I think we are not disagreeing much actually. I do agree that Israel will forcibly expel Arab civilians, as much as they can. I'll leave the actual border to the author, an Israel that borders Turkey seems a bit much, but in the TL's circumstances it is at least conceivable (the humanitarian catastrophe ensuing would be... well... really big).
The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
I'm not sure that it is too much. Lebanon in some form will exist, but the idea of Turkey and Israel meeting along Lebanon's eastern border is possible.
I do not rule it out either. It just sounds... well, there is a lot of people in the relevant area who will vehemently reject the idea, to put it mildly.
So?
Seriously, at this point, The western/RA powers I believe will place the following limits on the lands of postwar Israel. (More or less clockwise from the south)
Nothing west of the Suez Canal
Will not include Beirut or Seacoast north of Beirut.
No lands north of a line running EW through the northern border of OTL Lebanon (So nothing north of Homs)
No lands east of the Euphrates, not that there is much in OTL Al-Anbar province.
Nothing *that* close to Medina, but they'll probably get the OTL Saudi coast of Gulf of Aqaba.
Still doesn't give them any oil and I'm not sure that they want it all , but gives them defense in depth, if that means anything with launched nerve gas.
It will be interesting to see how the relations between Israel and South Iran develop. I don't see the two bordering, they'll be a Sunni State around in the area around Baghdad regardless of what happens to Baghdad.
Bookmark1995
Banned
I'm just exploring some possibilities. Perhaps Mussolini's successor might make that outcome possible, but it's more likely for Ethiopia to become a pointless guerilla war.
I guess.
But it is possible that within a few years, Israelis might wake up from their vengeance and see that they...might have gone overboard.
Like how Americans at the time justified the bombing of Dresden, but within a few decades questioned both the ethics of it and the utility of it.
Again: while I can see that such border are easily conceivable in context, there's a few million Syrians (not to mention others, in lesser numbers) in these areas, who will be displaced (as I doubt Israel will want them there - Israel has also not that many people to repopulate such a large area, at least not in the short term). Since I also do not see full scale genocide, their fate would, in one way or another, be an issue. And I expect them to resist.
As I think yourself said upthread, Angola comes to mind as a comparison. The difference is that Italy ITTL is a major great power, which Portugal was not IOTL.
So maybe actually Algeria IOTL, except probably a lot worse (and democratic France, notionally adhering to ideals of human rights and son on, went to depressingly far lengths to hold that place. A Fascist Italy which does not even pretend to give a shit about those standards... it may be very, very ugly).
Given the existance of the UAR, any displacements will be internal to their country, a fig leaf that might help. And the Israelis might not want it all, but it will be the Israelis to choose. At minimum I except expansion into both OTL Syria and somewhat into OTL Saudi Arabia (that section of Arabia is pretty empty)
This is a very good summary of why it's so difficult for Ethiopia to simply be repressed like the rest of the European colonies. One thing I'd like to mention is the presence of a warrior-monk concept and culture that's seen Orthodox priests fight to the death in conflicts that go as far back as the 1500s, if not longer - this was also a thing in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and it contributed to the slaughter of Orthodox priests, deacons, etc. throughout the Occupation. If you think Ethiopian militarism is only confined to this aspect, I think more examples will be apparent ITTL as things progress and we see chapters on Ethiopia.
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So you'd agree with my assessment that the IJA's rampage throughout Asia would be the best OTL analogy for what Israeli conduct towards conquered civilians would look like?
Don't know about him, but I most certainly wouldn't. Neither in OTL nor TTL was Japan ever the target of an attempted Genocide by Korea or China. Isreal here most certainly is. At the hands of Nazi-made nerve gas no less. The "Holocaust all over again" precedent doesn't get more blatant than that.
If there's any rampaging done by the IDF, the closest OTL analogy would be the Red Army in Germany.
Speaking of, let me add my 2 cents to the whole displacement debate: I'd expect that to happen as predicted by others and in the future for it to be viewed as akin to the displacement of the Germans from Posen, Pommerania and the Sudetenland.
Lucky for Israel, I don't think they will have much opportunity to do much rampaging and/or displacing. The UARs own propaganda about the monsterous baby-killing Jews will make sure that that most Arab civilians will flee from any IDF forces well in advance of them.
Well, I was talking in terms of the brutality of said actions, not the motivation behind said actions, to which I agree with.
I’m thinking it’ll be less IJA and more Soviet advance through Eastern Germany.
Deleted member 109224
If the Israelis empty out southern Syria, there aren't enough Jews to replace all the folks kicked out.
Israel might expand down to Duba, Saudi Arabia. Expansion into Sinai and Saudi just seems more feasible than moving into Syria. Plus, between the Litani, the Golan, and the Yarmouk Israel has a defensive northern boundary. Jabal al-Druze might be worth incorporating though for security.
But if they expanded even further north, the whole of the Hauran could be worthwhile. Going beyond that... Mandatory Syria's Damascus state? Mesopotamia is going to be in the Turkish sphere, I think.
If the choice is between nukes and chemical WMDs anyway, would poison gas really be that much worse? The people directly affected might die slower deaths, yes, but the wealth and history of the place is preserved, making things easier for future generations.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Um...
The IJA launched expansionist wars against its neighbors, used children for bayonet practice, and even committed cannibalism against POWs-something one of our President's nearly escaped.
The Israeli soldiers may not be nice toward civilians, but they certainly aren't being cruel for the HELL of it. And they certainly won't do shit that will resemble the "Blood libel."
Never Again
Hello all, my apologies for this chapter being so long, but I may have to stop writing for a week due to tests and work so I wanted to give you a bunch of stuff to sink your teeth into. It goes without saying that none of the actions written here are pleasant or desirable. I hope this chapter explains all the forewarnings about what would befall the Middle East.
Interrogator 1: Now tell us straight: did you know Aflaq was going to hit Tel Aviv with nerve gas?
Amer: (*Sound of spitting out blood*) Can you tell this bastard to stop hitting me if you want an answer?
Interrogator 1 (in Italian): Hey, he called you a ‘bastard’. Are you going to take that?
Interrogator 2: So he still thinks he’s somebody, eh?
*(Sounds of punching and groans)*
Interrogator 1 (in Egyptian Arabic): I’m sorry, but my colleague politely turned down your request. You can try telling him yourself, but I’m afraid he doesn’t speak Arab. Therefore, like we keep telling you, your best option is to cooperate. Now, why did Aflaq hit Tel Aviv? What did you know about it?
Amer: That damned Christian …
Interrogator 1: Excuse me?
Amer: That damned Christian shat his panties when the Jews were knocking at his border. He didn’t give a shit when Alexandria was raped, when the Suez Canal was stolen or when you sons of whores were standing outside Cairo. But when some kike could see Mount Hermon, it was too much for him!
Interrogator 1: Why?
Amer: Because the faggot hadn’t gotten into a real fight in his life! Syria fell into his lap the fucking whore of a country she is, and the Iraqis fell to their knees so fast they broke their legs hitting the ground! Because the peasants here were delirious with excitement in Egypt, they forced Nasser to join with that useless cunt. Then Lebanon let him in, because she’s the son of sixty thousand whores, and Oman was able to kick out the British, who were too busy drinking tea and wearing women’s underwear to care about some godforsaken desert halfway across the world. By the time the war turned against him, he was shitting himself because half of the fucking morons he had beneath thought he was Allah himself. When he didn’t beat Israel after saying up and down he would, he sure as hell didn’t look like a God then. He was shitting himself that our brave leader, General Nasser - God rest his soul – would be the new hero to the Arabs after his heroic resistance in Egypt.
Interrogator 1: So there was trouble in paradise. What does this have to do with the nerve gas?
