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Strategic Empathy Is Missing in Action, in the US and Israel: And the Price is Terrible
By Shlomo Maital
Consider ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’. Sympathy — you offer it to those bereaved. Empathy? Empathy is shown in how much compassion and understanding we can give to another, in our actions.
Empathy is good, right? The foundation of community and brotherhood. The glue that binds us together as human beings. “And you shall love your brothers and sisters as yourself”.
Not according to the world’s richest man. Direct quote from Elon Musk: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy – the empathy exploit.” He said this on Joe Rogan’s podcast – same podcast that refused to host candidate Kamala Harris.
Empathy is Western civilizzation’s fundamental weakness! And why? Because the United States, through AID and other organizations, helps those abroad who are poor, ill, uneducated. This is, by Musk, a weakness. It invests resources in others, who exploit our compassion, when we could be buying more $100,000 Tesla cars. This, from the person now dominating US government (and destroying it), who, as far as I know, was never elected by anyone.
LACK of empathy causes wars. Here is the analysis of MIT Professor Barry Posen: “Vladimir Putin likely viewed Russia’s strategic situation through a preventive war frame. NATO membership for Ukraine would shift the balance of power against Russia, and U.S. and NATO military cooperation with Ukraine intensified during the Joe Biden administration. These developments likely convinced Putin that he did not have much time to forestall Ukraine’s NATO membership.”
The US lacked what Posen calls “strategic empathy”. Understanding how foes feel and think.
“The United States is an enormously powerful actor in international politics. But U.S. leaders often fail to consider the knock-on effects of their own policies. U.S. foreign policymakers are always alert to how the United States’ behavior affects the confidence of its allies. They are attentive to how U.S. behavior does or does not strengthen deterrence of its potential adversaries. But U.S. leaders are often oblivious that U.S. power and behavior might feel threatening to other states.” [1]
Posen shows that Russia’s Putin for years, dating to 2014 and before, felt threatened by Ukraine’s avowed desire to be part of NATO. He felt in February 2023 that if he did not occupy Ukraine now, Ukraine would join NATO – and that would bring, by force of law, the entire military might of NATO on him. His invasion of Ukraine was predictable – with a bit of strategic empathy.
Consider Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas leader Yihya Sinwar spent 22 years in Israeli prisons. Enough time to get inside his head? And he made no bones about it. His goal was to destroy Israel. He attacked on October 7, because he saw Saudi Arabia close to normalizing its relations with Israel – and that would forever marginalize the Palestinian cause and leave the ‘occupation’ permanent. The October 7 attack led to over 50,000 Palestinians’ death. But it has delayed, maybe for years, Saudi normalization. Or maybe forever.
And Israeli intelligence? And government? That fed Qatari billions into Gaza, even when it became clear that the money was going to Hamas tunnels and weapons, not to food and water for Gazans. The total lack of strategic empathy, to understand what Posen calls the ‘preventive war’ (you go to war to keep a worse war or event from happening), was rampant. Especially in the Netanyahu government, in power since March 2009, with only a short break.
The Netanyahu government is culpable, directly, including its head, because it lacked strategic empathy. And we, the people, paid a terrible price.
The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, wrote this some 2,500 years ago: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
On October 7, we learned that Israel neither knew the enemy, nor knew itself. Despite having imprisoned Yihya Sinwar for over two decades, we failed to learn, understand, and pay attention to his intentions –- even though he declared them openly.
And despite some 15 major operations and wars against Gaza since 1948, Israel and IDF did not come to know themselves — applying strategies that repeatedly failed, while building blindly on assumptions (the enemy is deterred) that were visibly and obviously false.
No, Elon Musk. Strategic empathy is not a weakness. The total lack of it is. And the price we pay is truly terrible.
[1] Barry Posen. Putin’s Preventive War: The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine. International Security, February 2025.
Hamas Tunnels: An Expert’s Analysis
By Shlomo Maital
For five months, Israel has been battling Hamas, and its network of tunnels. No army has faced such an extensive array of underground tunnels, comprising hundreds of kilometers, in a strip of land only 40 kms. long.
As an Israeli, I have a rather biased view of the tunnels. So, instead of my views, here is the analysis of a fairly objective expert, John Spencer *. His essay was published in Modern Warfare on January 18.
