Jimmy Carter, Iranians, etc.

[Mediocrates]

GAMLA: NEWS AND VIEWS FROM ISRAEL

Volume 7 Issue 54 Jerusalem, Israel
14 Kislev 5767 December 5, 2006

1. Jimmy Carter: "I oppose a Palestinian State"
2. Teheran's Holocaust Denial Conference

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Jimmy Carter: "I oppose a Palestinian State"


By Jeff Ballabon

(http://politicalmavens.com/index.php...carter-i-oppos
e-a-palestinian-state/)

"... I am opposed to an independent Palestinian state, because in my own
judgement and in the judgement of many leaders in the Middle East,
including Arab leaders, this would be a destabilizing factor in the
Middle East and would certainly not serve the United States
interests."

(Jimmy Carter at the United Jewish Appeal National Young Leadership
Conference, February 25, 1980).

"...we oppose the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The
United States, as all of you know, has a warm and unique relationship
of friendship with Israel that is morally right. It is compatible
with our deepest religious convictions, and it is right in terms of
America's own strategic interests.

We are committed to Israel's security, prosperity, and future as a
land that has so much to offer to the world. A strong Israel and a
strong Egypt serve our own security interests.We are committed to
Israel's right to live in peace with all its neighbors, within secure
and recognized borders, free from terrorism.

We are committed to a Jerusalem that will forever remain undivided
with free access to all faiths to the holy places.

Nothing will deflect us from these fundamental principles and
committments.

(Source: First anniversary of the Egyptian-Israeli
Peace Treaty / White House joint conference, March 23, 1980).

What has changed in the last 25 years? Not Israel's 1948
independence. Not the 1967 war. Not the cynical, ignominous treatment
of Arab refugees by the Arab world.

So why, 25 years later, is Israel's right to exist a matter of
debate, while Palestine's right to exist is presumed by everyone from
the United Nations to Jimmy Carter to George Bush to Ehud Olmert?

Why, when the Palestinian leaderships - PA and Hamas - the first
imposed and the second popularly elected, demonstrate that their
chief characteristics are, respectively, corrupt thuggery and bloody
holy war, why then is endless-concession-making, negotiating,
retreating, disengaging, humanitarian-aid-giving, appeasing Israel
viewed as the "destabilizing factor?"

Did a massive land-grab by Israel precede Carter's new book? On the
contrary: a massive land-surrender preceded the book. And, in fact,
when it retreats, morally, intellectually, politically, physically,
Israel does become the destabilizing factor - or at least surrenders
its role as the stabilizer of the world's most volatile region.

What has changed is Israel's own resolve. Why should anyone else
fight to support a nation whose political elite takes every
opportunity and advantage we give it and squanders it? Why should
anyone else fight for a nation which sacrifices its soldiers rather
than vanquishes its enemy? Why should anyone else fight for a nation
which has ceased believing in itself? Which cravenly begs forgiveness
on the rare occasions it actually defends its citizens? Why should
anyone fight for a Jewish homeland which seems bent on denying its
Jewishness? Why should anyone care about a state which retreats from
its victories? Which sheds its democratic veneer to brutalize and
displace its most patriotic and committed citizens, its idealists,
its pioneers? Why should anyone care for an Israel that is willing,
even eager, in its quest for a "secular revolution" to declare that
the Jewish heritage is an albatross, that Judea and Samaria are a
burden, and that Jerusalem is negotiable? That the State of Israel
is, in fact, seeking to disengage from the Holy Land?

The turning point, perhaps the catalyst, was Oslo; the Bill
Clinton/Ehud Barak plan to (in Clinton negotiator Dennis Ross'
terminology) dispense with the "mythologies" in order to negotiate.
How very modern and enlightened and liberal and civilized. And how
very destructive and foolish and deadly. The ideas, the principles,
the vision, the morals, the truths which they disdain as mythologies
were and are the very heart of Israel's national aspiration. It was
the vision that kept Jews alive through millenia of diaspora and
dispersion, crusade, expulsion, forced conversion, blood libel and
pogrom, and, finally, Holocaust And the heart may be romanticized as
the seat of emotion, but only the hopelessly deluded excises it and
thinks the body will survive. Only the deluded excises the heart. Or
the suicidal.

