Once again, there’s a taboo against stating the obvious. It’s an open secret, and a source of great Israeli satisfaction, that the Mossad killed Hizbullah’s Imad Mughniyeh four years and a day ago, and that the Mossad was behind a half-dozen killings of Iranian nuclear scientists, as well as explosions at Iranian military sites. Israel didn’t have to do any of that – we have the power to deter attacks by Hizbullah and Iran, we don’t have to pick fights. But we did, so this is what we get. Israel provoked the car bomb attack today on the wife of the diplomat in New Delhi, and we’re making life dangerous for Israelis and Jews everywhere.
Imagine: Israel is cranked up to bomb a country that likely has chemical and biological weapons to go with its missiles. Imagine: It is planning a future of one such ‘pre-emptive’ war after another.
I’ve been preoccupied for several years with the prospect that Israel would bomb Iran, and what started it was something that people don’t talk about much, certainly not now that an attack seems to be imminent: the possibility that Iran will hit back with chemical or biological weapons. Experts on WMD say it’s a good bet Iran has both these weapons. (Syria is known to have chemical weapons, and we all know what Israel’s got.) Missiles carrying chemical warheads can kill thousands, while missiles carrying biological weapons – which have never been fired by anyone - can kill more than thousands.
I found it strange that Israeli leaders – not just Netanyahu, but across the board – considered an attack on Iran less dangerous than letting Iran go nuclear, when such an attack meant risking literally millions of lives – Israeli lives, Iranian lives, maybe Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian lives, maybe others. Bombing Iran meant opening the door not only to a regional war, but to a regional WMD war.
And everyone was aware of this. In 2007, I had an informal debate with Michael Oren (before he became ambassador to the U.S.) on an American public radio show, and while he didn’t explicitly argue for war as a last resort, he very clearly leaned that way, even while acknowledging that if Iran struck back with WMD, at least some Israeli cities would be left “in smoking ruins.”
In that same year I asked Dany Shoham, an expert on WMD at Bar-Ilan University’s BESA Center, a generally hawkish think tank, about this threat, and he said that before striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israel would have to first knock out Iran’s missile launchers or depend on the Arrow and notoriously undependable Patriot anti-missile missiles to protect it from a possible fate that he wouldn’t even describe because he “didn’t want to terrify the readers.” Mind you, Shoham wasn’t saying the Iranians would definitely use chemical and/or biological weapons in response to an Israeli strike, just that they might. At any rate, if Iran’s nuclear project could not be stopped any other way, it would be best, he said, for Israel to try to destroy it militarily because if Iran got the Bomb, a nuclear war with Israel would erupt sooner or later because there was too much mutual fear and uncertainty to avoid one.
In other words, even though Israel has an estimated 200 to 300 nuclear bombs, even though the Iranians know their country of 75 million people would be wiped out if they tried to nuke Israel, we have no choice but to try to pre-empt Iran’s nuclearization even though it means risking multiple genocides, including our own.
Seeing that this was the dominant way of thinking among Israel’s decision-makers and opinion-makers, I became pre-occupied with the issue. Lately, this pre-occupation has become almost an obsession, an overhanging dread.
These days, the possibility that Iran would retaliate for an Israeli attack with chemical or biological weapons isn’t discussed, and if it is, it’s dismissed as being unrealistic. The Iranians wouldn’t fire such weapons, the argument goes, because they’re afraid of Israel’s response. I love the logic here: We have to bomb the Iranians’ nuclear facilities because they might not be deterred later on by the prospect of their own annihilation - but we don’t have to worry about them shooting back at us now with chemical or biological weapons because, after all, they know they’d be annihilated.
I understand why people don’t think about missiles loaded with poison gas or bubonic plague landing on Israel; I don’t think about it much anymore, either, because it’s become too close. Instead, I think more about the less-than-doomsday scenarios: a conventional missile war lasting weeks, spreading beyond just Israel and Iran. I think about those 200,000 missiles pointed at Israel, and about what sort of blood account the Muslim Middle East is going to have with this country after we launch a war to defend, for the third and by far most dangerous time, our exclusive “right” to nuclear weapons in this part of the world.
I imagine the day after the smoke clears, for however long it clears, when Israelis count their dead and realize they’re going to have to do it again in another year or two or three, and I wonder what it’s going to be like in the interim. I try to imagine a future in which Israel, believing it has no choice, starts one war after another after another whenever some Middle Eastern country decides it wants a fraction of one percent of the weaponry Israel has had for decades.
I try to imagine such a future, and I can’t. My image of Israel is of a teenager who decides to run across the freeway, makes it, decides to try again, makes it again, and then just does it over and over, thinking he’s immune from catastrophe, until one day the law of averages catches up with him.
I lived through the end of the Cold War in America; I remember the scare headlines about the Russians, the drop drills in school, the Cuban missile crisis. Then one day Americans realized that the Russians didn’t want to die, either, and they began to calm down. That’s the problem – I can’t imagine Israel calming down, not anytime soon. It would require people here to realize that the Muslims don’t want to die, either, and there seems to be too much demonology about Muslims in the Israeli mind for that to happen.
Can this terminal future be averted – for starters, by averting an attack on Iran? Until about a week ago, I thought that maybe if enough Meir Dagan types came out of the closet and went public with their opposition to the war, a backlash might build. So I made inquiries to a couple of well-placed Meir Dagan types; I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Maybe Obama will read Israel the riot act. That’s the only chance I see left. Otherwise, I’m hanging my hopes on my spotty record as a fortune-teller. I’d much rather be proven wrong than see these foreboding images in my mind come true.
The demonstrator who said there were more cops than demonstrators was way wrong; I counted ten cops and there must have been 25, even 30 protesters.
Sad. Pathetic. Not the protesters, but the public that will follow the government to war with Iran without a peep. Also pathetic: Peace Now, Labor, Meretz, Hadash, for saying nothing about it, either.
The demonstrators on Kaplan Street across from the Defense Ministry compound held big signs that said “Don’t bomb – talk.” I heard one car that bothered to honk.
I stopped a passerby in her 20s pushing a baby carriage, an accountant from Petah Tikva, and asked if she was for or against an attack on Iran. ”We’ll see how things turn out. Whatever happens, happens.”
If the government decides to bomb, will you support it? “They sit up there, they’re smarter than me, whatever they decide, I’ll support.”
Do you think they’re going to do it? “It looks that way.”
Are you worried? “A little.”
What do you think is going to happen afterward? “I don’t really think about it.”
A guy of about 20 on a skateboard was checking out the signs. I asked if he was for against an attack.
“First of all, I’m not for war, I’m against war. But if somebody is going to attack you, if your enemy is going to attack, don’t you think you have to attack him first, for the sake of survival?”
Do you think Iran will attack us first?
“I don’t know, I’m not privy to all the information. But good luck,” he said, and skated away.
The public doesn’t know it, but ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan and his opposition to war with Iran have company
Retired army general Nathan Sharony, head of the Council for Peace and Security, which includes over 1,000 former high-ranking security officials with dovish views, says the positions of ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan and ex-army intelligence head Shlomo Gazit against an attack on Iran are ”acceptable” to him.
Retired army colonel Yiftah Shapir, the leading expert on missile warfare at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), Israel’s premier security think tank, says he “does not think the price we will have to pay [for an attack on Iran] is worth the benefit.” He argues that the most Israel can do is delay Iran’s nuclear ambitions by “some months” – a far cry from the possible five-year delay that Israeli security officials are speaking about in the media.
Retired army colonel Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the INSS, says he “does not know” whether Israel should strike or not, because he does not have all the necessary information. But in the next breath he emphasizes that such an attack “is a very problematic idea, a very dangerous option.”
Israelis aren’t hearing these voices, those of members of the security establishment who oppose an attack on Iran, or who at least have deep doubts about it – and there are crowds of them in this country. If these career security people with impressive titles were to speak out, or, failing that, if journalists and activists were to seek out their opinions, the march to war being led by Barak and Netanyahu could at least be slowed, and maybe even stopped.
But as far as the public knows, the only security heavyweight against the war is Dagan. In truth, Dagan’s predecessor, Ephraim Halevy, preceded him in this view, and the two are joined by former IDF chief Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Gazit.
None of them are “peaceniks” on the issue – I’m not aware that any of them oppose an Israeli attack under any conditions and at any time; Kam and Shapir, for instance, both said it was vital to Israel’s deterrent power to be ready and, in principle, willing to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. (Shapir acknowledged that this view, alongside his opposition to actually bombing Iran, amounted to a “Catch-22.”)
But unlike Barak, Netanyahu, Vice PM Moshe Ya’alon and all the other team players in and out of government, these people are talking about the downside, not just the upside, of a war with Iran: missiles landing on Israel; terror attacks on Israeli, Jewish and possibly American targets abroad; the chance of mission failure; an international oil crisis; and more.
And what is most unusual to be hearing from Israeli military men is that while a nuclear Iran is certainly a threat, it is not necessarily an intolerable one.
Kam: “With reservations, I think Israel can live with a nuclear Iran. The critical question is whether Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel. Rationally, I say no. But this is an assessment that is not based on fact.”
Sharony: ”I don’t know if the Iranians act rationally, I don’t know if Cold War deterrence is applicable to them. But I have to assume that national leaderships act rationally, which leads me to the conclusion that we can live with a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons. Is this a sympathetic situation? No.”
