One wonders: How can a country that is less than half the size of San Bernardino County in California cause so much concern for the Arab/Islamic world? The answer is, however, clear and incontestable: A Jewish State simply cannot be allowed to endure in the World of Islam, the Place of Islam. It is an abomination - a "cancer" to use the preferred metaphor - and abominations must always be expunged. It is a religious imperative to destroy Israel.

Its hardly surprising, therefore, that on the very day Arafat writes lovingly of a "Two-State Solution" in The New York Times, the PA Official Web site has only one state on its maps - the State of "Palestine." There is no State of Israel on the PA map. Not at all.

The Arab call for "annihilation" and "liquidation" of Israel is not new. What is new, and what is now (after September 11th) becoming apparent to many, is the litany of Palestinian Authority hatred for the United States. The recurring theme here is that the United States is an "imperialist" and "colonialist" usurper of land and a destroyer of human rights; that it is the sordid and satanic enemy of the Arab/Islamic world.

Yassir Arafat has always referred to Saddam Hussein as "my brother" (of course, Palestinian expeditionary forces served with Saddam's forces in occupied Kuwait), and he has always linked an Iraqi victory over the United States to a Palestinian victory over Israel. Recently the editor of the PA official daily newspaper wrote that America would pay for any war against Iraq "with 45,000 bodies of American soldiers who will return to the United States like airmail....The Arab mothers will not be the only ones crying...." The PA-appointed Mufti has even called for Allah to "destroy America and paint the White House black."

From Al Hayat Al Jadida last month:

"The United States of America and the Zionist State are two identical cases of historical development. each of them came into existence by invasion and mass extermination of the original residents, and each still occupies land belonging to others...."

Arafat condemned suicide bombers in The New York Times. But here is what the official PA newspaper said last November:

"The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of their noble predecessors...the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the US Marines a tough lesson in Lebanon....These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history....They are the most honorable people among us...."

And on September 11th, only hours after the attacks on the United States:

"The Palestinians must harm American interests in the Arab world, with all possible means, in all places, at all levels, because the United States does not understand the language of logic and wisdom, but only the language of force." (Al Hayat).

The 1993 Oslo Accords require Arafat to remove from the PLO Covenant all clauses calling for violence and the destruction of Israel. (Thirty of the thirty-three clauses would have to be deleted to meet that requirement). In April 1996, Arafat's Palestine National Council (PNC) passed a resolution appointing a legal committee to consider required changes. The committee never met. The PLO Covenant Was Never Changed. It remains utterly and unambiguously genocidal.

This is admitted by a top PNC official. Zuhair Sanduka, the PNC's Director of International Parliamentary Affairs, told the Israeli news agency IMRA on January 23, 2002: "No other Covenant has indeed been written ....There are publications that refer to the decision to make amendments. But there are no other texts - no other paragraphs or articles in place of those articles that had to be canceled or amended."

This is all part of the PLO culture of lies. Arafat says, again and again, that he has arrested terrorists. But then it emerges that it has all been a charade. Arafat says that the PA had nothing to do with the "ship of terror" - one carrying fifty-plus tons of weapons. But it turns out that the ship was owned and chartered by the PA. He says that the Holocaust was a hoax; that Israel injects Arabs with AIDS; and so on.

The "ship of terror" is an especially telling metaphor. Oslo made the ship possible, not only literally, but also in the sense of a much graver vessel: Unconventional Terror and Unconventional War. Weakened by years of surrender and capitulation - and by endless scenes of Jewish corpses sacrificed to a "peace of the brave" - Israel is now vulnerable to what its Arab/Islamic enemies have always intended: Total physical annihilation.

For years Israel has been unable, because of Oslo, to take essential preemptive measures against increasingly deadly terrorist assaults. For years, largely because of Oslo, Israel has been unable to strike preemptively at Iraqi and/or Iranian developing nuclear infrastructures - what would be known in international law as "anticipatory self-defense" (what was done so successfully at Osiraq in June 1981).