On the massive extent of the tunnels: “New estimates also indicate the construction of this subterranean network could have cost Hamas as much as a billion dollars. The group has poured resources over fifteen years not just into constructing tunnel passages, but for blast doors, workshops, sleeping quarters, toilets, kitchens, and all the ventilation, electricity, and phone lines to support what amount to underground cities. As much as 6,000 tons of concrete and 1,800 tons of metals have been used in this subterranean construction. The sheer size of Hamas’s underground networks may, once fully discovered, be beyond anything a modern military has ever faced. The new estimates say the network may include between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels, with close to 5,700 separate shafts descending into hell.”
On the political function of the tunnels: “For the first time in the history of tunnel warfare, however, Hamas has built a tunnel network to gain not just a military advantage, but a political advantage, as well. Its underground world serves all of the military functions described above, but also an entirely different one. Hamas weaved its vast tunnel networks into the society on the surface. Destroying the tunnels is virtually impossible without adversely impacting the population living in Gaza. Consequently, they put the modern laws of war at the center of the conflict’s conduct. These laws restrict the use of military force and methods or tactics that a military can use against protected populations and sites such as hospitals, churches, schools, and United Nations facilities.
Civilian Deaths and Buying Time: “Almost all of Hamas’s tunnels are built into civilian and protected sites in densely populated urban areas. Much of the infrastructure providing access to the tunnels is in protected sites. This complicates discriminating between military targets and civilian locations—if not rendering it entirely impossible—because Hamas does not have military sites separate from civilian sites. Hamas’s strategy is also not to hold terrain or defeat an attacking force. Its strategy is about time. It is about creating time for international pressure on Israel to stop its military operation to mount.
The Huge Challenge for Israel Defense Forces: “The tactical challenges Hamas tunnels present to Israel are thereby compounded by strategic challenges. To deal with tunnels at the tactical level, Israel has demonstrated some of the world’s most advanced units, methods, and capabilities to find, exploit, and destroy tunnels. From specialized engineer capabilities and canine units to the use of robots, flooding to clear tunnels, and both aerial-delivered and ground-emplaced explosives, to include liquid explosives, to destroy them. Arguably, no military in the world is as well prepared for subterranean tactical challenges as the IDF. But the strategic challenge is entirely different. To destroy many of the deep-buried tunnels, the IDF has required bunker-busting bombs, which Israel is criticized for using. And most importantly it has required time to find and destroy the tunnels in a conflict in which Hamas’s strategy is aimed at limiting the time available to Israel to conduct its campaign. Hamas’s strategy, then, is founded on tunnels and time. This war, more so than any other, is about the underground and not the surface. It is time based rather than terrain or enemy based. Hamas is in the tunnels. Its leaders and weapons are in the tunnels. The Israeli hostages are in the tunnels. And Hamas’s strategy is founded on its conviction that, for Israel, the critical resource of time will run out in the tunnels.”
“We Are Proud to Sacrifice Martyrs”. “Hamas is globally known for using human shields, which is the practice of using civilians to restrict the attacker in a military operation. The group wants as many civilians as possible to be harmed by Israeli military action—as one of its officials put it, “We are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” It wants the world’s attention on the question of whether the IDF campaign is violating the laws of war in attacking Hamas tunnels that are tightly connected to civilian and protected sites. It wants to buy as much time as is needed to cause the international community to stop Israel. Its entire strategy is built on tunnels.”
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And my own view: The Hamas strategy is working. The US has lost patience with Israel, as Israel’s self-centered Prime Minister plays in Hamas hands by refusing to define a clear end-of-war strategy. Biden is losing the Muslim vote in Michigan. The world has lost patience. Israel is ending up facing two billion Muslims, and a Western world that is increasingly hostile to the Gaza operation by IDF.
The young Israeli generation that many of us seniors felt was hopeless, unpatriotic, selfish, has shown incredible sacrifice, motivation and heroism, fighting to save our country. When they return from months of combat, they find a gaggle of incompetent politicians maneuvering to escape the popular judgment, that they bear responsibility for the October 7 disaster and must leave office at once. Experts believe we are headed for a new civil conflict, as popular demands for the government’s resignation face the Prime Minister’s stubborn desperate efforts to stay in power and thus perhaps avoid jail.
* John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He is also a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.
Political Leaders: Step Back! Let the Pros Do It!
By Shlomo Maital
Ladies and gentlemen, golf fans! Here we are, on the 18th green, at the legendary Master’s tournament. Byron Putput has a 30-foot put for birdie, to win the Green Jacket and the championship. He’s thinking. He’s looking. He’s planning… all his 24 years of golfing are going into this crucial put! The fans are silent. The tension is palpable.
