If Hamas Gives Up Violence – Will the Israelis?

… by  Jim W. Dean, VT Editor       … featuring Uri Avnery’s  The Stolen War

Hamas declares it will given up all violent action, choosing the well proven Arab Spring non violent demonstration process instead. It agrees to join the PLO government and allow their presidential candidate to run unopposed.

And for icing on the cake it accepts a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and agrees to abide by the Oslo accords.

Was there deafening celebration here in Zionist controlled American? No. There was deafening silence. Here in the land of the free, most American know nothing about this.

Happy New Year to all you Americans out there who think you are free. You aren’t.

What most Americans are allowed to know about geopolitics is decided by our Elites, be they Dems or Repubs. Why should you believe me you say? I don’t expect you to. I have Uri Avnery to carry my water today, and I his.

Regular readers know I do these duet pieces with Uri as he is admired here at VT as the ultimate authority on domestic Israeli policy. That is why hardly any one knows of him over here. It’s called a media ban…part of our ‘free’ press.

They are so afraid of Uri they will not even contradict him as that would just attract more attention to who he is and his long activist and journalism career as an critic of the War Dogs of Israel.

His journey has taken him from 14 year old Irgun member, the ’48 war, to the early Knesset days, and a few assassination attempts, to the being the masthead of the Gush Shalom peace movement.

Zionist hardliners have publicly asked their army to take him out in a ‘targeted killing’.

Mind you, Israel is the country that American Zionist Jews constantly claim is the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. But they know that America media will never report this targeted killing story (they didn’t).

On the contrary, I am sure they can’t wait for the day when they can start doing targeted killing here. Some say they started long ago, but I digress. This is a two punch intro.

First, the good news about the pull out from Iraq, and the eventually pull out from the disaster in Afghanistan, a defeat from the first day, was followed by the kick off of the new Asian Cold War.

We have to defend against China as their non offensive capability is not non offensive enough. They like Iran, want to have some type of effective defensive from U.S. Military power that is flanking them.

We had the silly Australian photo op of a tiny Marine training facility there…like Marines who are deployed need training. And then we have the ‘break through’ opening to the country formally known as Burma…of no geopolitical consequence whatsoever. Can you say Kabuki Theater?

The ludicrous idea of an attack on Iran is widely known all over the world, even by cab drivers. The U. S. military is facing automatically triggered cutbacks in deficit reductions, major troop draw downs in Europe and here at home.

But we are to believe we are going on the offensive defense against China, the country that buys our debt and supplies much of our military equipment. You just can’t make this stuff up.

My only conclusion is that our elites really think we are that stupid. Our Republican presidential candidates mostly are.

They are tripping over themselves as to who can kick Iran’s butt, squash Hamas…and any other military inferior target they can find to pretend they are a threat to the U.S.

Does the American regime ever make their case for the threat? No. They don’t even try. What the do is what is called in the sales business…the ‘assumed close’.

If pressed, they say the proof is ‘classified’…the tried and true dodge. Our sources tell us what is classified is that they are hyping the threat.

Whatever happened to the CNN rage against bullies that was going on over the summer? I thought bully thing being cool and a role model…was out.

So what is the point of my intro missive? It’s ‘Occupy America’ time folks. We need some game changing street action here. We are in an election year and we need to do something different.

Radical me, I suggest the Left and Right getting together to protest against all candidates who are obvious unsuited to be President.

Our Elites and the MSM are not used to seeing the folks do that. We don’t want Israeli, MSM, or American shadow government candidates…none of them. It’s like…not a real choice. There is only one that is not in the bag. You know who that is.

But let me go on record here. The elites are still running the game here. The politicians are their puppets. Tunisa, Egypt, Bahrain, the Syrians were dying to overthrow their elites.

What will we do? ‘They’, are convince we are sheep, partially our fault. They are betting our staying that way.

I am praying that Americans prove this year that they are not suckers for the usual disinformation campaign…even addicted to it. For example, we had this prominent coverage of the ‘peak oil’ theory in the early 2000’s…and then all the wars really being to secure shrinking oil resources.

And what was the real deal? It’s out now, thanks to Gordon Duff’s work, that the world is awash in petro-reserves that threaten to crash market prices in one of the elites’ prime businesses (the others are banking and food).

