“As soon as possible, even during the current Gaza war with Hamas, Jerusalem will need to shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Among other things, this explicit shift would allow Israel to clarify that its nuclear weapons are not too large for actual operational use against Iran. In essence, this complex clarification would be the reciprocal of Israel’s Samson Option and would cover the complete spectrum of Israel’s nuclear deterrence options.”
Two of my friends were questioned by the FBI because they signed a petition of some kind that made them members of SLA. I believe one of them said he was in People’s Park – when he was recruited – but, more than likely it was Sproul Plaza where for years groups set up their tables and sold their Radical Wares. It was a smorgasbord. A Pro-Israeli group was threatened, but not physically assaulted. This has set off a BIG INVESTIGATION that I want to take part in. I lived in Oakland and Berkeley. I took part in Antiwar Protests. In the beginning, the Hell’s Angels attacked and beat up protestors – while the police stood by and watched. I have been trying to post pics of this, along with pics of the Israeli Hardliners going crazy trying to stop THE FEEDING OF STARVING PALASTINIANS! The Diggers fed people in People’s Park and Golden Gate Park. This enraged the powers that be.
Let us begin The Battle by putting two tables in Sporul Hall. One belongs to the Hell’s Angels who pass out fliers demanding Loyal American – BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF people who are against the War in Vietnam. Next to the Angels is the ‘Don’t Feed Hostile Non-Jews’ group. “Starve the enemies of Israel to death! Teach them a lesson!”
Everything is copasetic, until a new group sets up a table! It’s the
‘Please God – NUKE THE B-JESUS OUT OF US ALL! We deserve it!
So, these are your three choices – OH MAN!
The fourth choice is to be fitted with a HATE-A-JEW-O-METER that trains you to STOP having negative thoughts of ANY JEWS, lest you get stamped with the Mark of The Beast, and be known as a ANTISEMITE! Being a Anti-Semite is the worst thing that can happen – to a Gentile. No Jews need worry! You’re totally free of guilt, and win the Best Victim award – thanks to Hitler!
“Lehi split from the Irgun militant group in 1940 in order to continue fighting the British during World War II. It initially sought an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.[22] Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis, proposing a Jewish state based on “nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance.”
As a Theologian, I have spent thirty years trying to map the EXCLUSIVE nature of the God of the Jews verses the INCLUSIVE nature of the God of the Gentiles. This is three thousand year study, so, I will start out simple. One finds themselves shopping for a GOOD CAUSE and decides to join the Jewish Hardliners, and be one with them. But, they only allow Jews – Hardliner Jews! Next you try to join the Hells Angels, and be one with them. Sorry Charlie, you aren’t mean enough. Now you try to join the END OF THE WORLD CULT, and are feeling as gloomy as hell, when, suddenly, you hear music. Yeah! It’s…..THE ALL INCLUSIVE HIPPIES WHO LOVE EVERYONE! They’ll save us! I want tobe a Hippie! Go team Hip!
After my last post I thought about my vision of a Dirty Bomb lurking about. This morning I read this article.
“Navigating Chaos: Israel, Nuclear Ambiguity and the “Samson Option”
I’m asking Governor Newsom to launch an investigation into why The Supernova Sukkot Dance WAS MOVED to a very dangerous location – at the last moment? It reeks of the strategy of the CIA and police – to DEFAME THE HIPPIE PROTESTS FOR PEACE. Berkeley was a LAB for crushing protests. I just found a video of Supernova dancers, dancing for The Starving of Children and Pregnant Mothers. I want to know….how long has Israeli Intelligence been monitoring the Antiwar Moving – IN MY COUNTRY! I suspect Israeli Hardliners NEEDED a good excuse to….BOMB IRAN! The Hardliners were – too prepared to handle the War Protests from College Students. It appears the Hardliners recruited Governors DeSantis – TO DESTROY – the Berkley Factor!
The ultimate belief of most Jews, is that Iran would nuke Israel – showing no mercy – if it could. This belief created a IMAGE that is replicated in the Gaza. It is – TOTAL REVENGE – for what could have happened to……THE JEWS!
