Can Israel Defeat The Spectre Of The Short Term? 

Hadrian said to Rabbi Joshua: “Mighty is the lamb that can survive among seventy wolves.” And he replied: “Mighty is the shepherd who can save and protect the lamb, and destroy the wolves surrounding her.” (Midrash Tanchuma Toldot 1)[1]

Has the West failed to fully grasp the Iranian Revolution and its focus on destroying Israel? If so, is the immediate threat to Israel a “diplomacy of smiles” that fails to extinguish the genocidal risk it faces?

Israel’s primary existential enemy, Iran, has, since 1979, sought to lead a Shia renaissance and establish an Islamic State across the globe. When Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in that year, he concluded that the establishment of an Islamic State was indispensable in order to prepare the Umma for the End of Days and to hasten its arrival:[2] 

We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry “There is no god but Allah” resounds over the whole world, there will be a struggle.[3]

As a concomitant goal, Khomeini commanded, “We must all rise [and] destroy Israel.”[4] This remains an enduring objective of the Revolution:

The destruction of Israel is the idea of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is one of the pillars of the Iranian Islamic regime. We cannot claim that we have no intention of going to war with Israel![5]

In the face of the Iranian Revolution and its focus on “full annihilation of Israel,”[6] the West has failed fully to appreciate and learn from 1400 hundred years of experience with Islam and, instead, has “pursued policies based on delusion and false paradigms.”[7] The Revolution’s goal to bring all men to the justice of Islam and to fight whoever refuses does not fit within the Western project to maintain a “rules based international order” and support democracy and human rights. Iran has, however, skillfully aligned its anti-Israeli posture, which is of nominal theological importance to Shiites,[8] with Western values of self-determination and human rights to camouflage its military and nuclear program under the banner of support for the Palestinians and as a counter to Israel’s military strength.

A preeminent challenge for Jews seeking to confront the promised Islamic genocide, as augured by Hamas’ invasion and sickening killing spree, is the “spectre of the short term.”[9] Israel’s allies in the West reach recursively for immediate solutions, failing to acknowledge and confront the true threat that promises to unfold gradually across an extended period of time (the ‘longue durée’).[10] They consciously ignore the past and lessons of history, and, instead, stake their initiatives on an erroneous myopic hypothesis–on display in US policy and driving a consuming passion of several US administrations since the 1950’s– that an Israeli-Palestinian peace is the key to solving all the Middle East’s problems.[11] According to President Clinton’s Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross:

“The mother of all myths” is the idea that once the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is solved, the rulers of the region will become friendly liberal democracies and the terrorists will put away their bombs.[12] 

The West willfully disregards the Muslim view of negotiation as a sign of weakness to exploit.[13] Feigning peace and dissembling to gain tactical advantage in war is a strategy specifically endorsed by the Prophet Muhammed.[14] Yasser Arafat, at a mosque in 1994, defended signing the 1993 Oslo Accords (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements) with an allusion to the doctrine of Muhammad of making treaties with enemies while weak and violating them when strong, stating:

I see this agreement as being no more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh in Mecca.[15]

This approach has been leveraged to full advantage by the Palestinians, who have not deviated from their phased plan to destroy Israel, adopted at the 12th Session of the Palestinian National Council in Cairo on June 9, 1974.[16] This strategy, says historian Ephrain Karsh, stipulates that,

[T]he Palestinians should seize whatever territory Israel is prepared or compelled to cede to them and use it as a springboard for further territorial gains until achieving the “complete liberation of Palestine.”[17]

In this respect, it is instructive that the PLO failed to ratify the Oslo Accords signed on the White House lawn by PLO Chairman Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.[18] Similarly, the PLO failed, despite announcements to the contrary, to annul legally (by a two-thirds vote of all Palestinian National Council members) provisions of the PLO Charter calling for Israel’s destruction.[19] For its part, Hamas, which ascribes to the Sunni branch of Islam (as do the vast majority of Palestinians), unabashedly calls for the destruction of Israel in its Charter:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.[20]

