"The Second Holocaust is Looming"

[Spinoza]

http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/10350.htm

snip>" The second Holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or ten years' time, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will covoke in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Ahmedinejad, by then in his second or third term, the go ahead. The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles will take off for Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa, and Jerusalem, and probably some military sites, including Israel's half dozen air and (reported) nuclear missile bases. Some of the Shihabs will be nuclear-tipped, perhaps even with multiple warheads. Others will be dupes, packed merely with biological or chemical agents, or old newspapers, to draw off or confuse Israel's anti-missile batteries and Home Guard units.

With a country the size and shape of Israel (an elongated 8,000 square miles), probably four or five hits will suffice: No more Israel. A million or more Israelis, in the greater Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem areas, will die immediately. Millions will be seriously irradiated. Israel has about seven million inhabitants. No Iranian will see or touch an Israeli. It will be quite impersonal."<snip

snip>"As with the first, the second Holocaust will have been preceded by decades of preparation of hearts and minds, by Iranian and Arab leaders, Western intellectuals and media outlets. Different messages have gone out to different audiences -- but all have (objectively) served the same goal, the demonization of Israel. Muslims the world over have been taught: 'The Zionists\the Jews are the embodiment of evil' and 'Israel must be destroyed.' And Westerners, more subtly, were instructed: 'Israel is a racist oppressor state' and 'Israel, in this age of multi-culturalism, is an anachronism and superfluous'. Generations of Muslims and at least a generation of Westerners have been brought up on these catechisms.

The build-up to the second Holocaust (which, incidentally, in the end, will probably claim roughly the same number of lives as did the first) has seen an international community fragmented and driven by separate, selfish appetites - Russia and China obsessed with Muslim markets; France, with Arab oil - and the United States driven by the debacle in Iraq into a deep isolationism. Iran has been left free to pursue its nuclear destiny and Israel and Iran, to face off alone."<snip


IMO what is of interest in this essay is not whether Benny Morris is right or wrong in his forecast. Who knows? (Of course, even the POSSIBILITY that there is....lets say....a 5% chance he is correct is chilling.) What is of interest is that this attitude is coming from a man who--for years-- was repeatedly denounced by mainstream Israeli opinion as a revisionist pro-Palestinian historian. Read about him at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris .

If this feeling is indeed prevalent now among Jewish Israelis, even leftist Israelis, I believe an eventual pre-emptive attack on Iran, by Israel if the USA does not act first, is inevitable. (Even though Benny Morris himself does not believe Israel will have the heart to launch a strike on Iran, or at least an effective strike.) The possibility that Israel will, from a (in my opinion understandable) feeling of isolation and desperation launch a nuclear strike on Iranian nuclear facilities--- is growing.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. And any attack on Iran that can be linked back to Israel

Will, beyond any doubt, prompt the holocaust the writer of the article fears. Whoever starts it, the other will finish it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I'm fearing the same thing

What has the Grand Ayatollah been doing lately? Last I heard he was making overtures towards Israel.

This whole thing sounds looney to me because the Palestinians live so close to Israelis that they would die in any nuclear explosion as well. And it would lead to immediate retaliation....something only the Armageddon crowd could hope would transpire.

[AlienGirl]

10. Worst-case scenario spitballing here...

Iran (or whomever the attacking country turns out to be) would claim that Israel had used massive amounts of chemical weapons on the Palestinians, and there were no Palestinian survivors. They would then use this claim as justification for nuking Israel, in retaliation for the genocide. Since the Palestinians were all dead already according to the prior claim, the nuking of the Palestinians along with the Israelis would not be an issue. Since the attack was ostensibly carried out in reaction to a genocidal act, there would not be as much international condemnation of the attacking country as would ordinarily follow from a nuclear attack.

Obviously, this is just a hypothetical how-this-could-happen, and I don't think it is at all likely. It's just that if I were writing a movie with the basic premise "Iran nukes Israel and gets away with it," this is the storyline I'd use.

Tucker

[pelsar]

3. being an israeli leftest...

If this feeling is indeed prevalent now among Jewish Israelis, even leftist Israelis,...doesnt mean putting your head in the sand, holding hands and singing "kumbaya"...while the guy cuts your throat because your a "jew' and an israeli"

the first thing kommeni did in 79 was hang the "left" intellectuals who helped him gain power.....

One can have all the sympathy in the world for the palestinians, but still realize that the lebanese civil war killed over 100,000, that iran/iraq war killed over 1million (and iran sent kids in to clear mines), the Syria wiped out their own city in 82, killing 40,000 using artillary and gas, Egypt gassed yemenites pre 67....Irans fanatics in power, the persians, have no sympathy toward the arabs and less toward the jews, + their religious fanatics.....they might very well use their bomb. it has nothing to do with being on the left or right, but everything to do with the culture and neighborhood.

[Howardx]

4. pelsars right

no love lost between the persians and the arabs. i guess i dont think think the fanatics in charge of iran are crazy enough to take the inevitable retaliation that would come their way if they used the bomb assuming of course, they had it.

[Spinoza]

8. Yes, of course.

The Western 'left' is almost exclusively pacifist. The Israeli 'left' does not have that luxury. Look at Benny Morris. Look at yourself. And yet the Israeli left is probably in general agreement with the Western left on almost every other issue.

[Violet_Crumble]

11. Look at Benny Morris?

By that standard, the Israeli 'left' is a bigoted one that thinks the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians wouldn't be a bad thing....

[yurbud]

5. does he mention that Israel has 200 nukes and that Iran attacking would result in

Iran being wiped off the map?

How often have whole nations committed intentional suicide?

[Tom Joad]

6. Iran presently has no nuclear weapons. Israel has a massive arsenal.

That is how things presently stand.

We should work to make the Middle East, and the whole world, nuclear-free.

[BushOut06]

7. Isn't Iran a little too close to Israel for that?

All that fallout would have to go somewhere. There's a very good chance that Iran would be blanketed in radioactive ash within a few days of nuking Israel.

I don't see this happening. If Iran did launch nukes at Israel, it would be cutting its own throat, as virtually every single country in the world would condemn them - and quite possibly take retaliatory action on behalf of a nation that could no longer do so.

[Douglas Carpenter]

9. first of all Benny Morris is a anit-Arab bigot -- not pro-Palestinian and an apologist

for ethnic cleansing. Anyone who thinks Benny Morris is pro-Palestinian should read this Hareetz interview with him: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=380986&contrassID=2

Second of all there is no evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program

third of all, what better way to silence rational discussion than by instilling fear?

fourth of all, if the U.S. and/or Israel attack Iran this will cause such turmoil in the region that the security of both the U.S. and Israel will be placed in greater jeopardy than anyone can even imagine

___________

"I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world. Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Vanity Fair, 2006. Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Carter from 1977 to 1981.