Casus Belli: Can Spiritual Injury Lead to War?
By Steven Constantiner
The laws failure to address spiritual injury is prevalent in the international realm. The United Nations, by and through its establishing principles and charter, exists to maintain world security and prevent acts of aggression. Recently, though, it has been silent and done very little to contain and control the acts of aggression and bellicose rhetoric coming from Iran and aimed at Israel. The U.N.’s failure to address the spiritual injury that results from the Iranian President’s consistent remarks threatening to “erase Israel from the map,” will ultimately lead to catastrophic confrontation and casualties, many of them civilians.
Since Israel’s inception in 1948, the country’s residents have been plagued by a constant psychological victimization. To say this feeling of angst, dread and the prospect of extermination began with its creation would be to deny two thousand years of history replete with persecution and pogroms. The creation of Israel, one must always remember, was a mere three years after the holocaust in which 2/3 of European Jewry had been eradicated, a term employed by the Germans, as if they were exterminating rodents. The creation of the Jewish State was not only in line with the thinking of Zionist pioneers, who posited that Jews could only be accepted if they were a people with a homeland, but it also was a proclamation to the world that Jews could fight and that they would endeavor to protect themselves. One must not underestimate the feeling of vulnerability and the anticipation of inevitable destruction that the Jews who inhabited Israel at the beginning felt about their future. On the day that Israel declared its independence, four Arab armies, with conscripts from almost every Arab nation massed on its borders threatening to “wipe the Jews into the sea.” In 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez canal and with various other acts of aggression against Israel, precipitated another conflict. Only 11 years later, Egypt again threatened Israel with annihilation after closing the Straights of Tiran, massing its army in the Sinai and using bellicose rhetoric in much the same way as is being used today. In a military alliance with Jordan and Syria, Egypt with its continuing hostility and flagrant threats towards Israel, knowing that Israel couldn’t indefinitely keep its army mobilized without strangling the economy, and having removed UN observers from observation posts, was playing with fire–Israel’s southern neighbor was threatening them with annihilation and apocalyptic warfare, with the memory of the Holocaust still etched in the Israeli psyche. Jews all over Israel began digging graves for themselves, not knowing that Yitzak Rabin, Levi Eshkol, Uzi Narkiss and Moshe Dayan were ready with one of the most audacious military operations known to man. The history of that war is now the stuff of legend.
Over the forty years since then, Israeli citizens witnessed a War of Attrition with Egypt, watched its citizens massacred all over the world, watched planes hijacked, terrorists infiltrate its borders, its fishermen shelled in the Galilee, its athletes killed in Germany, again, its neighbors surprise attack on its Holiest Day, the creation of radical-fundamentalist terrorist groups aimed at mayhem and destruction, two intifadas, its children blown up in discos by suicide bombers, being forced into quagmire in 1982 in Lebanon, seeing Jewish passengers thrown from cruise ships, being shelled from Southern Lebanon….and then from Gaza.
The world body, the U.N., has consistently admonished, and taken positions adverse to, Israel; But for the United States veto power, the U.N. would consistently sanction this small nation. So what the supposed arbiter and proponent of International Law does not quite understand is the psychological impression that the aforementioned conflicts have engendered in the minds of Israelis, and the ramifications of that feeling. Like a beat up and fed up animal, Israelis always feel the end is near, thus not taking any chances when it comes to their security or existence. In 1981, in a daring mission, IAF pilots, including former Columbia astronaut, Colonel Llan Ramon, flew 100 feet off the deck into Iraq, bombing the nuclear reactor at Osirak. In the operation that was later dubbed “Raid on the Sun,” Israel’s fears climaxed and it acted. Now, Iran is flaunting its intransigence and has repeatedly refuse to yield or halt its nuclear aspirations—It’s president has vehemently expressed his desire to obliterate Israel. The spiritual injury that has resulted from the experience of Jewry and from the past 60 years of Israel’s existence, leaves them uniquely situated and extremely prone to drastic action. The Israelis, as seen in their black humor and fatalistic outlook, as evidenced by their high-rate involvement in extreme activities such as skydiving, motorcycling and other risky sports, always feel as if they are victims of some madman or another. The U.N. needs to take this into account. As Iran refuses to stop its reactor, to make full disclosure, and continues to make public tests of its missile program and the capabilities of its Revolutionary Guard shock troops, no one should be surprised that tension is building in the stomach of each and every Israeli. That is what the law does not take into account, the spiritual injury that these events in conjunction with the vitriolic rhetoric of Iran’s president and mullahs has on each and every Israeli. This psychological feeling is catapulting Israel towards actions.
In the last month, Israel sent 100 F-15 and F-16 fighter jets into the Eastern Mediterranean under the auspices and guise of an exercise but really to demonstrate its capability of reaching distances equivalent to those of Iran. The idea has been floated of using tactical nuclear projectiles to take out installations far below ground and Israel’s minister of transportation and former minister of Defense, Shaul Mofaz, recently told reporters that Iran’s president would be gone before Israel. Israel demonstrated in it’s still fully undisclosed strike on nuclear components in the Syrian dessert that it was not playing games and that it felt threatened again.
The world and U.N. are not taking into account how psychologically devastating it is to be told again and again that you and your people will be exterminated. It must be acknowledged that such has repeatedly been a real prospect for Israel, and that their predisposition to victimization is being drawn out here. Anyone who is threatened with death has a right to respond as it is not in the civilized nature of this world to have leaders threaten to take out a country. Wars have been fought over territorial expansion and power, greed, religion, but never just to eradicate a people. Iran has therefore opened itself up to attack, and preemptive attack it probably will sustain. The notion of preemptive attack may have been a token phrase of the Bush Administration, but before that it was called “preventative warfare” by the Israelis-warfare on your terms to prevent war. With threats emanating from the leader of Iran and the desire to obtain nuclear capabilities, Israel cannot wait to be attacked. Iran has called Israel a “one bomb state.” While the fear that Iran could become the first “suicide state,” as Alan Dershowitz termed it, the actual development of a nuclear arsenal is irrelevant. Iran has and continues to injure a people who are already spiritually injured. Telling someone who is already spiritually injured that you will kill them can go nowhere desirable, and telling someone who has an estimated 200 nuclear warheads and been attacked and attacked incessantly that they will no longer be around…well, then you are just messing with the wrong person. The U.N., the world court, and every other believer in International Law should not be surprised when Israeli warplanes are flying into Iranian airspace.
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