Israel May Attack Iran: Halper

The most powerful Christian Zionist in the U.S. (probably the world), John Hagee,  has called on numerous occasions for the U.S. to attack Iran. Jeff Halper, an Israeli peace activist, believes Israel may be poised to do the job for them. Read what he said in the following article posted on the Mondoweiss website by Philip Weiss.

Halper: Israel may attack Iran so that we won’t hear the word ‘Palestinian’ for another 5 years
Nov 02, 2011 09:47 am | Philip Weiss

Israel may well attack Iran in an effort to distract the world from the Palestinian issue, Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said last Saturday in New York.

“There’s a very real possibility that Israel will attack Iran,” he said. At a time when there is tremendous international pressure on Israel to end the occupation and even the U.S. discourse is beginning to shift on Israel, an Iran attack would be the “ultimate deflection… it would deflect everything.”

“It’s a delaying thing. You won’t hear the word Palestinian for another five years,” Halper said. And Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, government ministers from rightwing and centrist parties, could work together on the effort, seamlessly.

The Minnesota born activist, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, spoke at the Tree of Life conference on the conflict at Advent Lutheran Church on the Upper West Side. And Halper spoke frankly of the American interest and of the issue of dual loyalty.

“I don’t want to become all jingoistic,” he said, but there are real questions of where AIPAC is leading the US that should be in the conversation politically: “You’re an American member of Congress not an Israeli member.”

At the beginning of his term, Obama was talking the national-interest talk: “Resolving this issue is in the vital national interest of the United States.” Halper said that Ronald Reagan played the same card when he sold the AWACs airplanes to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s– it’s not in Israel’s interest but it’s in the American interest.

And when the issue is framed in that manner, most American Jews are going to fall into line “150 percent.” Even AIPAC supporters’ greatest fear is that they are going to be seen to have dual loyalties because there is a “conflict between the interests of Israel and the United States,” Halper said, and that cleavage ought to be stated now.

That has been Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas’s achievement in going to the U.N.: U.S. support for Israel is “really beginning to bring the United States down,” in the eyes of the world. Obama’s speech before the General Assembly in September was met by “stony silence;” he has “alienated the entire audience.”

(Ron Paul subliminal advertising moment)

Halper also said that the two state solution is no longer viable, and that one great outcome of the U.N. process is that 140 members of the General Assembly are likely to vote for a Palestinian state, and then send their ambassadors to Jerusalem. And then if Palestinians march on a checkpoint, and if one Palestinian is shot, it would “absolutely be a war crme,” in the eyes of the world.

The Tree of Life conference will continue this weekend in Old Lyme, CT. See Ashley Bates, Mark Braverman, Daoud Nasser, Laila El Haddad and Adam Horowitz among others…