The December 19 issue of The Jewish Link has a column by Eliana Birman, “Middle East in Focus: Nadav Eyal Addresses Barnard on Regional Shifts and Challenges,” which focuses on the effect of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon on the geopolitical makeup of the Middle East. I submit that there is more to the story than just Israel’s influence in the Middle East region, but rather to the entire world order.
The world is generally divided into two camps: One is the “Axis of Evil” consisting of the totalitarian states of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea; the other, the free democracies of the United States, the NATO countries of Europe, and in the Pacific arena, Japan, India, and Australia. The Middle East is a microcosm of these super power blocs with democratic Israel on one side, and totalitarian Muslim regimes like Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Palestinian controlled West Bank, Yemen and Iraq on the other side. Many of these, like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, are proxies of Iran.
In the Gaza war, the IDF conducted a campaign in what is universally considered as the toughest combat environment—that of urban warfare—against heavily armed defenders. These wars are usually very costly for both sides. However, the tolls in Gaza were strikingly different. Tens of thousands of Hamas fighters and civilians have been killed, against a remarkably small total of IDF martyrs. These results can be described as brilliant.
Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon even surpassed that accomplishment. Hezbollah appeared to be a more formidable foe, with its arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets and missiles that were within range of major Israeli population centers. However, instead of engaging Hezbollah in an all out war like with Hamas in Gaza, Israel relied on superior intelligence and guile to decapitate their top leadership, which they systematically took out by pinpoint precision attacks, thus rendering Hezbollah impotent to carry out any sustained attacks against Israel. The “exploding pagers” were a striking example.
As for Iran itself, their one large-scale attempt to launch a barrage of missiles against Israel was a colossal failure. Also, the collapse of Iran’s ally, Assad’s regime in Syria, was a devastating blow to Iran’s dream of becoming a world power. Additionally, in Iran, Syria and Lebanon, Israel systematically destroyed all their air defenses, naval capability and stores of arms and chemical weapons and is currently occupying important military sites inside the Lebanese and Syrian borders for additional security.
In essence, in a war which Iran and its proxies started to try to destroy Israel, Israel turned the tables and now leaves Iran as a pathetic, weak country unable to even defend itself. Its status as a major power in the “Axis of Evil” with China and Russia is now in shambles. This in turn weakens the “totalitarian” bloc and strengthens the “democratic” bloc.
Israel makes up only about 0.1% of the world population, yet this tiniest of countries has just effected a major reassessment of the world’s great superpower blocs.
