Israel Matzav

Deconstructing Peter Beinart

The other day, someone sent me an email titled, "Feel like fisking Peter Beinart's latest?" I passed on Beinart's latest screed, which urges American Jews to 'listen to Israeli soldiers' who oppose an attack on Iran's nuclear weapons, as if there were no soldiers on the other side of the divide. I had neither the time nor the patience nor the desire to give any more traffic to this despicable excuse for a Jew - let's call him a Chayma Jew (those of you who read the comments on this blog will immediately understand why) - by linking to him.

But someone had to answer Beinart and David Keyes did a good enough job to m ake it worth linking Beinart's original article above. Here's Keyes.

Beinart is as guilty as anyone of not listening to Israeli soldiers. Consider all the Israeli generals whose opinions he casts aside because they differ from his. On the matter of Gaza and the West Bank, he rejects the opinion of former Chief of Staff General (ret.) Moshe Ya’alon, who opposes disengagements on security grounds. He disregards the former head of Israel’s General Security Service, Avi Dichter, who warned that “the evacuation [from Gaza] is dangerous, and the retreat will give the Palestinians a sense of victory and encouragement for terrorism.” Beinart dismisses the assessments of withdrawals of former head of Israeli intelligence, General Zeevi Farkash, former Israeli Air Force Chief General Ben Eliyahu, and former military secretary to the prime minister, General Gadi Shamni. He also rejects the advice of current National Security Advisor General Amidror, who believes control of territory is essential to defeating terrorism.

On the Iranian threat, he casts aside the warnings of former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, that a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is the best way to keep Israel safe.

Beinart has every right to favor withdrawals from territories and oppose a strike on Iran, but this has little to do with his listening to Israeli soldiers.

...

[Beinart] writes, “Netanyahu’s taste for the apocalyptic flows less from his Jewishness than from his conservatism—a conservatism learned during his close association with the Republican right while he served as a diplomat in Washington and New York in the 1980s.”

Iran does not stand in violation of the Genocide Convention because Netanyahu was hanging out with Republicans in the 1980s. Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said triumphantly, “an atomic bomb would leave nothing in Israel.” Does his actual “taste for the apocalyptic” flow from his time spent secretly cavorting with Republicans in the 1980s?

Seventy percent of Israel’s population and 80 percent of its industrial capacity resides on a tiny strip of coastal territory, which two nuclear bombs could obliterate. Israeli military officials who work day and night to thwart this scenario aren’t fear-mongering right-wingers. They despise war, but many of them have come to the conclusion after painstaking deliberation that only Israeli jets can stop Iranian nukes. It was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after all, who described his nuclear program as a train without brakes.

Not "can" but "will - God willing." The US can stop Iran too, but it won't so long as Beinart's god, Obama, is in charge.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Iranian nuclear threat, Peter Beinart, self-hating Jews

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:41 PM