Netanyahu’s Moment

Benjamin Netanyahu held a bloggers conference call today, as he was traveling by car from one meeting to another.  He spent half an hour with us.

We had hoped to afford him the opportunity to present his views without the sound-bite time constraints of the mainstream media, and to make his analysis available to the blogosphere.  And we hoped he would help put the current situation into perspective.

He did not disappoint us.  The indefatigable Atlas Shrugs has posted the audio, together with notes, and a full transcript (click and scroll down).  There are very insightful analyses and summaries by the other bloggers who participated:  Power Line, The American Thinker, Boker tov, Boulder!, Mere Rhetoric, In Context and Soccer Dad.  They are all worth reading.

Netanyahu described the U.N.-mandated cease fire as merely an interlude — a first round with “the forward unit of the Iranian army,” armed with sophisticated missiles, with more coming.  In his view, Israel needs not merely to analyze the deficiencies in its defenses and to hone its offensive capabilities, but to develop new doctrines, because it is not just a matter of weapons. 

He views unilateral withdrawals as retreats under fire that encourage Hamas and Hezbollah, create new forward bases for missiles, and do nothing to solve the underlying problem, which is not about territory but Israel’s existence.  He does not think anyone in Israel will seriously consider another unilateral withdrawal — “unilateral withdrawal is gone.”

He warned that Hamas and Hezbollah should not underestimate the ability of Israel to learn lessons from its experience, and to employ the results — and that if Hamas and Hezbollah persist, they will be destroyed.  Asked to explain the thinking behind the cease fire, he said “I am not sure I can.”  Asked to explain why the Olmert government seemed so hesitant to unleash the IDF, he said he didn’t know. 

He is skeptical about U.N. Resolution 1701, because the prior one (1559) was a better, clearer one — and it “turned out to be totally useless.”  It is not the language of a resolution that counts, but rather the power and the purpose behind it.

He believes Iran is the single greatest threat to our civilization, a state with millennial suicidal ambitions and missiles that can reach Paris — a state with global ambitions and thus a global threat.  He thinks many Europeans don’t realize they are the “middle-sized Satan” — the target, along with the Great Satan and the Little Satan, of an attempt to destroy their civilization.  “They don’t get it, and they should.” 

He said that what we are witnessing is not just a dispute between Jews and Arabs — he wishes it were, it would be simpler — but rather the opening salvo of Iran’s bid for empire.  If al Qaeda had had nuclear weapons, it would have destroyed Washington and probably other cities.  If Iran gets nuclear weapons, the whole world will be at risk.  It is not just “our house” (Israel) that is at risk, but the broader “house of freedom and democratic society.”

Netanyahu believes that George W. Bush’s commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is the most important decision of our time, and he believes the president will live up to it. 

It is hard to convey the quality in Netanyahu’s voice and words today.  He is always eloquent, but there was something else there as well.  He seems like a man who is speaking at the eleventh hour, about a cause that involves much more than his own political future.  He turned down several opportunities today to score merely political points.

I think something of the answer is in a prior Netanyahu interview.  On June 3, 2006 — three weeks before Gilad Shalit was abducted, in what seems like a different time — Ari Shavit had an extensive interview with Netanyahu.  It is a remarkable interview — extraordinarily candid and personal — and it conveys a picture of Netanyahu the public has not really seen.  Probably not that many people read that interview at the time (he seemed a politician whose career was in eclipse).  But they should read it now. 

Near the end of the interview, Shavit turned to Iran: 

How much does Iran perturb you?

"Very much.  But it is not just Iran.  The problem of nuclear armament is liable to crop up in other countries.  Many people do not yet understand this, but the twilight period is about to end.  We are entering a new age.  We are about to face a different world.  This new age has to give every sane person sleepless nights."

What are you referring to?

"The 19th century was relatively orderly and stable.  It internalized the lesson that Europe learned from 500 years of war:  compromises and settlements are obligatory.  The 20th century saw one major exception to the enlightened concept of managing the world — Nazism.  True, Communism ignored human nature in managing a society and economy, but it showed great responsibility in preventing a world war.

In contrast, we are now facing a species of Islam that rejects compromise and coexistence and believes in the need to bend rivals to its will by force of the sword, in order to restore some fantasy of the rule of the pure Muslims in the world.  When the sword possessed by those Muslims becomes a nuclear sword, the world will be a different place.  All of humanity will find itself at a different point in history.  What was effective against the Soviet Union will not be effective here.  We will find ourselves facing new barbarians.  Facing a challenge the likes of which Western civilization has never before known."

Is Iran a threat to humanity?

"Yes.  But that is not the problem.  The problem is that since Alexander the Great, the West has always overcome the barbarians.  The advantage of freedom imbued the fighters with greater motivation and equipped them with more advanced weaponry.  Now, however, we are facing the possibility that backward, fanatic states will succeed in massing enough resources to obtain an atomic bomb.  One nuclear warhead will be enough for the whole balance of power vis-a-vis the West to change utterly.   So we are now at a dramatic moment of unparalleled urgency.  Two demonic forces in human existence are about to merge:  the dark side of human nature and nuclear weapons.  There is no historical analogy for this moment. This is a turning point in human history." . . .

Isn’t it too late?  Are we not fated to accept a nuclear Iran?

"Absolutely not.  We have to prevent Iran from going nuclear."

At any price?  By every means?

"We have to prevent Iran from going nuclear."

Read it all.