Recent events  in Syria underscore the changing geo-strategic landscape in the Middle East. For Israel, although the fall of Assad will likely weaken Iran, it won’t necessarily reduce the risk of a nuclear war in the region. In fact, there is apt to take place a strengthening of certain Sunni sub-state jihadist elements, a development that could prove “force-multiplying” with a non-nuclear Turkey and/or an already-nuclear non-Arab Pakistan. Plausible “wild cards” in this opaque mix would be an increasingly desperate pre-nuclear Iran and an expectedly perplexed non-nuclear Saudi Arabia. Also to be factored in should be the unpredictable element of already-nuclear Iranian ally North Korea and its potentially critical connections to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In essence, even a newly-weakened and still pre-nuclear Iran could pose existential hazards to Israel by means of North Korean military surrogates.

Israel’s nuclear weapons and its nuclear doctrine should ensure national survival. In the early 1950s, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, already understood the need for a conspicuous “equalizer” to secure an otherwise too-vulnerable Jewish State.

Early on, the “old man” had recognized that in the absence of task-appropriate nuclear assets, Israel could sometime lose every tangible chance to simply endure.

Still, no category of weapons, even nuclear ordnance, is meaningful on its own All weapon systems need to be informed by suitable strategy and tactics. How should these special Israeli assets be “used?”

Back in the early days, when Americans and the Soviets were first defining a bipolar Cold War nuclear strategy ex nihilo, Israel had nowhere to turn for a template of useful nuclear guidance. What Jerusalem did understand, from the start, is that nuclear ordnance can succeed only through non-use.

This seeming paradox has prominent conceptual origins in Sun Tzu’s ancient dictum from The Art of War: “Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.” In brief, deterrence, whether ancient or contemporary, “works” to the extent that prospective aggressors could calculate that the expected costs of striking first would exceed expected gains.

To work, designated adversaries must be considered rational nation-states. Sometimes, these states could operate in tandem with other states (an alliance) or with assorted terror groups (hybrid). In the future, Israel’s enemies could include sub-state nuclear foes acting by themselves, such as Hezbollah, after it had become the recipient of reassuring nuclear largesse from Iran or even North Korea.

For now, at least, Israel has no current nuclear enemies, unless one were to consider Pakistan.

Despite a common enemy in Israel, the conflict between radical Shiite and Sunni forces continues across the region. For all sides, the aim of this conflict is “escalation dominance” during episodes of competitive risk-taking. Over time, such escalations by Iran could include nuclear warheads, not against insurgent targets, but against a formidable Arab state such as Saudi Arabia.

As a literal matter of survival, Israel should be intellectually creative and conceptually well-prepared. For deterrence to work long-term, Iran and its proxies would need to be told more rather than less about (1) Israel’s nuclear targeting doctrine; and (2) the expected invulnerability and penetration-capability of Israel’s nuclear forces.

However counter-intuitive, this means that to best prepare for all plausible attack scenarios, Israel should plan conscientiously for the incremental replacement of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” with apt levels of “selective nuclear disclosure.” In common parlance, it will soon be time for Jerusalem to remove Israel’s bomb from the “basement.”

For Israel, the only continuously true purpose of nuclear weapons should be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post. Nonetheless, there would inevitably remain diverse circumstances under which Israeli nuclear deterrence could fail.

How might such fearful circumstances arise? Four principal though not mutually exclusive scenarios now warrant both mention and examination. Israel’s strategic planners should study these paradigmatic narratives closely, and prepare to deal effectively with any and all of them, singly and in potentially synergistic interactions.

Taken together with the four basic scenarios outlined below, these “parallel” narratives could help provide Israel with needed intellectual armaments to prevent “the worst.” Presently, though Israel need not worry about any existing regional nuclear adversary, state or sub-state, it’s nuclear weapons and doctrine could still represent an indispensable “ultimate” deterrent against forms of massive conventional/biological/chemical attack.

(1)     Nuclear Retaliation

Should Iran or an alliance of enemy states ever launch a nuclear first-strike against Israel (in principle, this could include North Korea), Jerusalem would respond to the extent possible with a nuclear retaliatory strike. If enemy first-strikes were to involve other available forms of unconventional weapons, such as chemical, biological or EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapons, Israel might still launch a “limited” nuclear reprisal. This decision would depend, in large measure, on Jerusalem’s informed expectations of follow-on enemy aggression and its comparative calculations of damage-limitation.

If Israel were to absorb a massively disruptive non-nuclear attack, a nuclear retaliation could not automatically be ruled out, especially if: (a) the state aggressors were perceived to hold nuclear and/or other unconventional weapons in reserve; and/or (b) Israel’s leaders were to believe that non-nuclear retaliations could not prevent annihilation of the Jewish State. A nuclear retaliation by Israel could be ruled out only in those rapidly discernible circumstances where enemy state aggressions were clearly conventional, “typical” (that is, consistent with all previous instances of attack, in degree and intent), and hard-target oriented (that is, directed towards Israeli weapons and related military infrastructures, rather than civilian populations).

(2)     Nuclear Counter retaliation

Should Israel ever feel compelled to preempt enemy state aggression with conventional weapons, the target state(s)’ response would largely determine Jerusalem’s next moves. If this response were in any way nuclear, Israel would doubtlessly turn to some available form of nuclear counter retaliation.

If this retaliation were to involve other non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, Israel could also feel pressed to take the escalatory initiative. Again, this decision would depend upon Jerusalem’s judgments of enemy intent and on its corollary calculations of damage-limitation.

Should the enemy state response to Israel’s preemption be limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is unlikely that the Jewish State would then move to any nuclear counter retaliations. If, however, the enemy conventional retaliation was “all-out” and directed toward Israeli civilian populations as well as Israeli military targets, an Israeli nuclear counter retaliation could not be excluded. Such a counter retaliation could be ruled out only if the enemy state’s conventional retaliation were identifiably proportionate to Israel’s preemption; confined to Israeli military targets; circumscribed by the legal limits of “military necessity”; and accompanied by certain explicit and verifiable assurances of non-escalatory intent.

(3)     Nuclear Preemption

It is highly implausible that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. Although circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would be rational and permissible under authoritative international law, it is unlikely that Israel would allow itself to reach such irremediably dire circumstances. Unless the nuclear weapons involved were usable in a fashion still consistent with the longstanding laws of war, this most extreme form of preemption could represent an expressly egregious violation of humanitarian international law.

Even if such consistency were possible, the psychological/political impact on the entire world community would be strongly negative and significantly far-reaching. This means that an Israeli nuclear preemption could conceivably be expected only: (a) where Israel’s pertinent state enemies had acquired nuclear and/or other weapons of mass destruction judged capable of annihilating the Jewish State; (b) where these enemies had made it clear that their intentions paralleled their genocidal capabilities; (c) where these enemies were believed ready to begin an operational “countdown to launch;” and (d) where Jerusalem believed that Israeli non-nuclear preemptions could not achieve the needed minimum levels of damage-limitation — that is, levels consistent with physical preservation of the Jewish State.

(4)     Nuclear War fighting

Should nuclear weapons ever be introduced into any actual conflict between Israel and its enemies, either by Israel or a regional foe, nuclear war fighting, at one level or another, could ensue. This would hold true so long as: (a) enemy first-strikes would not destroy Israel’s second-strike nuclear capability; (b) enemy retaliations for an Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy the Jewish State’s nuclear counter retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons would not destroy enemy state second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for conventional first-strikes would not destroy the enemy’s nuclear counter retaliatory capability.

In order to satisfy its most indispensable survival imperatives, Israel must take appropriate steps to ensure the likelihood of (a) and (b) above, and the simultaneous unlikelihood of (c) and (d).

Even in the midst of “only” a conventional war with Iran, Israel could sometime decide that the expectations of “escalation dominance” had become overwhelming and that escalation to nuclear combat would be the sole rational option.

A compelling example could involve an Iranian non-nuclear missile attack upon Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, Iranian resort to radiation-dispersal weapons (dirty bombs), and/or Pyongyang’s combat involvement on behalf of Iran.

All these scenarios pose more-or-less indecipherable hazards for Jerusalem, including manifestly unknown prospects of enemy irrationality. Writing in broadly philosophical terms, philosopher Karl Jaspers observed: “The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it.”

Understood in more narrowly military or strategic terms, Jaspers wisdom suggests that appearances may deceive and an apparently rational foe in Tehran could turn in extremis to non-rational decision-making.

The opposite is also worrisome. Accordingly, for Israel, a presumptively irrational adversary in Iran could unexpectedly turn to rational decision-making, a policy tilt that would at first seem welcome but quickly become dissembling. In tangible essence, this tilt could create unmanageable levels of “cognitive dissonance” for strategic planners in Jerusalem.

For Jerusalem, in daring to face prospects of a nuclear war, candor matters. In all matters of national security strategy, just as in all matters of law and jurisprudence, truth will be exculpatory. Going forward in an unprecedented strategic universe, Israel will need to combine deeply theoretical examinations with tangibly pragmatic policies. Ironically, even its most plainly threatening nuclear weapons could prove useless or self-defeating unless there had first been suitable advance planning for virtually every imaginable WMD war scenario.

For Israel, national survival must always be about what ancient Greeks and Macedonians defined as a struggle of “mind over mind.” Even in a steadily nuclearizing world, the true contest is never just about “mind over matter.” In the end, if all goes well for Israel, there will have been meticulous considerations of enemy rationality and correspondingly calibrated shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Without such multi-layered antecedents, a catastrophic conflict, whether operationally nuclear or “merely” conventional, could become unavoidable.

For the Jewish State, mentored by history, Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt’s warning should be unchallengeable: “The worst does sometimes happen.” It should be taken most seriously by Jerusalem with reference to nuclear war avoidance. No strategic imperative could be more obvious.

Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books, monographs, and scholarly articles dealing with military nuclear strategy. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel. Over recent years, he has published on nuclear warfare issues in Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; The Atlantic; Israel Defense; Jewish Website; The New York Times; Israel National News; The Jerusalem Post; The Hill; and other sites.

The post Israel Must Make Its Nuclear Intentions Clear in Order to Stay Safe in an Escalating Middle East first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Once a year, the Palestinian Authority (PA) celebrates National Reading Day, also named “Palestine’s Schools Read.”

But what are Palestinian children reading?

One book stood out when the PA’s South Hebron Directorate of Education posted photos of the reading activities in the district:

The title of the book on the right is Hanadi in the Restaurant of Horror.

This is a children’s book about Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist and female suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat.

She carried out a suicide attack at a restaurant in Haifa on Oct. 4, 2003, murdering 21 Israelis and wounding over 50.

This is yet another example of the PA’s child abuse, and how the PA teaches children that terrorists are their role models and that Martyrdom is an ideal to strive for.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has reported how this celebration of terrorism is fundamental to PA/Fatah ideology, exposing most recently in the report Teaching Terror to Tots about how Fatah’s youth magazine promotes terrorism for kids and promises the destruction of Israel.

In addition, PMW has documented many examples of Palestinian girls being taught to look up to female terrorist murderers in particular.

This terror role-modeling does not take place only in elementary school. Rather, it continues at the university level as well.

Fatah’s Shabiba Student Movement and Student Union Council at Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie welcomed new students with free notebooks and stationery bearing photos of terrorists Dalal Mughrabi, Salah Khalaf, and Yasser Arafat.

Mughrabi led the murder of 37 people, 12 of them children; Khalaf, or “Abu Iyad,” was the head of the Black September terror organization; and Arafat was the chairman of the PLO and PA.

Following Hanadi Jaradat’s suicide bombing, the PA Ministry of Culture produced a poetry collection in her honor that stressed “death as a Martyr for Allah” as “the highest goal” achieved by “blowing up the enemy”:

The book’s dedication reads: “To the rose of Palestine, the iris of the Carmel, the Martyr Hanadi Jaradat’”

The poem in Jaradat’s honor ends as follows:

Oh Hanadi! Shake the earth under the feet of the enemies!
Blow it up!
Hanadi said: ‘This is my wedding’
It’s Hanadi’s wedding, the day when death as a Martyr for Allah becomes the highest goal, that redeems my land.” [emphasis added]

[Al-Ayyam, independent Palestinian daily, Aug. 22, 2005]

In 2014, while Hamas was again firing missiles at Israel, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Movement expressed its support for the murder of Israelis with a video honoring nine female terrorist murderers.

Hanadi Jaradat, having murdered 21 Israelis, ranked second among them, only surpassed by Dalal Mughrabi, who led the murder of 37 people:

The same year, Fatah highlighted a female army unit training to launch rockets at Israelis, again pointing out murderers Dalal Mughrabi and Hanadi Jaradat as role models who should be emulated:

TV reporter: “Another aspect of the Palestinian woman’s role in all areas is being created here. She is not merely the man’s partner in domestic life, but his companion wherever he is; on the battlefield, she is at his side on the frontline, and fulfills an active role in training generations of resistance [fighters], who will confront the ‘invincible’ army. …

They thereby strive to become an important part of the path of Jihad and the struggle – the path walked by Dalal Mughrabi, Hanadi Jaradat and Reem Riyashi …

Female fighter: “We are young women, but we can do the impossible … We support our boys, our husbands and our leaders to liberate Palestine, in the way of leader Yasser Arafat. We are the sisters of Dalal Mughrabi. We will continue to walk the path …”

TV reporter: “The woman in Palestine is no longer a prisoner of her home or work, but constitutes the foundation of the [young] generations’ education and the occupation’s defeat.” [emphasis added]

[Facebook, “Fatah – The Main Page,” July 10, 2014, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades YouTube channel, July 10, 2014]

Terrorist Dalal Mughrabi is by far the PA’s most “popular” female role model, with five schools having been named after her, thus creating a strong identification for girls.

PMW exposed this interview with teenage girls studying in a Dalal Mughrabi school. One of the girls stated that her “life’s ambition” was to become like murderer Dalal Mughrabi:

PA TV host: “Today we are in the Dalal Mughrabi School [in Gaza], to get to know the Palestinian Martyr and fighter [Dalal Mughrabi] …”

Student 1: “Dalal Mughrabi is a great leader, who raised more and more and worked for the Palestinian cause to protect the pure land of the homeland, by defending Jerusalem to liberate it. This fighter may have died and her soul may have ascended to Heaven, but still our mothers give birth to thousands like Dalal, and she still walks among us. Dalal Mughrabi has given us a lot, and I personally am proud to attend the Dalal Mughrabi School, which bears this pioneering name.”

Student 2: “My life’s ambition is to reach the level that the Martyr fighter Dalal Mughrabi reached…”

Teacher at the school: “Dalal Mughrabi is a fighter who carried out Jihad and struggle from the beginning of her life. She was one ofthe brave female fighters who carried out Martyrdom-seeking operations (i.e., terror attacks). We in the Ministry of Education had the honor of naming our school after the Martyr Dalal Mughrabi, so that her eternal memory will stay for a long time.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, March 27, 2014]

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.

The post Palestinian Authority Teaches Children to Admire Suicide Bomber Who Killed 21 People first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Yale University students have voted in favor of a referendum calling for the school’s divestment from Israel — a core tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — the Yale Daily News reported on Sunday.

“The referendum, proposed and written by the pro-Palestine Sumud Coalition, asked three questions. The first two ask whether Yale should disclose and divest from its holdings in military weapons manufacturers, ‘including those arming Israel,’ and the third asks whether Yale should ‘act on its commitment to education by investing in Palestinian scholars and students,’” the paper reported, noting that while each item received overwhelming “yes votes,” they equaled just over one-third of the student body.

The low-threshold is, however, sufficient for the referendum questions being codified and passed as a resolution by the Yale College Council (YCC), which facilitated the referendum and spoke positively of it before students cast their votes. It also rings loudly to the school’s Jewish community, senior Netanel Crispe told The Algemeiner during an interview, explaining that some 2,500 students voted for a policy aimed at compromising Israel’s national security to precipitate its destruction.

