If it is a symptom of madness to keep trying something that has failed again and again, we should start to worry about "King Bibi."
TO SAVE itself from the image of utter failure, AIPAC has started to order its senators and congressmen to work out new sanctions to be instituted in some indefinite future.
The new leitmotif of the Israeli propaganda machine is that Iran is cheating. The Iranians just can't do otherwise. Cheating is in their nature.
This might be effective, because it is based on deeply rooted racism. Bizarre is a Persian word, associated in the European mind with haggling and deception.
But the Israeli conviction that the Iranians are cheating is based on a more robust foundation: our own behavior. When Israel started in the 1950s to build up its own nuclear program, with the help of France, it had to deceive the whole world and did so with stunning effect.
By sheer coincidence -- or perhaps not -- Israel's Channel 2 TV aired a very revealing story about this last Monday (just two days after the signing of the Geneva accord!) Its most prestigious program, "Fact," interviewed the Israeli Hollywood producer, Arnon Milchan, a billionaire and Israeli patriot.
In the program, Milchan boasted of his work for Lakam, the Israeli intelligence agency which handled Jonathan Pollard. (Since then it has been dismantled). Lakam specialized in scientific espionage, and Milchan did invaluable service in procuring in secret and under false pretences the materials needed for the nuclear program which produced the Israeli bombs.
Milchan hinted at his admiration for the South African apartheid regime and at Israel's nuclear cooperation with it. At the time, a possible nuclear explosion in the Indian Ocean near South Africa mystified American scientists, and there were theories (repeated only in whispers) about an Israeli-South African nuclear device.
A third party was the Shah of Iran, who also had nuclear ambitions. It is an irony of history that Israel helped Iran to take its first atomic steps.
Israeli leaders and scientists went to very great length to hide their nuclear activities. The Dimona reactor building was disguised as a textile factory. Foreigners brought to tour Dimona were deceived by false walls, hidden floors and such.
Therefore, when our leaders speak of deception, cheating and misleading, they know what they are talking about. They respect the Persian ability to do the same, and are quite convinced that this will happen. So are practically all Israelis, and especially the media commentators.
ONE OF the more bizarre aspects of the American-Israeli crisis is the Israeli complaint that the US has had a secret diplomatic channel with Iran "behind our back."
If there were an international prize for chutzpah, this would be a strong contender.
The "world's only superpower" had secret communications with an important country, and only belatedly informed Israel about it. What cheek! How dare they?!
The real agreement, so it seems, was not hammered out in the many hours of negotiation in Geneva, but in these secret contacts.
Our government, by the way, did not omit to boast that it knew about this all the time from its own intelligence sources. It hinted that these were Saudi. I would rather suspect that it came from one of our numerous informants inside the US administration.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
3
2
