NOVANEWS
By Gilad Atzmon
Just hours after the attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Ehud Barak were quick to announce that Iran and the Hezbollah were behind the attack. In fact, it didn’t take the Israeli PM more than two hours to blame another country for committing an act of war on Israeli citizens in a third country’s territory. Of course, Netanyahu didn’t provide any evidence to support his thesis. In fact, even today, three days after the attack, no clear leads suggesting any Iranian or Hezbollah’s connection are available.
What was it then that made Netanyahu so determined? Is it because he himself was privy to the knowledge that Israeli agents have been murdering Iranian scientists for years? Did Netanyahu react the way he did because he thought to himself that considering Mossad’s assassinations in Tehran, Israel may well have brought on itself an Iranian retaliation? Was Bibi projecting?
I obviously do not have access to Netanyahu or Barak’s minds, but Israel has certainly by now made it clear that its desperation to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, even if such an attack would escalate into a global nuclear conflict. In order to grasp such morbidity we have to bear in mind that collective self-annihilation is inherent to Israeli culture. As it happens, the story of Masada and Samson, both heroic suicidal narratives, are cherished in Israel. Yet, as much as Netanyahu and Barak are keen to launch a world war, it is far from being clear whether the Israeli masses are quite as keen to sacrifice themselves on the Jewish national altar.
I guess that both Barak and Netanyahu’s rush to blame Iran must be seen as an indication of their clear eagerness to attack the country. By now, the two Israeli leaders have managed to rid themselves of any significant voices against such an attack. The former head of Mossad Meir Dagan and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Askenazi, both of whom opposed military action against Iran, are now excluded from any decision-making process. Veteran Major-General Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the Kadima party, who also opposed an attack on Iran, left Netanyahu’s coalition last week. It seems as if no one within the Israeli cabinet is there to stop Barak and Netanyahu’s genocidal enthusiasms.
Furthermore, from an Israeli military perspective the current chaos in Syria is interpreted as a ‘window of opportunity’. Israeli generals assume that Assad’s regime, fighting for its survival, would refrain from joining any attack on Iran. Also Israelis believe that without Syria’s backing, Hezbollah also would stay out of it. In Israeli military terms, this means that the north of Israel is in no imminent danger of Hezbollah’s medium and short range missiles – at least for the time being.
The Israelis are, as usual, deluded. For some peculiar reason, they fail to grasp the possible devastating consequences of such a conflict. Barak, for instance, commented ‘optimistically’ last week that a clash with Iran may ‘cost the lives of up to 500 Israelis.’ First, it is interesting to learn about the ease in which an Israeli Defence Minister is happy to sacrifice 500 of his people. Second, it is far from being clear on what Barak’s estimate is based. Considering the common assumptions that Iran would retaliate immediately launching a first wave of more than 1500 missiles in the direction of Tel Aviv, Barak must believe that each Iranian rocket is capable of destroying no more than one third of an Israeli. Barak is indeed an optimist.
It is also far from being clear whether Israel possesses the military capacity to hit Iran and imperil its nuclear project. Earlier this year, American analysts suggested that the Israeli Air Force doesn’t posses the necessary might to attack Iran. For example, it lacks the airborne re-fuelling capacity needed to dismantle the Iranian nuclear project. It is also far from being clear whether Israel would attack Iran without an American green light and it is widely accepted that it is more than unlikely that Obama would provide such an approval ahead of the American election.
I guess the meaning of it all is pretty simple: whether Israel attacks Iran is obviously an open question. However, we have a clear indication that the Israeli leadership is more than keen to do so. Barak and Netanyahu are begging for a pretext to launch a global conflict. The meaning of it is totally is clear – the Jewish state and its pro-war lobbies are the ultimate threat to world peace. This threat must be taken care of immediately.
One thought on “A War Israel is Just Begging for an Excuse to Start”
Despite all odds, the Palestinian cause is gaining
by Khalid Amayreh
Saturday, July 21st, 2012
Source: The Palestinian Information center
[ 21/07/2012 – 12:39 PM ]
By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine
For many decades, secular and quasi-atheistic regimes in the Arab world used the Palestinian cause to consolidate their tyrannical stranglehold on their countries and people. The net result was a gigantic fiasco for the entire Umma in every conceivable field. The indescribably corrupt regimes tormented and terrorized their own citizens, so much so, that the crème de le crème of their societies were forced to emigrate to the West or other countries, fleeing police state terror and repression.
