Yves here. As most of you know, protestors in Israel came out en masse to pressure the Netanyahu government into negotiating a ceasefire deal to secure the release of Hamas hostages after six were killed. While this article reports that the defense ministry and security forces are even more opposed to the hardliner refusal to reach an agreement with Hamas than before, Netanyahu is using the death as yet another pretext not to come to an agreement with Hamas, that it would effectively be rewarding them.
Keep in mind that Hamas did not kill the hostages for sport. Hamas claims that Israel shot them during an attempted rescue; Israel says the reverse. Alastair Crooke explained why given the givens that Hamas would have felt it necessary to execute them. Starting at 30:20:
I’ve done hostage negotiations. And this is the basic rule. You start in a hostage negotiation. The hostage takers say, “If we detect any signs of an attempt at a military release, we kill the hostage immediately.” And so, all those negotiators have to be so careful. If they heard an aircraft they weren’t expecting, they heard an engine sort of nearby, they can just go kill the hostages. I don’t think that Hamas was quite as trigger happy as that, but undoubtedly, the attempt to rescue them, the sense that they attempted to pre-empt an attempted Israeli rescue, like I think on the 8th of June when 274 Palestinians were killed and four hostages were released. So they decided they wanted to pre-empt that. I’m sorry to say, it’s an unpleasant fact of hostage life.
A point the Anglosphere media generally skips over is what a farce these negotiations have been. Hamas has made clear it will not give up hostages for anything less than a long-term, as in expected to be permanent, ceasefire. Israel keeps insisting it will persist in the war until it destroys Hamas, which really means ethnically cleanse Gaza, and since no neighboring state will take in lots of Palestinians, that means genocide. We’ve had the intelligence-insulting spectacle of the Biden Administration acting again and again as if a deal is nigh, when nothing fundamental has changed on the Israel side. Indeed, the Hamas side has complained that when they make concessions, Israel adds new demands.
Part of the reason for continuing this sham is that the Administration seems to believe, and may be correct, that Hezbollah and Iran will hold off on retaliation and escalation if hostilities look about to end. You can be sure the US would try to make the charge that they’d mendaciously attacked on the eve of a deal if either one were to make a big move.
It would be nice to hope that the big protest, and prospect of more, would force Netanyahu to relent. But the settler-brownshirts appear to be in the ascendant, witness the big escalation in West Bank. This article describes how the power struggle in the street is between the liberal Ashkenazi and the one-time underclass of the Middle Eastern Jews in Israel, the Haredim, who recently got a majority of seats in the Knesset. Sadly, the balance of forces, politically and physically, seems to favor the hardliners.
By David Hearst, the Editor of the Middle East Eye. Originally published at Middle East Eye; cross posted from Common Dreams
The recovery of six further dead hostages has set off a tidal wave of fury in Israel.
Demonstrations, not seen since the protests over judicial reform, are shaking the country.
Israelis are calling it an uprising.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have walked out of their jobs in a general strike. Both the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and the security establishment are in open conflict with their prime minister.
Opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid called for people to go onto the streets. And they have. The main highways around Tel Aviv are blocked.
However the hostages died—Hamas initially indicated they were killed by Israeli gunfire, the Israeli army says they were executed at close range just before an attempt was made to free them—the blame for their deaths has settled firmly on Benjamin Netanyahu and the ultra-right-wing clique that props up his government.
Four of the six hostages were on Hamas’ “humanitarian” list of captives and would have been released in the first stage of a hostage deal had Netanyahu not refused to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor separating Egypt from Gaza.
This is not speculation.
Undermining a Possible Deal
Israeli security chiefs who repeatedly warned Netanyahu about what would happen to the remaining hostages if he continued to scupper a deal are saying so themselves.
Three days ago, a regular cabinet security briefing turned into a shouting match between Gallant and Netanyahu, Axios reported.
Gallant reportedly told the meeting: “We have to choose between Philadelphi and the hostages. We can’t have both. If we vote, we might find out that either the hostages will die or we will have to backtrack to release them.”
Gallant, Israeli army Chief of Staff General Herzi Halevi and Mossad Director David Barnea, the head of the Israeli negotiating team, all confronted Netanyahu and his proposal to vote on a resolution to maintain full Israeli control along the border with Egypt that they said would undermine a possible deal with Hamas.
“We warned Netanyahu and the cabinet ministers about this exact scenario but they wouldn’t listen,” a senior Israeli official told Axios. The vote went ahead with the majority in favour.
