Der Spiegel has just published an important article about the Dolphin submarines Germany has been selling to Israel over the past fifteen years. Israel now has three, with a fouth and fifth on the way and sixth in the pipeline by 2017. Sale of up to nine submarines is contemplated by both sides. The ostensibly big news in this story is that both the Israelis and Germans knew the subs were nuclear weapons-capable, but the Germans had denied it. In fact, they contain a special secret hydraulic launching system designed for nuclear cruise missiles.
But this isn’t the real news since any reasonably intelligent person would know that any submarine Israel would buy would carry nuclear weapons. There are two truly newsworthy aspects of this story: one reported and the other not. The reported one is that German chancellor Angela Merkel officially denied the subs would carry nukes all the while knowing they would. That is a big story, no doubt, in Germany. In Israel it’s pretty much a yawn, given that Israelis are used to their leaders lying through their teeth on national security and military matters.
But what has not been reported and is probably the most important aspect of this story is the major upheaval it will introduce in the Middle East balance of power. Der Spiegel notes that the nukes on board the Dolphins will offer Israel a “second strike” capacity against any enemy who thinks to level a crippling pre-emptive blow against it. Ostensibly, this will make a power like Iran, after it would get nuclear weapons (if it would), think twice about using the nukes since Israel’s cruise missiles will level entire Iranian cities.
But the question must be asked: who in the Middle East has the power to mount such an attack against Israel? No one. Iran doesn’t even have nukes and certainly can’t attack Israel without them. There simply is no other country that could do so. Perhaps in one’s wildest dreams one could imagine Israel and Turkey tussling with the Turks thinking of striking a crippling blow against Israel. But essentially, no one in the Middle East could mount a first strike. So in effect Israel is getting a weapon for a purpose that doesn’t exist. Why should it need second strike capacity when there is no first strike possible? It’s a little like running for president even before you’ve been elected to the school board.
From this flows an even more important development. I recently posted about a conversation I had with noted Israeli nuclear weapons analyst Avner Cohen about the hidden impact of Israel’s nuclear arsenal on strategic military and policy matters that one would never think could be influenced by nuclear weapons. Namely, that a nuclear-weapons-enabled Israel has no reason to compromise either with its neighbors or with its allies on any major issues like ending Occupation, returning to 1967 borders, etc. Just as North Korea’s nukes have enabled it to maintain a surprisingly belligerent posture towards its enemies and even its Chinese friends, Israel too can thumb its nose at anyone asking it to make concessions it isn’t prepared to make.
An Israel with nukes can even tell a U.S. president that he can take his settlement freeze and shove it. That’s precisely what Bibi Netanyahu did and Pres. Obama didn’t have the guts to pursue the matter. After all, what leverage did Obama have unless he was willing to go to the mat and invest everything in winning?
There is another macabre irony in Germany’s sale of these weapons to Israel. The state which inflicted the Holocaust on the Jewish people and incinerated 6 million of them in the ovens of Poland, has now dealt Israel the ability to incinerate any Arab country so bold as to stand in the way of Israeli hegemony over its little slice of the Middle East. If an Israeli missile is ever fired at an Arab state and inflicts major damage upon it, this will be one of the first things the media will mention. And Germany will then, too late, have some soul-searching to do about giving Israel the power to inflict its own Holocaust on the Mideast.
Ah yes, the right-wing naysayers will protest at references to an Israeli-inflicted Holocaust because it can’t and won’t happen here (or I should say, there). Israel would never deliberately kill more than say the ten or fifteen thousand Arabs its killed since 1948. It would never kill, say a hundred thousand or a million. Unfortunately, history has offered up the American example of two atom bombs used against Japan within a week. Though no one has used a nuclear weapon since, we let the bomb out of Pandora’s Box and Israel would clearly be willing to use it if it had to. Can anyone say that they’d trust Israel’s judgment in using such a weapon as an absolute last resort to stave off national catastrophe?
Germany has offered the subs to Israel on terms that what can only be called a sweetheart deal: the seller finances one-third of the purchase price ($168-million), but Israel doesn’t make its first payment till 2015. Is Germany that desperate for customers that it had to practically pay the Israelis to buy weapons that can incinerate half the Middle East?
It seems to me that right about this time some German moral thinkers (aside from Gunter Grass, whose criticism of the sub deal was right on the mark) and peace activists should be doing some very deep soul-searching about why their country has offered a weapon of such enormous power to a country which has done nothing but resist making peace in the region over the past 45 years or more.