I might be The Last Radical Hippie Standing, because the hateful and violent psychological attacks upon the Hippies – has wiped us out! Only in Israel – do we exist – in spirit?
John Presco ‘Nazarite after John the Baptist’
UC Berkeley Announces Hate Crime Investigation Into ‘Unacceptable’ Violent Anti-Israel Protest
‘Is this 1938, 1939 Nazi Germany, where I have to hide because my safety is at risk?’ one Jewish student asks.
After a violent antisemitic mob surrounded a Jewish event at UC Berkeley last week — forcing Jewish students to evacuate the area through tunnels as protesters threatened, screamed, and grabbed them — the university announced on Monday the launch of a criminal investigation into the incident.
In any rationality-based strategic calculus, the “Samson Option” would refer not to a last-resort act of national vengeance but to a persuasive limit on existential threats. When taken together with Israel’s intentionally ambiguous nuclear strategy, an outdated doctrine commonly referred to as “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” or “Israel’s bomb in the basement” (amimut in Hebrew), more compelling threat postures could prove effective. To be truly promising, however, an Israeli Samson Option would need to 1) coincide with an incremental and selective end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” and 2) pertain to Iran directly, not just to terrorist proxies. There are no conceivable circumstances in which Samson could offer Israel useful applications regarding Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or any other jihadist foes.
Golden Gate Park was the site of many a Digger meal. TED STRESHINSKY/GETTY IMAGES
PROTESTER 1: They are not starving.
WARD: They are starving!
PROTESTER 1: You know what? If they are starving to death, give us back, give our hostages back. Not a single loaf of bread should go there ’til our hostages are coming back.
WARD: To many people in the world listening to what you’re saying and what you’re protesting for, it sounds like, A, a contravention of international law, and B, incredibly callous in the face of an epic humanitarian catastrophe. In the face of children starving to death, people can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would advocate for stopping aid.
PROTESTER 2: Hamas has no fair play, Hamas has no rules. Hamas is holding civilians!
HUEY P. NEWTON, CO-FOUNDER OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY, AT AN UNKNOWN PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMP IN LEBANON, 1980. (PHOTO: DR. HUEY P. NEWTON FOUNDATION INC./DEPARTMENT OF SPEICAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES)
עכשיו 14Some of the work taking place in Gaza to build a new road as seen in the Israeli Channel 14 video uploaded to YouTube on 17 February
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has finished building a new road which runs across northern Gaza from east to west, according to satellite images verified by the BBC.
The IDF told the BBC they were attempting to gain an “operational foothold”, and facilitate the movement of troops and equipment.
But some experts fear it will used as a barrier, preventing Palestinians from returning to their homes in the north.
Others said it appeared to be part of an Israeli plan to remain in Gaza beyond the end of current hostilities.
In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a post-war vision in which Israel would control security in Gaza indefinitely.
Image Via Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images
Claim:
Video authentically shows Israeli protesters dancing to electronic rave music while blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians via the Kerem Shalom border crossing to the Gaza Strip.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/israeli-protesters-aid-gaza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_power
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/diggers-san-francisco
Israel-haters aren’t re-fighting Vietnam War
- Jonathan S. Tobin
columnist@cjn.org - Posted Dec 28, 2023 at 4: 00 PM
Disclaimer
The Cleveland Jewish News does not make endorsements of political candidates and/or political or other ballot issues on any level. Letters, commentaries, opinions, advertisements and online posts appearing in the Cleveland Jewish News, on cjn.org or our social media pages reflect the views and thoughts of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cleveland Jewish Publication Company, its board, officers or staff or any other organization unless explicitly stated.
Many Americans are baffled by the mobs on college campuses and the streets of major U.S. cities chanting for Israel’s destruction and the genocide of its people.
That so many of their fellow citizens – regardless of their age, education, ideology or background – would openly take the side of Hamas, the terror group that started a war on Oct. 7 with the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, remains mind-boggling. So is the fact that those who call themselves “progressives” are now rooting not just for the cessation of suffering for Palestinians but for the survival of a reactionary Islamist terrorist organization that despises their beliefs.
I challenged you and Jonathan to a debate. You can prepare his way. He can stay at your home. You can make sure he has water bottes at his Kosher Podium that will be blessed by a rabbi. You can show up with your movie gang. Is Doug Hennessey still around. You will be the opening Debater. You will soften up The Old Hippie Jew Hater for Jonathan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army
The SLA formed from people who met during prisoner outreach programs supported by group Venceremos, active in the Palo Alto area, and the Black Cultural Association in Vacaville Prison, about 45 miles from Berkeley. Student volunteers from University of California, Berkeley, some recruited by graduate student and professor Colston Westbrook from his classes in African American linguistics, were encouraged to conduct prisoner outreach at Vacaville.
Westbrook had previously served with a contractor in Vietnam for the US Army that provided services to the CIA. After returning to the United States, he worked for the Los Angeles Police Department in its Criminal Conspiracy Section and the State of California’s Criminal Identification and Investigation Unit. In 1970 he started graduate work at University of California, Berkeley and taught at the university after completing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group)
Lehi (Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈleχi]; Hebrew: לח”י – לוחמי חרות ישראל Lohamei Herut Israel – Lehi, “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi”, sometimes abbreviated “LHI”), often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,[10][11][12][13] was a Zionist paramilitary militant organization founded by Avraham (“Yair”) Stern in Mandatory Palestine.[14][15][16] Its avowed aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by use of violence, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. It was initially called the National Military Organization in Israel,[17] upon being founded in August 1940, but was renamed Lehi one month later.[18] The group referred to its members as terrorists[19] and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks.[14][20][21]
Lehi split from the Irgun militant group in 1940 in order to continue fighting the British during World War II. It initially sought an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.[22] Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis, proposing a Jewish state based on “nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance”.[22][23] After Stern’s death in 1942, the new leadership of Lehi began to move towards support for Joseph Stalin‘s Soviet Union[17] and the ideology of National Bolshevism, which was considered an amalgam of both right and left.[24][22] Regarding themselves as “revolutionary Socialists”, the new Lehi developed a highly original ideology combining an “almost mystical” belief in Greater Israel with support for the Arab liberation struggle.[17] This sophisticated ideology failed to gain public support and Lehi fared poorly in the first Israeli elections.[25]
Israeli hardliners fume, as army moves Gazan orphans from Rafah to Bethlehem
11 March 2024, 8:22 pm
Illustrative. Palestinian children receive cooked food rations as part of a volunteer youth initiative in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on March 5, 2024. (MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
The army is facing criticism after a report carried by Channel 12 news that some 70 Gazan orphans were moved to the West Bank over the last day, in a move coordinated by the Defense Ministry and the National Security Council, but which did not receive explicit permission from the government’s security cabinet.
According to the report, children were moved from the SOS Children’s Village in Gaza to a facility in Bethlehem at the request of the German embassy, via the Taba crossing near Eilat. The report claims the orphanage had stopped functioning, necessitating the extraordinary rescue.
According to information available online as of late January, SOS administered an orphanage in Rafah where 76 children and young people sheltered, some of whom had lost their parents in the war. SOS said at the time that its residents were safe, with food, water, and fuel being stockpiled.
Israel has sought to evacuate Gazan civilians from Rafah ahead of a planned offensive in the city, a move not backed by the international community, which has opposed evacuating Gazans out of the enclave for fear Israel will seek to take over the territory.
Protests against the operation, however, are lodged not by Palestinians but by settler leaders, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who calls it “an ethical failure,” and demands answers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The station quotes an unnamed source in the security cabinet calling the evacuation “ridiculous and immoral behavior toward the hostages in Gaza and their families.”
Shlomo Ne’eman, the outgoing head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council in the West Bank, which borders Bethlehem, urges residents to protest on a road used for the transfer.
“We provide more and more gestures and make sure that aid is transferred to a group of murderers, when innocent citizens including women, children, the elderly, and the sick are being held by these evil people,” he says in a statement.
the officer warns. I ask you to leave this place.
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‘They Are Starving!’ CNN’s Clarissa Ward Confronts Israeli Protesters Trying to Block Aid to GazaUnmute
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CNN’s Clarissa Ward engaged in an intense exchange while marching with Israeli protesters trying to block aid trucks from getting to Gaza where Palestinians are starving.
“So, you can see the trucks with aid over there. The police had been trying to stop the protesters, but then they’ve just cut through this field and they’re pushing ahead,” Ward said. One of the protesters said the trucks were transporting bullets, not bags of rice.
Another protester said, “I’m telling you here and now, if we knew it’s getting to the children of Gaza, we will do it. This does not arrive at their doorstep. This arrives into the tunnels of Hamas that are fighting us and holding our hostages.”
“There’s not evidence to support that all of this aid is going to Hamas,” Ward told a group of protesters:
PROTESTER 1: This is intelligence only for terror. That’s why they’re getting, they should get only the minimum calories required to survive.
WARD: They’re starving to death.
PROTESTER 1: They are not starving.
WARD: They are starving!
PROTESTER 1: You know what? If they are starving to death, give us back, give our hostages back. Not a single loaf of bread should go there ’til our hostages are coming back.
WARD: To many people in the world listening to what you’re saying and what you’re protesting for, it sounds like, A, a contravention of international law, and B, incredibly callous in the face of an epic humanitarian catastrophe. In the face of children starving to death, people can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would advocate for stopping aid.
PROTESTER 2: Hamas has no fair play, Hamas has no rules. Hamas is holding civilians!
The first protester claimed, “You know, even if there is a humanitarian crisis — and there’s not — even if there is, it’s my right and duty to prioritize” my people “over any Gazan babies.”
“Really, this does underscore that Israel is not a monolith,” Ward said. “There are different people who have different feelings about this war and how it should be dealt with. And there are those who believe that depriving the people of Gaza of aid is certainly not the answer.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.The post ‘They Are Starving!’ CNN’s Clarissa Ward Confronts Israeli Protesters Trying to Block Aid to Gaza first appeared on Mediaite
Navigating Chaos: Israel, Nuclear Ambiguity and the “Samson Option”
By Prof. Louis René BeresMarch 10, 2024
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,268, March 10, 2024
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel’s ship of state, facing rough seas, is at high risk and requires clearer rules of navigation. During this period of deep complexity, Israel will need to clarify its strategic direction. The terrorists of Hamas are the tip of Iran’s much larger spear. Israel’s current war against jihadist criminality could thus turn into a wider and more damaging war with Iran. Such a war could emerge as a “bolt from the blue” or incrementally. Ultimately, it could involve the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, and/or North Korea. How might Jerusalem prevent or manage any such derivative conflicts? Israel must consider whether there is a productive role to be played by the “Samson Option.”
In any rationality-based strategic calculus, the “Samson Option” would refer not to a last-resort act of national vengeance but to a persuasive limit on existential threats. When taken together with Israel’s intentionally ambiguous nuclear strategy, an outdated doctrine commonly referred to as “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” or “Israel’s bomb in the basement” (amimut in Hebrew), more compelling threat postures could prove effective. To be truly promising, however, an Israeli Samson Option would need to 1) coincide with an incremental and selective end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” and 2) pertain to Iran directly, not just to terrorist proxies. There are no conceivable circumstances in which Samson could offer Israel useful applications regarding Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or any other jihadist foes.
Israeli strategists will need to consider factors beyond what is taking place right now between Israel and its jihadist adversaries. Because military crises in other parts of the world could spill over into the Middle East, strategic planners should begin to clarify Israel’s operational preparations regarding Samson. This is especially the case
where a spill-over could involve the threat or actual use of nuclear weapons.
Though Iran is still “only” pre-nuclear, it already has the capacity to use radiation dispersal weapons and/or launch conventional rockets at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Moreover, Tehran has close ties to Pyongyang, and it is not inconceivable that a nuclear North Korea might operate as a strategic stand-in for a not-yet-nuclear Iran.
