Israel loves Iran

If you don't live in Israel (or Iran, I guess), then you don't know how bad it has gotten. Israeli politicians are broadcasting the message loud and clear that it's only a matter of time before Israeli attacks Iran. It's frightening. I have had quite a few conversations with my Israeli friends about this - and while they are generally the type to hide their fears, they are talking about the risks of war. None of them want war, regardless of their political opinions (pretty right wing to ultra-left-wing). But there hasn't been any antiwar movement at all, on the popular level. Haaretz has editorialized against war, and some high officials (like Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad) has strongly campaigned against war with Iran. There haven't been any demonstrations, even from the far left (unless I haven't heard about them).

Ronny Edri and Michal Tamir are two Israeli graphic artists who have started a Facebook campaign with the message "Israel Loves Iran." They posted photographs of themselves and their family with the wording "Iranians: We will never bomb your country. We ♥ you." See their FB page for lots of posters -

At first, they only heard from fellow Israelis, who sent them posters with their photos on them. Then they started to get responses from Iranians, who take a real risk when they communicate with Israelis in any way.

Here are some of the posters they have received from both Israelis and Iranians. 

An Iranian Happy Nowruz (New Year) poster - Nowruz is happening right now.

From the Israeli satire show, Eretz Nehederet - these two guys appear on the show as workers in an Iranian atomic plant.

And here's the message that Ronny sent out with the first posters:

To the Iranian people
To all the fathers, mothers, children, brothers and sisters

For there to be a war between us, first we must be afraid of each other, we must hate.
I'm not afraid of you, I don't hate you.
I don t even know you. No Iranian ever did me no harm. I never even met an Iranian...Just one in Paris in a museum. Nice dude.

I see sometime here, on the TV, an Iranian. He is talking about war.
I'm sure he does not represent all the people of Iran.
If you see someone on your TV talking about bombing you ...be sure he does not represent all of us.

I'm not an official representative of my country. but I know the streets of my town, I talk with my neighbors, my familys, my friends and in the name of all these people ...we love you.
We mean you no harm.
On the contrary, we want to meet, have some coffee and talk about sports.

To all those who feel the same, share this message and help it reach the Iranian people

ronny

http://israelovesiran.telavivnet.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pushpin

I hope that this Facebook campaign turns into a real political movement against war with Iran.

Ran Boker (Ynet) on living under rocket fire in Beersheva

Ran Boker, a columnist for Ynet, wrote a very powerful article on what it's like to live under attack, in Hebrew. I've translated his column (Ynet hasn't yet posted it in English).

What escalation? There’s a crazy after-Purim

Ran Boker

Friday afternoon, the pots are on the stove, the table is already set, and Shabbat is knocking at the door.  A little update from the internet tears apart the festive atmosphere: the liquidation of a senior figure in the Resistance Committees. “Ema,” I call, “I don’t want to ruin your Shabbat, but look forward to a stormy Shabbat.” Her glance was troubled and fearful. I hope that nothing will happen. We, the residents of Beersheva and all the residents of the south, we have suffered enough. The evening approaches and the fear only increases.

Fleeing to the center is not an option, my soldier brother has just now returned from his military service. The truth? We also don’t have a protected room in the house, so we decided to pack up and to pass the Shabbat with our aunt and uncle, there they at least have a protected room. My soldier brother cancels his plans to enjoy himself, and is satisfied with a costume and sitting in the protected room of friends. My mother, wearing pajamas after a hard week, only waits for the siren so that this will pass. Ten at night, and now it arrives. The first siren. We descend to the protected room with a hysteria that will never pass, no matter how much we get used to it.

The waiting there only to hear the boom, in the small and empty protected room, to understand that we have been saved. This siren really signals to you that only a minute separates between you and another life, if indeed there is life. We go out of the protected room, and Ema has her regular hysteria. My little brother tries to calm her: “Ema, learn to enjoy the siren.” We go to sleep, with the windows open despite the freezing cold. None of us wants to miss the siren. “See you later with the Grads of 6 a.m.,” one of our cousins writes on his Twitter account.

Six in the morning? Ah, you’re joking with me. One in the morning, three in the morning, seven in the morning, and ten in the morning. The siren screams, go try to sleep after the difficult week that was. These trips to Tel Aviv every day. Ah, I’m sorry, I haven’t presented myself, I am Ran Boker, the gossip columnist for Ynet. I travel every day from Beersheva to Tel Aviv, round-trip. An hour and a half of traveling on the railroad, which separates between the fear, the darkness, the hysteria, the sirens, and the booms, and the city that never stops.

I want to be with them, to be afraid with them.

