The Speech
By Uri Avnery
March 09, 2015 "ICH"
- SUDDENLY IT reminded me of something.
I was watching The Speech
by Binyamin Netanyahu before the Congress of
the United States. Row upon row of men in
suits (and the occasional woman), jumping up
and down, up and down, applauding wildly,
shouting approval.
It was the shouting that
did it. Where had I heard that before?
And then it came back to
me. It was another parliament in the
mid-1930s. The Leader was speaking. Rows
upon rows of Reichstag members were
listening raptly. Every few minutes they
jumped up and shouted their approval.
Of course, the Congress of
the United States of America is no
Reichstag. Members wear dark suits, not
brown shirts. They do not shout "Heil" but
something unintelligible. Yet the sound of
the shouting had the same effect. Rather
shocking.
But then I returned to the
present. The sight was not frightening, but
ridiculous. Here were the members of the
most powerful parliament in the world
behaving like a bunch of nincompoops.
Nothing like this could
have happened in the Knesset. I do not have
a very high opinion of our parliament,
despite having been a member, but compared
to this assembly, the Knesset is the
fulfillment of Plato's dream.
ABBA EBAN once compared a
speech by Menachem Begin to a French souffle
cake: a lot of air and very little dough.
The same could be said
about The Speech.
What did it contain? The
Holocaust, of course, with that moral
impostor, Elie Wiesel, sitting in the
gallery right next to the beaming Sarah'le,
who visibly relished her husband's triumph.
(A few days before, she had shouted at the
wife of a mayor in Israel: "Your man does
not reach the ankles of my man!")
The Speech mentioned the
Book of Esther, about the salvation of the
Persian Jews from the evil Persian minister
Haman, who intended to wipe them out. No one
knows how this dubious composition came to
be included in the Bible. God is not
mentioned in it, it has nothing to do with
the Holy Land, and Esther herself is more of
a prostitute than a heroine. The book ends
with the mass murder committed by the Jews
against the Persians.
The Speech, like all
speeches by Netanyahu, contained much about
the suffering of the Jews throughout the
ages, and the intentions of the evil
Iranians, the New Nazis, to annihilate us.
But this will not happen, because this time
we have Binyamin Netanyahu to protect us.
And the US Republicans, of course.
It was a good speech. One
cannot make a bad speech when hundreds of
admirers hang on every word and applaud
every second. But it will not make an
anthology of the world's Greatest Speeches.
Netanyahu considers
himself a second Churchill. And indeed,
Churchill was the only foreign leader before
Netanyahu to speak to both houses of
Congress a third time. But Churchill came to
cement his alliance with the President of
the United States, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, who played a big part in the
British war effort, while Netanyahu has come
to spit in the face of the present
president.
WHAT DID the speech not
contain?
Not a word about Palestine
and the Palestinians. Not a word about
peace, the two-state solution, the West
Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem. Not a word
about apartheid, the occupation, the
settlements. Not a word about Israel's own
nuclear capabilities.
Not a word, of course,
about the idea of a nuclear-weapon–free
region, with mutual inspection.
Indeed, there was no
concrete proposal at all. After denouncing
the bad deal in the making, and hinting that
Barack Obama and John Kerry are dupes and
idiots, he offered no alternative.
Why? I assume that the
original text of The Speech contained a lot.
Devastating new sanctions against Iran. A
demand for the total demolition of all
Iranian nuclear installations. And in the
inevitable end: a US-Israeli military
attack.
All this was left out. He
was warned by the Obama people in no
uncertain terms that disclosure of details
of the negotiations would be considered as a
betrayal of confidence. He was warned by his
Republican hosts that the American public
was in no mood to hear about yet another
war.
What was left? A dreary
recounting of the well-known facts about the
negotiations. It was the only tedious part
of the speech. For minutes no one jumped up,
nobody shouted approval. Elie Wiesel was
shown sleeping. The most important person in
the hall, Sheldon Adelson, the owner of the
Congress republicans and of Netanyahu, was
not shown at all. But he was there, keeping
close watch on his servants.
BY THE way, whatever
happened to Netanyahu's war?
