Isolating Israel

by P. David Hornik, FPM

The Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon notes:

When Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy blasted Syria’s government at the Non-Aligned Movement Conference in Tehran on Thursday, his comments prompted Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem to storm out.

But when Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei slammed Israel, labeling it a state of “bloodthirsty Zionist wolves” that controls the world media, nobody moved.

The silence of the world in the face of these charges is chilling.
Correct, and the full phrase from Khamenei is “bloodthirsty Zionist wolves who digest the Palestinian people in the haraam-eating stomach of the Zionist regime”—haraam being, of course, impure food according to Islam.

“Granted,” Keinon notes further, nobody in Israel is expecting much of Bangladesh, Cuba or South Africa. But how about those countries with whom Israel has strong ties, such as India, Colombia and Thailand? Why did they sit still, and what does that say?

Indeed, the view from Zion is not rosy these days. In the same week that 120 “nonaligned” nations of the world were gathered in Tehran to give their blessing to its open genocidal anti-Semitism, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had doubled the number of centrifuges at its underground Fordo site since May, while increasing its stockpile of 20%-enriched uranium to within 50 kilograms of a bomb.

All this while continuing to block access—as it has been since November—to its Parchin facility for nuclear-explosives testing.
And that wasn’t all. Even though the IAEA’s findings vindicate all the warnings by Israeli leaders that Iran was exploiting the period of sanctions and diplomatic talks to race ahead toward the bomb, the Obama administration reacted—again—by coming down on Israel rather than Iran.

On Thursday the U.S. chief of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told reporters in London that an Israeli attack on Iran would delay but probably not stop its nuclear program, could unravel the “international coalition” supposedly “pressuring” Iran, and that “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.”

With a few words, then, Dempsey managed to convey that Israel was militarily incapable, a potential spoiler of an effective international strategy, and that it would be somehow criminal or illicit—“complicity” usually referring to illicit activity—if Israel did move to preempt the genocidal threat, something the U.S. would want no part of.

It was further reported by Time magazine that the U.S. was substantially scaling back a planned joint U.S.-Israeli military drill, though so far that account has evoked denials from some of the officials quoted in media reports. But, on the whole, the developments didn’t impart the sense that the Obama administration “has Israel’s back” as it has been ritually claiming.

A former Israeli cabinet minister and head of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Tzahi Hanegbi, reacted by saying last week’s events—Iran’s diplomatic victory at the NAM conference and the latest IAEA report—had given Israel “increased legitimacy” for a military strike.

What Jerusalem may or may not be planning remains a matter of intense speculation. What is clear, though, is that if the international community prefers an Israel that feels less isolated and threatened, it is doing a bad job of attaining that result. With the solemn, soul-searching holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur approaching, it is hard for Israelis to escape a sense of being, once again, a people that is on its own.

To be sure, there is a clangor in Israel of left-wing media outlets, former military officers, former judges, and the like accusing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of being paranoid “messiahs” pushing the country toward war. As external pressures mount, the “elite” sector least comfortable with national cohesion turns increasingly shrill and adversary.

Most Israelis, though, get the message. Here in 2012, threats to annihilate the Jewish state evoke yawns. Dramatic, documented Iranian progress toward the means to do so prompts, from the top U.S. soldier, a warning not to do anything about it.