“Most Americans support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, while a smaller majority endorses such US strike, according to a poll commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League. Some 63% of poll respondents characterized Israel as a “crucial ally” and said that the Jewish state’s relationship with the US does not undermine America’s image in the world. As to Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, the poll showed that 57% of Americans support Israeli military action to prevent such scenario while only 31% opposed such move. Some 50% of respondents suppor. Meanwhile, nearly half of all Americans said they sympathize with the State of Israel, while only 18% said they sympathize with the Palestinians. Some 63% of respondents said they believe Israel is serious about peace. ………”
That last 63% almost certainly don’t know much about Netanyahu and his Likud. You always get a “generic” answer when asking a “generic” question. The tendency among American voters, assuming this was a “good” poll, is to use whatever vague general information they have and answer accordingly to specific questions. For example, if the question was “Do you think the Likud wants to be left in peace to complete the takeover of the West Bank?” They may have answered the same affirmative.
Besides, the most recent headlines drive opinion polls in the United States in this era of sound bites. Iran and its nuclear program being in the headlines cause people to quickly associate Israel with peace. I bet ($5) many of these same folks would answer affirmative if asked whether the US faces an imminent threat of an Iranian nuclear attack. It is all headlines driven, I tell ya. (Sad fact is, most people in the United States cannot identify Missouri or Nebraska on a map, let alone Iran or Israel. As for locating Bhutan…..). Cheers
mhg
“The Zionist battle to wrest control of the country from the British and establish a Jewish homeland was led politically by the Jewish Agency and militarily by guerrilla organisations such as the Haganah and Irgun. “The Jewish Agency set up special clubs for the purpose of propaganda,” said Motti Golani, a historian of the British Mandate at Haifa University. “There were dancing parties, clubs with lectures, dinners. The Agency pushed young girls, of around 18 or 20, to have relationships with British soldiers. It was a kind of spying.” The Jewish Agency’s message was confusing: on the one hand the relationships were encouraged for political purposes, but they were meant to stop short of becoming sexual or permanent. “It was an indecent thing, for a Jewish girl to have a British boyfriend,” Segev told the Observer. “Not because he was British, but mostly because he wasn’t Jewish. It was something a family would hide.”…..… The British did not confine their romances to Jewish women. The highest-profile relationship of the era was between the commander of the British forces in Palestine, General Evelyn Barker, and Katy Antonius, the socialite wife of a prominent Arab. Barker, who was also married, wrote almost 100 passionate letters to his lover …….The Jewish Agency, he added, “had very good information. There were a lot of spies. There were hardly any real secrets. Both the British and Jewish Agency used code names, but they both knew who the other was talking about……...”
Interesting bit of old history of Palestine under the Mandate. Not clear how much is true and how much gossip. I suspect most of it is true. But you get the flavor of the time. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Nor did I find much sympathy for Obama in Israel. The right thinks of him as a naïf who can easily be out-maneuvered, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently done. The left is disappointed in him for the same reason: that Obama let Netanyahu push him around. The spectacle of members of Congress leaping to their feet to clap after almost every sentence of Nethanyahu’s address gave comfort to the right that America could always be manipulated. To the Israeli left it was pathetic. “Netanyahu could have been reading from the telephone book,” said author and journalist, Yuval Elizur……..”
What can I say? Members of Congress were intoxicated by all the bullshit Mr. Netanyahu spread under the some of the Capitol, as he is wont to do wherever he goes. They recognized a sour b.s. disseminator, a right-winger, one of their own. Only better at it. Cheers
mhg
“The “Iran Threat Reduction Act” HR1905, passed on November 2 by the House Foreign Relations Committee, neither reduces an Iranian threat, nor puts significant pressure on Iran’s leaders to change policies with which the United States disagrees. A corresponding bill has been introduced in the Senate (S1048). If passed, the House bill would, however, make it illegal for any American diplomat to speak to or have any contact with an Iranian official unless the President certifies to Congress that not talking to the Iranian officials “would pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States” 15 days prior to that contact. Former U.S. Ambassadors William Luers and Thomas Pickering point out that this bill is not only illegal, it places the United States in greater danger in the world…….”
“(c) RESTRICTION ON CONTACT. — No person employed with the United States Government may contact in an official or unofficial capacity any person that — (1) is an agent, instrumentality, or official of, is affiliated with, or is serving as a representative of the Government of Iran; and (2) presents a threat to the United States or is affiliated with terrorist organizations. (d) WAIVER. — The President may waive the requirements of subsection (c) if the President determines and so reports to the appropriate congressional committees 15 days prior to the exercise of waiver authority that failure to exercise such waiver authority would pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States.” Cheers
mhg
BFF “Israel’s ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor attended a luncheon for France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen “by accident,” his spokeswoman told AFP on Thursday. Prosor attended the event in honor of the far-right leader at the United Nations in New York. It was Le Pen’s first meeting with an Israeli official. Prosor’s spokeswoman Karean Peretz told AFP that the ambassador’s attendance was the result of a misunderstanding. She did not elaborate. The French newspaper Le Monde reported that Prosor told reporters before entering the event: “I am a free man.”……..”
