Louis Rene Beres

Now that the primary season is seriously upon us, at least one claim is common to all of the candidates. No matter the differences between them, all of the political aspirants exhibit a fundamental populism. "I want to be the people's president" is their shared mantra. Indeed, for any of them to suggest otherwise would be far more than foolish; it would be downright blasphemous.

Si vis pacem, para bellum atomicum. "If you want peace, prepare for atomic war." However reluctantly, this must be Israel's overriding strategic mantra in the years ahead. This is not because a nuclear war is especially likely, but rather because Israel's nuclear deterrent will remain indispensable for the prevention of large-scale conventional conflict.

For the moment, fears of a nuclear war in the Middle East remain focused narrowly and correctly on Iran. In the coming months, before that country is able to deploy a fully operational nuclear capability, Israel will have to preemptively destroy essential parts of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

Sculptor Alberto Giacometti's “Man Pointing” gesticulates ominously. Emaciated, skeletal, and tormented, the iconic sculpture is an artistic expression of humankind's stalwart march toward suffering and recurring annihilation. Resembling the Swiss creator’s gaunt and unnaturally elongated figure, each of us has now become both a potential observer and a prospective casualty.

'Faced with imminent and existential attacks, Israel − properly taking its cue from The National Security Strategy of the United States of America − could decide to preempt enemy aggression with conventional forces.

It is time to look behind the news. Operation Iraqi Freedom is officially concluded; U.S. operations in Afghanistan are reportedly moving in a similar direction. More generically, however, debate about combat operations, strategy and tactics remains ongoing.

In the past I have written about global anarchy and its strategic implications for Israel. Today, I want to assess something far more specific and ominous: global chaotic disintegration. Such an unraveling is already an evident fact of life in several different parts of the world. Moreover, substantial and sudden extensions of this perilous condition to other far-flung parts of our planet are both plausible and probable.

By now, Eliot Spitzer is no longer on the front pages, but America's recent fascination with the former New York governor and high-end prostitution did reveal a great deal.

The State of Israel came into being on May 14, 1948. The five Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Trans Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq immediately invaded the new microstate. Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, expressed their combined intention publicly: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentousmassacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." In terms of international law, the Arab League thus spoke from the beginning in unhidden support of genocide. This is hardly surprising, especially in view of their candid and warm personalcooperation with Hitler and the Axis against the Allies in World War II.

The views expressed in these six columns are those of Professor Louis René Beres, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other members of Project Daniel, or of any government.

Israel now faces grave dangers from Iran, a hostile Islamic state deeply involved in production of nuclear and certain other weapons of mass destruction. In essence, the Jewish State will soon have only two options vis-a-vis Iran: 1) sit tight, do nothing militarily, and hope that deterrence, political agreemeents and/or economic sanctions will prevent Iranian mega-aggression; or 2) strike preemptively against pertinent military targets, thereby expressing what international law calls "anticipatory self-defense."

In the always complex discourse of nuclear strategy, critical thinking is a "net." Only those who cast will catch. To calculate Israel's best strategic options in the months and years ahead, the capable strategist must continue to ask and answer difficult questions persistently, patiently, and above all, systematically. Only by drawing together, seamlessly, this interrelated body of queries and replies, can the serious military analyst ever hope for a coherent and comprehensive body of military and diplomatic theory - a strategic master plan from which particular policies and decisions can be suitably extracted. The only alternative is the usual patchwork quilt of journalistic or reportorial "explanation," an arbitrary mélange of more or less disjointed information and factoids lacking even the rudiments of predictive thought.

Arafat is gone, but the "Road Map" remains. Indeed, regarding Israel's continuance in the Middle East, absolutely nothing has changed in the Palestinian Authority or in the Arab world generally. Notwithstanding President Bush's explicit plea for a "Two State Solution," the PA and its allies still see only one state. This State of Palestine would include all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and ALL of the rest of Israel.

Mr. President, the "Two-State" approach to peace between Israel and Palestine, strongly reaffirmed in your recent meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, accepts the position of an Israeli occupation. Yet even the most cursory look at pertinent world history would reveal several compelling reasons to reject any such position. Organized Arab terrorism against Israel began on the very first hour of Israel's independence, in May 1948. Indeed, virulent anti-Jewish terrorism in the British Mandate period had even taken place many years before Israel's statehood.

Not surprisingly, with regard to Israel, The New York Times continues to publish essentially only the Arab side of the story. In this connection, an especially egregious April 4 article by Professor George Bisharat ("Israel On Trial") was decidedly more of a visceral attack upon Israel's recent Gaza operation than it was a sober jurisprudential assessment.

Israel remains the openly declared national and religious object of Arab/Islamic genocide.

Steadily, Israel is strengthening its plans for ballistic missile defense, most visibly on the Arrow system and also on Iron Dome, a lower-altitude interceptor that is designed to guard against shorter-range rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza.

Israeli leaders be thinking about doctrinal continuity in all of the seemingly discrete Palestinian factions.

After absorbing any enemy nuclear aggression, Israel would certainly respond with a nuclear retaliatory strike.

Historically, viewed against the background of extensive and unapologetic terrorist perfidy in both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has been innocent of any alleged disproportionality. All combatants, including all insurgents in Gaza and Lebanon, are bound to comply with the law of war of international law.

Although Israel continues to face multiple and often intersecting security threats, including terror, its core operational focus should remain on existential perils, especially nuclear attack and nuclear war.

The following article was originally published in The Jewish Press in February 2000. It is being reprinted here now because over the past ten years, nothing has been learned about the central impediment to real peace in the Middle East. The core problem was, and still is, the far-reaching Islamic hatred of Jews. Doctrinally, Israel will never be accepted in the Islamic Middle East because it is a Jewish state. As with the Oslo process discussed in this 2000 article, no "Road Map" or other currently favored form of twisted cartography can hold any plausible promise for Israel. Today, as in the case of Oslo, the Road Map simply requires Israel to exchange land for nothing. President Barack Obama, please take note.

The poet Auden understood many things. He understood truly important things as only the poets can. He understood that humankind can always be found in pretty much the same imperiled condition.

Good morning. Thank you, John (Loftus) and Bob [Dr. Robert Katz). The conference main theme is in essence: Our individual and collective survival amidst growing global chaos. With this in mind, the Irish poet Yeats reminds us: "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."

Amid the growing chaos of internal Palestinian violence, the manifest error of every Middle East Peace Process should be altogether obvious. Quite predictably, Fatah and Hamas now validate years of informed Jewish opposition to both the original Oslo Agreements and to the equally twisted cartography of a so-called "Road Map."

Everyone who has taught international law, or written about it, knows that the idea of crisis in actually inherent in the subject. More than anything else, this crisis, this continuing or protracted dilemma, is one of efficacy, of effectiveness.

From an existential standpoint, Israel must quickly change its strategic and diplomatic course, or prepare to disappear in increments. More specifically, with a new prime minister in place, Israel will soon need to reassess its presumed faith in the so-called Road Map to Peace in the Middle East.

Truly, there can never be any virtue without memory, and France - it would seem - displays a persistent penchant for forgetting. Now unambiguously aligned with the Arab/Islamic states in global geopolitics, France's staunchly oppositional posture toward Israel is a predictable continuation of official French policy toward the Jews during and immediately after World War II.

In the 2554 years between 587 B.C.E. and 1967 C.E., Jerusalem was conquered more than twenty times, and, as part of many empires, was ruled from different and distant capital cities. Only for the Jews (for more than 650 years), for the Crusaders (for 188 years), and for the State of Israel (since 1949) has Jerusalem served as a capital city.

For the most part, we Jews have always accepted the obligation to ward off disaster as best we can. For the most part, we generally understand that all humans have free will. Saadia Gaon included freedom of will among the most central teachings of Judaism, and Maimonides affirmed that all human beings must stand alone in the world “to know what is good and what is evil, with none to prevent him from either doing good or evil.”