18 thoughts on “Congressional Pro-Israel Supporters Tell Obama: To ‘Avoid War’ Be Prepared to Wage It – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. “It is the first state in the region to pursue nuclear capability” – no, Richard, it certainly isn’t. Israel is the first, as we all know.

    There is obviously a back-door to this whole thing, as evidenced by Obama’s ambivalence. One moment, he is helping Israel rattle its sword, and the next he’s throwing cold water on Netanyahu. There is a strong belief in this region – I have heard it both from Iraqis in Jordan and Egyptians here – that the US has been in secret cahoots with Iran from the time of the Iraq invasion. People have said to me, “just watch – the US will never agree to an attack on Iran.” Sure enough, the US is pushing more and more sanctions.

    If and when Israel attacks Iran, it will do so unilaterally as a result of its collective insanity and hallucinatory existential fear. Iran will fight back. There will be massive casualties, which will feed the lie that “Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map.”

    1. Noooooo, it means no “preconditions” on them. Like no settlement freeze. Israel does not accept that it is doing anything it should stop doing. Ever.

  2. The very fact that this latest posting exists and that the lead article in today’s New York Times is saying the same thing, possibly more so, I find appalling almost beyond expression. Even if everything is a calculated political bluff designed to topple Obama while aggrandizing Netanyahu, it all still remains horrific, immoral and simply insane. You say, Richard, that “The U.S. must not be party to this.” But it is, with thousands of American Jews and non-Jews, mauybe millions, and dozens of American politicians clamoring for us to lock-step with a terrorist nation, Israel, at least official Israel, and go to war or at the very minimum threaten to do so. You also state that “…as a sovereign state it [Israel] has a right to pursue its interests…”. Indeed? A right to threaten other nations, to carry out such threats, to assassinate its citizens, to possess the very instruments of destruction it would not allow another nation to possess? It’s a vast et cetera of hypocrisy and arrogant militarism from a nation 45 years in contravention of international law. At the very least, people like Lindsay Graham should register as foreign agents doing the work of a foreign government acting against our best interests, unless, of course, we have not yet fully satisfied the blood lust of our homegrown neocons. As with other posts of Tikun Olam, with one startling revelation and usually well documented revelation after another, it ends with nothing more than “The U.S. must not be party to this.” In other words, we can’t do one bloody damn thing about it all, so why try? Sad, defeatist and unfortunately very likely realistic. But certainly if ever there is justification for some sort of concerted action it is now, with the very core of our poilitical process being further corrupted for the perceived interest of a small foreign power. BDS? Never really discussed in Tikun Olam – off the table, or something. And speak of self-interest, hell, we should be breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel and stop shelling out obscene amounts of money to it in support of a lawless government more than willing to commit murder and mayhem and further destroy any amicable relationship we might develop with a large part of the world, the Muslim world. I say all this not in spite of being a Jew, a non-self-hating one, by the way, but because of being a Jew. Judaism, remember? Ethical monotheism. Let’s stop ignoring the adjective.

  3. The Iranian regime is an uneasy coalition between a fairly extreme political wing and a very extreme religious one, parts of which believe in the cult of the Hidden Iman. The latter want an apocalypse, the former wants to gain some sort of advantage, short of precipitating disaster. Neither is particularly lovely, but the former will avoid nuclear war if they can and are the least bad choice, assuming that a moderate and genuinely democratic regime is not likely in the near future.

    Unfortunately, setting red lines not only gives the Hidden Iman nutters a target they can shove the rest of the regime towards, it also effectively allows them to pick the time of any conflict.

    Israel has allies in Iran: this, too, may be a double-edged sword as those allies have no hope of gaining power without a war to destroy the existing power structures.

    Israel’s tail wags the American dog. But Israel is being wagged by its dissident Iranian allies.

    Perhaps in the next few years, the phrase “The Muslim World” will basically mean Malayasia and Java. Arabia and Pakistan will be radioactive and Nigeria will have ethnically cleansed itself to oblivion. Isreal is too small and too close not to share the Arab world’s fate in a nuclear conflict: it’s like Britain nuking France. (To be avoided, no matter what the temptation or provocation.)

