Defining the threat
Lior Akerman (“Israel must remain alert,” Observations, April 7) dismisses former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo’s assertion that the two-state solution poses an existential threat to Israel, and identifies other threats that, in Akerman’s estimation, are similarly non-existential.
Akerman’s analysis is faulty. First, he seems to assess threats individually rather than cumulatively. A Palestinian state by itself might not threaten Israel’s existence. However, should the state become a launching site for rockets and terrorist attacks (as happened with the Gaza Strip), it could well pose an existential threat if the other actors he mentions (Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah) choose to work in concert.
More importantly, it is irresponsible to minimize a threat simply because it may not result in Israel’s immediate destruction. All the threats Akerman identifies have the potential to severely degrade the personal safety and quality of life of Israelis. This could have a longterm impact on the country’s economy and aliya, and lead some residents to leave. The adverse ramifications of attacks by any (or several) of these actors might not be fully apparent for many years.
Akerman fails to point out Israel’s fundamental error in responding to attacks. He says: “Hamas knows that Israel only responds to provocation with ‘proportionate’ responses .... ” This conveys a misunderstanding of the law of proportionality.
Strategic proportionality does not require you to wait to suffer harm; nor are you obliged to inflict only the level of damage that you have suffered. (If that were the case, the aggressor would always control the conflict by inflicting only the level of damage it is willing to absorb in response.) Rather, actions must be proportional in relation to legitimate military objectives even if some civilian collateral damage is foreseeable.
Unfortunately, Israel’s leaders have forgotten the essential strategy of a defensive war – to inflict heavy military losses on the other side as quickly as possible so that the enemy will be dissuaded from further aggression well before it becomes a serious (let alone existential) threat. ARYEH SHAPUNOW Skokie, Illinois