis “from the River to the Sea.”
Sooner or later, Israel will win the Gaza war. I am not optimistic that jihadism will be decisively defeated, though. After all, as a neo-realist, optimism in international politics is not my cup of tea. Israel will be able to end the fighting against the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran’s proxies successfully. However, the blow against its image, especially that of its soft power, will be tremendous. Too many innocent souls have been lost by now, even though the jihadists used quite a large number of them as human shields, for the Gaza war to be forgotten soon. The only realistic way for Israel to reinforce its image internationally is when the war is over to begin a sincere discussion with the international public community about the origins and the consequences of the fighting and what will happen from that point onward in this part of the world.
I believe that the Gaza war opens a Dante’s crossroads for Israel. The one direction leads to Sparta, to its mighty army, the well-disciplined society, and the constant fear due to an expectation of another violent revolt by the Helots. The other direction leads to Athens, its great soft power image, a strong army but not a militarized society, and an efficient melting pot system. The direction that will be taken will also be critical for the future of the Israeli state and the balance of power in the MENA region.
Perhaps Israel thought that the horrendous scenes of the civilians murdered by Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were enough to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the Westerners
* Professor Spyridon N. Litsas is professor of international relations at the University of Macedonia and visiting professor of international relations at the University of Grenoble (Sciences Po) France. His latest book is titled “Smart Instead of Small in International Relations Theory: The Case of the United Arab Emirates” (Springer).