Benny Morris: The Next Holocaust Will Be Different

You must read this powerful essay by Israeli historian Benny Morris:

This Holocaust will be different.
The second holocaust will be quite different.

One bright morning, in five or 10 years, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran’s acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will convene in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by then in his second or third term, the go-ahead.

The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles will take off for Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, and probably some military sites, including Israel’s half dozen air and (reported) nuclear missile bases.

Some of the Shihabs will be nuclear-tipped, perhaps even with multiple warheads.

Others will be dupes, packed merely with biological or chemical agents, or old newspapers, to draw off or confuse Israel’s anti-missile batteries and Home Front Command units.

With a country the size and shape of Israel (an elongated 20,000 square kilometers),

probably four or five hits will suffice: No more Israel.

A million or more Israelis in the greater Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem areas will die immediately.

Millions will be seriously irradiated.

Israel has about seven million inhabitants.

No Iranian will see or touch an Israeli.

It will be quite impersonal.