And you want these guys to have a nuclear weapon???

For the want of a bullet, the world was lost ...

As I prepare my Sukkah here in Jerusalem, the news networks are reporting on A-jad's hugely provocative appearance in the US and his invitation to speak to the students of Columbia University.

What he had to say was not of importance. The excuses given by the faculty for giving this man a platform are of even less importance.

What is of crucial interest is what history will record about this week's visit.

If there is an historian or journalist still alive after A-jad has tried out his nuclear toys, and should they find a scorched laptop with enough battery life left to tap out a few lines, they will most likely refer back to this particular week in the history of mankind.

And with their stiffening fingers, they will type out a sentence that contains a long list of "if onlys".

• If only we took him at his word about wiping a nation off the map.


• If only we had not let him go nuclear.


• If only we had realised that the cold war safeguard of 'mutually assured destruction' only worked between rational minds.


• If only we had understood that A-jad considered his own people totally expendable martyrs in the Jihad's ultimate - global and nuclear - suicide bombing .


• If only we had registered his maniacal belief that this death and destruction would usher in the era of the hidden imam; for whom he had built a grand roadway into Teheran as one of the first acts as president.

And finally .... if only we had not let him out of New York alive!

Many have speculated how many tens of millions of lives could have been saved if Hitler had been assassinated at any number of opportunities that presented themselves. Had Hitler won the war, such of us that survived might now be speaking German.

After A-jad's war, people may not be speaking at all.

Or breathing.

Mutually Assured & Immediate

The message being sent by Israeli leaders to the West these days goes something like this:

If you fail to stop Iran, understand that its threat to Israel now will surely be followed by similar intentions towards the rest of the free world.

This is like saying: if I catch Ebola today, you will get it tomorrow.

The other guy says: "Okay, I have time. Firstly you haven’t caught it yet. But if you do, I will have at least a day to get as far away from you as I can."

It’s the wrong message.

Now that Bush has decided to abandon the Iraqis to mass slaughter and to allow Iran to go nuclear without the threat of any military intervention, Israel’s message needs changing.

Israel needs to say to the world: If we get Ebola, so do you.

The same day …the same hour … the same horrible death.

America and the EU need to know that any non-conventional strike against Israel will result in an immediate counterstrike of such magnitude that the rest of the world shall not escape.

This is unfortunately the only language world leaders will understand. This is clear from the crisis point in the Yom Kippur War when the Nixon administration was dragging its feet on the airlifting of arms and ammunition to a desperate Israeli army.

It is not widely known that on the night of 8 October 1973 Golda Meir’s war cabinet decided to assemble 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs. The number and in fact the entire story was later leaked by the Israelis as a great psychological warfare tool. Although most probably plutonium devices, one source reports they were enriched uranium bombs. The Jericho missiles at Hirbat Zachariah and the nuclear strike F-4s at Tel Nof were armed and prepared for action against Syrian and Egyptian targets. It is also said that the nuclear missiles were wheeled out of their bunkers the following day, just as America’s spy satellites passed over the Judean hills.

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was notified of this on the morning of 9 October. Nixon immediately opened an aerial resupply pipeline to Israel, and Israeli aircraft began picking up supplies that very same day. Although stockpile depletion remained a concern, the military situation stabilized on October 8th and 9th as Israeli reserves poured into the battle and averted disaster.

Israel’s nuclear capability has long been referred to as The Samson Option. This is because the biblical Samson vowed that if he were killed, he would take the Philistines with him.

That’s precisely the message that needs to be sent to Western leaders who seem to be flirting lately with the notion of Israel’s expendability.

Our debt to Peres

----- Original Message -----

To: s_peres@netvision.net.il
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 1:43 PM

Dear Mr Peres,

I was visiting the Knesset last Monday afternoon and saw you walking by in the lobby.

It occurred to me that Israel owes you a great deal for creating our nuclear facility in Dimona.

After all you have been doing over the last 12 years, we have never needed it more.