17 June 2010

Iran is not the main problem


Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says that Iran’s nuclear program is the most difficult peace and security issue the international community will be confronted with over the next twelve to eighteen months.

Wrong.  The most difficult peace and security issue the international community will be confronted with over the next twelve to eighteen months will be the one it has steadfastly refused to confront since 1948: the ongoing consequences of the unjust division of Mandate Palestine, with 83% of the land going to the relatively recently arrived Zionists and just 17% to the original Arab inhabitants, with catastrophic consequences for the dispossessed Palestinians.  The invasion of the Suez Canal Zone in 1956, the wars of 1967 and 1973, the ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, the Israeli blockade of Gaza since 2006, and the invasion in 2009, all attest to that.

Now Israel has the most right wing and extremist government in its history, a government that feels it owes nothing to anyone in the outside world, and that any step it chooses to take in the name of Israel is justified.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an appalling person.  But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the most dangerous man in the Middle East. Binyamin Netanyahu is.

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