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TechnoratiIsrael's Looming Catastrophe
For the past three decades, Israel has charted a course that invites its own destruction by relying on two risky propositions: first, that it could extend its security perimeter beyond the reach of a devastating missile attack, and second, that it could permanently control the political debate inside its crucial ally, the United States.
Israel's current assault on Gaza is only the latest manifestation of this dangerous strategy, but - whether or not Israel succeeds in its stated goal of stopping the launching of short-range Hamas rockets - the more troubling writing for Israel remains on the wall.
If Israel continues to engender hatred across the Muslim world - and thus feeds the growth of Islamic extremism - eventually some radical government or group will get hold of a missile or some other means of delivering a payload against Tel Aviv that would wreak mass devastation.
In that event, Israel would almost surely turn to its sophisticated nuclear arsenal and launch a massive retaliatory strike. But to what end? Whatever counter-devastation could be delivered, it would not solve the strategic dilemma facing Israel.
Indeed, retaliation would likely make matters worse by engendering even a stronger determination among Muslims to eliminate whatever would be left of Israel. The situation might even be beyond the military power of the United States to set right.
Yet, this Israeli conundrum is not discussed inside the United States, where - for the past three decades - American neocons have led a powerful propaganda apparatus that demonizes any public figure who dares question hard-line Israeli strategy.
Even Americans with strong affection for Israel are denounced as "anti-Semites" or "pro-terrorist" if they challenge the Israel-is-always-right conventional wisdom that dominates modern Washington, where Democrats and Republicans alike line up to pander to the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference.
Former President Jimmy Carter, for instance, has become almost a political pariah although he arguably did more than any U.S. official to advance Israel's security by negotiating the Camp David accords in 1978.
However, it was that event - the agreement between Israel and Egypt, returning the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a lasting peace commitment - that marked the strategic turning point for both Israel and the United States.
Begin's Fury
Though Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the peace deal, he was furious over the pressure Carter put on him.
Begin - who had led a Zionist terrorist group before Israel's independence in 1948 and founded the right-wing Likud Party in 1973 - decided he must take steps to prevent Carter from pushing for a broader Israel-Arab peace deal in a potential second term.
Begin's views were described by Israeli intelligence and foreign affairs official David Kimche in his 1991 book, The Last Option. Kimche wrote that Begin's government believed that Carter was overly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and was conspiring to force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.
"Begin was being set up for diplomatic slaughter by the master butchers in Washington," Kimche wrote. "They had, moreover, the apparent blessing of the two presidents, Carter and [Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat, for this bizarre and clumsy attempt at collusion designed to force Israel to abandon her refusal to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, and to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state."
Kimche continued, "This plan - prepared behind Israel's back and without her knowledge - must rank as a unique attempt in United States's diplomatic history of short-changing a friend and ally by deceit and manipulation."
Begin particularly dreaded the prospect of a second Carter presidential term.
"Unbeknownst to the Israeli negotiators, the Egyptians held an ace up their sleeves, and they were waiting to play it," Kimche wrote. "The card was President Carter's tacit agreement that after the American presidential elections in November 1980, when Carter expected to be re-elected for a second term, he would be free to compel Israel to accept a settlement of the Palestinian problem on his and Egyptian terms, without having to fear the backlash of the American Jewish lobby."
Begin's fear of Carter's reelection - combined with alarm over Carter's perceived bungling in Iran where Islamic extremists took power in 1979 - set the stage for secret collaboration between Begin and the Republican presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, according to another Israeli intelligence official, Ari Ben-Menashe.
In his 1992 memoir, Profits of War, Ben-Menashe said the view of Begin and other Likud leaders was one of contempt for Carter.
"Begin loathed Carter for the peace agreement forced upon him at Camp David," Ben-Menashe wrote. "As Begin saw it, the agreement took away Sinai from Israel, did not create a comprehensive peace, and left the Palestinian issue hanging on Israel's back."
Ben-Menashe, an Iranian-born Jew who had immigrated to Israel as a teen-ager, became part of a secret Israeli program to reestablish its intelligence network in Iran after it had been decimated by the Islamic revolution.
