Vice President Biden Warns Israel Against Attacking Iran - Analysis
By Vusi Moloi © 2009
The United States Vice-President Mr. Joe Biden has warned the Jewish State of Israel against attacking Iran. In a clear departure from policy statements of previous US Administrations (criticized by some for bringing disrepute to the United States), Vice-President Biden sounded the warning in a concise statement “I think he (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) would be ill advised to do that”.
Vice-President Biden was responding to a question on national security on Tuesday by the CNN’s veteran Journalist and Host of The Situation Room Wolf Blitzer who con-anchored the show with Gloria Borger. In dissuading Israel from attacking Iran, Vice-President Biden added, “… my level of concern is no different from what it was a year ago.”
Wolf Blitzer’s line of questioning was motivated by an expressed concern that the new Israeli Government, under the hawkish Prime Minister Netanyahu and his key advisors was inexorably intent on striking Iran’s nuclear development facilities. For his part, Prime Minister Netanyahu had made it a cornerstone of his campaign message that he would order military strikes against Iran once voted into power. Mr. Netanyahu was inaugurated as the new Israeli Prime Minister last week.
Israel’s Nuclear Power
The incoming Prime Minister Netahanyu has characterized Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat to the Jewish state and has vowed never to tolerate a nuclear Iran even though Israel is a nuclear power in the region and has previously collaborated with apartheid South Africa in the Project Phenix in exchange for uranium (despite the United Nations Security Council Resolution 418) which resulted in the explosion of two nuclear bombs on the Antarctica on September 22 1979 near South Africa’s Prince Edward Island an event registered by the US satellite Vela 6911. South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Azis Pahad later confirmed the historic incident in his interview with the Jewish newspaper Haaretz twenty years later. The American Embassy in Pretoria also confirmed the event as well as the retired Central Intelligence Agency Chief Officer Mr. Tyler Drumheller who provides more details in his book On The Brink. Mr. Drumheller lived in South Africa in the 1980s.
Eisenhower Pioneered Iran’s Nuclear Program
The interesting thing is that the US Government of President Dwight Eisenhower pioneered Iran’s nuclear program after the President had delivered his historic speech at the United Nations on December 8 1953 when he spoke about Atoms for Peace which philosophically laid out a strategy for the peaceful use of nuclear technology. A nuclear agreement was signed between Iran and the US in 1957 towards this goal. Iran received a lot of assistance from the US and other European countries as a result. Iran fell out of favour with the US when the Shah, who had signed the nuclear agreements fled for exile on January 16 1979 and his loyalist forces were subdued on February 11 by the forces loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who became the Supreme Leader of Iran under the new Iranian Revolution.
US Change of Strategic Direction
Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that a military strike against suspected facilities of Iran’s nuclear program would set it back by a number of years during which time other punitive actions against Iran would combine to deal a final death blow to the nuclear program. The problem with this approach is that the geo-political strategy may have changed and unless Prime Minister Netanyahu changes with it, he might find himself on a collision course against the steamroller of a new US policy. Should this be the case, then the words spoken by the former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleeza Rice last year about the permanence (or impermanence) of relations become a case in point.
The former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleeza Rice once made an astute observation “The United States believes there is no permanent enemies so it is possible for it to have better relations with countries like Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea”. She was in fact invoking the philosophical principle of a great British Prime Minister of Irish descent Lord Henry John Temple who once said “Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
An indication of change of direction can be partially deduced from President Obama’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Professor Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke has hired an internationally acclaimed Iranian nuclear expert Dr. Vali Nasr as part of his team. Another special advisor to Secretary of State Clinton on the Middle East Dennis Ross has hired an Iranian expert Dr. Ray Takeyh. This seemingly underscores the importance of amicably settling the question of Iran in a credible fashion.
