Alan Dershowitz speaks

I don’t agree much with Alan Dershowitz, but on this issue he may be right:

[…] But the threat from a nuclear Iran is existential and immediate for Israel. It also poses dangers to the entire region, as well as to the US – not only from the possibility that a nation directed by suicidal leaders would order a nuclear attack on Israel or its allies, but from the likelihood that nuclear material could end up in the hands of Hezbollah, Hamas or even Al Qaeda. Recall what Hashemi Rifsanjani said to an American journalist:

[Rifsanjani] “boast[ed] that an Iranian [nuclear] attack would kill as many as five million Jews. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated by dropping its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose only fifteen million people, which he said would be a small ‘sacrifice’ from among the billion Muslims in the world.”

Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to take this threat seriously and to consider it as a first priority. It will be far easier for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians if it did not have to worry about the threat of a nuclear attack or a dirty bomb. It will also be easier for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank if Iran were not arming and inciting Hamas, Hezbollah and other enemies of Israel to terrorize Israel with rockets and suicide bombers.

In this respect, Emanuel has it exactly backwards: if there is any linkage, it goes the other way – defanging Iran will promote the end of the occupation and the two-state solution. Threatening not to help Israel in relation to Iran unless it moves toward a two-state solution first is likely to backfire.

After all, Israel is a democracy and in the end the people decide. A recent poll published in Haaretz concluded that 66% of Israelis favored a preemptive military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, with 75% of those saying they would still favor such a strike even if the US were opposed.

Israel’s new government will accept a two-state solution if they are persuaded that it will really be a solution – that it will assure peace and an end to terrorist and nuclear threats to Israeli citizens. I have known Prime Minister Netanyhu for 35 years and I recently had occasion to spend some time with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. I am convinced that despite their occasional tough talk, both want to see an end to this conflict.

via Read the whole thing.

(H/T Maggie at Infidels Paradise)

1 thought on “Alan Dershowitz speaks”

  1. Why do you quibble? He MAY be right? Of course he is right.
    So much of the world has this stuff backwards. Giving in to terrorists or tyrants in the hope that they will like us and see the light is as futile as Bush’s trying to be nice so that the msm or the left would like him more.
    The world has to understand that a dangerous Iran is of course dangerous to Israel, but is also dangerous to the world. Pressuring Israel to appease Iran is an awful idea. Naturally if it is an awful idea, this administration will champion it.

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