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Middle East

Nuclear Options

Israel’s leading military ethicist, Moshe Halbertal, argues that in some cases a pre-emptive nuclear strike might be moral while nuclear retaliation might not. An exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III.

By Ron Rosenbaum|February 22, 2011 7:00 AM|54comments
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(Mark Alan Stamaty)
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At some point in the near or not-distant future, the State of Israel will face the question of nuclear retaliation. Consider the following not unlikely scenario: A nuclear-armed nation, or nuclear-armed terrorists, detonate enough nuclear devices to destroy utterly the land of Israel and most of its people, rendering it uninhabitable.

Israel has been called “a one-bomb state” in that a single megaton-sized bomb detonated in Tel Aviv could accomplish such destruction. Many prefer to live in denial of this possibility. The people of Israel don’t have this luxury. If you don’t think they’ve war-gamed this possibility, think again. Many focus on Iran’s potential nuclear weaponry and the statements of Iranian leaders such as Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani that Iran would “welcome” a nuclear exchange with Israel because while it might lose 15 million people there would be a billion and half Muslims left on earth and no Jews in what was once Israel. But there is less focus on the current reality of the so called “Islamic bomb”—Pakistan’s 60 to 100 nukes, now ever more vulnerable to takeover by Taliban al-Qaida sympathizers. Seizable by or salable to terrorists.

What happens if it happens? A “second Holocaust”? One thing we can be fairly certain of: Israel will have the capacity for nuclear retaliation. Israel has purchased and put into operation at least three German-manufactured (!) long-range “Dolphin class” submarines, capable of being fitted out with nuclear weapons.

There has been all sorts of information and disinformation about the disposition of these subs, but most analysts seem to believe they are cruising the waters of the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea, within range of the most likely targets. And, many believe, they are armed with nuclear-tipped Harpoon cruise missiles. Ready to retaliate.

This is complicated by the potential of an attack from a terrorist “bomb with no return address,” smuggled across any one of three borders, or lobbed in from off shore. Whom to retaliate against? And is retaliation moral under Jewish law?

“How could they not?” is one’s first response. But what is the point, what is the morality of killing 15 or 50 million people in order to carry out a threat that failed to deter an attack? The most famous Biblical verses are divided: “An eye for an eye,” says one but “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” says the other.

What have the submarine commanders been ordered to do if they are cut off from the chain of command in what is left of the State of Israel? Will it be up to them in any case? Nations that rely on submarine nuclear capacity as their last line of nuclear deterrence have all devised “workarounds” should their subs be cut off from home base by a decapacitating attack. The United Kingdom, for instance, has a “Letter of Last Resort” locked in a safe in their subs’ control rooms. It purportedly gives the prime minister’s orders about retaliation if he’s cut off. In other words, although they may have orders not to fire without orders, if the ones who give the orders are dead or incommunicado the submarine commanders must have the power to launch in order to give the threat of retaliation “credibility.”

I wouldn’t want that power, that decision in my hands. But what if it were in your hands? Put yourself in the place of an Israeli submarine commander knowing his family has likely perished in the Holy Land conflagration. How many missiles would you launch, how many—and who—would you decide to kill? Is there a “just” number, a “proportional” number? Is any number just? Would it be done to prevent a third holocaust? On abstract “just punishment” grounds?

In the course of writing How the End Begins, which deals with the moral dimensions of questions like nuclear retaliation, I sought to find the state of Jewish wisdom about these questions among the best, most learned Jewish thinkers on this question.

It wasn’t easy.

***

What is the moral status of such retaliation? A friend familiar with the faculty of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary offered to put me in contact with three of the sages there most familiar with such difficult ethical questions such as justice and retaliation and the history of Jewish thinking on the question.

I asked them, separately, to put themselves in the place of a Jewish submarine commander who learns of a nuclear Holocaust in Israel, and, cut off from his home base chain of command by the destruction of land-based communications links, must decide for himself what is the just response. What, in effect, would the sages’ Letter of Last Resort say?

The results played out almost as in some biblical story, or perhaps as if I were the wicked son asking the wicked question at the Passover feast. First one sage, then a second, pronounced himself unwilling to confront the question. Almost as if it were an affront to have been asked. One just wouldn’t comment, the other claimed a lack of expertise. I hate to say it, but I had a feeling they were afraid to commit themselves. These are literally explosive issues. Better to stay in their safe tenured little patch of academia than risk saying something on urgent but controversial questions where their purported wisdom might help ordinary people wrestle with huge life-or-death decisions. Academic timidity, don’t get me started. These are the ethics of genocide and you have nothing to say?

