Efforts to beat the drums of war for an attack on Iran’s nuclear reactor facilities are promoted in both the USA and Israel scenes. The recent New York Times opinion piece [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html (the post to which this post is a reply)] of July 18th, written by the Israeli historian Benny Morris, serves to consolidate those political forces. The Jewish opposition here expresses our outrage in order to forestall this horrendous proposal.
That clamour for war with Iran has met not only popular opposition but also runs counter to the quiet diplomacy that has engaged Iran in ongoing relations with the UN nuclear agency, as well as economic trade talks with the USA itself. Israel is also committed to a cease-fire that has held now for a month’s time, to the relief of both the populations of Israel and Gaza. In light of the developing political atmosphere of reason and negotiations, the militarist mindset has pumped up its rationale for war attempting to create the preconditions for a further war. Morris seeks to fabricate such prior conditions arguing,
“They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption. Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards.”
This promotion of inevitability plays on Jewish and Israeli memory of the Nazi Holocaust in order to garner any and every source of support for an Israel military strike against Iran, provoking a reaction and leading to a further war by drawing in the USA. This is particularly deplorable in view of the fact that 16 US intelligence agencies concluded that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and has not had one for five years.
We extol the heroic courage of Israel's nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, joining our voices to his in condemnation of Israel's illegal stockpile of nuclear warheads and support the call for a nuclear-free Middle East.
The mindset calling for a war of mutual annihilation as a solution to security is astoundingly self-contradictory. Only the fabrication of a Nazi-like threat seeks to provide any credibility to such a call to war, much like the rationale for occupation that perceives a Palestinian plot to drive Jews into the sea. The reference to Iranian ideology (Islam) as the source of confrontation does not stand up to scrutiny, since the political challenge to Israel by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is not a call for extermination, despite any mistranslation.
We seek security for all concerned by affirming the right of all to security. While we lend no credibility to the prospect of an inevitable conflict, we nonetheless object to the hysteria promoted by the Iran-bashers who are now desperate in their repeated false starts to create another unnecessary war. The attempt to oblige Iran to comply with Security Council resolutions loses its legal, diplomatic and political force as the United States and Israel consistently ignore UN diplomacy and World Court decisions, relevant to the question of Palestine. We call upon all opposed to a military confrontation with Iran to write their governmental representatives demanding that the State of Israel subject its nuclear facilities to international inspection and sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as has Iran, rather than issue threats of war.
Further endorsements may be added by sending in a message to saalaha@fokus.name
Initiators:
Stanley Heller www.TheStruggle.org mail@TheStruggle.org
Connecticut, USA
Prof. Dr. Fanny-Michaela Reisin
Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in Middle East - EJJP
www.juedische-stimme.de
mail@juedische-stimme.de
Germany
Abraham Weizfeld
saalaha@fokus.name 514.284.66.42
Interim Administrative Secretary, Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians
Loze mir alle leiben mit shytvis un shulim
Montréal
Organizational Co-signers :
Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians
jewish.alliance@yahoo.ca
Colorado Jews for a Just Peace
Granny Peace Brigade Philadelphia
Germantown Friends Meeting, Peace & Social Concerns
Independent Jewish Voices Montreal
Jewish Voice for a Just Peace, Switzerland
Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods
New Profile
a feminist, pluralist Israeli movement of males and females who wish to transform Israel from a militaristic society to a civil-ized one. www.newprofile.org
Women in Black
San Francisco Bay Area in Oakland, California
Women in Black (Vienna)
Co-signers :
Paula Abrams-Hourani
Women in Black (Vienna) and
Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East (EJJP-Austria)
Miriam Adams
New Mexico
Prof. Ammiel Alcalay
CUNY Graduate Center & Queens College
Henry Ascher, MD, PhD, Assoc. Professor Gothenburg, Sweden
Tsela Barr
Madison Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace
Abigail B. Bakan, Ph.D., Queen’s University
Canada
Judith Bernstein
Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group Munich
Murray & Marcia Bernstein
Brooklyn, NY
Rudolf Bkouche
vice-président, l'Union Juive Française pour la Paix
Mark Robert Brill
As a Jewish Canadian (and inhabitant of the same planet as any and all who may read this), I
Wholeheartedly endorse the statement in opposition to the Benny Morris article which appeared in the New York Times urging an attack on Iran.
