‘For the past two decades, Netanyahu has been crying wolf’

Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a special session of both Houses of the US Congress was pure political theatre.

His objectives were, in order of priority, to promote Netanyahu, to secure the advantage for his Likud Party in the March 17 parliamentary poll, to cement the Likud’s alliance with the US Republican Party, which enjoys majorities in Congress, and to undermine ongoing US-led negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Netanyahu used his speech to a packed chamber to promote himself as the hero who can keep Israel and Jewish communities round the world “safe”.

He called himself the “emissary of all Israelis, even those who disagree with me, of the entire Jewish people”.

Several commentators quipped that he was casting himself as the new Moses leading the world out of the wilderness of negotiations with Iran when the only real option is uprooting Iran’s entire nuclear programme and maintaining sanctions on Iran to prevent it from imposing its hegemony on the whole region.

Netanyahu cannot, of course, carry on with his mission if the Likud does not form the next Israeli government.

Therefore, his address to the US Congress, engineered by Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, was meant to demonstrate to Israeli voters that Netanyahu is the only Israeli leader who has the ear of the powerful US legislature, which provides Israel with financial, political and military support.

To ensure congressional support for all Israel’s demands — however outrageous — Netanyahu has forged an ironclad alliance with the right wing of the Republican Party.

He has done this because he does not trust the more liberal Democratic Party, currently headed by President Barack Obama.

The Democrats are seen by Netanyahu and hardline Republicans as the archenemy.

Netanyahu regards Obama as an adversary because in the first six months of his first term, the president made a serious attempt to cultivate good relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds.

His first interview after taking office was made on Al Arabiya television channel, on January 27, 2009. He then addressed Arabs and Muslims in speeches delivered in the Turkish parliament in April 2009 and at the American University in Cairo in June of that year.

Finally, Obama’s peace plan for Palestinians and Israelis involved a halt to Israeli colonisation in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and the emergence of a viable Palestinian state in these areas and Gaza.

For Netanyahu and right wing and messianic Israelis, a Palestinian state is anathema.

Netanyahu flatly rejected Obama’s plan and was clearly alarmed by his overtures to the Arab and Muslim peoples.

Israel — which seeks to be the United States’ chief friend and ally in this region — has always opposed the development of close ties between the US and any Arab country, and worked to undermine relations between the US and regional allies.

Netanyahu adopted an overtly partisan approach to Congress.

He accepted the invitation of Republican House speaker John Boehner and dismissed warnings that he was undermining bipartisan support for Israel.

For the first time ever, 56 Democrats from the House and Senate boycotted his address.

Both politicians and pundits accused Netanyahu of using the congressional podium to secure his party’s plurality in the Knesset and his return to power, while sacrificing US relations with Israel. 

He no longer trusts the Democrats and the 69-70 per cent of the members of the US Jewish community who vote Democratic because a majority of them and this party want to see an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

For the past two decades, Netanyahu has been crying wolf over the threat posed by Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons.

Therefore, his false “words of wisdom” to Congress were nothing new, and he put forward no plan of action to serve as an alternative to the proposal currently under negotiation.

Gary Sick, a former adviser on Iran in Carter’s White House, blogged that Netanyahu either misconstrued or left out key points.

He repeated his claim that Iran is “actively seeking” nuclear weapons, although US and Israeli intelligence agencies argue “with high confidence” that Iran has not taken the decision to make nuclear weapons.

Sick said this claim runs counter to assurances given by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has not secretly diverted any of its nuclear material for bomb making.

Netanyahu failed to mention that Iran has dramatically reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium, that inspections will carry on “long after” the 10-year period of the proposed agreement, and that the Arak heavy water reactor will be modified so it cannot produce plutonium (which, along with enriched uranium, can be used to make bombs).

Netanyahu also argued that there will be a regional nuclear bomb race if Iran obtains “the bomb”.

This is also a false claim.

Israel, seen by the Arabs as their main enemy for decades, has had “the bomb” for more than half a century and there has been no race for the bomb, even though Israel repeatedly attacked neighbouring states as well as the Palestinians.

Ignoring Israel’s record as a serial aggressor, Netanyahu insisted that Iran is an aggressive power that controls four Arab countries: Iraq (handed over to Shiite fundamentalist allies of Iran by the second Bush administration), Syria (where Iran’s ally, the government, is fighting a civil conflict fuelled by other external powers), Lebanon (too anarchic to be in Iran’s sphere of influence) and Yemen (where Shiite rebels are battling the government).

Netanyahu has personally contributed to the failure of the US and its partners — France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany — to reach a timely deal with Iran over its nuclear programme.

Since 1993, he has charged Iran with trying to build weapons, claiming that Tehran would have the bomb by 1999 — year after year.

His and Israel’s opposition to an arrangement means current terms of a potential deal will be less advantageous for the West and its allies than one that might of have been concluded in 2003 when Iran had only 3,000 spinning centrifuges enriching uranium rather than the 20,000 now in operation.

But at that time, Israel’s good friend, president George W. Bush, was surrounded by Israel loyalists who characterised Iran as a member of an “axis of evil”, along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea.

We all know the result of this policy: Iran’s nuclear programme has moved forward, Bush’s war on Iraq, launched at Israel’s behest, was a disaster that has destroyed that country and destabilised the region, and North Korea is sitting pretty with its nuclear arsenal intact.