Wipe Them Off The Map V. Never Again

Two explosive policy clashes are shaping up in the Mideast. Actually, they are both old policies that have been around for several decades but only now have become potentially apocalyptic. We are referring to Iran and Israel and the threat of a nuclear exchange. This is real and perhaps as serious a threat to world stability as the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s.

The central core of the founding of the Israeli state after the Holocaust was “never again.” Simply put, it was the declaration by the remnants of the annihilated European Jews that they would never allow themselves to be passive victims in a war for their destruction. By gathering the world’s Jewry into a nation state with an army to defend itself, Israel would protect its Biblical tribe from the countless pogroms that have occurred through millennia. Interestingly, this appeared to the average Israeli as simultaneously a reflection of both domestic and foreign policy. After the first miraculous war for independence and after all the subsequent wars to maintain itself as a nation, the promise of “never again” appeared to be made good.

Sometime, most likely in the 1970s, Israel went nuclear. Without any announcements or testing it became clear from intelligence sources that another nation state had joined the nuclear club. While never admitting the truth to this assertion Israel had in fact created the ultimate, final and complete guarantee to back its “never again” promise. Now, before the Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis (or pick a threatening state) could overwhelm Tel Aviv they would cease to exist, their people extinguished in a horror not seen since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To attack Israel was to risk annihilation. Perhaps there is a reason Israel has not been attacked by a sovereign nation since 1973, for Israel’s enemies too understand the concept of “never again.”

In 1981 the now-deposed tyrant of Iraq verbally threatened Israel with extermination. Saddam was developing a nuclear capability and he announced that he would use his bombs against Israel. We know the outcome: Israel sent bombers over Iraq and destroyed his nuclear facility. Ostensibly condemned at the time, there may have been a deeper acceptance of this act as very little fallout on the diplomatic front occurred. Israel had made it clear that retaliation was not enough, the policy of “never again” was in fact a preemptive one. The new fact in the air was that a sworn enemy would not be allowed to have the capability of destroying the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

Enter Ahmadinejad, the new president of Iran. Over the course of the last several months he has issued clear and unambiguous threats that he will wage war to destroy Israel. Ahmadinejad even tied in Iran’s nuclear goals with that policy aim. Both he and Saddam have clearly and without coyness stated that their foreign policy goals are the elimination of the state of Israel. We may safely ignore low-level flacks that are sent out to deny and thus distract us from what is coming from the top. The president is the highest level of authority in Iran; these are not the bellicose threats of mullahs or low-level generals. Many times Arabs and Persians have been observed to make flowery verbose threats. There is a long history of verbal exaggeration amongst these peoples. However, many times these have been the precursor to war. The Iraq/Iran war was not a surprise attack; there had been months of escalating explicit verbal threats issued by both countries before the actual war.

Israel now needs to weigh its policy options in light of the Iranian threat. It should not go it alone but cannot afford to be isolated as the target of an Iranian nuclear bomb. The recent Iranian threats to Israel’s existence cannot be dismissed as Persian hyperbole. The very clear irresponsibility of issuing these threats and refusing to back down from the world’s condemnation shows the determined malice of the Iranians. It is as if Tojo addressed the world before Pearl Harbor and announced his people’s intentions to wipe America off the map and that Hawaii was never a part of the United States. The U.S. policy response might have been different.

If the Europeans and the other sane nations of the world wish to continue to see a nuclear-war-free world, they had better act now. The Iranians have created a flash point for the end of global denial. There will not be much Chinese growth or Russian oil exports if a fanatical regime unleashes a nuclear exchange.

Thus, two implacable policies are in close proximity: “Never again” means just that. There will be fireballs over Tehran and Qom before the Jewish people are “wiped off the map.” Much of Russia and Europe will be contaminated from the fallout. The Iranians have given us the warning; the world must unite in its response.