The Real Aim of Israel’s Bomb Iran Campaign

Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed justifying an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.

What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.

That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel wants to start.

Gerecht openly expresses the hope that any Iranian response to the Israeli attack would trigger full-scale U.S. war against Iran. “If Khamenei has a death-wish, he’ll let the Revolutionary Guards mine the strait, the entrance to the Persian Gulf,” writes Gerecht. “It might be the only thing that would push President Obama to strike Iran militarily….”

Gerecht suggest that the same logic would apply to any Iranian “terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike,” by which he really means any attack on a U.S. target in the Middle East. Gerecht writes that Obama might be “obliged” to threaten major retaliation “immediately after an Israeli surprise attack.”

That’s the key sentence in this very long Gerecht argument. Obama is not going to be “obliged” to joint an Israeli aggression against Iran unless he feels that domestic political pressures to do so are too strong to resist. That’s why the Israelis are determined to line up a strong majority in Congress and public opinion for war to foreclose Obama’s options.

In the absence of confidence that Obama would be ready to come into the war fully behind Israel, there cannot be an Israeli strike.

Gerecht’s argument for war relies on a fanciful nightmare scenario of Iran doling out nuclear weapons to Islamic extremists all over the Middle East. But the real concern of the Israelis and their lobbyists, as Gerecht’s past writing has explicitly stated, is to destroy Iran’s Islamic regime in a paroxysm of U.S. military violence.

Gerecht first revealed this Israeli-neocon fantasy as early as 2000, before the Iranian nuclear program was even taken seriously, in an essay for a book published by the Project for a New American Century. Gerecht argued that, if Iran could be caught in a “terrorist act,” the U.S. Navy should “retaliate with fury”. The purpose of such a military response, he wrote, should be to “strike with truly devastating effect against the ruling mullahs and the repressive institutions that maintain them.”

And lest anyone fail to understand what he meant by that, Gerecht was more explicit: “That is, no cruise missiles at midnight to minimize the body count. The clerics will almost certainly strike back unless Washington uses overwhelming, paralyzing force.”

In 2006-07, the Israeli war party had reason to believed that it could hijack U.S. policy long enough to get the war it wanted, because it had placed one of its most militant agents, David Wurmser, in a strategic position to influence that policy.

We now know that Wurmser, formerly a close adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu and during that period Vice President Dick Cheney’s main adviser on the Middle East, urged a policy of overwhelming U.S. military force against Iran. After leaving the administration in 2007, Wurmser revealed that he had advocated a U.S. war on Iran, not to set back the nuclear program but to achieve regime change.

“Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians,” Wurmser told The Telegraph. The U.S. attack was not to be limited to nuclear targets but was to be quite thorough and massively destructive. “If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don’t shoot a bear if you’re not going to kill it.”

Of course, that kind of war could not be launched out of the blue. It would have required a casus belli to justify a limited initial attack that would then allow a rapid escalation of U.S. military force. In 2007, Cheney acted on Wurmser’s advice and tried to get Bush to provoke a war with Iran over Iraq, but it was foiled by the Pentagon.

As Wurmser was beginning to whisper that advice in Cheney’s ear in 2006, Gerecht was making the same argument in The Weekly Standard:

Bombing the nuclear facilities once would mean we were declaring war on the clerical regime. We shouldn’t have any illusions about that. We could not stand idly by and watch the mullahs build other sites. If the ruling mullahs were to go forward with rebuilding what they’d lost–and it would be surprising to discover the clerical regime knuckling after an initial bombing run–we’d have to strike until they stopped. And if we had any doubt about where their new facilities were (and it’s a good bet the clerical regime would try to bury new sites deep under heavily populated areas), and we were reasonably suspicious they were building again, we’d have to consider, at a minimum, using special-operations forces to penetrate suspected sites.

The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious lunacy, which is why U.S. military leaders have strongly resisted it both during the Bush and Obama administrations. But Gerecht makes it clear that Israel believes it can use its control of Congress to pound Obama into submission. Democrats in Congress, he boasts, “are mentally in a different galaxy than they were under President Bush.” Even though Israel has increasingly been regarded around the world as a rogue state after its Gaza atrocities and the commando killings of unarmed civilians on board the Mavi Marmara, its grip on the U.S. Congress appears as strong as ever.

Moreover, polling data for 2010 show that a majority of Americans have already been manipulated into supporting war against Iran – in large part because more than two-thirds of those polled have gotten the impression that Iran already has nuclear weapons. The Israelis are apparently hoping to exploit that advantage. “If the Israelis bomb now, American public opinion will probably be with them,” writes Gerecht. “Perhaps decisively so.”

Netanyahu must be feeling good about the prospects for pressuring Barack Obama to join an Israeli war of aggression against Iran. It was Netanyahu, after all, who declared in 2001, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. His latest book, with John Kiriakou, is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis: From CIA Coup to the Brink of War. Read other articles by Gareth.

19 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. MichaelKenny said on August 1st, 2010 at 10:41am #

    I think Mr Porter is right when he says that the point of an Israeli attack would be to draw the US in, and I’m sure that the US would indeed be drawn in. And such an attack would indeed be lunacy for the US. The US could not “win” such a war in any sense of the term. First of all, the more damage it did, the more such an attack would rally the Iranian population behind its leaders, even unpopular ones. Secondly, precisely because it would show the “mighty” US as little more than a stooge of Israel, it would further discredit it (in itself, a perfectly desirable thing, of course). Israel could hardly be more discredited than it is, which is probably why the lunatics (probably more American than Israeli) are thinking in terms of a last, desperate throw of the dice. Thirdly, an attack on Iran would send the “allies” scuttling for home from Iraq and Afghanistan (the Netherlands withdrew its forces today, by the way) and I would guess that NATO would deny any connection with the attack. Thirdly, since the UN will never sanction such an attack, Iran will be in the beautiful position of being the victim of agression and can go to the Security Council, forcing the US to veto any resolution, thereby further discrediting itself.
    I always say that the Jews don’t need enemies. They are so inept and flat-footed that they do more harm to themselves that even the most determined enemy could ever do to them. I could easily imagine Israel’s lunatic supporters in the US liking the idea of an Isearli attack on Iran. Whether the Israelis themselves would be so utterly stupid remains to be seen.

  2. Rehmat said on August 1st, 2010 at 7:46pm #

    Israel and the US are twin evil sisters. Most of American wars and hoaxes were conceived by the Jewish elite and their Christian foot-soldiers. Take for example the phoney Al-Qaeda……

    CIA-Mossad played ‘midwife’ to Al-Qaeda
    http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/cia-mossad-played-midwife-to-al-qaeda/

  3. Hue Longer said on August 2nd, 2010 at 1:47am #

    Helo Rehmat,

    The article makes sense to me and Israeli influence (and US Zionist influence) is no doubt in play as far as I can see….having unnecessarily said that? Rehmat, there has been many “American” wars and hoaxes and you claim that most were conceived by the Jewish elite and their Christian foot-soldiers? I am open to (seriously! I wonder about this) banking family conspiracies predating Israel but would you please give some hard facts to support this?

    Cheers

  4. Aaron Aarons said on August 2nd, 2010 at 4:44am #

    If the Iranians have any sense, and I think they do, they have already created hit lists of people who have the wealth and power to influence what the U.S., and Israel do, and have let those people know that they, their heirs, and their interests will be the targets of retaliation by Iranian-backed anti-imperialist fighters if Iran is attacked.

    That kind of asymmetrical warfare strategy is the only military strategy that is of much use against the imperialist monster in this epoch, given the imbalance of conventional military power.

    If this be “terrorism”, let us, the enemies of the empire, make the most of it!

  5. shabnam said on August 2nd, 2010 at 3:47pm #

    Thank you Mr. Gareth Porter for your excellent analysis. You write:

    {The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious lunacy, But Gerecht makes it clear that Israel believes it can use its control of Congress to pound Obama into submission.}

    This is very good point.
    The ‘regime change’ did not start from Bush administration in 2000, rather much earlier from Clinton Administration in 1992 where Jewish Lobby has full CONTROL over US foreign policy in the Middle East including the North Africa.
    The Zionist plan for the re draw of the map of the middle East including Horn of Africa designed according to Oded Yinon Strategy, and later, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, a 1996 policy recommendation report presented to Benyamin Netanyahu, became part of the US policy during President George Bush where both working toward, regime change to to expand the interest of Israel using the United States military might to impliment the policy. This policy was sold AS AMERICAN’ INTERSET to bring the planet under US control through control of the oil, where we know now it is BU.

    This LIE sold to US elite and ignorant American public by the Necons with cooperation of the fifth column, the zionist Lobby, and its extension the ‘left’.
    As Gilad Atzmon has indicated, the Jews have brought three empires down by clinging to them and manipulating them for their own interest:

    {The Jewish lobby in America and in the UK has managed to shape the English speaking Empire’s vision of its needs and interests. The Zionists in fact have managed to bring down every super power they cling to. Britain, France and now America. You have to allow yourself to admit that the ‘War on Terror’ was actually a Zionist led war against Islam, a battle that was there to serve Israeli interests.}

    How does the lobby execute their plan?
    1) control of the Government
    2) Present the enemy of Israel as the United States’ enemy
    3) Makes the interest of Israel IDENTICAL to American’s interest
    4) write major policy to wish to be implemented: “Dual Containment” by Martin Indyk to weaken both Iraq and Iran through illegal sanctions
    5) The use of numerous THINK THANKS in policy in support of the Apartheid state, Israel using their stooges at the WH, Senate, Congress and lately military and intelligence. The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) based in Washington, D.C. lasted from early 1997 to 2006t co-founded as a non-profit educational organization by neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan to bring down undesired leaders through ‘regime change’. The use of major ZIONIST OUTLETS, most important NYT to lounge disinformation against the enemy and form public information to bring ‘regime change.’

    Today, the propaganda for a war against Iran is simliar to IRAQ manuscript. The same people, who were involved in destruction of Iraq, are pushing for destruction of Iran. They are following the Zionist script for ‘regime change’, JINSA, to destroy Iran, a country, with civilization older than 7000 years and great contribution to humanity by a VICIOUS TRIBE OF ZIONIST JEWS.

    According to many, including Philip Giraldi, this war, like Iraq, is pushed by Zionist Lobby and its extension. He writes:
    {House of Representatives resolution 1553, introduced by Congressional Republicans, and currently working its way through the system will endorse an Israeli attack on Iran, which would be going to war by proxy as the US would almost immediately be drawn into the conflict when Tehran retaliates. The resolution has appeared, not coincidentally, at the same time as major articles by leading neoconservatives Reuel Marc Gerecht and Bill Kristol calling for military action. AIPAC thinks it is wonderful.}
    Giraldi believes that:

    {Ironically, the push against Iran comes at a time when the National Intelligence Estimate on the country is being finished. It might come out as soon as August, but it will be secret and its conclusions will either be leaked or released in summary. My sources inside the intelligence community insist that it will support the 2007 NIE that concluded that Iran no longer has a weapons program. The White House has delayed the process seeking harder language to justify a range of options against Iran, including a military strike, but the analysts are reported to be resisting.}
    Why American people are sitting idle so, the organized Zionist Jews opens another front to stage a military attack on Iran? Do you think you don’t have enough enemy created by the phony “WAR ON TERROR pushed by Wolfowitz according to Gilad Atzmon:

    {You may want to ask yourself how the Wolfowitz Doctrine made it into American policy. I guess that ‘moral interventionism’ and ‘war against terror’ look nice on paper. It means that ‘we’ are kosher and the ‘other’ is evil. It took the West and humanity some time to realize that, in fact, we were serving an evil ideology and Zionist interests. It may also take us some time to realize that it is us who have become the darkest force around.}
    http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/touching-left-islam-israeli-lobby-chomsky-and-many-other-hot.html

    You as American must prevent an attack on Iran by going into the street to demand the organized zionists and their stooges be overthrown NOW.
    Do you want the zionist crimes against humanity to be written in you names?

  6. shabnam said on August 2nd, 2010 at 4:45pm #

    Please discard the propaganda by the closet Zionists who are trying to HIDE the hand of the ORGANZED ZIONIST JEWS in pushing for an military attack on Iran by telling the audience that the propaganda for an attack on Iran has nothing to do with Zionist expansionist policy, but is related to US policy toward world hegemony to gain the control of OIL.

    This lie is repeated by other closet including Michel Chossudovsky in an article “Preparing for WWIII” where he paints push for a war, like Chomsky, is for control of the resources. He writes:

    While Iran is the next target together with Syria and Lebanon, this strategic military deployment also threatens North Korea, China and Russia.

    Does SYRIA have OIL to be targeted by Israel?
    This war is pushed by Israel and its Zionist Jewish activists and their stooges in the United States and elsewhere, and I am glad to see Mr. Gareth Porter is holding Israel responsible for a war on Iran.

    Iran, with an estimated ten percent of global oil and gas reserves, ranks third after Saudi Arabia (25 %) and Iraq (11 %) in the size of its reserves. In comparison, the US possesses less than 2.8 % of global oil reserves.
    Why don’t they go to Saudi Arabia? Or Canada? Why they target Syria who has NO OIL?
    If anyone bothers to look at the list of the targeted countries, will realize that these countries do not support zionist expansionist policy but support Palestinians’ rights, countries like Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and more.
    Israel is interested in ‘regime change’ to partition the regional countries based on ethnic and religious divide to creat ally like the Kurdish terrorist as pawns.
    Thus, Iraq invasion fulfilled one of the main Zionist goals toward her goal since its erection. Sudan is another one, Somalia and other countries around the RED Sea are targeted for the same treatment can be found in Oded Yinon strategy and ‘A Clean Break’, to implement Zionist expansionist policy in the region.
    Therefore, re draw of the map to control the waterway and Canals around the Red Sea is a major Zionist strategic interest to be implemented through destabilization and ‘regime change.’

    Many people believe that the ‘Somali pirate’ problem was engineered in Washington to put pressure on international community to accept an international regime to bring the area under control of Israel and the West to weaken Arab sovereignty at the Horn of Africa.

    Galal Nassar in an article “Israel, Piracy and the Red Sea” writes:
    {Conspiracy theorists would further suggest that the acts of piracy in the area are masterminded in the West, and in Washington in particular. They point, for example, to the hijacking of a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 state-of-the-art Russian tanks and argue that there must, at the very least, be some collusion at work in order to draw world attention to the risks involved for ordinary transport ships, with the purpose of rallying support behind the idea of forming an international naval force to keep those waters safe. Indeed, the Western drive to form an international naval force in the Red Sea is, perhaps, the most salient proof that the internationalisation of the Red Sea is coming and only waiting for the Western powers and Israel to reach an accommodation over their shares of the pie. During the coming months those powers will engage in intensive and, most likely, secretive talks and machinations with the purpose of assigning roles and dividing stakes. Naturally, Israeli aims will be given high priority.}
    http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/926/focus.htm

    The desire to bring the Red Sea under Israel is very important to Zionist expansionists like David Ben Gurion who said:

    {David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, was the first to voice the Zionist entity’s ambition to gain control over the Red Sea. In 1949 he said, “We are surrounded on land… The sea is our only route of contact with the rest of the world. Developing Eilat will be a major goal towards which we will direct our steps.” Countries overlooking the Red Sea sensed the danger. In 1950 Saudi Arabia and Egypt struck an agreement granting the latter military access to several strategically placed islands in the Gulf of Aqaba, the two most important of which are Tiran and Sanafir. The purpose was to restrict Israeli maritime activities. The action became one of the motives behind the tripartite aggression of 1956. Later, in 1967, Egypt’s closure of the Gulf of Aqaba became the direct cause of the Six Day War in which Israel occupied extensive tracts of Arab land.}

    Are American people going to stay PASSIVE AGAIN and let the ORGANIZED ZIONIST JEWS start another war to expand Zionist’ interest in the region based on lies, including IMAGINARY IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM while Apartheid state is sitting on 300 ILLEGAL NUCLEAR BOMBS? Are you willing to cooperate with the mass murderers again in order to continue your meager life style, shopping at the mall? Have you become so comfortable with crimes against humanity committed by the US elite and its WMD supported by your tax money that you are willing to stay PASSIVE as ever? Have you really hit that low to allow the Zionists to kill 75 million Iranians who have done NOTHING WRONG BUT to exercise their right to elect a president who is trusted by the majority of Iranian people, but not acceptable by Israel, an apartheid state?
    Iran has a right to enrichment for its fuel, according to NPT where Iran is a signatory, on the contrary, Israel has not signed the treaty and when WH asked Netanyahu to sign the NPT, he showed his middle finger, instead, he asked for more $$$$$$$$ if the ‘most powerful man on earth’ Obama, wants him to talk with Palestinians? Do you understand what NPT says?

    We will promise the Zionist murderers if they dare to attack Iran, they will be crushed before Iran goes down. It is sad to see Americans are funding wars with no shame.

  7. yoni said on August 2nd, 2010 at 6:38pm #

    @shabnam
    Let me just say that I’m against any attack against Iran – I hope that diplomatic actions against Iran’s antisemitic, genocidal intentions against the Jewish people will bear fruits and no violence occurs.

    I just have to ask – you mentioned Sudan as a target of the ORGANIZED ZIONIST JEWS (btw a small tip: don’t write “Jews”, it will make your case stronger if you only refer to Zionists and less people will suspect that you took your ideas from the protocols, mein kampf and so forth… ok?) –
    Do you have anything to say against the genocide of half million people in Darfur by the Sudanese government? And did you know, that Israel is hosting a few dozens of thousands of refugees from that area, who fled to Israel (those who managed to escape the Egyptian police that usually kills them without thinking much about it) to save their families from the brutal massacres going on there?

    I get the feeling that if I get something at all, it will be that those are the ORGANIZED ZIONIST JEWS who kill people in Darfur. I wouldn’t be much surprised…

  8. shabnam said on August 2nd, 2010 at 7:39pm #

    Yon:

    {Do you have anything to say against the genocide of half million people in Darfur by the Sudanese government? }

    I want to let you know the above quote is based on Zionist propaganda.
    According to statistics from US department on how many people were killed in Darfur or using statistics WHO statistics on Darfur, it indicates that the charge ‘genocide’ in Darfur was engineered by the Jewish organizations such as ‘Save Darfur” and ‘holocaust museum’ to form public opinion against Al Bashir.
    Sudan, during the 1980s, especially since Bill Clinton presidency was targeted according to ODED YINON STRATEGY for ‘regime change’ by the foreign powers. Charles Jacobs, a zionist pro Israel started a campaign against Sudan and its leader, Al Bashir, who supports Palestinian struggle, during 1980s, Samantha Power from Harvard University was on board, with spurious change of “child slavery’ to destabilize Sudan where let to soft partition of southern Sudan waiting to be split from Sudan through a referendum which is going to take place next year. Thus, people know about Sudan and what was behind the charge of ‘genocide’ in Darfur.

    You should read a book by Mahmud Mamdani, “Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror” which tells you the charge ‘genocide’ was politically motivated and was a lie.
    The following video is helpful for astart and may help you with your research on this subject.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfrblZ1gdDU&feature=player_embedded

  9. teafoe2 said on August 2nd, 2010 at 7:42pm #

    Yoni is just a lia… oops, a purveyor of erroneous falsehoods. Sorry, Yoni ol buddy, Keith Harmon Snow has already explained to us DV trolls the truth about the zionist “Save Darfur” snowjob. Suggest you go peddle your bs elsewhere.

  10. yoni said on August 2nd, 2010 at 9:06pm #

    @shabnam
    Great! I just got the “the Jews did Darfur”, didn’t bump into it yet… Amazing what people would do to wash their hate with the “social justice” discourse. Martin Luther king is turning in his grave.

    Just out of curiosity – are you denying that hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered in Darfur? John, 21 years old guy from Sudan who lost his entire family there, and whom I helped with Hebrew documents in Tel Aviv a few months ago (volunteering for Tehila, an Israeli organization helping refugees, that is the real kind of refugees and not those who opened a genocidal war and lost) – would respectfully disagree.

  11. Deadbeat said on August 3rd, 2010 at 2:50am #

    yoni writes …

    Amazing what people would do to wash their hate with the “social justice” discourse. Martin Luther king is turning in his grave.

    He certainly would by the way a Zionist would dare misuse his name.

  12. Aaron Aarons said on August 3rd, 2010 at 3:02am #

    yoni/lingam asks of shabnam:

    > Just out of curiosity – are you denying that hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered in Darfur? John, 21 years old guy from Sudan who lost his entire family there, and whom I helped with Hebrew documents in Tel Aviv a few months ago (volunteering for Tehila, an Israeli organization helping refugees, that is the real kind of refugees and not those who opened a genocidal war and lost) – would respectfully disagree.

    I would hope that shabnam would deny that absurdity. Even if you count all the Western-backed insurgents who were killed, and the people who were killed by those insurgents, and the people killed in conflicts between nomads from farther north (driven south by desertification) and settled farmers, there were not “hundreds of thousands” of people killed in Darfur. The number who might be said to have been “murdered” by government forces during their counter-insurgency campaign in around 2002 is a small fraction of that, perhaps on a par with the number of people killed in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

    Just out of curiosity, ‘yoni’, why don’t you mention the far greater number of people, i.e., millions, killed by the U.S./Israel-friendly governments of Uganda and, especially, Rwanda, in the Eastern Congo since around 1995?

    By the way, the assertion by a pseudonymous poster about what an alleged person whose very existence is unverifiable would say is not exactly the kind of evidence that would stand up in most courts, except perhaps those that try Palestinians arrested by the Israeli state.

  13. yoni said on August 3rd, 2010 at 4:31am #

    @ Aaron Aarons/mikiyanum

    “Just out of curiosity, ‘yoni’, why don’t you mention the far greater number of people, i.e., millions, killed by the U.S./Israel-friendly governments of Uganda and, especially, Rwanda, in the Eastern Congo since around 1995?”

    I won’t since I’m not brainwashed with antisemitic garbage…

    Denying the crimes the Sudanese government conduct in Darfur is at least three levels below what I would expect from anti-Zionists. At least I can find comfort in the fact that most anti-Zionists I’ve asked about it so far didn’t.

  14. yoni said on August 3rd, 2010 at 4:36am #

    @Deadbeat
    MLK was a Zionist, like a real Zionist (not that type that you people invent here)?? That’s new to me, any good source?
    I wouldn’t be surprised of course. People who stand up for human rights and real social justice would always support the Jewish cause for independence in their tiny state, and admire the outcome of their national liberation, which is not flawless of course but is much better than most other political creations out there.

  15. Aaron Aarons said on August 4th, 2010 at 11:30pm #

    @yoni: “I won’t since I’m not brainwashed with antisemitic garbage…”

    Given that you, yoni were raised in one of the countries where one gets a virtual deluge of Zionist propaganda every day of one’s life (the U.S., Canada and most European countries, at least to some extent, being others), and given that you show no inclination to question the founding myths of your own society, I don’t think it’s hard to explain why you appear to be brainwashed with pro‘semitic’ garbage.(I say ‘appear’, because it is possible that you are just a cynical hasbarachik who doesn’t actually believe anything he or she writes.)

    But please explain how we anti-Zionists, who have had to resist that same pro-Zionist (and more generally pro-Western) brainwashing that has worked so well on you, and have to go out of our way to find alternative sources of information, can be ‘brainwashed’ by those alternative sources.

  16. Jonas Rand said on August 4th, 2010 at 11:51pm #

    Yoni: While there may have been good intentions amongst early proponents of Zionism, those who wished to settle in Palestine and construct a state, such as Shlomo Ben-Avi, had the intention of expelling the indigenous Palestinian population or somehow oppressing them to create a Jewish theocracy. Zionism means something different than it did in the 1940s, when it simply supported a homeland (not a state) for Jewry, not explicitly in Palestine. I have never heard the claim that Martin Luther King was a Zionist, and have some doubts about it, but I doubt that he supported what “Zionism” means today. Nor do I think that were he to support a “homeland for the Jews”, that King would endorse the expulsion, displacement and/or oppression of Palestinians as the government of Israel pursues to this day. King supported equality and social justice, not racism or discrimination, whether coming from “Jews” or “Christians” (so-called, as neither the Bible nor Jesus ever endorsed discrimination).

    Zionists like Noam Chomsky (note he is not a “crypto” Zionist – he makes no effort to keep it a secret) never supported a “State for the Jews” located in Palestine during the Jewish Zionist movement of the 1940s. That said, Chomsky sometimes has a soft spot for Israel, and his dismissal of some comparisons of Israel to racist Apartheid S. Africa “preposterous” appears to be inaccurate. Though I admire Chomsky’s work, standing up to power, and providing a conscientious, alternative voice with detailed analysis of multiple conflicts, his rather obtuse views about BDS cannot seemingly be reconciled with his support of boycotting Apartheid South Africa. The two cases are much the same.

  17. Jonas Rand said on August 4th, 2010 at 11:58pm #

    Also, Yoni, Deadbeat wasn’t saying that MLK was a Zionist. Indeed, nobody did. If you are a Jew from Israel, and you stand against the racism and discrimination occurring in Palestine, then you should feel insulted about the war crimes being committed in the name of your religion and country.

    I think we should welcome other voices here and discuss things with them. Sometimes this place becomes overly dogmatic and certain posters tend to criticize the wrong thing (Judaism, rather than modern-day Zionism) rather than staying open-minded.

  18. Aaron Aarons said on August 5th, 2010 at 12:08am #

    @yoni:

    @Deadbeat
    MLK was a Zionist, like a real Zionist (not that type that you people invent here)?? That’s new to me, any good source?

    No, MKL was not a Zionist, and Deadbeat never implied that he was. You misread him.

    I wouldn’t be surprised of course. People who stand up for human rights and real social justice would always support the Jewish cause for independence in their tiny state, and admire the outcome of their national liberation, which is not flawless of course but is much better than most other political creations out there.

    Let’s see now. Your group, which only has a small presence in an imperialist-occupied country, conspires with the imperialist occupier and other imperialist powers to prevent the independence of that country until your group can colonize it. Then, when your group has about a third of the population, you get the imperialist powers to agree to divide it, giving your group of foreign colonizers over half of this land that is not theirs to give, and then when some of the indigenous people object to your taking over their land, you use that as an excuse to violently drive most of them out. By that time, you don’t need the original imperialist patron any more, so, in the middle of driving out the indigenous people, you declare independence from that patron. (You’ve got some new ones in the meantime!) Then, when some neighbors finally and feebly come to the aid of their kin that you are displacing. you use that to conquer even more of the land and displace more of the indigenous people.

    And you call that “national liberation”? What a sick joke!

  19. Deadbeat said on August 5th, 2010 at 3:36am #

    Thank you Jonas and Aaron for coming to my defense from yoni’s very obvious distortion.

    I’m extremely glad that DV posted Hammond’s screed against Jeffrey Blankfort. IMO it finally opened the sore spot that has been festering on the Left for over 40 years and reveals the for all to see the extreme corruption of the Left. Only when this problem is confronted can there even begin a renewal of the Left with the hope that it can build the level of trust and solidarity that is going to be needed to confront these difficult issues.

    I missed an opportunity to thank Aaron for his remarks during the Hammond thread. He made several courageous and profound comments.

    DB