From Gaza to Iran

Itsik Saban

A few years ago, back when I was a young reporter in the Gaza Strip, I met with one of the senior officers in the Southern Command and what he told me then echoes in my head to this day. "If the Palestinians fire one, just one mortar round, we will make them regret it and never think about doing it again."

Since then the Palestinians have upgraded from lobbing mortars to firing rockets. One such rocket landed not far from my home south of Tel Aviv, and they have rockets that can hit Tel Aviv at their disposal. So I ask myself as I watch brigadier and lieutenant generals in the reserves and former Mossad and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) chiefs engage in the frightening debate over attacking Iran, seriously, is this real? Do we really need to revert to the same stuttering response we had in Gaza, one that we are still paying for to this day, with the Iranian nuclear threat?

Ahmadinejad, like Hitler, has an anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish obsession. The Iranian regime is infected by a messianic complex to impose Shia Islam on the world and eradicate the infidels, Jews first and foremost among them. Anyone with two eyes and a brain knows that Ahmadienjad is not developing a nuclear bomb to win "America's next top nuclear reactor."

As a citizen of a democratic nation, do I not deserve to have my democratically elected government do everything in its power to defend me, my family and my neighbors? It is a bit strange that we are so keen on attacking the Palestinians for every rocket they fire at us, but when talking about Iran, then suddenly we cannot thwart the real threat?

In June 1981 we bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak. former Prime Minister Menachem Begin was warned that striking the Iraqi reactor could lead to a hostile backlash against Israel. Some worried that bombing the reactor would unite the Arab world against us and could serve as a reason for the U.S. to cut back on its vital support for Israel.

But ten years later, as we slept in gas masks [during the first Persian Gulf War] in our sealed rooms and Iraqi SCUDs fell onto Israeli cities, Begin's decision to strike the Iraqi reactor became a lot more significant. An existential atomic threat to Israel was averted. "Our future is not dependent on what the gentiles say, it is dependent on what the Jews do," Ben-Gurion once said. We should learn from history.