Robert
Fisk Independent/UK 01 OCTOBER 2013
These
are hard times for the Israeli right. Used to bullying the US – and especially
its present, shallow leader – the Likudists suddenly find that the whole world
wants peace in the Middle East rather than war. Brits and Americans didn’t want
to go to war in Syria. Now, with the pleasant smile of President Rouhani
gracing their television screens, fully accepting the facts of the Jewish
Holocaust – unlike his deranged and infantile predecessor – the Americans (75
per cent, if we are to believe the polls) don’t want to go to war with Iran
either.
Having, live on television, forced
President Obama to grovel to him on his last trip to the White House – Benjamin
Netanyahu brusquely told him to forget UN Security Resolution 242, which calls
for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from lands occupied after the 1967 war – the
Israeli Prime Minister did a little grovelling himself on Monday. He no longer
called for a total end to all Iranian nuclear activities. Now it was only
Iran’s “military nuclear programme” which must be shut down. And, of course,
like Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction programme” which President George W
Bush had to invent when the weapons themselves turned out to be an invention,
we still don’t know if Mr Netanyahu’s version of Iran’s “military nuclear
programme” actually exists.
What
we do know is that when Mr Rouhani started saying all the things we had been
demanding that Iran should say for years, Israel went bananas. Mr Netanyahu
condemned him before he had even said a word. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Even when Mr Rouhani spoke of peace and an end to nuclear suspicions, Israel’s
“Strategic Affairs” Minister, said time had run out for future negotiations.
Yuval Steinitz claimed that “if the Iranians continue to run [their nuclear
programme], in another half a year they will have bomb capability”.
Mr
Netanyahu’s own office joined in the smear campaign. “One must not be fooled by
the Iranian President’s fraudulent words,” one of Mr Netanyahu’s men sneered.
“The Iranians are spinning in the media so that the centrifuges can keep on
spinning.” The Rouhani speech was “a
honey trap”. Mr Netanyahu himself said Mr Rouhani’s address to the UN, a speech
of immense importance after 34 years of total divorce between Iran and the US,
was “cynical” and “totally hypocritical”.
Israel Hayom, the Likudist freesheet, dredged up the old pre-Second
World War appeasement argument that the Israeli right have been reheating for
well over 30 years. Perhaps it had its effect. If he was not so frightened of
Israel – as most US administrations are – President Obama might actually have
shaken hands with Mr Rouhani last week; though Mr Rouhani himself might have
preferred not to touch the hand of the “Great Satan” too soon. Instead,
President Obama settled for a miserable phone call.
When
Mr Rouhani came to speak, Western nations crowded into the chamber to hear him.
But Israel stormed out. “A stupid gesture,” according to that wise old Israeli
sage, writer and philosopher Uri Avnery. “. Stupid because it painted Israel as
a spoiler, at a time when the entire world is seized by an attack of optimism
after the recent events in Damascus and Tehran. Stupid, because it proclaims
the fact that Israel is at present totally isolated.”
Mr
Avnery’s contention is Israel wanted two wars, the first against Syria, the
second against Iran. As he wrote last week, when Congress hesitated to strike
Damascus, “the hounds of hell were let loose. Aipac (the largest Likudist
pro-Israeli lobby group in the US) sent its parliamentary rottweillers to
Capitol Hill to tear to pieces any senator or congressman who objected”. Yet at
the White House on Monday, the Israeli Prime Minister had calmed down. I doubt
if it will last. Israel, I suspect, will do everything it can to cut down Mr
Rouhani’s overtures.
For
there was President Obama at Monday’s meeting, praising Mr Netanyahu for his
support for a two-state solution. There is, of course, only a “limited amount
of time” to achieve this illusory goal because the Netanyahu government is
thieving, against all international law, yet more Palestinian Arab land for
Jews and Jews only, at a faster rate than ever, to prevent just such a
Palestinian state ever existing. And when President Obama can’t even explain
this weird “limited amount of time”, the Israelis know that he is still a
groveller. This is what real “appeasement” is all about. Fear. And you can be sure that Madame Clinton – to
quote Sir Thomas More – doesn’t have the spittle for it. For she wants to be
the next appeaser-president. The
Likudists have isolated Israel from the world just now but be sure American
cowardice will let them off the hook. [Abbrev.]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-cowardice-will-let-israels-isolated-right-off-the-hook
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