An Israeli professor and military historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said in an interview published on Friday: “We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even to Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force.... We have the capability to take the world down with us and I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under.”
The professor’s statement comes at a very sensitive time when the whole world anticipates a US invasion of Iraq.
One may argue that this statement does not represent Israel’s policies as it comes from a non-political source. Yet perhaps Israel’s policy makers thought it more prudent to have their threats come from unofficial sources so that the Israeli government would not be reprimanded by European nations which still, one way or another, back the Jewish state in many of its terrorist acts.
Hidden in this statement are messages being sent out in more than one direction.
If Israel is indeed capable of threatening European capitals with nuclear weapons, it could obviously also very easily destroy every Arab capital. As such, the comments were a warning to Arab countries in anticipation of the extremist stand that Israelis will take toward the so-called peace process, a stand guaranteeing that a fully autonomous Palestinian state will never come into being.
The second target of these statements are the European capitals which reject America’s unilateral decision-making on the invasion of Iraq — the so-called axis of rejection, France, Germany and Belgium. In the meantime, Washington has on its side the axis of support — Italy, Spain and the UK. It is clear that the arrogant American stand on Iraq has generated a degree of conflict within the European group and this is the first of its kind in the history of the European collective.
The Iraqi case has turned the political clock back to the time of De Gaulle’s France. De Gaulle who wanted to get rid of the imposed post-World War II American domination of Europe. That stand received support from Germany.
The French-German understanding, whose power has grown in light of common political stands and the creation of the European legion in anticipation of dispensing with NATO, greatly worried Washington who saw it as a real threat to its dominance whether over Europe or the world at large. This was reconfirmed when the axis nations used their veto inside NATO, refusing aid to Turkey in the event of an attack during the course of the US’s self-serving war.
Who benefits from destroying the political unity inside the European Union?
The answer is without a doubt America — which seeks to retain its unilateral dominance over the world, followed by Israel, which seeks to destroy the power and cohesiveness of the European Union to insure its economic interests and Jewish capital on the old continent. Is it possible for the European political leadership and the European people to accept and agree to Israeli intimidation? Or are such statements considered irresponsible and so do not have any effect on European security issues?
I believe that the situation rests on France and Germany’s ability to re-establish political unity in the European Union and transcend the Iraqi case in a way that corresponds to European direction refusing the invasion of Iraq, in order to confirm its stand against US dominance.
Arab News Opinion 17 February 2003
