WarSclerotic

Column One: The Left against Zion | JPost | Israel News.

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

12/19/2013 20:43

The Left’s doctrinaire insistence that Israel is the root of all evil is not limited to campuses.

In the 1960s, the American Left embraced the anti-Vietnam War movement as its cri de coeur.

In the 1970s, the Left’s foreign policy focus shifted to calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the US and its Western allies.

In the 1980s, supporting the Sandinista Communists’ takeover of Nicaragua became the catechism of the Left.

In the 1990s, the war on global capitalism – that is, the anti-globalization movement – captivated the passions of US Leftists from coast to coast.

In the 2000s, it was again, the anti-war movement.

This time the Left rioted and demonstrated against the war in Iraq.

And in this decade, the main foreign policy issue that galvanizes the passions and energies of the committed American Left is the movement to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

This week has been a big one for the anti-Israel movement. In the space of a few days, two quasi academic organizations – the American Studies Association and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association – have launched boycotts against Israeli universities. Their boycotts follow a similar one announced in April by the Asian Studies Association.

These groups’ actions have not taken place in isolation. They are of a piece with ever-escalating acts of anti-Israel agitation in college campuses throughout the United States.

Between the growth of Israel Apartheid Day (or Week, or Month) from a fringe exercise on isolated campuses to a staple of the academic calendar in universities throughout the US and Canada, and the rise of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement to wage economic war against the Jewish state, anti-Israel activism has become the focal point of Leftist foreign policy activism in the US and throughout the Western world.

Every week brings a wealth of stories about new cases of aggressive anti-Israel activism. At the University of Michigan last week, thousands of students were sent fake eviction notices from the university’s housing office. A pro-Palestinian group distributed them in dorms across campus to disseminate the blood libel that Israel is carrying out mass expulsions of Palestinians.

At Swarthmore College, leftist anti-Israel Jewish students who control Hillel are insisting on using Hillel’s good offices to disseminate and legitimate anti-Israel slanders.

And the Left’s doctrinaire insistence that Israel is the root of all evil is not limited to campuses.

At New York’s 92nd Street Y, Commentary editor John Podhoretz was booed and hissed by the audience for trying to explain why the ASA’s just-announced boycott of Israel was an obscene act of bigotry.

Many commentators have rightly pointed out that the ASA and the NAISA are fringe groups.

They represent doctorate holders who chose to devote their careers to disciplines predicated not on scholarship, but on political activism cloaked in academic regalia whose goal is to discredit American power. The ASA has only 5,000 members, and only 1,200 of them voted on the Israel- boycott resolution. The NAISA has even fewer members.

It would be wrong, however, to use the paltry number of these fringe groups’ members as means to dismiss the phenomenon that they represent. They are very much in line with the general drift of the Left.

Rejecting Israel’s right to exist has become part of the Left’s dogma. It is a part of the catechism.

Holding a negative view of the Jewish state is a condition for membership in the ideological camp. It is an article of faith, not fact.

Consider the background of the president of the ASA. Curtis Marez is an associate professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, San Diego. His area of expertise is Chicano Film and Media Studies.

He doesn’t know anything about Israel. He just knows that he’s a Leftist. And today, Leftists demonize Israel. Their actions have nothing to do with anything Israel does or has ever done. They have nothing to do with human rights. Hating Israel, slandering Israel and supporting the destruction of Israel are just things that good Leftists do.

And Marez was not out of step with his fellow Leftists who rule the roost at UCSD. This past March the student council passed a resolution calling for the university to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

Why? Because hating Israel is what Leftists do.

The Left’s crusade against the Jewish state began in earnest in late 2000. The Palestinians’ decision to reject statehood and renew their terror war against Israel ushered in the move by anti-Israel forces on the Left to take over the movement. And as they have risen, they have managed to silence and discredit previously fully accredited members of the ideological Left for the heresy of supporting Israel.

This week, Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz retired after 50 years on the law faculty. His exit, the same week as the ASA and the NAISA announced their boycotts of Israeli universities, symbolized the marginalization of the pro-Israel Left that Dershowitz represented.