On several occasions, I co-authored articles with IAF General Yoash Tsiddon Chatto calling for such preemption - but in vain. Today, Israel can do nothing truly meaningful against the developing existential threats from Iraq and Iran. Yes, it can muster a configuration of Arrow and Patriot anti- ballistic missile efforts, but these could not possibly prevent catastrophic destruction of Israeli cities. And with the placement of Hezbullah missiles in South Lebanon (from Iran), Israel's vulnerability is now unprecedented and beyond question.

I have written very widely on Israeli defense matters for a quarter of a century. Much of this writing has been focused on the question of Israel's "nuclear ambiguity," Israel's "Bomb in the Basement." Today, there is strong disagreement between Sharon and Netanyahu on this question, with the latter calling for an end to ambiguity. Netanyahu is correct.

I have written in the Jerusalem Post and elsewhere on behalf of Netanyahu's position. It is not a simple matter of Israel's enemies knowing that Israel has nuclear weapons - of course they already know this - but a question of whether what they know is enough to sustain Israel's deterrence posture. For example, if Israel's nuclear weapons are perceived to be vulnerable to first-strike attack (whether or not they are really vulnerable), deterrence could fail. Similarly, if Israel is doubted to have the resolve to use its nuclear weapons (whether or not it really lacks such resolve), deterrence could fail. And if Israel's weapons are perceived to be uselessly large and indiscriminate - that is, countervalue (city busting) rather than counterforce (warfighting) in quality and targeting doctrine - deterrence could fail.

In all of these cases - and there are many pertinent others - it would be in Israel's interests to consciously disclose certain information.

In these cases, ambiguity would surely be a net negative. There is also the problematic assumption of rationality. All students of deterrence understand that the logic of deterrence always rests upon presumptions of adversarial rationality. Yet, if Israel were to face an irrational adversary or adversaries - a sort of national suicide bomber writ large - its deterrent could fail. This means that Israel needs (immediately) to take proper steps to deal with nonrational state and nonstate adversaries - especially if these are (or will soon be) equipped with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Logically, Israel's options here would include only: (1) preemption; (2) active ballistic missile defenses; and/or (3) political settlements. Right now, largely because of Oslo, Israel has abandoned (1) and is relying upon a dubious combination of (2) and (3).

Some years ago I met several times with Israel's Yu'val Ne'eman, the distinguished physicist who played a very major role in development of Israel's bomb. After attending a lecture of mine at BESA (Bar Ilan University), he told me that the fusion of Weapons of Mass Destruction with irrationality in the hands of Israel's enemies could be both plausible and devastating. (Even Shimon Peres has made such statements). Although such fusion could exist independently of the "peace process," it is the "ambience" of Oslo that has impaired (indeed paralyzed) Israeli prudence since 1993.

Let me return for a moment to terrorism. To an extent, Arafat's self- righteous denunciations of terrorism are not altogether lies. This is because PLO, together with all the other Arab frontline terror groups, believe that their struggle for "liberation," for an end to the "occupation," justifies any means necessary. By this calculation, the killers of Israeli women and children are "freedom fighters," engaged in a "military operation."

Yet, international law is altogether unambiguous on this claim. It is entirely invalid. Every use of force is judged twice under international law; once with regard to the ends; and once with regard to the means. There is no end, under any circumstance, that justifies violence against the innocent. Under international law, any use of insurgent force aimed at noncombatants is a crime - a violation of longstanding customary and codified norms. (Primarily common article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Protocols).

It should also be added that the Palestinian use of violence has become an end in itself. There is now a distinct joy, and exuberance, felt by Palestinian insurgents and their supporters about such violence. Indeed, this violence has a certain voluptuousness to it that has nothing to do with political objectives. The Palestinian terrorists who use nails and shrapnel and explosives against Jewish children dancing and eating pizza have not read Clausewitz; they are, rather, enchanted by De Sade.

In his February 3rd Op Ed in The New York Times, Yasser Arafat said: "Let me be clear. I condemn the attacks carried out by terrorist groups against Israeli civilians." But a few days earlier, speaking to a delegation of Arab leaders that was broadcast openly on PA Television on January 26th, he said: "Yes, brothers, with our souls and blood we redeem you, O Palestine....This is a sacred bond....Allah is great. Glory to Allah and his prophet! Jihad! Jihad! Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!

