Jerusalem- In an interview on NBC News' Meet the Press to be aired Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also says he disagrees with those who argue that going to war with Iran would be worse than a nuclear Iran.
"Iran is guided by a leadership with an unbelievable fanaticism," he said. "You want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?"
Washington wants to give diplomacy and sanctions more time to pressure Tehran to abandon its suspect nuclear work.
But Netanyahu has warned repeatedly that Iran is perilously close to acquiring a nuclear bomb. Earlier this week, he criticized the U.S. specifically over its containment policy, saying peaceful methods are not working.
Source: The Associated Press
Comment: It's a good thing for the rest of us that Netanyahu is so 'rational' by comparison, isn't it?
[Link]
It is possibly the greatest of American political myths, repeated ad nauseam by presidential candidates in their election campaigns. President Barack Obama has claimed that the United States enjoys a special bond with Israel unlike its relations with any other country. He has called the friendship “unshakeable”, “enduring” and “unique”, “anchored by our common interests and deeply held values”.
[...]
The distrust has been particularly hard to hide in relation to Iran. Israel has been putting relentless pressure on Washington, apparently in the hope of manoeuvring it into supporting or joining an attack on Tehran to stop what Israel claims is an Iranian effort to build a nuclear bomb concealed beneath its civilian energy programme.
While coverage has focused on the personal animosity between Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the truth is that US officials generally are deeply at odds with Israel on this issue.
The conflict burst into the open this month with reports that the Pentagon had scaled back next month’s joint military exercise, Austere Challenge, with the Israeli military that had been billed as the largest and most significant in the two countries’ history.
The goal of the exercise was to test the readiness of Israel’s missile-defence shield in case of Iranian reprisals — possibly the biggest fear holding Israel back from launching a go-it-alone attack. The Pentagon’s main leverage on Israel is its X-band radar, stationed in Israel but operated exclusively by a US crew, that would provide Israel with early warning of Iranian missiles.
A senior Israeli military official told Time magazine what message the Pentagon’s rethink had conveyed: “Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you’.”
[...]
Israel is far from a trusted ally in the US “war on terror”. A former intelligence official told the Associated Press in July that Israel ranked lower than Libya in a list of countries helping to fight terrorism compiled by the Bush administration after September 11.
So why all the talk of a special bond if the relationship is characterised by such deep mistrust?
Part of the answer lies in the formidably intimidating tactics of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, spoke for a growing number of observers last year when he wrote that the US Congress was effectively “bought and paid for” by Israel’s lobbyists.
That power was all too evident last week when the Democratic national convention adopted an amended policy designating Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in opposition to both international law and the vocal wishes of delegates.
But there is another, less spoken-of reason. Francis Perrin, the head of the French Atomic Agency in the 1950s and 1960s, when France was helping Israel develop a nuclear weapon against the wishes of the US, once observed that the Israeli bomb was really “aimed against the Americans”.
Not because Israel wanted to attack the US, but because it realised that — once it possessed the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East — the US would rarely risk standing in its way, however much its policies ran counter to US interests.
For that reason, if no other, Israel is determined to stop any rival, including Iran, from getting a nuclear weapon that would end its monopoly.<<<
This reminds me of a (banned) book called The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed. In it the history of 'the Jewish Nation' is laid to bare. Notable is that, throughout history, whenever a king or government opens its arms in friendship and refuge, the Judahites effectively bring destruction upon their heads by joining forces with the 'enemy' of that nation, all in the name of the 'vengeance of Jehovah'.
[page 84] The command, "destroy", forms the very basis of the Law which the Levites made. If it be deleted,
what remains is not "the Mosaic Law", or the same religion, but something different; the imperative,
"destroy", is the mark of identity. It must have been deliberately chosen. Many other words could have been
used; for instance, conquer, defeat, vanquish, subdue; but destroy was chosen, It was put in the mouth of God,
but obviously was the choice of the scribes.
This was the kind of perversion which Jesus attacked: "teaching for doctrine the commandments of men".
It comes first at the very start of the story, being attributed directly to God in the original promise of
the promised land: "I will . . . destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come".
[page 85] Here the idea that "the people" should join with their hosts' enemies, in order to destroy their hosts,
first appears. When the story reaches a more or less verifiable event (the fall of Babylon) it is portrayed in
such a way as to foster this same notion. The Judahites are depicted as joining with the enemies of Babylon
and exultantly welcoming the Persian invader. The destruction of Babylon is shown as an act of vengeance wreaked by Jehovah on behalf of the Judahites, exclusively; this
vengeance is extended also to a king and the manner of his death (both apparently invented, but valid as
historical precedents).
The presentation of history in the Old Testament ends with the next act of vengeance, on the Persian
liberators! Western political leaders of our century, who often were flattered to be compared by Zionist
visitors to good King Cyrus of Persia, the liberator of the Judahites, may not have read "The Law" with
attention or have noted what then befell the Persians. Logically the Persians in their turn had to suffer for
having Judahites among them.
[page 204] The Arabs saw from the start what was in store for them, for they knew the Torah. Dr. Weizmann
had told the Peace Conference "The Bible is our mandate", and they knew about "the God of the Jews" and
his promises of pogrom and reward: "When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou
goest to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before thee . . . seven nations greater and mightier than thou; and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou shalt smite them; then thou shalt
utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them" (Deuteronomy 7, 1-3).
Thus Zionism, and Western support of it, meant extermination for them under a Law of 2,500 years
earlier (and the events of 1948 proved this).<<<
We should not forget the Torah and the Talmud is the authority under which Israel and their minions operate in order to UTTERLY DESTROY all the heathen amongst whom they have been dispersed, and that this dispersal has reached the very ends of the earth. So when you hear today's political candidates bleat about the survival and protection of Israel as a mandate from God, when you see our men return home in body bags, when you listen to Bibi spew his rhetoric, remember that we are all heathen in their eyes, and that the fate of the western nations which currently support the State of Israel will be the same as the fate of those that supported and gave refuge to them 2500 years ago.