Public Figures Who Won't Address The Issues

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

TriumphantAngel wrote:

i've written him plenty of letters.

the fact he doesn't reply doesn't mean i'll give up fighting for what i believe in and what i think is right. the rest of you can have whatever attitide you want and do whatever the hell you want. that's up to you.

i won't give up fighting for a fair and just peace for all the people in Palestine and Israel.

and like i said i agree with you. the question is why has he done nothing different? why are his policies towards israel the same as those before him? why has nothing changed? and when will the financial support, military support, and weapons sales end?

no that's not what happened. you told me to wake up and said that nothing will change and that obama is in a no win situation.

it might be no win to you. it might be no win to the people who support Israels rogue government. personally i don't give a shit who he offends. i just want him to do the right thing.

Israel fears no repercussions otherwise the settlement expansion would not have continued and it wouldn't be continuing right now.

Israel only does what they do now because of U.S.support.

that's my final say on it. that's what i believe.

perhaps this is why obama will not come out and discuss israel's nukes...this is from may 2009 when there was hope that he would be different from all of the prior presidents, but something happened between then and now that changed that. what was it and why are there 2 separate sets of rules, one for the US and israel and another for everyone else? that would be my question to obama...



Israel’s Nukes
By ERIC ETHERIDGE


http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... els-nukes/

Until recently, the nuclear weapons that dominated most political discussions were the ones in North Korea, Pakistan or Iran’s future. Now, the nuclear weapons everyone wants to talk about are in Israel, a mostly undiscussed open secret for some 40 years.

Now, it seems, we can talk about them, can talk about whether Israel should join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, can even talk about whether Israel’s nukes can be used in negotiations with Iran.

On Tuesday at a conference of the 189 NPT signatories, Assistant Secretary of State Gottemoeller said, “Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea … remains a fundamental objective of the United States.”

Eli Lake took that quote and ran with it in yesterday’s Washington Times:

President Obama’s efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel’s nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.

The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for Iranian ones.

To which Joshua Pollack at Arms Control Wonk replied: “Oh, calm down.”

This is not exactly earth-shattering news. It’s the logical entailment of seeking a world without nuclear weapons. “World” would seem to indicate “everyone.” Now, it’s a safe bet that of the four states mentioned by Gottemoeller, North Korea is a lot higher on the list of America’s concerns than Israel. It’s also a safe bet that none of the four states will be joining the NPT anytime soon — rejoining it, in North Korea’s case.

Yet somehow, the Times would have us read these unobjectionable remarks as foreshadowing a demand upon Israel in particular to “come clean” about nuclear weapons, i.e., abandon its stance of “nuclear opacity,” which is designed to avoid unduly provoking the neighbors. Or perhaps they hint at coercing Israel into a Middle East Nuclear-Weapons Free Zone, which is something quite different — and something nobody outside of Riyadh imagines possible.

Pollack also points to an article in the Jerusalem Post, which quotes Israeli and American officials as saying that Gottemoeller’s comment was nothing new:

Israeli officials are also characterizing the comments as consistent with previous statements, with a Foreign Ministry officially saying “The US policy of wanting everyone to sign the NPT is well known to us,” and that “her comments were very general.”

Writing at the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb says that Gottemoeller’s comments are “absurd” (“none of these countries is going to surrender their current arsenals and allow full inspections by the international community”) but he writes that there is “evidence that the Obama administration is not like all the others that preceded it, and that it may well plan to fundamentally change the relationship between the United States and Israel.”

Evidence of that fundamental change, says Goldberg, comes from a different member of the administration:

[A] comment by Bruce Riedel, who headed the Obama administration’s “AfPak” strategy review, offers a more credible view into the administration’s thinking:

“If you’re really serious about a deal with Iran, Israel has to come out of the closet. A policy based on fiction and double standards is bound to fail sooner or later. What’s remarkable is that it’s lasted so long.”

The Obama administration may make Israel’s nuclear deterrent a bargaining chip in their negotiations with Iran — negotiations that Secretary Gates says today have only a “very remote” chance of producing a favorable outcome. It’s a big bet, but at least Obama’s playing with someone else’s security.

It’s not just Americans talking about Israel’s nukes. At Mondoweiss, Bruce Wolman writes that Egypt is getting into the act as well:

Speakers at the AIPAC policy conference [which just concluded in DC] regularly said that some Arab nations are on the same page with Israel in considering the Iranian nuclear program the biggest threat to regional stability, but the Egyptian Foreign Ministry articulated a different message yesterday.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said that Western policies aimed at “pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear program will fail because they disregard Israeli nuclear capabilities.” More critically, Egypt called the Israeli nukes “the first and greatest threat to security in the region.”

At Commentary, Noah Pollak writes that “the Iranians must be watching the spectacle of the Obama administration dragging Israeli nukes into the open with amazement.”

What could be better for Iran than somebody else’s weapons becoming the object of international attention? It was always probable that Iran, in the unlikely event that it succumbed to pressure, would demand a “nuclear-free Middle East” as a last-gasp bargaining position — but who could have expected that the Obama administration would make Iran’s case for it, and long before Iran was in a position to need to do so?

At World Politics Review, Judah Grunstein writes that “any sudden shift of U.S. policy here would be counterproductive.”

Should Israel declare its nuclear status, whether because the U.S. outs it or an Iranian bomb forces its hand, the result is very likely to be an inherently unstable, because generalized, regional nuclear architecture. The overlapping and volatile faultlines in today’s Middle East, combined with the short flight times needed for delivery — meaning everyone would be on constant hair-trigger alert — add up to a worst-case scenario. . . .

The initial goals here should be an NPT-compliant Iran, and a regionally integrated Israel. End goals should be a regionally integrated Iran and an NPT-compliant Israel. Reversing the order on either is likely to accomplish neither.

Matt Yglesias says “the idea that there should be no swapping of concessions whatsoever with the Iranians highlights a certain schizophrenia in the Israel view of these matters.”

The Iranian nuclear program, we’re supposed to believe, is an overwhelming existential threat to Israel’s existence and yet it’s not worth considering any form of Israeli concessions whatsoever in order to achieve any goals whatsoever on the Iranian front? Really? And at the same time, Israel’s nuclear deterrent is so overwhelmingly important that it can’t be bargained about for any purpose, and yet its existence gives the Israelis no confidence whatsoever that a nuclear Iran could be deterred. Again, really? If I were Israel, I wouldn’t want to swap my nukes for empty promises from Iran. But if I were Israel I also wouldn’t be ruling any sort of deal whatsoever off the table in advance.