Remember when the Israel
Defense Forces were about to bomb Iran to
smithereens? When the US military might was
about to "take out" all Iranian nuclear
installations?
Readers of this column
might also remember that years ago I assured
them that there would be no war. No ifs, no
buts. No half-open back door for a retreat.
I asserted that there would be no war,
period.
Much later, all Israeli
former military and intelligence chiefs
spoke out against the war. The army Chief of
Staff, Benny Gantz, who finished his term
this week, has disclosed that no draft
operation order for attacking Iran's nuclear
capabilities was ever drawn up.
Why? Because such an
operation could lead to a world-wide
catastrophe. Iran would immediately close
the Strait of Hormuz, just a few dozen miles
wide, through which some 35% of the world's
sea-borne oil must pass. It would mean an
immediate world-wide economic breakdown.
To open the Strait and
keep it open, a large part of Iran would
have to be occupied in a land war, boots on
the ground. Even Republicans shiver at the
thought.
Israeli military
capabilities fall far short of such an
adventure. And, of course, Israel cannot
dream of starting a war without express
American consent.
That is reality. Not
speechifying. Even American senators are
capable of seeing the difference.
THE CENTERPIECE of The
Speech was the demonization of Iran. Iran is
evil incarnate. It leaders are subhuman
monsters. All over the world, Iranian
terrorists are at work planning monstrous
outrages. They are building intercontinental
ballistic missiles to destroy the US.
Immediately after obtaining nuclear warheads
– now or in ten years - they will annihilate
Israel.
In reality, Israel's
second-strike capability, based on the
submarines supplied by Germany, would
annihilate Iran within minutes. One of the
most ancient civilizations in world history
would come to an abrupt end. The ayatollahs
would have to been clinically insane to do
such a thing.
Netanyahu pretends to
believe they are. Yet for years now, Israel
has been conducting an amiable arbitration
with the Iranian government about the Eilat-Ashkelon
oil pipeline across Israel built by an
Iranian-Israeli consortium. Before the
Islamic revolution, Iran was Israel's
stoutest ally in the region. Well after the
revolution, Israel supplied Iran with arms
in order to fight against Saddam Hussein's
Iraq (the famous Irangate affair). And if
one goes back to Esther and her sexual
effort to save the Jews, why not mention
Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Judean
captives to return to Jerusalem?
Judging by its behavior,
the present Iranian leadership has lost some
of its initial religious fervor. It is
behaving (not always speaking) in a very
rational way, conducting tough negotiations
as one would expect from Persians, aware of
their immense cultural heritage, even more
ancient than Judaism. Netanyahu is right in
saying that one should not trust them with
closed eyes, but his demonization is
ridiculous.
Within the wider context,
Israel and Iran are already indirect allies.
For both, the Islamic State (ISIS) is the
mortal enemy. To my mind, ISIS is far more
dangerous to Israel, in the long run, than
Iran. I imagine that for Tehran, ISIS is a
far more dangerous enemy than Israel.
(The only memorable
sentence in The Speech was "the enemy of my
enemy is my enemy".)
If the worst comes to the
worst, Iran will have its bomb in the end.
So what?
I may be an arrogant
Israeli, but I refuse to be afraid. I live a
mile from the Israeli army high command in
the center of Tel Aviv, and in a nuclear
exchange I would evaporate. Yet I feel quite
safe.
The United States has been
exposed for decades (and still is) to
thousands of Russian nuclear bombs, which
could eradicate millions within minutes.
They feel safe under the umbrella of the
"balance of terror". Between us and Iran, in
the worst situation, the same balance would
come into effect.
WHAT IS Netanyahu's
alternative to Obama's policy? As Obama was
quick to point out, he offered none.
The best possible deal
will be struck. The danger will be postponed
for ten years or more. And, as Chaim
Weizmann once said: "The future will come
and take care of the future."
Within these ten years,
many things will happen. Regimes will
change, enmities will turn into alliances
and vice versa. Anything is possible.
Even - God and the Israeli
voters willing - peace between Israel and
Palestine, which would take the sting out of
Israeli-Muslim relations.
Uri
Avnery is an Israeli author and activist.
www.avnery-news.co.il