I was angry with my friends from the center who haven’t asked how I am. One SMS, it wouldn’t kill them to see that I’m okay. “We saw your status on Facebook, and saw that you’re okay,” they answered me. I don’t think that they don’t worry about me, I simply don’t think that they have any idea. They were busy with Purim parties. The truth is that I don’t really blame them. When the Qassams fell in Sederot for eight years, that didn’t really interest us in Beersheva, except for a “tut-tut” on our tongues when we saw them running for the shelters. In the afternoon, after the direct hit of the Grad on Beersheva, I became angry.

When I heard about the (Grad) falling (on Beersheva), no “item” interested me. I didn’t even eat anything, I only wanted to be there, with them, with my family in Beersheva. To feel the pain, to fear, and to feel them. I said, “There was a direct hit on Beersheva.” No one turned around, this really didn’t interest anyone. My friends in Tel Aviv continued with their own affairs. Until one righteous person in Sodom asked, “What? What did you say?” “Nothing,” I said, “Be ashamed of yourselves, there’s a direct hit in Beersheva and you’re not interested at all?” One of my acquaintances answered: “It’s Bibi who throws the Grads at you, be angry with him.” Do you get it? He still hasn’t asked if there were injured people and immediately turned it into a political argument. They will never understand. I only wish that they, my friends in the center, will come sleep at my house for one night. To feel what it’s like. I didn’t say another word about the fact that my friends in Beersheva are praying that a missile should fall on Tel Aviv, “so that they’ll understand.” Yes, the anger and the pain have reached this level.

I don’t know why I’m writing these words, perhaps so that the Tel Avivis will understand us, even though I don’t believe that will happen. There’s an after-Purim that it’s impossible to miss, that’s more important. Maybe I just write to weep over the keyboard, because aside from that there’s really nothing we can do. Understand that your fate is placed in the hands of Iron Dome, four cement walls, and a dangerous Grad missile. But what idiotic things am I saying? Today Big Brother is on television, only there shouldn’t be a special news program so that they have to cancel the broadcast.

How Israel would attack Iran

Another scary article, this time from NBC news, on the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran this year - it even goes into the details of which missiles Israel would use to attack Iranian nuclear sites.

Why is this information being passed on to journalists? Is it just part of a giant propaganda campaign to get the Iranians to take the threat of attack seriously (and thus give up the nuclear program without a fight), or is this telling the world that Israeli will, in fact, be attacking Iran this year?

Panetta’s reported view has been echoed in recent interviews by NBC News with current and former U.S. and Israeli officials who have access to their countries’ intelligence. Those officials, all of whom spoke to NBC News on background, estimated the odds of an Israeli attack on Iran as better than 50-50....

Officials agree the chances for an Israeli attack on Iran are at least 50-50, maybe higher. More than one former official has suggested the possibility is as high as 70 percent, but events can move that higher or lower. One said he is “worried sick” about it....

Many of those interviewed claim Israel would launch a multi-pronged attack, using its fighter bombers as well as its Jericho missile force.

Israel has both medium and intermediate range Jerichos. The medium-range Jericho I would not have the range to reach many Iranian targets but the intermediate-range Jericho II’s, capable of hitting targets 1,500 miles away, would have no problem. The Jerichos would be equipped with high explosives, not nuclear warheads. Asked if the Jericho would have the accuracy and the explosive power to take out a hardened bunker of the sort believed to be protecting Iran’s most-sensitive underground nuclear facilities, one official replied, “You would be surprised at their accuracy” and that the high explosives involved is a special mix of chemical explosives that could conceivably penetrate the Iranian fortifications.

Missile attacks would be coordinated with fighter-bomber attacks (presumably the Israelis’ extended-range F-15I Strike Eaglet) as well as drone strikes. The fighter bombers would use what one official described as “high-low, low-high” flight paths -- high first to increase fuel efficiency, then low for most of the trip to evade radar, then climbing high again as the weapons are released in what is known as a “flip toss” on the target. The Israelis would be prepared to lose aircraft if necessary, the officials said.

The Israelis are not planning to use submarine-launched cruise missile force -- “not enough of them,” one official said of the subs. (The Israelis have long had nuclear tipped sub-launched cruise missiles as part of their deterrent force.)....

As the New York Times reported Friday, the Israeli military intelligence assessment is that Iran’s military response to such an attack would be muted, in part because of its limited capability and in part because of it understands a massive attack would be met with massive response. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, noting that Iran has had years to plan out their response. The biggest fear is that Iran would unleash Hezbollah, which has between 42,000 and 48,000 missiles and rockets in southern Lebanon aimed at Israel. Even before any attack, officials in both Thailand and Azerbaijan say they have recently thwarted Hezbollah plots against Israeli facilities.

