What might Netanyahu do when his American mob tells him Romney won’t win?
Most significant of all are poll findings that most Americans do not want their country to go to war with Iran even if Israel starts it. Perhaps most remarkable of all was a poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. More than half of the respondents said that if Israel starts a war with Iran, the US should not leap to Israel’s defense.
So if and when he is told that Romney won’t be the next president, Netanyahu will have a problem. He could no longer be certain that he can cause Obama to go to war in what remains of his first term.
While I was thinking about what Netanyahu might actually do, I recalled a conversation I had with Ezer Weizman in early 1980 when he was the defense minister in Begin’s coalition government. What follows is a part of that conversation as set down in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume Three sub-titled Conflict Without End?, Chapter 12 The Blood Oath. Ezer was half an hour late for an appointment I had with him and I had been shown into his outer office to wait for him.
I heard the sound of heavy, weary footsteps coming up the stone stairs. When Ezer filled the frame of the doorway to the outer office of his inner sanctum it was obvious that he was not his usual energetic, breezy self. He had the look of a haunted man. He managed a smile and said “Shalom.” Then, without another word, he put an arm around my shoulder and walked me into his office. He closed the door, nodded me to a seat on the other side of his ministerial desk and flopped into his own chair. He pushed it back and plonked his feet on the desk. He was looking straight at me but through me, to something only visible in his imagination.
I let the silence run and then, eventually, I said: “Ezer, you’ve obviously got a major problem on your mind. Shall I make an appointment for another day?”
Eventually he spoke. On reflection I am sure he told me what he did only because I was there. He needed to tell somebody and it happened by chance to be me.
He said, slowly and with quiet emphasis:
“This lunchtime Sharon convened a secret meeting of some of our generals and other top military and security people. They signed a blood oath which commits them to fight to the death to prevent any government of Israel withdrawing from the West Bank.” Pause. “I know that’s what happened at the meeting because I’ve checked it out, and that’s why I am late.”
In the event of a government decision to withdraw, Ezer said, Sharon was pledged to set up headquarters on the West Bank, and those in Israel’s armed forces who were loyal to him would make common cause with the armed settlers who wanted to fight.
I told Ezer what Peres had said to me weeks previously – that Begin was creating the conditions for a Jewish civil war, knowing, as Peres had put it, that no Israeli prime minister would trigger it by agreeing to withdraw from the West Bank.
Ezer nodded and then asked me a question. Did I think Sharon would act in accordance with the blood oath he and others had signed?
I said: “What I think is of no consequence. I’m a visiting goy. You’re Israel’s defence minister, what do you think?”
Ezer replied: “Of course, he would. He’s mad enough to nuke the entire fucking Arab world!”
Question: Is Netanyahu mad enough to order an attack on Iran in what remains of Obama’s first term without the president’s blessing and American participation?
Who knows?
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