Israel to World: "Suck It."

the thing that is so ass-backwards about many american jews is that they just. don't. get. that there are real debates within israel--they stupidly imagine whatever the prime minister's position is to be the Voice of Israel that a presidential candidate must support blindly. when the reality is that all the major military folks in israel have had it up to -here- with netanyahu.

apparently theres a rumor going on in israel that bibi's gonna attack iran in october to force the issue..

my only source is my roomate who works at a jewish summer camp with a bunch of israelis..

Seems like if there's anything that would sew this up for Obama would be for the election to happen in the middle of a Middle East war. "Don't change horses midstream" and all that.

christ why can't the military just tell bibi to fuck off? i guess that would force a big constitutional crisis.

call me pollyanna but does anyone think iran is really going to nuke israel? wtf would they stand to gain?

they think that the Iranians want to bring about armageddon and are willing to accept all casualties necessary

hmmm where have I heard that before

In the war room?

the thing is the ayatollahs who have ultimate power over the military are probably much less interested in bombing israel than ahmenijabad (sp?) who has no power to start wars.

the system works!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9545597/Armada-of-British-naval-power-massing-in-the-Gulf-as-Israel-prepares-an-Iran-strike.html

great timing

http://plus.maths.org/content/game-theory-and-cuban-missile-crisis

I wonder if Obama arranged this international show of power as a message to Bibi as much as to Iran. Relax, we got this, etc.

I feel these days like how I felt before the Iraq war; just day after day wondering if war was going to come and becoming more certain it would. I hope it doesn't.

Wanted to post something about the Romney comments, but I kind of don't like that a thread with this title has become the main Israel/Palestine discussion thread. Would it be stupid to ask mods to change it? Is there another thread we can revive?

See, I think this thread, especially under Bibi and his cabinet, is appropriately titled for what it covers.

A cursory search of "palestine" leads to at least a half-dozen threads dedicated more closely to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

I kinda like the thread title.

Ok well anyway, I thought that parts of Romney's analysis were pretty cogent and honest, although absolutely not the kinds of things a person running for president should ever say out loud.

is obama really that beholden to the mystical "jewish vote"? are american jews really so fucking stupid? (NB: i am an american jew.) whose vote does obama really stand to lose if he tells netanyahu to fuck off?

This is silly btw. By all accounts Bibi has totally written off Romney (dude is an American educated world leader - he can read poll results too). He's either a) trying to get Obama to attack, b) trying to lay groundwork for American acceptance and material support if Israel attacks, or c) believes that a red line or more threats will stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapon so no one will have to attack. Obama isn't going along with it bc he's desperate for American Jewish votes, which he more or less already has in the bag*. He's probably a) trying to keep Bibi from attacking Iran and b) trying to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons without going to war. It could be that they're both maneuvering around the 2012 election but I think it's a very silly view of geopolitical situation to think either are seriously thinking about Romney while negotiating.

* Ironically my community is probably one of the few where Obama's responses to Bibi may influence votes, but I think it's a big mistake to extrapolate very small group of Jews to Jewish community at large.

Israel to World: "Hey, let's you and him fight."

Also - I haven't seen Romney's comments yet but I suspect they don't matter. No one voting for Romney at this point will care and tbh, it seems like Palestinian issue is off the table for most people right now. It has been marginalized by Iran, the Arab Spring (esp in Egypt), Syria, etc. My prediction: I think 2 state solution idea is over. Future is gonna be 1 state.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/romney-secret-video-israeli-palestinian-middle-east-peace

Obviously I don't agree on some of his key points (that Palestinians are "committed" to the destruction of Israel and under no circumstances want peace, or w/e) but I think he gets a lot right about why the situation is intractable

I'm torn by two perspectives in this regard. One is the one which I've had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish. Now why do I say that? Some might say, well, let's let the Palestinians have the West Bank, and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians. And then come a couple of thorny questions. And I don't have a map here to look at the geography, but the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel, the center of Israel. It's—what the border would be? Maybe seven miles from Tel Aviv to what would be the West Bank…The other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian state would either be Syria at one point, or Jordan. And of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, what they did near Gaza. Which is that the Iranians would want to bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel. So Israel of course would have to say, "That can't happen. We've got to keep the Iranians from bringing weaponry into the West Bank." Well, that means that—who? The Israelis are going to patrol the border between Jordan, Syria, and this new Palestinian nation? Well, the Palestinians would say, "Uh, no way! We're an independent country. You can't, you know, guard our border with other Arab nations." And now how about the airport? How about flying into this Palestinian nation? Are we gonna allow military aircraft to come in and weaponry to come in? And if not, who's going to keep it from coming in? Well, the Israelis. Well, the Palestinians are gonna say, "We're not an independent nation if Israel is able to come in and tell us what can land in our airport." These are problems—these are very hard to solve, all right? And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, "There's just no way." And so what you do is you say, "You move things along the best way you can." You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don't go to war to try and resolve it imminently. On the other hand, I got a call from a former secretary of state. I won't mention which one it was, but this individual said to me, you know, I think there's a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis after the Palestinian elections. I said, "Really?" And, you know, his answer was, "Yes, I think there's some prospect." And I didn't delve into it.

and weirdly, there is almost a glimmer there of being able to understand someone else's perspective, which is unusual for Romney

On the other hand, I got a call from a former secretary of state. I won't mention which one it was, but this individual said to me, you know, I think there's a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis after the Palestinian elections. I said, "Really?" And, you know, his answer was, "Yes, I think there's some prospect." And I didn't delve into it.

lmbo

"a former secretary of state called me with one perspective, but, eh, i went with dan senor's take"

lol, i'm trying to think which former secretary of state's opinion i'd give a shit about and coming up short

that former secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson

"That sounds like a job for the president, have you called him?"

id take just about any one of them over romneys advisers

You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don't go to war to try and resolve it imminently.

eh not bad tbh

that's what I'm saying. If you cut the fatty pandering off the edges of what he said, the meat of it shows a pretty good understanding of the situation.

We live with that in China and Taiwan.

lol, no unleash chang for you guys.

that former secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2),

lol

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.

Sadly, I think the international consensus is dead; Russian immigrants and settlers will never put up with anything but Jerusalem being the capital and the West Bank slowly being engulfed, American evangelicals will back them both for eschatonic reasons and out of hatred for Islam, the Chinese will remain aloof, the Russians are concentrated on Syria right now, Egypt is still chaotic, SA is looking at Iran, and the EU doesn't have the clout it once had. The Palestinians have messed up so many times that no-one really has any faith in them or patience and the rise of Hamas as both anti-Fatah protest and return to Islamic fundamentals deeply hurts both Palestinian unity and their image amongst the players most likely to help. I guess I'm about as pessimistic as Mittens on the subject.

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