Last night at Columbia’s school of international affairs, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector, and former Marine, opened a speech about Iran bracingly, by speaking not of Iran but about the “elephant in the room”: Israel. He said that Israel is our close ally; and if Iran actually intends to develop nuclear weapons, not nuclear power (as the Iranian Ambassador had said, in the speech preceding Ritter’s), and if Iran fails to repudiate Ahmedinejad’s hateful rhetoric about Israel, well then, Israel’s “legitimate national security concerns” are ours, and could even bring war. After all, Ritter said, one nuclear strike on an Israeli city and the small country would be deeply and permanently damaged.
The great thing about Ritter’s speech, before an ambivalent UWS audience, was its bluntness. In that sense, his rhetoric reflected an important lesson of the Iraq war (which Ritter had opposed). We all know, or we ought to by now, that concern for Israel’s security played a role in America’s disastrous war plans. Yet as Philip Zelikow of the 9/11 commission has said, It was an agenda that dare not speak its name. It was generally cloaked in language about bringing democracy to the Middle East that reporters who knew better parroted. This lack of straightforwardness has damaged the country. It has corrupted our journalism and our thinktanks, it has caused enormous bitterness and mistrust—and justifiably. The feeling many Americans now have that they were lied to about the causes of one of the greatest mistakes in our history is going to echo through our lives for a long time…
I think the lack of straightforwardness reflected Jewish fears of antisemitism; that if a Christian nation was actually put to the test, and the alliance with Israel actually cost American lives, the American people would abandon Israel. And so the Middle East Forum likes to put up feel-good billboards saying, Israel’s interest is also the American interest, and Israeli Ambassador Arens likes to say as he did in the Times yesterday that 9/11 put us and you in the same boat, got that? But attack Saddam in part because he has threatened Israel? Friends of Israel don’t like to say that. They fear that the average American would do as Borat says they would do—and throw the Jews down the well. Thus: the Israel lobby, which acts to shield the issue from open public debate.
Last night, Ritter said, We’re not going to abandon “my good friend, the state of Israel,” and I’m going to put that agenda right on the table. Very post-Iraq. I wanted to hug him. Such transparency is essential, when we try to sort out what we’re talking about when we talk about Iran.
Of course the sequel to all this is that in identifying this interest baldly, we get to scrutinize it, everyone gets to weigh in, even Americans who are appalled by Israel’s racialism and militarism. Last night Ritter said that Israel is out of control, “drunk with hubris, arrogance and power.” Jimmy Carter says in a book published tomorrow that Israel’s policies in the West Bank are apartheid. And John Mearsheimer says that this small country’s policies are hurting our standing throughout the Arab world, and America should therefore insist that Israel change its policies, and we should use our full powers to make that happen; and if Israel fails to heed us, change the relationship. There’s a word for what Ritter, Carter and Mearsheimer are doing: discussing.
If it's Tuesday it must mean another polemic from little Phill Weiss about Jews and the LOBBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
What does he do, does he write about anything else, does he do anything else. Does he go to movies, to the beach. Or does he sit in a room and contemplate the evils of Judaism and Israel. Well Phil, I'm coming clean. We got America into the war. We're behind it all, All the wars, politics everywhere, Holloywood, and don't forget currency movements. Somehow we forgot to shut down Hitler, oops. But of course sacrificing a third of our people was just a brilliant strategic move to create israel and inflict upon the Palestinians, ( leaving aside the fact that when you said Palestinians before 1948 tu meant Jews ) the greatest disaster and oppression that has ever been inflicted by anyone on anyone. Yes Phil you got us. I submited your name to the elders for retribution but something must have got lost in the shuffle. But, continue on your brave quest to expose the Hebrew cabal. It's right up there with hiting the beach Iwo Jima, or going in front of HUAC in 1947, Or bucking Roland Freisler in 1943. The courage of litttle Philly Weiss in exposing us is astounding,
I really don't see how a nuclear iran is a threat to israel, nor how it's any of our business. if they want a nuke they probably want it because we say stuff like "all options are on the table" incessantly.
the iranian nuke phobia is a logical outcome of the effectiveness of the Wall. they don't fear suicide bombers as much anymore, now they fear the thing that can blow up the wall. they traded one fear for a bigger one. and the first one was much more real. if iran nukes israel we'd obliterate them. they know that. iran has been there for thousands of years. the mullahs don't want war with the US.
