Is Benjamin Netanyahu Waging War By Way of Deception?
May 18, 2009 marks the first meeting between Israel’s new prime minister and America’s new president. Israeli behavior suggests that the pre-staging for a terrorist attack may be underway to advance indirectly what Tel Aviv cannot achieve directly.
In the diplomatic shadow boxing that precedes such meetings, Benjamin Netanyahu took a page from the playbook of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In 2002, the hawkish Sharon assured the U.S. that peace was achievable if only the U.S. would remove Saddam Hussein. The hawkish Netanyahu now assures the U.S. that the barrier to peace is Iran.
In practical effect, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq handed that dominantly Shiite nation to Shiite Iran on a silver platter. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Americans they would be welcomed with flowers and sweets. Yet anyone familiar with the region knew that a violent overthrow of the Iraqi dictator—particularly if led by a nation allied with Israel—would create political dynamics certain to favor the Shiites and Iran.
If Barack Obama fails to comply, Israel has signaled its intention to continue this six-decade conflict. That would only further undermine U.S. national security as America would continue to be portrayed as guilty by its association with Israel’s thuggish behavior.
Citing the Jewish state’s “very close friendship” with the U.S., Defense Chief Ehud Barak declared Israel “ready for a process.” He proposes three years to hammer out an agreement between “two peoples” (versus two states) and another five years for implementation. That “process” puts peace safely beyond the reach of even a two-term U.S. president.
Though Netanyahu will press Obama to pressure Tehran, the “existential” threat he cites to justify an Israeli attack on Iran can be addressed by the Israelis themselves. Palestinian statehood has long been key to keeping Iran’s nuclear program peaceful.
Better yet would be a nuclear-free Middle East. President John F. Kennedy pressured Israel not to start a nuclear arms race in the region. In a June 1963 letter to David Ben Gurion, he insisted on knowing “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Tel Aviv was not building a nuclear arsenal. Before the letter could be delivered, Ben Gurion resigned. With Kennedy’s assassination, the Zionist state found in Lyndon Johnson a far more compliant president.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that the U.S. may provide Israel with support “vis a vis Iran.” If President Obama in any way links the two-state solution to concessions on Iran, he is inviting a terrorist attack. If history is any guide, that attack will be accompanied by an orgy of evidence implicating Hezbollah, with Iran the plausible Evil Doer.
Nation state terrorism is a real threat. The problem lies in the misplaced focus. The U.S. was taken to war in Iraq by those skilled at displacing facts with what “the mark” could be deceived to believe: Iraqi WMD, substantive ties to Al Qaeda, mobile biological weapons, meetings in Prague and so forth. All were false. Yet all were widely believed.
No one has yet identified the stable nation state intelligence required to perpetrate 911 or to continue to run such a fact-displacing psy-ops program in plain sight almost eight years later. Who has the means, motivation and opportunity to operate inside the U.S. with such impunity? “Islamo” fascists?
More than 92 months have passed since the terrorist attack of 911 was cited by U.S. war-planners as a rationale to invade Iraq. The beneficiary of that attack was not the Arab world but Israel. Yet the chairman and vice-chairman of the 911 Commission reported overwhelming opposition to hearings on the motivation for that mass murder.
The barrier to peace in the Middle East is not Iran. The barrier is the false belief that Israel is (a) a democracy and (b) an ally of the U.S. The obstacle to peace is six decades of ongoing warfare waged by way of deception. The problem is a nuclear-armed theocratic people committed to an expansionist foreign policy and an apartheid domestic policy.
The threat is not to the Jewish state. The existential threat is the danger to world peace posed by the U.S.-Israeli relationship. And by those pro-Israelis who produced Barack Obama’s political career and now shape his policies.
If this U.S. president fails to insist on a peace that only the U.S. can force, he will be allowing foreign interests to shape U.S. foreign policy. By that decision, he will be inviting a terrorist attack. And for that decision he will be seen as advancing the interests of an enemy within—a treasonable charge.