You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Iran’ tag.
This essay was written by Michael Ross, and originally published at National Post
Thai police officers escort Iranian bomb suspect Mohammad Kharzei (C) during an investigation at his rented house in Bangkok on February 20, 2012. Police in Thailand said on February 17 they were hunting for a fifth Iranian suspected in a failed bomb plot in Bangkok that has sent tensions between Israel and Iran soaring.
In a recent article in The Guardian entitled, “Iran seems an unlikely culprit for the attacks on Israeli diplomats”, University of London scholar Arshin Adib-Moghaddam contends that Iran wouldn’t plan attacks in India, Thailand and Georgia because Tehran enjoys good relations with these countries. Mr. Adib- Moghaddam is either very naive or enjoys good relations with the Iranian regime but either way, his article flies in the face of very damning evidence. A long look at Iran’s state-sponsorship of terror would indicate to the most casual observer that the regime couldn’t give a damn about it’s multilateral relationships with those countries.
Mr. Adib-Moghaddam even floats the absurd theory that these were dissidents belonging to an anti-regime faction or part of the “Indian Mujahedeen” ostensibly bent on wrecking relations between India and Iran. I guess this theory works for some if confined to the Indian sub-continent, but it’s going to be very hard to convince the government in Azerbaijan that this is the case as details emerge today of the arrest of an IRGC-QF/Hezbollah cell that was gathering intelligence, purchasing firearms, ammunition, explosives and devices, and making other preparations in order to commit terrorist acts on Israeli targets in Baku.
As more details emerge about the Iranian cell’s activities in Bangkok, the first thing I examined were their flight records. At least four of the six Iranians flew to Bangkok on direct flights originating in Tehran – and in the case of Leila Rohani, the woman involved in the plot – on a flight directly back to Tehran. I don’t have much experience as a dissident, but it seems to me that I’d probably want to avoid any travel that would ultimately take me into the waiting arms of the regime’s security services. But it’s not just the direct flights; it’s the airline they used. As it happens, the members of this cell flew on Mahan Air, an Iranian commercial airline that was designated by the U.S. last year under Presidential Executive Order 13224 blacklisting it due to links to Iran’s support for terrorism.
Mahan Air is known in counter-terrorism circles as “IRGC Air” due to its busy schedule ferrying IRGC-QF/Hezbollah/MOIS operatives, weapons and money around the world. The U.S. is especially displeased with Mahan Air as it emerged that the airline was covertly flying IRGC-QF officers in and out of Iraq to engage in all manner of mayhem directed at coalition forces and in support of the Shia militias in the south of that country. Mahan Air has also been one of the air links facilitating weapons transfers between Iran, Syria and their enfant terrible, Hezbollah, based in Lebanon. The cargo manifests belonging to this airline have a long history of omitting certain shipments that are transferred between these three countries.
Also emerging from the plot in Bangkok is the use of stickers bearing the word “SEJEAL” to mark possible target zones at various points along a 1.5-km route on roads and public transit in Bangkok. These stickers were similar to ones located at the house where the first blast occurred and at another house rented by Leila Rohani. The stickers were also found under the seat of a seized motorcycle belonging to the Iranian cell. As it happens, Iran-sponsored Hamas refer to their rockets as “Sejeal Stones” after a passage in the Koran that tells of a miracle when birds dropped “Sejeal Stones” on an army attempting to kill Mohammed.
Iranians flying on Iranian documents from Tehran to Thailand on Mahan Air and caught en flagrante on one of the busiest streets in Bangkok with their stickers, explosive devices and motorcycle would seem to point in directions other than the “Indian Mujahedeen”.
I’m curious to know how far The Guardian’s writers and editors will bend themselves into contortions of Iran denial before they just end up looking silly.
The only “false flag” I can detect is flying from the roof of the British newspaper.
Related articles
- Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, an Unlikely Non-partisan Analyst (Harry’s Place)
Like this:
Ian Black
The latest report by the Guardian’s Middle East editor, Ian Black, Feb. 13, is titled “Israeli embassy attacks in Delhi and Tblisi could set off conflagration“.
Black’s analysis attempts to contextualize the recent attack on the Israeli embassy in India, and the thwarted attack in Georgia, (likely committed by Iran or Hezbollah) with the “ongoing campaign of sabotage and assassination against [Iranian] scientists” working on a nuclear programme”.
Black characterizes such covert acts as representing a “highly volatile element in an extremely unstable landscape.”
Adds Black:
Against a background of extraordinary turbulence across the Middle East, the Israeli-Iranian confrontation is by far the most dangerous element.
Black’s analysis of the Iranian-Israeli conflict includes the following:
- A requisite obfuscation over Iran’s nuclear intentions. Black non-judgmentally contrasts Iran’s insistence that its program is peaceful with “Israel and western countries adamant [that it] is not”, failing to cite the latest IAEA report, available on the Guardian website, which states: “the information indicates that Iran has carried out…a structured program…to develop an explosive nuclear device.”
- The suggestion that Iranian attacks on Israeli targets are justified: Black quotes a former British diplomat accusing Israel of “international state terrorism [which] invit[es] a response. It looks like a further twist that will lead to a tit-for-tat.”
However, the most egregious distortion in Black’s report is the historical analogy he attempts to draw in the penultimate paragraph, suggesting that Israel is looking for a “pretext” to war.
Nor could the stakes be higher [for the Middle East]. In June 1982 an assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador to London by the renegade Palestinian faction led by the Iraqi-backed Abu Nidal provided the pretext for war against Yasser Arafat’s PLO in Lebanon, despite a ceasefire that had held for nearly a year. Ariel Sharon, then defence minister, was pressing to attack and persuaded the prime minister, Menachem Begin, to go ahead
Full scale invasion, thousands of dead and years of war and occupation were the result.
Black’s characterization of the cause of the 1982 war, about which he attempts to draw an analogy to the current crisis, is grossly ahistorical.
The roots of the Lebanon war lay in the bloody expulsion of the PLO from Jordan, the terror group’s relocation to Lebanon in 1971 and subsequent staging of hundreds of terrorist acts across Israel’s northern border.
In March 1978, PLO terrorists infiltrated Israel, hijacked a bus and ended up murdering 34 Israeli civilians on board.
In response, Israeli forces crossed into Lebanon and overran terrorist bases, pushing the PLO away from the southern border.
