[E-rundbrief] Info 1091 - Israels Atomruestung und Waffentests

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1091 - Matthias Reichl: Todbringende israelische 
Waffensysteme, Günther Grass' Gedicht Gedicht  "Was gesagt werden 
muss",  Verfolgung Mordechai Vanunus in Israel, Pax Christi (D): Für 
eine atomwaffenfreie Zone im Nahen Osten,  Richard Silverstein 
(Truthout): Israel's Assassination of Gazan Leader Lays Groundwork for 
Iran Attack ("Gaza has been a regular testing ground for new Israeli 
weapons systems")

Bad Ischl, 4.4.2012

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Todbringende israelische Waffensysteme - Gedicht von Günther Grass - 
Für eine atomwaffenfreie Zone im Nahen Osten

Wir haben seit Jahren über die "Tests" mit Israels Waffen - und auch 
mit "effizienten" Repressionsstrategien - berichtet. 
DU-(Atom)-Geschosse und auch "konventionelle"- wie DIME und Drohnen 
(nun auch mit Atomantrieb) - töten nicht nur Menschen und Tiere 
sondern zerstören auch die kostbaren Böden. Sie kontaminieren sie - 
aber auch Wasser und Luft - über die Region und auch über Kontinente 
hinaus. Diese Bedrohungen kennen keine Grenzen!

So hat der Einsatz in Gaza und anderen palästinensischen Regionen auch 
einen Bumerangeffekt in Richtung israelischer Kerngebiete. Über kurz 
oder lang ist es eine Selbstmordstrategie der dafür militärisch und 
politisch Verantwortlichen. Welche internationale Institutionen wagen 
es, diese anzuklagen und zu verurteilen?

Unter anderem haben dies auch die Frauen in Schwarz in Wien bei 
einigen Mahnwachen zu früheren Gaza Angriffen thematisiert.

Matthias Reichl

4.4.2012

P.S. Günther Grass drückt die Atomkriegsgefahr durch Israel in seinem 
Gedicht  "Was gesagt werden muss" treffend aus, ich danke ihm dafür. 
(Es wurde u.a. in der "Süddeutschen Zeitung" v. 4.4.2012 
veröffentlicht: 
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/gedicht-zum-konflikt-zwischen-israel-und-iran-was-gesagt-werden-muss-1.1325809 
).

Die wütenden Vorwürfe wegen "Antisemitismus" - sogar durch deutsche 
Grüne - waren zu erwarten. Sie sind ein weiterer Beitrag zu einer 
schon seit Jahren andauernden weltweiten Propagandakampagne die 
Kritiker dieser mörderischen Politik mundtot machen möchte. (Z.B. 
http://derstandard.at/1333528351685/Kontroverse-Scharfe-Kritik-an-Guenter-Grass-fuer-Israel-Gedicht 
)

Der israelische Alternative Nobelpreisträger Mordechai Vanunu war 
wegen seiner Aufdeckung dieser Atomaufrüstung Israels jahrelang 
inhaftiert und ist nach seiner Freilassung weiterhin zeitweise in 
seinen bürgerlichen Rechten (z.B. Ausreise, Kontakte mit Journalisten) 
eingeschränkt. http://www.vanunu.com/recentnews.html

Wir haben darüber in unseren Aussendungen laufend informiert. Wir 
lassen von niemandem verbieten, die Friedens- und 
Menschenrechtsaktivisten in Israel und Palästina in ihrem gewaltfreien 
Widerstand zu unterstützen. Die seit langem einen Nahen und Mittleren 
Osten frei von Atomgefahren fordern. Siehe u.a. die Erklärung von Pax 
Christi Deutschland: 
http://www.paxchristi.de/news/kurzmeldungen/one.news.km/index.html?entry=page.news.km.808

-----------------

Israel's Assassination of Gazan Leader Lays Groundwork for Iran Attack

Sunday, 01 April 2012 08:03

By Richard Silverstein, Truthout | News Analysis

Bibi Netanyahu returned a few weeks ago from his annual pilgrimage to 
Washington DC, where he met with the president and thrilled an 
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) crowd with his usual 
baleful predictions of Jewish catastrophe at the hands of a nuclear 
Iran. Though the hysteria of the prime minister's portrayal of the 
Iranian threat led anyone listening to believe that he would attack 
Iran sometime down the road, it wasn't clear to me whether he would 
wait, as Obama sought to do, for sanctions to debilitate Iran's 
economy, or go it alone and strike sooner.

Events after Bibi's return to Israel clarified this. Within days, the 
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had assassinated Zuhir al-Qaisi, the 
leader of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), 
violating a ceasefire that had been in place since the end of 
Operation Cast Lead in 2010. As in the past, Israel took action 
knowing what the Palestinian response would be: a rocket barrage on 
southern Israel. This is precisely what happened. Two hundred rockets 
fell on Israel in a matter of days. The IDF retaliated, and 26 Gazans 
were killed, six of them civilians and among those, two children.

Israel justified the assassination, claiming that, just as the PRC had 
inspired the Eilat terror attack of last summer - in which eight 
Israeli civilians and three Egyptian police officers were killed - the 
PRC leader this time was supposedly planning a similar assault. The 
only problem with this narrative is that Israeli journalist Alex 
Fishman and Ben Gurion University political blogger Idan Landau proved 
that the PRC was not involved in the Eilat attack. Rather, Sinai, 
Egypt-based, al-Qaeda-inspired Islamists perpetrated that assault, 
completely independent of any Gazan involvement. Egypt even 
subsequently arrested the ringleader of the Eilat attack, and he was 
from Sinai - as Fishman and I had predicted he would be.

