Jeffrey Goldberg, Bibi Gun
I have learned much from Jeffrey Goldberg, and generally admire what he does with his contradictions; but yesterday's New York Times column on Benjamin Netanyahu is troubling on so many levels one hardly knows how deep to drill first.
Basically Goldberg is saying this: You may suspect (given Netanyahu's record, presumably) that the prime minister is an ideologue and something of a manipulator, that he is actually committed to Greater Israel, and is throwing Iranian sand in our eyes, trying to distract us from the occupation and the settlements. But this would be wrong.
Netanyahu, Goldberg continues, truly does believe that Iran is a threat to Israel's very existence, and he believes this for three reasons: strategic, Jewish, and familial. I, Goldberg, do not necessarily believe these things myself, but I have access to Netanyahu and his strategic planners, a purchase on the way Israeli Jews think, and a sympathetic grasp of his family dynamics. So I'm going to explain him to you. (Goldberg does not tell us why, if he does think Netanyahu is misguided, the prime minister's sincerity is a virtue or even worth talking about; or why Netanyahu and his aides particularly like to speak with him. But I digress.)
THE STRATEGIC POINT is the important one, and Goldberg does not so much report it as (how did Stephen Colbert put it?) write it down. He is, no doubt, accurately reflecting the views of most of the professionals currently involved in Israeli strategic planning, from Uzi Arad (Netanyahu's confidant and head of Israel's National Security Council) on down. Roughly, their scenario runs like this:
Iran may or may not be going for a nuclear bomb, but we have to assume that it is; and once Iran reaches the capacity to build one, this will change the Middle East in a way that will eventually destroy Israel. Even if mad mullahs do not just drop one on Tel-Aviv, the mere fact of a "nuclear umbrella" will embolden Hamas and Hezbollah to fire missiles. It will also turn Iraq into a client state, which will cause Kuwait and the Gulf states to fall in line behind Iran's power. Then Saudi Arabia will fall in line, or get a bomb of its own, or both; all of which will eventually bring Islamists to power in Cairo. So Israel cannot allow these dominoes to fall, which will bring its end. Even if an Israeli air strike only delays the Iranian bomb by a few years, it must hit before doomsday processes are set in motion. (Goldberg is by no means alone in reproducing this scenario. Israel's foremost Churchill wannabe--also a kind of IDF stenographer--Haaretz's Arie Shavit, has been flogging it for months; you can read Shavit's version here.)
I say currently involved in Israeli strategic planning because there are plenty of professionals, from former intelligence boss, Ephraim Halevy, to former Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who think an attack would be madness, however uncomfortable it might be to live with a nuclear Iran. But how about mere civilians using their heads for a change? The fact is, every terrible domino that the existence of an Iranian bomb is supposed to topple is far more likely to be toppled by an attack on Iran.
GOLDBERG, VENTRILOQUIZED BY Netanyahi and Arad, is not convinced. "Talk of containing Iran after it acquires a nuclear capacity," he writes, "does not make the Israelis (or Iran's Arab adversaries, for that matter) happy and, in fact, might push them closer to executing a military strike." Notice the parenthetical aside, implying as Netanyahu's loves to imply, that Israel would actually be doing the work of moderate Arab states like Egypt and Jordan, and with their tacit blessing. Goldberg does not tell us that Mohamed El Baradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and an Egyptian, has called a strike "completely insane"; that it would "turn the region into one big fireball, and the Iranians would immediately start building the bomb--and they could count on the support of the entire Islamic world."
If you want to know what an Israeli attack will really mean, just read this extraordinarily trenchant summary by Reuven Pedatzur, ironically entitled, "Here's how Israel would destroy Iran's nuclear program." The piece, relying on a study by Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, blasts the Netanyahu-to-Arad-to-Goldberg thesis more thoroughly than a bunker buster.
