Among the articles and snippets of news I read this
week I singled out one brief sub-column to include in my opening remarks. It
concerns two stone figurines discovered during construction work carried out
near Tel Moza west of Jerusalem.
The figurines, one carved from limestone the other from dolomite clearly represent
a ram and a buffalo. They were crafted by Neolithic hunters between 9,000 and
9,500 years ago. .
Presumably, the
figurines were a kind of talisman to ensure successful hunting. It seems that
human beings, ancient and modern, have always preferred to leave little to
chance. Nowadays, people embarking on a journey might prefer to keep a St
Christopher or a blessing for the road on the dashboard. If they go fishing or
hunting some might choose to keep a rabbit's foot or other good luck charm
handy. However, in order to predict the future other means are available. Some
time ago I wrote about one of them.
"About forty or fifty years ago visitors to Nazareth would often seek out an Arab woman famed
for her skill in fortune telling. I believe she met her clients in a coffee
shop near the Church of the Annunciation. I don’t know whether she read palms,
coffee cups or Tarot cards; however her reputation as a fortune teller was
widespread. People came from all over Israel to ‘consult her’. Her
predictions for better or for worse were either believed or shrugged off as
nonsense. With the passage of time the coffee shop became a restaurant and the
fortune teller was heard of no more."
Analysts, political
strategists and even run-of-the-mill casual observers, anxious to know what the
Netenayahu-Barak duo is up to are advised to read “
Israel Today(Israel Hayom)” a free Hebrew language daily launched five
years ago by American business magnate Sheldon Adelson. The paper’s owner and
editorial board are staunch supporters of
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Haaretz
political analyst Amos Harel claims a scrutiny of Israel Today front-page headlines can
offer clues to Netanyahu's intentions, especially on the crucial issue of
whether to attack Iran.
Much the same as Tom Friedman echoes President Barack Omaba’s opinions in the New
York Times. Shaman’s
in this part of the world and in other places once examined anomalies in
the entrails of goats and sheep to
predict or divine future events The
practice was first common in ancient Mesopotamian, Hittite and Canaanite
temples. . Saul sought the witch
at Ein Dor who conjured up the spirit of Samuel who prophesised his defeat in
battle.
Harel says, “In
recent weeks, Israel Today has featured a barrage of worrying reports on
Iran's nuclear progress and Washington's failure to
halt it. But over the last few days, something interesting has happened: Last
Friday, the paper instead highlighted a statement by Gen. Martin Dempsey,
chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he doesn't want America to be ‘complicit’
in an Israeli attack on Iran right now. The International Atomic Energy
Agency's disturbing report on Iran's
nuclear program got second billing. On Sunday, Iran was mostly
relegated to the daily’s inside pages. On Monday, it returned to the headlines,
but only in the form of Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz's
vague statement that the IDF can act ‘anywhere, anytime.’”
Harel interprets
the alternate increasing and decreasing of the war rhetoric as an indication that
Netanyahu is seeking a way to retreat without loss of face.
“Netanyahu and
Barak have been ratcheting up the pressure. But they appear to have overplayed
their hand. The result has been a tougher American stance that has led Israel to calm
down a bit, as reflected in recent reports that Barak has changed his mind and
now opposes attacking at this time. Thus many officials now believe an attack
is not as inevitable as it previously seemed. “
Harel offers his
damage assessment of the Netanyahu-Barak sabre-rattling.
“In the best
case, described as a possibility in a leak Monday to the New York Times,
President Barack Obama will publicly set red lines and promise to attack if Iran
crosses them. In the worst case, he will make do with vague generalities about Iran - but will
certainly remember to settle accounts with Netanyahu if he is re-elected. Either
way, it's hard to dismiss the damage the recent outpouring of Israeli verbiage
has done to our strategic relationship with America. “
A lead article in
The Economist this week concluded
much the same, “Israel’s prime minister, seems to have signalled that he will wait
at least until after the American presidential election before deciding whether
to bash Iran’s nuclear facilities. He let it be known that he expects Barack
Obama, in return, to toughen his line on Iran
by issuing something close to an ultimatum to the Islamic Republic that, if it
still refuses to curb its nuclear programme and provide for intrusive
monitoring and verification, the United States will take military
action itself.”
The paper mentioned
the ever mounting speculation that Netanyahu viewed the American pre-election
period as the best time to attack, despite Obama’s evident discouragement, on
the presumption that no candidate could be seen to condemn, let alone abandon,
Israel. Mitt Romney accused Obama of weakness towards Iran and of “throwing allies like Israel under
the bus”. “Furthermore,” continues the speculative opinion mentioned by the Economist “If Israel
were to strike at Iran, hawks on both sides of the Atlantic hope that America
would be drawn in militarily, aiming its own far bigger firepower at the
Iranian sites.”
Referring to the
considerable opposition to an Israeli unilateral attack on the Iranian nuclear
facilities voiced by past security and intelligence directors, the paper was amazed that, “This strangely
public controversy over the most secret of national decisions included a
petition by authors and artists denying Netanyahu’s right to decide whether to
attack Iran. Nine members of his own parliamentary party then issued a
counter-petition eagerly upholding his right and duty to do so. A senior former
judge, Eliyahu Winograd, who headed an inquiry into Israel’s war in Lebanon in
2006, weighed in with a blistering broadcast swipe at Messrs Netanyahu and
Barak, urging them not to ‘endanger the future of Israel’ and risk losing ‘everything
we have built’ by launching an attack.” The Israeli sabre-rattling was intended
as much for Obama as it was for Tehran.
However, as John Foster Dulles certainly knew there’s a limit to brinkmanship. “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the
necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the
brink, you are lost. “
The Economist claims, ”Netanyahu’s apparent climb-down
followed a realisation by policy makers in Jerusalem
that his brinkmanship had become dangerously caught up in an American election
too close to call. The Israeli prime minister’s apparently less bellicose stand
seems to have been co-ordinated with the White House. On September 2nd he told
his cabinet that “the international community is not setting Iran a clear red line.” Until Iran
sees it, he added, “it will not stop the progress of its nuclear project.. The next day, the New York Times reported,
the administration was ‘considering new declarations by President Obama on what
might bring about American military action.’ On September 4th, sounding more
conciliatory, Netanyahu said that ‘the clearer the red line, the less likely
we’ll have conflict.’ Several other muscle-flexing actions by the Americans
were also heralded in the American press. A naval exercise led by the United States
with a score of friendly countries would soon take place in the Gulf. The
Americans were likely to sign a new batch of anti-missile deals in the region,
plainly directed against Iran.
Still-tighter sanctions against Iran
were in the offing, along with plans for renewed cyberwarfare against it. Such
measures were hailed in America
as intended to forestall an attack by squeezing the Iranians yet harder in the
hope of forcing them to curb their nuclear ambitions. But the latest quarterly
report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s watchdog, said that Iran
had sharply increased the size of its stockpile of higher-grade uranium and its
capacity to enrich more.”
In an article in the Washington Post Charles
Krauthammer took to task the people who advocate a policy aimed to deter Iran. They cite cases where deterrence worked . He claims
that deterring Iran
is fundamentally different from deterring the Soviet Union.
You could rely on the latter but not on the former.
America is a nation of 300 million; Israel,
8 million. America is a
continental nation; Israel,
a speck on the map, at one point eight miles wide. Israel is a ‘one bomb country.’ Its
territory is so tiny, its population so concentrated that, as Iran's former
President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has famously said, ‘application of an atomic
bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce
damages in the Muslim world.’ A tiny nuclear arsenal would do the job. In
U.S.-Soviet deterrence, both sides knew that a nuclear war would destroy them
mutually. The mullahs have thought the unthinkable to a different conclusion.
They know about the Israeli arsenal. They also know, as Rafsanjani said, that
in any exchange Israel
would be destroyed instantly and forever, whereas the ummah – the Muslim world
of 1.8 billion people whose redemption is the ultimate purpose of the Iranian
revolution – would survive damaged but almost entirely intact. This doesn't mean that the mullahs will necessarily
risk terrible carnage to their country in order to destroy Israel
irrevocably. But it does mean that the blithe assurance to the contrary –
because the Soviets never struck first – is nonsense. The
mullahs have a radically different worldview, a radically different grievance
and a radically different calculation of the consequences of nuclear war. The
confident belief that they are like the Soviets is a fantasy. That's why Israel is
contemplating a pre-emptive strike. Israel refuses to trust its very
existence to the convenient theories of comfortable analysts living 6,000 miles from its
ground zero.”
Have a good
weekend.
Beni 6th
of September, 2012.
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