America, Iran and the “Showdown in Jerusalem”

According to recent news reports the controversy surrounding the visit by Vice President Joe Biden was, and would have remained, a tempest in a teapot. Only after the vice president’s hour and a half consultation with the White House the night of his state dinner with Netanyahu did the event become a high profile media fiasco.

Ramat Shlomo, topic of the controversy, is a suburb of Jerusalem previously recognized by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of Israel in a future peace accord. So while the timing of the Shas party’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s announcement of plans to build on the site two years in the future may be politically suspicious, the decision itself was not. Other than its timing there was nothing in the issue itself to justify the controversy.

Soon after arriving in Israel Biden began a series of meetings with Israeli leaders. While the talks touched on peace talks assumed to be the primary reason for the visit, the real conversations reportedly centered on Iran and the bomb. The substance of those discussions prompted King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to summon Defense Secretary Gates, just flying out of Afghanistan, to make an unscheduled stop in Riyadh for “urgent clarifications."

What might have so alarm the Saudi king that prompted him to issue that summons; what might have warranted Gates agreeing to the unscheduled stopover? According to Israeli military sources, the summons immediately followed "the failure of US Vice President Joe Biden's talks with Israeli leaders to resolve their differences on Iran."

That Biden was unable to convince Israeli leaders should come as no surprise since administration Iran policy to date has nothing by way of success to show for more than a year of conciliatory gestures towards the Islamic Republic.

With the departure of its director Mohamed ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed what had been widely known outside of the American intelligence community, that Iran had for years failed to comply with United Nations resolutions, had evaded inspections, and was now in an advanced stage of developing a nuclear weapon. Soon after the IAEA disclosure Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s boasted that Iran had succeeded in enriching uranium to 20%, also known as the “breakthrough level” to weapons grade uranium. A few days later President Obama announced that he was, yet again, delaying his “final deadline” for “strong” sanctions.

Israel is not the only country in the region troubled by administration reluctance to take on the Iranian nuclear threat, as the Saudi summons to Gates demonstrates. Just two weeks earlier the president dispatched Secretary of State Clinton to Riyadh with the same message Biden brought to Israel: support the Obama sanctions effort, trust administration assurances. And the Saudis reportedly gave the secretary the same reply, but without the public upheaval from Washington following Israeli skepticism. The United States, the Saudis observed, is thousands of miles and an ocean away, so might be comfortable with a long-term sanctions program. But for states in the region the Iranian threat sits across a narrow water way, only seconds distant as the rocket flies. The only assurance that would satisfy the king would be the president’s pledge to back up those sanctions with military force, something recognized and approved by more than 60% of surveyed Americans.

And, as if the message to the president needed further evidence of how its hesitancy was seen by the Arabs, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, second only to Saudi Arabia in importance, told the press that his country and Israel "see eye to eye on the Iranian issue."

What is obvious from the above is that America’s approach to Iran does not inspire confidence in her allies, including Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. That the United States is reconciled to, and willing to accept a nuclear armed Iran is something totally unacceptable to Iran's neighbors across the gulf. This being the case no amount of assurance by the president’s emissaries will serve to convince, to reassure. By their concerns expressed in the press Arab oil producers view American policy as more directed at protecting its interests in gulf oil and its transport than with the survival of the regimes producing it.

And, following seven years of chairman of Admiral Mullen’s repeated concern that an attack on Iran would result in “unintended consequences,” Israel is forced to agree with the Saudis that the Obama Administration long since concluded that an Iranian bomb is a fait accompli, that America’s Iran policy is of appeasement, containment and deterrence.

Since it is unrealistic for the administration to expect Israel and the Arabs to fall on their swords for the superpower, President Obama must choose between equally undesirable alternatives. To prioritize Afghanistan over Iran will, in the end, likely result in the loss of American influence over the region, and its oil.

Alternatively the United States can begin to behave as “the world’s only superpower,” fulfill its obligations to defend the region and its oil. But this will require Obama use the real threat of force to deter Iranian ambitions. And be prepared, should threat fail to deter, to carry through on those threats.

There is precedence for an alternative to America joining the fight. In 1957 President Eisenhower intervened to save the Egyptian president by forcing the withdrawal of England, France and Israel following the 1956 Suez War. By saving President Nasser Eisenhower unleashed a decade of radical Arab nationalism, opened wide the door to Soviet influence in the Middle East. Today, by coincidence, a resurgent Russian is supporting Iran. And those same conservative Arab oil producing monarchies, threatened forty years ago by Nasser’s radical secular Arab nationalism are today threatened by Ahmadinejad’s radical Islamic fundamentalism.

The Obama Administration expresses concern that defiance by Israel presents the United States as weak on the world stage, so places American global interests and her military forces stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan in danger. I suggest that America is judged by its actions, not by those of such mini-states as Israel and Saudi Arabia, or even Syria and Iran. That reputation is earned and, unfortunately, deserved. Let the United States act as the superpower she insists she is and no one would doubt or challenge her strength.

Today the United States is a hesitant giant. But in the fast-evolving Iranian situation hesitation is not an option. The administration’s only choice is to either lead, follow or get out of the way. In the final analysis Admiral Mullen’s mantra is correct: whichever course Obama takes will have “unintended consequences.”

Israel’s coming war with Iran

When it comes to the Middle East the only apparent consistency in American policy appears to be confusion.

At least since 2006 there has been a struggle within the White House to define a clear strategy confronting the problem of Iran. Through six years of his presidency George W. Bush regularly threatened military action. But, as the war in Iraq dragged on and Iranian influence in the former Sunni state grew, Bush needed Iranian influence to contain the Shiite militancy supported and encouraged by the Islamic Republic. Even threat itself grew less frequent until, by 2006 Bush's closest advisers were warning that a US attack on a third Muslim country would harm American interests in the region.

Then, in 2007, came the appointment of Admiral Michael Mullen as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At an early news conference the admiral warned of “unforeseen dangers” should the US attack Iran. American policy was shifting from confrontation to sanctions.

When, later in 2007 the sixteen intelligence agencies contributing to National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded “with great confidence” that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, American interest in forcing Iran into compliance seemed to evaporate completely.

Today, one year into the Obama successor administration, the zigs and zags of the Bush Administration continue. One day sanctions with hits of a military option, the next sanctions as its own end and today we learn that not only are sanctions a thing for the future, but that the administration has reverted to "secret" talks with the Iranian regime.

And America’s vice president and long-time friend of Israel Joe Biden visits Israel apparently to inaugurate the latest round in futile Israel-Palestinian peacemaking. Except, as it turns out, the real purpose of the visit is to inform Israel that beginning now the two “allies” are marching in lock-step regarding Iran, with the senior partner, dazed and confused, leading the way.

No wonder that Turkey, astride the strategic crossroads of a Russian or Iranian advance on the Middle East, long-time ally of the United States and Israel, has been increasingly friendly towards Iran and Syria, increasingly distant from Israel.

No wonder that, at their recent Damascus summit Syria, Hezbollah and the Emirate of Qatar all agreed to host Iranian Revolutionary Guards on their territory. Of course Syria and Lebanon have long-since welcomed an Iranian presence. But Qatar? The emirate is host to America’s largest airbase outside the United States, an airbase whose sole purpose is to protect Qatar and its Arab oil producing neighbors from the Iranians.

No wonder that, on her recent visit to the Middle East, the Saudi king lectured America’s Secretary of State that sanctions may or not eventually prove effective, but the Iranian threat is immediate and demands an immediate American response.

Given American confusion, its abandonment of diplomacy-backed-by-threat-of-force, an Israeli response to this American created and exacerbated problem is increasingly likely. But, while Mullen and the US are using his “unforeseen dangers” as reason not to attack, feeble as the excuse, the dangers are real; and more so for Israel, a country a fraction of the size and influence of its super power ally. So, while it is increasingly likely that Israel will at some point be forced by American complacency to act, the conditions under which she does so must be carefully weighed and orchestrated to minimize those risks.

The recent warning by Defense Minister Barak that an attack by Hezbollah would be viewed by Israel as an attack by its sponsors suggests the path Israel may follow.

The gravest threat to Israel is not in engaging Iran in a four-front war with bordering Syria, Hezbollah, Gaza behind an Iranian missile shield, but in the repercussions by a world plunged into yet a second round of economic distress due to the war. The Iraq invasion triggered an oil price spiral that eventually reached its peak in the global Great Recession. An attack on Iran will bring on a second and likely far more severe shock to the price of oil. Its impact to a global economy just beginning to emerge from recession may well tip the world into an economic depression. And the initiator of the war, not the United States but Israel, would be blamed.

In such a situation Israel would find herself isolated, not just by Europe, but by its long-time “ally,” the country most responsible for the runaway Iran crisis, the United States. Nor will that isolation end with cessation of hostilities, because the resulting financial crisis will be long-lasting, its resentments also long-lasting.

Israel isolated is Israel vulnerable, and her enemies in the region will quickly appreciate the opportunity. And those enemies, Shiite-Sunni rivalry temporarily set aside, will take advantage of the unique opportunity and strike.

Under this scenario Israel will have neither military nor diplomatic cover, just Jews against Muslims. In virtually every war Israel has been forced into or chosen, in the end she was dependent on an outside source for munitions and arms. In the 1973 Suez War Nixon authorized the massive resupply airlift only after Israel agreed to American terms regarding the outcome of the conflict. Minus that airlift Sharon would not have had the supplies to cross the Canal and surround the Egyptian Third Army. Minus that airlift it would have been Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that would have been threatened, not Cairo.

The United States today is ordering Israel into compliance. The risks involved in open defiance of the order are dire. So Israel will have to avoid the appearance of initiating the attack.

How this might be achieved was hinted at in Defense Minister Barak’s warning that an attack by Hezbollah would be considered an attack by her masters in Syria and Iran. In diplo-speak this suggests a warning to Iran to keep Hezbollah on a short leash. But where conditions are ripe, and Hezbollah or Hamas test Israel, and the test escalates? According to the rules laid out at that recent Damascus summit, should Hezbollah or Hamas or Syria find itself at war with Israel the others are sworn to join the war. An Iranian misstep in support of her allies would be a causus belli no less than when Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran in 1967. Under such a direct provocation Israel would have justification for defending herself against Iran, and the nuclear facilities become open and justifiable targets. With the onus of aggression removed, although the impact on the global economy would be the same, the onus for having initiated the war would be on Iran, not Israel.

But let's be clear that, regardless of which country initiates the conflict, once combat between Israel and Iran commences the United States will have to participate actively in defense of Gulf oil and shipping. Even today, in addition to that massive air base in Qatar there are two aircraft carrier battle groups patrolling the waters of the gulf. The United States is already involved.

Should war break out under these condition the US would be drawn into the conflict and, as a participant, would be in a position to, in the end, enter a quid-pro-quo with the ayatollahs allowing the regime to survive, but with full and verifiable compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency oversight. Israel could emerge not only victorious again, but stronger. The appearance of provocation on the world diplomatic stage could well make the difference.

America’s Iran policy: Leave it to Israel!

"Let me be clear: We owe [Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates] and [President Obama] a range of options for this threat. We owe the American people our readiness," Adm. Mullen said. "But, as I have said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action."

