Vatic Note: The purpose is to kill off all our soldiers through the Israeli khazar leaders and bankers planned nuke attacks on Israeli soil. This is all a game and these articles below prove it. We warned about this in a blog we did sometime back when we found out that Israel and the US had planned, funded and executed an underground nuke hardened bunker way back before any of these wars were even started, so this has ALL BEEN PLANNED from the gitgo (prior to 2005 when they built the bunker). Israel also bought the entire Petagonia sections of Chile and Argentina to relocate after this is over. Just like WW I, WW II, Vietnam war, Russian Revolution, etc etc etc, its all part of Eisenhowers warning to us about the military industrial complex, JFK's warning to us in 1961 about the conspiracy to bring America down and destroy her. Now we are attacking our own military readiness by sending tired and warn out and sick troops to areas we know are going to be fully destroyed through nuclear war. That IS MASSIVE HIGH TREASON OF UNPRECEDENTED EVIL.
Remember we did an expose years ago about how the US paid for and aided Israel in building underground nuke hardened facilities and that was disclosed by Barry Chamish who had to seek Asylum from Israel leaders who tried to kill him in Israel. He sought asylum in Canada and also the USA. He even gave us pictures of the nuke hardened entrances to the underground facilities. This article below shows they are beginning the process of murdering our troops intentionally. After reading all the links above, its more than enough proof of high treason and mass murder by these bankers, Khazars in London, Rothschilds and Israeli and American leaders. They have done this time and again with no accountability or responses by us, NOW THIS TIME WE MUST NOT LET THIS PASS IF THEY HARM THE HAIR ON ONE MORE OF OUR CHILDREN.
Thousands of US Troops To Be Deployed in Israel?
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=250249
by Rabbi Brant Rosen
How did this one slip in under the media radar (pun intended)?
From the Jerusalem Post 12/20:
Israel is moving forward with plans to hold the largest-ever missile defense exercise in its history this spring amid Iranian efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Last week, Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US's Third Air Force based in Germany, visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming drill, expected to see the deployment of several thousand American soldiers in Israel.
This is not the first example of US military presence on Israeli soil. Back in 2008, it was reported that 120 US military technicians and advisers were permanently in Israel to help operate a new early-warning radar system that was designed to ward of a potential Iranian missile attack.
But the deployment of "several thousand American soldiers" is something else entirely. Could there be any more ominous sign of the "special relationship" between these two military-industrial juggernauts?
BTW, shortly after this report was issued, the chief of the Mossad publicly stated a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel. And still the drumbeats grow ever louder.
This one hasn't trickled down to the mainstream media yet and clearly needs more independent confirmation. But for those hoping against hope that 2012 would be a more peaceful year, I'd say things are off to a pretty dismal start...
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Obama Seeks to Distance US From an Israeli War on Iran (VN: Right, that is why he sent troops to Israel on orders from his 32 dual israeli citizen handlers))http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106361
By Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service
04 January 12
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in intense maneuvering over Netanyahu's aim of entangling the United States in an Israeli war against Iran.
Netanyahu is exploiting the extraordinary influence his right-wing Likud Party exercises over the Republican Party and the U.S. Congress on matters related to Israel in order to maximise the likelihood that the United States would participate in an attack on Iran.
Obama, meanwhile, appears to be hoping that he can avoid being caught up in a regional war started by Israel if he distances the United States from any Israeli attack.
New evidence surfaced in 2011 that Netanyahu has been serious about dealing a military blow to the Iranian nuclear programme. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who left his job in September 2010, revealed in his first public appearance after Mossad Jun. 2 that he, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) chief Gabi Ashkenazi and Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin had been able to "block any dangerous adventure" by Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
The Hebrew language daily Maariv reported that those three, along with President Shimon Peres and IDF Senior Commander Gadi Eisenkrot, had vetoed a 2010 proposal by Netanyahu to attack Iran.
Dagan said he was going public because he was "afraid there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak". Dagan also said an Israeli attack on Iran could trigger a war that would "endanger the (Israeli) state's existence", indicating that his revelation was not part of a psywar campaign.
