The non-Zionist Israeli Population Could Save the Day
Paul Craig Roberts
Trump’s blustering April Fool’s day speech would easily have served as a hilarious April Fool’s day joke. But it was just bluster to take the place of the discarded 10-day ultimatum that replaced the discarded 5-day ultimatum with a 3 or 4 week ultimatum. As I asked, if Iran is as totally destroyed as Trump asserts, what is the purpose of Trump’s ultimatum?
Time is running out for Trump, not for Iran. The last time an American president took America to war Constitutionally was 1941 when Congress gave the executive branch permission to enter the war with the Constitutionally required Congressional Declaration of War. As time went by Congress finally responded to presidential decisions to go to war without a Congressional declaration of war not by impeaching the President, which should have been done in order to protect the Constitutional political order and separation of powers, but by requiring the president who initiates military action without Congressional approval to come to Congress with a deadline of 60 days after initiating military action for congressional approval to continue the military action.
In other words, Congress failed to defend the Constitution’s Separation of Powers by allowing the executive branch to exercise a power it does not have to go to war and, afterward, to come to Congress for approval. In the past Congress has rubber-stamped the President’s decision.
But this time it is different. Polls indicate that a majority of Americans do not share Trump’s concern about the Iranian threat to America. They do not support Netanyahu’s war. Even many American Jews do not support the war.
On April 2 the Times of Israel reported that “the US Democratic National Committee is set to consider a resolution at a meeting next week that “condemns the growing influence” of AIPAC. This is extraordinary considering that in the US Senate there are 9 Jewish Democrats and no Republican ones and that of the 25 Jews in the House of Representatives, 21 are Democrats. https://www.timesofisrael.com/democrats-to-weigh-resolution-against-aipac-fueling-concerns-about-undercurrent-of-antisemitism/
The Times of Israel reports that: “A recent NBC poll found that 57% of Democratic voters have a negative view of Israel, compared to 13% who have a positive view of the country. Meanwhile, a growing number of the party’s congressional candidates—and politicians thought to be seeking its 2028 presidential nomination—are swearing off AIPAC, and crossing its red line of supporting conditions on military aid to Israel.”
What Trump has done is to ally the American Democrat Party against Israel and the Republicans with Israel Or to put it more correctly with the current Zionist government of Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s party has 23.41% of the vote. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Netanyahu’s+Party+as+a+percent+of+the+electorate+in+Israel&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
To be in office Netanyahu has to rely on far right-wing extremist parties who fervently believe in Greater Israel from the Nile River to Pakistan.
It is for this Greater Israel agenda that Americans have been fighting for the first quarter of the 21st century.
But support for this agenda is not only weak in the US, it also seems to be week in Israel. Zionism has always been a minority position among Jews and the Israeli population. The Israelis tolerated Zionism because it did them no harm. No missiles fell upon them and the Americans protected them with money, weapons, and diplomatic cover.
But now the vaunted Israeli Iron Dome is penetrated at Iran’s will. The Iranian missiles have destroyed the American radar systems that enabled US defenses to prevent attacks on the Persian Gulf states and Israel.
If Trump declares victory and goes home, Zionist Israel has no chance of survival. Israel’s nuclear weapons are cancelled by Iran’s demonstrated ability to hit the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona and Israel’s storage site of its nuclear weapons. Iran doesn’t need nukes to destroy Israel. A strike on the Dimona nuclear facility would suffice to spread radiation over tiny Israel.
Trump cannot stay in the war, because he cannot risk Congress rejecting his justification for attacking Iran and for continuing the war. For Trump, being defeated by Congress is worse than being defeated by Iran. Trump has until April 28 to extricate himself from the war.
So what happens to Israel, defenseless from Iranian missile attack, when Trump leaves the scene?
Netanyahu, who is under indictment in Israel, also faces elections this autumn. What if he cannot put together another ruling coalition? What if the Israelis for the first time are experiencing heavy costs of the Zionist Agenda of Greater Israel and decide that the Zionist agenda does not serve the security of Israel?
There is a possibility that Trump and Netanyahu have made the Israeli population aware of the heavy cost of the Zionist agenda. I do not know what the odds might be, but it is not impossible that Israelis, with the cost of the Zionist agenda now brought home to them, will reject the Zionist agenda and announce that they are satisfied with Israel’s current borders.
It is possible–I do not know the odds–that the non-Zionist population of Israel will take the agenda out of the hands of the Zionist war-mongers, and form a government that rejects the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel.
This, other than Israel’s destruction, is the only avenue to peace in the Middle East.