  4. Thank you for another great article.
    The reality is that none of this will be longed lived. One day, the Palestinians will realize that the success to overthrowing the apartheid regime is non-violent resistance. One day, the world will realize that religious extremists and Russian mobsters have not total control over Israel and the hundreds of nuclear weapons. One day, Americans will realize the damage AIPAC, its policies and wars have caused on America. The manipulation and propaganda will not last forever. However, the question is how much do we in America have to financially and morally suffer until that day? How much innocent Jews and Palestinians in the occupied Palestine have to suffer. That is the problem that we need to address. It is always more difficult to organize the majority (who are the reasonable ones) than it is to organize a minority group like AIPAC.
    I am worried about the children in all these places. They are in constant fear of war and death.

  5. From Salon’s Glenn Greenwald:

    “…the U.N. Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, explicitly prohibits not just a military attack on another nation, but also the issuance of threats of such an attack.

    From Chapter II, paragraph 4:

    All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

    It’s probably too much to hope for, but might not a reporter at the Netanyahoo- Obama press conference ask Pres. Obama about the applicability of this provision?

    1. If you’re going to invoke the UN Charter, it should have applied long ago to Iran and Khamenei’s threats to “cut out” the “cancer”, as he calls Israel.

    2. Even more importantly, a reporter should ask what treaty, signed by the President and ratified by the Senate, commits the United States to the defense of Israel in any way whatsoever? The short answer is that there isn’t one.

  6. RE: “Israel’s strategic approach has demanded not just parity with its enemies but overwhelming superiority. Having an Iran able to stand up to Israel as an equal is unthinkable. It must be cut down to size. At all costs.” ~ R.S.

    FROM WIKIPEDIA [Iron Wall (essay)]:

    (excerpt)…Jabotinsky argued that the Palestinians would not agree to a Jewish majority in Palestine, and that “Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”[1] The only solution to achieve peace and a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he [Ze’ev Jabotinsky] argued, would be for Jews to unilaterally decide its borders and defend them with the strongest security possible…

    SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Wall_(essay)
    ALSO SEE: The Iron Wall, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, 1923 – http://www.mideastweb.org/ironwall.htm

    1. P.S. ALSO SEE: Israel’s Defense Chief OK’s Hundreds of Israeli Deaths, By Ira Chernus, CommonDreams.org, 11/11/11

      (excerpt). . . An essential motive of Zionism from its beginning was a fierce desire to end the centuries of Jewish weakness, to show the world that Jews would no longer be pushed around, that they’d fight back and prove themselves tougher than their enemies. There was more to Zionism than that. But the “pride through strength” piece came to dominate the whole project. Hence the massive Israeli military machine with its nuclear arsenal.
      But you can’t prove that you’re stronger than your enemies unless you’ve also got enemies — or at least believe you’ve got enemies — to fight against. So there has to be a myth of Israel’s insecurity, fueled by an image of vicious anti-semites lurking somewhere out there, for Zionism to work. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran has gradually risen to the top of Israel oh-so-necessary enemies list. Iranophobia is rampant in Israel, as one Israeli scholar writes, because “Israel needs an existential threat.”
      Anyone who has grown up in Israel, or in the U.S. Jewish community (as I did), and paid attention knows all this…

      ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/11-2
      AND SEE – Iranophobia: The Panic of the Hegemons, by Ira Chernus, Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2010
      LINK – http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/iranophobia-the-panic-of-the-hegemons-3

  7. RE: “But my real problem here is with how the U.S. acts. If we allow ourselves to be sucked into aiding Israel, or being instrumental in Israel’s long-term strategic goals of humbling Iran, we become an accessory after the fact, instead of a great power pursuing our own sovereign interests.” ~ R.S.

    DAVID BROMWICH, 3/01/12:

    (excerpt)…President Obama continues a policy of minimal explanation concerning Israel and Iran. He gave a hostage to fortune and contradicted warnings by his secretaries of state and defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs when he said that the U.S. was marching “lockstep” with Israel on Iran. Characteristically, as three years of his presidency have shown, Obama works by tacking and co-opting. He goes some distance to meet the most dangerous of demands, and seems not to have understood the impression of weakness which this pattern has infallibly conveyed. His counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, by contrast, moves rapidly, emphatically, and unembarrassed in the medium of American politics. He has the assistance of the jingo media of the far right but also the mainstream media. Is it wrong to suspect that Obama is entering his next encounter in a usual state of mind for him–passive, wishful, and ill-advised?

    SOURCE – http://mondoweiss.net/2012/03/the-israeli-case-for-war-in-the-new-york-times.html

  8. It’s pretty well-established that the intelligence and military establishments in America are fed up with Israel, the troublesome “ally”, especially after this push for war. The majority of Americans, given the TRUTH (found outside the ‘reality’ established by PRIVATE media), would be happy if Israel joined Iran’s call for a nuclear-free Middle East instead of rejecting it dismantling Dimona and freeing Vanunu, withdrew from Gaza and the West Bank in full force instead of using it as a means to apply “formaldehyde to the peace process”, stopped spying on us (Pollard), committing espionage (AIPAC – Rosen), killing our service people (USS Liberty) or commit false flags to draw us into war against its regional competitors (yellowcake document forgery and Lavon Affair).

    To contend with the silenced military and intelligence establishments, the media and government establishments wield an influence that is largely directed by private interests which shower Israel with praises and establish the context of the conversation, the “boundaries”. For instance, naysaying Israel is a third rail. Mind you, Israel is not the 51st State. States don’t get that kind of aid money and arms, or influence, in America. The media creates the reality. Occupy Wall Street and Ron Paul do not exist when the media acts concertedly against them. Goebbels was right.

    Private interests that control media are controlled and control others by the federal reserve note, or money. That currency is controlled by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is neither federal, nor really a bank in definition, but a private group of bankers. The bankers, the media arm, the corrupt politicians, or veritable infiltrators, the parts of government under their control, think-tanks, corporations and more wield immense influence, such that America, the government, and America, the people, and the divide between them is no longer a loosely kept secret or non-imminent issue.

    This is why Ron Paul has almost triple the amount of campaign contributions from active military personnel than any other candidate. The media, run by people like Rupert Murdoch, will seek to affect the politics of the Western countries for the benefit of the Zionist project. Ron Paul, thus, is the enemy. So is Ahmadinejad, even though he is but a spokesman for the guy called the —SUPREME LEADER— (can it get any more obvious)? Eh, I’m digressing. Long story, short: they’re all sheisters. The internet is like the light switch in the dark room. Suddenly, more people than ever are beginning to see the bigger picture. If Bibi goes before congress to standing ovations for war, or the media sides with warmongering Bibi, expect the silent majority to suddenly become not so silent.

  9. There’s more proof of AIPAC being a paper tiger:

    a) The American public does not support war with Iran (NYT)
    b) Nobody noticed this, but Bibi is definitely not speaking to a joint session of congress this year. Not like last year. Um, why not? I know why. AIPAC weakness. Got a better explanation? I know what you will say: “He doesn’t FEEL like it!”

    Once AIPAC stops shooting bull’s eyes there’s no fallback position. Without war with Iran it will be GAME OVER.

    Obama is going to show Bibi something very scary. And it won’t be the latest Photoshopped satellite pictures of Iran. It will be the polls saying the blind Israel support is not getting traction any more.

    1. I wouldn’t ever call AIPAC a paper tiger, considering their affirmed acts of the past, including literally composing major parts of the Patriot Act and pushing it through henchman Joe Lieberman, who will join any party to thrust an Israeli firster to the Presidency (see him campaigning for McCain…wow lol…has anyone in American history ever turncoated so blatantly???)

      I agree with you that there are definite signs that their influence is no longer considered a blessing, but an albatross around one’s neck. Americans are fed up with Israel. Gideon Levy gets it right. On the other hand, the reaction that comes out of this opinion is absolutist – criticism of Israel does not equal calls for its destruction.

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