For years, Dershowitz has been a non-entity in leftist circles. His place at the table was usurped by anti-Israel Jews like Peter Beinart. And now Beinart is finding himself increasingly challenged by anti-Semitic Jews like Max Blumenthal.

The progression is unmistakable.

The question is, is it irreversible? Must supporters of Israel choose between their support for Israel and their affinity for the Left? Certainly it is true that the more the issue of support for Israel splits along ideological and partisan lines, the more reasonable it is for supporters of Israel to move to the ideological camp and the party that supports Israel, and away from the ones that do not support Israel.

The average voter is not in a position to change the positions of his party or the dogma of his ideological camp. He can take it or leave it. With rejection of Israel now firmly entrenched in the Left’s dogma, and with the Left firmly in control of the Democratic Party under President Barack Obama’s leadership, for those who care about Israel, the Republican Party is a more natural fit.

So, too, the ideological Right is far more congenial to the Jewish state than the Left.

While the most sensible place for supporters of Israel to be today is on the political Right, it is also true that it is neither smart nor responsible to abandon the Left completely. Jews should be able to feel comfortable as Jews, and as supporters of Israel everywhere. Ideological camps that castigate Jews for their pride in the accomplishments of the Jewish state, and for their support and concern for its survival and prosperity, are camps in desperate need of fixing.

But we should not fool ourselves. Challenging the likes of Marez, or the Swarthmore students, or Max Blumenthal or Peter Beinart to a reasoned debate is an exercise in futility. They do not care about human rights. They do not care that Israel is the only human rights-respecting democracy in the Middle East. They do not care about the pathological nature of Palestinian society. They do not care about the Jewish people’s indigenous rights and international legal rights to sovereignty not only over Tel Aviv and Haifa, but over Hebron and Ramallah.

Being hypocrites doesn’t bother them either.

You can talk until you’re blue in the face about the civilian victims of the Syrian civil war, or the gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia and the absence of religious freedom throughout the Muslim world. But they don’t care. They aren’t trying to make the world a better place.

Facts cannot compete with their faith. Reason has no place in their closed intellectual universe.

To accept reason and facts would be an act of heresy.

Marez may be a hypocrite, and even a servant of evil. But he is no heretic.

The only real way to mitigate the hard Left’s devotion to Israel’s destruction is by changing the power balance on the Left. For the past decade, donors like George Soros have been open in their commitment to elect Democrats who oppose the US’s alliance with Israel. A decade ago, Soros and fellow Jewish American billionaire Peter Lewis funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into Moveon.org. Moveon.org became a clearinghouse for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messages that became the stock in trade of the ideological Left, and of Democratic candidates in need of campaign funding.

It was due to then-Democratic senator Joe Lieberman’s refusal to get on the Soros- and Lewis-funded anti-Israel bandwagon in the 2004 elections, that they turned Moveon.org against Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic primary for his seat in the Senate. His Democratic challenger, Ned Lamont, who won the primary, ran a campaign laced with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda.

There are Democratic funders, like Penny Pritzker, Lester Crown and Haim Saban, who support Israel. If they were so inclined, they could use their considerable funds to change the power equation in the Democratic Party. They could cultivate and support pro-Israel Democratic candidates. They could take the Democratic Party back.

This week ended with Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer finally breaking his silence on Obama’s Iran deal and joining forces with his fellow Democrat Sen. Robert Menendez and Republican Sen. Mark Kirk to defy Obama on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Given Obama’s floundering popularity, it is possible that Schumer’s move will open the door for a change in the Democratic Party.

In truth, there is no reason for the Democratic Party to remain in place. It isn’t ordained that the Democrats must cleave to the hard Left.

The rejection of Israel is not a natural component of leftist dogma. It’s just that for the past decade, the smart money and the rising power on the Left has been with those who oppose Israel’s existence as a strong, independent Jewish state.

While the ASA and its comrades are on the fringes of academia, they are not fringe voices on the Left. The Left has embraced the cause of Israel’s destruction. And its financial power has made it difficult for pro-Israel Democrats to act on their convictions, and those of their voters.

The combination of an exodus of supporters of Israel – Jews and non-Jews alike – from the Left and from the Democratic Party on the one hand, and generous funding for pro-Israel Democratic candidates on the other, can change the equation.