It’s worthwhile noting Ehud Barak’s hearty congratulations offered to the German people:
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told SPIEGEL that Germans should be “proud” that they have secured the existence of the state of Israel “for many years.”
These weapons have done much more than secure Israel’s existence. They’ve secured Israel’s ongoing intransigence in any matters pertaining to peace negotiations. This in turn makes the Middle East a much more unstable place, which doesn’t render Israel more secure, but rather less.
There is talk by Angela Merkel of making delivery of the last two submarines contingent on Israeli flexibility concerning settlements. But once Germany has let the cat, in the form of four submarines, out of the bag, what more can they do? I’d say it’s too little, too late. The conditions should’ve been negotiated before the delivery of the first submarine (or the second or even the third).
Richard,
My readers don’t pay me enough for me to do anything on their behalf. JPost pays Toameh to be a House Arab. I’m not sure he’d have these views were he forced to write for an Arab paper, were he to be able to find such a job.
Neither Yoshiro nor you, have any way of knowing that is the case. I don’t believe the Jpost is paying Khaled to be a house Arab. I believe they pay him, because his views tie in with their own readerships. That is nothing to hold against him. REmember, they do have a Christian edition, which means they must be getting funds from Christians too. They have a separate Christian edition.
What Koshiro said, means he is practicing the bigotry of low expectations, and this is not the right reason to support someone.
His post infers that anything the Palestinians do is perfect, i can find plenty to criticise them for, or rather their leadership. First, the aid being stolen, the corruption, the education system that teaches hate. Apparently, you agree with Yoshiro which is troubling. Khaled rightly criticises them for this, this doesn’t mean that he is licking the boots of his ‘supposed superiors’. I suspect Yoshiro or Koshiro himself has an inferiority complex and is projecting onto the Israelis.
BTW, my readers offer me far less in the way of donations than what JPost offers Toameh.
Symantics. Perhaps I should have said if someone offered you such a post at a publication that was like Tikkun Olam here, would you accept it?
Or
If readership donors amounted to a few hundred thousand, would Yoshiro question his double standard, which is that you are speaking out against Jews and Israel. According to Yoshiro you are immoral for doing this. So why is he here? Why is he condemning Khaled and supporting you? If he really believed Khaled was morally wrong, then he would criticise you, but I don’t believe that is the reason he is criticising Khaled. If Khaled were a traitor to Israel Yoshiro would be praising him. What’s the difference between this, and kahanists who say Arabs are a fifth column regardless of whether they practice any terrorism or not?
Disgusting.
Personally, Chayma, i think you should pull your foot out of your mouth and give it rest while you still have a chance. I for one am beginning to think you’re nothing more than a West Bank settler masquerading as “pro-Palestine.” In any event, I’m becoming increasingly appalled by the stands you’re taking.
I see more boot-licking here on your part than on the Jerusalem Post.
First of all, it’s Koshiro. I don’t know where your assumption it could be “Yoshiro” comes from.
Second of all…
His post infers that anything the Palestinians do is perfect,
… bullshit. Palestinians are humans like any others. There’s good, less good and rotten people among them like anywhere else.
What Toameh is doing is not criticism of Palestinian leaders for corruption or bad management or whatever: He’s trying to shift blame from Israel to “the” Palestinians. He’s not even trying to obfuscate that: “Focus less on Israel.” Of course, to someone who wants to help the Palestinians free themselves from Israeli occupation, focussing less on Israel is mind-numbingly idiotic – or a transparent attempt at distraction.
The state of Israel is the oppressor of Palestinians in the OT, and freeing the Palestinians from occupation requires tackling that fact. I do not care for any opinions on the whole issue that refuse to recognize this basic fact.
Oh, and: Your trying to compare Richard to Toameh is an insult. Richard takes the side of the oppressed. Toameh takes the side of the oppressors. Aligning yourself with the stronger side in subjugating the weaker side is odious no matter what your supposed ethnic allegiances are, but doing so as a member of a discriminated minority lends an extra reek of opportunism to it.
In Richard’s case it’s exactly the opposite. But I suppose that you, like so many apologists for Israel, subscribe to the false equivalence of oppressor and oppressed.
Richard,
I would rather not go far afield & discuss anyone’s past history here. It’s simply not relevant. Please stay on topic.
Is there any reason why you are not consistent in applying your rule of law here?
Deir brought up my past history here first. Why didn’t you say this to her?