"[M]ost of us believe the greater threats [than Iran and the bomb] are the trans-national non-state networks," i.e. "al-Quaeda." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is now agreeing with Israel and most western intelligence agencies that Iran, "may currently be working on ways to turn enriched uranium into a nuclear warhead, instead of having stopped several years ago. This "...contradicts an assessment by Washington [the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, NIE] that Teheran suspended such activities in 2003." According to IAEA, "...Iran managed to make a minute amount of near 20-percent enriched uranium within days of starting production from lower-enriched material."

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington suggests that, 70 percent of the work toward reaching weapons-grade uranium was achieved when Iran succeeded in enriching uranium to 3.5 %. To bring it to Ahmadinejad's announced target of 20%, the breakthrough point to weapons grade enrichment, would take the process another "15 to 20 percent of the way there." To take it to the 90%, weapons grade level, could be achieved in months. Even more dangerous, according to Albright, the final enrichment step would require a much smaller and more easily concealed facility.

By IAEA evidence, then, even Mr. Albright's challenge to the years-long multi-US intelligence assumptions regarding the time-frame for Iran to reach the breakthrough enrichment level was very wrong.

On 2 February US, defense secretary Robert Gates told a news conference in Italy that, "I believe there is still time for sanctions and pressure to work."

A few hours later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a CNN interviewer that, "most of us believe the greater threats are [not Iran and the bomb, but] the trans-national non-state networks [al-Qaueda affiliates]." And no doubt she is correct today regarding the security of the continental United States, an ocean away from the threat. But Israel and the Arab states are mere minutes as the missile flies, and for them the danger is not abstract, something that can wait.

On 3 February Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered "work to begin on producing 20 per cent enriched uranium." And whether that process preceded his order to enrich to breakthrough level, two weeks later he announced the deed done.

Caught off-balance yet again the administration repeated its "hope" that the UN Security Council would finally agree to "tough" new sanctions. According to a senior White House official, "This [sanctions policy] is about driving them back to negotiations, "because the real goal here is to avoid war." But if war is an extension of diplomacy, what is diplomacy without the threat of war?

As regards America's strategic interests in the Middle East, most visibly Arab oil, should US inaction permit Iran to develop a nuclear weapons capability then options for her regional "allies" would quickly narrow. This narrowing is already evident in Turkey. A strategic US partner since the 1950's, Turkey has for several years been seeking accommodation with Iran. One example of this drift is her increasingly cool relationship with that other US regional military ally, Israel. At the same time as Turnkey distances herself from Israel her support for Hamas and her relationship with Iran's strategic partner in the region, Syria, continue to increase.

So, why America’s reluctance to take on in a more direct and serious manner the Iranian threat we need look no further than US Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen’s fears. Faced with more than a decade of American distraction in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, America's traditional defense shield over the Middle East, and particularly covering the oil-producing countries of the Arabian Peninsula has, put mildly, frayed. While the Arabs see themselves increasingly abandoned, the Iranians find the region increasingly open to their influence. And the perception of American weakness, while fueling Arab anxieties, emboldens Iranian aggressiveness.

Should Iran end up a nuclear power, surrounding states from Egypt to Afghanistan would have few choices but to accommodate Iran following the Turkish model, or try to counter the Iranian threat with nuclear weapons of their own. Either way the world would grows far more dangerous. And the increased threat to Middle East oil would will fast trigger a return to the oil price inflation attendant to Bush's invasion of Iraq. If the oil speculation frenzy following that invasion tipped the world towards the Great Recession, the response to a renewed threat to oil on a world just emerging from that recession would be catastrophic. But that's not the worst of it.

US intelligence has long warned of the interest of al-Quaeda in obtaining a nuclear capability. Whether or not Iran will, once it builds its bomb, have the technical ability to fit a nuclear warhead atop a missile, they will certainly have the technology to produce a small plutonium device, one well suited for use by terrorists. And which countries would be most vulnerable to such a weapon? Think Madrid, think London, both cities targets of more recent mass terror attacks. And, of course, the United States, a country only beginning to wake to its own home grown terrorist threat.

Israel, on most countries short list as primary target would, because of its long experience with countering local terrorism, be among the most difficult, so least likely immediate targets.

US policy is unchanged since Bush, provided the 2007 NIE “estimate,” abandoned threat of military action and turned instead to “containment” by sanctions. A serious question is, Do administration insiders even believe sanctions can work? According to the Times article quoted above, "the list of [Iranian] sanctions is [already] six pages long. But none have accomplished the central goal. "Not surprising since," the article continues, "North Korea, Cuba and Myanmar have been economically isolated for decades, with little effect."

So, if the US is anxiously searching for a way to avoid war, where does this leave Israel? Administration efforts to get the Chinese aboard the sanctions train centered on the threat that, "there is something worse than sanctioning Iran: letting war break out between Israel and Iran [and disrupting China's Iranian flow of oil]." Since sanctions without the threat of force is a known dead end, what remains is that, while the US provides a toothless sanctions bark, Israel is for Obama as she was for Bush, the US policy choice to provide the military bite. In my earlier article, "Israel, America's Shaheed?" I concluded that the risks to Israel for attacking would far outweigh even the risks of living with a nuclear-armed Iran. My conclusion remains unchanged.

Iran is, via the Iraq invasion, a made in America problem. The responsibility for its solution resides solely with that country. Only the US has the wherewithal to effectively carry out a military strike, if it comes to that, and withstand the fallout resulting from its impact on the global economy. Israel cannot afford to act as America's pawn in this matter. Her past and present position serves only to encourage the US in its efforts to evade responsibility for dealing with the problem. A public statement to the effect that "Israel stands by the United States and will support any initiative our American friends undertake to eliminate the Iranian threat, including an American led military action," would serve to put the administration on notice, would return responsibility for the solution and its consequences to the superpower and return worldwide focus back to its appropriate target.

Israel cannot place loyalty and machismo above survival. Israel is not America's shaheed.



David Turner blogs at, America, Israel and the Special Relationship and, Israel.

