GIDI GRINSTEIN

JERUSALEM — A year on from Operation Cast Lead, one thing is increasingly clear: together with the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the two military operations exposed a dire need to reform Israel’s security and foreign policy doctrine.

The borders of Gaza and Lebanon may be quiet, but a fierce global battle for our basic legitimacy is raging.

Many Israelis are frustrated. Within three years, we failed to achieve a decisive success in recent confrontations with Hezbollah and Hamas in spite of overwhelming military, technological and economic superiority.

In 2006, we were dragged through 33 days of an exchange that left a relatively high number of casualties, 133, as well as a trauma to Israeli society that will take years to heal. In the 2009 Cast Lead operation, our military power was unmatched, yet it was offset by the offensive on Israel’s international legitimacy that led to a significant setback in our standing among the family of nations and would constrain Israeli military planning and operations more effectively than any Arab military deterrence. This is a score card Israel finds hard to accept.

In its first 20 years of existence, between 1947 and 1967, Israel had remarkable military successes. Not­withstanding the bravery of our soldiers in the battlefields, these achievements were the outcome of a victory in the intellectual battle of ideas and concepts.

David Ben Gurion’s 1947 Seminar, when he prepared himself to be the leader of a nascent state in an existential military confrontation, generated a set of principles for Israeli national security that proved so effective that many of them remain relevant today. Israel’s wars are won, or lost, on the drawing boards of strategists and planners before a single fire is shot.

Since 1967, Israel’s physical existence has been an unchallenged reality, even if at times Israelis were subject to threats of terrorism and violence. Arab intentions to compromise Israel’s physical existence were repeatedly frustrated to the point that any such effort was abandoned. Iran represents the first potential threat to Israel’s existence in 40 years. A truly phenomenal achievement.

Frustrated by Israel’s military might, its adversaries -– and primarily Iran and its allies in Hezbollah and Hamas –- experimented with politics and violence to cap its power and diminish it. Over time, they were able to crystallise a set of ideas that have proven to be very effective.

Instead of seeking to conquer Israel, they seek to bring about its implosion, like South Africa or the Soviet Union. While Israel aims to avoid civilian casualties, they systematically seek to involve civilians on both sides of the frontier. While Israel seeks “victory” its adversaries value “resistance”.

Further-more, avoiding, as much as possible, a clash with the Israel Defence Forces, they not only prefer low-intensity conflict, but also systematically take the battle to other arenas, primarily to the international community, working to fundamentally de-legitimise Israel and turn it into a pariah state.

Israel is a geopolitical island. Its survival and prosperity depend on its relations with the international community in trade, science, art or culture, which rely on Israel’s legitimacy. When the latter is compromised, the former may be severed with harsh political, social and economic consequences.

This is not theory but a daily practice. Our politicians and military personnel are sued, campaigns to boycott our products gain traction and our very existence is challenged in academic institutions and intellectual circles. Israel is increasingly isolated

To date, Israel has failed to accept these trends for what they are: strategically significant and potentially, if neglected, also existential. It is not only that our politicians fail to articulate this threat for what it is, but also that there has been a dramatic shortage of resources and personnel, as well as the absence of a comprehensive approach to this challenge. A first step must be calling the spade a spade.

Many frame the problem as public relations, as if Israel’s response must comprise a task force of eloquent speakers that could deliver a three-point punchline in polished English in 30 seconds. This may have been relevant in the early days of global news television 20 years ago. Today it is insufficient.

The most effective barrier to fundamental de-legitimacy is personal relationships. In every major country, Israel and its supporters must sustain thousands of personal connections with the entire elite in business, politics, arts and culture, science and academia. This requires not only an overhaul of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and much larger embassies with significant operating budgets, but also mobilising Israeli civil elite in Israel and overseas to the task.

There is also a geographic focus to our response. Israel’s de-legitimacy is propagated in a few global metropolises such as London, Madrid or San Francisco that are hubs of international non-governmental organisations, media outlets, academia and multinational corporations. Therefore, an extraordinary effort must me made in these areas to isolate Israel’s de-legitimisers and the double standards that allow them to operate.

Some say that Israel’s policy is key and that a genuine and credible commitment to the peace process will decrease the criticism of Israel’s policy, as well as its de-legitimacy. Whereas such policies will be helpful in this respect, even a comprehensive peace treaty with the Palestine Liberation Organisation that would end the historical conflict and bring finality to all outstanding claims would not cripple the de-legitimisation efforts.

The forces that drive this campaign are not Palestinian moderates, but rather those that oppose Israel’s very existence. Hence, their campaign would not be tamed by such an agreement but actually fuelled by it to converge around the next outstanding issue between Israel and the Arab world. In other words, we must work to isolate them as they work to isolate us; we must play offence and not just defence.

Operation Cast Lead may have ushered in a new era in Israeli national security. The frontiers of our survival have shifted the shoulders of our military on our borders to the brains of our diplomats the world over. This is a struggle that may be less bloody but just as existentially important.

Gidi Grinstein is founder and president of Israeli strategic think tank, the Reut Institute