Bret Stephens used to be a journalist in Israel, now he’s at the Wall Street Journal. And the talk about Israel’s nuclear arsenal that’s finally filtering into the discourse, so that the Iranian discussion doesn’t happen in a hypocritical vacuum? Well, Stephens tries to head that off here, in a piece imagining Israel’s disarmament. And of course likens it to the Wannsee conference, when "Nazi Germany planned the extermination of European Jewry."
Reminiscent of Tom Lantos comparing Saddam to Hitler. Before we invaded Iraq. Remember that? Victory or Holocaust, Perle and Frum warned.
Sounds great. “Make it so.”
bingo…we can dream
We have had a never ending Holocaust in our Media for 50 some years. Yes we need to remember but what is with only mentioning the 6 million Jews. Not recognizing that others millions were murdered in that Holocaust that are never Never mentioned in our media. This has also been going on for 50 some years. And in our media very little coverage about the genocides that have taken place since.
as if only that genocide means anything
this interview on Grit T.V. is worth a listen
Worth it
link to lauraflanders.firedoglake.com
Bret Stephens was parachuted into the job of editor of the rightwing Jerusalem Post (which has lower circulation than most Time Out magazines).
Needs to be a citizen’s arrest at this event on Thursday. Douglas Feith will be there…that guy should be in prison for war crimes
Q
link to hudson.org
Look at the inflammatory rhetoric of Mevra Wurmser . She will be stirring up the flames of hate at the upcoming conference. Read this hogwash
link to hudson.org
“On arms control, the United States has already begun to shift its tone, which probably suggests a shift in substance. The Obama administration is pressuring Israel to sign both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which could lead to Israeli disarmament. Before the summit, U.S. officials asked Israel to come prepared with ideas on how to implement this dramatic new vision. Again, for Washington, the ball is in Israel’s court.
On Iran, the Obama administration signaled before the summit that it would consider an Israeli strike on Iran to be an impetuous and useless act. From the defense secretary to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the message was clear: Do not strike Iran — it will not help and it will inflame the world. Even at the summit, while President Obama suggested that he will give diplomacy a chance until the end of the year, he said the next move after that will be tougher sanctions. Israel, on the other hand, says that time is running out and all options are on the table — which is diplomatic code for “We may strike.”
Washington views Israel’s mere discussion of striking Iran as an aggressive act that will incite the Middle East and make an Arab-Israeli peace even more remote. Hence the alacrity with which U.S. officials express their opposition to an Israeli strike — a unique historical spectacle of a nation publicly criticizing an ally over a decision that it has not yet made.
And yet, the Obama administration has offered no clear strategy for preventing a nuclear Iran. Israel — and not just its Likud government — believes it is facing an existential threat from Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This sentiment runs deep in Israeli society. The core of Zionism is the principle of Jewish self-defense. A state built by the children of Holocaust survivors, Israel is grounded in the belief that Jews should never again find themselves vulnerable. This is the reason that Israel has developed a strong military: In some ways, the country has created for itself a fortress of protection. But Israel now faces the possibility that a messianic regime in Tehran aspires to annihilate the 6 million Jews of Israel. If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, it will finally have the means to do so. Israelis see no other response but to defend themselves. In Israel, the Iranian question is above partisan politics and not left to chance. The memories of the past resonate too strongly for that. The Israeli prime minister thinks that he faces a Churchill-like moment and that he must defend his nation.”
WHAT IS THIS ABOUT
When in the winter of 1177 the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV visited Pope Gregory VII at his temporary residence in Canossa, Italy, his journey became a symbol of humiliation and degradation. The pope, angered by Henry’s attempt to independently appoint bishops, had excommunicated him. When Henry went to seek the pope’s forgiveness, he was made to wait outside the city gates for three days, during which time he fasted and prayed for the opportunity to see the pope.
This is the script the Obama administration seems to be bringing to U.S.-Israeli relations. It’s time for Washington to change course. Otherwise, the West will have morally and politically failed the Jews once more, as they face another leader bent on their destruction.
Interesting comparison. Canossa, no less.
Really part of a rather complex struggle for power. Henry the IV – Rudolf von Rheinfelden among other interest groups e.g. behind Agnes, and Anno II of Cologne. So it’s all about power after all? Guiding her choice only on the surface: Secular power versus religious power? That surely is only part of the our tale.
Could the link be: Imperial power, thus secular power? And wouldn’t that be the US in front of whose floors of power poor little Israel is forced to wait? Was Israel excommunicated by the US? If so, I didn’t notice.
What are we, chopped liver?
Good to know, but gotta go now… time for another Holocaust movie.
