Prioritizing Existential Risk: Israel’s Need to “Stay Focused” on Nuclear Threats
Although Israel continues to face multiple and often intersecting security threats, including terror, its core operational focus should remain on existential perils, especially nuclear attack and nuclear war.
Israel, Iran, And The Shiite Apocalypse (Second of Three Parts)
For Israel, and also its cross-pressured U.S. ally, there would be very difficult problems to solve if an enemy state such as Iran were permitted to go fully nuclear. These problems could lethally undermine the conceptually neat, but probably unrealistic, notion of balanced nuclear deterrence in the region.
For Israel, What Next In The Matter Of Iran? (2 of 3)
Steadily, Israel is strengthening its plans for ballistic missile defense, most visibly on the Arrow system and also on Iron Dome, a lower-altitude interceptor that is designed to guard against shorter-range rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza.
Understanding Child Murderers: The Unique Barbarism Of Palestinian Terrorism
What sort of "freedom fighters" applaud the close-range murder of a pregnant Israeli woman and her four young daughters? There is only one correct answer: Palestinian terrorists. There is, in fact, no other insurgent movement on this persistently bleeding planet that can begin to compare with Arab/Islamic terror. From the standpoint of sheer barbarism, of a primal evil that mocks any human pretension to being a civilized "resistance," no other movement even comes close.
A New Military Reality: Suffering Existential Harms Without Losing A War
It is not always easy, in studying world politics, to know when power is really "powerful," and when weakness is really "weak." Oddly enough, some states that are presumably very powerful in measurable military terms may occasionally have to yield to others that seemingly lack power altogether. Even more ironically, in the case of Israel versus Hamas, the presumably powerful state is increasingly at the mercy of a brutal criminal organization that is substantially less autonomous than a truly sovereign state, and that has no armed forces even worth mentioning.
Arab Anti-Semitism – Genocide, Terrorism And International Law (First of Two Parts)
A comparable legal case could just as easily have been made on behalf of Israel. Still reeling from an organized chorus of barbarous calls for individual and collective Jewish annihilation, Israel itself must now continuously remind the world of its own incontestable and established rights to self-defense.
Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity: Opportunity Or Liability? (Part II)
The Israeli policy of an undeclared nuclear capacity will not work indefinitely. Left unrevised, this policy will fail. The most obvious locus of failure would be Iran.
Learning From Ancient Chinese Military Thought: Israel And Sun-Tzu’s Art Of War
Despite altogether unimagined transformations of weapons technologies, some ancient principles of warfare remain entirely valid. Founded upon the essentially persistent nature of human behavior in organized conflict, these principles can be ignored only at great strategic risk. For the always-imperiled state of Israel, there is especially much to be learned from certain elements of past thought. This includes the unchanging requirements of national survival.
What If Israel’s ‘Peace Partners’ Actually Prefer War?
At this point in Israel’s problematic diplomatic agenda, there is really only one overriding policy question: Can any form of negotiation with the Palestinians,...
On Assassination, Preemption, And Counter-Terrorism: The View From International Law
Good morning. Thank you, John (Loftus) and Bob [Dr. Robert Katz). The conference main theme is in essence: Our individual and collective survival amidst growing global chaos. With this in mind, the Irish poet Yeats reminds us: "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."
Crowds, Conventions and the Slow Death Of Individualism in America
My dear readers, let's look for a few moments behind the news. As we may readily learn from the philosophers, every sham can have a patina.
Arab Anti-Semitism – Genocide, Terrorism And International Law (Second Of Two Parts)
While most of the world outside of Washington and Jerusalem chooses to ignore calls identifying Palestinian terrorism as attempted genocide, international law has an unswerving and renewed obligation to do so.
America Needs A Strategic Nuclear Doctrine – Now
My readers in The Jewish Press will already know that I write a great deal about Israeli nuclear issues. One of these inherently existential issues is the need for a coherent and codified Israeli nuclear doctrine. Moreover, this need was an integral part of Project Daniel - a private effort that reported to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ("Israel's Strategic Future," January 2003) and was most immediately concerned with Iranian nuclear weapons and the associated prospect of nuclear war in the Middle East.
For Israel, Better the ‘Blessing’ than the ‘Curse’
Israel must continue to base its policies toward both Iran and 'Palestine' upon an utterly candid and unvarnished awareness of threats to Jewish life.
Israel And Its Enemies: Future Wars And Forceful Options (First Of Three Parts)
As the continuing flow of new missiles to Iran reveals, the Bush administration (refers to first President Bush) remains committed to misconceived policies in the Middle East. Even if Israel were to yield West Bank and Gaza to create a new state of Palestine (with east Jerusalem as its capital), the government in Teheran would persist in planned aggression against the Jewish state. Altogether unconcerned with the fate of the Palestinians, this government will be satisfied only by Israel's disappearance.
