October 11, 2011
Panetta to Netanyahu:”
Israel may not survive the current Arab/Islamic awakening”
Three weeks after being
named by President Obama in January 2009 as the 19th Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and during his first day on the job which was
February 12, 2009, Leon Panetta, now US Secretary of Defense, signed off on a March
2009 “eyes only” CIA Report that had just been completed by his new agency.
As reported at the time,
the CIA Report predicted the demise of Israel within 20 years, if present
political trends in the region continued.
The CIA intelligence
analysts concluded that it was unlikely that Israeli leaders would grant even
minimal concessions in order to achieve a settlement with their neighbors,
which comprise increasingly disillusioned and rapidly growing dignity and
justice seeking populations.
The CIA Report noted that
Israeli officials felt emboldened in taking Palestinian land by the myriad support
Israel was receiving from the leadership of Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, Jordan and three other Arab leaders.
Israel and its two most
powerful US lobbies, the US Congress and AIPAC, quickly squelched the 2009
Report and only seven copies were eventually acknowledged, one by AIPAC and the
others by staffers of select supporters of Israel on key Congressional
Committees.
Panetta to Netanyahu: ”Israel may not survive the current Arab/Islamic awakening”
During last week’s
meetings with Israeli officials, both sides knew that the 2009 CIA study was
front and center even without Panetta being the first one to refer to it.
President Obama sent
Panetta to engage in frank discussions which included the White House
displeasure at Netanyahu’s repeated humiliation of the President over the past
18 months and Israeli threats to cut off Jewish aid to Obama’s 2012 re-election
campaign.
Panetta did deliver
public statements which allowed Netanyahu to put the best hasbara face on the
meetings and he thanked the US Secretary of Defense for “helping to improve
US-Israeli relations.”
Panetta repeated at a
news conference with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Ehud Barak some
pointed generalizations. "At this dramatic time in the Middle East, when
there have been so many changes, it's not a good situation for Israel to become
increasingly isolated. And that is what's happening," he said.
"There's not much
question in my mind that they maintain that (military) edge. But the question
you have to ask he added is: was it enough to maintain a military edge, if
you're isolating yourself in the diplomatic arena? At this dramatic time
in the Middle East, when there have been so many changes, it's not a good
situation for Israel to become increasingly isolated. And that is what's
happening," he said.
In private, according to Washington sources, the atmosphere was quite different. Panetta reportedly made plain that given recent changes among Middle East countries, meaning the Arab Spring and Islamic Awakening, Israel was quickly running out of time. Its only choice was to make peace with the Palestinians and her neighbors or perish.
During frank and sometimes
heated exchanges, Panetta told the Israelis that time is running out for a two
state solution, which means time is running out for Zionist Israel and that
similar to apartheid South Africa, following the Reagan years, the days of
American propping up of Israel are coming to a close.
Seemingly dwelling on the subject of the US being unable to continue funding Israel in real terms with more than $6 billion every year and being able to continue to guarantee Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME), Panetta told the Israelis that it was out of the question given American domestic problems and the US process of substantial, if partial, disengagement from the region.
At issue with the
American inability and increasing unwillingness to prop up Israel’s QME is the
innocuous sounding 2008 Naval Vessel Transfer Act shepherded through the
Congress a month before the 2008 US Presidential election by one of Israel’s
unwavering lobbyists, Rep. Howard Berman.
In its essence, this law
shackles every American president with a legal obligation to ensure that Israel
maintains its military dominance over the Middle East.
It is designed to assure
that Israel’s regional hegemony is legally mandated via Israel’s “Qualitative
Military +*Edge” (QME). The US Government must guarantee
that “the sale or export of the defense articles or defense services will not
adversely affect Israel’s qualitative military edge over any military threats
to Israel.”
The term ‘qualitative
military edge’ means the ability to counter and defeat any credible
conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of
states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties,
through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity,
including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are
superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition
of states or non-state actors.
Panetta reportedly
reminded Ehud Barak, during heated discussions between the two defense
ministers of the statement of an Egyptian general back 1973 as reported by then
President Nixon.
According to Nixon, an Israeli official asked an Egyptian general convalescing in hospital, “We have defeated you Arabs three times (1948, 1967 & 1973) why to you continue to resist us?”The Egyptian replied, "You may have defeated us three times, and you may defeat us 11 times. But the 12th time we will win and Palestine will be liberated."
The unavoidable
signs seen by Panetta, as by his predecessor, Defense Secretary Robert Gates,
include nearly one dozen uprisings in the region that share the goal, among
others, of returning Palestine to its rightful inhabitants.
The Egyptian people are
reclaiming Egypt’s proud Arab position and helping lead the cause to liberate
Palestine as evidenced by their intentions to expel the Israeli Embassy, scrap
Camp David, abrogate the capitulation agreements, including Egypt’s natural gas
giveaway to Israel subsidized by the Egyptian people, and made by the Mubarak
family doing business with Israeli officials.
Panetta, and an increasingly number of American officials as well as the American public knows that the genie has been released and that Arabs, Muslims, and all people of good will continue to inexorably confront the remaining 19th Century colonial enterprise which is the artificial and illegitimate Zionist implantation on Palestinian land.
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