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Dangerous Intersections: Palestinian Statehood and Regional Nuclear War
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, June 21, 2023. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA via Reuters
When Israel completes its obligatory counter-terrorism war in Gaza, the issue of Palestinian statehood will insistently be raised. This perilous resurrection is foreseeable even though any de facto reward for Hamas criminality would be unconscionable.
Still, if Israel could be convinced that an inherently flawed “two-state solution” would be preferable to a future of protracted warfare against terrorism, Jerusalem will have to take certain arguments for Palestinian statehood seriously.
The true intent of Palestinian statehood arguments could prove irrelevant to Israeli acceptance. Israeli reasoning would be strategy-driven whether the two-state argument were offered maliciously or in good faith. A prominent example of the well-intentioned alternative would be US President Joe Biden’s current calls for a two-state remedy.
For the long-beleaguered State of Israel, accepting or rejecting a state of Palestine would involve only injurious choices, but acceptance would be more injurious and more plainly an existential peril. At a minimum, any Palestinian state would be irredentist, seeking incremental control over Israel in its entirety. This signifies control over what Israel’s Islamic foes call “occupied Palestine.” In a worst-case scenario, Israel’s post-Gaza War efforts at self-defense would involve Iran as a direct enemy belligerent. Conceivably, Turkey could join forces with Iran against Israel, though that scenario would likely be “overruled” by Turkey’s membership in NATO.
What would Iranian involvement mean for Israel’s security and regional stability? Ultimately, even if Iran were not yet nuclear, a widening conventional or unconventional war with Israel could still elicit Israeli escalations to low-yield nuclear weapons. Such escalations would become increasingly realistic if Iran were to use “only” radiation-dispersal weapons against Israel. If Iran were already a fully nuclear power, however (i.e., in possession of chain reaction-based nuclear explosives), the Middle East could become the world’s first (and possibly last) venue for a nuclear war.
There is one more important nuance to consider regarding escalation prospects between Israel and Iran. Because North Korea has ongoing weapons-related ties to both Iran and Syria, even a pre-nuclear Iran might be able to draw upon nuclear support from an already nuclear North Korea. Here a non-nuclear Iran could act against Israel as if it were already a nuclear power. In effect, though perhaps difficult to imagine, a more advanced North Korea would act as surrogate of a less advanced Iran. Apropos of this worrisome scenario for Israel, even a North Korea that shares “only” its advanced ballistic missile technologies with Iran (not its explosive nuclear warheads) could trigger an unpredictable nuclear war.
There is an overriding message here for Israel. Issues of Palestinian statehood and nuclear war with Iran ought never to be treated as separate. Rather, these matters of existential security are potentially intersecting and “force multiplying.” For Israel, either an already-nuclear or still-nuclearizing Iran could vastly enlarge the plausible threat posed by a Palestinian state. Reciprocally, Palestinian statehood could vastly expand the existential risks to Israel of a pre-nuclear or nuclear war with Iran.
The holistic relationship between Palestinian statehood and nuclear war is apt to be synergistic and not merely intersectional. It follows that the whole of this core relationship’s injurious effect upon Israel could eventually prove greater than the sum of its parts. But what could usefully represent measurable correlates of this foreseeably catastrophic “whole?”
From the standpoint of science-based prediction, nothing accurate can be said about the likelihood of a nuclear war between Israel and Iran. Israel would nevertheless have no reasonable alternative to offering best-possible estimations. The reason why it is not possible to offer reassuringly scientific assessments of probability is that any such assessments would need to be based on the determinable frequency of relevant past events. Because there has never been a nuclear war, there can be no meaningful estimations of nuclear war’s probability.
Since 2012, the Palestinian National Authority has been recognized by the UN as a “Nonmember Observer State.” Looking beyond the Gaza War, if the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas are ever able to restore a functional level of cooperation, a fully sovereign Palestine could emerge. In short order, this furiously adversarial Arab state would become a jihadist platform for continuous war and terror against Israel.
Israel should remain keenly attentive to force multipliers in its struggles against terror-state patron Iran. Virulent synergies between Iranian nuclearization and Palestinian statehood could spawn unique threats to the Jewish State. Though Iranian and Palestinian annihilationist threats are entirely out in the open, they remain largely unacknowledged. Most worrisome are the myriad ways in which a Palestinian state could change the correlation of military forces in the region and the circumstances whereby Iran would be drawn into direct hostilities with Israel.
Understandably, nuclear weapons are generally regarded as destabilizing. In the special case of Israel, however, possession of such weapons could become all that protects the state’s civilian population from catastrophic international aggression. Maintaining stable nuclear deterrence, whether deliberately ambiguous or disclosed, could ultimately prove indispensable to Israel’s survival. But this conclusion makes sense only if those nuclear weapons are used for war avoidance or war mitigation, not for the fighting of nuclear war.
Iran is adding to its arsenal of cruise missiles. Even without nuclear warheads, such “fully smart” weapons could lead to accelerated Israel-Iran competition in risk-taking and a corresponding search for escalation dominance. To succeed in this competition, Israel should prepare to move beyond a policy of deliberate nuclear ambiguity to one of selective nuclear disclosure. The reason would not be to validate Israel’s military nuclear capacity (that capacity is already well recognized in Tehran), but to convince Iranian leaders that an Israeli resort to the use of nuclear weapons could be rational.
Ironically, the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrent could vary inversely with that deterrent’s perceived destructiveness. Though counterintuitive, a seemingly too destructive Israeli nuclear force could undermine Israel’s deterrent effectiveness.
There are associated matters of law. In its landmark Advisory Opinion of 8 July 1996, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled: “The Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense…” Where the very survival of a state would be at stake, concluded the ICJ ruling, even a tangible use of nuclear weapons could be permissible.
Israel’s existential vulnerability to a fully nuclear Iran is manifest. On its face, Israel’s small size precludes tolerance of any Iranian nuclear attack. In 2015, this point was made openly by a senior Iranian official: “Israel is a one-bomb state.” This means that Israel’s annihilation would require only a single Iranian nuclear bomb.
For Israel, it is time for analytic clarity and absolute candor. From a regional or world security standpoint, Israel’s nuclear weapons are not the problem. In the Middle East, the most persistent source of war and terror remains a genocidal Arab/Islamist commitment to “excise the Jewish cancer.” Faced with the threat of a Palestine that is “free from the River to the Sea” – that is, a Palestine that has completely destroyed and replaced Israel – the Jewish State will need to acknowledge that Palestinian statehood is not just another tactical enemy expedient. Indeed, a cartographic genocide has already been inflicted upon Israel. All official Palestinian maps describe Israel as “Occupied Palestine”. The Jewish State has already been eliminated.
With a selectively revealed nuclear weapons posture, Israel could more reliably deter a rational Iranian enemy’s unconventional attacks and perhaps most of its large conventional aggressions. Additionally, with such an updated deterrence posture, Israel could, if necessary, launch non-nuclear preemptive strikes against Iranian hard targets and against associated counterforce capabilities.
Left in place, these assets could threaten Israel’s physical survival with impunity. In the absence of acknowledging possession of certain survivable and penetration-capable nuclear weapons, therefore, Israel’s lawful acts of preemption (“anticipatory self-defense”) could trigger the onset of a much wider war. The reason is straightforward: There would then remain no convincing threat of an unacceptable Israeli counter-retaliation.
The decision to bring Israel’s “bomb” out of the “basement” (that is, Israel’s calculated end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity”) would not be easy. But the stark realities of facing not only a nuclear-capable Iran but also assorted other nuclear aspirants – sometimes in synergy with anti-Israel terrorists – obligate immediate reconsideration of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.” As a corollary, Jerusalem will need to clarify that its multi-level active defenses would operate in tandem with Israel’s counterforce nuclear retaliations, not in their stead.
All of this suggests that Israeli security assessments of Palestinian statehood and Iranian nuclearization should be undertaken together, and with due regard for complex synergistic intersections. For Israel, the cumulative impact of Palestinian statehood and Iranian nuclearization would be substantially greater than the sum of their parts. The poet Auden’s words should ring as a galvanizing prophecy: “Defenseless under the night; our world in stupor lies.”
Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
The post Dangerous Intersections: Palestinian Statehood and Regional Nuclear War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Netanyahu Holds Emergency Meeting on Hostage Deal
People walk past images of hostages kidnapped in the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas from Gaza, in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
JNS.org — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting at Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening to discuss efforts to free the captives still being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The meeting was convened in response to the rejection by Hamas of all proposals currently on the table, a senior security source told Israel;s Channel 13.
The terrorist group has continued to insist on its key demands that the war end and Israeli troops withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
Mossad chief David Barnea was to have presented a new proposal to a select group of ministers and senior security officials at the meeting, including Defense Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, according to the report.
Katz, who took over the defense portfolio from Yoav Gallant on Nov. 8, reiterated on Sunday that the hostages’ return was Jerusalem’s “most important value goal.”
“As I defined from my first day in the role, returning the hostages home is our most important value goal,” he said. “There have never been, and never will be, political considerations on the matter,” he added.
“Every meeting with the families of the hostages and those involved in the mission to return them fills me with more motivation, and I pledge to work together with the defense establishment in every possible way to return them home.”
Kan News reported on Sunday that Hamas’s senior leadership has relocated from Qatar to Turkey. The report cited unnamed Israeli sources as confirming the move, which was said to have taken place in “recent days.”
According to the broadcaster, the development could have “dramatic” consequences for the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, which have been mediated by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt.
During a recent meeting in Washington between hostages’ families and senior Qatari officials, the relatives were told that Doha is “not giving up on the negotiations,” according to an earlier report by Kan. The Qataris also told the families that they had “paused the negotiations to apply pressure on both sides,” according to the report.
Hostage families met on Nov. 13 with outgoing President Joe Biden at the White House, and with president-elect Donald Trump’s State Department nominee Marco Rubio.
According to Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagie was abducted to Gaza from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, the families asked Biden to collaborate with Trump’s team to secure the release of the hostages, to which Biden agreed.
“Biden reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to bringing all the hostages back. The administration has worked tirelessly to achieve a deal as soon as possible, and the President assured the families that these efforts will continue,” according to a White House statement.
Also on Nov. 13, Palestinian Islamic Jihad released a proof-of-life video of Russian-Israeli hostage Alexander (“Sasha”) Troufanov, who was abducted from his family home during the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In the undated video, the third of Troufanov released by Hamas, he says his age is 28, although he turned 29 on Nov. 11.
The two previous PIJ videos of Troufanov were released in May.
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Why Does Bernie Sanders Feed Antisemitic Stereotypes?
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are seen before a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 21, 2024. Photo: Craig Hudson/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Shortly after the presidential election, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders released a scathing statement blaming the Democrats for Trump’s victory.
Alongside a slew of criticisms of Democratic policies on healthcare and labor, Sanders tore into the party for their stance on the Israel-Hamas war, writing that “despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all-out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.”
As usual, Sanders’ statement is deeply off base — both about the situation in Israel, and about the impact of the war on the 2024 election.
Exit polls and voter surveys have painted a clear picture of American priorities in the 2024 election, and the war in Gaza was nowhere near the top of the list.
Instead, the leading issues were the state of democracy, which 34% of voters cited as their main concern, followed by 31% for the economy, abortion for 14%, and immigration at 11%. By contrast, only 4% of voters were most concerned with foreign policy.
Americans also reported notably deep concerns about their leading priorities, with 3 in 4 people saying that they think democracy is threatened and 2 in 3 voters saying that they think the economy is either not good or poor. And nearly half of voters said that they are financially worse off now than they were four years ago — a rate of dissatisfaction higher than any presidential election since 2008.
In other words, American motives for voting the way they did this year are incredibly clear, and they center around the issues that have always mattered the most to everyday citizens. To quote Bill Clinton’s former adviser James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Americans had deep, pervasive worries about their financial and domestic standing this year, and many of them felt alienated by a Democratic Party that spent the last few years more worried about “woke” political issues — and championing terror supporters like Hamas instead of our allies like Israel — than the well-being and financial stability of hardworking American citizens.
This is why Trump beat Harris in every swing state, not just states like Michigan with a high population of Muslim voters. While it may be possible Harris did worse in Dearborn, Michigan, thanks to protest voters from Arab Americans, her underperformance among many other traditionally blue constituencies, like Latinos and Black men, suggest a much wider policy failure from the Democratic Party.
Furthermore, even though Harris was decisively beaten in the state, Michigan elected a pro-Israel Democratic senator.
Sanders’ statement feeds into antisemitic stereotypes, and it is especially noxious given his insistent weaponization of his Jewish identity to viciously criticize the Jewish State.
Sanders has spent the months since October 7, 2023, behaving as a token Jew for some of the most virulently anti-Israel segments of the left, highlighting his own Jewish heritage only insofar as it helps him slander Israel and Zionism, and refusing to condemn the dog-whistling antisemites in his corner of the party.
Charging Israel with the Democrats’ humiliating defeat this year is just the latest example of this tendency, which feeds into the time-honored antisemitic strategy of blaming Jews for self-inflicted issues.
American voters did not come to the ballot box concerned with Benjamin Netanyahu — they voted with their own country and personal interests in mind.
Sanders’ insistence on overlooking this obvious reality, and accusing the “Zionists” for the loss, reflects a concerning level of ignorance and a willingness to throw his own people under the bus for cheap political capital.
Rather than fanning the flames of Jew hate, the senator would do well to turn his concerns inward towards his own party and the myriad ways they have failed the American people. Otherwise, if they don’t learn to speak to everyday American voters, the Democrats will keep losing, and Bernie Sanders will shout his brainless lies into the void.
Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician and star of the Emmy-nominated Netflix series Skin Decision: Before and After. Follow her on Instagram.
The post Why Does Bernie Sanders Feed Antisemitic Stereotypes? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Is the Government of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Celebrating Anti-Israel ‘Resistance’?
An anti-Israel banner hanging outside a court building in Chapel Hill, NC. Photo: provided.
Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture — a division of the town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina — has proudly announced a new banner that praises student-led and often violent campus protests against Israel.
The banner is on display at the Peace & Justice Plaza, which sits in the heart of the downtown shopping district, in front of the local courthouse, just steps away from the campus of the University of North Carolina (UNC). The banner features a pro-Palestinian UNC protestor wearing a keffiyeh with the message “#GOODTROUBLE.”
The keffiyeh has become a controversial symbol, particularly since the terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, that slaughtered more than 1,200 people in Israel, including 46 Americans, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Reuters has referred to the keffiyeh as “an emblem of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.” While the keffiyeh is viewed as a sign of Palestinian nationalism by many Palestinians, it is also viewed by Jews worldwide as an incitement to violence and a symbol of backing mass bloodshed against Israel.
When a protester at UNC yelled, “All of us Hamas,” she was surrounded by fellow protestors wearing keffiyehs, a clear message of intimidation to those in the community who might have different views.
According to their website, Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture promotes inclusiveness and respect as their top values. Yet, in their announcement of the “artistic banners,” they abandoned any semblance of neutrality by ignoring Hamas’ pogrom and the more than 100 hostages that have remained in captivity or been murdered over the past 13 months.
In the town’s announcement, the artist of the banners is quoted as saying that the banners “evoke the essence of the ongoing struggle for racial justice … they echo the timeless words of the late John Lewis, urging us to stir up ‘Good Trouble’ in pursuit of a more equitable world.”
Chapel Hill wrote, “We invite you to visit the plaza to see this new art and recognize the ongoing fight for justice.”
In a recent letter to Chapel Hill officials, former Raleigh City Council member Stefanie Mendell wrote:
It is appalling to think that anyone would consider that “good trouble” would celebrate the murder, rape, and kidnapping of thousands of innocent Israelis, especially when two of the kidnap victims are Chapel Hill residents, one of whom remains in captivity after more than a year.
The Jewish community around the world, and right here in the “enlightened” Triangle is experiencing an unprecedented increase in anti-semitism. This banner does nothing to unite or heal the community; quite the opposite.
This issue is being widely discussed across local social media, with many outraged community members — both Jewish and non-Jewish — contacting local officials.
On Instagram, one user wrote, “This does little more than make me feel that Chapel Hill is not a safe space for the Jewish people.”
Deborah R. Gerhardt, Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC, wrote to town officials:
I just saw that a banner with a keffiyeh wearing student indicating “good trouble” is hanging on Franklin street. What message are you trying to send? That it is good to make trouble against fellow Jewish citizens? That it is good to make them feel unwelcome? That John Lewis would have supported this kind of divisiveness? A Chapel Hill native is currently being held hostage by Palestinians. Does that mean nothing to you? We have no control of Israel policy, but we can certainly show compassion for our Jewish community.
Chapel Hill Jewish resident Kathy Kaufman wrote to town officials:
The protestors chanted slogans such as “Globalize the Intifada”, “From the River to the Sea”, and “By Any Means Necessary”. These chants signify erasure of Jewish identity, ethnicity, and history. The student protestors have explicitly endorsed violence against Jews, including, in particular, the October 7 massacre, and also continuing antisemitic violence (such as currently in Amsterdam and Paris).
This banner, supporting the student protests, is essentially equating Good Trouble with support for Hamas terrorists going on a murderous rampage, torturing, gang raping, and murdering men, women, and children in their homes in grisly fashion. And then taking more of them hostage to torture them in their terror tunnels – still, to this day.
One of those hostages, Keith Siegel, grew up in Chapel Hill. It is now 400+ days that he and 100 others are still being held in Hamas terror tunnels. Keith still has family in the Chapel Hill area, including his sister. What does this banner say to them?
The new keffiyeh banner, hanging above the front doors of the Chapel Hill courthouse, honors and glorifies the very activists who are now appearing before the local courts.
This gives the appearance that the Chapel Hill government endorses or is complicit in attempts to influence or intimidate public officials on matters before the court. Whether intentional or not, promoting this banner by the town is a chilling overreach of local government on issues of law, justice, neutrality, and community safety.
This banner was hung at the same courthouse that was recently scheduled to hear charges against members of the UNC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The UNC-SJP chapter was suspended by the university along with some of its student activists for repeated issues such as vandalism on campus and substituting the Palestinian flag in place of the US flag.
Jews in Chapel Hill feel disregarded, mistreated, unseen, and unsafe. The message being sent to the courts and to the community is clear — local government has chosen the side of the Palestinian activists and anti-Israel inciters, and has thus dismissed the safety and well being of the Jewish community.
Chapel Hill residents are furious and frustrated after contacting the Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture with heartfelt, anguished letters, only to receive form letter responses.
One local resident wrote on a WhatsApp group, “I don’t think anyone is reading our letters … It seems to me they simply don’t care.”
You know very well what a keffiyeh means to many if not most Jews in the United States. You know very well how this symbol has been used to marginalize and intimidate Jewish students and staff on the UNC campus. You know very well that a Jewish citizen of Chapel Hill is being held captive in the terror dungeons of Hamas.
Is this poster what you really want “welcoming“ visitors to Chapel Hill?
I contacted Chapel Hill mayor Jessica Anderson, the Town Council, and Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture for comment. At the time of publication, no responses were received.
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
The post Is the Government of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Celebrating Anti-Israel ‘Resistance’? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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