An open letter to Senators and Congressional Representatives
nationwide:
On March
3rd, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu will speak before a joint
session of Congress. I’m sure that, you, like every other responsible elected
representative in the country, knows what a divisive issue this has become. I
wonder if you really understand though, all the messages that your presence at
that event will send.
By merely
being present in that historic chamber, you will not be making a casual
appearance at your workplace. You will be giving credence to, and lending
support to, a man who has become a symbol of intransigence and intolerance. You
will be taking sides on a long list of highly controversial issues that I
frankly doubt you fully understand.
1. Netanyahu
has recently claimed that he speaks for ‘all the world’s Jews.’ This is an
outrageous claim, and Jewish groups across the US and the world are extremely
angry about it. Netanyahu does not have majority support even within Israel. When you stand with Netanyahu, you will be taking sides in a highly
charged struggle within the Jewish Communities.
2. Netanyahu
has made no secret of his reason for wanting to speak to Congress. His goal is
to derail sensitive and vital US nuclear negotiations with Iran. He has said he
is willing to do so at any price. When you stand with Netanyahu, you will be
standing with a foreign leader against our own president. You will be standing
for war, not peace.
3. In
response to recent violence in Denmark and France, Netanyahu has urged European
Jews to flee to Israel. By doing so he has insulted and undermined the
credibility of European governments and he is also, in effect, promoting the
position that European Jews should give in to terror. Finally, he is quite
dishonestly asserting that Israel is safer than Europe. When you stand with Netanyahu, you will be taking a stand for surrender
to the forces of terror and intolerance. You wil be undermining our crucial
European allies.
4. Reliable
reports show that Netanyahu has been leaking sensitive secrets regarding the US
negotiations with Iran in selective and highly misleading ways. As the current leader
of Israel, a country that is supposed to be a US ally, Netanyahu has access to
highly privileged intelligence information. He has proven his unreliability by
leaking this to further his own personal position and ambitions. When you stand with Netanyahu, you will be
standing with a person who is a serious security risk to the US.
5. In
his attempt to derail the president’s policy, Netanyahu may well reveal more
secret information… Since Obama has already ordered his access to sensitive information
to be curtailed, it is unlikely that Netanyahu knows more about the details of
the current negotiations than the president. It is totally inappropriate for
the house chamber be used to reveal classified information or to disseminate
disinformation by a foreign government. When
you stand with Netanyahu, you will be showing you trust a foreign leader more
than our own president. You will be aiding and abetting possible crimes against
the US. You will be failing to defend the honor of the house to which you have
been elected.
6. President
Rouhani of Iran is a moderate who started his term by making several symbolic
and substantive gestures of goodwill towards the US. Like any progressive
reformer in Iran, many Iranian hardliners would like him to fail. In 2002, after
President Khatamei of Iran had made generous offers of sympathy and cooperation
to the US in the wake of 9/11, George Bush included Iran in the famous “axis of
evil.” The result was that the reformist president Khatamei was discredited and
Ahmadinjad was elected. Today, Iran is deeply involved in defending Iraq
against our new nemesis ISIS. When you
stand with Netanyahu, you will be standing with Iran’s hardliners, undermining
the entire reform movement in Iran, and sabotaging Iran’s vital cooperation in
the fight against ISIS.
7. Netanyahu’s
key demand seems to be a total
dismantling of the peaceful Iranian nuclear program. That would make the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which was created mainly to allow developing
countries to use atomic energy in peaceful ways) totally irrelevant and
meaningless. It would be a severe blow to the prestige and worth of such
international treaties. When you stand
with Netanyahu, you will be delivering a serious blow to the integrity of
international law.
