DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 24, 2012,
A fateful decision is reached on Iran
Israel has withdrawn its pledge to US President Barack Obama not to strike Iran’s nuclear sites before the November presidential election after he rejected its minimal demands for nuclear negotiations with Iran. This is reported exclusively by debkafile’s Washington sources.
In public, Israeli ministers still talk as though they believe in results from the Six-Power talks with Iran, which Thursday May 24 limped into their second day in Baghdad with the parties still miles apart. But the presidential veto has essentially cast Israel outside the loop of influence on the outcome of diplomacy.
When Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak met US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon on May 17 he was told that Obama had rejected Israel’s toned-down demands for Iran to at least to halt high-grade uranium enrichment, export its stocks of material enriched higher than 3.5 percent grade and shut down production at the Fordo nuclear plant near Qom. For six months, the Obama administration tried to sweeten the bitter pill of this rejection by bumping up security aid. The latest appropriation covered another $70 million for manufacturing more Iron Dome short-range missile interceptors.
After talking to Panetta, Barak turned to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon in the hope of winning their support for softening Obama’s ruling. Clinton replied she was not involved in the negotiations with Iran and Donilon, that a personal decision by the president was not open to change.
A week of consultations followed the defense minister’s return home, during which it was decided to tear up Israel’s pledge to refrain from attacking Iran during the US presidential campaign. Wednesday, May 23, the day the Baghdad talks began, Barak signaled Washington to this effect.
It was conveyed in a little-noticed early morning radio interview with the defense minister. To make sure his words reached the proper address without misunderstandings, the defense minister’s office issued a verbatim English translation from the Hebrew:
“There is no need to tell us what to do, and we have no reason to panic. Israel is very, very strong, but we do know that the Iranians are accomplished chess players and will try to achieve nuclear capabilities. Our position has not changed. The world must stop Iran from becoming nuclear. All options remain on the table.”
As the Baghdad talks went around in circles, Israel’s military option was put back firmly on the table and on the US-Iranian chessboard.
http://www.debka.com/article/22024/Israel-revives-military-option-after-Obama-rejects-its-nuclear-demands-of-Iran
@ BlandOatmeal:
They reject Jesus, then spend all their time trying to be more Christian than the Christains. There is much truth in this statement. I have said as much several times in my comments.
Torah’s Mandate: Defend Yourselves!
Israel and the U.S.: Friendship through Strength
@ LT COL HOWARD:
In order to preserve Israel, I can only offer suggestions:
1. Attack Iran, to destroy their nuclear enrichment capabilities. This is the minimum that must be done, to protect Israel from Iranian nuclear blackmail. There are lots of dependent scenarios of this, all of them hypothetical. Obama can try to isolate Israel in retaliation, but he would have an awfully tough time with the pro-Israel US electorate if he did.
2. Start a grass-roots effort to reform Israel’s political system, and make it responsive to the popular will. Everything else inside Israel depends on this; it’s futile to talk about settling, building, annexing, etc., when the High Court and Shas stand ready to put a monkey wrench in the system and prevent effective action.
3. Once the Israelis actually control Israel, they should kick the Muslims off the Temple Mount.
That will do for starters.
@ BlandOatmeal:My theme sentences: “Why do so many bright contributors who are obviously concerned with the survival of Israel spend so much time and energy arguing with each other, when the focus should be on WHAT CAN AND SHOULD BE DONE TO PRESERVE ISRAEL.”
everything in your response illustrates my exasperation with you and with so many others. You’re facing the world that doesn’t care about you. Therefore I say: FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS.
LT COL HOWARD Said:
ha!
colonel!
can you spell ‘hudna’?
@ LT COL HOWARD:
Howard, you MUST be joking. A reason to survive? Oy veh! Hillel is known among Jews not for his standing-on-one-foot variation of the Golden Rule, but for saying, “If I’m not for me, then who?” Jesus exhorted us to love our neighbor as ourself (repeating Torah, or course), because it was TAKEN FOR GRANTED that we would love ourselves! 🙂 With Jews, though, apparently, this is not a clear-cut issue. A Jew must somehow justify his existence, it seems, or else contemplate suicide as a “reasonable” option!
Does THAT explain why “so many bright contributors who are obviously concerned with the survival of Israel spend so much time and energy arguing with each other”? Or do you think we should spend time and energy arguing about it? Jews are nuts, that’s why. They reject Jesus, then spend all their time trying to be more Christian than the Christains. If Christians love their enemies, then Jews must throw themselves into their enemies’ frying pans like schmoos! Zebras can’t help being zebras, and Jews can’t help being Jews. And what, you may ask, do Jewish zebras do? One calls the other black, and the other insists that he’s white!
Am Yisrael chai! 🙂
Why do so many bright contributors who are obviously concerned with the survival of Israel spend so much time and energy arguing with each other, when the focus should be on what can and should be done to preserve Israel.
If the choice is between “a democracy for all its citizens”and a “Jewish state” I urge Israeli Jews to opt for the Jewish state.
Maybe Ted, who is one of the most reasonable persons I have ever encountered, can get a list of all of the reasons (they may be partially in conflict or directly opposed to one another) for Israel to survive: examples as a refuge for the Jews; to pass on certain values to the world; to provide a good economic life for the citizens; to serve as a model for democracy in the treatment of minorities; etc. (I did not say any of these are good or well stated-I am just trying to get a list developed.).
then we can go on from the “whys” to enumerating the “ whats” and the “hows”.
I have just returned from a meeting with a scientist steeped in the Islamic culture. He believes, as I believe, that is a mistake to make any concession before a final deal struck and the provision that there is no agreement until we agree on everything doesn’t work with the US pressures you to give up what you have put on the table “as a confidence building concession” when your enemy has determined: no recognition; no negotiations, no peace.
Do either yamit or Mr Hamilton know what an average is?
The average was 2000 a day. Some days more. Some days less.
Even Mr Hamilton, who lies about me, admits that some days were less.
Nikzor, the very pro-Jewish site, admits that 1.5 million, NOT 4 million were killed at Auschwitz.
I will thank both of you to get your facts straight.
No one is denying the Holocaust, but 4 million did not die at Auschwitz.
THIS IS THE REAL STORY.
I applaud Israel.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Dream om Mr. Harris-Where did you get your crystal ball? What made you such an expert as to what might transpire in the future. No one and I mean no one can say with 1000 percent certainty what would happen if Israel attacked. All you can do is guess, conjecture, and try to appear authoritative. And of course Kvetch, a lot of kvetching.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Whatever factors the Israeli leaders take into account deciding when and how to stop Iran from joining the nuclear club, I’m sure that the outcome of the November elections in the United States will not be one of them. US presidency that lasts 4 to 8 years connot compare in importance with Israel, which must last forever. The suggestion that the join session of Congress would be an appropriate venue for the celebration of the Israeli victory is even more absurd. Regardless of the outcome of Israeli efforts to protect itself, international condemnation of its actions is absolutely certain, and the US is guaranteed to join the chorus of anti-Semites.
@CuriousAmerican this has been studied extensively. The White House the US State Department and top military officials were guilty as hell in this matter. All statements about shortage of resources, diversion from other missions, etc. are phony. muuch of the Jewish support for the Roosevelt policy was based on the fact that the White House and the State Department threatened that any lack of support would be publicly pointed out as subversive to the war effort. Also, unfortunately, certain Jewish leaders enjoyed the celebrity of their proximity to the White House and the political powers and were thus blinded by their egos. (My personal observation is that in our dealings with Iran so much has remained the same within the American government and within the American Jewish community)
Calls from within the camps pleaded for the bombings.
Again, the Jewish tendency to blame each other for the anti-Semitism and ill will of others pervades many of the arguments that I have been reading.
Wikipedia is lousy source for most things that deal with Israel, the Middle East, etc.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Your math is based on quoting my comment that:“in 1944, Auschwitz was going at 20,000 people (killed) a day.” Any intelligent readwe unfamiliar with the facts would at least make even a superficial effort to verify and understand the statement. Did I say all of two years every day? Did I even say all of 1944 every day? a quick google check would have made clear the facts of the matter some of which I present below but for more exact details they are all on line check them yourself.
Your mentors?: David Irving, David Duke, Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In November of 1944, in the face of the approaching allied Red Army, Himmler ordered gassings to stop and for a “clean-up” operation to be put in place in order to conceal traces of the mass murder and other crimes that they had committed. The Nazi’s destroyed documents and dismantled, burned down or blew up the vast majority of buildings.
The orders for the final evacuation and liquidation of the camp were issued in mid-January 1945. The Germans left behind in the main Auschwitz camp, Birkenau and in Monowitz about 7,000 sick or incapacitated who they did not expect would live for long; the rest, approximately 58,000 people, were evacuated by foot into the depths of the Third Reich.
Those prisoners capable, began forcibly marching at the moment when Soviet soldiers were liberating Cracow, some 60 kilometers from the camp. In marching columns escorted by heavily armed SS guards, these 58,000 men and women prisoners were led out of Auschwitz from January 17-21. Many prisoners lost their lives during this tragic evacuation, known as the “Death March.”
When Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found only the few thousand pitiful survivors who had been left behind as well as 836,525 items of women clothing, 348,820 items of men clothing, 43,525 pairs of shoes and vast numbers of toothbrushes, glasses and other personal effects. They found also 460 artificial limbs and seven tons of human hair shaved from Jews before they were murdered. The human hairs were used by the company “Alex Zink” (located in Bavaria) for confection of cloth. This company was paying the Nazi’s 50 pfennig per kilo of human hair.
Of those who received numbers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, only 65,000 survived. It is estimated that only about 200,000 people who passed through the Auschwitz camps survived.
Historians and analysts estimate the number of people murdered at Auschwitz somewhere between 2.1 million to 4 million, of whom the vast majority were Jews.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Another reason to do it before the elections. As the cartoon goes Israel can risk an Obama defeat. It’s a chance they’ll have to take.
I refuse to recognize the poster who as I described him is a Nazi. However I will point out for the rest of the viewers of this website that Miklos Horthy dictator of Hungary refused to allow the deportation of Hungarian Jews until the threats the Nazi made, finally caused him to agree in May 1944. Jews were transported to the death camps from mid May to the beginning of July 1944 when Horthy stopped them. They did not restart until after Horthy was permanently overthrown in November 1944 and ended at the beginning of January 1945 when the Red Army conquered Hungary .Himmler had by the latter part of 1944 attempted to bargain with the anti-Semitic British and Roosevelt offering to trade Hungarian Jews in an effort to save his worthless neck. He actually stopped the deportations during the period at the end of 1944 for brief periods partly because of the work of Raul Wallenberg naively believing the Allies might overlook the millions he had killed. Himmler actually believed Roosevelt and Churchill were Jewish puppets. He was unaware that not only were they not controlled by Jews but their feelings towards Jews was much closer to his own than he could have ever imagined . So the deportations probably were carried out for as little as 70 days total which would equal 10,000 per day . So the nameless creature who as all Neo-Nazis do, greatly minimized the amount of Jews transported each day and the number transported each day the deportations were carried out was approximately 10,000. Therefore each day the railroad tracks would have been out of commission would have meant 10,000 less Jews arriving at the death camps.
I don’t know why anyone bothers answering this anti-Semitic piece of sh-t the Curious Nazi. As for bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities engaged in making their nuclear weapons,it must be done before the election. Regardless of the effectiveness of the bombing, it would drive up the price of oil and definitely hurt the US economy thus hurting Obama reelection chances. Obama more and more,although he would never admit it, clearly reveals he is in favor of eradicating Israel.It fits his world view which is shaped by his limited intellect i.e. Israel is a colonial/European/White outpost which is oppressing “people of color”. Obama wants Iran to remove the evil, alien white,European/colonialist Israeli Jews. His limited IQ and education doesn’t allow him to see that it is the Fakestinians who are the aliens and colonizers. Obama is as antisemitic as anyone could be and get elected President. He was married by,had his offspring baptized by a phony reverend/ Louis Farrakahn type Black extremist antisemite whose church he attended every Sunday for 20 years.He was best friends with the most prominent Fakestinian “Professor” in the US. He attended Columbia where the previous top Fakestinian professor in the US Edward Said was a member of the faculty before the world became a better place when Said died. He grew up in Indonesia where he was exposed to the repeated sermon at the Mosque he attended which ad nauseaum repeated the typical view of infidels especially Jews as subhuman. Even his treatment of Netanyahu during a visit to the White House during which Obama displayed the utmost contempt for the Israeli delegation and his utter his clear hatred of Netanyahu during an alleged “open mike” moment is another example of his extreme hatred of Jews. He used Jews who were valuable to him as still does like David Quisling Axelrod. Hitler, when it was necessary, signed documents which made German Jews such as Field Marshall Erhard Milch an “Aryan” because he was needed to run the Luftwaffe and the German military during WWII and had 3 Field Marshals ,and 13 generals who were by the Nuremberg law definition ,Jewish. The fact he doesn’t possess dictatorial powers like Hitler did ,is probably why American Jews are not directly persecuted by him, and in their incredible naivete actually will vote for him overwhelmingly.
20,000 x 365 days per year = 7,300,000 per year.
I doubt it. Maybe for one or two days they hit that rate. The death toll at Auschwitz is now listed at 1.1 Million killed. Over two years that would be around 2,000 a day as a more reasonable estimate.
This post from Debka is about Iran as a deadly threat to the State of Israel. It is not about why nobody bombed the railroad lines leading to Auschwitz during the Nazi era.
But here we are, as usual, wandering off into probably interesting, sometimes heartwarming but mostly heartbreaking tidbits of history involving a different enemy, but all of which is utterly irrelevant to the immediate and long-term Iranian nuclear threat to Israel.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Obama and BB
Political Cartoon
@ Bert:
@ ArnoldHarris:
Obama and BB
Political Cartoon
CuriousAmerican says:
Jew haters and Jew hating apologists flock together, if you know what I mean?
In spite of the war effort, nothing was done to halt the transports to the camps.
Classified papers released in 1978 clearly show that as early as 1942, the governments of the world – particularly the Americans and the British and the Russians – definitely knew what was happening. But nothing would be done until 1944.
The question is often asked: Why didn’t they do anything? Remember, everything worked on the railways. Without the railways, the masses of Jews could not reach the camps. And the rabbis were pleading, “Please bomb the railroad lines to the camps!” in 1944, Auschwitz was going at 20,000 people (killed) a day. The Allies were bombing within a mile of the camp at that time. There were factories all around it.
NOW WE KNOW FOR SURE WHY THERE WAS NO BOMBING THE RAILS AND TRAIN; FDR DIDN’T WANT TO DO IT. HE WANTED VICTORY OVER GERMANY AND DEAD JEWS.
From New English Review
excerpts:
The reputation of President Franklin Roosevelt has been dealt a serious blow following the release of a study by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In numerous speeches, articles, and conferences over the years, former officials of the Roosevelt administration and supporters have claimed that David Ben-Gurion, who would become the founder of the modern state of Israel following its liberation in 1948, opposed bombing the Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland out of fear that innocents would be killed. Roosevelt’s supporters have made the claim to deflect criticism of FDR for the rejection of requests to bomb the death camp.
A newly-completed two-year study by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, however, has concluded that Ben-Gurion opposed bombing the Auschwitz prisoner camp only for a period of several weeks when he believed it was a labor camp, reversing himself when its purpose as a death camp became clear to him. Thereafter, he supported bombing. Ben-Gurion’s associates in Europe and the United States then repeatedly pressed Allied officials to bomb the camp.
[. . .]
“There is now broad agreement among Holocaust historians regarding the question of David Ben-Gurion’s position on bombing Auschwitz,” said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which had been urging the museum to study the subject in depth. “Roosevelt’s apologists can no longer use Ben-Gurion to whitewash the Roosevelt administration’s refusal to bomb Auschwitz.” The Wyman Institute has issued a study of its own, “America’s Failure to Bomb Auschwitz: A New Consensus Among Historians,” which will be made available this week on the Institute’s web site, http://www.WymanInstitute.org.
In Washington, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., was heartsick over what he was discovering about the murder of the Jews of Europe. He was FDR’s closest friend in the administration and a non-observant Jew. Morgenthau did not want to jeopardize his friendship with FDR and thus refrained from asking the president’s intervention into what he considered specifically Jewish matters. FDR’s attitude towards Jews and Catholics reflected his elite upbringing of the time. Once the world war began, FDR privately said to Morgenthau and Leo Crowley, a Catholic appointed to government, “You know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance.” He bluntly told them it was “up to you” to “go along with anything I want.”
The thought of the extermination camps haunted Morgenthau. When Secretary of War Henry Stimson told Morgenthau that his plan was too harsh on the Germans, Morgenthau replied that it was “not nearly as bad” as sending people “to gas chambers.”
Doing something about the gas chambers had to go through channels, so he directed an aide to explore whether bombing Auschwitz and/or the rail lines might save lives. The matter was referred to Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, who had so exasperated Morgenthau by refusing to let the U.S. military help save Jewish refugees that Morgenthau had privately denounced McCloy as an “oppressor of the Jews,” a charge McCloy vehemently denied. McCloy viewed any bombing of Auschwitz as a violation of FDR’s demand that the U.S. military be used only for direct efforts to win the war. McCloy refused to bomb Auschwitz. For decades after the war, McCloy was excoriated for his refusal to bomb Auschwitz just as he always and vehemently insisted that he had never discussed the matter with FDR. McCloy was so respected after the war that he was known as the ‘chairman’ of The Establishment.
In our NER article on the Auschwitz bombing controversy, we noted this comment from Israeli PM Netanyahu during a 1998 visit to Auschwitz:
All that was needed was to bomb the train tracks. The Allies bombed the targets nearby. The pilots only had to nudge their crosshairs.
You think they didn’t know? They knew. They didn’t bomb because at the time the Jews didn’t have a state, nor the political force to protect themselves.
Blame Ben Gurion for that … NOT the US Government.
There are some who assert that Ben Gurion knew that most Jews in the camps were Hasidim or Orthodox, who would only be a burden to Israel. He wanted young, secular Jews, not anti-Zionist Haredim.
Furthermore, the Allies were afraid of killing the prisoners. This was before the era of pinpoint bombing.
As for bombing the railroads, the Germans rebuilt railroads overnight.
If Israel were to attack the Iranian nuclear complexes well in advance of the US presidential election in early November, that action alone would help galvanize opinion here against Obama, and would help doom his political effort to save his failing presidency. Which is precisely what America needs.
And if the mission were to be deemed successful, I think Netanyahu, Barak and possibly the Israel Air Force officers in charge of the mission might even be invited to a celebratory joint session of the two houses of the Congress of the United States.
May haShem give Israel both strength and courage.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Obama’s betrayal was entirely predictable for two reasons. Obama has, from the start, been hostile to Israel. Also U.S. officials have been hostile to Israel from the start.
In the 1930’s the U.S. and Britain cut the escape routes to Jews fleeing the Nazis and refused to bomb rail lines leading to the death camps.
In the War of Independence Britain sided with the Arabs while the U.S. imposed an arms embargo that affected only Israel.
In 1967 Johnson refused to honor a pledge from Eisenhower and pressured Israel to wait and be attacked. In 1973 Kissinger threatened Golda Meir with abandonment if she pre-empted.
Today Obama threatens Israel with dire consequences if she pre-empts.
These are only a few highlights from the long and dismal record of U.S treachery.
Congress and the American people may be pro-Israel but U.S. officials remain hostile and duplicitous.
The worst thing Israel can do is to trust ANY other nation no matter how much they may smile at us.