Neither as a Jew, nor a human being living in this age of myriad pressing concerns which threaten the existence of our species, can I condone the insanity of the current policy of the present United States & Israeli administrations which at least states as its belief that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat to world security. (Though I must credit the authors of those policies to be intelligent enough to know full well the dishonesty of such a stated belief so therefore must further condemn them for such cynical manipulation).
In fact, the by far greater threat to world security is and has been for some time now the actions of those above-named states.
secretaire nationale of the UJFP. I endorse your statement against war on Iran . Definitively.
Stephen Conroy, B. Com.
Montreal, Canada
Mark Cramer
Professor Université Paris-Jussieu and Sciences-Po (Paris)
Mike Cushman
Secretary LSE University and Colleges Union Branch (personal capacity)
Uri Davis (Dr)
MAIAP: Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine
Richard Lee Deaton, Ph.D., LL.B.
Ottawa, Canada
James Deutsch, M.D., Ph.D.
Judith Deutsch, M.S.W.
Jean M. Entine
Interim Chair Jewish Voice for Peace
USA
Dror Feiler
Composer, musician, artist
Chairman, European Jews for a Just Peace (www.ejjp.org)
Stockholm, Sweden
Pnina Feiler
Reg. nurse, Israel
Deborah Fink
Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods
Joel Frangquist
San Francisco, CA
Member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Bay Area chapter
Racheli Gai
Tucson Women in Black
Miriam Garfinkle M.D.
Sheila Goldmacher,
Member, Bay Area Women in Black Study Group
Sherna Berger Gluck
Professor Emerita, California State University Long Beach USA
Sue Goldstein Toronto
Women in Solidarity with Palestine
Julius Gordon
Tucson, AZ
Please add my name to the list of violent dissenters with Benny Morris, who proposes the start of a nuclear war in the Middle East. Based on his NY times article it appears that Prof. Morris, who at one time was considered a valuable scholar in Middle East history, has suffered a dissociative disorder. How else to explain the patent lies (no intelligence service in the world..) that a rational historian would never allow to be printed under his name.
Tony Greenstein
Robert B. Gross
Suffern N.Y.
Batja P. Guggenheim- Ami
St.Gallen Switzerland
&
Chanan H. Guggenheim-Ami
St. Gallen Switzerland
Members of the Israel- Palestinian Dialogue Group ‘Olivenzweig’ St. Gall CH
Evelyn Haas [ oldleft@hotmail.com ]
Abe Hayeem
Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine
Dr. Annette Herskovits
Writer, California, USA
Fred Hirsch
Executive Board Member Plumbers and Fitters Local 393, Delegate to the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, Delegate to the Santa Clara and San Benito Counties Building and Construction Trades Council
I endorse the statement wholeheartedly.
Benny Morris thinks the unthinkable. His article justifying a nuclear strike against Iran speaks the unspeakable. Such an action could and probably would open humanity's door to the abyss - a monstrous step toward the end of human viability on Earth.
Shame on the New York Times for admitting such barbarity into the public discussion as normal discourse.
Israel's unchecked development of nuclear weapons, with the help of apartheid South Africa, was an affront our legacy as Jews - a sharp stick in the eye to the population of the planet. Weapons of mass destruction indeed!
Any nuclear threat today is despicable.
Louis Hirsch
Chicago, Illinois
Dr. Tikva Honig-Parnass
Jerusalem
Tamzin Jans
Brussels, Belgium (in Libya)
Jake Javanshir
I endorse your stand of no attack on Iran. I am an Iranian Jew, living in Canada. If anyone should be stoped of aggression, it's Israel not Iran.