It is generally agreed that an Israeli attack can only temporarily set back the Iranian nuclear programme, at significant risk to Israel. But Netanyahu and Barak hope to draw the United States into the war to create much greater destruction and perhaps the overthrow of the Islamic regime.
In a sign that the Obama administration is worried that Netanyahu is contemplating an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta tried and failed in early October to get a commitment from Netanyahu and Barak that Israel would not launch an attack on Iran without consulting Washington first, according to both Israeli and U.S. sources cited by The Telegraph and by veteran intelligence reporter Richard Sale.
At a meeting with Obama a few weeks later, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey and the new head of CENTCOM, Gen. James N. Mattis, expressed their disappointment that he had not been firm enough in opposing an Israeli attack, according to Sale.
Obama responded that he "had no say over Israel" because "it is a sovereign country."
Obama's remark seemed to indicate a desire to distance his administration from an Israeli attack on Iran. But it also made it clear that he was not going to tell Netanyahu that he would not countenance such an attack.
Trita Parsi, executive director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), who has analysed the history of the triangular relationship involving the United States, Israel and Iran in his book "Treacherous Alliance", says knowledgeable sources tell him Obama believes he can credibly distance himself from an Israeli attack.
In a Dec. 2 talk at the Brookings Institution, while discussing the dangers of the regional conflict that would result from such an attack, Panetta said the United States "would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, sinking our ships, striking our military bases."
Panetta's statement could be interpreted as an effort to convince Iran that the Obama administration is opposed to an Israeli strike and should not be targeted by Iran in retaliation if Israel does launch an attack.
Parsi believes Obama's calculation that he can convince Iran that the United States has no leverage on Israel without being much tougher with Israel is not realistic.
"Iran most likely would decide not to target U.S. forces in the region in retaliation for an Israeli strike only if the damage from the strike were relatively limited," Parsi told IPS in an e-mail.
The Obama administration considers the newest phase of sanctions against Iran, aimed at reducing global imports of Iranian crude oil, as an alternative to an unprovoked attack by Israel. But what Netanyahu had in mind in proposing such an initiative was much more radical than the Obama administration or the European Union could accept.
When Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is closely aligned with Netanyahu's Likud Party, pushed the idea of sanctions against any financial institution that did business with Iran's Central Bank, the aim was to make it impossible for countries that import Iranian crude to continue to be able to make payments for the oil.
Dubowitz wanted virtually every country importing Iranian crude except China and India to cut off their imports. He argued that reducing the number of buyers to mainly China and India would not result in a rise in the price of oil, because Iran would have to offer discounted prices to the remaining buyers.
Global oil analysts warned, however, that such a sanctions regime could not avoid creating a spike in oil prices.
U.S. officials told Reuters Nov. 8 that sanctions on Iran's Central Bank were "not on the table". The Obama administration was warning that such sanctions would risk a steep rise in oil prices worldwide and a worsening global recession, while actually increasing Iranian oil revenues.
But Netanyahu used the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over Congressional action related to Israel to override Obama's opposition. The Senate unanimously passed an amendment representing Netanyahu's position on sanctions focused on Iran's oil sector and the Central Bank, despite a letter from Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner opposing it. A similar amendment was passed by the House Dec. 15.
The Obama administration acquiesced and entered into negotiations with its European allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE on reducing imports of Iranian crude oil while trying to fill the gaps with other sources. But a number of countries, including Japan and Korea, are begging off, and the EU is insisting on protecting Greece and other vulnerable economies.
The result is likely to be a sanctions regime that reduces Iranian exports only marginally - not the "crippling sanctions" demanded by Netanyahu and Barak. Any hike in oil prices generated by sanctions against Iran's oil sector, moreover, would only hurt Obama's re- election chances.
In an interview with CNN in November, Barak warned the international community that Israel might have to make a decision on war within as little as six months, because Iran's efforts to "disperse and fortify" its nuclear facilities would soon render a strike against facilities ineffective.
