The key difference is that Israel, unlike Iran, has not said it wishes to wipe anybody off the map.

Mutually Assured Destruction rests on the principle that both nuclear participants have the foresight and discipline to restrain themselves – the above comment shows that Iran clearly doesn’t (and whatever you think of Israel, I think it’s fairly obvious they’re not about to nuke Gaza/the West Bank).

If Isreal did not have nukes, would it have been invaded? (that is a genuine question; I have no idea). If so, “a balance of regional power favourable to Isreal” translates to one in which Isreal is not invaded.

Note the role of the “if” there, I am not making any claim. “a balance of regional power favourable to Isreal” could mean something else.

@ 1 – David Levene,

I don’t want to be forced into the role of appearing to defend a vile, anti-semitic liar and fantasist like Ahmadinejad. But I would point out three things:

1. There’s a lot of controversy about what Ahmadinejad said in October 2005. Go to the wikipedia page ‘Ahmadinejad and Israel’ for discussion of what he really said. He clearly expressed a desire to see the Israeli regime disappear, but I don’t think you can interpret what he said as a threat to wipe Israel off the map.

2. However, Shimon Peres made a much more direct threat in response, so your ‘key difference’ disappears: http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/world/2006/5/8/13207/Peres-says-that-Iran-can-also-be-wiped-off-the-map

3. Some would say the ‘key difference’ is that since the Iranian Republic was estabished, Iran has waged one defensive war, while Israel has waged several aggressive wars, been responsible for massacres, killed thousands upon thousands of civilians. So you could forgive the world for thinking that Israel hasn’t displayed any great evidence of the superior ‘discipline’ you’re so sure it possesses.

@ 2 Luis Enrique – Would it have been invaded when? Israel has in fact been invaded since acquiring nukes – in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Never mind Ahmadinejad, do we really want Quds Force with access to nuclear devices?

Oh please – pretty sure the semantic difference between saying Israel should “vanish from the pages of time” and that it should be “wiped off the map” is pretty minimal. And Israel responded by warning that Iran *could* see the same fate, which considering that Iran had just threatened genocide hardly seems “a much more direct threat”. You seem to be cherry-picking.

Considering the above, and that we’re talking about Iran actually getting the ability to do exactly what it threatened to do, I feel that them not letting them do so isn’t particularly unreasonable. Of course diplomatic solutions should be exhausted first, and to be honest I’m not a fan of any country having nuclear weapons (though I’ll say it again, Israel having nukes is a bit different as they’re rather to unlikely to use them against the Palestinian Territories), but I think you’ve built a bit of a straw man here.

Never mind Ahmadinejad, Quds Force with access to nukes is a seriously scary prospect. We don’t just need to consider national command authorities, but security of the command and control system and physical security, and the evidence suggests the Iranian system isn’t secure enough, no matter national level policy.

Iran behaves threateningly (imperially, one might say) toward almost every gulf state, can control shipping through the gulf, attempts to run the vile Assad’s Syria (and by extension Lebanon) as a semi-protectorate, and is currently engaged in an ever-nastier cold war with the (also vile) Saudi regime. If its reactors were destroyed, a great many sighs of relief would be heard across the region, and for good reason. A more influential Iran isn’t a good thing. The trouble is that we couldn’t pull off an attack…

In any case: there is more to middle-eastern politics than Israel.

As to the last paragraph, I don’t think the principle that the further proliferation of nuclear weapons should be avoided at all costs is in the slightest bit contentious. It’s the standard hippy-left thing to want, isn’t it? Honestly, bring Israel into a conversation and everyone’s brains start to go phooey.

“Iran has waged one defensive war, while Israel has waged several aggressive wars, been responsible for massacres, killed thousands upon thousands of civilians.”

Urrr…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_political_prisoners
And in terms of

And in terms of acts of war against Israel specifically: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/argentina.html

Frankly, I think your current contributions to this difficult area act to introduce more muddle rather than less. You cannot equivocate an authoritarian regime like Iran with Israel. It is simply bonkers to do so. You can’t generalise everything into some lovely cosmopolitan theory which gives every state equal rights and legitimacy.

Matt,

Oh, I didn’t know that. I suppose it doesn’t entirely nullify the idea that nukes may have been a deterrent since then. If you don’t think nukes are a deterrent, how do they ensure a balance of power favorable to Isreal?

Q: what’s worse than one state having a nuclear monopoly in the ME?

A: 2 states in the ME with nuclear weapons.

Q: what worse than that?

A: 2 states at war with each other, where one develops nuclear weapons during the period of conflict

“If Isreal did not have nukes, would it have been invaded?”

Isn’t the Israeli perspective that it has been invaded and attacked repeatedly, both before and after having nukes.?

Q: if you start a war with a near-nuclear state that you are unable to conquer and occupy, how do you stop it before they develop such weapons?

A: ???

@ 5 – David Levene – You’re putting the most threatening possible spin on the Ahmadinejad statement and making a feeble effort to weaken Peres’s statement. Yes, he said Iran COULD be wiped off the map by Israel. That is at least as direct a threat as Israel’s.

It’s you who’s attacking a straw man. I said that I have no desire to see Iran acquire nukes and that hopefully the threat of force will make force unnecessary.

What I have NOT said is that I think Iran should be allowed nukes. My post tries to clarify our government’s stance w/r/t nukes in the region. We’ve supported Israel’s nuclear programme both passively and actively for many years; whereas in the case of Iran we’re threatening war in order to prevent the acquisition of nukes.

I’m simply saying this: if you support that policy, you’re not against Mideast nukes per se but against Israel’s regional dominance being curtailed. Personally I’m against both Israel and Iran having nukes, and think we should ramp up the pressure on Israel to sign up to non-proliferation. As for Iran, I haven’t ruled out, as a last resort, that a military attack may be necessary – as far as I’m concerned, the fewer nukes in the region, the better.

But if – like many posters here, apparently – you see no problem at all in Israel having a nuclear weapons programme, but believe Iran’s is unconscionable – well, I’m calling you out on a blatant double standard, and inviting you to justify your view.

@ 8 – Daniel Rivas – ‘As to the last paragraph, I don’t think the principle that the further proliferation of nuclear weapons should be avoided at all costs is in the slightest bit contentious. It’s the standard hippy-left thing to want, isn’t it? Honestly, bring Israel into a conversation and everyone’s brains start to go phooey.’

It’s not my brain that’s gone ‘phooey’, You’re arguing against the point you think I was trying to make, or wish I’d made. I didn’t say Iran should be allowed to have nukes – quite the opposite. I’m saying Iran shouldn’t be allowed nukes, and neither should Israel. I think we should be doing something about BOTH – though in light of the comments of the former heads of Shin Bet and Mossad, I’m far from convinced an imminent attack is wise.

“You cannot equivocate an authoritarian regime like Iran with Israel. It is simply bonkers to do so. You can’t generalise everything into some lovely cosmopolitan theory which gives every state equal rights and legitimacy.”

How ‘authoritarian’ Iran (or Israel) is has little to do with the threat it poses. Its foreign policy is the more relevant test.

I dont have a view on whether Isreal should have nukes, aside from wishing nobody did, but:

” – you see no problem at all in Israel having a nuclear weapons programme, but believe Iran’s is unconscionable – well, I’m calling you out on a blatant double standard, and inviting you to justify your view”

There has never been any reason to treat all countries alike. One obvious potential reason to treat Isreal and Iran differently is that Isreal is surrounded by hostile neighbours who need deterring, whilst Iran is a hostile neighbour. The situation is not symmetrical. Isreal may be (appallingly) aggressive but is essentially defensive. If others were not hostile towards it, it would not be hostile itself. The same is not true in reverse. (I don’t hold these views very strongly; I don’t know nearly enough history).

Plus when it comes to nukes we are always inconsisentent. We always accept some countries have them whilst wanting countries that do not currently have them to not acquire them. We wouldn’t want Saudi with nukes, or Indonesia or Colombia, why is that also not “blatant double standards”?

@ Matt

“That is at least as direct a threat as Israel’s”

Iran: “Israel *should* be destroyed”
Israel (in response): “Well, Iran *could* also be destroyed”

And you’re telling me Israel’s is the more direct threat? Nonsense

“hopefully the threat of force will make force unnecessary”

Yep, because that’s worked so well thus far!

“My post tries to clarify our government’s stance w/r/t nukes in the region”

No, your post tries to imply our government’s stance based on conjecture and a straw man argument that in terms of the consequences to the international community, Israel having nukes is the same as Iran having nukes, which based on previous statements from the President of Iran, is patently false. Hence the rather different response!

“I’m simply saying this: if you support that policy, you’re not against Mideast nukes per se but against Israel’s regional dominance being curtailed”

I’m generally against all countries having nukes, but think that Iran having nukes is rather more dangerous and problematic, which is a perfectly reasonable and logical position, again given previous statements.

“But if – like many posters here, apparently – you see no problem at all in Israel having a nuclear weapons programme, but believe Iran’s is unconscionable”

I never said I have no problem at all with Israel’s nuclear program, as I have said, but yes, Iran having them is unconscionable

“I’m calling you out on a blatant double standard, and inviting you to justify your view”

See above!

@ David Levene

“The key difference is that Israel, unlike Iran, has not said it wishes to wipe anybody off the map.”

That is a propaganda lie, it was never said. This is what was said:

“Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.”

Word by word translation:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

The Persian word for map, “nagsheh”, is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase “wipe out” ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran’s President threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”, despite never having uttered the words “map”, “wipe out” or even “Israel.”

Sorry, got a bit tongue tied (finger tied?) in the penultimate paragraph, but you catch my drift

@Luis Enrique – Put the anti-Iran argument if you will, but don’t pretend that they aren’t surrounded by states the Americans have occupied, or that they weren’t invaded by Saddam Hussein and hundreds of thousands of their citizens killed, at a time when Iraq was allied with the US. Then let’s compare existential threats.

@17: “There has never been any reason to treat all countries alike. One obvious potential reason to treat Isreal and Iran differently is that Isreal is surrounded by hostile neighbours who need deterring”

C’mon, Luis. Reflect for a moment on the long series of documented Israeli terrorism and atrocities to understand why Israel has hostile neighbours:

The sinking of SS Patria in Haifa harbour in 1940; the terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946; the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948; the Qibya massacre in 1953; the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982; the Khiam Prison in South Lebanon in 2000 and the report of Physicians for Human Rights in 2000 on the suppression of the intifada by disproportionate use of force by the IDF – stone throwing youngsters were shot in the head or thighs by Israeli sharpshooters

Leading Israeli terrorists have been made Israel prime ministers – Begin, Shamir and Sharon. So much for Israeli declarations denouncing terrorism. Barak – now the defence minister – was the prime minister in 2000 at the time of PHR report on the intifada.

