Did anyone in the audience at the UN laugh out loud? How could they contain themselves upon seeing Netanyahu show a bomb right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon? My first thought was of Wile E. Cayote.
The Israeli Likud Party’s cover story for why it wants to draw the United States into a war with Iran makes no real sense. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been predicting an Iranian nuclear bomb since 1992 (a time when Iran had no nuclear program at all), and he has been wrong for 15 years in a row. Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and other Israeli officials have said publicly that Iran has not decided to go for a nuclear weapon. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given more than one fatwa or formal religious ruling that making and stockpiling nuclear weapons are forbidden in Islamic law. Netanyahu is in a position similar to that of someone who wants to argue that Pope Benedict XVI secretly has a condom factory operating in the Vatican.Bibi makes the case for war with Iran on the same bases that he made the case for war in Iraq. By changing only one letter in the name of the country and using pretty much the same pattern of lies and misinformation which were successful in persuading Cheney/Bush to launch a war in Iraq, Bibi's script promoting an attack on Iran was written. Check out the 2002 video of Bibi's testimony before Congress, explaining the dangers of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, which were later proved to be non-existent.
Check out the winners of the caption contest of the photo above at The New Yorker.
Ironic really; an inter-tribal squabble that effectively started in the Bronze Age could end up putting us all back into the stone age via the technology and weaponry of the Nuclear Age.
ReplyDeleteThere are grudges and there are grudges, but 2000 years or so? That's what I'd call a bit excessive.
And yes, I love the 'ACME' bomb. This time the Roadrunner's a gonner for sure.
No end to the grudges. I hope Obama is smart enough to dismiss the propaganda of both Bibi and Ahmadinejad.
DeleteSo, are we surprised that he can't conceive of a life without war having lived a whole life in the habit of suspicion and aggression? An offering to consider:
ReplyDelete… in Gilead
my re-write of the classic spiritual
There is a bomb in Gilead, on poor and young the toll,
There is a bomb in Gilead, beneath a tattered stole.
On long pent up frustration, the predators preach war,
For power and for profit, twist prophets words to score.
There is a bomb in Gilead, on poor and young the toll,
There is a bomb in Gilead, beneath a tattered stole.
Oppressed, no hope, discouraged, they long to be set free,
Again treat life as sacred, not martyr’s casualty.
There is a bomb in Gilead, on poor and young the toll,
There is a bomb in Gilead, beneath a tattered stole.
The clerics, priests and rabbis, must teach the ways of peace,
Link arms in holy union, demand the fighting cease.
There is a bomb in Gilead, on poor and young the toll,
There is a bomb in Gilead, beneath a tattered stole.
For Arab, Jew and Christian, life should mean so much more,
Than war and confrontation, with Peace this song restore:
There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole.
There is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin sick soul.
The Israelis' oppressive actions against the Palestinians leave them with no hope. Bibi and his hard-line cohorts want to make a Palestinian state impossible, but in less than a decade Palestinians will outnumber Israelis, and then what? An apartheid state with the minority ruling the majority?
DeleteThey might start by agreeing to the obvious fact that the fighting has accomplished nothing but endless killing and retribution and killing ... a cycle that resolves nothing. If they can agree on that, there is a place to start by agreeing to stop killing one another, then real talk can begin about how to live side by side ... live ... that's a beginning.
DeleteGenette, to stop the killing would be a start. Perhaps one day the two peoples will be willing to ask, "Where do we go from here to learn to live together in this place?"
DeleteGenette and Mimi, the Israelis agreed to that long ago. It's the Palestinians and their backers who have trouble with the concept.
DeleteAs for Juan Cole, since he's long been anti-Israel, he naturally leaves out a few important points--such as the fact that the Iranians have taken serious steps to turn their nuclear program into something the IAEA can not monitor, that Khamenei can easily issue a fatwa saying his earlier rulings don't prohibit nukes when 'the Zionist entity' is the target, that the Iranian regime has promised to use a bomb on Israel if they ever get one, that Hezbollah are their pet terrorists and would be guaranteed not to turn on them, and--most important--would become the leader of the Muslim world if they ever did bomb Israel simply because that fact. It's true that Israel has a bunch of weapons, but then again Israel has never come close to demanding any other country be wiped off the map, or threatened to use those weapons--so a comparison to Iran is not really symmetrical. It's true that Iranian extremism is masking the problem of the Israeli settler movement, but it's the anti-Israel extremists who are providing the settlers cover (and letting the rest of the Israelis feel that there's no point to restraining the settlers because Arab hatred of Israel would not diminish if they did curb the settlers). It's really the reverse of what Cole said. It may be politically convenient for Netanyahu, but maybe if Iran wasn't constantly calling for the destruction of Israel, Bibi wouldn't have the opportunity to keep the argument on the topic of Muslim hatred of Israel and off the topic of Israeli settlers.
The real solution to the problem of Iranian nukes is for a real democratic government to replace the ayatollahs, but, quite obviously, no one has managed to find a way to do that yet.
kishnevi, it's not just Juan Cole being "anti-Israel". Our own intelligence agencies don't agree with Netanyahu. I hope and pray we will not start another war in the Middle East on the basis if lies and false information. Why should the US believe Netanyahu now? If Israel decides to attack Iran, I hope we make it clear they are on their own.
DeleteI do realize that the present situation between the Israelis and Palestinians is due, in part, to actions of the Palestinians, but right now Israelis exercise full power over Palestinians as oppressors. Palestinians live in misery and with no hope, and the state of Israel cannot benefit from such an ongoing situation of gross inequality.
Mimi, you are not the only one who thought of Wile E. Coyote. Check out Rob Rogers' cartoon in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
ReplyDeleteBill, one look at the cartoon of the "nuclear bomb" brought Looney Tunes to mind, and I'm not surprised that others thought the same.
DeleteJon Stewart had a great take on this: "Bibi, Bubbe: you're Israel. If you want to know what a nuclear bomb really looks like, just check the basement!"
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly right, JCF.
Delete"Israel has never come close to demanding any other country be wiped off the map." Really? I think the Israeli government is doing a good job of that with the Palestinians, if by other means than nuclear weapons.
ReplyDeleteThe Palestinians are stateless people. Think what it would be like to live without a state. Since the Israeli government has made a two-state solution nearly impossible, the two groups will have to live in the same state, but, in the name of common humanity, the conditions under which Palestinians are forced to live now must change.
DeleteMimi, you don't need to remind me what it is to live without a state. I'm a Jew. We're experts on what it is to live without a state. We've been walking a Trail of Tears for almost two thousand years, and less than seven decades of that with a "state", and the Iranians and Palestinians want to make it longer.
DeleteThe conditions under which the Palestinians are forced to live? No one forces them accept Hamas and the other extremists and terrorists as their leadership. And until they do, it would be impossible to have a two state solution, even if the Israelis turned into the most charitable and forgiving government in the world as far as the Palestinians are concerned.
And think of it this way--if a person is continually making death threats at you, and has access to weapons to put those threats into effect. exactly how would you act?
kishnevi, if you are a citizen of the US, you are not stateless. So because the Jews walked the Trail of Tears, and I know that is true, that makes it just for the Jewish state to oppress the Palestinians?
DeleteI think there will be no two-state solution. The Palestinians and the Jews will probably have to find a way to, at least, co-exist in a society that provides a measure of justice and equality for both peoples.
As far as the death threats from Iran, those need to be assessed with some degree of realism.
This is just the type of thing that makes my blood boil about religion, and it is largely a religious problem; for 'Palestinian' read 'Muslim', for 'Israeli' read Jewish. To me, the problem looks for all the world like a family divided over a will, both sides holding copies that they each claim left the so-called 'Promised Land' to them. Normally, though, family disputes don't descend into full-scale wars, with indiscriminate killings and the threat of a nuclear Armageddon hanging over the whole planet.
DeleteHere's some breaking news for both factions; Jahweh / Allah did NOT promise you ownership of that bit of desert (or the mineral wealth contained beneath it, for that matter). The books that you claim to have come directly from your deity of choice, and that you claim give you sole rights to the land, were written by mortal men with agendas, and one Hell of a long time ago to boot.
When will you realise that you, whether you identify yourself as Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, or Atheist, are just a Human being like every other Human being on the planet. Land boundaries,whether local or national, are man-made like your books, and like your books they were drawn up by men (it's always men) with agendas. They don't exist in reality, as anybody who's ever been up in an aircraft or seen pictures of our beautiful planet taken from on high will testify.
We are, all of us, first and foremost children of Earth; please don't leave it until there are no more people left before you realise it for yourselves.
Please forgive my rambling post; we were celebrating our youngest grandson's first birthday this afternoon (technically yesterday, but it's still Tuesday over there), and this type of thing makes me wonder just what kind of future our little ones are set to inherit. Why can't we mature as a species the way we mature as individuals? Because we have to, if our grandchildren are to have a future worth having.
If I were starting out in married life today, I probably would not have children. But then, if I were young and starting out, I probably would not know enough to decide not to have children.
DeleteI can't imagine not liking living behind a wall or in Gaza, cut off from my family and having to endure onerous "travel" regulations every day to be able to go to work. Extremism breeds extremism.
ReplyDeleteThe bomb reminds me of Inspector Clouseau. "In my 'and I have a berm. Oh no!! A berm!!"
ReplyDeleteYes, Cathy, now that you mention it. Would that Bibi was no more than a character in a comedy.
Delete