Victor Rosenthal – Plan Z and Israel Bashed for Resisting Arab Colonization
PLAN Z
In the Fall of 2012, Bibi Netanyahu and then Minister of Defense Ehud Barak had a plan to destroy Iran’s capability to make nuclear weapons. The plan was not executed because of opposition from the Cabinet, the Israeli security establishment, and of course the Obama Administration, which was facing an election and secretly negotiating with Iran toward what would become the JCPOA.
The “nuclear deal” that was ultimately signed in 2015 provided Iran with cash for its Hezbollah terrorists and its expansion into Iraq and Syria, as well as fully legitimizing Iran’s nuclear project in 10-15 years. Even before then, the JCPOA lacked adequate safeguards to prevent cheating, and Iran took advantage of the loopholes to pursue development of uranium and plutonium bombs.
The Obama Administration was following a playbook developed – in part by advisor Ben Rhodes – in the 2006 Iraq Study Report, which intended to extricate the US from Iraq and bring about overall stability in the region by appeasing and empowering Iran and Syria (there was still an independent Syria then) at Israel’s expense. It seemed to me then, and still does today, that the negative consequences for Israel from the plan were not simply an unfortunate byproduct of it, but rather a desired outcome.
President Trump took the opposite tack, choosing to weaken Iran and empower America’s traditional allies in the region, Israel and the Sunni Arab states. He took the US out of the JCPOA, re-imposed sanctions on Iran, recognized Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan and Jerusalem (the 2006 plan envisioned Israel transferring the Golan to Syria), and encouraged an alliance between Israel and the Sunni Arab states.
If Trump’s policy to build up a strong countervailing power while weakening and isolating Iran would continue, then it might be possible to force Iran to give up its nuclear dreams without military action. But if, as seems likely, Joe Biden takes office as President of the US on 20 January 2021, then everything may change.
The following is sheer fantasy. I don’t know what the PM of Israel is thinking, I am not acquainted with anyone in the Trump Administration, the Biden team, or Israel’s defense establishment, and I have no insider knowledge about anything.
By Chanukah 5781 [10 December 2020], it became clear to the Prime Minister of Israel that President-elect Biden, although personally not particularly anti-Israel, was assembling a team heavy with individuals that were less than sympathetic to our point of view, like Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, and Daniel Benaim. Biden had also made appointments that were concessions to the extreme left wing of the Democratic party that had almost defeated him in the race for the nomination. Intelligence reports showed a continuous flow of communications between Biden and the headquarters of the group led by Barack Obama, located only about 3 km. from the White House.
The PM of Israel was worried. Biden had already announced his intention to re-engage with Iran, which would probably mean a loosening of sanctions. The PM knew that the Iranians had recently made significant progress toward the development of a nuclear arsenal. He had no confidence that the Biden Administration would have the will to stop them; he could imagine a repeat of the JCPOA process, in which Iran made a fool of US negotiators.
Israel would have to stop Iran, or nobody would.
The PM knew that during the Obama Administration the Americans considered Israel a prime target for intelligence-gathering. The Americans had been operating a radar installation in Israel since 2008 that could spot air activity anywhere in the country, even small drones. Electronic communications in Israel’s defense headquarters, the Kiriya in Tel Aviv, have been tapped for some time. It would be very hard to take almost any kind of military action against Iran without the Americans finding out.
The PM decided that if Israel were to take action, it would have to be before 20 January, when Biden would be inaugurated. Indeed, considering the precedent of the incoming Obama team which aborted the ground invasion of Gaza in January 2009, it would have to be before Biden’s people got themselves organized. Otherwise, he was sure the Americans would act, diplomatically or even kinetically, to prevent Israel from striking the Iranian nuclear program.
Such an operation would not be simple or easy. The Iranian assets that would need to be destroyed are buried deeply underground and defended by surface-to-air missile batteries. The moment Israel attacked, the Iranians would unleash Hezbollah in Lebanon, which had some 130,000 short range rockets and longer range missiles, some with precision guidance. They are fitted on mobile launchers and ensconced in the homes of civilians. Hezbollah has plans to invade across the northern border, and kill Israelis and take hostages.
But the IDF has been preparing for this for some time. There is a plan called tochnit zayin [Plan Z]. The Prime Minister convened his mini-security cabinet, a subset of a subset of the cabinet, including the Minister of Defense and several others, together with the IDF Chief of Staff and a few key officers, including the Air Force and Navy commanders. The meeting took all of 15 minutes. The clock began to tick on tochnit zayin.
The IDF announced that it would carry out a defensive exercise on our northern border. It was not a massive exercise, and only a small number of reserve units were called up. Several days later an Israeli submarine moved into position in the Persian Gulf (or, if you prefer, the Arabian Gulf). At 0200 on the 4th day of Hanukah, the submarine fired a missile almost straight up. The missile contained a small nuclear bomb designed to maximize the production of gamma rays, and it exploded high in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 100 km. A person on the ground might see a small dot of light if he knew where to look; he would not be injured or even feel anything.
Most of the gamma radiation from the explosion was absorbed by the air. The gamma rays ripped electrons from atoms in the air, and the electrons spun downward; their motion in the Earth’s magnetic field produced a powerful pulse of electromagnetic radiation, lasting only one millionth of a second but containing an enormous amount of energy. Much of Iran was blanketed by this pulse. Electrical conductors that it passed over had high voltages induced in them, and semiconductor devices, especially those connected to power lines or antennas, were reduced to inert lumps of silicon. Telephone and cellular networks, broadcasting equipment, internet routers, the power grid, and countless other things became inoperative. Even emergency generators, with their solid-state controls, didn’t start.
