Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Comments

Tsvi Bisk: The Day After, What I Would Like to See After the War

First and foremost I want to see every single living hostage and every single deceased body returned to Israel. For this, I am ready for an immediate ceasefire and the release of many prisoners in our jails. This is not instead of defeating Hamas but it would be instead of killing every last Hamas fighter. When Hitler killed himself there were still millions of fighting men in uniform, but Germany’s ability to wage war had been destroyed. So it must be with Hamas. We must conceive of a different strategy regarding Gaza. I suggest the following.

 

Gaza

I do not have one iota of the Settler community’s ambition to resettle in the Gaza Strip.  I would pull out completely tomorrow if all the hostages were released on condition that the following took place. Complete separation from Israel. No Gazan workers whatsoever. It has become clear that significant numbers were allowed by Hamas to work in Israel on condition that they gathered the intelligence that facilitated the massacre. No sick Gazans whatsoever – man, woman, or child – were admitted to an Israeli hospital. No Gazan whatsoever was permitted to traverse Israel on the way to the West Bank or Jordan lest they gather intelligence – they must go by way of Egypt. We leave Gaza to its own devices according to the following conditions.

 

1. Israel does not pay one cent for the reconstruction of Gaza (if reconstruction takes place at all). Israel will supply electricity and water for a period of 18 months from the time a ceasefire is implemented during which time donor nations (not us) will build an autonomous desalinization plant and an autonomous electricity generation system. After 18 months Israel will physically destroy all its infrastructure connections to Gaza.
2. Israel will declare UNRWA persona non grata – no staff or officers will be allowed to live in, traverse, or land in Israel. An intense global campaign will be conducted against them, exposing their corruption, antisemitic educational systems, and cooperation with terrorist organizations. We will encourage public pressure on the United States and European countries to cease all financial support for UNRWA (as has Switzerland recently). It has become painfully apparent that many UNRWA employees in Gaza are the equivalent of card-carrying members of Hamas, while others only have their jobs because they support Hamas. UNRWA has become the educational ministry of Hamas; “educating” the most base Nazi-inspired tropes to Gaza’s children.
3. A Kill Zone, 200-300 meters wide, must ring Gaza within Gazan territory. A series of A.I.-operated machine guns of various calibers, sensitive to ANY movement within the kill zone, will be installed on the Israeli side. Nothing that enters that zone will live for more than a few seconds. This will be supplemented by a parallel series of mini-Dirigibles also equipped with A.I. operated gatling guns and small rockets that will instantly (within milliseconds) unload thousands of rounds into any area from which any rockets are fired or incendiary balloons released. Both systems will be entirely independent of human commands and not subject to calls for moderation and proportionality.

 

Lebanon

Declare to the world that unless rocket attacks from Lebanon cease completely and U.N. Resolution 1701 (calling for the removal of all Hezbollah forces south of the Litani river)  fully implemented by a certain date, a state of war between Israel and the Lebanese state will have been declared with all the implications that entails.

 

Parallel to that announcement Israel should conduct an incursion of one kilometer into Lebanon, turning that area into a Kill Zone similar to the one in Gaza, with similar technological accoutrements. If rocket attacks continue Israel must occupy Lebanon up until the Litani River and make the entire Southern Lebanon a population-free Kill Zone.

 

Declare to the world that unless all supplies to Hezbollah from Syria into Lebanon cease completely by a certain date, a state of War between Israel and the Syrian State will have been declared with all the implications that entails. Parallel to that announcement the Syrian Presidential Palace and Parliament should be leveled by the Israeli Air Force. Making it clear that if Hezbollah initiatives full scale war the city of Damascus will suffer even greater damage than Beirut.

West Bank

The security barrier must be significantly upgraded materially and electronically. It must become all but impenetrable. A Kill Zone of 10-20 meters must be established on the internal side of the barrier equipped with the highest quality movement sensors and lethal apparatuses. The number of laborers permitted to work in Israel should be cut in half or even a third and only for absolutely necessary work in agriculture and building. They all should be women over 40 with children and married men over 45. No young men or women, married or unmarried, should be allowed in.

 

Israel must explore moving most of its vegetable and fruit production to urban vertical hydroponics installations (as has Singapore) while engaging in robust R&D in agricultural robotics to replace human hands in the remaining field of agriculture. Serious fines and even jail time should be imposed on Israeli employers that employ Palestinians illegally. A Gdud HaAvoda must be formed consisting of those demographics unable or unwilling to serve in the army, enabling an alternative form of national service to replace Palestinian and Thai workers in agriculture.

 

Iran

Iran is the key to ALL of Israel’s security challenges – as well it must be said to all of the West’s security challenges in the Middle East. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are all living off the Iranian swamp. Rather than swatting these flies, Israel must drain that swamp. Consequently, Israel’s grand strategic aim should be to destroy Iran’s economy – bringing it to its knees so that it cannot finance terror or its nuclear ambitions. This could entail a combination of overt and covert actions concentrating on easy targets such as their seven oil exporting terminals and the gas pumping stations supplying over 90% of their domestic electricity production. These seem to me to be more rational targets than trying to pinpoint the dozens of sites involved in their atomic research programs.

 

Taking 1.8 million barrels daily off the international oil market will not make our friends happy given its likely impact on oil prices. But the example of the Ukrainian war has shown that the world oil market is a lot more elastic than we have heretofore assumed. Prior to the war Russia supplied 15.9 % of EU petroleum imports and 28.3% of its gas which in one year declined to 2.7% and 13.8% respectively without any undue medium-term inconvenience. Worldwide consumption of oil averaged 101.1 million barrels per day in 2023. Iran’s crude oil and gas condensate exports reached 1.812 million barrels per day, or less than 1.8% of the world market. I am sure the global markets could respond to that without much difficulty. And since one million of those barrels go to China the discomfit to the Democratic world would be super minimal. In 2023 Iran’s natural gas production equaled 6% of global production but since domestic consumption eats up over two-thirds of that they only contribute 2% of global exports (about equal to their contribution to oil exports).

 

Internal

Needless to say, new elections and a national referendum on a constitution while reinventing Israeli governance. We must turn Israel into an economic muscle by eliminating corruption, waste and bureaucratic roadblocks to business initiative. One national aim should be to move Israel from 31^st on Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer to being listed in the top five (1^st being the least corrupt). It is embarrassing that the United Arab Emirates are listed as less corrupt than Israel. Another national aim should be to move Israel from 35^th on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings to being listed in the top five. The United Arab Emirates are listed at 16 and Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are also easier to do business in than in Israel.

Universal service of Haredi youth in a modern work brigade (Gdud Avoda) to replace (as much as possible) Arab and Thai field workers as well as foreign construction workers and carers, All this should be enshrined in a written constitution.

 

Diaspora

Following October 7^th and the renewed outbreak of overt antisemitism we must heed the words of Abraham Lincoln: “As our case is new, so must we think anew.  We must disenthrall ourselves [from past habits of thinking], and then we shall save our country.”  So too, the time has come for Diaspora Jewry to disenthrall themselves from old ways of doing things.  Our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew, and then we too will save our people. What would be some steps that could be taken?

 

1. An educational fund should be established to enable Jewish youth to pursue their university education in Israel, free from antisemitic humiliation. A high-quality degree can be had in Israel for one-third the tuition of an American university. The following ideas will also enable Israel to absorb Israeli academics who wish to return to Israel.
2. Initially, double the English language academic programs at all the universities, especially Reichman University..
3. Secondly, universities and colleges to which Jews contribute should be encouraged to set up satellite campuses in Israel.
4. Thirdly, establish the Ibn Ezra Institute of Technology on a quality par with the Technion and MIT to serve not only Diaspora Jewry but the entire Middle East and East Africa. (This initiative will have hasbara benefits as well).
5. An Israeli Credits Bank should be established enabling Jews to donate Israeli credits to their favorite domestic charity. Instead of one million dollars of money one million dollars of Israeli credits, enabling the charity to purchase Israeli software or hardware, medical supplies (equipment and medicine), water management technology and services, alternative energy and services, as well as services such as interior design etc. etc. In other words, a multi-purpose donation that serves the needs of the domestic charity while supercharging the Israeli economy.

 

Hasbara

The trouble with hasbara is the very word hasbara – i.e. explanation. Not (as it should be) information. Explanation is to information what sales is to marketing. Explanation tries to sell a product; information tries to build a brand. Israel’s brand before the 6-Day War was the phoenix rising from the ashes against overwhelming odds; it was the Kibbutz and other social experiments; it was the ingathering of the exiles. Today our brand is high-tech and the “occupation”. Unfortunately, the occupation trumps high-tech in the public imagination and we have to create more “positive” brands.

 

The Ibn Ezra Middle East Technological Institute (and a Middle East Mayo Clinic), as well as absorbing thousands of returning Israelis and potential olim could be the basis of a new Israeli brand.

 

Moreover, we have neglected negative campaigns against our enemies. I would wager, for instance, that only a small percentage of African Americans have ever heard about the Arab Slave Trade which not only kidnapped almost 20 million Black Africans but established the slave trading infrastructure subsequently exploited in the Atlantic Slave Trade. And an even smaller percentage are aware of the current rampant anti-Black racism in North Africa and elsewhere in the Arab world. This should occupy a major part of our efforts in Africa and in the Black Diaspora.

 

Going on the offensive against the moral and intellectual corruption of some of the media and humanitarian organizations is also not out of the question.  Although here I would employ a strategy of the indirect approach.

 

October 7^th was the bitterest pill the Jewish People have had to swallow since the Holocaust. But it has created numerous opportunities for Jewish renewal which we can take advantage of if we act cooly and rationally. We have a tremendous opportunity to redefine our relationship with the Diaspora while creating realities that could facilitate a great increase in aliya (including returning Israelis) from the West. Furthermore, this war has so traumatized the Haredi community that the case for army service or alternative national service can now find much greater resonance in the community – especially among the young. The Holocaust didn’t end us – rather we responded with a burst of creativity by creating the Jewish state.  We can repeat this miracle if we do not succumb to pessimism and gloom.