In confronting the existential threat of militant Islam, and Iran in particular, Israel must address the West’s tyranny of time and ingrained distrust of the “lessons of history.”[21] The decision-making framework, proclaimed aims, and actions of Israel’s enemies cannot be discounted to make palatable political expediency that promises a brief reprieve on the road to Apocalypse, including a revised JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) that does not completely eliminate Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon and halt its international aggression.[22] In the art of war,

 If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.[23]

Endnotes

1. https://www.sefaria.org/Midrash_Tanchuma%2C_Toldot.1.2?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
2. M. Mubrano, Iran, Hezbollah, and the End of Times: Ideology in Context, TFA (Jan. 19, 2018), https://theforeignanalyst.com/iran-hezbollah-and-the-end-of-times-ideology-in-context/
3. Quoted in, N. Teller, What the Iranian regime really wants – and what the West refuses to see, Jerusalem Post(May 27, 2020), https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/what-the-iranian-regime-really-wants-and-what-the-west-refuses-to-see-628585
4. Quoted in, P. Shindman, The Iran Regime’s Incitement to Destroy Israel, (Dec. 23, 2019), https://honestreporting.com/iran-regimes-incitement-destroy-israel/
5. Sayyid Ahmad Alamolhoda, member of the Iranian Assembly of Experts of the Leadership, quoted in M. Segall & M. Rubenstein, Sworn to Destruction: What Iranian Leaders Continue to Say about Israel in the Rouhani Era, Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (Jan. 7, 2014), https://jcpa.org/article/20-threats-iranian-leaders-made-in-2013/
6. “The Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel.” Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi (Fars News Agency, May 20, 2012), cited by Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, https://www.dailyalert.org/rss/Mainissues.php?id=34514
7. B. Thornton, Forty Years of Misunderstanding Islam, Front Page (Aug. 26, 2021), https://www.frontpagemag.com/forty-years-misunderstanding-islam-bruce-thornton/; see also, N. Teller, What the Iranian regime really wants – and what the West refuses to see, Jerusalem Post (May 27, 2020), https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/what-the-iranian-regime-really-wants-and-what-the-west-refuses-to-see-628585
8. Israel and Jerusalem are of nominal theological importance to Sh’ites, particularly as they believe that Muhammad forbade pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and that his ascent (the Israʾ and Miʿraj) did not happen in Jerusalem but in a “distant mosque” in Heaven. P. Inbari, Why Do Iran and Hizbullah Crave Jerusalem?, Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (Feb. 29, 2024), https://jcpa.org/why-do-iran-and-hizbullah-crave-jerusalem/
9. D. Armitage & J. Guldi, THE HISTORY MANIFESTO, Cambridge U. Press (2014), p.1, https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/AC1A1EC711AE91A4F9004E7582D79AFD/9781107076341AR.pdf/The_History_Manifesto.pdf?event-type=FTLA
10. The lack of long-range perspective is deeply ingrained in Western culture. Those seeking answers typically peer myopically into the “ephemeral froth” of the “brief, rapid, nervous oscillations.” See, F. Braudel, quoted in, Cf., D. Armitage & J. Guldi, Bonfire of the humanities, aeon (Oct. 2, 2014), p.16, https://aeon.co/essays/the-role-of-history-in-a-society-afflicted-by-short-termism
11. The architects of the Oslo Accords maintained that in order to make peace with the PLO, it was necessary to forget the past and history. For example, US President Carter said to Israeli President Rabin, “We have assumed that you would be ready to forget about the past and about history, and to adopt a fresh perspective.” Meeting between President Carter and Prime Minister Rabin, Memorandum of Conversation( March 8, 1977), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v08/d20; “When Oslo began, and the Israeli and Palestinian teams decided not to talk about the past, they imagined setting aside their competing narratives.” E. Bazelon, Was Peace Ever Possible?, NY Times Magazine (Nov. 20, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html