The new wars that are in incubator now, Western wars of terror, are to keep new reserves from coming onto the market. Nigeria is just one of the countries on the Aztec sacrificial block.

Enough of me, now onto Uri. He’s older and wiser…and I did not fight in the 1948 war, just being an idea in my father’s mind at the time.

As you read this Uri gem, ask yourself if American media a fraud for banning a man like this from American viewers.

In a criminal investigation withholding evidence is a felony. I think what is being done to us media wise is a felony…radical me. “Lay it on them Uri.”

The Stolen War    …by Uri Avnery

January 7, 2012

IS THERE no limit to the villainy of Hamas? Seems there isn’t. This week, they did something quite unforgivable. They stole a war.

FOR SOME weeks now, our almost new Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, has been announcing at every possible opportunity that a new war against the Gaza Strip is inevitable.

Several commanders of the troops around the Strip have been repeating this dire forecast, as have their camp-followers, a.k.a. military commentators.

One of these comforted us. True, Hamas can now hit Tel Aviv with their rockets, but that will not be so terrible, because it will be a short war.

Just three or four days. As one of the generals said, it will be much more “hard and painful” (for the Arabs) than Cast Lead I, so it will not last for three weeks, as that did. We shall all stay in our shelters – those of us who have shelters, anyway – for just a few days.

Why is the war inevitable? Because of the terrorism, stupid. Hamas is a terrorist organization, isn’t it?

But along comes the supreme Hamas leader, Khaled Mash’al, and declares that Hamas has given up all violent action. From now on it will concentrate on non-violent mass demonstrations, in the spirit of the Arab Spring.

When Hamas forswears terrorism, there is no pretext for an attack on Gaza.

But is a pretext needed? Our army will not let itself be thwarted by the likes of Mash’al. When the army wants a war, it will have a war.

This was proved in 1982, when Ariel Sharon attacked Lebanon, despite the fact that the Lebanese border had been absolutely quiet for 11 months.

After the war, the myth was born that it was preceded by daily shooting. Today, almost every Israeli can “remember” the shooting – an astonishing example of the power of suggestion.

[Editors Note: Uri did another great piece called Instilled Memory (with my normal lead in) which details more how Israelis can generally can come to believe something happened, despite the archive records showing that it did not. The mythical version is more attractive to them than the truth. Israelis do not uniquely suffer from this mass affliction, but they do excel at it… Jim W Dean]

WHY DOES the Chief of Staff want to attack?

A cynic might say that every new Chief of Staff needs a war to call his own. But we are not cynics, are we?

Every few days, a solitary rocket is launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. It rarely hits anything but an empty field. For months, now, no one has been hurt.

The usual sequence is like this: our air force carries out a “targeted liquidation” of Palestinian militants in the strip.

The army claims invariably that these specific “terrorists” had intended to attack Israelis. How did the army know of their intentions? Well, our army is a master thought reader.

After the persons have been killed, their organization considers it its duty to avenge their blood by launching a rocket or a mortar shell, or even two or three. This “cannot be tolerated” by the army, and so it goes on.

After every such episode, the talk about a war starts again. As American politicians put it in their speeches at AIPAC conferences: “No country can tolerate its citizens being exposed to rockets!”

But of course, the reasons for Cast Lead II are more serious. Hamas is being accepted by the international community.

Their Prime Minister, Isma’il Haniyeh, is now traveling around the Arab and Muslim world, after being shut in Gaza – a kind of Strip-arrest – for four years.

Now he can cross into Egypt because the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ parent organization, has become a major player there.

Even worse, Hamas is about to join the PLO and take part in the Palestinian government.

High time to do something about it. Attack Gaza, for example. Compel Hamas to become extremist again.

NOT CONTENT with stealing our war, Mash’al is carrying out a series of more sinister actions.

By joining the PLO, he is committing Hamas to the Oslo agreements and all the other official deals between Israel and the PLO. He has announced that Hamas accepts a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

He has let it be known that Hamas would not contest the Palestinian presidency this year, so that the Fatah candidate – whoever that may be – would be elected practically unopposed and be able to negotiate with Israel.

All this would put the present Israeli government in a difficult position.

Mash’al has some experience in causing trouble for Israel. In 1977, the (first) Netanyahu government decided to get rid of him in Amman.

A team of Mossad agents was sent to assassinate him in the street by spraying his ear with an untraceable poison. But instead of doing the decent thing and dying quietly from a mysterious cause, like Yasser Arafat, he let his bodyguard chase the attackers and catch them.

King Hussein, Israel’s longstanding friend and ally, was hopping mad.

He presented Netanyahu with a choice: either the agents would be tried in Jordan and possibly hanged, or the Mossad would immediately send the secret antidote to save Mash’al. Netanyahu capitulated, and here we have Mash’al, very much alive and kicking.

Another curious outcome of this misadventure: the king demanded that the Hamas founder and leader, the paralyzed Sheik Ahmad Yassin, be released from Israeli prison.

Netanyahu obliged, Yassin was released and assassinated by Israel seven years later. When his successor, Abd al-Aziz Rantissi, was assassinated soon after, the path was cleared for Mash’al to become the Hamas chief.

And instead of showing his gratitude, he now confronts us with a dire challenge: non-violent action, indirect peace overtures, the two-state solution.

A QUESTION: why does our Chief of Staff long for a little war in Gaza, when he could have all the war he desires in Iran? Not just a little operation, but a big war, a very very big war.

Well, he knows that he cannot have it.

Some time ago I did something no experienced commentator ever does. I promised that there would be no Israeli military attack on Iran. (Nor, for that matter, an American one.)

An experienced journalist or politician never makes such a prediction without leaving a loophole for himself. He puts in an inconspicuous “unless”. If his forecast goes awry, he points to that loophole.

I do have some experience – some 60 or so years of it – but I did not leave any loophole. I said No War, and now General Gantz says the same in so many words. No Tehran, just poor little Gaza.

Why? Because of that one word: Hormuz.

Not the ancient Persian god Hormuzd, but the narrow strait that is the entrance and exit of the Persian Gulf, through which 20% of the world’s oil (and 35% of the sea-borne oil) flows.

My contention was that no sane (or even mildly insane) leader would risk the closing of the strait, because the economic consequences would be catastrophic, even apocalyptic.

IT SEEMS that the leaders of Iran were not sure that all the world’s leaders read this column, so, just in case, they spelled it out themselves.

This week they conducted conspicuous military maneuvers around the Strait of Hormuz, accompanied by the unequivocal threat to close it.

The US responded with vainglorious counter-threats. The invincible US Navy was ready to open the strait by force, if needed. How, pray? The mightiest multi-billion aircraft carrier can be easily sunk by a battery of cheap land-to-sea missiles, as well as by small missile-boats.

Let’s assume Iran starts to act out its threats. The whole might of the US air force and navy is brought to bear. Iranian ships will be sunk, missile and army installations bombed.

Still the Iranian missiles will come in, making passage through the strait impossible.

What next? There will be no alternative to “boots on the ground”. The US army will have to land on the shore and occupy all the territory from which missiles can be effectively launched. That would be a major operation.

Fierce Iranian resistance must be expected, judging from the experience of the eight-year Iraqi-Iranian war. The oil wells in neighboring Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states will also be hit.

Such a war would go far beyond the dimensions of the American invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, perhaps even of Vietnam. Is the bankrupt US up to it? Economically, politically and in terms of morale?

The closing of the strait is the ultimate weapon. I don’t believe that the Iranians will use it against the imposition of sanctions, severe as they may be, as they have threatened. Only a military attack would warrant such a response.

If Israel attacks alone – “the most stupid idea I ever heard of,” as our former Mossad chief put it – that will make no difference. Iran will consider it an American action, and close the strait.

That’s why the Obama administration put its foot down, and hand-delivered to Netanyahu and Ehud Barak an unequivocal order to abstain from any military action.

That’s where we are now. No war in Iran. Just the prospect of a war in Gaza. And along comes this evil Mash’al and tries to spoil the chances of that, too.

 Editing:  Jim W. Dean

Jim W. Dean

Jim W. Dean was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022.  He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.

• Read Full Complete Bio >>>
• Jim W. Dean Archives 2009-2015