Thursday, August 19, 2010
[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]
Noam Sheizaf and Larry Derfner are worried about the possibility that Israel might attack Iran's nuclear facilities. No surprise there. What sensible person could contemplate such an idea with equanimity? However, both of them fall into the trap of assuming that all the risks are stacked on the side of attacking and none on the side of not taking military action.
Derfner seems to think that the only real problem is what he sees as the Israeli government's obsession with the Holocaust. This is core argument:
The powers-that-be say Israel cannot risk another Holocaust; sounds to me like their Holocaust mania is creating what could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It doesn't seem excessive to parse this as meaning that if an attempt is made to exterminate the Jews of Israel then they'll only have their obsession with the extermination of their European relatives to blame.
He also asks this question:
After all the doomsday weapons we've amassed, must we be so afraid, must we hold onto the Holocaust for dear life?
This doesn't indicate that he has much of an understanding about how deterrence works. Israel's nuclear weapons can't protect it from a nuclear attack. They can only ensure that such an attack would receive a response in kind. Deterrence is founded on the belief that your enemy would be unwilling to accept the costs that your retaliatory strike would impose on him and hence not attack you. If he's willing to accept those costs then you're in big trouble, just as you are if he believes you'd lack either the means or the will to retaliate.
It's worth reminding those who glibly support the idea that Israel's nuclear arsenal will deter a nuclear Iran that they are supported the killing of hundreds of thousands - possibly millions - of ordinary Iranians if deterrence fails and Israel retaliates. If you don't support this you are not supporting deterrence. There are no clean hands for anyone in this debate.
He goes on to say that an Israeli attack on Iran would,
... cause a full-blown schism among Jews, both in Israel and the diaspora. It will turn Jews against Israel in droves.
Perhaps it would. And no doubt a future Iranian nuclear attack on Israel would lead to an outpouring of sympathy and solidarity for Israel from Jews throughout the world. That would be really great for the surviving Israelis.
Sheizaf, in his piece, argues that,
Israeli Generals have a tendency for creating mass hysteria. Defense Minister Dayan thought in 1973 that the end of Israel has come, and Israel armed its nuclear warheads.
Those silly Israel generals, eh? I mean during the Yom Kippur War there wasn't the slightest reason to be worried about the future of Israel when the Syrian army was on the point of a breakthrough on the Golan Heights, was there?
He goes ask the following question,
...if Iran is the biggest threat the Jewish people faced since Nazi Germany, why not compromise on other issues - important as those might be - and maybe help reduce this threat, isolate it, or just deal with it on more favorable terms? Why not try getting Syria out of the game, possibly also Lebanon as a result? Why not strike a deal with Abu-Mazen and help legitimize Israel in the Arab world?
Laudable ideas all, but bringing them up in the context of the argument about what to do about the threat of a nuclear Iran rather suggests that Sheizaf thinks that Iran's hostility to the existence of Israel is based on a vicarious sense of grievance regarding the fate of the Palestinians and the Golan Heights and that were these matters to be addressed the tide of Iranian hostility to Israel's existence might ebb.Neither Derfner nor Seizaf offer any analysis of Iran's policy towards Israel or on matters such as the Holocaust. It would be perfectly possible to consider these questions and still reject an Israeli attack but neither writer seems to take the government of Iran sufficiently seriously to do so.
Sheizaf says is piece tries to give "an Israeli perspective," by which he means a delusional, left-wing perspective. (There are lots of discredited, marginal views on the fringes. Meretz and other radical parties have their perspective, and they are indeed Israeli.) It gets even more ridiculous after the passage Sol quoted:
Instead of worrying about the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of a brutal tyrant, a madman who talks of genocide, he's trying to protect Israel from the danger of a Greater Israel.Sheizaf is stuck in a time-warp.
Apparently he didn't get the memos about Bibi's accepting a two-state solution or about the 10-month housing freeze. It's Bibi's fault there's no deal with Abu Mazen, not Abu Mazen's intransigence. Never mind how our Dear Leader's dunderheaded foreign policy moves enabled Abu Mazen to pull back from negotiations and demand even more than what Ehud Barak offered Abu Amar under pressure from Bill Clinton in Bubba's desperate move to create a legacy other than the stained blue dress. And these absurd demands are just as a precondition for deigning to talk. (Not much left to talk about after that except to negotiate the amount of tribute vanquished Israel must pay the Arabs, i.e., how much money Israel will give the Palestinian authority for new villas, Mercedes limos and foreign bank accounts for Abbas and his cronies.)
According to Sheizaf, the most important thing is to make sure no more Jews move back into Gush Etzion, the very heart of Israel's patrimony. He's just not concerned that Iran will soon have the capacity to murder 6,000,000 more Jews. As he sees it, that very fact that people are talking seriously about the necessity of taking action against Iran just proves that it's all because Bibi wants to build more settlements. Bibi's saber-rattling is just a pretext for settlements, a ruse to bamboozle us.
Is thiys guy for real or is he the sushi-eating reporter in a skit on last week's "Tribal Update"? (Weekly must-see TV for Nappy after "We Con the World". That link is to the full episode where the song made its debut.)
What a doofus.