Reply #19: What is Israel actually planning? [View All]

[LeftishBrit]

As I understand, some Israelis would like facilities, which they perceive as possible nuclear weapon factories, to be bombed. This is a dangerous idea IMO (and most Israelis would prefer economic sanctions in any case), but no one, Israeli or American, is seriously proposing NUKING Iran. In fact it would be suicidal for Israelis to do so, due to the nuclear fallout probably affecting Israel as well. Israel is also not proposing either 'wiping Iran off the map', or forced regime change, whichever translation of Ahmadejinad's speech you accept. I would say that Iran is doing far more threatening of Israel than the other way about; and that it will probably stay on the level of a 'cold war' of threats between the two countries, unless Bush does something stupid and stirs things up further.

What about all the bombing and threats that other Middle Eastern countries do to *one another*? What about the Lebanese civil wars; the threats and worse between Lebanon and Syria; the wars between Iran and Iraq until recently? What about what WE have done to Iraq premptively? This is not saying that one country's actions excuse any other country's actions; just that there is no one country that is causing all the problems, and that it is as unfair and dangerous to treat Israel as a uniquely evil bogeynation as to treat Iraq or Iran as one.