Category Archives: Israel

The Plan For Iran

Iran, Israel, Russia, War, WMD

In the days and weeks ahead, the political Demopublican machine will fog up the Iran matter to such a degree that seeing the forest from the trees will become impossible for the average war-starved American (a default position, it would seem).

For the purpose of formulating a principled position, here’s something of what you need to consider: With all its posturing, Iran is preparing a time table for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Iranians will want to pretend they are calling the shots, so to speak. Saving face is a very crucial component of the culture, in case American multiculturalists have not figured that out yet.

The IAEA did a good job in Iraq; when they reported in 2002 that Iraq had been cleansed from WMD, they were 100 percent correct, although “Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush never stopped gabbling about a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear-weapons program, chemical and biological blights, Scuds and squadrons of unmanned aerial vehicles streaking U.S. skies, and traveling laboratories teeming with twisted scientists.”
(And some members of the fantasy-based community still believe “the weapons” are in Bashar al-Assad’s basement.)

So long as its inspectors are fully engaged with Iran, the Iranian crisis will remain a manufactured one, drummed up by interested parties: Iranian exiles and the usual American armchair warriors.

Recall, as the US was ramping-up for war against Iraq, Hans Blix, Chief United Nations weapons inspector, and Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei were crisscrossing Iraq, scouring the place for WMD. The two had turned Iraq into a CSI-like crime scene:

“From November 2002 to January 2003, Blix conducted approximately 300 inspections of more than 230 different sites in Iraq. Of these, more than 20 had hitherto not been inspected. (He set up field offices in Mosul and Basra, places he could never hope to access today.) Despite this empirical exercise, the fantasy-based community asserted that ‘All the Western intelligence services – the UN itself – stated with certainty that this thug had and was hiding WMD?'”

Please read my account at the time of Blix’s efforts in “INK STAINS AND BLOOD STAINS” and “What WMD.”

Dislike for these operatives doesn’t change that what they reported comported with reality, perfectly.

Israel, unlike America, acts in its self-interest. So it is natural that Israelis would, overall, encourage the world to help diminish their own plight vis-a-vis Iran. However, a man I really like, the hard rightist Avigdor Lieberman (foreign minister) is “being criticized for aligning his policies with those of Moscow.” That’s telling. And what is the position of Moscow? Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies “that although [the] Iranian’s missile exercise was worrying, restraint was needed. An official communiqué urged ‘Western powers to restrain themselves.”

That seems reasonable at this point.

‘Have You No Shame?!’

Anti-Semitism, Canada, Iran, Israel, Judaism & Jews, UN

Bibi Netanyahu’s excoriating address to the UN is being described as “Churchillian.” I doubt Bibi matched the master, but the address was factual, solemn, dignified and to the point (excerpted and YouTubed below).

So too is Canada to be commended. Foreign minister Lawrence Cannon walked out while A-Jad, the Iranian Majnun, delivered his rant. (A-Jad is short for Ahmadinejad. First name: Mahmoud. Residence: Iran. Occupation: dictator.) The Canada of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a good record with respect to Israel.

Said Canada’s Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon: “The prime minister of Canada indicated earlier today that the outrageous statements by Iran’s president, denying, of course, a holocaust, casting terrible aspersions against the state of Israel, the complete violation for human rights … as we’ve seen Iran over the course of the last several years, complete disregard for United Nations Security Council resolutions, prompted us quite clearly to not be in the same room with the Iranians while the president was making his speech.”

Details are sketchy, but the US seems to have lingered a little too long in the assembly. I can’t find information on who stayed tuned to the fulminating A-Jad and who left. [Any one?]

Over to Bibi: “Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.

But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.

What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!”… [A mockery of the Charter, perhaps, but true to the record of the institution.]

The full text.

Part I of the address:

Updated: The POTUS’s Plans For ‘Palestine’

Barack Obama, Foreign Aid, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War

Obama’s plans for Israel: “two states living side by side in peace and security – a Jewish State of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. … The time has come to re-launch negotiations – without preconditions – that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem.”

QUESTION: Contiguous? How do you make the West Bank and Gaza contiguous without making Israel unconnected?

West_Bank__Gaza_Map_2007_Settlements.1912940

QUESTION: “Occupation that began in 1967”? As far as I recall, the 1967 war was a war of aggression begun by the Arabs and won by Israel. I lived through it.

Obama: “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”

Well, then, if “America” objects, then that’s all there is to it.

QUESTION: Why bring up “borders, refugees and Jerusalem” if the POTUS’ goal is not to get Israel to go back to the 1967 line, absorb self-styled Palestinian refugees (“right of return”), and divide the Jewish Capital?

All the stuff Obama liked about “Abdullah’s Plans for Israel.”

Update (Sept. 24): Conversely, I imagine that there are many countries that receive USAID but are not told what to do by Rome. The Arab countries, for example. Other than the staple stupidity about the need to democratize (and thus empower the Jihadi Muslim Brotherhood), I have never heard the US insist Egypt do this or the other. And why is aid to Israel always depicted in a different light than aid to other nations? Foreign aid is bad when given to Israel and to Egypt.

Updated: The POTUS's Plans For 'Palestine'

Barack Obama, Foreign Aid, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War

Obama’s plans for Israel: “two states living side by side in peace and security – a Jewish State of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. … The time has come to re-launch negotiations – without preconditions – that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem.”

QUESTION: Contiguous? How do you make the West Bank and Gaza contiguous without making Israel unconnected?

West_Bank__Gaza_Map_2007_Settlements.1912940

QUESTION: “Occupation that began in 1967”? As far as I recall, the 1967 war was a war of aggression begun by the Arabs and won by Israel. I lived through it.

Obama: “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”

Well, then, if “America” objects, then that’s all there is to it.

QUESTION: Why bring up “borders, refugees and Jerusalem” if the POTUS’ goal is not to get Israel to go back to the 1967 line, absorb self-styled Palestinian refugees (“right of return”), and divide the Jewish Capital?

All the stuff Obama liked about “Abdullah’s Plans for Israel.”

Update (Sept. 24): Conversely, I imagine that there are many countries that receive USAID but are not told what to do by Rome. The Arab countries, for example. Other than the staple stupidity about the need to democratize (and thus empower the Jihadi Muslim Brotherhood), I have never heard the US insist Egypt do this or the other. And why is aid to Israel always depicted in a different light than aid to other nations? Foreign aid is bad when given to Israel and to Egypt.