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LETTERS / Is This Who We Want Deciding Whether America Fights Her Fifth War in a Generation in the Mideast?

Dear Editor,

“Our congress” is currently considering a law handing the decision on war to Netanyahu/Israel who has said: “This is 1938. Iran is Germany.” Senators whose loyalty to Israel overrides their oath to America want to vote Israel a blank check for war on Iran: “If Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” America “should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military and economic support to Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence.”

Is this who we want deciding whether America fights her fifth war in a generation in the Mideast? Do we want to outsource the decision on war in the Persian Gulf to an Israeli regime whose leaders compare Iran, where Jews live unmolested, to Nazi Germany? The bill says Iran has a “nuclear weapons program” yet American intelligence has often declared “with high confidence” that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

If AIPAC succeeds in herding our cowardly, corrupt politicians into war against Iran for Israel, it would become another Israeli war fought by America and you’d be smeared as “anti-Semitic” to blame Israel for it.  Those arguing for these wars make it completely clear who the warmongers are. Its no more “anti-Semitic” to oppose Israeli aggression than it’s anti-American to oppose American aggression. Citizens aren’t synonymous with state.

Israel has said for years that Iran, a faith–based government, is months away from having nuclear weapons yet Iran’s Religious leaders have consistently forbidden making, stockpiling or using nukes over many decades; it violates Islamic doctrine.

Israel accuses Iran of seeking what Israel already has: nuclear bombs. Many are unaware that it’s against the law for “our Congress” to provide aid to any nation that hasn’t signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) yet every year “our government” gives Israel more than three billion/year in direct financial aid and latest-generation military equipment in spite of Israel’s continual to refuse to sign the NPT. Iran has signed the NPT and is regularly inspected by the UN. We’re sold paranoia by the Israel–first cheerleaders who want us to join them rushing into another AIPAC sponsored war to benefit a few.

Israel throws around phrases like Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons,” which Iran denies and for which Israel’s former defense minister admitted there’s no proof. Iran has international legal rights to develop nuclear technology.  Israel has created and maintains a large nuclear arsenal in direct violation of international law.

Netanyahu neglects to mention that Israel has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran, whereas Iran, when translated accurately, has made no such threats against Israel.  The bombing of nuclear sites in Iran could kill and/or maim many thousands of people from radioactive fallout; it’s equal to Israel threatening genocide.

In 2003 Iran sent a proposal to America through the Swiss embassy suggesting the possibility of peace with America and Israel. Both countries have a history of dealing aggressively with Iran, yet that proposal demonstrated that Iranian leaders can imagine recognizing Israel and they’re interested in diplomacy. Baby Bush threw this proposal in the trash.

 The repeated theme is that Iran wants to destroy Israel, has a nuclear weapons program and that its intentions are aggressive. There’s no evidence for these points. America’s intelligence community says Iran has no plans for a nuclear weapon or a program to develop one. Iran hasn’t threatened to attack Israel; it hasn’t attacked anyone for several hundred years. Israel has a history of aggression.

How can Iran, surrounded by enemies, be a threat? Israel, with its several hundred secret nukes, could destroy Iran almost instantly if Netanyahu gave the order. Netanyahu is crazier than a football bat and the obvious, outspoken threat to peace.

Netanyahu says that Iran refuses to recognize Israel suggesting that this attitude is genocidal. Netanyahu refuses to recognize Palestine. Is he being genocidal toward the Palestinians?

Netanyahu complains that Iran’s Religious Leader called the Israelis names; saying they’re “rabid dogs”, are doomed to failure and that they “cannot be called humans.” During the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006, the Israeli UN ambassador called Hezbollah “animals.”

Aggression as a policy always fails. America hypocritically talks of peace, but acts aggressively world wide, backs other states that do and is failing. Israel has aggressively and repeatedly attacked its neighbors for territory and control. Israeli policies are super-nationalistic, belligerent, and their state can’t long survive if they continue those policies.

Israel complains that Iran supplies the Lebanese with rockets, which is true, but since Israel keeps invading Lebanon, tried to annex Lebanon’s territory and occupied it for 18 years, it’s inevitable that Lebanon would act to stop Israeli aggression. The only large-scale use of those rockets by the Lebanese was in self-defense. In 2006, Israel’s bombing raids wiped out 20 years of economic progress in Lebanon. The Israelis dropped a million cluster bombs on Lebanon, another Israeli war crime, since they were clearly targeting civilians: Hezbollah has also used rockets offensively, but not on a significant scale and not since 2006.

If Israel wants Iran to stop supplying rockets, the best way to accomplish that is to pursue peace with the Lebanese. Israel still occupies Lebanese land, routinely threatens Lebanon, flies over it, bombs it, and has threatened to prevent Lebanon from developing the natural gas off Lebanon’s coast.

America and Israel, disguised as civilized democracies, choose aggression and colonialism for a variety of reasons. The thieves creating these policies are the monsters you “vote” for because you choose to believe their lies. Until your conscience, intelligence and compassion determine your vote, you’re their accomplice.

 Zionism, Israel’s founding ideology, is a nationalistic, belligerent, political movement, as was Nazism, put into action by a minority of Jews. The time has long past to wake up to America’s Zionist problem.

 Craig Dudley