1938 and all that

A counter-factual is an historical what-if, such as what would the course of history have been if Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union or if the Confederacy had won the American Civil War? Counter-factuals make for fascinating speculation but are ultimately self-defeating. Reality always has a habit of intruding in the end.

What, then, is one to call Binyamin Netanyahu’s ominous “it is 1938, Iran is Germany and it is arming itself with nuclear weapons?” Future non-factual, perhaps? Or under-the-counter factual? Whatever we call it, it was very far from being factual, either as an historical analogy or as a prediction with a reasonable basis for accuracy. Bibi may know how to move crowds but his grasp on reality is tenuous.

What’s interesting about the 1938 analogy is not that Netanyahu chose to use it – after all, what better bogeyman is there for an Israeli politician wanting to spread anxiety and fear than Hitler? – but what is says about Netanyahu himself and the contempt with which he treats the intelligence of his audience, American Jews and Israelis alike.

Why, for instance, did he choose the year 1938? He could have chosen 1937, say, or 1939, when the plight of the Jews in Europe was just as precarious as in 1938, if not more so. But he chose 1938, a year which has gone down in history as the year of Munich; the year in which Chamberlain and the other “appeasers” betrayed Czechoslovakia.

There’s a clear, if subliminal, message in that. Israel is Czechoslovakia, Bibi is telling us, and the UN, the EU and all the rest (with the exception, one assumes, of Bush’s America) are the appeasers. They’re hell bent on selling Israel out to the new Hitler.

Except, of course, that Czechoslovakia's army was no match for Hitler's in 1938 and most of its heavy industry and land defenses were in the Sudetenland, which had been ceded to Germany anyway. It was unable to defend itself after the sell-out, which is patently not the case with Israel, despite the pathetic performance in Lebanon recently. And Czechoslovakia had played no role in the crisis in Europe, whereas most Western politicians outside Washington believe that Israel has directly contributed to the instability in the whole of the Middle East. Czechoslovakia was a pawn, Israel is a participant.

So Israel, in the Netanyahu world view, is both Czechoslovakia and the pre-war Jews. Both a country on the verge of being betrayed and the defenseless innocents bound for the slaughter.

Iran is Germany, Netanyahu said. Is it? There’s no doubting the fact that Iran is run by a pernicious regime and its president is a particularly unappealing character. By perpetuating the ‘Holocaust is a myth’ line, Iran has put itself on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of decency. All that is a given. Iran is likely to continue to be a major irritant to the Western liberal democracies, not to mention to Israel.

But that doesn’t make it analogous to Germany in 1938, the strongest land power in Europe and a highly militarized society bent on territorial aggrandizement and racial domination. Iran's military power is unproven (by some accounts it has yet to fully recover from its war with Iraq in the Eighties) and it has shown little appetite for territorial acquisition or Shi’ite regional hegemony, other than its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran’s ambitions probably don’t extend much further than some sort of hegemony over the Iraqi Shia and the hunger of the perennially weak for recognition and respect.

None of that is of any importance, Netanyahu seems to be saying, because Iran is arming itself with nuclear weapons – the implication being that a nuclear Iran will run amok, with Israel as its first target. Not being a prophet, I can’t say categorically that it won’t; just as Netanyahu can’t know for sure that it will (unless prophecy is amongst the talents that this modest and unassuming man has hidden from the public.) But, if history is anything to go by, the chances are that it won’t.

For over a generation during the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union, both nuclear armed to the teeth, faced each other down without ever pushing the nuclear button. They fought dozens of proxy wars in Vietnam, Angola and elsewhere, but neither opted for the nuclear option. The reason was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD.) the certainty that any resort to nuclear weapons would bring down both their houses. More recently, India and Pakistan have proved the same principle; despite their ongoing dispute over Kashmir, relations between the two long-time enemies have grown warmer since they both joined the nuclear fraternity. The possession of nuclear weapons tends to focus the mind.

A nuclear Iran, face to face (or warhead to warhead) with a nuclear Israel, is likely to show similar restraint. No doubt it will continue meddling in Lebanon and Iraq and its anti-Israel rhetoric is likely to be as vituperative as ever, but even Ahmadinejad is smart enough to understand that any nuclear strike on Israel will mean the end of Iran as we know it today.

If anything, the threat of Iran with nuclear weapons may be what is needed to persuade Israel’s leaders that stasis is not a viable diplomatic option in the long term.

Bibi got it wrong. Israel, despite it’s ‘we won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons’ camouflage, is a nuclear power, not the hapless Czechoslovakia of 1938 nor the defenseless Jewish communities of Europe before World War II. If Europe and perhaps even the US (with the assistance of James Baker) do begin to pressure Israel to finally negotiate with the Palestinians, it will not be because they want to throw a bone to Iran, a la Czechoslovakia and Germany, but because they have concluded correctly that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is at the heart of the anarchy and despair that characterize the Middle East today.

Nuclear weapons are a blight on our so-called civilization and their possession by any country is regrettable. But if Netanyahu wants to do something useful for Israel and the region, he should stop his scare-mongering and start making peace. Only at peace will Israel be secure.