Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery
13.1.07

                Manara Square, Ramallah

IT WAS murder in broad daylight. Undercover soldiers disguised as Arabs,
accompanied by armored vehicles and bulldozers and supported by
helicopter gunships, invaded the center of Ramallah. Their aim was to kill
or capture a Fatah militant, Rabee' Hamid. The man was wounded but
managed to escape.

As always, the place was teeming with people. Manara Square is the heart
of Ramallah, full of life, both walking and driving. When people realized
what was going on, they started to throw stones at the soldiers. These
responded by shooting wildly in all directions. Four bystanders were
killed, more than 30 wounded.

The routinely mendacious army press release announced that the four
had been armed. Indeed? One of them was a street vendor named Khalil
al-Bairouti, who used to sell hot beverages from a small cart at this place.
Another was Jamal Jweelis from Shuafat near Jerusalem, who had come to
Ramallah to buy new clothes and sweets for the engagement party of his
brother, which was scheduled for the next day. Hearing that approaching
bulldozers were crushing vehicles in the street, Jamal ran out of the shop
to remove his car.

That happened nine days ago. A "routine" action, like so many others that
take place in the occupied Palestinian territories almost daily. But this
time it created an international uproar, because on that very day Ehud
Olmert was due to meet the President of Egypt, Husni Mubarak in Sharm
el Sheikh. The host was deeply offended. Do the Israelis despise him so
much, that they so lightly put him to shame in the eyes of his people and
the Arab world? At the end of the meeting, he gave vent to his anger in no
uncertain terms, in the presence of Olmert, who muttered some weak
words of apology.

In Israel, the usual game of passing the buck, known as "covering one's
ass", began. Who was responsible? As usual, someone low down in the
hierarchy. The Prime Ministers's people first suspected that the Minister
of Defense, Amir Peretz, had done it to trip up Olmert. Peretz denied any
prior knowledge of the action, and passed the buck on to the Chief-of-
Staff, who, he implied, wanted to bring about the downfall of both Olmert
and Peretz. The C-o-S transferred the responsibility to the Commander of
the Central Front, Ya'ir Naveh, a Kippa-wearing general known as
especially brutal, with extreme right-wing views. In the end it was
decided that some officer lower down had approved the action, and that
all the responsibility was his.

Even if you believe all these denials - and I most certainly do not - the
image is no less disturbing: a chaotic army, out of control, where every
officer can do as he sees fit (or unfit).


TWO DAYS later, my wife Rachel and I visited the place. It was early
evening. Under an intermittent drizzle, Manara ("lighthouse") Square was
again teeming with people. Traffic jams blocked all the six streets leading
to the square

Zacharia, the Palestinian friend who was accompanying us, was clearly
worried. He tried to persuade us not to go there so soon after the
incident. But nothing happened.

Posters of Arafat were hanging on the column in the center of the square
and on some walls. In a mini-market there were photos of Saddam
Hussein. One of the walls carried angry graffiti: "We Don't Need Your Aid!"
(You the Americans? The Europeans? The aid agencies?)

The four lions surrounding the column in the square looked to me forlorn
and helpless. One of them is wearing a watch on his leg. The designer
had added the watch as a joke and the Chinese who were contracted to
produce the lions according to the plan did precisely that.

In the end we entered a coffee shop. While we were sitting and enjoying
the coffee, all the lights went out. Before we could start to worry, people
around us used their cigarette lighters and cellular phones. After some
minutes, the lights went on again.

On the way home to the hotel in a side street, we took a taxi. The driver,
who did not know that we were Israelis, talked all the way with his brother
in Arabic on his phone. He ended the conversation with three words:
"Yallah. Lehitraot. Bye." Yallah (something like OK) in Arabic. Lehitraot
("see you again") in Hebrew. Bye in English.


WHEN WE told our friends in Tel-Aviv that we were off to a conference in
Ramallah, they thought that we had taken leave of our senses. "To
Ramallah? And now of all times, after what has just happened there?"

