My father-in-law, who lives in Ramat Gan, Israel, is a leftist of longstanding. Over the years, he mostly has voted for Meretz (further to the left on foreign policy, in Israeli terms, than “McGovernites” are in American terms), sometimes for Labor. He hates Netanyahu, and perhaps his least favorite person in Israeli politics of all time is Ariel Sharon. He came to Israel from Iraq in 1950, part of a mass exodus of Jews forced to leave the country, but he has fond memories of his childhood there, and the many Christian and Moslem friends he had (though his grandfather was murdered in an anti-Semitic pogrom when he was little). He, like many Iraqi Jews, blame (without any hard evidence) Israeli agents for stirring up trouble for the Jewish community in his native land, leading to the ruination of the Jewish community. His favorite leisure-time activity in watching Arabic movies on satellite channels. Religiously, he is completely secular, and I’ve often heard him blame religion for most of the world’s troubles.
In short, he’s among the last people one would expect to be hawkish. Much to my surprise, however, he has been busily lambasting the Israeli government for timidity in its prosecution of the war against the Party of God: too much concern for world opinion, too much concern for civilian casualties among the Lebanese, too much reliance on air power. Of all things, he even expressed nostalgia for Ariel Sharon, stating that if he were around, Israeli forces would be on the outskirts of Beirut by now.
Why so bellicose? My own theory is that many in the West see Israel fighting a small, albeit well-trained and armed, group of “militants” who pose little military threat to Israel. Thus, Israeli actions are “disproportionate.” Israelis, however, have been treated to months of hearing Iranian officials threaten to destroy the country, while at the same time pursuing nuclear weapons. These threats receive occasional play in the West, but, understandably, they receive much more prominent attention in Israel.
If Iran’s proxy army in Lebanon is willing to indiscriminately kill civilians when Israel has no territorial or other dispute with Lebanon, Israelis believe that Iran itself would not hesitate, when the time came, to incinerate Tel Aviv, despite the lack of any extant dispute with Iran. If Israel doesn’t display fortitude, and even a certain level of ruthlessness, in dispatching the Party of God, this will only embolden Tehran.
Imagine if the Iranians did get nukes, and were considering whether to use them, or at least threaten to sue them, against Israel. The only deterrence Israel would have would be the threat to retaliate against Iran with its own nuclear weapons. But if Israel, with a fifth of its population displaced by missile atatacks, won’t even defend itself vigorously against the Party of God because of fear of hundreds of civilian casualties, what are the odds that Tehran would take a threat of Mutual Assured Destruction seriously? Not to say this means that my father-in-law, or other Israelis, want the government to kill civilians for the heck of it. But neither are the inevitable civilian casualties that accompany urban warfare going to shift Israeli public opinion against the war.
UPDATE: This essay by Ron Rosenbaum soberly discusses the threat of a “Second Holocaust” from Iran, including the disturbing notion that Israel’s own nuclear weapons may not serve as much deterrence.
Comments are closed.