What has changed, in consequence, is the resolve of Israel's enemies
as well. And, because they are not burdened by the selfish inanity of
modern liberalism, they have not lost their willingness to suffer and
to sacrifice. The suicides they are committing are anything but
deluded; their terror is a winning strategy. Rather than eliciting
disgust and fury, rather than being condemned as unutterably
barbaric, the use of civilians as targets, children as bombs and
grandmothers as bunkers has even brought them the sympathies of the
deluded West. Not only in the corridors of the UN or the salons of
Europe - but even in those enlightened liberal precincts in Israel
where the stubborn, unruly Jewish "mythologies" have long since been
relegated, surrendered, sublimated to an oh-so-superior modern
Israeli multicultural consciousness.

It often has been said that the Jews are the canary in the coalmine.

Pay close attention, for what is playing out in Israel today is the
future of the West.


Teheran's Holocaust Denial Conference (World's Sympathy With Jews Has Expired Alert)

Frontpagemag.com P. David Hornik

Posted on 12/05/2006 1:24:08 AM PST by goldstategop

Iran, which has often proclaimed its intent to carry out a second
Holocaust, this time against the Jews concentrated in Israel, will be
holding a Holocaust-denial conference on December 11-12.

A certain illogic is evident: if you yourself find Jews so loathsome
that you seek to exterminate them, why is it implausible that someone
else should have had the same idea and acted on it, especially when
so many people including all reputable historians say that is exactly
what happened just six decades ago?

The illogic is compounded by the fact that just last August Teheran
held an international Holocaust-cartoon contest in which the
allegedly fictitious event served as material for the cartoonists'
creations.

Nevertheless, the website of Iran's Foreign Ministry announces that
the conference, to be called "Study of Holocaust: A Global
Perspective," aims to "create opportunities...for a suitable
scientific research so the hidden and unhidden angles of this most
important political issue of the 20th century become more
transparent." The ministry's Institute for Political and
International Studies is organizing the conference and calling on
"researchers" to participate.

Topics will include "anti-Semitism, Nazism and Zionism: collaboration
or animosity; the concept of Holocaust and its roots; views of
revisionists; denial or admittance of gas chambers" as well as "the
laws against those who deny Holocaust and killing of the
Palestinians."

A psychological issue is whether the seekers of a new Holocaust
really disbelieve in the old one or just want to divest today's Jews
of the moral, political, and financial power they think the old
Holocaust confers on them. On a more emotional level, the Iranian
(and other) Holocaust deniers could be motivated by aggression toward
the victims of Hitler's Holocaust, seeking both to "murder" them a
second time by denying their deaths while also mocking those deaths
in cartoons and the like. This sense of aggression toward long-dead
victims would only underline the severity of the hatred toward the
still-living, somewhat-militarily-powerful Jews of Israel.

Teheran may now be the epicenter of such attitudes, but they radiate
extensively from it to the Arab and Muslim worlds and beyond. In
Europe, where Holocaust denial is still mostly considered in poor
taste, the impatience with Israel's continued existence is very much
in vogue as seen, for instance, in a recent BBC symposium on whether
Israel will continue to exist in fifty years, or in the poll of EU
countries three years ago that ranked Israel "the greatest danger to
world peace." In America, prestigious scholars and former top
officials push the view that Israel is (with its supporters) the crux
of America's foreign policy problems and the cause of the world jihad
movement.

In such a climate, it is no surprise that neither Teheran's cartoon
contest in August nor its upcoming denial convocation have drawn much
attention. It also makes sense that the current leading
second-Holocaust proponent, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has
not only not been charged or penalized for his repeated calls for
politicide and genocide—manifestly illegal under the UN Charter—but
was received as an honored guest at the UN itself and the Council on
Foreign Relations and granted a chummy Mike Wallace interview by CBS.

After not-quite six decades, the world, apart from still-substantial
support in America and a few pockets of it elsewhere, has pretty much
had it with the Jewish State and is content to trade or endlessly
negotiate with Iran as it quite openly and brazenly pursues that
state's destruction. The depth of such animosity lies beyond
psychological conjecture.

[Mediocrates]

http://www.meforum.org/article/1068

From news article:

Could Sanctions Work against Tehran?

by Patrick Clawson
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2007

As Western diplomats debate ways to counter Iran's nuclear program, the strategies they devise must take Iranian motives into account. If Iranian leaders see their nuclear program as essential to defending Iran's existence—as the Israeli[1] and Pakistani[2] governments view their nuclear programs—then economic considerations would make little difference to Iran's calculations. But defense is not the principal factor behind the Iranian nuclear program. Rather, Tehran seeks prestige and influence. Iranian leaders consistently present the nuclear program as an accomplishment of Iranian science and as evidence that Iran is an advanced industrial power.[3] They also argue that international opposition to Iran's nuclear ambitions is motivated by a Western effort to prevent the country from assuming its rightful place as a regional leader. They play to Iranian national pride, not to the idea that Iran is so threatened that it must take desperate measures to defend itself. If the West is to convince the Iranian leadership to change course, therefore, it is necessary to persuade the Iranian leadership that its nuclear program will not advance Iranian influence. Economic instruments can play a role in this regard though they are by themselves unlikely to be sufficient.


..............................

Conclusion

At the end of the day, diplomacy may not be enough. The best explanation about why force has to remain an option comes from the IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei, who, on January 23, 2006, said "Diplomacy has to be backed up by pressure and, in extreme case, by force. We have rules. We have to do everything possible to uphold the rules through conviction. If not, then you impose them. Of course, this has to be the last resort, but sometimes you have to do it."[37]

To be sure, preemptive military force would be a highly undesirable option—but it would be less undesirable than the alternative, which could be both nuclear weapons in the hands of ideological hard-liners bent on confrontation and a nuclear arms race across the Middle East.
That said, it would be premature to write off the prospects for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. If the United States and its allies can effectively demonstrate that Iran is paying a high price for its confrontational stance, the cautious instincts of Khamene'i and many Iranian leaders could lead them to freeze the overt conversion and enrichment programs, regardless of Ahmadinejad's attitude. While Iran would almost certainly continue with covert activities, the need to keep those hidden would slow development. In this case, delay could be victory, because the long-term prospects for the Islamic Republic look poor: it has done a miserable job of winning the hearts and minds of young Iranians and, meanwhile, social and regional developments suggest more pressure for democratic governance.[38]

Patrick Clawson, senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. This article draws upon May 17, 2006 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations and his June 8, 2006 testimony before the House Armed Services Committees.

[farmall]

Deleted-double post.

[farmall]

The Iranian leaders are a hard bunch.
Sanctions would simply enable them, because sanctions punish the public rather than those in power.

Some interesting photos illustrate just how Iranians play the game:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs

[Khalid]

The Iranian leaders are a hard bunch.
Sanctions would simply enable them, because sanctions punish the public rather than those in power.

Some interesting photos illustrate just how Iranians play the game:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs

Wow, what a big deal?..Eleven men get execution for espionage and trying to create a "Kurdistan", and this happened when? Right, 30 years ago.
Now, lets go and Bomb the hell out of those Iranians.

[Parsi]

The Iranian leaders are a hard bunch.
Sanctions would simply enable them, because sanctions punish the public rather than those in power.
Some interesting photos illustrate just how Iranians play the game:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs

Well, there is not doubt that the Iranian leaders are a hard bunch, but by no means they are the only ones who play nasty games.

There was a lot of support for US in Iran until before 1988 where people realised how the US government could "play the game" by killing over 250 innocent people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

Sanctions and imposed wars on Iran will only strenghen the regime. It has been proved over 25 years.

[AnotherAlly]

Sanctions and imposed wars on Iran will only strenghen the regime. It has been proved over 25 years.

True. This is why air strikes may be necessary.

[Parsi]

True. This is why air strikes may be necessary.

Any kind of offensive attack (you may call it pre-emptive or whaterver) against Iran will similarly refresh the memories of 1988 and the time during Iran-Iraq war.

The attitude of "We hit you because we want and we can..." could potentially start WW3. US doesn't need to boast or prove its military capabilities by attacking other countries. It's a known fact the US is the superior military force in the world.

[Khazar]

Do you think Iran will change its approach? because it's just creating more problems for itself today.

[Parsi]

Do you think Iran will change its approach? because it's just creating more problems for itself today.

I wouldn’t expect the regime to do a U-turn publicly, but since they have now lost their touch with the people the change in their policy will come naturally and very quietly.

People in Iran (apart from the 2-3 million "camera crowd") are not interested in any Islamic-motivated foreign policy and that's why Ahmadinejad is so desperate to draw attention by provoking Israel and US.

There is of course another possibility. If Israel or US initiate any attacks on Iran people will CERTAINLY back the government and all the hopes of peace will be gone for another 20 years.

I really hope that Israel will be the wiser party over the next few years.

[Mediocrates]

I hope Iran slowly grinds itself into the dust and implodes. And when they start to starve to death I will laugh insanely and claim it's all a myth. Screw them in enriched uranium hell.