Sunday, April 22, 2018

The Next War

Ominous drumbeats in Friday's Australian, from its full-page interview with Israel's new ambassador to these shores, Mark Sofer:

"... the insidious beachhead of Iranian military power pushing into Syria, which shares a border with Israel." (A NOTE TO IRAN: GO HOME, Adam Creighton)

"... Iran is 'crossing a red line'."

"'The Iranians are sitting there, threatening our existence... '"

"... an Iranian government so belligerent that even Arab nations - former enemies of Israel - are looking to Israel to help contain it."

If Israel isn't gearing up for a war this year...

Some other highlights:

"Sofer is at pains to draw a distinction between the Iranian people - 'very erudite' - and the 'half-crazed lunatics' running the theocracy in Tehran."

Says the representative of the half-crazed lunatics running the theocracy in Tel Aviv...

(Remember what happened after another half-crazed lunatic, George W. Bush, drew the same distinction between the Iraqi people and their leader? "Iraq's talented people, rich culture, and tremendous potential have been hijacked by Saddam Hussein." (A vision for Iraq & the Iraqi people, 16/3/03))

"The country is more than pulling its weight in humanitarian terms. 'We're accepting into Israel a huge amount [sic] of Syrian wounded into our hospitals. We don't make a song and dance about it,' he says, referring to the tens of thousands of Syrians being treated for wounds in the north of the country."

And the Oscar goes to...

"The ambassador displays his nation's famously coy attitude to its own military capabilities. 'We're not a nuclear power. We have always said so, and will always say so,' he says when asked about his country's nuclear development. Try finding a source that argues Israel doesn't have a sizeable battery of nuclear weapons. Can anyone blame Israel, though?"

Certainly, you can't, Adam - not if you want to keep your job at the Australian.

2 comments:

Grappler said...

Ah the "tens of thousands of Syrians being treated for wounds" story. I'd be interested in real evidence of the numbers but here is a story from a much more reliable source about those wounded "Syrians":

https://southfront.org/injured-terrorists-taken-israeli-hospitals-syria/

Don't make a song and dance about it? He is joking as he is about Israel not being a nuclear power. Even the grauniad - in its immediate pre-Freedland days - admits it:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal

Anonymous said...

Only problem is, it won't be a nuclearised IDF that will be doing all the fighting. I suspect that's why we're seeing a maximised effort into doing the hard sell worldwide. It all starts with naming "the common enemy" (Syria's Bashar al Assad and Russia's Vladimir Putin) which will provide the pretext for an invasion of Syria and then the bogeyman will suddenly become Iran. Unfortunately Trump is not smart enough to work this through without hurtling the world into World War Three. Perhaps that's how he was elected: the tiny cog in a much larger wheel.