Oh, as for missiles coming from Gaza and South Lebanon, you may remember that these have not needed an "Iranian nuclear umbrella" to be launched. You also may have noticed that Israel's nuclear umbrella did not seem to do much good against them either, or for that matter, get its neighbors to fall in line. It seems that, if you subscribe to the big swinging dick theory of diplomacy, the enlargement you can expect from a nuclear bomb is rather limited. (I have had more to say about deterring, not attacking, Iran here and here.)
BUT STRATEGY IS not enough, apparently. To really get Netanyahu we must also understand how "Amalek" (the biblical people that mercilessly attacked the rear of the camp when the children of Israel were leaving Egypt) rattles around in the minds of Israeli planners--also how hard it is to be the son of the Jabotinsky movement's favorite historian of Jew-hatred, and the younger brother of a military icon, to boot. Amalek, Amalek. The ultimate enemy, the metaphor for every anti-Semite, Nazi, and terrorist.
Goldberg might be forgiven for going all squishy here about Jewish fears, though Netanyahu is not the only person to have a difficult father or lose a loved one to terror. But as long as we are onto Amalek, Goldberg might also have noticed that there are two times that biblical Israelites themselves commit genocide. The first, in Prophets, when Samuel commands King Saul to attack Amalek for what their forebearers did. They were to kill every child, lamb, and calf. The second time was after Haman, the Amalekite prime minister in the "comic" Book of Esther, planned to annihilate all of the Persian King's Jewish subjects. The Jews responded preemptively, and with the King's permission, to "destroy, massacre, and exterminate" all of Haman's "sons," and the killing became a bloodbath against Jewish foes that--so the story goes--took over 75,000 lives.
Such Jewish stories--whether Israelis are to regard them as heroic or tragic--raise the question of what exactly will be the Jewish lesson in the "Jewish state" Netanyahu means to secure. But that's another story.
Hopefully, Netanyahu will have time to visit with Cheney, in person, while he's here. There's nothing like a little face time for a couple of ol' buddies like these two.
- the guy's name is Uzi?
May 17, 2009 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why not? I have a friend named Winchester.
May 17, 2009 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Uzi was a name before it was a machine gun.
May 17, 2009 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the insights into the paranoiac side of Israel. It sounds, as suggested by boggles, a lot like the Cheney side of American politics. Is it amazing or inevitable that immorality at the nation-state level produces such in nominal leadership?
May 17, 2009 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's quite amazing that after all these years people are still talking about who Netanyahu is. It's been clear for a very long time. An "ideologue," you bet; "something of a manipulator," nah -- he's a full-blooded manipulator. And he's also immature, which makes him dangerous. Israelis should be able to live in peace, free from rockets being lobbed into their country, and so on. Likewise, the Palestinians should have a safe state. I don't see any scenario where this happens so long as the United States continues to play Daddy. It's time for other countries to step forward, especially those in the same region (same with the messes in Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Somalia, and on and on). Until we let go of the insane notion that we are the world's Daddy and no problem can be solved unless we solve it, nothing will be accomplished. Nothing.
May 17, 2009 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting Bibi's position is the other side of the coin of Ahmadinejad position, both want only one country, the Greater Israel for Bibi or Palestine (before 1948 -for A). Bibi has the power to decide between making the one state official, an apartheid state with Palestinian Bantustans, or make it a democracy where Palestinians will outnumber Israelis or go the third way for the two state solution. Over to you Bibi.
May 17, 2009 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Iran nuked Israel wouldn't they be committing genocide against the Palestinians as well? Do those assuming the worst regarding Iranian intentions actually believe that the Iranians would kill all the Palestinians and any future Palestinian state while with turning their own country into a sheet of glass? What level of deterrence is required for Likudniks?
May 17, 2009 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem is Israel has been saying Iran is imminent in making (they don't have one yet) the nuke since early 1990s. Well, a nuke from Pakistan would likely reach any ME country, right?. Why is Bibi not obsessing with Pakistan?
Meanwhile, Iran doesn't mind this flattery. How then do you start creating a reality of a nuclear Iran from a "what if" position and base a fate of a people on this scenario as Bibi is doing?
