Israel v Iran – religious fanaticism or common sense in the atomic age.
Decision to use nuclear bombs could be made for religious reasons, not military strategy.
Trying to understand the culture of other nations, looking from the outside, is a tricky task.
But – as I attempt this, about Israel and Iran, I find some remarkable similarities
Israel is supposed to be a democracy. But the fact that they call it “The Jewish State” immediately sheds doubt on that claim. It is a technocratically advanced state – but with a prevailing religious culture which is quite counter to the ideas of modern secular states. With the current war on Gaza , Israel now functions as a brutal fascism.
Iran makes no pretense of being a democracy. Under the veneer of genuine Islam, the clerics and mullahs run an oppressive, vengeful, misogynist dictatorship.
Yet in both cases, the rulers have twisted religion to suit their cruel aims.
ZIONISM. Jewish tradition abhors violence and reinterprets war episodes, plentiful in the Hebrew Bible, in a pacifist mode. Tradition clearly privileges compromise and accommodation. Albert Einstein was among the Jewish humanists who denounced Beitar, the paramilitary Zionist youth movement, today affiliated with the ruling Likud. He deemed it to be“ as much of a danger to our youth as Hitlerism is to German youth”.
The first Zionist congress in 1897 had to be moved from Germany to Switzerland because German Jewish organizations objected to holding a Zionist event in their country. The Zionist argument that the homeland of the Jews is not the country, where they have lived for centuries and for which many have spilled their blood in wars, but in a land in Western Asia. For many Jews, this message bears disconcerting resemblance to that of the antisemites who resent their social integration.
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM IN IRAN.
From Prophet Muhammad: “Kindness is a mark of faith, and whoever is not kind has no faith.” “Do good to others, and goodness will come back to you.” “He who does not show mercy to others will not be shown mercy.”
The Quran places great emphasis on the dignity of human beings regardless of their gender or race or even status. The dignity also means that human beings have a right to life, right to freedom of religion, right to freedom of lifestyle, right to labor, right to security and right to family
In Iran, The crux of the fundamentalist conflict is not between Islam and Christianity. Nor is it between Islam and the West, and nor between the Shia and the Sunni. The conflict is over freedom versus subjugation and dictatorship, between equality on the one hand and oppression and misogyny on the other.
When it comes to the nuclear bomb – these forms of religious extremism become a critical danger to the world. The idea of martyrdom becomes important – sacrificing oneself, and one’s people become a value, a virtue even. It has been prominent in many wars – a notable example – Japan’s Kamikaze airmen in World War 2.
Martyrdom has been a value for some extremist Islamists. I don’t think it would be so for the mullahs of Iran.
But – when it comes to Israel – there’s a definite strand of martyrdom in Israeli military thinking.
Ultimately, all the nuclear powers have no intention of firing first, as this would undoubtedly lead to their destruction. The exception is Israel, which seems to have adopted the “Samson doctrine” (“Let me die with the Philistines”). It would thus be the only power to imagine the ultimate sacrifice, the “Twilight of the Gods”, dear to the Nazis.
The military atom was never envisaged as a classic form of deterrence, but as an assurance that Israel would not hesitate to commit suicide to kill its enemies rather than be defeated. This is the Masada complex [3]. This way of thinking is in line with the “Hannibal Directive”, according to which the IDF must kill its own soldiers rather than let them become prisoners of the enemy [4].