Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Six million Jews live in Israel today, where the threat of another Holocaust grows greater by the day. But the world tells them to wait and trust.
As Iran grows closer to creating viable nuclear weapons, Israel has been criticized for suggesting that it might launch preemptive strikes on Iranian weapons facilities. We can't know whether such strikes would prevent the nuclear empowerment of one of the world's most dangerous countries. But we need to understand why the Israelis might take this step, and why we should hope they succeed if they do.
"Never again": This was the vow that Jews have been determined to uphold since the Holocaust. A centuries-old culture of bookish passivity -- of meekness, of not making waves -- was murdered by the Nazis along with the six million. In 1948, when the nation of Israel rose from the ashes of the European slaughter, it did so with a new understanding of self-defense as a matter of life and death.
The medieval theocrats who run Iran do not see the Nazi legacy the same way. In 2006, Tehran hosted a conference for Holocaust revisionists and deniers; Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently referred to the Nazi genocide as a "big lie." But Ahmadinejad seems determined to make Jewish extermination a reality in our time, openly calling for the "eradication" of Jewish Israelis. "The Zionist regime is a center of microbes, a cancer cell," he said last summer. "If it exists in one iota of Palestine it will mobilize again and hurt everyone." These sentiments were echoed in February by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called Israel a "cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut."
It is impossible not to hear echoes of Hitler's Final Solution in such threats. After Auschwitz, the Jews cannot afford not to take them seriously. It cannot gamble with its very existence.
Yet the world expects Israel to hold its fire as Iran build nuclear warheads -- the most aggressive potential radiation treatment for the Zionist "cancer" that any anti-Semite could wish for. Huge destructive power in the hands of retrograde religious zealots: The danger of decimation is clear and present. But instead of bombing Iran, the editorialists say, Israel should wait for the international community to intervene through diplomacy and sanctions.
The problem with this is twofold. First, we do not know how far Iran is from reaching its goals, and the window for action may be closing. And second: If there is anything the Jews have learned, it is that the international community cannot be trusted to protect them. The Holocaust, after all, happened just 70 years ago; Germany, until that time, had been one of the most hospitable places for Jews in the world
Europe has not been a reliable friend since then, either. In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel faced the most serious threat in its history as Arab armies -- led by Egypt and Syria -- massed at its borders to invade on the holiest day of the Jewish year. The United States insisted that Israel not launch a preemptive strike, promising to send weapons and supplies if Israel was invaded. But when the Arab armies attacked, America's rescue mission was nearly choked off when its European allies -- worried by the threat of an oil embargo -- refused to let American planes land to refuel in their countries, or even fly through their airspace.
Thousands of Israeli men and women were killed in the Yom Kippur War, and Israel has not forgotten Europe's betrayal. It has every right to be skeptical about Europe's commitment to its safety. And the irony is that Israel often ends up doing the Western world's dirty work in taking bold action against rogue states. In 1981, when Israel bombed a nuclear reactor near Baghdad, it was condemned around the world -- but many analysts later credited the action for crippling Saddam Hussein's nuclear aspirations. In 2007, Israel again overstepped its boundaries by destroying a nuclear reactor in Syria. Does anyone today think the world would be safer if Bashar al-Assad had the Bomb?
In the end, this is not just a question of Israeli national security or even of Israeli survival. It is part of a larger struggle between world ideologies. For more than three decades, Iran has been ruled by radical fundamentalists bent on exporting their backward version of Islam; by funding and arming of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, it has become a leader in the worldwide movement to reject "decadent" Western values in favor of systematic misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism and religious bigotry. To use just one standard of measurement: Israel is a country that prohibits anti-gay discrimination, permits gay adoption and military service, and honors gay marriages; in Iran, same-sex relations are punishable by corporal punishment, imprisonment or death.
A nuclear Iran would change the balance of power in the Middle East and the world in potentially devastating ways. Whether Israel should proceed with a strike is a complicated question that Israel's leaders will have to decide for themselves. It is their decision to make -- not Iran's, not Europe's and not America's -- because it is their blood on the line. The Jews have trusted the world to defend them in the past, and they have been betrayed. They must never make that mistake again. Never again.
Rafael Alencar
Unless it's the Israelis doing to Iran what was done to them.
How do you know Iran doesn't have a couple nuke from Russia?
The USA military was wrong then they wanted to bomb Cuba. If they had been allowed by Kennedy, the east coast of the USA would be a radioactive wasteland today.
What give us the right to tell other sovereign countries, THEY may not protect their sovereignty with nukes? We do. We torture, and wage war crime wars.
Iran is not insane, they won't launch first.
Iran has not even shown any evidence of actually building nuke bombs.
We in the west claim MAD worked, but not Iran?
"Reuben Moscowitz, a Holocaust survivor who took part in the mission, expressed his disbelief that "Israeli soldiers would treat nine Jews this way. They just hit people."
"I as a Holocaust survivor cannot live with the fact that the State of Israel is imprisoning an entire people behind fences," Moscowitz said, adding that "it's just immoral."
"What happened to me in the Holocaust wakes me up every night and I hope we don't do the same thing to our neighbors," Moscowitz said, adding that he was comparing "what I went through during the Holocaust to what the besieged Palestinian children are going through."
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/jewish-gaza-bound-activists-idf-used-excessive-force-in-naval-raid-1.316247
Surprised that the Post allowed this article to be posted! Well done!
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1. We know they do and it makes them liars.
2. Their existence is a threat.
3. What good is a treaty with liars?
If we are judging whether a state or people are a threat simply by existing, I would suggest the addition of the following states and people to that list: America, Russia, China, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, South Korea, etc
"What good is a treaty with liars?"
exactly, which is why a treaty with iran is not worth the paper it's written on.
Observing Israel state resume, one can conclude they're not shy on being ruthlessly violent and if they could have attacked Iran, they would have done it by now, these threats are just huff and puff to distract people from eventually unfolding reality, Palestinian sovereignty!
Here's a map of Iran's sites: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111822956
Let's look at Israel's known ordnance, then its equipment to deliver it.
Short of a "tactical" nuclear strike, bunker busters are necessary to touch about all Iranian facilities. Of the 100 GBU-28 (76m long, 2.3t a piece, penetrates 7m ferro-concrete) promised to Israel by the US only 55 are verified (in 2009) to have actually been delivered. Suffices to destroy the enrichment plant in Ghom, but won't even touch the new plant in Fordow. That can only be done with a MOP (6.2m long, 14t! a piece, 60m penetration) — only the US possesses these. Israel could not use those, anyway— [cont.]
How about midair refueling? Two grave issues: Only jets can refuel jets, and Israel has but four converted Boeing 707, with recent rumors of the US selling further tankers denied. They are also very conspicuous on radar — just what SAM and AAMs are waiting for.
In conclusion: Without US backing, talk of an Israeli first strike appears hardly more political grandstanding. Well, from a factual perspective that is — it would not be first time certain politicians had forced cataclysmal decisions on its military.
Links
"Attack on Iran…" http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB16Ak01.html
"Ohne die US-Luftwaffe…" http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2012-03/usa-israel-waffen
The writer(?) chooses to use a discredited translation of Ahmadinejad staement on the future of Israel, and fails to mention the Ayatollah's repeated statements condemning the use of nuclear weapons.
Israel is in fact the most destabalizing presence in the mid-east. Iran's record of attacking neighbours looks stellar in comparison. Netanyahu and Lieberman are far more dangerous characters than the Iranian leadership.
According to the Christian Science Monitor we are paying 25 cents a gallon (US figures) to wage the Iranian sanctions. The cost is not worth it.
I am a proud America-Firster and I completely agree with the article. You are correct that it is perfectly rational for Iran to want nukes. They see that if they have nukes they won't have to answer for anyone when they wage wars, create proxies, and abuse human rights. They will be able to hold the world hostage with the threat of using their nuclear weapons.
It is also perfectly rational for the world to oppose and want to prevent Iran from being able to intimidate the world and threaten the use of nukes. Logic and reason would encourage the world to look at what Iran has done in the last 30 years at the very least and decide that Iran should be stopped.
Jimmy, you appear to be an Iran-firster which is sad because you have the freedom to write ridiculous things which is only afforded to you by countries that Iran wants to eliminate.
>> is their decision to make -- not Iran's, not Europe's and not America's -- because it is their blood on the line. The Jews have trusted the world to defend them in the past, and they have been betrayed. They must never make that mistake again. Never again.
Sorry, Israel, you can't have it both ways, Either you give to gain an ally, or you have no allies. Distrust all the world and you stand alone. That is your privilege, your cultural heritage, the policy of your government, and your self-imposed destiny.
This article is well written, even inspiring; but Vlady is correct: the bottom line is that the decision is Israel's to make — not Europe's, not Iran's, and not America's. What Vlady stops just short of saying is that Israel will live or collapse because of what emerges from within Israel, not because of what other nations say or do. I believe she will live. shalom l'yisrael.
Due to United Nations mandate against marijuana, sanctions went into effect against Iran.
To hide the ridiculous drug war that the government has no idea how to exit a nuclear threat is invented. With sanctions in place Iran responds with a small whimper that is interpreted as a threat to take Israel off the face of the earth and destabilize the region.
What a farce.