For everyone’s files on Bret Stephens (who is the principal foreign-affairs columnist for the WSJ and member of their editorial board)–
Speech Delivered to Chicago Friends of Israel, Israel Week 2006
False and true.
Gee I’d be more ashamed of the Chicago Boys’ destruction of Latin American economies.
At least he admits his emotionalism.
Kathleen quotes Wurmser Israel — and not just its Likud government — believes it is facing an existential threat from Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
This really does present us with a dilemma. I accept that Israel really does believe this. It is a problem of Israel’s own making. They made two major decisions in the last 50 years. One was to settle 80% of the Jewish population in the greater Tel Aviv region. Second they decided to introduce nuclear weapons as part of their “defense” in their perpetual war against the Moslem nations and peoples.
This was totally insane to concentrate your people in an area about 6 nuclear fission blast radii across at the same time escalating the weapons selection to include those same nuclear bombs. They quite deliberately made themselves vulnerable to any nuclear armed enemy. Now their only defense is to prevent any of some 15 Islamic nations from ever having those same weapons. Their fear is not irrational.
If Iran has the technical ability to enrich Uranium and to build power reactors, they most certainly have the technical ability to build a bomb. Whether they intend to do so or not is quite irrelevant to the Israelis. They quite naturally assume the worse intentions so it is the technical abilities they focus on. Approaching the problem then from Israeli perspectives it is only logical for them to use their military to try to destroy Iran’s nuclear abilities.
There is another danger here to Israel that her leadership must recognize. That is, probably every Israeli has thought about their situation as described above so they are conditioned to believe in the worse case scenario. What do they do if Iran perfects the Uranium fuel cycle and begin to run power reactors? Remember, this means that Iran now has the ability to also make nuclear weapons. Well if I were an living in Tel Aviv and believed this, I would be on the first plane out of that Hell hole and never come back.
This is the existential threat facing Israel. We cannot simply dismiss their fears as irrational since they seem quite rational in many respects. What we must work out is how to defend America’s national interests. Because everyone agrees, our interests will be seriously wounded if Israel attacks Iran. That is the dilemma and we should consider that we do have a solution to it: extricate ourselves from this self destructive alliance with Israel and very carefully back away from all of this ME madness.
This is the existential threat facing Israel.
Personally I would be more scared of a bus blowing up.
Iran says, over and over: no arms race, no war with Israel, no first strike.
Israel stockpiles nukes, says Iran must be confronted, and claims to be considering a first strike.
If anything, shouldn’t you be acknowledging the existential threat facing Iran?
That doesn’t even mention the economic warfare. The attempts to freeze Iran’s funds in banks. The threats of sanctions.
I couldn’t disagree more that Iran actually presents a threat–much less an existential threat–to Israel or Israelis. I don’t see why that paranoid delusion should be accepted and acknowledged as valid, especially as it buttresses the rampant militarism in all countries involved, and brings the world to the brink of another world war.
American should talk to Israel the way the cops talk to a crazy man standing on a ledge on the 21st floor, threatening to jump. There are enormous psychological problems and destructive elements at play.
Of course Iran has better reasons to feel threatened. But that is not really relevant here. The US is the world’s only superpower, it is allied with Israel and it buys into Israel’s fears.
It is not fair. If life were fair the US would be supporting the oppressed Palestinians but we support their oppressors. Iran’s fears are also irrelevant. You are correct that There are enormous psychological problems and destructive elements at play. but we, the world’s only superpower, have identified our interests with Israeli insanity. I was just trying to illustrate the problem. Identifying the problem does not in this case lead to any simple solutions.
“Iran’s fears are also irrelevant.” (syvanen)
No. They are quite relevant to Iran’s decision whether or not to acquire the bomb, and that’s very relevant to many future events.
A couple of points:
Appropos of Stephen’s invocation of the Nazi experience and etc. Haaretz here link to haaretz.com
is running a very smart piece by an Israeli political scientist making a very interesting distinction that gets at what I see as the shell game being played by both sides in this conflict. In it he observes that in Netanyahu’s speech to the U.N. recently he appeared really not as an Israeli nationalist president, but instead as a Diaspora jew, wearing a kippa and, like Stephens, starting off his speech making the Nazi—Iranian comparison. But, the author also observes, one could see this same identity-shifting with Arafat for instance, who when it suited him appeared one day in a Western suit, and the next in a keffiyeh and associating himself with religious symbols.
While the writer doesn’t go really go there, talking mainly about how this does or does not really represent the interests of their constituents, to me it is a shell game played not only to stir their constituent’s religious/emotional support but also to either do the same for the rest of us, or to blunt, parry or confuse our objections to their positions by hiding behind religion or ethnic pride essentially.
So, one wants to criticize the seemingly insane use of suicide bombers and out comes the keffiyeh and the talk of martrydom. Or criticize the avaricious land grabbing of the Israelis and out comes the kippa and accusations of using anti-semitic tropes of greed.
It is a shell game to me, keeping us all in a never-ending whirl of talk with dual standards today, and quadruple ones tomorrow and endlessly plumbing the meaning of the Holocaust and then the Nakba and and then defensibility of Israel’s pre-’67 borders and then the demographics of the area and on and on.
Thus I think that in the future one consequence of this recognition ought to be asking, whenever anyone from either side is talking, who the hell do they purport to be speaking for? Their nation, or their religion/ethnic? Because if this or that Palestinian or Iranian or whomever wants to start talking religion then damnit they got no grounds to object to people observing what might delicately be called the somewhat celebration of violence one can perceive in Islam. And if this or that Israeli or Israeli partisan wants to start invoking the Holocaust and historic jewish suffering then equally damnit they got no business objecting to people observing a certain less-than-universal concern for others in classical judaism and whether there aren’t some cultural aspects of jewry that have proven problematic.
This also brings me to my second point, which is also somewhat in response to syvanen’s fine post above noting that Israel does indeed have at least a theoretical “existential” security concern but also the later discussion of the true degree of same and etc. Because to me, while I certainly don’t think any of these comments were not smart, nor that those issues are uninteresting, it’s still just somewhat more of the same getting sucked into simply endless and unanswerable debate that distracts America from focusing on what seems to me is its first and indeed sole question which simply is what is best in terms of U.S. interests, period?
This, it seems to me, is the only really truly relevant question for Americans. Everything else—whether Iran is another Nazi regime, whether the Palestinians really had their land stolen out from under them originally or whether many many of them actually just sold it for lucre to the Jewish Agency, and etc., etc.—just approach the academic to me. Interesting, yes. Worth talking about, sure. But, damnit, not important to me really. Not near principally at least.
Thus, for instance, in response to a Stephen’s invocation of the Wannsee Conference, or Wurmser’s talk about the West’s possibly “failing” the jews “once more,” and even to syvanen’s heartfelt but still misguided to me statement about us not dismissing the real threat to Israel, I think the proper response is, frankly, so what? Tell me how it affects U.S. interests and I’m listening. Otherwise, this kind of talk just wins, doesn’t it? It in essence says to a Stephens or a Wurmser “okay, all you got to do is raise the Holocaust and suddenly we the U.S. are in and hell-bent to use our power and sacrifice our interests to prevent same if another such threat really exists and there’s no need to talk about why that matters to the U.S.”
And, with one big reservation, the same goes with the Palestinians talking about Israel possibly gobbling all their land. “Tell me why, aside from a humanitarian concern, that means we in the U.S. should sacrifice our blood or treasure” is to me the only really relevant question, although that reservation I mentioned and would have to be dealt with is the fact that we have in essence subsidized the hell out of much of that gobbling already. So I do perceive a huge difference in our position with the parties in this respect, but neither do I think that the U.S.’s past involvement means that we have the obligation to totally ignore our present interests either. It might be ugly but it’s still true that probably no country on earth could survive if was forced to ignore the interests of its living generations so as to try—probably fruitlessly anyway—to atone for the alleged misdeeds of its dead ones.
In my view aside from the strictly humanitarian the U.S. simply has no vital nor even very important interest in the I/P conflict whatsoever. And thus it has a very important if not vital interest to do *exactly* the opposite and stay the hell out because doing otherwise precisely means expending our blood and treasure for nothing really important to us, not to mention doing so in a particularly intractable and complex conflict that ineluctably means lots and lots of our blood and treasure.
“The West may fail the jews again!” Wurmser screams so as to essentially demand our blood and treasure—which comment I cite not to pick on the Israeli side but only because it is so illustrative of the argument both it and the Palestians essentially use—to which I say the correct response at least from America to both sides is “screw you.” And as to Wurmserites in particular, the U.S. didn’t start the Holocaust, and in fact we ended it. America owes no more obligation to “the jews” than it does to the Palestinians (with that above reservation noted) than it does to the Koi San people of Africa. We wish neither any harm nor unhappiness, but neither do we know where the ultimate justice of their situation lies. It’s hard enough knowing where the ultimate justice of our *own* situation and interests lies, so please keep your conflicts to yourself.
For an American at least it thus seems to me that while it’s perfectly fine to debate the intricacies of this stuff, our first obligation, and our last, and our ever-present one too, is simply to not get distracted.
“Tries to head that off here”???
Did you read it Phil?
Before the Iraq invasion, IDF officials stated that “Iran was the real problem. Iraq is contained. We don’t agree with the decision to attack Iraq, but we won’t stand in the way.”
