Israel calls for attack on Iran

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for “a credible military option against Iran” to force Tehran to end its nuclear energy program.

"On Tuesday, Netanyahu said that military action should be taken by the international community and headed by the United States. "

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/159762.html

War with Iran - Will it revitalize the economy?

One of the main reasons I began studying Israeli politics was because the "father "of American Communitarianism is Dr. Amitai Etzioni, a high ranking Israeli military professional and terrorist during the 1947 coup. Dr. Ezioni often refers to his terrorist background as a justification for his self proclaimed more "moral" position. Our Communitarian guru holds duel Israeli/U.S. citizenship and has close professional ties to several of the Zionists in the Obama administration. His latest ploy is to support the American Afghan anti-war movement and his reason is simply that the Afghani people are too stupid and backwards to accept Israeli-U.S. style "democracy." I wonder if Etzioni would claim the Iranians are still stuck in the 12th century as well.

I do understand the reluctance and outright fear our people have about any discussion of the Israeli's history in Palestine. But it is impossible to understand why the U.S. is invading the Middle East and why the U.S. is rebuilding America into a giant communitarian kibbutz without the minimum awareness of the ideology behind the movement toward one world government. The accusations of Antisemitism are usually enough to stop most people from having an opinion on Israel, and yes, many Christian Zionists are even more aggressive than the ADL. But I learned a long time ago that when my adversaries must stoop to name calling it means they have nothing solid to back up their position. Ever since my Pentagon analyst visitor told me to back off on researching and writing about the Mossad (because they operate with impunity in the U.S.), I have been more determined than ever to keep mentioning the fact that Etzioni may be the highest ranking Mossad agent in the United States... known to the FBI only as "Mega."

Etzioni's cover story is that he miraculously evolved into a peaceful guru who immigrated to the U.S. with the intention of "shoring up the moral, social and political environment." In the 50 years since Etzioni has been shoring us immoral Americans up, the Arab nations of the Middle East went from being America's best friends to our most hated enemies. Why does the M.E. need to be destroyed? Look up their UN Local Agenda 21 resource questionnaires online. Unlike the brave, evolved and oh so religious Americans, the Muslim nations refuse to fill in the blanks.

The war recovery?
by David S. Broder
Sunday, October 31, 2010

"Here is where Obama is likely to prevail. With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran's ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve.

"I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history."

David Salzer Broder (born September 11, 1929) is a Jewish American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, television talk show pundit, and university lecturer. ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/29/AR2010102907404.html

From Peter Myers' elist:

Obama pressed to weigh Iran strike

Senator Joe Lieberman, Congressman Howard Berman say US must put time limit on sanctions

Yitzhak Benhorin

YNet News (Israel) Published: 09.30.10, 19:54 /

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3962291,00.html

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama is under pressure to consider a military strike on Iran, according to the Financial Times.

Both Senator Joe Lieberman and Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have urged the president to consider setting a time limit of just a few months on the effectiveness of the most recent sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic for its nuclear advances.

"Our goal here is to convince Iran to stop its nuclear weapons development program by economic and diplomatic means if we can but (to make clear) that we are prepared to use military means if we must," Lieberman told the Financial Times.

The senator added that the Obama Administration must reevaluate its policy at the end of the year and adopt a tougher stance if necessary. He called the sanctions "biting", but said he doubted they would cause Iran to negotiate its nuclear program with the West.

Howard Berman told the publication that the administration had "months, not years" to make sanctions work and that a military operation was preferable to a nuclear Iran.

But the Obama Administration is still basking in the afterglow of its victory with Tupraz, a Turkish energy company that ceased refined oil sales to Iran due to sanctions. Next week a US delegation will visit China in an effort to convince Beijing not to fill the newly created void.

And on Thursday the US placed the Swiss-based Naftiran Intertrade Company, a subsidiary of Iran's national oil company, on a financial blacklist and claimed success in persuading several European energy firms to divest from the country.

