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By conjuring the Holocaust, Netanyahu brought Israel closer to war with Iran
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/by-conjuring-the-holocaust-netanyahu-brought-israel-closer-to-war-with-iran-1.416847
06.03.12
Haaretz's editor-in-chief says that the Prime Minister publicly
booby-trapped himself to war with Iran by comparing the need to strike
its nuclear program with the Jewish request to bomb Auschwitz.
By Aluf Benn
Get Haaretz on iPhone Get Haaretz on Android In his speech to the
AIPAC conference Monday night Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved
closer than ever to the point of no return en route to war with Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu talking at AIPAC conference Monday
Photo by: Reuters
Netanyahu compared Iran to Nazi Germany, its nuclear facilities to
death camps, and his current trip to the White House to a desperate
plea to former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt by the U.S. Jewish
community to bomb Auschwitz.
The request, as Netanyahu told a sympathetic AIPAC crowd, was denied,
using justifications similar to those used today by those who object
to a military strike against Iran.
"Israel has patiently waited for the international community to
resolve this issue. We've waited for diplomacy to work, we've waited
for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer,"
Netanyahu warned, adding that, as Israeli premier, he would "never let
Israel live under the shadow of annihilation."
It was the same reason former Prime Minister Menachem Begin used to
bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981: preventing the possibility
that Jewish children would face the peril of another Holocaust. Now
it's the turn of his successor, Netanyahu, to remove the danger
hovering over the heads of Jewish children.
Netanyahu was in the habit of comparing the Iranian nuclear threat to
the Holocaust back when he was opposition leader, claiming that the
western powers were not doing enough to thwart it. But, since coming
back to power, three years ago, he has refrained from making these
kinds of statements, opting for a vaguer rhetoric and asking his
ministers to keep the fervor down. That vagueness dissipated on
Monday. In his speech to AIPAC, coming mere hours after his meeting
with U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House, Netanyahu
escalated the tone, both in his reference to a clock that was running
out, and in his expressed disappointment from U.S.-led diplomatic
sanctions.
The Holocaust talk has but one meaning: they force Israel to go to war
and strike the Iranians. The justifications against an attack, weighty
as those may be, turn to fumes when put up against the Warsaw Ghetto,
Auschwitz, and Treblinka. No calculus of missiles falling on Tel Aviv,
rising oil prices and economic crisis can hold water when compared to
genocide. If that's the situation, the option of sitting quietly,
expecting the "world" to neutralize Iran, or of a stable balance of
terror, becomes nonexistent. If Netanyahu doesn't act and Iran
achieves nuclear weapons capabilities, he'll go down in history as a
pathetic loud mouth. As a poor man's Churchill.
But Netanyahu booby-trapped himself back when he was still making his
way to Washington, when he presented Iran with a public ultimatum:
dismantle the underground enrichment facility near Qom, cease all
enrichment activity, and remove the medium-grade uranium from Iranian
territory. He realizes that the Iranian government will never agree to
those terms, which seems more like setting up a casus belli that a
reasonable diplomatic demand. But Netanyahu's Holocaust speech at the
AIPAC conference went much further than that.
Obama asked Netanyahu to avoid inflammatory statements in regards to
Iran, to keep gas prices down in America's gas station. It's an
important issue when trying to rebuild the American economy as well
as, of course, his reelection bid. And while Obama's thinking may seem
reasonable, he's living in an entirely different world than that of
Israel's prime minister. From the White House, Iran looks like a
strategic problem, not as a Holocaust. Thus, time isn't of the
essence, and diplomacy and sanctions should still be given a chance.
Netanyahu is motivated by other things.
It's possible to detect enough loopholes that would allow Netanyahu to
escape an imminent decision to go to war. Netanyahu has a political
interest to aid his Republican friends against Obama, so his statement
that "there wasn't a decision to attack" seems more like an attempt to
stir things up ahead of the U.S. presidential elections than a command
to Israel Air Force units. There are those who believe he's just a
second-guessing coward who would never take it upon himself to
initiate a war. It could be that all those interpretations are true.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu took on a public obligation on Monday that
would make it very hard for him to back away from the path of war with
Iran.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/by-conjuring-the-holocaust-netanyahu-brought-israel-closer-to-war-with-iran-1.416847
06.03.12
Haaretz's editor-in-chief says that the Prime Minister publicly
booby-trapped himself to war with Iran by comparing the need to strike
its nuclear program with the Jewish request to bomb Auschwitz.
By Aluf Benn
Get Haaretz on iPhone Get Haaretz on Android In his speech to the
AIPAC conference Monday night Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved
closer than ever to the point of no return en route to war with Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu talking at AIPAC conference Monday
Photo by: Reuters
Netanyahu compared Iran to Nazi Germany, its nuclear facilities to
death camps, and his current trip to the White House to a desperate
plea to former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt by the U.S. Jewish
community to bomb Auschwitz.
The request, as Netanyahu told a sympathetic AIPAC crowd, was denied,
using justifications similar to those used today by those who object
to a military strike against Iran.
"Israel has patiently waited for the international community to
resolve this issue. We've waited for diplomacy to work, we've waited
for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer,"
Netanyahu warned, adding that, as Israeli premier, he would "never let
Israel live under the shadow of annihilation."
It was the same reason former Prime Minister Menachem Begin used to
bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981: preventing the possibility
that Jewish children would face the peril of another Holocaust. Now
it's the turn of his successor, Netanyahu, to remove the danger
hovering over the heads of Jewish children.
Netanyahu was in the habit of comparing the Iranian nuclear threat to
the Holocaust back when he was opposition leader, claiming that the
western powers were not doing enough to thwart it. But, since coming
back to power, three years ago, he has refrained from making these
kinds of statements, opting for a vaguer rhetoric and asking his
ministers to keep the fervor down. That vagueness dissipated on
Monday. In his speech to AIPAC, coming mere hours after his meeting
with U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House, Netanyahu
escalated the tone, both in his reference to a clock that was running
out, and in his expressed disappointment from U.S.-led diplomatic
sanctions.
The Holocaust talk has but one meaning: they force Israel to go to war
and strike the Iranians. The justifications against an attack, weighty
as those may be, turn to fumes when put up against the Warsaw Ghetto,
Auschwitz, and Treblinka. No calculus of missiles falling on Tel Aviv,
rising oil prices and economic crisis can hold water when compared to
genocide. If that's the situation, the option of sitting quietly,
expecting the "world" to neutralize Iran, or of a stable balance of
terror, becomes nonexistent. If Netanyahu doesn't act and Iran
achieves nuclear weapons capabilities, he'll go down in history as a
pathetic loud mouth. As a poor man's Churchill.
But Netanyahu booby-trapped himself back when he was still making his
way to Washington, when he presented Iran with a public ultimatum:
dismantle the underground enrichment facility near Qom, cease all
enrichment activity, and remove the medium-grade uranium from Iranian
territory. He realizes that the Iranian government will never agree to
those terms, which seems more like setting up a casus belli that a
reasonable diplomatic demand. But Netanyahu's Holocaust speech at the
AIPAC conference went much further than that.
Obama asked Netanyahu to avoid inflammatory statements in regards to
Iran, to keep gas prices down in America's gas station. It's an
important issue when trying to rebuild the American economy as well
as, of course, his reelection bid. And while Obama's thinking may seem
reasonable, he's living in an entirely different world than that of
Israel's prime minister. From the White House, Iran looks like a
strategic problem, not as a Holocaust. Thus, time isn't of the
essence, and diplomacy and sanctions should still be given a chance.
Netanyahu is motivated by other things.
It's possible to detect enough loopholes that would allow Netanyahu to
escape an imminent decision to go to war. Netanyahu has a political
interest to aid his Republican friends against Obama, so his statement
that "there wasn't a decision to attack" seems more like an attempt to
stir things up ahead of the U.S. presidential elections than a command
to Israel Air Force units. There are those who believe he's just a
second-guessing coward who would never take it upon himself to
initiate a war. It could be that all those interpretations are true.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu took on a public obligation on Monday that
would make it very hard for him to back away from the path of war with
Iran.