This was a speech threatening war.
By Phyllis Bennis Common Dreams March 3, 2015
Realizing he has insufficient clout to stop the negotiations, Netanyahu demanded a back-up position: If not “no” deal, then we can have a better deal.
His vision of a “better” deal, however, is grounded in Iranian surrender. And since that is not going to happen, demanding it means abandoning diplomacy in favor of—yes, war.
Netanyahu threatened just such a war against Iran, in his statement “even if Israel stands alone, the Jewish people will not remain passive.”
Subscribe or “Follow” us on RiseUpTimes.org. Rise Up Times is also on Facebook! Check the Rise Up Times page for posts from this blog and more! “Like” our page today. Rise Up Times is also on Pinterest, Google+ and Tumblr. Find us on Twitter at Rise Up Times (@touchpeace). Click here to help Rise Up Times continue to bring essential news you won’t find in the mainstream corporate media.
The threat to nuclear non-proliferation in the Middle East was issued long ago—not by Iran, but by Israel’s own internationally known but carefully denied nuclear arsenal. It is Israel, not Iran, whose hundreds of nuclear weapons threaten a potential nuclear arms race in the region, threaten its neighbors, and threaten the world.
Any other nuclear weapon in the region, whether from Iran or any other country in some distant future, would not threaten Israel’s existence, it would threaten only Israel’s nuclear weapons monopoly.
And by ignoring any reference to Israel’s decades of occupation of Palestinian land and dispossession of Palestinian people, by keeping the U.S. focus on false claims of Israel being endangered, Netanyahu kept the focus of Congress and the U.S. media squarely where he wanted it—on Iran, away from Palestine, settlements, assaults on Gaza, violations of international law.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
One Comment
Comments are closed.
Along with keeping the Congress and U.S. media distracted from his clearly prosecutable war crimes against the Palestinian people during Operation Protective Edge in summer 2014, Netanyahu also kept the Congress and media from asking why Israel hasn’t become involved in any way in the fight against ISIS. He compared ISIS to Iran, while Iran is leading the fight against ISIS – “the greatest terrorist threat the world has ever seen” – while giving no explanation why Israel’s military remains out of the fight and Israel has never been attacked by ISIS.