A few days ago, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave a blunt, direct, and impassioned speech to a joint session of the United States Congress.
Even before the speech, controversy preceded the event because the White House was apparently not consulted about the invitation extended to the Prime Minister. In spite of all that, the speech was, perhaps, one of the most anticipated and listened to in many years.
Why would Netanyahu, facing an election in his own country, risk all politically to come to Washington? Why would he risk the relationship between Israel and the United States? Knowing that the President was disapproving of his coming to speak to Congress, why would the Prime Minister come anyway?
The answer is simple. Israel faces the possibility of annihilation.
Iran seeks to have nuclear weapons. Everybody knows this unless their heads are stuck deep in the sand. Iran has the stated goal of exterminating the nation of Israel.
Israel has fought numerous wars since 1948, not over land or resources, but because its neighbors have sought their destruction. For Israel, the issue is not an academic exercise. The issue is survival.
People, who are still living, remember the Holocaust of World War II in which six million Jews were murdered. Many in the West knew of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews but remained silent or turned a blind eye. Israel knows that they can depend on no one, not even the United States, to come to their aid should Iran acquire nukes.
From Israel’s point of view, the current administration’s negotiations with Iran will end in only one way — eventually Iran will go nuclear.
If and when they do, does any thinking person doubt that they will use these devices and/or make them available to terrorist organizations?
It is reported that Israel has nukes. If they do, they obviously have chosen not to use them, even when they have been under attack by overwhelming forces. However, if Iran, or any other regime hostile to Israel, becomes a nuclear power, the game changes radically.
If nuclear weapons are used against Israel, she will doubtless retaliate in kind. Before that happens, Israel will attack Iran to destroy their nuclear facilities. Israel will never risk another Holocaust. The Prime Minister has made that abundantly clear. And so, he came to plead his case and try to persuade the United States to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The United States has the dubious distinction of being the only nation to use nuclear weapons against another nation. Doing so, according to many sources, saved the lives of up to 1 million U.S. military personnel, who would have been killed in an invasion of the Japanese homeland, and an untold number of Japanese citizens.
Some contend that nuclear weapons are immoral. But the truth is that war itself is immoral. Innocent people perish. Seventy-two million people died in World War II, a large percentage of them civilians. But governments are empowered by their laws and by moral law to protect its citizens. Someone, hopefully someone with caution and restraint, has to have the big stick.
It has been 70 years since the United States used these weapons. It has been that long since anyone used these weapons. All that will likely change if aggressive regimes and terrorist organizations acquire them.
Benjamin Netanyahu has sounded a dire but serious warning. Like Winston Churchill, he has sounded an alarm that needs to be heeded. In the 1930s Churchill was ignored and the world was plunged into war.
Bullies, who have announced their intentions to inflict harm on others, must be denied use of the big stick. If the world is set against itself in a nuclear conflict, the results will make World War II look like a school yard brawl.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.]
