The importance of Jewish Warfare 3.0

As discussed in THE IMPORTANCE OF JEWISH WARFARE 1.0 and 2.0, Jews are only 0.2% of the global population. By 2023, approximately one half of this tiny minority lived in a Jewish state the existence of which depends upon successful Jewish warfare. The other half continued the 2000-year diaspora tradition of living among majorities by managing victimhood until required to emigrate to live among another majority, but even they were impacted significantly by Jewish warfare in 2023.

Over those two millennia, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have all asserted a God given right to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Although this disputed land is only approximately the size of New Jersey, these conflicting assertions have caused wars, often between armies raised by rulers anointed by the competing religions, which implies that each of these religions contain beliefs that allow or encourage the killing of members of the other religions. Since the beginning of recorded history, most religious based wars over land have resulted in the removal, extermination, or forced conversion of the losing population.

Since 1948, several nation states have asserted a combination of religious and sovereignty rights to all or part of that land, and those assertions in 2023 were limited to two generally recognized states, Israel and Palestine. An interim agreement had been reached between them about the governance of various geographic areas, pending a more permanent agreement on the boundaries of both states, but a final agreement had not been reached by 2023 because of the security and other issues inherent in the underlying religious claims that still exist among the populations of both nation states.

Asserting those claims, both states have political parties that favor the abrogation of any agreement that allows the existence of the other state, and some of those parties suggest that the matter should be decided by war. By 2023, one such Palestinian party, Hamas, had governed Gaza (about the size of Philadelphia) since 2007. Hamas had long before declared perpetual war against Israel and all individual Jews, especially the Jewish inhabitants of the contested land. Although Israel had viewed Hamas governed Gaza as a hostile neighboring state, Jews had not inhabited Gaza since 2005 when Israel stopped governing Gaza.

A war between a Hamas governed Gaza and Israel to determine the existence of the Jewish State of Israel is essentially the same as prior wars on the same issue between Israel and Jordan, Egypt, Syria, or Lebanon, but none of those prior wars included an open declaration of the abandonment of rules of war.

The rules of war established by Western and similar civilizations permit civilian casualties as collateral damage during combat between armies but prohibit the specific targeting of civilians. Some humans are sufficiently motivated, by religious, political, or other beliefs to either reject a civilization or to violate its most basic proscriptions. The October 7, 2023 attack from Gaza, by perhaps 1000 Hamas fighters willing to mutilate, kill, or capture thousands of civilian Israeli Jews, seemed especially uncivilized (in the Western sense) and raised the issue of how to respond to such humans.

Those 1000 relatively uncivilized humans are not from a small warrior tribe. They were born and bred among 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, or among 3 million Palestinians on the West Bank. Although neither population presently resides in a democratic society where the beliefs and preferences of the inhabitants can be determined accurately, it is possible that long held religious or other beliefs of both Palestinian populations may justify the lethal targeting of Israeli noncombatant Jews sufficiently to allow a government that supports or allows the Hamas level of barbarity. Therefore, eliminating the 1000 attackers, or even perhaps 100,000 possible replacements, might be insufficient to remove this threat.

October 7 implies that it is possible that forcefully reprogramming, as a conquered and occupied population, the 2 million in Gaza, and perhaps the 3 million on the West bank, or permanently evicting or eliminating them, might be required to eliminate the threat.

The United States, which used forced reprograming of perhaps 71 million Japanese and both techniques with perhaps 18 million members of American Indian tribes, presently joins almost all other nations, including Israel, in condemning the use of these techniques. Although Israel had established itself as a warrior nation capable of defeating most standard military threats, it was not feared as a force that might commit something approaching genocide or draconian occupation of perhaps 5 million to protect itself against insurgent militias or other combatants strongly motivated by religious or other beliefs. The bounding factor appears to be the current Jewish value set, developed over two millennia of relative victimhood and still dominant among most Israeli and Diaspora Jews.

Groups that self-define as victims or oppressed try to manage their victimhood by limiting exposure to victimizers and by seeking the sympathy and protection of larger and stronger allies. In 2023, Israeli Jews continued to claim a form of victimhood, but many of the 99.8% of humans who are not Jews have difficulty seeing the Israel Defense Forces and the Startup Nation as victims. Conversely, the 1.4 billion Muslims, especially the 150 million Arabs, have almost no difficulty in viewing the Palestinians as victims, and this view is shared by many others including some progressive Diaspora Jews. Combined with the Jewish value set, this wide sympathy for Palestinians bounds the ability of the IDF to defend Israel.

Diaspora (now mostly American) Jews continue the claim of victimhood and expect the protection of both governmental and non-governmental forces against threats and attacks because they are Jews (antisemitism) and because Jews now have a homeland (anti-Zionism). Some anti-Zionist Diaspora Jews seem to expect better treatment from the non-Jewish majorities. The bounds on both expectations also became clearer in 2023.

Even before October 7, more than 60% of religious hate-based crimes in the USA were against Jews who are only 2.4% of the US population. That small minority had come to expect the 98% majority to provide a reasonable level of protection against both physical and other antisemitic attacks, but by 2023 several communities, previously thought to be allies of US Jews, had morphed from allies to neutrals, to anti-Zionism and finally to antisemitism. Perhaps most notably, this had occurred on elite college campuses. The University of Pennsylvania provides an interesting example.

Months before October 7, an increased awareness of dangerous levels of a Hamas type combination of antisemitism and anti-Zionism created a strong disagreement between several Jewish trustees (major donors) and the Chair of the Trustees and the President of the University of Pennsylvania about the September 2023 Palestine Writes event sponsored by four Penn entities and scheduled to be on the Penn campus. Among the many scheduled presenters, the Jewish trustees objected primarily to two individuals whose public positions seemed to assert that Israeli Jews are draconian occupiers of Palestine, which might justify the techniques used by Hamas and perhaps similar techniques against Diaspora Jews. The Penn president and the Trustee Chair, perhaps having some difficulty in viewing major donors as victims requiring protection, refused to limit the suggested problematic speech, asserting the primacy of two somewhat undefined philosophical constructs, freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Extensive negative publicity after October 7, including a more general boycott of Penn by Jewish donors and growing political disapproval, eventually caused both the President and Trustee Chair to resign. However, prior faculty recruitment and student admission policies had produced a campus community very interested in defending victims against victimizers, and more inclined to view and treat Israeli and US Jews as victimizers than as victims, so the seemingly apologetic statements and subsequent resignations did not reduce the underlying level of support on campus for the Hamas claim that Jews are inherently evil victimizers and must be killed or expelled.

Many US Jews, including some Penn related Jews, have continued to expect the protection of the majority based upon a claim of victimhood for themselves and Israeli Jews. The former claim may be less useful as the memories of October 7 fade and the latter claim has long been problematic given the order of magnitude difference in the IDF kill ratio.

Jews are only 0.2% of all humans. Jewish managed victimhood preserved this small minority for 2000 years. Jewish warfare has been successful thus far for less than a century in preserving a Jewish state that has been a refuge for the Jews who no longer wanted to manage victimhood. However, that success has endangered the victimhood claims of US Jews, who may yet decide that some form of Jewish warfare is a better bet, even for the anti-Zionist Jews who did not learn the lesson of the failure of Soviet anti-Zionist Jews to have continued protection from Russians.

The financial warfare initiated by some Jewish donors is less bounded by rules of combat. Political warfare is even less bounded and digital warfare has almost no such limits. Although peaceful coexistence is almost always preferable to any form of warfare, a peace between two very different belief systems, or between victim and victimizer, is rarely stable, and a peaceful existence of victims under the protection of any protector is never stable.

Sixty years ago, a young engineer left the comforting bubble of academia for the much better opportunities in the Military/Industrial Complex because most humans seemed incapable of learning and using the analytical techniques needed for the strategic projections required for successful modern warfare even though there had never been a single day since the beginning of recorded history that had not included warfare between two states. The failure to think strategically, especially about warfare and its effects, may still be understandable for 99.8% of all humans, but the 0.2% Jewish minority may be forced to change by the increased importance of Jewish Warfare.