Dan Judelson
Secretary , European Jews for a Just Peace
Gilda Katz
MSW, RSW, Toronto
Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta
citizen of Canada and Israel
Mira Khazzam
Montreal, Canada
Alisa Klein
Israeli and U.S. Citizen
Jason Kunin
Toronto
Rebekah Levin Oak Park, IL
Joseph Levine Dept. of Philosophy Univ. of Mass Amherst, MA
Abby Lippman, PhD, Professor
Montreal, Quebec
Antony Loewenstein
Sydney, Australia, journalist/author
Leslie Lomas
Colorado Jews for a Just Peace
Moshé Machover
London, UK
Dr Sabetai Matsas MD
Athens, Greece
Hilda Meers
Writer
member of Scottish Jews for a Just Peace,
Aberdeen Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,
Grampian Senior Citizens Forum
Peter Melvyn
Vienna, Austria
Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in Neareast
Brigitte Meyer
Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group St.Gallen, Switzerland
I fully support the content and spirit of this statement. Real security can only come from peace.
Dorinda Moreno Fuerza Mundial Collaborative
Dorothy Naor Ph.D.
Israel Naor
Israel
My spouse and I both endorse the statement and fervently hope that reason rather than emotions and war profiteering will hold sway.
Diana Neslen
United Kingdom
Joan Nestle
Alex Nissen Senior Educator / Coordinator Israeli/Australian Women in Black Melbourne
Prof. Judith Norman
Jewish Peace News
Prof. Bertell Ollman
Dept. of Politics, NYU
New York, New York, USA.
Karin Pally
Women in Black-Los Angeles
Jean Pauline
Oakland, California
Daniel Pines
Karen Platt
member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Albany, CA
Laurie Polster
Jewish Voice for Peace/Bay Area
Oakland, CA
Yakov M Rabkin
Professor of History, University of Montreal Israel’s elites disdain – to their own peril - the Mishna that praises as a hero someone who knows how to turn an enemy into a friend.
Naomi Rankin
I fully support the content and spirit of this statement. As a Jewish Canadian with cousins in Israel, I am interested in real security for Israel, and that can come only from peace.
Bruce Robbins
Columbia University
Stewart M. Robinson
retired Prof of Mathematics
Professor Jonathan Rosenhead
Secretary, British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP)
Prof Andrew N. Rubin
Georgetown University
Washington, DC
Molly Rush
PUSH PA. United for SinglePayer HealthCare
Health Care for All PA
www.healthcare4allPA.org
Margot F Salom (BA Soc Work, M Phil)
Palestinian & Jewish Unity for Justice & Peace
Stop this madness - What has happened to Jewish ethics?
July 27 letter to the Raleigh News & Observer. It was not published.
America is no place for satire. The New Yorker Obama cartoon went over like a John Kerry joke. Now some are responding seriously to the column by Benny Morris, “Soon, strike on Iran” (N&O, July 20), which presented a case for another pre-emptive war with the cogency with which Jonathan Swift proposed that Irish poverty be relieved by devouring babies.
Morris’s proposal is as insane and as devoid of humanity as Swift’s “modest proposal.” It should convince any sane person of the insanity of attacking Iran.
I doubt, however, the sanity of all discussion of Iran’s nuclear threat. The existing nuclear threat in the Middle East comes from Israel. Israel’s arsenal is controlled by the same Israeli government that dropped a million cluster bombs in southern Lebanon only for the purpose of killing and maiming farm families that wished to return to their land. Israel’s bombs provide the motive for surrounding nations to seek nuclear weapons. The only way to prevent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is to create a nuclear arms free zone. In return for Israel’s dismantling its nuclear arsenal and agreeing to strict inspections by the IAEA, other countries in the region should make similar commitments.