The organizers of the conference - Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace,
an international group of academics - also hesitated. True, the
conference was arranged several weeks ago, but perhaps it would be best
to postpone it for a week or two? Was it wise to bring to Ramallah dozens
of Israelis, less than 24 hours after the killing?

In the end, it was decided, quite rightly, that this was exactly the right
time and place to convene the conference. The representatives of 23
Palestinian, 22 Israeli and 15 international organizations were lodged for
three days in a Ramallah hotel, met, ate together and discussed the one
subject that was on everybody's mind: how to act together to put an end
to the occupation which produces daily horrors like the Manara Square
killing spree?

It was important to hold the conference precisely at this place for another
reason: Since the murder of Yasser Arafat, the connections between the
Israeli and Palestinian peace forces at the higher level had become
tenuous. Unlike Arafat [incidentally, Uri Dan, Sharon's confidant, recently
put to rest any doubt that the late Palestinian President was indeed
murdered], Mahmoud Abbas obviously does not think that they are
important. That is one of the reasons - one of many - for the pessimism
that has infected parts of the peace camp.

Therefore, the very fact that such a conference was taking place was
important. Israelis, Palestinians and international activists mingled and
sat together, proposed actions, stressed the common aim. On the second
day, the conference broke up into smaller workshops, where participants
from Tel-Aviv and Hebron, Nablus and New York, Barcelona and Kfar-
Sava put forward ideas for joint actions.

There were also some stormy debates, though not between Israelis and
Palestinians, but about differences of opinion that did not follow national
lines. The most important one: Should the main effort be devoted to
action in the country or abroad?

The representative of an Israeli group argued with much feeling that there
was nothing to be done inside the country, that all the efforts should be
focused on winning over international public opinion, on the lines of the
world-wide boycott that had been so successful against South Africa. In
response, a Palestinian activist argued that the only important thing was
to influence public opinion in Israel, which was, after all, the occupier. I
also argued that the main effort should be directed towards Israel, even if
actions abroad can be useful, too. I vigorously opposed the idea of a
general boycott against Israel, because - among other things - it would
push the public into the arms of the Right. (However, I do support the
idea of a boycott against specific targets that are clearly identified with
the occupation, such as the settlements, suppliers of certain military
equipment, universities with branches in the occupied territories etc.)


SOME DAYS later a comparable meeting took place in the capital of Spain.
But there was a difference between the two conferences - much like the
difference between Sun Square in Madrid and Manara Square in Ramallah.

Madrid saw a congregation of respectable personalities, Members of the
Knesset (including supporters of the government that is responsible for
the bloodshed in Ramallah, one of them a representative of a neo-Fascist
party) together with some notables from the Palestinian authority and
their colleagues from Arab and other countries. In Ramallah there came
together the veterans of the fight for peace, people who had stood fast
dozens of times in a cloud of tear gas and against rubber-coated bullets.
One group of Palestinians and Israelis, who arrived together late on the
first day, came straight from a demonstration in Bil'in, where the army
had used a water cannon, tear gas and also rubber bullets.

The guests in Madrid had come by plane. The guests in Ramallah had a
much tougher time getting there. The Israelis had to squirm through
checkpoints on their way in, and even more on the way back. Israelis
(except settlers) break the law when they travel to the occupied
territories. But for the Palestinians, it was ten times harder to get to
Ramallah. A guest from Nablus told us that he had left home at 2 AM in
order to reach the conference at 11 AM. The guest from Tubas, near
Nablus, spent eight hours on the road and at the checkpoints - much
more than the time needed to get from Tel-Aviv to Madrid.

The Madrid conference was covered extensively in the Israeli media, day
after day. The Ramallah conference was not mentioned with one single
word in any Israeli newspaper, TV or radio station, except for a single line
in the gossip column in Maariv, which said: "Uri Avnery has temporarily
gone to live in Ramallah".


THE MADRID conference was relevant mainly as proof that Israeli and
Palestinian politicians can sit together, even after all that has happened.
What was the importance of the meeting in Ramallah?