Ben-Menashe wrote that Begin authorized shipments to Iran of small arms and some spare parts, via South Africa, as early as September 1979. In November of that year, events in Iran took another troubling turn when Islamic radicals seized the U.S. Embassy and took 52 Americans hostage, prompting a U.S. trade embargo.
Carter Catches On
By April 1980, however, Carter had learned about the covert Israeli shipments, which included 300 tires for Iran's U.S.-supplied jet fighters. That prompted an angry complaint from Carter to Begin.
"There had been a rather tense discussion between President Carter and Prime Minister Begin in the spring of 1980 in which the President made clear that the Israelis had to stop that, and that we knew that they were doing it, and that we would not allow it to continue, at least not allow it to continue privately and without the knowledge of the American people," Carter's press secretary Jody Powell told me.
"And it stopped," Powell said. At least, it stopped temporarily.
Questioned by congressional investigators a dozen years later, Carter said he felt that by April 1980, "Israel cast their lot with Reagan," according to notes I found among the unpublished documents in the files of a congressional investigation in 1992.
Carter traced the Israeli opposition to his reelection to a "lingering concern [among] Jewish leaders that I was too friendly with Arabs."
Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski also recognized the Israeli hostility. Brzezinski said the Carter White House was well aware that the Begin government had "an obvious preference for a Reagan victory."
Extensive evidence now exists, too, that Begin's preference for a Reagan victory led Israelis to join in a covert operation with Republicans to contact Iranian leaders behind Carter's back and delay release of the 52 American hostages until after Reagan defeated Carter in November 1980.
In his book and in sworn testimony about this so-called "October Surprise" controversy, Ben-Menashe asserted that then-vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush personally participated in a key meeting in October 1980 in Paris. Bush denied that claim at two press conferences in 1992 but was never questioned under oath in any formal government investigation.
More Evidence
Since then, additional evidence has emerged linking the senior Bush to the clandestine Republican contacts with Iran during the 1980 campaign. Chicago Tribune reporter John Maclean said he was informed by a well-placed Republican Party source in mid-October 1980 that Bush was heading to Paris for a meeting with Iranians about the hostage crisis.
David Andelman, a former New York Times correspondent who was assisting French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches on his memoir, said deMarenches described arranging meetings between Republicans and Iranians in Paris but insisted that be left out of the book for fear it would hurt his friend, George H.W. Bush.
After checking its intelligence files at the request of the U.S. Congress, the Russian government submitted an extraordinary report in January 1993 that identified the senior George Bush as one of several Republicans who negotiated with the Iranians in Paris during the 1980 campaign.
The congressional task force that requested the Russian report as part of its "October Surprise" investigation in 1992 never made the report public or even disclosed its existence.
I discovered the Russian document in a storage box left behind by the task force, which - by the time the Russian report arrived - had already decided to "debunk" the allegations of a Republican-Iranian hostage deal. The task force cleared Bush without ever questioning him.
In 1993, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who followed Begin to power in Israel, became another voice endorsing the allegations of a Republican-Iranian "October Surprise" deal back in 1980.
When asked in an interview whether there had been a Republican "October Surprise" operation, Shamir responded, "Of course, it was." [For details on this mystery, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
The 52 American hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, just as Ronald Reagan was beginning his inaugural address.
Though the allegations of a Republican-Iranian deal have remained in dispute, investigations into the controversy confirmed that Israel did resume military shipments to Iran in 1981 with the knowledge of Reagan-Bush officials who permitted the secret deliveries to go forward.
By the mid-1980s, the Reagan-Bush administration was playing both sides of the Iran-Iraq war, funneling financial and some military support to Iraq while also selling missiles to Iran, both through third countries such as Israel and directly from U.S. stockpiles.
Rise of the Neoconservatives
The election of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in 1980 also coincided with the emergence of a political movement known as neoconservatism.
Many neoconservatives had been liberals or even leftists but broke with the Democratic Party in the 1970s to favor a more aggressive policy toward the Soviet Union. The neoconservatives also wanted a more staunchly pro-Israeli position in the Middle East.
The Reagan-Bush administration rewarded the neocons for their support in the 1980 campaign with their first taste of executive power, giving them credentials that would prove crucial more than two decades later in their ability to push through the Iraq War.
Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz became assistant secretaries of state in the Reagan-Bush administration. Abrams now handles Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, and Wolfowitz was an architect of the Iraq policy as deputy secretary of defense. One of Wolfowitz's protégés from the Reagan-Bush era, I. Lewis Libby Jr., became Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and a leading hawk on Iraq.
Another key neocon -- and Iraq policy architect -- was Richard Perle, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan. Perle's former counsel was Douglas Feith, who returned as under secretary of defense for policy under George W. Bush and strongly promoted the invasion of Iraq.
Besides bringing intellectual firepower to the Reagan-Bush team, the neocons tapped into a powerful right-wing media apparatus that began to take shape in the late 1970s and pushed propaganda that advocated a more aggressive U.S. approach toward Israel's "terrorist" adversaries in the Middle East.
Over the ensuing three decades, the neocons - and their right-wing Republican allies - came to dominate the Washington news media, especially on Middle East policy. Critics of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians were routinely denounced as "anti-Semites" and found little space on the major editorial pages to argue their positions.
Once the neocons returned to power under George W. Bush (and especially after the 9/11 attacks), the space for any debate shrank further, with anyone who questioned hard-line policies toward Iraq or Israel's other Muslim enemies called "soft on terror."
With debate suppressed, the neocons pushed for the invasion of Iraq almost without opposition. Though the war was pitched as necessary to protect the American people from Iraq's supposed stockpiles of WMD, the invasion was viewed by many neocons as necessary to protect Israel's long-term security.
The idea was that by transforming Iraq into a permanent base for the American military, U.S. power could be projected throughout the Middle East, forcing "regime change" in Iran and Syria and undermining other groups threatening Israel, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
The neocons saw the U.S. military in Iraq as the guarantors against any long-range assault on Israel. In other words, if Israel couldn't reach some of those distant threats, the United States could.
The neocons also assumed that their tough-talking ways - especially President Bush's then-popular swagger - would keep the American people in line with Washington's Israel-is-always-right consensus.
Strategic Defeat
President Bush's strategic defeat in Iraq - defined by the new "status-of-forces agreement" that prohibits permanent U.S. bases and insists on a full U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011 - marks a major turning point in the Middle East.
Plus, the American neocons have been severely damaged domestically by their overreach in Iraq. Though they remain influential - especially inside the national press corps with control of the Washington Post's editorial pages and other influential media outlets - the neocons are increasingly despised by the broad American public.
One of their chief advocates, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, went down to decisive defeat on Nov. 4, 2008, to a political newcomer in Barack Obama, despite right-wing and neocon smear campaigns emphasizing his middle name "Hussein" and claiming that he is a secret Muslim who would be sworn in using a Koran.
Though Obama has given the neocons some hope by handing the State Department to the staunchly pro-Israel Hillary Clinton and by keeping on Bush's Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the neocons will probably never reclaim the kind of sweeping influence they had during George W. Bush's presidency.
These new facts-on-the-ground - both in the Middle East and in Washington - add to the imperative for the Israeli people to reassess the three-decade strategy of balking at reconciliation with their Arab neighbors and counting on the neocon dominance of the U.S. political debates.
Israeli leaders might want to do whatever they can to turn back the clock to the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter showed a possible route to long-term security for Israel - by making respectful peace deals with its Arab neighbors.
Rather than trying to bomb and kill their way to security, Israeli leaders might want to consider a new strategy that steps away from endless confrontation with Arab enemies and instead seeks to integrate Israel into the economic life of the Middle East, as a center of science, technology, industry and finance.
Surely, this approach would not be easy. Given the past three decades of tit-for-tat atrocities, there would be extremists on both sides who would commit additional outrages to derail any progress.
It would have been much easier if Menachem Begin and his successors had understood that some of their greatest American friends were those - like Jimmy Carter - who recognized legitimate interests on both sides of the conflict, rather than those - like George W. Bush - who embraced the most extreme neoconservative positions.
So, whatever the outcome of Israel's Gaza offensive, it cannot disguise how untenable Israel's long-term position has become.
Even if Hamas's little short-range missiles can be silenced for the time-being, the hatreds will continue to fester. The Arab Street will turn, increasingly, against authoritarian Arab leaders in countries such as Egypt and Jordan who have taken the most moderate positions regarding Israel's right to exist.
And beyond Israel's immediate neighbors - assuming those mutual hatreds are not defused - Muslim extremists will eventually get hold of a weapon of mass destruction, possibly in Pakistan if its current fragile civilian government falls. At some point, someone will have a missile or some other means of delivering a powerful weapon against Israel.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Bush and his neocon advisers may have imagined themselves ensuring security for Israel by taking aggressive action against its regional adversaries but have instead worsened Israel's predicament. Now, the neocons find themselves widely discredited inside the U.S. political process.
It is this combination of realities - Bush's failed adventurism in the Middle East and the decline of the neoncons at home - that could become the impetus for a new and serious peace initiative in the Middle East, as the best hope for Israel's success and survival.
40 Comments so far
Show AllIsrael's aggression is only possible because of the support it receives from the USA and the EU. The US economy is premised of continuous war, and this Super Power has found reason for continous war since the end of World War 2. War is profitable, and after burning its fingers in Iraq the USA is in search of enemies once more. The most likely target during Obama's tenure will be Iran. Thus the US public will be told that the problem of Gaza is the support Hamas receives from IRAN. The US global media monopoly will trot out the usual lies and scare mongering to justify the war and the US war machine will grind into action again. So boringly predictable, but so profitable for the Military Industrial Complex.
The conflict in the Middle East will continue so long as it sustains market demand for weapons. To stop the war economy the citizens of the US, those who work in the arms industry should be targetted and called out tro strike, those handling weapons in the ports and airports should refuse to do so.
This war economy has its roots in the Wall Street Stock Market Crash of 1929. To avoid a crisis of overproduction/under consumption the USA launched its war economy, this allowed it to replace the old colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium, Germany etc. and to occupy territory globally - hence the US military presence on all continents.
War implies continuous consumption and demand sustaining the global market in perpetuity so long as conflict can be manufactured somewhere. The USSR provided the first bogey and the USA had no qualms in sponsoring radical Islamic movements in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia to undermine the Soviet Union. Unfortunately the USSR proved less resillient that what the war profiteers expected. Now it is a war on terror against the former cold war allies of the USA - the Taliban, Al Queda, the Muhajedin, the Suni Muslims etc. In Iraq the USA used Shiite discontent against the Sunnis. Now that US forces are about to withdraw the Shiites of Iran are becoming the new targets.
War destroys mega tonnes of copper, iron, uranium etc. maintaining a global boom in commodity prices, hence the global commodity boom during Bush's tenure. The mnoment Obama began speaking of withdrawing from Iraq commodity prices slumped and major arms manufacturing firms such as General Motors went into crisis.
The non-elected state apparatus, the CIA, Homeland Security, the Federal Reserve etc will all lean on Obama to revive the war economy. Where the rulers of ancient Egypt built pyramids to keep their citizens productively employed, the rulers of the USA engage in war. It is time for the American empire to be exposed for what it really is! The solution to the problem resides within America and amongst the workers who make the arms industry possible. The left in the USA needs to revive the class struggle!
I agree with most of what Parry says but the neocons have actually made creeping gains in their infestation of the Amurkan mediasphere. Most Amurkans and most Israelis these days are unclear on the details behind all the post 2000 US/Israeli blitzkriegs, to put it mildly. Nations of sheep ruled by wolves owned by pigs and both of them in rapid decline. The desperate extremism of their propaganda telegraphs their dying empire stench.
The thing the Israelis should be worrying about most is Amurka's accelerating economic fall and the indifference of much of the rest of the world regarding Israel's plight should Amurka fully depress. We can't keep up threat-bribes to the Sunni sheiks and Billions to Israel forever under these conditions--what with multiple wars to pay for and Afghanistan & Pakistan & India melting down--on top of Trillions in lost wealth and economic stimulus expenditures and precious few creditor nations willing to lend to us anymore. Amurka & AIPAC are the only things keeping Israel alive right now and Israel has no other nations willing to chomp that bit. Amurka can fall just as fast as the Soviet Union did. Our fascist neocon rulers and their DLC abettors have boxed Amurka into an economic corner even as Israel's Zio-con nutjob rulers have boxed Israel into a survival corner.
