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I have been working hard to explain to people that Iran’s nuclear weapons are not the major threat to Israel. It is obvious.
The problem is that after almost a century, Israel is not just the object of genocide by the Arabs but by many Iranian, Turkish, and newly European and North American Muslims. It is truly awesome how few politically active would-be peacemakers among Arabs and Middle Eastern Muslims there are.
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Note two ignored points on Iranian nuclear weapons, which show the focus is ridiculous:
- Why use nuclear weapons when you believe you will win by conventional means and while you make billions to shore up the Tehran regime so effectively in the short-run?
- Iran’s nuclear effort is ironically a defensive strategy to neutralize any possible Israeli nuclear option or an Israeli attack on Iran.
This is a massive misdirection — get it?
Let’s see. Can you imagine this misdirected “detail”? Simply: the almost decades-old effort to destroy Israel.
1929: Hebron massacre of Jews. No Arabs massacred.
1937-1939: Arabs fight war against British mandate of Palestine including terrorist assassinations.
1939: Jordan and Egypt are inclined to prevent Israel by diplomatic means but the Palestinian Arabs, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq want violence.
1939: Saudi Arabia secretly negotiates weapons purchase for the Palestinian Arabs from Nazi Germany.
1939: Muslim Brotherhood subsidized by Nazi Germany. Seventy-five years later, the grandson of the head of the Brotherhood and the son of the Palestinian European leader were permitted by the New York Times, without contradiction, to write that the Brotherhood believed in parliamentary democracy and was pro-British during the war. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood and the Arab-Palestinian leadership from Berlin were advocating massacres of the Jews in Egypt, and the government was providing maps of British fortification to the German army.
1941: The Palestinians’ Arab leadership asks for a safe haven in Berlin. For the next four years, this leadership organizes thousands of German Nazi troops and SS imams, advises the German government, sends delegations to concentration camps with an eye on setting up death camps throughout the Middle East, etc.
1941: Massacre of Jews in Baghdad; revolt by radical Iraq’s Nazi ally put down.
1948: Refusal of UN partition giving a Palestinian Arab state.
1955: Soviet-Egyptian alliance.
1956: Suez War: Israel pressed to pull back by U.S. victory but gets nothing.
1967: Israel attains victory.
1967: 1970 War of Attrition.
1970: Arab summit–no recognition of Israel, no negotiations, no peace.
1970-1982: Decades of terrorism; the murder of any Israeli in reach; yet relatively little retaliation. And there was the assassination of almost every Arab leader willing to make peace with Israel.
1973: War.
2000: Refusal of UN partition to receive a Palestinian Arab state.
Okay, why go on?
Now consider today. Well, it’s the same thing. It is obvious that despite the thinnest veneer, it is pretty much the same thing as 1929, 1941, 1948, 1979, 2000-2004, etc. That is a terrible and sobering situation, but it is true. Maybe not inevitable, but it is based on leadership. Remember Iran (34 years) and Turkey (about 12 years) are relatively newadditions to existential conflict with Israel.
When asked by a recent poll if Israeli-PA negotiations would ever lead to peace, 25 percent of Jewish Israelis said yes, while 73 percent of them said no. Remember, many of those Jews who were against still–or used to–vote for the left. It is angering that Israel and PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s “hard line” are being blamed for this, but it should be obvious that the conflict will not end.
In the meantime, Iran is getting nuclear weapons while Israel is getting nothing but insults from Kerry as the–wait for it–“bad” guy after 65 years. He is unintentionally encouraging murders (two of four Israeli soldiers killed in two weeks werenot killed in the territories–one was killed while visiting what he thought was an Arab “friend” and another while sleeping on a bus bench).
Or as former U.S. Secretary of State Shultz explains what is really happening: Iranians will “cut your throat.” He is really encouraging this Iranian throat-cutting.
But no doubt Kerry knows better. On Palestinian television (which incidentally is under protest for censorship by Palestinian journalists who have at times been arrested), he stated,
Failure of the talks will increase Israel’s isolation in the world. The alternative to getting back to the talks is a potential of chaos. I mean, does Israel want a third intifada? I believe that if we do not find a way to find peace, there will be an increasing isolation of Israel.
Two intifadas? Is he going to do something about this if there is a third intifada? Is Kerry going to protect Israel? Because there will be cross-border attacks, and they will only be covered in one-paragraph shorts, while any photos will be of Palestinian terrorists’ grieving families.
So what is Iran doing in the meanwhile? Here are some public statements by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
First, Israel is “the rabid dog” of the region. Iranian leaders have also said that Israel wants genocide against all Muslims. In fact, antisemitism is justified on the basis of the Koran by Iranian leaders. Iran says that everybody in the Middle East wants to destroy Israel.
But here is the tip-off: “Zionist officials cannot be called humans, they are like animals… The Israeli regime is doomed to failure and annihilation.”
Wait, there’s more. Here is Khamenei’s analysis of U.S. positions. He accused Western officials of “kneeling before the Israeli regime.” Moreover, he said, “The government of the United States of America is on the top of the arrogance in the world.” (The audience repeatedly chants: “Death to America.”)
And he continues, “We fight against the arrogance. Arrogance is a word in the Koran. It is used in the Koran for people like Pharaoh, malevolent groups which are hostile to truth and righteousness….” I think that pharaoh ended up being drowned in the sea. I don’t think that there is any good intention for the U.S. here, even though it is going to stop sanctions worth billions of dollars to Iran, and enable them to develop nuclear weapons.
Last, he stated that the,
Zionist regime is doomed to oblivion. The Zionist regime is an imposed regime which is formed by force. None of the formations or creatures which are formed by force is durable, and neither is this one….Unfortunately, some European countries cringe before this creature which is not worthy of the name of a human being, before these leaders of the Zionist regime, who look like beasts and who cannot be called human.
Sounds like he wants peace to me!
But who cannot be called human? Where have we heard that before? Say, Nazi propaganda? Didn’t end well then.
Any by the way, the Obama administration did not condemn these vicious anti-Israel statements nor did it alter any policy because of them.
Holocaust? Yawn!
Meanwhile, the U.S. policy has also hardened Palestinian Arabs’ lines, as shown in statements by leaders. In turn, the Palestinian Arabs have hardened their policy, insulting the United States. Recently, there was a situation in which a Georgetown University session ditched a Nazi speaker but still featured a Nazi professor who denied that bin Ladin had played a role in September 11.
And moreover, Professor Rima Najjar posted on her Facebook page: “What Brandeis University does not understand: Palestinian armed resistance to Zionist colonization is a path to liberation.” Brandeis University suspended its partnership with al-Quds University after the West Bank University had a rally that was meant to honor the martyrs of Islamic Jihad, in which the symbol of Israel, the Star of David, was symbolically stepped on by all demonstrators.
This is going to justify the murder of any Israeli. If,
we don’t end the presence of Israeli soldiers perpetually within the West Bank, then there will be an increasing feeling that if we cannot get peace with a leadership that is committed to nonviolence, you may wind up with leadership that is committed to violence.
Well, what do you think has been happening for almost 90 years?
I normally agree with Mr. Rubin, but in this case I do not.
Iran doesn’t need to have made all the sacrifices she has these past years to get the bomb…in order to forestall an Israeli nuclear option against Iran. That is ridiculous.
It is ridiculous because Israel has had the bomb now for approximately 40 years, and has never threatened openly to use it on anyone. As long as no one threatened Israel with WMDs, Israel has relied solely on her conventinal forces for defense. The idea that Iran “has to” have a bomb in order to deter a nuclear-armed Israel is absurd. Israel was already deterred.
Ask Saudi Arabia, for example. The Saudis have known about Israel’s nuclear capability for years…so why is it only in the face of a prospective Iranian bomb that Saudia is making arrangements to procure nukes from Pakistan? And Saudia has done more to threaten Israel than most other countries over the years in terms of bankrolling hostile academics, media organizations, Palestinian terrorism, etc., than Iran has.
Barry Rubin is whistling in the dark. He’s trying to put the best face possible on a dreadful situation.
Sure, if Iran gets the bomb, they won’t use it right away. They aren’t that stupid. But once they have that one bomb, then the military option for stopping them in this context is off the table. Then, the potential for catastrophic retaliation for stopping Iran is too high, even for Israel. Iran then has a clear path to building her arsenal.
And when Iran has say, 30 warheads on IRBMs, among a fleet of perhaps 300 IRBMs – and this will take place in five or ten years after Iran gets that one bomb – then she’ll manufacture a pretext for using them on Israel.
That is what Hezbollah is for. What other purpose, really, does Hezbollah serve except to provoke Israel into invading Lebanon once more, and thus provide a pretext for an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel? What does Iran NEED a base in Lebanon for? A port to export pistachios and rugs from? Hezbollah has no mechanized infantry, no serious armored forces, no air force…this entity cannot really “invade” Israel nor even attrit her military forces significantly. But with her vast arsenal of rockets, she can absolutely FORCE a reaction (i.e., invasion) from Israel. And that is the point.
One might ask, “Why does Iran need the pretext?” Well, why did Hitler heed to drag a few hundred concentration camp inmates out of camp, dress them up in Polish army uniforms, and gun them down on the Polish-German frontier so as to provide “evidence” for a “Polish invasion” of Germany that “justified” Germany’s invasion of Poland? The historical narrative, for purposes of posterity, seems to be important even to nutcase regimes like Iran’s (or Nazi Germany’s).
Three hundred IRBMS seeded with 30 nuclear-tipped IRBMs redundantly targeted at perhaps five or six aimpoints in the northern third of Israel WILL destroy Israel for all intents and purposes. Israel will not be able to stop this with any known technology. She can retaliate and make the region and the world pay an unprecedented price – I expect 100 million dead within a month – but the mullahs couldn’t care less about that. This is the same regime that sent 100,000 young boys to their deaths as human mine detectors in the Iran-Iraq war…what’s 100 million of the world’s 1.3 billion Moslems in exchange for the end of the Zionist entity? A fair trade, by their lights. And, if Israel’s retaliation includes some Western capitals or even U.S. targets just for spite – And who could blame them? – that’s that many fewer Infidels so far as Iran’s clerics are concerned. Just doing Iran’s work for them, that’s all that is.
Hmmm. Wonder what a war like that will do to the stock market, the world economy, etc.?
BUT…stopping Iran before she gets nukes, now THAT is an “irresponsible, warmongering” point of view, according to Obama/Kerry and their many defenders/apologists among the chattering classes of today.
I wish Mr. Rubin spent his time and energy highlighting the threat of a nulcear Iran for what it really is, instead of finding ways to rationalize shrinking from this challenge.
Iranian clerics, the 21st century NAZI. So far the world of humans has not changed!!!! and not learned.
The name of Amin Al Husseini and his connection to the Third Reich is becoming more and more popularly understood. But the connection between Islam and genocide and Amin Al Husseini could go deeper than that.
When WWI broke out, Amin Al Husseini served under the Ottoman Empire when it entered the war. And at the beginning of WWI was when the Armenian Genocide occurred, carried out by the military of the Ottoman Empire. So Amin Al Husseini, who actively participated in the Holocaust, who fabricated the fraud of Palestinian Nationalism, also served in the same Turkish military that carried out the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey. He served in Smyrna, which was a multiethnic city, now known as Izmir. At the end of the war, the non-Muslims of Smyrna suffered a massacre, considered to be the last act of the Armenian Genocide, which took place further to the east.
It is also worth remembering that Turkey was allied with Germany in WWI and that there were many German military observers of the Armenian Genocide.
The relationship between the Armenians and Islam in Turkey is very complex. But it starts with the simple fact that the Christian Armenians and Christianity in general is older in Turkey than both Islam and the Vatican. Emperor Constantine with his imperial seat in Byzantium, (later Constantinople, now Istanbul) was the first in the Roman Empire to liberate Christianity and give us modern Christianity as we know it predominantly today.
The Armenians were frequently enticed into political movements of Turkish nationalism and national defence against the Russians and later the USSR, only to be to be betrayed and murdered.
Barry Rubin is correct – Iran does not need the nuclear bomb to bring Israel to its knees. From its perspective, its already delivered a huge blow to the US-Israel alliance without the loss of a single Iranian life.
And in the West, its Israel – not Iran – that is now the leper and the rabid dog of the region. Quite an accomplishment! There are other ways to defeat an adversary besides the obvious military ones and people somehow still manage to overlook them.
In other words, Israel’s greatest threat isn’t from Iran. Its from its own weakness and the lack of any real ally on its side. No wonder the mullahs in Tehran are grinning.