18 Comments

1. Pajamas Media » Israel and Iran: What Next?:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

May 12, 2009 - 2:43 am 2. eurabitopian:

I smell a rat. Ahmadonjihad is grinning like the cat that got the cheese and definitely has something up his sleeve (probably a rat), which is why he keeps laughing up it. He’s laughing at us, but why?

On the face of it, the Iranian position doesn’t make sense. Their numero uno priority is to develop a bomb, so why are they repeatedly proclaiming to the whole world their intention to annihilate the one country that could possibly stop them? They are clearly goading Israel and leaving her absolutely no option but to strike. Iran wants to be attacked. They need an excuse. They have a dastardly plan. But what?

My worst fear is that they already have some nukes, possibly acquired from the ex-USSR, NK or the Chinese etc, and they are already in place in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel or maybe even in America. This might explain the kid-gloves-carrot-and-carrot approach that America has been taking with Iran for years now.

But not to worry, now we have the sophisticated new doctrine of hope’n'change. Obama will sit this one out whilst ineffectually playing peacemaker. He hates Israel even more than he hates America and instinctively sympathises with Islamists and Communists. He thinks he may need Iran as an alternate supply/retreat route into/out of Afghanistan when Pakistan falls. He’s effectively given the crazy-as-a-fox mullahs the green light to attempt to destroy Israel and I’m very afraid that they have the means and that they mean to do it.

Traces of highly enriched uranium were recently found by the IAEA in Egypt. You can bet your life that the Saudis, the Turks, the Sudanese and just about every tin-pot tyrannical state from Venezuela to the Somali pirates is going to be rushing to join the nuclear club.

The nuclear cat is out of the bag but this cat is pals with the above mentioned rat. Unfortunately, so seems to be the brave new leader of the (soon not to be) free world.

It’s going to be bloody.

May 12, 2009 - 3:48 am 3. David Thomson:

“He (Jeffrey Herf) gives the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt”

This is not a logical position. It is pure wishful thinking that is easily contradicted by the available evidence. Barack Obama is clearly a self-hating Westerner who has issues with white people. This is why he threw his own white grandmother under the bus. Obama, in his heart of hearts, perceives the mostly white Jews as oppressors of the dark skinned Palestinians. Moreover, Obama is implying, if not even explicitly asserting, that the radical Muslims will quiet down once a deal is struck between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This ultimately means, of course, that the Israelis will be encouraged to give away the farm while getting nothing in return. Their safety will be further jeopardized.

It would also be wise to take another look at James Burnham’s Suicide of the West. He wrote this important work during the Cold War while the United States was in a life and death struggle against Communism. Still, the book is very relevant today. Liberals instinctively desire for the Western powers to lay down their arms against their existential foes. They will not be content until the West has committed suicide.

May 12, 2009 - 4:14 am 4. Fragmentarian:

One need only read the comments on The Australian piece to see that Chomskyism is the default position of the brain dead left. No matter how coherent the argument for Israel, no matter how vigorously the lies are refuted, the attacks continue based on the same calumnies.

May 12, 2009 - 5:30 am 5. Tom Holsinger:

In death ground, fight.

A nation that won’t fight to save itself from extinction, deserves extinction.

Bosnian Muslims faced extinction. They fought.

May 12, 2009 - 8:02 am 6. anton:

Obama tying the Iranian bomb to the resolution of the Palestinian question is absurd. Two different questions with no logical connection. Connecting that which is unacceptable to that which is unachieveable gives Obama an out; if you first must do the impossible before you can stop the intolerable you gaurantee that the intolerable will occur.

Israel has no conflict with the Pallys, it is the Palestinians (and I only use that term for brevity’s sake, there is no such animal as a Palestinian, they are Jordanian Arabs) that have a conflict with Israel. Both of the ruling political entities in the PA call for the destruction of Israel in their formative charters, a glance at the Israeli Constitution shows no such animosity. The provocations are entirely one-sided. Obama should be telling them to make peace with Israel not the other way around.

I am fearful that the only peace likely to occur any time soon in the Mid-East will be the peace of the grave.

