Israeli Media on Israeli "Paranoia"

I recently asked a question that most Americans might find shocking...precisely because it was NOT prejudiced:

are the regimes governing Israel and Iran warmongering or peace-loving regimes?

Given all the loose talk about nuclear war, something that for all the Cold War years was termed "unthinkable," your lives may depend on answering this question correctly. To assert that it should not even be asked is frankly criminal.

So, if you are American and have been convinced by the mainstream media that such questions are taboo, take a deep breath and consider what a recent columnist in a leading Israeli newspaper had to say on the topic:

destruction wouldn't have to come from falling Iranian nukes - according to leading-edge opinion around here, Iran's mere possession of nuclear weapons would cause not only mass emigration but a flight of foreign capital, too. The economy would dry up!

What's more, Hamas, Hizbullah and the other Islamic fanatics would come under the protection of an Iranian "nuclear umbrella." They'd feel free to attack us and we'd be afraid to hit back because if we did, Iran would nuke us. Israel would be overrun by jihadists!

In short, the thinking here is that even though we have a nuclear, biological and chemical arsenal that Iran couldn't match in a million years, the emergence of an Iranian nuke, even if it's never fired, will turn Israel into something like Darfur.

These are the stories we tell ourselves.

Naturally, I'd feel safer if Iran didn't get The Bomb. But what scares me more than the ravings of Ahmadinejad is the bad nerves and Holocaust fixation of this country, starting with Netanyahu. I think that what Israel might do out of fear is a greater threat to all concerned than what a nuclear Iran might do out of religious fanaticism or anti-Semitism.

Yes. That's how far I think our paranoia has gone. Our number one strategic goal, as far as I'm concerned, is not to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but to calm the hell down. It's the Iranians who should be scared - and they are. It's we who don't have to even use our nuclear weapons - it's enough just that we have them.