Amer: The Christian finally decided that the war needed to end, but since he couldn’t come begging to the Israelis, he thought the only way he could get a decent deal was to get the Russians involved. The Russians were sitting on their fat, vodka-drinking asses making money off Arab blood. They didn’t want the war to end any earlier than it had to. So they kept doing these half-assed ‘please stop’ speeches, when what we needed them to do was tell the Colonialists and Jews to stop right there or they would use nukes. Finally, Aflaq decided that the only way to get those fuckers off the sofa was to break out chemical weapons. The idea was that at worst, the Imperialists would reply with another chemical weapon attack, which we could live with. He told us about it and we said ‘fine, use them on the Italians outside Cairo’. The bastard refused, and said that if we used it on the Italians then we’d get nuked – ha! He said that if we only used them on Israeli soldiers, no one would give half a shit and we’d just be stuck hurling gas at each other like a bunch of idiots, so we had to hit Tel Aviv to change the colour of their underwear enough. We told him to fuck off, that our capital was at stake and needed all the help it could get. This pissed the Christian off, and he started telling us how Egypt was just one small province in the Arab World, and that losing Cairo was no more serious than losing Muscat. After we both screamed at each other over the phone, he finally said he’d split the missiles 50:50, half on Tel Aviv since we couldn’t risk hitting Al-Aqsa, and the other half on Italian troops. Instead, that Christian, shoe-eating, son of a planet of whores bastard blew the whole thing on Tel Aviv!
Interrogator 1: Why?
Amer: How the fuck should I know? Maybe he wanted to piss us off. Maybe he was screwing some Italian chick. Or maybe, heh, maybe he couldn’t resist making the kikes squeal a little bit. He was good at making the Israelis shit themselves. If only he was as good at predictions as that. He that if we only hit the Israelis that we’d expect gas. We got fucking nukes. He told us that nukes were too dangerous because it would mean the Russians would have to use military force, but the chemical weapons would give them some space to threaten.
Interrogator 1: Well that turned out great, didn’t it?
Amer: Fuck you!
*(Sounds of punching and groans)*
It was three in the morning but we were all wide-awake. But amidst the chaos of reports coming in, the main actors in this nightmare play stood out like they were a world unto themselves. Golda [Meir] and Moshe [Dayan] sat beside each other at the table, heartbroken. Elie [Wiesel] and Yitzhak [Rabin] were standing by the door, looking down in melancholy. Shamir was pacing across the room in fury, cursing and damning everyone and everything. Begin was sitting down but he was almost as angry as Shamir. Then there was David [Ben-Gurion], at the head of the table. He sat looking down, the weight of a hundred worlds on his shoulder. He looked like a man who had lost everything he had loved. I never knew that a man could bear such despair. Yet his pain was not enough for Begin and Shamir, who looked at him as if he had ordered the rockets himself.
“If we’d told the Italians to nuke the Arabs back at the start of the war, this would never have happened!” Shamir screeched.
Begin leaned towards David with such venom that I worried he was going to physically attack him. “What are we waiting for?! Rockets to fall on the fucking Temple Mount?! Your beloved English aren’t going to lift a finger! Call the Italians! Now!”
As if to take the attention off David, Moshe sighed. “I don’t know how the intelligence network didn’t pick it up. We were tracking almost every Soviet shipment. There never looked like there could be nerve gas among them.” He stood up, “I take full responsibility for -”
Shamir violently cut him off. “Don’t you excuse this old fool! He spent the last three years trying to attack Jewish patriots, trying to destroy the Lehi and telling the one man in the world who cared about us during the Nazi Holocaust to go to hell! Now we’re paying the price!”
Yitzhak looked at Shamir with all the disgust he had for anything resembling the Lehi. “That man’s done more than anything to create Israel, and more than anything to defend it! If you think your goose-stepping, pub-brawlers would have done a better job, you can send your best division against our best! Then we’ll separate the men from the boys …”
It was at that moment I was given a note. I quickly read it – my face was already white from the conflict in the War-Room but it went whiter still. I ran up to the table, almost crashing in to it. Everyone turned to me in confusion. I was scared to be the centre of attention but I was so glad that everyone had stopped yelling at each other.
“Um,” I began. I needed to hold the note with both hands because I was trembling so much. “A message has come through from Rome from Foreign Minister Ciano. He said that Italy denounces this act of Arab barbarism, and assures the Israeli government that …” I paused. “… That each every weapon in our inventory is now considered appropriate to use. We can now confirm that President Orbay has given approval for Turkish participation in Operation Samson. Our Prime Minister, and leader, requests that the Israeli government also confirm their willingness to initiate Operation Samson.”
I didn’t know what Operation Samson was at the time, but I could tell from how suddenly the listeners went quiet and pale that they knew full well what it was.
Shamir was the first to recover, marching up to David. “Mr. Prime Minister … if you don’t give the order right this minute, I will order every man of the Lehi to rise up against your Arab-Collaborationist government.”
“You’ve got some chutzpah saying that in front of an army man …” Yitzhak growled.
Shamir didn’t turn his gaze. “This is our chance to exact revenge for what they’ve done! Are we going to let Aflaq and Nasser get away with what they did to Tel Aviv?! They hit us with nerve gas! Are you going to let the blood of our people go unavenged?!”
“In case you forgot, Shamir,” spat Yitzhak, “the Soviets swore they’d intervene if there were nukes used in the war! Are you going to take the blame if the Russians commit the Third Holocaust? And take down the whole of mankind with them?!”
Begin stood up now. “Khrushchev doesn’t have the balls. He’s been trying to play the Good Goy after we all found out what the Communists were up to because he knows the USSR’s popularity is in the fucking toilet. Aflaq has reserved a place alongside Himmler in the minds of the world, and no one’s going to side with that. The bald oaf is in no position for a war and he knows it. The North Iranians would probably start a war with the Russians anyway if he tried to support Aflaq. He’s been playing about with reforms like a teenage boy plays around with his dick – he’s not going to throw it all away for some camel-seller who isn’t even a Red. But what we have to do is strike back before the Soviets are forced to make statements about it. If we hit quickly, we can end the war before Khrushchev takes his morning shit.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Elie.
Shamir and Begin turned to him in shock. “What did you say?” asked Begin.
Elie shrugged as if he’d already regretted speaking out. “I don’t want Israel to go down in history having …”
Begin slammed his fist on the table. “IF WE DON’T ACT, THERE WON’T BE A FUCKING ISRAEL! For two thousand years, goyim have been murdering us in the millions. They destroyed the Temple, they burned down the synagogues, they burned us, they robbed us, they stuffed us in ghettoes, and then they threw us into death camps. And every time, we cowered. We let them walk over us. We walked into our graves. Until now. When we finally stood like Moses and killed our overseer. We fought for this land and we came back to Jerusalem after 2000 years. If we let Aflaq fire nerve gas again, we’ll lose the war. If we lose the war, there’ll be no more Israel. If we lose Israel … we’ll never get a second chance. You worry about how we go down in history?! I’d rather be part of a Jewish state cursed by every tongue in the world than allow an Auschwitz loved by one and all!”
Begin sat back down, exhausted from his outburst. It was at that point, having the lost the energy to hide his emotion, that a look of supreme sadness entered his eyes. His voice, laced with all the pain of having seen so much hatred and death in his life, was breaking. “I’d rather be judged by our children than have to bury them.”
“That’s enough.”
We all turned around to David, surprised that he finally spoke.
“All of you – that’s enough,” he said, as he finally straightened his head a little. “I never thought that it would come to this. You know, it’s so strange looking back. We thought we could leave together in peace. We thought that the Jews and the Arabs could get along together. That we could share this land, trade and prosper as neighbors. The brotherhood of man … Then the pogroms happened, but I didn’t lose faith. I was sure it would all be resolved soon enough. Then they turned down the Peel Commission. I thought, alright, we can improve our position in the future and change their minds. Then they tried to destroy us in the first war. But we won so I thought, now, finally, they would see reason. Then they started a second war. Alright, maybe they just need one final push to finally make them realize… and then they did this. They don’t hate us for taking their land, or for having land or anything to do with land … they hate us because we are ‘us’. I tried to keep the hope alive after what the Nazis did, that it could never happen again. And then Stalin did the same thing. I couldn’t believe it could happen twice, let alone in less than a decade afterward. And now Aflaq wants to try a third time.”
David raised his head, and all of us, even Shamir and Begin, were terrified by the blazing fury in his eyes. “I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. We’ve tried everything to avoid being killed – fleeing, converting, enlisting … and now we’re going to do the one thing we haven’t done: we’re going to wipe our killers off the face of the Earth. I didn’t come to this country to hurt anyone … I came here that we could live in peace … so we could be a shining light to the world. But it seems the only peace we’ll ever get is through victory. Golda?”
Golda straightened. “Yes, Prime Minister?”
“Have the Soviets made any diplomatic movements?”
“N-no. There’s a lot of chatter, but no announcements. Their army wasn’t on any sort of footing, but now it seems to be chaotically attempting to organize. It seems that they were as shocked as we were.”
“And the British?”
“They’re telling us to use restraint. They’re afraid of dragging the Soviets into the conflict.”
“The French?”
“De Gaulle says he will support any action Israel takes.”
David clenched his fists and said nothing. It must have been only ten seconds at most, five seconds perhaps. But so much ran through my mind that I thought I lived a lifetime in those few seconds. I thought of this kind man, who had always cared more about helping the poor and reading the Torah than he ever did about death and war. Of all the people, why was he the one who had to make the call?
He finally looked back to Golda. “Tell Ciano that Israel will participate in Operation Samson.”
[…]
Many years later, just after I’d been elected to the Knesset, I visited David at his home. His wife smiled when she saw me and ushered me in. She knew we were friends, and she told me about how proud David was that I was an MK now. Even then, I still knew what to expect. I saw him sitting in his chair, looking away. The Torah sat on his lap, and the Jerusalem sunlight floated through the window.
“Hello, David!” I said, “I guess you can’t call me ‘Anne’ anymore, I’m Anne Frank, MK!” I laughed.
David didn’t laugh. He had fallen into a deep depression since that Yom Kippur so long ago, and the memory of that night still haunted him. He turned towards me, though he still failed to look me in the eye.
“That’s great, Anne.” His voice didn’t match his words. Though pained I persisted.
“Don’t worry, David,” I smiled despite being so nervous I wanted to run away, “we’ll get the party back on its feet in no time! Herut can’t run the country forever!”
He said nothing. I began to turn around, hoping for some conversation with his wife to save us from the tedium.
“Anne?” said David, just as I was about to leave.
I turned around and almost ran to his side, as if I was still his secretary from all those years ago. “Yes, Prime Mini – I mean, David?”
“… I did the right thing, didn’t I?”
I didn’t need to clarify what he was talking about. The pain and anguish I felt for him all those days ago came back to me as fresh as ever. I saw how aged he had gotten, how tired his joints, how thick his wrinkles. He was doomed to go every waking moment of his life thinking about that night, whether anger had clouded his judgement, whether there could have been another way, whether he could have done something before the war, something. Every day and every night, he tortured himself with the thoughts of all the souls who had perished that day. If any Arab wished revenge on him for what happened, they had surely gotten their wish. I walked up to him, putting my hand on his tired shoulders.
“You had no choice,” I said.
David said nothing. Perhaps, deep down, he agreed with me. But perhaps, deep down, he felt it made no difference either way.
In all the capitals in all the world, including Jerusalem, none were as blind with panic and shock as Moscow. Khrushchev’s moneymaking racket had in one night gone from a source of relief to a source of existential crisis. None of the Soviet hierarchy expected Aflaq to do something so incendiary, and only partially because they were unaware of how advanced the chemical weapon programs of the UAR had gotten. The Politburo talked like men minutes from death, as they analysed their woeful options. The Soviets had made repeated declarations that they would protect Aflaq from chemical weapon and nuclear strikes, but they were made before they knew about his inventory and certainly before he started using them. At the same time, to throw Aflaq to the wolves would be an utter geopolitical calamity, perhaps closing off the Middle East to the Soviets forever and making their other declarations of support as useful as the paper they were written on. Not to mention, giving the historical Anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union, there was a serious fear that Moscow could be identified as the mastermind behind the attack on Tel Aviv. Mikhail Suslov, whose relative youth and rapid ascendency had made him bold, said that the best of the bad options was to step in and swear that a nuclear attack on the UAR would be considered an act of war against the Soviet Union in an act of brinksmanship. Aflaq was the only real major ally the Soviets had outside their occupation and he was considered too important to lose. But Khrushchev would not so easily consent to defending the UAR, even as he agreed with Suvlov’s arguments, paralyzed in horror at the dilemma before him.
Yet there was one thing Khrushchev was adamant about: calling Baghdad. The phone was brought in, the call was made and with a speed that implied he had been in anxious wait, Aflaq was on the line. Khrushchev’s first words were ‘What the fuck have you done?’ For the following hour, the two traded barbs back and forth. Khrushchev accused Aflaq of having betrayed his trust, threatening the security of the Soviet Union and risking dragging even the US into the conflict. Aflaq shot back that Khrushchev was acting like America and Britain in WW2 in depending on a foreign nation’s youth to do their bidding, with the UAR as the new Soviet Union fighting the Nazis. He argued that the Soviets had to bear their share of the Anti-Imperialist struggle, unless he would like to see the whole Middle East become a Fascist-Zionist base that could attack the already stretched Soviets. On and on the two went, even as events elsewhere overtook them. Finally, after a final declaration from Khrushchev that he would ‘Do everything I can to fix your fuck-up!’, he slammed the phone down and wiped his brow.
Khrushchev must have had many competing arguments in his head, but chief among them was the one thing he knew for sure: war was certain defeat for the Soviet Union. After Stalin’s purges and the countless resources squandered in China, the Soviet Union could not hope to steamroll even the Fascist Bloc in isolation anymore, as she could once have done effortlessly. And now, with war certain to bring in the Western powers - including the still neutral US – there was only obliteration in store if the Soviets attempted to save Aflaq. It was as hopeless a task as Canute turning back the waves. The only way out was for Khrushchev to risk a gamble. If he could make enough threats and bombast that a massive escalation would invite nuclear destruction, it could make the Democracies and Fascist leaders think twice about being too hasty. Finally, after further delay and much debate in Moscow, Khrushchev and the Politburo reluctantly agreed to send out an international ultimatum. It would be addressed not just to the West, but the UAR as well. It went as far as to criticize the UAR’s strike (half as a way to convince the West and half as a cold rebuke to Aflaq’s monstrosity) as ‘Reckless endangerment that threatens the survival of the very human species’. The most important segment was that, ‘The Soviet Union will use all weapons in its arsenal in response to any further escalation in the Middle Eastern region.” With that, the ultimatum was sent. Yet as though the Soviets were cursed by fate, by the time the letter was sent, it was already far too late to stop what was coming. Four minutes later, the first nuclear explosion sounded over the Middle East.
