Israel to World: "Suck It."

I don't know it seems like Romney's a bit too fatalistic and one-sided in his view. So his message to Palestinians, is basically, Sorry guys you'll have to live with the occupation indefinitely because you know it would create security headaches for Israel to try and move the ball forward.

― o. nate, Tuesday, September 18, 2012 12:50 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"security headaches" is understating things a bit

Well, I exaggerated a bit to make a point, but I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle between "headaches" and "humanly insurmountable obstacles".

I think the issue is less one of "human insurmountability" and more one of certain parties in the region who have not exactly shown a good faith willingness to commit to letting a post-two-state-solution Israel exist in peace.

I mean not that that's the the issue, it's just a the issue.

The phrase "good faith" doesn't seem to apply to any party in the region, is part of the problem.

I'm not trying to assign more blame to one side or the other here. Just saying that US should be involved in actively pushing both sides towards piece rather than taking a hands-off approach and saying, Who knows - maybe someday things will change.

piece = peace, oops

xp to onate: which is why I think it's really unpresidential of a candidate to say these things publicly (even private-publicly) even if he thinks them

Yeah, even as an off-the-cuff remark, it bespeaks a deep level of foreign policy naivete.

http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/19/why-im-a-one-issue-voter/?iid=op-main-lede

There are two words that symbolize the terror of the twentieth century: Auschwitz and Hiroshima. An Iranian bomb threatens to combine them both. It portends the destruction of an entire nation and an entire people in a moment. However hard it may be to imagine such wholesale slaughter, if history has taught us nothing else, it has taught that today’s delusions of madmen can become tomorrow’s reality.

The problem is not one person. True, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad describes Israel as an “insult to humanity” and “a cancerous tumor,” and calls for its “disappearance.” But it is equally true that in May, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, Major-General Seyed Hassan Firouzabadi, said: “The Iranian nation is standing for its cause [and] that is the full annihilation of Israel.” And in June, Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told a United Nations-sponsored anti-drug conference that the Jews were responsible for the spread of illegal drugs around the world, that the Zionists control the international drug trade, and that they had ordered doctors to kill black babies.

Experts from Israel’s former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan and others point to a genuine concern that Iran would bomb Israel. So those like The New York Times‘ Bill Keller who declare that Iran would not use the bomb are foisting their own humanitarian criteria on people who do not share them. The reasoning seems to be: “Since for me it is unthinkable, it must be impossible.” But we have learned to our cost in the twentieth century, when it comes to atrocity, the unthinkable is indeed possible. “Containing” a nuclear Iran is the opposite of real politik; it is fantasy politik.

I think if someone wants to make a cogent case that the leaders of Iran are suicidal, genocidal psychopaths, they need to offer more than examples of rhetorical excess. It's one thing to play on populist sentiments for political reasons, even to the point of making extreme statements about annihilation, but talk and action can be quite different things, and AFAIK Iran's leaders don't have a record of doing anything even remotely like starting a nihilistic nuclear conflagration.

man, mainstream news magazines are just the worst when it comes to photo usage in connection with anything islam

Demonstrators hold up a Quran during a protest outside the Swiss embassy in Tehran, capital of Iran, on Sept. 13, 2012.

What are they protesting? What does it have to do with nuclear weapons and Israel? We don't know, we just get some spooky black-shrouded women and a mystical book.

But more importantly, this:

Experts from Israel’s former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan and others point to a genuine concern that Iran would bomb Israel.

is just a MASSIVE distortion

the unthinkable is indeed possible.

this is just stupid. Auschwitz was not unthinkable, in fact there were tons of historical precedents for it - Europe's historical anti-semitism, the Armenian genocide, etc. Iran would be committing suicide by nuking Israel, there's no real evidence that they are psychopathically suicidal, even if I do find their pursuit of nuclear weapons fairly irrational.

similarly Hiroshima was preceded by the firebombing of Tokyo, by Dresden, by the massive industrialized slaughter of WWI etc

Experts from Israel’s former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan and others point to a genuine concern that Iran would bomb Israel.

Yes, the concern is genuine.

Fortunately, concern doesn't nuke countries.

Dagan is the guy who called an Israeli attack on Iran "the stupidest idea I've ever heard" so it's really disingenuous, and weak, to cite him as the one example of "experts" with a "genuine concern that Iran would bomb Israel"

http://news.yahoo.com/sabotaging-iran-nukes-084500157--politics.html

Dagan felt a preemptive strike would be stupid because he thinks Iran is three years away from developing nuclear weapons, not bc Iran w/ nuclear weapons is an existential threat (which he seems to believe - and acted accordingly when he was running Mossad).

Wow at that btw xp - I've felt for awhile that best scenario was sabotage w/out overt deployment.

seems like a much more manageable way to go, that's for sure.

how operatives get in and out of a country and blow shit up like that is o_0 to me tho, can't even conceive it

“I very much appreciate the president’s position, as does everyone in my country,” he said. The Israeli leader’s speech also suggested that his deadline for a military strike was well past the American presidential election and into 2013 — perhaps as late as next summer.

My totally baseless guesses: Either there has been a development in sabotage that Obama briefed Bibi on or made some kind of promise to Bibi that made him back off. This is practically an endorsement.

I GOT THIS

I suspect it may have something to do with Obama's widening lead in the polls.

Might be related, but I think Bibi gave up on Romney a long time ago. And I don't think he'd back down on nuclear Iran unless he had some assurances from Obama. (After all, the only reason he'd favor a Republican over Obama is because he thinks they'd be tougher on Iran. That's clearly his end game. I don't think he otherwise gives a fuck about the Republican Party.)

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/07/benjamin-netanyahu-on-israel-mitt-romney

Netanyahu is once reported to have said—he now denies it—that he “speaks English with a heavy Republican accent.” “Israel’s current prime minister is not just a friend, he’s an old friend,” Mitt Romney, with whom Netanyahu worked at the Boston Consulting Group in the 1970s, told aipac in March. (Romney, Netanyahu suggests, may have overstated the tie. “I remember him for sure, but I don’t think we had any particular connections,” he tells me. “I knew him and he knew me, I suppose.”)

I think there was a window when Romney and Obama were still close enough in the polls that Netanyahu thought he could apply some pressure on Obama politically by voicing his unhappiness, or maybe even boost Romney's chances. But then the polls widened more, and he thought it wiser to backpedal rather than risk pissing off Obama too much. There may be more to it that we don't know about.

Heard Israel, with US funding, is actually building a 300 foot tall wall - a giant red line - that it will drop around Iran's nuclear site, thus containing the threat.

The Mossad already tried it out on this guy, and it totally worked.

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRCzePPVhMgBdFkP4OxySm9Cgjpuq2ewixHpIhwJd3MbOR5XxKHbQ

he thought it wiser to backpedal rather than risk pissing off Obama too much

For all the pro-Israel evangelicals out there, there are still lots of anti-semites, anti-Zionists, and assorted whackjob nationalists who might look askance at an ally meddling in our politics and Bibi's astute enough not to give them too much ammo, esp if his candidate is losing.

A new twist?

"Mitt Romney is set to speak by telephone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday.
The Republican presidential nominee's campaign confirms the scheduled conversation. It would come the same day that President Barack Obama also is expected to speak with Netanyahu phone."

http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/mitt-romney-to-speak-with-israeli-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-1.4051460

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/09/28/israeli-embassy-pokes-fun-at-iranians-on-twitter-for-publishing-fake-anti-obama-onion-article-photos/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/24/us-un-assembly-ahmadinejad-idUSBRE88N0HF20120924

"Iran has been around for the last seven, 10 thousand years. They (the Israelis) have been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in history," he said, referring to the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

"We do believe that they have found themselves at a dead end and they are seeking new adventures in order to escape this dead end. Iran will not be damaged with foreign bombs," Ahmadinejad said, speaking through an interpreter at his Manhattan hotel.

"We don't even count them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase, they (the Israelis) represent minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated."

I can't understand why anyone thinks Iran would attack Israel!

the guy with no power over Iran's military sure says some crazy stuff

as if he says anything khomeini doesn't cosign

As if it's anything other than talk

how could you possibly know whether it was just talk or not?

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ahmadinejads-adviser-sentenced-rift-deepens.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31118&NewsCatID=352

as if

There is no upside in actually attacking Israel.

So the New Yorker had themselves a caption contest:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/BibiBomb.jpg

I made two of those three jokes, combined, ha!

("Our Christmas Tree ornament fundraiser has almost met its goal")

ACME

anyone who thinks iran would actually attack israel has presumably given up on the idea that nations' actions bear some relation to their discernable interests.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/170264/palestinian-soccer-player-mahmoud-sarsak-wont-play-fc-barcelonas-game

He was making clear that peace and harmony with Sgt. Maj. Gilad Shalit in the current circumstances would do more harm than good, selling the idea that peace under the current circumstances of quarantine and occupation was a peace worth having.

Israel released hundreds of prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, many of whom even Hamas admitted were responsible for killing Israeli civilians. I can't really support Sarsak on this one.

yay bibi thx for not ending the world this month! :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/world/middleeast/israels-iran-policy-appears-to-shift-further-toward-more-sanctions.html

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/features/health/theskinny/blog/gilad-thumb.jpg

hundreds of prisoners are worth it to free this man

With all the carrier groups/naval forces in the Persian Gulf right now, I'm actually somewhat worried that a USS Vincennes vs. Iran Air #655 situation could happen again