[Peace-discuss] Benny Morris in NYT

[David Green]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
   
  "Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best — meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal."
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  Benny Morris is the Israeli historian best known for researching the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. His summary "by war, not by design" argued (not convincingly) that the expulsion was not the result of planning but of ongoing, unpredictable events. It would seem that regading Iran, he's of the view that if there is a nuclear war, it should indeed, from the start, be by design.
   
  It's important to understand how conspiracy theories that project suicidal tendencies onto foreign countries and cultures are projections of the overriding ambitions or quasi-suicidal tendencies of our own leaders, or Israel's, when faced with the prospect of losing their "deterrent" capability (that is, capacity to dominate) in the Middle East. Conspiracies are justified by claims that others are conspiring (see Daniel Pipes, for example). I think it's important to take this mindset seriously, however we may evaluate what is "rational" for our leaders to do or not do. If Morris's article accurately reflects the mentality of the Israeli leadership and of Israelis, then we have to begin to understand that logic and lunacy are not necessarily mutually exclusive, geopolitical ambitions are involved.
   
  DG
   
   

       
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