The headline from Haaretz describes the results of a survey conducted in Israel: ‘1 in 4 Israelis would consider leaving country if Iran gets nukes’.

Some 23 percent of Israelis would consider leaving the country if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, according to a poll conducted on behalf of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Some 85 percent of respondents said they feared the Islamic Republic would obtain an atomic bomb, 57 percent believed the new U.S. initiative to engage in dialogue with Tehran would fail and 41 percent believed Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear installations without waiting to see whether or how the talks develop.

“The findings are worrying because they reflect an exaggerated and unnecessary fear,” Prof. David Menashri, the head of the Center, said.

It’s nice that the professor thinks it to be an exaggerated fear, and it’s also completely irrelevant, of-course. Put a fear of imminent annihilation over people, and over their children, and they will react. Many will be stoic, of-course. But many will vote with their feet. It’s just human nature.

Back in December, when rockets were flying from Gaza into southern Israel, and the world was condemning the Israelis for finally taking tough military action against Hamas, I wrote the following in this space:

Hamas’s strategy of firing missiles into southern Israel cannot be understood in isolation. Although in isolation it is bad enough. No country on earth can tolerate these kinds of open attacks against its citizens and long remain a nation at all. But Hamas in the south is acting with a strategy similar to Hezbollah in the north. Both receive support from the Iranians, who are themselves pursuing a nuclear weapon and talking publicly of wiping Israel off the map. Theirs can be seen as a three-pronged strategy for the destruction of Israel without ever having to fight the Israeli Defense Forces in one enormous battle. It is a war of attrition, of threat and of fear. Israeli residents in the south of that tiny country must evacuate their homes under threat of Hamas missiles, just as residents of the north had to in 2006 as Hezbollah’s rockets were launched over the border (and just as they might have to again at any time). The mere fact that Iran is pursuing an atomic bomb and talking about the destruction of Israel puts a threat of doom over the heads of all Israelis. Imagine how magnified that will be once Iran actually achieves the bomb, or announces that it has achieved it. Imagine trying to raise a family when enemy missiles, with ever-increasing range and lethality, are closing in from the south and from the north, and when a nation that openly wishes your family’s death achieves the practical capability to cause it. Imagine trying to carry on a business — trying to carry on anything at all. The Iranian strategy, with the enthusiastic support of Hamas and Hezbollah, is to simply make life in Israel untenable for a critical mass of Jews, who will then either go somewhere else (those that have somewhere else to go) or give up the fight. A conventional war of nations and of armies, of the kind that Israel has won repeatedly in its history since 1948, is therefore avoided. Or, at the least, postponed until Israel is much more weakened and demoralized.

It is not an outlandish strategy. It is a very practical one, and it is one that is being pursued with some effect.

Israel simply cannot afford the kind of crisis in confidence over her future that the fact of an Iranian nuclear bomb would create, most of all among her own citizens. That is why Israel will act against Iran before the day that Ahmadinejad can stand up and credibly say, “Our glorious Islamic Republic now has the ultimate weapon and we cannot be touched.” The consequences of Israeli military action against Iran may well include difficulties for everyone else, but the circumstances permit Netanyahu — or any Israeli leader — no other choice.

That is, unless President Obama’s sweet overtures achieve their purpose of getting the Iranian regime to reverse course and demonstrably renounce its pursuit of nuclear energy and weapons. The hour is getting late.

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