12. See, D. Ross & D. Makovsky, “Myths, Illusions, and Peace,” Viking (2009), quoted in, A. Lebor, Neocons vs. Realists, NY Times (July 16, 2009), https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/books/review/LeBor-t.html 
13. Peace with non-Muslims can only be provisional and deception (taqiyya ), specifically permitted by Muhammed, can be used in war and to survive a weak position. See, Sahih Muslim B32N6303; cf.;  “[F]rom an Islamic point of view, times of peace—that is, whenever Islam is significantly weaker than its infidel rivals—are times of feigned peace and pretense, in a word, taqiyya.” R. Ibrahim, How Taqiyya Alters Islam’s Rules of War, Middle East Report, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Winter 2010), https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war; , R. Ibrahim, Islam’s doctrines of deception, Middle East Report (Oct. 1, 2008), https://www.meforum.org/islams-doctrines-of-deception
14. See, Sahih Muslim B32N6303.
15. In 628 CE, Muhammed and the Quraysh (the tribe controlling Mecca and to which Muhammad belonged) entered a ten-year truce under the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. In 630 CE, Muhammad conquered Mecca with an army of 10,000 men. Cf., D. Pipes, Lessons from the Prophet Muhammad’s Diplomacy, Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Fall 1999), https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/lessons-from-the-prophet-muhammads-diplomacy. 
16. See, The PLO’s “Phased Plan”, Information Regarding Israel’s Security, https://iris.org.il/plophase.htm; I. Marcus, Abbas’ advisor: PA policy is based on the stages plan, Palestine Media Watch (March 9, 2023), https://palwatch.org/page/3286
17. E. Karsh, “Arafat’s Grand Strategy,” Middle East Quarterly, (Spring 2004), quoted in, The PLO’s “Phased Strategy”, Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-plo-s-phased-strategy
18. See, D. Bedien, RENEW TALKS WITH THE PLO: ASK PLO RATIFICATION OF OSLO ACCORDS, Times of Israel (Blog June 7, 2013), https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/renew-talks-with-the-plo-ask-plo-ratification-of-oslo-accords/; B. Bedein, A guide to the ten principles of the PLO two stage solution, not the two state delusion, Israel Resource Review (Sept. 22, 2016), https://israelbehindthenews.com/2016/09/22/guide-ten-principles-plo-two-stage-solution-not-two-state-delusion/
19. See, Call for elimination of Israel – HRC 16th session – NGO statement (WUPJ), United Nations, https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-188599/; see also, J. Cooper, Did the PA Ever Revise Its Charter Calling for the Destruction of Israel, Times of Israel (Blog Dec. 3, 2023), https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/did-the-pa-ever-revise-its-charter-calling-for-the-destruction-of-israel/; I. Marcus & M. Hirsch, PA presents the PLO Charter as currently calling for Israel’s destruction, Palestinian Media Watch (March 16, 2021), https://palwatch.org/page/18655
20. Hamas Covenant 1988, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
21. French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) defined the postmodern as “incredulity towards metanarratives” (and also the “speculative” narratives of Hegel and Marx) of social progress and modernization. This suspicion and distrust would trigger the decline of large stories, told across long sweeps of time. Where Cicero (106–43 BCE) once wrote that history is a ‘guide to life’ (magistra vitae), modern historians retreated from the long term. Cf., D. Armitage & J. Guldi, Bonfire of the humanities, aeon (Oct. 2, 2014), https://aeon.co/essays/the-role-of-history-in-a-society-afflicted-by-short-termism; P. Gratton, “Jean François Lyotard”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/lyotard/
22. Cf., M.Levitt, Ending Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program Is Not Enough, Washington Institute (April 25, 2025), https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/ending-irans-nuclear-weapons-program-not-enough; B. Schaefer, The Biden Administration’s Iran-Deal Fable, Heritage Found. (Dec. 19, 2022), https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/commentary/the-biden-administrations-iran-deal-fable
23. Sun Tzu on the Art of War, Allendale (L. Giles Tr. 1910), p.11, https://sites.ualberta.ca/~enoch/Readings/The_Art_Of_War.pdf