Israel's existential imperatives

There's a most interesting op-ed in today's LA Times.  Here's an excerpt:

I take it personally: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to murder me, my family and my people. Day in, day out, he announces the imminent demise of the "Zionist regime," by which he means Israel. And day in, day out, his scientists and technicians are advancing toward the atomic weaponry that will enable him to bring this about.

And another:

. . . Had [Hitler] been stopped before the invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, the lives of many millions, Jews and Gentiles, would have been saved. But he wasn't.

And it doesn't look like Ahmadinejad will be either. Not by the United States and the international community, at any rate. President Obama, when not obsessing over the fate of the ever- aggrieved Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, proposes to halt Ahmadinejad's nuclear program by means of international sanctions. But here's the paradox: The wider Obama casts his net to mobilize as many of the world's key players as he can, the weaker the sanctions and the more remote their implementation. . . .

You'd think this was one of those "hard line" Israelis writing this, wouldn't you?  He goes on to call Obama's refusal to allow Israel to launch a preemptive strike against Iran's nukes while his own administration has taken any meaningful deterrent off the table "immoral."  Harsh words.

. . . The problem is that even if severe sanctions are imposed, they likely won't have time to have serious effect before Iran succeeds at making a bomb.

Obama is, no doubt, well aware of this asymmetric timetable. Which makes his prohibition against an Israeli preemptive strike all the more immoral. He knows that any sanctions he manages to orchestrate will not stop the Iranians. (Indeed, Ahmadinejad last week said sanctions would only fortify Iran's resolve and consolidate its technological prowess.) Obama is effectively denying Israel the right to self-defense when it is not his, or America's, life that is on the line.

Ain't that the truth? 

The American veto may ultimately consign millions of Israelis, including me and my family, to a premature death and Israel to politicide. It would then be comparable to Britain and France's veto in the fall of 1938 of the Czechs defending their territorial integrity against their rapacious Nazi neighbors. Within six months, Czechoslovakia was gobbled up by Germany.

But will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu follow in Czech President Edvard Benes' footsteps? Will he allow an American veto to override Israel's existential interests? And can Israel go it alone, without an American green (or even yellow) light, without American political cover and overflight permissions and additional American equipment?

The overwhelming consensus seems to be no.  But this apparent hard-liner has other ideas.

An Israeli attack might harm U.S. interests and disrupt international oil supplies (though I doubt it would cause direct attacks on U.S. installations, troops or vessels). But, from the Israeli perspective, these are necessarily marginal considerations when compared with the mortal hurt Israel and Israelis would suffer from an Iranian nuclear attack. Netanyahu's calculations will, in the end, be governed by his perception of Israel's existential imperatives. And the clock is ticking.

Benny Morris used to be a darling of the anti-"occupation," post-Zionist Israeli left.  Lately, not so much.  Now he's even accused of making Islamophobic and racist statements towards Arabs and Muslims.  He says his positions haven't really undergone any radical transformation and that people have misinterpreted his intentions.  Maybe.  His post-Zionist credentials were pretty convincing, though.  But he continues to surprise.  In a good way.  He doesn't sound like much of a post-Zionist in this op-ed.

Shabbat Shalom.