By Ted Belman
After the Security Cabinet met to discuss the deal, all ministers came out of it claiming that Israel not only had the ability but the intention to stop Iran from getting the bomb. Ehud Barak also said “Israel is by far the strongest country in the region.” He ought to know.
Dr Gabi Avital wrote in ISRAEL HAYOM that we have the right to defend ourselves:
The deal isn’t the end of the matter, and as far as Israel is concerned, not all the ends have been wrapped up. A reminder: Two years after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the nuclear reactor in Iraq was bombed. Israel’s international standing was no better than it is today, and the U.S. didn’t like the action that was executed without its knowledge. At home, the plan to bomb it was met with widespread opposition in the security establishment. Shimon Peres decided that Israel would be “like a juniper in the wilderness,” and rationality won out.
Right now, the military option in all its power is on the table. Israel is currently seen as having its back against the wall and nothing to lose, while at the same time being equipped with sea, land and air weapons systems. The attack capability is such that it would allow the destruction of a significant part of the infrastructure around Iran’s four main nuclear sites and even badly damage the reactors themselves. We should also remember that the bomb itself won’t reach its target independently. Iran has long-range missiles, and as far as anyone knows they are not highly accurate, although Iran clearly aims to equip itself with the ability to land precise attacks. So Israel has no lack of targets.
It’s almost certain that Iran would respond in kind. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon might join in. But it should be emphasized that Hezbollah is wounded and limping from the dragged-out war in Syria, and it has no support on the Iran-Syria axis. Syria is crumbling and busy with a civil war, so Israel would have great latitude to act. In the case of an Iranian counter-attack that employed only missiles, the price might be a few dozen civilian and military casualties — that’s the most serious scenario — and a few weeks of war damage, compared to the potential killing of thousands of Jews and a similar number of heat and radiation victims. And as this platform has stated numerous times, sometimes it’s necessary to choose between tolerable pain and an ongoing nightmare.
About 70 years ago, the writer Yosef Letz wrote, “It is very difficult to swim against the current. It is seven times harder to swim when the current is brackish.” To make a decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, we should remember that the main current in the West is very brackish. The process of Iran’s nuclear armament is not the result of one political situation or another in Israel, or even the great U.S. It is despite both, actually. Because in the vision of the Iranian leadership, the Zionist enemy is an obstacle, but not the biggest one. In their vision, there might not be any place for Israel in the Middle East, but the overreaching goal of Iran’s leaders is rule over all the Arab peoples on their way to Europe. At least. And here, ironically enough, is the key to the West waking up: Iran is shrewd enough to be very rational in its intentions. Until then, Israel has a moral obligation and the proven ability to strike a fatal blow to Iranian nuclearization.
@ Ted Belman:
I have no idea who “Peter” is. Nor am I factually-equipped to argue any aspect of the arguments he raised in Point 1, regarding petroleum prices.
But I have been arguing for years that Israel’s sometimes frantic efforts to use the USA as a security blanket has come to nothing. As he writes, the USA now is the centrum of a rapidly-failing empire, and is increasingly mistrusted with by its former friends and is all but ignored by rising superpowers such as China and Russia. All this truly is unfortunate, but evidence-backed truths must not be ignored in a world order as increasingly dangerous as the one which now prevails.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Peter writes:
It may in fact be necessary for military action to to terminate the present Iranian regime’s expressed intention to destroy the State of Israel for their particular religious reasons. My suggestion, however, has always been action likely to initiate regime change. That way, if achievable, Israel could well help give birth to a government possibly friendly to the Jewish state, an outcome utterly impossible under the ayatollists.
In any case, Israel must never again put itself under the restraint of asking the USA or any other government for permission to defend itself.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Israel can go against the world when its survival is on the line.
Jews owe no one any justification for defending themselves.