Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn't the first politician, Israeli or American, to try to dictate US policy. Israeli lobbies, notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have done that for years. Any US congressman or senator who dared to speak out in America's interest or that of fairness – Charles Percy, Paul Findley, William Fulbright, Cynthia McKinney and others - was mowed down electorally as a punishment and an example for others. Israeli lobbies and US neo-cons pushed the Bush Administration in 2003 into attacking and occupying Iraq – which hadn't harmed the US. The excuse: Iraq possessed destructive weapons. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction – it's the US and Israel that have them and have used them against civilians. The war in Iraq and the Afghan war cost the US, according to a Brown University study, some $3.2 trillion, forcing the mighty US to beg China for loans. It also killed or wounded thousands of Americans, and some 600,000 Iraqis, according to the UK Medical Journal, Lancet. Undeterred, Netanyahu, plugs along. He has urged Americans, by implication, to forget which candidate is best for the United States and vote for one who's ready to attack Iran. It is a clear call: dump Barack Obama and elect Mitt Romney. Netanyahu is taking this step even though Obama, while refusing to immediately attack Iran, is bending over backwards to placate Israel. US military aid to Israel exceeds what Israel itself spends on its military. The two countries have launched a cyber war against Iran to cripple its communications. Israel is killing Iranian scientists. The US is providing Israel with antimissile batteries and will also supply midair refueling planes and bunker-destroying bombs to attack others. In addition to making Israel a military superpower, the US is trying to crush Iran through sanctions. Milder sanctions against Iraq a few years ago killed thousands of innocent women and children. It isn't enough for Netanyahu that the US dropped nuclear bombs on civilians and has amassed nuclear, thermonuclear and biological and chemical weapons – or that US aid enables Israel to occupy Palestinian lands, crush all resistance and defy the United Nations and international law. He wants the US to pummel Iran for a crime it hasn't committed, but the US and Israel have, i.e., developing nuclear weapons. American, Israeli and other specialists have found no reliable evidence that Iran has decided to manufacture nuclear weapons. Even if it did so, it would be years before it could make them. Even then they'd be no match for the thousands of such bombs that the US has and the hundreds that Israel possesses. While American politicians are too scared of Israel to speak out, some people in the US and Canada have done so. The respected American paper, the Jewish Daily Forward, said in an editorial that it's difficult to recall a time when an Israeli prime minister inserted himself into the US presidential campaign in this manner. It stated: “Americans are deeply wary of another military involvement in the Muslim world. Most Americans oppose a military strike against Iran. Most even oppose coming to Israel's aid should it be attacked by Iran. A recent poll by the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Global Affairs posed this hypothetical situation: Israel attacks Iran, Iran retaliates and the two nations go to war. Only ‘38 percent say the United States should bring its military forces into the war on the side of Israel. A majority (59 percent) says it should not,' the poll showed.” It cited another poll that said that 36 percent of American Jews and 59 percent of all Americans oppose a US attack on Iran. According to the New York Times, a Gallup Poll in the summer showed that 64 percent of Jewish voters favored Obama compared to 29 percent for Romney. Six hundred rabbis have formed a Rabbis for Obama to help him. Respected columnist Andrew Cohen wrote in the Ottawa Citizen in part: “It was madness to speak of hitting Iran in January, when Netanyahu began his new season of saber-rattling, and it is madness now. He is gambling that a weakened Obama loses the election and that Mitt Romney embraces Netanyahu's view and takes his talking points from Jerusalem, much like the government of Canada. “That the United States has helped finance Israel's (“Iron Dome”) anti-missile and other defense systems, that it has provided $168 billion in aid to the country since 1948, and that it has collaborated with Israel on anti-nuclear cyber-warfare against Iran – all does not give Netanyahu pause.” And surprise, surprise, even Canada, according to a senior official, doesn't favor attacking Iran and “will continue to work with our allies to find a peaceful resolution on Iran.” Mercifully, the world hasn't totally lost its sanity and sense of fairness.
– Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, civil servant and refugee judge. He has received the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario and the Queen's Diamond and Golden Jubilee medals
