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The Nuclear (and the) Holocaust: Israel, Iran, and the Shadows of Auschwitz
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The main thesis of this article is that the Holocaust is indispensable for understanding Israel’s treatment of what it perceives as the greatest current threat to its security - the Iranian nuclear program. The Holocaust’s impact deviates in crucial ways from established teaching regarding balance of power in general and nuclear deterrence in particular. Mutually Assured Destruction, the distinction between capabilities and intentions, and even linkage politics - all of those basic concepts are profoundly altered in the Israeli case by the (often conscious) presence of the Holocaust. The Holocaust’s influence is evident in the Israeli belief that deterring Iran might be impossible: MAD does not apply to the Iranians since, like Hitler, their regime is considered mad: its commitment to destructing the “Zionist entity” is understood as trumping any standard realpolitik calculations. This perception of Iran generates the conviction that the Iranian nuclear project must be stopped at all costs: Israel must prepare for the possibility that the Jews will once again be left alone and, if need be, launch a strike against Iran to prevent a potential second Holocaust. There will not be time for “accommodation” to the threat.
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“Israel holds a significant advantage with its superior military infrastructure.This includes advanced systems like the Iron Dome and a presumed nuclear arsenal.These capabilities give Israel a qualitative edge in conventional warfare (Nili, 2011).”
From Theoretical Analysis of the Iran and Israel Conflict: Identity, Power, and Ideology (2025) · cites this paper as Nili, 2011
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- On the general lack of attention to processes, see Charles D. Freilich, "National Security Decision-Making in Israel: Processes, Pathologies, and Strengths," Middle East Journal 60 (2006), 635-663 at 635. For an overview of shifts in Israeli secu- rity doctrine, see Uri Bar-Joseph (ed.), Israel's National Security towards the 21st Century (Frank Cass: London, 2001).
- analogy." An attempt to quell the former can be found in Michael C. Desch, "The Myth of Abandonment: The Use and Abuse of the Holocaust Analogy," Security Studies 15 (2006): 106-145;
- on the latter, see Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Prince- ton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 63.
- Such traumas, in the words of Nytagodien and Neal, "refuse to remain buried in the back reaches of human memories...Just as traumas at the individual level reappear in intrusive flashbacks and psychological disorders…collective traumas from the past continue to have a living influence upon the contemporary present." Ridwan Nytagodien and Arthur Neal, "Collective trauma, apologies, and the politics of memory," Journal of Human Rights 3 (2004): 465-475 at 468. See also Yael Zerubavel, "The Death of Memory and the Memory of Death: Masada and the Holo- caust as Historical Metaphors," Representations 45 (1994): 72-100. Of course, it is hard to deny that why and how certain collective traumas linger on in different soci- eties is largely influenced by powerful social groups, including political actors. See for example Nancy Wood, Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe (Oxford: Berg, 1999). However, the point made here regarding Israel's Holocaust trauma remains valid. A psychological analysis of the Israeli posture regarding the peace process, for example, can be found in Ofer Grosbard, Israel on the Couch (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003). Journal of Strategic Security, Vol. 4, No. 1 https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol4/iss1/4 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.4.1.3 The Nuclear (and the) Holocaust: Israel, Iran, and the Shadows of Auschwitz 51 8 Freilich, Decision-Making in Israel, 637. · DOI
- Shlomo Aronson, "Israel's Security and the Holocaust: Lessons Learned, but Exis- tential Fears Continue," Israel Studies 64 (2009): 65-93 at 71. Aronson also claims that Ben Gurion, following the Holocaust, was reluctant to pursue policies that might completely alienate the great powers, with permanent presence in the West Bank a key example. Yet unlike the three lessons discussed here, Ben Gurion's view of the West Bank is subject to controversy. An outside perspective arguing that Ben Gurion in fact dreamt of Israeli presence in the West Bank can be found in Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 163.
- Quoted in Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 65. Such scenarios, far from being "just a method of planning" were literally nightmares for Ben Gurion, who once even testified to his aide that he "could not sleep all night. I had one terror in my heart: a combined attack of all Arab armies." Quoted in Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben Gurion: A Biography (New York: Delacorte Press, 1979), Vol. 3, 1365 and 1368. The most recent account of Israeli concerns and nuclear programs in the American context is found in Matteo Gerlini, "Waiting for Dimona: The United States and Israel's development of nuclear capa- bility," Cold War History 10, (2010): 143-161.
- Of course, this attribution of fixed hostility to an enemy is common behavior in many cases aside from the Israeli one, as discussed for example in Jonathan Mer- cer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
- A protest widely seen as a crucial landmark in Israeli history. See for example, Guy Ben-Porat, Yagil Levy, Shlomo Mizrahi, Arye Naor, and Erez Tzfadia, Israel Since 1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
- Uri Ram, "National, Ethnic or Civic? Contesting Paradigms of Memory, Identity and Culture in Israel," Studies in Philosophy and Education 19 (2000): 405-422;
- Daniel Gutwein, "Left and right post-Zionism and the privatization of Israeli collective memory," Journal of Israeli History 20 (2001): 9-42.
- Cf. Desch, The Myth of Abandonment, 111, relying also on Rose McDermott, "The Feeling of Rationality: The Meaning of Neuroscientific Advances for Political Sci- ence," Perspectives on Politics 2 (2004): 691-706.
- A recent reminder of American belief that the Soviets can be deterred is found in Keith B. Payne, "Nuclear Deterrence for a New Century," Journal of International Security Affairs, No. 10 (Spring 2006): 53.
- Emerson M.S. Niou and Peter C. Ordeshook, "Stability in Anarchic International Systems," American Political Science Review 84 (1990): 1207-1234, at 1231.
- John Mueller, "The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons: Stability in the Postwar World," International Security 13 (1988): 55-79, at 75.
- Mueller, Nuclear Obsession (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 151.
- Israel Ministry of Foreign affairs, "The Iranian Threat: overview," available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/The+Iranian+Threat/Overview/ 47 A move which realist scholars have been emphasizing with regard to U.S. conduct vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Cf. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," Foreign Affairs 85.2 (2006): 42.
- The same might of course apply to the Iranian leadership, but since the focus here is on Israeli perception this possibility is put aside. Journal of Strategic Security, Vol. 4, No. 1 https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol4/iss1/4 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.4.1.3 The Nuclear (and the) Holocaust: Israel, Iran, and the Shadows of Auschwitz 55 · DOI
- Burg, Avraham, The Holocaust is over, we must rise from its ashes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 23-24.
- Charles S. Liebman and Yaacov Yadgar, "Secular Jewish Identity and the condition of Secular Judaism in Israel," in Zvi Gitelman (ed.), Religion or Ethnicity-Jewish Identities in Evolution (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009): 149-170, at 160.
- That is true even if analysts like Mark Fitzpatrick are right in claiming that "At best, air strikes will only delay the program a few years, and probably not at all, unless the United States or Israel were prepared to extensively widen the bombing campaign and to repeat it in a few short years-in effect, to launch an interminable war against a Middle East foe stronger, larger and more cohesive than Saddam's Iraq." See Fitzpatrick's "Can Iran's Nuclear Capability Be Kept Latent?" Survival 49 (2007): 33-58 at 47. Even more recent pessimism regarding a strike can be found in Henry U. Ufomba and Robert O. Dode, "Which way to Tehran? Pre- emptive air strike, cumulative diplomacy, technical isolation and the Iranian nuclear crisis," Journal of Public Administration and Policy Research 2 (2010):46-52.
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Theoretical Analysis of the Iran and Israel Conflict: Identity, Power, and Ideology
Siddiqi, M. U., & Windy Khairunnisa, B. (2025) · Journal of Islamic Civilization and Culture Review · doi:10.58524/jiccr.v1i1.21
Metadata
- Authors
- Nili, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Notre Dame (US)
- Corresponding author
- Nili, Shmuel
- ORCID
- Nili, Shmuel
- Venue
- Journal of Strategic Security
- Published
- 2011-03
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 37-56
- ISSN
- 1944-0464 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-0472
- OpenAlex
- W2136234063
- Cited by
- 8
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2024: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 2.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- Journal of Strategic Security (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Digital Commons - University of South Florida (University of South Florida) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Nuclear Issues and Defense
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › International Relations and Foreign Policy
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
- Keywords
- Holocaust, Iranian nuclear program, Israel, nuclear deterrence, mutual assured destruction, balance of power, linkage politics, Israeli security policy
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