Operation Samson was conceived in the years preceding the Second Arabian War, though only definitely finalized in April 1956. Italy was the only member of the Roman Alliance who had nuclear weapons, but there was still a certain moral taboo about their usage. Nukes had been completely ignored in China owing to the threat of retaliation. Yet at the same time, were seen as instant game-enders due to their being instrumental in ending WW2 and the Second Polish-Soviet War. For this reason, it was considered prudent to at least be prepared for the possibility, even though it was considered unlikely the Soviets would allow it. The main problem of using nuclear weapons on the UAR was Israel and Turkey, who were right beside the UAR, were critical allies, and may be affected by any radioactive fallout and damage as a result of a mass nuclear bombing. For that reason, leading Israeli and Turkish were both invited to planning sessions.
Though it changed as time went on, the basic plan was the same: a decapitation strike would hit the administrative headquarters of every region of the UAR, followed by further nuclear strikes on the UAR’s now leaderless, directionless armies. After that, chemical weapons would then be used on whatever organized resistance was left, and a broad, general offensive would begin. The cities that would be struck were: Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Deir Ez-Zur, Muscat, Riyadh, and Tripoli in Lebanon. The original plan was to nuke Beirut, but the Phalangist Party’s strength in the city convinced the Fascists to attack Lebanon’s second-largest city, which had almost no Phalangist presence. Yemen was likewise spared owing to Mussolini’s gratitude to Imam Yahya, as well as Mussolini’s own long-term ambitions. Deir Ez-Zur was condemned owing to its massive growth in recent years as the bridge between Syria and Iraq. The town had grown rapidly due to the massive levels of transit between the newly joined countries. If that was severed, the UAR would effectively be split in two. Cairo was only chosen after Mussolini was repeatedly reassured that the Sphinx and Pyramids were too far away from the blast radius to be affected. A further ten nukes were earmarked for military use, their targets to be agreed on at the time, depending on the circumstance by Italian, Israeli and Turkish commanders. The British and French were specifically not invited to the meetings, or even aware of them. Britain and France’s dithering during the rise of the UAR had left even Ben-Gurion reluctantly confessing that he preferred the ‘insurance’ of Italy.
The plan was named after the Old Testament’s Samson’s pulling down the pillars of the temple where he was chained and derided, killing both himself and his tormentors. Ben-Gurion was deeply uncomfortable about how destructive the plan was, and suggested the name precisely because it was such an unthinkable option. To Ben-Gurion, the option could only be used in an extreme scenario where Israel was at extreme threat of total extinction. Italy did not want to risk damaging relations with Israel by setting off nuclear weapons near their territory, and so a solution was made. The three powers agreed that the operation could only be enacted if all three agreed to implement it. Ben-Gurion had told the Cabinet early of the plan and faced demands to execute it immediately by Shamir, who was rebuffed sharply. By September, with Israel having mostly expelled the UAR from her borders, Ben-Gurion was relieved that he never had to implement the proposal. He was convinced that there was now no scenario where it would be morally, politically or even pragmatically acceptable to do such a thing. Then came the Yom Kippur Rocket Attacks, and the entire animus of the war changed. Israel now had to choose between restraint in the face of a Third Holocaust, or to unleash a nuclear rampage that would result in the death of countless thousands. Ultimately, knowing that he faced with the prospect of an outright coup if he held back, Ben-Gurion gave his reluctant assent to the attack. He would be haunted by the move to his dying day.
That morning, from the Aircraft Carrier Sparviero in the Mediterranean, the pilots were given the words they’d been at once excited to and frightened to receive: Arabia Delanda Est. Named after the razing of Carthage, Balbo had chosen the codewords to impress Mussolini by finding a connection to Rome’s own incursions to the shores beyond Italy. Balbo would be the man personally in charge of the operation, co-operating closely with the Turks and Israelis to ensure that the UAR was ‘wiped off the face of the Earth and the pages of history’. As the first planes left, and Cairo approached its doom, he received news of the Soviet ultimatum. It said that a nuclear strike by Italy would mean nuclear strike by the Soviets After hearing it, he fell silent, before turning to the staff in the room. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ll be damned if Communists ever tell Italians what they can do!” If there was any fear of Soviet attack, the staffers certainly didn’t show it, letting out cries of ‘Long live Italy! Love live the Leader!’ The cries continued until the first flash of light lit up Cairo.
Detonating just east of Tahrir Square, the ancient city was decimated in an instant. Rubble and steel were flung like pebbles across the streets, filled with war pilgrims, desperate to have taken part in what was meant to be the glorious final resistance of Cairo, and filled with refugees who had fled from the north. The Nile burned in nuclear fire, strewn with corpses of thousands, and of further thousands unlucky enough to have lived, literally melting alive. In his command bunker south of the city, General Nasser was unlucky enough to have looked at the city the moment the bomb dropped. He fell in agony, demanding to know why he couldn’t see anymore and what had happened. Then the terrifying truth struck him along with the sound of a demonic thunder – Cairo was no more. His subordinates raced to collect him from the carnage to save him, Nasser’s only consolation being he would never see what had befallen Cairo. All the developments he worked on had been flattened, the working-class districts where thousands cheered his name had been incinerated along with the people who lived there. The old palaces, mosques and churches of central Cairo may as well have never existed. As the cries of millions deafened all around, the Sphinx starred as coldly and heartlessly as it had all those thousands of years she had stood. Old Egypt stood motionless, even as the new one burned.
Yet that was only the first strike of the carnage that was to unfold. Soon afterward, Tripoli was blasted off the Mediterranean, taking out the still-under-construction Soviet naval base that had been planned to reside there. The strike on Damascus would be more important because it would mean the death of Salah al-Din al-Bitar, the de jure second most powerful man in the UAR. Al-Bitar had always been more moderate than Aflaq and it is likely he would have felt uncomfortable about the Yom Kippur Rocket Attack, but he would never have the chance to tell Aflaq himself. The City of Jasmine became The City that Never Was. Once considered the oldest continuously lived in city on Earth, central Damascus was flattened. The Tomb of Saladin and the Umayyad Mosque were obliterated, robbing Syria of some of its most precious cultural heritage (though since little of it was considered Pre-Arab culture, Mussolini was mostly indifferent). Israeli troops from the Golan could see the explosion from a safe distance, and it wasn’t over yet. Deir Ez-Zur was struck just as intended, obliterating the central connection between Syria and Iraq, leaving the two states effectively re-separated. Then came Baghdad, facing a cataclysm not seen since the Mongol invasion. The abode of Aflaq, the Italians struck with devastating force turning the heart of the Levant into an empty husk. In the hours following the Baghdad strike, countless radio operators all over the UAR tried to contact Aflaq … only to be met with silence. On the carnage went, with a bombing of Riyadh that killed not only King Saud, but the next three of his successors. Scholars debate to what extent King Saud was culpable for what happened in Tel Aviv, but there is no doubt as to what the Italian position was. Lastly came the nuclear strike at Muscat, a symbolic strike to remind the world of why the war was being fought. As the official UAR story was that the Jews of Muscat had been relocated to desert camps, the Italians and Israelis had no qualms about the judgment of the city that betrayed them. The largest city in Oman was obliterated, and its regional leader, Alhianai, along with it.
The initial strike had largely accomplished its goal, leaving the UAR effectively leaderless and bewildered. But this was only the start, as the Israelis and Turks now took a larger role in identifying the locations for tactical nuclear bombing. Two further nukes would be detonated in Egypt, just east and south of the city to destroy the Egyptian reserves (with Nasser barely escaping the blast range of the second due to the quick evacuation of his staff). Two were used in the north of Saudi Arabia, obliterating the cream of the Saudi army and making the Israelis the masters of the field. Three were deployed along the Syrian border, with a further nuke used in southern Lebanon. The final two were deployed on UAR troops advancing from the west to try and liberate Aleppo from the Turks, who quickly ensured that would never happen. By the end of the nuclear strikes, the UAR’s once-imposing army was leaderless, directionless and ultimately hopeless.