In the past, I have taken part in many similar conferences that have borne
no fruit. This time, too, the obstacles are enormous. But more than ever,
it is clear that action must be taken against the occupation, and that the
action must be joint, consistent and well planned.

In five months, the occupation will be 40 years old - perhaps the longest-
lasting military occupation regime the world has ever seen. At the
conference, there was general agreement that all forces must be
concentrated in a great public campaign to mark this shameful date and
draw attention to the injustices of the occupation, the harm it does not
only to the Palestinians but also to the Israelis, to bring the Green Line
back into the public consciousness, to act against the roadblocks and the
Annexation Wall, and for the release of the prisoners of both sides. For
this purpose, the conference decided to set up "an Israeli-Palestinian-
International Coalition to End the Occupation".

The continuation will depend on the willpower, courage and devotion of
all peace forces, and their ability to cooperate beyond the roadblocks,
walls and fences - one of whose aims is precisely to obstruct such
cooperation.

Time is pressing. Perhaps that is why one of the lions in Manara Square
has a watch.

Daniel Dworsky wrote: Uri Avnery 23.12.06                 Sorry, Wrong Continent A FEW weeks ago, the 15th Asian games, the "Asiad", was held in Qatar. The Israeli media treated the event with a mixture of derision and pity. Some kind of picturesque Asian circus. Our television showed an exotic horseman with a keffiyeh at the opening ceremony, riding his noble Arab steed up a steep staircase to light the Olympic flame. And that was that. One question was not asked at all in any of the media: why are we not there? Does Israel not lie in Asia? That was not even considered. We? In Asia? How come? WHEN I followed the event on Aljazeera television, I suddenly remembered a private anniversary that had slipped my memory. Exactly 60 years ago a small number of young people founded a group that called itself in Hebrew "Young Eretz-Israel" and in Arabic "Young Palestine". With money out of our own pockets (at the time we were all quite poor) we published occasional issues of a periodical we called Bamaavak ("In the struggle"). Bamaavak stirred up a lot of stormy waves, because it voiced infuriatingly heretical opinions. Contrary to the dominant Zionist narrative, it asserted that we, the young generation growing up in the country, constituted a new nation, the Hebrew nation. Unlike the somewhat similar group of "Canaanites", that preceded us, we proclaimed that (a) the new nation is a part of the Jewish people, much as Australia is a part of the Anglo-Saxon people, and (b) that we are a sister-nation to the resurgent Arab nation in the country and throughout the region. And, no less important: that since the new Hebrew nation was born in the country, and the country belongs to Asia, we are an Asian nation, a natural ally to all the Asian and African nations that strive for liberation from colonialism. On Wednesday, March 19, 1947, a few months after the first edition of Bamaavak had appeared, the Hebrew daily Haboker reported: "On the occasion of the opening of the Pan-Asian Conference (in New Delhi), the group Young Eretz Israel has sent a cable to Jawaharlal Nehru reading: 'Please receive the congratulations of the Eretz-Israeli youth for your historic initiative. May the aspirations for freedom of the peoples of New Asia, inspired by your heroic example, become united. Long live the united and arising Young Asia, the vanguard of fraternity and progress'."    A similar news story appeared on the same day on the front page of the Palestine Post (the predecessor of the Jerusalem Post), with the names of the signatories: Uri Avnery, Amos Elon and Ben-Ami Gur. Bamaavak appeared from time to time, whenever we had enough money, up to the outbreak of the 1948 war. In the Hebrew press, more than a hundred reactions were published, almost all of them negative, many of them vituperative. The famous writer Moshe Shamir, then a left-winger, made a neat play on words, calling us Bamat-Avak ("stage of dust"). When the war broke out, this whole chapter was overshadowed and forgotten. But almost all we said 60 years ago remains relevant today. And the most relevant question is: To what continent does the State of Israel actually belong? I BELIEVE that one of the most profound causes for the historic conflict between us and the Arab world in general, and the Palestinian people in particular, is the fact that the Zionist movement declared, from its very first day, that it did not belong to the region in which we live. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for the fact that even after four generations, this wound has not healed. In his book "The Jewish State", the founding document of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl famously wrote: "For Europe we shall be (in Palestine) a part of the wall against Asia�the vanguard of culture against barbarism�" This attitude is typical for the whole history of Zionism and the State of Israel up to the present day. Indeed, a few weeks ago the Israeli ambassador to Australia declared that "Asia belongs to the yellow race, while we are Whites and have no slit eyes. " One can perhaps forgive Herzl, a quintessential European, who lived in an era when imperialism dominated European thought. But today, four generations later, those forming public opinion in Israel, people born in the country, continue along the same path. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared that Israel is "a villa in the middle of the jungle" (the Arab jungle, of course), and this attitude is shared by practically all our politicians. Tsipi Livni likes to talk about the "dangerous neighborhood" in which we are living, and the chief advisor of Ariel Sharon once said that there will be no peace until "the Palestinians turn into Finns." Our soccer and basketball teams play in the European leagues, the Eurovision song contest is a national event in Israel, 95% of our political activity is focused on Europe and North America. But the phenomenon extends far beyond the political arena - this is a "world view" in the literal sense. In our world, Israel is a part of Europe. In the 50s, when I was the editor of the news magazine Haolam Hazeh, I once published a cartoon that I am still proud of: it showed the map of the Eastern Mediterranean, with an arm projecting from Greece and holding scissors that cut Israel off from Asia. It is a pity that I did not add a second drawing, showing Israel being attached to the shore of France or, preferably, Miami. These days it would be hard to find anybody who would assert that Asia - India, China - is barbarian. But it is easy to find people in Israel, and throughout the West, who believe that the Arab world, and indeed the entire Muslim world, is a "jungle". With such an attitude, one cannot make peace. After all, one does not make peace with poisonous snakes and ravenous leopards. In the Bamaavak days, we coined the slogan "Integration in the Semitic Region". But how can one integrate oneself in a region that is seen as a jungle? A WORLD VIEW is not an academic matter. It has a huge impact on actual life. It influences people when it is conscious, and even more so when it is unconscious. It shapes the practical decisions, without the decision- makers being aware of it. Politicians, too, are only human beings (if that), and their actions are directed by their hidden beliefs. In Israel we are used to consider unquestioned "conceptsias" as the mother of all our mistakes and defeats. But is such an assumption any different from the expression of an unconscious world-view? The world-view influences many aspects of the state. It is the core of the education system, which forms the mind of the next generation. We have perhaps the only education system in the world that does not teach the history of its homeland. In our schools, very little is taught about the past of the country. Instead, what is taught is the history of "the Jewish people". This starts with the ancient Israelite kingdoms before the sixth century BC ("the First Temple"), then the Jewish community in the country before the beginning of the Christian era and for some years after ("the Second Temple"). Then it leaves the country and dwells on the Jewish Diaspora for some thousands of years, until the beginning of the Zionist settlement. For almost 2000 years, the annals of the country disappear from the school. I once talked about this in a speech in the Knesset. I said that an Israeli child born in the country, whether Jewish or Arab, should study the history of the country, including all its periods and peoples: Canaanites, Israelites, Hellenists, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Turks, British, Palestinians, Israelis and more. In addition they could be taught the story of the Jews in the diaspora, too. The Minister of Education responded humorously and insisted on calling me, from then on, "the Mameluke".    LATELY IT has become fashionable for politicians and commentators in Israel to speak about the danger of annihilation that hovers, or so they claim, over Israel. It is hardly believable: the State of Israel is a regional superpower, its economy is robust and developing, its technological level is one of the most advanced in the world, its army is stronger than all the Arab armies combined, it has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons. Even if the Iranians were to obtain a bomb of their own, they would be mad to use it, for fear of Israeli retaliation. So where does this fear of annihilation come from in the 59th year of the state? A part of it surely emanates from the memory of the Holocaust, which is deeply imprinted in the national mentality. But another part comes from the feeling of not belonging, of temporariness, of the lack of roots. That has, of course, domestic implications, too. Consciousness also affects practical interests. The assertion that we are a European people automatically reinforces the position of our ruling class, which is still overwhelmingly Ashkenazi-European, over and against the majority of the citizens of Israel, who are of Asian-African Jewish and Palestinian-Arab descent. The profound disdain for their culture, which has accompanied the state from its first day, facilitates discrimination against them in many fields. A CHANGE affecting the consciousness of a community is not a short- term proposition. It cannot be achieved by decree. This is a slow and gradual process. But at some stage we shall have to start it, and first of all in the education system. I started my booklet "War or Peace in the Semitic Region", which was published in October 1947, just a few weeks before the outbreak of the 1948 war, with the words:     "When our Zionist fathers decided to set up a 'safe home' in Eretz Israel, they had the choice between two roads: they could appear in West Asia as a European conqueror, who sees himself as a beachhead of the 'white' race and a master of the 'natives'�(or) see themselves as an Asian nation returning to its homeland." When I wrote these words, the rise of Asia was still a dream. World War II had ended just two years before, and the United States looked like an omnipotent superpower. But now a quiet revolution of huge proportions is taking place. The nations of Asia, with China and India in the lead, are becoming economic and political powers. Should we not gradually move toward this camp? That brochure, 60 years ago, ended with the words of a Hebrew song: "We stand and face the rising sun / To the East our homeward path�"