So much for Israeli claims that it deplores terrorism. Successive Israeli prime ministers have gone out ot the way to create animosity on the part of Palestinians while claiming the right to self-defence and the right to build settlements on occupied Palestinian land. When one prime minister – Yitzhak Rabin – breaks the mould in 1995 and pushes along a peace process with the Palestinians he gets assassinated by a fellow Israeli.

@22 – Thanks for your opposition to the peace process (since neither side has clean hands) in Israel, and to the Good Friday agreement. Realpolitik is foreign to you, as ever.

And Israel has hostile neighbours because most of Arab countries cannot stand an Israeli state in the middle east. Land and water rights, as ever, are the heart of the issue. Pretending otherwise is just more of your typical anti-Semitism. Reflect on the fact that you’re going far further than even the discredited New History, as always.

@19 – It’s a clear threat. Bluntly, wars have started over less.

Israel’s technically guilty of starting the 6-day war, sure. It anticipated the attacks on it by less than 24 hours. Anyone really arguing it’s unreasonable?

“As it attempts to rustle up support for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, let’s not forget Israel is one of four non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the others are North Korea, Pakistan and India).”

Umm, it is lefties who normally argue in favour of international law, yes?

Good, so. Iran signed the non-proliferation treaty. They promised they would not develop nuclear weapons. In return, everyone else said that sure, you can have nuclear power plants and we’ll help.

That’s actually what the NPT says. You can get uranium, build reactors, enrich fuel if you want to, we’ll even tell you how to do it. But you must promise not to develop bombs.

Iran signed this.

Israel did not.

Iran, if it is developing a bomb (unknown, but I certainly think so and yes, I know about this bit of the metals trade) then they are in breach of their solemn promises under international law.

Israel ain’t.

International law does mean something, doesn’t it?

“@Luis Enrique – Put the anti-Iran argument if you will, but don’t pretend that they aren’t surrounded by states the Americans have occupied, or that they weren’t invaded by Saddam Hussein and hundreds of thousands of their citizens killed, at a time when Iraq was allied with the US. Then let’s compare existential threats.”

Well yeah, sure, you can see why the current Iranian regime might like to get hold of nuclear weapons. That doesn’t mean its a good idea for the Iranian people (additional power to an awful regime) and the people of the world in general.

The problem with these arguments it always seems to come down to personifying states in some morally essential way and then arguing for “fairness” between them. It is poor reasoning. We extend rights to states in so far as they support and extend rights to their people, which Iran doesn’t do on even a very minimal level.

The probability that Israel would nuke London? Vanishingly small.

The probability that Iran would? Mmm…………………………………..?

@19 – Again, how is “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time” better than “Israel must be wiped from the map”, exactly?

“One obvious potential reason to treat Isreal and Iran differently is that Isreal is surrounded by hostile neighbours who need deterring, whilst Iran is a hostile neighbour. The situation is not symmetrical. Isreal may be (appallingly) aggressive but is essentially defensive. If others were not hostile towards it, it would not be hostile itself. The same is not true in reverse. (I don’t hold these views very strongly; I don’t know nearly enough history).”

Luis enrique,

I commend your honesty, but I can only urge you to read a one-volume history of Israel by a respected historian like Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim or Martin Gilbert. Israel has been forced to defend itself against invasion from its ‘hostile neighbours’ just once, in October 1973. (The case of the Six-Day War in 1967 is more arguable – Israel fired the first shots but it claims to have faced intolerable provocation. In my view, it was a war neither side particularly wanted, but both were overtaken by events and bear some responsibility.)

On other occasions – like the Suez fiasco in 1956, the attack on Lebanon in 1982 (which led to the gruesome massacre at Sabra and Shatila, not to mention a 18-year occupation), the second Lebanon war in 2006, the destruction in Gaza in 2008-9 – it’s pretty clear, to any fair-minded observer, who was the chief aggressor. Again, I don’t want to be unkind, because I think it’s honourable to confess doubt and equivocation, but to say that ‘If others were not hostile towards it, it would not be hostile itself’ is, I’m afraid, rather naive.

@ 26 –

“The probability that Israel would nuke London? Vanishingly small.

The probability that Iran would? Mmm…………………………………..?”

Somewhere around zero in both cases. If you think Iran would try and nuke London, you’ve been watching too much sci-fi. The president may be an anti-semitic fantasist, but he’s not Dr Strangelove.

@28 – Benny Morris has renounced the New Historians, and for good reason. Recommending any of them is recommending what is basically anti-Israel propaganda. As Morris said, he was NOT in full possession of the full facts when he came up with New History.

More, that you’re in denial over the 6-day war, when it’s been confirmed from the Arab sides that they were about to attack shows some real hated.

David Levene @ 27 -

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re being wilfully obtuse. Ahmadinejad’s statement, properly translated, doesn’t amount to a threat to attack Israel. It’s much more ambiguous. Read on a couple of sentences and Ahmadinejad seems to be implying that a return of the refugees would see Israel voted out of existence. And read his other statements on Israel and you’ll see a pattern. He never envisages Iran as the agent of Israel’s being wiped from the page of history. He believes it will be overtaken by history, and collapse under the weight of its own failures, like the Soviet Union.

Now, that’s not very nice – I hate to be forced to defend this monster – but it’s not an unambiguous threat. So this whole argument – that nukes are somehow much more dangerous in Iran’s hands than Israel’s because in one speech in 2005 Ahmadinejad threatened to destroy his neighbour – collapses.

Anyway, it’s a lame argument in the first place, because it expects us to take one Iranian threat more seriously than decades of aggression and war from Israel. To any neutral observer, Israel would be considered the major threat to Mideast peace, not Iran.

@ 24 Tim Worstall – lame, lame casuistry. I think most people are more concerned about the proliferation of deadly weapons than countries breaking promises.

@ 30 – Benny Morris’s history of the conflict, Righteous Victims, was written after he’d begun his drift away from ‘New History’. I also recommended Martin Gilbert’s frankly partisan history of Israel, for the sake of balance. But in my view Avi Shlaim is the best historian of the conflict, and the world academic community largely agrees. Have you even read any of these books? All of them, in my view, show Israel is a less than favourable light – especially w/r/t the wars in 1956 and 1982.

And if splitting the blame for 1967 shows ‘hatred’, I’m largely based it on the centre-left historian Tom Segev’s universally acclaimed new history – where he goes further than me and argues Israel was too weak to avoid war. Does Tom Segev hate Israel too? Again, have you read him?

@23: “And Israel has hostile neighbours because most of Arab countries cannot stand an Israeli state in the middle east. ”

Israel has hostile neighbours because of the relentless series of terrorist outrages and atrocities that it has inflicted on indigenous Palestinians.

At the UN debate on the future of Palestine in November 1947, the UK representative abstained on government instructions saying that partition of Palestine would lead to continuing conflict, which it surely has.

Israeli terrorists, led by Irgun and the Lehi Group, perpetrated the Deir Yassin massacre in April 1948 to frighten settled Palestinians into flight from their homes for fear of their lives.

In vino veritas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALiyDNwgUGY

Of course, a world in which Iran’s squalid leaders have access to an atomic bomb is not an appealing one. Paradoxically, it may be necessary to threaten military action in order to make military action unnecessary.

And thus we see any rational point the OP may have had vanish – the Iranian leadership is nothing like the Israeli leadership. And that in itself is reason enough to be more concerned about Iran getting the bomb. We do not let the mentally ill own AK-47s. But we do allow law-abiding home owners with a legitimate purpose own shotguns. Apparently the OP thinks this is an outrage and wants the rights of the mentally ill respected.

Threaten military action to make military action unnecessary? Well all we are doing is threatening, and not even much of that, right now. So …. is the OP demanding actual military action? If he wants to prevent those threats, it seem he is demanding that we should be forced to actually take military action?

Confused seems the kindest thing to say about this.

While it’s difficult to assess claims about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capability without classified information, serious doubts have been raised about those claims, as well as about the wisdom of a military response.

Let’s see. Iran is making highly enriched uranium for which they have no possible legitimate use. And they have handed plans for nuclear weapons over to the IAEA. Sure, we need classified information to work out what is going on.

The evident concern among western powers over Iran’s weapons programme isn’t about the existence of nukes in the Middle East per se.

And the OP knows this because ….. ? It is all a plot, right? Those damn Zionists. They get everywhere.

What worries our governments is that Israel is in danger of losing the nuclear advantage that implicitly, through our silence and material aid, we’ve long supported as its right.

What advantage? All they do is guarantee that the territory of Israel proper won’t be invaded, perhaps, and that no one will attack Israel with nuclear weapons. What other advantage do they have? Do they deter terrorism? No. Do they deter conventional attacks on Israel’s periphery? No. Do they deter terrorists lobbing rockets into Israel? No. Iran can’t even invade Israel if they want as they do not share a land border. So where’s the advantage?

A Middle East in which Israel was no longer the only nuclear power would be a very different place. Forced to avoid actions that could heighten deadly tensions, its near-total military dominance would be curtailed.

In what way would it be different? Israel can’t use nuclear weapons even if it had them. It never has. Iran on the other hand can. That does suggest a difference – the Middle East may well contain a lot fewer Jews. A lot fewer Iranians too. But apart from that, Israel has never once attacked Iran. It shows no desire to attack Iran. It is doubtful it even has the reach to attack Iran. Why would it want to? Iran cannot attack it either. Too far apart.

If you think Israel, alone of all its neighbours, should be allowed recourse to the ultimate weapon, that’s an arguable, though contentious, opinion.

I think that nuclear weapons ought to be confined to law-abiding, rule-bound, human-rights-respecting democracies that treat its people with basic decency. So not Iran. I know on the modern Left this is a contentious issue. Given their love of anyone who is none of those things. But there you go. It has nothing to do with whether Israel has a monopoly or not. Turn Iran into Sweden and I’ll support their right to nuclear weapons too.

But let’s admit this is about maintaining a balance of regional power that’s favourable to Israel – and spare me the humanitarian gloss.

Sure, it is all a vast Zionist plot. The Foreign Office is really run by them, right? Did you stop to think for a moment that if the professionals in the Foreign Office and the State Department think this is such a big deal, it may be such a big deal? You know, given they are reading secret material that you can’t? That they know more about what Iran’s leaders want to do than you do? But no, it has to be that the Foreign Office is controlled by Zionists and is selling out Britain.