America lost the Vietnam War. The Sandinistas are back in change in Nicaragua. But if people are willing to stand up now and be counted, America need not harm Israel.

caroline@carolineglick.com

▶ “Shalom Aleichem” on violin from an IDF soldier boy… – YouTube.

“Shalom Aleichem” ( Peace be to you ) is the song sung by Jewish families before sitting down to the Sabbath meal.

The words are beautiful, but this boy’s musical rendition makes them superfluous.

Shabbat shalom !

JW

Rachel Maddow sacrifices her credibility to defend IranScam – YouTube.

Maddow purposefully distorts the intent and the effect of the bill in the Senate.

The bill strengthens Obama’s negotiating position by making clear to Teheran the cost of violating the terms of the agreement.  It has NO impact if there are no violations.

Maddow says outright that it is an attempt to force the US into another war.

Huh?

Oh, right… WH Talking point.

For good measure she stresses that he bill is the result of “outside groups” like (surprise !) AIPAC.

(Those dirty Jews are trying to force America into another war for their benefit…)

Say it ain’t so, Rachel….  Say it ain’t so.

JW

_______________________________________________________________________________

In a show of defiance to President Obama, 13 Democratic Senators joined 13 Republicans in introducing a new Iranian sanctions bill that includes language forcing the US to support Israel in the event they attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The president has threatened to veto the bill, and it is uncertain if Majority Leader Harry Reid will even allow the bill to come to the floor for a vote.

Republican Mark Kirk is leading the charge.

Associated Press:

“Current sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table and a credible threat of future sanctions will require Iran to cooperate and act in good faith at the negotiating table,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who spearheaded the effort with Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.

Kirk called the draft law “an insurance policy to defend against Iranian deception.”

The Obama administration has furiously lobbied Congress not to impose new sanctions, even on a conditional basis, saying the increased economic pressure could force Iran to withdraw from the negotiating process and strain ties between the United States and its key negotiating partners — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. Washington is banking on these countries to persuade Tehran into accepting a final package that would ease trade, financial and oil restrictions if the Iranian government severely rolls back its uranium enrichment activity and other elements of its nuclear program.

Iran’s foreign minister also has said new sanctions could scuttle hopes of a diplomatic resolution. Iran maintains its program is solely for peaceful energy production and medical research purposes, but the United States and many other countries harbor severe doubts. Israel is perhaps most adamant in insisting Iran’s true intentions are to develop an atomic weapons arsenal.

The White House said it didn’t think the Senate bill would be enacted and didn’t think it should be enacted.

“We don’t want to see action that will proactively undermine American diplomacy,” press secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

The bill would require the administration to certify Iranian compliance with the terms of the interim agreement every 30 days.

Without that certification, the legislation would re-impose all sanctions that have been eased and put in place the new restrictions. Foreign companies and banks violating the bans would be barred from doing business in the United States.

Mark Dubowitz, a sanctions advocate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the new economic penalties could cost Tehran $55 billion annually in lost exports of petroleum, fuel oil and other industrial products.

“This should be incentive enough for Iran, if it is serious about saving its economy from a deep recession, not to cheat on its nuclear commitments and to move quickly to conclude a final deal,” he said.

Beyond the economic measures, the bill includes potentially contentious language requiring strong American action if Israel decides to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has regularly issued such threats.

“If the government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the United States government should stand with Israel,” the bill states. It calls for “diplomatic, military and economic support” to Israel in such an eventuality.

Significantly, if 13 Democratic Senators were to support the bill, that would give the Senate an excellent chance of overriding any veto coming from the White House. But politics would almost certainly come into play, as some of those Democratic Senators would be under enormous pressure not to cut the legs off of Obama so early in his second term.

At the very least, this sends a strong message to the Iranians that at least some in Washington haven’t been bamboozled by the “moderate” President Rouhani. They are going to have to demonstrate with deeds, not words, their commitment to the agreement as well as their stated desire to conduct a “peaceful” nuclear program.

Jewish Group ‘Appalled’ by Huffington Post Article, SWC Says it Paints Jews as Warmongers – Regard d’un Ecrivain sur le Monde.

