Israeli historian Benny Morris, a man with a serious dislike of Arabs and Iranians, yesterday unloaded in the UK Guardian and urged nothing less than a military strike against the Islamic Republic.
Once again, a leading Zionist voice defines his ideology as nothing other than violence and devastation:
The talk in Israel, explicit and open – including in the country’s leading daily, Haaretz, last week – is about a war in the coming spring or summer. The skies will have cleared for air operations, Israel’s missile shields against short- and medium-range rockets will at least be partly operational, and the international community, led by President Obama, will palpably have failed to stymie Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. And the Iranians will be that much closer to a bomb.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, will then have to decide if Israel can live with a nuclear Iran and rely on deterrence. But if they judge the risk of a nuclear assault on Israel too great, Israel’s military will have to do what it can to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, despite the likely devastating repercussions – regional and global.
These will probably include massive rocketing of Israel’s cities and military bases by the Iranians and Hezbollah (from Lebanon), and possibly by Hamas (from Gaza). This could trigger land wars in Lebanon and Gaza as well as a protracted long-range war with Iran. It could see terrorism by Iranian agents against Israeli (and Jewish) targets around the world; a steep increase in world oil prices, which will rebound politically against Israel; and Iranian action against American targets in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf. More generally, Islamist terrorism against western targets could only grow.
But it is not only Israel’s leaders who will have to decide. So will Obama, a man who has, in the international arena, shown a proclivity for indecision (except when it comes to Israeli settlements in the West Bank). Will he give the Israelis a green light (and perhaps some additional equipment they have been seeking to facilitate a strike) and a right-of-passage corridor over Iraq for their aircraft? Or will he acquiesce in putting atomic weaponry in the mullahs’ hands?
It is clear – and should be by then to all but the most supine appeasers – that the diplomatic approach is going nowhere, with the Iranians conning and stonewalling and dragging their feet, all the while enriching more uranium.