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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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Boston University Rejects Proposal to Divest From Israel
College students in the Boston, Massachusetts area hold dueling demonstrations amid Israel’s war with Hamas in April 2024. Photo: Vincent Ricci via Reuters Connect
Boston University has rejected the group Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) call for its endowment to be divested of holdings in companies which sell armaments to the Israeli military, becoming the latest higher education institution to refuse this key tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
“The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East,” university president Melissa Gilliam said on Tuesday in a statement which reported the will of the board of trustees. “Our traditions of free speech and academic freedom are critical to who we are as an institution, and so is our tradition of finding common ground to engage difficult topics while respecting the dignity of every individual.”
Gilliam’s announcement comes amid SJP’s push to hold a student government administered referendum on divestment, a policy goal the group has pursued since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Its hopes were dashed on Tuesday when what SJP described as “technical difficulties” caused the referendum to be postponed indefinitely. However, SJP hinted that the delay may have been caused by its failing to draw a “representative sample of BU’s undergraduate population” to the polls.
SJP’s relationship with the university is poor, according to The Daily Free Press, Boston University’s official campus newspaper. In November, the Student and Activities Office issued the group a “formal warning” following multiple violations of policies on peaceful assembly. SJP, the Free Press said, occupied an area of the Center for Computing and Data Sciences for two days and tacked anti-Zionist propaganda — which included accusations that Boston University profits from “death” — on school property inside the building despite being forewarned that doing so is verboten. Following the disciplinary action, SJP accused the university of being “discriminatory towards SJP and our events.”
American universities have largely rejected demands to divest from Israel and entities at all linked to the Jewish state, delivering a succession of blows to the pro-Hamas protest movement that students and faculty have pushed with dozens of illegal demonstrations aimed at coercing officials into enacting the policy.
Trinity College turned away BDS advocates in November, citing its “fiduciary responsibilities” and “primary objective of maintaining the endowment’s intergeneration equity.” It also noted that acceding to demands for divestment for the sake of “utilizing the endowment to exert political influence” would injure the college financially, stressing that doing so would “compromise our access to fund managers, in turn undermining the board’s ability to perform its fiduciary obligation.”
The University of Minnesota in August pointed to the same reason for spurning divestment while stressing the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community. It coupled its pronouncement with a new investment policy, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.
Colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel, according to a report published in September by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.
The losses estimated by JLens are catastrophic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.
“This groundbreaking report approached the morally problematic BDS movement from an entirely new direction — its negative impact on portfolio returns,” New York University adjunct professor Michael Lustig said in a statement extolling the report. “JLens has done a great job in quantifying the financial effects of implementing the suggestions of this pernicious movement, and importantly, they ‘show their work’ by providing full transparency into their methodology, and properly caveat the points where assumptions must necessarily be made. This report will prove to be an important tool in helping to fight noxious BDS advocacy.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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American Jews Believe Republicans Handling Antisemitism Better Than Democrats, Poll Finds
US Nominee for Ambassador to the United Nations Elise Stefanik addressing the Israeli parliament on May 24, 2024. Photo: Office of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.
American Jews believe the Republican Party is handling antisemitism better than the Democratic Party, according to a new poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
The poll, which collected responses between Oct. 8 and Nov. 29 but was released on Wednesday, revealed that Jewish Americans hold widespread skepticism about how US politicians are handling the ongoing surge in antisemitism across the country.
Among respondents, only 39 percent indicated support for how the Democratic Party “is responding to antisemitism in the United States.” In comparison, 59 percent responded that they were “dissatisfied” with how the Democrats are handling the problem.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party performed better among Jewish American respondents, with 45 percent indicating “approval” and 54 percent indicating “disapproval” with how the GOP has handled antisemitism
Democrats have found themselves embroiled in controversy over their party’s handling of antisemitism following the Hamas-led massacres across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Democratic leaders were harshly criticized for adopting what they deemed a soft approach to combating the rising tide of anti-Jewish hate within left-wing circles. High-profile progressive Democratic lawmakers such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Summer Lee (D-PA), have spent the past year launching a barrage of insults against Israel, oftentimes accusing the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” against Palestinians as retribution for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
In November, 17 Democratic senators voted to implement a partial arms embargo against Israel, incensing many Jewish American organizations and pro-Israel supporters who view deep hostility and the application of double standards to the world’s lone Jewish state as an indicator of antisemitism.
Republicans in the US Congress have generally adopted a more hardline stance against antisemitism, launching congressional investigations against anti-Jewish bigotry on college campuses and presenting state-level legislation to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
High-profile Republican politicians such as Elise Stefanik, the nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, have also been elevated into powerful positions within the new Trump administration in part for their strident pro-Israel positions. US President Donald Trump, a Republican, recently passed an executive order to crack down on antisemitism at universities and punish the harassment of Jewish students, including by deporting non-Americans on campuses who promote terrorism and hatred against Jews.
