Editorial

By William A. Cook

“Men use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.” -Voltaire: Dialogue XIV, Le Chapon et la Poularde-

Voltaire’s wit often illuminates truth. Consider this revealing “thought” as expressed recently in Alert, the voice of AIPAC to its membership: “Some Americans believe if the Israelis strike Iran, the U.S. will pay the political costs anyway, so it would be better for the Americans to do the job and do it properly. Their clock is a bit different from the one the Israelis hear. Because of their vastly superior firepower, the Americans could strike Iran later, more devastatingly and more sustainably.”

Read more: Yet another War for Israel

By Lawrence Davidson

Two Fronts

In January 2011, I wrote an analysis in support of a one-state solution to the on-going Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It is the Israelis themselves who have made the one-state solution the only practicable approach, because their incessant and illegal colonization of the West Bank has simply eliminated all possibility of a viable and truly independent Palestinian state. Israeli behavior has not changed in the past year and so I still stand by the position.

Read more: Two Front International Struggle For Palestine

By Lawrence Davidson

Two Democratic Elections

There have now been two democratic elections in the Middle East as a consequence of the Arab Spring. One was in Tunisia in October 2011, and the recent staggered elections of December 2011-January 2012 for a lower house of parliament in Egypt.

Read more: Democratic Elections in the Middle East: Why the Islamists Win

By Richard Falk

Desirable, Necessary, and Impossible

Finally, there is some argumentation in the West supportive of a nuclear free zone for the Middle East. Such thinking is still treated as politically marginal, and hardly audible above the beat of the war drums. It also tends to be defensively and pragmatically phrased as in the NY Times article by Shibley Telhami and Steven Kull (I.15..2012) with full disclosure title, “Preventing a Nuclear Iran.” The article makes a prudential argument against attacking Iran based on prospects of a damaging Iranian retaliation and the inability of an attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear program at an acceptable cost. The most that could be achieved for would be a short delay in Iran’s acquisition of weaponry, and maybe not even that. An attack seems likely to create irresistible pressure in Iran to everything possible to obtain a nuclear option with a renewed sense of urgency.

Read more: Nuclear Free Middle East

By Ludwig Watzal

American and Israeli politicians and their neoconservative extremist friends in Western Europe and the United States do their very best to provoke the Iranian leadership to react irrationally against the different terrorist attacks by their intelligence services. So far, the Iranian regime has kept cool. But Western media propaganda runs at full speed to rally the public behind the flag of war. Especially in the U. S., it seems easy to manipulate the minds of the benighted population as was the case in relation to Iraq. 

Read more: Iranian 'nuclear threat' and Israeli political realism