For disciplined Israeli strategists, geopolitical context matters. There can be no logic-based assessment of probabilities because the events under consideration would be unprecedented. In logic and mathematics, true probabilities can never be ascertained ex nihilo, out of nothing. They can be drawn only from the determinable frequency of pertinent past events.
These are not narrowly political or intuitive calculations. As an operationally meaningful concept, the Samson Option references a residual deterrence doctrine founded upon credible threats (whether implicit or explicit) of overwhelming nuclear retaliation or counter-retaliation. These are unconventional threats (ancient Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu would call them “unorthodox”) to thwart more-or-less expected enemy state aggressions. Reasonably, any such massive last-resort doctrine could enter into force only where enemy aggressions would imperil Israel’s continued existence as a viable nation-state. In the absence of expected aggressions from Iran, Israel would more prudently rely upon an “escalation ladder.”
For doctrinal clarity, Israel’s nuclear forces should always remain oriented to deterrence ex ante, never to revenge ex post. Considered as potentially final elements of strategic dissuasion, it would do Israel little good to proffer Samson-level threats in response to “ordinary” or less than massive forms of enemy attack. Even where the principal operational object for Israel would be counter-terrorist success against Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., invoking Samson could make sense only vis-à-vis Hamas state patron Iran or Iran’s nuclear patron North Korea. In such nuanced calculations, assumptions of rationality could prove problematic.
For Israel’s nuclear deterrent to work against a still non-nuclear Iran, it is virtually inconceivable that it would need to include a Samson Option. In any crisis between Israel and Iran involving jihadist terror, Israel could almost certainly achieve “escalation dominance” without employing Samson. But if Iran were already an authentic nuclear adversary, its capacity to enhance surrogate terror capabilities would exceed any pre-nuclear constraints of competitive risk-taking. In these circumstances, Samson could prove necessary.
Israel’s basis for launching a preemptive strike against Iran without Samson could be rational only before that state turned verifiably nuclear. A foreseeable non-Samson plan for preemption would involve more direct Iranian involvement in the continuing terror war against Israel on behalf of Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. By setting back Iranian nuclear efforts and infrastructures, such pre-Samson involvement could offer Israel an asymmetrical power advantage in the region. This larger opportunity would be the result of Israel’s not yet having to fear a nuclear war against Iran.
There would be related matters of intra-crisis communications. As an element of any ongoing strategic dialogue, the basic message of an Israeli Samson Option would need to remain uniform and consistent. It should signal to an adversary state the unstated promise of a counter-city (“counter value”) nuclear reprisal. Israel would also need to avoid signaling to its Iranian adversary any sequential gradations of nuclear warfighting.
Israel’s “bottom line” reasoning would likely be as follows: For Israel, exercising a Samson Option threat is not apt to deter any Iranian aggressions short of nuclear and/or massively large-scale conventional (including biological) first strikes. Prima facie, Samson can do little to prevent Iran from its enthusiastic support of anti-Israel jihadists.
Whatever the Samson Option’s precise goals, its key objective should remain constant and conspicuous. This objective is to keep Israel “alive,” not (as presented in Biblical imagery) to stop the Jewish State from “dying alone.” In this peremptory objective, Israeli policy should deviate from the Biblical Samson narrative.
Ultimately, Samson, in all relevant military nuclear matters, should be about how best to manage urgent processes of strategic dissuasion. At least for now, Israel’s presumed nuclear strategy, though not yet clearly articulated, is oriented toward nuclear war avoidance and not to nuclear war fighting. From all standpoints, this represents Israel’s only correct orientation. Samson’s overriding rationale should be to serve Israel as a persuasive “high-end” component of nuclear deterrence and of corollary preemption options.
The Samson Option could never protect Israel as a comprehensive nuclear strategy by itself. This option should never be confused with Israel’s more generalized or “broad spectrum” nuclear strategy, one that would seek to maximize deterrence at incrementally less apocalyptic levels of military engagement.
At this point, various questions will need to be raised. Above all: How can the Samson Option best serve Israel’s general strategic requirements? Though the primary mission of Israel’s nuclear weapons should be to preserve the Jewish State – not to wreak havoc upon foes when all else has seemingly been lost – obvious preparations for a Samson Option could still improve Israel’s nuclear deterrence and preemption capabilities.
