We Can and Must Support Both Israel and Ukraine - Rob Horowitz

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Rob Horowitz, MINDSETTER™

 

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PHOTO: Julia Rekamie, Unsplash

“Israel is facing an existential threat,” tweeted Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) in the wake of Hamas’ barbaric and deadly terrorist attack from its base in Gaza, intentionally targeting women and young children for death.  “Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately.”

 

Someone should remind Mr. Hawley and others who have made similar arguments that the United States is the world’s preeminent superpower with a defense budget of more than $850 billion annually. The total amount we spent in military aid for Ukraine in 2022 was less than 6% of our annual defense spending, according to the Center for European Policy Analysis. An increase in our existing $3 billion or so a year of military aid to Israel needed to fortify the Iron Dome and for any other short-term assistance it requires will be no more than a rounding error in our annual military outlays.  Simply put, we are more than capable of providing Israel with the additional military aid it needs to decapitate Hamas and continuing to provide Ukraine what is required to successfully fend off a completely unjustified invasion by Russia- an authoritarian power with a far larger military seeking to expand its territory and take away the hard-won freedoms of the people of Ukraine, killing and kidnapping thousands of civilians in the process.

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In both these cases, these are wise uses of our military and foreign aid. The benefits reaped far outweigh the amount of money we invest.  The military assistance the United States and its European allies have provided Ukraine has already enabled its courageous military to degrade Russia’s conventional military capability by about half, according to military analysts. Providing timely additional military assistance to Israel will enable it to defeat Hamas more quickly, reducing the regional strength of Iran, which derives in part from its influence over Hamas and Hezbollah.  We are accomplishing all of this without boots on the ground and with little risk to American lives.

 

Perhaps more importantly, in a world where authoritarianism is on the march, brutality, and terror are too often admired and even celebrated, and democratic values are under assault at home and abroad, the United States is standing up for democracies, admittedly imperfect ones, when they are savagely and unjustifiably attacked. 

 

We are also fighting to preserve the rules-based world order that even with all its deficiencies and breaches, has served us relatively well.  As Anne Applebaum put it in The Atlantic, in a passage I first read in my colleague Bob Whitcomb’s column, “The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli civilians are both blatant rejections of that rules-based world order, and they herald something new. Both aggressors have deployed a sophisticated, militarized, modern form of terrorism, and they do not feel apologetic or embarrassed about this at all.”

 
The Hamas attack was especially monstrous.  We now know that elementary schools and a youth center were intentionally targeted. As a result, young children were among the 1,300 people brutally murdered and 199 hostages taken by these terrorists—and this was not done by accident. As with ISIS, the savage brutality was the point.

 

This is a time when fortitude and American resolve are required. We must reject the empty and value-free isolationism of today’s America First movement in much the same way the original movement of which it shares much more than a name was rejected before World War II. The words of President George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11 remain instructive today: “The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass the test.”
I, for one, am confident that we will pass this test once again, providing both Israel and Ukraine with the assistance they need at this crucial time.
 

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.


 

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