And I say to all that: hey, you can take them whenever and wherever you can get them. It is just one right-winger meeting another. I mean it is not like he dined with the daughter of Goebbels or Goering.It only means that Mr. Prosor is wild and free, just like the ass of the proverbial nun in the famous joke. Cheers
mhg
“And we keep forgetting the inconvenient fact that, even if the regime changed, the nuclear program — which is popular as an expression of Iranian nationalism and power — will continue. The leaders of the Green movement strongly support that program and have repeatedly criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for making too-generous offers to the West. (All Iranian officials repeat constantly that they would never develop nuclear weapons. And in a recent interview with Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he had never “seen a shred of evidence that Iran has been weaponizing, in terms of building nuclear-weapons facilities and using enriched materials.”…………“
This is another dilemma that the West will continue to face from Iran, something I and a few others have written about. What they don’t seem to understand is that no matter who is in power in Tehran, be it the mullahs, the Mujahideen Khalq, the Greens, the Communists, or the American Tea Party, they all want to keep the nuclear program going.They all claim they have no intention of developing nuclear weapons, but they know that an independent nuclear program, of the sort the Israelis and the Pakistanis have, is a matter of national pride.Regime change in Iran is desirable by the West and very likely by many Iranians, but that does not mean an acceptance of the loss of independent decision-making. Cheers
mhg
“U.S. officials are concerned that Israel will not warn them before taking military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, a senior U.S. military official said Friday. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, told the CNN network that although in the past, U.S. officials thought they would receive warning from Israel if it did take military action against Iran, “now that doesn’t seem so ironclad.” The U.S. is “absolutely” concerned that Israel is preparing an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and this concern is increasing, CNN reported the official as saying. The U.S. has increased its “watchfulness” of Iran and Israel…….…..”
If anybody truly believes that the US administration worries about Israel “attacking” Iran without them knowing, then I still have that perfect three legged and half-blind camel for sale. Clearly the Obama-Clinton administration and the Likud coalition are playing a game of good cop and bad cop, in the style of the Keystone cops. Israel has no way of getting into Iranian airspace without American knowledge. The United States owns the airspace over the entire Middle East, with the possible exception of Iran and Syria. Israel also has no way of getting into Iranian airspace without the cooperation of some other Middle East regimes. Iraq and Turkey and Syria will not allow attacking jets to cross their territory. That leaves only the potentates on my Gulf (and Jordan). The controlled Saudi media have been softening their people, and in some other Persian-American Gulf GCC states, by beating the sectarian drum. It is possible now, after this long and fierce media campaign by the al-Saud that a “not insubstantial” segment of Saudi society will not object to cooperation with the Israelis in an attack across the Persian-American Gulf. That segment includes the crucial Wahhabi palace ulema, the tamed Salafi royal clerics like Shaikh Al Al Shaikh, who will no doubt issue the appropriate fatwa. Then again, all this can be just part of psychological war against the mullahs. It might just stay that way, hopefully. Cheers
mhg
You won’t see an English translation of this junk analysis piece from the Saudi semi-official daily Asharq Alawsat. There are many pieces like this one in the same paper and they are never shown on the English website, only in the Arabic version in order to keep the faithful, faithful. The stupidity of the story is just too breathtaking (or rather the implied and assumed stupidity of the Arab reader is breathtaking). It is a wild story written by a Lebanese chick named Huda al-Husseini who is a regular on the daily and its sister Alarabiya website. She specializes in outlandish stories. It tells of how the Iranian mullahs have made a deal with al-Qaeda to take over Egypt! Yes, Wahhabi Saudi al-Qaeda, that same al-Qaeda.
But wait, there is more: according to the story either Israel or Iran will sooner or later attack the “Arab world”, wtf that be (Saudi? Egypt? Syria? Algeria? Somalia? All of the above?). Unfortunately you need to read it in Arabic and it is too long for me to bother translating now: maybe the weekend during the Cowboys-Seahawks game. If you thought the Saudi embassy plot was ‘fanciful’, this one will knock your socks off, provided you wear socks. “Al-Qaeda returns to Egypt under an Iranian cover…” Now all we need to confirm this story and make it legitimate and credible is a corroborating column by David Ignatius quoting the usual “high Saudi official” that all this is true. We know these people never lie, not when they are overseeing the holy places. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Chairman of Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Hassan Firouzabadi warned on Wednesday that any possible attack on Syria will put an end to the existence of the United States and the Zionist regime.
“If the Westerners break up the resistance front against the occupying Zionist regime, all Muslims will rise up, and in that case there will remain no U.S. and no Zionist regime,” he said.
They are talking about the use of Libya’s model for Syria to frighten and weaken the position of the Syrian government, but in fact they are not capable of implementing such a plan for Syria, he said.
On the developments in the Middle East and North Africa, he said that the Zionist regime is the real loser of the Islamic awaking in the region.…..”
About his threat of “no USA and no Zionist regime“: somehow I don’t buy it.Besides, it is very un-General-like and rude. Even Patton would not use such terms.Patton used worse, but not in public, and he was a realist, not a panderer.
I got news for this strange Iranian general. This Arab ‘awakening’ did not start as an Islamic awakening. Many Islamists went AWOL, stayed home, or sided with the regimes initially. They joined toward the end, and I suspect some of them, nay many of them, especially the Salafis, are on the side of the Arab Counterrevolution led by Saudi Arabia and others. Yet he is right in the sense that Islamists will gain much, perhaps more than the secular young people who started the uprisings.Unfortunately. Cheers
mhg
“Palestinian efforts to join U.N. agencies beyond its cultural arm are “not beneficial for anybody” and could lead to cuts in funding sure to affect millions of people, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned Thursday. In an Associated Press interview, the U.N. chief reiterated the world body’s support for a viable, independent Palestinian state — but lamented the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to join U.N. affiliates before the U.N. itself………”
Moony seems to be in a hurry here, effectively taking sides. Effectively telling the Palestinians not to bother applying beyond the UNESCO. It is odd that a UN secretary general takes sides so quickly. Luckily Moony is just a top international bureaucrat and his opinion is unlikely to sway anyone except the already-swayed. Unlike other previous UN secretaries general, I have no doubt that Moony will easily win a renewed term. Especially now. Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF