Now that the dust has settled regarding Jeffrey Goldberg’s much anticipated, and much discussed, article on Israel’s plans to launch a war with Iran (or, better yet, have the United States do the favor), I must say that despite the charges leveled against Goldberg – even from myself on occasion (propagandist, likudnik, warmonger, etc.), I had a similar reaction to Goldberg’s piece as Robert Wright* and Jim Henley.
Bottom line: if Goldberg’s article, The Point of No Return, was supposed to be a stirring call to war, despite the attendant sound and fury, there is barely a ripple. As Wright notes:
Indeed, what’s striking is that, for all the space given to the views of hawkish Israeli officials, they don’t wind up looking very good, and neither does their case for bombing Iran. The overall impression is that, as Paul Pillar, a former C.I.A. official, put it after reading Goldberg’s piece, Israel’s inclination to attack Iran is “more a matter of the amygdala and emotion than of the cortex and thought.”
While Wright’s piece is more methodical and thorough, Henley offers a concise summary:
At the same time, in Goldberg’s article, all on its own, Israel’s policy-makers condemn themselves out of their own mouth. If all you had was “The Point of No Return” and a brain, you would have everything you need to judge Israel’s case for bombing Iran as unjustified and immoral. In fact, there are truths in Goldberg’s article that appear almost nowhere else in the USA’s establishment media:
* Netanyahu has no intention whatsoever of implementing a two-state solution – at best he might take steps in that direction once his revanchist Daddy is dead;
* Netanyahu regrets the few partial steps he took under American pressure to comply with any smidgen of the spirit or letter of the Oslo agreements;
* Hardly anybody important in the Israeli government really believes that Iran would use nuclear weapons if Iran in fact develop them;
* Many don’t even worry that Iranian nukes would make it impossible for Israel to respond conventionally to Iranian “provocations” – rather, they want to go to war against a foreign country* for extremely speculative concerns about “brain drain” that are so time-dilated one suspects Iran might be deploying its nukes in near-orbit around Cygnus X-1;
* And by the way, as a child of the MAD Era in 20th-Century history, I feel qualified to say, “Grow a pair, Senior Israeli Dudes.” Brain drain. Sheesh.
Like Henley, I found it oddly refreshing to have the Likud position on the peace process and two state solution confirmed, in print, in a US media source, by a journalist sympathetic to the Likud view, in such a blatant fashion.
That, and the fact that few at the top in Israel actually fear a strike. It really boils down to an elaborate, if unconvincing, fear of brain drain inspired by the looming specter of an Iranian nuke. As Wright explains:
One “existential” threat that Israel’s policy elites do seem to take seriously is that a nuclear Iran might render Israel such a scary place to live as to induce a brain drain. “The real threat to Zionism is the dilution of quality,” defense minister Ehud Barak tells Goldberg. Here again, I think the threat is overstated. After a year or two, Iran’s possession of nukes would become background noise for the average Israeli, less salient than periodic flurries of missiles from Lebanon or Gaza — flurries that so far have failed to noticeably drain Israel of intellectual capital.
The “brain drain” issue illustrates what weak “propaganda” much of Goldberg’s piece is: America is supposed to support — or even conduct — a military attack designed to keep talented people from immigrating to America? If I were Israel, I’d hire a new propagandist.
This is especially true when one considers that Goldberg, to his credit, sets forth an extensive list of significant costs and negative outcomes likely to flow from an attack by either the US or Israel (even if a bit understated). All that death, destruction, destabilization and economic turmoil to back a policy espoused by irrational actors in defense of a vague fear? To quote Wright: I’d hire a new propagandist.
(* Full disclosure: I work for Robert Wright, in a paid capacity, as Senior Editor of The Progressive Realist)
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