The Waste Land: Israel And Iran After Nuclear War
Credo quia absurdum. "I believe because it is absurd." It is a term that I have used often here in my weekly column, but never more meaningfully than today. Now, years after the international community first blathered vainly about Iranian intentions, Tehran marches unhindered to full and final nuclear weapons status
A Still-Nuclearizing Iran: Defending Israel At The Eleventh Hour
From the start, our "international community" has stood by disingenuously as Iran prepared its atomic engines.
Knowing The Poisoned Heart Of An Islamic ‘Suicide’ Bomber
Science begins with the discovery of regularities. A regular feature of all Islamic "suicide" terrorists is a declared love of death. For us in the West, such declared affections must seem intuitively suspect. After all, they are contrary to everything we normally believe about self-preservation, reason and human behavior.
Obama’s Flawed Advice To Israel (Second of Two Parts)
A fundamental inequality is evident in all expressions of the Middle East peace process.
The Pianist And ‘Palestine’ (Second of Two Parts)
In strategy and law, war, terrorism and genocide are not mutually exclusive. Now, following the “Arab Spring,” even as the usual suspects maintain their explicitly genocidal threats against Israel, certain “progressive” Jews proudly lead various rallies and publications for "peace” and “democracy” in the Middle East. Such “progress,” we might learn from Roman Polanski’s film “The Pianist,” could only be fashioned upon yet another generation of Jewish corpses.
Pain And Martyrdom After The Arab Spring
Soon, at least meteorologically, the Arab Spring will become an “Arab Winter. It will also be an apt change of metaphor. After all, from the standpoint of civilizational vulnerabilities to jihadist terror, nothing will have been improved.
Why Children Shoot Other Children At School
We Jews have had to grow accustomed to perverse celebrations of death by large segments of the Islamic world. Sadly, such familiarity is now compelled by the rationale of Islamic terrorists in justifying their wanton murder of Israelis. For these terrorists, the Jewish worship of life is a sign of weakness and an expression of shaky faith.
Barack Obama, Individual Sacredness And The Lamed-Vav
Our new president seemingly understands something of very great importance: The state of our union is intimately intertwined with the state of our world. Our fate as Americans will ultimately depend upon our willingness to identify more broadly and openly as citizens of the entire planet. Reciprocally, the fate of all others on earth will be impacted more or less by what happens next in American politics. But the final outcome of all such interdependence will be determined by what is ordinarily called "human nature."
Iranian Nuclearization, ‘Human Shields’ And Israeli Preemption: The View From International Law
Soon, Israel will have little choice but to preemptively destroy Iran's developing capacity for nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Confronted by a declared enemy state that remains openly genocidal as it forges ahead with illegal nuclearization, Israel will face many tactical difficulties.
Space, Time and The Middle East “Peace Process”
Without getting lost in the immensely dense intricacies of quantum theory and the theories of relativity, we already know that modern physics has witnessed revolutionary breakthroughs in the rational understanding of space and time. Normally, however, these imaginative breakthroughs - which have produced entirely new "paradigms" or scientific models of the physical universe, still remain distant from analytic considerations of international relations and international law.
Kafka In Washington: Deceptive Cartographies And Hidden Meanings
Many people prowl round Mount Sinai. Their speech is blurred, either they are garrulous or they shout or they are taciturn. But none of them comes straight down a broad, newly made, smooth road that does its own part in making one's strides long and swifter.
Franz Kafka, Mount Sinai
Freeing Marwan Barghouti Would Violate International Law And Imperil Israel
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has reportedly asked Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to free imprisoned terrorist Marwan Barghouti. Her argument, it would appear, is that the Tanzim leader remains very popular among the Palestinians, and that he is the only Fatah representative who could successfully supplant the Hamas-led government.
After Annapolis: Israeli Rights, Arab/Islamic Anti-Semitism And International Law (Part I)
The recent Annapolis "peace" conference - and President Bush's subsequent visit to the Middle East - shows that where Israel is concerned, there is still nothing new under the sun. Once again, fundamental Israeli rights were shamelessly subordinated to the presumed rights of all others, including even of openly Arab defiant terrorists now conveniently disguised as an "Authority." Once again, it seems, Israel had been called upon to offer land for nothing.
Project Daniel: Israel’s Survival Amidst Growing Worldwide Anarchy (Part Six)
In the concluding paragraphs of our Project Daniel Final Report, Israel's Strategic Future, we identify a number of critical policy issues that need substantial further study. The first of these issues is described as "the growing anarchy in world affairs." What does it mean to live amidst such anarchy? What are the expected implications for secure and predictable international relations?
Project Daniel: Israel’s Policy Of Nuclear Ambiguity (Part Five)
My prior column dealt with some of the precise ways in which a nuclear war might actually begin between Israel and its enemies. From the standpoint of preventing such a war, it is essential that Israel now protect itself with suitable policies of preemption, defense and deterrence.