SPME Faculty Forum Editor’s Note: This piece is in response to the article by Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren, previously published at https://spme.org/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=1742

The authors conveniently forgot to mention a third way to mitigate the consequences of a nuclear strike upon Israel. Dispersal of the population.

Since it is clear that Israel is mostly the Tel Aviv environs, that is the greatest appeal to the would be Nuclear launcher. But the same bomb that would devastate TA would do relatively little damage to Shechem and Offra. Therefore it behooves the Israeli government to declare all of Judea and Samaria (which are 95% State Lands) open for immediate population dispersal, and start transferring the population to the relative safety of 6000 square kilometers of hills versus the 800 square kilometers of flatland.

Second, the authors do not address the Russian interest in providing Iran with the nuclear know-how. If Iran and Israel exchange atomics, making the Gulf inaccessible that will serve Russia doubly. As the major oil and Gas producer Russia will have Europe on her knees, and the Islamic threat emanating from Iran and projecting to Islamic republics will be eliminated. Two birds for the lives a few million miserable Jews.