Two weeks ago when I read Moshe Ya’alon’s interview and saw the Ha’aretz
Magazine cover page with the red BOMB OR BE BOMBED I was convinced that it probably must have nearly given heart attacks to the foreign
diplomats accredited in Israel and must
have caused a flurry of encrypted cables to their respective governments.
But how will the US press handle this?, I asked myself. Now I know.
Two weeks have passed and now I know. The US press has completely ignored it.
It is not that American columnists did not write about Iran and
Israel the last two weeks. They did, but when they did they either quoted Meir Dagan and Ehud
Barak ( Jeffery Goldberg in the
Atlantic ), Efraim Halevy and Ehud
Barak ( David Ignatious in The
Washington Post ), Shaul Mofaz (
Daniel Halper in The
Weekly Standard , Robert Wright in The
Atlantic and Jennifer Rubin in The
Washington Post blog). None mentioned Moshe Ya’alon.
What is going on?
How is it that this watershed interview given by a member of the
Israeli cabinet at a time when the threat of war with Iran is looming went completely
unreported in the US press? Here is an excerpt from the interview:
But the Iranians are rational, and the use of nuclear weapons is
an irrational act. Like the Soviets, they will never do that.
“A Western individual observing the fantastic ambitions of the Iranian leadership scoffs: ‘What do they think, that they will Islamize us?’ The surprising answer is: Yes, they think they will Islamize us: The ambition of the present regime in Tehran is for the Western world to become Muslim at the end of a lengthy process. Accordingly, we have to understand that their rationality is completely different from our rationality. Their concepts are different and their considerations are different. They are completely unlike the former Soviet Union. They are not even like Pakistan or North Korea. If Iran enjoys a nuclear umbrella and the feeling of strength of a nuclear power, there is no knowing how it will behave. It will be impossible to accommodate a nuclear Iran and it will be impossible to attain stability. The consequences of a nuclear Iran will be catastrophic.”
In contrast, the Israeli
press noticed:
Moshe Ya'alon: Strategic
thinker and leader by Isi Leibler:
A major
component is devoted to the Iranian nuclear threat. Ya’alon stresses that we
must not, under any circumstances, stand by and enable “the
apocalyptic-messianic regime of the ayatollahs” to obtain the bomb. Although
hopeful that Israel will not be obliged to go it alone, Ya’alon insists that
“we are not bluffing” and that despite the likelihood of considerable Israel
casualties should armed conflict ensue, it is unquestionably preferable for us
to bomb rather than to be bombed
I can only conclude that
the American press is just incapable of handling the truth about the Iranian
threat and chooses to ignore it. The frankness displayed by the Ya’alon
interview in Ha’aretz is just too much for the uninformed and sleepwalking US
public to handle.
