We are so used to thinking about nuclear weapons as the instruments of deterrence that we are really at a loss for ideas when that breaks down.
Israel built nuclear weapons precisely to be able to defend herself without any allies if need be. For obvious reasons — the Holocaust, the Suez crisis, the hostility of the UN, and DeGaulle’s withdrawal of support in 1967 — it is the bedrock of Israeli foreign policy never to rely on any treaty or alliance for security. With the ultimate weapon you can deter enemies yourself.
Now it is becoming clear that there has always been another side to nuclear weapons. The one Einstein and Oppenheimer tried to warn us about. In the hands of people who don’t care about dying, when deterrence fails, the weapons will kill us no matter what we do. We are all in denial about this, clinging to deterrence for salvation.
How many of us truly understand that it is a certainty that if the Russians launched their missiles today we would cease to exist as a people within the hour. We would be destroyed beyond all possibility of recovery. Nothing could save us. Not our military, not prayer, nothing. Yes, we would incinerate them in return but that would not save us. We are utterly helpless to save ourselves if they are willing to make a suicide attack.
This is true in the case of Israel even if attacked by a much smaller nuclear power. And now we have Iran publicly threatening daily to do just that.
But a suicide attack by Muslims? A country preaching Jew-hatred actually killing Jews? Hard to imagine such things.