A lot of the Arab dictators in the region and Egypt sat on their hands during this latest most barbaric Israeli collective punishment and their younger generations may trade some of them in for Islamic fundamentalists in the not too distant future. This latest Israeli blitz is a lose/lose proposition on all sides. Another dumb decision backed by Team Bush nitwits at the end of their elephant turd trail of bad decisions whose global damage will reverberate for epochs to come. Watching Condileeeza Rice's performance this week was like watching a zombie from Night of the Living Dead make a spectacle of her half rotted self as Death's majorette parading alone on the field during half-time at the SuperBowl. Bush dodging shoes and her reptilian policy death rattles are the faces of Amurka many in the war zones will remember for decades.
I can't help but wonder what the Israeli people really expect their leaders would do even if they had (from the official Israeli point of view) the wildest most successful outcome possible from their invasion of Gaza. What next? It's clear the Israeli Right-wing has no intentions whatsoever of allowing the creation of a Palestinian State--let alone one with sovereignty equivalent to Israel's. They will always insist on treating it as a "securitized" vassal State of third class citizens with limited rights, and they will always insist that the rest of the world tolerate that mistreatment because (inwardly) of their spiritual exceptionalism as God's chosen people and (outwardly) their special cultural relationship to the Christians and Jews in Amurka.
When US money dries up, what then for Israel? The Likud and Kadima and right-wing settler crazies will find out just how special Israel's spiritual ubermenschen are to the rest of the world. Not because the rest of the world hates Israel and Jews so much as they couldn't care less about their religious exceptionalism and they have their own more immediate problems to worry about. It's not the rest of the world's fault that some Jews decided to rebuild ancient Israel in an area surrounded by enemies on all sides and then aggravate those enemies while depending on ONE ally to keep it forever afloat. Israel, for most non-Jews, is no longer a likable nation. The same goes for much of Amurka under the neocons. Amurka may be able to turn that around. Israel has a much harder row to hoe along those lines and invading Gaza just multiplied that difficulty a hundredfold. Thinking Israelis should pray they have time to rethink their nation's policies because if the US falls like the USSR, then Israel's teeming enemies will be sorely tempted.
I used to have so much respect for the Israelis until Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, but it's been straight downhill for them ever since. The Israeli Right-wing and "settler's movement" either sneered or were silent in gleamy-eyed, racist, sectarian ambitions for a "pure" Zionist State then and that aspect has been written into Israel's face ever since.
The Nazis believed they were superior to every other race and nation on earth because of their technological supremacy as a civilization and their misguided notions of the "racial purity" that they believed led to that technological and cultural supremacy. Contemporary Israelis believe they are superior to every other race and nation on earth because of their belief in their spiritual exceptionalism by dint of their belief that they are the only race/nation chosen by God to make a covenant with God. The Nazis never learned that their beliefs in their superiority did not entitle them to treat those they considered inferior as inferiors and neither have most contemporary Israelis. How utterly tragic, considering the innocent lost lives on all sides.
Tragedies, agony and drama seem the lot of the Jewish peoples. A history of Moses, Egypt, the Romans, Jesus, the Diaspora, the Inquisition, Pogroms, the Holocaust, and Israel. Some have alluded to the karma the Jewish people have brought on since the establishment of Israel. I believe we are in for a real game changer. That is the current financial crisis that looms before us. The U.S. is bankrupt. We continue to support far flung foreign adventures and wars. Our supply lines are long and unsure. Our dollar has been the world's currency standard. But that is about to change. We are going down. Let's hope our Dr Strangeloves do not provoke wars hoping to stem this fall. You see, nonetheless, we are going down and Israel will then be standing alone. The monsters and gollums that inhabit the Jewish pysche will than become real. They will come to life. How will Israel manage in such an environment? They have scorned their neighbors with the US standing beside them. They have actually behaved rather atrociously. Such Drama
Interesting that you bring up possible false flag operations. I don't know if this is the case with those quasi toy rockets being fired menacingly into the asphalt of untravelled roads near Sderot, but has anyone noticed that all of a sudden the "sectarian violence" in Iraq has suddenly been ratcheted up through the roof? It must be that the Sunnis are so upset over Gaza that they really need to go blow up some Shiites, and vice versa, no?
It could be that John Negroponte stopped off in Baghdad after his visit to Israel.