Barak said he "couldn't predict" whether that point would be reached in "two quarters or three quarters or a year". The new Israeli "red line" would place the timing of an Israeli decision on whether to strike Iran right in the middle of the U.S. presidential election campaign.
Netanyahu, who makes no secret of his dislike and distrust of Obama, may hope to put Obama under maximum pressure to support Israel militarily in a war with Iran by striking during a campaign in which the Republican candidate would be accusing him of being soft on the Iranian nuclear threat.
If the Republican candidate is in a strong position to win the election, on the other hand, Netanyahu would want to wait for a new administration aligned with his belligerent posture toward Iran.
Meanwhile, the end of U.S. Air Force control over Iraqi airspace with the final U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq has eliminated what had long been regarded as a significant deterrent to Israeli attack on Iran using the shortest route.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Parsi: Israeli pressure helped scuttle Obama overtures to Iran
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/01/parsi-israeli-pressure-helped-scuttle-obama-overtures-to-iran.html
by Alex Kane on January 3, 2012
Barack Obama signed the Iran sanctions bill into law on Saturday, significantly intensifying economic pressure on the country. The latest news from the Financial Times is worrisome:
Iran made a fresh move to ratchet up tensions with the west on Tuesday, sending oil prices higher when it implied that it would take military action if the US Navy moves an aircraft carrier back into the Gulf.
In the latest sign of tension between Iran and the west over the future of the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for oil, Iran stated that it did not want to see Washington redeploying an aircraft carrier in the Gulf region.
It's enough to make you forget that there were hopes of a rapprochement with Iran when Obama came into office. How did we get from there to here?
Trita Parsi, an expert on Iran, has an important new book out (Google Books has excerpts here) that helps answer that question. Barbara Slavin reports on the book for the Inter Press Service:
Negotiations should have continued, Parsi argues, and perhaps would have continued, if not for other pressures on Obama.
Parsi, citing a leaked State Department cable, reveals that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office shortly after Obama, told a U.S. Congressional delegation led by Sen. Jon Kyl in April 2009 that engagement with Iran should be tried for only four to 12 weeks "with the explicit objective of putting an end to the Iranian nuclear program - a near impossible task."
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress - actively lobbied by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - began pushing for new sanctions before Obama had had a chance to make a serious overture to Tehran.
Netanyahu also sought to leverage Obama's main priority in the Middle East - resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - to cut short U.S. engagement with Iran. As Parsi writes, "the Netanyahu government declared that it would not move on peace talks with the Palestinians until it first saw progress in America's efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program and limited Tehran's rising influence in the region."
____________________________________________________________________________________
[forwarded from Sara Roy]
For the new year, here are some prophetic excerpts from two essays of Hannah Arendt's, collected in The Jewish Writings (2007). Please note her predictions of the Nakba, of unending conflict, of Zionist dependence on the American Jewish community, of ultimate conflict with that American Jewish community, and the contribution of political Zionism to world anti-semitism. Just what Howard Gutman said recently. For which he was denounced by-- Zionists.
Zionism Reconsidered, 1944:
Nationalism is bad enough when it trusts in nothing but the rude force of the nation. A nationalism that necessarily and admittedly depends upon the force of a foreign nation is certainly worse. This is the threatened state of Jewish nationalism and of the proposed Jewish state, surrounded inevitably by Arab states and Arab people. Even a Jewish majority in Palestine--nay even a transfer of all Palestine's Arabs, which is openly demanded by the revisionists--would not substantially change a situation in which Jews must either ask protection from an outside power against their neighbors or come to a working agreement with their neighbors...
[T]he Zionists, if they continue to ignore the Mediterranean people and watch out only for the big faraway powers, will appear only as their tools, the agents of foreign and hostile interests. Jews who know their own history should be aware that such a state of affairs will inevitably lead to a new wave of Jew-hatred; the antisemitism of tomorrow will assert that Jews not only profiteered from the presence of foreign big powers in that region but had actually plotted it and hence are guilty of the consequences...
[T]he sole new piece of historical philosophy which the Zionists contributed out of their own new experiences [was] "A nation is a group of people... held together by a common enemy" (Herzl)--an absurd doctrine...