Shapir told me in 2007 that “the chance that Iran will launch a nuclear first strike is low.” If Iran went nuclear, he said, what would probably happen is that it would enter a “dialog” with Israel like the Soviet Union had with the U.S. and Pakistan has with India. ”Strategic logic is stronger than any ideology,” he said.
Why are these and other critics and skeptics in the security establishment, except for Dagan and a few others, keeping their doubts to themselves? The main reason that emerged from these interviews was a reticence to challenge the government and its security advisors on such a fateful issue “without having solid information,” as Sharony put it.
I suggested to him that if all the skeptics outside of government and active military service continue to keep quiet because they don’t know what the people around the cabinet table know, then the people at that table, led by Barak and Netanyahu, will be the only authoritative voices the public hears, so they’ll be free to shape public opinion to their taste and have clear sailing to launch the war.
Sharony replied fatalistically: “By the way, that’s how it’s going to be.”
He’s probably right – the prowar forces have the field to themselves, and it’s likely to stay that way until the jet bombers take off. But probably does not mean certainly. It is impossible to simply accept this brainwashing, to watch the country sleepwalk to war behind Barak and Netanyahu, knowing that there are so many potentially influential people who are against it, or who at least have severe doubts about it.
The only people who can throw a wrench in the wheels of the war train are those like Dagan, Halevy, Lipkin-Shahak, Gazit, Kam, Shapir and Sharony – bitkhonistim, security types, warriors with big brains. If enough of them go public, they could start a backlash, and then opposition politicians like Tzipi Livni and Sheli Yachimovich – maybe even Yair Lapid (!) – might at least begin to ask the government embarrassing questions.
In 2007, former defense minister and IDF chief Shaul Mofaz told The Jerusalem Post that while he wasn’t ruling out a military strike on Iran, “The potential for a regional escalation as a result of an attack is great. Iran sees Israel as a target and has ballistic missiles that can reach every European capital. If it responds, then Hizbullah will respond and maybe Syria, and we don’t even know how Hamas will respond.” Mofaz quickly forgot those words, but if a wave of opposition arose against the war that’s looming, he might remember them.
There is no greater danger on earth today than that of an Israeli attack on Iran; in my opinion, it will be the beginning of the end of this country. There is no more urgent work for Israelis to do than try and prevent it. The key, the start, is in getting the antiwar warriors to come out of the closet.
At any given time, about 200,000 missiles are aimed at Israel, Aviv Cochavi, chief of army intelligence, told the VIPs today at the Herzliya Conference.
Two-hundred thousand missiles – another important fact that will go in one ear of the Israeli public and out the other. It plays havoc with a basic national conviction, so it will be discarded.
It’s a basic national conviction that if “the Arabs” could annihilate this country, they would, no matter the cost to themselves. That’s why we bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor, the Syrian nuclear reactor, and why we’re probably going to bomb the Iranian reactors, or some of them anyway, later this year – because we believe that if “the Arabs” get the means to destroy us, they will. They hate us so much and they’re such fanatics that they don’t care if they die, just so they can kill us.
Well, what does 200,000 missiles aimed full-time at Israel tell you? That “the Arabs” have the power to effectively destroy the country right now. And this is without even mentioning the chemical and/or biological weapons that some Muslim countries are likely to have.
Yet they don’t use that power. Not because they don’t want to. I have no doubt that at the very least, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan would love to fire missiles at Israel. They don’t because they’re deterred by Israel’s power – by all those missiles and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons we’ve got aimed at them. They’re afraid of us. Everybody in the world knows this except Israelis. (The only Arab territory that fires missiles at us is Palestine, which is also the only Arab territory occupied by us. There may be a connection.)
This belief about Arabs is why we attack our neighbors’ nuclear installations, even while we’ve got hundreds of nukes ourselves - because we think of Arabs as scorpions, as killing machines that aren’t afraid, that can’t be deterred.
Two-hundred thousand missiles pointed our way at any given time, and nobody fires them. In one ear and out the other. There’s another war of survival that needs starting.
CORRECTION: Thanks to Alex Kane for tweeting the reminder that Palestine isn’t the only Israeli-occupied territory; the Golan Heights is, too, of course. So why doesn’t Syria fire missiles at us? I’d say because the Golan amounts to only about one-half percent of Syrian land, so it’s not such a pressing issue. But it’s obviously still a sore point; it may come back to haunt us one day.
American Jewish liberals who use it do so in bad faith, and what they mean by the term is not what Americans hear
Even though the term “Israel-Firster,” taken literally, is a fair, accurate description of any number of American Jews – those whose main concern in American politics is its effect on Israel – it shouldn’t be used. There are a couple of reasons why.
