The comparison between Golda Meir’s Yom Kippur War debacle and Netanyahu’s nuclear Iran debacle does a great disservice to Golda. Golda was surprised, Golda was misled; Netanyahu had the information and he also had yours truly, who attempted in every way possible to explain to him the significance of the information he had.
Netanyahu’s fiasco is exponentially bigger than Golda’s. But not because he didn’t succeed in ensuring accords more favorable to Israel. Netanyahu failed when he transferred Israel’s Iran problem to the nations of the world.
These are the hardest times Israel has ever faced. A nuclear or nuclear-threshold Iran will trigger an arms race in the Middle East. In the crumbling Arab expanse – in a Middle East that is shedding the nation-state straightjacket the West imposed on it – the first leader to attain a nuclear bomb will become the next Saladin.
The American weapons industry (most of the weapons in the world are manufactured in the U.S.) is already rubbing its hands in anticipation of the fat American orders – “remuneration” to the Arab states that fear a nuclear Iran. The array of terror organizations under Iranian auspices are also waiting – for the billions of Iranian petro-dollars now being freed.
In face of the above “technical” dangers, some will claim that all we need is a technical solution. Just like we have gotten used to putting cement blocs at bus stations to prevent terrorists from running over people standing there, we will position Iron Domes in the face of the nuclear threat and live happily ever after.
But this notion is absurd. No anti-missile system can seal Israel’s skies from a consolidated nuclear and rocket attack. Furthermore, the real danger is not technical, but essential. Israel is losing its very legitimacy. The right of the very existence of a Jewish state on the map is being called into question.
When did the Holocaust begin? With the breakout of the war on September 1, 1939? On Kristallnacht in November 1938? No. It began with Hitler’s speeches in the German Reichstag in 1933, when he publicly declared his intention to destroy the Nation of Israel – and nobody reacted.
This experience is the premise – sadly – upon which Israel has based its existence. Ever since Israel was founded, it has dragged every hapless visiting dignitary straight from the airport to the Israeli Temple: the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. “Look,” Israel says to the world, “when we cannot defend ourselves, nobody does it for us. We created a state so that the horror of the Holocaust will never happen again.”
And the world was convinced. It knew that Jews henceforth would stand up for themselves. They no longer would rely on American or British pilots to “bomb the tracks” for them.
This principle was not broken by PM Netanyahu, but rather, by a different Likud prime minister – and the best one of them all – Yitzchak Shamir. In the first Gulf War, President Bush pressured Shamir not to allow the IDF to react to the Scud missile attack on greater Tel Aviv. It was important to the U.S. to forge a coalition that would include a number of Arab countries, and Shamir agreed to play along. For the first time in Israel’s history, Israelis wrapped themselves up in plastic sheeting and allowed foreign armies to protect them from a direct attack on its cities.
Israel’s archenemy, the PLO under the chairmanship of Arafat, firmly supported Sadaam Hussein. Logically, Israel, which cooperated with the victors, should have enjoyed the fruits of the victory, while Arafat should have been made to pay a price for his support of the losing side. But just the opposite occurred. After the war, the U.S. applied tremendous pressure on Shamir and dragged him to the Madrid Conference, paving the way for the Oslo Accords.
From the moment that American and British soldiers endangered their lives for the state of Israel, “the Jew” once again became a pawn in the hands of foreign interests. He was forced to pay in hard currency for his right to breathe air on the face of the globe.
When Mahmoud Ahmadinijad began to threaten to destroy Israel, the world stood agape, expecting Israel to react. It remembered Begin’s attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor well, and was sure Israel would react the same way this time. Nobody would have publicly applauded an Israeli attack. But eventually, it would have appreciated it, just like it later appreciated Israel’s strike against Iraq.
But Israel hesitated and Ahmadinijad’s chutzpah (he even came to Israel’s northern border to publicly threaten our country) intensified. The process of de-legitimization began to slowly sprout once again.
Netanyahu did everything to create the impression that the military option was still on the table. For that reason, the process of de-legitimization was slow and much more subtle than what the Jews experienced in the ‘30s. But ultimately, Netanyahu effectively transferred the responsibility for Jewish existence to the hands of the world. Instead of being a state that takes responsibility for its own fate and retaliates against foreign threats, Israel turned into something like Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Munich Accords.
Czechoslovakia – a strong and progressive state – was forced to wait outside the door while the great powers debated its fate with Hitler. And they decided to sacrifice it for the sake of the interests of England and France. Czechoslovakia was only supposed to lose the Sudetenland, but within a short time it lost its sovereignty – without a single shot being fired.
States that cannot defend themselves exist thanks to the kindness and interests of other states. When those melt away, they exist on borrowed time. More than I fear war, I fear that there will be no need for it…