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A sergeant in the US Army Special Forces with whom I'm acquainted turned me on to an article on Israel's Ynet in which a member of the Knesset responded to the Iran NIE.
Shas party minister Yitzhak Cohen has been called a key coalition partner in Olmert's government. According to reporter Roni Sofer, during a security cabinet meeting, Cohen said, "In the middle of the previous century the Americans received intelligence reports from Auschwitz on the packed trains going to the extermination camps. They claimed then that the railways were industrial. Their attitude today to the information coming out of Iran on the Iranians' intention to produce a nuclear bomb reminds one of their attitude during the holocaust."
Ouch - to the tune of three billion dollars! (That's how much aid, mostly defense, the US bestows on Israel yearly.)
Not content with his foot in his mouth, he forced it down his esophagus: "Whoever thinks that the president of Iran is a lover of Zion with Kosher certification from the Americans, misleads and is misled." [Emphasis added.]
What prompted such over-the-top statements? Sofer explains: "According to senior ministers, Israel has information proving that Iran did not cease in its efforts to obtain a nuclear bomb, and is only acting in secret. . . . A senior security official who has seen the materials Israel possesses claims that there is enough incriminating information regarding Iran's intentions."
My friend in the Special Forces holds the Israeli Defense Forces and Mossad in the highest regard. Yet, about this incident, he felt compelled to write: "What a hell of a thing to say to the country that liberated the concentration camps and called for the creation of a Jewish homeland."
Meanwhile, of course Ahmadinejad doesn't keep Kosher. Worse, it looks like President Bush's status as an honorary Israeli is slipping away from him.
