Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Scholars generally define the law of self-preservation as the instinct for individual preservation. The men who wrote the Geneva rules of war never anticipated a time when streets and malls would become battlefields. For thousands of year, warring nations generally realized that citizens are not soldiers. Soldiers must fight other soldiers. The reality of asymmetrical war has altered the way peoples across the world now fight. Fanatical religious regimes are making people rethink about the effectiveness of traditional deterrents (e.g., MAD). Today’s forces of Radical Islam revel in the apocalyptic destruction of a sworn enemy-regardless of the casualties and deaths they cause. Radical Islam poses exponentially greater problems today than the forces of Nazism presented to the pre-WII world.

Unlike Nazis, the forces of Radical Islam have no moral problem transforming their own children into human bombs. Try to remember that simple fact.

Had the European community taken a proactive position against Hitler’s Germany, the world might have been spared WWII; the death of over 25 million people might have been profoundly avoided.

Today’s efforts to prevent war include racial profiling, detention of those suspected of having terrorist connections, expansive surveillance through wire-tapping, computer hacking, cyber-warfare, assassinating known terrorists and their masters, pre-emptive attacks on known terrorist training camps, not to mention—outright pre-emptive war.

Without a re-visioning of these principles, Western civilization may not be able to withstand the force of an amoral enemy, who has no regard or respect for Western values—but holds these values we consider sacred as, “worthless.”

Does Israel have the moral right to unleash a pre-emptive attack on the Iranian nuclear reactors? The risks are obvious: Iranian population centers will suffer the brunt of nuclear fallout, but should Israel rather put the safety of its own people at risk and allow Iran or its affiliates to, “wipe Israel off the map”?

Israel has often used pre-emptive attacks in the past. When the Egyptian army crossed the Suez and blocked international waterways, Israel justly viewed these bold actions as a provocation for war. But again, Israel did bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, and the one Al Kabir nuclear reactor that Syria was trying to build in 2007.

Will the world condemn Israel once again? Of course, but what else would you expect? Will Obama chastise Israel? You can count on it! In 1981, the United States ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, described the attack as “shocking” and likening it to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Given the fact that Iran has supported Al Qaeda attacks on the United States military facilities and civilian targets, through their Hezbollah proxies, Israel would be wise to take Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at his word.

The spiritual leader of the Palestinian Authority, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein, went on record declaring, “The killing of Jews by Muslims is a religious, Islamic goal. The hour of Resurrection will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call out, ‘Oh Muslim, faithful servant of Allah-there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!’”

Why should we not take Ahmadinejad and his cohorts at their word? Once again, I must reiterate: President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly declared his intention to wipe Israel off the map. There are no grounds for concluding that he is any less serious than was Adolf Hitler when he preached genocide.