Arafat's Op Ed notes falsely that the Palestinian people are living under "foreign occupation." 95% of the Arab population in West Bank (Judea/Samaria) and Gaza live now under PA authority. Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement in Judea/Samaria are not the result of whimsical Israeli disregard for Palestinian rights, but the direct result of unending Palestinian violence - violence against defenseless civilians which is explicitly illegal under Oslo as well as general international law.

Arafat's true position on violence against the innocent is echoed, of course, by Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. Here is what the Hamas Charter says concerning "peace" with Israel:

Peace initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith; the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad....There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad....In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad....We must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one to be dealt with on this premise.....'I swear by that who holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill....'"

Israel is despised in the world because it is a Jewish state. Period.

Al Da'wa - The Mission - an Islamic publication - identifies the status of Israel with that of the individual Jew. Israel is simply the Jew in macrocosm: "The race (sic) is corrupt at the root, full of duplicity, and the Muslims have everything to lose in seeking to deal with them; they must be exterminated."

Israel's Islamic enemies make absolutely no distinction between Jews, Judaism and Israel. All Jews, wherever they may be, are "a part of a global conspiracy to create an alien body in the heart of the Muslim world....." In the recent language of Islamic Jihad: "The war is open until Israel ceases to exist and until the last JEW in the world is eliminated....Israel is all evil and should be wiped out of existence."

The Prophet is said to have predicted a final war to annihilate the Jews. Mohammed. we read in many current publications, had stated: "The hour (i.e., salvation) will not come until you fight against the Jews; and the stone would say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.'"

An article last week in Al-Ahram said the following:

"The first thing we have to make clear is that no distinction can be made between the Jew and the Israeli....The Jew is a Jew, through the millennia...in spurning all moral values, devouring the living and drinking his blood for the sake of a few coins. The Jew, the Merchant of Venice, does not differ from the killers of the (Lebanon) camps. They are equal examples of human degradation. Let us put aside such distinctions (Jews and Israelis) and talk only about Jews."

A current Egyptian textbook of "Arab Islamic History" informs new teachers as follows:

"The Jews are always the same, every time and everywhere. They will not live save in darkness. They contrive their evils clandestinely. They fight only when they are hidden, because they are cowards....The Prophet enlightened us about the right way to treat them, and succeeded finally in crushing the plots they had planned. We, today, must follow this way and purify Palestine from their filth."

It is with such enemy characterizations in mind that Israel must now face threats of unconventional war and unconventional terrorism. This threat is enlarged, substantially, by growing evidence of Arab and Islamic "sacrificers," both in microcosm and in macrocosm. Longstanding references to Israel as a "cancer" are much more than a vile metaphor. They are profoundly serious Islamic characterizations of a Jewish enemy that must be "liquidated."

A root problem here is Arab/Islamic death fear and the consequent compulsion to "sacrifice" despised Jews. This compulsion, in turn, stems from a widespread and doctrinal belief that killing Jews, and being killed by Jews, is simultaneously a path away from cowardice and toward immortality. The pertinent Arab/Islamic unwillingness to accept personal death leads, then, to the killing of Jews as a way to escape this death.

The ironies are staggering; but the connections exist and persist. King Sa'ud once informed a British visitor to his court: "Verily, the word of God teaches us, and we believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him an immediate entry into heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty." This doctrinal premise is now very widely accepted by Israel's Islamic state enemies as well as by its nonstate enemies.

What is needed now is a sustained and conspicuously competent effort to answer in greater depth and breadth this question: How can Israel best protect itself against irrational state enemies armed with weapons of mass destruction? Very importantly, Israel must always maintain its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons are not inherently evil or destabilizing (think of our own country). In spite of their terrible destructiveness, there are times and places wherein nuclear weapons can prevent both war and genocide.

