"Israel and Iran" By Richard Sale

I have listened to Wolf, and Andria Mitchell, both such meager fires, and to many, too many, who are hostile to the Iran Deal.

With all due respect, I believe that the primary am of Israel’s foreign policy is to make the world safe for Israel. Israeli society, which manifests many layers of uncertainty, has made ceaseless efforts to secure Israel’s national safety, yet many of those efforts have rendered the Middle East unstable.

Israel doesn’t seem to realize, in any articulate way, that its own predominance in the region has acted to destabilize it.  Israel’s nuclear arsenal has perhaps made it feel safe and impervious, but the race for nuclear arms, mounted by its rivals in the region, were the result of that arsenal. A lot of Israel’s actions seem to aim at inspiring fear rather than confidence. Israel’s leaders often  complains of encirclement, just as the Germans used to do. Encirclement is the product of its geographical location. It was an unintended effect of Israel’s founding. To  complain about it, seems me to an attempt renege on your establishment in the region. 

To Israel, it would appear that force or the threat of force remain the main ingredients of negotiation.  Israeli leaders believe that their country is  “encircled,” forgetting that their methods and intimidations have produced this condition. Man is by nature, addicted to slandering what it doesn’t understand and dislikes. Unfortunately, But Israel’s enormous national self satisfaction renders its leaders blind and obstinate. We see in Israel’s rhetoric, dishonesty, exaggeration, recklessness, impatience, emotionalism,  and in may instances, outright lying. We observe little better in the U.S. Congress.

Diplomacy

The power of putting yourself in another’s place makes diplomacy possible. Israel consistently lacks that power. Israel has no patience or sympathy for any nation that differs with it. Israel’s national conceit results in its losing interest in the psychology of its rivals, such as Iran. Israel makes little effort to divest itself from its own national prejudices to try and accommodate,  understand and study Iran’s prejudices,. its habits of thought --  its magnificent colure, its flawed beliefs and myths. Instead Israeli leaders habitually call them wicked and  threat to Israel’s existence. 

It should be recalled that the Israelis and the Iranians differ not only in race, but also in spirit. Both are he product of  race plus culture. In other words, it is incontestable that some of the spiritual features of a race owe their conditions to the environment in which both races have grown up and developed. Both suffer from ineradicable prejudices and such embedded prejudices cannot be measured by reason. It is claimed that both nations are bent on subjugating the world.  Neither can do it.

But why should Iran live a national life where its’ population and culture has been branded second class, where the very constitution of Iran’s political life  is riddled with wickedness without end.

As to the Republican opposition on the U.S. Congress, Israel, like the United States, obtains its U.S. allies on this basis, buy the man, and if he doesn’t sell, buy the man above him.. The Republican response to President Obama’s attempt to reach a deal with Iran  exhibits a boundless national pride, which is the cheapest pride there is. (Think of Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham.)

 and its relation to Israel, it comes to this: buy the man, and if he doesn’t sell, you buy the man above him. The Republican response to President Obama’s attempt to reach a deal with Iran  exhibits a boundless national pride, which is the cheapest pride there is. (Think of Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham.)

No country, except America, likes to throw the word ““terrorism” around unrestrainedly as Israel does. But we should remember that it was Israel that founded Hamas, and it later branded Hamas a terrorist group, because it couldn’t use it effectively for its own aims. To this day, few Israel leaders admit their own role in originating it. Israel likes to call any rival a “terrorist,”  while it habitually uses targeted assassinations to carry out its aims

As for Congressional opposition to the U.S. deal with Iran, we should remember that many of the members of Congress, have the IQ of toe fungus, and thus, we should lower our expectations.

 

Comments

[jdledell]

Richard - A couple of comments on your insightful article. First, you make a comment that "Israel has no patience or sympathy for any nation that differs with it" Let me clarify - Israel has no patience or sympathy for anyone. Everyone else is Goyim, neither requiring or deserving patience and sympathy. It doesn't matter if the goyim are Palestinian or American you are all the same. Even when Israel sends it's famed medical disaster teams to far flung natural disaster, it's not done out of concern of the goyim affected but how well the PR teams that go with them can wring out some positive publicity for Israel.

I've written extensively about the exploits of my Irgun grandfather. He was a stone cold killer both of British soldiers but also Arab civilians. He used fertilizer bombs in Arab marketplaces to sow fear amount the native Arab population. His job after WWII was to clear out Jaffa of it's Arab populations so it could be absorbed by Jewish Tel Aviv. Many, if not most of those Jaffa Arabs ended up in Gaza. Yet to this day I cannot get any of the Israelis I know to admit we used terrorism to get our way, no different than Muslim terrorists. It was only late in life he realized the enormous depravity of his actions. He left Israel and spent the last few years of his life begging G-D for forgiveness.

In my mind, Israel and it's people suffer from a collective mental illness. It originated in the pogroms Jews suffered over the centuries with the Shoah being the straw that broke a people. The Us versus the World permeates every aspect of Jewish Israeli life, religion and politics.

[HankP]

Richard Sale -

Interesting piece. I think Israel, like a lot of countries, is trapped by the political language their politicians use, specifically the inculcation of fear as a primary motivation for policy. Fear is a horrible basis for decision making.

[euclidcreek]

Interesting article, my question: is Israel a mental illness and/or a criminal organization?

[confusedponderer]

Richard,
I had the same thought about Israel and Wilhelm II's Germany - militarist to the core, permanent and actually justified (Bismarck was a wiser man that Wilhelm) fear of encirclement and two front wars and prone to subordinate the political to the military every time.

Wilhelm II's magnificent Imperial German Army marched through neutral Belgium to get et France because it was militarily effective in face of the mechanics of mobilisation, and they needed to beat France first and fast to be ale to deal with Russia in the East. No second thought about the political, or rather, military victory would solve the political problems, so why bother.

In Israel, whether they marched though Lebanon to get at the PLO (learning to know the Shia, soon to their chagrin, who didn't have a beef with Israel before) or go to Tunis for it, or assassinate some PLO type in Jordan, or a HAMAS guy in Dubai, or assassinate a Syrian minister in Syria - because it was militarily effective. No second thought about the political.

And on the Israeli right wing, now in government, you now have folks who more or less overtly call for a final solution of the Palestinian Question. Perhaps they could send them all to Madagascar, where they could become a New Israel.

With Imperial Germany the idea at least was to get out of it victorious on their own.

Israel has always needed an uncle sugar to realise and help fund their oversized ambitions - first France (sho sold them arms, lent a hand against Egypt and helped them get nukes), then the US (who give them arms, provide political cover in their little excesses and do as if they don't notice the nukes).

As for America's similarily shallow conceit - the problem for loons like Miss Graham and Bomber McCain is that the US didn't defeat Iran, because the US in their view should have. Their idea of diplomacy is not negotiation and give and take, not even using orange sticks and call them carrots, but coercion and diktat all the way. Compromise would only betray weakness!

In a sense, they reflect the same approach that Israel uses in their relations with their neighbour: Sending love messages by JDAM - the morse code is in the sequence of explosions.

In essence, America has Israelised it's foreign policy. The name of the malady is militarism.

[turcopolier]

jdledell

"begging G-D for forgiveness" The middle letter is absent as a sign of respect for the deity? Would you care to re-write this for me as a front page post? pl

[BabelFish]

Thank you for stating plainly what so many of us believe.

[BabelFish]

This is profound, as a personal testimony. My deepest thanks for your sharing.

[William R. Cumming]

Great post IMO! Some dupication in it.

Iran has announced that despite the nuclear agreement the USA still THE GREAT SATAN [and Israel the LITTLE SATAN?]!

I have mentioned before on comments that in my view Israel is a PROTECTORATE of the US to which some disagree. The principle reason is that PROTECTORATES usually follow the instructions of the PROTECTOR to survive. SINCE FOR VARIOUS REASONS THE US NEVER INSTRUCTS ISRAEL [at least in public] TO DO ANYTHING ISRAEL IS NOT A US PROTECTORATE.

This is ridiculous since even the PLUTONIUM with which Israel built its first bombs came from the USA. As many as 20% of Israel's citizens carry dual-citizenship with the USA. And the USA subsidizes Israel weapons and armed forces to the extent of $3B per annum. Israel's organized criminal operations are deeply linked with US [and Russian?] organized crime.

So here is what I would publically announce if President of the US or a candidate for that office!

1. In agreeing to establishment of the State of Israel and its recognition the US did not agree to Israel expanding beyond the 1948 borders.

2. US FP is bases largely on the 1st Amendment of the CONSTITUTION and Israel is a theocracy and therefor the US will apply economic sanctions and reduce all subsidies to the State of Israel. And even before that happens the US will provide the American electorate with a list by Nation-State including Israel of all economic subsidies from the US to all Nation-States. The listing at first would be direct subsidies only but later expand to indirect also.

3. The US would insist that AIPAC register under FARA.

4. Israel will not conduct any military offensive operations outside of the 1967 borders without prior notification and approval of the US.

5. Israel will accept UN Recognition of the State of Palestine.

6. No citizen of Israel will be confirmed in any PAS [Presidential appointed Senate confirmed] position.

7. US Federal Reserve actions involving Israel will be a matter of public record 180 days following that action.

8. Israel will explain its role in the LIBERTY events and furnish all records that exist to the US Navy for appropriate action by the NAVY!

9. Announce that JONATHAN POLLARD's conviction was directly related to the NATIONAL SECURITY of the US and no clemency or pardon will be forthcoming.

10. Israeli citizens traveling to the USA will no longer receive visa-free travel to the USA even if dual citizens of the US.

Comments? Suggestions? Criticisms?

[Cee]

Richard,

All that is left to be said is that Israel supports ISIS and any other terrorist group yet to be formed, at our expense.

Iraeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu would like to see the al-Qaeda spin-off ISIS attack Iran in a repeat of the Iran-Iraq War, a conflict that lasted eight years and cost Iraq 500,000 lives and Iran more than 750,000.

Netanyahu told the United States to stay out of the fight currently developing in Iraq and allow both sides to annihilate each other. “Don’t strengthen either of them. Weaken both,” he advised.

When are we going to stop being led around by them?

[jdledell]

Pat - You are right that we don't spell out the Name out of respect. I learned to do so as a child and now it's a habit that I can't shake even though I have become much more secular as I get older. Since I am leaving on vacation later this morning and will be traveling, I'll have to take a pass on rewritten my comment.

[Babak Makkinejad]

US Electorate will not stand for any of your suggestions - however sensible some or all of them may be - in my opinion.

[BabelFish]

WRC, no crticisms, particularly on #s 7, 8 & 9.

On #4, what is the 'or else'?

[Richard Sale]

I just want to make sure that I am not in the least anti-Semitic. I grew up studying the Old testament. I loved the Hebrew Prophets like Amos, Jeremia and Hosea.

My closest friend during my college years was Mike Huberman, who taught Comparative Literature at Harvard. He is my son's godfather. His godmother was Judy Wyler, the daughter of William Wyler the outstanding film director.

Two of my children are half-Iranian. My half Iranian son, a composer for Hollywood scores, married a lovely Jewish girl and their children are being raised in the Jewish faith. I am thrilled by that.

The early Zionist leaders displayed some sympathy for Arabs. It appears that sympathy has dried up.

being raised by abusive parents, I was tempted to reproduce the very things that I had suffered from and rebelled against.

the God is Israel is a just God.

Richard

[Richard Sale]

Israel's militarism is its glory but also its curse.

Excellent insights,

Richard

[Richard Sale]

There is hope. I more and more get comments from American Jews about Israel's fiercely right wing government.

for years I worked for the Abraham Fund, a group that was trying to expand the rights of Israeli Arabs. I soon found that the ARabs were never invited.

and after putting together a formal dinner whose head table speaker was Martin Indyk, I was forced to eat in the kitchen with the secretaries, both of us deemed lesser beings.

and the Netanyahu government is trying to curtail the rights of Israel's Arabs.

Richard

[LeaNder]

Richard, first of all, I am not really present, and this is a private message.

Two minor things anyway?

"It should be recalled that the Israelis and the Iranians differ not only in race, but also in spirit."

This could lead us into a bigger "nature versus culture" debate, in other words, do we as being born somewhere or in whatever skin or nation have some type of biological ingredients that force us to be anything specifically? Really? Don't we all one way or another have to deal with the realities around us?

I am aware in the US the usage of the term race is not much of a problem as it would be over here in Germany. Maybe even less after the "Bell Curve" wisdom. I have no idea. Meaning, I didn't look into American reception.

Apart from the above, I am a fan of words with simple messages like "colure". Since they with their very existence signify something like an ideal space of communication without misunderstandings. But, mo doubt it is also a tool that should be handled with care.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colure

[Imagine]

"It is claimed that both nations are bent on subjugating the world. Neither can do it."

You base this on marketing perceptions. Israel, English, grandmasters. Iran, Farsi, journeymen. I believe you're inaccurate on both counts.

Iran has consistently advised settling matters of international dispute through peaceful democracy: let the people hold a referendum, and then respect their wishes. MENWFZ, Gaza, etc. The claim that Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map has been a trumpeted, highly successful canard of the Zionist P.R. machine.

Various Zionists, on the other hand, DID successfully: (1) plan and trigger the American invasion of Iraq, taking America from ~$7T to ~$12T in debt and sending it into an exponential tailspin; (2) take effective command & control of the world's largest/most powerful employer, the U.S. gov't + military; (3) steal nuclear triggers from America and form a formidable rogue nuclear arsenal with full delivery capability; (4) create apartheid laws constantly condemned by the U.N. and hold over a million women & children hostage behind barbed wire, on survival calories and inadequate water; and (5) take over and hypnotize the mainstream media so much that not only do they CONTINUE to GET AWAY WITH THESE, they do NOT EVEN REACH AWARENESS.

When the Senate passes resolutions giving Israel a blank check, with 100% in favor, and no one even blinks, you have a Perfectly-Whipped Nation PWN.

The current Yahoo conversation is, Gosh, if Israel tried to bomb Iran and start WWIII, would we maybe try to stop them? Think about this--it's like asking "if my psychotic mistress bought a gun and planned to shoot up the town, would I maybe speak up against her?". Pathetic. The military is smart enough to put an early warning system smack in the middle of Israel [for OUTgoings], and the President is smart enough to stand up. Everyone else looks pretty much 'whipped. The Zionists have already won the last five rounds, and you don't even notice.

[Babak Makkinejad]

بسم‌الله‌الرّحمن‌الرّحیم‌
اِذا جآءَ نَصرُاللهِ وَ الفَتح. وَ رَاَیتَ النّاسَ یَدخُلونَ فى دینِ اللهِ اَفواجًا. فَسَبِّح بِحَمدِ رَبِّکَ وَ استَغفِرهُ اِنَّهُ کانَ تَوّابًا

Quran - Surah Nasr (1-3)

In the name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.
When God's succour and the triumph cometh
And thou seest mankind entering the religion of God in multitudes,
Then hymn the praises of thy Lord, and seek forgiveness of Him. Lo! He is ever ready to accept repentance.

[Valissa]

Great post Richard!

Retired Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar has a post that complements this one well. He is chastising Indian foreign policy re: Israel and Iran, and many of his points have a familiar ring to them. I have included a few relevant excerpts but the whole post is well worth reading.

Move over Israel, it’s time for Iran http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2015/07/17/move-over-israel-its-time-for-iran/
But the fundamental question here is why the Indian foreign-policy establishment has to be more loyal to the “cause” than the neocons in America themselves. It boggles the mind. By all means, be “pro-(neocon) America”, be “pro-Israeli”, but should it be at the cost of being “pro-Indian”? …

The fatcats in the Indian establishment are beholden to Israel from where we buy billions of dollars worth weapons. We may never know how thick was the creamy layer in all those arms deals by way of kickbacks, but it must be very substantial, considering that the Indian and Israeli elites are both notoriously corrupt.

Put differently, vested interests have formed within the Indian establishment and like the monkey in the old fable, no one in our capital city today wants to say, hear or speak a bad word about Israel. Even the corporate media have caught on.
----------

Hey Babak, when I saw that MKB called out the neocons in his gov't I thought of you. IIRC, this is part of a pattern of neo-con friends in high places in the gov't of US allies that you have pointed out in the past.

[Babak Makkinejad]

My understanding has been that Hindu Indians in high-places are in awe of Israel.

And they are emotionally attracted to yet another country which has problems with the Muslim World.

India surely gained nothing in this Iranian Nuclear Saga; they were one of the losers and thus silent when the agreement came out. I think they are in the state of Strategic Shock.

[Swami Bhut Jolokia]

...many of the members of Congress, have the IQ of toe fungus...

This is a family blog--there's no need to insult fungi.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Well, I for like the fact of existence of different races:

http://beauty-around.com/en/tops/item/59-samyue-krasivyie-swedki

http://girlspics01.blogspot.com/2013/07/iranian-girls.html

http://hotisraeligirls.tumblr.com/

http://thechive.com/2015/01/10/from-asia-with-love-50-photos/

Reminds me of the Medieval Persian Romance of "Haft Peykar" - where the Emperor had 7 wives from seven different races.

It must have been good to be the King.

[David Habakkuk]

Richard,

You write:

'It should be recalled that the Israelis and the Iranians differ not only in race, but also in spirit. Both are he product of race plus culture. In other words, it is incontestable that some of the spiritual features of a race owe their conditions to the environment in which both races have grown up and developed. Both suffer from ineradicable prejudices and such embedded prejudices cannot be measured by reason. It is claimed that both nations are bent on subjugating the world. Neither can do it.'

I am not sure what is implicit in this reference to 'race'.

As you obviously know, the opposition to the Balfour Declaration in the British Government was led by Edwin Montagu, then the sole Jewish member of the Cabinet. At the time he had just been appointed Secretary of State for India, in which capacity he was instrumental in the concessions to Indian nationalisms embodied in the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms.

It might be said of him that he had 'done the state some service.' But a crucial point of his the memorandum 'on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government' he submitted to the Cabinet on 23 August 1917 related to questions implicit in the Shakespearean quote.

(https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Montagumemo.html .)

It is in fact a classic statement of what I call the 'Dreyfusard' conception of Jewish identity. What Montagu did not want was to be seen as a kind of 'Moor' whose skills might be useful to Britain, but who did not really belong.

It was a central part of this 'Dreyfusard' response that Jews should serve their native countries in time of war – which is a matter central to Montagu's memorandum.

At the start of the Second World War, Montagu's nephew, Ewen Montagu, was in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He was clearly eminently happy to fight, but the Director of Naval Intelligence, John Godfrey, could see that the skills of a first-class criminal barrister were better employed than in fighting.

Many young American as well as British men came alive and intact off beaches in Sicily because of the tender loving care which Ewen Montagu devoted to diddling the Germans into believing that the Allied invasion would come in Sardinia and Greece.

As a young man, I knew two Jews who, as young men, had made it over here shortly
before the war, one from Czechoslovakia, the other from Germany. Both ended up as (distinguished) scholars of German literature.

I remember watching the hand of one of them curled round a pipe – and noting two missing fingers. As I learned later, this was the result of an ultimate narrow escape, when the Wellington bomber in which he was 'tail end Charlie' had been shot down over the Atlantic, and the survivors rescued by pure fluke after a cold night in a dinghy by a British vessel returning from a secret mission in Spain.

As to the other, we knew when growing up that he had made it here after spending six weeks in Buchenwald after Kristallnacht, and then been interned in the Isle of Man. He told us he had spent the war in the Pioneer Corps, digging.

Only after his death did I learn that he had actually been one of the German emigres recruited into the Trent Park surveillance operation, in which captured senior German officers were bugged with a positively Soviet thoroughness. What we also learned was that his father had distinguished himself in the Imperial German Army in the First World War. So he would have been listening to descriptions of the Holocaust from people who might have been his father's comrades.

What I also learned is that both of these men said, in different contexts, that the full absurdity of the Holocaust lay in the fact that European Jews had practically nothing in common.

The former of them, J.P. Stern, wrote a notable short study entitled 'Hitler, The Führer and the People'. In the concluding chapter, entitled 'Conquest and Annihilation', he develops this argument, and goes to explain why, in the world created by the emancipation of Jews that arose from the Enlightenment, the notion of a coherent Jewish identity was nonsense. And he writes:

'They were still discernible and distinct in every profession as it opened up to receive them. Yet to many intellectuals it looked as though in another generation or two the ''Jewish problem'' would be superseded by complete assimilation. What was needed, for a man like Hitler on one side of the argument, or for Theodor Herzl, the creator of modern Zionism, on the other – was the creation of a distinct Jewish image – an image which would have to be very largely the opposite of the reality which the one wished to destroy and the other to save.

But precisely therein lies the tragedy – a fact which some American and British Jews can see clearly, but so many others cannot. It is Hitler's myth-making which has appeared to vindicate that of Herzl.

As a result, we are seeing the creation of a 'distinct Jewish image'. All the 'Dreyfusard' Jews, clearly, were not really Jewish.

I could go through a long list, but, for reasons I brevity, I will summarise thus: forget Billy Wilder, a clear case of 'galut'. The true, the authentic Jew, is Binyamin Netanyahu – or Sheldon Adelson – or Rabbi Smuley Boateach – or David Brooks – or Jeffrey Goldberg.

Like many Englishmen of my generation, I am in substantial measure the product of 'Dreyfusard' Jewish culture. Both writers, musicians and artists I have loved, and people I have known personally and greatly admired, indeed sometimes loved, come from this culture.

As to what Zionism has become, however, it is a complete negation of this culture. If indeed we are asked to conduct an argument on the basis of the premise that to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic, then, of course, I am perfectly happy to plead guilty to anti-Semitism.

And indeed, if I ever got to be accused of anti-Semitism by Abe Foxman, I would wear it as a battle honour. Fame at last, I would say.

[William R. Cumming]

Termination of all military to military programs and/or ammunition and ordnance resupply!

[BabelFish]

Good to see you post, my friend.