With the Western allies having been entangled in two destructive and illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Benny Morris (The Guardia, Obama’s Nuclear Spring, November 24th) is eager and willing to start a third one, with even more devastating consequences. The history professor who now believes that the Nakba in 1948 did not go far enough, with too few Palestinians being ejected out of their land, is now of the opinion that Obama must give Israel the go-ahead for an attack on Iran, so as to destroy its nuclear potential. As he considers that it is unlikely that “Israel can live with a nuclear Iran”, the coming war, which he admits will engulf not just the Middle East, but regions far beyond, is, for him and for most Israelis, seemingly unavoidable. Interestingly, there seems to be no problem with a nuclear Israel for Mr. Morris…
Let us hope that for once, the US President will show some resolve and fight back against the destructive and aggressive Zionist lobby, and stop this terrifying prospect of an all-out conflict in the Middle East. The advice given by Morris, Lieberman and Netanyahu is the promise of doom for us all. If he sounds crimin ally insane, it is because he is, as is the culture he comes from. Read the maniacal academic below, remembering that he indeed represents Israel very well, not just himself:
Obama’s nuclear spring: The Guardian
An Israeli attack on Iran’s atomic weapons plants rests on one thing – the US president’s approval
Benny Morris, Tuesday 24 November 2009
The talk in Israel, explicit and open – including in the country’s leading daily, Haaretz, last week – is about a war in the coming spring or summer. The skies will have cleared for air operations, Israel’s missile shields against short- and medium-range rockets will at least be partly operational, and the international community, led by President Obama, will palpably have failed to stymie Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. And the Iranians will be that much closer to a bomb.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, will then have to decide if Israel can live with a nuclear Iran and rely on deterrence. But if they judge the risk of a nuclear assault on Israel too great, Israel’s military will have to do what it can to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, despite the likely devastating repercussions – regional and global.
These will probably include massive rocketing of Israel’s cities and military bases by the Iranians and Hezbollah (from Lebanon), and possibly by Hamas (from Gaza). This could trigger land wars in Lebanon and Gaza as well as a protracted long-range war with Iran. It could see terrorism by Iranian agents against Israeli (and Jewish) targets around the world; a steep increase in world oil prices, which will rebound politically against Israel; and Iranian action against American targets in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf. More generally, Islamist terrorism against western targets could only grow.
But it is not only Israel’s leaders who will have to decide. So will Obama, a man who has, in the international arena, shown a proclivity for indecision (except when it comes to Israeli settlements in the West Bank). Will he give the Israelis a green light (and perhaps some additional equipment they have been seeking to facilitate a strike) and a right-of-passage corridor over Iraq for their aircraft? Or will he acquiesce in putting atomic weaponry in the mullahs’ hands?
It is clear – and should be by then to all but the most supine appeasers – that the diplomatic approach is going nowhere, with the Iranians conning and stonewalling and dragging their feet, all the while enriching more uranium. And Tehran is laughing, as it were, all the way to Armageddon. Ahmadinejad and the mullahs know full well that the west will never impose the only sanctions that could work (a complete boycott of Iranian oil and cessation of the export to Iran of all products).
Some in the west blithely hope that the Iranians are aiming for a low-key and shadowy “bomb in the basement”, rather than immediately usable atomic bombs, and that this reduces the necessity of a pre-emptive military strike. My guess is that Iran has not taken this giant gamble in order to achieve a dubious, implicit capability: it will not stop short of actual, usable atomic weapons with which to overawe and gain hegemony over its neighbours, deter the west and, perhaps, destroy Israel.
So Obama is fast approaching his moment of truth. His predecessor, George Bush, repeatedly assured Israel that the US would not allow fundamentalist Iran to attain the bomb. The implication was that America itself would prevent this – at the last resort, by military means.
Today that seems highly unlikely. Obama is enmeshed in two wars in Muslim lands, with Afghanistan looking increasingly unwinnable, and Iraq stumbling either toward de facto partition or growing subordination to Shia Iran. With an American public increasingly tired of war, any war, the US president is unlikely to send in the air force, navy and special forces to smash the Iranian nuclear installations.
There is a sad double irony here. The Iranians and their proxies are likely to attack American targets whether or not the US is involved in a strike against Iran. And while Israel’s conventional military capabilities are limited and could probably delay the Iranian acquisition of nuclear arms only by a few years, American conventional might – if brought resolutely and efficiently to bear – could completely halt Iran’s nuclear project and thoroughly destroy its military carapace in a few weeks of intensive bombing; indeed, the regime itself might collapse like a house of cards, as did Saddam’s under the American onslaught of March 2003.
This is not going to happen. Nevertheless Obama will soon have to decide whether to give Israel a green light, and how brightly it will shine. And soon. For spring is fast approaching.
A DESPERATE THROW OF THE DICE: The Electronic Intifada
By Ben White, 24 November 2009
The Palestinian “unilateralism” making recent news is more like a game of politicking — and a dangerous one at that.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas could be keen to push the proposal for unilateral statehood/Security Council recognition as a way of undermining Salam Fayyad’s own “two year plan,” amid
worries that the US has already designated Fayyad to replace Abbas, just as Abbas himself was “empowered” by
the US to sideline and eventually embrace the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Ben White comments for
The Electronic Intifada.
VEOLIA AND ALSTOM CONTINUE TO ABET ISRAEL’S RIGHTS VIOLATIONS: The Electronic Intifada
By Adri Nieuwhof, 24 November 2009
Despite mounting pressure to withdraw from the light rail project in Jerusalem designed to serve the needs of
Israel’s illegal settlements, the French transportation giant Veolia is set to be highly involved in the project
for the next five years. The company needs to support its new Israeli partner, the Dan Bus Company, which lacks the experience to operate the light rail. Adri Nieuwhof reports for The Electronic Intifada.
SOUTH AFRICA DEPORTS ISRAELI AIRLINE OFFICIAL SPYING ON CITIZENS: The Electronic Intifada
By Jonathan Cook, 23 November 2009
South Africa deported an Israeli airline official last week following allegations that Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet, had infiltrated Johannesburg international airport in an effort to gather information on South African citizens, particularly black and Muslim travelers.
PALESTINIAN STUDENTS CROSS BARRIERS TO DISCUSS BOYCOTT: The Electronic Intifada,
By Bianca Zammit, 23 November 2009
The right of Palestinian students to an education was the main theme of a video conference between students from the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank on 12 November 2009, sponsored by the al-Quds Bank for Culture and Information Society and Bethlehem University. Bianca Zammit reports for The Electronic Intifada.
HEBRON’S ARCHITECTURE OF OCCUPATION: The Electronic Intifada
By Sarah Lazare and Clare Bayard, Live from Palestine, 23 November 2009
The word “revenge” is scrawled in Hebrew on a Palestinian school in Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The windows are covered with screens and the play yard obstructed with more screens tipped with barbed wire, to obstruct the stones regularly pelted down by Jewish settlers. Sarah Lazare and Clare Bayard write from Hebron, occupied West Bank.
TRIBUTE TO TERROR LEADER KAHANE PLANNED BY ISRAELI LEGISLATORS: The Elctronic Intifada
By Jonathan Cook, 20 November 2009
A plan by right-wing legislators in Israel to commemorate the anniversary this month of the death of Meir Kahane, whose banned anti-Arab movement is classified as a terrorist organization, risks further damaging the
prospects for talks between Israel and the Palestinians, US officials have warned. Jonathan Cook reports.
FAITHS UNITE AT ACTORS’ CHURCH TO MARK PALESTINE’S PLIGHT
On December 8, Jews, Christians and Muslims will join forces to highlight the tragedy of modern day Palestine with an evening of poetry, prose, song and theatre at a popular central London church.
The event, titled Bethlehem Now: Alternative lessons and songs of protest for Palestine, will take place at The Actors’ Church, St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, with the support of organisations including the interfaith Amos Trust, the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the charity War on Want.
It is inspired by what one of the Palestinian contributors, Omar Barghouti, describes as “our humanity, our dreams, our hopes and our will to resist and to be free.”
Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, former Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, has also sent a message of support.
For the past 42 years Israel has occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank and Gaza in defiance of international law. So new lyrics, many to be premiered on December 8, have been written for familiar carols. Thus “The Holly and the Ivy” becomes “The Olive and the Army”, with the refrain:
O the rampaging of settlers
And the rolling of the tanks;
The grinding of the bulldozers
As olives fall in ranks.
Organiser Deborah Fink, a Jewish human rights campaigner, noted that the event will take place very close to the anniversary of Israel’s military assault on Gaza. Between December 27, 2008 and January 22, 2009 almost 1,400 Palestinians were killed and thousands more maimed.
The evening will feature a scene from the play ‘Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea’, by Justin Butcher and Ahmed Masoud.
Staged in February in the aftermath of the slaughter in Gaza it was described at the time by Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington as “a deeply felt, humane and vividly expressive reaction to the current crisis.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/feb/21/go-gaza-drink-sea-technis)
“Our songs and readings will reflect the seldom heard Palestinian experience since Israel was founded in 1948,” said Fink, a professional soprano who will lead the singing.
Readers will include Palestinian writer Ghada Karmi, veteran peace campaigner Bruce Kent, Baroness Jenny Tonge and Lauren Booth (sister of Cherie Blair).
Funds raised will support the work of the Free Gaza Movement (http://www.freegaza.org/), the Bethlehem-based Palestinian Conflict Resolution Centre (Wi’am – http://www.alaslah.org/) and Interpal (http://www.interpal.info/our-work)
NOTES FOR EDITORS –
– Leaflet including cartoon graphic (PDF file attached)
– Supporting organisations (below)
– Supporting statements from prominent Christians (below)
– Background information on Palestinian contributors (below)
– Background about St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden (below)
ORGANISATIONS SUPPORTING BETHLEHEM NOW
AMOS TRUST – http://www.amostrust.org/
Promoting human rights and nurturing local responses to situations of injustice.
BRICUP (British Committee for the Universities of Palestine)
UK based academics working to support Palestinian universities, staff and students, and to oppose the continued illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands with its concomitant breaches of international conventions of human rights, its refusal to accept UN resolutions or rulings of the International Court, and its persistent suppression of Palestinian academic freedom.
BRITAIN PALESTINE TWINNING NETWORK – http://www.twinningwithpalestine.net/
“promoting twinning and friendship links”
CAABU (Council for Arab-British Understanding)
http://www.caabu.org/
CAABU works to promote a positive approach to Arab-British relations by providing an unrivalled forum for a diverse range of politicians, journalists, opinion formers and members of the public to co-operate on issues relating the Arab world.
FRIENDS OF SABEEL-UK, http://www.friendsofsabeel.org.uk/Home.shtml
Sabeel works for a just peace for the people of Palestine and Israel. Started by Palestinian Christians, Sabeel promotes non-violence and reconciliation.
INTERNATIONAL JEWISH ANTI-ZIONIST NETWORK,
http://www.ijsn.net/home/
An international network of Jews who are uncompromisingly committed to struggles for human emancipation, of which the liberation of the Palestinian people and land is an indispensable part.
JUST PEACE FOR PALESTINE, http://www.justpeaceforpalestine.org/
A new interfaith initiative committed to justice for Palestine and peace and security for Israel and Palestinians.
WAR ON WANT, http://www.waronwant.org/
War on Want fights poverty in developing countries in partnership <http://www.waronwant.org/overseas-work> with people affected by globalisation. We campaign <http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns> for human rights and against the root causes of global poverty, inequality and injustice.
ZAYTOUN, http://www.zaytoun.org/
A cooperative founded in 2004 to create and develop a UK market for artisan Palestinian produce. A member of the International Fair Trade Association.
To see leaflet, clik:
Fanatics and the army: Adam Keller’s Blog
There was a time when citizens of Israel took seriously the name of the Israeli Defense Forces. There was a time when this army was seriously considered as the people’s army. It was a long, long time ago.
The State of Israel is holding under occupation rule millions of Palestinians for 42 years, more than two-thirds of its entire history. Decades have passed since the army for the last time fought a real war of army against army.
The great majority of soldiers and officers serving in this army today – conscripts, reservists and career personnel – know only the type of service known as “ongoing security” and “maintenance of order” and “guarding settlements” and “struggling against terrorism” and other terms expressing: forcible control over a rebellious civilian population which does not want to live under Israeli occupation. An army of occupation and oppression, an army of which occupation and oppression are the main mission.
Who wants to serve in this kind of army? Many do not. Many feel disgusted by the very idea. Some state it clearly and openly, and enter into a head-on confrontation with the military authorities, and go to prison, sometimes for long terms. (For example, Or Ben David, girl refuser of the Shministim protest letter, who entered on her second prison term a few days ago.)
To read his excellent blog, use the link above