This is The Chronicle’s Purim edition for 2012. But I do not feel like joking around in the holiday’s spirit this year.
Instead, I feel a sense of dread, compounded by the irony that looming on the horizon may be a war involving the place where the Purim story supposedly occurred, the ancient Persia that today is the Iran now ruled by Muslim fascists and anti-Semites.
I have read — though I cannot recall where — that according to the Talmud, when the judges of the Sanhedrin imposed a death sentence, they fasted for the rest of the day. This practice may have helped make sure that such a penalty was not imposed with rejoicing, ease, and hubris; but with fear, trembling, and humility.
I have recently been reading numerous American opinion articles, blogs, and comments for and against Israel going to war with Iran over its presumed nuclear weapons program — and I have started to feel disgusted about nearly all of them. I could wish these glib people would fast after they write their screeds, to bring home to them the true seriousness of the consequences of their ideas.
Israel is stuck in another of those cruel situations endemic to its existence in which its leaders have no truly good choices to make, and would take horrible risks and could create horrific consequences for Israelis or for others no matter what they decide to do.
Yet I see people on both sides of the issue advocate their positions blithely, with a confidence in their judgment that can only be called arrogant, with seeming incapacity of comprehending what could result, and with total lack of empathy for other people.
I don’t think anybody with a brain can deny that Iran’s government today constitutes a regime of people like Haman, the Jew-hating villain of the biblical book of Esther on which the Purim holiday is founded. If further evidence were needed:
• On Feb. 3, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s “supreme leader,” delivered a speech in which he called Israel “a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off” and in which he pledged that Iran “will support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world.”
• Moreover, on Feb. 6, Khameini endorsed an article posted on Iranian government websites providing justification not only for destroying Israel but also for attacking Jews worldwide.
But are such verbal bombs indicative enough of a true threat to justify Israel attacking Iran? The anti-attack folks on liberal and conservative websites love to point out that:
• Iran’s leaders have been careful to say “Israel should be destroyed” and not “we are going to and are about to destroy Israel” — that is, they have avoided the unequivocally threatening statements that Egyptian and Syrian leaders and government-controlled media made in May 1967 prior to the Six Day War.
• Iran has not moved any troops to Israel’s vicinity or launched an actual attack on Israel. In fact, while the regime’s proxies and agents have carried out terrorist attacks, to date Iran’s military has not invaded or attacked any country.
• Iran’s leaders continue to deny that its nuclear energy program is for any military purpose. Moreover, its reactors and other facilities are so spread out and well protected that at best Israel could only delay the program’s development for a short time. Besides, nuclear weapons technology can’t be un-invented; and any nation’s leaders that want it badly enough (e.g., North Korea) will find a way of getting it.
• Israel in all probability actually has nuclear weapons, and more than Iran could amass; and therefore Israel could retaliate massively should Iran’s leaders be irrational enough to launch any attack.
• Since the invention of nuclear weapons in 1945, the world has lived a long time with nations that are enemies possessing them and not using them, like the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, and India and Pakistan. So the precedents are good that the world, including Israel, could live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Add to these some other considerations that the pro-attack folks seem to ignore: That war should always be the last resort, employed only when no other choice is available. That once a modern war begins, innocents will suffer, both in Iran and in Israel itself when Iran and possibly other nations or terrorist groups retaliate. That Israel may end up attracting more condemnation and alienating potential allies — including the United States — if it strikes first; and it could mobilize against itself an Arab and Muslim world that would rather side with Muslims — even if they are Iranian Shi’a Muslims, a controversial minority in the mostly Sunni Muslim world — than with Jewish Israel.
However, I find that many of these anti-attack critics are people who continually underestimate the threat Israel faces and the reality and sincerity of the hatred it endures; who regard Israel and Jews as expendable for other interests; and who are clueless or maliciously indifferent about what Israel should do instead.
Tiny Israel, a country of 7 million people in an area smaller than Lake Michigan, can’t afford to wait for an enemy first strike before responding. Indeed, the last time it did that — the 1973 Yom Kippur War — Israel came close to destruction. It certainly can’t wait for Iran to hit first, especially if Iran might do so with nuclear weapons attached to the practically unstoppable ballistic missiles it now reportedly has.
Would Iran’s leaders actually do such an irrational thing in light of Israel’s retaliatory capacity? Hatred of Jews has been known to impel people to do amazingly irrational things. For example, a case can be made that a significant reason why Germany lost World War II was because its Nazi leaders irrationally made the genocide of Europe’s Jews a higher priority than their war with the Allies.
Israel’s leaders can’t afford to underestimate any dangers or threats — and I find it sickening when others demand that they do so.
I don’t know what Israel’s leaders should do about Iran, and I dread all the possibilities. I hope Israel’s leaders can make their decision with more knowledge and wisdom than all the pundits and bloggers have. But I do wish that all the folks so free with their advice or demands would humbly acknowledge their fallibility, and would have more empathy with Israel and more understanding of the reality of its situation.
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