The Iron Dome

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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“We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not. There is no other morality. All this does not mean that any kind of agreement is impossible, only a voluntary agreement is impossible. As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall . . .”

What would the Zionist prophet Vladimir Jabotinsky, quoted above, have made of the latest events in Israel? We have moved, it seems, from the iron wall to an iron dome, and it is plenty dramatic, as the youtube.com video that the Drudge Report links attests. It shows the view from what apparently is a Tel Aviv apartment as the air raid sirens sound. One sees some sort of missile arching across the sky before there comes an explosion. The cutline with the Youtube video suggests that it is the result of an interception by anti-missile defenses. There hasn’t been footage so dramatic since the film of the dog fights over the Golan or the rockets out of Iraq during Desert Storm.

Well, wall or dome, it’s startling to reflect on the enduring logic of the essay — one of the most famous in history — in which Jabotinsky argued that only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, “only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions.” The essay is much despised on the Left, but in arguing that the Arabs are not going to sell out for foreign aid and other enticements and will respect only Israeli strength and commitment, he is taking the Arabs more seriously than the liberals.

Jabotinsky’s argument, in any event, is the rarely spoken logic behind the qualitative military edge that American presidents of both parties have made it a policy to provide to the Jewish state, no matter which ideology has been in power at Jerusalem. It’s a logic by which the peace press, which is forever carrying on about the need for Israel to react to the attacks on it by giving away its territory to its enemies, emerges as the very enemy of the peace for which it ostensibly stands. It is the spark of hope that keeps the enemy energized. It is precisely at this juncture that partisans of Israel would best avoid any hint — any spark of hope — that they are prepared for a peaceful settlement. If they do the enemy will never sue.


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