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If Only Israel Would Get Over that Darned Holocaust

[Foreign Policy] David Rothkopf - Roger Cohen's piece, "Israel, Iran and Fear," in the Sunday New York Times essentially argued that Israel should get over the Holocaust in the way that Germany has. Yet an Israel that dropped its guard and accepted the promises of its neighbors at face value (or dismissed the threats of its neighbors as bombast) could very well have long ago ceased to exist. Cohen believes Israel needs to stop "overstating" the threats around it, and undermines his credibility further by quoting Jimmy Carter to support his argument. Yet those enemies are the ones continuously calling for the destruction of Israel, and the Iranians and the extremist mullahs throughout the region are not doing it just to prop up the Israeli PR machine. As we move toward an era in the region in which there will be more nuclear weapons and materials scattered about, we need realize that only one or two well placed devices (they can be delivered in VWs if missiles are unavailable) would have a devastating, perhaps permanently shattering impact on Israeli society. The writer is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
2009-04-21 06:00:00
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