Israel is the best case in point. There can be no question but that Israel's many enemies - state and nonstate - would commence annihilatory warfare tomorrow if Israel had given up its nuclear weapons. But why, exactly, does Israel need nuclear weapons?

1. Israel needs nuclear weapons to deter large conventional attacks by enemy states.
2. Israel needs nuclear weapons to deter all levels of unconventional (Chemical/Biological/Nuclear) attacks.
3. Israel needs nuclear weapons to preempt enemy nuclear attacks.
4. Israel needs nuclear weapons to support conventional preemptions against enemy nuclear assets. With such weapons, Israel can maintain - explicitly or implicitly - a threat of nuclear counter-retaliation.
5. Israel needs nuclear weapons to support conventional preemptions against enemy non-nuclear (conventional/chemical/biological) assets.
6. Israel needs nuclear weapons for nuclear war fighting. Although, in the best of all possible worlds, this need will never have to arise, it cannot be discounted or ignored. Essentially, however, fulfilling this need will enhance Israel's nuclear deterrent and reduce the risk of catastrophic regional war.
7. Israel needs nuclear weapons for the "Samson Option." This understanding is much more than a refutation of the "Masada Complex," that is, suicide without punishment of the aggressor. It is, rather, an integral and indispensable element of Israel's nuclear deterrent.

How might a nuclear war in the Middle east actually begin? Here are the most probable paths:

1. Enemy nuclear first-strikes against Israel.
2. Enemy non-nuclear first-strikes against Israel that elicit Israeli nuclear reprisals (either incrementally or via incremental escalations);
3. Israeli nuclear preemptions against enemy states with nuclear assets;
4. Israeli non-nuclear preemptions against enemy states with nuclear assets that elicit enemy nuclear reprisals (either immediately or via escalatory processes).

Other prominent paths to nuclear warfighting could include: Accidental/unintentional/inadvertent nuclear attacks between Israel and regional enemy states. Even, perhaps, the escalatory consequences of WMD terrorism against Israel.

So long as it can be assumed that Israel is determined to endure, there ARE conditions wherein Jerusalem could well resort to nuclear war fighting. Israeli leaders and planners should be reminded of Miguel de Unamuno's instructive remark about Hegel: "Hegel made famous his aphorism that all the rational is real and all the real, rational; but there are many of us who, unconvinced by Hegel, continue to believe that the real, the really real, is irrational; that reason builds upon irrationalities."

For Israel, now faced with the prospect of unconventional attacks from certain enemy states, it would be more than prudent to "build upon irrationalities." That is, it should build upon the expected irrationalities of increasingly formidable enemies.

As I speak to you this evening, Saudi Arabia is financing the relocation of thousands of Al Qaida terrorists to Judea/Samaria and Gaza. The German daily, Die Welt, reported on February 6th that Saudi Arabia is funding the escape of 4000 followers of Osama Bin Laden to Lebanon. There, quoting CIA and other Western intelligence sources, these terrorists will prepare to aid the Palestinian Authority with trained warriors. Their planned "liberation of Palestine" refers to all of the State of Israel - consistent, of course, with the PA official map of "Palestine."

Today, thousands who have fled from Afghanistan to Lebanon are being harbored in the Palestinian refugee camp at Ein Hilwe. The Saudi intelligence service has also paid Iran $10 million to buy weapons for the Palestinian Authority. Some of these weapons were confiscated in the Red Sea capture, by Israel, of the Karine-A freighter on January 3rd.

The Arab/Islamic plan to eradicate Israel has never slowed down or stopped. On the contrary, it is more virulent and systematic now than ever before. And today, it is a plan that can be augmented and implemented by authentically genocidal weapons. If these two elements - genocidal intent and genocidal weapons - are fused, Israel's physical survival will depend almost entirely upon its overall deterrence posture. And this posture is always very problematic. If these two elements are fused, and then joined by Arab/Islamic irrationality, even a robust Israeli deterrent posture will be wholly inadequate. It follows that all those who would prefer not to see another Jewish genocide put their minds to work immediately. There are very difficult intellectual problems to be solved, and there is little precious time left.