Tag: minister benjamin netanyahu

Echoes of 1967: Israel is preparing to act

An important commentary by Charles Krauthammer .  If he is correct, Netanyahu has sent a message to Obama.

David Bancroft

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IN May 1967, in brazen violation of previous truce agreements, Egypt ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the Sinai, marched 120,000 troops to the Israeli border, blockaded Eilat (Israel’s southern outlet to the world’s oceans), abruptly signed a military pact With Jordan and, together with Syria, pledged war for the final destruction of Israel.

May 1967 was Israel’s most fearful, desperate month. The country was surrounded and alone. Previous great-power guarantees proved worthless. A plan to test the blockade with a Western flotilla failed for lack of participants. Time was running out. Forced to protect against invasion by mass mobilization – and with a military consisting overwhelmingly of civilian reservists – life ground to a halt. The country was dying.

On June 5, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on the Egyptian air force, then proceeded to lightning victories· on three fronts. The Six-Day War is legend, but less remembered is that on June 1, the nationalist opposition (Menachem Begin’s Likud precursor) was for the first time ever brought into the government, creating an emergency national-unity coalition.

Everyone understood why. You do not undertake a supremely risky pre-emptive war without the full participation of a broad coalition representing a national consensus.

Forty-five years later, in the middle of the night ·of May 7-8, 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked his country by bringing the main opposition party, Kadima, into a national unity government. Shockking because just hours earlier, the Knesset was expediting a bill to call early elections in September.

Why did the high-flying Netanyahu call off elections he was sure to win(

Because for Israelis today, it is May 1967. “The dread is not quite as acute: The mood is not despair, just foreboding. Time is running out, but not quite as fast. War is not four days away, but it looms. Israelis today face the greatest threat to their existence – ‘apocalyptic .mullahs publicly pledged to Israel’s annihilation acquiring nuclear weapons – since May 1967. The world is again telling Israelis to do nothing as it looks for a way out. But if such a way is not found – as in 1967 – Israelis know they will once again have to defend themselves, by themselves.

Such a fateful decision demands a national consensus. By creating the largest coalition in nearly three decades, Netanyahu is establishing the political premise for a pre-emptive strike, should it come to that. The new government commands an astonishing 94 Knesset seats out of 120, described by one Israeli columnist as a “hundred tons of solid concrete.”

So much for the recent media hype about some great domestic resistance to Netanyahu’s hard line on Iran. Two notable retired intelligence figures were widely covered here for coming out against him. Little noted was that one had been passed over by Netanyahu to be the head of Mossad, while the other had been fired by Netanyahu as Mossad chief (hence the job opening). For centrist Kadima·(it pulled Israel out of Gaza) to join a Likud-led coalition whose defense minister is a former Labor prime minister (who once offered half of Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat) is the’ very definition of national unity – and refutes the popular “Israel is divided” meme, “Everyone is saying the same thing,” explained one Knesset member, “though there may be a difference of tone.”

To be sure, Netanyahu and Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz offered more prosaic reasons for their merger: national service laws, a new election law and negotiations with the Palestinians. But Netanyahu, the first Likud prime minister to recognize Palestinian statehood, did hot need Kadima for him to enter peace talks .. For two years he’s been waiting for Mahmoud Abbas to show up at the table. Abbas hasn’t. And won’t. Nothing will change on that front.

What does change is Israel’s position vis-a-vis Iran. The wall-to-wall coalition demonstrates Israel’s political readiness to attack, if necessary. (Its military readiness is not in doubt.)

Those counseling Israeli submission, resignation or just endless patience can no longer dismiss Israel’s tough stance as the work of irredeemable right-wingers. Not with a government now representing 78 percent of the country.

Netanyahu forfeited September elections that would have given him four more years in power. He chose instead to form a: national coalition that guarantees 18 months of stability – 18 months during which, if the world does not act to stop Iran, Israel will.

And it will not be the work of one man, one party or one ideological faction. As in 1967, it will be the work of a nation.

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for the Washington Post. Readers may contact him via email atletters@!charleskrauthammer.com.

Will Israel strike without U.S. support?

Martha Raddatz, ABC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent, was on tonight’s “Washington Week” on PBS.  She said that Israel is in a bad neighborhood and that they will attack Iran within six months unless they see evidence that Iran is backing off on intentions to build a nuclear weapon.

From “The Week” magazine dated February 17, 2012:

“If one is to believe the threats that are ramping up at warp speed, Israel will strike Iran’s nuclear facilities before spring,” said Gideon Levy in the Tel Aviv Ha‘aretz. The best-case scenario is that the repeated warnings of imminent war from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are “mere pressure tactics.” But even if that’s true, it’s a dangerous game. “Threats of this scale take on a life of their own” and could create an irreversible momentum toward war. If Israelis don’t want this war, we have to speak up loud and clear so Netanyahu and Barak get the message. “We can no longer depend on the United States to stop it.”

President Obama is certainly downplaying the threats, said Kaveh L. Afrasiabi in the Hong KongAsia Times. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently conceded that Israel had a plan to attack Iran “within months,” and National lntelligence Di­rector James Clapper said Iran was planning terror attacks on the U.S. Yet Obama, in an interview this week, contradicted both those officials, saying pointedly that Israel had not yet de­cided whether to attack and denying Iran’s capacity to hit U.S. soil. With that, Obama sent “an important signal to Iran and the rest of the world” that he is seriously committed to contin­ued diplomacy and to avoiding war.

There’s certainly “no chance that the U.S.will attack Iran,” said Gershon Baskin in The Jerusalem Post. But the U.S. would “probably be relieved by a successful Israeli attack.” Even if, in public, Obama would have to express disap­proval, “behind the scenes Washington would be sending congratulatory mes­sages to Jerusalem.” Besides hampering Iran’s nuclear program, an Israeli at­tack would likely have other repercus­sions that benefited the U.S. IrIterna­tional pressure would surely push Israel to compromise with the Palestinians. And the U.S. would be in a stronger position to insist that Israel “enter the nonproliferation treaty and place its nuclear facilities under international inspection.”

It’s not just the Israelis who are talking about striking first, said Dudi Cohen in Ynetnews.com. Last week, Iranian media gave lots of attention to an Iranian blogger who urged an all-out Iranian assault on Israel. Alireza Forghani, a former member of the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij militia, claimed that Iran could “annihilate all population centers” in under 10 minutes with a barrage of ballistic and cruise missiles. Forghani argued that targeting civilians was justified to defend the Palestinians, under late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s ruling that Muslims must wage a jihad against an enemy who attacks an Islamic nation. Some analysts believe the attention given to Forghani’s blog signals the “dawn of public discourse about a pre-emptive strike on Israel.” Just last Friday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Israel “a cancerous tumor” and said “it will be removed.” If Iran acts, as it well could, the entire debate over an Israeli strike will be moot.

My opinion is Martha Raddatz is correct.