THE DUOPOLY WATCH |
Steven
Jonas, MD, MPH
So
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes his annual speech to the Fall,
2015 meeting of the UN General Assembly. He is VERY concerned about the
“Iran Deal,” which from all accounts will prevent Iran from developing nuclear
weapons (if they were ever going to do that anyway)
for 10-15 years, maybe more. The issue is “TRUST.” “Can they be
trusted?” Netanyahu asks. (Of course in my view, the real trust question
is “Can the Iranians trust the U.S., should the Repubs. gain the
Presidency in 2016?”
But that’s another story.) He is totally against the
deal.
He
offers no alternatives, of course. There are three reasons for
that. A) There is none. B) The other members of the “5+1”
negotiating group have made it clear that they would not go back to the
negotiating table in any case, even if Iran were wiling (which they are
not). C) The last thing Israel wants is for the deal to be in place,
and work. That would give one major reason for cutting back on the
Israeli military-industrial complex (yes, folks, they have one too), and it
would weaken Likud politically by diminishing the “threat of
Iran.”
By
the way, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
has said that Israel will be wiped off the face of the Earth in 25 years.
BUT, he never said that Iran would do the wiping. Read the statement, and
you will see that he is simply saying that if it follows its present policies
towards the Palestinians, that in 25 years it will no longer exist looking like
the present State of Israel. But so have many other observers, including
this writer. However, like so many right-wingers in so many countries, it
is not a good idea to confuse Netanyahu with facts, for if one tries to, they
get very anxious.
At
any rate, the main thing that Netanyahu did in his speech was to play the
Holocaust card, which Israeli leaders have done so many times over the 70 years
since Nazi Germany was defeated. But I am wondering if this time around
Netanyahu has over-played the hand. First, oh, the dramatics. When
accusing the UN, which has overwhelmingly approved the deal, of being silent in
the face of a holocaust-like re-run: the silences and the angry stares.
It’s hard to know what this stone-faced man expected to accomplish with
those. Good dramatic effect — for his supporters, in Likud and the
Republican Party. But he has few anywhere else, especially in a
half-filled General Assembly chamber.
Then
Netanyahu referred to Israel as “The Jewish State.” That’s not how the UN
set it up and that’s not how Israel’s founding document referred to what back
then was called “The State of Israel” either. Again, good propaganda to
his base; not so good elsewhere. Next, the irrepressible, blustering
leader was talking as if he represented the world’s Jews on the Iran deal
question. The only problem there is that the Jewish community of the
United States, about the same size
(coincidentally around 6 million) as that of Israel, generally supports the deal
(even if most of the leading “Jewish” organizations, the “Jewish establishment”,
don’t). And of course, many Jews in Israel disagree with him too,
including a prestigious group of Israeli military and security officials.
So he is hardly talking for “The Jewish people.”
Then
there are the proposals that have periodically emanated from members of
Netanyahu’s governments or party, like Avigdor Lieberman, a former Israeli
Foreign Secretary, that the “solution” (the “Final Solution?”) to the “Israeli
Arab citizens” problem is to deport them to some reconstructed West Bank.
And then there was another “Final Solution” to “solve” the “Gaza Problem,”
by expelling the Palestinians from it.
In this context, just how many grains of salt do you think that UN members would
be taking while taking in Bibi’s “The Iran Deal is Just Like the Holocaust”
speech (if they did at all)? Further, taking a lesson from ISIS, Lieberman
has also proposed beheading Israeli Arabs
who do not subscribe to some “loyalty oath.” UN members know this stuff.
They also know that the Jews who were sent to the gas chambers by the Nazis were
not carrying in front of them somewhere between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons of
their own, with a variety of delivery systems (including several German[!]
submarines), coming along not-too-far behind.
Just
when is Bibi going to give up this charade? It impresses no one except his
Israeli and U.S. Repub. followers and the Israeli ruling class that knows that
if Netanyahu and his no-negotiations-ever buddies are ever voted out of office,
Israel’s military industrial complex will take a major
hit.
One actually can be sure that it makes nothing but a totally negative impression
at the UN. But it’s all that Bibi has to stand on. So the answer to
the above question is “never.”ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Senior
Editor, Politics,
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony
Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-
Dr. Jonas’ latest book is The 15% Solution: How the
Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic
Novel, Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013,
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