Israel understands that Hezbollah may respond on behalf of Iran following an attack and is prepared to go after Hezbollah “and not stop at the Litani River (the northern limit of most previous Israeli attacks) this time nor limit its force to a brigade or two” as one U.S. official put it. Another added that Israeli officials understand that “Israeli blood, Jewish blood will certainly be spilled” in attacks around the world in the event of an attack. And the response might not be immediate. One official noted that the Saudi Hezbollah attacks on Khobar Towers in 1996 took place months after the U.S. passed tighter sanctions against Iran.

Note: Yediot Aharonoth also has an article based upon the NBC article - Officials discuss Israel-Iran showdown.

Bitterness

This is an email that I sent to some friends about my feelings during this visit to Israel:

I know I haven't written anything to people about Israel, other than a few Facebook updates (all they said was that I had arrived and have watched some soccer games - the World Cup is definitely the most important public event going on now). I guess I've been feeling a bit depressed about the situation here. It just seems like such a mess.

When I arrived the immediate issue was of a court case involving a Haredi community in the West Bank where they were accused of discriminating against Sephardi girls in admission to the local school (state-funded by the way). The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the discrimination was illegal, and then took the further step to order the Haredi Ashkenazi parents who had taken their daughters out of the school (in protest of the order to integrate it) - to go to jail for two weeks, both mothers and fathers. That happened a week ago. Most of the fathers went to jail, but none of the mothers, and today the court ruled that most of the mothers won't have to go to jail. In reaction to the ruling, there were extraordinarily large Haredi demonstrations all over Israel, including one of 100,000 people in Jerusalem! (Fortunately, I was nowhere near it).

And then there's the whole business with the flotilla and its aftermath. Everything I've read in the Israeli press about the makeup of the Israeli inquiry commission suggests that it's a joke, that the government set up this commission simply to mollify the U.S. (which actually isn't working, since the U.S. is still calling for an international inquiry). Israel has now been forced to lighten the blockade on Gaza because of international pressure, which is obviously better for the people of Gaza but makes the Israeli government look weak, which it is. And more flotillas are on their way, from Lebanon and Iran. Who knows how the incompetent Israeli government will deal with them - not well, I imagine.

See these articles on the planned flotillas: Lebanon has just told Israel that it will be "fully responsible" if Israel attacks the boats that will be coming from there. Iran is also sending a boat to break the blockade.

Iran said Tuesday it would send a blockade-busting ship carrying aid and pro-Palestinian activists to Gaza, fueling concern in Israel, where commandos were training for another possible confrontation at sea.

Israel warned archenemy Iran to drop the plan. The Iranian announcement came days after Israel eased its three-year-old blockade of Gaza under international pressure following its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla last month.

"No one in their right mind can believe that a ship sent by the ayatollahs and their Revolutionary Guards has anything to do with humanitarian aid," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. "I don't think there is one single country in this region and beyond that would let such an ayatollah ship come near its coasts."

Security officials said the prospect of an Iranian boat headed for Gaza had Israel deeply worried, and that naval commandos were training for the possibility of taking on a vessel with a suicide bomber on board. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose operational details.

Maybe I'm just being negative, but it certainly seems to me that if there is an armed encounter with the Iranian ship, it could be the beginning of a war.

From here it seems that Iran, Hizbollah, and Hamas are just getting stronger politically (and militarily). Honestly, I think a war with one or all of them is inevitable - I don't know when or how it will begin, but I think there will soon be a pretty terrible war. I was hoping that my anxious feelings about war were just projections from far away, but the reality here is bad, and it doesn't seem to me that the current government has the wisdom to deal with a real war.

From here it also seems that Israel is getting more and more isolated politically, in part due to the stupid right-wing government which can't even manage not to antagonize the U.S. government (today the Jerusalem municipality just announced its plans to tear down 22 Palestinian homes in Silwan, which is just down the hill from the Dung Gate, and build an archaeological park there - the U.S. government immediately protested).

The right-wing government also seems to view the simple exercise of certain civil rights as anti-Israel (or maybe the exercise by certain people of those civil rights). I was watching the news last night, and one of the stories was about a conference at Ben Gurion University in the Negev held to deal with the legal problems of the Bedouin in the Negev - many of their villages are unrecognized by the state and therefore get no state services, including running water and electricity. The conference was intended to help people learn about the relevant laws and how to file court cases. The local prosecutor's office accused Ben Gurion of anti-state activity and threatened legal action against the university for doing something entirely legal!