However, conservatives have struggled with surging antisemitism within their own ranks in the 16 months following the Oct. 7 atrocities. Popular conservative podcasters Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have circulated antisemitic content to millions of their subscribers, oftentimes outright accusing Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians and promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Jewish people. Both Carlson and Owens have indicated support for the “Christian Nationalist” movement — a form of religious nationalism which seeks to enshrine Christianity’s dominance in American cultural life. According to the AJC poll, 79 percent of American Jews believe Christian Nationalism is an “antisemitic threat.”
An almost identical number of American Jews perceive left-wing and right-wing political extremism as an “antisemitic threat.” According to the poll, 78 percent believe that the “extreme political left” and 79 percent believe that the “extreme political right” are threats to the Jewish community.
The poll also found that 54 percent of American Jews believe antisemitism is a “very serious problem,” a sharp increase from previous years, and another 39 percent said it was “somewhat of a problem.”
More than half, 56 percent, of Jews have also avoided publicly identifying as Jews to shield themselves from dealing with antisemitism, an 18-point increase from 2022.
“Antisemitism has reached a tipping point in America, threatening the freedoms of American Jews and casting an ominous shadow across our society,” AJC CEO Ted Deutch said in a statement. “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for leaders across the US. We must act now to protect Jews — and America — from rising antisemitism. That one-third of American Jews have been the target of antisemitism in the past year should raise red flags for every American and our leaders.”
The survey also revealed that there is still widespread support for Israel among the Jewish community in the United States. According to AJC, 81 percent of American Jews stated that they cared about Israel because it was “important.” The poll also indicated rising pro-Israel sentiment among younger generations, with 40 percent of those aged 18 to 29 claiming Israel was “very important” to them, an 11-point surge from the previous year.
The post American Jews Believe Republicans Handling Antisemitism Better Than Democrats, Poll Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Irish Leftist, Nationalist Party to Boycott St. Patrick’s Day Events at White House Over Trump’s Gaza Plan
Anti-Israel demonstrators stand outside the Israeli embassy after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Molly Darlington
A prominent left-wing and nationalist political party in Ireland has confirmed that it will not attend St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Washinton, DC next month due to “incompatible values” with US President Donald Trump following the announcement of his plan to “take over” Gaza and rebuild it into an economic hub.
Claire Hanna — leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the once dominant party of Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland — announced the decision as a stance against Trump’s proposal for the Palestinian enclave, where Israel and the terrorist group Hamas have been fighting for 16 months.
“The SDLP’s values are incompatible with what we are seeing and hearing, and we won’t be endorsing it on St Patrick’s Day,” Hanna, a member of the British parliament, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We understand the importance of the relationship between the US and this island [Ireland], but the politics of the current US administration mean it is essential that we stand up for what is right, and when it comes to Gaza, what is wrong.”
Last year, Hanna’s predecessor also refused to attend the White House festivities as a protest against US support for Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
At the time, then-party leader Colum Eastwood accused Washington of having an “atrocious” response to the Middle Eastern conflict — which began with Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — and refused to celebrate “while the civilian population in Gaza lives in constant fear of eradication.”
In line with her predecessor’s stance, Hanna justified this week’s decision by saying the SDLP “could not endorse the US government while it armed and supported the bombardment of Gaza.”
“We hope the fragile ceasefire will deliver a lasting peace and the return of hostages to their families, but the rhetoric of Donald Trump, around the displacement and ethnic cleansing of millions of people, is absolutely beyond the pale,” she said. “We can’t in good conscience attend parties hosted in that context.”
The SDLP also posted on social media announcing its decision, writing, “Ireland has a proud history of solidarity with Palestine.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their Oct. 7 onslaught. After 16 months of fighting, both sides agreed to a ceasefire and hostage-release deal last month, with the first phase set to last six weeks.
Trump last week proposed resettling Gaza’s Palestinians in Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab countries while the US “takes over” the coastal enclave and builds it up into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” His comments have been met with immense backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Michelle O’Neill, and Deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, have yet to announce whether they will attend St Patrick’s Day events in Washington next month.
Traditionally, political leaders from Ireland take part in celebrations at the White House each March, when the Irish premier usually presents a bowl of shamrock to the US President.
Even with its decision, Hanna said the SDLP will maintain relationships with US officials, “particularly with those trying to resist and combat the overreach of the current administration.”
Since the aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, Ireland has been a fierce critic of the Jewish state.
Last month, Irish President Michael D. Higgins used his platform speaking at a Holocaust commemoration to launch a tirade against Israel’s military campaign targeting Hamas terrorists, seemingly drawing parallels between Israel’s war in Gaza and the Nazis’ genocide of Jews.
Amid a downward spiral in relations between the two countries, Ireland joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In December, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin, accusing the Irish government of undermining Israel at international forums and promoting “extreme anti-Israel policies.”
Irish leaders have previously called on the EU to “review its trade relations” with Israel after the Israeli parliament passed a law banning UNRWA activities in the country due to its ties to Hamas.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, claiming the move was accelerated by the Israel-Hamas war and would help foster a two-state solution, which Israeli officials described as a “reward for terrorism.”
The post Irish Leftist, Nationalist Party to Boycott St. Patrick’s Day Events at White House Over Trump’s Gaza Plan first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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