May 17, 2009 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
While this is a perfectly logical supposition, you have to ask yourself why Palestinian terrorists don't feel the same way. After all, in many of the suicide bombings of the last 10 years or so, there have been Arab victims as well. Let's just say that these are not people who are motivated by logic and reason.
As for the question of their own vulnerability, perhaps that is best understood by quoting Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Prime Minister of Iran:
He's right. From a certain perspective, it isn't irrational. But whether this is mere saber-rattling, a minority view, signs of lunacy or something else entirely depends on one's perspective. But the fact that such sentiments are openly expressed by the Iranian leadership says to me that it isn't completely insane to assume that some of them think this way. I highly doubt that this would be enough for Iran to launch an attack. But anything that brings the notion of an attack from the realm of the unthinkable is, in my opinion, worrying to say the least.
May 17, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wouldn't the Book of Joshua add a third genocide to the list?
I am not an observant anything but I happened to read Joshua awhile back and found in it an apologia for Greater Israel.
The Chosen People enter the Promised Land and proceed to conquer every city and kill their entire populations except for the one city whose population they enslave to be drawers of water and hewers of wood.
I mean it is not just about trumpets making the walls of Jericho fall down or God making the sun stop in the sky. All of that is just prelude to murder on a massive scale.
I found the whole thing chilling particularly in light of modern parallels. Operationally what distinquishes Joshua from Hitler? After all each was just creating some Liebensraum for the Master Race.
From my distant vantage point it seems that the more radical elements of the Settler Movement are using Joshua as an operations manual and figuring that God gave the green light for eliminationism thousands of years ago. Meaning this probably won't end well.
May 17, 2009 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is true as far as it goes, but perhaps isn't the whole story. The missile strikes on Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas have been carefully calibrated to be enough to harass Israelis, but not not severe enough to provoke Israel into responding (except, of course, when that calculation fails, as it did last December and in July 2006). It is possible that a perceived increase in strength of their patron Iran will embolden these groups to start using longer-range, more powerful rockets targeting Israel's population centers.
It is this possible unpredictable psychological reaction to an Iranian nuclear capability, not the idea that Iran will immediately try to drop a bomb on Israel, that is the biggest worry. Perhaps Netanyahu and others overstate the case. Perhaps the options for doing anything about it don't exist or are worse than the problem itself. But the concerns are real and not just products of fevered imagination.
May 17, 2009 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brad: "It is possible that a perceived increase in strength of their patron Iran will embolden these groups (Hezbollah and Hamas) to start using longer-range, more powerful rockets targeting Israel's population centers. It is this possible unpredictable psychological reaction to an Iranian nuclear capability, not the idea that Iran will immediately try to drop a bomb on Israel, that is the biggest worry."
Hold on, Brad. Time out.
You don't get to turn on dime like that, changing the entire rationale for a pre-emptive strike on Iran. I know George Bush tried it in Iraq, switching "the spread of democracy" for the WMDs he'd baited the country in with.
But seriously? Suddenly the "biggest worry" about Iran getting a bomb is the possible reaction of Hamas and Hezbollah?
For this we're supposed to risk burning down the Middle East? Seriously?
May 17, 2009 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two points:
1. Just because the short-term worry is the reaction of Hamas and Hezbollah doesn't mean that the long-term worry about Iranian intentions goes away. The fact is that there is a desire on the part of some in the Iranian leadership to wipe out Israel. A nuclear capacity gives them the means to do so. Therefore Israel faces a finite existential threat. The probability that Iran would use a nuclear weapon on Israel if it could is certainly not large, and is probably quite small. But it isn't zero either.
2. Against this existential threat from Iran, Israel (and the US) must weigh the costs of a strike. There isn't anyone who claims these costs wouldn't be horrendous. Of course they would be. But the cost of WWII was horrendous as well. Virtually no one argues that it wasn't a price worth paying.
I personally believe that Israel will ultimately realize that a strike will cost it and the US far more than they would gain, for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that the Iranians have surely put in place disaster recovery that would enable them to get the program up and running quickly after any strike. It just wouldn't be effective. As much as the US and Israel consider a nuclear Iran to be "intolerable", tolerate it they probably will, in the end.
May 17, 2009 10:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do see some value in the "Netanyahu is sincere" line that Goldberg is exploring. If, indeed, he is sincere, we need to put ourselves in his shoes so we can know what he's thinking and why.
That said... most of what I've read here is ludicrous at best. Iraq a client state of Iran? Iraq is a client state of the US and will be for decades. We established its government, after all.
Another crazy notion is a "nuclear umbrella" in the middle east. If such a thing could exist, it would exist, given that Israel has nuclear weapons.
May 17, 2009 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can anyone comment on why Netanyahu would land here in the US for his talks with President and use Uzi Arad as his press mouthpiece to announce that Netanyahu does not support the two-state solution?
May 17, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bernard Avishai's analysis usefully dissects the practical folly of Goldberg's do-nothing vis-a-vis the Palestinans ala Cheney-Bush and then pre-emptively attack Iran, but there is a still bigger flaw in Goldberg's rationalizations.
Goldberg's op-ed is a carefully crafted bit of mythology, subtly reinforcing a long-entrenched fantasy-based alternate history of the Mideast, in which Israel never bulldozed Palestinian homes, built fortress-settlements for religious kooks on the West Bank, or needlessly slaughtered Palestinian children.
Once upon a time, Israel was indeed something close to a reliable and stable ally of the United States, in a state of war or near-war with its major neighboring countries, Egypt and Syria, who refused to compromise with it, or accept it, and were in turn backstopped by the Soviet empire. Those days are long gone, and it is long past time to draw a line in the sand against the Greater Israelians whose madness has raged largely unchecked despite the disappearance, since the Soviet collapse, of the slightest justification for it. These bigoted Israeli fanatics are no more deserving of one iota of American support than are their most amoral Arab adversaries.
Some day, some Islamic kook or other may manage to kill a huge number of Israelis. It is not a risk that should be ignored or taken lightly, but neither do we need to let fanatical Israelis run rampant over the West Bank because of it. Nor is there is any imagineable way that the worst conceivable attack could approach a complete destruction of all Jews worldwide. It is high time to stop tolerating incessant crap from deniers of and apologists for the settler atrocities, echoed in statements by craven and/or functionally-brain-dead U.S. Congresspeople, the ultimate basis of which is the absurd notion that the world is a some kind of gigantic existential Warsaw ghetto.
Every day that passes without America demanding the swift removal of all Israeli settlements outside of the immediate 1967 border area, and insisting on making solid and prompt arrangements for a Palestinian state REGARDLESS of anything else (just as Israel got a recognized state 60 years ago despite the King David hotel, etc.), INCREASES the likelihood of some kind of eventual horrible revenge against Israel, and also the likelihood that a large segment of the world's opinion will conclude that Israelis deserve such punishment for many years of terrible brutality, oppression, and atrocities inflicted against Palestinians, especially that committed beginning under the first prime-ministership of Netanyahu. It is time for that informed world public (not just a few enlightened pro-peace American Jews) to demand an end to America's coddling of the settler-nuts whose unjustifiable mania threatens world peace and stability, and to do so WITHOUT whitewashing the idiocies, fanaticism, and immoralities committed AGAINST Israelis.
May 17, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
this is great. i'll believe when it happens.
Obama to warn Israel's PM, Benjamin Netanyahu: 'No more blank cheques'
May 17, 2009 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought Avishai's piece unnecessarily snarky, and came away with a sense of "WELL! I guess you told US!"
The subject merits more than an offer of alternative certitude.
