Translate

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Israeli politicians and Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.”



Jerusalem Post, Letters to the Editor, March 31. 2021


Regarding “Sa’ar, Bennett’s Arab vetoes may give PM first mandate” (March 30), even Blue and White leader Benny Gantz does not see anything wrong with the Islamic parties being in the coalition? 
“He called on Sa’ar and Bennett not to rule out a coalition with parties in the bloc, a reference to the Joint List and Ra’am (United Arab List).” 
Gil Hoffman quotes Gantz as saying: “When I meet with them, I will tell them that it is okay to have principles, but it is also necessary to display the flexibility needed to enable the formation of a government and the replacement of Netanyahu.”
This reminds me of Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.”
Ra’am is the political wing of the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement. In 1999, Raphael Israeli wrote about the Islamic Movement:
“A Muslim is not supposed to respect and act according to secular laws made by humans, but follow the Shari’a, the law which emanates from Allah himself. Thus, when the Muslim movement in Israel participates in local elections and elects Islamic mayors, they do not need to swear allegiance to the State of Israel. 
“Moreover, under Israeli law, local councils are entitled to adopt bylaws, for example, governing the separation of sexes at school or forbidding the sale and consumption of alcohol. From the fundamentalist point of view, this is not an enactment of law but merely an application of the law of Allah. However, participation in government at the national level would require acceptance of the secular laws of the Jewish state and behaving in accordance with them instead of cultivating a separate patrimony in isolation and segregation.”
How can Gantz, Yair Lapid and Benjamin Netanyahu ignore this? Has political survival made our politicians abandon all their principals?
MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC 
Beersheba

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Weekly Commentary: What If Bernard Lewis Was RIght About Nuclear Iran? MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement

 


IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 13 March 2021

"mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the
Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general
destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the
dead -- hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with
this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement."
Bernard Lewis - The Wall Street Journal Aug. 8, 2006

Amos Yadlin remarked in a live Zoom tonight with Minister of Defense Gantz
that the odds the Iranians would actually nuke Israel if they had nuclear
weapons was 1%. Gantz nodded in agreement.

Unfortunately, these policy makers and analysts simply cannot comprehend
that Iranian Twelvers could actually welcome an apocalypse set into motion
by an Iranian nuclear strike and the response that would follow. Without
saying it explicitly, they are arguing that there is some set of universal values that
has some kind of veto power over belief systems when adhering to those
beliefs can have unsavory results when judged by these "universal values".

This is not an inconsequential academic disagreement.

The attitude of policy makers and analysts towards the threat of a nuclear
Iran would be radically different if they thought that there was even a 25%
chance that Bernard Lewis is correct.

Yadlin and Gantz both appeared to say in the session that Israel cannot act
outside of the bounds of what a sitting American president supports a
priori.

I daresay that if they gave Bernard Lewis the weight his opinion deserves
that they would not advocate allowing America to stop us from preventing Iran
from having nukes if it came to that.

________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il