Hey lester:
The leader of Iran, ( no way I spell his name ) says he wants to wipe Israel of the map. He will soon have the bomb. Enlighten me has to your reasoning, why is this not a real threat. But it is interesting to know that you think that suiced bombers are actually a threat. And how do you know we would obliterate them and what makes you think that they wouldn't see that has an acceptable trade off. They have said so explicitly.
I'm so tired of the ad hominem on this web which I would otherwise like to comment on. Can't you folks make your points without attacking the motivations of those who disagree with you? Surely you don't expect us to read what you have to say when you lead with a personal attack. So how can you expect to change our minds?
Anyway, I'd just like to say one more time that the settlements are illegal and that the fact that the motivate al Qaeda recruits means that they are a mortal threat to me and to all of my fellow American Christians, and to American Jews also.
So I would appreciate it if my fellow American citizens who are Jews would get those who support the settlements under control. That would be a positive contribution in contrast to just making American Christians who want to save their country from disaster feel endangered by libel.
Mr. Weiss has an interesting book review in the current American Conservative–
http://amconmag.com/2006/2006_11_20/review.html
The chief fault of this book is Stern's resistance to taking on the historian's "metaphysical fluency and … arrogance" (intellectual qualities he praises in Hannah Arendt) when it comes to Jewish history in the United States. He does not apply to the American scene his knowledge of Bleichroder's presence at Bismarck's side or of the German nationalists' fury toward modernity. This reader kept waiting for Stern's opinion on such issues as: How powerful are Jews in America? How does their role in the economy and the professions compare to Weimar? The obvious question is of course whether our society is capable of seeking the extermination of Jews, but just as interesting is whether the Jewish role in the American establishment has hampered our ability to relate to the Arab world. As it is, the neoconservatives are only glimpsed here, for instance in a crack about how much money Richard Perle has made.
David:
What the fuck are you talking about.
Robert Hume:
The Khartoum summit laid down thr three No's, no recognition of Israel and no negotiations. Resolution 242 specified territories, not "The" territories and that was be design/ The west banks legal status was alwas ambiguous and last but not least. Why the bombings in Londan and Spain if it was simply a question of settlements. And if it was just about the settlements why rockets from Gaza.
Pearlman:
If you and Israel want to go bomb Iran, please be my guest. Just leave America out of it. Olmert has a lot of nerve to come to the White house to demand that American Christian boys go die for Israel. If Israel wants to stop Iran from becoming the second Middle-Eastern nuclear power they should go do it themselves. Where is it written that American boys must die because Israel won't remove its colonies from the occupied territories?
although little phil weiss looks more like a homely version of borat, he appears to be on the same intellectual wavelength as ali g, especially when he attacks israel for "racialism".
is he kidding? i hope so.
big ups and booyakasha.
for the 10,000th time little phil weiss has referenced the same tired little essay, but its been dealt with already by far more incisive minds than his.
Overstating Jewish Power
Mearsheimer and Walt give too much credit to the Israeli lobby.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 27, 2006, at 1:47 PM ET
It's slightly hard to understand the fuss generated by the article on the Israeli lobby produced by the joint labors of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was published in the London Review of Books. My guess is that the Harvard logo has something to do with it, but then I don't understand why the doings of that campus get so much media attention, either.
The essay itself, mostly a very average "realist" and centrist critique of the influence of Israel, contains much that is true and a little that is original. But what is original is not true and what is true is not original.
Everybody knows that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish organizations exert a vast influence over Middle East policy, especially on Capitol Hill. The influence is not as total, perhaps, as that exerted by Cuban exiles over Cuba policy, but it is an impressive demonstration of strength by an ethnic minority. Almost everybody also concedes that the Israeli occupation has been a moral and political catastrophe and has implicated the United States in a sordid and costly morass. I would have gone further than Mearsheimer and Walt and pointed up the role of Israel in supporting apartheid in South Africa, in providing arms and training for dictators in Congo and Guatemala, and helping reactionary circles in America do their dirty work—most notably during the Iran-Contra assault on the Constitution and in the emergence of the alliance between Likud and the Christian right. Counterarguments concerning Israel's help in the Cold War and in the region do not really outweigh these points.
Jews did 911 and all world wars. Jews will become as they always have been the destroyers of civilization.
www.Jew-Crime.com
Name the jackals of war.