( The left continues to paint itself into its own special corner of hypocritical naivete. They have always gotten most of their strength from their Jewish members. How far can they push it before they lose even these self-haters? – JW )

A screenshot of the headline and accompanying picture and article that was deemed offensive by Jewish groups.

Popular internet newspaper, The Huffington Post, is under fire yet again for a headline and accompanying image that offended major Jewish groups.

Both the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) criticized the article, headlined “Saboteur Sen. Launching War Push,” which featured a picture of New Jersey’s Senator Robert Menendez addressing pro-Israel lobby the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

In the article, the publication attacked Senate leaders who backed a bill which calls for new sanctions against Iran in response to the country’s nuclear program. The bill threatens “to push the United States toward war with Iran,” the paper claimed.

Confident that the choice was a deliberate “editorial decision,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center sharply criticized the presentation as reminiscent of anti-Jewish tropes.

“It goes back to the age old canard,” he told The Algemeiner, “that certain people have never seen a war that they can’t find a way to blame on the Jews.”

“Conscious or subconscious it just screams out ‘there they go again,’ meaning Jews, ‘they are bringing the country to war,’” he added.

The AJC said it was “dismayed” and “appalled” by the article, and spoke out in defense of Senator Menendez.

“The Huffington Post has launched a shameful, unjust assault on Senator Menendez,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris.

“Why this incendiary attack on a respected and experienced legislator, who has every right to express his viewpoints, without being depicted in such toxic terms?” Harris continued. “Senator Menendez believes, as do many of his Senate colleagues and a majority of the American people, that the best way to reach a diplomatic solution with Iran is through a hard-nosed, clear-eyed approach to a dangerous and wily adversary. So do we.”

The Huffington Post has often been accused of anti-Israel bias and tolerating anti-Jewish sentiment. Two anonymous blogs, HPMonitor and Huff-Watch have extensively recorded the allegations.

The site “has become a home to a sub sect of commentators expressing anti-Israel hate speech and anti-Semitism,” says the mission statement of HPMonitor. Huff-Watch goes a step further, writing: “…for at least the past two years, Israel and Jews have been HuffPost’s secondary ‘targets.’”

Earlier this year Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff told Israel’s channel 2 that the publication was planning to open an Israeli branch of the site.

George Washington Spinning In Grave Over Senate Iran Resolution | MJ Rosenberg.

( The self-hating Rosenberg joins forces with the professional lefty anti-Semite Andrew Sullivan to attack even this meager attempt to reign in Obama’s appeasement policy. – JW )

Just when President Obama was starting to believe that it was safe to go back into the water, the lobby has come out with a new Iran sanctions resolution designed to torpedo negotiations with Iran. And, once that is accomplished, it provides for automatic U.S military backing for Israel if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decides to bomb.

This may be the lobby’s most brazen attempt yet at subverting negotiations and, in Andrew Sullivan’s words, “handing over American foreign policy on a matter as grave as war and peace to a foreign government….”

The resolution, introduced by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mark Kirk(R-IL), seemingly responds positively to President Obama’s request that Congress hold off on new sanctions during the negotiations. It does that by giving Obama the authority to waive its proposed new sanctions until the two sides successfully reach an agreement. It is only at that point, with the agreement in hand, that the new sanctions would go into effect, effectively killing the deal.

The bill is almost like an exploding Christmas present. It looks pretty under the tree, all wrapped up nicely, but then in six months it blows down the house.

Here is how it would work, according to an exclusive report in Foreign Policy by Ali Gharib, who obtained a copy of the resolution.

The Menendez-Schumer-Kirk resolution would expand current sanctions to include all aspects of its petroleum trade and its shipping and mining sectors. However, these new sanctions would not take effect so long as Obama certifies that Iran is negotiating in good faith and that imposing them would not be in the U.S. national interest.

That is all well and good. Other than threatening to further damage Iran’s economy while in the midst of negotiations, the new sanctions remain theoretical so long as the president can waive them.

Although damaging (there is no telling how the Iranian government will react to such an insulting action by Congress while it is in the midst of negotiating with the administration) the resolution is par for the course. If it’s not one donor-backed lobby dictating policy, it’s another.

But then the bill goes off in a truly unprecedented direction. It states that if negotiations fail (it defines failure as leaving Iran with the capacity for any nuclear enrichment at all) and Prime Minister Netanyahu decides to dispatch his bombers, the United States is automatically at war too. Here is the language of the resolution:

If the government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide in accordance with the laws of the United States and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, and economic support to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence.

It is difficult to know where the deconstruction should start.

First, is the resolution’s assumption that the existence of an Iranian weapons program makes Israel “compelled” to take “military action of legitimate self-defense” against Iran. That is absurd. The mere possession of a”weapons program” by any state does not give any other country a “legitimate” right to respond militarily.

If it did, the United States would have had the right to bomb the Soviet Union when it ended our atomic bomb monopoly in 1949. In fact, given that there are today nine states with nuclear arsenals (including Israel), recognition of such a right would have meant that the last 60 years would have seen one war after another as various nations felt “compelled” to attack when they suspected that an unfriendly state was on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough. Accepting the logic of the Menendez bill, Iran has the right to attack Israel right now, given that Israel not only has nuclear weapons but is openly hostile to Iran.

And then, of course, is the resolution’s acceptance of Binyamin Netanyahu’s view that any Iranian capacity to enrich uranium is tantamount to nuclear weapons development. This is not the view of any nation on earth but Israel’s and yet the resolution would have us “stand with Israel” in combined “military action” should Netanyahu decide that Iranian enrichment at 5 percent or 10 percent or whatever means a nuclear bomb is being developed.

But worst of all is the fact that this resolution would empower Israel to make the decision to go to war for us. Israel would decide it feels threatened and we would have to back an attack on Iran with “military force,” not to mention all the other forms of support the resolution spells out.

Never in American history have we permitted another government to decide such matters of life and death for us. Israel is a friend but the United Kingdom was our foremost ally in 1940 when it was under constant bombing by Nazi Germany (50,000 British civilians were killed in the so-called Blitz).

Nonetheless, President Roosevelt could not join the war alongside Britain until Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. Not even Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor automatically brought us into the war against Germany. No, it took Germany declaring war on us before Roosevelt was able to go to Congress and ask for a declaration of war, this despite the fact that FDR considered the survival of Britain indispensable to our own survival.

This resolution would dispense with all that in the case of Israel, giving Netanyahu a power that not even FDR had.

Andrew Sullivan has it exactly right:

For the US Senate to proactively bless future aggressive military action by a foreign government when it is not justified by self-defense is an appalling new low in the Israeli government’s grip on the US Congress.

But to proactively commit the United States as well to whatever the Netanyahu government might want to do in a war of choice against Iran is more staggering. Yes, this is non-binding language. But it’s basically endorsing the principle of handing over American foreign policy on a matter as grave as war and peace to a foreign government, acting against international law, thousands of miles away. George Washington would be turning at a rather high velocity in his grave.

Follow MJ Rosenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjayrosenberg

Jerusalem’s Itchy Trigger Finger.

Forget sanctions. If there’s one thing that should convince Tehran not to go nuclear, it’s that Israel might use its own nukes — first.

BY Yonatan Touval
DECEMBER 19, 2013

Of all the dangers associated with a nuclear-armed Iran — from the onset of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and an Iranian extension of “a nuclear umbrella” to regional proxies, from a nuclear bomb falling into terrorist hands to an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel or even on the United States — the one we should take most seriously goes virtually unmentioned: a miscalculated nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran. It’s a risk that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei should consider carefully; when push comes to shove, having a bomb might only make a conflict between the two countries more likely. In fact, when considering how this chain of events might unfold, the basic strategic calculus would suggest that it is Israel — rather than Iran — that would be more liable to make the calamitous mistake of initiating a nuclear conflagration.

This assessment is not invoked lightly, let alone accusingly. Since Israel first obtained nuclear military capabilities in the late 1960s, it has proven itself to be an extremely responsible nuclear power. In fact, given the level of threat the country has faced — including the perceived threat to its very existence during the 1973 Yom Kippur War — Israel might well be deemed the most responsible nuclear power in the world.

The case of the Yom Kippur War is particularly enlightening. Fearing it might be overrun by the combined Syrian and Egyptian armies on its northern and southern fronts, Israel came close to making use of its nuclear arsenal — though not as close as many believe. In the most illuminating testimony to have come out in recent years about the deliberations that took place among Israel’s top political and military echelons during the first days of the war, a former Israeli official who was an eye-witness to the exchange recounted how Defense Minister Moshe Dayan asked Prime Minister Golda Meir “to authorize him to start making the necessary preparations so that if we have to make a decision to activate [the nuclear option], we could do it in a few minutes, rather than wandering around for half a day in order to prepare everything.” According to this official, Meir rebuffed Dayan out of hand.

In other words, even at the fateful moment when Israel’s defense minister assessed that the country was in imminent danger of collapse — so imminent, as he explained to his prime minister, that “half a day” might not be enough lead time to activate the ultimate deterrence — Israel’s top leader opted for restraint.

However reassuring Israel’s record is to date, it is hard to extrapolate from it about the future, especially one in which Iran possesses military nuclear capabilities. After all, the prospect of invasion by enemy armies pales in comparison to that of nuclear annihilation. And that is a threat that neither Israel — nor any other nation — has ever really faced before. (While the specter of a nuclear exchange was raised during both the Korean War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, none of the various powers involved feared complete nuclear annihilation.)

How would Israel conduct itself when faced with a nuclear foe — and one, moreover, that continued to spew exterminationist rhetoric against it? While restraint may well rule the day, the danger of a catastrophic mishap cannot be discounted. And although this may hold true for other nuclear rivals — such as India and Pakistan — the case of Iran and Israel is particularly acute, with Israel being the more liable actor to make the calamitous error.

The reasons are multiple and mutually reinforcing. And they have little to do with safeguards. First, Tehran’s explicit hatred for Israel — the latest display of which was offered by Khamenei last month when he declared that “the Israeli regime is doomed to failure and annihilation” — is extreme even among the bitterest of adversaries. (By comparison, the most prevalent context in which the term “annihilation” crops up in the context of Indian-Pakistani relations is cricket.) Backed up by new military nuclear capabilities, such threats could, under certain circumstances, push an Israeli leader to take desperate action.

In addition, Israel is uniquely vulnerable to nuclear annihilation on account of its small size — a size that has earned it the horrific epithet “a one-bomb country.” With no margins for error, Israel may sooner choose to act than risk having to react.

In the face of a nuclear scare, the asymmetry in second-strike capabilities would give Israel an added incentive to go ahead and initiate an attack on Iran rather than the other way around. After all, if the aim is to successfully eliminate the nuclear arsenal of the other, Israel could hope to destroy the handful of weapons Iran could make, leaving it unable to retaliate with nukes of its own. Iran, though, could not hope to eliminate Israel’s entire arsenal.

Israel’s military history also suggests a penchant for preemptive action. The heroic example of the 1967 Six-Day War stands in stark contrast to the dire lesson of 1973 and informs a military ethos that prioritizes proactive measures.

Finally, in the absence of a hotline between the Iranian and Israeli leaderships — the kind of quick and secure communication link that was set up following the Cuban Missile Crisis between Washington and Moscow, and which exists today between such foes as Delhi and Islamabad and even Seoul and Pyongyang — any accident or misunderstanding would be difficult to address speedily and effectively before triggering a potentially nuclear action.

None of this is to shift the focus from the need to roll back Iran’s nuclear program; on the contrary, such a sobering perspective on the real risks at stake should only firm up international resolve to reach a permanent agreement with Iran in the next 6-12 months.

Nor should world powers turn their attention to Israel’s nuclear status, either in parallel to negotiations with Iran or immediately following an agreement. Assuming Iran’s nuclear program is successfully constrained, Israel can be counted on to remain a highly reliable nuclear player. On other hand, pressing Israel toward greater nuclear transparency — such as by joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty — is certain to be met by stiff Israeli resistance. Worse, it may set off a dynamic that risks only undermining the overarching goal of preventing the nuclearization of the Middle East. After all, whether or not one buys into the argument that Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity has indeed served to stave off a nuclear arms race in the region, the counter argument that Israeli transparency will serve better the cause is even more fanciful.

What the world needs to realize — and especially Iran and the Western powers trying to forge more constructive dialogue with Tehran — is that the risk of a nuclear Iran is not so much Iran itself as it is the co-presence of two nuclear-armed enemies in the region. At the very least, such honesty might begin to address — even if not defuse — Iran’s longstanding claims of a Western double standard toward its nuclear program. And it might just convince Iran that, with a foe like Israel, the danger of acquiring military nuclear capabilities far outweighs the benefits.

Senators defy Obama in bid to back Israel | TribLIVE.

By The Associated Press

Published: Thursday, Dec. 19, 2013, 9:33 p.m.

WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of the Senate introduced legislation on Thursday that could raise sanctions on Iran and compel America to support Israel if it initiates a pre-emptive attack on the Iranian nuclear program, defying President Obama and drawing a veto threat.

Report: Putin Backs Israel in Middle East Issues – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

( Russia has plenty of oil but trails the West in high-tech.  Putin follows Russia’s interest.  No mention of an Israeli quid pro quo for Putin’s commitment.  Hmmm…. – JW )

Maariv report claims in private meeting Netanyahu and Putin forged security pact for Israel’s safety.

PM Binyamin Netanyahu with Russian President Vladimir Putin

A pact was forged between Moscow and Jerusalem to ensure Israel’s security during a private meeting last month, according to a Friday Maariv report.

The report claims that a 90-minute conversation took place between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin during Netanyahu’s last-minute attempt to prevent an interim nuclear deal between Western powers and Iran.

While Moscow – which has been rumored to be involved in a nuclear arms deal with Tehran – refused to accede to Israel’s stance on the nuclear Iran issue, Putin did allegedly promise to ensure Israel’s security in the region.

Netanyahu asked Putin “not to push” the demilitarization of the Middle East from all nuclear weapons, according to the report. Israel has faced mounting international pressure to sign the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Netanyahu stressed to Putin that threats to disarm Israel of its nuclear weapons – which have never been officially confirmed by Israeli officials but are widely thought to be in Israel’s possession – would harm Israel’s interests in the Middle East.

Putin, surprisingly, agreed to the proposal. “Russia will block efforts to convene the nuclear arms conference,” he allegedly promised Netanyahu.

Putin even made ​​it clear to Netanyahu that Russia will not do anything to harm Israel. He added that despite the close relationship between Israel and the US – with whom Russia’s relationship is strained – Russia would nonetheless stand by Israel’s side and offer aid in the event of a conflict against it, according to the report.

US President Barack Obama reportedly objected to the pressure on Israel in 2010, but later backed down, in a move widely panned by Israeli officials. The Obama administration’s policy of non-intervention in the Middle East – including failed threats of a Syria strike and ambivalence about a nuclear Iran – has irked Russia and strained the relationship, the report claims. Putin and Netanyahu allegedly united over the common dissent with the US’s policy over the region.

The newly revealed pact with Russia coincides with a growing rapprochement between Israel and China. The deepening ties were highlighted in Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s first visit to Israel this week.

The report contradicts evidence indicating that Russia is involved in arming some of Israel’s most formidable threats, including Iran, Syria, and Egypt. Russia was reportedly among the most vocal supporters of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and came out against Israel’s rumored possession of nuclear weapons earlier this year.

Before last month’s meeting, an expert from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem dismissed claims that Israel has been playing off tensions between Russia and the US.

“I very much hope that (Netanyahu) will not try such an exercise,” Amnon Sela, professor emeritus of international relations, told AFP.  “I think he has already taken some steps which are very harmful to Israel, with his opposition to President (Barack) Obama and trying to enlist (US) public opinion and Congress against the president, and in particular the American Jewish community which immediately raises the question of dual loyalties.”

Even if Russia would like to fill the gap, it lacks the resources, he said.

“It is not capable of playing any role beyond that which it already has, in Iran, Syria and (Lebanese terrorist group) Hezbollah.”

“It has no possibility; not economically, nor diplomatically,” he said, adding that “it could act only together with the United States.”

Is singling out Israel for boycotts anti-Semitic? | JPost | Israel News.