The Israeli justification for the recent killing of al-Qaisi - the 
claim that he was planning a new terror operation - quickly fell by 
the wayside. The Israeli government needed the excuse for just a day 
or two following the killing. Once events shifted to the Gaza missile 
fire, Israel no longer needed its justification, and after that, you 
never heard about it again.

What did Israel gain by attacking Gaza? Israeli anti-Occupation 
activist Professor Neve Gordon wrote in Al Jazeera English that Israel 
deliberately provoked the Gaza response because it wished to test its 
new Iron Dome anti-missile system. In the fighting, reports of the 
weapon's success varied, but Israelis generally viewed it as quite 
effective. Given the terror that the rocket barrages previously caused 
inside Israel, it can't be underestimated how much relief this caused 
the Israeli public. Knowing it was protected by its own government 
from these dangers brought feelings of confidence and gratitude from 
the would-be victims.

Gaza has been a regular testing ground for new Israeli weapons 
systems, much as the Spanish Civil War was used by the German military 
prior to World War II. The IDF tests its most advanced weaponry under 
battlefield conditions using Gazans as guinea pigs. This, in turn, 
allows Israel both to use the weapons in other theaters of battle and 
to promote the systems when they are sold to foreign buyers. The 
strategy serves multiple purposes, including suppressing the 
resistance and lethality of Gaza militants, promoting Israeli 
readiness to battle other foes, and supporting the powerful economic 
engine of the Israeli defense and aerospace industry.

During the last go-round it was Iron Dome. Before that, Israel tested 
the particularly lethal, cancer-causing dense inert metal explosive 
(DIME) tungsten bomb . During Cast Lead, it also used drones much more 
extensively than it had before, deploying them for both surveillance 
and attack .

One of the Gaza assault's related missions was to prepare the Israeli 
public for what I believe is Netanyahu's planned war against Iran. Now 
that Iron Dome has performed reasonably well, the prime minister can 
argue to the naysayers in his cabinet who will vote to approve such a 
strike that he has a shield that will protect Israel from the 
anticipated storm of Hezbollah and Hamas rockets that will follow an 
attack on Iran. So, instead of 20,000 or 30,000 rockets falling from 
three directions (Lebanon, Gaza and Iran), Israel would be able to 
focus its defense on the Iranian front.

A different missile system, the Arrow, defends Israel from 
medium-range missiles of the type the Iranians would use to respond to 
an Israeli assault. The Arrow is a joint development effort of the 
United States and Israel. It has not received battlefield testing as 
Iron Dome now has. No one knows for sure how effective it would be in 
stopping Iranian missiles. But then again, Iran has never fired 
weapons at Israel, so the public doesn't know what to expect and isn't 
as frightened as it is of the familiar terror of Gaza and Hezbollah 
rockets.

Netanyahu directly coupled his attack on Gaza with the Iran menace by 
claiming that Gaza militants firing the rockets at Israel were 
operators for Iran:

     The dominant force behind the events in Gaza is not the 
Palestinians, but Iran .. The terror groups there stand under an 
Iranian umbrella. Imagine to yourselves what will happen when that 
umbrella is armed with nuclear bombs.

     Sooner or later Iran's terror base in Gaza will be uprooted. Iran 
is what is happening inside Gaza. Where does the funding come from? 
Iran. Who equips the terrorists? Iran. Who builds the [terror] 
infrastructure? Iran. Gaza is Iran's frontline.

Portraying Iran as the principal agent of terror against Israel also 
softens Israeli opinion toward an attack on Iran.

By Israeli media accounts (depending on which one you read), the vote 
in the cabinet is currently either 8-6 favoring war or a 7-7 split. On 
Tuesday, March 27, The New York Times reported that Netanyahu and his 
war partner, defense minister Ehud Barak, are meeting privately with 
crucial individual ministers to lobby for their support for an attack.

My judgment is that the Israeli leader will not attack until he has 
the votes in his pocket. That means that the Gaza assault was one 
piece of a puzzle Netanyahu is putting together that will lead to 
striking Iran.

Which brings us back to the 26 Gazans killed by the IDF. They were the 
cliché collateral damage, but in this case, the situation is even 
worse: they were killed not for the reason Israel claimed (that it was 
pre-empting a terror attack against it), but as part of a grander war 
strategy that had little or nothing to do, directly, with them.

The same thing happened regarding the 30 Gazans killed in the 
aftermath of the Eilat terror attack. No Gazans had participated in 
the Eilat assault. Sinai Egyptians had. Yet, because Israel could not 
attack Egypt for political reasons, Gazans paid the price. In that 
sense, Gaza is a punching bag or escape valve that Israeli generals 
and politicians can use when they need to show their public that 
they're tough on terror, whether or not an attack serves any real purpose.

To kill people as a matter of state policy and lie about the reasons 
for doing so is the height of cynicism. It turns Gaza into a 
sacrificial victim of Israel's regional war strategy. If what 
Netanyahu has done twice in Gaza over the past year doesn't qualify as 
a war crime, it should.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8215-israel-defense-forces-assassination-of-gazan-leader-lays-groundwork-for-iran-attack 


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