May 17, 2009 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, if you knew anything at all about Jeffrey Goldberg's writing, you'd know that he has written favorably of a two-state solution and is no friend of the settler movement. In any case, the subject at hand is a nuclear Iran and what to do about it, not the West Bank settlements. If you think there's a relationship between the two, maybe you need to explain your logic. My view of course is that it is simply folly to assume that Iranian hatred of Israel would go away even if Israel were to do everything you say they should. In other words, there is no relationship between the West Bank settlements and the Iranian question.
May 17, 2009 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
"there is no relationship between the West Bank settlements and the Iranian question"
I agree, Brad, in the sense that the West Bank settlements do absolutely zilch to defend Israel (against Iran, or anyone else) or to further the interests of America.
In fact, I can see no real function of the settlements at all beyond providing Arab terrorists with an excuse, which, in turn, permits the settlements to continue because a single act of Arab terrorism (unlike the King David Hotel bombing when it came to setting up Israel) is accepted by the out-to-lunch US Congress as a reason for avoiding all negotiations with Palestinians.
May 17, 2009 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "the big swinging dick theory of diplomacy"
MY COMMENT: Is this a reference to "Pricky Dick" Cheney?
May 17, 2009 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama having said that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the national security interest of the United States is crucial. Why do Netanyahu and Goldberg ignore this statement of policy by only addressing Israel's concerns with Iran?
May 17, 2009 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: "Amalek" (the biblical people that mercilessly attacked the rear of the camp when the children of Israel were leaving Egypt)
BUSH TOLD CHIRAC: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East"
FROM THE ARTICLE "When God Spoke to Me": .....During those private interviews, Jacque Chirac had purportedly confessed to the journalist some personal remarks regarding the faith of George W. Bush that seemed quite daunting. He told the journalist that the latter called him twice beseeching him basically, in the name of their common “spiritual faith”, i.e., “Christianity”, to join the collective effort of the coalition being formed to wage a preemptive war against Iraq. In his first telephonic call he reportedly said to Jacque Chirac: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East” and then added that “the biblical prophecies are being fulfilled”.....
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14890
May 17, 2009 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Avishai seems to make a rather basic error in conflating Golberg's views with Netanyahu's. It's quite clear that Goldberg's op-ed is a political analysis on Netanyahu's upcoming meeting with Obama: specifically, how the Israeli PM's goals and worldview are likely to clash with the president's. In this respect, his analysis is of a piece with MJ Rosenberg's and that of a host of other commentators. Sure, Goldberg could have argued that the notion of Israel bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would be a disaster, but that wasn't the story he chose to write. Rather, his focus is on explaining how, in light of Netanyahu's worldview, his insistent focus on Iran is not mere posturing. In this respect, he means what he says. As Goldberg also points out, Netanyahu's grave concern over Iran is shared by most Israelis on both sides of the political spectrum.
My personal views are closer to Avishai's than Bibi's, although I would not be so dismissive of the profoundly destabilizing influence of an Iranian bomb. However, I am far less inclined to believe that Netanyahu would initiate a unilateral Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Even if the US gave its approval (not happening), the cost would be too high and the benefit - delaying Iran's program by a few years - too scant to justify such an action. Israel simply has no good options with respect to Iran and Netanyahu has to know that. My own armchair analysis suggests that Netanyahu would like to create the impression that Israel will take matters into its own hands in order to prod the US and our allies into taking a more forceful stand.
May 17, 2009 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Mr. Goldberg does not adopt Mr. Netanyahu's views as his own, he should have presented his piece as an interview rather than as a condescending history lesson for the American people. As it is, no one is fooled that this isn't a Bibi Netanyahu press release.
May 17, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
In fact, Goldberg's piece builds on his interview of Netanyahu for the Atlantic around a month ago. Goldberg's main point is that to view Netanyahu as a pragmatist who would never act unilaterally against Iran is to misread the depth of his commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran. Goldberg also explains how Netanyahu's agenda clashes with Obama's and that the US President, while sympathic in some respects, is unlikely to share the Israeli PM's view of the extent of the threat. Although many here would prefer otherwise, it's simply not a piece of advocacy - for either Netanyahu or Obama. It is, in other words, a piece of journalism. I don't know exactly where Goldberg stands with respect to the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran, but having followed him for some time, I tend to believe he would believe it to be a disastrous error.