Israel, America’s Shaheed?

Iran is a made-in-America problem with Israel being stuck with the bill. But this bill represents an existential threat to Israel at least as serious as the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Ever since 2007, when Bush abandoned his oft-repeated threat to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program by force Israel has, apparently with little thought to consequences, stepped into the gap. Where does this enthusiasm come from? Are we so needy of U.S. approval, insecure as country that we have to parade our machismo endlessly across the world stage? Is it pride that blinds us to the fact that we are being set up for a suicide mission?

While Bush Administration appetite to wage war on Iran had been fading for some time, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (NIE) gave Bush the cover needed to bow out of his threats with some dignity. And from then until the present all threats against Iran emanating from the White House and the Joint Chiefs have directly or not pointed to Israel as designated warrior. Herb Keinon recently referred to White House Middle East expert Dennis Ross as warning the Chinese that if they did not join Obama’s most recent push for sanctions that Israel, “could bomb Iran and severely damage China's crucial Persian Gulf oil needs.” And just this week French president Sarkozy warned Lebanon’s prime minister Hariri that, “Israel might take action to prevent the Iranian regime… from obtaining a nuclear bomb.” Forget that French-built Iranian reactors continue to supply fuel for that weapons program.

Who does Israel think will stand by her when the attack on Iran produces the consequence Ross threatened China with, but on a global scale? Bush invading Iraq resulted in the price of oil skyrocketing from the mid-$20’s to more than $100 per barrel. Oil price inflation set the stage for the resulting global recession only now beginning to ease. But Iran is not Iraq, and Israel is definitely not the United States. If the U.S. has backed away from the consequences of such an attack, is Israel prepared to accept them? When the Iranians mine the Straits of Hormuz, or just threaten to do so, and a new round of oil speculation sparks yet another global economic crisis, will the United States, the country most responsible for permitting the Iranian problem to get this far, will Israel’s super power ally still support tiny Israel? Or will the U.S. distance herself while the world blames Israel for the new round of global misery?

Nor is the danger to Israel alone. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Agency recently released a report concluding that, “Anti-Semitism has reached a global peak since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead… levels of Jew-hatred have not been so high since the Second World War.” If a far lesser Israeli military action with no direct impact on Israel’s critics, how much more dangerous would the reaction to an attack whose consequences directly impact those predisposed by history to blame the Jews?

How did Iran grow into the massive problem it represents today?

With the invasion of Iraq Bush replaced Sadam and his Sunni Ba’ath party with a government headed by Iraqi Shiites. By that single act Iraq was overnight transformed from mortal enemy and barrier to Iranian hegemonic ambitions into a potential ally and invasion corridor, brought the Iranian threat to the border of Saudi oil wells. Responding to the dual threat of an Iranian bomb, and an increasingly uncertain American defense umbrella, countries from Yemen in the south to Turkey in the north are forced to seek accommodation with the emerging Iranian reality.

But the 2007 NIE allowing Bush to step back from Iran contradicted most credible intelligence agencies assessments of the situation, including Israel’s Mossad, Britain’s MI6 and Germany’s BND. The soon to be released 2010 NIE reportedly concedes its 2007 “mistake.” According to government sources quoted in Newsweek, “U.S. analysts now believe that Iran may well have resumed ‘research’…but that Tehran is not… actually trying to build a weapon (my quotes).” Two “estimates” for two presidents. With that earlier NIE having insisted that Iraq possessed those missing WMD, and so justified invading Iraq, it is fair to at least question the reliability and credibility of the combined wisdom of those 16 intelligence agencies party to the “assessment.” Is US intelligence merely a rubber stamp and whitewash for White House policy? If so, what might the 2010 NIE indicate about current US policy towards Iran and the Middle East?

President Obama, unlike his predecessor, prefers diplomacy and the threat of sanctions over bluster and the threat of war. And to all early signs the 2010 NIE will provide the new administration with the “intelligence” needed to justify that policy. After all, Iranian “research” is not the same as an active program to “develop” a bomb. So the United States has the leisure to pursue its policy of diplomacy while the Iranians continue to pursue their policy of the bomb, a clear and present danger to those counties actually facing the threat on the ground.

Just how real is that threat to the Arabs, to Arab oil? As this is being written the Saudis, who share a long border with Iraq, are building a physical wall between the two states and along its coastline, an Arab Maginot Line. They are also fighting a cross-border war with Iran-backed tribesmen in Yemen. And along the Mediterranean Israel is facing Iranian proxies in Assad’s Syria, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, while down the coast Egypt is building an underground barrier to close Hamas weapons smuggling tunnels.

And to prepare Egyptians for the possibility of war by their Israeli protector against Iran, several months ago the Egypt’s press followed closely the passage of an Israeli submarine and accompanying flotilla through the Suez Canal. While Israeli military traffic through the canal is not in itself newsworthy, Egyptian press coverage is. And further evidence of this “pro-Israel” course change, Egypt’s semi-official al-Ahram newspaper last week described Israel’s Mossad chief Meir Dagan, “a hero who single handedly delayed Iran's advance on a nuclear weapon by several years."

The Saudis, in the meantime, are reported to be sharing intelligence on Iran with Israel, and have quietly given permission for Israel to pass over Saudi airspace in a future bombing run on Iran.

Iran is a made-in-America problem with Israel being stuck with the bill. But this bill represents an existential threat to Israel at least as serious as the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. At best the outcome of the attack would, according to Israeli intelligence, not end the threat but merely delay it by “a few years.” But as the lone country to launch the attack Israel alone would be held responsible by the world for the economic crisis certain to follow. Already surrounded by an Arab world hostile to her very existence Israel can ill afford to be shunned also by the rest of the world.

So where does this leave Israel? The U.S. is irresolute, preferring not to be responsible for acting, ignoring not only the risk to its oil interests but the fate of its “allies”, and the likelihood of a regional nuclear arms race. Nor was this withdrawal from responsibility an innovation of the Obama Administration. It is an American position with deep roots in the Bush Administration. Still, regardless who introduced the policy, Iran is a threat not just to Israel but to all states of the region. And while the Egyptians and Saudis are apparently willing to quietly applaud an Israeli attack, neither has publicly allied itself with the Jewish state in its own defense and self-interest.

If the United States is content to remain aloof from her responsibilities towards the defense of her allies and Arab oil, of the danger posed by a Middle East nuclear arms race, then at least take responsibility for inducting the Arab states to join Israel in fulfillment of America’s obligations. As did Bush, Sr., use that preferred diplomacy to “encourage” diplomatically America’s Arab clients to join in a renewed “coalition of the willing” against the common strategic threat.

But the more sensible course of action for Israel would be to stop enabling the US to shun its responsibilities and withdraw from the playing field. Force the administration to act on behalf of its own responsibilities and strategic interests. Better to wait out the U.S., force her superpower ally, so much better able to absorb the shock of blame for the war’s fallout, than to accept a shaheed’s death.

This article also appears in slightly different form at, http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/guest/entry/israel_america_s_shaheed_posted and, http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/america-israel-and-the-special-relationship/.

Responses to my jpost article were posted after it was taken down from the front page, so I was unable to maintain a dialogue with the responders. I did, however, post my own response in case those who submitted were still following the blog.

1 flinky dinky, Thursday Jan 28, 2010
Of course, prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 military action had been heavily pushed for some time by the Israel Lobby, just as the same forces now pushes hard for military action on Iran. However, it appears the Israel Lobby has made enemies in the rank and file of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, and this takes the form of concerted resistance to any form of military action on Iran.

#1, Such confidence, but little knowledge. In fact Israel, the Saudis and the CIA all came out AGAINST Iraq, favoring the more dangerous Iran. And even there favored a diplomatic confrontation. See Bush*s CIA director Tennant*s memoir on issue.

15 Jacob - Amsterdam, Saturday Jan 30, 2010
Israel could go a long way in assuring its future if it would sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open up Dimona and any other nuclear sites to UN inspection. As things stand now, Israel wants to be excepted from international standards while insisting that others comply. Israel itself is the source of many of the problems it faces.

#15, Israel is not a member of NPT for good reason. If she has the bomb, to say so would start the nuclear arms race I suggest regarding an Iranian bomb. Israel may or not have it, but not saying so provides reassurance through ambiguity. The real question is What is Israel*s motive for an implied nuclear arsenal? She is small, isolated and vulnerable. An implicit threat provides end-game deterrence against the explicit threat of being *pushed into the sea.* In four major wars Israel never openly threatened a nuclear defense. The bomb, for Israel, is purely defensive. The Iranian bomb is not.

23 Larry xxxxx, Saturday Jan 30, 2010
Anyting Israel does will be seen as America having given it the green light, no matter what America says. SO GO AHEAD AND BOMB IRAN.

#23, Refer to my comment to #15. Ambiguity provides no hard evidence, so the world is free to interpret according to self-interest. Unless the United States is openly seen as the bringer of the global disaster likely to follow, unless it is the US that leads the attack openly, then whoever does do the deed will be seen through the prism of self-interest and predisposition. Would a Taiwan take on the US for the *possible* green light, or insignificant Israel. And what about the west and its long tradition of antisemitism? Blame the US when blaming Israel would *feel* so much more satisfying?

25 CARES1996, Saturday Jan 30, 2010
DAVID,HAVE YA GONE CRAZY MAN,WITHDRAWAL FROM THE FEILD AT WHO`S PERIL,ISRAELI DISENGAGEMENT WOULD BE GROSSLY NAIVE,THIS IS WHY SOME THINK WE NEED AN INTL. HOLIDAY,TO REMEMBER WHAT CAN HAPPEN IF CLOSE ATTENTION ISN`T PAID,THANK GOD YOUR NOT THE PRIME MINISTER. YEAH LETS ALL JUST PRETEND NOTHING`S GOING ON AND THAN NOTHING WILL HAPPEN,WHY DIDN`T SOMEBODY THINK OF THAT BEFORE,WAIT (CHAMBERLAIN)SORRY DAVE,WITHDRAWAL FROM PROBLEM NOT AN OPTION.

#25, I never said Israel should withdraw from the field, but. either sit back and let the resulting pressure of a growing Iranian threat ripen, forcing the US to accept its superpower responsibilities; or wait for the US to increase the list of its ME surrogates by inducing the Sunni Arab states to openly participate in another *coalition of the willing,* Saudi and Egyptian aircraft participation in the action. While the antisemites would still blame Israel, of course, blame would be more defuse, and Israel would not suffer global isolation, a very real existential threat to her survival.

David Turner also blogs at

Is Jewry responsible for the Holocaust?

“Jews have experienced anti-Judaism during most of our Diaspora existence, and at great cost in life. One prominent Holocaust research center suggests that, had Jewry not been subject to two millennia of European persecution our numbers today would equal that of the entire British Isles!”

According to one respondent to my recent article, Understanding the Holocaust: Shoah in Historical Perspective, Jewry should, “seek the causes (for antisemitism) in our own acts.” Self-blame is not an uncommon response to tragedy. Rape victims are one group that comes immediately to mind. But what motivates such a comment as we Jews, by our own actions, invite antisemitism, are somehow responsible for the Holocaust?

Several years ago a prominent Israeli rabbi attributed the massacre of a bus load of children by terrorists as G-d’s punishment for the “sins of Israelis.” As if G-d targets children, uses terrorists to carry out His will. In the wake of Shoah, seeking to somehow explain the inexplicable, some orthodox Diaspora leaders suggested that Shoah was G-d’s punishment for the sins of our people in Europe. But as in the Israeli bus massacre, most Jews victim to the European slaughter, during and for centuries before Shoah, were mostly the pious and the poor, those least likely to be Halachic “transgressors.” And was the hand of G-d also present in the elimination of Eastern Europe’s famed Hasidic centers, for the murder of orthodox communities dedicated to a life of learning and Halachic tradition? I, for one, prefer not to seek G-d’s intention in such events.

Jews have experienced anti-Judaism during most of our Diaspora existence, and at great cost in life. As I observed in my earlier submission, one prominent Holocaust research center suggests that, had Jewry not been subject to two millennia of European persecution our numbers today would equal that of the entire British Isles!

Since we had never experienced anything on the scale of Shoah, we could not have anticipated, taken evasive or direct action to the emerging danger. Yes there were those few, Jabotinsky and Abba Kovner, for example, who by intuition born of their Zionist background were more sensitive and alert to the unfolding events. But Martin Buber was more typical of general Jewish understanding and response: antisemitism was a pendulum that was now at its extreme. Germany would, he believed, sooner or later pass through that terrible period and life to return to normal for the Jews. As a result Buber urged German Jewry to remain in place, to wait out the storm.

Sixty years later Shoah is part of our Diaspora experience. We cannot now pretend that such a thing as a government organized effort to murder each and every Jew alive, including non-Jews defined “Jewish” due to a single grandparent convert to Christianity (1930’s German legal definition) is impossible, unthinkable. It is an established fact. We ignore at peril to self and our future generations that the Holocaust is the latest, but not last development in a process begun two thousand years ago. As that prehistory and cultural experience served as precedent for state-organized murder (Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremburg referred to Luther’s writings as inspiration and justification), so does the nearly successful Final Solution of the Jewish problem serve the future. The road to Shoah may have been twisted in detail, but the process was continuous and straight.

So Shoah is neither unique in history, nor a mystery beyond human comprehension. It did and, if history serves, will again befall us, for the solution was not yet final. The Holocaust was not an invention of the twentieth century as so many of our historians would have us believe, an event comparable to other such 20th century genocides. It was only the most recent in a long and continuing process. The only real contribution of the twentieth century was technological: those computers IBM provided Hitler, the software IBM developed to identify and locate each and every Jew for arrest and murder; Henry Ford’s assembly line adapted to the problem of mass production and disposal of human corpses.

While each of us, every Jewish adult alive today, may choose not to study the evolution of antisemitism and Shoah, still we cannot avoid awareness of Shoah as a real and recent event. Our responsibility for another such occurrence is not in somehow acting to encourage its recurrence since that is a permanent characteristic of the fabric of western culture, but in choosing to ignore its precedent. Our guilt lies in Denial, a denial expressed in insisting that our particular chosen homeland is “exceptional,” that such a thing cannot happen here. Denial was the response of our German community, with far more justification. Had not Jews settled the Danube one hundred years before the Common Era? Had not a Jew been prime minister in the Weimar Government in the years before the election of Adolph Hitler? Had not a Jew authored the Weimar constitution which was the very foundation of Weimar German democracy? Where else, or since, had our people resided longer, achieved such prominence, contributed to and been more accepted and assimilated?

For we who lived an ocean away from Europe’s death camps antisemitism was little different in popularity and intensity. Nativism, antisemitism and isolationism kept the United States neutral towards German persecution of their Jews, leaning as much to join Hitler in the crusade against the “godless” Soviet Union as to ally with America’s traditional ally England against the German threat. Even the Nazi program of racial hygiene which inspired the Holocaust was modeled after the American “science” of eugenics, America’s effort to create its own white, Nordic master race.

Had Henry Ford or Charles Lindberg, populist antisemites and isolationists decided to accept the Republican Party nomination and opposed Roosevelt for the presidency and won, a real possibility before Pearl Harbor, then it takes little imagination to appreciate the likely outcome for New World Jewry also. Even under the Roosevelt Administration the US built concentration camps to imprison its Japanese-American citizens.

As our German experience proves, antisemitism does not require a religious base. Western society is anti-Jewish by history and tradition. This is a fact we cannot, by our actions, change. The starting point for eliminating antisemitism would be for Christianity in all its forms to delete those anti-Jewish references from its gospels. But that is unlikely to happen since to do so would be to throw into question the divine inspiration of the texts as the true word of God. And where would that leave Christianity?

And where does this leave the Jewish people?

Understanding the Holocaust: Shoah in Context

In response to a recent contribution to this blogspace, Understanding the Holocaust: Shoah in Historical Perspective, one respondent suggested that we Jews, “seek the causes (for anti-Semitism) in our own acts.” My critic was himself a Jew, and living in Israel. Self-blame for tragedies which befall us is not uncommon. Rape victims are one group that come to mind. But what motivates such a suggestion as we Jews, by our own actions, are possibly responsible for bringing down a Holocaust on our own heads?

Are we Jews somehow responsible for antisemitism, for Shoah? That by our behavior we anger God and bring down His wrath is not unknown in history, or in modern day Israel. A terrorist bus bomb which killed dozens of children was attributed by a prominent Israeli rabbi as God’s punishment for our deeds. In the wake of Shoah there were suggestions by some orthodox figures that Shoah was God’s punishment for the sins of Europe’s Jews. Except that most Jews victims to the European slaughter, in the Shoah and the centuries before were mostly poor and pious, those least likely to fall into the category of “transgressors;” that Europe wiped the most prominent Hassidic centers of Eastern Europe seems not to enter the logic of these pious critics.

