For Unworried Israelis, It’s Just Another Day

Israel, the target of 39 Iraqi Scud missiles in the 1991 Gulf War, followed the Western allies’ attack on Iraq on Wednesday with a large, and unusual, measure of detachment.

Although state-run radio and television gave almost minute-by-minute reports of the U.S.-led raids, Israeli officials and commentators stressed that their country was not involved and had little to fear from Iraq.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been told by the United States of the general plan of attack, according to Israeli officials, and was kept informed on a continuing basis of the raid’s progress.

“We assume this will not affect the situation in Israel,” Rabin said after he arrived an hour late to speak at a dinner of the British-Israeli Chamber of Commerce. “The fact is that I am here and I feel very good.”

Moshe Arens, Israel’s defense minister during the Gulf War, commented, “Even if we thought two years ago that (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein had no rational reason to attack the State of Israel, now he has even less.”

And a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces urged people to continue their normal activities.

“The assessment of the defense Establishment is that this is apparently a limited strike in response to the Iraqi cease-fire violations,” he said. “We do not expect the events to deviate from the Gulf area.”

Israeli forces had gone to a slightly higher state of alert, according to military sources, and the country’s intelligence facilities were closely monitoring developments in the Gulf.

But the government’s message to Israelis was that this was not their fight and, in any event, Iraq’s arsenal of surface-to-surface Scud missiles was largely destroyed in the wake of the Gulf War, as was its chemical warfare capability.

“In my opinion, we can be calm,” Avihu Bin-Nun, the recently retired commander of the Israeli air force, told Israel Radio, “and personally I am on my way to the ballet.”