8. So
far, the IAEA has found Iran guilty only of some relatively minor violations of
reporting protocols. In many areas, those protocols are open to wide
interpretation. The IAEA has never found concrete “smoking gun” evidence of an
Iranian project to “weaponize” a so far peaceful nuclear energy program. In
2012, Netanyahu addressed the UN on the subject of an “Iranian bomb.” He
claimed they were only a year, or even a few months from attaining a bomb. Just a few months earlier, a Reuters report said
that, “The United States, European allies and
even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran
does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away
from having a deliverable nuclear warhead. A few months later an Israeli
intelligence official reported that the actual Israeli estimate was that Iran
was at least 10 years away from a deliverable bomb—if it decided to try to get
one, which it hadn’t. When
you stand with Netanyahu, you will be standing with an established liar—a liar
who is intentionally using false fear to shape US policy.
9. Just
a year or so ago, Syria destroyed its chemical weapons stockpiles –a concrete
example of how useful international treaties can be. At that time, Netanyahu
claimed that we should start bombing Syria before negotiating this issue with
them because (according to him) they would never comply with the treaty. Syria
did sign and complied very promptly. Israel has never ratified the CW treaty. When you stand with Netanyahu, you will be
standing with an established liar and a hypocrite.
10. In
spite of all evidence to the contrary, Netanyahu insists his take on Middle Eastern
issues is better than the President’s. In 2002, Barack Obama said that a war with
Iraq “will only fan the flames of the Middle East.” In the same year, Netanyahu
claimed that, “I guarantee you that it (a US invasion of Iraq) will have
enormous positive reverberations on the region.” One such reverberation has
been the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS. When you stand with Netanyahu, you will signal that you believe that
Netanyahu is more credible on foreign policy than President Obama.
11. In
2014, Netanyahu unleashed the Israeli military in a no holds barred assault on
Gaza. He claimed that he did so in order to stop Hamas rocket fire. Later he
shifted his focus to destroying tunnels in Gaza. The fact is, prior to Israel’s
breaking of the ceasefire with Hamas, not a single Israeli civilian had been
killed by a Hamas rocket in 2013-2014. In the end one was killed by rocket fire
and 4-5 others by mortar fire. In other words, the Israeli military, acting
under Netanyahu’s orders, initiated military action against the Gaza strip and
then killed roughly 2,200 Palestinian civilians and seriously wounded over
10,000 others for basically no rational
reason at all. Between 75-80% of all Palestinian casualties were civilians.
In international law, “disproportionate response” is a war crime. For those two
words to have any meaning, they must
apply to this situation. Of course the Israeli use of human shields, their
attacks on UN schools, hospitals and mosques etc., are also war crimes. Israel
only avoids prosecution by refusing to sign on to the International Court—and
because it has been shielded from prosecution by US vetoes in the UN. When
you stand with Netanyahu, you will signal that you believe that Netanyahu is
innocent of war crimes, or that you simply don’t care about these crimes and
that you approve of his actions in Gaza.
12. Netanyahu’s
Likud Party is bitterly opposed to a Palestinian state. It always has been, and
Netanyahu lied to the President when he said he would work toward the creation
of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu himself has since reneged on a two-state
solution and just a few days ago his ally, rightwing Knesset member Naftali
Bennett, stated that the Palestinians
should “forget about statehood… We are not going to give up more land. This approach has failed.”
The fact is, this unilaterally turns almost 67 years of official US policy completely
upside down. It is also a bald- faced lie: Israel has NEVER given land to
Palestinians— they have only taken it from them and then demanded more. That
the US has gone along with this for so long is the true meaning of the word
“appeasement” so often cited in relationship to the Munich agreement when
western powers acquiesced to Hitler’s lust for land, and so often misapplied to
other situations by the American right. When
you stand with Netanyahu, you will send the message that Netanyahu runs US
foreign policy. When you do that you will be reinforcing an idea that has great
traction in the Muslim world—namely, that the US is a Zionist pawn. This claim
is probably the single most powerful recruiting tool that extremist
anti-American groups have. Our enemies will lap it up like gravy.
