By David K. Shipler
In nearly two years since the Gaza
war began, the world has learned what Israel does when it feels its very
existence is threatened. It invades, bombs, maims, starves, blockades, sickens,
dislocates, and traumatizes an entire population of innocents whose most
radical leaders and their followers have committed intimate atrocities against
innocents inside Israel: Sacrifice innocents for innocents. It attacks
throughout the Middle East, in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, and Qatar. It defies
international condemnation. It dismisses evidence of its victims’ suffering as antisemitic
propaganda.
What it has
not done, obviously, is use its nuclear weapons, which Moshe Dayan revealed
to me in 1981 could be quickly assembled. As Defense Minister, he reportedly
urged consideration of their use when Israel was attacked by Arab countries
in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Whether the possibility came up this year, as
Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, is not yet known publicly.
The lesson
couldn’t be clearer: Born as a refuge for Jews after the Holocaust, Israel
inherits a legacy of anxiety and persecution, and therefore treasures its
military strength. It feels risk beyond what hard-headed security
experts might assess. Nevertheless, as Henry Kissinger once said about the
Jewish state, even paranoids can have real enemies.
And so, when its own intelligence and military hierarchy grew so complacent that Hamas terrorists could easily flow in from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023 to slaughter, rape, and kidnap, a traumatized Israel sensed doom and replied with terrorism of its own, which an international commission of the UN Human Rights Council has now defined as genocide.