( Does a bear shit in the woods? – JW )

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

Let the world judge Israel by a single standard and let the world judge those who condemn Israel by that same standard.

A paradigmatic characteristic of all bigotry is to take a fault that is widespread among all cultures, races, religions and nationalities and to attribute it singularly to one group.

For example: “Blacks are violent.” “Jews are cheap.” “Asians are sly.” “Gays are pedophiles.” “Women are irrational.” “Romanies (gypsies) cheat.”

The truth, of course, is that all groups have some among them with these negative characteristics.

The bigots who make these claims correctly point to the fact that some members of these groups display the negative characteristics attributed to the groups as a whole.

But the bigotry consists of singling out any such group for unique condemnation on the basis of these widespread faults without acknowledging that members of other groups have them as well, sometimes in greater proportion than the group that is singled out.

This is precisely what is occurring in the context of the nation state of the Jewish people, Israel, being singled out for boycotts, divestment and sanctions.

As the president of the American Studies Association, Curtis Marez, acknowledged, after his organization singled out Israel for an academic boycott: Many other countries, including all of Israel’s neighbors, have far worse records when it comes to human rights and academic freedom.

Moreover, other countries (including China, Russia and Turkey) have had longer and far more oppressive occupations than Israel without offering (as Israel has) to end the occupation as part of a negotiated peace. But Prof.

Marez’s response to the charge of bigotry in applying the double standard to the nation state of the Jewish people was “We have to start somewhere.”

That is the characteristic response of the bigot. When it comes to condemning violence, we have to start somewhere, so let’s target African-Americans for stop and frisk. When it comes to stopping pedophilia, “we have to start somewhere” so let’s start with profiling gays. Surely this would be recognized as bigotry personified.

Marez’s benighted response is more than simply bigoted, it is mendacious.

His association is not simply starting with Israel, it is stopping with Israel. A vote to boycott Chinese, Cuban, Russian or Palestinian academic institutions— which are worse by every measure of civil liberties, human rights and academic freedom than Israeli institutions – would garner few, if any, votes. This too is the paradigm of bigotry: starting and ending with one ethnic or religious group and applying a different standard to every other group.

When Harvard University adopted a quota system directed only against Jewish applicants, its president, A. Lawrence Lowell, justified singling out Jews, because, he claimed, “Jews cheat.”

When told that Christians cheat, too, he responded: “You’re changing the subject. We’re talking about Jews now.”

He too had to start and stop somewhere. So he singled out the Jews. Was this anti-Semitic? The answer to the question, is the singling out of the nation state of the Jewish people for an academic boycott an act of anti-Semitism, the answer is, if the shoe fits …

Here not only does the shoe fit, but like Cinderella’s slipper, the bigoted shoe in this case fits only one group: academic institutions in the nation state of the Jewish people.

There are those who claim that the BDS movement against Israel cannot be anti-Semitic, because it is directed at a country and not at individuals. But by treating Israel as the Jew among nations – singling it out for condemnation when others are far worse by any relevant standard – the advocates of BDS are simply expanding the notion of anti-Semitism beyond the individual to the nation state of the Jewish people. When Nazis condemned “Jewish physics,” “Jewish art” and “Jewish business practices,” they too claimed that they were focusing on Jewish institutions rather than Jewish individuals. That defense won’t work. Treating the Jew among nations precisely the way classic anti-Semites have treated the Jewish people is simply a new adaptation of the oldest of prejudices.

So let the world condemn those who single out the nation state of the Jewish people for the application of a double standard. Let the world understand that bigotry is bigotry whether directed against the Jew among nations or the Jew within nations.

Let those who want to boycott nations apply the simple test of morality: the worst first. Let them apply another moral test: focusing first on those countries in which dissent is not tolerated and in which there is no internal recourse against violations of human rights.

Applying these tests to Israel would put the nation state of the Jewish people at the very bottom of countries deserving to be boycotted. But by ignoring the worst and condemning a nation that is near the very top in terms of human rights, academic freedom and the rule of law, the bigotry of the condemners becomes obvious.

So let the world judge Israel by a single standard and let the world judge those who condemn Israel by that same standard.

The writer, a veteran professor at Harvard Law School, is a prominent advocate for Israel in the United States

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