[Peace-discuss] Pleas for attacking Syria and Iran

[David Green]

Oren's book on the 1967 war is demolished by
Finkelstein in an appendix to the revised edition of
Image and Reality. The first 3 pages are online:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/pdf/imgreality/appendix.pdf

Oren emanates from the same Netanyahu/radical settler
Israeli think tank as our esteemed "journalist in
residence" Yossi Klein Halevi, sponsored by
Netanyahu/Yoram Hazony, the latter prime ideologue in
turning Israel into a truly religious Jewish state on
radical settler terms. The point Finkelstein makes
about Syria at the end of the three pages is valid.
Tourists are taken to the Golan Heights and told that
Syria rained missles on Israel for 19 years, including
the kibbutz where I lived for 5 months in 1974. They
are not told about calculated and incessant Israeli
provocations from 1948-67, violating the DMZ (see also
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall). Israel has destroyed
hundreds of Syrian villages since occupying the Golan
Heights. It's particularly outrageous for Oren to
claim that Syria was behind the 67 war--Israel invaded
Syria as an afterthought, most likely bombing the
U.S.S. Liberty in the Med. Sea and killing 34
Americans in order to suppress knowledge of the
operation. Israel rejected all efforts at diplomacy
with Egypt, and the blocking of Tiran Straits had
little effect on its functioning--and was not even
seriously monitored. Israel itched for war since its
1956 invasion (promoted by Britain and France, and
completely unprovoked by Egypt vis a vis Israel, and
therefore never seriously considered), and memoirists
like Begin have been honest enough to admit that it
was Israel who wanted a war.

As for Iran, it has no history of attacking anyone.

