Michael Oren Lectures on Israel's "Stunning" Intifada Victory

Historian and author Dr. Michael Oren addressed students and faculty in Beren Campus's Levy Lobby on November 1. The lecture, entitled "Israel Update: Assessing Trends and Facts," analyzed Israel's recent confrontations with terror and was sponsored by the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for International Affairs and Stern College for Women.

Oren began the lecture by defining the bloodshed that began in September of 2000 as the "seventh Arab-Israeli war," which was "as much a war as any that had come before" in that "one side sought to annihilate the other." He proceeded to describe the war's challenges, which included the fact that it was an "unusual type of war" for which Israel was "totally unprepared...with no idea...[of] how to deal with [the] suicide bombings" that characterized it.

In addition to its unusual nature, the war's difficulties included a lack of support for Israel's war effort from both the international community as well as from parts of Israeli society, according to Oren. "The international community was extremely hostile to us...and the Israeli left was not behind the effort," he explained.

As a result of Israel's inability to deal effectively with the war, Israeli morale suffered tremendously. The war damaged Israel's tourist industry - "one of its great money-makers" - to such an extent that plans were considered to convert the King David Hotel, Jerusalem's premier vacation spot, into an apartment complex. "Restaurants were empty. Theaters were empty....Israel's morale was breaking," he said.

Upon describing Israel's uncertain state, Oren proceeded to explain how Ariel Sharon led his country to victory in its war. "By holding his fire again and again" in the face of terror, Sharon gained the support of both the Bush administration and the Israeli left. By the spring of 2002, after the devastating Netanya Passover bombing, "Israel and Bush...finally understood" the nature of the war Israel was facing, and that it "wasn't about settlements," said Oren.

At this point, Sharon launched a major military counteroffensive operation, and "terror began to fall precipitously," Oren said. The success of the operation made "Ariel Sharon the first leader in history to prove you could win a war on terror," and he did so using "only a fraction of military power." And although Israel's victory "came at a price, especially to those fighting the war," it was a "stunning victory," he said.

The victory, said Oren, was "not only a product of policy of the government but also a product of the resilience of the Israeli people," which he witnessed firsthand the morning after the Café Hillel bombing when a group of Israeli citizens gathered to see the ruins of the café, then cordoned off by a wooden barrier. He realized that Israel was "going to win this war" when a man began to paint the barrier blue, defiantly showing that Israel would not be intimidated.

The restaurant reopened two weeks later.

With Israel's victory in the war, said Oren, "Israeli society has gained tremendously economically." He described "completely packed" hotels during the recent holiday season, something that "was literally unthinkable two to three years ago."

Israelis "can lift their heads up," said Oren, because Israel has emerged from its war with "the most experience" in fighting terror and "the most sophisticated" methods of doing so. "Palestinian terror doesn't pose an existential threat," contrary to Israelis' concerns at the start of the war.

In addressing Israel's recent withdrawal from Gaza, Oren explained the decision to disengage as complying with Israel's "unwritten constitution," which dictates that Israeli citizens will engage in war if the government can convince them of its worth. "People weren't willing to go to war for the settlers of Gaza," Oren explained. "In retrospect, Israel has gained prodigiously from disengaging from Gaza."

Oren views Sharon's policies following Israel's victory as a "radical departure from previous Israeli policies because Israel always won militarily but failed politically." Sharon, said Oren, has succeeded in placing Israel in a position to "reply to Palestinian terror almost with impunity; nobody says anything."

While Oren acknowledges the disengagement's benefits, he asserted that Israel's "government could have handled this completely differently...and the government failed...and is still failing." Unlike the Israeli army, which Oren believes "acted impeccably" during the withdrawal, the Israeli government has failed in several ways, which include having not provided outreach programs for displaced Gazan citizens.

Israel's triumph over Palestinian terror compelled the Bush administration to deviate from the conventional American policy towards Israel, said Oren. As the first US President to call Israel a "Jewish" State, to say explicitly that Israel has the right to defend itself, and to affirm the philosophy that peace must be reached before negotiations over land can take place, Bush has effected a "revolution in American policy," he said.

In answering an audience member's question about how Israel will handle Jews living behind the Security Fence, Oren said that Israel "needs the fence to include as many Jews as possible....It would be a mistake to move the Fence to comply with pressure" from the US.

When asked how Israelis deal with the pain of their challenges, Oren recounted his prediction after his son's birth in 1983 that his son "was not going to wear a helmet" as he had only months before in the Battle of Beirut. He was wrong. "Yet Israel has survived it all," he said. "Though I wore a helmet, he did, and his grandchildren might. [Yet] we lead normal, interesting, fulfilling, vivid lives."

A contributing editor for the political magazine The New Republic, Oren is the author of the New York Times Best seller, Six Days of War, which is considered to be the definitive work on the Six Day War.