There’s a theme I see coming from Israel and friends of Israel that I find puzzling. Consider this nonsense from Mort Zuckerman, where he lays into Secretary Clinton for critizing Israel’s interference in Gazan reconstruction (emphasis mine).
“I am very surprised, frankly, at this statement from the United States government and from the secretary of state,” said Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and member of the NYC Jewish Community Relations Council. … “I don’t believe that we should be in a position at this point to do anything to strengthen Hamas,” Zuckerman said. “We surely know what Hamas stands for as I say they are the forward battalions of Iran.”
On the surface, it’s impossible to know what Zuckerman means when he says that Hamas is a forward battalion of Iran. Hamas is an indigenous Palestinian organization. It’s membership is nearly 100% Sunni Muslim, although I am sure it has a few Shi’ite and Christian members. It does not share the goals of the Shi’ite Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini. The only reason Hamas has any relationship with Iran at all is because Iran is willing to sell them arms and give them some financial support and military training.
Now, consider this exchange in an interview with Netanyahu adviser, Dore Gold:
Q – What do you think the priorities are in … dealing with the security issue that arises out of Gaza and then the political issue of having a substantial part of the Palestinian electorate … supporting a party that is not prepared to talk peace?
A – Gaza poses a very real problem. It’s a Mediterranean beachhead now for the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is supplying arms to Hamas, which is giving money to Hamas, and which is training Hamas operatives in military camps outside of Tehran run by the Revolutionary Guards.
But, again, Hamas is not acting as a proxy for Iran because their ambitions are for themselves and the Palestinian people, not for Iran’s brand of Islam nor for Iran’s regional political ambitions. Iran doesn’t have a beachhead in Gaza. What they have is street cred as one of the only governments in the Middle East willing to support armed resistance to the Israeli government. But the Israelis are continuously talking nonsense. Consider this recent performance by Israeli president Shimon Peres:
“The Iranian leadership’s grand design is to convert the Middle East into one religious bloc,” President Shimon Peres said Wednesday during his address to the British Parliament.
“The Iranian leadership is obsessed with its quest for regional religious domination. This quest is supported by long range missiles, enriched uranium and fanatic incitement – all fueled by the excessive price of oil,” he said.
“The Iranian leadership’s grand design is to convert the Middle East from a region of nations into one religious bloc. They attempt to impose their version on everyone. Whoever disagrees is deemed a heretic and is doomed to disappear.”
If this were true, why would Hamas have anything to do with Iran? Sunni Muslims, as a rule, have no interest in being forced to convert to the Shi’a creed. Even less so are they interested in being ‘disappeared’ if they refuse to convert. Hamas accepts aid from Iran because no aid is on offer from Egypt or Jordan, since they have made peace with Israel. But President Peres has no shame in lying to the British Parliament.
And consider Netanyahu’s performance after he was tapped by Peres to form an Israeli government.
Binyamin Netanyahu described Iran as the greatest threat that Israel has ever faced and failed to mention stalled talks with the Palestinians after he was asked to be the country’s new Prime Minister today.
In a speech made outside the residence of President Shimon Peres, the Likud leader said that protecting Israel would be his greatest responsibility as leader, and condemned “formidable” challenges posed by the Islamic Republic.
However, he did not once mention the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process or a two-state solution throughout his address, omissions that will cause concern within an Obama administration determined to advance the peace process.
It should be obvious that Israel is trying to use some super-hyped threat from Iran to avoid even discussing the Palestinian peace process. I can understand that Israel doesn’t want to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran. But suggesting that Iran is a bigger threat than the combined Arab armies that invaded and nearly overran Israel during the Yom Kippur War and then arguing that Iran is on a mission to forcibly convert the Sunni Arab world to Imami Shi’ism is an insult to everyone’s intelligence. Hamas receives aid from Iran, but they are not out to do Iran’s bidding. Iran is run by an unsavory government, but they have no territorial ambitions, they have no intention of starting a nuclear war with Israel, and their religious ambitions, whatever they may be, are nothing compared to their interests in commerce and security for their own people.
Iran gains influence by aiding the Palestinian resistance. Nothing more. Hamas is not a proxy for Iran.
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The Israel Defense Forces said that Hamas has commandeered a large cache of unexploded weapons fired by Israel into the Gaza Strip during its offensive last month.
The cache had disappeared while under guard by Hamas officials. United Nations experts had planned to dispose safely of the stockpile, which includes aircraft bombs and white phosphorous shells.
White phosphorus bombs found in Gaza City and in the northern Gaza Strip last month and placed in a lot near police headquarters in Gaza City, bombs with a collective weight of 7,500 kilograms, were neutralized by being submerged in water and covered with sand.
Netanyahu to form alliance of right-wing and hard-line religious parties
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."By the standards of the Israel propagandists, the Afghanis were the forward battalions of the US during the war against the Russian occupation. That didn’t work out so well for us, did it? If every nation and political movement that gets aid, overt or covert, from a foreign source is a forward battalion, there sure are a hell of a lot of battalions out there.
Between the attitudes of Israel and of its propagandists here, it becomes clearer and clearer that the situation is near-hopeless and the only solution would be for the UN to enforce a military occupation on Israel and its so-called territories.
How sad, the Israelis are using lies as weapons to defeat the truth of what is really happening between them and the Palestinians. And for what reason? So they can control the “Holy Land” in the name of their patriarchal god. Will the human species ever survive its religious challenges?
Blah. This is a simple crutch. Was our exploitation of the native population in the United States and theft of their lands all in the name of a Judeo-Christian deity? The Israeli govt. favors expansion and dominion over natural resources in Palestinian-populated areas and their policies reflect that.
Well, yeah, it was. See The Sword and the Cross. See Manifest Destiny.
You do know Israel was founded by secular nationalists whose closest analogs were the Arab nationalists of the Nasser period, don’t you?
Yes, the Zionists were secular nationalists. Zionism had nothing to do with religion. But unlike the Zionists the Arab nationalists of the Nasser period were not even a little bit interested in moving into lands that had non-Arab majorities, taking them over, colonizing and ethnically cleansing them in order to create an Arab state.
Well, there is an obvious practical reason for that difference. The slogan “People without a land for a land without a people” was 1/2 true.
Yes, true.
One of the interesting things about Zionism is that its founders and for decades the overwhelming majority of its proponents were highly assimilated secular European Jewish elites many of whom were in fact atheists.
And so it is revealing that many European Christians who criticize Israel and Zionism, almost certainly unconsciously, echo the anti-jewish tracts of Martin Luther who condemned the vengeful God of the old testament and the people who refused Christ’s mercy.
Funny, I’ve never picked up on that at all. Where do you get that?
“So they can control the “Holy Land” in the name of their patriarchal god.”
See above. Or consider the essay of Joostien Gaarder
We do not recognize the rhetoric of the State of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution and blood vengeance that comes with “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” We do not recognize the principle of ten or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population thinning out as a political weapon. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
He said: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” We do not recognize a state founded on anti-humanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic national and warlike religion. Or, as Albert Schweitzer expressed it: “Humanitarianism consists of never sacrificing a human being for a cause.”
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14532.htm
Here is a guy writing an essay in a state where the official state religion is Lutherinism, the original constitution banned Jews (and Jesuits) from living in the country, and essentially echoing Martin Luther’s infamous essay concerning the Jews. And publishing in the foremost paper how the Jews have still failed to heed the words of the Prince of Peace whose teachings have made Europeans world famous for their pacifistic and mild nature!
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Translated and published by Sirocco at his own blog and BooMan Tribune.
Jostein Gaarder controversy
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The funniest part of that discussion was how complaints about the characterization of Judaism as “an archaic national and warlike religion” were countered with “one cannot criticize Israel without these baseless accusations of anti-semitism.”
Are you suggesting that these criticisms of Israel’s conduct are not completely justified?
Jews have a violent religion and rejected the teachings of Christ – is not a criticism of Israel’s conduct.
My original note was that there is a reason why, despite the origin of the Israeli state as a secular nationalist movement run mostly by atheists, it is often criticized by European gentiles in language that reflects European gentile traditional prejudices.
In fact, the very horror of the Israeli occupation make these excursions into comments on Jews and Judaism more glaring.
But unlike the Zionists the Arab nationalists of the Nasser period were not even a little bit interested in moving into lands that had non-Arab majorities, taking them over, colonizing and ethnically cleansing them in order to create an Arab state
that’s not really true. see, for example, the displacement of the nubians in upper egypt because of nasser’s grand dam project. or, for that matter, the treatment of the kurds in northern syria when nasser was president of the united arab republic.
all forms of ethnic-based nationalism inevitably lead to abuses.
Not the same thing at all. The dam project was not even remotely the same thing as what happened in Palestine. This was a case of a state exercising eminent domain within its own territory – something states do all the time.
The treatment of the Kurds in Syria or anywhere else is also a completely different matter than what happened in Palestine.
i didn’t say it was exactly the same thing. you said that even in the nasser era, arab nationalism never mistreated or displaced non-arabs from their ancestrals lands. i gave you two examples where nasser himself did just that.
as i said before, ethnic-based nationalism inevitably leads to mistreatment of members of other ethnic groups. you can call the forced relocation of thousands of dark skinned people largely for the benefit of their lighter skinned rulers “eminent domain” if you want. but frankly, that’s not how the nubians i met in aswan see it. (also, incidentally, israeli authorities invoke eminent domain when they seize arab lands. it seems to me that calling something “eminent domain” doesn’t mean it isn’t directed at a particular ethnic group)
“the Israelis are using lies as weapons to defeat the truth of what is really happening between them and the Palestinians.“
They’ve been doing that for more than a century. There’s nothing new here at all!
“At least 50 percent of Hamas’s current operating budget of about $10 million a year comes from people in Saudi Arabia, according to estimates by American law enforcement officials, American diplomats in the Middle East and Israeli officials.”
NY Times September 17, 2003
Is in their ability to take a disunited, fractious mixed motive enemy and forge them into a determined united front.
If this were true, why would Hamas have anything to do with Iran?
To get all that nice training, munitions and intelligence support. They have a common enemy and would likely act upon some requests from Iran that would not further their own goals in exchange for sustenance.
I am sure they don’t need to justify such things further, but could also do so by the reasonable assumption that Iran will eventually fail in dominating their part of the world with or without Palestinian support.
This hardly makes them a proxy, but it certainly greys the line, no?
Give me an example of a request from Iran?
Ok! once you prove they have not. Too many rhetorical games:
So, sure, if the question is ‘pick one: is Hamas a proxy for Iran or they are not?’ Then you gotta go with ‘not.’
[Reminds me of a Debate Club Resolution]
But I am thinking the problem is the question, as the two regimes relationship can’t appropriately be defined by either answer a yes or a no. Is or Isn’t.
Simply asking a question that must be answered yes or no while offering evidence of a something in between indicates an understanding that the reader is being coerced: rhetoric is being used to force the reader to dismiss a full picture for a forced choice between two incomplete options. I am referring to that wonderful sentence where financial, training and intelligence support is brushed aside once the reader has made the choice.
So I wonder, why the rhetorical, semantic exercise? I guess I find it manipulative to use a forced choice after 8 years of ‘Great President or Greatest President’ rheotorical games..
I don’t get something. How can Hamas, the legally elected government of the Gaza Strip, be called a resistance force? Some of their acts are of resistance against the Israeli government, but isn’t it a bit off to call them an umbrella resistance movement?
Bob Baer’s book “The Devil We Know” lays out a convincing case that both Hezbollah and Hamas are client’s of Iran. It seems that Baer has spent his whole adult life in the Lebanon/Syria part of the world.
Iran, a Shia/Persian country, really does not care if Hamas is Sunni. Iran is building client states that are beholden to Iran and are putting and will continue to put pressure on the Gulf States (Saudi, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain) in order to achieve their goal(s).
Iran will be the key player because of the size of their military and their ability to control the flow of oil.
It sounds like you are describing what any country should do in its neighborhood; find allies and nurture them. Calling them ‘client states’ is just a trick to make ‘pursuing their national interests’ seem evil or nefarious. Isreal does the same things Iran is doing. So does the US.
nalbar
Au contraire. I did not want to make it sound evil. It is what I would expect any nation to do, under the circumstances, if they could.
But, also, I think it is important to understand the dynamics, financial at least, of what is happening.
Well, done, BooMan! Thanks for pointing all this out.
I have to nit pick a couple of things, though.
Dore Gold refers to Hamas as “a party that is not prepared to talk peace”. Typical Israeli rubbish. Hamas has repeatedly stated its willingness to accept a two-state solution. Hamas has also repeatedly proven by its actions that it is far more willing than Israel is to work to avoid armed conflict in the interim. In the overwhelming majority of cases it is Israel that breaks a formal or informal lull in violence, and the longer the lull lasts the more likely Israel is to be the one to end it.
“…no aid is on offer from Egypt or Jordan, since they have made peace with Israel.” Not quite. No aid is on offer from Egypt or Jordan because their dictatorial rulers are among the Middle Eastern despots who are bought and paid for by the United States, and they don’t dare defy their masters by supporting the Palestinians’ resistance to occupation, colonization, and oppression.
Iran is no threat to Israel or anyone else. Unlike Israel they have no territorial ambitions, have not attacked another country in nearly three hundred years, and are really just looking after their own security and economic stability.