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High-level Israeli military officials have a red phone at their bedside -- an encrypted, classified phone line, that rings nearly every night alerting them to an emergency that can range from Hamas rocket firings in southern Israel to Hezbollah movements in southern Lebanon to machinations against Israel by global jihadist movements.

Such a system is necessary in today's world, said Yaakov Katz, the military correspondent and defense analyst for the Jerusalem Post, speaking at the East Brunswick Jewish Center Feb. 16.

"When we look at the different challenges that Israel faces in 2010, they are so different, so varied," Katz said.

Katz, who covers the Israeli defense establishment for Israel's leading English daily, delivered his talk, "A Dangerous Neighborhood: Israel's Challenges for 2010," at an event co-sponsored by EBJC, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, Young Israel of East Brunswick, and the Campus for Jewish Life.

"When we see all these different threats Israel is facing, the question is: What should Israel do?" Katz said.

According to the Katz, Israel is pursuing "three independent, but parallel tracks" to confront the many security challenges the country faces.

Emphasis on training, Katz said, has been reemphasized by the Israeli military following the 2006 Lebanon War, which he said demonstrated how the army was "rusty."

After the Second Intifada erupted in 2000, for several years the army concentrated on discrete counterterrorism operations as opposed to fighting a conventional war with a large number of troops and tanks. "Today, training is the name of the game in the IDF," Katz said.

The second track that Katz said the IDF is pursuing, as it has for the past 60 years, is maintaining its "qualitative military edge."

This model was originally conceived by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who realized that his country would never be able to match the troop size of those as large as Egypt or Syria and would instead need to have the best trained troops as well as the most advanced weapons, tanks, fighter jets, and ships.

"Today that same idea survives," Katz said, noting that this "edge" is enabled by the U.S. government's military aid.

Israel is currently purchasing the latest advancements in military technology including new stealth fighter jets, submarines, smart bombs, and a mid-air refueling fleet, according to Katz.

"It's all about obtaining a distinct advantage in the event of a military conflict," he said.

The third track, Katz said, is "deterrence," whether it is through the targeted assassinations of individuals like Hezbollah leader Imad Fayez Mughniyeh in Damascus in 2008 or attacks on hostile countries' nuclear facilities such as Iraq's in 1981 or Syria's more recently in 2007.

Katz said that deterrence was about curtailing the efforts of what he called, borrowing former President George W. Bush's famous phrase, the "axis of evil."

"When I speak of an axis of evil, I'm speaking of a [Middle East] axis of evil that affects Israel everyday," Katz said of an alliance that begins with Iran and goes through Syria to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Katz said that Iran's shipment of long-range missiles to Hamas in Gaza exemplified this "axis."

"Not only are the Jews and Israelis smart. The enemies are smart, too. Iran is smart," he said, describing how these large weapons are smuggled in pieces into Gaza and then assembled within the strip by local engineers.

Katz suggested that Iran's efforts at obtaining nuclear weapons represented the single greatest threat Israel faces.

If Iran was successful at securing nuclear weapons, Katz said, it would "set off an unprecedented nuclear arms race in the Middle East."

Egypt, which has amassed a powerful conventional military through the substantial military aid it has received from the U.S. following the Oslo Accords, likes to think of itself as a regional superpower, according to Katz.

"A nuclear armed Iran ups the ante," Katz said of countries like Egypt, that wish to maintain that superpower status, or Saudi Arabia, a Sunni country that would not let its Shia neighbor, Iran, gain the upper hand.

The danger of such an arms race in the region is that it is unpredictable into whose hands such a weapon could fall, Katz said. With nuclear weapons, he said, "a volatile Middle East can become all the more of a nightmare."

Katz said that one potentially effective means of deterring Iran is through "tough sanctions" that halt the import of refined petroleum into the country. While such an action would prove devastating for the Iranian people as a whole, Katz said, it could also bolster the opposition movement in the country.

"Sanctions that are tough can possibly create the change that is ultimately required," he said.

At this point, Katz said it was wise for the Israeli government to let the United States pursue its strategy vis-à-vis Iran. If such American overtures to Iran through engagement followed by targeted sanctions failed to garner the desired outcome, Israel will have built up the legitimacy for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

"Israel can say, you tried engagement, it failed. You tried sanctions they failed. Now we have to attack," Katz said.

In addition to the Iranian threat, which Katz called an existential one, Israel must also confront in the coming year the threat of the Goldstone Report and certain Human Rights NGO's efforts to deny Israel's right to defend itself.

"What these people are essentially after is not to change the way Israel fights, but to stop them from fighting at all," he said.

Following the talk, Isabel Smith, a lay coordinator for CAMERA in New Jersey and the wife of EBJC Rabbi Aaron Benson, said that presentations like Katz's are important for the community to hear in order for individuals to advocate effectively on behalf of Israel in one's day-to-day life.

"You know in your heart that Israel is right, but you want to know how to express it," Smith said. "CAMERA gives individuals the tools to advocate on a grassroots level."