Amazing.

“He never envisages Iran as the agent of Israel’s being wiped from the page of history”

Which is why I suppose Iran channels funding to Hamas and Hezbollah? And why Ahmadinejad also says that “the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain” (though I’m sure you’ve got an “alternative” translation for that too).

“To any neutral observer, Israel would be considered the major threat to Mideast peace, not Iran”

I like how you’re constantly proclaiming yourself to be the voice of “any neutral observer” and, indeed, “the world” (5.39pm). At the end of the day, Iran has threatened the total destruction of a state, Israel hasn’t.

A nuclear Iran is also certainly the major threat to the UK and UK interests compared to a nuclear Israel, which would seem a much more obvious reason it is talking about an attack!

Nor, as the UK fast-tracks plans to join in, should we forget the role of our government in helping Israel achieve nuclear status – the edifying details of which can be found here.

The paranoia of the Left when it comes to Israel and their steely determination to smear Britain in every possible way is rarely better demonstrated than in these childish claim. What did Britain export to Israel?

The UK Atomic Energy Authority made what it called a “pretty harmless request” to the government: it wanted to export ten milligrams of plutonium to Israel.

It takes kilograms of plutonium to make a weapon. Ten milligrams is literally harmless. How precisely could that make any contribution to Israel’s nuclear weapons programme? Seriously – would someone like to try to explain that? It would not give them any experience is handling plutonium. Which they would not need anyway. It would not go anywhere near helping their acquisition of bomb making material. So go on, anyone?

But there’s more:

In 1966 UKAEA supplied Israel with 1.25 grams of almost pure lithium-6.

Wow. All of 1.25 grams. That’s almost enough to …. well I am not sure. Anyone? Care to explain what possible use this would be to anyone’s bomb programme?

The main problem with this article is what is either ignorance and stupidity or outright lies. Heavy water was not sold to Israel to “fire up” its plutonium making facility. It was sold to Norway. Who then re-sold it to Israel. For their research reactor in Dimona. Their perfectly legal research reactor at Dimona. Which was inspected every year by the Americans.

Now does this matter? Let me point to 7-7. Such attacks, like the lynching of Blacks or pogroms against Jews, require years of lies and the incitement to hatred before perfectly normal people are driven to kill. It is no surprise that young Muslims exposed to the insane hatreds of Britain common among the Loony Left would have come to blame us for everything under the sun. I would politely suggest it is not the place for the responsible Left to encourage such delusions and paranoid hatreds. Which means not reproducing lies about Britain’s minor and irrelevant involvement in Israel’s perfectly normal research programmes – which clearly had nothing to do with its bomb programme.

Try Sir Gerald Kaufman’s speech to Parliament in January 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEYz00MqCx0

Quote: “Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. “

19. Davey T

The Persian word for map, “nagsheh”, is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase “wipe out” ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran’s President threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”, despite never having uttered the words “map”, “wipe out” or even “Israel.”

So your whole argument is a semantic quibble over the precise translation of the exact words in which Ahmadinejad threatened to destroy Israel? I am sure it will come as a comfort to many living with the threat of that genocide that you lean towards the literal when it comes to translation and reject the use of a more colloquial approach that manages to convey the general idea better. Really I am.

29. Matt Hill

Somewhere around zero in both cases. If you think Iran would try and nuke London, you’ve been watching too much sci-fi. The president may be an anti-semitic fantasist, but he’s not Dr Strangelove.

Or listening to what A actually says. He believes he is living in the Last Days. He thinks the Imam is going to come back and justice is going to reign on Earth. He said he felt touched by the Imam talking at the UN. Frankly delusional nut jobs who believe they are living in the End of Times are dangerous – as you would be the first to claim if, Oh I don’t know, he was a Christian. Do you want Aum Shinrikyo to have nuclear weapons? How about Jimmy Swaggart? Why then are you fine with vastly more dangerous lunatics?

Matt Hill

Ahmadinejad’s statement, properly translated, doesn’t amount to a threat to attack Israel.

Yes it does. You may wish otherwise, but it is.

I hate to be forced to defend this monster – but it’s not an unambiguous threat.

I am sure, I am sure. So it is am ambiguous threat. When placed in context. Well that’s all fine then. He’s welcome to have nuclear weapons, right?

To any neutral observer, Israel would be considered the major threat to Mideast peace, not Iran.

This would be Israel whose only foreign policy goal is to be left alone? Unlike every other state in the Middle East whose foreign policy goals are to destroy Israel and export their insane ideology across the Middle East and the world?

Yes. That’s an interesting definition of neutral there.

32. Matt Hill

lame, lame casuistry. I think most people are more concerned about the proliferation of deadly weapons than countries breaking promises.

So international law does not apply when it comes to the enemies of the West? Interesting.

And I think you are wrong. Most people are utterly unconcerned about nuclear proliferation. As long as it is to sane countries. If New Zealand got the bomb tomorrow, no one would give a rat’s arse. Rightly. But if Idi Amin had way back when, that would have been a different matter. But what matters is *you* don’t care if Iran gets the bomb, right?

The key argument here is not that the UK govt are against a nuclear Iran in order to maintain Israeli regional dominance, they’re against a nuclear Iran because they are hostile to democracy in general and the West in particular, have a very weak chain of command, and are generally a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

And with that, I’ll leave you all to it!

@34 – So you agree that Israel should be “removed from history”, along with it’s people. I get it. And you’re willing to be as a revisionist as necessary about the causes of conflict to get there.

@33 – You go right on thinking the New Historians have made more than one good point. They haven’t. And I’ve read extensively, primarily in journals. Again, blaming Israel for anything more than it’s existence sparking the 6-day war amounts to revisionism…the Arab countries trying to correct what they saw as the error of the War of Independence.

Lots of people debating national policy and history. No one addressing physical security of the weapons.

Matt,

Yes, I should read those such books. I don’t know when aggressive self-defence becomes basic aggression. I currently believe there is asymmetry in that if Isreal’s neighbours were friendly towards it, it would have no beef with them, whereas if Isreal was friendly towards its neighbours, its neighbours would, or perhap would have done in the past, want to destroy it regardless.

Bob B, I think there is far more to hostility towards Isreal than objection to its treatment of Palestinians. You would be ignoring a lot to think it was only, or mainly, down to that, I reckon.

Luis: “I think there is far more to hostility towards Isreal than objection to its treatment of Palestinians. You would be ignoring a lot to think it was only, or mainly, down to that, I reckon.”

There are other points of view, something which Israelis seem incapable of recognising but try Avi Shlaim’s account of the Palestine conflict in: The Iron Wall (Penguin Books). Israelis have stoked much of that hostility. Palestine was a settled land with an indigenous people. Israeli terrorist organisations – the Irgun and the Stern Gang, or the Lehi Group – set about the massacre in Deir Yassin to terrify Palestinians into flight from their homes for fear of their lives.

The leaders of Irgun and the Lehi Group eventually became Israeli prime ministers – Begin and Shamir – so they cannot credibly claim, as Israelis do, that terrorism is an outrage. Sharon was the IDF commanding officer at the Qibya massacre in 1953.

The continued approvals for building settlements on occupied Palestinian land by the Netanyahu government – which the Obama administration has persistently deplored – is a solid reason for imposing international sanctions on Israel, not for going to war on its behalf.

The hugely active Israeli lobby in Britain appears to owe greater loyalty to a foreign state than to Britain.

@44 – BOTH sides played up what happened in Der Yassin for their own propaganda reasons. The panic-fuelled exodus of Palestinian civilians surprised both sides. Moreover, ask the Arab countries why they’ve kept those refugee camps in place all these years? (I know what you’ll say, and my answer is offering recompense fixes that in international law).

And thanks again for opposing any form of peace process, in both Israel and Northern Ireland, since apparently per you terrorists can never put down their weapons, and neither can their political descendants.

And gee, maybe that’s because strong elements within Britain are actively hostile to us much of the time, meaning we have to do things like run our own security? Hmm! Don’t worry, I’m sure people like you will drive many of us out this country sooner or later. You’ll get some of the ethnic purity you crave.

“@ 24 Tim Worstall – lame, lame casuistry. I think most people are more concerned about the proliferation of deadly weapons than countries breaking promises.”

That’s interesting. What people are concerned about is more important than the rule of law then? Doesn’t that rather kill off all those various things that people try to do under international law then? Prosecute an Israeli Minister for whatever it was when they visited London? Heck the whole Pinochet thing?

The law really is the law you know, that’s why we have it.

You’d also do well to lsten a bit to someone like me who knows a bit more about the technicalities here. I’ve had export/import licences or nuclear materials myself so I do actually know a bit. Heck, back when Russia was offering to buildan enrichment plant for the Iranians I was working with the Russian company offering to build it.

This really is where some of the complexity comes in. Iran has an absolute right to build reactors and we’re all actually supposed to help them. They’re allowed to buy uranium too. They’re even allowed to enrich uranium. Because that is part of the nuclear cycle which they’re entirely allowed to do as part of the NPT.

Now,. doing your own enrichment is actually a very silly, very wasteful thing to do. It’s gargantually expensive, it’s much, much, cheaper to hire one of the extant firms (already built by the taxpayers of other countries) to do that work for you. Same with hte recycling of spent fuel.

But Irtan wants to do this themselves. OK, they’re allowed to. Russia signed a contract to build exactly such plants. Then they thought a bit about this and said, well, we’ll build you a factory, but it will be in Russia, where we can keep an eye on what you’re doing. Iran rejected this and built there own.

All of this is all entirely legal under the NPT.

We can’t stop Iran having a nuclear program because they’ve signed the NPT in which we all solemnly agree under international law that Iran can have a nuclear industry.

However, the one thing they must also promise is not to develop nuclear weapons. Now, we can make inferences: building your own enrichment plant does not mean that you are. But being willing to spend the enormous amount on doing so is at least a guide to the idea that you might be doing so.

What would be the killer signifier though is that you are enriching uranium to HEU. No modern reactor uses HEU as fuel (some old research reactors did, some small reactors to make medical isotopes did, but HEU is really only used for bombs directly or for reactors where you’re deliberately making plutonium…..for bombs), only LEU.

So, it becomes terribly important to work out whether Iran is making HEU. If they are, we’ve reasonable (reasonable, not quite proof perfect) that they are running a bomb program. At wihch point all the other provisions of the NPT come into play. We stop any kind of copoperation with their nuclear program because we don’t help those developing bombs, only those building civilian power plants.

