‘All time is unredeemable’: A core, timely message for Israel - opinion

There is a dilemma, however. Though Israel lives according to clock time, its jihadi adversaries (state and sub-state terror groups) regard such mechanistic chronology as a theological profanation. The conceptual differences could have major policy implications for the Jewish state’s management of war and terror.

To dedicated policy-makers, all this will sound excruciatingly theoretical. Nonetheless, the clarifying bifurcation is crucial to supporting Israel’s survival. To wit, jihadi notions of “sacred time” actively encourage “martyrdom operations.”

This enabling linkage portends escalating violence against Israel. Plausibly, “over time,” it could even increase various risks of a nuclear war. Even before Israel would have to face operational nuclear adversaries, Jerusalem could find itself caught up in an “asymmetrical nuclear war.” The fact that only Israel would employ nuclear ordnance in such a conflict does not mean that it would avoid significant military harm.

There is more. A state enemy could become a “suicide bomber in macrocosm.” For Israel, no such force magnification could be considered “acceptable.” Not to be minimized or overlooked in such sui generis calculations is that Israel is less than half the size of America’s Lake Michigan.

For Jerusalem, policy-relevant issues should always be framed in legal and military terms. Though generally unrecognized, Israel’s jihadi adversaries (a category that now includes reconfiguring terror groups in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Qatar, and other places) define true victory as “power over death.” For these recalcitrant foes, becoming a “martyr” (a shahid) represents “power over time.” Prima facie, there could be no comparable or greater form of power.

Because “clocks slay time” – a famous observation by American writer William Faulkner – a narrowly objective chronology would prove injurious for Israel. But what should constitute a suitably personalized and policy-centered theory of time for policy makers in Jerusalem? It’s a demanding but imperative question.

In reply, history will deserve pride of place. By helpful coincidence, the complex notion of temporality being “felt time” or “subjective time” has its origins in ancient Israel. By rejecting time as a linear progression, the early Hebrews generally approached this key issue as a qualitative experience. Among other things, the associated view identified time as logically inseparable from personally infused content.

There is more. From its beginnings, the Jewish prophetic vision was one of an imperiled community living “in time.” Within this formative vision, political geography or “space” was vitally important, but not because of territoriality.

The importance of certain specific geographic spaces stemmed from unique events that had presumptively taken place within their boundaries. Eventually, a subjective metaphysics of time, a reality based not on equally numbered chronological moments, but on deeply-felt representations of “time as lived,” could impact the ways in which jihadi enemies choose to confront the Jewish state and wherein Israel decides to confront these enemies.

What else should Israel know about time? Among Islamists at every level, “martyrdom” is accepted as the most honorable and heroic way to soar above clock time or “profane time.” Looked at from a dispassionate perspective, this “suicide” is accepted by jihadists as the optimal way to both sanitize barbarism and justify mass murder of “unbelievers.” Ironically, because such self-sacrifice is expected to confer “power over death,” it does not really qualify as a suicide. Jurisprudentially, it is always an inexcusable homicide.

It’s time for conclusions. From the standpoint of Israel’s most urgent survival concerns, the time-sensitive adversary could be an individual jihadi terrorist, a sovereign enemy state, or both acting together. In the third scenario, the effects of a state-terrorist fusion could be not merely interactive, but also “synergistic.” This would mean that a “whole” injury inflicted upon Israel would be greater than the sum of its “parts.”