- Israel's Missile Shield, the Iranian Threat, and the
Palestinians
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- Israel has developed, what an article in the "Washington
Post" (Sept. 19) by Howard Schneider calls, "one of the world's
most advanced missile defense systems." What does this mean in regard
to the alleged existential nuclear threat to Israel from Iran? Schneider's
article continues: "Defense Minister Ehud Barak said this week that
he did not consider Iran's nuclear program an 'existential issue' because
'Israel is strong.' Part of that strength lies in its nuclear capabilities
-- never acknowledged but widely presumed to exist -- and part in the assumption
that the United States would stand behind Israel if it came under attack.
But it also rests in the calculation that enough of the country's air bases
and other military facilities would survive a first strike to retaliate
effectively." This is a considerable understatement since Iran does
not even have a nuclear weapon, while Israel is estimated to have an arsenal
of 200 to 400 nuclear warheads.
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- Even though Israel is a small country, it would likely
take more than the few nukes that the Iran could develop in the near future
to even knock out Israel's land-based capacity to retaliate. But Israel
also has nuclear-armed submarines that would be virtually impossible for
Iran to destroy in any hypothetical first strike. In addition to Israel's
own missile shield, Obama has a new plan of a ship-based missile defense
system in the Mediterranean, which is in lieu of the now abandoned plan
to put missiles in Eastern Europe. This new positioning would greatly
enhance the ability of American missiles to protect Israel.
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- http://news.antiwar.com/2009/09/18/obamas-new-missile-plan-aimed-at-placating-israel/
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- While war propaganda wails that the Iranian leaders are
so insane as to launch a suicide attack on Israel regardless of the consequences,
there is not a shred of evidence of any reckless adventurism in Iran's
military activities; rather, the Islamic Republic has been quite cautious
in this regard. It certainly aids militant groups in other countries,
not unlike the policy of the United States, but, unlike the U. S., it has
not engaged in direct military warfare (except when attacked by Iraq in
1980). While the American conventional wisdom would have it that the U.S.
only supports freedom fighters while Iran only backs terrorists, it is
instructive to remember the adage: "One man's terrorist is another
man's freedom fighter."
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- Even in its rhetoric, Iran has not said that it would
attack Israel, despite Western media reports to the contrary. Ahmadinejad's
2005 statement, as reported in the Western media, that "Israel must
be wiped off the map," has been trumpeted by critics of Iran as advocating
the nuclear annihilation of Israel. In response to the world outcry,
the Iranian government maintained that Ahmadinejad's words did not mean
genocide as the Western media implied. As a number of commentators pointed
out, the Western media actually had mistranslated Ahmadinejad's speech
to make it seem that he sought to annihilate the Jewish people in Israel
by using nuclear weapons or some other drastic means. Instead, Ahmadinejad
was referring to the Zionist regime, not the Jewish people, and a better
translation of his words would have been "vanish," not "wiped
off the map."
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- Ahmadinejad was speaking of a one-state non-Zionist solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--presumably allowing for the return
of Palestinian refugees and the creation of a Palestinian majority state.
This could be interpreted as a call for a type of "regime change,"
but certainly one that would be anathema to most Israeli Jews and the
supporters of Israel in the United States. Since Iran supported the Palestinian
resistance to Israel, especially Hamas, it would seem reasonable to conclude
that Ahmadinejad believed that some degree of violence would be necessary
to bring about the downfall of the Zionist regime (i.e., Israeli state
apparatus), but it did not mean an all-out suicidal attack. It would seem
that the Israeli government and its American supporters have distorted
and hyped the Iranian danger for the purpose of propaganda. Obviously,
far more Americans are willing to protect the Jewish population of Israel
from a nuclear holocaust than they are to guarantee continued Jewish dominance
over the Palestinians.
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- It is the Iranian support for the Palestinians that is
the fundamental concern of Israeli leaders, not any offensive Iranian nuclear
threat to Israel's existence. The military disparity between Israel and
Iran is far greater than ever was the case between the United States and
the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Palestinians, however, do pose
such an existential threat. The Palestinians are a demographic threat to
the Jewish exclusivist nature of the state of Israel-that is, a threat
to Israel's raison d'être. Obviously, in a one-state solution
in the area west of the Jordan River, or in Israel proper if Palestinian
refugees and their descendants were allowed to return, the Palestinians
would be a very large minority or even a majority of the population, which
would rule out the possibility of an exclusivist Jewish state.
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- But even a fair accommodation to the Palestinians in
an actual two-state solution (in which Palestine would be a viable state)
would make the continuation of a exclusivist Jewish state tenuous. So
far, Israel has offered the Palestinians something far short of a viable
state in its "peace" process; instead, Israel has essentially
offered the Palestinians only an unarmed entity (defenseless against potential
Israeli military incursions such as the attack in Gaza) consisting of a
congeries of non-contiguous Bantustans interspersed with Jewish settlements
and Israeli roads and with an Israeli security zone along the Jordan River
border.
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- Of great significance, but rarely mentioned in the Western
press, is the fact that Israel has never said it would allow the Palestinians
to control the West Bank aquifers, which Israel now depends on for its
water supply. Israel uses far more water per capita than the Palestinians,
which not only provides for intensive agriculture but also for the amenities
of a Western lifestyle regular bathing, swimming pools, green lawns.
Although the Israeli people could physically exist without those water
resources, they would not be able to live the type of Western lifestyle
to which they are accustomed--which would make it difficult for Israel
to attract and retain a Westernized Jewish population. A slowly diminishing
Jewish population in Israel itself could mean the end of a Jewish dominated
and exclusivist state.
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- With the Palestinian population being an existential
threat to the Jewish nature of the Israeli state, many Israelis, especially
the Israeli Right, view the elimination of that population, or its significant
diminution, as essential. Since outright expulsion is politically impossible
except in the fog of war, the goal would seem to be to get the Palestinians
to leave voluntarily by making their existence miserable and hopeless.
This condition could be realized if the Palestinians would ever accept
the type of non-viable state that Israel has been willing to offer. So
far, the Palestinians have rejected that offer but their resistance has
been receiving outside support, both moral and material. Without outside
support, the isolated Palestinians, seeing their liberation as impossible,
would be likely to accede to the "peace" solution that the Israelis
offered as the best deal possible.
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- In such a non-viable state, with poor economic and physical
conditions, and with the hope of a viable future Palestinian state eliminated,
many Palestinians would be apt to give up hope for their homeland and simply
think in terms of individual survival. Many, especially the young,
would emigrate in the search of economic betterment and a decent life. Thus,
the Palestinian demographic threat to the Jewish state would be greatly
diminished or eliminated. This scenario appears quite realistic, but
even if it is not, it does reflect the thinking of many Israelis, particularly
of the Israeli Right. For example, Baruch Kimmerling writes in his book
"Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians" that
Sharon's fundamental policy was "designed to lower Palestinian expectations,
crush their resistance, isolate them, make them submit to any arrangement
suggested by the Israelis, and eventually cause their 'voluntary' mass
emigration from the land." (p. 211)
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- Thus, in the eyes of Israeli leaders, Iran, instead
of being a direct military threat to Israel, is, nonetheless, a grave
threat because it enables the Palestinians, the real existential threat,
to maintain their resistance. Thus, the Israeli goal is to have an Iran
that is completely defenseless against a potential Israeli attack. Not
only must Iran be without a deterrent force, but it must not have any type
of defensive system that would enable it to withstand an Israeli attack.
As Jason Ditz wrote recently on Antiwar.com: "Israeli officials
seem much more concerned with Iran acquiring defensive systems to thwart
their ability to attack than with the largely illusory specter of Iran
using its very limited collection of missiles to launch an attack which
would certainly provoke a devastating retaliation."
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- http://news.antiwar.com/2009/09/18/obamas-new-missile-plan-aimed-at-placating-israel/
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- In short, a defenseless Iran could be intimidated into
abandoning support for the Palestinian resistance. Even better, an Iran
whose infrastructure was destroyed by a United States attack and/or fragmented
into warring ethnic and sectarian statelets would be unable to provide
significant support to the Palestinians. With the elimination of Iranian
support to the Palestinians, along with the elimination of all other outside
support, the Palestinians would be more apt to cave in to the Israeli "peace"
offers, which are predicated on maintaining the security and exclusivist
Jewish nature of the state of Israel.
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- _______________
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- Israel and the Israel lobby's current position on Iran
fits the neocon Middle East war agenda, which I describe in my book-"The
Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East,
and the National Interest of Israel"
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- Website:
- http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/
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- Amazon:
- http://tiny.cc/zNV06
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- My recent article "Afghanistan: Back Door to War
on Iran" has been edited and posted at:
- http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/sniegoski_back_door.htm
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- Stephen Sniegoski
- Israel Finds Strength In Its Missile Defenses
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR2009091801787_pf.html
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- Obama Aims To Squeeze Iran, Placate Israel
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- http://news.antiwar.com/2009/09/18/obamas-new-missile-plan-aimed-at-placating-israel/
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