Alan Hart

Unless they are the victims of their own propaganda and deluded close to the point of clinical madness, which is possible, Israel’s leaders must know that even a nuclear-armed Iran could not and would not pose an existential threat to the Jews now living in Israel/Palestine. So why, really, are they, Prime Minister Netanyahu especially, trying so hard to make the world believe otherwise?

(In parenthesis I think I should say that I am not the originator of the notion of Israelis being the victims of their own propaganda. As I note in Waiting for the Apocalypse, the Prologue to my book, ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS – the originator was Major General Shlomo Gazit, the best and the brightest of Israel’s Directors of Military Intelligence. In 1980, I said to him: “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all a myth. Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger”. Through a sad smile he replied, “The trouble with us Israelis is that we’ve become the victims of our own propaganda.”)

Before I offer my answer to the ‘why really’ question above, I must make two observations.

The first is that there is no evidence of any kind even to suggest that Iran’s leaders want their country to be, like Israel, nuclear-armed.

The second is that even if Iran did possess nuclear bombs, there are no circumstances in which its leaders would order a first strike on Israel. If they did, Iran, all of it, would be obliterated. Iran’s leaders are not that stupid. (Incidentally, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad never said that he wanted Israel to be “wiped off the face of the earth”. The words falsely and maliciously attributed to him imply, obviously, that he seeks the death and destruction of all Jews in Israel. What he actually said was that he wanted the Zionist entity/state to “disappear” as the Soviet Union had done. As I have pointed out in previous posts, Iran under any leadership is prepared to accept whatever the Palestinians accept. In other words, if the Palestinians were offered a genuine and viable two-state solution and accepted it, Iran would, too. The problem is that Zionism has no intention of making peace on terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept. Iran’s leaders are aware of this but that doesn’t mean they want to see the end of the Jews in Israel – driven into the sea or whatever. Iran’s leaders want a one-state solution, a state in which Arabs and Jews now living in Israel/Palestine enjoy equal political, civil and human rights. Yes, of course, that means the end of Zionism’s colonial enterprise and the disappearance of the Zionist entity/state. But it does not mean the extermination of the Jews now living in Israel or even harm to them).

There are three related reasons why Israel’s leaders and the Zionist lobby in all of its manifestations are working so hard to convince the world that Jews now living in Israel/Palestine will be incinerated if Iran is allowed to possess nuclear weapons.

The first is that Zionism’s prime propaganda purpose is, always was, to frighten the Jews of the world – to make them fear, in the context of persecution on and off over 2,000 years and after the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, that another great turning against Jews is inevitable, and that they will one day need Israel as a refuge of last resort. As Zionism knew would be the case, this fear silences most Jews who would otherwise criticize and even condemn what Zionism has done, and is still doing, in their name.

The second is that when Israel’s name stinks around the world because of its actions (as in Lebanon and then most recently the Gaza Strip), it’s necessary to have a way of diverting mainstream media and political attention. The existential threat Iran is asserted to represent is an awesomely effective diversion.

The third is to do with Zionism’s strategy for winning time in its undeclared war with President Obama over policy for ending what has come to be called the Israel/Palestine conflict.

If this American President could do what he knows to be right and in the best interests of America first but all concerned including the Israelis themselves, I now believe that in his own time he would not only insist on an end to further illegal Israeli settlement activity on the West Bank but that he would seek to build an internal American policy consensus to require Israel, in exchange for peace with the states of the entire Arab and wider Muslim world, to end its occupation of all of the West Bank, to create the space for two states with Jerusalem an open city and the capital of both.

President Obama (Mr. Yes We Can) did tell Prime Minister Netanyahu (Mr. No We Won’t) that he wanted an end to further illegal Israeli settlement activity. Back in Israel Netanyahu’s response to that was, effectively, “Go to hell, Mr. President”. Of course Netanyahu didn’t put it like that. He said that while Israel would not create “new” settlements, it would continue by means of “natural growth” to develop, for which read expand, existing ones. It was the tried and tested Zionist approach, perfected by Ben-Gurion, saying one thing and doing another – the opposite.

Though it’s not much discussed in polite company and the mainstream media, Zionism knows that there probably will come a time when President Obama (perhaps not until his second term if he gets one) will do some demanding, backed by real pressure, to cause Israel to be serious about peace on terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept. In Zionist thinking (never given public expression) the best way to delay that time is by focusing on Iran. “Mr. President, we understand your wish to end our conflict with the Palestinians, but we also think you must understand that our own first and absolute priority is preventing Iran becoming a threat to our existence.”

Though he can’t say so in public or even behind closed doors, I think it’s more than reasonable to assume that President Obama is fully aware of what Zionism’s real game plan is – under the cover of the false claim that Iran represents an existential threat, to go on consolidating its hold on most of the occupied West Bank.

It seems to me that if President Obama is to have any chance of calling and holding Zionism to account, he could do with some serious assistance from Iran. How about, after the election there next month, an unequivocal statement from its entire leadership to the effect that while Iran will tolerate no interference by any party with its right to go nuclear for peaceful purposes, it does not desire, is not developing and will never develop nuclear weapons?

In summary, objective review of the documented facts and truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel invites, no demands, this conclusion.

To best protect itself against the possibility of being called and held to account for its crimes (only beginning with phase one of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948), Zionism not only needs enemies, it must be able to assert, while exploiting the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust to the full, that there is an existential threat to the Jews of Israel. For the best part of six decades Zionism’s spin doctors succeeded in persuading the Western world that the Arabs were that threat. In reality and despite some stupid Arab rhetoric to the contrary, they never were. Today, when the Western world is beginning (only beginning) to see through this Zionist propaganda, Zionism needs another party allegedly representing an existential threat – Iran. An unequivocal statement by Iran’s leadership could take that card out of Zionism’s hands and make it less difficult for President Obama to do what is right and in the best interests of America and all others concerned, the whole world.

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