Under Iran’s theocratic dictatorship atheist Soheil Arabi faced death for blasphemy

Thousands were released in Iran, but not atheist prisoner Soheil Arabi

The activist and blogger sentenced to blasphemy is on hunger strike

By Rahila Gupta  

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Soheil Arabi. Photo: Nano GoleSorkh

If lockdown has deepened our empathy with the predicament of inmates in our jails, it has also released innovative means of protest on behalf of political prisoners locked up in brutal conditions. On 14th April, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain organised a self-declared first: a three-hour online protest, live-streamed on Facebook, mixing music, poetry and an array of international speakers, in support of Soheil Arabi.

Arabi is an atheist, activist and blogger. He’s in an Iranian prison, in bad shape both emotionally and physically. His crime? Blasphemy: writing insulting Facebook posts about the prophet Muhammad, the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei and other Iranian officials. Arabi was arrested in December 2013 and sentenced to death for blasphemy. In July 2015, upon appeal, his death sentence was reduced to seven and a half years in prison and two years of religious studies to cure him of his atheism. In addition to physical problems caused by various hunger strikes, Arabi has been tortured, resulting in blunt trauma to his testicles and a broken nose, amongst other injuries.

Refusing to be silenced, he was later sentenced to an additional three years in prison, exile and a fine on charges of “propaganda against the state” and “insulting the sacred and the supreme leader” because of his open letters highlighting inhumane prison conditions of political prisoners in Iran. As if to rub the mullahs’ noses in it, he signs letters as Soheil Arabi, Atheist.

Iran, Pakistan and Yemen are the three worst countries in regard to the implementation of blasphemy law, often used to harass religious and ethnic minorities. (See my interview with Saif ul-Malook, the lawyer who represented Asia Bibi. A Christian woman, Bibi spent nine years in prison on confected charges of blasphemy, many of those on death row, before the sentence was commuted to life.) According to The Freedom of Thought report 2019, blasphemy laws exist in 69 countries and is punishable by death in six.

We don’t know the number of prisoners sentenced to death for blasphemy in Iran. Figures are hard to come by. A 2018 Amnesty report put the number of individuals executed at over 253, while 18 were convicted of moharebeh (enmity against God) and 14 of “spreading corruption on earth”, vague terms for blasphemy much in vogue in Iran. Any criticism of the state can be deemed a religious offence and has proven a handy mechanism for controlling dissent.

Arabi resumed his hunger strike on April 4 in protest at the Iranian regime’s denial of medical care, inhuman prison conditions and the denial of leave for prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic. In a bid to stop the spread of the virus, more than 85,000 prisoners were released on temporary leave, including the more well-known political prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian citizen imprisoned for allegedly “plotting to topple the Iranian government”. In his letter to the Greater Tehran Penitentiary announcing his hunger strike, Arabi asks, “And I have been imprisoned for telling the truth. Those who had embezzled money were granted prison leave and are now at large. Armed robbers are now at large. What is the danger of a journalist?”

Atheism is a red rag to religion in a way that religion rarely is to atheism – unless we are talking about authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union. It’s a point that is often eclipsed in liberal democracies where freedom of belief often trumps the freedom not to believe. Of course, in countries like Iran, neither freedom exists.

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Senator who spearheaded letter to Iran got $1 million from Kristol’s ‘Emergency C’tee for Israel’

Bill Kristol, at Rightweb

by Philip Weiss

The U.S. media have been sadly incurious about the origins of yesterday’s unprecedented Open Letter of 47 Republicans to the Iranian leadership seeking to block the president’s likely deal with Iran. The press has portrayed the letter as the work of Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a 37-year-old freshman senator so new to the limelight that the New York Times got his name wrong on first impression. But as a Times commenter writes, “Does anyone really believe the ‘freshman senator from Arkansas’ wrote the letter? No.”

The media are all over the unprecedented nature of the letter — which informs Iranian hardliners that Obama’s likely deal with Iran is a “mere executive agreement.” Chris Matthews and Chris Hayes and Michael Steele on MSNBC last night all expressed outrage or surprise. Paul Waldman at the Washington Post calls the letter “stunning” and “appalling.” But apart from a passing reference to neocons from Matthews, no one is looking under the hood.

I don’t know who wrote the letter, but I can tell you whose fingerprints are on it: the only folks who are supporting it publicly, the hard-right Israel lobby. Even as Cotton himself splutters on national television, rightwing lobby groups are the main voices out there defending the letter.

Like Bill Kristol of the Emergency Committee for Israel:

Cotton open letter: “Just so you know, we’re a constitutional democracy. Congress (or next president) has a say.” Dem response: Hysteria.

J Street’s Dylan Williams fingers Bill Kristol for writing the letter:

Who gave @SenTomCotton & others the awful idea for the Iran letter? Seems like Sarah Palin-for-VP-level bad advice doesn’t it @BillKristol ?

There’s a reason for Williams’s suspicion. Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel gave Tom Cotton nearly $1 million in his race for the Senate just five months ago, Eli Clifton reported. “Cotton received $960,250 in supportive campaign advertising in the last month.” (Thanks to Kay24 in comments).

Cotton also got $165,000 from Elliott Management Paul Singer’s hedge fund. Singer is the billionaire who is trying to stop Obama’s Iran talks (Clifton’s reporting again). He funds the Israel Project too– Josh Block’s efforts.

Josh Block has been standing up for the letter on Twitter. And the rightwing Israel Project offered support for the letter in an email last night:

Many analysts believe that without congressional approval, if a final deal with Iran is reached, it will not outlast President Barack Obama’s tenure as President of the United States. Without congressional involvement, the Obama administration would strike a deal with Iran through executive action which could signal to the Iranians that the “deal would be with the President alone,” writes Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith. He continues, “The bottom line, then, is that any deal struck by President Obama with Iran will probably appear to the Iranians to be, at best, short-term and tenuous.  And so we can probably expect, at best, only a short-term and tenuous commitment from Iran in return.”

When it comes to the Iran negotiations, the Obama administration says that they only see a role for Congress  when it comes to sanctions. If a final agreement is reached, they will eventually look to Congress for the lifting of sanctions. The White House said that Congress has had a role to play when it has drafted and passed the sanctions legislation that President Obama subsequently signed into law. The White House does not believe that an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program would require congressional approval.

The letter has gotten support from David Frum, the former Bush aide who wrote of taking on Saddam Hussein, “It’s victory or Holocaust.” On twitter:

“Time after time, Obama has told Congress to go to hell. Now Congress is telling Obama to go to hell.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition, a pro-Israel group, has also supported the letter.

Josh Block used to work at AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and is sometimes thought to speak for AIPAC. AIPAC is staying silent, while pushing further sanctions on Iran.

But former AIPAC staffer MJ Rosenberg has explained why he believes AIPAC penned the letter. As he tweeted today:

Nothing happens on Capitol Hill related to Israel unless and until Howard Kohr (AIPAC chief) wants it to happen. Nothing.

What network is behind this letter? People have a right to know. The media should be sending reporters out to dig into these connections. Imagine if the Koch Brothers were pushing some initiative on states’ rights or abortion. Would the media be so incurious? No. The scandal of the Netanyahu speech and the efforts by Israel to derail US negotiations with Iran has surely exposed the workings of the Israel lobby to the eyes of the American public to an unprecedented degree. But the media have to do more.

 

Noam Chomsky: Why Israel’s Netanyahu Is So Desperate to Prevent Peace with Iran

Noam Chomsky: Why Israel’s Netanyahu Is So Desperate to Prevent Peace with Iran

By Amy Goodman

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in the United States as part of his bid to stop a nuclear deal with Iran during a controversial speech before the U.S. Congress on Tuesday. Dozens of Democrats are threatening to boycott the address, which was arranged by House Speaker John Boehner without consulting the White House. Netanyahu’s visit comes just as Iran and six world powers, including the United States, are set to resume talks in a bid to meet a March 31 deadline. “For both Prime Minister Netanyahu and the hawks in Congress, mostly Republican, the primary goal is to undermine any potential negotiation that might settle whatever issue there is with Iran,” says Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “They have a common interest in ensuring there is no regional force that can serve as any kind of deterrent to Israeli and U.S. violence, the major violence in the region.” Chomsky also responds to recent revelations that in 2012 the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, contradicted Netanyahu’s own dire warnings about Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb, concluding that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.”

TRANSCRIPTThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington as part of his bid to stop a nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu will address the lobby group AIPAC today, followed by a controversial speech before Congress on Tuesday. The visit comes just as Iran and six world powers, including the U.S., are set to resume talks in a bid to meet a March 31st deadline. At the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Netanyahu’s trip won’t threaten the outcome.

PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST: I think the short answer to that is: I don’t think so. And the reason is simply that there is a real opportunity for us here. And the president is hopeful that we are going to have an opportunity to do what is clearly in the best interests of the United States and Israel, which is to resolve the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program at the negotiating table.

AARON MATÉ: The trip has sparked the worst public rift between the U.S. and Israel in over two decades. Dozens of Democrats could boycott Netanyahu’s address to Congress, which was arranged by House Speaker John Boehner without consulting the White House. The Obama administration will send two officials, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, to address the AIPAC summit today. This comes just days after Rice called Netanyahu’s visit, quote, “destructive.”

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also facing domestic criticism for his unconventional Washington visit, which comes just two weeks before an election in which he seeks a third term in Israel. On Sunday, a group representing nearly 200 of Israel’s top retired military and intelligence officials accused Netanyahu of assaulting the U.S.-Israel alliance.

But despite talk of a U.S. and Israeli dispute, the Obama administration has taken pains to display its staunch support for the Israeli government. Speaking just today in Geneva, Secretary of State John Kerry blasted the U.N. Human Rights Council for what he called an “obsession” and “bias” against Israel. The council is expected to release a report in the coming weeks on potential war crimes in Israel’s U.S.-backed Gaza assault last summer.

For more, we spend the hour today with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, Noam Chomsky. He has written over a hundred books, most recently On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Ilan Pappé, is titled On Palestine and will be out next month. Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than 50 years.

Noam Chomsky, it’s great to have you back here at Democracy Now!, and particularly in our very snowy outside, but warm inside, New York studio.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Delighted to be here again.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Noam, let’s start with Netanyahu’s visit. He is set to make this unprecedented joint address to Congress, unprecedented because of the kind of rift it has demonstrated between the Republicans and the Democratic president, President Obama. Can you talk about its significance?

NOAM CHOMSKY: For both president—Prime Minister Netanyahu and the hawks in Congress, mostly Republican, the primary goal is to undermine any potential negotiation that might settle whatever issue there is with Iran. They have a common interest in ensuring that there is no regional force that can serve as any kind of deterrent to Israeli and U.S. violence, the major violence in the region. And it is—if we believe U.S. intelligence—don’t see any reason not to—their analysis is that if Iran is developing nuclear weapons, which they don’t know, it would be part of their deterrent strategy. Now, their general strategic posture is one of deterrence. They have low military expenditures. According to U.S. intelligence, their strategic doctrine is to try to prevent an attack, up to the point where diplomacy can set in. I don’t think anyone with a grey cell functioning thinks that they would ever conceivably use a nuclear weapon, or even try to. The country would be obliterated in 15 seconds. But they might provide a deterrent of sorts. And the U.S. and Israel certainly don’t want to tolerate that. They are the forces that carry out regular violence and aggression in the region and don’t want any impediment to that.

And for the Republicans in Congress, there’s another interest—namely, to undermine anything that Obama, you know, the Antichrist, might try to do. So that’s a separate issue there. The Republicans stopped being an ordinary parliamentary party some years ago. They were described, I think accurately, by Norman Ornstein, the very respected conservative political analyst, American Enterprise Institute; he said the party has become a radical insurgency which has abandoned any commitment to parliamentary democracy. And their goal for the last years has simply been to undermine anything that Obama might do, in an effort to regain power and serve their primary constituency, which is the very wealthy and the corporate sector. They try to conceal this with all sorts of other means. In doing so, they’ve had to—you can’t get votes that way, so they’ve had to mobilize sectors of the population which have always been there but were never mobilized into an organized political force: evangelical Christians, extreme nationalists, terrified people who have to carry guns into Starbucks because somebody might be after them, and so on and so forth. That’s a big force. And inspiring fear is not very difficult in the United States. It’s a long history, back to colonial times, of—as an extremely frightened society, which is an interesting story in itself. And mobilizing people in fear of them, whoever “them” happens to be, is an effective technique used over and over again. And right now, the Republicans have—their nonpolicy has succeeded in putting them back in a position of at least congressional power. So, the attack on—this is a personal attack on Obama, and intended that way, is simply part of that general effort. But there is a common strategic concern underlying it, I think, and that is pretty much what U.S. intelligence analyzes: preventing any deterrent in the region to U.S. and Israeli actions.

AARON MATÉ: You say that nobody with a grey cell thinks that Iran would launch a strike, were it to have nuclear weapons, but yet Netanyahu repeatedly accuses Iran of planning a new genocide against the Jewish people. He said this most recently on Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, saying that the ayatollahs are planning a new holocaust against us. And that’s an argument that’s taken seriously here.

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s taken seriously by people who don’t stop to think for a minute. But again, Iran is under extremely close surveillance. U.S. satellite surveillance knows everything that’s going on in Iran. If Iran even began to load a missile—that is, to bring a missile near a weapon—the country would probably be wiped out. And whatever you think about the clerics, the Guardian Council and so on, there’s no indication that they’re suicidal.

AARON MATÉ: The premise of these talks—Iran gets to enrich uranium in return for lifting of U.S. sanctions—do you see that as a fair parameter? Does the U.S. have the right, to begin with, to be imposing sanctions on Iran?

NOAM CHOMSKY: No, it doesn’t. What are the right to impose sanctions? Iran should be imposing sanctions on us. I mean, it’s worth remembering—when you hear the White House spokesman talk about the international community, it wants Iran to do this and that, it’s important to remember that the phrase “international community” in U.S. discourse refers to the United States and anybody who may be happening to go along with it. That’s the international community. If the international community is the world, it’s quite a different story. So, two years ago, the Non-Aligned—former Non-Aligned Movement—it’s a large majority of the population of the world—had their regular conference in Iran in Tehran. And they, once again, vigorously supported Iran’s right to develop nuclear power as a signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That’s the international community. The United States and its allies are outliers, as is usually the case.

And as far as sanctions are concerned, it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s now 60 years since—during the past 60 years, not a day has passed without the U.S. torturing the people of Iran. It began with overthrowing the parliamentary regime and installing a tyrant, the shah, supporting the shah through very serious human rights abuses and terror and violence. As soon as he was overthrown, almost instantly the United States turned to supporting Iraq’s attack against Iran, which was a brutal and violent attack. U.S. provided critical support for it, pretty much won the war for Iraq by entering directly at the end. After the war was over, the U.S. instantly supported the sanctions against Iran. And though this is kind of suppressed, it’s important. This is George H.W. Bush now. He was in love with Saddam Hussein. He authorized further aid to Saddam in opposition to the Treasury and others. He sent a presidential delegation—a congressional delegation to Iran. It was April 1990—1989, headed by Bob Dole, the congressional—

AMY GOODMAN: To Iraq? Sent to Iraq?

NOAM CHOMSKY: To Iraq. To Iraq, sorry, yeah—to offer his greetings to Saddam, his friend, to assure him that he should disregard critical comment that he hears in the American media: We have this free press thing here, and we can’t shut them up. But they said they would take off from Voice of America, take off critics of their friend Saddam. That was—he invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the United States for advanced training in weapons production. This is right after the Iraq-Iran War, along with sanctions against Iran. And then it continues without a break up to the present.

There have been repeated opportunities for a settlement of whatever the issues are. And so, for example, in, I guess it was, 2010, an agreement was reached between Brazil, Turkey and Iran for Iran to ship out its low-enriched uranium for storage elsewhere—Turkey—and in return, the West would provide the isotopes that Iran needs for its medical reactors. When that agreement was reached, it was bitterly condemned in the United States by the president, by Congress, by the media. Brazil was attacked for breaking ranks and so on. The Brazilian foreign minister was sufficiently annoyed so that he released a letter from Obama to Brazil proposing exactly that agreement, presumably on the assumption that Iran wouldn’t accept it. When they did accept it, they had to be attacked for daring to accept it.

And 2012, 2012, you know, there was to be a meeting in Finland, December, to take steps towards establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region. This is an old request, pushed initially by Egypt and the other Arab states back in the early ’90s. There’s so much support for it that the U.S. formally agrees, but not in fact, and has repeatedly tried to undermine it. This is under the U.N. auspices, and the meeting was supposed to take place in December. Israel announced that they would not attend. The question on everyone’s mind is: How will Iran react? They said that they would attend unconditionally. A couple of days later, Obama canceled the meeting, claiming the situation is not right for it and so on. But that would be—even steps in that direction would be an important move towards eliminating whatever issue there might be. Of course, the stumbling block is that there is one major nuclear state: Israel. And if there’s a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone, there would be inspections, and neither Israel nor the United States will tolerate that.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about major revelations that have been described as the biggest leak since Edward Snowden. Last week, Al Jazeera started publishing a series of spy cables from the world’s top intelligence agencies. In one cable, the Israeli spy agency Mossad contradicts Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own dire warnings about Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb within a year. In a report to South African counterparts in October 2012, the Israeli Mossad concluded Iran is “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” The assessment was sent just weeks after Netanyahu went before the U.N. General Assembly with a far different message. Netanyahu held up a cartoonish diagram of a bomb with a fuse to illustrate what he called Iran’s alleged progress on a nuclear weapon.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: This is a bomb. This is a fuse. In the case of Iran’s nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium. And Iran has to go through three stages. By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb. A red line should be drawn right here, before—before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September 2012. The Mossad assessment contradicting Netanyahu was sent just weeks after, but it was likely written earlier. It said Iran, quote, “does not appear to be ready,” unquote, to enrich uranium to the highest levels needed for a nuclear weapon. A bomb would require 90 percent enrichment, but Mossad found Iran had only enriched to 20 percent. That number was later reduced under an interim nuclear deal the following year. The significance of this, Noam Chomsky, as Prime Minister Netanyahu prepares for this joint address before Congress to undermine a U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the striking aspect of this is the chutzpah involved. I mean, Israel has had nuclear weapons for probably 50 years or 40 years. They have, estimates are, maybe 100, 200 nuclear weapons. And they are an aggressive state. Israel has invaded Lebanon five times. It’s carrying out an illegal occupation that carries out brutal attacks like Gaza last summer. And they have nuclear weapons. But the main story is that if—incidentally, the Mossad analysis corresponds to U.S. intelligence analysis. They don’t know if Iran is developing nuclear weapons. But I think the crucial fact is that even if they were, what would it mean? It would be just as U.S. intelligence analyzes it: It would be part of a deterrent strategy. They couldn’t use a nuclear weapon. They couldn’t even threaten to use it. Israel, on the other hand, can; has, in fact, threatened the use of nuclear weapons a number of times.

AMY GOODMAN: So why is Netanyahu doing this?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Because he doesn’t want to have a deterrent in the region. That’s simple enough. If you’re an aggressive, violent state, you want to be able to use force freely. You don’t want anything that might impede it.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think this in any way has undercut the U.S. relationship with Israel, the Netanyahu-Obama conflict that, what, Susan Rice has called destructive?

NOAM CHOMSKY: There is undoubtedly a personal relationship which is hostile, but that’s happened before. Back in around 1990 under first President Bush, James Baker went as far as—the secretary of state—telling Israel, “We’re not going to talk to you anymore. If you want to contact me, here’s my phone number.” And, in fact, the U.S. imposed mild sanctions on Israel, enough to compel the prime minister to resign and be replaced by someone else. But that didn’t change the relationship, which is based on deeper issues than personal antagonisms.

 

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Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/amy-goodman
[2] http://www.democracynow.org/
[3] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Noam Chomsky: Why Israel's Netanyahu Is So Desperate to Prevent Peace with Iran
[4] http://www.alternet.org/
[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Ex-Mossad chief calls Netanyahu’s Iran speech ‘bullshit’

Ex-Mossad chief calls Netanyahu’s Iran speech ‘bullshit’

Meir Dagan says current policy vis-a-vis Palestinians will lead to either bi-national or apartheid state

 

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan lambasted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Channel 2 interview previewed Thursday, calling his speech before Congress “bullshit,” and charging that his policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians endangered the Zionist dream.

“The reality being championed by Netanyahu and [Jewish Home party leader Naftali] Bennett will result in a bi-national state. I think that’s a catastrophe,” Dagan said.

“In the Palestinian arena, [Netanyahu’s] policy will lead … to apartheid,” he told Channel 2 Thursday, adding that such an outcome will “end the Zionist dream.”

The former spymaster, who spent eight years at the helm of Israel’s shadowy intelligence agency, will lead a Tel Aviv rally Saturday night to advocate a change of government.

He has been an outspoken critic of Netanyahu in the past, calling Netanyahu’s judgment on Iran into question.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands as he leaves the House chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2015, after addressing a joint meeting of Congress. (Photo credit: AP/Andrew Harnik)

In a snippet from Dagan’s reaction to Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress on Tuesday — which he watched alongside a Channel 2 reporter — Dagan can be seen muttering at the screen “bullshit” after Netanyahu makes a point on Iran’s progress in its nuclear program.

The full interview was to be aired Friday night.

“For 45 years I have served this country — all of them dedicated to safeguarding its security as a Jewish and Zionist state. I don’t want that dream to disappear,” Dagan said.

In response, Netanyahu’s Likud party issued a statement accusing Dagan of deceiving the public and noted that the prime minister has worked tirelessly in his efforts to ensure Israel’s continued security.

“Meir Dagan is wrong and misleading,” the statement read.

Netanyahu does not “give in to international pressure” and will not hand over land to the Palestinians because areas submitted to them today will “come under the control of radical Islam and terror groups backed by Iran tomorrow.”

“The prime minister’s speech at Congress reverberated around the world and enunciated the dangers faced by Israel and the world as a result of a bad agreement. There is no doubt that [Netanyahu] challenged the major powers to address these dangers,” the press release stated.

Obama Crushes the Neocons

Obama Crushes the Neocons

By Michael Tomasky

FOLLOWMore Stories by Michael Tomasky

The agreement signed with Iran on Sunday is a momentous step forward. Yet Republicans will try to subvert the success by playing to their Obama-hating base.

Well, the ayatollah appears to have lent his provisional support to the historic U.S.-Iran accord announced Saturday night. In a letter to President Hassan Rouhani, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said the deal “can be the basis for further intelligent actions.” Now we just need sign-off from our American ayatollahs. But the early indications are that the Republicans, eager to perform Bibi Netanyahu’s bidding—not that they needed a second reason to oppose something Barack Obama did—will do everything within their power to stop the thing going forward.

We shouldn’t get too carried away in praising this accord just yet. It’s only a six-month arrangement while the longer-term one is worked out. Those talks are going to be harder than these were, and it’s not at all a stretch to envision them collapsing at some point. Iran is going to have to agree to a regular, more-or-less constant inspection regime that would make it awfully hard for Tehran to be undertaking weapons-grade enrichment. It’s easy to see why they agreed to this deal, to buy time and get that $4.2 billion in frozen oil revenues. But whether Iran is going to agree to inspections like that is another question.

Still, it is indeed a historic step. Thirty-four years of not speaking is a long time. So it’s impressive that this got done at all, and even more impressive are some of the inner details, like the fact that Americans and Iranians have been in direct and very secret negotiations for a year. Rouhani’s election does seem to have made a huge positive difference—four of five secret meetings centered in Oman have been held since Rouhani took office, which seems to be a pretty clear indication that he wants a long-term deal to happen.

So this is potentially, I emphasize potentially, a breakthrough that could have numerous positive reverberations in the region—not least among them the virtual elimination of the chance that the United States and Iran would end up at war. And what a refutation of those harrumphing warmongers! I’d love to have had a tap on John Bolton’s phone over the weekend, or Doug Feith’s, or Cheney’s, and heard the combination of perfervid sputtering and haughty head shaking as they lament Obama’s choice.

Well, then, let’s compare choices. They chose war, against a country that never attacked us, had no capability whatsoever to attack us, and had nothing to do with the allegedly precipitating event, 9/11. We fought that war because 9/11 handed the neocons the excuse they needed to dope the public into supporting a unilateral war of hegemony. It has cost us more than $2 trillion now. It’s taken the lives of more than 100,000 people. It has been the author of the trauma of thousands of our soldiers, their limbs left over there, their families sundered. And on the subject of Iran, the war of course did more to strengthen Iran in the region than Obama could dream of doing at his most Machiavellian-Manchurian. Fine, the world is well rid of Saddam Hussein. But these prices were far too steep.

Then along came Obama in 2008, saying he’d negotiate with Iran. I’d love to have a nickel for every time he was called “naive” by John McCain or Sarah Palin (after the differences between Iran and Iraq were explained to her) or any of dozens of others (and yeah, even Hillary Clinton). I’d settle for a penny. I’d still be rich. You might think that watching this past decade unfold, taking an honest measure of where the Bush administration’s hideous decisions have left us, that some of them might allow that maybe negotiation was worth a shot.

Of course that will never happen. Marco Rubio was fast out of the gates Sunday, but he will be joined today by many others. Some will be Democrats, yes, from states with large Jewish votes. Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez have already spoken circumspectly of the deal (although interestingly, Dianne Feinstein, as AIPAC-friendly as they come, spoke strongly in favor of it). There will be a push for new sanctions, and that push will be to some extent bipartisan.

But the difference will be that if the Democrats get the sense that the deal is real and can be had, they won’t do anything to subvert it, whereas for the Republicans, this will all be about what it’s always about with them—the politics of playing to their Obama-hating base. But there’ll be two added motivations besides. There’s the unceasingly short-sighted and tragic view of what constitutes security for Israel, which maintains the conditions of near-catastrophe that keep just enough of the Israeli public fearful of change so that they perpetuate in putting people like Netanyahu in power, thus ensuring that nothing will ever change. And perhaps most important of all in psychic terms to the neocons, there is contemplation of the hideous reality that Obama and the path of negotiation just might work. This is the thing the neocons can’t come to terms with at all. If Obama succeeds here, their entire worldview is discredited. Check that; even more discredited.

Rouhani appears to be moving his right wing a bit. Ours, alas, isn’t nearly so flexible as Iran’s.

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• Obama Crushes the Neocons (thedailybeast.com)
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How Obama’s Iran deal screwed up Homeland’s third season

How Obama’s Iran deal screwed up Homeland’s third season

 

Thanks a lot, Obama. (Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images, Kent Smith/SHOWTIME)

I am an avid Homeland fan, as is the POTUS.  I doubt that Homeland will be screwed behind the tentative Iran developments…

The Week

Saul Berenson’s grand scheme to assassinate an Iranian official as part of a CIA-orchestrated coup has been bettered by a simpler real-life option: Diplomacy

In a press conference less than 24 hours before Homeland aired the ninth episode of its uneven, Iran-focused third season, President Obama took the podium to offer a brief statement about a breakthrough deal on Iran’s nuclear program. The president described a diplomacy that had “opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure — a future in which we can verify that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and that it cannot build a nuclear weapon. For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back.”

That announcement comes at a strange time for Homeland, which has built a big following by depicting a harrowing post-9/11 political landscape that feels eerily plausible. And the show’s third season has been all about Iran. Homeland‘s vision of the U.S.-Iran relationship shares at least one compelling similarity to real life: The Western world is obsessed with whatever nuclear enrichment might be afoot. But otherwise, the events of this past weekend showcased a sharp contrast between Homeland‘s fiction and the facts of real-life U.S. diplomacy.

The Iran of Homeland‘s third season has fueled nuclear paranoia, and acting CIA director Saul Berenson’s agency has done everything possible to infiltrate this foreign power. As Sunday night’s “One Last Time” revealed, Saul wants to send Nick Brody, a Marine turned terrorist turned fugitive, to kill a high-ranking Iranian intelligence official. This assassination will allow another Iranian official (who the CIA has implausibly blackmailed into working with them) to assume a top position. Saul calls Brody’s target — the head of Iran’s revolutionary guard — “the single greatest impediment to peace” without explaining why. His plan to end a vicious cycle of violence is deploying an assassin. That plotline, brewing all of Homeland’s third season, paints a Manichean picture of U.S.-Iran relations: An unending cycle of terrorist violence, hatred, and confusion.

How strange to have all that murky plotting offset, in the real world, by the first inklings of real dialogue, and an agreement cobbled together in Geneva to buy time and cooperation for something more permanent. In exchange for a reduction in sanctions, Iran will place limits on its much-feared nuclear program. Such news would be unthinkable in Homeland‘s world, and these real-life details mark a sharp contrast to the unsettled post-9/11 world that Homeland revels in.

The drama of Homeland is the drama of the bomber. The show can’t exist without that paranoia, not to mention that often ambiguous line between calm and violence, sanity and bipolar madness. Diplomacy is a distant dream in the world of Homeland. Enemy officials never call each other. Everything is built on backroom deals, blackmail, spying, trickery, and assassination. A deep moral guilt accompanies this battered landscape, as CIA agents like Peter Quinn question the stray causalities they leave behind. The lump-in-the-throat heartstopper of the early seasons revolved around Nick Brody’s rebellion against U.S. drone use and the innocent deaths drones cause.Homeland says the world is already damned, and everyone’s to blame for it.

But there’s a startling disconnect between news of Obama’s outreach, the tentative agreement, and the utter violence of the Iran of Homeland. Because what is Homeland’s Iran if not violent? The series has reached deep into this well of history (often true and troubling, of course), and its convenient thriller narrative in the show’s last several episodes. It assigned blame to Iran for a brutal bombing at Langley, killing more than 200 U.S. citizens. The show marketed this 12/12 attack as a second 9/11, the ghost of which always defines the dynamics at play in Homeland. The villainous Javadi isn’t just the mastermind of killings from afar, but the murderer of his own kin on American soil. Iran, as depicted on Homeland, is incapable of negotiation.

In a recent episode, Sen. Andrew Lockhart scoffs at the idea of blackmailing an Iranian official with knowledge of the official’s corruption. “Which in Iran just means it’s Tuesday,” the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman remarks, writing off the entire country as one of the U.S.’s “sworn enemies.”

“We fry Javadi’s ass publicly,” Lockhart demands, as he seeks to take down the Langley bombing mastermind who serves as an Iranian intelligence chief. This sort of trial strikes Saul as “short-sighted.” Saul would prefer having an asset within Iran, someone the U.S. can “control” to force regime change — the only acceptable option in his mind. (Note to Homeland: The U.S. did something kind of similar 60 years ago. Didn’t work out so well!) To Saul, if the U.S. seizes Javadi and tries him, Iran will inevitably replace Javadi with someone just like him. “And the attack that happened here happens again and again and again,” Saul tells the senator. All of this is fine for drama – but it also showcases the power of Iran in Western imagination, and the divergence between real Iran and TV Iran.

Really, that’s why it’s so bizarre to see this chilling, sinister vision of Iran contrasted with news of a deal crafted between Iran’s government and the U.S., Great Britain, China, Russia, France, and Germany. What would Saul say? Who did the CIA control within Iran to make this possible, Saul? Consider Saul’s explanation for killing an Iranian official and installing his blackmailed bomber in power:

Javadi won’t be just an intelligence source. He’ll be in control of the entire security apparatus. He can do something, something to break the logjam, something besides another war, something that’ll change the facts on the ground just enough, so two countries that haven’t been able to communicate for over 30 years except through terrorist actions and threats can sit down and talk. That’s the play, Carrie. Tell me it’s not worth your time.

Two countries that haven’t been able to communicate. What timing.

This is, of course, the popular conception of Iran, and a testament to how startling the weekend’s agreement really was. The deal blows past the action-movie fantasyland that CIA agents are about to plow into on Homeland. Don’t blame Showtime or Homeland‘s show runners for entrenching that vision of Iran, of course — the frames are certainly common enough. And for a show about U.S. intelligence officials, what better drama than conspiracies and assassinations? But for all the dense plotting of Homeland‘s third season, the real-life events of this weekend punctured Saul’s theories in a big way. It was a welcome dissonance.

Related articles

• It’s time for America to lay the Iranian bogeyman to rest | David Shariatmadari (theguardian.com)
• ‘Homeland’ episode 9 recap: One last time to be “the man you were”(theblaze.com)
• ‘Homeland’ Iran Plot to ‘Break the Logjam’ Parallels Real Life(thewrap.com)
• ‘Homeland ‘ Recap: Season 3, Episode 7 (usnews.com)
• Maybe if Obama Had Sold Illegal Arms to Iran, Then Republicans Would Call Him a Hero (kstreet607.com)

Related articles

• How Obama’s Iran deal screwed up Homeland’s third season (kstreet607.com)
• ‘Homeland ‘ Recap: Season 3, Episode 7 (usnews.com)
• ‘Homeland’ Iran Plot to ‘Break the Logjam’ Parallels Real Life (thewrap.com)
• ‘Homeland’ episode 9 recap: One last time to be “the man you were” (theblaze.com)
• You: ‘Homeland’ recap: Iran op offers chance for redemption (latimes.com)
• It’s time for America to lay the Iranian bogeyman to rest | David Shariatmadari (theguardian.com)

Oscar Prints the Legend of Argo

Oscar Prints the Legend: Argo’s Upcoming Academy Award and the Failure of Truth

  One year ago, after his breathtakingly beautiful Iranian drama, “A Separation,” won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, writer/director Asghar Farhadi delivered the best acceptance speech of the night.

“[A]t the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians,” he said, Iran was finally being honored for “her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics.” Farhadi dedicated the Oscar “to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment.”

Such grace and eloquence will surely not be on display this Sunday, when Ben Affleck, flanked by his co-producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, takes home the evening’s top prize, the Best Picture Oscar, for his critically-acclaimed and heavily decorated paean to the CIA and American innocence, “Argo.”
Over the past 12 months, rarely a week – let alone month – went by without new predictions of an ever-imminent Iranian nuclear weapon and ever-looming threats of an American or Israeli military attack. Come October 2012, into the fray marched “Argo,” a decontextualized, ahistorical “true story” of Orientalist proportion, subjecting audiences to two hours of American victimization and bearded barbarians, culminating in popped champagne corks and rippling stars-and-stripes celebrating our heroism and triumph and their frustration and defeat.  Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir aptly described the film as “a propaganda fable,” explaining as others have that essentially none of its edge-of-your-seat thrills or most memorable moments ever happened.  O’Hehir sums up:

The Americans never resisted the idea of playing a film crew, which is the source of much agitation in the movie. (In fact, the “house guests” chose that cover story themselves, from a group of three options the CIA had prepared.) They were not almost lynched by a mob of crazy Iranians in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, because they never went there. There was no last-minute cancellation, and then un-cancellation, of the group’s tickets by the Carter administration. (The wife of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor had personally gone to the airport and purchased tickets ahead of time, for three different outbound flights.) The group underwent no interrogation at the airport about their imaginary movie, nor were they detained at the gate while a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard telephoned their phony office back in Burbank. There was no last-second chase on the runway of Mehrabad Airport, with wild-eyed, bearded militants with Kalashnikovs trying to shoot out the tires of a Swissair jet.

One of the actual diplomats, Mark Lijek, noted that the CIA’s fake movie “cover story was never tested and in some ways proved irrelevant to the escape.” The departure of the six Americans from Tehran was actually mundane and uneventful.  “If asked, we were going to say we were leaving Iran to return when it was safer,” Lijek recalled, “But no one ever asked!…The truth is the immigration officers barely looked at us and we were processed out in the regular way. We got on the flight to Zurich and then we were taken to the US ambassador’s residence in Berne. It was that straightforward.”

Furthermore, Jimmy Carter has even acknowledged  that “90% of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the  plan was Canadian [while] the movie gives almost full credit to the  American CIA…Ben Affleck’s character in the film was only in Tehran a  day and a half and the real hero in my opinion was Ken Taylor, who was  the Canadian ambassador who orchestrated the entire process.”

Taylor himself recently remarked that “Argo” provides a myopic representation of both Iranians and their revolution, ignoring their “more hospitable side and an intent that they were looking for some degree of justice and hope and that it all wasn’t just a violent demonstration for nothing.”
“The amusing side, Taylor said, “is the script writer in Hollywood had no idea what he’s talking about.”

O’Hehir perfectly articulates the film’s true crime, its deliberate exploitation of “its basis in history and its mode of detailed realism to create something that is entirely mythological.” Not only is it “a trite cavalcade of action-movie clichés and expository dialogue,” but “[i]t’s also a propaganda movie in the truest sense, one that claims to be innocent of all ideology.”

Such an assessment is confirmed by Ben Affleck’s own comments about the film.  In describing “Argo” to Bill O’Reilly, Affleck boasted, “You know, it was such a great story. For one thing, it’s a thriller. It’s actually comedy with the Hollywood satire. It’s a complicated CIA movie, it’s a political movie. And it’s all true.”  He told Rolling Stone that, when conceiving his directorial approach, he knew he “absolutely had to preserve the central integrity and truth of the story.”

“It’s OK to embellish, it’s OK to compress, as long as you don’t  fundamentally change the nature of the story and of what happened,” Affleck has remarked, even going so far as to tell reporters at Argo’s BFI London Film Festival premier, “This movie is about this story that took place, and it’s true, and I go to pains to contextualize it and to try to be even-handed in a way that just means we’re taking a cold, hard look at the facts.”

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Affleck went so far as to say, “I tried to make a movie that is absolutely just factual. And that’s another reason why I tried to be as true to the story as possible — because I didn’t want it to be used by either side. I didn’t want it to be politicized internationally or domestically in a partisan way. I just wanted to tell a story that was about the facts as I understood them.”
For Affleck, these facts apparently don’t include understanding why the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun and occupied on November 4, 1979.  “There was no rhyme or reason to this action,” Affleck has insisted, claiming that the takeover “wasn’t about us,” that is, the American government (despite the fact that his own film is introduced by a fleeting – though frequently inaccurate¹ – review of American complicity in the Shah’s dictatorship).

Wrong, Ben.  One reason was the fear of another CIA-engineered coup d’etat like the one perpetrated in 1953 from the very same Embassy. Another reason was the admission of the deposed Shah into the United States for medical treatment and asylum rather than extradition to Iran to face charge and trial for his quarter century of crimes against the Iranian people, bankrolled and supported by the U.S. government.  One doesn’t have to agree with the reasons, of course, but they certainly existed.

Just as George H.W. Bush once bellowed after a U.S. Navy warship blew an Iranian passenger airliner out of the sky over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 Iranian civilians, “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.”  Affleck appears inclined to agree.

If nothing else, “Argo” is an exercise in American exceptionalism – perhaps the most dangerous fiction that permeates our entire society and sense of identity.  It reinvents history in order to mine a tale of triumph from an unmitigated defeat.  The hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days and destroyed an American presidency, was a failure and an embarrassment for Americans.  The United States government and media has spent the last three decades tirelessly exacting revenge on Iran for what happened.

“Argo” recasts revolutionary Iranians as the hapless victims of American cunning and deception.  White Americans are hunted, harried and, ultimately courageous and free.  Iranians are maniacal, menacing and, in the end, infantile and foolish.  The fanatical fundamentalists fail while America wins. USA -1, Iran – 0.  Yet, “Argo” obscures the unfortunate truth that, as those six diplomats were boarding a plane bound for Switzerland on January 28, 1980, their 52 compatriots would have to wait an entire year before making it home, not as the result of a daring rescue attempt, but after a diplomatic agreement was reached.
Reflecting on the most troubled episodes in American history is a time-honored cinematic tradition. There’s a reason why the best Vietnam movies are full of pain, anger, anguish and war crimes.  By contrast,

“Argo” is American catharsis porn; pure Hollywood hubris.  It is pro-American propaganda devoid of introspection, pathos or humility and meant to assuage our hurt feelings.  In “Argo,” no lessons are learned by revisiting the consequences of America’s support for the Pahlavi monarchy or its creation and training of SAVAK, the Shah’s vicious secret police.

On June 11, 1979, months before the hostage crisis began, the New York Times published an article by writer and historian A.J. Langguth which recounted revelations relayed by a former American intelligence official regarding the CIA’s close relationship with SAVAK.  The agency had “sent an operative to teach  interrogation methods to SAVAK” including “instructions in torture, and the techniques were  copied from the Nazis.”  Langguth wrestled with the news, trying to figure out why this had not been widely reported in the media.  He came to the following conclusion:

We – and I  mean we as Americans – don’t believe it. We can read the accusations,  even examine the evidence and find it irrefutable. But, in our hearts,  we cannot believe that Americans have gone abroad to spread the use of  torture.
We can believe that public officials with  reputations for brilliance can be arrogant, blind or stupid. Anything  but evil. And when the cumulative proof becomes overwhelming that our  representatives in the C.I.A. or the Agency for International  Development police program did in fact teach torture, we excuse  ourselves by vilifying the individual men.

Similarly, at a time when the CIA is waging an illegal, immoral, unregulated and always expanding drone execution program, the previous administration’s CIA kidnappers and torturers are protected from prosecution by the current administration, and leaked State Department cables reveal orders for U.S. diplomats to spy on United Nations officials, it is surreal that such homage is being paid to that very same organization by the so-called liberals of the Tinsel Town elite.

Upon winning his Best Director Golden Globe last month, Ben Affleck obsequiously praised the “clandestine service as well as the foreign service that is making sacrifices on behalf of the American people everyday [and] our troops serving over seas, I want to thank them very much,” a statement echoed almost identically by co-producer Grant Heslov when “Argo” later won Best Drama.

This comes as no surprise, considering Affleck had previously described “Argo” as “a tribute” to the “extraordinary, honorable people at the CIA” during an interview on Fox News.
The relationship between Hollywood and the military and intelligence arms of the U.S. government have long been cozy.  “When the CIA or the Pentagon says, ‘We’ll help you, if you play ball  with us,’ that’s favoring one form of speech over another. It becomes  propaganda,” David Robb, author of “Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies” told The Los Angeles Times. “The danger for filmmakers is that their product —  entertainment and information — ends up being government spin.”

Awarding “Argo” the Best Picture Oscar is like Barack Obama winning a Nobel Peace Prize: an undeserved accolade fawningly bestowed upon a dubious recipient based on a transparent fiction; an award for what never was and never would be and a decision so willfully naïve and grotesque it discredits whatever relevance and prestige the proceedings might still have had.*
So this Sunday night, when “Argo” has won that coveted golden statuette, it will be clear that we have yet again been blinded by the heavy dust of politics and our American mantra of hostility and resentment will continue to inform our decisions, dragging us closer and closer to the abyss.
***** ***** *****
* Yes, in this analogy, the equivalent of Henry Kissinger is obviously 2004’s dismal “Crash.”
*****
¹ The introduction of “Argo” is a dazzingly sloppy few minutes of caricatured history of Iran, full of Orientalist images of violent ancient Persians (harems and all), which gets many basic facts wrong.  In fact, it is shocking this intro made it to release as written and recorded.

Here are some of the problems:
1. The voiceover narration says, “In 1950, the people of Iran elected Mohammad Mossadegh, the secular democrat, Prime Minister.  He nationalized British and U.S. petroleum holdings, returning Iran’s oil to its people.”

Mossadegh was elected to the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) in 1944. He did not become Prime Minister until April 1951 and was not “elected by the people of Iran.” Rather, he was appointed to the position by the representatives of the Majlis.

Also, the United States did not have petroleum interests in Iran at the time.

2. After briefly describing the 1953 coup, the narrator says Britain and the United States “installed Reza Pahlavi as Shah.”

Wow. First, the Shah’s name was not Reza Pahlavi. That is his father’s (and son’s) name. Furthermore, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was not installed as Shah since had already been Shah of Iran since September 1941, after Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran and forced the abdication of his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi.
During the coup in 1953, the Shah fled to Baghdad, then Rome. After Mossadegh had been forced out, the Shah returned to the Peacock Throne.

This is not difficult information to come by, and yet the screenwriter and director of “Argo” didn’t bother looking it up. And guess what? Ben Affleck actually majored in Middle East Studies in college. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t graduate.

The rest of the brief intro, while mentioning the torture of SAVAK, glosses over the causes of the revolution, but lingers on the violence that followed.  As it ends, the words “Based on a True Story” appear on the screen. The first live action moment we see in “Argo” is of an American flag being burned.

So much for Affleck’s insistence that “Argo” is “not a political movie.”

Still, as Kevin B. Lee wrote in Slate last month, “This opening may very well be the reason why critics have given the film credit for being insightful and progressive—because nothing that follows comes close, and the rest of the movie actually undoes what this opening achieves.”

He continues,

Instead of keeping its eye on the big picture of revolutionary Iran, the film settles into a retrograde “white Americans in peril” storyline. It recasts those oppressed Iranians as a raging, zombie-like horde, the same dark-faced demons from countless other movies— still a surefire dramatic device for instilling fear in an American audience. After the opening makes a big fuss about how Iranians were victimized for decades, the film marginalizes them from their own story, shunting them into the role of villains. Yet this irony is overshadowed by a larger one: The heroes of the film, the CIA, helped create this mess in the first place. And their triumph is executed through one more ruse at the expense of the ever-dupable Iranians to cap off three decades of deception and manipulation.

And brilliantly concludes,

Looking at the runaway success of this film, it seems as if critics and audiences alike lack the historical knowledge to recognize a self-serving perversion of an unflattering past, or the cultural acumen to see the utterly ersatz nature of the enterprise: A cast of stock characters and situations, and a series of increasingly contrived narrow escapes from third world mobs who, predictably, are never quite smart enough to catch up with the Americans. We can delight all we like in this cinematic recycling act, but the fact remains that we are no longer living in a world where we can get away with films like this—not if we want to be in a position to deal with a world that is rising to meet us. The movies we endorse need to rise to the occasion of reflecting a new global reality, using a newer set of storytelling tools than this reheated excuse for a historical geopolitical thriller.

*****
UPDATE: February 25, 2013 – On the heels of Oscar Night’s unsurprising coda (made all the more bizarre by the inclusion of Michelle Obama, surrounded by awkward-looking military personnel, presenting the Best Picture to “Argo” from the White House, providing a deeply disturbing governmental imprimatur to the entire proceedings), The Los Angeles Times published a report Monday morning about how “Argo” is being perceived in Iran by Iranians themselves.
The conclusion is clear from the headline: ‘Argo’s’ Oscar gets a thumbs-down in Iran. Journalists Ramin Mostaghim and Patrick J. McDonnell quote several Iranians who have seen the movie, bootlegs of which are widely available, all of whom clearly have a better grasp on, not only the politics, but also the art (or lack thereof) of cinema itself.  “The perception that the film portrayed Iranians uniformly as bearded, violent fanatics rankled many who recall that Iran’s 1979 revolution had both secular and religious roots — and ousted a dictatorial monarch, the shah of Iran, reviled as a corrupt and brutal puppet of Washington,” Mostaghim and McDonnel explain.  Here’s what we hear from Iranians themselves:

“I am secular, atheist and not pro-regime but I think the film ‘Argo’ has distorted history and insulted Iranians,” said Hossain, a cafe owner worried about business because of customers’ lack of cash in a sanctions-battered economy. “For me, it wasn’t even a good thriller.”

“I did not enjoy seeing my fellow countrymen and women insulted,” said Farzaneh Haji, an educated homemaker and fan of romantic movies who was 18 at the time of the revolution. “The men then were not all bearded and fanatical. To be anti-American was a fashionable idea among young people across the board. Even non-bearded and U.S.-educated men and women were against American imperialism.”

“As an action film or thriller, the film was good, but it was not believable, especially the way the six Americans escaped from the airport,” said Farshid Farivar, 49, a Hollywood devotee, as he stretched his legs in an office where he does promotional work. “At any rate, it was an average film and did not deserve an Oscar.”

The piece ends with the reporters speaking with Abbas Abdi, one of the revolutionary students who planned the seizure of the American Embassy in 1979 and who spent some time in prison a decade ago for criticisms of the Iranian government:

In a brief telephone interview on Monday, Abdi said the Oscars had plummeted to the feeble level of Iran’s own Fajr Film Festival, not exactly one of the luminaries on the international movie awards circuit.
“The Oscars are now vulgar and have standards as low as our own film festival,” he said. “The Oscars deserve ‘Argo’ and ‘Argo’ deserves the Oscars.”

USA Today also has an Oscar follow-up entitled, “Tourists see a different Iran reality than ‘Argo’ image,” which details the warmth, generosity and hospitality of Iranians experienced by travelers when visiting Iran.

Related articles

• Iran dismisses “Argo” best picture Oscar (cbsnews.com)
• Argo’s Oscar and the failure of truth (mondoweiss.net)

Longform’s Best Sex Stories of 2012

Sex on the Web, during the age of Grindr, and in the Olympic Village—the best sex writing of 2012.

Demystifying a ubiquitous Internet presence.

“If you think cam girls—those flirty naked characters that plague porn site pop-up ads—are raking in easy money, you’re right. If you think cam girls are bleakly stripping online out of desperation, you’re also right. Peel away the sex and pixels and money and you’re left with the cloudy truth about the Internet’s relationship status with these on-demand entertainers: it’s complicated.

“You’ve looked at porn online, which means you’ve likely been propositioned by advertisements for cam girl networks. They invade your peripheral vision; they pop up behind your window. The women wait for you to start staring, and, just when you’re interested, they hit you up for money. You’ve seen them sitting at their keyboards, wearing barely anything, winking at you, typing to nobody in particular with thin, lethargic arms: bored and conventionally beautiful. The ads, with flirty video that might be live or recorded years ago, shout at you with promises of ‘Live Sex Chat’ and ‘Sex Shows,’ with both amateurs and ‘pornstars’ alike. It’s a web red light district, and unlike some gaudy Dutch strip or seedy sidewalk, you’re completely anonymous. The sex comes to you.”

Absolute Beginners Bethany Cosentino, Krista Burton, Lena Dunham, Liz Phair, Miranda July, Pamela Des Barres, Sarah Silverman, Shannon Woodward • Rookie

Eight women remember their first time.

Lena Dunham talks sexJason Merritt/Getty Images.

“Lena Dunham: When I was about nine I wrote a vow of celibacy on a piece of paper and ate it. I promised myself, in orange magic marker, that I would remain a virgin until I graduated from high school. This seemed important because I knew my mother had waited until the summer after she graduated and also Angela Chase seemed pretty messed up by her experience at that flophouse where high school kids went to copulate. If my relationship to liver paté was any indication, and I had recently eaten so much that I barfed, then my willpower was very bad, and I needed something stronger than resolve to prevent me from having intercourse too early in life.

“Turns out, this was an unnecessary precaution. The opportunity never arose in high school, nor even during the first year of college, save for a near-miss with a stocky kid I knew who was home visiting New York City from the Air Force Academy—that encounter went far enough that I had to fish a mint-colored, never-used condom out from behind my dormitory bunk bed the next day. I transferred to Oberlin my sophomore year, a small liberal arts school in Ohio that was known for having been the first college to admit both women and men, as well as for its polyamorous, bi-curious student body. I was neither, but it did seem like a good environment in which to finally get the ball rolling. I really felt like the oldest virgin in town, save for a busty riot grrrl from Olympia, Washington, who was equally frustrated; she and I would often meet up in our nightgowns to discuss.

“I was pretty sure I had already broken my hymen in high school, crawling over a fence in Brooklyn in hot pursuit of a cat that clearly didn’t want to be rescued. So the event would only be psychologically painful.”

Please Don’t Infect Me, I’m Sorry Rich Juzwiak • Gawker

Sex and status disclosure in the age of Grindr and undetectable HIV-levels.

“The first guy I ever turned down on Grindr for having HIV, my patient zero if you will, is all kinds of hot: hot in the face, hot in the body and hotheaded. In May, he asked me to come over and make out. We chatted a little bit more, he told me about his status and I slipped out of the conversation, just like that. Randomly in July, I noticed him at a movie theater: On Grindr and online, people lie with pictures all the time, choosing ones that distort their appearance in a captured second, but I was able to pick Miguel right out of a crowd. His picture is a symbol of habitual honesty, maybe, but also because he’s so attractive, he has no reason to lie.

“ ‘This always happens: someone will feel bad and then they’ll see me out and they’ll be like, “Oh my god, you’re so fucking hot,” ‘ Miguel told me while we waited for our table outside of a Chelsea brunch spot one Saturday in early July after I reconnected and asked him to talk to me.

“Miguel told me that being turned down for sex because he’s HIV-positive is something that happens ‘all the time,’ and that ‘almost every time, the minute someone gets to know me, their mind changes.’ Exposure to a gay friend often converts homophobes swiftly; the same can be said of an HIV-positive guy meeting others who are fearful. It’s somewhat reassuring that that’s all it takes in many cases, but it also underlines the exponential burden put upon positive guys. They are either in a constant state of proving themselves socially or they are sitting on a secret.”

 

The Ayatollah Under the Bed(sheets) Karim Sadjadpour • Foreign Policy

 Politics, sex, and political sex in Iran.

“Perhaps it’s not entirely surprising that Iran’s Shiite fundamentalists—not unlike their evangelical Christian, Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, and Sunni Muslim counterparts—spend an inordinate amount of time pondering sexuality. They are human, after all. But the sexual manias of Iran’s religious fundamentalists are worthy of greater scrutiny, all the more so because they control a state with nuclear ambitions, vast oil wealth, and a young, dynamic, stifled population. Yet for a variety of reasons—fear of becoming Salman Rushdie, of being labeled an Orientalist, of upsetting religious sensibilities—the remarkable hypocrisy of the Iranian regime is often studiously avoided.

“That’s a mistake. Because religion is politics in a theocracy like Iran, uninformed or antiquated notions of sexuality aren’t just confined to the bedroom—they pervade the country’s seminaries, military barracks, boardrooms, courtrooms, and classrooms. A common aphorism among Iranians is that before the revolution, people partied outside the home and prayed inside, while today they pray outside and party inside. This reverse dichotomy is true of a lot of social behavior in Iran. For many Iranians, this perverse state of affairs is now so ingrained, such an inherent aspect of daily interactions with Iranian officialdom, that it is no longer noteworthy. For those in the West who seek to better understand what makes Tehran tick, though, the regime’s curious fixation on sex cannot be ignored.”

 

Will You Still Medal in the Morning? Sam Alipour • ESPN the Magazine

 Sex in the Olympic Village.

“Home to more than 10,000 athletes at the Summer Games and 2,700 at the Winter, the Olympic Village is one of the world’s most exclusive clubs. To join, prospective members need only have spectacular talent and —we long assumed—a chaste devotion to the most intense competition of their lives. But the image of a celibate Games began to flicker in ’92 when it was reported that the Games’ organizers had ordered in prophylactics like pizza. Then, at the 2000 Sydney Games, 70,000 condoms wasn’t enough, prompting a second order of 20,000 and a new standing order of 100,000 condoms per Olympics.

“Many Olympians, past and present, abide by what Summer Sanders, a swimmer who won two gold medals, a silver and a bronze in Barcelona, calls the second Olympic motto: ‘What happens in the village stays in the village.’ Yet if you ask enough active and retired athletes often enough to spill their secrets, the village gates will fly open. It quickly becomes clear that, summer or winter, the games go on long after the medal ceremony. ‘There’s a lot of sex going on,’ says women’s soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo, a gold medalist in 2008. How much sex? ‘I’d say it’s 70 percent to 75 percent of Olympians,’ offers world-record-holding swimmer Ryan Lochte, who will be in London for his third Games. ‘Hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.’ ”

For more of the year’s best writing, check out Longform’s Best of 2012.

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AP’s Dangerous Iran Hoax Demands an Accounting and Explanation

AP’s dangerous Iran hoax demands an accounting and explanation

Via:- Glenn Greenwald

Evidence proves that the graph trumpeted by AP as evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons program is an obvious sham.

An article published by Associated Press about Iran’s nuclear program has sparked controversy (screen shot of AP story) Photograph: AP

(updated below w/AP’s response)

It’s important to return to the story about AP’s nuclear Iran “exclusive” which I wrote about yesterday. Although it was intuitively obvious that the graph trumpeted by AP as scary and incriminating of Iran’s nuclear program was actually a farce, there is now new, overwhelming, very compelling scientific evidence that is the case. Whether as victim or recklessly culpable participant, AP helped perpetrate a dangerous hoax, and owes an explanation and accounting for what took place, including identifying the “officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic program” who made false claims about what this is.

To begin with, the graph AP touted as reflecting some sort of nefarious, highly threatening and complex nuclear calculation is, in fact, widely available all over the Internet in the most innocuous places. Just consider this side-by-side comparison of the AP graph on the left, with the graph on the right on this harmless site designed to teach beginner users how to use Microsoft Excel:

At the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS), Yousaf Butt and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress on Wednesday night wrote: “Graphs such as the one published by the Associated Press can be found in nuclear science textbooks and on the Internet.” Similarly, Prof. Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of chemical engineering at USC and expert in Iran’s nuclear program, told Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olum that “too many graphs like this can be generated by a competent undergraduate student.” So what AP presented to the world as some sort of highly complex, specialized document was, in fact, nothing more than a completely common graph easily found in all sorts of public venues.

Even worse, the calculations reflected on this graph are patently ridiculous. Butt and Dalnoki-Veress document that the graph “does nothing more than indicate either slipshod analysis or an amateurish hoax” [emphasis added]. That’s because, they explain, “the diagram features quite a massive error, which is unlikely to have been made by research scientists working at a national level”; namely:

“The image released to the Associated Press shows two curves: one that plots the energy versus time, and another that plots the power output versus time, presumably from a fission device. But these two curves do not correspond: If the energy curve is correct, then the peak power should be much lower – around 300 million ( 3×108) kt per second, instead of the currently stated 17 trillion (1.7 x1013) kt per second. As is, the diagram features a nearly million-fold error.”

This error is patently obvious to anyone versed in nuclear physics. Nima Shirazi yesterday spoke with Dr. M. Hossein Partovi, who teaches courses in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics at Sacramento State, and he echoed the BAS scientists:

“[Dr. Partovi], noting that the graph is plotted in microseconds, explains that ‘the graph depicted in the report is a nonspecific power/energy plot that is primarily evidence of the incompetence of those who forged it: a quick look at the energy graph shows that the total energy is more than four orders of magnitude (forty thousand times) smaller than the total integrated power that it must equal!'”

Notably, the nuclear expert quoted by AP in its article, David Albright, also seemed to be trying to tell AP that the graph contained this same obvious, glaring error, yet AP – eager to believe, or at least lead others to believe, that it had some incriminating evidence – either failed or refused to understand its significance. Buried in the AP article was this passage:

“‘The yield is too big,’ Albright said, noting that North Korea’s first tests of a nuclear weapon were only a few kilotons.”

But AP never indicated that this error strongly suggested that no real nuclear scientist would have prepared it, and immediately went back in the very next paragraph to touting the document as some sort of scary evidence of Iran’s threatening nuclear weapons machinations.

Then there’s the obvious crudeness of the graph itself, which I noted yesterday. Professor Sahimi told Silverstein: “The graph itself looks low quality, as if it has been drawn by hand.” And the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists authors noted the same thing: “the level of scientific sophistication needed to produce such a graph corresponds to that typically found in graduate- or advanced undergraduate-level nuclear physics courses.” Indeed, they added: “no secrets are needed to produce the plot of the explosive force of a nuclear weapon – just straightforward nuclear physics” [emphasis in original]. They continued:

“Though the image does not imply that computer simulations were actually run, even if they were, this is the type of project a student could present in a nuclear-science course. The diagram simply shows that the bulk of the nuclear fission yield is produced in a short, 0.1 microsecond, pulse. Since the 1950s, it has been standard knowledge that, in a fission device, the last few generations of neutron multiplication yield the bulk of the energy output. It is neither a secret, nor indicative of a nuclear weapons program.”

It is, to put it as generously as possibly, completely reckless for AP to present this primitive, error-strewn, thoroughly common graph as secret, powerful evidence of Iran’s work toward building a nuclear weapon. Yet from its inflammatory red headline (“AP EXCLUSIVE: GRAPH SUGGESTS IRAN WORKING ON BOMB”) to the end of the article, this is exactly what AP did. And it did so by mindlessly repeating the script handed to it by a country which AP acknowledged is seeking to warn the world about the dangers of Iran. This is worse than stenography journalism. It is AP allowing itself, eagerly and gratefully, to be used to put its stamp of credibility on a ridiculous though destructive hoax.

The obligation of journalists to protect the identity of their sources to whom they have pledged anonymity ends when the “sources” use them purposely to disseminate falsehoods. Indeed, the obligation to protect these sources not only ends, but a different obligation arises: to tell the public who fed them the hoax. This was exactly the issue that arose when it became clear that multiple sources had falsely told ABC News’ Brian Ross in late 2001 that government tests had linked the anthrax attacks in the US to Saddam’s chemical weapons program, a story that Ross spread far and wide – thus, as intended, heightening fears of Iraq, but which turned out to be completely false from start to finish. As numerous journalists argued then, Ross had the obligation to tell the public who was behind the hoax he so damagingly spread.

AP has that same obligation here. At the very least, they have the duty to respond to this scientific and documentary proof that the graph they trumpeted, and certainly the claims they made about it, are misleading in the extreme. On Wednesday afternoon, I asked AP to comment on these issues and have thus far received no response.

As both Shirazi and John Glaser document, the AP writer responsible for this absurdity, George Jahn, has a history of similar behavior. That includes producing an equally hyped and equally absurd report back in May featuring a cartoon-like drawing that, as Jahn put it, “was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran’s nuclear program who said it proves the structure exists, despite Tehran’s refusal to acknowledge it.”

As the Iraq War proved, there are few things more irresponsible and dangerous than having a large media outlet trumpet extremely dubious claims from anonymous sources designed to hype the threats posed by some targeted foreign regime. That is exactly what AP is doing here, and given how obvious the sham is, it is inexcusable. AP owes a clear explanation of what happened here.

The real story here is not this inane graph, but the behavior of AP and its “sources”. That someone is purposely feeding this influential media outlet obvious hoaxes shows two facts: (1) the evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons program must be very thin if fabrications of this type are needed; and (2) someone from an unnamed country or countries is very eager to scare the public into believing this weapons program exists and is vigorously proceeding, and is willing to use fraud to advance those fear-mongering ends.

UPDATE

Here, in its entirety, is the response sent by AP to all of the objections raised to its story:

“We continue to report this story.”

It’s hard to decide which is worse: the original story or their “response” to the very serious flaws in their reporting.

Related articles

• Associated Press (AP)’s Iran nuclear diagram Amateurish HOAX: Scientists (thesantosrepublic.com)
• AP’s Dangerous Iran Hoax Demands An Accounting And Explanation (Guardian) (infiniteunknown.net)
• Fake AP Graph Exposes Israeli Fraud and IAEA Credulity (dissidentvoice.org)
• Fake AP graph exposes Israeli fraud and IAEA credulity (realisticbird.wordpress.com)
• AP’s Dangerous Iran Hoax Demands an Accounting (readersupportednews.org)
• AP’s dangerous Iran hoax demands an accounting and explanation (thetruthseeker.co.uk)
• AP’s dangerous Iran hoax demands an accounting and explanation (weeklyintercept.blogspot.com)
• Supposed Iranian Nuke Graph off; UN Still Worried (abcnews.go.com)
• AP’s dangerous Iran hoax demands an accounting and explanation (dprogram.net)

Marxist View On Gaza: What Does It Mean?

Gaza: What does it mean?

Posted by Alan Woods

On the morning of November 15, Israel carried out the extrajudicial killing of Hamas military leader Ahmed al-Jabari. This act sparked off a new and deadly conflict between Israel and Gaza. This whole affair has all the hallmarks of a premeditated provocation.

“When the leaders speak of peace the common people know that war is coming.” (Bertolt Brecht)

IDF chief of staff visits southern Israel Photo: Israel Defense ForcesIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly wanted to provoke Hamas into an armed conflict. He has succeeded. Hamas responded with rocket attacks on Israeli towns that border the Gaza strip. The Israelis have used these attacks as an excuse for pulverising Gaza.

Throughout the night of Nov. 16-17, the Israeli Air Force bombed targets across the Gaza Strip including key Hamas ministries, police stations and tunnels near the border crossing with Egypt. They also carried out strikes in Rafah’s al-Sulan and al-Zahour neighbourhoods, as well as east of the al-Maghazi refugee camp. Later attacks included the bombing of a building that was known to be occupied by international journalists.

The Israeli propaganda machine has gone into overdrive. They try to present their military onslaught as a justified response to “terrorist attacks”. Obediently falling into line, the mass media in the western world show their “impartiality” by presenting the conflict as a war between equals: “Israeli bombs against Hamas rockets”.  But this conflict is absurdly unequal.

Gaza is an open-air prison in which 1.7 million people live in just 140 square miles. It is entirely at the mercy of its powerful neighbour, Israel. The latter possesses the most formidable military machine in the entire region. Its stockpile of arms, which includes nuclear weapons, is funded by Washington to the tune of US$3 billion a year.

By contrast, Gaza is a tiny besieged enclave composed mainly of impoverished refugees. The primitive, homemade rockets fired from Gaza are no match for the sophisticated weaponry of the Israeli army and air force. Israeli jet fighters and drones are bombarding Gaza by day and by night.

The Israelis claim that they are aimed to kill only “terrorists” and Hamas officials. But the television cameras of the world give the lie to this propaganda. Despite the claims of the Israelis that these attacks were carefully targeted, most of the victims were, as usual, civilians, including many women and children. The harrowing scenes of diminutive corpses being carried by grieving relatives to the cemeteries have shocked the public opinion of the world.

The population of Gaza is angry and desperate, but increasingly traumatised by the unrelenting bombardment, against which they have no defences. Despite talk of a ceasefire, Israel continues its airstrikes on Gaza, and Gaza continues its long-range rocket attacks on major Israeli population centres. The sight of rockets flying in the direction of Israel may or may not boost morale, but in fact their effectiveness as weapons of war is minimal.

As of last night (Monday) at least one hundred people have been killed in Gaza, while the Israeli death toll has reached the grand total of – three. This is not a case of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” The death toll of Palestinians exceeds that of Israelis by thirty three times.

The Israelis claim that their Iron Dome defence system has intercepted most of the rockets. To judge by the very low Israeli casualty figures, this may be partly true. However, the claims of the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) that its Iron Dome interceptors have successfully intercepted 90 percent of the rockets are clearly exaggerated.

Israel appears to be positioning itself in preparation for a ground operation. The Israeli Cabinet on Nov. 16 approved Defence Minister Ehud Barak’s request to call up 75,000 reservists, even more than in the 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza. The main roads leading to Gaza and running parallel to Sinai have been declared closed military zones. Tanks, armoured personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery and troops have been massing on the border in recent days. Whether this is an act of intimidation or a preparation for something more serious remains to be seen.

What was the purpose of all this?

What interest can Israel have in taking on Gaza this time?

The timing cannot have been an accident. It follows the same pattern we saw exactly four years ago. On Nov. 4, 2008, while Americans were going to the polls to elect a new president, the Israeli army entered the Gaza Strip with infantry, tanks and bulldozers Its alleged aim was to dismantle the extensive tunnel network used by Hamas to smuggle in weapons.

Hamas responded with a barrage of mortar and rocket fire. On Dec. 27, 2008, Operation Cast Lead was launched. The military campaign began with a seven day aerial bombardment was followed by a 15-day ground incursion. By the end of the campaign, many people were killed and the infrastructure of Gaza was devastated.

According to figures from the Israel Defence Forces figures, only ten Israeli soldiers died (four from friendly fire). The hundreds of rockets fired by Hamas killed three Israeli civilians. But 1,166 Palestinians were killed, of which 709 were said to be combatants.

It is no secret that Netanyahu wants to bomb Iran, allegedly to sabotage its nuclear programme. It is also no secret that Netanyahu was hoping for the victory of Mitt Romney in the US elections. The Republicans are well known to be active advocates of an attack on Iran.

Obama is a more cautious representative of US Big Business and is worried about the effect of an Israeli air strike against Iran. By flexing his muscles only a few days after the US elections, Netanyahu is ending a message to Washington, which says more or less: “Obama can say whatever he likes, but we are the ones who decide what happens in this part of the world.”

It has been said that certain forces in Gaza may be manufacturing long-range rockets locally. Even more significantly, it is said that the rockets that have been fired into Israel have been imported from Iran. The latter accusation would give a sinister twist to the present conflict, providing it with a regional dimension that is highly convenient to Netanyahu, who is looking for any excuse to launch an air attack on Iran. Part of his calculations may have been an attempt to shoring up his rear prior to such an attack.

At the same time, he may also be sending a message to the new Egyptian government. The Muslim Brotherhood is supposed to be hostile to Israel. It is also supposed to be friendly towards Hamas. But this attack has shown the Morsi regime to be weak and pusillanimous. Cairo makes noises about the “humanitarian disaster” in Gaza but does not lift a finger to go to its defence.

Prospects for Negotiations

The present conflict has once more glaringly exposed the impotence of the so-called United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has said he will go to Gaza, but he will not be able to do anything.

All kinds of contradictory rumours regarding the outcome of cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel have been circulating in Cairo. A Hamas spokesman told Al Jazeera that Israel and Hamas have “agreed to 90 percent of the terms of a new cease-fire”. But he did not say what the remaining ten percent consisted of. And while Israeli officials have told news outlets that the government is in talks with Cairo on a cease-fire, Israeli officials are now denying reports that an Israeli envoy is in Cairo at all.

On the face of it, there seems to be some basis for a deal. Hamas would like to enjoy the prestige of a symbolic victory from its long-range rocket attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem but does not want to pay the price of seeing its leadership and infrastructure pulverised in an Israeli ground invasion.

For its part, Israel would like to remove or neutralize the threat posed by Hamas’ long-range rockets but does not want to go through the experience of a ground invasion, drawing Israeli forces into urban warfare with the threat of suicide bombings that could prove costly.

It would appear that Hamas is pressing for a temporary truce in return for Egypt opening the border blockade on Gaza and Israel halting targeted killings of its leaders and military commanders. Whether the Israelis will accept this is open to doubt. Who will guarantee such a deal? Unless Egypt agrees to assume responsibility for Hamas’ rocket arsenal to satisfy Israel’s security concerns, it will be difficult for Israel to take these talks seriously. But that would place Egypt itself right in the firing line of future conflicts. It would also fatally undermine the Morsi government.

Both sides want a negotiated end – but on terms that would leave the other side in a weaker position. Both sides are well aware of the other side’s game. In order to reach a deal, Hamas would have to recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel would have to accept something resembling a Palestinian state led by Hamas in Gaza, which would gradually take over the West Bank. Both these assumptions seem wildly improbable. It is hard to see how this contradiction can be resolved peacefully.

Hamas does not want to give up its rockets. Israel cannot allow Hamas to possess weapons that threatens its heartland. The long-range Fajr-5 rockets can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The possession of these rockets improves Hamas’ strategic position and also serves to undermine the Palestinian National Authority (In the West Bank) vis-a-vis Hamas. They will therefore resist any deal that deprives them of the rockets. But Israel will not accept the Fajr-5 in the hands of Hamas. Netanyahu announced to his Cabinet Nov. 18 that targeted killings would not only continue, but would increase.

It is possible that all this merely means that both Israel and Hamas are trying to strengthen their negotiating positions by continuing their attacks before a cease-fire deal is struck. Be that as it may, while the leaders talk of peace, the war is already under way. And although a direct ground attack on Gaza by the Israelis has been temporarily stalled, the Israelis have already mobilized their forces and are ready to attack whenever they choose.

Although probably the Israelis would prefer not to attack because of the consequences, both in terms of human casualties and in political reverberations, they are poised to attack. And one must not assume that this is just a bluff. Netanyahu has given notice that if a truce is not agreed soon, a ground war may be launched even before the end of this week.

Gaza and the Arab Revolution

The Europeans are putting heavy pressure on Jerusalem to desist from an actual invasion of Gaza. Western capitals fear that any serious conflict in the region can spiral out of control. Though they always speak of humanitarianism, their real motives are quite different.

Paris, London and Berlin fear the effects on the price of oil and the anaemic economic recovery. Above all, they fear a new eruption of the “Arab Street”, always highly sensitive to the Palestinian cause. It is this that inspires their insistent calls for peace and restraint. But the Europeans are far too concerned in trying to halt the disintegration of the European Union to get involved with what is happening.

The same fears exist at the highest levels of the United States government. That is why Hillary Clinton is on a plane heading for Cairo. But, having burnt their fingers in Iraq, the gentlemen in Washington do not wish to be dragged into another conflagration in the Middle East.

In theory the United States can pressure Egypt by threatening to withhold financial and military aid. But in practice no US administration can oppose what Israel does because, after the Egyptian Revolution, it is now its only reliable ally in the whole region. Therefore, despite his weasel words, Obama has effectively endorsed the Israeli position.

On the broader scale, however, Israel has never been so isolated. Back in 2008, Mubarak’s Egypt could be relied upon to adopt a position of benevolent “neutrality”, which was, in practice, support for Israel. Now Mubarak has gone, and the present Egyptian government can no longer be relied upon.

In 2008 Turkey was a close ally of both the USA and Israel. But Israel’s relations with Turkey have been strained to breaking point by the attack on a Turkish ship bringing aid to Gaza in May 2010, during which several Turkish citizens were killed by Israeli troops. The Turkish Prime Minister, Erdogan, has recently denounced Israel as a “terrorist state”.

Under Assad Syria was an adversary, but at least it was a predictable one. With the chaos in Syria spreading to the Lebanon, Israel can no longer rely on Damascus to keep Hezbollah in check. Moreover, Iran has increased its influence in the region, bringing it closer to Israel and intensifying the tension over Iranian nuclear facilities.

Closer to home, the growing crisis in Gaza threatens to provoke renewed instability in the West Bank and arouse the Palestinians in Jordan. Across the Jordan River valley, to Israel’s east, the Hashemite kingdom is hanging by a thread.

But the country most directly affected is Egypt. The Egyptian government, terrified of the repercussions of a new war on the streets of Cairo, has been the most active in trying to secure a cease-fire: Cairo is hosting talks on a ceasefire, involving senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad members. It is said that Israeli officials are also present in Cairo.

The Egyptian government has a vested interest in preventing an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza because of the explosive effects inside Egypt. The Moslem Brotherhood is supposed to be aligned with Hamas. But in reality, its support is confined to hypocritical speeches about the plight of the people of Gaza. Morsi will have to promise the Israelis that he will do everything in his power to prevent weapons smuggling via Gaza. He will stand exposed before the masses.

The leaders of Hamas have the ambition of donning the mantle of “resistance” that was earlier worn by Hezbollah. They hope that the present crisis will enable them to win a symbolic “victory” over Israel. But that is an idle dream, which can end up in the complete devastation of Gaza.

The people of Gaza are increasingly desperate. They have no control over events that are destroying their lives. They hate the Israeli oppressors, but also resent the dictatorial rule of the “men with beards,” which has brought them nothing but death and suffering. Neither Hamas nor the so-called Palestinian Authority can offer any solution. Only a genuine revolutionary leadership can show the way out for the Palestinian people.

For its part, the Israeli ruling clique pretends that their aggressive actions are intended to eliminate Hamas’ arsenal of rockets and thus guarantee the safety of Israel. But with every new war, Israel becomes a less secure place. It is increasingly isolated both in the region and internationally.

These brutal attacks on Gaza have added yet another twist to the bloody imbroglio of the Palestinian question. The spectacle of death and destruction will have filled yet another generation of Palestinian youth with feelings of rage and hatred, adding fresh fuel to the fire. In what way this can be presented as making Israel safe for future generations is s mystery.

Every Palestinian child that dies in an air raid deepens the mood of bitterness and feeds the thirst for revenge. Every “victory” merely sows the seeds of new wars, new terrorist acts, new murders and atrocities. On this path lies nothing but death and destruction for all the peoples of this unhappy region.

In this struggle, the IMT stands firmly on the side of the oppressed and against the oppressors. The question of who fires the first shot and all the rest of the diplomatic sophistry is of no interest.  We stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Gaza against the barbarous onslaught of the Israeli aggressors. We will be to the forefront of every anti-war movement, protest and demonstration. We will endeavour to bring out the class content of the struggle, its anti-imperialist character. We will mercilessly expose the hypocrisy of western governments and their false “humanitarian” rhetoric.
We must build links with the most revolutionary sections of the youth in Gaza, who are fighting against imperialism and the Israeli state and also against the reactionary leadership of Hamas and the bourgeois collaborationist wing of the Palestinian leadership. Above all, we must maintain a broader perspective. The present conflict is just part of a far wider picture that encompasses the entre Middle East and cannot be understood outside this context.

The Gaza crisis is only the prelude to a far greater crisis. It is inseparably linked to Netanyahu’s plans for an air attack against Iran, which will set the entire Middle East ablaze. It will have incalculable consequences, economic, political and military. It will provoke a new wave of upheavals in the Arab world and beyond. Regimes will fall. People will take to the streets. The price of oil will go through the ceiling, and the world economy will take a nose dive, as it did in 1973 for similar reasons.

The Gaza crisis can be the match that reignites all the combustible material that has accumulated in the Middle East. It will mark a new stage in the ongoing Arab Revolution.

The stage is set for dramatic events on a world scale

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Is The Meme “Nuclear Iran” a Cover For Iran’s Killing and Torture of Dissenters?

The meme of “nuclear Iran” is plastered in every media. This makes convenient cover for Iran’s internal killings and human rights violations. Little attention is given to the slaughter, torture and persecution of minorities, women, atheists, perceived heretics and dissenters!

US Blasts Iran Over Torture And Death Of Blogger

Posted by:– chainsoff

English: Mr. Sayyed Mohammad Beheshti (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The U.S. has strongly condemned Iran for thetorture and death of Iranian blogger and labor activistSattar Beheshti (35), who as reported, died earlier this week while undergoing interrogation in Evin Prison. “We are appalled by reports that Iranian authorities tortured and killed blogger and activist Sattar Beheshti during a prison interrogation. Besheshti had been arrested for a crime no greater than expressing his political opinion online,” saidVictoria Nuland, U.S. Department spokesperson.

Nuland said that the Iranian government must “investigate this murder, hold accountable those responsible for Beheshti’s arrest, torture, and killing, and immediately cease all reported harassment of Beheshti’s family.” GVF reported that Beheshti’s death occured just one week after his arrest by Iran’s cyber police.

Beheshti was arrested by Iran’s cyber police on national security charges on October 30, who also confiscated the activist’s personal belongings, including his computer and handwritten notes.

Beheshti, the family’s only breadwinner, was reportedly active on Facebook. Iran’s cyber police was launched in January 2011 as part of the nation’s crackdown on online activism. “Sattar Beheshti is just one of thousands of victims of the Iranian government’s campaign of violent repression and efforts to curtail basic freedoms at all costs,” Nuland said

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• Iran prosecutor confirms blogger Sattar Beheshti died in police custody (guardian.co.uk)
• EU Joins US In Condeming Iran Over Death Of Blogger Beheshti (eurasiareview.com)
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Talk To Iran Urges Ex Israeli Spymaster

Former Israeli Spymaster: We Need To Talk to Iran

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) joined  Efraim Halevy (R) who succeeded outgoing Mossad chief Danny Yatom (L) in a toast  in the prime minister’s offices during Mossad handover ceremony.  (photo by  ISRAEL MOSSAD)

By:  Laura Rozen 

Efraim Halevy served as chief of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad,  under three Israeli prime ministers and led the secret negotiations with  Jordan’s King Hussein that made way for Israel’s historic 1994 peace treaty with  that country. Other assignments in a four-decade government career include  serving as Mossad station chief in Washington in the 1970s under then-Israeli  ambassador to the United States Yitzhak Rabin, for whom, as prime minister,  Halevy served as Mossad chief until Rabin’s 1995 assassination. Halevy also  served as Israeli national security advisor and Israeli ambassador to the  European Union in the late 1990s.

About this Article

Summary: In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor,  former Israeli spy chief Efraim Halevy said Israel and the US must engage in a  dialogue with Iran to understand how their adversaries think, a position rarely  heard from top Israeli officials. He faulted Republican candidate Mitt Romney  for making US policy toward Iran an issue in the presidential  election.

Born in Britain — Halevy moved to Israel in 1948 at the age of 14 — and  wearing a trench coat with a newspaper tucked under his arm on a drizzly morning  in Washington on Friday, Oct. 19, Halevy, 78, evoked George Smiley, the  protagonist in the John Le Carre British spy novels, who is burdened by the  knowledge of state secrets too sensitive and ugly to share. But it is Halevy’s  fierce advocacy for dialogue with mortal enemies such as Iran and Hamas,  combined with a biography laden with hard political experience, that makes him  so iconoclastic, especially in the current Israeli political and national  security landscape.

“I was 40 years in the business of dealing with adversaries — some of them  very bitter ones, some we fought successive wars with,” Halevy said in an  interview with Al-Monitor. “Over the years … I realized that, in order  to be effective with one’s enemies, you have to have two essential capabilities:  To overcome them by force if necessary … And do everything you can to get into  their minds and try to understand how they see things … and where if at all  there is room for common ground of one kind or another.”

“I think that what we have had over the years is an abundance of one side,  and a dearth of the other,” Halevy said.

Halevy most especially emphasized the need for dialogue with Iran, and to  try to understand the Iranians — a position rarely heard from top Israeli  officials, even those who have expressed opposition to unilateral Israeli  military action on Iran.

“The Iranians, in their heart of hearts, would like to get out of their  conundrum,” Halevy told Al-Monitor. “The sanctions have been very  effective. They are beginning to really hurt.”

In earlier episodes of his career that he described at length in the  interview, Halevy said, “I realized that dialogue with an enemy is essential.  There is nothing to lose. Although the claim was, if you talk to them, you  legitimize them. But by not talking to them, you don’t de-legitimate them. So  this convinced me, that we all have been very superficial in dealing with our  enemies.”

“What has happened, in order to meet public opinion, both Israel and the US  governments have tied our own hands,” Halevy said, referring to prohibitions on  US contacts, for instance, with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. “In the end, you create an inherent disadvantage for  yourself.”

“On Iran, you have to go much deeper,” Halevy said. “You have to understand  what it is that makes Iran tick.”

[This weekend, both the White House and Iran denied a New York Times report that the United States and  Iran have agreed to hold direct talks on Iran’s nuclear program after the US  presidential elections. “It’s not true that the United States and Iran have  agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement, adding the  US has “said from the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally.” Meantime, an Iran analyst tells Al-Monitor that it is  his understanding there have been back-channel talks between a senior US arms  control official and an Iran official through Turkey.]

Striking a deal with Iran will be “extremely difficult,” Halevy said. “It  needs a lot of creativity. And courage, political courage.”

“The perception is that Israel is going through the stages of sanctions,  etc. not with the idea or conviction that at the end, the other side will  yield,” he said. “If the purpose was to exert pressure to bring the other  side to the table, the rhetoric should be different.

“Obama does think there is still room for negotiations,” Halevy said. “It’s a very courageous thing to say in this atmosphere. In the end, this is  what I think: Making foreign policy on Iran a serious issue in the US  elections — what Romney has done, in itself — is a heavy blow to the  ultimate interests of the United States and Israel.”

Halevy spoke to Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen over breakfast at the  Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Al-Monitor:  In a very interesting interview  you gave to Haaretz last month, you said, “What we need to do is to  try and understand the Iranians.” That was quite striking — especially  coming amid the height of Israeli thinking out loud about possible military  action on Iran. Can you elaborate on your comment?

Halevy:  Let me begin by  point of departure. I was 40 years in the business of dealing with adversaries — some of them very bitter ones. Some we fought successive wars with.

Over the years, both because of personal contact with some key figures on  the other side […] I realized, in order to be effective with one’s enemies, you  have to have two essential capabilities: To overcome by force if necessary — and/or to withstand their force if necessary. And do everything you can to get  into their minds and try to understand how they see things, what their concerns  are — their dreams, aspirations, hopes, feelings are. And where if at all there  is room for common ground of one kind or another.

I think that what we have had over the years is an abundance of one side,  and a dearth of the other. There has been a big emphasis, and rightly so, [on  overcoming adversaries by force]. But we have paid little attention [to  understanding one’s enemies.] And I have always had the feeling to look for ways  and means of creating channels for dialogue. I was involved in channels of  dialogue in one way or other, in major and minor roles, as of 1973-1974, when I  served here in Washington, D.C., as Mossad station chief.

There have been two, three instances, in which I have had a very massive  challenge which shook my self confidence in what we were doing. […]

I tried to understand what happened here. I began to realize, in terms  of what we were doing, the colors were not only black and white, but there were  all kinds of hues of gray. The picture is much more complex.

[…] in 1997, when I was [Israeli] ambassador to the EU. I was called in  hastily because of a problem in Jordan. Mossad had tried to assassinate Khalid  Meshal [a Hamas leader], it was a botched operation. This was three years after  Israel signed a peace agreement with Amman. Meshal was a Jordanian citizen, and  [Mossad] had attempted to assassinate Meshal, a Jordanian citizen, in the  capital of Jordan.

And I, in analyzing the situation as I was making my way to Israel, reached  the conclusion that to solve the problem, we had to do something very creative  and unexpected. I […] said we have to release Sheikh Yassin, the founder of  Hamas, from jail. Within 24 hours, [after first rejecting this], then Prime  Minister Netanyahu accepted this, and did it. I was then able to travel to  Jordan and meet the king, And [Jordanian intelligence chief] Prince  Hassan.

I spoke to the king, and he was not a very happy man that day. And he said,  “One thing I don’t understand: I did not get any response to the offer [I passed  on to your people] 10 days ago.” [Unbeknownst to Halevy, King Hussein had passed  to Mossad an offer from Hamas proposing a 10-year or 30-year truce.]

When I got back to Israel, it transpired that [then Mossad chief Danny]  Yatom didn’t think to bring [the Hamas truce offer] to the attention of the  prime minister. It was still sitting on his desk. At the same time he received  it, he was masterminding [what became the botched Meshal assassination  plot].

Al Monitor:  Why do you think the Hamas  long-term truce proposal had sat on a desk?

Halevy:  It was so removed from the mainstream of  thought, nobody in their right mind at the time would even think this was  something serious. Hamas was our implacable enemy.

Al Monitor:  Was there any thought to try to  salvage the offer?

Halevy:  It was too late. You can’t offer negotiations  after attempting to kill a senior figure.

Therefore, I realized that dialogue with an enemy is essential. There is  nothing to lose. Although the claim was, if you talk to them, you legitimize  them But by not talking to them, you don’t de-legitimate them. So this convinced  me, that we all have been very superficial in dealing with our enemies.  […]

Not everything you try succeeds. But you have to be willing to try. If you  fail 10 times, and succeed once, the success outweighs the failures.

What happened: In order to meet public opinion, both Israel and the US  governments have tied our own hands. There is a law […] which prohibits US  officials from talking to Hamas […] In the end, you create an inherent  disadvantage for yourself.

Al-Monitor:  You mentioned in a talk this week  the need for dialogue with Iran.

Halevy:  On Iran, you have to go much deeper. You have  to understand what it is that makes Iran tick.

Iran in the past did not have a religious regime. It was a secular regime.  The source of power was the shah and he was a secular ruler. Mossadegh in  1953 became prime minister. He tried to nationalize the oil industry. He  was overthrown by a coup initiated by the British and CIA.

Mossadegh was not a [radical or fundamentalist]. He was the scion of one of  the leading royal families in Iran. [In a recent biography of Mossadegh, it  notes that] Mossadegh’s wife was a devout Muslim. He one time joked with  her, if you respect God so much, why do you bother him five times a  day?

Major sections of Iran society were secular and for many years this is a  stain on their history: that two intelligence agencies in 1953 kicked out their  elected leader and threw them to the wolves. They treated Iran not even as a  partner [against the Soviet Union in the Cold War]. This [resentment] runs very  deep [in Iranian psychology].

What happened to the US in 1979, the embassy affair, was an outburst of  indignation. Not that I justify it, at all. But to understand it is not to  justify […] There’s a difference […] Many prefer not to know, the details  confuse you.

[Politicians often prefer to have] a clear sound bite rather than a  policy. “Axis of evil.” Three words. Solved the problem. It would be fine  if we could go in and overturn the [government, but we can’t]. The US is trapped  by the way it treated Iran in the past and […] it is limiting its  options.

Al-Monitor:  There were periodic efforts by US  administrations to try to test openings for thawing relations. During the  Clinton administration, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright apologized for the  US role in the overthrow of Mossadegh […] But they all seemed to run  aground.

Halevy:  The US President  acts within the confines of US law. So, for instance, American officials  are not allowed to deal with Hamas. This is the through point.

In 2006, the US, under the George W. Bush administration, decided that it is  in the interest of the United States that Hamas participate in the Palestinian  elections. It twisted the arm of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to  make it come about […] The outcome was they won, not by the popular vote.  […]

Why limit your options. Why limit the capacity of the government to deal with  deadly enemies, without accepting their ideology. It inhibits you. […]

Al-Monitor:  And you believe that Iran wants  to talk to the United States?

Halevy:  They have wanted it for years.

What do we want to do: We want to change their mindset. We want to  change the rules of the game […] In order to bring that about, you have to have  drama. You have to decide in advance, what you are willing to give up. I don’t  want to use the term “red lines.”  The prize here is something which has to  benefit both sides.

My view: Iran has to accept two things. There is an absolute necessity to  prevent Iran from getting a nuclear device. And it has to accept the existence  of the state of Israel. […]

Al-Monitor:  Many observers believe there  is a nuclear deal to be had. But it’s very hard to do, to even talk to them. Do  you think it’s possible to narrow the huge gulf between the two sides?

Halevy:  It is extremely difficult. It needs a lot of  creativity. And courage, political courage.

I remember for many years we [Israeli officials] used to come to Washington,  and used to say [to American officials], “You must help us strengthen our  strategic capabilities. We must always have ‘the edge,’ we called it.” For  two things. To protect ourselves, and we need to show, out of  a feeling of  confidence and safety, that we are negotiating out of strength and not out of  weakness.

Israel did negotiate […] two peace treaties, with Egypt and Jordan, and we  went part of the way with the Syrians and the Palestinians. We needed to be  strong in order to negotiate, in order to get that.

But we have forgotten the last part. Yes, we had to negotiate, or appear to  be negotiating, in order to strike [a deal] in the end. We have to prove in the  end [we tried everything else].

In Israel, [it has taken hold that] the Iran nuclear issue will not be  resolved except with a major confrontation. Here is the difference I see  currently between the Israeli position and that of the United States. It’s not  that we don’t have a common intelligence picture. The question is, what is the  end game?

The perception is that Israel is going through the stages of sanctions,  etc., not with the idea or conviction that at the end, the other side will  yield. If the purpose was to exert pressure to bring the other side to the  table, the rhetoric should be different. […]

Obama has placed emphasis on negotiations. In this current election for  the US presidency, his hands are tied. He cannot proceed, because he cannot  appear soft on Israel’s security.

Negotiating with Iran is perceived as a sign of beginning to forsake Israel.  That is where I think the basic difference is between Romney and  Obama. What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a  resolution without war. Therefore when [he recently] said, he doesn’t think  there should be a war with Iran, this does not ring true. It is not consistent  with other things he has said. […]

Obama does think there is still room for negotiations. It’s a very  courageous thing to say in this atmosphere.

In the end, this is what I think: Making foreign policy on Iran a  serious issue in the US elections — what Romney has done, in itself — is a  heavy blow to the ultimate interests of the United States and Israel.

It is not as if, if he wins the election, and gets into the White House, he  can back up. The Iranians are listening attentively to what he says. When  he says, he would arm the opposition in Iran. They understand.

Al-Monitor:  Obama has also seen the limits of  force in places like Afghanistan. The surge didn’t work.

Halevy:  The late Richard Holbrooke spent infinite  days talking to Taliban figures […] Holbrooke was one of the most brilliant  diplomats in the past half century of US diplomacy. He was a great figure. He  understood, that, in the end, in order to outgun the enemy, just brute force, is  not enough, it doesn’t work. […]

Al-Monitor:  Several former senior Israeli  national security chiefs, like yourself, have expressed opposition to a  unilateral Israeli strike on Iran. But you are one of the few […]

Halevy:  It is not a question of opposing a strike on  Iran. I don’t oppose a strike. I said, a strike should be the last resort,  and we should mean it. We have not reached a point where there is no other way  to resolve this. We have not behaved, or gone through the other steps.

The Iranians, in their heart of hearts, would like to get out of their  conundrum. The sanctions have been very effective. They are beginning to  really hurt.

Al-Monitor:  Are the Iranians paranoid the US  policy is regime change, even as I don’t think for the Obama administration it  is true?

Halevy: They are certainly convinced the policy [is  regime change]. And that is not the only regime the US has problems with in the  field of values. The regimes in Beijing, North Korea, Moscow […]

Romney has been very costly on Russia […] If you want to create situation,  where the only way to go about things is to go back to the Cold War, that is  what is being done here. It’s very dangerous.

I don’t think the US public wants to go to another world war over values in  this way. If it persists, it will be a slide down a very slippery  slope.

It’s a question of concept. Where are we going in the  21st century? Are we going to try to propagate policies on the  battlefields?

Al-Monitor: Beyond the heated US  campaign rhetoric, what do you make of the wider perception that, even  though Obama has actually used force quite a bit, and successfully oversaw the  operation that killed Osama bin Laden, that he is perceived, or misperceived, as  not wanting to use force, and the US is seen therefore as weak.

Halevy:  I think nobody who has been involved in  ordering the use of force can forget the angst, the days and nights of concern,  as to what and how it can be done.

Romney has said, Anybody could have decided to finish bin Laden. Even  [Jimmy] Carter. This again was a mistaken concept. President Obama didn’t  just decide [one day to kill bin Laden]. The operation to end the life of bin  Laden necessitated multiple points of decision by him. I know from operations I  have been involved with on a smaller scale.

They are very intricate. You don’t just give the order and wait in your  office for commanders to come three months later and say it’s done. No. This  kind of operation, which is accident prone, hands on operation, one has to make  one decision after the other […] It took courage and cool headedness and  leadership. Anyone who says it was an easy thing to decide, doesn’t understand  what he’s talking about. [Such comments] show a total lack of understanding of  what this kind of operation means.

Once I was in charge of an operation and Netanyahu was Prime Minister. One  day, because of the intricacy of what we were doing, I talked to him 10 times on  the phone […] Ten times. It was a Friday, a day I will not forget.

This kind of operation, every minute, an issue comes up, that sometimes  requires a decision on the political level.

The Libya story, the way it’s being used, is a sordid manipulation.  […]

Al-Monitor: In a recent dialogue with Iranian  officials, I was told the Iranian interlocutors used some formulation which  indirectly recognized Israel. They demanded that Israel become a signatory  to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Since the NPT only admits  states, was it a tacit recognition of Israel?

Halevy:  Not everything has to be spoken out loud […]  It is not naïve or foolish, that there has be a serious beginning of a process  of dialogue, which ultimately leads to mutual acceptance of the state of  Israel.

I have had opportunities to see Iranians […] All I can tell you is, after  the first round of P5+1/Iran nuclear talks in Istanbul in April, the Iranians  came out and said they were extremely happy. They were treated with  dignity.  And they were happy the conversations took place around a round  table [which made them feel symbolically an equal party to the talks with the  United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China].

You can smile and say it’s an insignificant detail. But though  insignificant, it is indicative of one aspect of the problem. [The Iranian  priority on the issue of dignity.]

There are two issues which have to be resolved in a clear way. Iran cannot  gain a nuclear military capability. And the existence of Israel ceases to be an  issue.

One thing the Israeli Prime Minister [Netanyahu] has done: He does not  induce confidence [in the Israeli public]. He is invoking Auschwitz twice a  week. He has created a situation in which he’s “damned if he did, damned if he  didn’t’’ bomb Iran, since he created such a buildup.

Related articles

• Why Israel Won’t Attack Iran (thediplomat.com)
• Secret, Deniable and Useful (nationalinterest.org)
• Former Mossad Chief, Halevy, is Iran Contrarian (richardsilverstein.com)
• Ex-Mossad chief on Iran: We need ‘people who are solution orientated and not war orientated’ (blogs.jta.org)
• Former Mossad Chief Says Iran Red Lines ‘Not Conducive,’ Urges Diplomacy (thinkprogress.org)

Benjamin Netanyahu Plagiarizes Looney Toons | But He Ain’t The Wascally Wabbit!

What do Netanyahu and Wile E. Coyote have in common? Bibi Pulls Out A Cartoon Bomb To Explain to UN The Iranian Nuclear Threat

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted that ‘Netanyahu’s bomb cartoon is the Middle East equivalent of Clint Eastwood’s chair’

Via:- Destro

I knew ACME was in the bomb business but this is ridiculous!

[Link: www.carbonated.tv…]

What do Netanyahu and Wile E. Coyote have in common?

Other than looks you mean? Well both have their devilish plots, deceptions and grand schemes that typically backfire. They also have the wonderful ACME bomb sketches and ofcourse their continuous harrassement of their foes, the Road Runner in one case and the Palestinians/Iranians on the other- Beep Beep anyone.

In what is going to be remembered as one of the goofiest performances of all times at the U.N. Netanhyahu’s attempts to graphically scare the world about the dangers of the Iranian bomb backfired as his cartoonish sketch became the subject of ridicule in various media circles and is sure to be featured on all late night talk show circuits imminently. Hey Bibi, how about outsourcing the graphics to India the next go around?

Image: 83853_story__NETANYAHU-Untitled-1.jpg

Image: 83853_story__NETANYAHU-Untitled-2.jpg

CHART OF THE DAY: Benjamin Netanyahu Pulls Out A Cartoon Bomb To Explain The Iranian Nuclear Threat

Brett LoGiurato

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled out this chart to describe the threat of a nuclear Iran during his speech to the UN General Assembly…..

“We must face the truth,” he added. Economic sanctions, he said, are not enough to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He said “a clear red line on Iran’s nuclear weapons program” needs to be established.

Here’s the red line:

Image: netanyahu.png

So far, there have been mixed reactions to the chart.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted that it “It’s Official, Netanyahu has no idea what he is doing and turned a serious issue into a joke: Image: jeffrey-goldberg.png

Goldberg followed up that it was Netanyahu’s equivalent of the Republican National Convention’s Clint Eastwood moment.

Not to worry though!

Former George W. Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, on the other hand, called it “effective” and “gripping.”

Read more: [Link: www.businessinsider.com…]

Related articles

• ‘Bibi’s Bomb’: Netanyahu uses a picture to make his point (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Bibi as Wile E. Coyote (richardsilverstein.com)
• Binyamin Netanyahu draws ‘red line’ on Iran nuclear bomb chart (guardian.co.uk)
• In front of global audience, Netanyahu draws his red line (on his ridiculous bomb cartoon) (weeklyintercept.blogspot.com)
• Bibi: The Middle East’s Wile E. Coyote (theatlantic.com)

Is Obama Right to Snub Netanyahu?

Obama is right to ignore Netanyahu

By Andrew Cohen, Ottawa Citizen September 24

In the Jewish calendar, the interlude between Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) is called the Days of Awe. During these 10 days, Jews reflect on themselves and their faith.

Like observant Jews everywhere, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will consider his conduct over the last year and seek forgiveness for his transgressions. He will have much to contemplate. Before the Days of Awe, Netanyahu had his Days of Audacity.

That’s audacity as in effrontery, not boldness. Netanyahu’s cardinal sin is interfering in the domestic politics of the United States, Israel’s friend, ally and benefactor, in a manner that is disingenuous, ungrateful and irresponsible.

Twice this month, Netanyahu has told the United States, publicly, to give Iran an ultimatum on its nuclear program. It should draw “a red line” that Iran cannot cross, he says. “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red line before Israel,” he told a news conference this month.

His point: that if America is not going to set limits on the Iranians and nuclear weapons, it has no right to tell Israel what to do.

As if those dense Americans didn’t recognize themselves as “the international community,” Netanyahu later went on American television to drive home the point.

Let’s get beyond the coded conversation. The prime minister is saying that President Barack Obama is unreliable. He does this as the president seeks re-election against a Republican who attacks him for being soft on Iran and hard on Israel, who claims Obama is “throwing Israel under the bus.”

It is very simple and very dangerous, Netanyahu’s game. In portraying Obama as weak, he plays to the Republican canard that on Israel — as in events in Libya and Egypt — the president has no backbone.

This is beyond audacity. It is chutzpah.

No wonder Obama is snubbing Netanyahu when he visits the United Nations this week. He resents Netanyahu’s megaphone diplomacy, which tries to drag the U.S. into a premature, preventive war, as well as his ingratitude for America’s magnanimous financial and military support of Israel.

For months, Netanyahu has been warning that Iran is getting the bomb, a refrain from him and other alarmists we have heard for 20 years. In his messianic view of himself and Jewish history, Israel has no choice but to strike first.

Netanyahu continues to argue this amid growing opposition in Israel, particularly among influential insiders, such as Meir Dagan, who ran Mossad. Read Dagan’s assessment of Iran in the New Yorker, and see the emptiness — and recklessness — of Netanyahu’s declarations on Iran.

It was madness to speak of hitting Iran in January, when Netanyahu began his new season of sabre-rattling, and it is madness now. Attacking Iran isn’t about weak-kneed morality. It is about hard-headed practicality.

And practically speaking, it just doesn’t add up.

No credible intelligence suggests that Israel has the ability to destroy Iran’s capacity to make a nuclear bomb. It can delay it, yes, for six to 24 months.

Say Israel does attack Iran. Then what? Consider the consequences: a newly enfranchised but still illegitimate regime in Tehran, backed by popular outrage in the Arab Street; the expulsion of the international nuclear inspectors; a public commitment from Iran to developing the bomb “in self-defence”; a rain of rockets on Israel’s cities, launched by Hezbollah and Hamas; Israeli retaliation inviting regional war, drawing in Egypt.

No wonder Obama wants to let international sanctions and diplomacy play out. If they don’t, and the Iranians decide to build a bomb (which they have not yet), Obama might then decide to order an attack. If so, it would be carried out with America weaponry, with a better chance of success.

Apparently that isn’t enough for Netanyahu. He is gambling that a weakened Obama loses the election, and that Mitt Romney embraces Netanyahu’s view and takes his talking points from Jerusalem, much like the government of Canada.

That the United States has helped finance Israel’s (“Iron Dome”) anti-missile and other defence systems, that it has provided $168 billion in aid to the country since 1948, and that it has collaborated with Israel on anti-nuclear cyber-warfare against Iran — all does not give Netanyahu pause.

The prime minister’s audacity will bring him more trouble than he knows.

If he attacks Iran over the objections of the Americans, he risks shattering Israel’s most important relationship. If he doesn’t attack but continues to push the U.S. to present ultimatums, he risks shattering his relationship with Obama, who will be less tolerant of Netanyahu if re-elected.

In arguing for red lines, Netanyahu cited — and misread — John F. Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis 50 years ago. As Netanyahu tries to make the case for war, he would do well to heed JFK’s memorable warning: those who ride the back of the tiger often end up inside.

Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

 

Related articles

• Netanyahu To Obama: I Won’t Interfere In Election On Romney’s Behalf (washington.cbslocal.com)
• Jewish Dems warn Netanyahu to stay out of US presidential election (thehill.com)

Mitt Romney | Echoes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Romneynejad: We didn’t have gays in the 1960s

Via:- Juan

Mitt Romney, accused of harassing gay students when he was in high school, tried to get out of the charge by pretending that being gay was not a big issue in the 1960s.

“Romney moved quickly to counter any suggestion he had targeted students because they were gay.”

“That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case,” he said, adding that the students involved “didn’t come out of the closet until years later.”

As Andrew Sullivan asks, “And there was no homophobia in the 1960s?”

Romney’s attempt to deny that there was consciousness of gayness in a past era resembles the denial by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that there is any consciousness of gayness in Iran today.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies that there are any gays in Iran. “I don’t know who told you we have this:

Why aren’t we up in arms about Jordan’s nuclear ‘threat’?

Why aren’t we up in arms about Jordan’s nuclear ‘threat’?

Jordan, Israel’s neighbor, has a nuclear program. And, unlike Iran, Jordan and Israel actually have a history of military confrontation.  So why isn’t Israel barking?

Yes, Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan, but if the Israeli and American hawks set their sights on Jordan’s nuclear ambitions, they would shriek that a peace treaty is not enough to secure Israel’s future. They would demand Jordan halt its uranium enrichment and dismantle its facilities.

If Jordan refused, and insisted that its nuclear program was for civilian purposes – as Iran has – Israeli leaders would threaten that Israel will do what she “has to do” to protect herself and the future of the Jewish people (more than half of which, mind you, do not live in Israel). I can just hear Netanyahu saying something like “Israel won’t hang its fate on a piece of paper.”

Then there are the Palestinians, a group that constitutes more than half of Jordan’s population. If the Palestinians and Palestinian refugees are really as fearsome and bloodthirsty as Israel makes them out to be – if the Palestinians are indeed terrorists bent on Israel’s destruction – wouldn’t a nuclear program in a country where they constitute more than half the population be of concern to Israel?

So why isn’t Israel barking about Jordan’s nuclear program? Because Jordan is a U.S. ally; because Jordan is open to Western influence.

Some would argue it’s also because Jordan’s program is for civilian purposes. But, the same could be said of Iran. In fact, American intelligence agencies believe that Iran stopped working towards a nuclear weapon in 2003.

As for Iran’s so-called intent to wipe Israel off the map, Jordan and Israel have actually had military confrontations, during the 1948 War and the Six Day War in 1967. If you had to pick who is a bigger threat, would you pick the kid you exchanged words with or the one who you actually had a fist fight with?

Regarding anti-Semitism, Iran has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East, outside of Israel. Ever heard of Jordanian Jews?

That’s not to say that Jordanians are anti-Semitic but, yes, like most places in the world, there is anti-Semitism in Jordan. When I was in Jordan recently on a reporting trip, I attended a pro-reform protest in Amman. At one point the crowd chanted “Jews are pigs” and many an interviewee told me that they want to see a Palestine free of Jews. Still, Israel and the United States aren’t up in arms about Jordan’s nuclear program.

One last point: according to a 2010 study, Jordan is the fifth most militarized country in the world, with Israel, Singapore, Syria, and Russia taking the top four spots, in that order.

According to the same research, Iran came in as the 32nd most militarized country in the world, lagging far behind Israel’s neighbors Jordan and Syria.

By Israeli political standards, it sounds like a real formula for disaster, right? Israel’s neighbor – a highly militarized country with a history of armed conflict with Israel, a country full of Palestinian refugees, a country in which the largest political opposition party is the Islamic Action Front, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood – has a nuclear program. Yet Israel and the United States are mum, suggesting that the Palestinians, Islamists, and nuclear programs aren’t the existential threat Israel pretends them to be.

Sort of makes you wonder what all the fuss about Iran is really about, doesn’t it?

Related articles

• German Poet Banned from Israel for Writing about Nuclear Program (commondreams.org)
• Goldberg Slipping on Grass (middleeastatemporal.wordpress.com)
• Why We Need an Open Debate on Israel (3quarksdaily.com)

‘Radicalised agnostics’ threatening to derail Middle East war process

The irresponsible actions of a group of radical agnostics are threatening to jeopardise the glorious battle that awaits the holy lands, warned Israel and Iran today.

‘These people are dangerously sensible and naively human in their outlook,’ said Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a joint statement. ‘We have a clear roadmap for war in the region, but the soft-line approach to international politics of these fundamentalist equivocators could prevent millions of martyrs from fulfilling their destiny. The Middle East is like a powder keg that could explode any minute – the last thing we need is some crazed pacifists standing around with fire extinguishers.’

Radical agnostics have hit back at the attack, but insist they don’t want to offend anyone. ‘We’d just prefer it if religious leaders didn’t blow the world to oblivion,’ stated Daniel Olszewski, a spokesman for the group known as The Silent Unsure. ‘We may be in the minority, but we just think that mass human extinction through warfare should be avoided. Agnostics get a lot of stick from both believers and atheists for sitting on the fence, but the one thing we’re sure about is that we’re not quite ready yet to find out if there is an afterlife.’

