Netanyahu’s way

MIAMI – There are lots of political leaders in the world with gall to spare. Vladimir Putin is one of them. The succession of men who have run North Korea since the early 1950s also qualify. But when it comes to supreme gall, what Yiddish expresses with the word chutpah, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no rivals.

Consider a country that has no allies in the world save one: the United States of America. That sole ally lavishes more money annually – at least $3 billion – on this highly developed country of about eight million people than it spends on entire continents like Africa, where hundreds of millions of people are ravaged by poverty and disease and where millions die of starvation during frequent, prolonged droughts that lead to famine.

Then consider that the leader of this small country has no qualms about virtually spitting in the face of its magnanimous generous benefactor. He seems to take special pleasure in showing brazen disrespect and in humiliating the leader of the one country whose invariable diplomatic protection, especially through the frequent exercise of its veto in the UN Security Council, prevents Israel from becoming a pariah state instead of merely an unpopular one.

I am not talking about an isolated case, such as the time when Netanyahu used an invitation to the White House to publicly and rudely lecture President Barack Obama. Netanyahu’s actions regarding the United States in general and Obama in particular, his exercises in extreme gall, are of a serial and escalating nature.

By recently addressing a joint session of the Republican-run Congress without regard to the White House declining to extend him an invitation – indeed in the face of the Obama administration’s open opposition – Netanyahu once gain kicked Obama in the teeth.

The purpose and message of his speech to the U.S Congress made things much worse. Netanyahu’s main mission was to undermine the effort undertaken by the United States and all the Western powers to prevent through negotiation Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu’s actions were an insult to the United States and its president. They also rode roughshod over elementary rules of diplomatic protocol. By giving a political boost to the bellicose GOP, for instance, Netanyahu illegitimately interfered in the internal U.S. political process.

Netanyahu portrayed his decision to address Congress by claiming that the principles on which current negotiations with Iran are based represent an existential threat and must be stopped at any cost.

This contention is highly questionable. For one thing, Iran has no history of committing military aggression. It has been the victim of aggression, most recently by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

On the other hand Israel has a notorious record of aggression, including pulverizing great chunks of Lebanon, attacking Gaza on several occasions, even killing several Turkish civilians and one American citizen engaged in a flotilla intended to symbolically break the inhumane siege of Gaza. And, Israel does have nuclear weapons, an estimated 100-200. It is the only nuclear state in the Middle East.

In contrast, Iran is far from having even one such weapon. Its leaders have repeatedly declared that, for religious reasons, it doesn’t intend to seek one. It’s a claim that should not be dismissed lightly in a country in which religious strongmen hold the real power, people who take their religion seriously. Ask Salman Rushdie.

In addition, Iran would run major risks if it tried to produce a nuclear weapon clandestinely after successful negotiations which would require it to refrain from doing that. The most evident one is a preemptive strike by Israel and/or the United States.

On the other hand, Iran has an incentive to forego the nuclear weapons path, namely the lifting of sanctions, which are hurting the country. It’s also not clear what Iran would gain by producing one or at best a few nuclear weapons since it could never use them.

If it did, Israel would use its powerful nuclear arsenal to utterly annihilate Iran. The Iranian leadership despises Israel, but are the Iranians ready to see their ancient civilization turned to dust in order to kill Israelis, including Israeli Arabs, but in all likelihood not destroy the Israeli nation?

I think the answer is no. The only possible reason Iran would have for developing a nuclear weapon would be deterring an Israeli attack. But deterrence doesn’t work if you are not willing to use your nuclear weapon(s).

Iran would be buying plenty of trouble by going for nuclear weapons and would be faced with the choice of facing the certainty of national extinction if it ever used them. There are a lot of fanatics Iranians willing to kill. But Iranians are not suicidal fools.

Using a nuclear weapon against Israel would mean not only collective suicide but the erasing from the face of the earth of a civilization that has lasted thousands of years. Given Iranian pride in their culture and civilization, it seems highly unlikely that even Iran’s fanatics would be willing to undertake the suicide of their entire history and civilization because of animus against Israel.

Netanyahu’s rationale for poking the Obama administration in the eye before Congress is mostly bogus. The reason had more to do with Netanyahu’s political fears – he was trailing in the polls at the time – than with fear of Iranian nukes. Looking tough by thumbing his nose at Obama may have been one of the reasons Netanyahu eventually won a narrow victory.

But even the Washington speech was not Netanyahu’s ultimate act of chutzpah. That came in the days before the elections when, on several occasions Netanyahu declared he would never allow a Palestinian state. That directly contradicts commitments he had made to the United States.

A superficial look would suggest Netanyahu is just the ultimate flip-flopping politician. He has switched positions on the issue of a Palestinian state – several times. A deeper analysis indicates the reality is different.

Over the years, Netanyahu’s words and actions betray where he really stands. He first came to power on a platform of expanding the settlements, in effect creating “facts on the ground” that would make a viable Palestinian state that the Palestinian people might accept impossible. He has never really deviated from this purpose, except on occasions when it was in his interest to placate and hoodwink the United States by talking about a “peace process” or “two states living side by side in peace.”

You can’t believe much of what Netanyahu says. But you can believe him when, according to a leader of Netanyahu’s own Likud party, the Israeli Prime Minister declared: “My entire political biography is a fight against the creation of a Palestinian state.”

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