Pak — “Child soldiers” are a common phenomenon all over the world however the atrocity propaganda about children human wave attacks to clear minefields (usually further embellished with stories about “Keys to Heaven” around their necks) were long ago exploded as exactly that, atrocity propaganda.

Thank you for your response. I will be content with agreeing to disagreeing, because you have provided me a logical and understandable response. You also admit you have an inclination towards Iran, which was my initial concern. But, as an American, your interests rightly extend as far foreign policy only and not Iranian domestic affairs.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at when you say, “it’s clear that you are pushing a certain agenda.” Care to spell that out?”

I was trying to say that your intense focus on Israel’s arms trading, as opposed to arms trading as a whole, is unfair, because you are singling out Israel. (Unfair is a pretty lame word to use, but I hope you understand what I mean.) And, in the paradigm of international relations, I see no difference between keeping “one’s finger on the pulse of another country’s business” and “warming relations” with another country. Potayto Potato.

“pak wrote: “Please, if you want to defend American values, which you rightly state have been distorted, then defend these values universally and not selectively.”

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here specifically, but I’m educable.”

What I mean is that you want the US to reconsider its relationship with Israel based on American values. If I am on the same wavelength as you, I believe that Iran’s actions, both abroad and domestically, are in violation of the same values. For example, if you do not “wish that Iran would take down Israel”, then Iran is hardly a good candidate to be credited with your support. Also, Khomeini explicitly stated that the Islamic revolution should spread (which is why he prolonged the Iran-Iraq war for 6 years); that is hardly noble.

By the way, your encounter with the Jewish ladies is very haunting.

You’re right; it does seem odd to freight with so much meaning a brief conversation in a coffee shop. I’ve tried and tried to make sense of it. Nobody I know would say a thing like that: we want it, we intend to have it, even tho it belongs to someone else. After our conversation ended, the women spoke between themselves about what ‘the rabbi’ said. Did the rabbi encourage them in that kind of thinking? I had always thought Jewish women were smart, and tough-minded, but these women seemed willing to parrot whatever the rabbi told them, even if it seemed wrong. It’s so counter to my impression of strong Jewish women.

I’ll bet you will reply that Israelis have been so persecuted that they have to have drills like this, but as was pointed out in an earlier comment, Israel’s narrative of perpetual persecution is not completely factual. Your leaders teach you these things to keep you in a state of fear and anxiety, eager for a war to relieve the tension, like an addict needs a fix to forget about life. Have you ever thought about how your leaders manipulate your emotions and resented it? Are you aware of the Institute for the Study of Rationality, where game theory is applied to calculate how populations will respond, when and how much pressure to apply, when to stage a false flag operation that will motivate a population lapsing into complacency to once again be hyper-alert to non-existent boogeymen?

You expressed disdain for Jonathan Cook’s comments on videos linked several days ago, but he is just a reporter, not an pundit: his narrative was just a report of what he observed as life in lived in Israeli schools (especially). It didn’t sound like a happy lifestyle to me; did it to you? Avigail Abarbenal has studied Israeli society as well; she has observed serious problems in the way Israeli leaders constantly re-traumatize Israeli citizens in what Ian Lustic calls a perpetual “death cult.” Have you observed this? Does it make you afraid?

Are you aware that much of the demonization campaign against Iran was devised by AIPAC because AIPAC had achieved many of their goals and the American Jewish community was no longer terribly interested in participating in pro-Israel campaigns. So they invented a new demon, Iran, with the help of a useful rhetorical hothead, Ahmadinejad. There’s a small Jewish newspaper out of Montgomery County, Maryland that calls Ahmadinejad the best thing that ever happened to AIPAC’s treasury.

Are you aware of how you, a Jew, are being manipulated by wealthy zionist leaders? Do you think their purpose is to make your life happy? In the United States, we see as our right the “pursuit of happiness,” and striving to form “a more perfect union,” but Israel’s leaders seem to idealize the pursuit of fear and, based on the Jane Harman video that Castellio linked, Israel’s advocates in the US seem to think that engendering hatred and division are the ideals to be pursued. Those are not American values. Are they Israeli values? Do you think they will make your life happier?

Try to be in a shoe of an Israeli who find himself guilty before being found guilty?

you wrote:

“This is an example of where you assume that Iran is the innocent party. In fact, Khomeini was vehemently and openly anti-Israeli long before he came to power. This of course rattled Israel, which triggered a deterioration of relations that has spiralled dangerously out of control. Neither Israel nor Iran has made any attempt to improve relations. I personally put more of the blame on Iran’s foreign policy, which is determined by childish stubbornness and opportunism, not pragmatism.”

Yes, I suppose I do see Iran as the MORE innocent party and Israel as having committed the greater offense. Part of my animus toward Israel stems from a chance conversation in a coffee house in Virginia: I summoned my courage to ask two Jewish women why Israel said so many nasty things about Iran. They told me — these are their words: “Unfortunately, Iran is sitting on a piece of real estate that someone else wants. And we intend to get it.” I was stunned and I still am. But that’s just an anecdote…

Point one: Iran IS Iran’s, not Israel’s, to use and even abuse and exploit. If Iranians dislike the actions of their government, then they can take action to change it — as the Iranian people have, several times. But Iranians do not have the ability to influence Israeli policy, which targeted their government. Furthermore, Israel has displayed a tendency to fail to be mindful of its own boundaries, as evidenced by the overwhelming influence Israel has over US affairs, and

Point two: as Israel did, indeed abuse their status as contractors and advisors in the Iranian government, ie. Israel failed to respect its boundaries as an outsider in Iranian affairs. The students who held hostages at the US embassy discovered documents demonstrating the extent to which Americans and Israelis had used their positions in Iranian society to spy on Iran, exploit Iran economically, conspire with the Shah to use SAVAK to imperil the lives of many Iranians. I believe that’s undue influence by foreign governments on the sovereign rights of a people.

It’s been awhile since I read Khomeini’s letters; I recall they were bombastic. If I recall correctly, their main argument was that the US used Israel as a cat’s paw to keep the Arab and Islamic states from achieving independent nationhood. Khomeini urged that Islam was the unifying element among the Persians, and Arabs, and that united around Islam, they could defeat the designs of the west.

I have to admit to having an emotional barrier to ruthless objectivity when assessing Iran during the post-Revolution period due to unique involvement my family had with Iran. I am also aware, through friendships with Iranian-Americans who were dispossessed from their home country while students in the US, how painful that period was for Iranians. I think its important to realize that in a 30 year period, Iran dealt with a revolution, a ‘civil’ war within Iran to determine its future, and an invasion by Iraq. In comparison, the US revolutionary war ended in 1783 and US was not engaged in another war until 1812; it had 30 relatively peaceful years to craft a constitution and form a system of government. If Iran made major mistakes in establishing its government, it deserves at least a small amount of leeway: it didn’t exactly get a lot of help from US OR from Israel, to start it off in the right direction, quite the contrary.

You wrote:

“Finally, you say:
“…of how Israel cheated Iran; undertook a strategy calculated to result in the deaths of Iranians; undertook no ethical evaluation of those actions; and (tangentially related to a point that Eric Brill has been hammering away at), that Israel’s government was involved at every point in supplying weapons to Iran with the goal of killing Iranians — Israel’s enemy, as well as Iraqis, also Israel’s enemy.”

The fact of the matter is that arms trading inevitably leads to death and destruction. Yet Bergman himself identified motives beyond simply generating business; i.e. attempting to warm relations with the mullahs and repelling an advancing Saddam Hussein. So if this incident truly disturbs you, I insist that you challenge arms trading as a whole instead of isolating Israel. Otherwise it becomes clear that you are pushing a certain agenda.”

No, Bergman did NOT identify motives of “attempting to warm relations with the mullahs,” he wrote that Israel was distressed and discombobulated at being unable to gather intelligence on Iran and that Israel had learned from cases in the past that the best way to keep one’s finger on the pulse of another country’s business is by acting as its arms merchant. One does not get the impression that Israel acted as a wise uncle, seeking to “warm relations with the mullahs” by offering advice and counseling restraint; rather, it would seem that Israel would have been overjoyed at Khomeini’s mania to continue the war longer than was necessary. In its earlier days of relations with Iran, ie. when Iran requested that W Morgan Schuster assist Iran with creating a system of taxation and finance, Iran trusted the US and US DID offer Iran the advise of ‘wise uncle.’ Some elements of the US State Department attempted to play the same role in attempting to dissuade Great Britain from its harsh treatment of Iran in the early 1950s. As Ron and Allis Radosh track in their book, “A Safe Haven,” American advocates for Israel worked diligently to clear the US State Department of “Arabists,” persons studied in US – Arab relations, and to replace them with persons sympathetic to Israel’s point of view. According to the Radoshes, that effort has been successful. The timeline of that effort parallels US involvement in Cold War balance of power policy and unfriendly relations with Iran.

I think I’ve pointed out a number of times on this blog that Robert Gates and David Petraeus are arms merchants and little more; I have linked to their speeches at Manama Dialogs in 2007, 2008, and 2009, where they praise the Saudis and emirates for their wisdom in purchasing billions of dollars worth of US armaments. Again, as Eric has emphasized, although Israel and the US have claimed that “Iran” — the government — supplies arms to Hezbollah, it is not a verifiable fact. On the other hand, Robert Gates’s and Petraeus’s statements that Arabs purchase arms from the US seems pretty convincing that the US government is involved in arming the Arab peninsula, and the US agreements and money transfers to Israel for military hardware is similarly solid evidence that the US government is tightly entwined with arms merchants. I also believe I have written on this forum of the relationship of Norman Augustine, former president of Lockheed-Martin and confidant of George Bush, whose activities I have studied. In the 1980s I had neighbors who were tapped by Lockheed to spend time in Israel selling Lockheed products.

I’m not sure what you’re getting at when you say, “it’s clear that you are pushing a certain agenda.” Care to spell that out?

pak wrote: “That is why I comment on this blog (and I am not going to stop my pestering any time soon); it smells of hypocrisy and double standards. Legitimate concerns about American foreign policy in the Middle East, and Israel, are made illegitimate because people react by cosying up to Iran. Look at the Leveretts: they make some very valid points but then publish ridiculous articles about Iranian domestic affairs, as if they are obliged to because of the position they are defending. To a lesser extent, people like yourself and Eric make similarly valid points, but then turn a blind eye to some things that are just as important yet too distant for you to experience yourselves. I sense that your attitude is similar to proverb, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.”

I can’t speak for anyone but myself: Yes, I do try (too frequently with counterproductive results) to “cosy up to Iran” and even to “turn a blind eye” to some of Iran’s evil deeds. The American public will just have to dig and search and work to discover those carefully hidden transgressions of Iran; goodness knows, US mainstream media does not point them out.
But seriously — I am aware of many of the crimes Iran is accused of, and of the ways in which Iran’s Islamic government constrains Iranian rights. Nevertheless, I think it’s a tactical mistake for US-based advocates for Iran to focus on Iran’s human rights abuses NOT because I do not believe the Iranian people deserve to be treated better by their government but for these two reasons: 1. Iranian-American focus on Iran’s human rights abuses gives US policy makers “comfort” in further bashing Iran, a comfort level that US government scarcely needs. 2. I know from first hand experience that Iranians are resentful of the notion that they need American ‘help’ to claim their rights, and would much prefer to be left the hell alone to reform their government in their own style.

If, by “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” you are suggesting that I wish that Iran would take down Israel, I reject that. I do have a negative attitude toward Israel because they deserve it: right-wing Israel advocates — as well as America’s own right wing — have gotten in the way of several Iranian efforts to effect a rapprochement, however hesitant those gestures were.

It is my perspective that a triple-entente: Israel, Muslim Middle East, and US is eminently possible and desirable, and holds the promise of an extraordinary era of dynamic prosperity and peace: mutually assured cooperation.

To achieve that dream, Israel needs serious psychological readjustment: they have got to move away from their mythologized victim complex. The “anti-semite” card has been overplayed; in my view, no American should be put on the defensive where Israel is concerned: it is not incumbent upon an American to support or defend Israel.

American lawmakers will have to step back and mature a bit — spend more time studying in the Robert Byrd tradition and less time on the rubber chicken circuit; they need to grow a spine and throw Israel advocates as well as arms merchants out of their offices when they come calling, and make their own decisions based on American Constitutional principles. Lobby money has become an addiction like smoking; were congressmen to kick the habit of begging for campaign dollars, they might find the atmosphere a cleaner one to breathe in.

pak wrote: “Please, if you want to defend American values, which you rightly state have been distorted, then defend these values universally and not selectively.”

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here specifically, but I’m educable.

Factually, Jews were only persecuted by other West Eurasians who subscribed to religions that were themselves off-shoots of Judaism.

Once you exit that millieu, in South Asia, South East Asia, and Africa, no one cares about the Jews – one way or another.

Furthermore, Jews clearly seem to have been an obsession of Christians over the last 1500 years.

They were not an obsession of Muslims to who Christians, Jews, and other so-called people of the book were benighted people who refused to accept a superior scripture.

So, factually as you like to say, the scope of persecution against Jews is not global and is limited.

Furthermore, even among Christians, the treatment of Jews had been non-uniform. Franco did not do anything to Jews and I think Mussolini did what he did under German pressure. France did worse. And Danes saved the Jews.

Having a country would have helped in 1933; it is of no use now when a Lithium bomb can incinerate a country the size of France.

I for one certainly wish there were a few other pro Israeli voices on this forum to stimulate greater debate.

“The imperative is to defang the Iraqi regime by preventing its acquisition of atomic weapons. No inspectors will be able to do that job.” (Benyamin Netanyahu)

In: Jay Bushinsky, “Netanyahu says Israel expects war,” Washington Times, October 23, 2002.

“[T]he campaign against Saddam is a must. Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.” (Shimon Peres)

In: Marc Perelman, “Iraqi Move Puts Israel In Lonely U.S. Corner”, Forward, September 20, 2002.

“These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction, and a successful move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve.” (Ariel Sharon)

In: Aluf Benn, “Sharon says U.S. should also disarm Iran, Libya, and Syria,” Ha’aretz, February 20, 2003.

“I don’t agree that you need an enormous number of American troops,” said Adelman. Hussein’s army “is down to one-third than it was before, and I think it would be a cakewalk.” (Ken Adelman)

In: Robert Novak, “No cakewalk”, Townhall.com, March 27, 2003.