So, are we responsible? Certainly not our victims of Shoah or, for the most part, our victims of western persecution before Shoah. Yes there were those few, Jabotinski and Abba Kovner, for example, who by instinct and background were more sensitive to the significance of the unfolding events. But not even Martin Buber, a community leader and educator in Germany, appreciated the significance and severity of the approaching storm. He encouraged German Jewry to wait it out.

But today we can no longer fall back on such excuses as ignorance of Shoah as possible since it is historical fact. Neither can we ignore the obvious connection between the Holocaust, and two thousand years of persecution precedent, and process in the long road to Shoah, because today we have the benefit of hindsight: Shoah is a fact; Shoah is precedent and blueprint for the future. We can no longer ignore the fact that those two millennia of persecution which preceded 1933 provide the historical foundation upon which1933 and a final solution to the West’s Jewish Problem were built.

The contribution of the twentieth century to the West’s nearly successful solution to its twenty century-long Jewish problem was IBM’s computers and software the company created for Germany to locate each and every Jew for death, and Henry Ford’s assembly line applied to the problem of mass production and disposal of human corpses.

While each of us, every Jewish adult alive today, may not give thought to the mechanics of Shoah, still we are each aware of Shoah as a recent event. Our responsibility for another such occurrence is not in encouraging its recurrence, but in ignoring the precedent it represents. Our guilt lies in repeating the tried and failed response of our pre-Shoah German community who, until it was to late refused to accept that their civilized, educated and cultured fatherland was capable of transforming suddenly from welcoming and accepting, into executioner. Was not a Jew prime minister in the Weimar Government in the years before the election of Adolph Hitler? Was it not a Jew who authored the liberal Weimar constitution? Where else, or since, had our people achieved such prominence, contributed more to the beloved homeland?

For we who lived an ocean away from the death camps, we too experienced fear and confusion. Antisemitism in the United States was little different from Europe in popularity and intensity. Nativist isolationism kept the United States neutral and ambivalent, as inclined to join Hitler in the crusade against the “godless” Soviet Union as to ally with England against Nazi Germany. The Nazi program of racial purification which inspired the Holocaust was modeled after the “science” of eugenics, America’s effort to create its own white, Nordic master race. Had Henry Ford or Lindberg decided to oppose Roosevelt for the presidency in 1932 and, as is more than possible, won the presidency then it takes little imagination to appreciate the likely outcome for American Jewry. Even under Roosevelt the US built concentration camps to house Japanese-Americans.

Returning to the beginning, I am not judging the religious dedication of Europeans but suggesting that which should be obvious. As individual or as culture, while we generally have free choice in our behavior, our choices are conditioned by our history. The history of Europe is Christianity, and the theology of hate at the heart of that religion.

St. Paul accused the Jews of rejecting Jesus out of blindness; the gospels accused the Jews of condemning and crucifying their messiah. The theme of anti-Judaism was further developed by such prominent theologians as Sts. Augustine and Aquinas and, most viciously, by Luther the Reformer. I suggest that such anti-Judaism by such important figures in Christian history are bound to impact popular attitudes and prejudices, perpetuating and promoting that which was to become, with the advent of secular society, antisemitism. Nor am I alone in this obvious conclusion as my reference to Ms. Reuther, a highly regarded Catholic theologian herself suggests.

Whether or not Europe has been mostly secular since before Shoah, that would no more remove its identification with its thirteen hundred year long theocracy, and another three hundred years of religious competition between the Church and Protestantism. All contributed to the character of secular Europe, to its attitude towards the Jews. Even Hitler, assumed to have been, and perhaps by some actions was, anti-Christian was, none-the-less a self-affirmed, if conflicted tithe-paying Catholic to the end. Indeed, one platform of the Nazi Party was the establishment of an Aryan-Christian church. So we should not confuse appearance for reality: Christianity is still Gospel-based, and secular Europe is still culturally and historically Christian.

2. As regards Islam, I accept that there is an obvious river of antisemitism. But there is a significant difference between Christian and Islamic antisemitism. Islam is not historically anti-Jewish, at least no more so than anti- any other non-Muslim religion or people. And while I write as a committed Zionist, I also recognize that the Arabs and their Islamic supporters have a here-and-now animus towards the Jews born of conflict over Israel as opposed to an ancient and theologically-based animus. Moslem anti-Judaism will likely pass with resolution of the Palestine problem.

Returning to 3. If the “cause” of Western antisemitism is, as I maintain, Christian theology and its secular inheritors, then it will only begin to diminish with acceptance by the Christian denominations to finally accept responsibility and address the substance of the problem, the anti-Jewish slant of the gospels. While this is unlikely to immediately close the chapter on antisemitism, it will be a first and important step. But more immediate will be the impact on its own community of faith in removing the obvious contradiction between “love and forgiveness” and “hate and rejection.”

For we Jews, while we would applaud this very brave first step towards penance for crimes past, it would have little impact on our security within a community of nations nurtured on the milk, the history of bigotry and vengeance. We are still responsible for our choices, and for our resistance to choose. For we risk not only our own lives on the alter of hope, convenience and familiarity, but our denial of the obvious will have obvious consequences for those we are sworn to protect. Today’s denial will, as among our German community, ultimately cost the lives of our children, or our children’s children. Because the technology that so effectively identified European Jewry back three generations is exponentially more powerful today. And the technology of death born of the 20th century has only grown more efficient at its future assigned task.

Obama, far-sighted peacemaker or naïve meddler?

If Obama's real diplomatic agenda is to achieve a breakthrough, a united front between Israel and the Arab states facing the Iranian threat accross the Gulf, and his adherance to the failed concept of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is diplomatic cover, then he and his administration will, in managing international affairs, be head and shoulders above any since the 1940's. If not, then Obama and his team of experts will simply add another sorry chapter to the long tradition of US bungling and misadventures in the Middle East.

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"President Barack Obama is getting set for some military arm-twisting against Iran spearheaded by Israel." One day the US threatens Israel with sanctions for threatening to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. One week later, Hillary warns that, "it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons." And adding muscle to the threat Defense Secretary Gates arrives in Israel to discuss military options. What's real, what not in reporting regarding the US-Israel relationship? When Israel threatens to attack Iran is the threat substantive and imminent, or theatre, the Israeli bad cop playing to Obama's good cop? When Clinton demands a complete halt to settlement construction across the Green Line is that really US policy, or is it just a bone to the Arab street? And when news media warn of a crisis in Israel-US relations is the whispered information feeding those reports accurate or slanted to create an impression serving a hidden diplomatic purpose?

The Palestine Problem: The US and most of the world have long tired of the Israel-Palestine issue, are anxious for a quick fix. Accepting the Arab assertion that Palestine is the reason for all that ails the Middle East, not the corruption and police-state controls feeding unrest at home, then the simple answer for the simple problem is for powerful Israel to bend and grant the Palestinians a state. Except that, since the introduction of the Saudi Plan and for decades before, the Palestinians never fielded a leadership capable of defining and achieving that goal. And today the Palestinian leadership, such as it is, is more divided than ever, divided politically and geographically, Hamas and Fateh engaged in a cold civil war. In short, unless and until the Palestinians can achieve a level of political and social maturity and competence it makes no sense to expect an ersatz Palestine to even manage the complexity of everyday affairs of self-governance.
So why does Obama make a Palestinian state the lynchpin of his Middle East diplomacy? Is it possible that the Administration is really as committed to the primacy of Palestinian statehood as they appear in public? I, for one, prefer to believe that Obama, Mitchell and Ross are more rational and realistic than their public diplomacy describes.

The Saudi Plan: The Saudi's too set creation of a Palestinian state as precondition for Israel-Arab peace, a condition set at the time the Plan was introduced. But in the intervening years conditions on the ground have significantly changed. Not just that the Palestinians are farther from that goal but, more importantly, the rapid growth of the Iranian threat in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq. While Ahmadinejad describes Iranian ambitions as anti-Israel, and not a threat to the Arab world, Arab states from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic know that Iranian ambitions are more dangerous to themselves than to Israel. The Saudis, for example, following the Israeli example, are building a wall entirely surrounding the kingdom, coast through desert, protection against Iran. They are also reported to have "quietly" informed Israel that the IAF could use Saudi airspace should the decision to attack the Islamic Republic be finalized. Then there is the transit of an Israeli submarine and other warships through the Suez Canal, in support of an assumed future decision to attack Iran. Iranian ambitions and the nuclear threat have stripped the fig leaf from the already existing Arab-Israel military alliance.

If the Saudis feel the need for domestic consumption to demand a conciliatory gesture from Israel to allow them to come out of the closet regarding their involvement with Israel, then the precondition definitely should not depend on an improbable Palestinian renaissance involving political and social maturity.

Obama's Grand Strategy? I began this article suggesting that President Obama and his highly experienced staff of advisors and emissaries in matters Middle East might not be so naïve and unrealistic as America's public diplomatic posture suggests. Enter the US outreach to Syria. As prime minister, Ehud Barak and Hafez al-Assad were reportedly within meters of Kineret coastline of signature. That agreement, including the legendary Rabin "pocket," secret promises presumably involving the return of the Golan should Syria meet certain conditions, already exists. Unlike the highly unstable and politically immature Palestinians, for better or worse Syria is relatively stable and mature. In fact, Israeli military and intelligence experts describe Syria as assiduously adhering to all agreements between the two adversaries since the end of the 1967 war.

Obama is returning a US ambassador to Syria, and Mitchell, his emissary to Arab-Israeli peace declared, following his recent meeting with Assad, that Syria is an important player in regional stability, a moderating influence over Hamas, etc. If Israel is to expend time and effort any way, then doing so with a more responsible governing authority holds more promise of success than with an ungoverned and ungovernable social entity. In previous negotiations the Syrians proved to be shrewd and tenacious. If past experience serves, they will be no easier today. But at least Israel is dealing with an entity offering the possibility of a serious negotiation, if not necessarily assuring its success.

But whether or not Palestine is ever capable of statehood and the responsibilities of self-governance; whether or not Israel and Syria actually succeed this go-around in signing on the line, the main problem facing Israel and the Arab states is the Iranian threat, and an open and formal alliance between Israel and the Arabs is the most effective way to contain that threat.
If containing Iran is the real diplomatic agenda of the Obama Administration camouflaged behind the chimera of an Israel-Palestine "roadmap;" then this president may prove to be the most diplomatically far-sighted and effective since the 1940's. If not, if this initiative turns out to be exactly as it appears, then the "Obama Initiative" will go down as just another naïve American misadventure in the quagmire of Middle East politics. And Obama and his experts will simply add one more chapter to a very long tradition of US bungling in the Middle East.

Postscript: Following writing this article two pieces appeared in the media throwing further light on the conduct of US diplomacy, and the apparently intimate policy coordination between the Obama Administration and the Netanyahu Government.

An article appearing in the Washington Times on 29 July quotes former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, refering to recent visits to Aab capitals, "in the past, the first thing I'd get was a lecture about Israel....I no longer receive that, and when I go and travel, what I hear is, there is greater fear of Iran than there is animus toward Israel."

And a 30 July DEBKAfile article: “As recently as Sunday, July 26, a Washington sources quoted a US official as asking Israel to create "military background noise" that would harass Tehran without triggering an outright military clash, whether with Iran or its surrogates, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas.

But in the last three days, fresh reports have come out of Tehran indicating that US-Israeli coordination on the Iranian threat was lagging far behind developments. The Herzliya conference therefore switched its agenda to address urgent steps, in addition to the military pressure, for expediting Ahmadinejad's eclipse.”