Well, the Zionist shills are out in force again, and they sure are blustery today! Does it feel good to see your army sizzling innocent civilians with white phosphorus? As for Saphne's comment:
"many of these people on this site sympathize with the Palestinians because they are just humanitarians, we are more likely to be the same people who would have hidden Jews in our cellars during Nazi Germany."
Spot on, Saphne! But again curmudgeon99 is right in saying we should ignore these trolls. Parry's article is extremely interesting and informative and is what we should be commenting on.
I would choose to differ only on Parry's concluding statements. That is, I wish I had his same optimism as to the hypothetical decline in neo-con influence in the upcoming Obama administration. He's right to say that the American public, at least those with any brains, are fed up with the neocons, but since when has the political class in the U.S. listened to the people?
I agree, especially about the "hypothetical decline in neo-con influence in the upcoming Obama administration". Wait till the layers start peeling off this rotten onion.
Aaaah Blutodog once again derails a valid discussion with his Zionist Rants.
Please, fellow responders, don't fall on the trap of deigning to p* on his remarks. It is a waste of your time. His ignorance goeth before a fall, hopefully.
But I could be wrong !
In my heart of hearts you are right Curmudgeon, but I just can't let that oinker get away with his garbage can posts.
Perry and the rest of u Jew haters in here dream of Israel's destruction by any means even nukes if need be. But, you just wish it didn't mean the destruction of most of Israel's enemies by the same means. So sorry, but your not any longer dealing with those poor down trodden millions who couldn't fathom being gassed in 1940, in the modern world. We know how murderous the hatred is against us whether we have an Israel or not. So, u want us all dead then come on and try to kill us, but be forewarned it will cost you a terrible terrible price. Witness Gaza, Hamas thought it could just lob missiles day and night into Israel and nothing much would happen. Hello! This is not 1942.
Listen you piece of trash: I visited the Ann Frank House in Amsterdam. I was very moved by the bravery of that dear young lady and the wonderful people who hid her and her family from the Nazis. As I am very moved by true blue Jewish people who have the courage of their convictions to stand up against the Warsaw ghettoization of Palestine. Take a lesson! Special place in Hell for you oinker!
I'm sorry for your derangement, Bluto, and I don't know the details of your relationship to this subject, but this is a blinded mentality that points only to self-destruction. What about the thousands of Israelis who marched in Tel Aviv against the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Are these merely what the Zionist hardliners refer to as "self-hating Jews"?? It's the bully who sees the rest of humanity as the "other" and the "other" as the enemy--an inferior to be terrorized. The Zionist elites have been masters of the LIE to further their own self-interests, including continuous false-flag incidents to disrupt peace negotiations, for instance, firing missiles into their own towns upon occasion in order to blame "the enemy" and rachet up hostilities and warfare which is their modus operandi. Join the human race and investigate the position of the "other" side. Although the language is harsh, I don't think anyone here is calling for the annihilation of Israel. It's a warning out of deep frustration, when we see the destruction (in some sense self-destruction) of the U.S. by a crazed band of lunatics and their counterparts in Israel.
Actually for years I was very pro-Israel, it was actual a Jewish person who told me I was brainwashed. I was incensed at first, I think I may have even called him a self-hating Jew. If you look at the facts with an open mind, most people will come around. Ironically, many of these people on this site sympathize with the Palesinians because they are just humanitarians, we are more likely to be the same people who would have hidden Jews in our cellars during Nazi Germany.
A jewish friend went to work on a kibbutz around 1990, and when she came back she said, "They're becoming what they're supposedly against," meaning the Israelis in general.
Saphne there was also a time in my life when I was also very pro-Israel. The massacre in Shatilla and Sabra in 1982 shattered my illusions of Israel. Bless your heart for your good posts.
Oh, and I might add Blutodog, from your letters I get a sense of your temperment,and that said -a different time, a different place- you would have made a fine Nazi.
Blutodog would have made Adolph Eichmann look like Howdy Doody.
The silence of American Jews, especially the famous and empowered, is deafening. It's called "complicity."
Have you ever heard of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Max Blumenthal and many others?
You mistake the corporate media's failure to give these voices a wider hearing with "complicity."
The editorial pages of the NYT gives you instead Roger Cohen, Davis Brooks, and, disgracefully, Wm. Kristol.