May 12, 2009 - 8:24 am 7. Barry 0351:

I just wish some of those middle eastern assholes would grow a pair and really, really get on with the killing and wipe themselves right off the face of the earth.
That means all middle eastern assholes, israel included I’m sick of the crap.
do it or STFU and STFD

May 12, 2009 - 8:43 am 8. David W. Lincoln:

Keep this in mind. Part one ran in today’s National Post:

The myth of a secular Palestine The Palestinian national movement started life with a vision and goal of a Palestinian Muslim Arab-majority state in all of Palestine — a one-state “solution” — and continues to espouse and aim to establish such a state down to the present day. Moreover, and as a corollary, al-Husseini, the Palestinian national leader during the 1930s and 1940s; the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which led the national movement from the 1960s to Yasser Arafat’s death in November, 2004; and Hamas today — all sought and seek to vastly reduce the number of Jewish inhabitants in the country, in other words, to ethnically cleanse Palestine. Al-Husseini and the PLO explicitly declared the aim of limiting Palestinian citizenship to those Jews who had lived in Palestine permanently before 1917 (or, in another version, to limit it to those 50,000-odd Jews and their descendants). This goal was spelled out clearly in the Palestinian National Charter and in other documents. Hamas has been publicly more reserved on this issue, but its intentions are clear.

The Palestinian vision was never — as described by various Palestinian spokesmen in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to Western journalists — of a “secular, democratic Palestine” (though it certainly sounded more palatable than, say, the “destruction of Israel,” which was the goal it was meant to paper over or camouflage). Indeed, “a secular democratic Palestine” had never been the goal of Fatah or the so-called moderate groups that dominated the PLO between the 1960s and the 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power.

Middle East historian Rashid Khalidi has written that “in 1969 [the PLO] amended [its previous goal and henceforward advocated] the establishment of a secular democratic state in Palestine for Muslims, Christians and Jews, replacing Israel.” And Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah has written, in his recent book, One Country: “The PLO did ultimately adopt [in the late 1960s or 1970s] the goal of a secular, democratic state in all Palestine as its official stance.”

This is hogwash. The Palestine National Council (PNC) never amended the Palestine National Charter to the effect that the goal of the PLO was “a secular democratic state in Palestine.” The words and notion never figured in the charter or in any PNC or PLO Central Committee or Fatah Executive Committee resolutions, at any time. It is a spin invented for gullible Westerners and was never part of Palestinian mainstream ideology. The Palestinian leadership has never, at any time, endorsed a “secular, democratic Palestine.”

The PNC did amend the charter, in 1968 (not 1969). But the thrust of the emendation was to limit non-Arab citizenship in a future Arab-liberated Palestine to “Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion” — that is, 1917.
True, the amended charter also guaranteed, in the future State of Palestine, “freedom of worship and of visit” to holy sites to all, “without discrimination of race, colour, language or religion.” And, no doubt, this was music to liberal Western ears. But it had no connection to the reality or history of contemporary Muslim Arab societies. What Muslim Arab society in the modern age has treated Christians, Jews, pagans, Buddhists and Hindus with tolerance and as equals? Why should anyone believe that Palestinian Muslim Arabs would behave any differently?

Western liberals like, or pretend, to view Palestinian Arabs, indeed all Arabs, as Scandinavians, and refuse to recognize that peoples, for good historical, cultural and social reasons, are different and behave differently in similar or identical sets of circumstances.

So where did the slogan of “a secular, democratic Palestine” originate? That goal was first explicitly proposed in 1969 by the small Marxist splinter group the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). According to Khalidi, “It was [then] discreetly but effectively backed by the leaders of the mainstream, dominant Fatah movement … The democratic secular state model eventually became the official position of the PLO.” As I have said, this is pure invention. The PNC, PLO and Fatah turned down the DFLP proposal, and it was never adopted or enunciated by any important Palestinian leader or body — though the Western media during the 1970s were forever attributing it to the Palestinians. As a result, however, the myth has taken hold that this was the PLO’s official goal through the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

And today, again, and for the same reasons — the phrase retains its good, multicultural, liberal ring — “a secular, democratic Palestine” is bandied about by Palestinian one-state supporters. And a few one-statists, indeed, may sincerely believe in and desire such a denouement. But given the realities of Palestinian politics and behaviour, the phrase objectively serves merely as camouflage for the goal of a Muslim Arab–dominated polity to replace Israel. And, as in the past, the goal of “a secular democratic Palestine” is not the platform or policy of any major Palestinian political institution or party.

Indeed, the idea of a “secular democratic Palestine” is as much a nonstarter today as it was three decades ago. It is a nonstarter primarily because the Palestinian Arabs, like the world’s other Muslim Arab communities, are deeply religious and have no respect for democratic values and no tradition of democratic governance.

And matters have only gotten worse since the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. For anyone who has missed the significance of Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006 and the violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, a mere glance at the West Bank and Gaza today (and, indeed, at Israel’s Arab minority villages and towns) reveals a landscape dominated by rapidly multiplying mosque minarets, the air filled with the calls to prayer of the muezzins and alleyways filled with hijab-ed women. Only fools and children were persuaded in 2006–07 that Hamas beat Fatah merely because they had an uncorrupt image or dispensed aid to the poor. The main reasons for the Hamas victory were religious and political: the growing religiosity of the Palestinian masses and their “recognition” that Hamas embodies the “truth” and, with Allah’s help, will lead them to final victory over the infidels, much as Hamas achieved, through armed struggle, the withdrawal of the infidels from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

May 12, 2009 - 10:02 am 9. Edward Norden:

It’s conceivable that sooner or later Israel will attack those Iranian sites it knows of. Will Obama —as soon as he’s informed—order American planes in Iraq and the Gulf to intercept? Will he already be threatening this when he meets Netanyahu next week?

May 12, 2009 - 11:56 am 10. a:

Too late. The time to defend Israel’s right to exist was before the election of the current president.

May 12, 2009 - 1:49 pm 11. oldfrt:

I once thought that Israel would be the salvation of the middle east…proving that a democratic state with modern ideas could improve the lot of the common man. Now, I dunno. There is no gainsaying that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (people who lived in what was earlier called “Palestine”) were evicted from their hereditary homesteads, regardless of the spin that they “voluntarily” abandoned home and fields. They were not considered to be “Jordanian arabs” at the time. And this suppurating wound will never heal. The mere existence of Israel will be decried by the Arab world until the end of time.

So: No peace plan will ever work. Israel must always be ready to defend itself. And I fear that there will be a bloodbath for all. Perhaps we should consider alternatives which would bring the Israelis to the US to live and prosper in peace. I, for one, would welcome them with open arms. They are a brave and productive people.

May 12, 2009 - 2:08 pm 12. Ellen K:

You can add another I country to the mix-India. India is a nuclear power. And they have been fighting a border war with Pakistan for decades. If it looks like the insurgency in the Swat Valley starts to make moves towards Islamabad, I suspect that India will go to a heightened level as well. The best thing we could do is sit back and watch, because India has more at stake with the instability of Pakistan than we do. The smartest thing Israel could do right now is strike a mutual defense treaty with India. They are both US allies, and both are nuclear equipped. If the Obama Administration would get off their high horse and start reading the reports on the ground rather than press releases, maybe something could be accomplished behind the scenes. But this administration seems rife with wannabes and hasbeens all looking for the limelight.

May 12, 2009 - 3:27 pm 13. Zabibi:

However long it takes, their is only one solution to the present crisis and it is the two-state solution. The majority of the Palestinians will now accept the occupied territories as the site for an independent state alongside that of Israel. But they are fractured people and they lack the leadership to move forward to independence. All the parties in the region will accept that position and they will resolve the refugee problem.

May 12, 2009 - 4:21 pm 14. Spindok:

Yes (5) Tom,

But Israel hardly needs lessons in fighting. They have nothing but that- in ways you cannot imagine.

So have Palestinians. Do not mistake that for some sort of equilibrium in my mind. I am as pro-Israel as you can get. But I know that Israels principal enemies are fighters too and just as dedicated. Reality begins there. Then we proceed with how to deal with it.

Nobody wants perpetual war and ill concieved peace efforts only make the problem worse. Like giving the wrong antibiotic for an infection.

Always the give and take. Let us imagine that Netanyahu and Likud want to open a dialogue because they see an opening with some Fatah faction. The hard liners whom they need to keep majority oppose this on idealogical grounds. They take a line which allows the US to give them an out.

So the US gives them that by saying “either you do x or we withdraw support”. Now the pragmatists have what they need. No Israeli politician would jeopardize US support which is essential to survival.

This game happens on many levels. Only way to judge is by outcome.

No. I do not think this is the time for a major peace initiative. If the current US administration thinks it can do that they will sink upon the rocks as have so many others.

It may be the time for a feint. Yet in the long run hope is lost now for a strong enough Palestinain faction, maybe even an Israeli faction, to achieve a peaceful solution – always the ultimate goal.

Our president and his administation should not open a major front here. Lose-lose situation. Bad for everyone to see another lost cause. Keep the quiet and strong support for Israel. Let Hamas and the like drown in their own lost cause. Keep up the pressure. This is a waiting game, not a US election.

Spindok

May 12, 2009 - 4:56 pm 15. Rob:

To put the burden of making concessions for peace only on Israel seems quite bizarre, but that is what is being done here.
Throw Israel under the bus and we will have “peace in our time” for a very short time.

Feckless, Jimmy Carter midwifed the rise of militant Iran; what will Obami wan give birth to.

May 13, 2009 - 9:05 am 16. Brian:

#4 Fragmentarian-I did the same.Try playing stupid as to who Chomsky is ,and watch the tirage and idiocy.
As some have posted i dont see any organs of state with the Palestinians.Still see alot of hatred though.Youd think the Holocaust was a firm reminder.Some are too blinded to see properly on the Left.

May 13, 2009 - 5:48 pm 17. David P:

What might happen if “normalized relations” grow sour, as they typically do, especially among the 22 existing Arab nation-states? During times of normalcy this Sunni dominant coterie treat their own with visceral contempt, lavish deceit and conspire against one another as a matter of natural selection. The Arab League’s been back channel begging Israel to prevent the Shiite Nuclear End Game regardless of the so called peace process. It’s all smoke and mirrors to exploit a crises, to ‘never waste a good one’ is too cliche when you’re serving up poison.

May 15, 2009 - 8:55 pm 18. Chileno:

Iran’s desire to annihilate Israel is real, but it’s not Iran’s primary goal. It’s merely a means to Iran’s true goal: becoming the region’s superpower.

Iran spreads its influence throughout the Middle East: in Syria, in Lebanon (where Hezbollah has created a virtual state within a state), in Gaza, in Egypt (through the Muslim Brotherhood), and who knows where else. Through its allies, and through its championing of the Palestinian cause, Iran rallies the masses to its causes and hopes to destabilize “moderate” pro-US Arab governments that are not under its influence. It’s questionable even if the Iranian government cares about the Palestinians, or whether it’s using them to unite the Middle East under its direction, much like Nasser tried in the 1960’s.

But if Iran aspires to become the regional superpower, it must first take on Israel, the current regional power. Israel is not out to challenge its neighbors. Rather, it uses its superior military strength to preserve a balance of power in which none of its neighbors can seriously challenge Israel. By taking out the region’s strongest military presence, Iran would cement itself as the new regional hegemon, and have the added benefit of rallying millions in the Arab street.

What would Iran gain as a regional power? Having controlling influence over a region with the world’s greatest oil supplies would force the West to see Iran as a global player. Iran could negotiate with the West from a position of strength. What better way to preserve and advance the Islamic Revolution? It’s also Iran’s way of seeking revenge for all the times the West has trampled it, from occupying the country during WWII, to foisting and preserving the Shah on the nation for so many decades.

What does this mean to Israel? If Iran became the regional power, it’s own influence in the West would be greatly diminished. Though the West would likely continue to see Iran with disgust, it would nonetheless be forced to accommodate it, putting Israel’s needs in second place.

So there is a strong geopolitical calculation in Iran’s rhetoric against Israel. Of course, this is on top of the inherent hate for the Jews that the current Iranian government has. The point is this: even if one were to (foolishly) discard the apocalyptic predictions of nuclear warheads falling on Tel Aviv it would still be in Israel’s best interests to knock back Iran’s ambitions.

This is why Israel must attack Iran. It must reassert its role as the region’s most powerful nation, it must preserve the balance of power to its favor, and, of course, it must eliminate the very real existential threat of nuclear warheads raining down on its territories. If it doesn’t, Israel will have sealed its own fate. This is not the kind of nation Israel has proved to be. Thus, I have no doubt the question is not if, but when Israel will act.

May 17, 2009 - 7:59 am

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