Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly wants to attack Iran before the U.S. elections. If true, it is a demonstration of the predictability of U.S. politics. Netanyahu knows that both Romney and Obama are seeking the support of Jewish voters and would be less likely to denounce such a unilateral attack before November. Indeed, they might even help fund the war with additional U.S. loans and military support. What is equally bizarre is the scene of top Israeli officials going to the ranking Rabbi in Israel to get his approval for the attacks. We are accustomed to seeing such influence by religious figures in Iran, but officials have been shuttling back and forth to get the nod from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
The attack on Iran could unleash a regional conflict and cause widespread destruction. Israel clearly expects that the U.S. will be forced to support it with the likely supply of billions of dollars of loans and replenishment of weapons. Even if Obama had the courage to denounce the attack, Congress would make certain that eventually Israel would be given the financial and military support that it needed.
The very public courting of Yosef to approve the attack included a briefing from National Security Council head Ya’akov Amidror, Interior Minister and Shas political leader Eli Yishai. Israel has long struggled under a political system that gives small religious parties virtual control of the Knesset and does not have the separation of church (or temple) and state that we have in this country. The result is that orthodox parties have radically inflated levels of power in the country and citizens live under laws which openly advance religious practices.
Yosef has criticized secular courts and leaders, including the Israeli Supreme Court which has struggled with the mix of religion and law in the country:
These call themselves the Supreme Court? They’re worthless. They should be put in a bottom court. They, for them [God] created all of the torments in the world. Everything that [the people of] Israel suffer from, is just for these evil people. Empty and reckless… What do they know? One of our children of 7–8 years knows better than they how to learn Torah. These are the people who have been put in the Supreme Court. Who chose them, who made them judges, but the Justice Minister, persecuter and enemy he liked them and he recommended that the President would appoint them as judges. What, were there elections? Who says that the nation wants such judges, such evil [ones]… They have no religion and no law. All of them have sex with Niddot. All of them desecrate the Sabbath. These will be our judges? Slaves rule over us.
The most interesting aspect of these stories however is the alleged timing of the attacks to the U.S. election. The American people could now find themselves clipped for billions more to support yet another war without any meaningful debate. Indeed we may end up an active participant if Iran attacks U.S. assets in response to the Israeli attack. It is the crushing predicability of it all that is so disturbing. The American public has long been opposed to the two current wars, but it has made little difference. There remains a disconnect in the political system as members pursue the course of least risk to themselves and their own reelection. That concern is only magnified by the lingering image left by these reports that we could end up in a new full-fledged war based on the inclinations of an ultra-Orthodox Rabbi in Israel. Hopefully he does not have a veto on the war but this is clearly a decision being made far from our shores.
Part of the concern is that President Obama and his predecessors have gradually gutted the constitutional requirement of congressional approval for wars as reflected in the Libyan War (for full disclosure, I represented the members opposing that war in court). If we were to enter such a conflict against Iran either indirectly or directly, the President has claimed the right to do so unilaterally and many members would privately support the action.
In the meantime, our leaders are reportedly accepting free trips to Israel paid by an affiliate of AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobby, to skinny dip in the Sea of Galilee
It could be a perfectly symbolic moment as our leader frolic with abandon in the Sea of Galilee as the country is moved closer to a third war.
What do you think?
Source: Haaretz
Netanyahuor or anyone yelling attach are not of God to yell attach. How could they be? . If Jesus who is God yelled attach on us who is Jesus he would have never said Father for give them for they know not what they do. He would have gotten enraged calling for revenge. That would have been devastating to say the least
Raf…
That is EXACTLY right….
I get sick of people saying the Left hates Israel…
heck… I know people from Israel and Jewish people who HATE the actions Israel has taken…..
Ralph,
I do not hate Israel. One can disagree with Israel’s actions at times, can’t they? All lefties do not hate Israel. That is a bunch of c-ap.
here is why Bush and his FAR RIGHT Republican Evangelical Christian friends support Israel so much…. it is for their Rapture….
http://www.raptureready.com/rr-last_days.html
It is this kind of thing that makes me sick…..
http://youtu.be/QyLEumBKuR0
It’s all just a chess match till the bombs and artillery goes off,…. or somebody kicks over the chessboard and insanity happens. NetanYahoo sounds like he’s about to start talking with his feet.
What’s new? Nothing much as of yet. That does not mean that nothing new, meaning real peaceful resistance to injustice and war crimes is impossible. It means we need to keep trying.
The IDF draftees PTSD rate is very high. And they are not in combat. What we ask our men and women to do is inhumane to them. And a war crime under sleazy grounds in both wars. So what’s new, says Sitting Bull?
According to the USG, the US has already begun war against Iran. The USG claims that cyber war should be viewed, at least when committed against the USG, as an act of war. Of course, cyber war was initiated by the USG so this doesn’t count as an act of war, only defense.
Likely what we are witnessing is something called: “hold me back” (look it up) in intelligence circles. It is my belief that the USG has every intention of bombing Iran. US powers are quite busy asking Saudi Arabia to up its output of oil. They are also quite busy in states like OK, the already destroyed Gulf, Canada and smaller nations in the ocean, asking everyone to put out more oil than ever before. I believe they are cranking up production because one consequence of the invasion will be a closing of the straights (at least for a while).
This is madness. It is my hope that intelligence officers and people of conscience will find a way of peacefully stopping this bombing. 4000 people in Israel asked their own members of the armed forces to refuse to engage in this war. We need to do the same in the US, increasing the numbers who will speak out to as many as possible.
A new realization for me.
Israel dose not have a MIS complex. Right?
Then if they start a war, then who benefits? Our MIS complex. Right?
So who is screwing us?
I don’t believe Natanyu will do it. Threats are cheaper than war. And far less risky.
And war can get you out of office, not keep you in it.
Netanyahu (or however ya spell it) can give the Iranians an ultimatum. Advise their “students” in Gaza that if they send one more missle into Israel that it will be Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Iran time. Iran plays these name games. Their trolls in Syria and Gaza and elsewhere are really not their trolls. its just like with the hostages 30 years ago.
It is in the interest of the United States and the World that these idiots do not get a nuclear weapon. They send missles into Israel every day. Saturday Night Live had it right 25 years ago or more when the schmucks had our diplomats hostage. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb bomb Iran… (to the Beach Boys tune of Barbara Ann)
I don’t think this would qualify as an October or any other type of surprise. Netanyahu has ALWAYS wanted to attack Iran. The timing could as easily be predicated on dyspepsia as on either American or global politics.
Ralph Adamo: One of these days, Ralph, the US is going to get over the infatuation we seem to have with Israel and see Israel for what it is: the small bully in the neighborhood.
Ralph,
I would agree that jews, not the jewish people, have contributed enormously through the centuries. Some evangelists support the conflagration of the apocalypse, as it will hasten the return of Jesus, they think.
And of course, I can not contest the role of the jews in financing the revolution as well as Madison privately.
But business is business, always a hazardous undertaking.
Whether it was patriotism is another matter.
But otherwise your free slinging of left and right as pejorative labels does not speak well for your other ideas.
One can take issue with Israel and the jews as a community without being one or the other, but only one who has opinions, hopefully grounded. And even some opinions which are a matter of taste and preference. I prefer peach cobbler for example.
1) Islam is not a homogeneous religion.
2) There are liberal and moderate Muslims. They are not the problem. They don’t want to force their religion on anyone. The problem is the right-wing fundamentalist radical Islamists. They want theocracy, forced conversion and/or “war with the infidels”.
3) Nazism was a far right ideology, but stating that the Nazis – which relied upon both occultism and a warped form of Christianity to rationalize their genocidal bent – and Islam are “blood brothers”? Is a false equivalence. Had the Nazis gained control of the ME and North Africa, the first thing they would have starting doing is eliminating the Islamic hardliners as a threat to their authority just as they planned (but failed) to do regarding other non-state friendly forms of Christianity in Europe.
4) “Hating Israel” and not approving of their actions as a nation or saying they have no right to exist are not equivalent either. There are many here, including myself and rafflaw, who support both Jews and their right to self-determination and yet disapprove of the overly aggressive and hypocritical stance the far right Likud uses in fostering a state of perpetual war and oppression. I love Jews. I love the idea of Israel. The Israeli government on the other hand? Sucks out loud. And the bad actions they take should have consequences that the United States does not have to pay for. They are not the 51st state. They are not owed a goddamn thing from us. They are a sovereign state that needs to take responsibility for their actions instead of acting like a bully and hiding behind our skirts. And we need to stop letting them act that way.
@Rafflaw, So you hate Israel. You are a Leftist, so of course, you hate Israel. You would obviously flunk, “The Israel Test,” as discussed in the book of that title by George Gilder.
@Archie Type–Although the Leftists today are the primary threat to the survival of Jews, the extreme Right-wing has never abandoned their goal of the extermination of the Jewish people. With respect to the goal of destroying liberty and freedom, Leftists and Right-wingers are virtually identical. That is why Islam (Leftists) and Nazis (Right-Wingers) are blood brothers, and always have been.
What a f— show.
@James of LA–The modern State of Israel was created by the efforts of the United States, and Christians had a leading role in making that happen. And long before modern Israel was created, Jewish people had a leading role in the financing of the United States of America. Thus, while you would not doubt call me an “Israel first” advocate, the fact is that the Jews and the US have had a symbiotic relationship at the very founding of the US. Does the US have a moral obligation to support and sustain Israel? Absolutely, and this goes far beyond the Jewish-Christian bond. And the US has benefitted enormously from its support of Israel. But I won’t go into that here. For now, a history lesson is in order.
First of all, many of the founding fathers held Jewish people in great favor, including Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and many more.
For example, President John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams agreed with Alexander Hamilton, writing separately and favorably of Jews and a Jewish state long before it was fashionable in a letter to Mordecai Manuel Noah, America’s first Jewish consul, founder of New York University, and his day’s most famous Jew. “I will insist that the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation,”
John Adams wrote to F. A. Van der Kemp, a Dutch-born Enlightenment thinker, condemning the anti-Semitism of Enlightenment writer Voltaire. “If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilization the nations. … [Jews] are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.”
Consider the following excerpt from a recent article, Obama’s Historical Chutzpah by Charles C. Johnson; May 31, 2012:
“President James Madison also studied Hebrew, electing to spend an additional, post-graduate year to focus on it. During the Revolution, Madison turned to Haym Salomon, a Polish-born financier who offered loans well below market rate to members of the Continental Congress. Writing to fellow Virginian Edmund Randolph in September 1772, he praised Salomon’s generosity: “The kindness of our little friend in Front Street (Salomon) near the coffee-house is a fund which will preserve me from extremities, but I never resort to it without mortification as he obstinately rejects all recompense.” Salomon was captured by the British and condemned to death, but he escaped by bribing the guards with gold.”
“Salomon wasn’t alone among Jewish patriots. Indeed, it’s fair to say that Jewish finance underwrote much of the cost of the American Revolution, something the unjustly neglected President Calvin Coolidge noted with favor in a dedication of the Jewish Community Centre on May 3, 1925. Their generosity, often never repaid, came because “the Jewish faith is predominately the faith of liberty,” Coolidge declared. “From the beginnings of the conflict between colonies and the mother country, they were overwhelmingly on the side of the rising revolution.” He listed the merchants—overwhelmingly Jewish—who cast their lot with the colonists in signing the non-importation resolution of 1765, also known as the Stamp Act, which directly taxed American colonists by restricting their freedom of commerce. “Hebraic mortar cemented the foundations of American democracy,” Coolidge said. “[T]he patriots who laid the foundation of this Republic drew their faith from the Bible. … Every inheritance of the Jewish people, every teaching of their secular history and religious experience, draws them powerfully to the side of charity, liberty, and progress.”” http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/101230/obamas-historical-chutzpah