Thank G-d for The Bomb

“If that’s the only thing that’s stopping war
Then thank God for the bomb”
“Thank God for the bomb”, Ozzy Osbourne (The Ultimate Sin, 1986)

A mushroom shaped cloud arose above Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945, and that picture became engraved in my mind forever.
A picture of hope, valor, vigor, victory and survival.

A picture of determination, a picture of defiance and a will to demonstrate that there is a judge and judgment in the world.

A picture showing that pretentious, false righteousness and false compassion haven’t surpassed the true sense of wrong and right, truth and lie, life and death.

A picture symbolizing that when pushed to the wall, humanity still has in it the sense of defending itself from utter cruelty and barbarism.

What about the innocent civilians, men women and children who had nothing to do with the war? The babies who committed no crime, the mothers who didn’t know what their country was fighting for?
They were identical to the innocent of Berlin and Dresden: they did not rise up against their dictator. The babies of Dersden, Berlin, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not murdered by the allies’ wickedness, as the communist propaganda machine would like you to believe: they were murdered by their parents who tacitly or actively supported their government, and were raising their babies to become good Nazis and Shintoists.

Still, the incessant chest-beating, phony penance and endless apologetics and museums, documentaries and memorials show, that at a certain point, there is an iota of truth and sincerity in this abhorrence of homicide. This is the iota that’s completely missing in our enemies, the scintilla of regard for the other human being, this last remnant of humanity - of the image of G-d. They despise those who respect ‘life’ or ‘humanity’ in the way we do, especially those who worship “life” in its physical form only, and for whom the saint and the child-rapist and decapitator are the same, and have an equal “right” to life. They look down in utter spite and contempt on those who would spare their lives rather stan stand up and fight. And they now have the bomb.

So I still see the picture of mushroom-shaped cloud, but it’s no more the cloud of a glorious yet reluctant flash of deadly light.

For it hangs over Tel-Aviv.

© Joseph Izrael 2008