Israel Matzav

Can Israel endure a war with Iran?

Dan Williams wonders whether Israelis are 'tough enough' to endure a war with Iran.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak estimates 500 Israelis would die should a strike on Iran, which denies seeking to develop nuclear weaponry, turn into a regional exchange of fire.

Such casualties would be painful for a population of 7.8 million, but would not be on the same scale as Israel's 1 percent death toll from its 1948 independence war and the steep losses from similar conflicts in 1967 and 1973.

The difference is that this time, Israel's home front would bear the brunt of any reprisals from Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, Palestinian armed factions and perhaps Syria.

A sophisticated Israeli missile shield would fend off some salvoes, but those that get through could hit almost anywhere, potentially paralyzing the economy and filling bomb shelters.

Matan Vilnai, the civil defense minister, told Israeli Channel 10 TV that while the home front was not fully prepared, he hoped emergency drills held in recent years were "building up the sense, among the people, that there's someone to depend on".

...

Martin van Creveld, a military historian who is critical of the Netanyahu government's Iran posture, posited a deterioration in Israel's fitness to confront an enemy state since it absorbed Iraqi missile salvoes in the 1991 Gulf war.

"More than 20 years of fighting the weak has bred in Israel a revolting blend of aggression and self-pity," he said, referring to outgunned Lebanese and Palestinians.

Van Creveld questioned whether Israeli morale was prepared for the costs of an Iran war, such as downed pilots. But retired air force chief David Ivry, who masterminded Israel's 1981 bombing of Iraq's atomic reactor, dismissed such pessimism.

Even were Iran to take 10 pilots captive, he said, "we'll free 10,000 prisoners to get them back. If the country decides that its national security is at stake, then the price is paid."

Here's the thing: Once a decision is made to go to war, I think that Israelis will stay behind it so long as they feel we are going all out to win (a point that, ironically, was made by Shimon Peres in Williams' article). Operation Cast Lead was enormously popular almost throughout. The Second Lebanon War was enormously popular until people go the sense that we were fighting with one arm tied behind our backs.

A war with Iran would, God forbid, be a fight for our survival. With everything on the line, this country will buckle down and be strong because it has no choice. If God forbid things don't go as planned, there will be backlash as there was in 1973 and 1982. But while the war is going on, almost no one is going to be critical, particularly given that the stakes are so high.

I don't think anyone here deludes themselves that we can live with a nuclear Iran. If that question were being asked, the answers would overwhelmingly be that we cannot live with a nuclear Iran. And I think that many of the people who say that we should not attack are people who are still holding out hope that the US will do the job for us, or at least take the lead. Many Israelis - especially those who have never lived in America and are not fluent in English - do not fully appreciate what Barack Hussein Obama is about.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran, Operation Cast Lead, Second Lebanon War

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:46 PM