The time had come for the general offensive, which started with the launch of countless chemical weapons. Aleppo would be known for this act most infamously, with the Turks pounding the city into submission through artillery and aerial chemical bombing. Italy went one further and dropped chemical weapons on the fleeing survivors of the Cairo strike. Israel, exercising more restraint than her peers despite the provocation, avoided using chemical weapons on civilians and used them to obliterate what little was left of what had the prior day been seen as an existential menace. Israeli soldiers, already riled in outrage by what had befallen Tel Aviv, were agitated yet further by the uncharacteristically harsh tone of the state radio service, which said things like ‘our blood shall be avenged with theirs’. Shamir would go as far as to say to his followers that, “The only ‘innocent Arabs’ are the ones yet to be born”. The general offensive against Lebanon began, with the Israelis slicing through the terrified, cowed UAR defense like a hot knife through butter. Most UAR soldiers, once seen as unbendingly committed to the cause, had fled in terror when the news reached them, if the flash hadn’t, that nuclear Armageddon had begun. Those who didn’t successfully cross over the Litani River, be they military or civilian, were typically captured and thrown into the old Trans-Jordan refugee camps, cramped to bursting. The camps had been ‘liberated’ by Aflaq in ushering the Arab refugees into society. Now the refugees were back in the dirty, squalid camps, with the rest of the Lebanese too. The Israelis arrived on the Mediterranean before the night was through, so devastated was the UAR defense.
Yet the world was not silent. While 10 Downing Street was in an uproar over the escalation, which absolutely no one wanted, De Gaulle decided that if the Italians were striking then so would he. Two nuclear weapons were deployed in the heart of the Algerian desert, for the most part destroying Tamanghasset, which had become something of a provisional capital for the FLN. The strike had the desired effect and took out much of the FLN’s leadership. Like Israel, France announced a general assault on the FLN, sending in paratroopers to the major sites in Algeria to overwhelm the enemy. Franco, out of the loop but smart enough to recognize an opportunity, began his own assault into the heart of Morocco. Britain pleaded with all parties to minimize the chaos, but it was much too late – the horse had left the barn, the farm and the whole town. The only voice that mattered now was Khrushchev, faced with the nightmare of having to uphold a pledge he never intended to honour. Ultimately, faced with the already untold destruction that had befallen Arabia (with over 1.7 million people having died on a single day, making September 15th, 1956 the deadliest day in human history), the Soviet leader folded. He told the Politburo the Soviet Union could not uphold its pledge to defend Aflaq. But if Khrushchev thought that was an end to his headaches in the war, he was very wrong. The Great Middle Eastern Crisis was only about to escalate.
Never Again
Transcript of Interrogation of Egyptian Army Chief of Staff, Abdel Amer
Transcript of Interrogation of Egyptian Army Chief of Staff, Abdel Amer
Interrogator 1: Now tell us straight: did you know Aflaq was going to hit Tel Aviv with nerve gas?
Amer: (*Sound of spitting out blood*) Can you tell this bastard to stop hitting me if you want an answer?
Interrogator 1 (in Italian): Hey, he called you a ‘bastard’. Are you going to take that?
Interrogator 2: So he still thinks he’s somebody, eh?
*(Sounds of punching and groans)*
Interrogator 1 (in Egyptian Arabic): I’m sorry, but my colleague politely turned down your request. You can try telling him yourself, but I’m afraid he doesn’t speak Arab. Therefore, like we keep telling you, your best option is to cooperate. Now, why did Aflaq hit Tel Aviv? What did you know about it?
Amer: That damned Christian …
Interrogator 1: Excuse me?
Amer: That damned Christian shat his panties when the Jews were knocking at his border. He didn’t give a shit when Alexandria was raped, when the Suez Canal was stolen or when you sons of whores were standing outside Cairo. But when some kike could see Mount Hermon, it was too much for him!
Interrogator 1: Why?
Amer: Because the faggot hadn’t gotten into a real fight in his life! Syria fell into his lap the fucking whore of a country she is, and the Iraqis fell to their knees so fast they broke their legs hitting the ground! Because the peasants here were delirious with excitement in Egypt, they forced Nasser to join with that useless cunt. Then Lebanon let him in, because she’s the son of sixty thousand whores, and Oman was able to kick out the British, who were too busy drinking tea and wearing women’s underwear to care about some godforsaken desert halfway across the world. By the time the war turned against him, he was shitting himself because half of the fucking morons he had beneath thought he was Allah himself. When he didn’t beat Israel after saying up and down he would, he sure as hell didn’t look like a God then. He was shitting himself that our brave leader, General Nasser - God rest his soul – would be the new hero to the Arabs after his heroic resistance in Egypt.
Interrogator 1: So there was trouble in paradise. What does this have to do with the nerve gas?
Amer: The Christian finally decided that the war needed to end, but since he couldn’t come begging to the Israelis, he thought the only way he could get a decent deal was to get the Russians involved. The Russians were sitting on their fat, vodka-drinking asses making money off Arab blood. They didn’t want the war to end any earlier than it had to. So they kept doing these half-assed ‘please stop’ speeches, when what we needed them to do was tell the Colonialists and Jews to stop right there or they would use nukes. Finally, Aflaq decided that the only way to get those fuckers off the sofa was to break out chemical weapons. The idea was that at worst, the Imperialists would reply with another chemical weapon attack, which we could live with. He told us about it and we said ‘fine, use them on the Italians outside Cairo’. The bastard refused, and said that if we used it on the Italians then we’d get nuked – ha! He said that if we only used them on Israeli soldiers, no one would give half a shit and we’d just be stuck hurling gas at each other like a bunch of idiots, so we had to hit Tel Aviv to change the colour of their underwear enough. We told him to fuck off, that our capital was at stake and needed all the help it could get. This pissed the Christian off, and he started telling us how Egypt was just one small province in the Arab World, and that losing Cairo was no more serious than losing Muscat. After we both screamed at each other over the phone, he finally said he’d split the missiles 50:50, half on Tel Aviv since we couldn’t risk hitting Al-Aqsa, and the other half on Italian troops. Instead, that Christian, shoe-eating, son of a planet of whores bastard blew the whole thing on Tel Aviv!
Interrogator 1: Why?
Amer: How the fuck should I know? Maybe he wanted to piss us off. Maybe he was screwing some Italian chick. Or maybe, heh, maybe he couldn’t resist making the kikes squeal a little bit. He was good at making the Israelis shit themselves. If only he was as good at predictions as that. He that if we only hit the Israelis that we’d expect gas. We got fucking nukes. He told us that nukes were too dangerous because it would mean the Russians would have to use military force, but the chemical weapons would give them some space to threaten.
Interrogator 1: Well that turned out great, didn’t it?
Amer: Fuck you!
*(Sounds of punching and groans)*
Extract from ‘Memoirs of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank
It was three in the morning but we were all wide-awake. But amidst the chaos of reports coming in, the main actors in this nightmare play stood out like they were a world unto themselves. Golda [Meir] and Moshe [Dayan] sat beside each other at the table, heartbroken. Elie [Wiesel] and Yitzhak [Rabin] were standing by the door, looking down in melancholy. Shamir was pacing across the room in fury, cursing and damning everyone and everything. Begin was sitting down but he was almost as angry as Shamir. Then there was David [Ben-Gurion], at the head of the table. He sat looking down, the weight of a hundred worlds on his shoulder. He looked like a man who had lost everything he had loved. I never knew that a man could bear such despair. Yet his pain was not enough for Begin and Shamir, who looked at him as if he had ordered the rockets himself.
“If we’d told the Italians to nuke the Arabs back at the start of the war, this would never have happened!” Shamir screeched.
Begin leaned towards David with such venom that I worried he was going to physically attack him. “What are we waiting for?! Rockets to fall on the fucking Temple Mount?! Your beloved English aren’t going to lift a finger! Call the Italians! Now!”
As if to take the attention off David, Moshe sighed. “I don’t know how the intelligence network didn’t pick it up. We were tracking almost every Soviet shipment. There never looked like there could be nerve gas among them.” He stood up, “I take full responsibility for -”
Shamir violently cut him off. “Don’t you excuse this old fool! He spent the last three years trying to attack Jewish patriots, trying to destroy the Lehi and telling the one man in the world who cared about us during the Nazi Holocaust to go to hell! Now we’re paying the price!”
Yitzhak looked at Shamir with all the disgust he had for anything resembling the Lehi. “That man’s done more than anything to create Israel, and more than anything to defend it! If you think your goose-stepping, pub-brawlers would have done a better job, you can send your best division against our best! Then we’ll separate the men from the boys …”
It was at that moment I was given a note. I quickly read it – my face was already white from the conflict in the War-Room but it went whiter still. I ran up to the table, almost crashing in to it. Everyone turned to me in confusion. I was scared to be the centre of attention but I was so glad that everyone had stopped yelling at each other.
“Um,” I began. I needed to hold the note with both hands because I was trembling so much. “A message has come through from Rome from Foreign Minister Ciano. He said that Italy denounces this act of Arab barbarism, and assures the Israeli government that …” I paused. “… That each every weapon in our inventory is now considered appropriate to use. We can now confirm that President Orbay has given approval for Turkish participation in Operation Samson. Our Prime Minister, and leader, requests that the Israeli government also confirm their willingness to initiate Operation Samson.”
I didn’t know what Operation Samson was at the time, but I could tell from how suddenly the listeners went quiet and pale that they knew full well what it was.
Shamir was the first to recover, marching up to David. “Mr. Prime Minister … if you don’t give the order right this minute, I will order every man of the Lehi to rise up against your Arab-Collaborationist government.”
“You’ve got some chutzpah saying that in front of an army man …” Yitzhak growled.
Shamir didn’t turn his gaze. “This is our chance to exact revenge for what they’ve done! Are we going to let Aflaq and Nasser get away with what they did to Tel Aviv?! They hit us with nerve gas! Are you going to let the blood of our people go unavenged?!”
“In case you forgot, Shamir,” spat Yitzhak, “the Soviets swore they’d intervene if there were nukes used in the war! Are you going to take the blame if the Russians commit the Third Holocaust? And take down the whole of mankind with them?!”
Begin stood up now. “Khrushchev doesn’t have the balls. He’s been trying to play the Good Goy after we all found out what the Communists were up to because he knows the USSR’s popularity is in the fucking toilet. Aflaq has reserved a place alongside Himmler in the minds of the world, and no one’s going to side with that. The bald oaf is in no position for a war and he knows it. The North Iranians would probably start a war with the Russians anyway if he tried to support Aflaq. He’s been playing about with reforms like a teenage boy plays around with his dick – he’s not going to throw it all away for some camel-seller who isn’t even a Red. But what we have to do is strike back before the Soviets are forced to make statements about it. If we hit quickly, we can end the war before Khrushchev takes his morning shit.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Elie.
Shamir and Begin turned to him in shock. “What did you say?” asked Begin.
Elie shrugged as if he’d already regretted speaking out. “I don’t want Israel to go down in history having …”
Begin slammed his fist on the table. “IF WE DON’T ACT, THERE WON’T BE A FUCKING ISRAEL! For two thousand years, goyim have been murdering us in the millions. They destroyed the Temple, they burned down the synagogues, they burned us, they robbed us, they stuffed us in ghettoes, and then they threw us into death camps. And every time, we cowered. We let them walk over us. We walked into our graves. Until now. When we finally stood like Moses and killed our overseer. We fought for this land and we came back to Jerusalem after 2000 years. If we let Aflaq fire nerve gas again, we’ll lose the war. If we lose the war, there’ll be no more Israel. If we lose Israel … we’ll never get a second chance. You worry about how we go down in history?! I’d rather be part of a Jewish state cursed by every tongue in the world than allow an Auschwitz loved by one and all!”
Begin sat back down, exhausted from his outburst. It was at that point, having the lost the energy to hide his emotion, that a look of supreme sadness entered his eyes. His voice, laced with all the pain of having seen so much hatred and death in his life, was breaking. “I’d rather be judged by our children than have to bury them.”
“That’s enough.”
We all turned around to David, surprised that he finally spoke.
“All of you – that’s enough,” he said, as he finally straightened his head a little. “I never thought that it would come to this. You know, it’s so strange looking back. We thought we could leave together in peace. We thought that the Jews and the Arabs could get along together. That we could share this land, trade and prosper as neighbors. The brotherhood of man … Then the pogroms happened, but I didn’t lose faith. I was sure it would all be resolved soon enough. Then they turned down the Peel Commission. I thought, alright, we can improve our position in the future and change their minds. Then they tried to destroy us in the first war. But we won so I thought, now, finally, they would see reason. Then they started a second war. Alright, maybe they just need one final push to finally make them realize… and then they did this. They don’t hate us for taking their land, or for having land or anything to do with land … they hate us because we are ‘us’. I tried to keep the hope alive after what the Nazis did, that it could never happen again. And then Stalin did the same thing. I couldn’t believe it could happen twice, let alone in less than a decade afterward. And now Aflaq wants to try a third time.”
David raised his head, and all of us, even Shamir and Begin, were terrified by the blazing fury in his eyes. “I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. We’ve tried everything to avoid being killed – fleeing, converting, enlisting … and now we’re going to do the one thing we haven’t done: we’re going to wipe our killers off the face of the Earth. I didn’t come to this country to hurt anyone … I came here that we could live in peace … so we could be a shining light to the world. But it seems the only peace we’ll ever get is through victory. Golda?”
Golda straightened. “Yes, Prime Minister?”
“Have the Soviets made any diplomatic movements?”
“N-no. There’s a lot of chatter, but no announcements. Their army wasn’t on any sort of footing, but now it seems to be chaotically attempting to organize. It seems that they were as shocked as we were.”
“And the British?”
“They’re telling us to use restraint. They’re afraid of dragging the Soviets into the conflict.”
“The French?”
“De Gaulle says he will support any action Israel takes.”
David clenched his fists and said nothing. It must have been only ten seconds at most, five seconds perhaps. But so much ran through my mind that I thought I lived a lifetime in those few seconds. I thought of this kind man, who had always cared more about helping the poor and reading the Torah than he ever did about death and war. Of all the people, why was he the one who had to make the call?
He finally looked back to Golda. “Tell Ciano that Israel will participate in Operation Samson.”
[…]
Many years later, just after I’d been elected to the Knesset, I visited David at his home. His wife smiled when she saw me and ushered me in. She knew we were friends, and she told me about how proud David was that I was an MK now. Even then, I still knew what to expect. I saw him sitting in his chair, looking away. The Torah sat on his lap, and the Jerusalem sunlight floated through the window.
“Hello, David!” I said, “I guess you can’t call me ‘Anne’ anymore, I’m Anne Frank, MK!” I laughed.
David didn’t laugh. He had fallen into a deep depression since that Yom Kippur so long ago, and the memory of that night still haunted him. He turned towards me, though he still failed to look me in the eye.
“That’s great, Anne.” His voice didn’t match his words. Though pained I persisted.
“Don’t worry, David,” I smiled despite being so nervous I wanted to run away, “we’ll get the party back on its feet in no time! Herut can’t run the country forever!”
He said nothing. I began to turn around, hoping for some conversation with his wife to save us from the tedium.
“Anne?” said David, just as I was about to leave.
I turned around and almost ran to his side, as if I was still his secretary from all those years ago. “Yes, Prime Mini – I mean, David?”
“… I did the right thing, didn’t I?”
I didn’t need to clarify what he was talking about. The pain and anguish I felt for him all those days ago came back to me as fresh as ever. I saw how aged he had gotten, how tired his joints, how thick his wrinkles. He was doomed to go every waking moment of his life thinking about that night, whether anger had clouded his judgement, whether there could have been another way, whether he could have done something before the war, something. Every day and every night, he tortured himself with the thoughts of all the souls who had perished that day. If any Arab wished revenge on him for what happened, they had surely gotten their wish. I walked up to him, putting my hand on his tired shoulders.
“You had no choice,” I said.
David said nothing. Perhaps, deep down, he agreed with me. But perhaps, deep down, he felt it made no difference either way.
Extract from ‘False Hope: The USSR 1953-1957’ by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
In all the capitals in all the world, including Jerusalem, none were as blind with panic and shock as Moscow. Khrushchev’s moneymaking racket had in one night gone from a source of relief to a source of existential crisis. None of the Soviet hierarchy expected Aflaq to do something so incendiary, and only partially because they were unaware of how advanced the chemical weapon programs of the UAR had gotten. The Politburo talked like men minutes from death, as they analysed their woeful options. The Soviets had made repeated declarations that they would protect Aflaq from chemical weapon and nuclear strikes, but they were made before they knew about his inventory and certainly before he started using them. At the same time, to throw Aflaq to the wolves would be an utter geopolitical calamity, perhaps closing off the Middle East to the Soviets forever and making their other declarations of support as useful as the paper they were written on. Not to mention, giving the historical Anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union, there was a serious fear that Moscow could be identified as the mastermind behind the attack on Tel Aviv. Mikhail Suslov, whose relative youth and rapid ascendency had made him bold, said that the best of the bad options was to step in and swear that a nuclear attack on the UAR would be considered an act of war against the Soviet Union in an act of brinksmanship. Aflaq was the only real major ally the Soviets had outside their occupation and he was considered too important to lose. But Khrushchev would not so easily consent to defending the UAR, even as he agreed with Suvlov’s arguments, paralyzed in horror at the dilemma before him.
Yet there was one thing Khrushchev was adamant about: calling Baghdad. The phone was brought in, the call was made and with a speed that implied he had been in anxious wait, Aflaq was on the line. Khrushchev’s first words were ‘What the fuck have you done?’ For the following hour, the two traded barbs back and forth. Khrushchev accused Aflaq of having betrayed his trust, threatening the security of the Soviet Union and risking dragging even the US into the conflict. Aflaq shot back that Khrushchev was acting like America and Britain in WW2 in depending on a foreign nation’s youth to do their bidding, with the UAR as the new Soviet Union fighting the Nazis. He argued that the Soviets had to bear their share of the Anti-Imperialist struggle, unless he would like to see the whole Middle East become a Fascist-Zionist base that could attack the already stretched Soviets. On and on the two went, even as events elsewhere overtook them. Finally, after a final declaration from Khrushchev that he would ‘Do everything I can to fix your fuck-up!’, he slammed the phone down and wiped his brow.
Khrushchev must have had many competing arguments in his head, but chief among them was the one thing he knew for sure: war was certain defeat for the Soviet Union. After Stalin’s purges and the countless resources squandered in China, the Soviet Union could not hope to steamroll even the Fascist Bloc in isolation anymore, as she could once have done effortlessly. And now, with war certain to bring in the Western powers - including the still neutral US – there was only obliteration in store if the Soviets attempted to save Aflaq. It was as hopeless a task as Canute turning back the waves. The only way out was for Khrushchev to risk a gamble. If he could make enough threats and bombast that a massive escalation would invite nuclear destruction, it could make the Democracies and Fascist leaders think twice about being too hasty. Finally, after further delay and much debate in Moscow, Khrushchev and the Politburo reluctantly agreed to send out an international ultimatum. It would be addressed not just to the West, but the UAR as well. It went as far as to criticize the UAR’s strike (half as a way to convince the West and half as a cold rebuke to Aflaq’s monstrosity) as ‘Reckless endangerment that threatens the survival of the very human species’. The most important segment was that, ‘The Soviet Union will use all weapons in its arsenal in response to any further escalation in the Middle Eastern region.” With that, the ultimatum was sent. Yet as though the Soviets were cursed by fate, by the time the letter was sent, it was already far too late to stop what was coming. Four minutes later, the first nuclear explosion sounded over the Middle East.
Extract from ‘The War that Ended a World’, by Francis Gautman
Operation Samson was conceived in the years preceding the Second Arabian War, though only definitely finalized in April 1956. Italy was the only member of the Roman Alliance who had nuclear weapons, but there was still a certain moral taboo about their usage. Nukes had been completely ignored in China owing to the threat of retaliation. Yet at the same time, were seen as instant game-enders due to their being instrumental in ending WW2 and the Second Polish-Soviet War. For this reason, it was considered prudent to at least be prepared for the possibility, even though it was considered unlikely the Soviets would allow it. The main problem of using nuclear weapons on the UAR was Israel and Turkey, who were right beside the UAR, were critical allies, and may be affected by any radioactive fallout and damage as a result of a mass nuclear bombing. For that reason, leading Israeli and Turkish were both invited to planning sessions.
Though it changed as time went on, the basic plan was the same: a decapitation strike would hit the administrative headquarters of every region of the UAR, followed by further nuclear strikes on the UAR’s now leaderless, directionless armies. After that, chemical weapons would then be used on whatever organized resistance was left, and a broad, general offensive would begin. The cities that would be struck were: Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Deir Ez-Zur, Muscat, Riyadh, and Tripoli in Lebanon. The original plan was to nuke Beirut, but the Phalangist Party’s strength in the city convinced the Fascists to attack Lebanon’s second-largest city, which had almost no Phalangist presence. Yemen was likewise spared owing to Mussolini’s gratitude to Imam Yahya, as well as Mussolini’s own long-term ambitions. Deir Ez-Zur was condemned owing to its massive growth in recent years as the bridge between Syria and Iraq. The town had grown rapidly due to the massive levels of transit between the newly joined countries. If that was severed, the UAR would effectively be split in two. Cairo was only chosen after Mussolini was repeatedly reassured that the Sphinx and Pyramids were too far away from the blast radius to be affected. A further ten nukes were earmarked for military use, their targets to be agreed on at the time, depending on the circumstance by Italian, Israeli and Turkish commanders. The British and French were specifically not invited to the meetings, or even aware of them. Britain and France’s dithering during the rise of the UAR had left even Ben-Gurion reluctantly confessing that he preferred the ‘insurance’ of Italy.
The plan was named after the Old Testament’s Samson’s pulling down the pillars of the temple where he was chained and derided, killing both himself and his tormentors. Ben-Gurion was deeply uncomfortable about how destructive the plan was, and suggested the name precisely because it was such an unthinkable option. To Ben-Gurion, the option could only be used in an extreme scenario where Israel was at extreme threat of total extinction. Italy did not want to risk damaging relations with Israel by setting off nuclear weapons near their territory, and so a solution was made. The three powers agreed that the operation could only be enacted if all three agreed to implement it. Ben-Gurion had told the Cabinet early of the plan and faced demands to execute it immediately by Shamir, who was rebuffed sharply. By September, with Israel having mostly expelled the UAR from her borders, Ben-Gurion was relieved that he never had to implement the proposal. He was convinced that there was now no scenario where it would be morally, politically or even pragmatically acceptable to do such a thing. Then came the Yom Kippur Rocket Attacks, and the entire animus of the war changed. Israel now had to choose between restraint in the face of a Third Holocaust, or to unleash a nuclear rampage that would result in the death of countless thousands. Ultimately, knowing that he faced with the prospect of an outright coup if he held back, Ben-Gurion gave his reluctant assent to the attack. He would be haunted by the move to his dying day.