But wait. Here comes… Donald Trump. Yes, Donald Trump. POTUS, he’s called, President of the United States. Yes, fans, he is shoving aside Byron. Executive privilege, he says. Trump himself will take the put. He pulls a putter out of the golf bag – but wait, it is not a putter, but an iron. He’s going to do the put with an iron!
Oh my gosh. Is this really happening?
……. No, it’s not. Or is it? Reopening the US economy is, “I would say, without a doubt, that it is the most important decision I have ever had to make,” Trump said three days ago. First person singular. I. Not ‘we’. And he doesn’t even have the authority to decide, it is really up to the state governors.
Let’s make some sense out of this. Giora Eiland is Major General (ret.) Israel Defense Forces. Eiland is a former head of the Israeli National Security Council. Speaking on Israeli Radio, he made this point:
In the pandemic, Israel (and every country) is at war. This requires mobilization of all our energy, skills, wisdom and resources. Israel has done this, alas, numerous times in the past. But how? As we do in wartime, as US and UK did in wartime. Set up a panel of experts. NOT politicians! In health, economy, education, psychology, science, medicine. Put them in a room. Let them define the issues, then divide up according to “comparative advantage” and work out alternatives and plans. Nonstop. Round the clock. Sleep on cots in the room or nearby.
Israel’s Ministry of Health has disastrously mismanaged the issue of performing COVID-19 testing. And testing, by all experts, is key to emerging from quarantine. The IDF (army) could have done it faster, better, more professionally. But internal political squabbles between Israel’s Prime Minister and the Defense Minister (whom the PM hates), Netanyahu’s nemesis, prevented this. Too bad. We are paying the price today.
Trump will not take the final put at the Master’s golf tournament. A pro golfer will do that. Why are we letting him, or Netanyahu, or Macron, or Johnson, take the lead in managing the epidemic? Step back politicians. Step aside. Let the professionals manage this war. Because you politicians do not have a clue.
One possible exception: NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo. In his amazing daily briefings, he shows a wonderful grasp of data, curves, expert opinion, trends, and illustrates his talks with informative slides and graphs. But this exception proves the rule.
Yuval Noah Harari: 21 lessons for the 21st C
By Shlomo Maital
Yuval Noah Harari
Historian Yuval Noah Harari has written two smash hit books: Sapiens (about the past – a huge bestseller, a vest pocket overview of human history and progress) and Homo Deus (about mankind’s future ). Now comes his third – about the present.
The book was reviewed by none other than Bill Gates, in The New York Times (Sept. 1-2).
The structure of the book is very well organized: Part I. The Technological Challenge (disillusionment, work, liberty, equality), Part II. The Political Challenge (community, civilization, nationalism, religion, immigration), Part III. Despair and Hope. (Terrorism, war, humility, God, secularism) Part IV Truth. (ignorance, justice, post-truth, science fiction) and Part V. Resilience (education, meaning meditation).
Harari writes in his introduction: What are today’s greatest challenges and most important changes? What should we pay attention to? What should we teach our kids?
As Bill Gates notes, Harari does not really offer ‘lessons’, prescriptions or solutions in depth, but instead, helps formulate the key questions – far more valuable, I believe. And he is basically optimistic. True, globalization (the amazing system of cooperation among nations, in which goods, services, ideas, technology, money and people flow freely among countries, driven by opportunity) is under assault. But it is irreversible and Gates notes, “though we took two steps backward in the past two years [since Trump’s election in 2016] before that we took a thousand steps forward.”
So why does it seem that the world is in decline? Because, Gates rightly observes, “we are much less willing to tolerate misfortune and misery”. And, he might have added, because the enormous resonating sound board of the media obsessively harps on the bad news, because it seems that is what brings them eyes and ears and ratings (and ad money).
One prediction of Harari that I think is correct: In the past, land was the source of wealth, then, machinery, then, technology and creativity – and today? It is, he says, data. It is as if social media mine our data (gold) for free, collect it (for free), then sell it directly and indirectly for a high price.
Harari thinks social media create political polarization, because they help people build cocoons, interacting only with ‘friends’ who share their views and consume only information they like and agree with, even if false.
Gates, still a hard worker, wants Harari to address THE fundamental question – when machine learning, artificial intelligence and other technologies give us longer, happier, wealthier lives, with little or no human labor – where will we find meaning in our lives? Why get up in the morning?
Perhaps that world is hard for us to imagine today. Perhaps we will have to deal with it in real time – if and when it happens.
TIMnovate 