Whatever one’s views of Ariel Sharon’s policies and the quality of his leadership, no Israeli can feel anything but sorrow at Sharon’s abrupt demise. A nation’s sudden and dramatic separation from its leader is never a good thing. It is all the more debilitating when the leader in question is as popular and powerful as Sharon.
There will come a proper time to inquire into the reports we received about Sharon’s health in the three weeks that passed since the premier suffered his initial stroke. Those questions will no doubt focus on statements by his spin doctors attesting to his good health and on the media’s refusal to ask hard questions about Sharon’s ability to continue in office after that first stroke. But now, as we enter the post-Sharon era, those questions are beside the point. The task that now besets our political leadership and the Israeli people as a whole is to focus on the country’s present challenges – for they suffer no delay.
Without a doubt, the greatest challenge facing Israel today is Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Until the night of Sharon’s second stroke, the rumor-mill running between Jerusalem, Washington and the capital cities of Europe was full of reports that Sharon planned to order an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear installations just before Israel’s general elections at the end of March.
There was nothing new in these rumors. Similar ones have been making the rounds for over a year now. In autumn 2004 for instance, it was whispered that Sharon would order such an attack on the day of the U.S. presidential election in November 2004. This past spring it was claimed that Sharon would give the order during the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria. And now, for the past two months or so, rumors have circulated that Sharon was planning a strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations just ahead of the elections on March 28.
There can be no room for doubt. The need to conduct a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program increases with each passing day. The threat that Iran’s nuclear weapons program constitutes for Israel is the most egregious example since the Holocaust of what happens when states and societies where anti-Semitism is of a genocidal nature are allowed to acquire the means to attack the Jews. Israel’s experience, like the experience of the Jewish people throughout its history, has taught that such anti-Semites seek out opportunities to use their acquired means to kill Jews. And now, against the increasingly tangible threat that Iran will soon acquire nuclear capabilities, Israel finds itself in an election season marked by political uncertainty and instability.
Even in the absence of domestic political chaos, any Israeli plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities is today hampered by two things. First, the anti-Semitism that is endemic in the Iranian regime is equally endemic throughout the entire Muslim and Arab world. Were Iran to carry out tomorrow President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s promise to complete Hitler’s work, such an act would no doubt be met with glee throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
As well, Iran has been able to advance its nuclear weapons program in large part due to the vast increase in anti-Semitic sentiment throughout the Western world. Over the past five years, the notion that there is something acceptable about murdering Jews and seeking to destroy Israel has met with increasing acceptance among large swathes of European society and the ranks of the international Left. Today, as Israel enters the post-Sharon era, it is hindered by unprecedented diplomatic weakness, largely as a result of the prevalence of Western anti-Semitism and its concomitant demand that Israel do all it can to appease its enemies.