Will we get the hint?

On Wednesday, October 3rd, 1973, 3,000 paratroopers from various generations gathered in Ramat Gan to mark the State of Israel’s 25th birthday. I, along with my reservist friends Dan Shilon and Yair Aloni, were tasked with producing this major function.

Before taking the stage, then-Chief of Staff David Elazar (known as “Dado,”) who was expected to deliver a brief speech moments later, turned to us. “I have nothing to say,” this charming may lamented. “Nothing is happening, and I’m sick and tired of repeating things I said before.”

“Just mutter something about our long arm, which will reach our enemies,” I said. He looked at us helplessly, before taking the stage and uttering some words about our “long arm.”

As we know, the Yom Kippur War, which left 2,700 Israelis dead, broke out three days later. This included many of those who attended the function, and just like the army chief thought that “nothing is happening.”

Why am I mentioning this here? The answer will be provided at the end of this piece.

The top threat

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may indeed be paranoid, haunted by the Holocaust, obsessive, and a chronic coward – yet he is completely right to place the Iranian nuclear threat at the top of Israel’s agenda, while also trying to push it onto the American agenda.

If Netanyahu is wrong or if he is deceiving us, and if it turns out that we merely cried wolf, Bibi will be slammed from all directions. He is already used to it.

Yet if this is not the case, then the prime minister was completely justified in presenting Obama with a matter which could be a life and death question for us. Negligent handling of this matter would border on treason.

This is the top issue and nothing else matters in the near future, at least until it is resolved one way or another. It would be better if it can be resolved without firing one shot.

We’re on our own

The prime minister’s recent visit to the US can teach us many things, and mostly that we are on our own in the war against the Iranian nukes. Netanyahu was glad to have been able to convince the US president to limit to talks with Tehran to the end of this year, so they say, but who knows whether that would be too late.

As of now, unless there is some kind of secret agreement regarding cooperation with the Americans on Iran, the State of Israel is alone in this war – and there’s nobody there to rescue us.

Israel cannot act against the Iranian nuclear threat alone, and therefore, at this time we require first-rate creativity in order to enlist the world, and most certainly the US, to the campaign to save the globe from this bomb.

Some will be happy to read this. They have been claiming for a while now that “the whole world is against us,” and that “the Jewish mind will find a solution.”

And back to the story at the beginning of this column: Years ago, before the Yom Kippur War, some people said, wrote, and warned that the situation cannot go on the way it is, and therefore a war was expected sooner or later.

Those who made this argument encountered the well-known Israeli response: We’re the best, the IDF is the best, we’re the masters of the land, and we control the world. We, we, we. So now, just to remind ourselves what ended up happening, go back and read the first section of this piece.