Using insidious techniques such as writing sensible letters to people in power and offering to grovel if that would help, the group claims that war might be avoided if everyone just thought about things logically for a while. It’s a stance that has earned them some powerful enemies, but there were signs today that it might be beginning to bear fruit with Israel and Iran finding some common ground.

‘It turns out that we and America have a lot more in common than we thought with Iran, Russia and China,’ said Netanyahu. ‘When what you believe in most is under attack from the nagging voice of reason and an underground network of people that discusses things, listens to both sides of the argument and looks for compromise, it’s time to join with your enemies and act. Diplomacy, sanctions, military action – we will do whatever it takes to defeat this threat to international warfare.’

Related articles

• Should the US Go to War for Israel? (alethonews.wordpress.com)

The Twisted Twins | Catholic Fascist Warmongers Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum

Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!!!!!!!  . . .   Bomb! Bomb Iran!!!!! (Christian Warmongers, Good Catholic Boys Div.)

by Rev. Paul McKay

SANTORUM & GINGRICH HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH TORTURE AND THE CASUAL DROPPING OF BOMBS THAT WILL DESTROY THE LIVES OF SCORES OF INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN; THESE ARE A COUPLE OF REALLY, REALLY VIOLENT, HATEMONGERING, WARMONGERING CATHOLICS AND WE CANNOT LET THESE PEOPLE GET US INTO ANOTHER CATASTROPHIC AND VIOLENT WORLD EVENT; SPEAK OUT, PEACEMAKERS: SPEAK OUT LOUD AND CLEAR AGAINST THIS MADNESS WITH ME

For Catholics who purport to care so deeply and passionately for the sanctity of life–for Catholics who claim to be all about the Catholic Church’s teachings–the Rick Santorums and Newt Gingriches of the world sure do talk casually about nuking people.

Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church were adamantly opposed to the mere invasion of Iraq, remember? So much so that the Pope dispatched an old Bush family friend and Catholic clergyman to try to persuade Bush that invading Iraq could in no way be justified on any Christian or moral grounds whatsoever.

At least President Bush heard out the old family Catholic friend before dismissing him with that typical Bush absolutism. (Absolutely to the right on war and peace.) Bush, a United Methodist (who left the Episcopal Church largely because of Laura’s Methodist ties and because “the Episcopalians kneel too much! he! he!”), turned a totally deaf ear to the United Methodist Bishops who joined every other mainline Protestant denomination in virtually begging him not to go venturing off on an unjust and unnecessary war.

Now, the Santorums and Gingriches of the world talk casually about dropping bombs–nuclear, no less–on Iran with no evidence to justify such draconian action (Ron Paul is right about that–walleyed crazy Ron Paul is right about a lot of things, not that I could ever vote for him except as a protest vote).

It seems to be lost on these Catholic politicos that their own Catholic Church, which they say they love and they defend so vigorously, extends the sanctity of life to all life–not just to life in the womb. It’s why the Vatican predictably speaks out loud and clear and justifiably every time there is a scheduled execution of a death row inmate in this country. It’s why the Vatican consistently opposes torture which Santorum and Gingrich have no prob with.

For all their problems and all the weird and twisted theology they have, in my humble opinion–as I noted in a recent posting, the theology of “every sperm is sacred” ain’t my deal–the Catholics at least are consistent on the sacredness of life and viewing a life as created in the very image of God. Santorum and Gingrich seem to think a lot of lives are born in the image of a literal Satan that doesn’t even literally exist (again, that opinion is my own humble and theologically informed opinion–send your nasty disagreements to revpaulmckay@gmail.com and put your name on your nastiness if you want to tell me how misguided a Christian I am because I don’t believe in a ridiculous literal Satan).

The Santorums and Gingriches speak as if they have no respect for their own church’s teachings and preachings whatsoever when they start fanning the flames of war. They speak of bombing without so much as any moral perspective. You won’t hear them say, “As much as I hate war, as much as I would tremble at the heavy responsibility of taking lives and wreaking havoc in the world, I would do it out of moral concern for the greater good of saving other lives.”

Nope, you won’t hear that kind of moral and Christian equivocating, acknowledging that people will suffer and die—living, breathing human beings outside of wombs–will be maimed if not killed and killed in the most gruesome way possible with nukes melting their bodies down. They won’t approach their violent positions on countries like Iran with any perspective on of the scores of innocent men, women and children who will be left starving, without shelter or clean water to subsist on.

And of course, they are clueless as to how kids growing up in Iran will see the U.S. as maybe being “the Great Satan” that their crazy ass dictator loud mouth clowns portrayed.

Kids in Iran want American Apple gizmos and cool blue jeans.

Bomb the country and kids in Iran will hate America’s guts because the Santorums and Gingriches didn’t give a shit if they and their loved ones lived or died.

I’m sorry, but Santorum and Gingrich are some really twisted sisters and haters.

And we can’t let the haters win.

Speak your voice.

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George Will Blasts GOP Candidates | Warmongers Want To Bomb Iran But Chicken Shit Afraid of Loony Rush Limbaugh

George Will Blasts GOP Candidates’ Meek Response To Rush: ‘They Want To Bomb Iran, But They’re Afraid Of Limbaugh’

Posted by kstreet607

I was never a George Will fan, but I’m learning to respect his opinions lately.  The current crop of GOP candidates and their supporters are so far right on every issue,they make Mr. Will actually seem extremely reasonable…

Think Progress

This morning on ABC, prominent conservative columnist George Will blasted the Republican leadership’s meek response to Rush Limbaugh’s sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke. Will mocked Speaker John Boehner for calling Rush’s language “inappropriate ” as comically weak, noting “using a salad fork for your entree, that’s inappropriate.”

Will also attacked the GOP presidential candidates timid response: “They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

Watch it:

Check out what all the Presidential candidates have said about Limbaugh’s sexist attacks here.

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Jewish ‘Assassinate Obama’ Proponent Tearful On-Air Apology: ‘Call Me Naive’

Adler’s Tearful On-Air  Apology: ‘Call Me Naive’

By J.J. Goldberg

Andrew Adler, owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, appears on a  local cable program to apologize for his recent  column proposing that Israel assassinate President Obama. It’s a  wrenchingly, gruesomely compelling scene of a broken man who plainly has no idea  how he got himself in this mess.

I was basically writing the column to draw, you know, draw interest I guess  to the Iranian situation and to get people’s reaction to it, and like in no  ways, means or form to advocate anything… I just felt I was doing my job as an  editor – an owner and publisher, to get the readers to wake up to what’s  happening with Iran and Israel and the nuclear situation…

That’s actually a bit disingenuous. What he wrote in the column was, “You  have got to believe, as I do, that all options are on the table.” In other  words, I mean what I say. On the other hand, he repeats this idea over and over,  that it was just a thought exercise, and you get the impression that he has  convinced himself he didn’t mean it.

Call me stupid, call me naïve, call me morally insane, whatever words you  want to apply… It’s storming outside as we speak and I’ve always felt that when  a storm happens, that God’s angry with me.

Still. “The intentions were good, to get more people involved, to promote  Israel’s side.” How could that be a bad thing?

One of the most intriguing threads is his recollection of his January 15  interview with Israel’s deputy consul general in Atlanta. Toward the end, he  says, “she wanted to talk about Iran”:

I forget what she said, but it wasn’t a pleasant ending if we don’t wake up  to what’s happening.

Again, as I wrote in my  post last night, this is the end result of a campaign of incitement. The  very healthy instinct among American Jews to want the best for Israel is  exploited, fed with a deliberately exaggerated sense of threat and  vulnerability, until anything seems imaginable. Let’s be clear: there is a real  threat. But it’s less than it was a generation ago. And yet it seems that as the  threat declines, the rage grows.

Most of us don’t cross the line, but there’s always someone who will. The  interviewer alludes to that when she suggests to Adler that “some might be  reminded” by his column of what happened to Yitzhak Rabin. His response is a  befuddled: “True – I wasn’t – to look back on it, I screwed up.”

I’m at a loss as to what tomorrow will bring, what time will bring, what the  next five minutes will bring. It’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest  of my life. … I deserve the repercussions. All can say is, I am devastated, I’m  stunned. I want to go to Israel. I probably won’t be welcome there now. I want  to go anywhere in the Jewish community, people will look at me like I did — … To  think that I could lose everything is devastating.

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/150155/#ixzz1kXWeOBAy

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Jewish Extremist Promotes Obama Assassination

Like fundi Islamist, Catholic, White Supremacist, Christian fascist and racist fanatics, certain Right Wing fanatic Jews also have an extremist bee in their bonnet with president Barack Obama and seek his murder.

As one Blog noted, “Who the fuck are these people? Where do they think that they fit into the “Land of the Free” ”

Gawker

Newspaper Editor: Israel Should Consider Assassinating Obama [UPDATE]

Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper serving Atlanta’s Jewish community, devoted his January 13, 2012 column to the thorny problem of the U.S. and Israel’s diverging views on the threat posed by Iran. Basically Israel has three options, he wrote: Strike Hezbollah and Hamas, strike Iran, or “order a hit” on Barack Obama. Either way, problem solved!

Here’s how Adler laid out “option three” in his list of scenarios facing Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu (the column, which was forwarded to us by a tipster, isn’t online, but you can read a copy here):

Three, give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.

Yes, you read “three” correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?

Another way of putting “three” in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives…Jews, Christians and Arabs alike?

You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.

It’s hard to tell whether or not Adler is just some crank. But the Atlanta Jewish Times, which he purchased in 2009, appears to be a real community newspaper. It was founded in 1925 and, according to Wikipedia, claims a circulation of 3,500 and staff of five. To judge from its web site, it’s a going concern.

A nervous Adler told me over the phone that he wasn’t advocating Obama’s assassination by Mossad agents. “Of course not,” he said.

But do you think Israel should consider it an option? “No.”

But do you believe that Israel is in fact considering the option in its most inner circles? “No. Actually, no. I was hoping to make clear that it’s unspeakable—god forbid this would ever happen. I take it you’re quoting me?”

Yes. “Oh, boy.”

When I asked Adler why, if he didn’t advocate assassination and didn’t believe Israel was actually considering it, he wrote a column saying he believed that the option was “on the table,” he asked for a minute to compose himself and call me back. He did a few moments later, and said, “I wrote it to see what kind of reaction I was going to get from readers.”

And what was the reaction? “We’ve gotten a lot of calls and emails.”

Nothing from the Secret Service, though. Yet.

UPDATE: Adler has told JTA that he “regrets” the column and plans to publish an apology. Oh, and the Secret Service says it will “make all appropriate, investigative follow-up in regard to this matter,” according to ABC News.

[Image via Getty]

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Former Mossad Head Says Radical Right Biggger Threat To Israel Than Iran

Former Mossad Head Says Haredim Biggger Threat To Israel Than Iran

The former head of the Israeli secret service said Thursday during an  army boarding school reunion that while Iran should be prevented from  becoming a nuclear power, its capabilities are still “far from posing an  existential threat to Israel.” “The growing haredi radicalization poses a bigger risk than  Ahmadinejad,” Halevy said, adding that “the ultra-Orthodox extremism has  darkened our lives.”

Ephraim Halevy

‘Iran far from posing existential threat’

Ex-Mossad Chief Ephraim Halevy warns strike on Iran could have devastating effect for region. ‘Ultra-Orthodox radicalization poses bigger threat than Ahmadinejad,’ he says
Yoav Zitun • Ynet

Former Mossad Chief Ephraim Halevy warned against an Israeli strike on Iran, saying that the results of a confrontation could be devastating for the Mideast.

“The State of Israel cannot be destroyed,” he told Ynet on Friday. “An attack on Iran could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years.”

The former head of the Israeli secret service said Thursday during an army boarding school reunion that while Iran should be prevented from becoming a nuclear power, its capabilities are still “far from posing an existential threat to Israel.”

“The growing haredi radicalization poses a bigger risk than Ahmadinejad,” Halevy said, adding that “the ultra-Orthodox extremism has darkened our lives.”

Political-Security Cabinet member and Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias slammed Halevy for claiming that the “ultra-Orthodox radicalization” poses a bigger threat for Israel than a nuclear Iran.

“Halevy’s statements are shocking and inciting and they divide the people of Israel at a time when it needs unity more than ever,” Atias said, urging the former Israeli intelligence head to apologize.

The Shas minister claimed he had a hard time understanding “how a Jewish man, who was the head of the Mossad, expresses himself in such a shameful, untruthful and provocative manner against the Jewish public, whose only sin is keeping the Jewish people‘s heritage alive without enforcing it upon anyone.”

This wasn’t the first time that Halevy, who headed the Mossad between 1998-2002, expressed opposition to an attack on Iran. In 2008, he told Time Magazine that the measure should only be used as a last resort, as its effects could resonate in the region for a century

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Iran Detains 6 Documentary Filmmakers, Activists Say

Iran detains 6 documentary filmmakers, activists say

September 19, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pictured on August 26, is being urged to free filmmakers and journalists.

Iran has detained six documentary filmmakers on accusations that they worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Persian service, activists said on Monday.The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran urged authorities to end the “ongoing intimidation and arrest of filmmakers and journalists” and called on diplomats and journalists in New York to press President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his country’s rights record during his reported visit to New York this week.”These arrests prove yet again that President Ahmadinejad and his intelligence apparatus have no tolerance for independent filmmakers and journalists,” Aaron Rhodes, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement.

“If the president expects the international community to respect his right to speak in New York, then he should be forced to explain why filmmakers and media are subject to repression in Iran,” he added.

Citing sources, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said the six documentary filmmakers were detained over the weekend and taken to prison.

It said a pro-government news agency accused the filmmakers of working for BBC Persian and spying for the service.

The BBC said Monday that no one works for the Persian service inside Iran and noted that the arrests came one day after the service broadcast a documentary on Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

The documentary was an in-house production and none of the detained filmmakers worked on it, the BBC reported.

In a news story posted on its website, the BBC quoted its language service chief, Liliane Landor, as saying the arrests are part of the “ongoing efforts by the Iranian government to put pressure on the BBC.”

Also Monday, the Iranian minister of culture and Islamic guidance told the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency that the intelligence ministry is responsible for providing details on the filmmakers’ case.

“BBC Farsi was a major actor in the disturbances during and after the elections,” Seyed Mohammad Hosseini told the agency, referring to the 2009 presidential elections.

“It agitated and guided the people in the hopes to create problems for the country. This is why the representative office of the BBC was shut down in Tehran. Those who are working legally in Iran must now pay close attention and be very careful. We do not plan on supporting a network that engages in anti-Iran activities and works against the interests of the country,” he said.

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Iran: Female Blogger Receives 50 Lashes

Iran: Female Blogger Receives 50 Lashes

Posted 15 September 2011 23:41 GMT

Written byFred Petrossian

These are the words Iranian blogger Somayeh Tohidloo wrote [fa] in her blog after receiving 50 whip lashes in Evin Prison on September 14, 2011:

Be happy, for if you wanted to humiliate me, I confess that I feel my entire body is suffering with degradation.

Somayeh Tohidloo

Somayeh was active during the 2009 presidential election in the campaign for Mir Hussein Mousavi, and she was jailed for 70 days in 2009, after a mass protest movement erupted in Iran. She was released after paying bail, but the flogging sentence was eventually upheld.

Green City writes [fa]:

Here is Iran, where Somayeh Tohidloo, a PhD-graduate is lashed while a $3 billion dollar fraud [over a Lake Urmia] happens, and nothing is done to punish the fraudulent acts.

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