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Why Israel Needs the Bomb: The Conventional Dimension

(Wall Street Journal) Mark Helprin - Sixty-five years after Germany's campaign to exterminate the Jews, of the many countries in the world Israel is the only one repeatedly subjected to calls for its extinction. Last week, the Iranian president traveled 1,000 miles from Tehran to stand on Israel's border and threaten annihilation. One can only imagine the hysteria if Israel's prime minister were to go to the Iranian border and do the same. In the 1948 War of Independence Israel had 30,000 casualties, including 6,000 dead, which given its population was proportionally as if today 2.6 million Americans were killed. In the 1967 War, in just six days of battle that created the legend of its invincibility, the proportional figure is 118,000 - 20 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. In 1973, having crossed the Suez Canal, downed a significant portion of the Israeli Air Force, and penetrated deep into the Sinai, the Egyptian army found itself with virtually nothing between it and Israel's heartland. But knowing that had they continued, their concentrations of armor would have been vulnerable to tactical nuclear weapons, that if Israel's existence hung in the balance so would Cairo's and Alexandria's, and that the whole of Egypt could drown in the flood of a breached Aswan Dam, they went no farther. Israel's potential antagonists are closing the gap in numbers and quality, and the Israeli Air Force does not offer the same margin of safety that it once did. The steadily improving professionalism of the Arab air forces, their first-rate American and European equipment, their surface-to-air-missile shield, and most importantly their mass, are potentially a mortal threat. The military strategy of Israel's enemies is now to alter the conventional balance while either equipping themselves with nuclear weapons or denying them to Israel, or both. Israel's adversaries have made their intentions clear, and as their mass and wealth are applied to their militaries over time, Israel's last line of defense in a continual state of siege is the nuclear arsenal devoted solely to preserving its existence. The writer is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.
2010-10-18 08:40:46
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