Missiles (Like Revenge) Can Go Both Ways – OpEd

By James E. Jennings

It may come as a surprise to people in Israel and the US who continue to cheer the unprecedented year-long devastation inflicted on Gaza and South Lebanon, that—like revenge—missiles and bombs can go both ways.

So far, Israel’s US-supplied “Iron Dome” anti-missile system has worked splendidly, destroying or deflecting a high percentage of enemy attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran.  For several reasons that success rate appears to be lessening day by day.  Looking into the future, some military analysts see a different picture.

So do folk tales and received wisdom from throughout human history, ranging from Aesop’s Fables, essentially teaching that “What goes around comes around;” to Confucian wisdom: “When you plot revenge, dig two graves.”

Israel was born in 1948 using mostly volunteer paramilitary troop units equipped with Uzi submachine guns ranged against the weakly organized Arab League and Palestinian irregulars using old Enfield rifles.  Later, with planes, tanks, and bombs supplied by Western arms manufacturers, Israeli forces destroyed huge Arab armies in Syria and Egypt with blitzkrieg air attacks and massive conventional tank formations in the Sinai Desert and Golan Heights.

 The strategic situation changed dramatically after the US-Iraq wars in 1991 and 2003, when Israel received a few Iraqi missile strikes that reached Tel Aviv, with only slight damage.  Still, it was a wake-up moment.

Israeli forces continue to dominate the Middle East with US financial and arms backing.  “Bunker busting” 2,000 lb. bombs have made Gaza uninhabitable for its more than two million citizens.  South Lebanon is now suffering the same fate.

Yet infrastructure damage pales in comparison to the unprecedented cost of human deaths and maiming of little children, who face a lifetime of wretchedness and pain.  To charges of genocide have now been added Ecocide, or the destruction of nature, meaning that nobody can grow food in the future on what was once fertile land.

Recently, however, there has been a change in the scenario that trumpets Israel Uber Alles.

First, Iran launched a huge barrage of missiles in April 2024.  Only a few landed, with no apparent damage.  Then Yemen’s Houthis tried, with about the same results. Iran tried again on October 1, 2024, launching another huge barrage, with only a few managing to evade Israeli defenses.

Still, no devastating blows succeeded.  HAMAS in Gaza launched a barrage on October 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the war, succeeding to target Tel Aviv with a few Qassam type rockets.

Finally, after devastating Israeli strikes on Beirut and South Lebanon that killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, missiles launched from Lebanon did in fact hit Haifa and a military base near Tel Aviv, meaning that it is now a new ball game in the Middle East.

The great economist Joseph Schumpeter issued the famous “Professor Schumpeter’s rule” that Henry Kissinger liked to quote: “Competing systems tend to become like each other.”

Where is all this going?  It is elemental to admit that missiles, like revenge, work both ways.  Even if technological superiority belongs to one side or another, that cannot be permanent.  Sometime, somewhere, a fuse will blow, a part break, electricity will fail, one software program will be defeated by another.

Over time human failures—including changes in political calculations, financial capabilities, social attitudes, volatile politics, individual breakdowns, and even mass psychological burnout, affect all civilizations eventually.  People may give up fighting and decide just to go fishing, as happened to two million discouraged Russian troops in 1917.

Even if a nation is technologically superior, there is no guarantee that things will stay that way permanently.  The wild-eyed witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth might be right after all: “Blood will have blood.”

People in Israel and the United States—especially those in Congress who cheer so wildly the rhetoric of hate spewed by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant—should perhaps listen instead to Moses and the ancient prophets of Israel, especially the blessings and curses listed in Deuteronomy chapters 27-29.

After that, repeat over and over again: “When you plot revenge, dig two graves.”

• James E. Jennings, PhD is President of Conscience International.  His organization has delivered aid directly to hospitals in Beirut and Gaza since 1982.