As soon as possible, even during the current Gaza war with Hamas, Jerusalem will need to shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Among other things, this explicit shift would allow Israel to clarify that its nuclear weapons are not too large for actual operational use against Iran. In essence, this complex clarification would be the reciprocal of Israel’s Samson Option and would cover the complete spectrum of Israel’s nuclear deterrence options.
There will be corresponding legal issues. Israeli resorts to conventional and defensive first strikes could prove permissible or law-enforcing under authoritative international law. In such cases, Israeli preemptions would contain a jurisprudential counterpart to nuclear weapons use. This counterpart should be referenced formally as “anticipatory self-defense.”
Concerning long-term Israeli nuclear deterrence, recognizable preparations for a Samson Option could help convince Iran or other designated enemy states that massive aggressions against Israel would never be gainful. This could prove most compelling if Israel’s “Samson weapons” were 1) coupled with some explicit level of nuclear disclosure (thereby effectively ending Israel’s longstanding posture of nuclear ambiguity); 2) recognizably invulnerable to enemy first strikes; and 3) “counter-city”/”counter-value” in declared mission function. Additionally, in view of what nuclear strategists sometimes refer to as the “rationality of pretended irrationality,” Samson could enhance Israeli nuclear deterrence by demonstrating a more evident Israeli willingness to take existential risks.
On occasion, the nuclear deterrence benefits of “pretended irrationality” could depend on prior Iranian awareness of Israel’s counter-city or counter-value targeting posture. Such a posture was recommended some 20 years ago by the Project Daniel Group in its confidential report to then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Residually, however, to best ensure that Israel could still engage in nuclear warfighting if its counter-value nuclear deterrence were to fail, Israel would more openly adopt a “mixed” counter-value/counter-force nuclear targeting doctrine. It should always be understood by Israeli military planners and strategic decision makers that actual nuclear warfighting is to be reserved only for “End of the Third Temple” scenarios.
In reference to strategies of preemption, Israeli preparations for a Samson Option – explicit, recognizable and not just sotto voce – could help convince Israel’s leadership that defensive first strikes could sometimes be gainful. These Israeli leaders could then expect that certain conventional preemptive strikes[1] would be undertaken with reduced expectations of unacceptably destructive enemy retaliation. This relatively optimistic expectation would depend upon a) prior Israeli decisions concerning nuclear disclosure; b) Israeli perceptions of the effects of such disclosure on enemy retaliatory intentions; c) Israeli judgments about enemy perceptions of Samson weapons vulnerability; and d) presumed Iranian awareness of Samson’s counter-city force posture.
In all cases involving Samson and Israeli nuclear deterrence, visible last-resort nuclear preparations could enhance Israel’s preemption options by underscoring a bold national willingness to take existential risks. However, displaying such risks could become a double-edged sword. The fact that these are uncharted waters and there exist no precedents from which to extrapolate science-based probabilities means Israel would need to move with determination and caution.
What about “pretended irrationality?” That complex calculus could become a related part of Samson. Israel’s leaders will need to remain mindful of this integration. Brandished too “irrationally,” Israeli preparations for a Samson Option, though unwitting, could encourage Iranian preemptions. This peril would be underscored by pressures on both Israel and Iran to achieve intra-crisis “escalation dominance.” Also significant in this unpredictable environment of competitive risk-taking would be either or both sides’ deployment of expanding missile defenses.[2]
This hearkens back to the early days of Cold War nuclear deterrence between the United States and the Soviet Union, days of “mutually assured destruction” or MAD. Either Israeli or Iranian efforts to reduce nuclear retaliatory force vulnerabilities could incentivize the other to more hurriedly strike first; that is, to “preempt the preemption.” In reference to international law, close attention would then need to be directed toward the peremptory rules of “military necessity.”