And in another forward from Peter:

Sephardi leader Yosef: Non-Jews exist to serve Jews

October 18, 2010

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/10/18/2741341/rabbi-yosef-non-jews-exist-to-serve-jews

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Israeli Sephardic leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in his weekly Saturday night sermon said that non-Jews exist to serve Jews.

"Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel," he said during a public discussion of what kind of work non-Jews are allowed to perform on Shabbat.

"Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat," he said to some laughter.

Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party and the former chief Sephardi rabbi of Israel, also said that the lives of non-Jews are protected in order to prevent financial loss to Jews.

"With gentiles, it will be like any person: They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one's donkey would die, they'd lose their money. This is his servant. That's why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew," said the rabbi, who recently turned 90.

An audio recording of some of the rabbi's remarks was broadcast on Israel's Channel 10.

The American Jewish Committee condemned the rabbi's remarks in a statement issued Monday.

"Rabbi Yosef's remarks -- suggesting outrageously that Jewish scripture asserts non-Jews exist to serve Jews -- are abhorrent and an offense to human dignity and human equality," said AJC Executive Director David Harris. "Judaism first taught the world that all individuals are created in the divine image, which helped form the basis of our moral code. A rabbi should be the first, not the last, to reflect that bedrock teaching of our tradition."

Is it possible that the Zionist agenda is as dangerous to the Jewish people as it is to the Arabs? And what happened to the open academic discourse between Christians, Muslims and Jews that existed prior to the Zionist war for independence? It was replaced with perpetual war.

Mark Steel: So what have the Palestinians got to complain about?

From Peter Myer's elist:

(8) Mark Steel: So what have the Palestinians got to complain about?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-so-what-have-the-palestinians-got-to-complain-about-1218135.html

Mark Steel: So what have the Palestinians got to complain about?

To portray this as a conflict between equals requires some imagination

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

When you read the statements from Israeli and US politicians, and try to match them with the pictures of devastation, there seems to be only one explanation. They must have one of those conditions, called something like "Visual Carnage Responsibility Back To Front Upside Down Massacre Disorder".

For example, Condoleezza Rice, having observed that more than 300 Gazans were dead, said: "We are deeply concerned about the escalating violence. We strongly condemn the attacks on Israel and hold Hamas responsible."

Someone should ask her to comment on teenage knife-crime, to see if she'd say: "I strongly condemn the people who've been stabbed, and until they abandon their practice of wandering around clutching their sides and bleeding, there is no hope for peace."

The Israeli government suffers terribly from this confusion. They probably have adverts on Israeli television in which a man falls off a ladder and screams, "Eeeeugh", then a voice says, "Have you caused an accident at work in the last 12 months?" and the bloke who pushed him gets £3,000.

The gap between the might of Israel's F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters, and the Palestinians' catapulty thing is so ridiculous that to try and portray the situation as between two equal sides requires the imagination of a children's story writer.

The reporter on News at Ten said the rockets "may be ineffective, but they ARE symbolic." So they might not have weapons but they have got symbolism, the canny brutes.

It's no wonder the Israeli Air Force had to demolish a few housing estates, otherwise Hamas might have tried to mock Israel through a performance of expressive dance.

The rockets may be unable to to kill on the scale of the Israeli Air Force, said one spokesman, but they are "intended to kill".

Maybe he went on: "And we have evidence that Hamas supporters have dreams, and that in these dreams bad things happen to Israeli citizens, they burst, or turn into cactus, or run through Woolworths naked, so it's not important whether it can happen, what matters is that they WANT it to happen, so we blew up their university."

Or there's the outrage that Hamas has been supported by Iran. Well that's just breaking the rules. Because say what you will about the Israelis, they get no arms supplies or funding or political support from a country that's more powerful than them, they just go their own way and make all their weapons in an arts and crafts workshop in Jerusalem.

But mostly the Israelis justify themselves with a disappointing lack of imagination, such as the line that they had to destroy an ambulance because Hamas cynically put their weapons inside ambulances.

They should be more creative, and say Hamas were planning to aim the flashing blue light at Israeli epileptics in an attempt to make them go into a fit, get dizzy and wander off into Syria where they would be captured.

