33 thoughts on “Bibi’s Fake Iran War Option, Barak Has Alzheimer’s – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.–SunTzu, Art of War

    All warfare is based on deception.–SunTzu, Art of War

    The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.–SunTzu, Art of War

    But of the State of Israel employs deception and disinformation to deal with their enemies, well……..

    1. Has it occurred to you that perhaps not all of us worship Sun Tzu, and that perhaps we reject deception, despite that fact that your personal Guru promotes it?
      I prefer Mozi (or Mo Di):
      “The murder of one person is called unrighteous and incurs one death penalty. Following this argument, the murder of ten persons will be ten times as unrighteous and there should be ten death penalties …. All the gentlemen of the world know that they should condemn these things, calling them unrighteous. But when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking states, they do not know that they should condemn it …”

    2. @ Fred: If you’d paid attention to Sun Tzu you’d have noticed that winning is best when you don’t even fight. If Israel looked at its circumstances differently it would realize that it could “win” what it needs (security, survival) by talking, negotiating & compromising, rather than war & the deception of which you’re so fond. Sun Tzu was even happier when he didn’t have to fight.

      You’ve just proven you can cherry-pick 3 quotes you read on a hasbara website and use them to your advantage. But the truth of the matter is that sunlight is the best disinfectant and dark shadows are only useful when you have something to hide. Israel unfortunately has many crimes to hide & must use much deception. These are not attributes to be proud of.

          1. And Israel doesn’t fight wars of aggression either.
            Iran, however, does have proxies do their fighting for them in Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere.

          2. @ Fred: Every Israeli war (except 1973) has been either a war of aggression or launched by a preemptive attack (another form of aggression). But we’re not going to have this argument again since we’ve had it numerous times. If you don’t understand the nature of Israeli wars you can either locate past debates here on the subject, or so some homework & educate yourself.

            Israel too has, & has had proxies like the South Lebanon Army, the MeK, the Village Leagues, Jundallah, Egypt, etc.

          3. @ Fred: How boring. Marc Perry writing in Foreign Policy notes Mossad recruited Jundallah leaders who engaged in acts of terror against Iran at Israel’s behest. Its leader was arrested by Iran & executed at least in part for doing Israel’s bidding. Egypt certainly is Israel’s proxy. Its military & intelligence services act on Israel’s behalf regularly.

            You have to get up quite a bit earlier in the morning to outfox or outhasbarize me.

            As for instructing us about Iranian proxies, it’s like telling us the sky is blue. Tell us something we don’t already know. But do let us know when Israel stops using the proxies I mentioned current & past.

    3. Fred, here’s another quote that is relevant to your argument:

      “Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.”
      Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  2. So much for Israel being an indispensable strategic partner for the US. It has to be continuously bribed to keep its head below the parapet. This was the case with the Gulf Wars – and now with Iran where even fake intended aggression has worked.
    It all has made me think of Tony Judt’s prediction in the last interview about Israel he went through not long before his death. The interviewer asked:
    In your view, in the bigger picture, what is Israel’s role and place in the history of the Jewish people?
    Judt answered:
    My first response is that of Zhou En Lai when he was asked what was the significance of the French Revolution and replied, “It’s too soon to tell.”
    Another perspective, the long one, would be to say that Israel is behaving very much like the annoying little Judean state that the Romans finally dismantled in frustration. This classical analogy may be more relevant than we think. I suspect that in decades to come America (the new Rome) will abandon Israel as annoying, expensive, and a liability. This will leave Israel to its own resources or to making friends with anyone who will deal with it (as it once did with South Africa).
    Read more:
    http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/tony-judts-final-word-on-israel/245051/3/

  3. As I said at the time, Israel didn’t have the military capability to be a sincere threat against Iran.
    Only the USAF/ USN poses that kind of threat.

    Why did they do it?

    Many synergistic reasons:
    a) Israel wants to be taken seriously. They need to be a “big” player.
    b) Maybe they could stampede the USA into bombing Iran for them.
    c) Every moment spent agonizing over Israel/Iran was one less moment agonizing over the occupation.

  4. Your barely restrained glee at revealing an incurable degenerative disease in someone you disagree with politically is appalling.

    “Someone less charitable might speak of the chickens coming home to roost regarding Barak’s terminal illness.”

    Be honest now, Richard, is there anyone on the planet less charitable than you?

    1. @ You Disgust Me of Amsterdam: When hasbarists like you so misread my intentions it doesn’t surprise me when you so misread the Mideast as a whole & Israel’s role in it. As for lack of charity, why don’t you ask a Gaza orphan who killed his parents. And then figure out who showed him or her a lack of charity? That should put your question in proper perspective.