For one, when American liberals, almost always Jews themselves, use it to slam American Jewish Likud types, they’re using the term in bad faith. They’re not honestly bothered by Americans whose chief political interest is the welfare of another country; neither Ireland-Firsters, nor Mexico-Firsters, nor Southern-Sudan-Firsters, nor Palestine-Firsters upset them, and neither do Israel-Firsters. They’re put off, instead, by the intimidating rhetoric of so many of these American Likud types; I’m convinced that M.J. Rosenberg, Joe Klein, Glenn Greenwald and others who use the term “Israel-Firster” do so as a way of getting back at all those right-wingers who call them self-hating Jews. This is understandable, but not right. They should slam the American Jewish hawks on Israel for slammable offenses, of which there is, of course, no shortage.
The other reason not to use ”Israel-Firster” is that unless you just can’t avoid it, such as with the term “Israel lobby,” you should not use terms that have anti-Semitic connotations, even when their literal meaning is fair and accurate. In America, ”Israel-Firster” is not heard literally to mean an American Jew whose first political concern is Israel – it’s heard to mean “American Jewish traitor,” which in America is just as bad and much more dangerous a slur than ”self-hating Jew.” I don’t believe for a second that Rosenberg, Klein, Greenwald et al mean their words to have that effect, but that is the effect.
There are any number of other strong pejoratives for the Adelsons, Morton Kleins and other American Jewish Likud types that can be used in good faith, and that do not have anti-Semitic connotations. For instance, “Arab-bashers” is one I’ve turned to lately.
The “Israel-Firster” controversy was discussed previously by Mairav Zonszein, Noam Sheizaf and Yossi Gurvitz
For Sheldon Adelson, Newt Gingrich and Binyamin Netanyahu, the political is the personal, and vice versa.
I make it a point not to judge people’s personalities on the basis of their politics; I’ve known, and known of, too many humble right-wingers and superior-acting left-wingers for that. But not infrequently, the personal and the political line up: the good guy (of either gender) has what I would call good political ideals, the bad guy has rotten ones.
At this rather fateful time for Israel, its three greatest champions - Bibi Netanyahu at home, Sheldon Adelson among American Jewry, and Newt Gingrich among American gentiles – are politically all Arab-bashers and personally all insufferable egomaniacs. I think this says something about Israel’s sphere of influence today, about what sort of people it lifts up.
In a news feature about Adelson titled “The Man Behind Gingrich’s Money,” the New York Times reported: “Even his two sons sued him at one point, accusing him of cheating them, though they lost.” The Times also reports: “Friends point out that [Adelson's] staunch Zionist beliefs are consistent with his take-no-prisoners personality.” “Staunch Zionist beliefs,” i.e. ”hatred of Arabs and of anybody who doesn’t hate them, too.”
About Gingrich, we already know: He visited his first wife in the hospital where she was recovering from cancer surgery and told her he wanted a divorce. His acknowledged professional code of behavior is ”chimpanzee politics,” otherwise known as ”winning through intimidation.”
Unlike Adelson and Gingrich, Netanyahu doesn’t go around scaring people; he leaves that to his wife Sara, who reportedly scares him, too. But a ruthless egomaniac he certainly is. I don’t think adultery, even serial adultery, necessarily makes you an SOB – but to go on prime time TV news and tell the world about it, like Bibi did in the 1993 Likud primary campaign? He was being blackmailed, somebody threatened to release a videotape of him and his girlfriend in the act. The solution he chose was brilliant politically - he played the outraged victim, smearing his chief rival, David Levy, for using “mafia” tactics to try to run him out of the race, which he never proved. But, uh, to voluntarily divulge your affair on TV while your wife is sitting at home? Some guy.
After Netanyahu won that primary, I researched a profile of him and had a phone interview with one of his close boyhood friends. The man, who insisted on anonymity, said that as a teenager in Jerusalem, Netanyahu was already “very dominant” in his political views. I wanted personal details – what was he like as a friend, I asked, would you say he was a loyal friend? The man answered: ”I would say he was loyal to himself.”
Politically, Adelson, Gingrich and Netanyahu are all national triumphalists – it’s all about Israel (for Gingrich, Israel is an extension of America) beating the daylights out of whichever nation happens to stand in its way. Personally, Adelson, Gingrich and Netanyahu are also triumphalists – it’s all about beating the daylights out of whichever individual happens to stand in their individual way.
In 2012, these three gentlemen are the saviors of Israel, our showcase of Jewish civilization – Bibi, King of Israel; Sheldon, King of the Jews; and Newt, our favorite Righteous Gentile.
Oh, we are in great shape, my ethnoreligious brethren. We’re having us a real Golden Age.
