More Israeli Warnings About Netanhayu's Incompetence

Israeli military-intelligence officials are lining up to make public warnings against the Risk-Seeking Faction of Netanyahu that appears to want both a war with Iran and the destruction of the Palestinians. Only Obama has the power to stop the war.

Shlomo Gazit, major general and former chief of IDF intelligence, has come out in support of ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s warning against an Israeli attack on Iran in the following blunt terms [thanks to Richard Silverstein for the translation from the original Hebrew in Maariv:

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear reactors will lead to the liquidation of Israel.  We will cease to exist after such an attack.  The result we seek in this attack of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability will have the opposite result.  Iran will immediately become an explicit nuclear power.  Iran will play the oil card to force the UN to pressure Israel to return to 1967 borders.  Such a settlement will, of course, include Jerusalem as well.

The threat of missiles across every part of Israel, international pressure and the necessity of returning the Territories.  This we will not be able to survive.  This is what Meir Dagan is trying to say.  Use some common sense and ask yourselves why such an attack is necessary.

Both the Maariv article and Silverstein’s English account of it are critical contributions to appreciating the profound significance of the debate instigated publicly by Dagan because of the evidence provided about how widespread opposition to such a war is within the Israeli military-intelligence elite.

The issue of Israeli aggression against Iran is deeply connected with the issue of a Palestinian state, as Dagan made clear. On the issue of a Palestinian state, Dagan has also been supported by officials. For example, ex-Minister of Defense and commander in both the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars, Member of Knesset (the Israeli parliament) Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, as paraphrased in the right-wing Jerusalem Post on June 6, accused the Netanyahu regime of making “all the mistakes possible to lead Israel to disaster” regarding the Palestinian issue and called for “immediate” talks with the Palestinians “without preconditions,” saying “there is only one solution.” Netanyahu seems to feel that another solution exists: distracting attention by attacking Iran.

Military-intelligence officials are lining up to warn their leaders not to endanger Israeli national security, but it remains unclear how they can stop the politicians who are in control. Only Obama, with the massive U.S. Fifth Fleet sitting in the Persian Gulf and a string of airbases in occupied Iraq that could be employed to maintain a neutral and stabilizing peace in Persian Gulf skies, has the power to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran.