Steve Kramer: Israel Battles its Jihadi Opponents with US help
I can only wonder where a statistic quoted in the Jerusalem Post of 3/11/26 comes from: “Iran’s missile fire rate has collapsed by 92%.” This week in Kfar Saba we have hurried to our in-apartment shelter perhaps the most times since the war began. I don’t remember how many times the sirens sounded (shortly after mobile phone warnings) during the day – probably four or five times. But for sure I remember a recent night when we had to enter our shelter just as we were getting into bed, two hours later, then one hour later, then when we were about to exit there was an additional attack. At about 4:30 we returned to our beds…
Michal and I are partially insulated from the war more *than many other Israelis because we have no relatives and not many friends in the army, nor do we live in the North, where the residents suffer attacks from Hezbollah with almost no time to protect themselves. (We have several minutes between the initial warning and the alarm to seek shelter.) Like almost all Israelis, we support the government in its pursuit of the Roaring Lion war. Israelis are nearly totally united, wanting to vanquish our enemies in Lebanon and Iran (the Houthis in Yemen have yet to enter the fight).
Israel isn’t alone in this fight. The IDF and the US military forces are working hand in glove with each other. There is probably no other example that compares to the synergy between these two armies. It’s the most powerful one-two punch ever in modern times. However, our strategies are not exactly aligned. The president wants a quick “victory,” and Israel wants to destroy its two jihadi opponents, the Iranian government and Hizbollah. “Quickly” won’t accomplish it.
The US fought its battles in World War II with strong allies, most prominently Britain. But today, the armies of America’s European allies are ill-equipped to defend themselves, let alone join the US in the Middle East. Recently, the weak prime minister of Britain, Keir Starmer, forbade US military aircraft from stopping in Britain unless they were engaged in “defensive” activities. (He’s somewhat reluctant.)
France’s entry in the Iran conflict is in a “strictly defensive” posture, although it is sending it sole aircraft carrier into the eastern Mediterranean Sea, near Cyprus and Israel. Spain, never an American ally, is backing the terrorists and has “terminated” its ambassador to Israel. Italy’s Prime Minister Meloni said, “Italy will not participate in the intervention against Iran.”
There is a downside to the closeness that binds America and Israel. President Trump and other Western leaders may not grasp our opponents’ life and death devotion to jihad. Only belatedly has Israel come to internalize it. Hezbollah and the mullahs have an overarching goal: to eliminate Israel and its “infidel” Jews from Arab lands (actually historic Israel) and then to conquer the US and Europe, converting the populations to Islam. They will not stop! There is no treaty that Islamists won’t abrogate, no promise that they will keep, and no agreements that they will honor.
You can’t “make a deal” with Islamists. You cannot trust the Islamists to fulfill any agreement. Why? They prefer to become martyrs for their cause, a great honor in their culture. But they are masters of pretending to follow agreements that gullible Western negotiators proffer to them. “There are several forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, the best known being taqiyya (the Shia name). These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause of Islam – in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them.” (https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/taqiyya.aspx)
So, Israelis will continue to depend on the IDF and its US allies, as well as luck and shelters to protect them from jihadi missiles and drones. We won’t give up the fight. Hopefully, the US will stick to its guns and help us defeat the jihadists. If not, we will have to do it ourselves.