The third sage at least left me with a memorable phrase that I felt justified the quest. When I asked him my forbidden question about the morality of retaliation, particularly in the event of second Holocaust in Israel, he said, “You’re asking something new under the sun.”

“Something new under the sun.” He understood! These are not questions that have had to be asked before the nuclear age. Perhaps the principles applied are older but the alternatives, genocide on each side of the question—this is “something new under the sun.”

And so you’re left with me to think about it and to ask you to think about it. One thing I want to think about is the possibility of nonretaliation. No striking back. Not necessarily to advocate it, but to describe my encounter with an advocate of it.

Continue reading: a second Holocaust, Falstaff, and “irregular warfare.” Or view as a single page.

1 2 3 4 5View as single page

Ron Rosenbaum, a columnist for Slate, is the author, among other books, of Explaining Hitler and, most recently, How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III.
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  • Natan

    With all due respect, Ron Roasenbaum discredits and disqualifies himself from intellectually honest discourse by making a moral equivalence between Halbertal and a mullah blessing a suicide bomber. Let us hope that Israel has the necessary means and moral convictions to prevent a second Holocaust.

  • dani levi

    They went to Germany and played pimp my sub. And pimp they did.

  • fw

    Part of the extremely interesting panel discussion following airing of “The Day After” in ’83. Elie Wiesel starts in at about 3:30. Prescient in some ways:

    http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/index.php?c=1821&m=abc%20viewpoint%20day%20after

  • Tamir

    What a sick picture with which to open up this gravely serious conversation. It removes all objectivity from a topic desperately in need of it by completely lying about the context of the conversation at hand. If anyone is actually behaving like the Nazis today it is Israel so, for starters, the swastika should replace the star on Israel’s flag or be plastered as the background of the Israeli submarine commander. Lest we forget, it is Israel that has a history of international attacks and acts of piracy, not Iran. Ultimately, this only sets the tone of subjective apologetics. Israel can do what it wants to do because it says it has reason to fear an attack from Iran so it can attack Iran preemptively, or any other nation it puts in that category. Where’s the conversation? Its over. As long as Israel feels threatened, the rest is intellectual masturbation.

  • fw

    Iran’s leaders sponsor and direct Hamas and Hezbollah, who have waged continual war against Israel, even after Israel has withdrawn from their territories in Gaza and Lebanon, provoking the two most recent wars in the region.

    Iranian leaders talk about eradicating Israel with nuclear weapons.

    Israel is contemplating what its response ought to be, in the event of such a contingency, hence the article.

    May none of it ever come to pass.

  • JCarpenter

    Would Iran risk killing Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians with a nuclear attack and subsequent fall-out? Hopefully the U.S. hasn’t taught the lesson of “collateral damage” being negligible in attaining the larger goal . . . .

  • shavit

    Natan: Both are providing justification for acts of violence are they not? You may think one is wrong and the other right, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing the exact same thing …

    Tamir: “Lest we forget, it is Israel that has a history of international attacks and acts of piracy, not Iran.” If they paid for the bomb, does it matter if they detonate it? If they pay for the missile, does it matter if it is Iran and not a proxy that launches it? In any case, you seemed to have missed the point of the article. There were no “subjective apologetics” justifying anything based on fear in this article. There were two people having a conversation about a topic that has enormous consequences but no answer.

  • dani levi

    Tamir understands nothing. He defends the greatest exponents of 21st century fascism. Iran has bombed and shot its way from Berlin to Argentina, from Iraq to Kandahar to Beirut to Gaza and Egypt. The Iranian Mullahs insane suppression of its own people with its very on SS, the Revolutionary Guards. I encourage you to read a little on the fate of gays and the Bahai in Iran or the Kurds before you out yourself here as a fan of mondoweiss and Finkelstein. Last I heard the second wave of the coming Green Revolution was clubbed and shot to pieces only last week.
    There is only one good fascist, a dead one. Read some European history.

    Here is a great Halbertal quote from wikipedia:
    “Democracy is a non-violent form of adjudicating different ideologies. It’s very easy to be non-violent when stakes are low; in Israel we are in a condition where the stakes are very high. It’s a tribute to Israel that it has managed to maintain democracy under such conditions of diversity and high political stakes. I would like to see other Western states deal with this condition without becoming fascistic.”

