RUTHIE BLUM: APPEASING IRAN
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=10709
In Vienna on Monday, after the deadline for reaching a deal on Iran’s nuclear program expired, and yet another extension was agreed upon, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
”Today we are closer to a deal that will make our partners like Israel and the Gulf states safer,” he said. “We now see a path for solving issues that until now were intractable.”
Responding to this turn of events at a forum in Tehran on the same day, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari expressed satisfaction.
”The Americans have very clearly surrendered to Iran’s might,” he said. “[Which] is obvious in their behavior in the region and in the negotiations.”
Indeed.
He then pointed to the fact that Iran is arming Hezbollah and Hamas with heavy weaponry for the purpose of defeating Israel and attaining a “final victory” over the West.
Jafari was referring to hundreds of Fateh missiles — with 160- to 220-mile ranges and the ability to carry 1,100-pound warheads — whose transfer was announced over the weekend by Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Force Brig. Gen. Seyed Majid Moussavi.
”Our strategic guiding principle is … to allow the resistance groups to deal with the bloodthirsty Zionist regime,” Moussavi told Iran’s Fars news agency.
This is in keeping with the nine-point plan for Israel’s destruction tweeted earlier this month by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It also jibes with Khamenei’s anti-Israel and anti-American speeches surrounding the celebration of the Nov. 4, 1979, takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Islamic revolutionaries who had ousted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ushered in the reign of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
It was spelled out, as well, in a communique issued by the Revolutionary Guard in honor of the 35th anniversary of the taking of dozens of American diplomats hostage for 444 days (and the coinciding Ashura day of mourning for the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein ibn Ali).
”America is still the Great Satan and the No. 1 enemy of the revolution and the regime of the Islamic republic,” read the communique, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“Inspired by the great lesson of the Ashura rebellion, by the eternal will of the imam [Ayatollah Khomeini], and by the wise instructions of the dear [Supreme] Leader Imam Khamenei, the Iranian nation will never allow the Islamic homeland’s honor and independence to be threatened and harmed by the enemy. Due to its arrogance and its lust for power, America is the main center of fitna [strife] and corruption in the world, and will never [be ready] for true reconciliation and friendship with a popular and independent regime that embodies the powerful life of Islam [i.e., Iran]. Under these circumstances, the courageous Iranian nation still demands the prosecution and punishment of the leaders of the White House for their crimes against the Islamic Iran over the past few decades. Furthermore, in the nuclear negotiations, Iran thinks only of comprehensive and total obedience to its undisputed rights, and a full lifting of the oppressive sanctions.”
Kerry, of course, did not mention any of the above in the lead-up to the Nov. 24 deadline for reaching what he called a “peaceful” solution to Iran’s nuclear program — a program that the Obama administration had come to accept as a fact on the ground, rather than a force to be reckoned with.
Nor did he bring it up while smiling for the cameras with his Iranian counterpart when announcing an extension of the talks until June 2015.
No, the warnings and finger-wagging emanating from the State Department on Monday evening were reserved — you guessed it — for Israel.
”We expect Israel to stick to its democratic principles,” it admonished, in response to the Jewish nation-state bill that was approved by the Netanyahu-led cabinet on Sunday.
The Knesset was scheduled to vote on the bill on Wednesday. But, due to the huge controversy it has aroused, the government decided on a postponement.
Though the bill, whose intention is to seal Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people, would not actually alter the situation as it has been since the establishment of the state, it is causing the Left and the Arab members of Knesset to accuse Netanyahu of trying to put Israel’s Jewish character above its democracy.
This is nonsense, of course.
The reason that Netanyahu wants it passed has to do with the international campaign to strip Israel of its legitimacy, and Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to recognize it as a Jewish state.
It is a semantic device aimed at making an assertion about something that should have been taken for granted long ago, but which is constantly being called into question in the West, while being targeted for annihilation in the Middle East.
This brings us to the bill’s opponents, who have no problem fighting to create a homeland for the (so-called) Palestinian people — a state which Abbas has said would be void of Jews.
Yes, on Monday, while Iran was laughing at the U.S. and the U.S. was reprimanding Israel, the U.N. was marking Nov. 24 as the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this was part of the designation of 2014 as the ”Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”
The special day included a meeting of the General Assembly to discuss the “Question of Palestine,” and a convening of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Right of the Palestinian People.
What Ban and Kerry should have been celebrating instead was the day that hypocrisy was given a bad name.
Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”
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