To such [political] independence, it was believed, the Jewish nation could arrive under the protecting wings of any great power strong enough to shelter its growth.... the Zionists ended by making the Jewish national emancipation entirely dependent upon the material intersts of another nation.
The actual result was a return of the new movement to the traditional methods of shtadlonus [court Jews], which the Zionists once had so bitterly despised and violently denounced. Now Zionists too knew no better place politically than the lobbies of the powerful, and no sounder basis for agreements than their good services as agents of foreign interests...
[O]nly folly could dictate a policy which trusts a distant imperial power for protection, while alienating the goodwill of neighbors. What then, one is prompted to ask, will be the future policy of Zionism with respect to big powers, and what program will Zionists have to offer for a solution of the Arab-Jewish conflict?...
If a Jewish commonwealth is obtained in the near future--with or without partition--it will be due to the political influence of American Jews.... But if the Jewish commonwealth is proclaimed against the will of the Arabs and without the support of the Mediterranean peoples, not only financial help but political support will be necessary for a long time to come. And that may turn out to be very troublesome indeed for Jews in this country [the U.S.], who after all have no power to direct the political destinies of the Near East. It may eventually be far more of a responsibility than today they imagine or tomorrow can make good.
To Save the Jewish Homeland, 1948 [on the occasion of war in Palestine]
And even if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the unique possibilities and the unique achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed. The land that would come into being would be something quite other than the dream of world Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist.
The 'victorious' Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded into ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense to a degree that would submerge all other interests and acitvities. The growth of a Jewish culture would cease to be the concern of the whole people; social experiments would have to be discarded as impractical luxuries; political thought would center around military strategy.... And all this would be the fate of a nation that -- no matter how many immigrants it could still absorb and how far it extended its boundaries (the whole of Palestine and Transjordan is the insane Revisionist demand)--would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbors.
Under such circumstances... the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whose possibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta. Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large number of Jews lived. Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of the Jewish homeland...
One grim addendum. In the heyday of the special relationship between the US and Israel, American Jewry felt itself to be one with the Israeli people. We Are One! declared Melvin Urofsky's book of 1978. That unity is today being dissolved. The haredi-secular conflict in Israel that is getting so much attention here is one means of that dissolution. And the aim, unconsciously, may be a desire by American Jews to distance themselves from Israeli Jews so that when the Arab Spring at last brings a democratic movement to Israel and Palestine, and bloody conflict ensues, and the Israeli gov't is cast as the bad guys, American Jews are emotionally prepared to regard the bloodshed as inevitable and not their problem.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
Remember we did an expose years ago about how the US paid for and aided Israel in building underground nuke hardened facilities and that was disclosed by Barry Chamish who had to seek Asylum from Israel leaders who tried to kill him in Israel. He sought asylum in Canada and also the USA. He even gave us pictures of the nuke hardened entrances to the underground facilities. This article below shows they are beginning the process of murdering our troops intentionally. After reading all the links above, its more than enough proof of high treason and mass murder by these bankers, Khazars in London, Rothschilds and Israeli and American leaders. They have done this time and again with no accountability or responses by us, NOW THIS TIME WE MUST NOT LET THIS PASS IF THEY HARM THE HAIR ON ONE MORE OF OUR CHILDREN.
Thousands of US Troops To Be Deployed in Israel?
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=250249
by Rabbi Brant Rosen
How did this one slip in under the media radar (pun intended)?
From the Jerusalem Post 12/20:
This is not the first example of US military presence on Israeli soil. Back in 2008, it was reported that 120 US military technicians and advisers were permanently in Israel to help operate a new early-warning radar system that was designed to ward of a potential Iranian missile attack.
But the deployment of "several thousand American soldiers" is something else entirely. Could there be any more ominous sign of the "special relationship" between these two military-industrial juggernauts?
BTW, shortly after this report was issued, the chief of the Mossad publicly stated a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel. And still the drumbeats grow ever louder.
This one hasn't trickled down to the mainstream media yet and clearly needs more independent confirmation. But for those hoping against hope that 2012 would be a more peaceful year, I'd say things are off to a pretty dismal start...
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Obama Seeks to Distance US From an Israeli War on Iran (VN: Right, that is why he sent troops to Israel on orders from his 32 dual israeli citizen handlers))http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106361
By Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service
04 January 12
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in intense maneuvering over Netanyahu's aim of entangling the United States in an Israeli war against Iran.
Netanyahu is exploiting the extraordinary influence his right-wing Likud Party exercises over the Republican Party and the U.S. Congress on matters related to Israel in order to maximise the likelihood that the United States would participate in an attack on Iran.
Obama, meanwhile, appears to be hoping that he can avoid being caught up in a regional war started by Israel if he distances the United States from any Israeli attack.
New evidence surfaced in 2011 that Netanyahu has been serious about dealing a military blow to the Iranian nuclear programme. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who left his job in September 2010, revealed in his first public appearance after Mossad Jun. 2 that he, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) chief Gabi Ashkenazi and Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin had been able to "block any dangerous adventure" by Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
The Hebrew language daily Maariv reported that those three, along with President Shimon Peres and IDF Senior Commander Gadi Eisenkrot, had vetoed a 2010 proposal by Netanyahu to attack Iran.
Dagan said he was going public because he was "afraid there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak". Dagan also said an Israeli attack on Iran could trigger a war that would "endanger the (Israeli) state's existence", indicating that his revelation was not part of a psywar campaign.
It is generally agreed that an Israeli attack can only temporarily set back the Iranian nuclear programme, at significant risk to Israel. But Netanyahu and Barak hope to draw the United States into the war to create much greater destruction and perhaps the overthrow of the Islamic regime.
In a sign that the Obama administration is worried that Netanyahu is contemplating an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta tried and failed in early October to get a commitment from Netanyahu and Barak that Israel would not launch an attack on Iran without consulting Washington first, according to both Israeli and U.S. sources cited by The Telegraph and by veteran intelligence reporter Richard Sale.
At a meeting with Obama a few weeks later, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey and the new head of CENTCOM, Gen. James N. Mattis, expressed their disappointment that he had not been firm enough in opposing an Israeli attack, according to Sale.
Obama responded that he "had no say over Israel" because "it is a sovereign country."
Obama's remark seemed to indicate a desire to distance his administration from an Israeli attack on Iran. But it also made it clear that he was not going to tell Netanyahu that he would not countenance such an attack.
Trita Parsi, executive director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), who has analysed the history of the triangular relationship involving the United States, Israel and Iran in his book "Treacherous Alliance", says knowledgeable sources tell him Obama believes he can credibly distance himself from an Israeli attack.
In a Dec. 2 talk at the Brookings Institution, while discussing the dangers of the regional conflict that would result from such an attack, Panetta said the United States "would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, sinking our ships, striking our military bases."
Panetta's statement could be interpreted as an effort to convince Iran that the Obama administration is opposed to an Israeli strike and should not be targeted by Iran in retaliation if Israel does launch an attack.
Parsi believes Obama's calculation that he can convince Iran that the United States has no leverage on Israel without being much tougher with Israel is not realistic.
"Iran most likely would decide not to target U.S. forces in the region in retaliation for an Israeli strike only if the damage from the strike were relatively limited," Parsi told IPS in an e-mail.
The Obama administration considers the newest phase of sanctions against Iran, aimed at reducing global imports of Iranian crude oil, as an alternative to an unprovoked attack by Israel. But what Netanyahu had in mind in proposing such an initiative was much more radical than the Obama administration or the European Union could accept.
When Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is closely aligned with Netanyahu's Likud Party, pushed the idea of sanctions against any financial institution that did business with Iran's Central Bank, the aim was to make it impossible for countries that import Iranian crude to continue to be able to make payments for the oil.
Dubowitz wanted virtually every country importing Iranian crude except China and India to cut off their imports. He argued that reducing the number of buyers to mainly China and India would not result in a rise in the price of oil, because Iran would have to offer discounted prices to the remaining buyers.
Global oil analysts warned, however, that such a sanctions regime could not avoid creating a spike in oil prices.
U.S. officials told Reuters Nov. 8 that sanctions on Iran's Central Bank were "not on the table". The Obama administration was warning that such sanctions would risk a steep rise in oil prices worldwide and a worsening global recession, while actually increasing Iranian oil revenues.
But Netanyahu used the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over Congressional action related to Israel to override Obama's opposition. The Senate unanimously passed an amendment representing Netanyahu's position on sanctions focused on Iran's oil sector and the Central Bank, despite a letter from Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner opposing it. A similar amendment was passed by the House Dec. 15.
The Obama administration acquiesced and entered into negotiations with its European allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE on reducing imports of Iranian crude oil while trying to fill the gaps with other sources. But a number of countries, including Japan and Korea, are begging off, and the EU is insisting on protecting Greece and other vulnerable economies.
The result is likely to be a sanctions regime that reduces Iranian exports only marginally - not the "crippling sanctions" demanded by Netanyahu and Barak. Any hike in oil prices generated by sanctions against Iran's oil sector, moreover, would only hurt Obama's re- election chances.
In an interview with CNN in November, Barak warned the international community that Israel might have to make a decision on war within as little as six months, because Iran's efforts to "disperse and fortify" its nuclear facilities would soon render a strike against facilities ineffective.
Barak said he "couldn't predict" whether that point would be reached in "two quarters or three quarters or a year". The new Israeli "red line" would place the timing of an Israeli decision on whether to strike Iran right in the middle of the U.S. presidential election campaign.
Netanyahu, who makes no secret of his dislike and distrust of Obama, may hope to put Obama under maximum pressure to support Israel militarily in a war with Iran by striking during a campaign in which the Republican candidate would be accusing him of being soft on the Iranian nuclear threat.
If the Republican candidate is in a strong position to win the election, on the other hand, Netanyahu would want to wait for a new administration aligned with his belligerent posture toward Iran.
Meanwhile, the end of U.S. Air Force control over Iraqi airspace with the final U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq has eliminated what had long been regarded as a significant deterrent to Israeli attack on Iran using the shortest route.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Parsi: Israeli pressure helped scuttle Obama overtures to Iran
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/01/parsi-israeli-pressure-helped-scuttle-obama-overtures-to-iran.html
by Alex Kane on January 3, 2012
Barack Obama signed the Iran sanctions bill into law on Saturday, significantly intensifying economic pressure on the country. The latest news from the Financial Times is worrisome:
Iran made a fresh move to ratchet up tensions with the west on Tuesday, sending oil prices higher when it implied that it would take military action if the US Navy moves an aircraft carrier back into the Gulf.
In the latest sign of tension between Iran and the west over the future of the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for oil, Iran stated that it did not want to see Washington redeploying an aircraft carrier in the Gulf region.
It's enough to make you forget that there were hopes of a rapprochement with Iran when Obama came into office. How did we get from there to here?
Trita Parsi, an expert on Iran, has an important new book out (Google Books has excerpts here) that helps answer that question. Barbara Slavin reports on the book for the Inter Press Service:
Negotiations should have continued, Parsi argues, and perhaps would have continued, if not for other pressures on Obama.
Parsi, citing a leaked State Department cable, reveals that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office shortly after Obama, told a U.S. Congressional delegation led by Sen. Jon Kyl in April 2009 that engagement with Iran should be tried for only four to 12 weeks "with the explicit objective of putting an end to the Iranian nuclear program - a near impossible task."
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress - actively lobbied by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - began pushing for new sanctions before Obama had had a chance to make a serious overture to Tehran.
Netanyahu also sought to leverage Obama's main priority in the Middle East - resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - to cut short U.S. engagement with Iran. As Parsi writes, "the Netanyahu government declared that it would not move on peace talks with the Palestinians until it first saw progress in America's efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program and limited Tehran's rising influence in the region."