Salaams,

Jazzak Allah Khayr Brother Daniel.  An anti-racist speech like this one needs to be widely read and heard.  With all that he knows, Mr. Averny stilll hopes for a brighter future.  Amazing and Inspiring.

 

Jazzak Allah Khayr Brother Daniel.  An anti-racist speech like this one needs to be widely read and heard.  With all that he knows, Mr. Averny stilll hopes for a brighter future.  Amazing and Inspiring.

Dokhtar'em, he is the most amazing of all men, women and children (you know, they are the best ones in our world!) I have ever come to know or know of. I have no idea how and from where does he get all that noble energy. Just a gift of nature, perhaps.

It is not in the vested American interests to let the peoples in this area to live in peace or even evolve some decent or noble living systems. Their is good reason for the west to be dead scared of the combined energies and the natural resources of these people who have far more practice of living together than our Masters would have us believe.

This area will never be at peace as long as the Brits and the U S have their fingers in it.

BUT, all of this will change. One day, peace shall rise. I know this since I know the Uris and the Daniels of my world.

 

Uri Avnery
3.2.07

                      Fatal Kiss

IT SOUNDS like a promo for a second rate soap opera: a 21- year old
woman appears with a much older celebrity, who grabs her, forces a kiss
on her and pushes his tongue into her mouth.

This scene has been occupying the attention of the Israeli public for
months now, more than any other topic, except perhaps the allegation
that the President of the State sexually assaulted several of his
employees. The war and its consequences have been pushed aside.

The interest stems, of course, from the identity of kisser and kissee: Haim
Ramon was at the time Minister of Justice and a central figure in the
government; the young woman, who was identified only as H., was a
lieutenant in the office of the "military secretary" of the Prime Minister, an
important military-political liaison point. The fatal encounter took place
at the Prime Minister's office, shortly before a cabinet meeting.

This week, three judges - two female, one male - unanimously found
Ramon guilty of an indecent act. It seems that the prosecution will not
call for the maximum penalty - three years in prison - but the political
career of Ramon has, so it seems, come to an end.

This might have been nothing more than a juicy piece of gossip, except
for one small detail, which has hardly been mentioned: the fateful kiss
took place in the room adjacent to that where a cabinet meeting was due
to start, and in which it was decided to start the war in Lebanon.

A short time before that, the Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz, also found the
time and energy for an un-warlike act: he called his broker and instructed
him to sell his shares.

The background must be remembered: a few hours earlier, Hizbullah
fighters had crossed the border and captured two Israeli soldiers. Two
soldiers had been killed during the operation, and six more died in
pursuit of the captors. Obviously the cabinet was about to decide upon a
military operation in which many soldiers and civilians, Israeli and
Lebanese, would lose their lives. Yet the supreme commander of the army
was handling his shares and a prominent minister was handling a female
soldier.


IN THE course of the 1948 war, I wrote reports of the battles from the
point of view of a simple soldier. After the war, when I was collecting
these reports for a book, it crossed my mind that it would be interesting
to add a description of the war as seen from the point of view of the
commander, who had made the decisions that affected our fate.

I approached my brigade chief, a commander highly admired by all of us,
and he gave me a detailed description of the campaigns. Before my eyes,
a different war unfolded. True, the place names and the battles were the
same, but there was no similarity between our war, the war in which the
fighters' main concern was to survive from day to day, and the war of the
high command, which moved figures on the board in an intricate game of
chess with the enemy commanders. The difference between the two levels
fascinated me. Perhaps it was that which helped to make the book, "In the
Fields of the Philistines, 1948", into a run-away bestseller.

All the great writers who wrote about war - from Leo Tolstoy ("War and
Peace") to Erich Maria Remarque ("All Quiet on the Western Front") and
Norman Mailer ("The Naked and the Dead") highlighted this huge
difference. The soldier crawls through the thorns, sinks into the mud and
cowers in his foxhole; the commanders move arrows on the map.

For the simple soldier, and even more so for the civilian, it is difficult to
penetrate the mental world of a general who decides upon an operation,
knowing that there will be so and so many "casualties", dead and
wounded. But after all, that is his profession: to weigh the gains of a
move against the expected losses. He receives the order to capture Hill
246 and works out a plan, which he expects will cost the lives of a
hundred or so of his soldiers. While he is calculating, those hundred
soldiers are horsing around, talking with their parents on the phone,
trying to catch some sleep.


I AM not writing this in a philosophical or literary mood, but in order to
draw attention to the unbearable lightness with which politicians and
generals decide on starting a war. The shares of Halutz and the kiss of
Ramon are but symptoms of this phenomenon.

The day before yesterday, Ehud Olmert appeared before the Board of
Inquiry (which he had appointed himself) and described how his cabinet
decided to start the Second Lebanon War. The testimony is being kept
secret, but it may be assumed that Olmert did not forget to express his
condolences to the bereaved families and his hopes for the speedy
recovery of the wounded. But did any of his ministers really weigh the
price of the operation in human lives - on our side and on the other? Did
the Chief-of-Staff, who had just disposed of his shares, raise the subject?
Was the Minister of Justice, who had just enjoyed a little adventure with
consequences he could not dream of, in an appropriately serious mood?

This is not a uniquely Israeli problem. Did George W. Bush and his clique
of Neo-Conservatives really consider the casualties, when they decided to
invade Iraq? Let's ignore for a moment the lies they spread, the fabricated
stories about "weapons of mass destruction", the imaginary connections
between Saddam and Osama and all the other falsehoods and deceptions.
Let's concentrate only on the two real aims of the war (which we exposed
at the time): (a) to get their hands on the oil of Iraq and the entire region,
including the Caspian, and (b) to place an American garrison in the heart
of the Middle East.

If Bush had to face a Board of Inquiry in Washington DC as Olmert did in
Tel-Aviv, he would certainly be asked some questions (which this column
asked in real time): Did you consider how many soldiers and civilians
would be killed and wounded? What led you to think that the invading
army would be received with showers of flowers? Why did you believe that
the Air Force would determine the issue so that the ground forces would
have to play only a minor role? Did you imagine that the planned little war
would still be going on three years and more later? Did you take into
consideration that the Iraqi state would be blown to pieces and that the
three peoples living there would soon be at each other's throats? Did you
expect that the war would strengthen Iran's position in the Middle East? In
short, did you have any idea at all of the place that you were about to
invade?

Clearly, nobody with any influence in the US government raised these
questions at the time. A foolish and power-drunk president, a rapacious
vice-president and a cabal of arrogant and ignorant ideological fanatics
decided upon an adventure whose end is not in sight even now. And
afterwards the statesmen and strategists went to their elegant restaurants
to enjoy sumptuous meals, while the 3000 US soldiers who have been
killed up to now spent the day in blissful ignorance of what was going on
at the highest level. The media and the senators, of course, were ecstatic.


IT'S NOT the past I am writing about, but the future.

At this moment, people in Washington and in Jerusalem are thinking
about a war in Iran. Not if it should be started, but when and how.

If this is to be an American war, its consequences will be many times
more grievous than the war in Iraq. Iran is a very hard nut. The Iranian
people are united. They have a glorious national tradition, a highly
developed national pride and a tough religious ideology. One can bomb
their oil facilities, but it is a big country, not dependent on a
sophisticated infrastructure, and it cannot be subdued by bombing alone.
There will be no alternative to a military attack on the ground.

Bush is already preparing the war. This week he instructed his soldiers in
Iraq to hunt down and kill all "Iranian agents" there. That is reminiscent of
the infamous "Kommissarbefehl" of June 6, 1941, on the eve of the
German invasion of the Soviet Union, in which Adolf Hitler ordered the
summary execution of every captured political commissar of the Red
Army. Since the commissars were uniformed soldiers, every commander
who carried out the order became a war criminal.

It is quite certain that if the United States does go to war, the Iranian
people will rally behind their government. They will draw the conclusion
that everything their leaders told them about the West was true. The
opposition, which has lately raised its head, will fall silent and disappear.
The big-mouthed president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose wisdom is
now being questioned by many of his own people, will turn overnight into
a national hero. It will be a war of many years, and many thousands of
American soldiers - not to mention Iranians - will fall.

President Bush may hesitate and pass the task over to Israel. Lately,
Olmert has hinted that it was the Americans who pushed him into the
Lebanon war. They believed that the Israeli army would defeat Hizbullah
easily, and that this would help the American clients in Beirut. (A similar
foolish calculation caused the Americans to give their blessing to Sharon's
First Lebanon War in 1982.)

Nowadays, our politicians and generals speak freely about the inevitable
attack on Iran. The pro-Israeli lobby in the US, both Jewish and Christian,
is toiling mightily to push American public opinion in this direction. All
these gentlemen and ladies, in their comfortable villas far from the
prospective battlefields, yearn for a war which will cost the lives of the
sons and daughters - of other people.

The advocates of the war declare that it is necessary in order to prevent a
"Second Holocaust". That has already become a mantra. This week,
Jacques Chirac nearly exploded it, when he expressed the self-evident:
that if an Iranian nuclear bomb were launched at Israel, Israel would wipe
Tehran from the face of the earth. The Iranian rulers are not mad and the
"balance of terror" will do its job. But the "friends" of Israel and the USA
started to pelt Chirac with verbal rocks, and he hastily retracted.


LET'S ASSUME for a moment that the Israeli Air force, with the help of the
American naval forces that are now being steadily built up in the Persian
Gulf, succeeds in bombing targets in Iran. What will happen then?

Iranian missiles will rain down on Tel-Aviv and Haifa. The promise of our
Air Force to destroy them on the ground is worth no more than the
similar promises we heard about Lebanon. In order to defend Israel,
American soldiers would have to go into Iran. Israel's account would be
debited with every casualty. If Israel is, God forbid, the first to use a
nuclear bomb there, the shame will last forever.

The masses of the Arab - indeed the entire Muslim world, both Sunnis
and Shiites, will rally around Iran. The Sunni heads of state, who are
embracing Israel now in secret, will run away in panic. We shall be left
alone to face the revenge that will come sooner or later. Will we be able to
rely on the heirs of Bush, who may be less reckless and more inclined to
listen to world public opinion, which will inevitably blame us for this
whole adventure?

Iran is not a second Iraq, neither is it Hizbullah multiplied by ten. It is an
entirely different story.

But is anyone here thinking about it seriously? Will the successors of the
share-selling Chief-of-Staff and the tongue-pushing minister be more
thoughtful? Or will they decide upon a new military adventure with the
same unbearable lightness?