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Adelson says Obama should fire “atomic weapon” at Iran, not negotiate

The recommendations were met with applause by a Yeshiva University audience.

Last night in New York, Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire supporter of Israel, said that the U.S. should fire a nuclear weapon at Iran rather than negotiate. He said that if Obama fires a weapon into the desert, killing no one, and then threatens to send the next one to Tehran so that Iran is “wiped out,” Iran will cease its nuclear program.

What are we going to negotiate about? I would say ‘Listen, you see that desert out there, I want to show you something.’ …You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’ And so there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever. Then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all,  and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.’

The recommendations were met with applause by a Yeshiva University audience.

Adelson, an 80-year-old casino mogul and major supporter of Mitt Romney and other Republican political candidates, made the comments in a dialogue with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach during a conversation called “Will Jews Exist? Iran, Assimilation and the Threat to Israel and Jewish Survival.”

The video I took at Yeshiva University, above, records the exchange. Adelson is in the foreground with his back to the camera. Boteach, a rightwing political figure close to US ambassador Samantha Power and NJ Senator-elect Cory Booker, is on his right. Neither Boteach nor the others on the panel– Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens and Yeshiva University president Richard Joel — objected to Adelson’s idea.

Adelson owns homes in the U.S. and Israel, where he is also a newspaper publisher. The dialogue began when Boteach, who calls himself “America’s rabbi,” says that Adelson believes that Franklin Roosevelt could have prevented the Holocaust. Adelson says:

“He could have prevented the Holocaust… Yes– if not prevented the Holocaust, he could have at least significantly reduced the severity of it.”

Adelson said that Roosevelt could have convinced the British that it was “more important to them and to their future” not to sign the White Paper on Palestine in 1939 that limited Jewish immigration to Palestine. FDR had “unlimited leverage” because he could promise the British that the U.S. would enter World War II once the country ceased to be isolationist.

“He really had the leverage, he really had the upper hand,” Adelson said– something he realizes from being in business 68 years.

“Given your strong feelings about what the U.S. did not do to prevent the Holocaust,” Boteach asks, what are your feelings about “Obama speaking to Iran right now” and having diplomatic relations with Iran, given its threats against Israel? Not as a political person, the rabbi says, but as a prominent American.

Adelson:

The worst negotiating tactic I could ever imagine, my entire life.

[Boteach: Why is that?]

Because you can’t get anything. He’s not saying to them, Roll back your entire program and show that you’re willing to be peaceful. So, roll it all back… and we’ll roll back the sanctions…. What is that, a game of chicken, who’s going to blink first?

“It’s very simple, it’s the same thing with the Palestinians,” Adelson continues. “Sixty-five years, they haven’t taken one millimeter step toward the Israelis, to accommodate the needs of the Israelis but more importantly, to show that they truly want peace.”

Adelson moves from Palestine to Iran:

If they truly want peace, it’s very simple to say to all their henchmen, lay off the terrorism for five years. And they’ll come to the Jews and say, for five or ten years there will be no terrorism, there will be no violence or no incitement against– We’ll throw out the books that teach the three-year-old children that Jews are descended from swine and apes, and that we’re not going to teach anymore in the curriculum to kill the Jews, that the Jews are very bad people.

So if you really want peace, it’s very simple to send a message to your opposition. Just be peaceful. Open up all the things.

Or– ‘We’ll give you this if you give us something.’ I think it’s the worst negotiating ploy, tactic anybody can imagine.

[Boteach: So you would support negotiations with Iran so long as they first cease all enrichment]

No. What do you mean support negotiations? What are we going to negotiate about? What I would say is, ‘Listen, you see that desert out there, I want to show you something.’ You pick up your cell phone, even at traveling rates. You pick up your cell phone, and– what are they called– [Boteach: roaming charges] Roaming charges. You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’ So there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever.

And then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. [Applause] You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.’

A tremendous demonstration of American strength? Boteach asks.

The only thing they understand.

So you see the current negotiations as a demonstration of weakness?

Absolutely.

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Adelson’s stand will not get much national notice, but whatever notice it gets will be to the good — showing the arch-Zionist willing to use Nukes (indeed, to use USA’s nukes and involve USA in nuclear war) in the service of Israel. this should help wavering (mostly young) Jews to abandon support for Israel which shows itself not merely a local expansivist-warlord but also a power willing to take USA down the wrong path. Again.

Wow this is ugly.

A jew urging genocide of iranians in a jewish/israeli campus and in front of a jewish crowd and gets applauded?

Are these the type of crowd that wonder why there is antisemitism?

Great coverage Phil, this should be on MSM!

If you ever wanted evidence that certifiable lunatics populate the Israel lobby, and are applauded for their insane Dr Strangelove scenarios, then here you have it. What part of the Iranian ‘desert’ are you planning to drop a nuclear bomb on which won’t have catastrophic consequences for the entire region? His schoolboy views of the world and how to deal with it would be treated with the derision they deserve had they not found a home with equally lunatic Israeli right wing crackpots, and of course come attached with millions of dollars of funding for their hellbent on destruction plans.

The Sheldon Adelsons of the world are always screaming “This is Munich!” Adelson doesn’t ever think how much like Munich it must look to the other side. The Iranians undoubtedly think that if they ever give in to US nuclear blackmail, the US will come back and ask again for more capitulations.

Oh, and by the way, a US nuclear bomb on Tehran will wipe out the Iranian Jewish minority, which is the largest group of Jews in the middle east outside of Israel. The headline ought to be:

ADELSON WANTS NUCLEAR WAR
KILLING IRANIAN MOSLEMS AND JEWS

of course it’s always Iran that “wants to wipe Israel off the map”….if my MEMRI serves me correct…