However the hostages met their deaths, what the families of the hostages clearly understood is that this group of hostages were alive shortly before the army’s attempt to rescue them.
“A deal for the return of the hostages has been on the table for over two months. If it weren’t for his [Netanyahu’s] thwarting, the excuses and the spins, the hostages whose deaths we learned of this morning would probably be alive,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.
The deaths of the hostages have also reverberated across the US, in the same way that the Hamas attack on 7 October did.
Not least because the parents of one of the dead, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a US citizen, spoke on stage at the Democratic National Convention as thousands in the audience chanted “Bring them back”.
In response, the outgoing US President Joe Biden vowed to “make Hamas pay” for these deaths and the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris said that Hamas must be eliminated.
Both know that the responsibility for the hostages’ deaths lies with them too.
The Brutal Truth
Biden clearly and unequivocally called for a permanent ceasefire four months ago. The UN passed a resolution for a comprehensive three-stage ceasefire in June.
It is Biden’s first duty as commander in chief to make sure a key security ally in the Middle East abides by US policy, especially an ally as dependent on the supply of US arms as Israel is.
The brutal truth of these killings is that if Biden had been prepared to enforce his own policy with an arms embargo, a ceasefire would now be in place and many of the remaining hostages, Americans and Britons among them, would be freed.
If anyone should be looking at himself in the mirror at Goldberg-Polin’s death, it should be Biden.
For Harris to meekly follow in these footsteps is folly. She should remember what her own generals have said about the impossibility of defeating Hamas in Gaza.
It could nevertheless be that these deaths are the tipping point that forces Netanyahu to U-turn in negotiations, which still remain deadlocked.
The US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the families of the US hostages held in Gaza that the US will present Israel and Hamas with a take-it-or-leave-it final offer on a ceasefire deal.
This has been said many times before, and one reason why US officials have lost all credibility with independent negotiators Egypt and Qatar.
However, if what results is a phased Israeli withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor, and Netanyahu buckles under the domestic and international pressure, he knows full well he will be tipped into another crisis.
End of Ashkenazi Control
It’s not just the likelihood that Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, the two of the most extreme in his government, will walk out as they have repeatedly threatened to do.
Netanyahu knows that Israel is split down the middle. He has more than half of the country demanding he “finish the job” that David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, failed to complete.
This uprising, like the demonstrations against the judicial reforms last year, is one of the last throws of the dice for the liberal Ashkenazi elite.
They sense they are losing control of the country they built. They have already lost control of the army and the police force to the settlers. Not much is left in their exclusive hands and there has been an exodus of Israelis and money to Europe over the last year to prove it.
Netanyahu is not solely acting out of personal political survival. He, too, senses Israel is on the cusp of a right-wing revolution. That is why every political instinct tells him the stakes are so high. If it happens, it will be totally at odds with a Democrat US presidency.
Unravelling in Real Time
Biden should also be looking himself in the mirror at what is happening in the Occupied West Bank.
Unable, for a variety of reasons not least military preparedness, to open a second front against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Netanyahu has turned his attention on the three towns in the north of the West Bank in a full-scale military operation called “Operation Summer Camps” designed to force a population transfer.
As night follows day, attacks have begun on Israeli troops all over the West Bank and particularly in the southern Hebron area.
Biden and Harris should take note of who shot three Israeli policemen dead in response to the army operation in the north.
The shooter was a member of Fatah and a former Palestinian presidential security guard. Furthermore, Muhannad al-Asood, a resident of Idhna in Hebron, who was born in Jordan and was a citizen of the country, returned to his native West Bank in 1998 with his family after obtaining family reunification.
Asood’s personal history carries a clear warning for the consequences of how Palestinians in the West Bank will react to the opening of a second front of this war in the occupied territories, using much the same weapons and techniques in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas as they did in Gaza.
Asood was not a member of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or part of any known local resistance group. He made an individual decision that resistance was the only answer to Israel’s military offensive.
There are hundreds of thousands of armed, unaffiliated Palestinians like him in the West Bank and Jordan who are coming to the same conclusion.
Furthermore, tensions between Jordan and Israel are mounting exponentially.
The launch of the offensive was accompanied by a war of words between Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, and hisJordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi.
Katz not only told Jenin’s residents to leave in a “temporary” evacuation. He repeatedly accused Jordan of the build-up of arms in the camps, claiming it was unable to control its own territory.
“Iran is building Islamic terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, flooding refugee camps with funds and weapons smuggled through Jordan, aiming to establish an eastern terror front against Israel. This process also threatens the stability of the Jordanian regime. The world must wake up and stop the Iranian octopus before it’s too late,” Katz tweeted on X.
All lies, his Jordanian counterpart retorted.
Safadi wrote: “We reject the claims of the extremist racist ministers who fabricate threats to justify the killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their capabilities. The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, and the Israeli escalation in the region constitute the greatest threat to security and peace.
“We will oppose with all our capabilities any attempt to displace the Palestinian people inside or outside the occupied territories.”
A Larger Conflagration
Now in its fifth day, the stage is set once more for an operation in the occupied West Bank which could last as long as Gaza and which the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is powerless to stop.
Palestinian teenagers are fighting back. Wael Mishah and Tariq Daoud were born after Oslo. They did not see the First or Second Intifadas.
Both had been released during a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas in November. On his release Mishah talked of the plight of children being beaten and abused in Israeli prisons.
Mishah’s short journey was preordained. “He went from being a prisoner to being wanted, to confronting [the occupation], then a martyr,” his mother said.
He was killed by a drone at dawn on 15 August as he fought an Israeli raid on Nablus. There are thousands more like him who are being driven to battle.
Another fighter killed by Israel was the commander of the Tulkarm Battalion, Mohamed Jaber, known as Abu Shuja’a. He was described by Israel as its most wanted militant but he was only 26 years old, and born four years after Oslo. Abu Shuja’a was a refugee in Nur Shams Camp who came originally from Haifa. Killing him will inspire many more to join as he himself was inspired by others.
Even with the obvious reluctance of Hezbollah and Iran to get involved, all the ingredients are there for a much larger conflagration.
An Israel in the grip of an ultra nationalist , religious, settler insurgency; a US president who allows his signature policy to be flouted by his chief ally, even at the risk of losing a crucial election ; resistance that will not surrender; Palestinians in Gaza who will not flee; Palestinians in the West Bank who are now stepping up to the front line; Jordan, the second country to recognise Israel, feeling under existential threat.
For Biden or Harris, the message is so clear, it is flashing in neon lights: the regional costs of not standing up to Netanyahu could rapidly outweigh the domestic benefits of being dragged along by him.
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Non-solution to an apparently older-than-dirt problem: send in more bullets, bombs and weapons and let ‘them’ self extirpate. Oh, wait, we have tried that and it seems to have no effect other than perpetuating an eternal, perpetual warfare state? Hmmmmm… Lotta lobbying money tied to bombs, bullets and war.
Apologies. Too many grim horizons when I poke my head up and have a look-see around the round world… it begets cynicism. Hopey-Changey left the building with El-Vez…
https://youtu.be/Knin4CLq4us
I would say that for Netanyahu, not only are those hostages of no value to him but that they are an inconvenience to his war. It would be better for him if they were all dead and after going towards a year now, I think that the Israelis are finally waking up to this. They are not exactly a quick study. The ultra-Orthodox certainly don’t care about those hostages and they have gotten into fights with the families of those hostages. Maybe because so many of them are secular Israelis so are of lessor value to them. When this war is finally over, I think that they will discover that the IDF ended up killing most of the hostages that died.
Biden/Harris can’t handle the brutal truth or any other truth. The Dems have tried to erect a fairy tale version of this election but the reality is that Harris will be four more years of a regime that a majority of Americans consider to be on the wrong track. Trump is bad too but does seem to have a slightly better grasp of the situation than the joy peddlers.
I’d say we are seeing fallacy of the Palmerston notion that countries have “only interests.” The madness of crowds can take nations where logic would never permit. As we saw in the last century violence can have its own self perpetuating momentum. Something must change and clearly that something won’t be Kamala.
The article presumes that Biden has agency. He has certainly been a knee-jerk Zionist his entire political career, and he would probably do nothing differently now even he weren’t well into senility. The brutal truth is that the doddering old fellow can no longer tie his own shoelaces. Biden is an easy signifier, but he is really the curtain…not the man behind the curtain. Other than a faint echo, there is zero legitimacy for saying that this is Biden’s foreign policy.
The President is indeed in charge of American foreign policy, as well as being Commander in Chief. Of course we are looking to Biden’s foreign policy. Members of the administration can always disagree with Presidential policy and there are many, many examples of this through our history. Right now, members of this administration agree with Biden’s foreign-military policy.
The goy from Queens will be worse for Palestinians.
He has repeatedly said for Israel to finish the jawb and his son in law wants sell real estate on bloody Gaza sand.
Carolinian, you wrote: “Trump is bad too but does seem to have a slightly better grasp of the situation than the joy peddlers.” Trump has said that Netanyahu needs to “Finish the job.” I believe that means – kill all of the Palestinians ASAP. So can you please explain to me what ‘better grasp of the situation’ he has? Both parties are bribed into compliance by the Israel Lobby. Look into what John Mearsheimer has to say, and Norman Finkelstein. The US is not interested in what is legal, or moral with regard to Israel’s assault on Gaza and now the West Bank. Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem to prove his loyalty to Zionist donors. What is “better” about Trump’s response to Israel? I understand you don’t like Harris but please – there is no difference between these two politicians on this matter.
I believe what he meant was finish the job of defeating Hamas, not of killing all the Palestinians. Or at least that’s what he would say he meant if asked. In other words it’s not that different from the boiler plate “Israel has the right to defend itself” being pushed by Harris and the Dems. Trump is simply more overtly pro Israel than the Dems who still make noises about the “two state solution” that they do nothing to move forward.
Trump cares about brand. He’s a salesman which is different from the PMC who are basically bureaucrats beholden to the system.
Ronald Reagan was a staunch supporter of Israel, but when Israel was bombing Lebanon a tough Reagan phone call to Prime Minister Begin ended the bombing in about an hour. The responsibility now rests with the Biden-Harris administration:
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/13/world/reagan-demands-end-to-attacks-in-a-blunt-telephone-call-to-begin.html
August 13, 1982
REAGAN DEMANDS END TO ATTACKS IN A BLUNT TELEPHONE CALL TO BEGIN
By Bernard Weinraub
Here’s an answer to your question. I’m not saying I believe it or foresee it happening, but it doesn’t seem to lack credibility to me. Trump has said all the things you quote and worse, and had a terrible policy with respect to Israel. But Trump has demonstrated that he does not have much stomach for foreign escapades. He has demonstrated that he is aware that powerful neocons in the government live in a bubble and pursue their own agendas. As ridiculous as it may sound, Trump could very well be the “anti war” candidate of the two. Even if one grants that Trump has said vile things and therefore can be expected to be far, far worse than Biden on Israel/Palestine–something believed by many Democrats that I know–the fact is that the Democrats, when in power, created this catastrophe and are largely responsible for it. In other words, one is comparing things Trump MIGHT do to things the Biden Administration DID. Harris, especially in her interview the other night, shows every sign of following every aspect of Biden’s policy. To me, it doesn’t seem completely implausible to make the case that, in spite of the tough talk, Trump might back away from the conflict and blind support for Israel–simply because he might consider it a powder keg, even here in the US (look at the criticism from anti-war libertarian types, for example).
Not saying I’m voting for Trump, as I constantly tell my liberal friends. But by placing so much emphasis on the things Trump SAYS (as opposed to the things the Democrats actually DO), one runs the risk of equating Trump’s tough-guy talk and the Democrats’ record of actions.
Bosko and Kouris, I understand your hopes with regard to Trump. Hamas can be/is defined by the IDF as every Palestinian – as evidenced by the mass indiscriminate killing. And I believe Trump does understand that this is a “bad look” for Israel. On the other hand his son in law faced a camera and said he thought that when Gaza was “cleaned up” there would be some valuable beachfront property available. My liberal friends are hoping that Harris wants very much to say things she cannot say in support of Palestinians in order to get elected. So I’m seeing two varieties of ‘hopium’ here. The Biden/Harris course is set and on track, and I do also agree that Trump is indeed a salesman and does indeed love money. His son Eric said that Green is the only color his father sees. Hence the embassy move. As of now neither candidate/party is telling the truth about what is happening in Gaza and now the West Bank. The government of Israel is making it plain they intend to keep on with the killing and displacement of Palestinians. Sadistic, cruel, illegal, relentless – stoppable ONLY by the US. And we are not stopping it. We are actively furthering Netanyahu’s belief that ‘fortune favors the bold.’ The question is, where will this lead?
Trump also recognized that all this public and publicized killing is not looking good so there is a very slim chance that ultimately he won’t allow it to proceed – very, very bad publicity for his name. He understands that.
Trump may be rather more pro-Israeli than pro-Zionist. And he may be more pro-Palestian than pro-Zionist. And, above all, pro-peace. I think his message is to finish up before he becomes President and finishes it up on his own terms which will take into account the shifts in geo-political power and he will want a deal which holds together and which the other powers will support.
I think that, above all other things, he is a realist, deeply concerned about his legacy and his place in history, and in ensuring that the anti-élite base of the Republican party is increased and secured and that his VP, who also seems to be a realist, will be a highly effective enforcer In Washington. I think both have a limited regard for the wisdom of the oligarchs, and even less for the upper levels of what passes for the US’s permanent civil service and it’s current military leadership.
It is likely that he will resurrect the task the Tea Party began before it stalled and that the makeup of the Republican Party in the House and Senate will undergo a fundamental change over the next two Comgressional election cycles.
From his stream of conciousness speeches, in which he can turn the most aggressive diatribe into an argument for increased understanding and dialogue carrying every section of his audience with him, it seems that President Trump will focus on foreign policy, trade and the re-industialisation of the US. He has already shown his willingness, capacity and courage to deal with competing powers on a personal level and I have no doubt that he will recognise the importance of coming to terms with BRICS, et al, and will enjoy the pleasure of shafting Europe and watching it disintegrate into a collection of nation states with some of whom bi-lateral trade deals may be worth negotiating at some future point.
Of course, I may be a little over-optimistic, but even if he were to limit himself to realising the same level of achievements of his earlier Presidency – especially in not starting any more forever wars of choice – then he will establish a metric by which to judge all succeeding Presidents. I don’t think that anyone who gives it a moment’s thought will feel comfortable making that assessment of the possible outcome of a (highly un-)likely Harris presidency.
“I’d say we are seeing fallacy of the Palmerston notion that countries have ‘only interests.’ ”
Really excellent insight.
The reason China is China is precisely because of a clear set of national principles.
I’m not really one point out spelling or grammatical errors, but this changes the meaning almost to its opposite – though I think most all readers will easily understand the intended meaning. Anyway, editors may want to correct from Yves’ commentary at the top of the post:
“Israel keeps insisting it will persist in the war until it destroys Hamas, which really means *ethically* cleanse Gaza, and since no neighboring state will take in lots of Palestinians, that means genocide.”
Big ooopsie! Fixing!!
“ethnically” cleansing seems correct in this context. And in Netanyahu’s intentions as well.
For Harris, it would seem that the only thing preventing her from articulating a more “humane” policy towards Palestinians is the very large AIPAC-oriented donor class of billionaires. The same group that has influenced many college administrators to pursue repressive policies towards student demonstrators. Harris has likely decided that her current position will have no critical electoral consequences in Michigan or neighboring states where the undecided vote was significant. Where will these undecideds go? My hope is to vote for Jill Stein.
It will be interesting to see if last spring’s campus activism in favor of Gazans will have a reprise in the next few months.
And not just AIPAC, but all of the allied “epistemic communities” of oligarchy: MICIMATT, BigFinance, BigOil, BigTech/MassMedia are pro-Genocide. All of the individual oligarchs are pro-Genocide as well. Both political parties and candidates are pro-Genocide. If you are not pro-Genocide, you are anti-Semtic, and a self-hating American.
Genocide is every kind of a crime. The difference here, not that it matters to the abused, brutalized, and murdered, is that this genocide is right there in your face. No hiding it. Joe Biden has been all in with support for Israel throughout his political career … and has been handsomely rewarded for being so. That is his policy now as it has ever been. The people and organizations who watch the destruction of a people are monsters.
One can wonder how pro-genocide the military contractors are.
Perhaps they are agnostic as they don’t care how their weapons are used, simply that they want to sell more as the weapons are destroyed/consumed.
There is also the problem with the weapons demonstrating to the world that they are ineffective, costing future sales..
The USA military contractors may prefer a world that continues to buy their products AND doesn’t actually use them.
Just a side comment; I live north of Baltimore, an area with a large Jewish population.
I saw a fair number of Ukrainian flags in 22+23. I’ve yet to see an Israeli flag around here. My sense is there is far more queasiness around this situation than is being made public. At some point Israel is going to lose that larger backing.
A side comment to you: Pa. senator john fetterman was traveling through Maryland recently, and was involved in an auto accident. He clipped the auto in front of him, I believe, and the vehicle landed on fetterman’s roof. What was the zionist senator from Pa. doing driving like a maniac on a Maryland interstate? I wouldn’t doubt that he was hauling all the israeli flags he could find in northern Md.(that would explain the shortage of the flags), and bringing them back to west. Pa., so that Genocide John could wave them in the voters faces.
I am so sick 🤢 of the Blood Caucus rooted in the nation’s capital.
“Blood Caucus” is a very distinctive, precise and accurate term which can be applied to all legislators, bi-partisan or not, and regardless of country and political shade, who have been feeding the weapons to the US and UK created Kiev regime that has made the Ukraine’s self-genocide not only possible but inevitable. It can also be applied to any legislator who has voted to support the current Israeli regime which can only result in the destruction of the Jewish colonial settler statelet on Palestinian land. In fact, it has the descriptive power to fuel a future series of War Tribunals to be faced by the most egregious political war criminals as well as the general run of military war criminals to determine whether they simply need to be imprisoned in solitary confinement for life or summarily executed à être un excellent exemple pour les autres. And it would also be an efficient and highly effective way to drain the swamp in every country in the Collective West.
Excellent post. The Biden admin’s position is all performance theater and they just showed their cards by charging Hamas leaders with the 7 October events. How do they expect to be taken seriously as a broker of a ceasefire or peace deal?
>If anyone should be looking at himself in the mirror at Goldberg-Polin’s death, it should be Biden.
I have to wonder if Biden even knows who he’s looking at in the mirror and looking back at him at this point in his life.
The question so many are asking, who the hell is actually running things in DC.? Save the blob comments, that’s a given, I would rather have names.
This is all true and well worth saying in order to correct the propaganda pumped out in support of the mass murder in Gaza and the West Bank.
The problem is that challenging the propaganda doesn’t actually change many minds. The media continue pumping out pro-murder propaganda laced with lies about how they support a two-state solution which can only be attained once the bad people have been slaughtered. I don’t know how many people believe this, but obviously a steady drumbeat of murderous lies must have its impact in destroying empathy, compassion and sanity in its audience. It’s had that effect in Israel, after all — Israel wasn’t always as openly fascist as it is today.
Americans have no choice but to vote for mass murder in Gaza. Both candidates have made that clear. The obscurity is mostly about whether there might be a modest decline in support for war with Russia if Trump is elected, or whether there might be a modest decline in support for war with China if Harris is elected, and whether anything that either candidate says about domestic policy can be trusted given the candidates’ long-standing record of obfuscation and outright lies.
The system is broken, decisively broken, conspicuously broken. But somehow most people are in denial about this, or else powerless or paralysed to take action. Pointing out the broken nature of the system is definitely worth doing and one must be grateful for the marginalised and denigrated publications which do it. But it isn’t enough, not nearly enough, not even necessarily a pointer towards what might be enough.
What is to be done? Where’s Ulyanov when you need him?
I think Sen. Lindsey Graham is sincere when he says that all problems in the ME point to Iran. Where I think he’s incorrect is he doesn’t realize that Iran is also the solution. And where he and others are downright idiotic is they want to bomb Iran because only then will Iranian leaders change their minds; about what I’m not sure.
There is no reason the US and Iran can’t have better relations. Iranians have made numerous overtures to the US to reach an understanding. Iran had nothing to do with 9/11 and it’s not a threat to the US. The ME is important to US strategic interests but the US is backing the wrong horse and Netanyahu, Zionists, and the Israel lobby want to keep it that way even to the detriment of the US.
The only big event between us was the 1979-1981 hostage crisis when the US embassy was seized. But that was done by students who protested President Carter’s protection of the Shah who they saw as a dictator, criminal, and torturer, and who should have stood trial in Iran. Yet, all the hostages were released the day Reagan was inaugurated, 01/20/1981.
Meanwhile, in Sep 1980 Iraq invaded Iran with US support. During WW2 the British and Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran. And in 1953 the US and British overthrew the elected government in Iran. Thus, Iran has as much reason to be pissed off as the Americans.
The Palestinians have already made a huge compromise. It’s my understanding, they agreed to accept the 1967 post war borders rather than the 1948 UN borders and for this they got nothing in return while every day became worse.
The major objection to improving Iran-US relations comes from Israel which has plenty to lose if it is no longer A#1 in the eyes of the Americans. But improving Iran-US relations would benefit the US, something Israel doesn’t care about. The solution to Americas problems and the problems of the Palestinians and the region lies through Tehran and the US should show some leadership and make it happen.
I think Crooke is correct about Hamas and the hostages. Killing hostages is obviously very bad, but letting Israel rescue them would be catastrophic as it would justify the operation in much of the world’s eyes, like the one in June did. If Israel could rescue hostages it wouldn’t need to negotiate.