May 17, 2009 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re '.... I tend to believe he would believe it to be a disastrous error."
If you'd read Goldberg's blog comments on Michael Oren, the ambassador-designate to the US, who shares Bibi's Iran views (but not, apparently, his West Bank views), I think you'd change your mind. Everything I've read by Goldberg persuades me that he supports the notion that something, most likely military, must be done about Iran. He certainly sees the possible negative ramifications, and understands the varied sources of Jewish fear. He has misgivings, but he's not going to let himself be swayed by them. He's trying hard to plead the anti-Iran case (mainly as a journo-ventriloquist) in order to help shrink the growing daylight beteen the US and Israel. That daylight clearly causes him discomfort.
May 18, 2009 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
May 17, 2009 11:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
No one can presume to know what Netanyahu truly believes, we can only judge him by his actions, from a signatory to the Neo-Cons' PNAC ideology to terrible violations of treaties and an almost fascist position vis the Palestinians. There will be no hope for a two-state solution, and most likely more "ethnic cleansing", invasions and uprooting of Gaza and the West Bank.
One thing we can safely presume of ANY politician - they live to politick and manipulate. One of their greatest ally in public opinion manipulation is a compliant and embedded media. Remember how Iraq is transformed into a threat in American minds?
We have much to fear from Netanyahu, AIPAC and their media allies in the further destabilization of the Middle East, and more bloodbaths to come.
May 18, 2009 1:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Forgot to add a "Thank You" for a brilliant blow-by-blow analysis of the Goldberg's article in relation to Netanyahu and the religious "codes" contained therein. Just as Bush's modus operandi was predicated on coded signals to his fundamentalist supporters, so are Netanyahu's, and we need a "decoder" to help us "see" the bigger picture and potential intent. It is chilling, and we need to protest against any new wars instigated against Iran.
May 18, 2009 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Goldberg's very interesting op-ed begs certain questions. First, would an attack on Iran permanently eliminate its capacity to produce nuclear weapons? Short of full scale invasion and occupation almost certainly not. The best result from even the most succesful strike setting back the program for a few years as was the case of Iraq, but at enormous political and strategic costs. There would be virtually no hope of creating or sustaining any effective international economic sanctions against Iran in the wake of an attack. Second, would Iran actually attack Israel with nuclear weapons when it would cause the death of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians? Indeed, Palestinians would probably suffer more than Israelis due to insufficient civil defense preparations and poor infrastructure. Besides making a viable Palestinian state impossible by destroying its economic and ecological foundations, a nuclear strike would run the risk of destroying the third holiest shrine of Islam, a matter which might give the Iranians some pause. Finally, is Iran willing to risk owns destruction by attacking Israel, since it would be subject to massive nuclear retaliation by both Israel and the United States? In short, President Obama might reply to Prime Minister Netanyahu concerns by suggesting that the answer is not premption but deterence and civil and strategic defense. And he might recall the verse "In every generation one rises up to destroy us,but the Holy One, blessed be He, delivers us from out of their hand."
May 18, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you read Goldberg's recent blog posts on the issue of Bibi, Iran, Amalek, the settlements, anti-Semitism etc., you'll find a welter of self-contradictory assertions and emotions. Very hard to tease out exactly where he stands. Seems uncomfortable when he senses that he's drifting away from the mainline Israeli consensus and so pulls himself back by the scruff of the neck. And seems equally uncomfortable when he's about to cut the cord with the Ameican liberal consensus. So long as you keep in mind that absolute chaos equals perfect order, I suppose it all makes some sense.
May 18, 2009 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why is he called Bibi?
May 21, 2009 9:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I should have Googled before posting. My bad.
May 21, 2009 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink