|
4
Israel
versus Iran
24
February 1993
Since the spring of 1992 public opinion in
Israel is being prepared for the prospect of a
war with Iran, to be fought to bring about
Iran's total military and political defeat. In
one version, Israel would attack Iran alone, in
another it would `persuade' the West to do the
job. The indoctrination campaign to this effect
is gaining in intensity. It is accompanied by
what could be called semi-official horror
scenarios purporting to detail what Iran could
do to Israel, the West and the entire world when
it acquires nuclear weapons as it is expected to
a few years hence. A manipulation of public
opinion to this effect may well be considered
too phantasmagoric to merit any detailed
description. Still, the readers should take
notice, especially since to all appearances the
Israeli Security System does envisage the
prospect seriously. In February 1993
minutely-detailed anticipations of Iran becoming
a major target of Israeli policies became
intense. I am going to confine myself to a
sample of recent publications (in view of the
monotony of their contents it will suffice),
emphasizing how they envisage the possibility of
`persuading' the West that Iran must be
defeated. All Hebrew papers have shared in
advocacy of this madness, with exception of
Haaretz which has not dared to challenge it
either. The Zionist `left' papers, Davar and A1
Hamishmar have particularly distinguished
themselves in bellicosity on the subject of
Iran; more so than the right-wing Maariv. Below,
I will concentrate on the recent writings of Al
Hamishmar and Maariv about Iran, only
occasionally mentioning what I found in other
papers.
A major article by the political
correspondent of A1 Hamishmar, Yo'av Kaspi bears
the title that summarizes its contents: `Iran
needs to be treated just as Iraq had been' (19
February 1993). The article contains an
interview with Daniel Leshem, introduced as `a
retired senior officer in the [Israeli]
Military Intelligence, now member of the Centre
for Strategic Research at the Tel Aviv
University'. Leshem is known to be involved in
forming Israeli strategies. His account of how
Iran is going to nuclearize is too dubious to
merit coverage here as are his lamentations that
`the world' has been ignoring the warnings of
the Israeli experts who
(55)
alone know all the truth about what the
Muslim state<_ are like. However, his
proposals for the reversal of the progress of
Iranian nuclearizatior. are by all means worth
of being reported. Leshem begins by opining that
the Allied air raids had very little success in
destroying Iraq's military and especially
nuclear capabilities, but, owing to Allied
victory on the ground, UN observers could
succeed in finishing the job. Harping on this
`analogy', Leshem concludes: `Israel alone can
do very little to halt the Iranians. We could
raid Iran from the air, but we cannot
realistically expect that our aerial operations
could destroy all their capabilities. At best,
some Iranian nuclear installations could in this
way be destroyed. But we couldn't reach their
major centres of nuclear development, since that
development has proceeded along three different
lines in a fairly decentralized manner, with
installations and factories scattered widely
across the country. It is even reasonable to
suppose that we will never know the locations of
all their installations, just as we didn't know
in Iraq's case.'
Hence Leshem believes that Israel should make
Iran fear Israeli nuclear weapons, but without
hoping that it might deter it from developing
their own; he proposes `to create the situation
which would appear similar to that with Iraq
before the Gulf crisis'. He believes this could
`stop the Ayatollahs, if this is what the world
really wants'. How to do it? `Iran claims
sovereignty over three strategically located
islands in the Gulf. Domination over those
islands is capable of assuring domination not
only over all the already active oilfields of
the area, but also over all the natural gas
sources not yet exploited. We should hope that,
emulating Iraq, Iran would contest the Gulf
Emirates and Saudi Arabia over these islands
and, repeating Saddam Hussein's mistake in
Kuwait, start a war. This may lead to an
imposition of controls over Iranian nuclear
developments the way it did in Iraq. This
prospect is in my view quite likely, because
patience plays no part in the Iranian mentality.
But if they nevertheless refrain from starting a
war, we should take advantage of their
involvement in Islamic terrorism which already
hurts the entire world. Israel has incontestable
intelligence that the Iranians are terrorists.
We should take advantage of this by persistently
explaining to the world at large that by virtue
of its involvement in terrorism, no other state
is as dangerous to the entire world as Iran. I
cannot comprehend why Libya has been hit by
sanctions, to the point that sales of military
equipment are barred to it because of its minor
involvement in terrorism; while Iran, with its
record of guiding terrorism against the entire
world remains entirely free of even stricter
sanctions.' In true-blue Israeli style, Leshem
attributes this lamentable state of affairs to
Israel's neglect of its propaganda (called
`Hasbara', that is, `Explanation').
(56)
He nevertheless hopes that Israel will soon
be able `to explain to the world at large' how
urgent is the need to provoke Iran to a war.
Provoking Iran into responding with war or
measures just stopping short of war, is also
elaborated by many other commentators. Let me
just quote a story published by Telem Admon in
Maariv (12 February) who reports that `a senior
Israeli', that is, a senior Mossad agent, `about
two weeks ago had a long conversation with the
son of the late Shah, Prince Riza Sha'a Pahlevi'
in order to appraise the man's possible
usefulness for Israeli `Hasbara'. In the
'senior's' opinion, `Clinton's America is too
absorbed in its domestic affairs', and as a
result `the prince's chances of reigning in Iran
are deplorably slim. The prince's face showed
signs of distress after he heard a frank
assessment to this effect from the mouth of an
Israeli.' Yet the `senior's' appraisal of the
prince was distinctly negative, in spite of `the
princely routine of handing to all visitors
copies of articles by Ehud Ya'ari' (an Israeli
television commentator suspected of being a
front for Israeli Intelligence). Why? In the
first place because `the prince shows how
nervous he is. His knees jerked during the first
half-hour of the conversation.' Worse still, his
chums `were dressed like hippies' wohile `he
kept frequenting Manhattan's haunts in their
company and addressing them as if they were his
equals'. The `senior' deplores it greatly that
the prince has emancipated himself from the
beneficial influence of his mother, `who had
done a simply wonderful job travelling from
capital to capital in order to impress everybody
concerned with her hope to enthrone her son in
Iran while she is still alive'. Her valiant
efforts look to me as connected, to some extent
at least, to the no-less-valiant efforts of the
Israeli `Hasbara' before it had written off her
son.
But what might happen if both Israel and Iran
have nuclear weapons? This question is being
addressed by the Hebrew press at length, often
in a manner intended to titillate the reader
with anticipated horrors. Let me give a small
sample. In A! Hamishmar (19 February), Kaspi
interviewed the notorious `hawk', Professor
Shlomo Aharonson, who begins his perorations by
excoriating the Israeli left as a major obstacle
to Israel's ability to resist Iranian evildoing.
Without bothering about the left's current lack
of political clout, says Aharonson: `The left is
full of prejudices and fears. It refuses to be
rational on the nuclear issue. The left doesn't
like nuclear weapons, full stop. The opposition
of the Israeli left to nuclear weapons is
reminiscent of the opposition to the invention
of the wheel.' Profound insights, aren't they?
After spelling them out, Aharonson proceeds to
his `scenarios'. Here is just one of them: `If
we established tomorrow a Palestinian state, we
will really grant a sovereignty to an entity
second To none in hostility toward us. This
entity can be expected to reach a nuclear
alliance with Iran
(57)
at once. Suppose the Palestinians open
hostilities against us and the Iranians deter us
from retaliating against the Palestinians by
threatening to retaliate in turn against us by
nuclear means. What could we do then?' There is
a lot more in the same vein before Aharonson
concludes: `We should see to it that no
Palestinian state ever comes into being, even if
Iranians threaten us with nuclear weapons. And
we should also see to it that Iran lives in
permanent fear of Israeli nuclear weapons being
used against it.'
Let me reiterate that the Israelis are also
bombarded ceaselessly with official messages to
the same effect. For example, General Ze'ev
Livneh, the commander of recently established
Rear General Command of the Israeli Army said
(in Haaretz, 15 February) that `it is not only
Iran which already endangers every site in
Israel', because, even if to a lesser extent,
'Syria, Libya and Algeria do too'. In order to
protect Israel from this danger, General Livneh
calls upon `the European Community to enforce
jointly with Israel an embargo on any weaponry
supplies to both Iran and those Arab states. The
EC should also learn that military interventions
can have salutary effects, as proven recently in
Iraq's case.'
Timid reminders by the Hebrew press that
Israel continues to have the monopoly of nuclear
weapons in the Middle East, were definitely
unwelcome to Israeli authorities. In Hodashot of
29 January and 5 February, Ran Edelist, careful
to rely only on quotes from the US press, raised
the problem of nuclear waste disposal from the
rather obsolete Dimona reactor and of other
possible risks of that reactor to Israeli lives
and limbs. He was `answered' by numerous
interviews with named and unnamed experts, all
of whom fiercely denied that any such risks
existed. The experts didn't neglect to reassure
their readers that the Israeli reactor was the
best and the safest in the entire world. But
speaking in the name of `the Intelligence
Community' Immanuel Rosen (Maariv, 12 February)
went even further. He disclosed that the said
`community' felt offended `by the self-confident
publications of an Israeli researcher dealing
with nuclear subjects. This researcher has
recently been found by Ihe Intelligence
Community to pose "a security risk", to the
point of observing that in some states such a
researcher "would have been made to disappear".'
Ran Edelist reacted in a brief note (in
Hadashot, 14 February), confining himself to
quoting these revealing ideas of `the
Intelligence Community', and drawing attention
to threats voiced there. But apart from Edelist,
the press of `the only democracy in the Middle
East' either didn't dare comment, or was not
allowed to.
The press is allowed, and even encouraged, to
discuss one issue related to Israeli nuclear
policies: to say how clever Peres was in
pretending to agree to negotiate nuclear
disarmament and then raising unacceptable
conditions for entering any such
negotiations.
(58)
An example of this is Akiva Eldar's coverage
in Haaretz (19 February), of Rabin's excoriation
of Egypt on television a few days earlier. Rabin
scolded Egypt for suggesting that a Middle East
regional nuclear disarmament agreement would be
desirable. Eldar comments that `The Prime
Minister is known to loathe anything that
relates to Egypt. Aiming at Boutros Ghali, he
said [in a public speech]: "What can you
expect of him? Isn't he an Egyptian?" Rabin is
particularly averse to Egyptian insistence that
the Middle East should be completely
denuclearized. Peres, by contrast, favours using
Egypt as an intermediary in various diplomatic
pursuits, while recognizing that Cairo's
reminders on the subject of Dimona obstruct his
real mission, which is to mediate between Egypt
and the grand man in Jerusalem.' Therefore,
after `Egypt recently invited Israel to a
symposium that "would deal with both
conventional and non-conventional armed
confrontations", a high level discussion was
held in the Foreign Ministry on how to pretend
to accept the invitation and then "to decline it
elegantly". The solution was to communicate to
Egypt the Israeli agreement in principle to
attend the symposium on three conditions: that
it be chaired by the US and Russia; that its
agenda be unanimously determined by the chairmen
and all the participants; and, most
interestingly, that nothing be discussed unless
the presence of all other Arab states, not just
of Syria and Lebanon, but also - hard to believe
- of Libya and Iraq, be assured in advance. In
this way, any conceivable discussion of nuclear
affairs was effectively precluded.' I find it
superfluous to comment on Eldar's story.
But I do want to make some comments on ihe
incitement of Israelis against Iran. I am well
aware that a lot of expert opinions and
predictions quoted here will sound to
non-Israeli readers like fantasy running amok.
Yet I perceive those opinions and predictions,
no matter how mendacious and deceitful they
obviously are, as politically quite meaningful.
Let me explain my reasons. In the first place, I
have not quoted the opinions of raving
extremists. I was careful to select only the
writings of respected and influential Israeli
experts or commentators on strategic affairs,
who can be presumed to be well acquainted with
the thinking of the Israeli Security System.
Since militarily Israel is the strongest state
in the Middle East and has the monopoly on
nuclear weapons in the region, strategical
doctrines of its Security System deserve to be
disseminated world-wide, especially when they
are forcefully pressed upon the Israeli public.
Whether one likes it or not, Israel is a great
power, not only in military but also in
political terms, by virtue of its increasing
influence upon US policies. The opinions of the
Israeli Security System may mean something
different from what they say. But this doesn't
detract from their importance.
(59)
But there is more to it. Fantasy and madness
in the doctrines of the Israeli Security System
are nothing new. At least since the early 1950s
those qualities could already be noticed. Let us
just recall that in 1956 Ben-Gurion wanted to
annex Sinai to Israel on the ground that `it was
not Egypt'. The same doctrine was professed in
1967-73 with elaborations, such as the proposal
of several generals to conquer Alexandria in
order to hold the city hostage until Egypt would
sign a peace treaty on Israeli terms. The 1982
invasion of Lebanon relied on fantastic
assumptions, and so did the 1983 `peace treaty'
signed with a `lawful Lebanese government' put
in power by Sharon. All Israeli policies in the
Territories are not just totally immoral, but
also rely on assumptions steadily held and
advocated without regard for their fanciful
contents. It will suffice to recall how Rabin
together with the entire Israeli Security System
perceived the outbreak of the Intifada first as
an Iranian manipulation and then as a
fabrication of western television and press.
They concluded that if the Arabs are denied
opportunities to fake riots in order to be
photographed, the unrest in the Territories
could be suppressed with ease.
Relevant to this is the fact that Israeli
policies bear the easily recognizable imprint of
Orientalist `expertise' abounding in militarist
and racist ideological prejudices. This
`expertise' is readily available in English,
since its harbingers were the Jewish
Orientalists living in English-speaking
countries, like Bernard Lewis or the late Elie
Kedourie who had visited Israel regularly for
hobnobbing on the best of terms with the Israeli
Security System. It was Kedourie who performed a
particularly seminal role in fathering the
assumptions on which Israeli policies rest and
who consequently had in Israel a lot of
influence. In Kedourie's view, the peoples of
the Middle East, with the `self-evident'
exception of Israel, would be best off if ruled
by foreign imperial powers with a natural
capacity to rule for a long time yet. Kedourie
believed that the entire Middle East could be
ruled by foreign powers with perfect ease,
because their domination would hardly be opposed
except by grouplets of intellectuals bent on
rabble-rousing. Kedourie lived in Britain, and
his primary concern was British politics. In his
opinion the British refused to continue to rule
the Middle East, with calamitous effects, only
because of intellectual corruption of their own
experts, especially those from the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office at Chatham House, who were
misguided enough to dismiss the superior
expertise of minority nationals, particularly
Jewish, from the Arab world, who alone had known
`the Arab nature' at first hand. For example, in
his first book, Kedourie says that as early as
1932 (!) the British government was misguided
enough to grant Iraq independence (it was faked,
but never mind) against the advice of Jewish
community in Baghdad. On many occasions
(60)
during his recurrent visits to Israel, from
the 1960s until his death, Kedourie would assure
his Israeli audiences (one of which I was a
member) that Iraq could `really' be still ruled
by the British with ease, under whatever
disguises it would be convenient to adopt,
provided the grouplets of rabble-rousers would
be dealt with by a modicum of salutary
toughness. That, the opportunities for education
would be restricted so as not to produce a
superfluous number of intellectuals, prone to
learn the western notions of national
independence. True, Kedourie also opposed the
idea of exclusive Jewish right to the Land of
Israel as incompatible with his imperialistic
outlook, but he favoured the retention of
Israeli permanent rule over the Palestinians.
The rather incongruous blend of Kedourie's ideas
with the Land of Israel messianism is already an
innovation of Israeli Security System
vintage.
The implications of the Kedourie doctrine for
Israeli policymakers are obvious. First, Israel
always seeks to persuade the West about what its
`true' interests and `moral duties' in the
Middle East are. It also tells the West that by
intervening in the Middle East they would serve
the authentic interests of Middle Eastern
nations. But if the western powers refuse to
listen, it is up to Israel to assume `the white
man's burden'.
Another implication of Kedourie's doctrine,
acted upon by Israel since the early 1950s
already, is that in the Middle East no other
strong state is to be tolerated. Its power must
be destroyed or at least diminished through a
war. Iranian theocracy may have its utility for
the Israeli Hasbara, but Nasser's Egypt was
attacked while being emphatically secular. In
both cases the real reason for the Israeli
threat to start a war was the strength of the
state concerned. Quite apart from the risks such
a state may pose to Israeli hegemonic ambitions,
Orientalist `expertise' requires that natives of
the region always remain weak, to be ruled
always by their traditional notables but not by
persons with intellectual capacity, whether
religious or secular. Before World War I, such
principles were taken for granted in the West,
professed openly and applied globally, from
China to Mexico. Israeli Orientalism, on which
Israeli policies are based, is no more than
their belated replica. It continues to uphold
dogmas which, say in 1903, were taken for
granted as `scientific' truths. The subsequent
`troubles' of the West are perceived by the
Israeli `experts' as a well-deserved punishment
for listening to intellectuals who had been
casting doubt on such self-evident truths.
Without such rotten intellectuals, everything
would have remained stable.
Let us return to the special case of Iran,
though. Anyone not converted to the
Orientalistic creed will recognize that Iran is
a country very difficult to conquer, because of
its size, topography and especially because of
fervent nationalism combined with the religious
zeal of its populace. I happen to loathe the
current Iranian
(61)
regime, but it doesn't hinder me from
immediately noticing how different it is from
Saddam Hussein's. Popular support for Iran's
rulers is much greater than for Iraq's. After
Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran, his troops were
resisted valiantly under extremely difficult
conditions. All analogies between a possible
attack on Iran and the Gulf War are therefore
irresponsibly fanciful. Yet Sharon and the
Israeli Army commanders did in 1979 propose to
send a detachment of Israeli paratroopers to
Tehran to quash the revolution and restore the
monarchy. They really thought, until stopped by
Begin, that a few Israeli paratroopers could
determine the history of a country as immense
and populous as Iran! According to a consensus
of official Israeli experts on Iranian affairs,
the fall of the Shah was due solely to his
`softness' in refraining to order his army to
slaughter thousands of demonstrators wholesale.
Later, the Israeli experts on Iranian affairs
were no less unanimous in predicting a speedy
defeat of Iran by Saddam Hussein. No evidence
indicates that they have changed their
assumptions or discarded their underlying
racism. Their ranks may include some relatively
less-opinionated individuals, who have survived
the negative selection process which usually
occurs within groups sharing such
ideologically-tight imageries. But such
individuals can be assumed to prefer to keep
their moderation to themselves, while hoping
that Israel can reap some fringe benefits from
any western provocation against Iran, even if it
results in a protracted and inconclusive
war.
|