3 – Israel
The Tel Aviv bomb stunned the world. The Damascus bomb disgusted it. An older generation that grew up hiding under their school desks from Russian atom bombs believed that era in history was, well, was history. Over with. The new generation that grew up on Bruce Willis movies in which terrorists had atom bombs but never got to use them believed the bombs weren’t history, but at least were fiction. September 11 shook that belief, but two decades of waiting for the second terrorist shoe to drop pushed those fears into the realm of bad movies.
With the limited exception of American Jews, sympathy for Israel had dwindled after years of West Bank closings, bombings and counter-bombings, Israeli assassinations of Palestinian leaders, missiles launched from Gaza into Israel and missiles launched from Israel into Gaza. American sympathy dwindled to the point where most Americans were unsure who the good guys were when it came to Israelis and Palestinians. We have enough with our own problems, most Americans thought. By the time of the Tel Aviv bomb, the United States was wallowing in the national post-traumatic stress syndrome that followed the humiliating conclusion to the Iraq war when American troops marched away and sparked a renewed bloodbath between Sunnis and Shiites. The last thing Americans wanted was to deliver their sons and daughters into another Middle East caldron, especially one in which the lines between good guy and bad guy were not just blurred but, in most minds, were nonexistent.
The Tel Aviv bomb briefly changed that. Hollywood special effects – alien destructo-beams raking Washington – paled in comparison to satellite images of the smoking crater on the Mediterranean shore. The American aid machine that awakened to deal with earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and far-off civil wars geared up to once again shelter and feed millions of people with neither homes nor food.
The United States Sixth Fleet, with the restored battleship New Jersey and the supercarrier Lyndon Johnson on its first operational cruise, rounded up its sailors from the streets and brothels of Tripoli, cutting short its courtesy visit to the latest Libyan government. The fleet steamed east, breaking out its never-used radiation decontamination equipment, preparing its sick bays. Doctors on board hurriedly read the manuals on treating radiation victims, knowing that by the time survivors would be carried on board the ships, the burn and blast victims would already be dead.
America was on the way, if only the Israelis could hold out for a few more days.
Damascus was obliterated before the Sixth Fleet arrived. The Damascus bomb slammed the door of world opinion. In contrast to the dozen organizations jostling to claim credit for bombing Tel Aviv, no one boasted about bombing Damascus. No one needed to claim credit. No one but Israel would have done it. At least that was what the world believed. American Jews, for the most part, made little effort to justify Israel’s conduct. For too many Americans, Jews or not, the bombing of Damascus went so far beyond bulldozing Palestinian homes or helicopter attacks on Gaza Strip apartment buildings that they could not attempt to rationalize it as an act of an anxious Israel fighting to remain alive. The Damascus bomb was an act of desperation, a drowning nation seeking to take an enemy, any enemy, down with it.
Hearts hardened. It was one thing for a crazy religious fanatic suicide terrorist to use an atom bomb, another for a government to choose to do so. Following the example set for them by Jewish-American civil rights organizations, by the Anti-Defamation League, by Bnai Brith, and most of all the example set by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Muslims stretched their long-dormant political – and financial – muscles. This is the ultimate war crime, they said. Israel has gone too far this time, they said. America can not tolerate this Israeli outrage, not this one, not this time. Enough is enough, they said.
The National Security Agency assured President Quaid that there was no way Syria could have been responsible for bombing Tel Aviv. Maybe Iran did it, or perhaps even our on-again-off-again ally Pakistan, but it was impossible for Syria to have a nuclear weapons program. The NSA’s secret memo to the President was leaked within hours of delivery and made every front page in the country. Israel had murdered hundreds of thousands of Syrians, innocent Syrians, headlines emphasized.
American interest in supporting Israel evaporated.
When the Sixth Fleet arrived off what had been Israel, they were met by a high speed Egyptian patrol boat whose nervous captain politely informed Admiral Barons in his comfortable command cabin on the Lyndon Johnson that the situation was well in hand, that the best medical teams were on the scene and that while the American offer of help was appreciated, the situation was not nearly as serious as first thought. So many armed groups were on the scene, however, that it would be best for the fleet to withdraw before a tragic accident took place.
Admiral Barons, who had lost his son, a Marine lieutenant, in Afghanistan, and his daughter, a Navy SEAL, in Kuwait, waited for orders from Washington. Twelve hours later, the orders were to exercise restraint but to act in his best judgment based on the local situation.
Enough young deaths, Barons thought. The fleet withdrew offshore.
Israel no longer existed by the time the Sixth Fleet arrived. The fiercest fighting was between the Syrians and the Egyptians, each claiming sovereignty over what had been Israel. Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and the West Bank emptied as four million people thanked Allah for the miracle and rushed to claim what was theirs by divine right. Or at least so much of it as did not glow in the dark from radiation.