PM receives 25 standing ovations Haaretz’s Barak Ravid, who is sitting in the chamber, counts 25 standing ovations overall for Netanyahu during his address.
Israel doesn’t stand alone, Netanyahu says Netanyahu says Jews are no longer scattered and powerless, and IDF soldiers have “boundless courage.”
He says Jews can defend themselves, and more applause breaks out.
“This is why as prime minister of Israel, I can promise you one more thing. Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand.”
More applause. “But I know that Israel does not stand alone. I know that America stands with Israel. I know that you stand with Israel,” he says. More applause.
If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu achieves nothing else in his speech before the US Congress on Tuesday, he will generate scrutiny of the nuclear agreement materializing with Iran. And there is much to be scrutinized. Furthermore, there is a way forward that necessitates neither signing a bad deal nor war with Iran.
Based on leaks by representatives of the US and other countries in the P5+1 (the UK, France, Russia and China, plus Germany) we know the general contours of the agreement set to be signed by the March 31 deadline.
If these leaks are to be believed, the latest worrying detail is that Washington may have conceded to Iran’s demand for a sunset clause. Though no international law permits it, the Islamic Republic will be granted the right to build its uranium enrichment capabilities as large as it wishes after a 10-year limitation. Perhaps a five-year phaseout period will be tacked on. Eventually, Iran will have the internationally sanctioned right to pursue nuclear weapons.
This will have immediate implications. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, threatened by the Shi’ite regime’s expansionist ambitions in the region, will demand similar conditions for their own nuclear programs. US President Barack Obama has vowed to prevent precisely this sort of nuclear proliferation.
In 1992, shortly after Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister, he addressed an academic workshop in Tel Aviv focusing on military strategy and arms control. The Iranian nuclear threat was the top priority on Rabin’s strategic agenda as prime minister, and he was beginning to develop the elements of his response.
For over two decades, Rabin’s policies on Iran were adopted, extended and adjusted by every successive Israeli leader. On this issue, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau addresses the US Congress again in Washington today, he will be reflecting this continuity. And while Israelis differ over the platform and timing, there is broad unity over the substance of Netanyhau’s message regarding the need to confront the reality of the Iranian threat.
For Rabin, the first line of defense on this as on many other strategic issues was through close cooperation with the United States government. From that first meeting, Rabin emphasized that the threat posed by the Islamic Republic, led by a supreme leader (a position still held by Ali Khamenei) spewing hate for Jews and Israel, along with Holocaust denial, was not limited to Israel or the Middle East. The Americans – as the world’s only superpower at the time following the collapse of the Soviet empire – understood what needed to be done, for their interest and to maintain global stability.
In 1996, after the assassination and then the election won by the Likud and Netanyahu, nothing changed in this central dimension of the US-Israel relationship. The strategic dialogues and close coordination between Washington and Jerusalem intensified as Iran repeatedly violated its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Gaza's only power plant is due to shut down by the end of this week as donor funding for fuel in the coastal territory has run out, officials said.
The energy and natural resource authority told Ma'an that the power plant had been using a Qatari grant to pay for diesel fuel to maintain operations.
Gaza's sole power station, which was damaged during the war, is struggling with a severe lack of fuel and is only able to supply the enclave with six hours of power per day.
All those billions of dollars of pledges, most from Arab countries, still aren't paying for fuel for the power plant.
And once again this will become part of an anti-Israel narrative, as has happened countless times in the past, often with staged photos of Gaza kids holding candles.
The defiant decision of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to plead direct to the United States Congress against rushing into a nuclear deal with Iran represents a watershed in the dismal relations between Jerusalem and the Obama administration. A foreign leader is being invited by Republicans to denounce the president on American soil. It is a speech that even before its delivery today has split Israel and the Jewish community in America, and is being presented by the Obama team as crude electioneering and provocative mischief-making on the part of Mr Netanyahu.
Yet it is a necessary speech. All the signs are that the US, flanked by five other powers including Britain, is accelerating towards a deal with Tehran that will allow it to retain significant capacity to enrich uranium. The arrangement would in theory allow the West to spot and block one year in advance any attempt to build a bomb. That presumes easy access to the most sensitive nuclear sites and a quick and efficient verification system.
Israel does not trust Iran. It sees a regime that is so desperate to have sanctions lifted it is willing to fabricate concessions. The negotiations do not include Iran’s ballistic-missile programme, whose prime function can only be the delivery of a bomb.
Mr Netanyahu therefore comes to Washington full of suspicion not only about Iranian intentions but also those of the Obama administration. He fears the nuclear treaty would be the first step towards projecting Tehran as a de facto ally and a regional power-broker. A nation that is so often challenged by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias and the Iranian-supplied weaponry of Hamas has a right to be concerned.
President Obama has needlessly aggravated relations with the Israeli government by making it public that he is angry with the prime minister. More, he seems ready to veto the bipartisan Kirk-Menendez bill that would impose further sanctions on Tehran if it failed to sign an accord. This saps the negotiating power of the West.
...Relations between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu have never been warm but the US should recognise that Iran cannot be blindly trusted. Tehran is already a leading sponsor of terrorism in the region; it is alarming to contemplate how nuclear weapons would transform this status. There is still time to build cheat-proof assurances into a future accord. This must be done to reassure Israel and all of Iran’s rightly nervous neighbours.
Rigorous inspection, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency, must become the norm. Any attempt to conceal should be punished. Washington cannot deny itself the option of escalating sanctions. Iran, though ready for its own reasons to sit down with the West, remains a hostile power rather than a putative ally.
The Israeli PM managed to hit the nail right on the head when he said that Middle Eastern countries are collapsing and that “terror organizations, mostly backed by Iran, are filling in the vacuum” during a recent ceremony held in Tel Aviv to thank outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz for his role during “challenging” times.
In just a few words, Mr. Netanyahu managed to accurately summarize a clear and present danger, not just to Israel (which obviously is his concern), but to other U.S. allies in the region.
What is absurd, however, is that despite this being perhaps the only thing that brings together Arabs and Israelis (as it threatens them all), the only stakeholder that seems not to realize the danger of the situation is President Obama, who is now infamous for being the latest pen-pal of the Supreme Leader of the World’s biggest terrorist regime: Ayottallah Ali Khamenei. (Although, the latter never seems to write back!)
Just to be clear, nobody disagrees that ridding Iran of its nuclear ambitions is paramount. And if this can be achieved peacefully, then it would be even better. However, any reasonable man CAN’T possibly turn a blind eye to the other realities on the ground.
Indeed, it is Mr. Obama’s controversial take on managing global conflicts that raises serious questions.
...The real Iranian threat is not JUST the regime’s nuclear ambitions, but its expansionist approach and state-sponsored terrorism activities which are still ongoing.
Not only is Iran responsible for sponsoring Shiite terrorist groups, but Sunni ones too.
In fact, according to the U.S.’s own State Department, Tehran was home to a number of Al-Qaeda facilitators and high ranking financiers. These accusations are also backed by findings of the U.S. Treasury Department as well.
Some think that Obama's attempts to punish Bibi has backfired spectacularly because the publicity will give Netanyahu a much bigger audience than he would have ever had otherwise - and his speech is the hottest ticket in Washington:
For Senator Lindsey Graham, the only ticket more in demand than a seat inside the House chamber for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress on Tuesday morning would be “if it was Garth Brooks — maybe.”
“The tickets are hotter than fresh latkes,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.
Mr. Graham said the White House’s “desire to undercut” Mr. Netanyahu’s visit had simply made it more appealing. “They have made it the most talked about thing in Washington, and I think it blew up in their face,” Mr. Graham said. “Everything he says, people want to hear, and people want to be in that room to listen, they want to be in person. It’s become a historic speech.”
Mr. Boehner’s office said it had received requests for 10 times as many tickets as there are available seats in the gallery, and both the House and the Senate have set up alternate viewing locations that will also require tickets. There will be heightened security throughout the Capitol complex, according to the Capitol police.
“If Taylor Swift and Katy Perry did a joint concert at Madison Square Garden wearing white-and-gold and black-and-blue dresses, accompanied by dancing sharks and llamas, that’s the only way you’d have a tougher ticket,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner.
Similarly, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, said, “If I was solely responsible for filling the gallery, it would have been filled up in a New York minute.”
“I have people all day, every day, contacting me as if there’s a hundred thousand seats just vacant,” he said. “It’s a historic time for Israel, for America, for the stability of the Middle East, and I think that people see that historic moment on March 3 and want to be part of it.”
The interest, Mr. Zeldin noted wryly, represented a change from President Obama’s State of the Union address, for which the congressman had to seek out a guest to invite. “No one asked to be my guest,” he said.
Israel typically justifies its harsh policies in the West Bank on security grounds, but since Binyamin Netanyahu took office in 2009, Israel has begun construction on more than 10,000 housing units there for Israeli civilians.
Israel assigns soldiers to protect these civilians, for whose safety it proclaims the need to build expensive special roads, walls and checkpoints. Those measures failed this summer, when Palestinian gunmen abducted and killed three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank – sparking a massive military operation.
Van Esveld knows quite well who was behind the planning, funding, logistics, kidnapping and murders of the boys: Hamas.
Hamas doesn't distinguish between Jews on either side of the Green Line, calling all Israeli towns "settlements."
So HRW's pathetic attempt to claim that Israeli security is compromised by Jews living in their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria is absurd. The second intifada made no distinctions between where Jews lived. The bombings that happened regularly during the Oslo process weren't concentrated to the east of the Green Line.
If HRW wants to use the murder of the boys as proof that settlements cause terror, then they must admit that the number of terror attacks has decreased significantly even as the number of Jews who live in the territories - Jews who move there voluntarily, and not in violation of any sane reading of international law - has increased. By their own logic, settlements help curb terror.
By blaming the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria for Arab terror, HRW is pushing a myth that has no factual basis in the interests of furthering an agenda against Jews having the human rights to live where their forefathers lived Control of that land has passed from the Ottomans to the British to the Jordanians to the Israelis without ever having been legally owned by the newly minted "Palestinian people."
The depths of HRW's hate for Israeli Jews can be seen from this sentence:
Unsurprisingly, settlements are flashpoints for confrontation; many arrests of Palestinian children, often for throwing stones, occur near settlements.
Hmmm, why would those horrible Israelis arrest people who throw stones at Jews who are living in and traveling to their communities? Who are the children (HRW doesn't want to mention the adults) throwing stones at? This article blames Jews for Palestinian Arabs throwing rocks at them - and it implies that people throwing rocks at other people is only a human rights issue for the criminals, not the victims! Indeed, Van Esveld seems to believe that throwing rocks at people is a human right in itself.
This is how depraved HRW has become in its zeal to characterize everything Israel does as a violation of human rights while giving Hamas (not mentioned once in this article) and stone throwers (who can and do kill human beings) a pass.
Moreover, confronting the resurgence of anti-Semitism would mean accepting that the demonisation of Israelis and Jewish diaspora – such as the toxic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that effectively calls for the destruction of Israel – has in part contributed to the legitimation of violent attacks against the Jews of Europe.
Instead, we have seen a bizarre reversal of victimhood. The first instinct of many, rather than sympathise with the victims of terror, has been to warn against a potential Islamophobic backlash. According to this warped and infantilising logic, Muslims, as the "new" Jews, are all innocent victims of Western (and Israeli) imperialism and racism.
No one wishes to see the peaceful majority of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims subject to discrimination because of the actions of a minority. We are not, as Roger Cohen has written in these pages, at "war with Islam". However, fear of giving offence or singling out a minority for criticism is scarcely a reason not to oppose anti-Semitism.
What then is to be done? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wrong to call for Europe's 1.4 million Jews to consider a mass aliyah to Israel. This suggestion can only embolden the thugs seeking to hunt the Jewish people off the continent.
Rather the solution is easy and begins with us. We need to talk about the threat of modern anti-Semitism not as some 1930s throwback but as a real and present danger. The next time you are privy to anti-Semitic abuse, speak up. The next time a protest calls for the destruction of Israel, or explains away terrorism with "but Israel", speak up.
Do so as a matter of principle. But we should also not forget the darkest chapter of European history: fascists come for the Jews first and never stop there.
The student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is prominent on many college campuses, preaching a mantra of “Freeing Palestine.” It masquerades as though it were a civil rights group when it is not. It is thus high time to expose its agenda and lay bare some of the fallacies they peddle. - If you seek to promulgate the legacy of Arab colonialistswho raped and pillaged the Middle East, subjugated the indigenous peoples living in the region, and foisted upon them a life of persecution and degradation—you do not get to claim the title of “Freedom Fighter.”
- If you support a racist doctrine of Arab supremacism and wish (as a corollary of that doctrine) to destroy the Jewish State, you do not get to claim that the prejudices you peddle are forms of legitimate “resistance.”
- You do not get to justify the calculated and deliberate bombings, beatings, and lynchings of Jewish men, women, and children by referring to such heinous occurrences as part of a noble “uprising” of the oppressed—that is racism. It is evil. - You do not get to pretend as though you and Rosa Parks would have been great buddies in the 60s. Rosa Parks was a real Freedom Fighter. Rosa Parks was a Zionist.
Coretta Scott King was a Zionist.
A. Phillip Randolph was a Zionist.
Bayard Rustin was a Zionist. Count Basie was a Zionist. Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. was a Zionist.
VOI's Melanie Phillips has been "Down Under," chatting with Australian MP Josh Frydenberg and journalist Miranda Devine about Australian attitudes towards Israel and Islamic extremism. She also meets two women with remarkable stories to tell: novelist Suzy Zail on how she started writing Holocaust fiction for teenagers, and tsunami survivor Rebekah Giles, who made an astonishing discovery about her identity.
Rev Dr Kenneth Meshoe MP (South African Parliament) on objections to claims of "Israeli Apartheid"
South African MP Rev. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe, a person of color who survived the apartheid regime, explains why he does not believe that Israel can be considered an apartheid state.
He has spoken often about this issue and how Israel is often unfairly attacked and accused of Apartheid by its enemies. Rev Dr Meshoe has fought vocally against misuse of this term and attempting to shed light on the real situation in Israel - that while it is a country with problems like any other, it is a vibrant democracy and a beacon of light in a sea of dictatorships and religious and ethnic oppression in the Middle East.
The Reverend is also the Parliamentary Leader and President of the African Christian Democratic Party as well as the President of DEISI (Defend, Embrace, Invest and Support Israel).
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the #AIPAC Policy Conference 2015:
"Thank you. Wow, 16,000 people. Anyone here from California? Florida? New York?
Well, these are the easy ones. How about Colorado? Indiana? I think I got it. Montana? Texas?
You're here in record numbers. You're here from coast to coast, from every part of this great land. And you're here at a critical time. You're here to tell the world that reports of the demise of the Israeli-U.S. relations are not only premature, they're just wrong.
You're here to tell the world that our alliance is stronger than ever.
And because of you, and millions like you, across this great country, it's going to get even stronger in the coming years.
Thank you Bob Cohen, Michael Kassen, Howard Kohr and all the leadership of AIPAC. Thank you for your tireless, dedicated work to strengthen the partnership between Israel and the United States.
I want to thank, most especially, Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans. I deeply appreciate your steadfast support for Israel, year in, year out. You have our boundless gratitude.
I want to welcome President Zeman of the Czech Republic. Mr. President, Israel never forgets its friends. And the Czech people have always been steadfast friends of Israel, the Jewish people, from the days of Thomas Masaryk at the inception of Zionism.
You know, Mr. President, when I entered the Israeli army in 1967, I received a Czech rifle. That was one of the rifles that was given to us by your people in our time of need in 1948. So thank you for being here today.
Also here are two great friends of Israel, former Prime Minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar and as of last month, former Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird. Thank you both for your unwavering support. You are true champions of Israel, and you are, too, champions of the truth.
I also want to recognize the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, for your genuine friendship, Dan, and for the great job you're doing representing the United States and the State of Israel.
And I want to recognize the two Rons. I want to thank Ambassador Ron Prosor for the exemplary job he's doing at the U.N. in a very difficult forum.
And I want to recognize the other Ron, a man who knows how to take the heat, Israel's ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. Ron, I couldn't be prouder to have you representing Israel in Washington.
And finally, I want to recognize my wife, Sara, whose courage in the face of adversity is an inspiration to me. Sara divides her time as a child psychologist, as a loving mother, and her public duties as the wife of the prime minister. Sara, I'm so proud to have you here with me today, to have you with me at my side always.
My friends, I bring greetings to you from Jerusalem, our eternal undivided capital.
And I also bring to you news that you may not have heard. You see, I'll be speaking in Congress tomorrow.
You know, never has so much been written about a speech that hasn't been given. And I'm not going to speak today about the content of that speech, but I do want to say a few words about the purpose of that speech.
First, let me clarify what is not the purpose of that speech. My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama or the esteemed office that he holds. I have great respect for both.
I deeply appreciate all that President Obama has done for Israel, security cooperation, intelligence sharing, support at the U.N., and much more, some things that I, as prime minister of Israel, cannot even divulge to you because it remains in the realm of the confidences that are kept between an American president and an Israeli prime minister. I am deeply grateful for this support, and so should you be.
My speech is also not intended to inject Israel into the American partisan debate. An important reason why our alliance has grown stronger decade after decade is that it has been championed by both parties and so it must remain.
Both Democratic and Republican presidents have worked together with friends from both sides of the aisle in Congress to strengthen Israel and our alliance between our two countries, and working together, they have provided Israel with generous military assistance and missile defense spending. We've seen how important that is just last summer.
Working together, they've made Israel the first free trade partner of America 30 years ago and its first official strategic partner last year.
They've backed Israel in defending itself at war and in our efforts to achieve a durable peace with our neighbors. Working together has made Israel stronger; working together has made our alliance stronger.
And that's why the last thing that anyone who cares about Israel, the last thing that I would want is for Israel to become a partisan issue. And I regret that some people have misperceived my visit here this week as doing that. Israel has always been a bipartisan issue.
Israel should always remain a bipartisan issue.
Ladies and gentlemen, the purpose of my address to Congress tomorrow is to speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the survival of Israel. Iran is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Look at that graph. Look at that map. And you see on the wall, it shows Iran training, arming, dispatching terrorists on five continents. Iran envelopes the entire world with its tentacles of terror. This is what Iran is doing now without nuclear weapons. Imagine what Iran would do with nuclear weapons.
And this same Iran vows to annihilate Israel. If it develops nuclear weapons, it would have the means to achieve that goal. We must not let that happen.
And as prime minister of Israel, I have a moral obligation to speak up in the face of these dangers while there's still time to avert them. For 2000 years, my people, the Jewish people, were stateless, defenseless, voiceless. We were utterly powerless against our enemies who swore to destroy us. We suffered relentless persecution and horrific attacks. We could never speak on our own behalf, and we could not defend ourselves.
Well, no more, no more.
The days when the Jewish people are passive in the face of threats to annihilate us, those days are over. Today in our sovereign state of Israel, we defend ourselves. And being able to defend ourselves, we ally with others, most importantly, the United States of America, to defend our common civilization against common threats.
In our part of the world and increasingly, in every part of the world, no one makes alliances with the weak. You seek out those who have strength, those who have resolve, those who have the determination to fight for themselves. That's how alliances are formed.
So we defend ourselves and in so doing, create the basis of a broader alliance.
And today, we are no longer silent; today, we have a voice. And tomorrow, as prime minister of the one and only Jewish state, I plan to use that voice.
I plan to speak about an Iranian regime that is threatening to destroy Israel, that's devouring country after country in the Middle East, that's exporting terror throughout the world and that is developing, as we speak, the capacity to make nuclear weapons, lots of them.
Ladies and gentlemen, Israel and the United States agree that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, but we disagree on the best way to prevent Iran from developing those weapons.
Now, disagreements among allies are only natural from time to time, even among the closest of allies. Because they're important differences between America and Israel.
The United States of America is a large country, one of the largest. Israel is a small country, one of the smallest.
America lives in one of the world's safest neighborhoods. Israel lives in the world's most dangerous neighborhood. America is the strongest power in the world. Israel is strong, but it's much more vulnerable. American leaders worry about the security of their country. Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.
You know, I think that encapsulates the difference. I've been prime minister of Israel for nine years. There's not a single day, not one day that I didn't think about the survival of my country and the actions that I take to ensure that survival, not one day.
And because of these differences, America and Israel have had some serious disagreements over the course of our nearly 70-year-old friendship.
Now, it started with the beginning. In 1948, Secretary of State Marshall opposed David Ben-Gurion's intention to declare statehood. That's an understatement. He vehemently opposed it. But Ben-Gurion, understanding what was at stake, went ahead and declared Israel's independence.
In 1967, as an Arab noose was tightening around Israel's neck, the United States warned Prime Minister Levi Eshkol that if Israel acted alone, it would be alone. But Israel did act -- acted alone to defend itself.
In 1981, under the leadership of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor at Osirak. The United States criticized Israel and suspended arms transfers for three months.
And in 2002, after the worst wave of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel's history, Prime Minister Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield. The United States demanded that Israel withdraw its troops immediately, but Sharon continued until the operation was completed.
There's a reason I mention all these. I mention them to make a point. Despite occasional disagreements, the friendship between America and Israel grew stronger and stronger, decade after decade.
And our friendship will weather the current disagreement, as well, to grow even stronger in the future. And I'll tell you why; because we share the same dreams. Because we pray and hope and aspire for that same better world; because the values that unite us are much stronger than the differences that divide us values like liberty, equality, justice, tolerance, compassion.
As our region descends into medieval barbarism, Israel is the one that upholds these values common to us and to you.
As Assad drops bell bombs on his own people, Israeli doctors treat his victims in our hospitals right across the fence in the Golan Heights
As Christians in the Middle East are beheaded and their ancient communities are decimated, Israel's Christian community is growing and thriving, the only one such community in the Middle East.
As women in the region are repressed, enslaved, and raped, women in Israel serve as chief justices, CEOs, fighter pilots, two women chief justices in a row. Well, not in a row, but in succession. That's pretty good.
In a dark, and savage, and desperate Middle East, Israel is a beacon of humanity, of light, and of hope.
Ladies and gentlemen, Israel and the United States will continue to stand together because America and Israel are more than friends. We're like a family. We're practically mishpocha.
Now, disagreements in the family are always uncomfortable, but we must always remember that we are family.
Rooted in a common heritage, upholding common values, sharing a common destiny. And that's the message I came to tell you today. Our alliance is sound. Our friendship is strong. And with your efforts it will get even stronger in the years to come.
Thank you, AIPAC. Thank you, America. God bless you all.
There are striking similarities between the objectives of Churchill's speech nearly 75 years ago and Netanyahu's today; both with no less purpose than to avert global conflagration. And, like Churchill's in the 1930s, Netanyahu's is the lone voice among world leaders today. There is no doubt abut Iran's intent. It has been described as a nuclear Auschwitz. Israel is not the only target of Iranian violence. Iran has long been making good on its promises to mobilize Islamic forces against the US, as well as the UK and other American allies. Attacks directed and supported by Iran have killed an estimated 1,100 American troops in Iraq in recent years. Iran provided direct support to Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. Between 2010 and 2013, Iran either ordered or allowed at least three major terrorist plots against the US and Europe to be planned from its soil. Fortunately, all were foiled.
Iran's ballistic missile program, inexplicably outside the scope of current P5+1 negotiations, brings Europe into Iran's range, and future development will extend Tehran's reach to the US. It is not yet too late to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. In his 1941 speech to Congress, Churchill reminded the American people that five or six years previously it would have been easy to prevent Germany from rearming without bloodshed. But by then it was too late.
This vengeful and volatile regime must not in any circumstances be allowed to gain a nuclear weapons capability, whatever the P5+1 states might consider the short-term economic, political or strategic benefits to themselves of a deal with Tehran.
On Israel, here’s the promise Obama made that stays with me the most: “I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff,” he said. “I also don’t, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli government recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.” He went on to say four words that have since become famous: “We’ve got Israel’s back.” Netanyahu obviously believes that Obama doesn't have his, or Israel's, back. There will be no convincing Netanyahu that Obama is anything but a dangerous adversary. But if a consensus forms in high-level Israeli security circles (where there is a minimum of Obama-related hysterics) that the president has agreed to a weak deal, one that provides a glide path for Iran toward the nuclear threshold, then we will be able to say, fairly, that Obama's promises to Israel were not kept. One of Netanyahu’s most strident critics, Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, said recently, “A nuclear Iran is a reality that Israel won't be able to come to terms with.”
He went on to say, “Two issues in particular concern me with respect to the talks between the world powers and Iran: What happens if and when the Iranians violate the agreement, and what happens when the period of the agreement comes to an end and they decide to pursue nuclear weapons?” In the coming weeks, President Obama must provide compelling answers to these questions. (h/t Serious Black)
2. Netanyahu’s speech is the act of a true and courageous friend. All of America’s traditional allies in the Middle East are deeply distrustful of Obama’s outreach to Iran. Allies in Europe and Asia are similarly fearful regarding what they consider to be flagging American resolve in the face of threats from Russia and China. Few allied leaders, however, will express their concerns to the president plainly — even in private — for fear of retribution. When they see the White House treating Netanyahu to a level of hostility usually reserved for adversaries, their trepidation only increases.
Even worse, Obama’s apparent reluctance to stand up to adversaries gives allies incentive to hedge. The case of France is instructive. As our colleague Benjamin Haddad recently argued, elements of the French elite are now saying that the French government would be foolish to take a hard line against Russia and Iran. If Washington is going to fold in the face of pressure from Moscow and Tehran, how can France alone hold the line? 5. The Israeli prime minister’s views are reasonable, if not judicious. His opinions about the proposed Iran deal are not idiosyncratic; they are not exclusively Israeli; nor are they extreme. American observers with substantial reputations and with no ax to grind have themselves begun to express similar doubts about the proposed deal. Citing Henry Kissinger and others, The Washington Post editorial board recently wrote that “a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and temporarily restrict that capability.”
If the president follows through with such a plan without first subjecting its terms to a rigorous debate in Congress, he will be concluding an agreement that is entirely personal in nature. The legitimacy of such a deal would be hotly contested, rendering it inherently unstable, if not dangerous. By helping to force a more thorough examination of the matter, Netanyahu is therefore performing a service to us all. When a president turns a deaf ear to a good friend bearing an inconvenient message, he works against his own interests, whether he realizes it or not.
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Weekend long read
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1) The Counter-Extremism Group think tank has published a report titled
‘Islamist Antisemitism: A Neglected Hate’. “This report demonstrates the
futility...
Weekend long read
-
1) The Counter-Extremism Group think tank has published a report titled
‘Islamist Antisemitism: A Neglected Hate’. “This report demonstrates the
futility...
July 4th 1976, Happy Entebbe Day!
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Dry Bones Golden Oldies in the fond memory of Yaakov Kirschen (Dry Bones)
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One Choice: Fight to Win
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Yesterday Israel preempted a potentially disastrous attack by Hezbollah on
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Closing Jews Down Under Website
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With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
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Tuesday, March 03, 2015
