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Israel readies civilians for war
Will Israel attack Iran before the US 2012 election? The people of Israel do not agree on whether they should. But they seem to think that war will come, and they’re getting ready for it.
Israel getting ready to strike?
Mike Evans (Jerusalem Prayer Team) said yesterday that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak had almost made up their minds to hit Iran. The reason: they don’t believe America will do it for them. Evans might have seen this article in Ynet News that said the same. (Russia Today reported on this, too. They wouldn’t cite the article, though.)
Israel’s Channel 10 said that putative US President Barack Obama would meet Netanyahu early in the fall. Obama will tell Netanyahu that America will attack Iran if “sanctions” don’t persuade the Iranians to drop their nuclear plans. The target date: June of 2013. But Israel’s Channel 2 said that Obama told Netanyahu not to rely on American help.
Netanyahu might not want to wait that long. The longer Israel waits, the harder the targets will be. Even the Americans know that Israel cannot wait too much longer. They speak of an “immunity zone” that Iran will enter by making its uranium-enrichment and other labs invulnerable to attack.
Sar Kenan. Here Abraham first came into Israel. (Photo: CNAV)
So why haven’t they struck yet? Because the Tzahal brass don’t want to. Furthermore, the people of Israel cannot agree on striking now, or ever. Amir Oren, of Haaretz (“The Land”), told his people to wait. The Iranians, he said, wouldn’t develop a nuclear bomb until they had a missile to carry it to a target in Israel or even America. And Iran is three years away from that. Oren is more afraid that Obama might demand that Israel demolish its experimental nuclear reactor complex in Dimona if Israel drags America into war with Iran.
Haaretz has always stood against war. But even they had an article about Iran’s leaders wiping Israel from the map. (And that comes from Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the real head of state, not the figurehead President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)
Iran’s leaders don’t take Israel seriously. They say that Israel is only waging a psy-op. Netanyahu told this to American Defense Secretary Leon Panetta more than two weeks ago. He also told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that he shouldn’t go to a “non-aligned movement summit” in Iran.
Israel has other reasons not to trust the Americans. Why, for instance, couldn’t the White House Press Secretary answer a simple question about which city is the capital of Israel? In fact, it’s almost as if the US State Department thinks that “Israel” and “Jerusalem” are two different countries.
People of Israel get ready to hunker down
The people of Israel aren’t waiting for Netanyahu or Barak or Obama to make up their minds. They’re getting gas masks and gas-attack antidote kits as fast as the government can make them. They might fear the breakdown of law and order in Syria just as much. But the people of Israel talk about Iran, and the idea of attacking it, all the time. And the number of people against going to war has dropped below fifty percent in the latest polls.
So the people of Israel are getting ready for war, and talking about it. And talking. And talking. But this talk doesn’t seem to have slowed down Jews worldwide from moving to Israel for good. (350 of them landed at Tel Aviv yesterday, in the middle of all the war chatter.)
For earlier articles on Israel and Iran going to war, start here.
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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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“Why, for instance, couldn’t the White House Press Secretary answer a simple question about which city is the capital of Israel?”
Probably because the USA, along with every other government in the world bar one, says it’s Tel Aviv. This is long-standing US policy in accordance with international law. That’s why the US Embassy is still in Tel Aviv. Moving it to Jerusalem, or otherwise accepting Jerusalem as the capital, would just be a needless provocation.
Not according to US law. In 1995, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act and directed the President to move the embassy. For reasons that you’d have to ask them about, Clinton and Bush Jr. never moved the embassy. For his own reasons, Barack H. Obama will not move the embassy. And they’re not the same reasons.
“In 1995, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act and directed the President to move the embassy.”
Not exactly. They asked him to move the Embassy, what with Embassy locations being a presidential decision and not subject to the decisions of Congress. The reason Bush and Clinton didn’t move it is that Jerusalem, under international law, does not belong to Israel and the USA has accepted that ruling.
“For his own reasons, Barack H. Obama will not move the embassy. And they’re not the same reasons.”
How do you know they’re not the same reasons? Obama is no great friend of Israel. So what? Neither was Reagan. US Presidents are not elected to look after small, troublesome countries in the Middle East.
I’ve told you before. Obama is an anti-Semite.
“I’ve told you before. Obama is an anti-Semite.”
You have indeed. I didn’t believe you then and I don’t believe you now. You have no evidence at all for that claim.
Actually I’ll qualify that. It’s not that I don’t believe you; Obama may be an anti-Semite. It’s just that I don’t see any reason to suspect that he is. I know you’ve pointed out that he dislikes Mental Benny Netanyahu, but that hardly makes him part of an isolated minority, does it?
Your argument assumes that Obama’s dislike of Benjamin Netanyahu is strictly personal, and has nothing whatever to do with his being the elected leader of something called “the Republic of Israel.”
I believe that Obama’s dislike of Netanyahu stems entirely from Netanyahu’s refusal to subordinate the security of his people to the wishes and desires of Barack Hussein Obama to curry favor with Muslims. No confidence artist has any affection for the difficult mark.
And there’s more. Remember that photograph from more than a year ago? I do. There sat Obama, turning his face away from Netanyahu, and cradling his chin in his right hand, right forefinger facing Netanyahu but pointed upward, and lips tightly pursed, as if he wanted to say,
Or even,
And here is the best evidence. Any person who would suggest that Israel confine its borders to an out-of-date armistice line, from an armistice the other party to which violated wholesale in a war of annihilation that obviously did not turn out the way the violator planned, is acting from deliberate malice, and not merely from ignorance of history.
“Your argument assumes that Obama’s dislike of Benjamin Netanyahu is strictly personal”
Correct. Many people dislike Benny on a personal level.
“I believe that Obama’s dislike of Netanyahu stems entirely from Netanyahu’s refusal to subordinate the security of his people to the wishes and desires of Barack Hussein Obama to curry favor with Muslims.”
And you’re quite entitled to believe that. You just lack evidence for that belief. Let’s face it: Obama hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to curry favour with our towelhead friends. Gitmo is still open. Hellfires are raining down on the North West Frontier at an accelerated rate. Aggressive generals (first the idiot McChrystal, then the far superior Petraeus) have been appointed to CENTCOM and ISAF. Jihadis – even American Jihadis – are getting Hellfire’d in Yemen. Obama has, in my professional opinion, prosecuted the war against islamism far more aggressively and infinitely more effectively than Bush did.
“And there’s more. Remember that photograph from more than a year ago? I do. There sat Obama, turning his face away from Netanyahu, and cradling his chin in his right hand, right forefinger facing Netanyahu but pointed upward, and lips tightly pursed, as if he wanted to say,
Joooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Or even,
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike!”
Or even, perhaps, “Maniac.” Or “Bigot.” Or “Nutcase.” Or any of the other non-antisemitic epithets that can be legitimately hurled at Mental Benny.
“And here is the best evidence. Any person who would suggest that Israel confine its borders to an out-of-date armistice line, from an armistice the other party to which violated wholesale in a war of annihilation that obviously did not turn out the way the violator planned, is acting from deliberate malice, and not merely from ignorance of history.”
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. As the war in question was started by Israel, however, and many Israeli political and military leaders have admitted that their motivation was territorial gain, it’s not exactly an objective one.
The worst flaw in that last is the idea that Israel started the 1967 War. Israel did no such thing. The casus belli for the initial action (destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground) was the closure of the Straits of Tiran and moving the bulk of the Egyptian Army right to the 1949 Armistice Line, or that portion of it between the Sinai and the Negev. And then when the Israeli planes were returning to base, the Jordanians mistook them for Egyptians coming in to attack, and they attacked across their part of the Armistice Line.
And I suppose that any man attacked, who suddenly decides to counterattack in self-defense, or any man who remembers the history and acts on that memory, can look forward to men like Obama conveniently calling him a maniac, a bigot, or both to the rest of the world. When your erstwhile ally makes absurd demands in the name of “peace,” it is no maniacal act to reject them. It would be a criminally negligent act not to.
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