Back when I was a political science major at, dare I say it, Columbia University, it was during the Cold War. The US and the Soviet Union, were armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. Tensions were high, and there were some close calls, but neither nation ever used its nuclear arsenal.
Disarmament treaties were negotiated and they held. There was the belief that even though Americans and Soviets were enemies, their leaders were rational and would act rationally. They didn’t want their citizens vaporized and their countries destroyed in a massive mushroom cloud.
Contrast that to what’s going on today in the Middle East.
On October 8th, the day after the horrific Hamas invasion of southern Israel, even before Israel launched any significant attack against Hamas, Hezbollah attacked Israel’s north.
Hezbollah could have stayed out of it, but its leader, Hassan Nasrallah joined in.
Understand please that Hezbollah is made up of Shiite Muslims. There’s nary a Palestinian in the organization. Israel doesn’t occupy one inch of Lebanese territory.
Okay, so at first, in sympathy with Hamas, Nasrallah fired some missiles at Israel. You’d have thought that by showing off his terrorist credentials, that would have been enough. No.
His attacks have continued till now, and have gotten more and more intense. Thousands of rockets have been indiscriminately fired at Israel by Hezbollah.
Israel retaliated by targeting top Hezbollah commanders and taking them out in airstrikes.
But Nasrallah kept on going.
Israel blew up his main man, Fuad Shukr in his Beirut pad, but Nasrallah kept on going.
This past week, Israel upped the ante. In a mind-blowing feat of military and intelligence Trojan Horsemanship, Israel purportedly punished and humiliated Hezbollah with exploding beepers and walkie-talkies, all over Lebanon and Syria. Thousands of Hezbollah operatives were killed or wounded.
And on Friday, Israel took out the head of Hezbollah operations, Ibrahim Akil, a big time terrorist with lots of Israeli and American blood on his hands. In fact, the US had a $7-million bounty on Akil’s head.
So the question is, why hasn’t Nasrallah looked for a way out, taken the off-ramp, so to speak, in his war with Israel?
He’s had lots of chances.
He could have taken it with the American mediator Amos Hochstein, or with French President Emmanuel Macron.
After seeing that the Israeli army of today is not the Israeli army of 2006 that he confronted in Lebanon, he could have declared victory and pulled back across the Litani River and prepared for a future confrontation.
He should be able to see that Hezbollah and its benefactor, Iran, will be up against an Israel that is light years ahead of them in technological warfare. It just won’t be tanks clumsily rolling into South Lebanon that he’ll have to contend with.
Instead, and irrationally, he isn’t looking for that off ramp. He says it himself. In a speech from his bunker, Nasrallah declared that Hezbollah will never negotiate, that it is invincible, even as thousands of his boys are in the hospital sans eyes, hands and other manly extremities.
Nasrallah must realize that by Israel rigging thousands of beepers he himself exhorted his operatives to use, that there’s no telling how deeply Israel has hacked into every nook and cranny of Hezbollan life.
Does he not realized that his forces must now think twice about opening a car door, answering a phone call, turning on the TV for fear that someone in Tel Aviv is going to push a button and blow them all to virginville?
Adding insult to injury, not only did thousands of his operatives have their body parts blown off this past week, their cover was blown too. Most assuredly, Israel is putting the face of every wounded Hezbollah-nik who appears on social media or on TV, into its terrorist data base.
By any measure, the beeper/walkie-talkie attacks were a huge blow to Hezbollah, physically and psychologically. A rational leader would internalize that and react, well, rationally.
But Nasrallah is not a rationalist, he’s a jihadist, a fanatic. His one goal, his only reason for existence, is to eliminate Israel and to kill all the Jews. End of story. The West, including the United States, needs to swallow that reality and say it out loud, not only for Israel’s sake, but for their own as well.
Where does all this leave Israel? It cannot deal with these terrorists as the US dealt with the USSR. It cannot have a rational dialogue with an irrational leader.
Richard Nixon was able to negotiate an anti-ballistic missile agreement with Leonid Brezhnev even though they were sworn enemies, because they were both rational leaders.
It is now apparent that Benjamin Netanyahu cannot negotiate a deal with Hassan Nasrallah because Nasrallah is irrational.
Here’s what Nasrallah should do. Before Israel reveals more audacious displays of super technological warfare against him, he should sit down at his desk, toss his iPad, and take out a piece of paper and a pen. He should write a short letter to his terrorist pimp, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran that goes something like this:
Dear Ali, my brother in the historic and righteous struggle against the infidels:
Sorry I haven’t called, but, well, heh.
Over the last 11 months, our magnificent martyrs have done much damage to the Zionist occupiers. We have inflicted the pain of a thousand daggers on the Jews. We’ve reigned missiles down onto their heads and have forced the occupiers to abandon their northern settlements. Allahu akhbar!
But now, exalted leader, may I humbly suggest we declare victory in this phase of our jihad. We can wait for when, inshallah, under your guidance and leadership, the great Islamic Republic achieves its holy destiny and has nuclear weapons.
When that glorious day arrives, we will have the untold strength to force the great satan and the little satan to bend to our will.
The infidels are weak, decrepit and corrupt. The hour is near when they will crumble under our might. Our patience will cause their blood to flow in the streets of Tel Aviv.
So, let me know if I have the green light to take a breather.
Your brother from another martyr,
Hassan N.
PS
Ali, one more thing. Do you have any of those princess phones left over from the Shah that you can send me? You know, the pretty pink and purple ones with the rotary dials?
Yes, that’s what Nasrallah should do, but I’m betting he won’t. Why? Because he’s not rational.