    I look forward to the day, when people like Tamir and Nir Rosen look back in history and see who they championed.

  • Shmuel Lifshitz

    In Syria Assad(the father) destroyed a city and killed 30,000 of his inhabtants when felt an uprising threatened him.
    Khadaffi did not hesitate in using his Air Force to strife his protesting citizens.
    Ahmandijad is constantly declaring he will obliterate Israel.
    The Muslims did not have any scrupulosity when doing their rebelious brothers their due, we have to believe them that their rethoric is not in vain. I do not understand Ron Rosenbaum’s moral pilpuls.
    The comment by Tamir and his flthy comparison made me puke.

  • Ury Vainsencher

    Disclaimer: I am an Israeli citizen and resident. So I don’t really know that we have nukes. It is all speculation in the foreign press (including Tablet, yes).

    Having said that, and assuming for the sake of argument that we do:

    Ethics shmethics. Nobody analyzed this better than Dirty Harry: “Well, do you feel lucky today? Do ya, punk?”

    Every morning when he looks in the mirror and doesn’t shave, Ahmadenijad has to realize that even if he does get lucky, he won’t get lucky. That from Teheran to Cairo, very little will be left.

    We should send all those (alleged) submarine commanders to a press conference and make them swear on their children’s heads that yes, they will push the button. It’s our only chance to ensure they won’t have to.

  • George Murphy

    The author wrote-

    “I decided to ask Halbertal about Israel’s nuclear “opacity,” the refusal of Israel to admit officially that it had nuclear weapons. The carefully worded, scarcely plausible statement by the Israel Ministry of Defense that “Israel would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons” into the Middle East. This has often been decoded to mean, at best, a situation in which not all components of Israeli nuclear weapons had been joined together, although readiness to fire was a few bolts and a few minutes away, for an arsenal most estimated at some two hundred warheads ready to “introduced.” Not counting the ones on subs.”

    Looking just at this phrase-

    “Israel would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons” into the Middle East.”

    I believe that the Israelis knew at the time that the US had already introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East on its aircraft carriers. This was not known publicly, as it was denied by the US, but Israel and others knew. Consider that the US always had nuclear arms aboard many of the carriers deployed to postwar Japan, but never admitted it until recently.

    So it was a trick statement – since the US had already introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East, no matter how many bombs Israel assembles and readies for deployment, it can never be the first.

  • George Murphy

    Oh, and hell yes Israel should retaliate in the event it is attacked with nuclear weapons.

    As a lesson to the others.

  • http://www.depthofrevenge.com Richard Golden

    The novel “Depth of Revenge” is based on the exact scenario addressed so well in this article by Ron Rosenbaum. Mr. Rosenbaum praised the book during his review of the new generation of nuclear war novels published in Slate.com on May 8, 2009. http://www.slate.com/id/2217899/

  • Leon Perez

    Mr. Tamir, you are a disgusting “human being”, to state the State of
    Israel is behaving like nazis after offering repeatedly, starting in 1948, to share the land with the Arabs, while ignoring the terrorism
    that Iran has conducted in the last 31 years is beyond the pale.
    You sir, need a big dose of reality.

  • Ari Venere

    why do you think that Israel will be attacked and not the way around? Israel is the one which starts wars in the region. It occupies parts of Syria and Lebanon and don’t forget whole Palatine.

  • Tamir

    This is the main problem, Ari. What is plainly before us all, namely that Israel is the clear aggressor, as seen through “the facts on the ground”, seems to be constantly ignored. There is this ubiquitous mantra that evil surrounds poor, victimized Israel on all sides and that all these “arab” armies, conveniently indistinguishable from each other, are looming on the borders of this little innocent state, hell-bent on its total destruction. But we should not be fooled that these catch phrases are actually being originally manufactured in the minds of those claiming to defend the terrorist state of Israel. A simple exercise of copying them from these comments and pasting them into a google search box reveals most of them are robotically being rebroadcasted directly from Hasbara sources easily identified on the web. An honest study reveals that little of what is passed for reality when singing the praises of Israel’s government and its rogue military is actually true. For example withdrawing a few hundred radical settlers from Gaza is often called “a total withdrawal of Israel from the territories”, when in fact, “Israel” didn’t withdraw at all. Gaza has not known a single day without total and complete military occupation since this form of world-class Nazism began. What is referred to as heroism when it was meted out by Mordecai Anielewicz and Marek Edelman against the German occupation in Warsaw only a few decades ago is now ignorantly referred to as terrorism by Hamas simply because its against Israel. I don’t support any of Hamas’ violence, but please! They are clearly on the defensive by any standard! All objectivity is completely abandoned and we’re left with hasbarabid bullshit that masks the facts from our minds completely. The consistent and quite deliberate destruction of all Palestinian culture and its deeply rooted history in the land now called Israel is also a work of monstrous proportions with which supporters of the terrorist state refuse to contend.

  • Shmuel Lifshitz

    The jews are defending their right to have an independent, democratic and soverein state. The arabs refused to accept the partition as decided by the UN in 1947. This is their original sin.Before that the grand mufti of Jerusalem colaborated with the nazis.No separate Arab state was formed by the palestinians and the war to erase the new born Israel was initiated by the surround Arab states and others and the result was the Nakba. Since then the arabs tried to get even and were repulsed and defeated by Israel.
    Israel is defending itself,in spite of it Israel is democratic and the Arabs in Israel have the highest standard of rights and living in all the Middle East.
    Ari and Tamir perceptions of history are, maybe, motivated by personal psicological problems, their “facts” are not facts, are delusions.

  • Mitch

    Palestinian culture? “long” history? did I miss something?

  • Leb

    judging by what is going on in the Arab world, it is clear who are the “rogue” states Tamir. Last I checked there were thousands of Tunisians and Libyans crossing the Med to freedom, and thousands of Eritrean’s coming to Israel. None of these people wish to stay in self governed Arab states for lack of a decent future or human rights abuses.

  • Philip

    The author was remiss in not asking some leading rabbis about revenge. They have a tradition of making some very tough decisions ,from the times of the Roman wars,through the Inquisition,to WWII. They had to live with the consequences of ther decisions,and did not shirk their responsibility.

    You may not like what they have to say,but their response would be well thought out.

  • Tamir

    Leb: So what? would you ignore the millions that are staying there to ensure their own freedom, to depose, even in the face of death, the dictator that the US has been protecting, along with Mubarak and the Saudis, for years? Libya is rogue because of one man leading it? All Libyans are rogue because of Qadaffi? That monster will be gone in a few days if he isn’t already. Don’t the millions of Libyans that made this nightmare end for themselves and the hundreds if not thousands that must pay with their lives to create a new dawning of self-determination deserve a little more than to be labeled “Rogue”?

  • Leb

    tamir
    you make your own reality, clearly.
    the fact that every day thousands of Arabs risk their lives to cross the Med tells you nothing does it? It is not only the Libyans.
    When the young flee in such numbers, one must ask why ? And What sort of places do they come from?
    But arguing with you is pointless. Because you clearly have no concept of rational, reality and truth. You make it up as you go along.
    Another point. If Israel were the Third Reich, why are there over a million Arab Israelis here? They seem to be in no hurry to leave. In fact more and more Palestinians are applying for Israeli citizenship, because the thought of becoming a citizen of a future Palestine does not appeal to them. Because they know that they will be exposed to tribalism, clanism, corruption and what not.
    You should stop reading mondoweiss.

  • Tamir

    Germany WAS the Third Reich in 1939 and there were more than 200K Jews living there at the time. The Israeli government today tolerates the same kinds of treatment of Arabs who live in Israel as the Nazi government did of Jews in 1935 to 1939. Arabs live in apartheid conditions and are persecuted all the time so pull your head out of the sand and read an Israeli newspaper from time to time. I have many Arab friends who live in Israel, even some who served in Tzahal as did I. They tell me on their own how they’re being treated so forgive me if I decline to entertain your baseless hypothesis.

    Not long ago 20K Israeli Jews marched in Israel demanding equal rights for Arabs in Israel and freedom of political expression. Were they inspired by Arabs waving the Israeli flag? I think not:
    http://www.peoplesworld.org/thousands-of-israelis-march-against-witch-hunt/

    Shulamit Aloni explains on DemocracyNow why she stepped down:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsZRGB9mcYk

    Notice that, as someone that really wants to know the truth, I refrain from telling you what NOT to read and encourage you to rather read more.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/aloni01082007.html – “They are not ready to hear criticism”
    Do you really expect me to take your word over Shulamit Aloni’s? What qualifications to you have?

    Read! Understand!
    http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/are-israel-and-apartheid-south-africa-really-different-1.265580
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3111727.stm

    Obviously confusing day and night, right and wrong, Israeli piracy is actually used as a context for removing Arab-Israeli representation from the Knesset
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/interior-minister-seeks-to-strip-israeli-arab-mk-of-citizenship-1.294091

    A larger Arab citizenry might demand fair representation in the Knesset. Fully 20% of Israel is Arab yet only 14/120 MKs are Arab. As an Israeli citizen, I defend their rights even if I don’t agree with them! Democracy is better than Nationalism.

  • Tamir

    Mitch: Yes you did miss something. It was systematically removed from your education because it didn’t fit in with the ideology your education was delivered through:
    http://www.palestinehistory.com/history/brief/brief.htm#01

  • Leb

    Tamir,
    great link. a more political source could not be found. from the bronze age straight to Arafat. Love it. It was bound to be, judging by your earlier comments. And it explains your ignorance about fascist Europe.

  • Tamir

    History may not be pretty, but at least we have it.

  • Tamir
  • Leb

    Tamir
    You remind of the Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Rage
    http://www.youtube.com/user/LatmaTV#p/a/8B99644BD8FE4070/0/M87C7i8X09I

    Did you ever read the article? Or did you get stuck with the illustration ?

  • Tamir

    At least we’re clear about our respective sources of news

  • Leb

    Tamir
    So we have identified three things for you to look up. One is German fascism. One is satire and the third is Hebrew history.
    And do read the article, because it is of interest when trying to understand Hebrew thought processes.

  • Philip

    Leb;

    Thanks for that YouTube link. Absolutely fantastic.

  • ZT

    Unfortunately, there’s an aspect the article ignores. Let’s say Israel is nuked, and makes the “moral” choice not to retaliate. Where does that leave extremists in Pakistan and India who see that as an example of what would happen if they struck first? The failure to retaliate could be the spark that causes nuclear deterrence to break down everywhere else.

  • George

    Rosenbaum makes a number of quite elemental errors in his analysis, but they all revolve around his unstated assumption that the nuclear exchange ends history–it’s actually rather ironic that a steadfastly secular Jew would embrace eschatology!

    If there is a nuclear first strike against Israel, Israel is hurt, terribly. But Israel does not vanish–it can continue, both with its remaining population and the potential influx of future settlers. It is only through inaction following the nuclear blasts, and a resulting invasion of Arab forces finishing the job, that Israel and its Jewish inhabitants are truly extinguished. The nuclear response of Israel is warfighting, nothing more and nothing less.

  • Shalom Freedman

    Ron Rosenbaum cites the major moral dilemna which confronts Israeli leaders should there be , God forbid, some kind of nuclear strike against Israel. This underlines of course the absolute importance of preventing such a strike against Israel. It underlines the importance of preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. It underlines the importance of supervising nuclear material in the hands of states which threaten Israel, today first and above all, Iran.
    Rosenbaum also makes the point that in order to maintain deterrence one must be inflexible about retaliation. I think that this must be the posture of Israeli leaders. But of course this posture is not a matter of words, but of deeds. In destroying the reactor in Baghdad and in making the strike against Syria in 2007 Israel did show this kind of determination.
    With this another point I am not too happy about making. There are those who say that the destruction done by a single nuclear weapon would no more eliminate Israel than the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki eliminated Japan. This is a point to be kept in mind when considering retaliation and its consequences.
    On the whole Israel because of its size, and because of the number and size of those who would destroy it faces unique and terrible threats.
    It is to be hoped that ‘retaliation’ will not be the means of dealing with those threats, but rather that forms of prevention and preemption will suffice. Here of course Israel needs the cooperation of the United States to be fully successful.
    This subject is a terrible and frightening one. I cannot write about it without praying to God that the Jewish people will never know again terrible disaster.

  • Elliott Tepper

    I find it strange that professor Habertal can say. “I cannot see a world in which you are allowed to actually kill an innocent person intentionally.” Has he not familiarized himself with the course of human history? War has almost always entailed the death of civilians alongside of their warriors. Wars and their sieges, famines, and plagues have always been the shared portion of a civilization’s armies and its citizens. Perhaps professor Habertal and I would not want to see a world like that, but it has and does and will always exist. That is why civilizations must be very slow to war. Innocents always suffer. That is why most nations have embraced just wars and reserved the right to self-defense and retaliation as a strong deterrent to needless suffering.
    There have been some civilizations where different forms of chivalrous codes of conduct have been practiced imperfectly, most notably among Judeo-Christian nations–and very imperfectly so. But Islam hardly embraces any such code and a significant element of Islam is working day and night to ultimately utterly destroy Israel and then work towards submitting the entire world to Islam. It is no exaggeration to note that the vast majority of Muslims in the world, though not directly involved in working towards the destruction of Israel, are rooting for its destruction. Yes, even moderate Muslims. If such a civilization attacks and largely erases the Jewish testimony from history, that civilization deserves to be destroyed–all of it, for judgment’s sake, lest it turn its attention to its next victim.
    Let there be no doubt that if even one nuclear bomb is exploded in Israel, those responsible can expect not ten or twenty million of their citizens to dies, but their entire civilization to be turned to glass. They, not Israel will be responsible for the collateral damage. If they grasp that fact, then perhaps no one on either side will need to die unnaturally.

  • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

    My name is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and I approve this message.

  • Adam F.

    Look, you farking monkeys have had 2000 years to try and sort out your differences, and guess what, both sides are not going to give. So let the nukes rain. Look, if I had a nuke, That’s where I would put it. The only difference is I would tell the bastards the date. Give them an opportunity to leave, or stay, it doesn’t matter to me. I would nuke all your retarded religions holy ground into dust, and then if you STILL insist on going back to that wasteland, the nuclear fallout will hopefully sterilize you, preventing you from continuing this cycle of which cultures imaginary friend is better. No one cares. Moses is make believe, Allah is imaginary, and seriously if you think that someone else DRAWING your prophet is an offense punishable by death, get the fuck off our planet. You and your stinky, brown, bearded, women-hating kids should be exterminated like the cockroaches you are.

  • Adam F.

    And oh by the way, Jews, you don’t belong in Israel. You got your asses kicked outta there a long time ago. You think you’re any better than the Muslims or the Christians, of course you do, because your the “chosen people”. Its a fucking piece of land. If their is a God, he doesn’t give a fuck about the rocks where Jesus’ blood was spilled, he most likely wants to know why YOU think that 2000 years later it’s ok to still be spilling blood in his name. Look, unless you’re Buddhist, your religion practices intolerance. That’s a fact. And you can tell me all the great things you do with your Church on the weekend, but the bottom line is you think your answer is the ONLY correct answer, and you do humanity a disservice by pretending or even actually believing that you know the answers to the big questions of creation, and what happens after death. Kevin Smith said best, “Don’t have a belief, have an idea. Ideas are much easier to change.”

  • Highlander

    I ve spent the night in a structure full of nuclear weapons. It makes even the youngest, most bellligerent of warriors fall silent, when contemplating their power to harm humanity.

    But for Jews, the obliteration of Israel will only be the beginning. Do you, seriously think, the savage barbarians of Islam, will want to stop at incenerating 4 or 5 million Israeli Jews?

    Next, New York with its millions of Jews will beckon to them. After that, they can systematically track down the rest of you. Ironically, after 2,000 years Israel is the key stone to the survival of western civilization as well as the Jews.

    So,if it comes down to that awful day, you better pray to GOD that, those Sub Commanders do their duty. And don’t just decide to surface, and say, “I read mr Rosenbaum’s book, and now, can’t we all just love one another?”.

  • http://none Jan Sand

    History will not end with Israel’s initial bombing of Iran. Nor with an atomic bombing of Israel. But for sure the degrees of hatred aroused may become unimaginably intense if Israel makes the first unprovoked atomic strike and the disgust the world now obviously feels for Israel will become hugely magnified and the Jews around the world may suffer interminably and very horribly. There is no easy solution to the problem but atomic interaction does not seem sensible.

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  • Bob Ritter

    Morality is an evolutionary strategy. Put morals aside and answer the question of what is the superior survival strategy in the context of your original question. Then come back around and superimpose the morals to justify the select strategy. Isn’t that what “supreme emergency” boils down to. After the strategist figure out the “choice” above with greatest probability of success the only moral question worth debating is which gene pool is superior. And when we get to that question we have become not so different than Hitler. It is all a race. A race to where we all must wonder. And how one goes about attempting to arrive at that answer sets the stage for either the greatest good or the greatest evil humankind is capable of. Notice there was no conclusion in Rosenbaum’s article. Because what I describe is a discussion he dare not consider! Who lacks courage?

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Nuclear Options

Israel’s leading military ethicist, Moshe Halbertal, argues that in some cases a pre-emptive nuclear strike might be moral while nuclear retaliation might not. An exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III.