____________________________________________________________________________________
[forwarded from Sara Roy]
For the new year, here are some prophetic excerpts from two essays of Hannah Arendt's, collected in The Jewish Writings (2007). Please note her predictions of the Nakba, of unending conflict, of Zionist dependence on the American Jewish community, of ultimate conflict with that American Jewish community, and the contribution of political Zionism to world anti-semitism. Just what Howard Gutman said recently. For which he was denounced by-- Zionists.
Zionism Reconsidered, 1944:
Nationalism is bad enough when it trusts in nothing but the rude force of the nation. A nationalism that necessarily and admittedly depends upon the force of a foreign nation is certainly worse. This is the threatened state of Jewish nationalism and of the proposed Jewish state, surrounded inevitably by Arab states and Arab people. Even a Jewish majority in Palestine--nay even a transfer of all Palestine's Arabs, which is openly demanded by the revisionists--would not substantially change a situation in which Jews must either ask protection from an outside power against their neighbors or come to a working agreement with their neighbors...
[T]he Zionists, if they continue to ignore the Mediterranean people and watch out only for the big faraway powers, will appear only as their tools, the agents of foreign and hostile interests. Jews who know their own history should be aware that such a state of affairs will inevitably lead to a new wave of Jew-hatred; the antisemitism of tomorrow will assert that Jews not only profiteered from the presence of foreign big powers in that region but had actually plotted it and hence are guilty of the consequences...
[T]he sole new piece of historical philosophy which the Zionists contributed out of their own new experiences [was] "A nation is a group of people... held together by a common enemy" (Herzl)--an absurd doctrine...
To such [political] independence, it was believed, the Jewish nation could arrive under the protecting wings of any great power strong enough to shelter its growth.... the Zionists ended by making the Jewish national emancipation entirely dependent upon the material intersts of another nation.
The actual result was a return of the new movement to the traditional methods of shtadlonus [court Jews], which the Zionists once had so bitterly despised and violently denounced. Now Zionists too knew no better place politically than the lobbies of the powerful, and no sounder basis for agreements than their good services as agents of foreign interests...
[O]nly folly could dictate a policy which trusts a distant imperial power for protection, while alienating the goodwill of neighbors. What then, one is prompted to ask, will be the future policy of Zionism with respect to big powers, and what program will Zionists have to offer for a solution of the Arab-Jewish conflict?...
If a Jewish commonwealth is obtained in the near future--with or without partition--it will be due to the political influence of American Jews.... But if the Jewish commonwealth is proclaimed against the will of the Arabs and without the support of the Mediterranean peoples, not only financial help but political support will be necessary for a long time to come. And that may turn out to be very troublesome indeed for Jews in this country [the U.S.], who after all have no power to direct the political destinies of the Near East. It may eventually be far more of a responsibility than today they imagine or tomorrow can make good.
To Save the Jewish Homeland, 1948 [on the occasion of war in Palestine]
And even if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the unique possibilities and the unique achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed. The land that would come into being would be something quite other than the dream of world Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist.
The 'victorious' Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded into ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense to a degree that would submerge all other interests and acitvities. The growth of a Jewish culture would cease to be the concern of the whole people; social experiments would have to be discarded as impractical luxuries; political thought would center around military strategy.... And all this would be the fate of a nation that -- no matter how many immigrants it could still absorb and how far it extended its boundaries (the whole of Palestine and Transjordan is the insane Revisionist demand)--would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbors.
Under such circumstances... the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whose possibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta. Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large number of Jews lived. Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of the Jewish homeland...
One grim addendum. In the heyday of the special relationship between the US and Israel, American Jewry felt itself to be one with the Israeli people. We Are One! declared Melvin Urofsky's book of 1978. That unity is today being dissolved. The haredi-secular conflict in Israel that is getting so much attention here is one means of that dissolution. And the aim, unconsciously, may be a desire by American Jews to distance themselves from Israeli Jews so that when the Arab Spring at last brings a democratic movement to Israel and Palestine, and bloody conflict ensues, and the Israeli gov't is cast as the bad guys, American Jews are emotionally prepared to regard the bloodshed as inevitable and not their problem.
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