The IDF shortly withdrew and allowed UN forces to enter, but UN troops were unable, or unwilling, to prevent PLO terrorists from re-infiltrating the region and introducing new, and more dangerous arms – a striking similarity to the complete failure of UNIFIL troops to keep southern Lebanon free of Hezbollah weaponry, per their mandate under UN Resolution 1701, following the 2nd Lebanon War in 2006.
Violence escalated with a series of PLO attacks and Israeli reprisals, which culminated n a U.S. brokered ceasefire agreement in July 1981.
However, the PLO repeatedly violated the cease-fire over the ensuing 11 months, carrying out terror assaults from Jordanian territory. (Between July 1981 and June 1982 26 Israelis were killed and 264 injured.)
Meanwhile, a force of over 15,000 PLO members was encamped in of locations throughout Lebanon, including thousands of foreign mercenaries. Israel later discovered an extensive cache of weaponry – which included mortars, Katyusha rockets and an antiaircraft network. The PLO also brought hundreds of T34 tanks into the area, and even surface-to-air missiles.
Israeli commando raids were unable to stem the growth of the PLO army, the of frequency of attacks forced thousands of Israeli residents in the Galilee to flee their homes and spend large amounts of time in bomb shelters.
So, while the final provocation occurred in June 1982 when a Palestinian terrorist group led by Abu Nidal attempted to assassinate Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Black’s suggestion that Israel cynically used the assassination as a pretext break a peaceful “truce”, in order to launch an unnecessary war, is patently untrue.
What country on earth would permit a terrorist group (with an increasingly deadly arsenal of weaponry) on its border to launch frequent terror attacks against its citizens without a robust military response?
In fact, the important historical analogy with Iran today and the PLO in the early 1980s, which the Guardian’s Middle East editor fails to observe, is that Israel is again faced with increasingly well-equipped terrorist militias on their borders (Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad) – with funds, training and increasingly sophisticated weaponry provided directly by the regime in Tehran.
Every cross border raid, every missile attack, and every attempt to abduct Israeli soldiers by Iranian proxy armies in Lebanon and Gaza over the years have represented acts of war – military aggression by an Islamist state which is attempting to develop nuclear devices, producing rockets capable of delivering such a lethal payload, and whose leadership has provided explicit religious justifications for the use of weapons of mass destruction on Jewish civilians.
Black’s last paragraph included the following, which he no doubt views as an incriminating quote by Menachem Begin, to buttress the overriding narrative of an Israeli state determined to use any pretext to ignite a dangerous regional conflagration.
“Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal,” [Menachem] Begin reportedly replied as his security chiefs explained the crucial detail and significance of the London attack.
However, those of us who understand the circumstances of Israel’s wars against hostile state and non-state actors since its founding (be it Nasser, the PLO, Hezbollah, Hamas or Iran) are not swayed by Black’s crude caricature of an Israeli antagonist. We read the attributed quote and see an Israeli leader who understood that his first role was to protect his nation from harm, and that the threat posed by a well-equipped military force reigning terror down on Israeli civilians more than justified an assertive military response.
The casus belli for Operation Peace for the Galilee was self-evident, building for years, and needed no “pretext”.
The antagonists have changed, but Israeli leaders today similarly face a very real threat by an even more powerful foe.
Today, as in 1982, the Jewish state will not shy away from confronting clear and present dangers it faces, and need not morally justify – to Ian Black or others who fancy themselves sophisticated, dispassionate political sages – its fierce and unapologetic defense of its national interests, and its citizen’s lives.
Related articles
Jonathan Freedland may be the closest thing the Guardian has to a sane, non-ideologically extreme, liberal voice on Israel.
Sure, his views on Israel are closer to the European Left brand of Zionism – convinced, it seems, that peace with the Palestinians would be at hand if not for the obstinate obstructionism of the leadership in Jerusalem, and buying into the leftist chimera of an Israeli democracy under siege – but, from what I’ve read, Freedland seems squarely in the Zionist tent.
Freedland has also not shied away from condemning antisemitism, seemed to acknowledge the malice which drives much anti-Zionist activism and, based on what I hear from those who know him, he is no AsaJew, and seems to identify genuinely, and unapologetically, with the British Jewish community.
As such, Freedland’s quite heterodox polemic in CiF on Feb. 10, “Syria is not Iraq. And, it is not always wrong to intervene“, quite clearly bucked Associate Editor Seumas Milne’s “Straight Left” inspired concern for the survival of the Syria-Iran anti-imperial resistance, by arguing that the West should consider intervention to stop the bloodshed in Syria.
Moreover, Freedland launched a broadside on the belief among many on the left – terming it “nonsensical” – held with something approaching religious intensity, that true “progressives” must oppose the use of military force in every case.
Freedland also condemns “similarly blanket thinking on Iran…[which] refuses to recognise there might even be a problem, namely the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon”, and derides their myopic view which “dismisses all talk of the issue as neoconservative warmongering.’
Adds Freedland:
It is natural for Israel to feel threatened by the prospect, given Iran’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist as Israel, and the slogans reportedly daubed on Iranian missiles, promising to wipe the country off the map. Carne Ross says Israel’s security concerns are “entirely legitimate” and that were we in their position, we would be just as worried as they are.
The anti-war camp [which he argues is blinded by Iraq] needs at least to acknowledge the existence of a problem here, that while military action to thwart Iran would have terrifying consequences, so too would an Iranian nuclear weapon. Nor will it do to oppose not just force but every other step the west is taking to prevent a nuclear Iran, including sanctions and sabotage. If anything, the anti-war movement should be the loudest advocate of non-violent alternatives to military action
Of course, as Freedland may have guessed, his over 1000 word missive, so openly challenging Guardian orthodoxy, produced a fury of attacks beneath the line.
Thus far, Freedland’s piece has elicited 888 comments.
Here’s a quick accounting of the most frequently used words:
Israel: 782
Jew: 126
Zionist: 34
Total number of references to Jews , Zionism, or Israel: 942
Syria: 553
Iran: 467
Here is a brief sample of the comments posted below the line thus far:
Freedland is a war-monger (566 Recommends)
Bashar al-Assad inspired conspiracy theory (291 Recommends)
Freedland’s commentary represents a Trojan Horse to furtively advance his Zionist views. Israel would like to see the world destroyed.
Berchmans’: It’s obvious that Syrian rebels are being set up by the West, Saudis, and Israel (41 Recommends)
And, finally, a commenter using the moniker “aljabha”, whose profile includes a photo depicting the Soviet Hammer and Sickle in a Palestinian Flag (A Seumas Milne or PFLP production, no doubt), with the requisite “Zionism is Racism”.
One of my standard quips to folks who aren’t familiar with the degree of anti-Zionism at the Guardian is that the paper makes the New York Times look like Arutz Sheva.
Similarly, I may have to add that Guardian readers increasingly make Jonathan Freedland look like Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
Related articles
- Jonathan Freedland to Israel: I love you, I love you not. (cifwatch.com)
- Jonathan Freedland’s Intifada delusions. (cifwatch.com)
- Seumas Milne shills for Syria & Iran: Sees hidden Zionist hand in calls for Assad’s overthrow (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, Hebron and the logic of ethnic cleansing (cifwatch.com)
- The siege of Homs, the Guardian, and the flight of the humanitarians. (cifwatch.com)
- Fascinating Twitter exchange between Guardian’s Seumas Milne & Hamas member Azzam Tamimi (cifwatch.com)
Yesterday, we posted about Seumas Milne’s latest essay (Intervention in Syria will escalate, not stop the killing, Feb. 8), which warned against any international efforts to put a stop to the massacre of civilians by Bashar al-Assad.
Milne argued that the West is really only interested in weakening Syria in order to strengthen the U.S.-Israeli hand in a future confrontation with Syria’s ally, Iran. In short, for Milne, any Western interference to prevent further bloodshed in Syria (where, just last night, another 100 Syrian civilians were reportedly killed in Homs by government forces) would represent yet another example of U.S.-Israeli-Western imperialistic interference in the region.
Milne posted his Guardian essay on Twitter, here.
Shortly after Milne’s Tweet, there was reply by Azzam Tamimi. Tamimi is an unashamed supporter of Hamas and a vociferous supporter of terrorism who, during an interview, said he would, if given the chance, go to Israel and become a suicide bomber. (He also is a contributor to Comment is Free.)
As you read the exchange, see you think comes out as the more ideologically extreme of the two.
Later, adding to his previous exchange, Tamimi, responds to another Twitterer asking him if he explicitly supports foreign intervention, but broadly addresses Milne’s arguments.
So, Azzam Tamimi, member of a group which seeks the annihilation of Israel and openly condones the murder of innocent Jewish civilians, emphatically disagrees with Milne’s opposition to any foreign interference on behalf of the rebels (whatever the benefits to the Syrian people).
That is, the rigid anti-Western ideology of the Guardian Associate Editor is more extreme, and more zealous, than even a member of Hamas.
I’ve noted several times that Milne used to work for the pro-Stalinist paper, Straight Left, and highlighted his 2001 defense of Soviet Communism, not to smear the “journalist” with gossip about past political transgressions but, rather, because, in reading Milne today, its clear that he’s hardly deviated at all from the Soviet-inspired anti-Imperialist propaganda he so eagerly parroted earlier in his career.
That Milne assumes such a prominent and influential position at the Guardian seems to at least partially explain why the paper continually publishes commentary by religious extremists, apologists for terror, and those ideologically opposed to the Jewish states’s very existence.
Related articles
- Seumas Milne shills for Syria & Iran: Sees hidden Zionist hand in calls for Assad’s overthrow (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Seumas Milne runs interference for “anti-Imperialist” Islamic Republic of Iran (cifwatch.com)
- Tin-Pot Pravda: Guardian editorial scolds Israel for taking Iranian nuclear threat seriously (cifwatch.com)
Seumas Milne’s latest communique published by the Guardian (Intervention in Syria will escalate, not stop the killing, Feb. 8) can be summed up thusly:
- Russia and China were correct to veto a recent western-sponsored UN resolution – “condemning Bashar al-Assad’s regime, requiring his troops to return to barracks and backing an Arab League plan for him to be replaced” – because it would amount to externally imposed (imperialist) regime change, and would be unfair to Assad, biased in favor of anti-government forces, and may lead to “foreign” intervention.
- Russia and China have rightfully acted to thwart the anti-Syria resolution “to challenge the west’s attempt to corral the Arab uprisings for its own interests.”
- “US, Britain and their allies” have no credibility to interfere in Syrian affairs given the fact that, for 45 years, ”they have underwritten Israel’s occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights”.
- One of the most important dimensions of the Syrian conflagration is the fact that the west and its Arab clients are trying to use the crisis to ramp up a confrontation with Iran, as “the overthrow of the Syrian regime would be a serious blow to Iran’s influence in the Middle East.”
- “As the conflict in Syria has escalated, so has the western-Israeli confrontation with Iran.”
So, Milne’s talking points can be summarized as:
Don’t be fooled by seemingly altruistic Western efforts to stop the massacre of civilians by the Syrian despot, as they’re really only interested in strengthening their hand in a confrontation with Iran (which isn’t, in fact, trying to build a nuclear weapon), and maintaining Western/Israeli imperialist dominance in the region.
I guess the only question is whether Milne’s essay was his own, or whether it was written by the Syrian ministry of propaganda. Bashar Assad, on March 31, in his first public statements since the uprisings, said his country was the target of a major conspiracy, pointing the finger at the U.S. and Israel, specifically blaming anti-government protests on “enemies with an Israeli agenda“.
In fact, the official Syrian state news agency featured a story just today (Feb. 8) which quoted Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasserallah on Tuesday saying “that there is an Arab, Israeli and US decision, represented by the so-called the Arab moderate states to overthrow the regime in Syria.”
Finally, Milne’s defense of Syria and Iran included the allegation that “US defence secretary Leon Panetta and national intelligence director James Clapper acknowledged that Iran isn’t after all “trying to build a nuclear weapon“.
Except that, when you follow the link, its clear that Panetta and Clapper “acknowledged” no such thing. Clapper was quoted in the Guardian report as saying: “Iran was keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons”.
Further, the most recent IAEA report on the Iranian nuclear issue, posted on the Guardian’s own website, says “Iran is on a structured path to building a nuclear weapon“
Parroting Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah anti-Western, anti-Zionist, propaganda. Lying about the Iranian nuclear threat: AKA, just another day’s work for Seumas Milne’s anti-imperialist propaganda mill.