But they prefer a direct approach, such as the statement from Ofer Schmerling, an Israeli Civil Defence official who said on al-Jazeera, "I shall play music and celebrate what the Israeli Air Force is doing."

Maybe they could turn it into a huge nationalfestival, with decorations and mince pies and shops playing "I Wish We Could Bomb Gaza Every Day".

In a similar tone Dov Weisglas, Ariel Sharon's chief of staff, referred to the siege of Gaza that preceded this bombing, a siege in which the Israelis prevented the population from receiving essential supplies of food, medicine, electricity and water, by saying, "We put them on a diet."

It's the arrogance of the East End gangster, so it wouldn't be out of character if the Israeli Prime Minister's press conference began: "Oh dear or dear. It looks like those Palestinians have had a little, er, accident. All their buildings have been knocked down – they want to be more careful, hee hee."

And almost certainly one of the reasons this is happening now is because the government wants to appear hard as it wants to win an election. Maybe with typical Israeli frankness they'll show a party political broadcast in which Ehud Olmert says, "This is why I think you should vote for me", then shows film of Gaza and yells: "Wa-hey, that bloke in the corner is on FIRE."

And Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues, and the specially appointed Middle East Peace Envoy, could then all shake their heads and say: "Disgraceful. The way he's flapping around like that could cause someone to have a nasty accident."

Peter also sent an article written by a US Intelligence officer who offers Americans his alternate view of the Israeli war against Gaza: http://www.currentissues.tv/Joe_Cortina.html

Radio interview with Constance Cumbey, Tuesday, Dec 30, 8pm EST

"The ideals of Zionism have, in the last half century, been endorsed by both parties, and Americans of all ranks and in all sections. Friendship for Israel is not a partisan matter. It is a national commitment.” (President John F. Kennedy, Speech August 25, 1960, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/jfkq4.html)

As the "debate" rages on over at Constance's blog over whether I am a credible source for information about communitarianism or not, Constance and I will be on the air discussing communitarianism again tomorrow. http://cumbey.blogspot.com/

The accusations expanded to calling my blog a soap opera (which is too funny because all I did was repost what they were saying here!) and also a New Ager because I endorse the Earthing Technology. So all new technology that exists outside the established medical "community" is considered New Age? People are doing searches for "Niki Raapana Stormfront" because they just can't believe I'm not some Aryan white supremacist hiding behind... well I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to be hiding behind. Some people hate it that I use jewishtribalreview as a source, and other people hate it that I use Christians and Jews and Muslims as sources. I'd say what's happening at Constance's blog is a good example of why the topic of communitarianism remains so obscured from the world. Nobody wants to accept their religion or political party's part in establishing a communitarian global order. What a great plan, eh?

Robert Kennedy visited British Palestine in 1948 and wrote several articles for a Boston paper about his experiences there. In the close of this article, posted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, he suggested the US, "through the UN must take the lead in bringing about peace in the Holy Land." Did Kennedy meet up with Amitai Etzioni when he travelled with the "underground" Haganah?

"The Jews on the other hand believe that in a few more years, if a Jewish state is formed, it will be the only stabilizing factor remaining in the Near and Middle East. The Arab world is made up of many disgruntled factions which would have been at each other's throats long ago if it had not been for the common war against Zionism. The United States and Great Britain before too long a time might well be looking to a Jewish state to preserve a toehold in that part of the world.

"Both sides still hate the British far more deeply than they hate one another. There was a British high commissioner who when attending the opera used to have his car parked directly in front of the main door, a place usually reserved for discharging passengers. An even more unpopular practice was the regulation that at the end of the opera everyone had to remain in their seats until the British high commissioner was out of the opera house and in his car.

