James discusses on Radio Islam this week’s Middle East developments, including religious ultra-nationalism’s growing influence in the Israeli military, what Israel can learn from NATO’s new strategy, how efforts to destabilise states or change regimes fuel the region’s multiple conflicts, and the Yemen war’s derailing of Saudi sports ambitions.
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Transcript
[Anchor] James, good morning, welcome. Good morning, pleasure to be with you. Israel’s conscripted military is no more if it ever was the so-called worst, most moral armed force and the country’s primary social cohesion tool.
[James M. Dorsey] Decades of religious ultranationalism march through the institutions. A phrase coined by 1960s German left-wing student leader Rudi Dutschke, have turned the military, long Israel’s preeminent secular institution, not only into the militant spearhead of a policy to disenfranchise Palestinians, but also into a misogynist institution that deepens fault lines between Israel’s secular and religious communities. Militant religious sentiment in the military, or what civil military relations scholar Yair Levy calls theocratization of the armed forces and the creation of a theocratic military culture, recently prompted an exasperated conscript combat soldier on Israel’s northern front with Lebanon to tell his father, this organisation hates secular Jews.
Religious ultranationalists believe their march will ensure that the military does not enable an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, as it did in Gaza when it destroyed settlements and forcibly removed settlers as part of Israel’s 2005 pullback from the Strip. The conscripts despairing assessment came 15 years after a senior officer in the military’s personal directorate noted that Jewish identity in the armed forces was changing. The officer argued that the military had long adhered publicly to religious rules, while allowing soldiers to do what they want in private.
Nowadays, the army is deciding for you what kind of Jew you will be, a national religious Jew, the officer said. The conscript’s exasperation is buffeted by the hotly debated question of who in Israel is expected to fight and who is exempt. A key issue in this month’s Israeli elections, with many resenting ultra-Orthodox or Haredi refusal to share the burden of defending the country.
[Anchor] There is much Israel could learn from NATO’s newly enunciated defence strategy, James.
[James M. Dorsey] It’s a lesson that could set Israel on a path that doesn’t consider war a permanent fixture of the Jewish state’s existence, doesn’t see ruptures with Israel’s Western allies as inevitable, and could open the door to repairing Israel’s shattered international standing and resolving multiple conflicts with the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. For now, that’s a prospect that neither Israel’s governing far right nor its more centre-right opposition parties or a majority of its citizenry envision. On the contrary, if Israel and NATO strategy have anything in common, it is the strategic goal of obliterating an adversary’s military capabilities.
But even on that, there is a stark difference between NATO and Israel’s approach. The difference is that NATO believes it doesn’t have to come to that and views peace as sustainable rather than a temporary lull. NATO conceived the threat of obliteration defined as attacking anything and everything that supports, sustains, or controls an enemy force as a deterrence.
That if it fails to deter is a defensive rather than a pre-emptive strategy framed by the belief that war is avoidable and the alliance’s democratic values. Contrast that with Israel’s post-October 7 Hamas attack unofficial security concept as laid out by Reserve General Tamir Hayman, the executive director of one of Israel’s foremost think tanks and a former head of military intelligence. Hayman describes the Palestinian issue as an Arab ploy to destroy Israel, asserts that war, settlements, occupation, and pre-emptive strikes are essential for national security, portrays peace as unattainable, advocates the destabilisation of Arab states, and postulates that Israel’s Jewish identity takes precedence over democracy.
[Anchor] Now increasingly destabilisation, if not regime change, is emerging as the subtext to the Middle East’s multiple conflicts.
[James M. Dorsey] The notion that civil wars, ethnic insurgencies, sectarianism, and social unrest can at least weaken hostile adversaries, if not produce more friendly regimes, complicates prospects for negotiated solutions, and in some cases thwarts prospects for diplomatic solutions, heightens the risk of prolonged wars and turns dispute into existential conflicts. It’s not that Middle Eastern powers and external powers, like the United States, only recently discovered destabilisation and regime change as a possible strategy. It’s that notions of destabilisation and regime change have moved centre stage.
The United States and Israel have for decades gone hot and cold on support for Iranian minority militants, first and foremost the Kurds and the Baloch, in an effort to destabilise and or dismember the Islamic Republic as a nation state. Similarly, the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq sought regime change. A survey of the Middle East’s foremost conflicts illustrates the degree to which notions of destabilisation and regime change are becoming a cornerstone of strategic thinking in the region.
Israel’s security concept as it plays out in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria is one example. So is Yemen. This week, Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti said the Houthis would back a popular revolt or an internal change of leadership in Saudi Arabia in the belief that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been weakened by miring the kingdom in Yemen’s quagmire and jeopardising the diversification of Saudi Arabia’s economy and positioning as a regional hegemon.
[Anchor] Now the Iran and Yemen wars have undermined Saudi Arabia’s hopes of developing sports, entertainment, and tourism as pillars of a diversified economy.
[James M. Dorsey] Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is about to cancel plans for five of the new stadiums to build the host of the 2034 World Cup. The cancellations are part of Saudi efforts to reduce spending on some of its signature domestic investments because of the fallout of the Iran and Yemen wars. Several of the cancelled stadiums are attached to broader real estate projects that have been halted or where work has slowed.
The cuts could leave Saudi Arabia developing just six new stadiums and refurbishing four existing ones for the World Cup. Four of the stadiums it plans to use in 2034 are also due to host matches for the 2027 Asian Cup, which starts in January. The outlook for that contest going ahead in Saudi Arabia has been thrown into doubt by the kingdom’s involvement in the Yemen war.
Earlier, the Asian Winter Games that Saudi Arabia’s futuristic Neom city was scheduled to host in 2029 were moved to Kazakhstan after the kingdom said it needed to postpone them. Similarly, the wars have forced Saudi Arabia to postpone a tennis tournament, the 2026 FIFA E-Finals, Saudi Pro League fixtures, and a Formula One Grand Prix.
[Anchor] All right, James, as always, thank you so much for your time and have a great week.
[James M. Dorsey] It’s always a pleasure and have a good weekend.
@jamesmdorsey@substack.com