Warning signs of an Israeli strike on IranDavid Owen Some key decision makers in Israel fear that unless they attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in the next few months, while George W Bush is still president, there will not be another period when they can rely on the United States as being anywhere near as supportive in the aftermath of a unilateral attack.
In the past 40 years there have been few occasions when I have been more concerned about a specific conflict escalating to involve, economically, the whole world. We are watching a disinformation exercise involving a number of intelligence services. Reality is becoming ever harder to disentangle.
Last month a story in The Guardian claimed that on May 14 Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, in a meeting with Bush, had asked for a green light to attack Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. We were told that Bush refused. He believed Iran would see the United States as being behind any such assault and Americans would come under renewed attack in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shipping in the Gulf would be vulnerable. We were told that the source of the story was a European head of government and “his” officials – as if to exclude Angela Merkel and Germany. It is, however, improbable that Israel abandoned its option to take unilateral action.
Three weeks later the Israeli military conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean to demonstrate to the United States as well as Iran that it could attack. More recently there have been a number of stories raising concern about what is happening in Iran. One said Iran’s first nuclear electricity generating plant would go critical in December and thereafter any air attack would become impossible since it would trigger a nuclear explosion. Then we were told that a US radar system had been deployed in Israel with US personnel to strengthen Israel’s defence against Iranian airstrikes. There was also an interview with Olmert where he dismissed as “megalomania” any thought that Israel should attack Iran. He appeared to be trying to disrupt the Israeli coalition negotiations.
Finally, on Friday, The New York Times revealed that in February an IAEA inspector had talked of experiments in Iran that were “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon”. Iran denied the claim.
Before the Israeli negotiations got under way, Ehud Barak, the Labour leader, spoke first to Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud opposition party, rather than to Tzipi Livni, the newly elected leader of Kadima. This indicated that Barak was interested in an all-party coalition, presumably believing that a Palestinian settlement is not yet achievable and that Israel needs maximum unity to deal with a world transfixed by the economic crisis and resigned to Iran becoming a nuclear weapon state.
If Israel were to attack Iran, one Iranian response would be to block the Strait of Hormuz. On September 16 Iran said its Revolutionary Guards would defend the Gulf waters. In the narrow strait just one oil tanker sunk would halt shipping for months. Insurance cover would be refused and owners would fear the risks of sailing even if the US navy cleared mines.
The Revolutionary Guards are committed to a war against Israel and prepared, in the process, to take on the rest of the world. They have good equipment and operate from the land, sea and air. They will be suicide soldiers, seamen and airmen. If Iran is attacked, Russia and China will supply it with arms.
The circumstances surrounding Georgia’s decision to attack South Ossetia are worth remembering. The Georgian president was advised by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, not to attack but there were powerful voices in Washington that, by a nod and a wink, were encouraging action, so the Georgian government felt confident in going ahead.
Following an Israeli attack and Iranian countermeasures, the American military would be bound to follow Bush’s orders. The president-designate or, if before the election, the two candidates, would be wary of criticising him. It is imperative that voices are raised in America and Europe to warn Israel off unilateral action against Iran. The experience of Georgia has given an amber, if not a green, light to Israel and only Bush can switch that to red.
Bush’s legacy would be best served by taking dramatic diplomatic action to prevent a war with Iran. He should publicly warn Israel that the United States will use its air power to prevent it bombing Iran, while announcing that he is sending Rice to Tehran to start negotiating a grand bargain whereby all sanctions would be lifted if Iran forgoes the nuclear weapons option. He could indicate that the negotiations would not continue indefinitely, but they would give his successor, as president, time to consider all the options, military and economic. It would also allow time for Israel either to negotiate a coalition to last until 2010 or to hold elections. It would replace the present multilateral negotiations, which are stalled with Russia and China unwilling to move on strong economic sanctions. Above all, it would be a last act of real statesmanship from Bush who is otherwise destined to end his term a miserable failure.
David Owen was foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979
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