Schumer says he opposed the Iran deal because of ‘threat to Israel’

March 20th, 2018

Awake Goy

[EXCERPTS] . . . The Israeli regime has always required enemies; it requires them now more than ever. But, as in the American case, only worthy enemies will suffice.

They are hard to find. With the United States and other Western powers in tow, talk of existential threats to the Jewish state ring increasingly hollow.

In addition to that, there is the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, a nuclear juggernaut, armed to the teeth, enjoying almost universal support within Israeli civil society and a reputation for excellence around the world. But its problem is much the same as one the American military confronts: for all its might, it is no longer suited to winning the wars it fights. All this self-proclaimed “most moral army in the world” can do is kill, maim, and bully.

It would be different if Israel had traditional state armies to fight. But it has not had enemies like that for many years. Instead, it has only defenseless populations, equipped with primitive homemade weapons to slaughter; and, of course, settlers to protect. . .

. . . Keeping the myth of a besieged and embattled Israel alive would be a problem even if Israel’s War of Independence had been more like unreconstructed Zionists claim it was. Jordan fell away from Day One, Lebanon long ago became a lost cause, and Egypt, by far the greatest danger Israel faced, was neutralized at Camp David.

Then the two Bush wars rendered Iraq harmless, and, for a variety of diplomatic and military reasons, Syria was effectively neutralized as well — even before inept American and European reactions to the Arab Spring brought that country to the brink of ruin.

And now a de facto Salafi-Zionist alliance, spurred in part by Saudi efforts to establish itself as a regional hegemon, has isolated Palestinians further. The theocrats in Riyadh have it in for the theocrats in Tehran, much to the detriment of the Palestinian national movement.

And so, the vaunted IDF is reduced to periodic slaughters of Palestinians living in the open-air prison that Gaza has become. It has not had an enemy worthy of the name since Hezbollah, a non-state actor supported by Iran, fought it to a draw more than a decade ago.

This is quite a problem for the IDF and, even more, for a regime that depends on existential threats to overcome internal divisions and to retain the support of the majority of the world’s Jews and of Israel’s allies abroad.

Therefore, even more than the Soviet Union in the Cold War era or Russia now, if Iran didn’t exist, it would have to be invented. . .

. . . It was only after the first Bush war against Iraq ended the prospect of serious Arab-Israeli hostilities, and after it had become indisputably clear that Palestinian resistance posed no serious military or diplomatic threat to Israel, that Iran would become a full-fledged, serviceable existential threat.

Russia served as a bogeyman for Americans for so long that Russophobia was easy to revive when the time came. But since Biblical times, Jews have held Persia and Persians in high esteem. . .

. . . Fear mongering can and does overwhelm that sentiment, but it is nevertheless there, beneath the surface, affecting public opinion at some level.

They therefore need a war bad, a war against a worthy antagonist. Iran is the only serviceable one in sight.

The Israeli Right understands this; this is why Netanyahu fear and war mongers as much as he does.

The problem, though, is that without American help, Israel would lose the war its leaders and many of its people want and may actually need if the regime now in place is to survive. They would likely lose too badly to save face.

If America was led by sensible people, it would never be dragged into such a dangerous folly. But it is led by Donald Trump.

And, on matters of interest to the Israeli Right, Trump, it seems, is himself becoming increasingly led by Zionist plutocrats of the Sheldon Adelson type, and by similarly noxious Israel-fisters. . .