I think that sentiment was sincere on their part.
Iran is different than Iraq. While you may dismiss the concerns about Iran (carelessly to my mind), it is still a different question as to what to do.
I wish that you didn’t take the ping-pong propaganda approach to “unveiling the emperor’s clothes”, and instead urged cool heads. Different hot heads is not my idea of improvement.
The fear mongering and scare campaing being launched against Iran is a mirro image of the Iraq lies we were fed.
On both occasions, there was no evidence to go on, just heresay and specualtion. On both occasions, dissenting views are dismissed, even those based on scientific evidence. On both occasions, false threats are being fabricated and ties to terrorism is being drummed up.
Iran was never a problem, in fact, in 2003, Iran offered a grand bargain to Washington to give up it’s nuclear program, wash it’s hands of Heabollah and Hamas and even recognize Israel. This offer was rejetected, proving that none of these issues matter to Washington ot Tel Aviv. This is about regional dominance and Israel’s determination to maintain it’s strategic superiority in the region. It is also about removing the one factor that can thwart Israel’s expasioinist and geographic ambitions.
“Proving”?
If Israel expressed in a single statement verbally the parallel to what you attribute to Iran, I’m sure your reaction would be “yeah sure”.
Did you see the Fareed Zakaria interviews, Shingo?
The three discussed whether Iran was a military dictatorship or a theocracy. All agreed that it was not a democracy any more.
Not a good development there.
Fareed Zakaria is a spineless politcla animal who has bought into the Iranian hystiria, but tries very hard to be sensible – much like yourself.
Israel has made the most extreme and absurd statements, via it’s leaders, sine it was created. need I remind you that Netenyahu is the only political leader that described the 911 attacks as a good thing.
The term democracy is largely meaningless. After all, Benjamin Franklin described democracy as 2 wolves and a lamb voting over what’s for lunch. That’s certianly explains that kind of democracy we see in Israel, a democrace for some, and apartheid for others.
Not a good development there either.
While it’s the Israeli officials at first wanted the USA to attack Iran first, then Iraq,
they came on board very quickly and loudly with Bushco’s reversal plan to take on Iraq first, then step two was Iran–nobody influential gave much thought to what
would happen after a successful shock and awe strike. And so three weeks has turned
into eight years with no end in sight, and Afghanistan-Pakistan blazing up–any attack on Iran would turn the USA into a Third World country, a process already underway.
The man has devoted his life to attacking Israel, Zionism and Jews that don’t buy into his agenda, do you think he is going to let the facts get in his way?
On Stephens’ WSJ piece:
Although the final paragraph is the punch line that’s meant to demonstrate that for Israel to disarm is to invite an existential threat, the rest of Stephens’ op-ed was surprisingly rational. Isn’t that the way the United Nations and civilized countries should be approaching Israel post-Gaza? Operation Cast Lead was the Waterloo of Israel in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Thanks to the taxpayers of the United States, of course. From link to whatreallyhappened.com
The trail of the German cargo ship hired by the USA to arm Israel’s attack on Gaza
is very interesting:
link to amnesty.org.uk
John Bolton in the Wall Street Journal and Henry Sokolski in the National Review – too acted like jerks – blaming Obama administration (most Zionist-dominated regime in the US history) for being “soft” on Islamic Iran during the latest P5+1 meeting in Geneva.
Bolton: Iran scored big victory in Geneva
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
What do you expect from Bolton, a man who is so extreme and despised that he couldn’t even get Senate Confirmation when the Senate was under Republican control.
Bolton sees very notion of diplomacy as requiring the US to rub the world nose into th ground.
Has anyone seen a decent history of how the WSJ became a total neocon front (a la National Review)? I recall when WSJ was the paper of the moderate national Republican WASP corporate establishment, with their genteel interest in peace, stability and prosperity. It was required reading before a job interview (I mean with a US company, not the Mossad).
The WSJ has always been right wing and now that Murdoch owns it, it’s moving even further to the right.
Wasn’t the late WSJ editor-in-chief Robert Bartlett always a neo-con sympathizer? Brilliant editor, but the rantings and ravings of Bret Stephens and all the neo-con guest editorialists is a continuation of his philosophies.
Neo-cons are faux conservatives, of course. When it came time for the NY Times to have a “conservative” columnist to give it the cover of objectivity, they chose Bill Kristol. It is not a core value of conservatives to put Israel’s interests before those of the U.S.; it is, however, the raison d’etre for neo-conservatives.
Russell Kirk : “Not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.”
Bret Stephens has one column that the putz writes over and over again: ‘All Israel all the time.’ That he is such an obvious personal loser just make his ‘writings’ funnier.