This international legal stuff, it isn’t casuistry. It’s all at the very heart of why Iran has been aided (yes, aided) in getting so far in its nuclear ambitions but then everything came to a screeching halt, with sanctions and all the rest.

BTW, up above, Li-6? Trigger for H bomb. A gramme or two would be research amounts, lab amounts.

@45: “And thanks again for opposing any form of peace process”

Another day, another lie to promote the cause of Israel.

I support a peace process for Palestine – as did Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli PM who was assassinated to prevent it.

The continued approvals by the Netanyahu government for settlement building on occupied Palestinian land – despite the repeated expressions of opposition by the Obama administration as well as by the Palestine Authority – shows, beyond serious dispute, that the Netanyahu government has no commitment to the peace process at all and wants to obstruct it.

The recent vote to admit the Palestine Authority to UNESCO – by 107 votes versus 14 votes – shows plainly enough the balance of opinion in the international community.

@47 – You conflate the Israeli government with Israel often enough I don’t believe that one, and the Palestinians are pushing, unwisely, into Netanyahu’s hands in electoral terms. Which you applaud.

No, you’re no friend of a two-state solution. A peace for Palestine, not for Israel, right. A final peace.

You’re a fanatic, and hence the enemy. Just as much as any other fanatic.

Israel doesn’t want to wipe anybody off the map? Are you sure about that?

It’s a tired and erroneous comparison to put Israel in the same bracket as Iran when it comes to nuclear weapons.

Israel is alleged to have had nuclear weapons since the 1960′s and had been through wars without resorting to using them. Apart from being a democracy that is answerable to the people, they have shown themselves to be a responsible nuclear nation.

Iran is controlled by wide-eyed fundamentalists who are not answerable to their people. A cleric in Iran once mused than striking Israel would destroy it, but retaliatory strikes against Iran would only do “damages to the Muslim world that it would recover from” – i.e these nutters might just be mad enough to accept retaliatory nukes for the ‘prize’ of destroying Israel.

That’s a chance that Israelis aren’t prepared to gamble with, especially given the total belligerence of Iran and their daily hate speeches about Israel and America for that matter.

@ 27 David Levene

You trumpet that ‘Iran wishes to wipe Israel off the map’ and then when it is proven that it is a lie, you say ‘so what?’

Well, for one a regime cannot be wiped off the map. For another, any occupying force is doomed to ‘vanish from the page of time’ as history has repeatedly demonstrated.

But mainly what you say was said, was never said, and therefore never remotely had any meaning as purported by your lie.

And the real clincher is this that a few sentences after the one you lie about, he went on to say:

““the human and civil rights of Jews, Christians and Muslims must be respected”

@ 39 So Much For Subtlety

There was no threat ‘to wipe Israel off the map’. Clearly. The propaganda version is a lie, and one that is repeated so often and by so many outlets you must surely wonder why?

To say an occupying regime will ‘vanish from the page of time’ is consistent with history.

To say …

““the human and civil rights of Jews, Christians and Muslims must be respected”

… makes the real context of the speech undeniable.

Davey T

Can you quote any reputable source that has your sanguine view of Ahmadinejad’s line on Israel?

@
-
53 Just Visting

I find it astounding that you accept such an important fallacy as fact, one that is being used to justify an unprovoked attack on yet another Islamic sovereign country, without even one iota of your own research.

But you can start here with the archive of the full text of the speech:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060625220249/http://www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/1384/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm

You might then also further discover:

Speaking at a D-8 summit meeting in July 2008, he denied that his country would ever instigate military action. Instead he claimed that “the Zionist regime” in Israel would eventually collapse on its own.

Asked if he objected to the government of Israel or Jewish people, he said that “creating an objection against the Zionists doesn’t mean that there are objections against the Jewish”. He added that Jews lived in Iran and were represented in the country’s parliament.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7495869.stm

In a September 2008 interview Ahmadinejad was asked: “If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?” He replied:

“If they [the Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay … Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it’s very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/29/iran.israel.ahmadinejad

@ 53 Just Visting

I find it astounding that you accept such an important fallacy as fact, one that is being used to justify an unprovoked attack on yet another Islamic sovereign country, without even one iota of your own research.

But you can start here with the archive of the full text of the speech, the llink will not post here, get it from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#cite_note-ahmadinejad_mapwipe_Persian-9

@
-
53 Just Visting

I find it astounding that you accept such an important fallacy as fact, one that is being used to justify an unprovoked attack on yet another Islamic sovereign country, without even one iota of your own research.

But you can start here with the archive of the full text of the speech, the llink will not post here, get it from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#cite_note-ahmadinejad_mapwipe_Persian-9

Wow – so the links did get through then! Must have been queued up.

My apologies to the author and the admins for the repeats posts.

I’m going to make a general point here, partly because I’ve missed the last 40-odd posts and partly because only a few of the posts here, in my opinion, merit an answer. (Those that don’t include arguments such as ‘It’s fine to have nukes so long as you’ve never signed the NNPT’; ‘Israel is a law-abiding global citizen whereas Iran are clearly out of control monsters’; ‘I know all the books you’ve quoted are junk even though I haven’t read them, but I heard they were rubbish, not that I’ve ever read any history books, I read, you know, er, journals’.)

To the poster who said ‘we allow law-abiding citizens to keep a shotgun at home’ – not only is it laughable on the metaphorical level to regard Israel as a ‘law-abiding citizen’, it’s not even literally true here in the UK. There’s no presumption here that you can keep a deadly weapon at home, so long as you’re not insane or a criminal. We think it’s a bad idea to have weapons lying around people’s homes, full stop.

And that, essentially, is my point here – which few here seem to have understood (though I thought it was clear in my post).

I’m NOT arguing it’s fine for Iran to have nukes.

What I’m saying is that neither Iran nor Israel should have nukes. And since our government doesn’t care about Israel having nukes, its urgent desire to keep nukes out of Iran’s hands is about maintaining Israel’s strategic dominance – and not about keeping nukes out of the region in general.

So for all those who’ve laboured so hard to argue here that it’s a bad idea for Iran to have nukes – I agree with you.

To show that I’m wrong, you have to show that it’s fine for Israel to have nukes and unthinkable for Iran to have them.

I think my original post was written in clear, relatively simple English sentences. I don’t normally have to write an even simpler commentary on my own posts to help people extract the meaning from them.But since so many people here evidently think I’m made entirely of straw, I thought I’d provide this gloss to help you out.

One additional point. If I spent hours online every day announcing to the world my opinion on a subject – and decrying anyone who disagreed with me as a ‘hater’ – I would think to read some books about it first. If anything, just to protect myself against making totally ignorant pronouncements that anyone with an iota of learning on a subject would find laughable. It’s amazing what you can find out by reading books.

Perhaps Sunny won’t thank me for making this point, but if you have time to spend all day arguing online about a subject, you have time to read some books.

If you think Martin Gilbert is an Israeli ‘New Historian’ – rather than a Briton who is one of the most famous historians in the world, with nearly 100 books to his name – you will just have to take my word for it that, for your own sake, you should avoid arguing about history in public. There are people who know a lot more than you, and you wouldn’t want to run into one of them during the course of an argument, for fear of looking silly.

It so happens that there are an enormous number of fascinating books on the Israel-Palestine subject, written for a range of perspectives. I haven’t read them all by any means, but I’ve read quite a few, and I’d be glad to recommend some to those, like Leon Wolfson, who haven’t come across them before.

@ Matt Hill

“There’s a lot of controversy about what Ahmadinejad said in October 2005. Go to the wikipedia page ‘Ahmadinejad and Israel’ for discussion of what he really said. He clearly expressed a desire to see the Israeli regime disappear, but I don’t think you can interpret what he said as a threat to wipe Israel off the map.”

I have read the page you direct to and funnily it contradicts your version of it in the very first sentence of the main section:

“On October 26, 2005, IRIB News, an English-language subsidiary of the state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), filed a story on Ahmadinejad’s speech to the “World Without Zionism” conference in Asia, entitled: Ahmadinejad: Israel must be wiped off the map”

The excuse you are making- that ‘wiped off the map’ is a western propaganda misrepresentation, has been made for years by apologists for Ahamdinejad, most notably by the Guardian’s Jonathan Steele. What all such excuses ignore – or are perhaps merely ignorant of – is that, as indicated above, the phrase ‘wiped off the map’ was first used by the state-run Iranian national news agency in its translation of the speech. You don’t even have the excuse of being ignorant of it. You simply misrepresented what the article clearly states.

Curious how so many western leftists seem to think they know better than the state-run translation department of a country’s official news agency what was officially said by the president of that country. Presumably said agency is run by Iran-smearing ‘zionists’?

@ 58 – Lamia, try reading beyond the first sentence and you’ll see it gets more complicated.

And before anyone piles in with the predictable smear that I must therefore want war with Iran, I don’t. I am alarmed by talk of plans to bomb Iran, and I think it would bring disaster to all. I don’t want tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents Iranians dead. I want politicians to try as many ways as possible to avoid it. I am just pointing out that Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime are not the victims of this and the Israelis not the shit-stirrers.

Ahmadinejad has been playing a suicidally stupid game of shit-stirring for years now. It is a tall order to expect the target of that ‘game’ to simply and indfinitely ignore the provocations – but you yourself Matt have treated Israel’s belated verbals responseas somehow more of an offence than the original provocations. That is standing moral logic on its head.

Any other country than Israel might not show restraint in such a case – how equinanimous would people here be if the presdient of France kept talking about how Britain must be destroyed? But I pray everyone does hold back from joining in Ahamdinejad’s sick game.

I tried posting further but there seems to be a problem uploading comments. Ho hum.

Matt, I have read read beyond the first sentence, and am already familiar with this topic, thank you. Your condescending reply didn’t address the rather enormously inconvenient fact that ‘wiped off the map’ was the phrase used by the Iranian state news agency itself, not an invention of western propaganda.

Matt,

I dont really understand this:

“What I’m saying is that neither Iran nor Israel should have nukes. And since our government doesn’t care about Israel having nukes, its urgent desire to keep nukes out of Iran’s hands is about maintaining Israel’s strategic dominance – and not about keeping nukes out of the region in general.”

For example, the belief that Iran is too dangerous a regime to be allowed nukes, whereas Isreal’s nukes are a fait accompli and a useful deterrent besides, fits the facts equally well. “it’s about maintaining Israel’s strategic dominance” is not the only explanation. And I’m still not clear what “maintaining Isreal’s strategic dominance” actually means. How does it differ from, say, ‘preventing Iran from being able to threaten Isreal with nuclear obliteration’?