"But the British have left - and now the issue is to be resolved in a bitter war between Jew and Arab. I do not think the freedom-loving nations of the world can stand by and see "the sweet water of the River Jordan stained red with the blood of Jews and Arabs." The United States through the United Nations must take the lead in bringing about peace in the Holy Land." http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=111&LNGID=1&FID=376&PID=0&IID=2213

Caroline Kennedy is hoping to take over Hillary Clinton's Senate seat and has reportedly told Press TV she "strongly supports a safe and secure Israel." When asked whether she would support an Israeli air strike on Iran, Kennedy said "Israel's security decisions should be left to Israel."

"Kennedy's stance toward Israel suggests that she has decided not to follow in the footstep of her late father, president John F. Kennedy, who enraged Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion over Tel Aviv's nuclear ambitions.

"Ben-Gurion, who ruled Israel from its inception in 1948 until he resigned on June 16, 1963, was convinced that Tel Aviv needed nuclear weapons to ensure its survival.

"President Kennedy, who was assassinated on November 22, 1963, was dead-set against Israel becoming a nuclear power." http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=79142&sectionid=3510203

Congressman Ron Paul disagrees with Caroline's assessment of Israel's security:

"Paul: I don't think there is such a thing as an independent Israel doing anything, because I think no matter what they do its our money, its our weapons, and their not going to do it without us approving it and if they get into trouble we're going to bail them out, so there is no separation between the two." http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=79752&sectionid=3510302

S. posted this link in my comments here and it certainly deserves my attention.

"Troen structures his work chronologically, moving from the earliest Jewish settlements in the last third of the 19th century to the present. He argues that what characterized the early Jewish settlements was their communitarian, anti-individualist impulse. It is this desire to create communities that Troen stresses and analyzes in depth in the first part of his work. He calls these settlements "miniature commonwealths" or, following the Puritans, "covenantal societies." His invocation of the Puritans is not accidental. While he acknowledges that most accounts of early Zionist settlement trace the communitarian impulse back to European socialist or communist roots, Troen argues that Zionist communal thinking had its origins in the "religious experience, imaginations, and predilections of early planners and pioneers"(p. 6)."http://www.shma.com/bookreviews/hart.htm

As another commentor here says, the "Communitarian Party" has a website now. They include many religious views, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and post things like: "For several years, on many fronts, champions of greater responsibility to the community have become something of a new force in American life. They think of themselves as "communitarians," though so far there is no registry of communitarians and no formal association. Nevertheless, their influence is real enough, and so are their objectives: to evolve public policies, moral norms, and regulatory guidelines that will correct what they perceive as excessive, "radical" individualism." This Christian Democracy Diagram (on the left) was posted by the blog's author as "helpful when trying to explain to people where I stand."


Maybe I need to design a new diagram that helps explain where I stand.

I made this chart called Big Mother's Gameplan: Checkmate sometime back in 2003 (maybe, not sure exactly when). Not that I expect it will help the people who insist on creating their own labels for me. For the record, I'm that little block on the bottom labeled "uncooperatives." Notice how close I am to being stomped on by the faith based initatives.

What's abundantly clear to me now is, according to certain watchdogs, I am not allowed to use any resourses or link to anyone they deem unnaceptable. If I link to someone they mistrust it means they don't have to consider anything else I write. How utterly convienent for the communitarian globalists.

Funny how my British readers never seem to be offended or insist I'm stiring up hate for the English people when I expose the British Empire's role in creating global governance (the new accepted term). Reminds me of when I was told by a Sandanista Nicaraguan in 1984 that he didn't hate the American people, he just hated our imperialist government and their CIA-Mossad mercenary policies in Central America.

Using Bombs to Stave Off War, by BENNY MORRIS, NYT

From Peter Myer's elist:

(2) Using Bombs to Stave Off War, by BENNY MORRIS, NYT July 18, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Using Bombs to Stave Off War

By BENNY MORRIS

Published: July 18, 2008

ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.

It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United States (nor, for that matter, the rest of the world) that Iran be savaged by a nuclear strike, or that both Israel and Iran suffer such a fate. We know what would ensue: a traumatic destabilization of the Middle East with resounding political and military consequences around the globe, serious injury to the West’s oil supply and radioactive pollution of the earth’s atmosphere and water.

