It’s Not about Bunkers and Bombs
The Torah begins, “Send men to scout the land of Canaan.” (Numbers 13) Moses instructed the spies to determine if the enemy was strong or weak, few or many. Do they live out in the open or in fortified towns?
According to press reports, prior to Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Mossad spy agency embedded agents in Iran. These covert operatives helped to take out Iran’s air defenses so that the Israeli air force could take command of the skies and soon declare air superiority.
When it comes to Israel, and Israel’s actions, everything seems to take on biblical proportions. Our worries are likewise magnified. I am concerned for family and friends who are in harm’s way. They have experienced many sleepless nights. When Iran launches its ballistic missiles, they have to run to bomb shelters. My fears have become apocalyptic. What might happen if the United States enters the war?
Although I have confidence in Israel’s military planners (they have been strategizing about these attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities for twenty years), I worry about the consequences. No military action is decisive. Terms like surgical strikes are misnomers. Collateral damage means innocent civilians are killed. Wars bring unintended consequences. They don’t solve problems with the precision of a surgeon’s knife.
This is not to suggest that Israel should not have attacked. Israel’s leaders have a moral duty to protect its citizens from Iran’s genocidal designs. I have always said that when antisemites rise up and say they want to kill you we must take them at their word. And when antisemites try to build nuclear weapons that can realize these designs Zionism dictates, we must take action.
Israel was founded to safeguard Jewish lives. How can it then allow Iran’s leaders to endanger these lives? It cannot. It must not.
The State of Israel was founded soon after the world learned of the Holocaust. It took to heart important lessons from that cataclysm. Never again will Jewish lives be extinguished without a fight. Its soldiers found meaning in the example of Masada’s Zealots who sacrificed their own lives rather than be taken prisoner by the Roman legion. It seized on the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as exemplars.
We likewise laud the soldiers who fought against the Nazi regime. We speak of their heroism on D-Day’s beaches and in the forests of Belgium. We forget that our defeat of Nazism involved far more than military gallantry. The great success, and victory of World War II, can better be found in the mundane intricacies of the Marshall Plan. That’s how we truly defeated Nazism. Hateful, and yes even murderous, ideologies can never be defeated by military means alone.
It’s never just about bunkers and bombs.
To think that it will all be cured by bigger bombs and larger planes is fallacy.