The Begin Doctrine?

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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Could President Obama’s escalating feud with Israel precipitate an early test of what is known as the “Begin Doctrine”? It is the doctrine Prime Minister Menachem Begin enunciated after Israel sent its flight of F-16A warplanes to destroy Saddam Hussein’s atomic reactor. He did it at a time when — like Mr. Netanyahu today — he was about to go to the polls in an election the outcome of which was uncertain. In a famous press conference after the attack succeeded, he declared it would stand as a precedent, saying:

“We chose this moment: now, not later, because later may be too late, perhaps forever. And if we stood by idly, two, three years, at the most four years, and Saddam Hussein would have produced his three, four, five bombs…. Then, this country and this people would have been lost, after the Holocaust. Another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people. Never again, never again! Tell so your friends, tell anyone you meet, we shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal. We shall not allow any enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction turned against us.”

That’s what Begin said. That is the Begin Doctrine. It was a — maybe the — defining moment of his career. There were those who suggested that Begin launched the attack precisely because his political alignment was floundering at the polls. He angrily denied the libel. To mark the point, the prime minister went on American television — the Columbia Broadcasting System — and declared: “This attack will be a precedent for every future government of Israel.” He added that “every future Israeli prime minister will act, in similar circumstances, in the same way.”

Are we in similar circumstances? Certainly some differences abound. The target in Iraq was clearer and smaller, the difficulty of the mission much less. Israel had not issued years of public warnings of the kind that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been issuing in respect of the dangers of Iran. Saddam and his Baathist regime, though terribly cruel, had not put up the kind of messianic tyranny established in Iran; Iraq itself was not as dangerous a foe. Iran is closer to a bomb than Iraq was.

Plus, America and the Europeans were not in the midst of a formal parley designed to seek a peaceful solution to Iraq’s nuclear program So, although Iraq caught President Reagan off-guard, the attack on Iraq did not put Reagan on the spot quite the way President Obama represents an attack on Iran’s nuclear program by Israel would do. Yet there are similarities. Both regimes, that of the mullahs and that of Saddam, insisted their nuclear programs were peaceful. Both were committed, as least in word, to Israel’s destruction.

That, in short, means that Iran’s nuclear program, like Iraq’s, clearly falls within the parameters of the Begin Doctrine. So what are the consequences of the deepening rift between the Obama administration and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government? On its face the Begin Doctrine doesn’t admit of outside consultations; it’s precisely a doctrine of self-reliance. Reagan was as caught off-guard as much as anyone else. It strikes us, though, that excluding Mr. Netanyahu from American consultations is playing with fire.

If Mr. Obama were to have his way, after all, Mr. Netanyahu would be excluded even from communicating his concerns to the Congress as it weighs Menendez-Kirk. That measure would set up a structure for bringing back, and even strengthening, sanctions in the event the Iranians and the P5+1 fail to agree or Iran defaults on its agreement. Cutting out Israel from all this can only throw into ever sharper relief the wisdom of Menachem Begin’s doctrine, a doctrine that reserves to Israel the decision of how to deny any enemy weapons of mass destruction intended for use against the Jewish state.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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