That morning, from the Aircraft Carrier Sparviero in the Mediterranean, the pilots were given the words they’d been at once excited to and frightened to receive: Arabia Delanda Est. Named after the razing of Carthage, Balbo had chosen the codewords to impress Mussolini by finding a connection to Rome’s own incursions to the shores beyond Italy. Balbo would be the man personally in charge of the operation, co-operating closely with the Turks and Israelis to ensure that the UAR was ‘wiped off the face of the Earth and the pages of history’. As the first planes left, and Cairo approached its doom, he received news of the Soviet ultimatum. It said that a nuclear strike by Italy would mean nuclear strike by the Soviets After hearing it, he fell silent, before turning to the staff in the room. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ll be damned if Communists ever tell Italians what they can do!” If there was any fear of Soviet attack, the staffers certainly didn’t show it, letting out cries of ‘Long live Italy! Love live the Leader!’ The cries continued until the first flash of light lit up Cairo.
Detonating just east of Tahrir Square, the ancient city was decimated in an instant. Rubble and steel were flung like pebbles across the streets, filled with war pilgrims, desperate to have taken part in what was meant to be the glorious final resistance of Cairo, and filled with refugees who had fled from the north. The Nile burned in nuclear fire, strewn with corpses of thousands, and of further thousands unlucky enough to have lived, literally melting alive. In his command bunker south of the city, General Nasser was unlucky enough to have looked at the city the moment the bomb dropped. He fell in agony, demanding to know why he couldn’t see anymore and what had happened. Then the terrifying truth struck him along with the sound of a demonic thunder – Cairo was no more. His subordinates raced to collect him from the carnage to save him, Nasser’s only consolation being he would never see what had befallen Cairo. All the developments he worked on had been flattened, the working-class districts where thousands cheered his name had been incinerated along with the people who lived there. The old palaces, mosques and churches of central Cairo may as well have never existed. As the cries of millions deafened all around, the Sphinx starred as coldly and heartlessly as it had all those thousands of years she had stood. Old Egypt stood motionless, even as the new one burned.
Yet that was only the first strike of the carnage that was to unfold. Soon afterward, Tripoli was blasted off the Mediterranean, taking out the still-under-construction Soviet naval base that had been planned to reside there. The strike on Damascus would be more important because it would mean the death of Salah al-Din al-Bitar, the de jure second most powerful man in the UAR. Al-Bitar had always been more moderate than Aflaq and it is likely he would have felt uncomfortable about the Yom Kippur Rocket Attack, but he would never have the chance to tell Aflaq himself. The City of Jasmine became The City that Never Was. Once considered the oldest continuously lived in city on Earth, central Damascus was flattened. The Tomb of Saladin and the Umayyad Mosque were obliterated, robbing Syria of some of its most precious cultural heritage (though since little of it was considered Pre-Arab culture, Mussolini was mostly indifferent). Israeli troops from the Golan could see the explosion from a safe distance, and it wasn’t over yet. Deir Ez-Zur was struck just as intended, obliterating the central connection between Syria and Iraq, leaving the two states effectively re-separated. Then came Baghdad, facing a cataclysm not seen since the Mongol invasion. The abode of Aflaq, the Italians struck with devastating force turning the heart of the Levant into an empty husk. In the hours following the Baghdad strike, countless radio operators all over the UAR tried to contact Aflaq … only to be met with silence. On the carnage went, with a bombing of Riyadh that killed not only King Saud, but the next three of his successors. Scholars debate to what extent King Saud was culpable for what happened in Tel Aviv, but there is no doubt as to what the Italian position was. Lastly came the nuclear strike at Muscat, a symbolic strike to remind the world of why the war was being fought. As the official UAR story was that the Jews of Muscat had been relocated to desert camps, the Italians and Israelis had no qualms about the judgment of the city that betrayed them. The largest city in Oman was obliterated, and its regional leader, Alhianai, along with it.
The initial strike had largely accomplished its goal, leaving the UAR effectively leaderless and bewildered. But this was only the start, as the Israelis and Turks now took a larger role in identifying the locations for tactical nuclear bombing. Two further nukes would be detonated in Egypt, just east and south of the city to destroy the Egyptian reserves (with Nasser barely escaping the blast range of the second due to the quick evacuation of his staff). Two were used in the north of Saudi Arabia, obliterating the cream of the Saudi army and making the Israelis the masters of the field. Three were deployed along the Syrian border, with a further nuke used in southern Lebanon. The final two were deployed on UAR troops advancing from the west to try and liberate Aleppo from the Turks, who quickly ensured that would never happen. By the end of the nuclear strikes, the UAR’s once-imposing army was leaderless, directionless and ultimately hopeless.
The time had come for the general offensive, which started with the launch of countless chemical weapons. Aleppo would be known for this act most infamously, with the Turks pounding the city into submission through artillery and aerial chemical bombing. Italy went one further and dropped chemical weapons on the fleeing survivors of the Cairo strike. Israel, exercising more restraint than her peers despite the provocation, avoided using chemical weapons on civilians and used them to obliterate what little was left of what had the prior day been seen as an existential menace. Israeli soldiers, already riled in outrage by what had befallen Tel Aviv, were agitated yet further by the uncharacteristically harsh tone of the state radio service, which said things like ‘our blood shall be avenged with theirs’. Shamir would go as far as to say to his followers that, “The only ‘innocent Arabs’ are the ones yet to be born”. The general offensive against Lebanon began, with the Israelis slicing through the terrified, cowed UAR defense like a hot knife through butter. Most UAR soldiers, once seen as unbendingly committed to the cause, had fled in terror when the news reached them, if the flash hadn’t, that nuclear Armageddon had begun. Those who didn’t successfully cross over the Litani River, be they military or civilian, were typically captured and thrown into the old Trans-Jordan refugee camps, cramped to bursting. The camps had been ‘liberated’ by Aflaq in ushering the Arab refugees into society. Now the refugees were back in the dirty, squalid camps, with the rest of the Lebanese too. The Israelis arrived on the Mediterranean before the night was through, so devastated was the UAR defense.
Yet the world was not silent. While 10 Downing Street was in an uproar over the escalation, which absolutely no one wanted, De Gaulle decided that if the Italians were striking then so would he. Two nuclear weapons were deployed in the heart of the Algerian desert, for the most part destroying Tamanghasset, which had become something of a provisional capital for the FLN. The strike had the desired effect and took out much of the FLN’s leadership. Like Israel, France announced a general assault on the FLN, sending in paratroopers to the major sites in Algeria to overwhelm the enemy. Franco, out of the loop but smart enough to recognize an opportunity, began his own assault into the heart of Morocco. Britain pleaded with all parties to minimize the chaos, but it was much too late – the horse had left the barn, the farm and the whole town. The only voice that mattered now was Khrushchev, faced with the nightmare of having to uphold a pledge he never intended to honour. Ultimately, faced with the already untold destruction that had befallen Arabia (with over 1.7 million people having died on a single day, making September 15th, 1956 the deadliest day in human history), the Soviet leader folded. He told the Politburo the Soviet Union could not uphold its pledge to defend Aflaq. But if Khrushchev thought that was an end to his headaches in the war, he was very wrong. The Great Middle Eastern Crisis was only about to escalate.
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