@ 64 – Luis enrique -

I’m sorry, it does not fit the facts equally well, if you include the Gaza massacre of 2008-9 and the Lebanon war of 2006 in the facts that need to be considered. Look, a country that in the last five years has started two wars, killing 1100 and 1400 civilians respectively (in two lands with tiny populations – imagine the equivalent proportionate number of deaths in the UK), and which has regularly shown its willingness to go against the international consensus on various issues, is, in my opinion, very far from a responsible global citizen which can be trusted with an awesome weapon of death. I understand the mentality that leads you to think otherwise – you look at Israel and you see a government full of respectable looking white men in suits, whereas Iran is, by your own admission, a murkier region that you know little about except that it’s run by dangerous fanatics. But let’s use the tired old gambit of an alien visitor from out of space. We tell our visitor the essential facts about Israel, its wars, the civilians it’s killed, etc. We tell him about Iran. I think it’s possible the proverbial alien would want neither country to have nukes. I think it’s highly unlikely it would be relaxed about Israel having them, nut not Iran. Don’t you?

Funny how the right wing argument that having nukes keeps the peace only seems to aply to us. As soon as other nations have nukes we must invade to er, stop them from having nukes.

It will be ironic if Israel does nuke Iran. Because it will mean the only countries to use them in anger are Western democracies.

@ 61 – Remember that my point here is not that Iran should be allowed nukes – nowhere have I ever said that – but that our government is being extremely hypocritical on this issue. I even said, on another thread here, that I would not be particularly outraged or surprised if – and only if – Iran were close to developing nuclear weapons and Israel bombed its nuclear facility to prevent it. I even argued against posters who disagreed with me, pointing out Israel’s successful bombing of Iraq’s nuclear facility in 1981 as a precedent of how it could be done with minimal fuss or loss of life.

So I agree that Iran should not be allowed nukes. My point is that Israel is at least as irresponsible a guardian of the lives of millions of people as Iran. You are using one statement of Ahmadenijad’s which is highly ambiguous to argue otherwise. I am merely pointing out that:

1. The statement is ambiguous.

2. Israel responded with the ‘same’ threat, if we assume for the sake of argument the threat was made.

3. Israel has started several wars since 1979. Iran hasn’t.

Who is ‘turning logic on its head’?

You want me to address the point that ‘wiped off the map’ was the original Iranian translation. Ok: I think the words spoken by the president of Iran are more important than the words some civil servant uses to render them in English in deciding what we think the regime is actually likely to do in future.

The fact is, I could even give you this point, and accept that Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map, and I’d still be right and you wrong. Because I don’t think Iran should have nukes. Again, if you check, you’ll find that I never claimed it did. What I’m saying is that NEITHER Iran nor Israel should have nukes.

But I won’t give you this point, not even for the sake of argument. Because I think it’s just absurd to argue that Iran is likely to nuke Tel Aviv one day. I’m sorry, I don’t think it will, no matter how mad the ayatollahs are (and I agree they’re mad). Stalin was a fucking lunatic, and he never nuked anyone. The current leaders of North Korea are off their box, and they don’t nuke people. So I don’t think Iran would either. But given the stakes involved, I still don’t think Iran should have the bomb – just as I don’t think Israel should.

I think it’s worth keeping in mind that through wikileaks, we learned that it was actually the Arab states like Saudi and the gulf nations that were the most vociferous about tackling Iran. I believe the quote from the Saudi’s urging America to strike was “cut the head off the snake”.

The thing is, it’s much more convenient for the anti-Israel obsessives on the left to paint this as Israel telling the world what to do. To paint this as only for the protection of Israel – when in fact every country bar Syria is terrified of a nuclear Iran.

It’s what we’ve come to expect from the left wing and their obsessive-compulsive disorder with regards to Israel.

Oh yes the words of Suadi. A thug Royal family, who rule with an iron fist, and who Western brownshirts love because they let the oil flow.

Remind me again how many of the 911 highjackers were from Suadi? Oh yes, all of them bar one. Remind me where Bin laden came from? Oh yes Suadi.

Iran have exported a lot more terrorism around the region and the globe than the Saudis. The difference with 9/11 is that it was not a Saudi sanctioned attack but an attack by Saudis. Whereas Iran’s terrorism is sanctioned at the very top.

I always find it hilarious how the left wing jump through hoops and contort themselves in their odious ideology. They rail against the Saudi regime, and at the same time are Iran’s cheerleaders.

====================
Sally

Oh yes the words of Suadi. A thug Royal family, who rule with an iron fist, and who Western brownshirts love because they let the oil flow.

Remind me again how many of the 911 highjackers were from Suadi? Oh yes, all of them bar one. Remind me where Bin laden came from? Oh yes Suadi.

Davey T

You have failed to provide what I asked:
> Can you quote any reputable source that has your sanguine view of Ahmadinejad’s line on Israel?

Don’t quote his words – quote a reputable source about him.

The suadis were funding Bin Laden for years. And they have been funding some of the most extreme islam fundi movements and teachings around the globe.

But wingnuts turn a blind eye because there is money to be made.

Merk28,

Next time you’re commenting on a thread written by an obsessive-compulsive anti-Israel author who cheerleads for Iran, that may be a point worth making. But I’m pro-Israel in a number of ways and I’ve made it clear I don’t want Iran to develop nukes.

Matt
> What I’m saying is that NEITHER Iran nor Israel should have nukes.

Well, yes we all wish the world was a better place – but let’s talk about the world as it actually is, shall we.

> I think it’s just absurd to argue that Iran is likely to nuke Tel Aviv one day. I’m sorry, I don’t think it will, no matter how mad the ayatollahs are (and I agree they’re mad)

That’s your view.
But does any reputable source share it?
Are you so sure you can predict the future = the future actions of mad men?

Did you read the Guardian this week:

“The Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, …in interview with a Turkish newspaper, claimed Tehran was ready for war with Israel. “We have been hearing threats from Israel for eight years. Our nation is a united nation … such threats are not new to us,” he said. “We are very sure of ourselves. We can defend our country.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/03/iran-warns-us-clash-nuclear

Let’s be clear about this, the Netanyahu government in Israel has no intention of progressing the peace process with the Palestinians or it would not continue to allow the building of more settlements on occupied Palestinian land despite the expressed opposition on the part of the Obama administration in addition to warnings from the Palestinian Authority that peace negotiations would stop if the settlement building continued.

The British government should be straight forward and honest about this and blame Israel for ending the peace talks not supporting pre-emptive attacks on Iran to obfuscate the issues. The fact is that Israel has an appalling record of terrorism and aggression. The recent vote in UNESCO to admit the Palestine Authority to full membership – by 107 votes versus 14 votes – shows clearly the balance of opinion in the international community.

But, but, but……… the right wing has told us the nukes keep the peace. They Deter aggression. Have they now changed their view on this?

The right wing need a constant stream of bogey men to scare the people and distract them while they steal. Who will be the new Hitler? It changes every month.

It would be utterly outrageous for Cameron to embroil Britain in another Middle East war, alongside Israel, while slashing public spending in Britain and when the financial chaos of the Eurozone remains unresolved to the extent where another lapse into recession looks increasingly likely.

NIESR predicts 70pc chance of UK recession

There is a 70pc chance the British economy will fall back into recession if policymakers adopt a “muddle through” approach to the eurozone crisis, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8865422/NIESR-predicts-70pc-chance-of-UK-recession.html

@ 75 –

“Matt
> What I’m saying is that NEITHER Iran nor Israel should have nukes.

Well, yes we all wish the world was a better place – but let’s talk about the world as it actually is, shall we.”

Well, the world as it is – according to some – is one in which Iran is about to develop nuclear weapons. And we’re talking about waging war to change it. Meanwhile I’m suggesting that, if we want to have any consistency, we should at least apply some diplomatic pressure on Israel to stop its nuclear programme (as well as winding down ours). It seems that, when it comes to Israel, only some kind of dreamer would imagine the world could be different; but when it comes to Iran, the pragmatic course of action includes war.

“That’s your view.
But does any reputable source share it?”

Aside from the former heads of Mossad and Shin Bet I mentioned in the piece you might have bothered to read before commenting?

@65 – “Gaza massacre of 2008-9″

Right. And you think I’m going to take any lectures from an revisionist neo-Fascist anti-Semite?

Arabs have a right to self-defence in your world, and NOT Israel. Right. Keep up the fight against the Zionist Overlord Government!

Did you just call me a revisionist neo-fascist anti-semite?

@80: “And you think I’m going to take any lectures from an revisionist neo-Fascist anti-Semite?”

Ahem. On Israel and Gaza, try Gerald Kaufman’s speech to Parliament in January 2009 on: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEYz00MqCx0

There’s an editorial in the Observer today that makes the same point very well, The whole thing is worth reading, but this paragraph in particular makes the point I made in my post:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/06/iran-israel-nuclear-weapons

‘The reality is that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is seen as a threat for reasons partly of Israel’s own making – foremost its absolute reliance on a policy of military supremacy and deterrence to underpin security. A nuclear-armed Iran would hole that policy below the waterline, making it far more difficult, for instance, to launch the kind of war it waged against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.’

Still lots of discussion of the politics, still no discussion of physical and C&C security.

“Amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics”

57. Matt Hill

To the poster who said ‘we allow law-abiding citizens to keep a shotgun at home’ – not only is it laughable on the metaphorical level to regard Israel as a ‘law-abiding citizen’, it’s not even literally true here in the UK. There’s no presumption here that you can keep a deadly weapon at home, so long as you’re not insane or a criminal. We think it’s a bad idea to have weapons lying around people’s homes, full stop.

You cannot avoid the comparison by creating your own strawman. I did not even hint that there is a presumption. I said we allow law-abiding citizens to have shotguns at home. Which we do. We do not allow the mentally ill to do so.

And Israel, whether you like it or not, is a law-abiding society.

I’m NOT arguing it’s fine for Iran to have nukes.

Well there comes a point when moral equivalence is pushed to such an extent it becomes justification. It looks like you are to me.

What I’m saying is that neither Iran nor Israel should have nukes. And since our government doesn’t care about Israel having nukes, its urgent desire to keep nukes out of Iran’s hands is about maintaining Israel’s strategic dominance – and not about keeping nukes out of the region in general.

That is interesting but as you have no evidence it is about maintaining Israel’s strategic dominance, and it has been pointed out to you several times that even if Iran had nuclear weapons it would change little, and the fact that there are dozens of *other* reasons not to want the Iranians to have nuclear weapons, you must be able to see why no one is buying your argument here. You must have some other reason you’re not telling us.

To show that I’m wrong, you have to show that it’s fine for Israel to have nukes and unthinkable for Iran to have them.

No I don’t. For a start you don’t know Israel does have nuclear weapons. For another if they do, we have all got along fine so far with that situation. There is no particular need to change a status quo that works. And above all, Israel is a perfectly normal state. Iran is run by theocratic loons. No matter how much you want to dance around that issue, it remains.

But since so many people here evidently think I’m made entirely of straw, I thought I’d provide this gloss to help you out.

Thank you. But your argument is still useless.

65. Matt Hill

Look, a country that in the last five years has started two wars, killing 1100 and 1400 civilians respectively

It says a lot that you insist that Israel started those wars. And not the people who, for instance, crossed into Israel proper and attacked Israelis. Not those that fired first. At this point you really have to wonder why prejudice leads you down such a dead end?

and which has regularly shown its willingness to go against the international consensus on various issues, is, in my opinion, very far from a responsible global citizen which can be trusted with an awesome weapon of death.

Well that is an interesting point of view. Of course any sane person would point out that when the UN puts Gaddafi in charge of the Human Right Commission, almost by definition, the only responsible powers are those that go against the international consensus.

I understand the mentality that leads you to think otherwise – you look at Israel and you see a government full of respectable looking white men in suits, whereas Iran is, by your own admission, a murkier region that you know little about except that it’s run by dangerous fanatics.

And it is so interesting how religious fanatics are so unacceptable if they are Christians, no matter if they are law abiding peaceful democrats or not, but as long as they are hate-spewing terrorist supporters they are fine on the Left. It is nice to see we agree that they are dangerous fanatics. Perhaps you can explain why you think allowing dangerous fanatics to have nuclear weapons – and no matter how you spin it that is your position – is sensible?

But let’s use the tired old gambit of an alien visitor from out of space. We tell our visitor the essential facts about Israel, its wars, the civilians it’s killed, etc. We tell him about Iran. I think it’s possible the proverbial alien would want neither country to have nukes. I think it’s highly unlikely it would be relaxed about Israel having them, nut not Iran. Don’t you?

I think that he would take two seconds to agree if anyone was going to have them, it was better Israel would. Because Israel does not start wars. Israel does not want wars. Israel wants to live in peace. As the cliche goes, if the Arabs put down their weapons (and we can count Iran in this group for now) for a day there would be peace. If Israel put down its weapons for an hour there would be no Israel. As even an alien from outer space can see.

Matt Hill

Remember that my point here is not that Iran should be allowed nukes – nowhere have I ever said that

Then you’re just being tricky with words given the inevitable result of what you are demanding.

but that our government is being extremely hypocritical on this issue.

Something you are yet to establish.

My point is that Israel is at least as irresponsible a guardian of the lives of millions of people as Iran.

And that is where your argument falls down because you can only maintain it by arguing that any attack on Israel is justifiable while any response is aggression.

You are using one statement of Ahmadenijad’s which is highly ambiguous to argue otherwise. I am merely pointing out that:

1. The statement is ambiguous.

No it was not. Especially not when given at a Conference on the end of Zionism.

2. Israel responded with the ‘same’ threat, if we assume for the sake of argument the threat was made.

No it didn’t. This false equivalence thing is really a problem isn’t it?

3. Israel has started several wars since 1979. Iran hasn’t.

No it hasn’t.

Matt Hill

Because I don’t think Iran should have nukes. Again, if you check, you’ll find that I never claimed it did. What I’m saying is that NEITHER Iran nor Israel should have nukes.

It is just that your entire argument revolves around why we should do nothing to stop Iran acquiring said nuclear weapons. Odd, that, isn’t it?

But I won’t give you this point, not even for the sake of argument. Because I think it’s just absurd to argue that Iran is likely to nuke Tel Aviv one day. I’m sorry, I don’t think it will, no matter how mad the ayatollahs are (and I agree they’re mad). Stalin was a fucking lunatic, and he never nuked anyone.

Yes but he did kill 60 million of his own people. Just because the right occasion failed to arise doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have. He did worse.

The current leaders of North Korea are off their box, and they don’t nuke people.

They haven’t yet.

So I don’t think Iran would either. But given the stakes involved, I still don’t think Iran should have the bomb – just as I don’t think Israel should.

Based on what? Their often stated belief that the end of the world is nigh?

@85: “Because Israel does not start wars. Israel does not want wars. Israel wants to live in peace.”

That claim is demonstrable fantasy.

Compare it with the documented history of Israeli terrorism and atrocities:

The sinking of SS Patria in Haifa harbour in 1940; the terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946; the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948; the Qibya massacre in 1953; the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982; the Khiam Prison in South Lebanon in 2000 and the report of Physicians for Human Rights in 2000 on the suppression of the intifada by disproportionate use of force by the IDF – stone throwing youngsters were shot in the head or thighs by Israeli sharpshooters

Leading Israeli terrorists have been made Israel prime ministers – Begin and Shamir and Sharon was the IDF commander of the commando unit which perpetrated the Qibya massacre.

So much for all those Israeli declarations denouncing terrorism. Barak – now the defence minister – was the prime minister in 2000 at the time of PHR report on the intifada.

@81 – Your own words are quite clear. So are mine.

You’ve advocated an attack on Dimona and deny any right of Israel to exist, that supporting Israel is purely party-political. That you’re glad in post 83 that a nuclear-armed Iran would make it impossible for Israel to strike back against terrorists, more evidence of your clear alignment with said terrorists…

@86 – Copy and paste, copy and paste – the denial of the peace process, in both Israel and NI. You hate peace.

@87: “Copy and paste, copy and paste – the denial of the peace process, in both Israel and NI. You hate peace.”

That’s another lie. I had hopes of Yitzhak Rabin’s bid for peace in Palestine but he was assassinated to stop it back in 1995. Get real and stop the phoney whitewashing of Israel.

The Netanyahu government’s approval of the continued building of settlements on occupied Palestinian land – despite the express disapproval of the Obama administration – shows that the present Israeli government has no intention of maintaining negotiations for the Palestine peace process. On the evidence, Netanyahu hates peace – hence the Netanyahu-Barak plan to bomb Iran, which was leaked to Israeli media by Mossad and Shinbet, presumably to forewarn and so prevent the planned pre-emptive strike.

The vote in UNESCO to admit the Palestine Authority to full membership, by 107 votes to 14 votes, shows the balance of opinion about Israel in the international community.

[i]So Much For Subtlety[/i]

So Much For Subtlety,

Christ, this is starting to feel like the 1967-1970 war of attrition. I simply don’t have the time to answer all your points. I’ve made a comment at my blog in response to another poster, clarifying my views. I explain that I would perhaps write this post differently if I had the chance to revisit it, because it’s clear I didn’t get my point across to several people here. Click on my name and have a look. I hope that will clarify things a bit. A quick response to your enormous post:

- ‘Israel, whether you like it or not, is a law-abiding society.’ If you mean Israel abides by international law, I think that is evidently incorrect.

- ‘Well there comes a point when moral equivalence is pushed to such an extent it becomes justification. It looks like you are [arguing Iran should have nukes] to me.’ If you think drawing a kind of equivalence between Iran and Israel’s nuclear programmes implies I think Iran should be allowed nukes, that probably just indicates your ingrained view that Israel’s nuclear programme isn’t a problem. Because I meant to draw a moral equivalence of a sort in order to argue the precise opposite – that self-evidently Iran shouldn’t be allowed nukes, and neither should Israel.

- ‘For a start you don’t know Israel does have nuclear weapons.’ That is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

- ‘For another if they do, we have all got along fine so far with that situation. There is no particular need to change a status quo that works.’ It’s not working – Israel has waged several wars of aggression since 1979 (Iran has waged none). Part of the reason it is so free to do so is because its total military dominance is guaranteed by its nuclear weapons. Without nuclear dominance, it would be less free to wage these wars.

- ‘I think that he would take two seconds to agree if anyone was going to have them, it was better Israel would. Because Israel does not start wars. Israel does not want wars. Israel wants to live in peace.’ I have no response to this – I’m just quoting it because I think your own words are the best indication of your absurd bias.

- ‘And that is where your argument falls down because you can only maintain it by arguing that any attack on Israel is justifiable while any response is aggression.’ I have never argued that. In fact I have argued the opposite.

- ‘It is just that your entire argument revolves around why we should do nothing to stop Iran acquiring said nuclear weapons.’ On the contrary, I’ve said in circumstances I would even support an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear programme, and that contradicts nothing I’ve said here.

Matt,

I shall be quick, as you seem to be approaching end of your tether.

Perhaps your aliens would pay more attention to Israel having possessed nukes for 40 years and not having used them despite, as you informed me above, being invaded during that period. I just don’t agree that Israel’s track record in Gaza and Lebanon answers the question of whether the we can be relatively more comfortable with its possession of nukes than we would be with Iran’s.

and, by the way, I don’t particularly appreciate your effort at “understanding my mentality”, with its implicit accusation of subconscious racism on my part.

@ 91 – Luis Enrique,

I’m truly sorry if you thought I was accusing you of subconscious racism. As you can see, a few posts ago I was accused of being an ‘revisionist neo-fascist anti-semite’ – which I found frankly disgusting – so the last thing I would want is for you to think I was doing something similar. Obviously racism should never be tolerated; but nor should it be trivialised by casual allegations. Please believe me when I say I never intended to imply you were racist, either consciously or unconsciously. In fact I’ve found you a refreshing voice, even though we disagree. You seem determined to understand these issues and to reason them out thoroughly. I’d be disappointed if you were reluctant to debate with me again because you perceived I was using rhetorical scare-tactics.

By the way, does your moniker have anything to do with the legendary Spanish midfielder of the 90s?

Matt,

thanks v much for that, and likewise concerning the respectful disagreement thing, and your conduct in these comments. Thinking about it now, I’m sure you didn’t mean to accuse me of racism, it was only the bit about me finding white men in suits easier to trust than swarthy sons of the desert. And it’s a point with merit – I wouldn’t be surprised if I am more inclined to trust people who most resemble myself, I guess psychologists would say that’s the rule.

oh, about 15 years ago I had a cat I named after the footballer, then myself after the cat.

Matt – I haven’t read every single comment but I just wanted to pick up on your use of the word ‘massacre’ to describe OCL – to me a massacre suggests that people were killed deliberately, in cold blood. I think one could have strong objections to OCL without feeling that particular word was the right one.

Whatever Mr Ahmedinejad’s exact words were, he is an odious holocaust denying, anti-semitic, religio-retard throwback. Let’s at least get that right.

Quite why the usual middle class fops are so keen to defend someone like him to the point of obsessional pedantry, while purposefully waving away the man’s foul character always saddens my heart. The sooner his own people deal with him, the better for everyone. I’m sure all those young Iranians would much rather be like Sweden (as someone mentioned up thread) and then no-one will give a toss whether they develop a few nuclear power stations etc

@88 – Quite, yes, you want every Israeli dead. You’ve said so multiple times before. I get it!

And you have very clearly denounced the peace process both in Israel and Northern Ireland.

@90/92 – And your disgust matters to the accuracy of the words, because? I’m disgusted to be English these days, I still am though.

You have no idea of the concept of international law, it seems. Iran is a signer of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Israel is not. Israel is NOT BOUND by it. A hard concept, I know. Iran is…it can withdraw at any time, but chooses not to.

You explicitly advocated an attack on Dimona, which is itself in massive and clear defiance of international law, then pretend you have clean hands. They’re as red as the blood you call for.

Leon, I actually defended you against accusations you’re a fascist a couple of threads ago. And then you spew all this bile at me. Nothing you’ve said is true. You seemed to lose the plot after I suggested you might want to read some books about the conflict. Suddenly I was a fascist, an anti-semite, calling for attacks on Israel (none of this is true).

I’m sorry, but you’ve stepped well outside the limits of reasonable debate. I simply refuse to be dragged down to your level, so I won’t answer any more such accusations. Rant and rave all you like – I’ll respond when you start speaking sensibly again, as you seemed to when I first came across your posts.

@97: “Quite, yes, you want every Israeli dead. You’ve said so multiple times before. I get it! And you have very clearly denounced the peace process both in Israel and Northern Ireland.”

All that is lies, compounding more lies. I’ve not mentioned Northern Ireland. The long documented record of Israeli terrorism and atrocities speaks eloquently for itself, as does the fact that leading Israeli terrorists have become Israeli prime ministers – Begin, Shamir and Ariel Sharon.

Israel is a deeply corrupt state. Earlier this year, the previous president of Israel, Katsav, ended up in jail, a convicted rapist. This is what the Guardian said in February 2005 about Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon:

Israel’s attorney general lifted the threat of indictment against Ariel Sharon yesterday in a scandal over illegal campaign funds but charged the prime minister’s son, Omri, with fraud and other crimes in the same case.

The decision closes the second of three corruption investigations which have dogged Mr Sharon and threatened to derail his “disengagement plan” to pull Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip. But there is a widespread view within Israel’s legal system and among the public that Mr Sharon escaped for political reasons and that his 40-year-old son and political adviser has accepted responsibility on his behalf.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/feb/18/israel1

You have completely discredited yourself.

It would be nice if someone else would weigh in at this point to say that Leon Wolfson’s accusation that I’m a ‘revisionist neo-fascist anti-semite’ is an outrageous slur with no basis in reality, or something to that effect. Just saying.

100. Matt Hill

It would be nice if someone else would weigh in at this point to say that Leon Wolfson’s accusation that I’m a ‘revisionist neo-fascist anti-semite’ is an outrageous slur with no basis in reality, or something to that effect. Just saying.

Matt, meet Leon. When you get to know Leon a little better, you will know that not to be called a revisionist neo-fascist anti-semite by Leon is the real slur.

He has problems with reality.

90. Matt Hill

If you mean Israel abides by international law, I think that is evidently incorrect.

Well obviously Israel does abide by international law. But that is not what I meant because it is irrelevant. I doubt international law prevents the use of nuclear weapons. It probably strongly encourages it if the people on the receiving end are Jews. I mean Israel is a law bound society. As I said. Which means that if they need to use such weapons, it will be because they have to. Not because some Mufti wants to bring about the Apocalypse.

If you think drawing a kind of equivalence between Iran and Israel’s nuclear programmes implies I think Iran should be allowed nukes, that probably just indicates your ingrained view that Israel’s nuclear programme isn’t a problem. Because I meant to draw a moral equivalence of a sort in order to argue the precise opposite – that self-evidently Iran shouldn’t be allowed nukes, and neither should Israel.

Except you are not calling for anyone to do anything about Iran’s nuclear weapons. You are calling for them *not* to do something about them. That looks like a pretty effective defence of Iran’s nuclear programme to me. What do you think you are doing by opposing Western action on Iran? It is an ingrained view because it is true. Israel may or may not have had nuclear weapons for decades and yet have not used them once. Not a problem. Will not become a problem because you want them to be.

That is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

No it isn’t. It is absolutely true. You have no idea. You may want it to be true, but you don’t know.

It’s not working – Israel has waged several wars of aggression since 1979 (Iran has waged none). Part of the reason it is so free to do so is because its total military dominance is guaranteed by its nuclear weapons. Without nuclear dominance, it would be less free to wage these wars.

Sorry but name those wars. Which wars, plural, has Israel started since 1979? We are back with your reducible bias against Israel. It is free to do so because it is free to do so. Israel was much more aggressive back before 1973 (or whenever you want to assume they acquired nuclear weapons). It does not need nuclear weapons to have a decisive margin over Lebanon. In fact can you even explain how these weapons in any way help Israel? It is not as if they can use them.

I have no response to this – I’m just quoting it because I think your own words are the best indication of your absurd bias.

I am sorry you cannot see past your bias.

I have never argued that. In fact I have argued the opposite.

Wars. Plural. Israel has fought three time since 1979. Let’s agree the Lebanon Invasion is murky. Even though Israel was repeatedly attacked from Lebanon. That leaves their more recent attack on Lebanon and the campaign against Gaza. I don’t think they have fought with anyone else since 1979. The Lebanon War was triggered by Hezbollah crossing the border and kidnapping some Israeli soldiers. You think this is a war of aggression by Israel? The Gaza campaign was triggered by repeated rocket firing into Israel? Yet you think this was a war of aggression by Israel? Clearly you think just what I said – crossing into Israel and murdering Israelis is not an attack of war, nor is firing rockets at civilians. Unless of course there is some other war I have not noticed.

On the contrary, I’ve said in circumstances I would even support an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear programme, and that contradicts nothing I’ve said here.

You failed to say in your article you supported any action against Iran. But you do seem to be calling for action against Israel. So I have no idea where you have done this. Buried in some fine print somewhere no doubt. But here you have been clear – your agenda is about Israel’s alleged weapons, not about Iran’s.

I would urge people to look at Bob B’s post @ 88 and Leon Wolfson’s response @ 97, and register your opinion. I’m not making a general point about what these posters believe or the views they’ve previously expressed. I’ve agreed with some things I’ve seen them both write, and disagreed with other things. But here is an outrageously nasty slur. Bob B’s post is mostly factual, with a few opinions that are expressed in the mainstream Israeli media every day. In fact, by saying that he had hopes for Rabin’s peace plans he shows he’s more moderate than some Israeli leftists, who argue Oslo was a stitch-up all along. There is absolutely nothing here to cause offence or to indicate extremism. But here is Leon Wolfson’s reply:

“Quite, yes, you want every Israeli dead. You’ve said so multiple times before. I get it!”

This beggars belief. This bears no relation whatsoever to what Bob B said. It’s just an outrageous lie. It’s like someone asking me the time, and my replying: ‘Yes, I get it, you want to slaughter every last Palestinian man, woman and child. You’ve said so before. I get it!’

Leon Wolfson, are you proud of this? Is this why you come online to debate people? Is there any part of you that believes anything you write? What’s wrong with you?

I’m beginning to suspect that the Israeli guy starring in this illuminating video made by a British documentary film crew is a mate of Leon’s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjgP33-Hi1c

Perhaps Leon would like to comment . . .

@98/103 – Idiots who want to call a Jew a Fascist are not people I need “protection” from, but thanks for making me feel dirty about getting caught up in your factional squabbles. I am now going to have to read up on why you did that and work out who benefits, sigh.

“outrageously nasty slur”

No, outrageously nasty would be me calling up your MP and repeating it. I’m not a scientologist though, and I’m proud to be a suppressive personality to them.

Bobbit’s little concession in talking even more about terrorism by mentioning Rabin shows what he;s really after- talking about Jewish terrorists. And only Jewish terrorists. And you’re backing him, the man who explicitly called for a pre-emptive attack on a functioning nuclear reactor, of a state which is NOT party to the treaty which would ban it’s operation.

Oh look, a rat! What’s wrong with you, that you effectively support genocidal fanatics like Hamas, though your words? That you give the Isralie right stronger electoral chances…that you’re decreasing, through what you say, any hope of peace in the middle east. Not to mention the little things like the “coincidence” of chemical weapons, which the Arab states DO have, never being deployed against Israel.

You’re akin, from the other side, to Avigdor Lieberman, who I’ve also called a fascist, as far as I’m concerned. (The Western press has been rather yellow in some cases in translating what Lieberman has said, frankly…)

@99 – You are utterly against forgetting any terrorist attack ever, which was a critical component of enabling the Good Friday Agreement, and hence you oppose it. And the entire middle east peace process, given Arafat was a terrorist, as are many Fatah and virtually every Hamas high official.

Or, alternatively, you are talking only and just about Jews being an evil, terrorist people. Oh hey!

103. Matt Hill

This beggars belief. This bears no relation whatsoever to what Bob B said. It’s just an outrageous lie. It’s like someone asking me the time, and my replying: ‘Yes, I get it, you want to slaughter every last Palestinian man, woman and child. You’ve said so before. I get it!

Well more or less but not quite. Leon is a disgrace but he comes close to having half a point here. But Bob B is monomaniacal. It is not that Bob B posts factual material on Israel. It is that Bob B brings up Israel’s alleged short comings at every opportunity, posts entirely one-sided anti-Zionist articles, ignores background or any form of context and is utterly immune to rational argument.

Being concerned about Israel’s human rights record is not wrong. But when someone is *only* concerned about Israel’s human rights record, when they ignore all the other states and actors in the region to focus solely on the Jewish state, when they quote out of context, when they ignore any mitigating event, when they do so relentlessly, every chance they get, impervious to evidence or counter-argument, then you begin to suspect they have a problem with Jews.

And the Catholic Church in Bob’s case.