Related articles
- Guardian readers skew conversation about UK, U.S. & Iran in a decidedly Semitic direction (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Seumas Milne runs interference for “anti-Imperialist” Islamic Republic of Iran (cifwatch.com)
- Tin-Pot Pravda: Guardian editorial scolds Israel for taking Iranian nuclear threat seriously (cifwatch.com)
- More Pro-Iranian “Hasbara” at ‘Comment is Free’ (cifwatch.com)
Simon Tisdall
His moral instincts are so refined, so sophisticated, and so unburdened by conventional thinking that he was able to see past the universal enmity towards Sudan’s tragically misunderstood leader, Omar al-Bashir, charged with genocide for acting with intent to destroy non-Arab ethnic groups in the Darfur region.
Al-Bashir’s unimaginably bloody campaign resulted in up to 400,000 dead and resulted in 2.5 million refugees.
Here’s the money quote from Simon Tisdall’s Dec. 27, 2010 apologia for Omar al-Bahsir.
“ostracised by western governments, [and] makes an easy target. America always needs bogeymen and Bashir fits the bill: big, bothersome, bad-tempered, black, Arab and Muslim.”
That final sentence should be placed in a museum of intellectual thought as a perfect representation of the Guardian Left’s capacity to synthesize anti-Americanism, post-colonialism and a perverse understanding of anti-racism in order to defend the morally indefensible.
Such background should help partially contextualize Tisdall’s latest “analysis” of the foreign policy implications of the American elections, “You’ve been Romney-ed! Obama must beware of GOP foreign policy vortex“, Jan. 15.
Tisdall’s broad argument is that Obama should keep to his principles and not be pushed unwillingly into a regional war with Iran, as both the result of a political pressure (to be more hawkish and, thus, win re-election) from Mitt Romney’s increasingly confrontational and belligerent foreign policy positions regarding Iran – pressure partially caused by “Israel’s obsession ”with eliminating the Iranian threat.”
Tisdall blames Romney for his ”uncompromising hostility to the Tehran regime” – such as his support for an “increase [of] US military presence around Iran, stepped up covert warfare, support for Iranian opposition groups, and beefed up military co-operation with Israel” – which, he argues, would play right into Netanyahu’s hands.
Tisdall:
All this must be highly encouraging to Netanyahu, who does not get on with Obama, is obsessed with eliminating the Iranian threat, and fears Obama would use a second term to pursue a more forceful regional peacemaking agenda, on Palestine as well as on Iran. For Iranian leaders, pondering war or peace, it must all seem highly provocative.
In this passage Tisdall demonstrates his moral divide: a militaristic Israel which fears the specter of a “peacemaking agenda”, and is irrationally obsessed with the Iranian threat, versus an Iran (“pondering war and peace”) which understandably views such American and Israeli belligerence as “provocative”.
Tisdall’s empathy for the legitimate concerns of the Mullahs in Tehran, and condemnation of Israeli measures meant to thwart the Iranian threat, represents pretty much conventional wisdom at the Guardian.
Such moral reasoning has included:
- Brian Whitaker sowing doubt over the “question” of whether Iran is seeking nuclear weapons (Why do the US media believe the worse about Iran?, Nov. 9).
- A Guardian editorial warning Israel against saber-rattling against Iran, and arguing that the Jewish state should just learn to live with a nuclear armed Iran (Iran, bolting the stable door, Nov. 9).
- Mehdi Hasan’s tear jerking tale of a beleaguered Iran threatened on all sides, which understandably may desires a nuclear weapon to defend themselves from U.S. and Israeli aggression (If you lived in Iran, wouldn’t you want the nuclear bomb, Nov. 17).
- Seumas Milne’s polemical attempt to obfuscate Iranian nuclear ambitions, which included an urgent plea for readers to prevent a “covert US-Israeli campaign against Tehran” from exploding into a global war (War on Iran has already begun. Act before it threatens all of us. Dec. 7).
- Simon Jenkins’ argument that the Israel lobby is pushing an unwilling Obama into militaristic policies towards Iran, (“Why is Britain ramping up sanctions against Iran?, Jan. 3).
- Saeed Kamali Dehghan’s warning against covert actions by the West and Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes, which will “ruin any chance of dialogue with Tehran” (The covert war on Iran is illegal and dangerous, Jan. 11).
Of course, strangely missing from any of these essays and editorials warning about the dangers of provocative acts by Israel and the US is any mention that Iran’s military is not only already engaged in routine belligerence acts, but routinely foments terrorism around the globe, and engages in proxy wars as a component of their foreign policy aims of exporting their Islamist revolution.
Iran is widely recognized as the world’s leading state sponsor of international terrorism. Both directly and indirectly, Iran funds, trains and arms groups that share the regime’s stated goal of destroying Israel and the West, as well as overthrowing moderate Muslim regimes. Groups who have received the Islamic Republic’s largess include Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
Iran also provides support to Islamist insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have inflicted casualties on American, British, Australian and other multinational forces.
In fact, Iran is attempting to expand its terror network beyond the Middle East, using Hezbollah and splinter groups of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to recruit and train sleeper cells in foreign countries.
The manner in which Tisdall and his Guardian colleagues almost uniformly contextualize the regional tension in a manner which frames Israel and the West as the warmongering aggressors and Iran as the victim of such (imperialist) aggression represents another instructive example of Guardian Left ideology.
The anti-imperialism which inspires such moral inversions, and informs their journalistic activism, is one of the more salient factors in properly understanding the institution’s near universal lack of moral sympathy for the Jewish state and the very real dangers the country faces.
The Guardian’s anti-Zionism doesn’t occur in an ideological vacuum and, as such, their coverage of the Iranian nuclear issue should necessarily be seen as part of their broader perverse understanding of what stances their “liberal” political package demands.
Related articles
- Guardian warns of dangerous saber-rattling by anti-Iranian Sunni-Zionist Alliance (cifwatch.com)
- The Iranian Guardians: CiF readers come out in force to demonize Israel, & defend Islamist regime (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Simon Jenkins suggests Obama’s sanctions against Iran caused by Israel lobby (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s Simon Tisdall, genocidal Arab dictator whisperer, takes aim at Israel’s Prime Minister (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian and rest of British media get it wrong about Iranian threat. (cifwatch.com)
- Flagman: Arab ‘Spring’, the Guardian & the glorification of a nation’s anti-Zionist obsession (cifwatch.com)
- More Pro-Iranian “Hasbara” at ‘Comment is Free’ (cifwatch.com)
- Berchmans’ off-topic Israel hatred of the day: On the IDF and dead Palestinian children (cifwatch.com)
- Israel, Likudniks & their enablers: The Guardian’s Ian Williams takes a brave stand against Zionism! (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s continuing obsession with Israel, by the numbers (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by AKUS
A screaming headline over a January 11th article by Julian Borger in the Guardian once again casts Israel in the worst possible light:
In fact, as even Borger points out, the three worst countries for nuclear security recognized by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) were no surprise at all:
No surprises about the bottom three when it comes to the overall score. North Korea is worse, then Pakistan and Iran.
The next group from the bottom is more noteworthy. India is 28th out of the 32 nuclear material states, China is 27th and Israel is 25th, below Russia and other former Soviet republics previously thought to be the worst threats in terms of nuclear security.
Make of it what you will, but only Israel and Iran, by the way, are linked to in the Borger article.
The NTI provides what at first sight is an innocuous opportunity for the reader on its website to assign his or her own weightings to the five “categories” and see how changing a weighting changes each country’s score. You appear to have the opportunity to play “nuclear regulator” and see how a country you select does depending on changes in these weightings. Here’s a screen shot:
Each “category” has a number of sub-categories or “indicators” – e.g., “Security Personnel Measures” – with a value between 0 (lowest) and 4 (highest) and a weighting.
For the details on the “indicators” and how they are scored, you have to dig in to the spreadsheet you can download via a link by the NTI that lists the “Economist Intelligence Unit analyst qualitative assessment(s) based on official national sources, which vary by country” for a large number of weighted sub-measures of the sub-indicators of the indicators in each category. (Don’t worry about it – it’s easier to check the spreadsheet for details.)
The reader of the NTI website is not allowed to adjust the “indicator” scores and hidden indicator weightings found in the provided spreadsheet, only the “category” scores.
For example:
The “category” of “Security and Control Measures“, which I would rank the most critical, is weighted by the NTI as a 2.
The scoring is based on the four “indicators” shown above, each scored over a number of “sub-indicators” :
The following countries, listed alphabetically, have the highest score possible of 4 for Security Personnel Measures as shown in the spreadsheet:
On a measure of “Security Personnel Measures” NTI ranks Israel in the top league with the world’s best performers. Bringing up the rear are:
Norway, not known as a proliferator, gets 2 points, along with Uzbekistan!
But all is fair in politics and propaganda, so the NTI throws in an “indicator” it calls “Control and Accounting Procedures” intended to show how open a country is about revealing information about materials control and accounting. Israel refuses to release this information (which does NOT mean it does not have the controls or the information) so gets a score of 0, below even Iran with a 1, while Norway, of course, gets a 5 out of 5!
Thus, Israel’s score on the critical issue of security of nuclear material is distorted because information is not known on how it controls access to nuclear material.
Even worse, the categories of “Domestic Commitments and Capacity” and “Societal Factors” allow the authors of the study to stray from the possibly measurable to the utterly imponderable. Several of the scores awarded to countries for their Societal Factors “indicators” reveal the NTI’s biases. While their biases may be there for others of the countries the report covers, our focus is on Israel.
One of the 5 “categories” is “Societal Factors”, weighted by NTI at 1.5. In this “category” there is an “indicator” of “Political Stability” that has a maximum score of 20 and an indicator weighting of 1, as opposed to 4 for “Security Personnel Measures”, where Israel scores highly. The value of 20 is arrived at by assessing and summing 5 “sub-indicators” such as “sporadic conflict” and “orderly transfer of power”, each with a maximum score of 4.
How many would agree with the following? Israel, a democracy that has never had a revolution nor is it faced with one, brings up the rear by NTI estimates in the “indicator” of “Political Stability”, sandwiched between China and Iran!
Top of the list is – you could have guessed it – is Norway with 20 points:
By favoring bureaucratic issues and introducing what can only be political bias, and eliminating scores where countries do not provide data, the report over-weights areas in which Israel does poorly (e.g., where it won’t, for security reasons, release data). On the other hand, it under-weights more directly critical areas of security in which Norway, for example, (which has currently no security reasons to withhold information) does poorly.
The spreadsheet allows comparisons between countries. Here is a summary it can provide for Israel and Norway, showing Israel ahead of Norway in matters of nuclear security even if behind on various reporting and bureaucratic measures!
As a result the report presents an entirely false view of Israel as a greater threat than Norway (for example) from the point of view of nuclear proliferation. A moment’s thought should suggest that security-conscious Israel is far less vulnerable to theft of nuclear material than a laissez-faire Scandinavian country.
What we have from the NTI is a hodge podge of some genuine assessments of countries’ ability and commitment to safeguard their nuclear facilities mixed in with reports on, for example, compliance with UN resolutions and obviously biased assessments of “political stability”.
The false picture the report presents is reinforced by allowing readers to play with the “category” weightings on the NTI website, but not the critical “indicator” values. The “category” weightings barely move the countries relative to one another because the underlying biases are so strongly baked in to the scoring.
Contrary what the headline states, in the critical and measurable area of actual security of nuclear assets, Israel is ranked among the best.
Of course, it would be too much to expect the Guardian’s expert on Global Security, Julian Borger, to actually dig in and critique the report’s methodology rather than writing a fluff piece that opened the door for another “shocking Israel” headline.
In fact, the Israel-obsessed Guardian should have had this as the headline to Borger’s piece of unresearched fluff:
NTI report ranks Israel among the world’s best for nuclear security
Related articles
- Obama condemns Arab antisemitism in UN speech. The Guardian’s first reaction? Outrage. (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian describes Iranian blast, which killed missile program architect, as “dangerous Israeli escalation” (cifwatch.com)
- The anatomy of a Guardian smear against Israel (cifwatch.com)
- The Iranian Guardians: CiF readers come out in force to demonize Israel, & defend Islamist regime (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian’s continuing campaign to persuade the world of the benign nature of the Iranian regime and its nuclear programme (also, here and here) was augmented on January 11th with another article by ex-pat Iranian Saeed Kamali Dehghan which, in finger-wagging fashion, informs us that “[t]his covert war on Iran is illegal and dangerous“.
With all the integrity and accuracy of a tabloid gossip columnist, Dehghan lays the responsibility for a whole string of events – which he takes care to detail meticulously – firmly at the door of Israel, the United States or the United Kingdom.
Or, perhaps all three: he doesn’t seem quite able to decide and of course he has no real proof for any of his speculations beyond the usual knee-jerk official Iranian reactions.
But for the Guardian and Dehghan, it is enough that Israel “has refused to deny involvement” to make it the natural prime suspect of choice.
Apparently having fully embraced the traditional Guardian anti-Western stance, Dehghan appears not to have considered the possibility that the Gulf nations in proximity to Iran have just as much – if not more – of an interest in preventing its acquisition of nuclear weapons. Conveniently, he also neglects to mention that the various incidents were apparently carried out by Iranian nationals – a fact which opens up even more possibilities.
Dehghan choses to lump attacks on various nuclear scientists together with the two explosions at military bases last year, despite the fact that there is no proof of connection and the explosions took place at sites later shown to have nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, what little information there is may even suggest that at least some of the past year’s incidents may have more to do with internal factors than cunning covert warfare.
But the cherry on the cream comes in the form of Dehghan’s appeal to international law in defence of a totalitarian regime which (as he well knows) violates human rights laws in its domestic arena on a daily basis, and arms its Syrian dictator ally (currently engaged in the murder of innocent civilians), as well as terrorist groups in Gaza and Lebanon.
“But no matter who is responsible for the extrajudicial killings and apparent sabotage, one thing should be considered above all: these are illegal actions under international law.
Whether it’s an individual simply murdering people or a foreign state inflicting injuries upon the nationals of another state and violating the territorial sovereignty of the Islamic republic, international laws and human rights conventions prohibit such activities.
Supporters of covert war against Iran see it as an alternative to aerial bombing raids or full-scale war. They believe it’s a better approach (even though it is illegal) since there are fewer civilian casualties and public confrontation with supporters of Iran, such as Russia and China, can be avoided.”
Until reaching the final paragraph, it is difficult to ascertain from this article what Dehghan would prefer: the upholding of his (unsourced) version of international law or the mass-killing of civilians on both sides. But then we read this:
“But illegal action will only ruin any chance of dialogue with Tehran. It will encourage Iran to be less prudent and become more radical about its nuclear activities and – most importantly – will encourage Iran to react in a similar fashion with its own covert operations. The covert war against Iran, if not stopped, could escalate out of control.”
So in fact, Dehghan is conveying a not so veiled threat – but the question is, on behalf of whom?
Has he merely spent too much time in the company of Seumas Milne – a supporter of the Stop the War Coalition, which frequently collaborates with the Khomenist Islamic Human Rights Commission and has embraced the approach of the ‘Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran‘ (CASMII)?
Of note, CASMII was founded by Abbas Edalat, a professor connected to the inner circle of the Iranian regime whose primary mission appears to be the defense of the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions. As such, it was interesting to see Dehghan’s ‘Comment is Free’ piece featured prominently on CASMII’s website.
Or is Dehghan – an Iranian national who openly champions LGBT rights, and has family still at the mercy of a regime which executes gays - subject to other pressures?
One sincerely hopes that the former is the case, but nevertheless, his analysis indicates that there is no room for the proverbial cigarette paper between the approach of the Guardian and that of the repressive theocratic dictatorship in Tehran.
That fact should be of profound concern to any Left-wing liberal still reading Comment is Free.
Related articles
Perhaps to fill their quota of CiF essays not viscerally hostile to the U.S., and Israel’s very existence, the Guardian published “A covert campaign is the only way stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions“, by Andrew Cummings – an adviser on the Middle East and US affairs in the UK cabinet office national security staff.
Cummings argues that a negotiated settlement needs a comprehensive strategy, including covert action, increasingly robust sanctions, along with a credible threat of military action.
The author also pointed out the following politically inconvenient fact:
“Through the Revolutionary Guards, “Iran has been responsible for increasing the efficacy of insurgent improvised bombs in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It has helped to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria and has a track record of attempting to assassinate or imprison its enemies – both at home and abroad.”
True to form, the merry band of Iran defenders whose Guardian-style politics can be pretty much summed up as “the enemy of the US and Israel are by definition deserving of sympathy”, immediately pounced on Cummings’ heterodox pro-Western views, often leveling clear ad hominem attacks on the author which have curiously not been deleted.
(I’ve read the first 202 comments posted thus far, and would gauge those militantly opposed to Cummings’ views in the 90-95% range, many of which are openly hostile to any suggestion that the West should challenge Iran’s aspirations for regional hegemony.)
Cummings is a Mossad agent who should be imprisoned or exiled (12 Recommends, not deleted)
Another accusation that Cummings is a Mossad Agent (10 Recommends)
U.S. and Israel are terrorists and war criminals (41 recommends)
The U.S. and Israel are a blight on the human race (22 recommends)
Iran should be seen as a check against the bullying and hegemony of the U.S and its allies. (23 Recommends)
Cummings is closer to an al-Qaeda terrorist than a civilized human being (25 Recommends)
Israel is an aggressive, jingoistic country which constantly murders innocent civilians (6 Recommends)
Cites conspiracy theory, including the suggestion that Israel lobby is behind assassinations
Perhaps Israeli leaders should be assassinated (8 Recommends)
And, finally, for some comic relief, here’s Berchmans, on the secret war mongering agenda of the “buffoons” at (multiple?) anti-CiF sites!
Related articles
- On CiF contributor Jonathan Guyer’s “chilling relations” with truth, context, and proportion (cifwatch.com)
- CiF piece by Brian Whitaker on “why media believes worst about Iran” draws on conspiracy blog (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian welcomes back Ben White, tireless campaigner for the end of the Jewish State (cifwatch.com)
- Tin-Pot Pravda: Guardian editorial scolds Israel for taking Iranian nuclear threat seriously (cifwatch.com)
- How Guardian writers file stories about life in Gaza without mentioning Hamas, without really trying (cifwatch.com)
- CiF contributor characterizes Israel’s relationship with India as an alliance based on Islamophobia (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian readers claim leading Zionists during WWII rooted for Hitler. Comments not deleted by CiF Moderators (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by Tom Wilson, and originally published at The Jerusalem Post.
When Iranians stormed the British embassy in Tehran, it was reported that they had burned the British flag, yet the truth is that they actually burned the Israeli and American flags along with the British one. This should have told observers something.
It should have alerted them to the ideology at work there, an ideology that singles out Western democracies less for what they do and more because of what they are and what they represent in the world. And, just as the British media has so often gotten it wrong on Israel’s attempts to defend its civilians, so too this error of judgment seems to extend to Britain’s own international efforts.
Seeing members of a mob brandishing a portrait of England’s Queen Elizabeth II as they stormed her embassy in Tehran, with the Iranian police initially appearing pretty impassive, you would have thought it would be clear to the British media which side they ought to be on. After all, with the Iranian parliament having voted to downgrade diplomatic relations to the sound of some of its members chanting “death to Britain,” many suspected that the ‘student’ riot was anything but spontaneous and, indeed, far from independent of the Iranian authorities’ influence.
Yet for some, this was not an occasion to rally to Britain’s defense, but rather to chastise its government for its policy on Iran and its nuclear program. A flurry of opinion pieces appeared, mostly in the liberal press, arguing that Britain had brought this on itself through its harsh dealings with Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime. This reaction, however, only reveals the extent to which some commentators in the West refuse to recognize that people in other cultures also have agency in their actions, that they are not simply reactive to our alleged geopolitical mismanagements.
In one opinion piece for The Guardian, former British Minister of State Mark Malloch-Brown argued that Britain had acted as a “ringleader of efforts to squeeze Iran” and, as such, has made itself an American proxy in the eyes of the Iranians, a cardinal sin in the view of Britain’s liberal circles.
The Independent’s Middle East editor Robert Fisk went further still, arguing the case that the recent sanctions are just a small part of a long history of reasons “that makes Iranians hate the UK.” Fisk has dismissed former Bristh prime minister Tony Blair and British governments for “raving” about “the necessity of standing up to Iranian aggression” and what he calls “the supposedly terrorist nature of the Iranian government”. These commentators seem to possess short memories, choosing to ignore the Iranian kidnapping of three British naval personnel in 2007.
Perhaps none of this should surprise us since the IAEA report was published last month, which provided the clearest evidence yet that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, sections of the British media rushed to Iran’s defense, either calling into doubt Iran’s activities or warning that all intervention, military or otherwise, would be futile and damaging.
Predictably these writers tended to chastise Israel and the US for allegedly risking an escalation in the situation and a leading article by The Independent went so far as to allege that “America’s Jewish voters” were driving US policy on Iran. More startling still was British journalist Simon Jenkins’ Guardian piece in which he coldly stated that “No one seriously supposes that Iran, under whatever ruler, would seek to wipe out Israel – and anyway that is Israel’s business”.
All of this appears to indicate a stark failing in moral judgment on the part of sections of Britain’s media. The automatic assumption seems to be one of an irredeemable West committing unceasing aggression against the ever innocent developing world. Ultimately, it has been the very same people who fail to recognize the values that the Jewish State stands for who have similarly proved unable to maintain any kind of moral clarity when it comes representing the dealings of liberal and democratic Britain with the belligerent and terror sponsoring Islamic republic.
The writer is a researcher and analyst at the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy where he heads the Centre Transatlantic Affairs project. Tom currently lives in London where he is completing a Doctorate at UCL.
This is cross posted by Richard Millett
New Statesman Editor, and CiF commentator, Mehdi Hasan
Last Friday Luke Bozier, a Labour blogger, said of Mehdi Hasan, the embattled Senior Editor (politics) at the New Statesman magazine:
“Wouldn’t it be good if he just buggered off to Tehran.”
It was in response to Hasan’s ['Comment is Free'] article the previous day If you lived in Iran, wouldn’t you want the nuclear bomb? which some commentators have interpreted as a call by Hasan for Iran to develop a nuclear bomb.
Yesterday Hasan posted a response to the criticism of his article and made the following curious remark about Bozier:
Can you imagine the media reaction if a British Jew wrote a column about Israel which prompted the response of “bugger off to Tel Aviv”?
I can’t see the parallel myself. Hasan isn’t Iranian and neither does Bozier’s remark seem to be an attack on Hasan’s Muslim identity.
It might be in dispute as to whether Hasan’s article amounts to a call for an Iranian nuclear bomb, but what is not in dispute is his coming to the defence of the vile Iranian regime, describing it as “surrounded on all sides by virulent enemies” and he doubts whether Iran is looking to create a nuclear bomb when he gives credence to the regime’s rhetoric that its “goal is only to develop a civilian nuclear programme, not atomic bombs”.
And so Bozier’s comment is not so different from those by people who tell apologists for Hamas to move to Gaza if they love Hamas so much. It’s the same with telling Hasan to go to Tehran. It isn’t a racist slur.
And in reality, and Hasan must know this, the equivalent far-left racial slur against British Jews is for us to bugger off to Russia. I, myself, was once told to go back to Poland at an anti-Israel event in London.
So what a nice change it would be for British Jews to be told to “bugger off to Tel Aviv”.
Implicit in such a suggestion would at least be a recognition of the Jewish connection to Israel, a connection which both the Palestinian leadership and the far-left refuse to make.
But it wasn’t like that before 1948 when the common refrain of racists in the UK was for Jews to go back to Palestine. After 1948 it became politically inconvenient for the racists to suggest Jews go back to Israel, so Poland and Russia are now the new hot spots designated for us by the far-left, irrespective of the fact that Jews got slaughtered there in their millions by the Nazis.
And how ironic that Hasan now chooses to employ British Jews in his defence when he has previously shown us such disregard with his casual attitude to anti-Semitism.
In an echo of Ben White’s article in 2002 Is It Possible to Understand the Rise in Anti-Semitism? in which White wrote “I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are” Hasan wrote in his article Does Israel “cause” anti-Semitism?:
“Nothing justifies anti-Semitism…But I do find it both tragic and ironic that the state of Israel…through its actions today…provokes such awful anti-Semitic attacks against diaspora Jews who have nothing to do with the actions of the IDF or the policies of Netanyahu, Olmert and Sharon.”
As The CST‘s Dave Rich wrote in the comment section of that post:
“The people who are primarily responsible for racist hate crimes are the racists who perpetrate them; the “cause” is their bigotry and hatred for a chosen ‘other’…You would not write an article lamenting that fact that Muslim immigration “caused” the recent arson attack on the Luton Islamic Centre…Don’t make excuses for racists, and don’t use racism as an excuse to score political points.”
And anyway, Hasan and President Ahmadinejad do have similar ideas which suggests that Hasan might actually feel at home in Tehran. For example, they both wish for Israel to be wiped off the map. In his article I’ve changed my mind about a two-state solution Hasan describes his own solution as being:
“a single, secular and binational state for Israelis and Palestinians. No longer ‘two states for two peoples’, but ‘one person, one vote’.”
And in mid-July 2009 he wrote of the Iranian regime’s Press TV that “not a single critic so far has claimed that his or her views were ever censored”.
However, two weeks earlier Press TV interviewed Hossein Mousavi in his prison cell in Iran asking him questions prepared by the Iranian regime with Mousavi reading his answers from a script also prepared by the regime. (OFCOM recently upheld the complaint of unfair treatment and unwarranted infringement of privacy in making the programme containing Mousavi’s interview.)
So, Mehdi, by all means hate Israel, excuse anti-Semitism and support the Iranian regime if you are that way inclined but please don’t try to use British Jews in your defence when it suits you politically.
And if anyone does tell me to “bugger off to Tel Aviv” I will be happy that, finally, they will have stopped trying to force me back to Poland.
Related articles
- CiF comment, justifying antisemitism as normal reaction to Zionism: 74 “recommends” & not deleted (cifwatch.com)
- Jews, Israel, & the Atavistic British Left: A response to Bob from Brockley (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an “Apology” (cifwatch.com)
- Fight or flight? CiF Watch, David Yehuda Stern & Ben White (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian Left comic moral equivalence watch: CiF’s Medhi Hasan shills for Iran (cifwatch.com)
- Arab-Israeli Conflict: A continuation of the Jews’ struggle, 70 years after Transnistria (cifwatch.com)
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
AKUS @ AIPAC Conf: Senate leader vows Congress will declare red lines for action on Iran
March 6, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Guest Post, Iran, Mitch McConnell | by Guest/Cross Post | 33 comments
A guest post by AKUS
Just returning from my first AIPAC conference, one of 13,000 attendees, including 2,000 students from campuses across the nation, it appears that the press has largely overlooked the most important speech at the conference by focusing on the speeches by Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Obama reiterated that he wants to give sanctions time to work, especially after (if?) the Europeans make good on their promise to halt all oil purchases from Iran after July 2012. At the same time, he has repeated that his policy is not one of containing Iran, but of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. He believes that Iran is at least two years away from building its own nuclear weapons, but he made no reference to the possibility that it could acquire nuclear weapons from another state, such as North Korea or Pakistan. It is not clear if that possibility has entered his, or the USA’s, strategic calculus.
The Guardian has tried to make much of Obama’s statement that too much loose talk only helps Iran by driving up the price of oil, as if it was directed only at Israel. Obama, I suspect, regrets the statement since it was so open to misinterpretation. He was clearly referring to the endless discussions in the MSM and elsewhere, by everyone, not just Israel and Israelis.
A clearly downcast Netanyahu made a largely platitudinous speech at the conference, reiterating his responsibility to keep the safety of Israel uppermost.
He made much of Israel’s ability to strike at its enemies without needing assistance or approval, unlike 1944, pointing to a copy of a letter he has from the time when Jewish organizations begged the Allies to bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz only to be told the resources to do so would be more effectively deployed elsewhere. He was clearly drawing a parallel with existential threat posed by Iran and the Holocaust, and demonstrating his skepticism that sanctions will be effective against Iran. He stated that Israel would take steps to defend its people, unlike the situation that prevailed in 1944, before the State of Israel was founded. I for one do not believe Israel can go it alone in Iran, at least with any effect – time will tell.
But the most striking and potentially important speech was delivered by Mitch McConnell, the Republican Minority leader in the Senate. He made it absolutely clear that not only is “overwhelming force”, as he repeatedly called it, an option, but that it is THE option that will be used against Iran if sanctions do not work – and he appeared to say quite clearly that he believes that sanctions have been applied too late to stop Iran now.
McConnell called for a “clear declaratory statement” from the Administration that if Iran enriches uranium to the level that it can be used in nuclear weapons, or if it acquires a nuclear weapon (presumably from a third-party), the USA will respond with overwhelming military force. Since he feels Obama is not willing to make such a statement, he intends to use the Republican majority in the House to put through such a resolution, and he believes that there is a majority in the Senate that would support the same proposal.
If this happens, it is a major new element in what has till now been largely a war of words against Iran finally accompanied with sanctions that are clearly hurting.
Perhaps McConnell, unlike others, has a clearer understanding that a government like Iran, not as strongly beholden to an electorate as fully democratic states, can allow continuing sanctions to be enforced, as such economic pressure – they believe – may only serve to inflame their population against the outside world rather than causing a change in the regime’s behavior, or a change of the regime itself.
A few quick notes about the conference:
The conference was attended by a massive 13,000 delegates, including many African-Americans, Christians, and, notably, 200 members of Congress supportive of Israel. Another notable guest speaker was supermodel Kathy Ireland. The entire cavernous Washington Convention Center was filled to capacity.
Much is made in MSM like the Guardian of the financial clout of AIPAC. The presence of the Congress-men and –women belies that. They were there, and constantly appear at the conference year after year, because of a genuine feeling that the U.S. and Israel share the same values and the same threats and concerns. Yes, AIPAC is exceptionally well-organized to lobby Congress, but those who think it can buy off hundreds of Congressmen with money simply do not understand how close and deep the ties are between the two countries. AIPAC lobbies on values and security issues shared by both countries.
The conference also showcased Israel advances in electric cars and water purification, and military coordination with the USA. Especially interesting was an enormous Humvee that has been equipped with Israeli anti-IED technology and which is used by American forces in Afghanistan, and, formerly, Iraq. The (non-Jewish) mother of a returned US veteran who used such vehicles spoke movingly about her visit to the factory in Israel where the special armor is made and how she values the assistance Israel has given to making US soldiers’ lives safer.
Finally –one of the highlights for me was an address by Yehuda Avner, former speech writer to Israeli Prime Ministers Ben Gurion, Eshkol, Meir, Rabin and Begin, promoting his book “The Prime Ministers”, which comprises memoirs of those leaders and their interactions with other national leaders. By now well into his eighties, I would think, he spoke engagingly and often hilariously of events from 1947 onwards and the words and actions of the leaders involved. I recommend the 700+ page book to all – you can download an electronic copy to your Kindle, iPad or NOOK.
Share this:
Like this: