ISRAEL-IRÁN-PALESTINA.2012

POR SU GRAN INTERÉS INFORMATIVO PUBLICAMOS TAMBIÉN LA CARTA ENVIADA A NABEEL SHAATH,AMIGO,UNO DE LOS FUNDADORES DE ESTA WEB,QUE ACOMPAÑA AL ARTÍCULO DE DANIEL LEVY.

ESTA ES UNA DEMOSTRACIÓN MÁS DE QUE EL DIÁLOGO ES POSIBLE, Y DE QUE EL ACTUAL GOBIERNO ISRAELÍ NO REPRESENTA LOS INTERESES DE LA MAYORÍA DE SU PUEBLO.

Dear Nabil,

 

After a week with a lot of focus on Israel and Iran, I wanted to share with you a curtain-raiser essay that I wrote for foreignpolicy.com prior to Netanyahu’s visit (the full article is pasted at the bottom of this note). Having followed developments this week closely, and now having had a chance to review the weekend Israeli press, I’m still sticking with my assessment from that essay entitled “Netanyahu Won’t Attack Iran (Probably.)”

 

On Wednesday morning, we held a post-mortem panel at NAF looking at the visit, how this is playing out in America and Israel, and also in Iran, bearing in mind Iranian parliamentary elections. That panel discussion can be viewed here in its entirety, and featured Heather Hurlburt of the National Security Network, Ali Nader of the RAND Corporation, in addition to myself. It was moderated by Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress. A transcript of the event will also be available shortly on the NAF website.

 

Just a heads up that I will be discussing some of these issues on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS show this Sunday on CNN (airing at 10am and 1pm EST and at various times on CNN International on Sunday and Monday). Also, look out for Chris Hayes’ show UP this Sunday morning at 8am EST, devoted to this topic and featuring my NAF colleague Leila Hilal and J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami, and for the CBS’s 60 Minutes interview with ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

Finally, to bring to your attention to what Israel’s leading columnist Nahum Barnea had to say today in the Yedioth Aharonoth  Newspaper (his column has not appeared in English translation yet online at Ynetnews.com). “Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems to me that more than the Israelis who pushed for action were thinking about Iran, they were thinking about the US administration. Israel was in a similar situation in the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein’s Scuds were launched at Israel, and the director of IDF Intelligence, Ehud Barak, was sent to Washington to explain to Secretary of Defense Cheney that there would be an Israeli military strike, that this was the government’s obligation to its citizens. Israel cannot place its security in the hands of others. The Americans sweated: they knew that an Israeli operation was liable to dismantle the coalition and to turn Saddam Hussein into the darling of the Arab nations. They asked for a 48-hour extension, and then sent a commando to attack the launchers that were troubling Israel…Netanyahu knows that he cannot force Obama to act, not before the elections in America and not afterwards. He can only try to persuade. That is what he tried to do at the White House. Then he went outside, to his friends on the Republican Right, and waved his papers from the Holocaust.”

 

It is an assessment that quite closely tracks my own analysis from the aforementioned scene-setting piece: “perhaps this has been the Israeli intention all along: to checkmate the United States by locking it into a logic of confrontation down the road. Israel's position has, after all, been relatively clear in preferring a "stars and stripes" rather than a "blue and white" label on the military taming of Iran.” Barnea then unleashes on Netanyahu’s Holocaust-centric speech from Monday night in DC. “His audience got up and cheered. Any speech about the poor, lost, attacked Israel reminds them of how well off they are: their ancestors immigrated to the right place. There, in the Middle East, oh my God, Auschwitz is lurking around every corner; here in America, we can live safely. They sat down and cheered Netanyahu: he was one of them.” It is a theme that has been repeated elsewhere in the Israeli media.

Last word, Paul Pillar, makes a very compelling case against any military action, Israeli or American, and for a different approach on Iran in a long article in The Washington Monthly magazine.It can be read here.

I welcome any thoughts or feedback.

With best whises,

Daniel