There is a simple way to prove this. How much has Bob B, or anyone else around here, written on Northern Cyprus? There we have a similar case. An illegal occupation. Ethnic cleansing. Transfer of population. Defiance of international law and UN resolutions. Torture. Death squads.

But utter and total silence from the usual suspects.

Can we agree that when someone is obsessed with the Jewish State but indifferent to Cyprus, despite being such a short trip apart, that we are not dealing with rational criticism any more?

“Can we agree that when someone is obsessed with the Jewish State but indifferent to Cyprus, despite being such a short trip apart, that we are not dealing with rational criticism any more?”

I agree we should be concerned with human rights abuses wherever they occur. An act of torture in Egypt is self-evidently just as despicable as an act of torture in Israel. And, yes, if I met someone who was only interested in exposing Israel’s crimes and not, say, those of her own country, I’d be suspicious of her motives.

Let me give you an example. It was Syria’s turn to submit a self-assessment to the UN about its human rights record this week. Inconvenient timing, I’m sure you’ll agree. Well, the report was of course an act of bare-faced mendacity and hypocrisy. Syria gave itself top marks for human rights, claiming that all human rights are respected throughout the country – except in one place. Guess where? The Golan. The report includes several pages of polemic against Israel’s occupation of the Golan.

Now, I oppose Israel’s occupation of the Golan. I think Israel and Syria missed a good chance to come to a final settlement on the issue under Barak and Hafez al-Assad in 1999-2000 (they came within a few hundred metres of agreement). But when Syria devotes several pages complaining against Israel’s human rights abuses in the Golan, while giving itself full marks while it’s massacring its own population – well, call me a cynic, but I tend to wonder whether the report’s authors are being quite honest. I wonder whether they are talking about the Golan to distract attention from Syria’s own crimes.

But that has no bearing on my view that the Golan should be returned to Syria in return for peace (and before you misinterpret me, that’s very much a two-sided demand). We should be able to separate our opinion of an argument from our opinion of the person making it. And while obviously racists of all stripes should be deplored, but neither should the accusation of racism be made casually. Ahmadenijad is clearly an anti-semite; most critics of Israel – even if they single Israel out for more criticism than other countries – are not.

But there do seem to me to be perfectly unsuspicious reasons why Israel is the subject of so much more debate than other countries that are far worse:

- It singles itself out – as the ‘only democracy in the ME’ with the ‘most moral army in the world’. It aimed to be a ‘light unto the nations’ and claims to be an outpost of western values, the front line against terrorism. It claims to belong to the world’s civilised states, and therefore invites evaluation according to their values.
- It controls a number of the world’s most famous and important religious sites; people from all over the world care about them.
- Israel’s is arguably the longest occupation in the world (7 years longer than that of Cyprus).
- It is the largest recipient of US aid and support (Egypt has traditionally been second, since it’s paid to be nice to Israel), which gives Americans a direct reason to be interested in it.
- The UK in many ways was responsible for starting the whole Israel-Palestine mess, making irreconcilable promises to both sides during WWI and after. It’s part of our imperial history.
- There are many, many social, cultural and personal links between Britain and Israel. Many Brits have relatives in Israel. (As for me, my parents live there and I spend up to half of each year there, so I have a special interest in its fate.)
- There is probably a sense in which we have leverage over Israel’s conscience in a way that we don’t over, say, Syria’s or Saudi Arabias. I think there’s a perception Israel can be shamed into improving its behaviour. Which is, of course, a compliment to Israel. In short, we expect better of Israel.

So, no, I don’t think being more interested in Israel than Cyprus is a good sign of anti-semitism. In fact, that definition would catch so many people in its net, 95% of people who take any interest in current affairs would be cast as anti-semites.

Let me put it this way. I would agree with you if you were saying ‘If only people cared about the Cypriots as much as they do about Palestinians.’ But I have a feeling many people who use this argument mean ‘If only people cared as little about Palestinians as little as they do about Cypriots.’

107. Matt Hill

I agree we should be concerned with human rights abuses wherever they occur. An act of torture in Egypt is self-evidently just as despicable as an act of torture in Israel. And, yes, if I met someone who was only interested in exposing Israel’s crimes and not, say, those of her own country, I’d be suspicious of her motives.

I am sorry but have you met anyone on the modern British Left? Ever listened to the UN Human Right Commission? Why is it you say these things when you show so few signs of actually doing them?

But when Syria devotes several pages complaining against Israel’s human rights abuses in the Golan, while giving itself full marks while it’s massacring its own population – well, call me a cynic, but I tend to wonder whether the report’s authors are being quite honest. I wonder whether they are talking about the Golan to distract attention from Syria’s own crimes.

And no doubt the UN will approve it and condemn Israel, not Syria. No doubt well respected people on the Left will go on taking Syrian money and condemning Israel – while turning a blind eye to Syria. No doubt Bob B will continue to bore on about Irgun but will not mention what is going on in Syria. No doubt LC will continue to publish articles about Israel but nothing about Syria. And so it goes.

But that has no bearing on my view that the Golan should be returned to Syria in return for peace (and before you misinterpret me, that’s very much a two-sided demand). We should be able to separate our opinion of an argument from our opinion of the person making it.

By all means. But of course the fact that Syria is a vile totalitarian state with an abominable human rights record also means we should listen carefully to Israel when it talks about the reasons it has for not trusting Syria. In these talks we do not have two equivalent parties.

And while obviously racists of all stripes should be deplored, but neither should the accusation of racism be made casually. Ahmadenijad is clearly an anti-semite; most critics of Israel – even if they single Israel out for more criticism than other countries – are not.

I don’t make them casually. People who show themselves utterly obsessed with Israel while utterly indifferent to Syria or Iran have some other motivation. Hatred of Jews is a perfectly reasonable assumption to explain this obsession. Most critics are anti-Semites. As, alas, is much of the modern Left – or at least if they are not, they are not choosy about endorsing anti-Semites. The Guardian gives its opinion pages to Islamists who are clearly anti-Semites. Chomsky speaks at Hezbollah rallies. The SWP endorses David Duke.

- It singles itself out – as the ‘only democracy in the ME’ with the ‘most moral army in the world’. It aimed to be a ‘light unto the nations’ and claims to be an outpost of western values, the front line against terrorism. It claims to belong to the world’s civilised states, and therefore invites evaluation according to their values.

I see. This is the Pinochet paradox. Chile used to be a democracy. And no doubt policemen took bribes to tear up parking tickets. Then it had a coup and became a non-democracy. And a few thousand people were tortured. But you think the parking tickets were worse because post-1973 Chile made no pretense at being democratic? It is the only democracy in the Middle East. It tries to have the most moral army in the world, or did. Why is such a high aim a bad thing? I notice you are ignoring the claims of the Syrian Revolutionaries. Why are their claims irrelevant? What you mean is that dusky Middle Eastern types should not be judged according to the values of White Westerners, no?

- It controls a number of the world’s most famous and important religious sites; people from all over the world care about them.

So what?

- Israel’s is arguably the longest occupation in the world (7 years longer than that of Cyprus).

Tibet? Kashmir? Turkey continues to occupy part of Syria. Or the Syrians think so. Why does length of time matter?

- It is the largest recipient of US aid and support (Egypt has traditionally been second, since it’s paid to be nice to Israel), which gives Americans a direct reason to be interested in it.

You’re not American.

- The UK in many ways was responsible for starting the whole Israel-Palestine mess, making irreconcilable promises to both sides during WWI and after. It’s part of our imperial history.

Rubbish. More blaming Whitey. It is nonsense. But even so, so what? We made a few decisions. Locals did not like them. We left. They made their own mess. Nothing to do with us.

- There are many, many social, cultural and personal links between Britain and Israel. Many Brits have relatives in Israel.

The same is true of Cyprus. Or Jamaica. Or anywhere really.

- There is probably a sense in which we have leverage over Israel’s conscience in a way that we don’t over, say, Syria’s or Saudi Arabias. I think there’s a perception Israel can be shamed into improving its behaviour. Which is, of course, a compliment to Israel. In short, we expect better of Israel.

I see. We should beat up on our friends because we can? More double standards for non-White peoples I see.

So, no, I don’t think being more interested in Israel than Cyprus is a good sign of anti-semitism. In fact, that definition would catch so many people in its net, 95% of people who take any interest in current affairs would be cast as anti-semites.

People who are more interested in Israel’s crimes. Not Israel per se. Someone with an interest in Biblical archaeology is obviously not in the same boat as Bob.

But I have a feeling many people who use this argument mean ‘If only people cared as little about Palestinians as little as they do about Cypriots.’

And what is wrong with that argument? Part of the problem is we have cared too much. If we cut off funding to the UN for Palestinian refugees this problem would go away in months. We pay for the terrorists to attack us.

So Much For Subtlety,

It’s odd. At times I feel like we’re having a reasonable, sincere, though frank exchange of views. Some of the points you make are very interesting: the whole question of moral culpability which you express in terms of the ‘Pinochet paradox’. I find that interesting. But at the same time you seem to be implying, throughout your post, that I’m a racist. It makes it difficult for us to have a civilised discussion. You’re nowhere near as barmy as Leon Wolfson, but at times you seem to be using his tactics. Wouldn’t you rather a respectful, reasonable exchange of opinions – rather than an endless game of one-upmanship? Why must you constantly question my good faith, accuse me of racism, etc, while I simply try and contradict your arguments?

@Matt Hill – It’s not pleasant being called a revisionist fascist antisemite when you are none of those things.My sympathy.Someone who has stalked me for a year on Harry’s Place did the same again on an HP thread yesterday:

We know what they’re like, because we’ve encountered skidmark and Johng (and the former still doesn’t like being reminded that aside from being a Jew-hater he’s also a supporter of Rwanda genocide deniers),
and of course noone there suggests that this is unacceptable behaviour. My feeling is that although many arguments on the internet are carried on at such an abusive level, it is particularly often true of supporters of Israel, which given the general agreement on the obnoxiousness of many of their bogeymen (Hamas, Ahmedinijad come to mind) suggest that their underlying arguments don’t withstand much scrutiny.Such as…

Iran is a signer of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty…it can withdraw at any time, but chooses not to.
Of course Iranian withdrawal would be seen as an excuse for an immediate attack.

Matt 109

What you posted above was not a reply to what SMFS had actually written.

His 108 deserves a more detailed reply,

Just Visiting,

Do me a favour, and paraphrase what you see as the important points, minus personal abuse, etc, and I promise I’ll answer.

M.