An interesting fact is that the current Iranian nuclear project Busher is permitted under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran is a signatory (Israel is not) and the main concern of the US is that it should not be used for secret development of weapons. This precondition would not be too hard to satisfy should Iran decide to cooperate with the US. There are already signs of a change of direction from snippets when President Obama recently said that Iran must choose between nuclear weapons or nuclear power. This could possibly mean that if Iran guaranteed the non-military use of nuclear technology they would be allowed to go ahead with the nuclear program. Moreover, Iran has more to offer to the US than Israel in terms of natural resources. An alliance with Iran would not be an expense as is the case with Israel but rather a rich investment with many returns.
Could Obama be resuscitating President Eisenhower’s nuclear program with Iran? This may not be related but we know that one of the staunch supporters of President Obama’s election campaign was Suzan Eisenhower (granddaughter of President Eisenhower) and I recall her defending him in a very powerful way during Larry King Live on CNN last year. She absolutely adores President Obama and was one of his early adopters.
The Fundamentals of US-Israeli Relations
The fundamental equation of the relations between US and Israel is premised on a strategic alliance for purposes of advancing the strategic interests of the superior power USA in the Middle East in exchange for guaranteeing the security of Israel. From a business analysis point of view, Israel is an expense to the US given the billions of dollars it receives in foreign aid in lump sums each year from American taxpayers. Sometimes the US Treasury goes into deficit in order to write that big fat cheque to the Jewish state. The only benefit in return, is the surrogate role, which Israel plays in the Middle East on behalf of the US. The parameters of this role are rooted on the ground and not on the abstract. Should the pendulum of US interests change there is a risk that the new Government of Prime Minister Netanyahu might be out of step with the instantaneous changes on the ground effectively spelling its own demise. These things happen and they are a fact of life. Where is Yugoslavia of Slobodan Milošević? Where is Iraq of Saddam Hussein? Where is Czechoslovakia of Vaclav Have? The list is endless. It would be very hard for Israel to make a business case that justifies pursuing actions that are contrary to the interests of the USA unless the Jewish state decides to go it alone without US support.
Can Israel Go it Alone?
It’s inconceivable that the Jewish State could survive without the material support of the USA. Moreover, the timing is presently not right because the urgencies of the economic slowdown inside the US are forcing a review of relations and strategic directions. There was even an unusual case of a GM CEO Rick Wagoner being fired by President Obama. Who would have predicted? Wagoner didn’t see it coming. It would be impossible to go it alone considering that the whole design of the alliance between Israel and US is like an NGO project where a proposal is put forward and if the funder thinks it’s a worthy cause, money comes flowing like milk from a cow udder. What happens when the cow’s udder shuts down? One could be sucking from an udder of a dead cow without knowing it. What happens then (as per an NGO analogy) when the funder no longer thinks it’s a good cause?
Two State Solution
Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to do away with a two state solution, which was laid out in the Annapolis Conference on November 27, 2007 in Maryland. The consensus solution, as organized, architected and envisioned by a US Secretary of State Dr. Condoleeza Rice, calls for a real sovereign State of Palestine. The watered down version of the Two State Solution desired by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his key advisors removes sovereignty from the equation reducing the Palestinian State to an apartheid-era Bantustan homeland since the sovereign functions such as imports and others would be vested with the Jewish State.
Another legal problem facing Prime Netanyahu is that the Obama Administration expects the Jewish State to honour its legal obligations as ratified in the Annapolis Conference and President Obama has signaled his commitment in that direction. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has told the Jewish state that it is in its best interest to accept a Two-State Solution. Already some Jewish observers are reading the writings on the wall whereby a clash of strongly held ideas between Israel and US could lead to the end of Israel as we know it. The Palestinians are the most brutally oppressed human beings on the planet and this may very well have reached a point of saturation with President Obama. He obviously believes that Dr. Condoleezza Rice fashioned a credible framework and wants to build on that.
Jewish Settlements in the West Bank
President Obama has indicated that he is not going to accept any further building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land a position reinforced by US Secretary of State Clinton who has reminded the Jewish state of its international obligations. This puts Prime Minister Netanyahu on a collision course with the Obama Administration since Prime Minister Netanyahu is not averse to the expansion of Jewish settlements. It’s currently estimated that there are more than 500,000 illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in violation of international law. Almost half of these are the direct result of taking land away from the poor Palestinians by the Jewish authorities in favour of the Jewish settlers. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has already made strong statements with respect to the Jewish state’s legal obligations.
Unilateral Military Action Against Iran
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to successfully carry out a military strike of this complex nature without the material and tactical support of the US. In fact President Bush flatly rejected the requests of the Jewish state to attack Iran last year because the US was not willing to provide refueling, airspace and the bunker busting weaponry according to a published report of the New York Times of January 11 2009. Without these three, Prime Minister Netanyahu would be creating a situation that might wind up causing an irreparable damage with respect to the relations between the two countries in which the Jewish state is a junior partner. Prime Minister Netanyahu has referred to the strident tirades of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as evidence that Iran posed an existential threat against the Jewish state. It’s of the essence to take a page from a warrior princess Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Interestingly, Dr. Condoleezza Rice once observed that they needed to take him [President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] at his word but watch his actions, in an interview with Journalist Glenn Beck. This implies that the US does not believe Iran poses a viable threat with its nuclear program hence Israeli’s request for assistance in attacking Iran was turned down, effectively nullifying any argument based on these strident tirades. Better reasons will have to be advanced in order to persuade the US authorities.
In fact the experts say that it was on the advice of the Defense Secretary Robert Gates that President Bush rejected the request from the Jewish state. This would explain why President Obama decided to keep Robert Gates because he is more familiar with the fluid dynamics and intricacies of the situation on the ground and maintains a good rapport with his commanders. Military commanders on the ground like the respected Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Glenn Mullen have already warned against attacking Iran saying it would further destabilize what is already an unstable region. It can be deduced from here that any strike against Iran is potentially hurtful to the US interests something the Obama Administration will not tolerate.
History Lessons
Risking a strategic alliance with the world’s superpower on the need to carry out a preemptive strike against some potential threat weakens the fundamentals of self-preservation and puts at peril the very survival whose objective it’s to safeguard. Since 1945 there have been many holocausts that have neither been addressed nor recompensed an observable fact that has the effect of chipping away at the core ingredients of compassion without which it’s impossible to facilitate the mobilization of strategic alliances in the first place. History is full of many such examples and to avoid another holocaust requires that people form alliances with others so that in the process of advancing other’s interests they are effectively advancing and strengthening their own survival interests.
Conclusion
As an African shepherd boy, I once caught a frog and put it inside ibhodo (a three legged African cast iron pot) and poured cold water in it. I then placed ibhodo on the fire. My reasonable expectation was that the frog would jump out once the water heated. To my amazement, the frog stayed there despite the rising temperatures. By the time everything was said and done, the frog had cooked in the African pot. I drew a harsh lesson from this experimental observation that the inability to detect small changes and act accordingly poses an existential threat against an organism. It’s prudent to put our ear to the ground and listen to the subtle changes and act accordingly.
About the Author
A former South African Television Journalist, Vusi Moloi is a published author of a contextual poetry book, A Goodbye To My Little Troubles, and maintains a blog, Zulumathabo on the Internet.
The United States Vice-President Mr. Joe Biden has warned the Jewish State of Israel against attacking Iran. In a clear departure from policy statements of previous US Administrations (criticized by some for bringing disrepute to the United States), Vice-President Biden sounded the warning in a concise statement “I think he (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) would be ill advised to do that”.
Vice-President Biden was responding to a question on national security on Tuesday by the CNN’s veteran Journalist and Host of The Situation Room Wolf Blitzer who con-anchored the show with Gloria Borger. In dissuading Israel from attacking Iran, Vice-President Biden added, “… my level of concern is no different from what it was a year ago.”
Wolf Blitzer’s line of questioning was motivated by an expressed concern that the new Israeli Government, under the hawkish Prime Minister Netanyahu and his key advisors was inexorably intent on striking Iran’s nuclear development facilities. For his part, Prime Minister Netanyahu had made it a cornerstone of his campaign message that he would order military strikes against Iran once voted into power. Mr. Netanyahu was inaugurated as the new Israeli Prime Minister last week.
Israel’s Nuclear Power
The incoming Prime Minister Netahanyu has characterized Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat to the Jewish state and has vowed never to tolerate a nuclear Iran even though Israel is a nuclear power in the region and has previously collaborated with apartheid South Africa in the Project Phenix in exchange for uranium (despite the United Nations Security Council Resolution 418) which resulted in the explosion of two nuclear bombs on the Antarctica on September 22 1979 near South Africa’s Prince Edward Island an event registered by the US satellite Vela 6911. South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Azis Pahad later confirmed the historic incident in his interview with the Jewish newspaper Haaretz twenty years later. The American Embassy in Pretoria also confirmed the event as well as the retired Central Intelligence Agency Chief Officer Mr. Tyler Drumheller who provides more details in his book On The Brink. Mr. Drumheller lived in South Africa in the 1980s.
Eisenhower Pioneered Iran’s Nuclear Program
The interesting thing is that the US Government of President Dwight Eisenhower pioneered Iran’s nuclear program after the President had delivered his historic speech at the United Nations on December 8 1953 when he spoke about Atoms for Peace which philosophically laid out a strategy for the peaceful use of nuclear technology. A nuclear agreement was signed between Iran and the US in 1957 towards this goal. Iran received a lot of assistance from the US and other European countries as a result. Iran fell out of favour with the US when the Shah, who had signed the nuclear agreements fled for exile on January 16 1979 and his loyalist forces were subdued on February 11 by the forces loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who became the Supreme Leader of Iran under the new Iranian Revolution.
US Change of Strategic Direction
Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that a military strike against suspected facilities of Iran’s nuclear program would set it back by a number of years during which time other punitive actions against Iran would combine to deal a final death blow to the nuclear program. The problem with this approach is that the geo-political strategy may have changed and unless Prime Minister Netanyahu changes with it, he might find himself on a collision course against the steamroller of a new US policy. Should this be the case, then the words spoken by the former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleeza Rice last year about the permanence (or impermanence) of relations become a case in point.
The former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleeza Rice once made an astute observation “The United States believes there is no permanent enemies so it is possible for it to have better relations with countries like Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea”. She was in fact invoking the philosophical principle of a great British Prime Minister of Irish descent Lord Henry John Temple who once said “Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
An indication of change of direction can be partially deduced from President Obama’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Professor Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke has hired an internationally acclaimed Iranian nuclear expert Dr. Vali Nasr as part of his team. Another special advisor to Secretary of State Clinton on the Middle East Dennis Ross has hired an Iranian expert Dr. Ray Takeyh. This seemingly underscores the importance of amicably settling the question of Iran in a credible fashion.
An interesting fact is that the current Iranian nuclear project Busher is permitted under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran is a signatory (Israel is not) and the main concern of the US is that it should not be used for secret development of weapons. This precondition would not be too hard to satisfy should Iran decide to cooperate with the US. There are already signs of a change of direction from snippets when President Obama recently said that Iran must choose between nuclear weapons or nuclear power. This could possibly mean that if Iran guaranteed the non-military use of nuclear technology they would be allowed to go ahead with the nuclear program. Moreover, Iran has more to offer to the US than Israel in terms of natural resources. An alliance with Iran would not be an expense as is the case with Israel but rather a rich investment with many returns.
Could Obama be resuscitating President Eisenhower’s nuclear program with Iran? This may not be related but we know that one of the staunch supporters of President Obama’s election campaign was Suzan Eisenhower (granddaughter of President Eisenhower) and I recall her defending him in a very powerful way during Larry King Live on CNN last year. She absolutely adores President Obama and was one of his early adopters.
The Fundamentals of US-Israeli Relations
The fundamental equation of the relations between US and Israel is premised on a strategic alliance for purposes of advancing the strategic interests of the superior power USA in the Middle East in exchange for guaranteeing the security of Israel. From a business analysis point of view, Israel is an expense to the US given the billions of dollars it receives in foreign aid in lump sums each year from American taxpayers. Sometimes the US Treasury goes into deficit in order to write that big fat cheque to the Jewish state. The only benefit in return, is the surrogate role, which Israel plays in the Middle East on behalf of the US. The parameters of this role are rooted on the ground and not on the abstract. Should the pendulum of US interests change there is a risk that the new Government of Prime Minister Netanyahu might be out of step with the instantaneous changes on the ground effectively spelling its own demise. These things happen and they are a fact of life. Where is Yugoslavia of Slobodan Milošević? Where is Iraq of Saddam Hussein? Where is Czechoslovakia of Vaclav Have? The list is endless. It would be very hard for Israel to make a business case that justifies pursuing actions that are contrary to the interests of the USA unless the Jewish state decides to go it alone without US support.
Can Israel Go it Alone?
It’s inconceivable that the Jewish State could survive without the material support of the USA. Moreover, the timing is presently not right because the urgencies of the economic slowdown inside the US are forcing a review of relations and strategic directions. There was even an unusual case of a GM CEO Rick Wagoner being fired by President Obama. Who would have predicted? Wagoner didn’t see it coming. It would be impossible to go it alone considering that the whole design of the alliance between Israel and US is like an NGO project where a proposal is put forward and if the funder thinks it’s a worthy cause, money comes flowing like milk from a cow udder. What happens when the cow’s udder shuts down? One could be sucking from an udder of a dead cow without knowing it. What happens then (as per an NGO analogy) when the funder no longer thinks it’s a good cause?
Two State Solution
Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to do away with a two state solution, which was laid out in the Annapolis Conference on November 27, 2007 in Maryland. The consensus solution, as organized, architected and envisioned by a US Secretary of State Dr. Condoleeza Rice, calls for a real sovereign State of Palestine. The watered down version of the Two State Solution desired by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his key advisors removes sovereignty from the equation reducing the Palestinian State to an apartheid-era Bantustan homeland since the sovereign functions such as imports and others would be vested with the Jewish State.
Another legal problem facing Prime Netanyahu is that the Obama Administration expects the Jewish State to honour its legal obligations as ratified in the Annapolis Conference and President Obama has signaled his commitment in that direction. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has told the Jewish state that it is in its best interest to accept a Two-State Solution. Already some Jewish observers are reading the writings on the wall whereby a clash of strongly held ideas between Israel and US could lead to the end of Israel as we know it. The Palestinians are the most brutally oppressed human beings on the planet and this may very well have reached a point of saturation with President Obama. He obviously believes that Dr. Condoleezza Rice fashioned a credible framework and wants to build on that.
Jewish Settlements in the West Bank
President Obama has indicated that he is not going to accept any further building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land a position reinforced by US Secretary of State Clinton who has reminded the Jewish state of its international obligations. This puts Prime Minister Netanyahu on a collision course with the Obama Administration since Prime Minister Netanyahu is not averse to the expansion of Jewish settlements. It’s currently estimated that there are more than 500,000 illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in violation of international law. Almost half of these are the direct result of taking land away from the poor Palestinians by the Jewish authorities in favour of the Jewish settlers. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has already made strong statements with respect to the Jewish state’s legal obligations.
Unilateral Military Action Against Iran
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to successfully carry out a military strike of this complex nature without the material and tactical support of the US. In fact President Bush flatly rejected the requests of the Jewish state to attack Iran last year because the US was not willing to provide refueling, airspace and the bunker busting weaponry according to a published report of the New York Times of January 11 2009. Without these three, Prime Minister Netanyahu would be creating a situation that might wind up causing an irreparable damage with respect to the relations between the two countries in which the Jewish state is a junior partner. Prime Minister Netanyahu has referred to the strident tirades of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as evidence that Iran posed an existential threat against the Jewish state. It’s of the essence to take a page from a warrior princess Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Interestingly, Dr. Condoleezza Rice once observed that they needed to take him [President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] at his word but watch his actions, in an interview with Journalist Glenn Beck. This implies that the US does not believe Iran poses a viable threat with its nuclear program hence Israeli’s request for assistance in attacking Iran was turned down, effectively nullifying any argument based on these strident tirades. Better reasons will have to be advanced in order to persuade the US authorities.
In fact the experts say that it was on the advice of the Defense Secretary Robert Gates that President Bush rejected the request from the Jewish state. This would explain why President Obama decided to keep Robert Gates because he is more familiar with the fluid dynamics and intricacies of the situation on the ground and maintains a good rapport with his commanders. Military commanders on the ground like the respected Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Glenn Mullen have already warned against attacking Iran saying it would further destabilize what is already an unstable region. It can be deduced from here that any strike against Iran is potentially hurtful to the US interests something the Obama Administration will not tolerate.
History Lessons
Risking a strategic alliance with the world’s superpower on the need to carry out a preemptive strike against some potential threat weakens the fundamentals of self-preservation and puts at peril the very survival whose objective it’s to safeguard. Since 1945 there have been many holocausts that have neither been addressed nor recompensed an observable fact that has the effect of chipping away at the core ingredients of compassion without which it’s impossible to facilitate the mobilization of strategic alliances in the first place. History is full of many such examples and to avoid another holocaust requires that people form alliances with others so that in the process of advancing other’s interests they are effectively advancing and strengthening their own survival interests.
Conclusion
As an African shepherd boy, I once caught a frog and put it inside ibhodo (a three legged African cast iron pot) and poured cold water in it. I then placed ibhodo on the fire. My reasonable expectation was that the frog would jump out once the water heated. To my amazement, the frog stayed there despite the rising temperatures. By the time everything was said and done, the frog had cooked in the African pot. I drew a harsh lesson from this experimental observation that the inability to detect small changes and act accordingly poses an existential threat against an organism. It’s prudent to put our ear to the ground and listen to the subtle changes and act accordingly.
About the Author
A former South African Television Journalist, Vusi Moloi is a published author of a contextual poetry book, A Goodbye To My Little Troubles, and maintains a blog, Zulumathabo on the Internet.
posted by Vusi Moloi at
7:00 AM
2 Comments:
Interesting post Zulumathabo.
I think that most top Israelis and Americans know that attacking Iran would destabilize the region because it would impose another burden on the Americans who are already spread thin. I also think that the Iranian government knows that attacking Israel would also destabilize the region because it would expose the Iranians to war that they have not experienced for 20 years.
So, given that starting a war would be extremely pointless for both sides, I think that President Ahmedinajad of Iran rails against the Israelis to ingratiate himself with the hard-line clerics that control Iran. I think that Prime Minister Netanyahoo of Israel rails against the Iranians to win points with the hard-line anti-Muslims that support his government. For both politicians, spewing vitriol is a cheap way to score political points.
Having said that, it becomes harder every year for the Israelis to run the last remaining apartheid government on earth. It becomes harder because the Arab:Jew ratio keeps increasing in those lands, and every year that continues, the Arabs get more and more powerful. Israel has run out of countries from which to draw massive Jewish immigration in order to maintain and expand the Jewish side of the ratio. If Israel doesn't share power and land now and do it quickly, their only hope for survival in a generation will be to systematically exterminate the Palestinians. I see this as being very similar to the challenge faced by President F.W. de Klerk in South Africa in the 1980s where the black African population was rising faster than the white African population. Israeli sabre rattling against Iran is no different than South African sabre rattling against Angola and Namibia in the 1980s, and served to rally the conservative base. However, rallying the base cannot change the shifting ratios of Arabs to Jews.
In the presence of shifting demographics, the days of the current power structure are limited. Israel's best hope is to commit to democratic reforms and concede equal status to the Palestinian Arabs in a one-country or a two-country solution, while retaining key economic controls in the background, just as the South Africans have done. That will enable a long but stable transfer of power to the majority, just as in South Africa.
However, having said all of that, don't underestimate the power of AIPAC to maintain the status quo...
Absolutely, the Jewish state understands the stringent consequences of attacking Iran and is equally appreciative of the need not to hurt US interests. The power base of the Arabs is more on the demographics as you pointed out but also on the moral grounds, steel determination and the passage of time. These factors have combined to engender a degree of compassion fatigue towards the Jewish state as it has consistently thwarted good faith attempts of credible men and women who attempted to free Palestinians from the brutal shackles of foreign occupation in their own native land.
There is one image from CNN Live I saw a few years ago that remains edged in my memory where a Palestinian guy bled from Israeli gunshot wounds and the European ladies, working as relief workers, carried him on a stretcher to save him. The Israeli solders burst to the scene and demanded him to be left on the ground. The European ladies refused to leave him there to bleed to death and that began a tug of war. On the one hand they pulled the victim away and on the other hand the Israeli soldiers yanked the victim away. These ladies didn't seem to care about the live ammunition of the Israeli soldiers, as they were fixated on saving the Palestinian guy. I don't know what was the end of that situation but it was too painful to watch. Things like these would come to an end under the Two State Solution. Maybe even the Two State Solution is not a final solution but rather a good faith attempt towards one country where both Jews and Arabs will coexist amicably in mutual trust and respect. They just need to take a page from South Africa and here we are making progress however slow at times. Israelis have nothing to fear from a free Palestine.
The word you used "vitriol" is interesting because whoever relies on it does not believe in it in their heart. They merely use it to ingratiate themselves as you rightly pointed out.
When President Obama addressed the Turkish Parliament he made two important points i.e. (1) the US is not at war with the Muslims and (2) he holds the Jewish state legally bound to fulfill the Annapolis Agreements effectively reversing the policy of the Axis of Evil and injecting a new level of optimism on the long overdue Palestinian question. In fact he indicated that he is taking the Palestinian project as his own personal project, which he will see to it that it succeeds. The great warrior princess Dr. Condoleezza Rice will be vindicated and have her place in history rightfully restored if President Obama successfully gives birth to the brand new baby of the sovereign Palestinian State with its own contiguous pre-1967 borders.
For their part, the Israelis are very smart people whom I respect greatly and have some of the best intellectuals who can steer them in the right direction so that they don't commit national suicide on this important issue. The South African case of economic apartheid is finally going to be addressed after 15 years under the forthcoming President Zuma. Even though issues of racism are painful realities, the most difficult part of social justice is economically liberating people from the shackles of poverty and this usually triggers the forces of reaction from the white establishment. It will be interesting to see how things unfold on the ground., the Jewish state understands the stringent consequences of attacking Iran and is equally appreciative of the need not to hurt US interests. The power base of the Arabs is more on the demographics as you pointed out but also on the moral grounds and the passage of time. These factors have combined to engender a degree of compassion fatigue towards the Jewish state as it has consistently thwarted good faith attempts of credible men and women attempting to free Palestinians from the brutal shackles of foreign occupation in their own native land.
The word you used "vitriol" is interesting because whoever relies on it does not believe in it in their heart. They merely use it to ingratiate themselves as you rightly pointed out.
When President Obama addressed the Turkish Parliament he made two important points i.e. (1) the US is not at war with the Muslims and (2) he holds the Jewish state legally bound to fulfill the Annapolis Agreements effectively reversing the policy of the Axis of Evil and injecting a new level of optimism on the long overdue Palestinian question. In fact he indicated that he is taking the Palestinian project as his own personal project, which he will see to it that it succeeds. The great warrior princess Dr. Condoleezza Rice will be vindicated and have her place in history rightfully restored if President Obama successfully gives birth to the brand new baby of the sovereign Palestinian State with its own contiguous pre-1967 borders.
For their part, the Israelis are very smart people whom I respect greatly and have some of the best intellectuals who can steer them in the right direction so that they don't commit national suicide on this important issue. The South African case of economic apartheid is finally going to be addressed after 15 years under the forthcoming President Zuma. Even though issues of racism are painful realities, the most difficult part of social justice is economically liberating people from the shackles of poverty and this usually triggers the forces of reaction from the white establishment. It will be interesting to see how things unfold on the ground.
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