Although this blog is devoted exclusively to the doctrine of
MAD, I could not ignore this excellent article by Charles Krauthammer in the
Washington Post . In contrast to many, Krauthammer understands the essence of
Netanyahu’s move to form a unity government.
While the rest of the US media is asleep, Krauthammer’s analysis is penetrating
and accurate, his timing perfect.
By Charles Krauthammer
In May 1967, in brazen violation of previous truce agreements,
Egypt ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the Sinai, marched 120,000 troops to the
Israeli border, blockaded the Straits of Tiran (Israel’s southern outlet to the
world’s oceans), abruptly signed a military pact with Jordan and, together with
Syria, pledged war for the final destruction of Israel.
May ’67 was Israel’s most fearful, desperate month. The country was
surrounded and alone. Previous great-power guarantees proved worthless. A plan
to test the blockade with a Western flotilla failed for lack of participants.
Time was running out. Forced into mass mobilization in order to protect against
invasion — and with a military consisting overwhelmingly of civilian reservists
— life ground to a halt. The country was dying.
On June 5, Israel launched a preemptive strike on the Egyptian air
force, then proceeded to lightning victories on three fronts. The Six-Day War
is legend, but less remembered is that, four days earlier, the nationalist
opposition (Menachem Begin’s Likud precursor) was for the first time ever
brought into the government, creating an emergency national-unity coalition.
Everyone understood why. You do not undertake a supremely risky
preemptive war without the full participation of a broad coalition representing
a national consensus.
Forty-five years later, in the middle of the night of May 7-8,
2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked his country by bringing the
main opposition party, Kadima, into a national unity government. Shocking because just hours earlier,
the Knesset was expediting a bill to call early elections in September.
Why did the high-flying Netanyahu call off elections he was sure to
win?
Because for Israelis today, it is May ’67. The dread is not quite
as acute: The mood is not despair, just foreboding. Time is running out, but
not quite as fast. War is not four days away, but it looms. Israelis today face
the greatest threat to their existence — nuclear weapons in the hands of
apocalyptic mullahs publicly pledged to Israel’s annihilation — since May ’67.
The world is again telling Israelis to do nothing as it looks for a way out.
But if such a way is not found — as in ’67 — Israelis know that they will once
again have to defend themselves, by themselves.
Such a fateful decision demands a national consensus. By creating
the largest coalition in nearly three decades, Netanyahu is establishing the
political premise for a preemptive strike, should it come to that. The new
government commands an astonishing 94 Knesset seats out of 120, described by
one Israeli columnist as a “hundred tons of solid concrete.”
So much for the recent media hype about some great domestic
resistance to Netanyahu’s hard line on Iran. Two notable retired intelligence figures were widely covered here for coming out against him.
Little noted was that one had been passed over by Netanyahu to be the head of
Mossad, while the other had been fired by Netanyahu as Mossad chief (hence the
job opening). For centrist Kadima (it pulled Israel out of Gaza) to join a
Likud-led coalition whose defense minister is a former Labor prime minister
(who once offered half of Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat) is the very definition of
national unity — and refutes the popular “Israel is divided” meme. “Everyone is
saying the same thing,” explained one Knesset member, “though there may be a
difference of tone.”
To be sure, Netanyahu and Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz offered more prosaic
reasons for their merger: to mandate national service for now exempt ultra-
Orthodox youth, to change the election law to reduce the disproportionate
influence of minor parties and to seek negotiations with the Palestinians. But
Netanyahu, the first Likud prime minister torecognize Palestinian statehood, did not need Kadima for
him to enter peace talks. For two years he’s been waiting for Mahmoud Abbas to
show up at the table. Abbas hasn’t. And won’t. Nothing will change on that
front.
What does change is Israel’s position vis-a-vis Iran. The
wall-to-wall coalition demonstrates Israel’s political readiness to attack, if necessary.
(Its military readiness is
not in doubt.)
Those counseling Israeli submission, resignation or just endless
patience can no longer dismiss Israel’s tough stance as the work of
irredeemable right-wingers. Not with a government now representing 78 percent
of the country.
Netanyahu forfeited September
elections that would have given him four more years in power. He chose instead
to form a national coalition that guarantees 18 months of stability — 18 months
during which, if the world does not act (whether by diplomacy or otherwise) to
stop Iran, Israel will.
And it will not be the work of one
man, one party or one ideological faction. As in 1967, it will be the work of a
nation.
However, when I read the
comments to Krauthammer’s article I was appalled by the ignorance in assessing
the situation. Krauthammer got it right. But he seems to be in the very small
minority. This is probably the consequence of the US media‘s reluctance for
decades to discuss Islam in general and Shia eschatology in particular. To most
people the idea that Iranian mullahs may indeed desire to start a nuclear war
in order to bring about the return of the Mahdi, the Hidden 12th Imam, seems so
preposterous that anyone who even mentions it must be considered insane. Their
reasoning is that if there were any remote truth in this the media would write
about it, but since they don’t then this must all be nonsense. Case closed.
A scholar of Islam like Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus at Princeton, the author of some 30 books on Islam, who spent the last 60 years in the study of Islam and who believes that Iran cannot be deterred is dismissed as an extremist by the readers, most of whom have never read the Koran and have no idea that the Twelvers even exist.
I can only compare such levels of mass ignorance to the population of the USSR where I spent six years in the 1970s. At least in the USSR there many were eager to tune in to foreign broadcasts and hear what was really happening or read an occasional copy of The Economist to which my father was subscribed to. In the US today the vast majority thinks it is well informed by reading the New York Times or the Washington Post and never ventures to look for more info although it is at their fingertips.
Now that the unity government is formed I guess Netanyahu will wait until May 24 to see what is going on with the Iranian/5p+1 talks and then we can expect an attack on the Iranian nuclear sites at any time. Many in the US will have absolutely no idea why Israel had to do it.
A scholar of Islam like Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus at Princeton, the author of some 30 books on Islam, who spent the last 60 years in the study of Islam and who believes that Iran cannot be deterred is dismissed as an extremist by the readers, most of whom have never read the Koran and have no idea that the Twelvers even exist.
I can only compare such levels of mass ignorance to the population of the USSR where I spent six years in the 1970s. At least in the USSR there many were eager to tune in to foreign broadcasts and hear what was really happening or read an occasional copy of The Economist to which my father was subscribed to. In the US today the vast majority thinks it is well informed by reading the New York Times or the Washington Post and never ventures to look for more info although it is at their fingertips.
Now that the unity government is formed I guess Netanyahu will wait until May 24 to see what is going on with the Iranian/5p+1 talks and then we can expect an attack on the Iranian nuclear sites at any time. Many in the US will have absolutely no idea why Israel had to do it.