A few years ago, a citizen of a key Arab capital in the Mashriq (the Asian part of the Arab world) intimated to this writer that his countrymen would even welcome the Israeli army as liberators in light of the reign of tyranny and terror they were facing at the hands of their regime.
“The terror, repression and corruption permeating through the country defies linguistic description,” he told me.
I didn’t publish his remarks then, fearing the Israeli hasbara machine would hasten to exploit the unusual temerity of the remarks for propaganda purposes.
Well, we can’t conceal the truth forever. In the final analysis, these manifestly criminal regimes have decidedly more harm than Israel. Yes, Israel is a racist and criminal enemy, no doubt about this. However, the ignorant and evil regimes which in the name of Arabism and Palestine were effectively repressing, murdering and humiliating their own people were actually a greater and harsher enemy to the people in comparison to Israel.
An enemy is an enemy and one knows what to expect from one’s enemy. However “national” regimes and governments are supposed to serve and protect the people, create prosperity and welfare as well as maintain citizens’ dignity and human rights and civil liberties.
But far from doing their minimal duties in this regard, the regimes smashed human rights, decapitated civil liberties, and terrorized ordinary citizens in ways indescribable. Even the most nefarious enemy imagined wouldn’t have caused that much dilapidation in society.
Therefore, the disintegration of the erstwhile Arab regimes is not and must not be viewed as a negative development for the Palestinian cause. The opposite is true. Yes, maybe the Palestinian cause is losing some media concentration these days as TV viewers are preoccupied with more dramatic events elsewhere. But this is a temporary phenomenon that will disappear soon.
The important thing is that Palestinians should never bid on police-state juntas, even if their rhetoric filled the ether, to liberate Palestine and defeat Israel. These are intrinsically terrorist and bankrupt regimes that nothing good may come from. In the Holy Quran, it is stated that (إن الله لا يصلح عمل المفسدين) meaning “Allah will not make the deeds of evil people prosper.”
Interestingly, some of these evil people are now murdering Palestinians, while having the Chutzpah to claim that they are doing the killing for the sake of Palestine!!!
In the early sixties, Ibrahim Machos, one of the leaders of the Baath party in Syria wrote “that Allah, religion, and morality are mummies in the museum of history.” We saw how his words manifested themselves on the 5th of June, 1967.
Today, we are witnessing the deepening of the Arab Spring. And, yes, the pangs of labor could be heard from many quarters. But that is quite natural as no one in his or her right mind had expected the stagnation and degeneration that hovered over the Arab world since before the downfall of the Ottoman state to disappear in a few months or even a few years.
But the train of freedom has already left the station and is traveling on the right track and will reach the correct destination sooner or later.
We will hear and actually we are hearing all kinds of rumors, disinformation, and lies intended to confuse us and derail the train of freedom. After all, the enemies from inside and outside will not just give up and raise the white flag so prematurely. We will be called names, we will be condemned and vilified. We will even be lumped with the Zionists, the Americans, and what have you, so that our image would be tarnished and besmirched.
But we shouldn’t pay too much attention to these barking dogs and the caravan must keep going.
One of the most crippling handicaps that caused the Palestinian cause an irreparable damage was that the very people who were supposed to lend the Palestinians a helping hand against Israeli criminality needed help themselves to deliver them from the clutches of their terrorist regimes.
Hence, the Palestinian cause was betrayed twice, first, knowingly by the tyrannical regimes, and second unknowingly by the thoroughly tormented and repressed masses for which Palestine became the 100th item on their agenda, thanks to unrelenting repression and persecution meted out to them by the regimes.
Hence we shouldn’t be dithering about the looming demise of some Arab regimes which excelled in making loud but mendacious voices about Palestine, Zionism and imperialism while in truth they were harboring dubious if not criminal agendas against the entire Umma.
In the final analysis, only free people can liberate Palestine from the claws of Zionism. Dictators, who are so repressive of their own people, will not help the Palestinians in any strategic manner. The opposite is true.
Charity, after all, begins at home and if a certain regime behaves criminally towards its own citizens, it shouldn’t be expected to behave charitably towards others.