There are dozens of much more brilliant minds that are kept from the wider public for reasons that should be obvious.
anwong says: The problem for Israel is that the policies of endless militarism as an approach to their security are simply not sustainable over the long term. To complicate matters, the longer these are pursued, the fewer options are available to manage their security in any other way, as extremism builds in response to their supposed efforts to snuff out that same extremism, which calls upon them to be more militarily assertive, and so on, and so on.
That is exactly, precisely, what is going to happen. The Israeli public doesn't appear to be any sharper than the American public. They, like us, dribble their lips with their index fingers while disaster looms over the horizon. And there's one other thing: one of these days, the American public is going to tire of the endless kowtoing to Israel and wave bye-bye. Politicians, being the ace opportunists they are, will wave bye-bye too.
What will happen to Israel when the oil necessary to run its military machine dries out and the machine becomes lame and idle? Won't the Arab populations it has mistreated for decades and decades remember the pain that was inflicted upon them?
Israel may not be our 51st state but we sure are part of Israeli occupied territory. It matters not if we approve or disapprove of what Israel does.
Hoa binh
it is perhaps of note that Israeli Jews and US Jews in NJ refer to that state as "West Jerusalem".....
The problem for Israel is that the policies of endless militarism as an approach to their security are simply not sustainable over the long term. To complicate matters, the longer these are pursued, the fewer options are available to manage their security in any other way, as extremism builds in response to their supposed efforts to snuff out that same extremism, which calls upon them to be more militarily assertive, and so on, and so on.
At the present time, Israel has few options left. They can level and ethnically cleanse the occupied territories, and even if the rest of the world and the UN lodge their obligatory, cynical protests, Israel will hardly pay any attention, and little would be done to stop them. However, the moral foundation of the State of Israel would be irreparably damaged. The triumph of raw power would have a corrosive and fatal impact on Israel's relations to the rest of the world as well as the moral foundations that support Israel’s continued existence.
Israel could seek peace, the so-called "two state" solution, but that possibility may well be over with the current war and the political and social fragmentation of the Palestinians. Also, if history is any guide, such a serious effort would not take place without significant, external pressure placed upon both parties to come to an agreement. That is very unlikely to take place, even under an Obama administration, which will have its hands full with too many other issues to risk stirring up serious controversy.
The most likely course will be more of the same, back and forth and indecisive conflicts that, in the end will corrode away Israel's existence as such things eventually did to Afrikaan South Africa, White Rhodesia, or the Pied Noir community of Algeria. The state of Israel will end, probably not with a bang as Mr. Parry suggests, but likely with a whimper from years of the corrosive effects of war on the political and social health of the country.
Why not move the State of Israel to Montana? Bring it on... to "our*" homeland. (*With apologies to Native Americans.) 50 states, 51 states, what's the diff?
Wouldn't it be better to move the Palestinian state to Montana? The Muslims and the Christians have so much in common, I'd think they'd get together well. And, after all, the Israelis already have a country and a place to live. It's the Palestinians who don't have a homeland anymore and need to find a new country. Montana would be perfect. After all, if they're not willing to live in peace with the Israelis then obviously they have to move somewhere.
And just why should the Palestinians agree to live in peace with those who are actively trying to steal their homeland, and who have vilified them for decades for having the gall to defend themselves against this colonialism?
Sounds like your White American ignorant mind is already made up. If you don't have the mental capacity to understand what is happening in Palestine, at least have the decency to shut up.
I don't recall the Palestinians arriving by a big boat, but sure why not? Either way gives the US a chance to show how decent we could be about accommodating a new state.
In reality, Israel's policies have been extremely successful. Israel has survived despite massive global anti-Semitism and endless efforts by a billion Christians and a billion Muslims to destroy it. Jews around the world have never been so secure, so prosperous, so numerous, and so well-educated. In fact, never in our 5,000 years of history have the Jews been doing so well, by every conceivable measure. Kind of a strange sort of failure, I'd say. Those waiting for Israel to fall are going to have a very, very, very long wait. Several thousand years, at best. But if there are people who think that they can accomplish what the most powerful nations in human history have failed to accomplish, then let them continue to attack. It's no biggie. Israel can defend itself. Bring it on.
Sounds like you are channeling George W. Bush.
