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Israel and Iran

Benny Morris describes the Israeli debate over attacking Iran: The past fortnight has witnessed an unprecedented, open public debate in the Israeli media about whether, and when, to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. While in the past six decades, Israel’s wars have often been followed by debates about this or that political or military aspect, or […]

Benny Morris describes the Israeli debate over attacking Iran:

The past fortnight has witnessed an unprecedented, open public debate in the Israeli media about whether, and when, to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. While in the past six decades, Israel’s wars have often been followed by debates about this or that political or military aspect, or even the justice of a given war (vide Israel’s Sinai Campaign in 1956 and Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982), none have ever been preceded by major, principled, open discussion.

It’s remarkable that no other major Israeli war was preceded by such a debate, but as far as I can tell Morris is right. This should underscore just how wrong Beinart was in his enthusiasm for the “functioning” of the Israeli political and military system. Leaving that aside, what is more remarkable is that the speculation about an Israei and/or U.S. attack on Iran has been a staple of American discourse for most of the last ten years, and Western politicians and pundits have been proclaiming their willingness to start a war with Iran for all that time, yet somehow we continue to pretend that it would be a preventive and defensive measure rather than a completely unjustified and unnecessary attack. It’s interesting that there is a major debate in Israel about whether to launch such an attack, but it’s depressing to think that so many people actually believe it to be necessary and justfied.

Morris doesn’t gloss over the many dangers that would accompany an attack, which Aaron David Miller also describes at length here, but like Miller he overstates the significance of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. When Miller describes Israel as “a tiny nation living on the knife’s edge,” are we meant to take him seriously, or is this a rhetorical concession he is making to Iran hawks so that his article will receive a hearing? When Morris writes that almost all Israeli Jews believe a nuclear-armed Iran “represents a mortal threat to Israel’s existence,” does it not occur to him that common sense tells us that they are wrong?

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