      One man will die from Alzheimers, when the State he served for so many decades has just murdered 2,100, including 500 children who never even lived long enough to contract Alzheimers. Who deserves charity in that situation?

  5. What I don’t understand is why a senior IDF officer would bother with planting such stories. I not only rejected the military option against Iran. I rejected sanctions as well. How would planting a story with a total Israel-skeptic like me persuade anyone that Israel was prepared to go to war? And why would any Israeli intelligence officer believe my audience was a desirable one to fool or influence?

    Because you are a critic with known reliable sources you have earned credibility with your audience and other educated Israel watchers. Fooling informed people through misleading reliable reporters is just what they intended. So, yes, you were taken, and along with the insult should come some pride as well – after all it’s a recognition of your status as a highly informed and credible reporter..

  6. @ Richard,
    “If Iran lies & deceives it has a terrific teacher in the Mossad.”
    Isn’t it a bit of an old excuse? It’s been 35 years already. The Iranians had enough time to “correct the Mossad’s path” so whatever they are doing now – it’s their own resposibility and noone’s else. In the same token, it’s like saying that the British are to blame for the occupation because they trained the first brigades that later were the back bone of the IDF.

    It’s seems that you have a different standard in the way you judge Israel and the other Middle Eastern countries – either that or you are implying that arabs and muslims are incapable of acting and thinkinging on their own.

    1. @ shay: Nonsense. Israel teaches the best of ’em including the CIA & NSA how to oppress, assassinate & massacre captive populations. Mossad & SHabak techniques are studied the world over. Not to mention Israel’s aggressive campaign to market these techniques around the world.

      You know as well as I that the commenter to whom I was responding was attempting to single out Iran for opprobrium as if it was the only country which ever used proxies to fight its battles. Israel did it well before the Iranians. But certainly Israel’s example influenced any country considering employing proxies, including Iran.

      As for standards by which Israel is judged. I usually use standards Israel itself would like to be used. However, I view those standards far differently than Israel’s leadership.

      1. @ Richard,
        With all due respect, you can not teach someone who doesn’t want to learn. And at 1979, the realtionship between Israel and Iran ended. From that moment of time they are on their own – what they do with the knowledge they acquired is their responsibilty, in my views at least.
        I didn’t argue about the proxies debate – as you said, many countries do that. Although, I don’t agree with you about Egypt being one. Having realtionships between 2 neighboring countries who share a common intrest isn’t a proxy – it’s a collaboration. Evantually if there’s ever going to be peace in the region such collaborations will exist anyways.
        About Israel’s standarts – I don’t think that there’s any statistics (or at least most of them) about any sort of freedom or democratic values that any country in the region surpasses Israel. In your facebook page, you showed that Israel’s gay acceptance is 40%, the palestinians are 2%(!!), the closest country was Lebanon with 20% – and yet you chose a title condemning Israel. In some polls you also published Israel is even ranked higher than the US. I don’t think you should be judging a country by it’s own standards – if that were the case North Korea would value themselves as Norway, but by what’s considered to be freedom and democratic vlaued that can be quantified.
        I don’t thing that endless biased condamnation of Israel and the lack of acknowledgment of other countries responsibilty is helpfull to solve any problem.

        Tzom Kal

        1. @ shay:

          I don’t think that there’s any statistics (or at least most of them) about any sort of freedom or democratic values that any country in the region surpasses Israel.

          Hey that’s cool. Be my guest if you wish to be measured against the standards of Saudi Arabia, Syria or Egypt. I kinda sorta thought you preferred to be compared to western countries. But if you want to brag about having more democracy than the House of Saud, be my guest.

          Same holds true with accepting gays. If you want to compare yourself to the Saudis on that score & claim you come out smellling like a rose, by all means. But don’t dare compare yourself to western countries where the level of acceptance is much higher. And don’t compare your democratic system to the west either because it doesn’t pass muster.

          1. @ Richard,

            “Be my guest if you wish to be measured against the standards of Saudi Arabia, Syria or Egypt.”

            Then you agree to the notion that you so many times ridiculed that Israel is a “Villa in the Junge” as now Alzheimer sick Ehud Barak once said?

  7. Amsterdammer, this is not the Dutch parliament. Objecting to a war criminal is not merely a matter of differences in political opinion.

    Ehud Barak

    Suspected of War Crimes and Crimes against humanity.

    Indictment outline:

    In June 2007, the suspect imposed a siege on 1.5 million residents of Gaza. The siege, which is ongoing in 2009, is collective punishment according to International Law. The year and a half long siege caused severe food and fuel shortages, intermittent drinking water and electricity supply, disruption to sewage treatment plants and shortages of medicine and essential medical equipment, affecting the lives of 1.5 million people – a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rome Statute.
    On 27 December 2008, the suspect ordered the aerial bombardment of Gazan population centers. The attacks involved hundreds of fighter jet sorties, dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Gazan neighbourhoods. At least 1,300 people – men, women and children were killed and 5,300 were injured. Schools, hospitals and UN facilities were targeted, medical crews shot at and prevented from evacuating the wounded.
    On 10 December 2008, a formal complaint was submitted by Lebanese lawyers to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, against Ehud Barak and four other Israelis: Ehud Olmert, Matan Vilnai, Avi Dichter and Gabi Ashkenazi on the suspicion that they had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by ordering and maintaining a siege on Gaza.
    Description of the suspect: a white man, about 65 years old, lower than average height, graying hair, brown eyes, with glasses.

  8. Sorry, but where do you see in Yossi Melman anything related to “when Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak were pounding the drums of war against Iran, they were engaged in an elaborate fraud” (sic)?
    He doesn’t say a word about a thing like that.
    So why do you qote him?

  9. @ Richard,
    ” Does it take a “villa” to be morally superior to Saudi Arabia? I’d rather call Israel a shanty shack while the Saudis live in a moral cesspool.”

    I don’t see why you’ve picked only the Saudis. Is it that hard to say that we also surpass the entire arab and muslim nations in the ME probably in any freedom and democracy category?
    As for the rest of the western world, our nation exist for 65 years – this means we are still young and developing in terms of society, economics and such. Although our young age, and despite the region we are living in we’ve managed to achieve a lot – sometimes even more that decades old nations – for example Nobel prises.

    1. The tragedy is that Israel is not developing in the direction of a more democratic society with more personal freedom, and equal opportunities and rights for minorities etc. but in the exactly opposite direction.
      Nobel prizes have nothing to do with such ethical issues. Why on earth do you bring in such a non-related topic?

      1. @ Elizabeth,
        you are right – at the time (yesterday) I thought it was related, now I see that not necessarily, although in most cases investing in science and higher education usually (there are exceptions) correlates with democratic societies. If you look at the list of nobel prizes per capita you’ll see that the countries with the most prizes are ranked high in the “democratic ladder” – of course, leave out the small once which won once and are just a bug in the statistics.

        I should have chosen a more related topic such as women right to vote (from the first elections) or minorities right to vote (also in the first elections).

        “The tragedy is that Israel is not developing in the direction of a more democratic society with more personal freedom, and equal opportunities and rights for minorities etc.”
        I’m sorry but has I’ve read some of your comments in various threads, I don’t regard you as an expert in the matter of Israel (not that I consider myself as such but still I am living here). Reading this blog – although informative – is reading half the picture at best, most of the times totally disregarding security events (did you know that 2 palestinians with explosives were caught in one Tapuach checkpoint a couple of days ago?) and other influential events. I’m guessing you do not read any hebrew, so no getting a more balanced view from there. In short, I don’t see how you can be a fair judge of that matter.

        1. @ shay: Buddy, I’d trust Elisabeth’s knowledge about Israel & Palestine above yours any day of the week. And she doesn’t need to know Hebrew, I do (in case you hadn’t noticed). She gets all the Hebrew she needs from the sources I translate.

          This is yet another riff on the old Zio-cliche: you can’t criticize because you don’t live here & don’t truly understand our country. Bollocks to that!

          As for investing in education as a reflection of democratic societies, Israel has dramatically reduced funding for its universities, which is reflected in their relatively low world ranking. The funding it used to offer to education is probably going into the increased military budget or God knows what else. The highest public university is ranked 188th. So much for that flourishing democracy.

          Israel’s drastic decline in funding for such purposes has driven many Israeli academics, researchers and other professionals to emigrate. Much wider horizons abroad for truly ambitious, capable individuals.

    2. @ shay: This is yet another bit of Arabophobia which is absolutely not permitted here. Read the comment rules & respect them & do so now. Another comment of this ilk & you will lose your comment privileges entirely or have them restricted.

      As for Israel’s status in the Mideast, there are several countries whose democracies rival or surpass Israel’s including Lebanon and Turkey. The fact that you don’t know this further strengthens the claim that you are both ignorant and Islamophobic.

      No more comments for you in this thread. You’re done.

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