LOL! At first, when a stream of Zionists/Neocons seemed to infest Commondreams.org at the end of every article about Israel/Palestine, I was furious. I was asking myself why it's not enough for them ot have the ENTIRE corporate media as cheerleaders. I come here to get AWAY from Zionist propaganda.
BUT, now I am glad they came because the majority of other visitors to Commondreams.org have countered them with passion, impressive counter arguments, a barrage of facts, and of course, humor. It's fun to watch! :)
I agree mikep. Cut all aid, military and financial, to Israel immediately and let them prosper on their own.
People like you are the reason this world will soon be destroyed. Ignorant buffoon.
I wouldn't call Israel so secure. And I think Jews were a bit more numerous, oh, about 70 years ago.
Oh great, so then I guess you won't be needing our 3 billion in aid this year?
No, Israel will not fall. It has nuclear weapons, and that alone makes the cost of trying to invade or destroy it too costly to any potential adversary.
But every time it does something like its present invasion of Gaza, Israel loses more friends. It needs to change its tactics/strategy. If all those Hamas rockets have killed 20 Israelis in eight years, then Hamas is considerably less effective than the IRA were in Northern Ireland and Britain at the height of the "Troubles". Britain's strategy of containing the terrorists without (except for some early blunders) committing atrocities, eventually resulted in a negotiated peace. Above all, while peace negotiations were in progress, either in secret or openly, the continuing outrages of extremists on either side were never allowed to veto the peace process. Unfortunately, Israeli politicians (at least the current lot) will suspend negotiations at the drop of a hat, never mind a rocket. Those who desire peace and genuine security for Israel must learn to deal with the actions of their own crazies, religious fanatics and others, who wield too much power in the Israeli democratic system.
If Israel used a nuclear weapon, every embassy and synagogue in the world would be burned down, and Pakistan would probably lend a missile to a muslim group.
That's assuming it doesnt hit a country close by--if it does, it will probably get radioactive contamination, and I dont think Israel is that suicidal. Masada involved starving to death, not firing catapults of fire at Romans. Despite the military bluster, I think Israel is still a passive warrior nation, it doesnt like risking soldier deaths(hence the development of guns that fire around corners, sticking them in towers, planes etc, even when they know the palestinians only have home made rockets).
I think any country that used a nuclear weapon today would face an immense backlash, but for Israel it would be extremely vicious, given its size.
"If Israel used a nuclear weapon, every embassy and synagogue in the world would be burned down, and Pakistan would probably lend a missile to a muslim group."
This is typical of how people in here mis-read what others say. The other poster didn't say Israel would use a nuke, it said if it was attacked with such a weapon it most certainly would use it's own nukes in retaliation. Webber , always ready to blame Israel for everything turned this around to try and make it sound as if Israel plans to use such a weapon. As for his statement about backlash against any country using a nuke today, of course it's tongue in check isn't it. He could care less if Israel and every Jew in it was incinerated. Problem solved is what he'd be thinking. Israel on the other hand defending itself by striking back is of course unacceptable. In his nasty little worldview Jews die willing by walking into gas chambers. That was then Herr Webber, today if attacked ...well I think Gaza makes my pt.
I think it might be too late. I don't know.
I keep thinking "First they came for the communists and i said i wasnt a communist..." If the u.s. didn't need israel anymore as a military base, why would they keep supporting them? Especially when the fundamentalists believe that the jews need to be killed before the 'second coming' can occur in jerusalem.
I think israel is making the world less safe for everyone and this will be its downfall. They can't keep all the media silent and videos and photos and reports are getting out. They did something not just inhumane but stupid.
But, my belief is that when you are so intentionally destructive to another, you do the same to yourself. The ends never justify the means. And the ends here aren't even good. They pretend that it is their own business and doesn't involve the rest of the world. But of course it does---profoundly.
It looks like they have set themselves up to fall in a big way.
I agree with you completely, so do many Israelis. Many of them have hated the fact they the unconditional, ironclad US support has allowed their right wing policies to flourish unabated. I think as people start to seek out information and begin peeling back the layers there will be a tsunami of outrage. We already know the same tired Israeli mantras,but now I see people starting to delve a little deeper into the intricacies of this conflict,and man, some of them are pissed!