We Can Only Rely on Ourselves

Israel has repeatedly outsourced its security to others--the results have always been disastrous

By Michael Oren

The state created in 1948 to ensure that the Jewish people would never again have to rely on anybody else for our security has repeatedly outsourced its security to others. The results have always been disastrous.

In the 1950s, we outsourced our security to UN peacekeepers in Sinai and Gaza only to see them evicted overnight by Egypt in 1967. During the First Gulf War in 1991, when the IDF was prepared to intervene against Iraqi forces firing Scud missiles at Tel Aviv, Israel instead relied on U.S. troops to fire Patriot missiles at the Scuds. The Patriots missed. In the 1970s and again after 2006, we outsourced our security in Lebanon to an international force - UNIFIL - that not only failed to preserve our security but helped the enemy to undermine it. In 2012, Prime Minister Netanyahu refrained from taking military action against Iran and instead gave President Obama the time and space to conclude a nuclear deal that would address Israel’s basic security needs. Obama, instead, forged a treaty that enabled Iran to keep its nuclear facilities and vastly increase its funding for the terrorists seeking to destroy us.

Now, even after the agonizing lesson of October 7, Israel is once again outsourcing our fundamental security. We expected the United States to deter the Houthis and save the IDF from having to do that difficult job. But, as the published correspondence between U.S. decision-makers revealed, America was bombing Yemen not to protect Israel but to shield international shipping—and that only reluctantly. The U.S. and British campaign, moreover, has proven singularly ineffective in stopping Houthi missile fire at Israel. It has only increased and, as of Sunday morning, has scored a strategic victory by striking our airport.

Having witnessed again and again the dangers of outsourcing, it is crucial that Israel must not make the same mistake by relying on some other country or countries to eliminate the greatest threat of all. If Iran is once again enriched by a nuclear deal, it will reestablish its hegemony over Syria, revive Hezbollah and Hamas, and return Israel to the situation that existed on the morning of October 7.

Though Israel can justifiably seek compensation for such a deal—the purchase of US strategic bombers, for example. In times of crisis, we can receive foreign financial aid and the reinforcement of our anti-missile defense. But such measures cannot substitute for Israel defending itself, by itself, against existential dangers.

Seventy-seven years ago, the State of Israel declared its commitment to take the destiny of the Jewish people into our own hands. We must remind ourselves of that commitment and do whatever it takes to fulfill it.