Our favorite duo, Bibi and Barak, operate like Sylvester Stallone's Rambo. Real macho men who win in every movie. Against his powerful enemies, Rambo sweats, gets a black eye or two, bleeds, but in the end he wins, to the appropriate background music. Rambo's weakness, at least early in his films, is that he doesn't seem to think ahead, even when he's bleeding after what happened to him. The viewers in the movie theater know that the blood is paint and in the end he'll be victorious.
Unlike a film, where the director decides on the script and happy end, we're living with lots of question marks. While the team that's called a government makes threats as Rambo does, it's not clear if it knows how the Iranian adventure will end. We're not the ones who can stop Iran's nuclear trance; all we can do is delay it, at the price of turning Israel into a target of Iranian revenge for generations to come.
Iran is endangering world peace, and by the very fact we think we have the power and option to take action against it, we're annoying the world. According to spokespeople for the U.S. administration, we're even endangering the world with our trigger-happy approach, as in a Western.
That's why when I read the passionate articles and politicians' battle cries calling on us to strike Iran, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. With all due respect to our exaggerated self-confidence, we're out of our league here. And it's no coincidence that the former Mossad chief and senior defense officials are warning our leaders against attacking Iran. Some of them are revealing that Iran has 200,000 long-range missiles, not to mention Syria's large arsenal of chemical weapons, which could fall into the hands of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.
When you read those figures, it's clear that Israel must think twice before taking suicidal steps against Iran. Israel is showing a great degree of arrogance; after all, even America couldn't stop the manufacture of nuclear weapons in North Korea, India and Pakistan, regions that are combustible to the whole neighborhood. And America is walking on tiptoe when it comes to Iran, whose lethal influence in the regions of oil and extremist Islam is liable to undermine world peace.
Before Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak lead us to an irreversible military operation, the cabinet must ask questions that receive unequivocal answers before each member votes.
1. Are we capable of stopping Iran's nuclear program entirely, as we did in Iraq by bombing the nuclear reactor before it was completed? And can we do it even though Iran learned its lesson from that operation and has dispersed its facilities deep inside rocky ground all over the country, and even the Pentagon has announced that none of its bombs penetrate so deep?
2. Is it possible that the attack will only delay the development of the bomb and lead us into a long war with Iran?
3. Are we prepared to have Jewish organizations and Israeli embassies all over the world become revenge targets (as in Argentina )?
4. Do we understand the significance of having dozens of missiles launched daily on Tel Aviv by Iran and its allies, which will empty the city, end tourism and spark a flight from the country?
5. Is the government aware of the global worldwide economic damage that would be caused by a unilateral Israeli operation and the reaction by an insane Iran?
6. What price is Israel ready to pay in its relations with the United States after an attack without U.S. consent or coordination?
7. Until the final screw is turned in the Iranian bomb, not only Israel but the entire free world is in danger. If we want to be part of the sane and free world, we must strive to reach an agreement as soon as possible with the Palestinians, in coordination with the United States and Europe.
An attack on insane Iran is out of our league and could prove a tragedy for generations to come.
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