But should Israel’s conventional assault fail to significantly harm or stall the Iranian program, a ratcheting up of the Iranian-Israeli conflict to a nuclear level will most likely follow. Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power. And, despite the current talk of additional economic sanctions, everyone knows that such measures have so far led nowhere and are unlikely to be applied with sufficient scope to cause Iran real pain, given Russia’s and China’s continued recalcitrance and Western Europe’s (and America’s) ambivalence in behavior, if not in rhetoric. Western intelligence agencies agree that Iran will reach the “point of no return” in acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in one to four years.

Which leaves the world with only one option if it wishes to halt Iran’s march toward nuclear weaponry: the military option, meaning an aerial assault by either the United States or Israel. Clearly, America has the conventional military capacity to do the job, which would involve a protracted air assault against Iran’s air defenses followed by strikes on the nuclear sites themselves. But, as a result of the Iraq imbroglio, and what is rapidly turning into the Afghan imbroglio, the American public has little enthusiasm for wars in the Islamic lands. This curtails the White House’s ability to begin yet another major military campaign in pursuit of a goal that is not seen as a vital national interest by many Americans.

Which leaves only Israel — the country threatened almost daily with destruction by Iran’s leaders. Thus the recent reports about Israeli plans and preparations to attack Iran (the period from Nov. 5 to Jan. 19 seems the best bet, as it gives the West half a year to try the diplomatic route but ensures that Israel will have support from a lame-duck White House).

The problem is that Israel’s military capacities are far smaller than America’s and, given the distances involved, the fact that the Iranian sites are widely dispersed and underground, and Israel’s inadequate intelligence, it is unlikely that the Israeli conventional forces, even if allowed the use of Jordanian and Iraqi airspace (and perhaps, pending American approval, even Iraqi air strips) can destroy or perhaps significantly delay the Iranian nuclear project.

Nonetheless, Israel, believing that its very existence is at stake — and this is a feeling shared by most Israelis across the political spectrum — will certainly make the effort. Israel’s leaders, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert down, have all explicitly stated that an Iranian bomb means Israel’s destruction; Iran will not be allowed to get the bomb.

The best outcome will be that an Israeli conventional strike, whether failed or not — and, given the Tehran regime’s totalitarian grip, it may not be immediately clear how much damage the Israeli assault has caused — would persuade the Iranians to halt their nuclear program, or at least persuade the Western powers to significantly increase the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran.

But the more likely result is that the international community will continue to do nothing effective and that Iran will speed up its efforts to produce the bomb that can destroy Israel. The Iranians will also likely retaliate by attacking Israel’s cities with ballistic missiles (possibly topped with chemical or biological warheads); by prodding its local clients, Hezbollah and Hamas, to unleash their own armories against Israel; and by activating international Muslim terrorist networks against Israeli and Jewish — and possibly American — targets worldwide (though the Iranians may at the last moment be wary of provoking American military involvement).

Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best — meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal.

Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption. Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards.

Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Bar this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland. Some Iranians may believe that this is a worthwhile gamble if the prospect is Israel’s demise. But most Iranians probably don’ t.

Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University, is the author, most recently, of “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War.”

There was a time when mentioning Israel's nuclear capabilities was considered to be a conspiracy theory. Obviously that's changed. I'm curious to know if Amitai Etzioni's role in the first Arab-Israeli war is mentioned in Morris' book. I've never been able to confirm whether the Etzioni brigade was named for him or for some other soldier named Etzioni.

I'm certainly not a big fan of Muslim fundamentalists, but isn't Israel the seat of Talmudic fundamentalism and the most religiously motivated nation on earth? Why is it okay for the Jewish state to have nukes and to threaten a Muslim neighbor with a nuclear holocaust? Who decided which country was the more moral or responsible of the two nations? American Jews and their dialectical opposites, the Zionists on the fundamentalist Christian Right? My heart goes out to all the commoners in the Middle East who have no say in any of this, as is always the case. My heart grieves for all the American soldiers who are giving their lives for Israel's Lebenraum.