David Green




--- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

> [In addition to the direct Israeli killing, the
> anti-war movement needs 
> also to oppose US plans to widen the war to Syria
> and Iran.  Here are 
> two examples: from The New Republic, "Why Israel
> should bomb Syria," and 
> from the Financial Times, "Why Bush should go to Tel
> Aviv - and confront 
> Iran."  The former is written by Michael B. Oren,
> who recently produced 
> a pro-Israeli account of the Six-Day War (June
> 1967); the latter is from 
> William Kristol, editor of the neocon journal The
> Weekly Standard. --CGE]
> 
> [1] WHY ISRAEL SHOULD BOMB SYRIA.
> Attack Add
> by Michael B. Oren
> Only at TNR Online
> Post date: 07.17.06
> 
> Nearly 40 years ago, Israel and the Arab world
> fought a war that altered 
> the course of Middle Eastern history. Now, as the
> region teeters on the 
> brink of a new and potentially more violent
> cataclysm, it is important 
> to revisit the lessons of the Six Day War, a
> conflict that few Middle 
> Eastern countries wanted and none foresaw.
> 
> By 1967, ten years after the Sinai Campaign, the
> Arab-Israeli dispute 
> had settled into an uneasy status quo. The radical
> Egyptian regime of 
> Gamal Abdel Nasser still proclaimed its commitment
> to liberating 
> Palestine and throwing the Jews into the sea, as did
> its conservative 
> rivals in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but none of these
> states made any 
> attempt to renew hostilities. On the contrary, Egypt
> remained quiescent 
> behind the U.N. peacekeeping forces deployed in
> Sinai, Gaza, and the 
> Straits of Tiran since 1957. Jordan maintained
> secret contacts with the 
> Israelis. Israel, for its part, had long learned to
> ignore bellicose 
> Arab rhetoric and to seek backdoor channels to even
> the most 
> vituperative Arab rulers. As late as April 1967,
> officials at Israel's 
> foreign ministry were speculating whether Nasser
> might be a viable 
> partner for a peace process.
> 
> But one Arab state did not want peace. Syria, then
> as now under the rule 
> of the belligerent Baath Party, wanted war. Having
> tried and failed in 
> 1964 to divert the Jordan River before it crossed
> the Israeli 
> border--IDF jets and artillery blasted the dams--the
> Syrians began 
> supporting a little-known Palestinian guerrilla
> group called Al Fatah 
> under the leadership of Yasir Arafat. Using Lebanon
> as its principal 
> base, Al Fatah commenced operations against Israel
> in 1965 and rapidly 
> escalated its attacks. Finally, at the end of 1966,
> Israeli officials 
> felt compelled to retaliate. But, fearing the
> repercussions of attacking 
> Soviet-backed Syria, they decided to strike at an Al
> Fatah stronghold in 
> the Jordanian-controlled West Bank.
> 
> The raid unfortunately led to a firefight between
> IDF and Jordanian 
> troops, and to Jordanian claims that Nasser had not
> done enough to 
> protect the West Bank Palestinians. Desperate to
> restore his reputation, 
> Nasser exploited a spurious Soviet report of Israeli
> war plans to evict 
> U.N. peacekeepers. He closed the Straits of Tiran to
> Israeli shipping, 
> concentrated 100,000 of his troops along the Israeli
> border, and forged 
> anti-Israeli pacts with Syria and Jordan. The Arab
> world rejoiced at the 
> prospect of annihilating Israel, and even the
> Soviets, eager to find 
> some means of distracting American attention from
> Vietnam, were pleased. 
> Israeli leaders had no choice but to determine when
> and where to strike 
> preemptively.
> 
> And so, suddenly and unexpectedly, a regional war
> erupted that the 
> principal combatants--Israel, Egypt, and
> Jordan--neither desired nor 
> anticipated. The lesson: Local conflicts in the
> Middle East can quickly 
> spin out of control and spiral into a regional
> conflagration.
> 
> The lesson is especially pertinent to the current
> crisis. Then, as now, 
> the Syrians have goaded a terrorist organization,
> Hezbollah, to launch 
> raids against Israel from Lebanon. Then, as now, the
> rapid rise of 
> terrorist attacks has forced Israel to mount
> reprisals. If the Soviets 
> in 1967 wanted to divert America's attention from
> Vietnam, the 
> Iranians--Syria's current sponsors--want to divert
> American attention 
> from their nuclear-arms program. And once again
> Israel must decide when 
> to strike back and against whom.
> 
> Back in 1966, Israel recoiled from attacking Syria
> and instead raided 
> Jordan, inadvertently setting off a concatenation of
> events culminating 
> in war. Israel is once again refraining from an
> entanglement with 
> Hezbollah's Syrian sponsors, perhaps because it
> fears a clash with Iran. 
> And just as Israel's failure to punish the patron of
> terror in 1967 
> ultimately triggered a far greater crisis, so too
> today, by hesitating 
> to retaliate against Syria, Israel risks turning
> what began as a border 
> skirmish into a potentially more devastating
> confrontation. Israel may 
> hammer Lebanon into submission and it may deal
> Hezbollah a crushing 
> blow, but as long as Syria remains hors de combat
> there is no way that 
> Israel can effect a permanent change in Lebanon's
> political labyrinth 
> and ensure an enduring ceasefire in the north. On
> the contrary, 
> convinced that Israel is unwilling to confront them,
> the Syrians may 
> continue to escalate tensions, pressing them toward
> the crisis point. 
> The result could be an all-out war with Syria as
> well as Iran and severe 
> political upheaval in Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf.
> 
> The answer lies in delivering an unequivocal blow to
> Syrian ground 
> forces deployed near the Lebanese border. By
> eliminating 500 Syrian 
> tanks--tanks that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad
> needs to preserve his 
> regime--Israel could signal its refusal to return to
> the status quo in 
> Lebanon. Supporting Hezbollah carries a prohibitive
> price, the action 
> would say. Of course, Syria could respond with
> missile attacks against 
> Israeli cities, but given the dilapidated state of
> Syria's army, the 
> chances are greater that Assad will simply
> internalize the message. 
> Presented with a choice between saving Hezbollah and
> staying alive, 
> Syria's dictator will probably choose the latter.
> And the message of 
> Israel's determination will also be received in
> Tehran.
> 
> Any course of military action carries risks,
> especially in the 
> unpredictable Middle East. But if the past is any
> guide, and if the Six 
> Day War presents a paradigm of an unwanted war that
> might have been 
> averted with an early, well-placed strike at Syria,
> then Israel's 
> current strategy in Lebanon deserves to be
> rethought. If Syria escapes 
> unscathed and Iran undeterred, Israel will remain
> insecure.
> 
> Michael B. Oren is a senior fellow at The Shalem
> Center in Jerusalem and 
> the author most recently of Six Days of War: June
> 1967 and the Making of 
> the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press).
> 
> 
> [2] Why Bush should go to Tel Aviv - and confront
> Iran
> 
> By William Kristol
> 
> Published: July 16 2006 17:38 | Last updated: July
> 16 2006 18:51
> 
> Why is this Arab-Israeli war different from all
> other Arab-Israeli wars? 
> Because it’s not an Arab-Israeli war. Most of
> Israel’s traditional Arab 
> enemies have checked out of the current conflict.
> The governments of 
> Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are, to say
> the least, indifferent 
> to the fate of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Palestine
> Liberation 
> Organization (Fatah) isn’t a player. The prime mover
> behind the 
> terrorist groups who have started this war is a
> non-Arab state, Iran, 
> which wasn’t involved in any of Israel’s previous
> wars.
> 
> What’s happening in the Middle East, then, isn’t
> just another chapter in 
> the Arab-Israeli conflict. What’s happening is an
> Islamist-Israeli war. 
> You might even say this is part of the Islamist war
> on the West--but is 
> India part of the West? Better to say that what’s
> under attack is 
> liberal democratic civilization, whose leading
> representative right now 
> happens to be the United States.
> 
> An Islamist-Israeli conflict may or may not be more
> dangerous than the 
> old Arab-Israeli conflict. Secular Arab nationalism
> was, after all, also 
> capable of posing an existential threat to Israel.
> And the Islamist 
> threat to liberal democracy may or may not turn out
> to be as dangerous 
> as the threats posed in the last century by secular
> forms of 
> irrationalism (fascism) and illiberalism
> (communism). But it is a new 
> and different threat. One needs to keep this in mind
> when trying to draw 
> useful lessons from our successes, and failures, in
> dealing with the 
> threats of the 20th century.
> 
> Here, however, is one lesson that does seem to hold:
> States matter. 
> Regimes matter. Ideological movements become more
> dangerous when they 
> become governing regimes of major nations. Communism
> became really 
> dangerous when it seized control of Russia. National
> socialism became 
> really dangerous when it seized control of Germany.
> Islamism became 
> really dangerous when it seized control of Iran -
> which then became, as 
> it has been for the last 27 years, the Islamic
> Republic of Iran.
> 
> No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No
> Islamic Republic of Iran, 
> no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No
> Iranian support for 
> Syria (a secular government that has its own reasons
> for needing Iranian 
> help and for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas), little
> state sponsorship 
> of Hamas and Hezbollah. And no Shi’ite Iranian
> revolution, far less of 
> an impetus for the Saudis to finance the export of
> the Wahhabi version 
> of Sunni Islam as a competitor to Khomeini’s claim
> for leadership of 
> militant Islam - and thus no Taliban rule in
> Afghanistan, and perhaps no 
> Hamas either.
> 
> It’s of course true that Hamas - an arm of the Sunni
> Muslim Brotherhood 
> - is at odds ideologically with Shia Iran, and that
> Shia and Sunni seem 
> inclined to dislike, even slaughter, each other
> elsewhere in the Middle 
> East. But temporary alliances of convenience are no
> less dangerous 
> because they are temporary. Tell the Poles of 1939,
> and the French of 
> 1940, that they really had little to worry about
> because the Nazi-Soviet 
> pact was bound to fall apart.
> 
> The war against radical Islamism is likely to be a
> long one. Radical 
> Islamism isn’t going away anytime soon. But it will
> make a big 
> difference how strong the state sponsors,
> harbourers, and financiers of 
> radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less
> on Hamas and 
> Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real
> commanders - Syria and 
> Iran. And our focus should be not only on the
> regional war in the Middle 
> East, but also on the global struggle against
> radical Islamism.
> 
> For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they
> are also enemies of 
> the United States. We have done a poor job of
> standing up to them and 
> weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly
> than one would have 
> thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is
> provocative. We have been 
> too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived
> as weak.
> 
> The right response is renewed strength - in
> supporting the governments 
> of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel,
> and in pursuing regime 
> change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might
> consider countering 
> this act of Iranian aggression with a military
> strike against Iranian 
> nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a
> nuclear Iran can be 
> contained? That the current regime will negotiate in
> good faith? It 
> would be easier to act sooner rather than later.
> Yes, there would be 
> repercussions - and they would be healthy ones,
> showing a strong America 
> that has rejected further appeasement.
> 
> But such a military strike would take a while to
> organize. In the 
> meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the
> silly G8 summit in St. 
> Petersburg - a summit that will most likely convey a
> message of moral 
> confusion and political indecision - to Jerusalem,
> the capital of a 
> nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight
> with us, against our 
> common enemies. This is our war, too.
> 
> William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard;
> this article appears 
> by arrangement with that publication
> 
> Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
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