When Israeli aircraft arrived to bomb the nuclear sites with multiple bunker-busters, Iranian radar was dark. When eyewitnesses tried to alert their commanders, they were unable to do so. When they finally drove to Teheran to inform their leaders (most vehicles were still operative, especially older ones), their leaders could not communicate with each other, or, importantly, with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Lebanon is too close to Israel to receive the same treatment, but units of Israeli special forces penetrated its borders and destroyed communications infrastructure and cut cables at key points. A bombing campaign followed, aimed primarily at the nervous system of the country – the power grid and communications systems. In 2006, the IDF was surprised by its inability to intercept and interrupt communications over Hezbollah’s fiber optic network. Since then, it’s been documented and mapped. It was quickly destroyed. Since 2006 the IDF has collected good intelligence about Hezbollah’s installations, including the hiding places of mobile rocket launchers and weapons depots. Many of them were destroyed almost immediately.
The Hezbollah leadership was targeted; unlike in 2006, the IDF knew where they were and was able to kill them. Without a head and a nervous system, and without support from Iran, Hezbollah was demoralized, and was unable to sustain a massive rocket attack. There was some damage to Israel’s home front, but Iron Dome and Arrow antimissile systems significantly reduced it.
All this happened in a couple of days. By the time Hanukah was over, the Lebanese government – less Hezbollah – was suing for peace. In Iran, economic paralysis had begun to set in.
The US and the Russians, who had been informed only an hour before the operation, offered to help Iran and Lebanon to rebuild, as did Israel and the Gulf states – on condition that the mullahs in Iran and what was left of Hezbollah in Lebanon would have no role in the government. They accepted.
By the time Joe Biden became president, he faced a whole new Middle East.
Israel Bashed for Resisting Arab Colonization
According to Ha’aretz, NBC, CBS, NPR, BBC, the EU, the UN, and countless denizens of social media, a whole Palestinian village was allegedly demolished and its entire population made homeless on 4 November of this year. Ilhan Omar accused Israel of “a grave crime … ethnic cleansing,” and called for “defunding” Israel. The story is that it was done “under cover of the US elections,” in order to allow for the replacement of Palestinians in the territories by Jewish “settlers.” The act was called “illegal,” “unlawful,” “inhumane,” and worse.
Here are the facts.
Khirbet Humsa is located in the Jordan Valley, part of “Area C” which, according to the Oslo Accords is under full Israeli civil and security control. It was a Bedouin encampment which consisted of seven tents and eight pens for animals. Bedouins camped there starting in 2010, but it was not a permanent settlement: aerial photographs from 2013 show only vacant land, proving that claims that the residents “lived there all their lives” are false. According to the NGO Regavim, new structures were built with money from the European Union in 2019, and it was these that were demolished on 4 November.
The area has been an IDF firing range since 1972, and is used regularly by the IDF for exercises. Bedouins who have encamped there to graze their animals have been required to move from time to time for their own safety.
Under international law, which recognizes the Oslo Accords as binding, construction in Area C requires permission from Israeli authorities. The Bedouins who now claim the area for a permanent settlement have no title to the land and no building permits. They are simply squatters. Even the left-leaning Israeli Supreme Court turned down three petitions on their behalf.
The European Union and the Palestinian Authority (PA) who encourage them and provide them with money for construction claim that all the land beyond the “Green Line,” the 1949 armistice line, is “Palestinian land” according to their interpretation of international law. How they square this with their recognition of the Palestinian Authority, which was created by the Oslo Accords, is not clear to me. But they continue to pay for illegal construction there as “humanitarian aid.”
The Bedouins who were evicted immediately received new tents from the EU, and have returned to the area. Incidentally, one of the more tear-jerking articles (by Amira Haas in Ha’aretz) about this incident refers to the IDF taking a car “belonging” to one of the families. I am willing to bet 1000 shekels that the car was confiscated because it had been stolen; car theft by Bedouins – including hijacking (Heb. link) – is common.
This is a skirmish in a larger war that the Israeli government has been ignoring, as it loses battle after battle. Since 2009, when then PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad published a plan for “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State,” the PA – with money provided by Israel’s “soft enemy,” the European Union – the PA has been engaged in a program of illegal building and settlement throughout Area C. Millions of Euros are used to build structures, often “schools” and “hospitals” to serve as nuclei for illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C.
This is a win-win situation for the Palestinians. If Israel allows them to remain, then they create facts on the ground that make it impractical for Israel to ultimately annex the areas in which they are located. If they are demolished, then they provide grist for the international media propaganda mill, which grinds out stories of Israeli inhumanity.
It’s ironic that despite the continuous complaining by all the usual suspects about “illegal” Israeli “settlement construction,” there is far more truly illegal Arab construction underway. And there have been far more cases in which Jewish residents have been removed by force from illegally built settlements, than Arabs.
Recently European countries have even demanded that Israel compensate them for their investment in illegal buildings that have been demolished! The chutzpah of that request is only matched by that of the Egyptians who are suing the Jewish people for gold allegedly stolen at the time of the Exodus.
Israel has recently begun to step up the demolition of illegal European-funded construction in Area C. I would go farther, and expel EU representatives from the territories. One wonders what the Belgian government would do if Israel sent money and advisors to the Flemish separatist movement (Dutch link).
What other sovereign state would allow agents from hostile nations to openly engage in subversive activities inside the country?
