URI AVNERY—I remember this joke every time Binyamin Netanyahu utters his blood-curdling threats against Iran. The struggle with Iran heads his agenda. He warns of the danger of an Iranian effort to produce nuclear weapons and implicitly threatens her with our “secret” nuclear arsenal. Why? God knows. I search desperately for a reason for the Israeli-Iranian conflict, a struggle of life and death, and do not find any. Nothing. Niente. Wars between nations are based on conflicts of interest. Are there any conflicting interests between Israel and Iran? None whatsoever.
ISRAELI EXCEPTIONALISM
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FRED REED—Jews with remarkable consistency have been described for centuries as smart, greedy, combative, clannish, “pushy,” exploitative, and arrogant. This is how I hear them described in Mexico, where I live. (I think of these as Middle Eastern traits, but never mind.) Then there is chutzpah. which in practice seems to mean “brashly walking over other people.” It can leave others feeling bulldozed, defeated, used. This bruising of the ego, of self-respect, arouses a hostility all out of proportion to actual damage done. It is, or so I think, a major cause of dislike for Jews. Such descriptions are dismissed today as stereotypes. A stereotype is just the aggregate observation of many people over time.
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LAURENT GUYENOT—The paradoxical nature of Jewishness (combining separatism and universalism), which is reflected in the ambiguous nature of Zionism (combining nationalism and internationalism), is ultimately linked to the Jewish conception of God. Is the biblical Yahweh the national god of Israel or the universal God of humankind?
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ROBERT FANTINA—Kushner is tasked with resolving a decades-old problem that the U.S. hardly even sees as a problem, and one on which he sides with the aggressor. That side is one nation whose government discussed ways of taking advantage of Kushner’s naiveté and complex business problems.
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The Shadow of an Israeli/U.S. Attack Grows Larger by the Day
15 minutes readED CURTIN—Israel’s mainstream newspapers, Haaretz, and the more conservative Jerusalem Post, both announce in headline news that Iran has built a new base in Syria with missiles capable of hitting Israel. One look at these newspapers with their talk of Israeli war preparations and the potential in assassinating the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah makes it very clear that an expanded Middle Eastern war is fast approaching. Russia, Syria, and Iran are being demonized as mind control propaganda spews forth. The mainstream corporate media in the United States and other countries are sure to follow.