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Iran Seeks to Encircle Israel with Rocket-Launching Platforms

(Newsweek) Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Ephraim Sneh - Israel's acceptance of a renegotiated Iran deal should be conditioned on the Biden administration legitimizing Israelis' fears, rather than ignoring them. Our concerns are based on our distant and recent history; in living memory, our grandparents and parents experienced unimaginable calamity. More than half a century later, in 2006, thousands of rockets were launched from Lebanon at Israel's towns and villages, and dozens of Israelis were killed. This was done at Iran's behest. And the thousands of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza since the Islamist takeover in 2007 were also supplied by Iran, directly or indirectly. In his book Palestine, Ali Khamenei, the Iranian spiritual leader, explains how Israel will be wiped out. It will be encircled by territories that will serve as mega-launching pads of rockets aimed at civilian population centers. In Lebanon, Hizbullah has 150,000 rockets ready to fire. From Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have more than 10,000. Many can reach Tel Aviv. And Iran is now seriously at work cultivating its third launching platform in Syria. To understand our fears, Americans should imagine that four million rockets are aimed at New York and Los Angeles from bases in Canada and Mexico. We Israelis don't want a single American soldier to risk his or her life for us. Instead, we require U.S. diplomatic backing for the measures any responsible Israeli government will be forced to take, on its own, to remove the threat in order to defend ourselves by ourselves. The writer, a former Israeli deputy defense minister, is chairman of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic Dialogue at Netanya Academic College.
2021-02-04 00:00:00
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