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October 8, 2023

Will Israel finally abandon policies driven by moral hazard?

By Andrea Widburg

For decades, Israel has graciously allowed herself to be subjected to slow bleeds by a hundred pinpricks here and a hundred pinpricks there. This was because of a form of “moral hazard,” a term I’ll explain in a minute. The savage brutality of this latest Palestinian-launched war, though, may finally have broken through that essentially passive mindset and forced Israel to reckon with the real costs of a genocidal enemy on her border.

“Moral hazard” is a fascinating concept that has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with risk assessment. In its simplest terms, moral hazard means that, the more you feel insulated from risks, the more likely you are to engage in dangerous activities.

Here’s the perfect example of how moral hazard works: When football players had little leather helmets, they didn’t use their heads as battering rams. When they had big padded helmets, they did. And as is often ironically true with moral hazard risk assessment, those helmets weren’t as safe as they thought they were, so increasing numbers of players suffered brain injuries. In the same way, the safer people believe their cars to be, the more they’ll engage in risky driving practices.

For decades, Israel has functioned using a moral hazard rubric. First, having won both the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, Israel felt insulated from attack by state actors. Second, because she instituted incredible early warning systems, shelters, and citizen training, she believed she could minimize civilian deaths from non-state actors. Third, after the First Intifada, she built a wall to keep terrorists out. Then, after the Second (or was it the Third?) Intifada, Israel started licensing a few thousand more civilians, as opposed to active-duty troops, to carry guns. And fourth, she had one of the best militaries in the world, including the Iron Dome defense system.

Image: A member of the Israel Defense Force by the IDF. Public domain.

Because of all these advantages, Israel believed that she could sustain the endless attacks from Gaza and the West Bank without engaging in full-scale war against the attackers. Instead, preserving the moral high ground, she responded to every attack with surgical precision: dropping bombs only after first giving warnings to clear the targets, destroying the homes only of the terrorists who killed Israelis, and—always—fighting a half-hearted war in which she put her fighters at tremendous risk to spare Palestinian civilians. She did this knowing that the Palestinians used their civilians as shields.

Of course, whenever Israel started gaining ascendency in a hottish war with the Palestinians, that was when the United States and Europe yanked at her leash and said “Enough,” and Israel stopped fighting. After all, she had her war victories, her protective systems, her Iron Dome, her wall, her small number of armed citizens, and her spectacular military. She could handle the slow bleed of terrorist attacks. Moral hazard was on her side.

On October 6, moral hazard abandoned Israel. Hamas, an Iranian satellite, attacked Israel with spectacular ferocity. It launched thousands of missiles and rockets, took over towns, invaded homes, slaughtered families, and it kidnapped old women, young women, children, and soldiers.

As of this writing, the tiny country (which has fewer than 10 million people) has suffered 300 deaths, 1,500 wounded, and untold kidnappings. Given that Iran is behind the attack; the Taliban, which the U.S. armed, is itching to join in; Saudi Arabia and Qatar are blaming Israel; and surrounding Muslim nations are likely to take advantage of Biden’s obvious disdain for Israel, Israel’s sense that she is protected is completely gone.

When you no longer feel protected, you can no longer be moral and magnanimous. The high ground is gone. Your primary obligation is survival. No wonder, then, that Netanyahu, with the approval of the entire Israeli government (including formerly peace-loving socialists), is finally on the warpath. Here’s the tweet he issued:

What’s key is this language, something no Israeli Prime Minister has ever said before:

What happened today is unprecedented in Israel – and I will see to it that it does not happen again. The entire government is behind this decision.

The IDF will immediately use all its strength to destroy Hamas's capabilities. We will destroy them and we will forcefully avenge this dark day that they have forced on the State of Israel and its citizens. As Bialik wrote: ‘Revenge for the blood of a little child has yet been devised by Satan’.

All of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble.

I say to the residents of Gaza: Leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.

I support that plan. Many other Israel supporters do, too:

Israel is finally being forced to face reality. No more post-modern peace raves with mindless (and, now, horribly brutalized) young people dancing for peace. Israel either wins this round decisively, or she will be at the mercy of ever more violent attacks until she is completely destroyed. In the world that Biden has wrought (weapons for the Taliban, money for Iran, money for Ukraine which allegedly sold weapons to Hamas, open contempt for Israel, the breakdown of the international order, etc.), moral hazard is something Israel can no longer afford.

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