13. Many
Americans believe that the US should always
stand with Israel, no matter what. In fact, when any decent country is
threatened by forces of intolerance, the US should stand behind it. But
standing behind Netanyahu is simply not the same thing as standing behind
Israel. Netanyahu is a highly challenged politician in his own country. He lost
his office once already because of corruption. He faces new corruption charges
today as well. When you stand with
Netanyahu, you won’t be standing with “Israel”—you will be taking sides in a
domestic Israeli political equation that you will place you at odds with millions
of Israelis who want peace.
14. When
he was first elected as Israeli PM in 1996, Netanyahu appointed Ariel Sharon as
his defense minister. Sharon had already been found to be complicit in the
horrific war crimes committed in the Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and
Shatila. When you stand with Netanyahu,
you are standing with a man who rewards war crimes.
15. A
number of credible sources have linked Netanyahu with the proliferation of
nuclear weapons related materials. These sources should be further
investigated, yet it seems clear that Netanyahu was mentioned in FBI
investigations related to the sale of devices that could be used in nuclear
triggers. It also seems that Netanyahu not only worked in the company involved,
but was observed holding meetings with the person found to be guilty in such
transactions. If true, that would mean that Netanyahu was himself directly
involved in nuclear proliferation. This certainly bears further investigation. It
is a matter of record that Netanyahu has constantly tried to get Jonathan
Pollard, an Israeli spy convicted of one of the most serious security breaches
in US intelligence history, released. Netanyahu is unapologetic about this. When you stand with Netanyahu, you may
well be standing with a man implicated in violating the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation treaty and also in aiding and abetting espionage against the
US.
16. Netanyahu
has repeatedly tried to conflate understandable anger at his Israeli government
policies with real anti-Semitism. While
this is politically expedient for him, that does not make Jews anywhere in the
world any safer. When you stand with
Netanyahu, you are standing with a man who directly helps create anger at the
Jewish communities throughout the world.
17. As
part of his narrow, misguided political program, Netanyahu actively promotes
the idea that Netanyahu = Israel = the world Jewish community. Both parts of
this equation are patently false. When
you stand with Netanyahu you will be embracing this dangerous and offensive
notion, a notion that is extremely offensive to many of your constituents,
Jewish and non-Jewish alike.
18. Finally
we must consider what this uproar is really all about. Almost the very day he
was inaugurated, President Obama called on his supposed ally, Israel, to freeze
their settlement program. Netanyahu immediately began to lie, calling this
request ‘new and unprecedented.’ In fact, almost every US president since 1967
has called on Israel to stop settlement activity in the occupied territories.
In other words, Netanyahu has never tried to work in good faith with President Obama. When
you stand with Netanyahu you will be embracing a man who has arguably done more
harm to US/Israeli relations than any man in History.
So
Senators and congressman throughout the land, remember, in a sense, you All
represent All of the American people. The issues listed above are not
quibbles; they are not nattering or nibbling about procedure; they are not
partisan bean-counting. They are real issues that may well decide the future of
the country. You may doubt some of my claims—I hope you do your due diligence
and research them—but do so before you stand with Netanyahu. To my mind, even
one of them is ample reason to refuse to attend Netanyahu’s speech. I fully
expect you to all read the transcript. But you needn’t sully your reputation by
being in the house chamber with him when he speaks.
The fact
is, while Netanyahu desperately seeks to derail negotiations with Iran, he has
outlined no plan as to how to proceed if he should succeed. He simply expects
that the US will “deal with it.” As polls have shown, Americans are not in the
mood for another catastrophic war in the Middle East. As countless experts have
testified, an Israeli attack on Iran (or even and American led one) has little
chance of stopping Iran from gaining nuclear capability if they should choose
to do so. So far, they have chosen not to. Encouraging this kind of enlightened
decision is a positive and attainable policy goal for the US.
US experts
have also testified convincingly and repeatedly that an attack on Iran would
probably force Iran to decide to create a nuclear weapons program, and further,
that their eventual success would be almost impossible to prevent.
If you
should choose to stand with Netanyahu, I hope you fully understand the messages
you are sending and the risks that you are subjecting this country to.
Recent
polls suggest that there is no downside for staying home. On the morning after,
you’ll thank yourself.
Think
about it.