While Israel and their American lobby are not exclusively responsible for the Iraq War, it was their cooked intelligence reports and political clout that both stiffened the spine of the neocon administration bent on war and weaken the knees of American politicians who would be voting for the war.
Likewise, Israel's "security"- demands that Iran not further its nuclear ambitions, peaceful or otherwise. It is once again in their best interest to let the U.S. do the killing. The Bush administration and Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain promised to do just that using American nukes. AIPAC is intent on holding them to their promise.
Former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, wrote in his 2006 book, "Target Iran ,"- "Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and no where else."- That war will both inflame and unite the Arab world against Israel and its benefactor and will once again bring the "chickens home to roost"- on American shores.
Keep in mind that Israel has never lost a major war since 1948. It has the most technologically advanced and deadly military in the region and, according to journalist Chris Hedges, is the world's fourth largest arms dealer and security technology exporter. It has over 200 nuclear warheads, enough to wipe the Arab world off the map in minutes. It has accomplished all this with chutzpa and 154 billion in U.S taxpayer dollars""monies it is not required to account for, unlike other countries that receive U.S. aid.
Keep in mind also that it is official U.S. policy that Israel not expand its settlements in the occupied territories. However, Israel is constructing a 40-foot high "security barrier"- in the West Bank""at a cost of one million U.S taxpayer dollars per mile""that will effectively annex 40 percent of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements and further the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This MAD policy waves a shoe in the face of Palestinian Arabs who have struggled for sixty years to live free in the State of Palestine. Be assured, Arabs know who is footing the bill.
Past victimhood is no moral justification for Israel's repressive, draconian "defensive"- policies against Palestinian resistance, whether that resistance takes the form of slingshots or backpack explosives. Nothing excuses the killing of innocents on either side, but we do well to remember that terror bombing was midwife to the birth of the state of Israel. Indeed, Israeli historian Benny Morris speculates, "The Arabs may well have learned the value of terrorist bombings from the Jews."-
Former Israeli Prime Minister Yizhak Shamir argued that "neither Jewish ethics nor tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat."- Defending his terrorist past to an interviewer in1998 he further claimed, "Had I not acted as I did, it is doubtful that we would have been able to create an independent Jewish state of our own."- No doubt Palestinian fighters are thinking the same regarding an independent Palestinian state of their own.
Since there is no overwhelming strategic or moral reason for the United States to continue its "non-negotiable"- support of Israel, that country should be treated like any other ally and not like an over-indulged adolescent. It is time Israel makes its own way in the world. To assume it is incapable of doing so is anti-Semitism worthy of the brush stroke, and a MAD policy we can no longer afford.
More than likely, the runt would not have been as belligerent had Rocky not been watching his back.
[Author's note: For a non-AIPAC vetted view of the Middle East conflict see Ramzy Baroud's "The Second Palestine Intifada,"- Ilan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine"- and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.]
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