Ted Lapkin has penned a terrific response to columnists Phillip Adams and Robert Fisk, who decry the purported double standard surrounding Israel’s nuclear capabilities.
Here’s an excerpt:
The statutory difference between Israel and Iran on the issue of nuclear weapons is simple and unequivocal. While many nations have become signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the Jewish state never affixed its signature to that document. Thus, as opposed to both Iran and Iraq, there is no prohibition in international jurisprudence against the acquisition of nuclear arms by Israel.
Israel’s nuclear critics are also labouring under a moral misapprehension that equates the ethics and policies of democratic governments with those of despotic regimes. Neither Adams nor Fisk comprehend the self-evident differences between a freely elected head of state whose tenure is determined by power of the ballot and a Third World tyrant whose rule depends solely on the power of the bullet.
Since before its formal establishment in 1948, Israel has had to fend off repeated assault by a hostile, numerically superior Arab world that is more than 500 times its geographic size. Indeed, during the past half-century, Middle Eastern leaders often expressed their desire to erase any sovereign Jewish presence from the region.
Last year, Syrian President Bashar Assad provided a typical example of this Arab genocidal rejectionism when he declared: “It is inconceivable that Israel will ever become a legitimate state, even if the peace process is implemented.”
Similarly, military parades through the streets of Tehran regularly feature long-range Iranian missiles inscribed with the slogan “Israel must be wiped off the map”. But Israel’s nuclear critics seem oblivious that the Jewish state sought nuclear weapons as the ultimate insurance policy against a second holocaust.
Emersonian foolish consistency surfaces on a practical plane as well when Adams and Fisk imply that the nuclear arsenal of a democratic Israel constitutes the same threat to world peace as nukes in the tyrannical hands of Saddam Hussein. Despite facing an ever-present threat of physical annihilation, Israel has consistently employed policies of strategic restraint, using its unproclaimed nuclear arsenal to deter rather than to destroy. Moreover, Israel has repeatedly committed to disarm itself within the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement with its Arab neighbours.
It is well worth reading the whole thing.
