Israel Under Fire – Foreword

This book is the first comprehensive study of the unique challenges confronting Israel as a lone democratic state under a multifront attack by terror proxies.

Dr. Dan Diker

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Israel Under Fire is an unprecedented compendium of articles by independent, professional experts that assesses Israel’s legal and diplomatic rights and responsibilities as a sovereign democratic state under assault by the terror network of Hamas in Gaza, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Houthi terror group in Yemen, all under the ideological auspices and the military and financial support of the Iranian regime.

This anthology also weighs military, economic, social, ideological, and psychological threats against Israel arising from Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre and the subsequent war in Gaza.

This book is the first comprehensive study of the unique legal and other challenges confronting Israel as a lone democratic state under a multifront attack by terror proxies, which, unlike Israel, are unconstrained by international laws and accepted norms of armed conflict and human rights.

Instead, Iran and its proxies pursue a radical Islamic “total warfare” strategy.¹ This strategy includes terror warfare and, simultaneously, deception and disinformation operations to influence international institutions led by the UN, international courts, media, and human rights groups, all intent on questioning and undermining Israel’s right to defend itself.

This compendium, “Israel Under Fire,” uniquely elucidates and analyzes the conflict’s factual and legal context. It also analyzes strategies to enhance psychological response and societal resilience in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, including confronting the unprecedented wave of global antisemitism, particularly in the face of the Iranian-led psychological warfare strategy. The insights here also apply to other democratic states confronting the same challenges of terrorism and subversion.

The Jerusalem Center is deeply grateful to international legal expert Robert Meyer for contributing content and enabling the publication of this compendium. JCFA also expresses its profound appreciation to Ambassador Alan Baker, head of its international law program and former legal advisor to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israel’s ambassador to Canada, for envisioning and editing this anthology. The JCFA also thanks Lenny Ben-David, Ahuva Ben Dor, and Daniel Levin for their invaluable assistance in publishing this study.

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Note

1 https://jcpa.org/article/the-twenty-first-century-total-war-against-israel-and-the-jews-part-one/

Dr. Dan Diker

Dr. Dan Diker, President of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, is the longtime Director of its Counter-Political Warfare Project. He is former Secretary-General of the World Jewish Congress and a Research Fellow of the International Institute for Counter Terrorism at Reichman University (formerly IDC, Herzliya). He has written six books exposing the “apartheid antisemitism” phenomenon in North America, and has authored studies on Iran’s race for regional supremacy and Israel’s need for defensible borders.

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