If left to itself, neither deterred nor preempted, Iran could threaten to bring the Jewish State face-to-face with Dante’s Inferno. Such a portentous scenario has been made more credible by the recent strategic strengthening of Iran[3] by its tighter alignment with North Korea and its surrogate fighters in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. At some not-too-distant point, a coordinated Iran-Hezbollah offensive (complementing the Iran-Hamas offensive in Gaza) could signal more imminent existential perils for Israel. By definition, all such synergistic intersections would be taking place within the broadly uncertain context of “Cold War II.”
In extremis atomicum, these hazards could become so unique and formidable that employing a Samson Option would represent the only available strategic option for Israel. In the best of all possible worlds, Israel would have no need to augment or even maintain its arsenal of deterrent threat options – especially untested nuclear components – but this ideal reconfiguration of world politics remains a long way off. In that ideal world, Israel could anticipate the replacement of realpolitik (power politics) with Westphalian international politics. Such a replacement would be based on the awareness that planet Earth is an inter-dependent and organic whole.
Plainly, the time for such replacement has not yet arrived. It follows that Jerusalem will need to prepare visibly for a possible Samson Option. The point of this doctrinal imperative would not be to give preference to any actual applications of Samson, but to best ensure that Israel could deter all survival-threatening enemy aggressions.
For the moment, Israel remains in protracted war with Hamas. It can succeed in this conflict only by weakening jihadist state-sponsor Iran. In the best-case scenario, Iran would remain non-nuclear and Israeli management of Iranian terror support would remain within the bounds of conventional deterrence. If, however, Iran were permitted to cross the nuclear weapons threshold by acquiring chain-reaction nuclear weapons (not just radiation dispersal weapons), Israel’s subsequent efforts at deterrence of Iran would become vastly more problematic. At that point, ipso facto, Israel could require a Samson Option to maintain its “escalation dominance.”
There does exist an intermediate, if paradoxical, scenario for Israel. If Iran should become involved in any direct military action against Israel before becoming a fully nuclear adversary, the Jewish State could find itself with a strategic and law-enforcing opportunity to preemptively destroy Iranian nuclear infrastructures before they become operational. Though advancing such a scenario could also create the false impression of planned Israeli aggression, it would more correctly represent permissible self-defense. Most importantly, of course, such an Israeli preemption could prevent a full-scale nuclear war with Iran.
How should Israel navigate chaos? Whether in the Old Testament or in more-or-less synchronous Greek and Roman thought, chaos can be understood as something potentially positive: an intellectual tabula rasa which, if thoughtfully “filled in,” can prepare the world for all possibilities, both sacred and profane. In essence, chaos can represent an inchoate place from which an expanding civilizational opportunity can still originate.
Such thinking is unorthodox, to be sure, but for Israel it could prove manifestly useful. With such thinking, chaos is never just a “predator” that swallows everything whole: omnivorous, callous, indiscriminate, and without higher purpose. Here, chaos is considered instead as an auspicious “openness,” a protean realm from within which new kinds of opportunity can be revealed.
This means the chaos in the Middle East need not necessarily be interpreted by Israel’s senior military planners as a harbinger of further regional violence and instability. In some hard-to-conceptualize respects, at least, such chaos could represent a condition for national security and survival. Though there are still rough seas ahead, their waves could be harnessed for a purposeful strategic direction.
[1] In extremis, even an unconventional or expressly nuclear preemptive strike could be lawful. In this connection, see Summary of the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, ICJ Advisory Opinion 1996.
[2] On Israel and ballistic missile defenses, see earlier writings co-authored with IDF Major General (res.) Isaac Ben-Israel, also a former Head of the Israel Space Agency: Louis René Beres and Major-General (IDF/ret.) Isaac Ben-Israel, “Think Anticipatory Self-Defense,” The Jerusalem Post, October 22, 2007; Professor Beres and Major-General Ben-Israel, “The Limits of Deterrence,” Washington Times, November 21, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iran,” Washington Tines, June 10, 2007; and Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iranian Nuclear Attack,” Washington Times, January 27, 2009.
[3] For earlier assessments of threats from Iran, see Louis René Beres and John T. Chain (General/USAF/ret.), “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran”? The Atlantic, August, 2012; and Professor Louis René Beres and General Chain, “Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. General Chain was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016.
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