Whatever its ongoing strategic and tactical challenges, Israel will need aptly nuanced understandings of time. This means more than refining traditional defense community notions of “clock time”; i.e., notions about “time remaining” to avoid a nuclear conflict. In essence, what should be examined by Jerusalem are jihadi enemy ideas of “sacred time.”
There is a dilemma. Though Israel lives according to clock time, its jihadi adversaries (state and sub-state terror groups) regard such mechanistic chronology as theological profanation. The conceptual differences could have major policy implications for the Jewish state’s management of war and terror.
To dedicated policy-makers, all this will sound excruciatingly theoretical. Nonetheless, the clarifying bifurcation is crucial to supporting Israel’s survival. To wit, jihadi notions of “sacred time” actively encourage “martyrdom operations.”
This enabling linkage portends escalating violence against Israel. Plausibly, “over time,” it could even enlarge various risks of a nuclear war. Even before Israel would have to face operational nuclear adversaries, Jerusalem could find itself caught up in an “asymmetrical nuclear war.” The fact that only Israel would employ nuclear ordnance during such a conflict does not mean that Israel would avoid significant military harm.
There is more. A state enemy could become a “suicide bomber in macrocosm.” For Israel, no such force-magnification could be “acceptable.” Not to be minimized or overlooked in these sui generis calculations is that Israel is less than half the size of America’s Lake Michigan.
For Jerusalem, policy-relevant issues should always be framed in legal and military terms. Though generally unrecognized, Israel’s jihadi adversaries (a category that now includes reconfiguring terror groups in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Qatar and other places) define true victory as “power over death.” For these recalcitrant foes, becoming a “martyr” (shahid) represents “power over time.” Prima facie, there could be no comparable or greater form of power.
Because “clocks slay time,” a famous observation by American writer William Faulkner, narrowly objective chronologies would prove injurious for Israel. But what should constitute a suitably personalized and policy-centered theory of time for decision-makers in Jerusalem? It’s a demanding but imperative question.
In a purposeful reply, history deserves pride of place. By ironic coincidence, the complex notion of temporality as “felt time” or “subjective time” has its origins in ancient Israel. By rejecting time as a linear progression, early Hebrews generally approached the issue as a matter of qualitative experience. Among other things, the associated view identified time as logically inseparable from its personally infused content.
In terms of prospective nuclear threats from adversaries, Israeli planners should consider temporality at the level of individual decision-makers. For example, “What do authoritative enemy leaders think about time in shaping their operational military plans?” For Israeli leaders, there could be no more urgent question.
There is more. From its beginnings, the Jewish prophetic vision was one of an imperiled community living “in time.” Within this formative vision, political geography or “space” was vitally important, but not because of territoriality.
The importance of specific geographic spaces stemmed from certain singular events that had presumably taken place therein. Eventually, a subjective metaphysics of time, a reality based not on equally numbered moments but on “time as lived,” could impact ways in which (1) jihadi enemies choose to confront the Jewish state; and (2) Israeli decision-makers choose to confront these enemies.
In the final analysis, a worst case for Israel would be to face an already-nuclear and seemingly irrational enemy state. Any such adversary could reasonably be described as a “suicide bomber in macrocosm.”
Simultaneously, Jerusalem could need to deal with a “suicide bomber in microcosm,” for example, an individual “flesh-and-blood” jihadi terrorist armed with crude or “small” nuclear weapons. In further elaboration, a radiological weapon or radiation dispersal device should come to mind.
What else should Israel know about time? Among Islamists at every level, “martyrdom” is accepted as the most honorable way to soar above clock time or “profane time.” Seen from a dispassionate perspective, this “heroic suicide” is accepted by jihadists as the optimal way to justify mass murder of “unbelievers.” Ironically, because such alleged self-sacrifice is expected to confer “power over death,” it does not properly qualify as a suicide. In law, it is always an inexcusable homicide.
It’s time for conclusions.
From the standpoint of Israel’s most urgent survival concerns, the time-sensitive adversary could be an individual jihadi terrorist, a sovereign enemy state or both acting together. In the third scenario, the effects of a state-terrorist fusion could be not merely interactive but also synergistic. This would mean that a “whole” injury inflicted upon Israel would be greater than the sum of its “parts.” The dangers to Israel of any such unprecedented synergy would be most catastrophic if the pertinent enemy state were nuclear or soon-to-be nuclear.
Sometimes, the strategist can learn from the poet. For T.S. Eliot, “ … all time is unredeemable.” With this unchallengeable insight in mind, an immediate goal for Israel’s defense-policy planners should be a fuller understanding of the nation’s jihadi enemies “in time.”
Though generally overlooked, more explicit and refined temporal understandings would be crucial to effective counter-terrorism and nuclear war-avoidance.
