by Fabius Maximus

Summary: This article by guest author Franz Gayl (Major, USMC, retired) looks ahead beyond Israel’s current moment in the sun. They face a divided Arab people and even more fragmented Islamic societies, which they overawe by their massive military strength — exercised in the shadow of the world’s hyperpower. But these are ephemeral advantages; meanwhile the tides run against Israel. Invisibly, quietly, decisively. Deteriorating demographics, increasingly powerful enemies, and ever-growing hatred. For another perspective on this see The Fate of Israel.

Introduction

The U.S. must begin to plan for the non-combatant evacuation of Israel to the U.S. as a means to mitigate or avoid a second Holocaust. Prevention of such a tragedy by diplomatic or military means alone is unrealistic. With Iran threatening to be in possession of nuclear weapons soon, other increasingly hostile neighbors of Israel will follow suit to respond to the new Mideast balance of power. More ominously, nuclear weapons will find their way into the hands of radicals through state sponsorship of terrorism. Whether the conflagration occurs later in a general confrontation, or sooner as a function of a 3rd or a later 4th Intifada, the writing is on the wall as it pertains to the most vulnerable members of the Israeli populace and the preparations that Israel and the U.S. must make.

The Physical Dilemma

Including the West Bank, Israel comprises only 8,522 square miles, a strip of land area smaller than New Jersey. The preponderance her nearly 8 million citizens are concentrated in the northern half of Israel aggravating vulnerability through urbanization and high population density. Finally, she is surrounded by unfriendly neighbors, and antagonisms are growing. In a conflict she is constrained to internal lines, and her only relief is seaward. Israel has survived past conventional military conflicts benefiting from internal lines and maneuver finesse. Unfortunately, against surface, air, or high altitude electromagnetic pulse nuclear weapons attacks her conventional finesse is meaningless. Given Iran’s nuclear bomb progress and growing Palestinian discontent, an existential threat to Israel has arrived, and it is time to plan for contingencies.

Infiltration was the terrorist technique favored during the 1st and 2nd Intifadas. If similar terrorists possessed nuclear bombs today air bursts like Hiroshima or Nagasaki could be ruled out in Israel. In an effort to project the effects of a surface burst analogous nuclear contamination events must be considered. For example, immediately following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster over 57,000 square miles in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were dangerously contaminated. Even today, 26 years after the event, the Ukrainian government maintains a 1,100-square-mile exclusion zone around the damaged reactor that people are prohibited from entering. The smaller exclusion zone resulting from the recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has been even more disruptive to the Nation of Japan due to higher population densities and the contamination of crops and pasture lands. In addition to the catastrophic blast and fires, ground burst of a fission weapon would have a similar contamination impact in Israel, a tiny nation incapable of absorbing one such attack, much less several.

The conventional Jihadist suicide bombings of past Intifadas are reminders that gaining access to the heart of Israel’s urban areas with bombs was been accomplished, and could be again. Past attacks can be viewed as dry runs, with big bombs yet to come, perhaps to the U.S. as well. Unlike Israel however, the U.S. population and infrastructure can absorb such detonations without irreversible loss of national physical integrity.

One might ask, why evacuate Israel to the U.S.? With regards to physical dilemmas, some observe that local competition for water and energy resources are to blame for many local conflicts, more so than international factors. The distant U.S. is irrelevant such disputes, and definitely not culpable. Yet, the legitimacy of the establishment of Israel has never been embraced by all, and any local issues are merely fuel on the fundamental question. As to the lethal tension created by that question, it will be argued below that more so than any European nation, America has an obligation to avert a 2nd Holocaust in Palestine. For reasons that follow, America must be the ally that provides the back door for the mass preservation of those who decide to leave Israel before, during, and after the coming conflicts of increasing lethality. Global polarization on the topic of Israel leaves her with few sympathetic ears, and survival aboard her land will become ever-less tenable.

read more here:
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/38404/