Posted on 04/12/2002 12:39:46 PM PDT by Truthfairy
IN CHESS, THE BEST PLAYERS ARE ABLE to think ahead, recognizing the consequences that their next move could have 10, 20 or 30 moves later. Both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict urgently need to consult with the geopolitical equivalent of such chess grandmasters.
The apparent goal of Palestinian extremists, for example, is to push Israel into the sea and take back 100 percent of its land. We can infer this because Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat 95 percent of everything the Palestinian leader demanded, but an uncompromising Arafat rejected this and re-ignited Intifada violence against the Jewish state.
What are the chances of Palestinians and the Arab nations winning by such violent tactics and all-or-nothing strategy? Zero, a chess master ought to tell them, and here is why.
If pushed to the sea’s edge, millions of Israelis would indeed flee to nations such as the United States wise enough to welcome those with their talents and intelligence.
But millions of Israelis would remain, and in a last-ditch stand they would fight to the death. This happened almost 2,000 years ago atop Masada, the Dead Sea mountaintop fortress where Jews took their own lives (technically not by suicide, but killed by a few who by lot had been picked to carry this sin) rather than surrender to Roman soldiers.
Today Israeli paratroopers and other soldiers go to this fortress and take an oath: "Masada shall not fall again." Psychologists describe the determination never to surrender of many Israelis as the "Masada Complex."
These remaining Jews, if pushed to the brink of annihilation, could and perhaps would take steps that would make today’s Palestinian "suicide bombers" look trivial by comparison.
If Israel loses, neither the Palestinians nor any unfriendly nation within 2,000 miles would "win." Israel could take them all down with it. Israel could turn the entire Middle East into a smoking, radioactive hole in the ground. Israel could blast fertility out of the Fertile Crescent and leave the barren region clicking hot for hundreds of years. This might not be Biblical Armageddon, but it would be a reasonable facsimile.
At its Dimona 150-Megawatt heavy-water nuclear reactor, Israel for more than three decades has been creating and reprocessing Plutonium. Israel on July 13, 1998, acknowledged that it has "built a nuclear option not in order to have a Hiroshima but an Oslo [Peace Accord]."
Most defense analysts estimate the number of Israeli nuclear weapons at up to 200, and one calculates that the Jewish State might possess up to 400 such weapons. Israel might also have manufactured a small number of H-bombs, thermonuclear explosives.
Israel has many delivery systems for these nuclear weapons. To mention only a few: 50 or so home-made Jericho-2 missiles reportedly can deliver a 2,200 pound payload to targets at least 900 miles away. Israel has been developing a Jericho-3 missile using space rocket Shavit technologies that can strike 2,900 miles away with the same 2,200 pound nuclear payload.
Israel already, according to MSNBC, possesses "25 nuclear capable F-15Es [and] about 80 older F-4 Phantoms." To understand what this means, an F-15E or Israel’s variant F-15I has a ferry range of up to 3,450 miles without refueling and can carry a payload weighing 23,000 pounds. The aging F-4E (not to mention Israel’s F-4/2000s) has a ferry range of about 1,550 miles and can carry a 16,000-pound payload.
Combat capability calculations are not based on the ferry range of aircraft, which replaces some weapon payload with extra fuel tanks. We instead assume that pilots fly out to a target and need fuel to return. But Israeli Kamikazis flying a one-way doomsday mission can expend all their fuel to reach a target. They could reach targets 80-90 percent of ferry range away with a compact nuclear weapon. Israel also can use FAST packs and other techniques to boost potential range, speed or payload.
In such a doomsday scenario, in fact, almost any of Israel’s hundreds and hundreds of aircraft could be used to deliver nuclear weapons if pilots were willing to become martyrs for their Jewish faith or nation.
Americans come from a big country. Those who have never visited the Middle East usually fail to understand its smaller scale. To envision the above doomsday scenario, consider some distances.
From the hills of Jerusalem at night, you see the skyglow from nearby Amman, Jordan.
To the north, Damascus in Syria and Beirut in Lebanon are both only about 150 miles away and could be struck by near-supersonic Israeli jets less than 10 minutes after they cross northern Israel’s border.
The Suez Canal is only about 200 miles from Jerusalem and far less distance from Israeli airfields. Cairo is about 250 miles from Jerusalem. But the real doomsday target in Egypt is the Aswan High Dam only 550 miles from King David’s city. If blown open with nuclear weapons, it would release the immense reservoir of Lake Nasser and unleash a flood of biblical proportions that would destroy almost everything and everyone in Cairo and all along Egypt’s Nile Valley.
Tripoli on the far side of madman Col. Muammar al-Qadhafi’s Libya is 1,300 miles from Jerusalem. But the Israeli Air Force has already demonstrated its ability, as Aharon Lapidot puts it, to "strike silent, strike far" by rescuing hostages in Entebbe, Uganda, and by hitting PLO headquarters in Tunisia, just over 1,500 miles west of Jerusalem on the North African coastline beyond the shores of Tripoli.
Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein rules Iraq deluded by his belief that he is the Nebuchadnezzar of a new Assyrian Empire, is less than 600 miles from Jerusalem. In 1981 Israeli aircraft preemptively destroyed the Osirak reactor being built near Baghdad, thereby keeping nuclear weapons out of this madman’s hands. Israelis could easily strike Baghdad again, this time with nuclear weapons of their own.
Even distant Tehran and the Ayatollahs of Iran sit less than 1,000 miles from Jerusalem, scarcely more than the distance from Los Angeles to Denver. Jericho-2 missiles could be goosed to get there within minutes, and at full throttle Israeli jets could have mushroom clouds sprouting above Tehran in little more than an hour….or maybe less.
Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, is about 850 miles from Jerusalem and could be destroyed before its princes got into their holes, if Israel so desired. All Persian Gulf oilfields could also be sent to heaven in glowing smoke and radioactive flame, thereby turning whatever Arabs survived back into the Bedouin goatherds they had been before oil was discovered or needed by a modern world.
But the ultimate doomsday target, of course, would be Mecca – the mystical center of Islam towards which devout Muslims bow in prayer five times each day. Come doomsday, as a last gesture Israel could vaporize the Black Stone, the Kaaba, the burial place of the Prophet Mohammed and all of Mecca. Thereafter Muslims could bow daily towards a place resembling Arizona’s Meteor Crater.
The moral of this story: ultimately the Palestinians can never win everything they want. They need to compromise and make peace. Even if they could destroy Israel, to do so would destroy them, too, as well as the surrounding Islamic nations that support them.
But Israel also needs to recognize that, sooner or later, Muslim nations will acquire their own weapons of mass destruction. Unless a way to peace can be found, one morning 20 or 30 years from now Israelis will awaken to 50,000 nuclear cruise missiles saturating their defenses and eradicating the Jewish State. What looked like stalemate will within minutes of retaliation then turn into mutual checkmate, mutual assured destruction. As the saying goes: an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
But it will certainly be Mecca that would take the first and most serious blows, should it come to that. Nothing, nothing there will remain.
Samson Option: Israel's Plan to Prevent Mass Destruction Attacks
David Eberhart
Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2001
With American bombing raids into Afghanistan and a tough President Bush intimating more of the same for other terrorist-harboring nations, experts and armchair war-watchers are inserting nuclear powerhouse Israel into the calculus of potential Armageddon in the Middle East. Adding yet other variables, a defiant Saddam Hussein issued an ominous warning in late August, just weeks before the terror attacks on New York City and the Pentagon: "The battle [against the U.S.] continues on the economic, political and military fields. We are convinced we will be victorious."
All that the saber-rattling Iraqi dictator left out of this latest diatribe was a bold repeat of his 1991 pre-Desert Storm boast that if America attacked, the first to feel his wrath in the "mother of all battles" would be Israel.
After decades of living among hostile neighbors, Israel has yet to be attacked by an enemy using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. One reason may be the horrific plan some claim Israel drew up to prevent such an attack. The plan was called the Samson Option. An astute investigative journalist and student of history chalked a dramatic potential solution to the volatile equation on the blackboard - a decade ago.
"Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973 [Yom Kippur War], or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did [in the 1991 Gulf War], a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong possibility."
Pulitzer Prize-winning author ("My Lai 4") Seymour M. Hersh made this hypothesis in his 1991 best seller "The Samson Option."
Captured and cruelly maimed, the book's biblical namesake uttered the ultimate fighting words, "Let my soul die with the Philistines."
That said, the divinely empowered Samson pushed apart the temple pillars - collapsing the roof and killing himself as well as his enemies.
In his exposÈ of Israel's clandestine nuclear arsenal, Hersh suggested that in the early days (late 1960s) of crude big-flash-and-bang nukes, one defensive option to counter an attack on Israel with weapons of mass destruction was for the beleaguered nation to mimic Samson and grimly trade holocaust for holocaust.
Hersh's 1991 prognostication of a "strong possibility" of the use by Israel of nuclear weapons rested on his knowledge that by the mid-1980s, Israeli technicians at the super-secret Dimona nuclear plant had produced hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal property damage.
Israel's ability to use nukes tactically and surgically, however, has evolved a great deal since the Samson option was still realistically an option.
Israel's Military Might
In 1997, Jane's Intelligence Weekly examined satellite photographs of what it described as an Israeli military base at Kfar Zechariah, concluding academically, "Israel's nuclear arsenal is larger than many estimates."
According to Jane's, the site was said to house about 50 Jericho-2 missiles, believed to have a maximum range of about 3,000 miles with a warhead of about 2,200 pounds.
According to the report, the installation contained nuclear bombs, configured for dropping from bombers.
Furthermore, five bunkers at the site were cited as capable of safeguarding 150 weapons.
"This supports indications that the Israeli arsenal may contain as many as 400 nuclear weapons with a total combined yield of 50 megatons," the report concluded.
In 1998 the New York Times reported a Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon that opined Israel had enough plutonium to make 70 nuclear weapons.
More light was shed on the issue in February of last year when the Israeli Knesset (parliament) held the first public discussion on the country's nuclear arms program. Issam Mahoul, an Arab Israeli MP and member of the Hadash (Communist) Party, petitioned that country's Supreme Court to force the government to permit a parliamentary debate on the forbidden subject.
The upshot of this bold and generally unpopular tactic was an unprecedented televised session of the Knesset at which Mahoul stated that, according to experts' estimates, Israel had stockpiled huge numbers of nuclear warheads.
This had increased to what he described as the "insane amount of 200-300." The weapons had been developed with the help of the South African apartheid regime.
Working up a head of rhetorical steam, Mahoul grandly alleged that three new German-built submarines just purchased by Israel were to be fitted with nuclear weapons.
Their stated purpose, he said, was "to cruise deep in the sea and constitute a second strike force in the event that Israel is attacked with nuclear weapons."
Mahoul also announced what was hardly a news bulletin - Israel was producing "biological warfare" weapons at the government's Biological Institute in Ness Ziona.
The obstreperous MP concluded that the government's official policy of "nuclear ambiguity" was the height of self-delusion. "All the world knows that Israel is a vast warehouse of atomic, biological and chemical weapons that serves as an anchor for the Middle East arms race," he said.
Despite the bristling inventory of nukes, the Israelis have a laudable history of restraint in brandishing, much less using, these most destructive of all weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, for most of the latter half of the 20th century, the Israeli Bomb remained invisible and unacknowledged. Israel's official position was to neither confirm nor deny its nuclear status, only pledging on the record "not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East."
A Show of Restraint
According to Hersh, the best example of Israeli restraint in the face of great provocation came during the Gulf War.
On the second day of the American invasion, Saddam Hussein fired eight Scud missiles at noncombatant Israel. Two of the conventionally armed missiles landed on Tel Aviv. Then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir responded by ordering mobile missile launchers armed with nuclear weapons moved into the open and deployed facing Iraq.
The Samsonesque strongman of the Middle East had stirred - and the world held its breath.
Promising Patriot missile batteries and loads of future aid, the United States pressured Israel to keep cool. After all, the allied coalition included a number of Arab nations, and the U.S. feared that dramatic Israeli retaliation could fragment the fragile alliance.
By the end of the Gulf War, Israel had dutifully absorbed 26 Scuds - none armed with biological or chemical weapons.
And therein lies the rub. What if the missiles had featured biochemical agent warheads?
Israel's prime ministers have plenary jurisdiction over their country's nuclear activities.
The refrain used consistently by the Israeli leaders has been and remains an unqualified: "Israel reserves the right to retaliate if attacked."
Traditionally, Israeli leaders have pigeonholed nuclear weapons as a psychological insurance policy for unthinkable contingencies, under the heading of "last resort."
The hope of those in the inner sanctums of national security is that the exigencies of America's New War send no such unthinkable contingencies in the direction of America's quiet ally.
David Eberhart is the former news editor for The Stars and Stripes and Stripes.com. A retired military officer and the published author of five novels, he recently contributed to the New York Times best seller "Chicken Soup for the Veteran's Soul."
Oh NO!!! If that happens, the "devout" had better hope that they remember the instructions from Muhammmed on how to do their prayers, or they won't get them answered!!!
The Hadith, in Islam, is second in authority only to the Qur'an. The Qur'an is considered to be the absolute and infallible word of Allah.
The Hadith are important because they elucidate many areas not covered by or were not very clear in the Qur'an. The Hadith is appealed to in legal decisions and consulted in debate among many Muslims. Here are some sample prayer instruction from Mohammed written in the Hadith. The principles given here must be followed, even if you're scared spitless:
Angels stop asking Allah to forgive people when they pass wind.
Allah's Apostle said, "The angels keep on asking Allah's forgiveness for anyone of you, as long as he is at his Mu,salla (praying place) and he does not pass wind (Hadath). They say, 'O Allah! Forgive him, O Allah! be Merciful to him." - Volume 1, Book 8, Number 436: Narrated Abu Huraira
When he enters the mosque he is considered in prayer as long as he is waiting for the prayer and the angels keep on asking for Allah's forgiveness for him and they keep on saying: 'O Allah! Be Merciful to him, O Allah! Forgive him, as long as he keeps on sitting at his praying place and does not pass wind. (See Hadith No. 620). - Volume 1, Book 8, Number 466: Narrated Abu Huraira
A man slept through prayer time and the devil peed in his ear.
It was mentioned before the Prophet that there was a man who slept the night till morning (after sunrise). The Prophet said, "He is a man in whose ears (or ear) Satan had urinated." Volume 4, Book 54, Number 492: Narrated 'Abdullah:
A person was mentioned before the Prophet (p.b.u.h) and he was told that he had kept on sleeping till morning and had not got up for the prayer. The Prophet said, "Satan urinated in his ears." Volume 2, Book 21, Number 245: Narrated 'Abdullah.
Satan puts three knots in the back of the head of people who sleep.
Allah's Apostle said, "Satan puts three knots at the back of the head of any of you if he is asleep. On every knot he reads and exhales the following words, 'The night is long, so stay asleep.' When one wakes up and remembers Allah, one knot is undone; and when one performs ablution, the second knot is undone, and when one prays the third knot is undone and one gets up energetic with a good heart in the morning; otherwise one gets up lazy and with a mischievous heart." Volume 2, Book 21, Number 243: Narrated Abu Huraira
Muhammad said that yawning is from Satan.
The Prophet said, "Yawning is from Satan and if anyone of you yawns, he should check his yawning as much as possible, for if anyone of you (during the act of yawning) should say: 'Ha', Satan will laugh at him." Volume 4, Book 54, Number 509: Narrated Abu Huraira
Muhammad said that yawning is from Satan and that Allah likes sneezing and dislikes yawning
The Prophet said, "Allah likes sneezing and dislikes yawning, so if someone sneezes and then praises Allah, then it is obligatory on every Muslim who heard him, to say: May Allah be merciful to you (Yar-hamuka-l-lah). But as regards yawning, it is from Satan, so one must try one's best to stop it, if one says 'Ha' when yawning, Satan will laugh at him." Volume 8, Book 73, Number 242: Narrated Abu Huraira: See also Volume 8, Book 73, Number 245:, Narrated Abu Huraira.
Muhammad said that Satan stayed in the upper part of a nose all night.
The Prophet said, "If anyone of you rouses from sleep and performs the ablution, he should wash his nose by putting water in it and then blowing it out thrice, because Satan has stayed in the upper part of his nose all the night." Volume 4, Book 54, Number 516: Narrated Abu Huraira.
Muhammad said Satan passes wind and runs so he may not hear the Adhan (call to prayer)
Allah's Apostle said, "When the Adhan for the prayer is pronounced, then Satan takes to his heels passing wind so that he may not hear the Adhan and when the Muadh-dhin finishes, he comes back; Volume 2, Book 22, Number 313: Narrated Abu Huraira.
Allah's Apostle said, "When the call for prayer is made, Satan takes to his heels passing wind so that he may not hear the Adhan and when the call is finished he comes back, and when the Iqama is pronounced, Satan again takes to his heels, Volume 2, Book 22, Number 323, Narrated Abu Huraira
Prayer offered in a congregation is 25 times better than prayer offered alone and each step towards a mosque results in forgiveness of a sin.
The Prophet said, "The prayer offered in congregation is twenty five times more superior (in reward) to the prayer offered alone in one's house or in a business center, because if one performs ablution and does it perfectly, and then proceeds to the mosque with the sole intention of praying, then for each step which he takes towards the mosque, Allah upgrades him a degree in reward and (forgives) crosses out one sin till he enters the mosque. When he enters the mosque he is considered in prayer as long as he is waiting for the prayer and the angels keep on asking for Allah's forgiveness for him and they keep on saying: 'O Allah! Be Merciful to him, O Allah! Forgive him, as long as he keeps on sitting at his praying place and does not pass wind. (See Hadith No. 620). Volume 1, Book 8, Number 466, Narrated Abu Huraira
The preceding Hadith are translated by Sahih Bukhari.
Sounds like a plan!
Probably wouldn't even take nukes. A few bunker buster type bombs, maybe even just standard bombs with precision guidance, either GPS or laser guided would probably suffice to burst the dam. How strong can it be? It was built by the Soviets. It is a long sucker, so it would take more than just a couple of hits to really do a good job on it. A quick search showed a theory that the dam may be in the process of triggering an ice age, I kid you not. So getting rid of it might be all to the good anyway, I for one don't like the idea of shoveling snow down here in San Antonio. Nor of the idea of a large influx of refugees from the north.
Another perspective:
Isreal and End-Times Fiction - By Joel Miller - © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
Bartenders in the Mideast are famous for their vibrant cocktails, mixing equal parts religious fervor, political ambition and ethnic hatred – along with a dash of gunpowder for that certain something. Best served flaming hot in a broken glass, quaffers and elbow-tippers should ready themselves for the drink's poison. In Palestine, the mickey is the drink.
Christians around the world closely watch the bloody revelry, convinced the brawl is of – hit the deck, incoming cliché – biblical proportions.
We can blame God for this. When He decided to tell His story, He sent the cast and crew to Israel and the surrounding environs. Very little was shot off-location. Hence the grand handle: The Holy Land. Christians look intently at this thin sliver of real estate as the lightning rod of biblical prophecy – the epicenter of God's future rumblings.
The Bible says the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will play host to an encore by Jesus Christ. The creeds of Christendom affirm this fact as crucial to the faith. What's still undecided is the order and significance of the events preceding that coming.
Currently the chic view is that espoused by prophecy pundits like Tim LaHaye and my fellow WND columnist Hal Lindsey.
In their scheme, the events of Revelation and other prophetic books will soon erupt, literally, in Israel, reaching out and engulfing much of the world. Christ will come back only after the imminent unpleasantries are finished.
Hal Lindsey recently wrote that "The Middle East is about to explode into all-out war," which was "predicted thousands of years in advance."
Tim LaHaye's fictional "Left Behind" series, co-written with Jerry Jenkins, kicks off with such a conflagration. Taking their cue from Ezekiel 38-39, LaHaye and Jenkins explain that Russia, allied with various Arab nations, will attack Israel, which they say is their "binding, overriding, passionate, and common hatred."
The views of Lindsey and LaHaye are wildly popular – both have sold multimillions of books. But they do not represent the only approach to applying Scripture to the bloody scraps in the Middle East.
"End Times Fiction," by Gary DeMar, published late last year by Thomas Nelson, is billed as a "biblical consideration of the 'Left Behind' theology." In the book, DeMar takes various portions of "Left Behind" that detail LaHaye's last-days views and compares them with Scripture.
For instance, in the first "LB" novel, "Buck" reads Ezekiel and immediately recognizes it as predictive of the battle in Israel he had witnessed at the start of the story. But how? "The battle in Ezekiel 38-39 is clearly an ancient one," writes DeMar. "All the soldiers were riding horses (38:4, 15; 39:20). The horse soldiers were 'wielding swords' (38:4), carrying 'bows and arrows, war clubs and spears' (39:3, 9). The weapons were made of wood (39:10), and the abandoned weapons served as fuel for 'seven years' (39:9)."
LaHaye follows what he calls "The Golden Rule of Biblical Interpretation"; unless the context clearly militates against it, the reader must opt for the most literal interpretation. But how does this square with LaHaye's interpretation of those references to ancient weapons as "war planes," "intercontinental ballistic missiles" and "nuclear-equipped MiG fighter-bombers"?
"There is nothing in the context that would lead the reader to conclude that horses, war clubs, swords, bows and arrows, and spears mean anything other than horses, war clubs, swords, bows and arrows, and spears," writes DeMar. "And what is the Russian air force after? Gold, silver, cattle, and goods (38:13). In what modern war can anyone remember armies going after cattle?"
LaHaye and Jenkins invent a fictional motive for the attack, a growth-enhancing botanical compound, which is admittedly sexier than cows. But just like the plot device, the interpretation is also contrived.
The details of the battle, DeMar points out, mirror closely those of a battle described in Esther – so closely, in fact, that it appears much more probable that Ezekiel's prophecy has long been fulfilled, in biblical times no less. A better hermeneutic than "The Golden Rule of Biblical Interpretation" is "Scripture Interprets Scripture Better than do Newspapers."
What about the "wars and rumors of wars" mentioned by Christ in the Gospels? Surely even if Ezekiel is wrongly applied by LaHaye and others, this one applies to the Israeli situation, right? Wrong.
DeMar points out that Tacitus, chronicling the events at the time of Christ and after in the Roman Empire, "describes the era with phrases such as 'disturbances in Germany,' 'commotions in Africa,' 'commotions in Thrace,' 'insurrections in Gaul,' 'intrigues among the Parthians,' 'the war in Britain,' and 'the war in Armenia.' Wars were fought from one end of the empire to the other in the days of the apostles." In other words, been there, done that, bought the toga.
The impulse by Christians to look for prophetic clues to events foretold in the Bible by keeping one eye on CNN and the other on sensationalistic books by men like LaHaye and Lindsey reflects a prejudice – however innocent – that none of those events could possibly have happened already. DeMar's "End Times Fiction" makes a powerful case that many of them have.
I doubt the Isrealis would attack European countries (what motivation would they have to do so anyway?) because some of those countries, Britain and France, have their own nuclear weapons. Also, an attack on European countries would be an attack on NATO. Of course, it would be ironic if the Israelis bombed Paris since the French started the Israeli nuclear program. But really, your suggestion that the capitals of Europe could be destroyed is sickening.
Try again, fool!
The brilliant offer Israel never made
Myth of Israel’s ‘generous offer’ damages truth, peace
Deadly myths blind us in peace process
LOL!! You got that right!!
The whole scenario is one of a final, vengeful act by Israel, if all is lost for it anyway. Its motivation is to take out its tormentors with it. The Eurotrash seem to have joined the ranks of its tormentors. Under this scenario, a parting shot at the Eurotrash that seem to think that the "never" in "never again" means 10 years or so seems consistent.
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