I meant it was irrelevant that Deir Yassin left the threads at one point. It felt like you were trying to hold that against her & I don’t think that was fair.
Particularly that Chayma was deliberately distorting my motives for leaving. Claiming that I left because I didn’t find you “anti-zionist enough” is incorrect and she knows so.
By the way, I’ve always stated that to me the “test of sincerity” concerning the Palestinian cause is the ROR, and that is more important that One or Two States though I myself have always been a One-Stater.
Distorting my motives for leaving is not the same as including earlier comments posted by someone to highlight the numerous contradictions in that person’s statements, IMHO.
Apologizes to Deir Yassin, all this time I thought you were a man; how sexist of me because I based this idea on your fighting spirit. You’re a great commenter in any case.
RE: “Der Spiegel has just published an important article about the Dolphin submarines Germany” ~ R.S.
A MUCH LONGER ARTICLE IS NOW AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH AT SPIEGEL ONLINE.
LINK – link to spiegel.de
Why is it not possible that Iran has simply purchased nukes for a defensive arsenal? A “use-only-as needed” type of thing?
Isn’t Germany violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
In November, Israel test-fired a ballistic missile capable of possessing a nuclear tipped warhead.
Now, Israel possesses submarines that are KNOWN to have been specially fitted to be able to fire nuclear payloads.
That is basically the primary strategic purpose of these special Dolphin subs that Israel received, to act as a roving, immersible and undetectable, second-strike retaliatory deterrent capable of surfacing and firing a missile at any time to cause a global event.
Israel, however, shows restraint. It only used A LITTLE White Phosphorous on the Gazans. It wasn’t their fault the little kids’ flesh were burned through to the bone. The hundreds of thousands of people turned homeless overnight. The thousand plus killed.
Like, Gilad Shalit. Gilad Shalit. Gilad Shalit…
@Koshiro: Slightly redundant reply. Attacking any country on this planet with nukes would decimate it. The point here is that the first war Israel loses will mark the end of its existence. Israel the nation, the ideology, will be no more. It will be actually be existentially finished. Not merely a regime that’s toppled, and back to business as usual. It therefore CAN NOT lose a war, or it’s game over.
Because of its tiny landmass this can happen during any conflict it enters. Israel in this position of existential destruction will use nukes on its opponent even though it was never nuked itself, or doesn’t face the risk of being nuked.
This scenario above can not occur in Iran during a conventional war. The Mullahs might use nukes in self defence after they’ve been nuked, but they’ll never be ‘forced’ to use them otherwise. If they lose the war, their regime might be done for, but the resulting country will still be Iran, run by Iranians, and populated by Iranians.
Short of the genocide of a very large portion of the 70 million population first, there won’t be an existential threat to Iran during a conventional war. That’s pretty much a given.
And no, the US doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity to occupy Iran… The reasons are extremely obvious, which you should be aware of with all extensive military ‘expertise’ of yours: toys are nice, but if you can’t afford to fly them or man them, and your population at home won’t accept the death toll it takes to get the job done, you might as well not have any of them.
All the Mullahs in Iran need are sticks and stones, and they can run the country forever.
An Israeli second-strike capability could be stabilizing, rather than the opposite, if the Israelis and their government were to think as follows: no need to be alarmed about Iranian nukes. Whatever happens, we will still have a second-strike capability, and that will be enough to deter a nuclear attack on us.
Unfortunately, I see no evidence that Israelis and their government think along such reasonable lines.
“Israel would never deliberately kill more than say the ten or fifteen thousand Arabs its killed since 1948. ”
Nitpicking here, but the usual estimate for the number killed in the 1982 Lebanon war is in the 10-20 thousand range. So the total is probably several tens of thousands.
Total since 1948, I mean.
I think the 10-15 thousand figure is the number of Palestinians that have been killed since 1948.
Don’t just “think”, sir. Know. Here are some good statistics: http://www.ifamericansknew.org.
As an Israeli living in Israel I have known about this from the Israeli media for years. Israeli politicians never lied on this issue since they avoided talking about it. I found this article from 2006. I suspect I have known about this from the Israeli media for +-10 years.
link to jpost.com
Another reference from 2008
link to lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com
Israel has had nuclear weapons probably since the 1960’s. They did not prevent Egypt and Syria from attacking in 1973 and they did not prevent Saddam Hussein from firing rockets at Israel in 1991. Nuclear weapons did not stop Israel from withdrawing from Sinai. Handing over parts of the West Bank and Gaza to Yassir Arafat and signing a peace deal with Jordan that included passing land back to Jordan. So I would suggest that Avner Cohen’s hypothesis is not sustained by past facts. In addition even though Israel was facing military defeat in the first week of the 1973 war there was no threat to use nuclear weapons. It has been widely reported that in the first few days of the 73 war Moshe Dayan (from wikipedia) “.. was close to announcing “the downfall of the “Third Temple” at a news conference, but was forbidden to speak by (then Prime Minister Golda) Meir”.
Wrong. Israel did assemble and ready its nuclear weapons during the Yom Kippur war. This was one of the factors motivating the US to quickly deliver conventional weapons in order to bail out Israel at all costs.
“Israel would never deliberately kill more than say the ten or fifteen thousand Arabs its killed since 1948. ”
At least that many Lebanese and Palestinians died in the siege of Beirut. The combined figure of Arab deaths in the Arab Israeli conflict has got to be way higher than ten or fifteen thousand.
(Apologies if this is a double post, I posted already but it didn’t seem to go through. If it is, please delete).
Yep, I was just tryng to make the whole addition but it takes a long time to verify all the sources. More than 17.000 Lebanese and 2.000 PLO-combattants in 1982, (Sabra and Chatila are NOT included).
Would love to see a rough total for all Israeli Arab wars/terror attacks on both sides etc. This would help put then lethality of the long-term conflict in focus.
I thought the figures would be easily availabe on the net but in fact not. B’Tselem has figures for Palestinians and Israelis since the First Intifada, but the rest seems very unprofessional and/or biased. I mean, I won’t trust Daniel Pipes on this one…
It seems the 1973-war had most casualties though.
If I come across anything serious I’ll put it aside, but on Yom Hazikaron/Memorial Day, I came across this amazing information in Haaretz:
22.993 Israeli soldiers have fallen since….1860! Wonder why they didn’t go back to Masada.
link to haaretz.com
In fact, it seems to include civilians (a new controversial law, apparently), Mossad-agents (wonder if they are so numerous).
I was curious so I just did a quick back of the envelope, literally, accounting, taking figures from Wikipedia on the main conflicts, adding in the intifada totals, and the 5000 Palestinians that Morris claims were killed by Israels shoot to kill orders for Palestinians crossing the border in the early 1950s. In some instances there is a wide range in estimates of Arabs killed, with Arab estimates usually being lower than Israeli estimates of Arab casualties.
I didn’t include any 1948 war casualties, which actually extended into 1949, but included the 5000 I mentioned above plus the Arab casualties from the 1956 war, the 1967 war, the War of Attrition, the 1973 war, the 1978 Lebanon invasion, the 1982 Lebanon invasion, the first and second Intifadas, the 2006 attack on Gaza, the 2006 Lebanon War, and the 2008 Gaza attack. I did not include any other casualties that occurred outside of those instances, such as Qibya, Es Samu, the 1954 Gaza raid, Kfar Kassem or the routine killing that goes on outside of the major conflicts.
The low estimates total I came up with was a little over 60,000 Arabs killed by Israel, and the high estimate total was over 93,000, since the end of the 1948 war. Both totals could easily be a few thousands higher, given figures on the Arab deaths outside of the major conflicts.
Thanks for all that hard work. I’ll adjust my own numbers in future accordingly.
Thank you so much, Tree.
That was very interesting, and as Richard said: very important for the long-term analysis of the conflict.
Among the casualties that you didn’t include in the final numbers: the 1996 shelling of Qana, the Battle of Karameh, and I’m sure there are plenty others that we’ve forgotten.
If the Israelis include ‘soldiers’ going back to 1860, maybe the Arab side should include incidents such as the wife of the Palestinian consul to France who had a miscarriage during a bombing of Gaza recently, or an elder Palestinian who died of a heart attack at the Alleby Bridge a couple of years ago when the Israelis prevented medical assistance from arriving. Cancer in Gaza is on the rise, the pollution of the water, people prevented from leaving for medical care abroad etc etc.
This needs some serious research.
Which planet did Israeli soldiers 1860-1948 come from? The only proper soldiers there in that time frame were Ottoman and British (and a handful of Jordanians and Egyptians during the war of ’48). Jewish fighters for the Zionist side would have to count as “unlawful combatants” (aka “terrorists”, or whatever Israel’s own convenient terminology du jour is).
Where does Haaretz speak of civilians?