Crispe, as well as his fellow student Sahar Tartak, led a campaign against the referendum.

“We put up a good fight, and I am immensely proud and grateful for all the students who organized to support the ‘vote no’ campaign,” Crispe said. “While this ultimately represents the opinion of less than half the student body, it highlights the level of animosity, discrimination, and, to a large degree, Jew-hatred that is present on this campus. What they said is that they support destruction of Jews, the abandonment of Western values, and are willing to do anything at their disposal to accomplish those goals.”

He continued, “The largest consequence of this resolution and its passing on the student level is its effect on the Jewish students. Some 2,000 of our peers were willing to publicly make it clear that they don’t support us and that they’re willing to go in favor of a bill that specifically targets the Jewish state and the land of Israel while labeling it as an apartheid state and perpetrator of genocide. I’ve seen no such bill or resolution put forth or passed to condemn Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 or to support Jewish life or condemn antisemitism.”

On Monday, Yale University told The Algemeiner it will continue to foster intellectual diversity and a robust Jewish student life without discussing the merits, or lack thereof, of the referendum.

“The university remains committed to fostering an academic environment where all can feel a sense of belonging,” a spokesperson said. “There are strong collaborations and close working relationships among the Joseph Slikfa Center for Jewish Life at Yale, Chabad at Yale, the University’s Chaplain’s Office, the faculty-led Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life, and other offices across Yale, including the Yale College Dean’s Office and the Office of the President. For example, the Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life is helping to guide the university’s continued efforts to support and enhance student life for Yale’s Jewish students.”

Regarding the referendum, the university said, “The referendum votes are expected to be formally transmitted to President [Maurie McInnis] this week. The YCC followed the referendum process according to its by-laws, and throughout the voting process, many undergraduate students and other members of the Yale community — including graduate and professional school students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents — shared their views openly with one another and with Yale University leaders.”

Speaking to the Yale Daily News, Han Pimental-Hayes, a leader of the anti-Zionist Sumud Coalition group which authored the resolution, praised the outcome of the referendum as expressing the will of students.

“University leaders have long tried to paint pro-Palestine and pro-divestment students as a fringe majority,” she said. “The results of this referendum demonstrate that, in reality, the movement for a free Palestine and a more ethical endowment is overwhelmingly popular.”

Yale University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) has before ruled against divesting from armaments manufacturers, saying in April that “it does not believe that such activity meets the criteria for divestment” because “this manufacturing supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security.” The decision set off a raging protest which resulted in the assault of a Jewish student and the arrest of some 47 students who had trespassed Beinecke Plaza, where they vowed to abstain from food unless the university acceded to their demands.

The campus has seen a heightening of anti-Zionist and antisemitic behavior since Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7. Less than a month after the onslaught, the Yale Daily News came under fire for removing what it called “unsubstantiated claims” of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas raping and beheading Israelis on Oct. 7 from an article written by Sahar Tartak. Published on Oct. 12, the column — which lambasted Yalies4Palestine (Y4P), for defending and seemingly applauding Hamas’s atrocities — was at some point afterward censored to no longer include a portion describing reports and eyewitness accounts of Hamas raping and beheading Israeli civilians. The paper later apologized.

Additionally, on the day of the massacre, Zareena Grewal — an associate professor of American Studies, Ethnicity, Race & Migration, and Religious Studies at Yale who describes herself as a “radical Muslim” — defended Hamas, saying it had “every right to resist through armed struggle” while denouncing Israel as as a “murderous, genocidal settler state.”

Most recently, a pro-Hamas activist spat in the direction of Jewish students, a group which included Tartak, for campaigning against the referendum.

On Monday, during an interview with The Algemeiner, Tartak called on the campus’ Jewish community to confront hostility with courage and strength in numbers.

“Our response to this should be an even stronger and prouder Judaism,” she said. “We need Shabbat dinners to be twice as large, twice as many students visiting Israel for Birthright, lighting Shabbat candles, and coming to Jewish learning classes and Torah study. That’s the way we empower Jewish students: make them connected in proportion to the extent that they are being targeted on campus.”

Follow Dion J.l Pierre @DionJPierre.

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