Should Israel attack Iran’s nuclear facilities?
No, says Hirsh Goodman in his provocative new book “The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival,” which examines the strategic, political, social and economic challenges confronting the Jewish state.
It’s not that the mullah regime, which use Israel as “a convenient whipping boy” in its drive to achieve regional hegemony, doesn’t constitute a mortal threat to the country, writes the former military reporter for the Jerusalem Post and editor-in-chief of Jerusalem Report, who is currently a senior research assistant at the Institute for National Security Studies at the Tel Aviv University.
Iran’s surrogates, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, are armed with thousands of missiles, “which carries with it a host of tactical advantages for the Iranians and serious disadvantages for Israel,” he writes.
Should the Iranians gain nuclear weapons, the threat becomes existential. With 70 percent of Israel’s population — a third of all the world’s Jews — and most of the country’s industrial base concentrated in a small area of the coastal plain, a nuclear attack would be catastrophic.
While in one sense Israel’s size is a liability, it also provides strategic advantages in that it is easier to defend a small area against missile attack rather than a large country with extensive borders, all of which need to be secured. That, combined with Israel’s Arrow anti-missile system and its nuclear arsenal that would devastate Iran in response, “should be enough to deter the ayatollahs from sanctioning an attack,” Goodman says.
The unlikelihood of an Iranian nuclear attack, plus the political and military risks involved, would make an operation targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities “strategically nonsensical,” the author believes.
While the Iranian threat is immediate, Israel’s other problems also need attention, Goodman argues. The haredi (zealously Orthodox) community is growing at twice the rate of the country’s overall Jewish sector, he notes, but its schools don’t prepare the children for the workforce. Many haredis don’t work — 60 percent of Orthodox men compared with less than 15 percent of the general population; for women, the numbers are 50 percent and 20 percent, respectively — and the overwhelming majority of haredi men avoid military or national service.
Goodman sees changes coming. Haredi women slowly are coming into the workforce; schools are beginning to teach arithmetic, English and science in order to receive state subsidies; some rabbis are allowing their followers to study certain professions in colleges; and the haredi IDF units have increased from 340 men in 2007 to 2,400 in 2011.
As for members of Israel’s minority population, Goodman sees great irony in their position. “Fate has been both fortunate and cruel to the Israeli Arabs, placing them in a country they can’t identify with, but one in which they enjoy living,” he writes.
He contends that national service would benefit the country’s Arabs, Bedouin, haredis — and Israel itself.
But, of course, most of the book is devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While not downplaying the difficulties of making peace (“the risks are tremendous and it is going to take extraordinary leadership on Israel’s side to surmount them”) and conceding that peace with the Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza is impossible now, Goodman believes the process of ruling a hostile people is so debilitating for Israel that reaching an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, rulers of the West Bank, is imperative.
Peace is possible, he says. His solutions include dividing Jerusalem (a very tricky proposition) and permitting Israelis to live in the new Palestine (a very tough sell to both Palestinians and Israelis living in the territories).
Asked in a telephone interview if it is wise to try to reach an agreement with the P.A., which seems reluctant to accept a de jure, permanent Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he stresses that Israel needs to try to reach peace because the current situation is not in its interests.
“I know that [P.A. President Mahmoud] Abbas is not [former French President Charles] de Gaulle and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is not [former Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion, but we have to work with what we have,” says Goodman from his home in Jerusalem.
Israel is faced with “two different realities” in Gaza and in the West Bank, he says. While progress is impossible with the Hamas rulers of the former, in the West Bank there is a “stable, open government” and security cooperation with the Jewish state.
“We need to move forward on the West Bank because if we don’t make peace with the good guys, we will be pulled down with the bad guys,” he says.
Whether or not readers agree with the author’s assessment, “The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival” is a thoughtful analysis of the formidable problems facing the Jewish state written in a clear, no-nonsense style by an Israeli insider.
“The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival” by Hirsh Goodman (274 pages, PublicAffairs, $26.99)