Human Wrongs Watch
By Uri Avnery*
22 August 2015
ONE HAS to choose: Binyamin Netanyahu is either incredibly shrewd or incredibly foolish.
Take his Iran policy. Actually, there is little to choose from. Netanyahu has no other policy to speak off.
According to him, Iran constitutes a mortal danger to Israel. If it obtains a nuclear weapon, God forbid, it will use it to annihilate Israel. It must be stopped by any means, preferably by American armed intervention.
This may be quite wrong (as I believe). But it makes sense.
So what did Netanyahu do?
FOR YEARS, he alarmed the world. Every day the cry went out: Save Israel! Prevent the destruction of the Jewish State! Prevent a Second Holocaust! Prevent Iran from producing The Bomb!
The world did not take any notice. It was busy with many other matters. There are crises galore everywhere, all the time. Economic depressions. Plagues. The warming of the earth.
But Netanyahu did not let off. He used every rostrum, from the Knesset to the United States Congress, to shout his message.
At long last, a weary world paid heed. OK, the Jews warn of the Iranian bomb? So let’s do something to prevent it. Not just something. No. Let’s get all the great powers of the world together to compel Iran to end this nonsense.
And they did. The USA, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – practically the whole world – commanded Iran to start negotiations.