The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
You have to admire the macho instincts of Hillary Clinton. Asked recently what she would do if Iran made a nuclear attack on Israel, she replied: ÒIf IÕm the president, we will attack Iran... we would be able to totally obliterate them.Ó And itÕs perfectly true. The United States has enough nuclear weapons to blast, irradiate, incinerate and obliterate all 75 million people in Iran. All she has to do is press the button. First she has to win the presidential election, of course, but American voters can rest easy in the knowledge that Clinton would not hesitate to kill tens of millions of people on behalf of their friends in Israel. What a contrast with wimpy Barack Obama, who said: ÒUsing words like ÔobliterateÕ Ð it doesnÕt actually produce good results.Ó What does he use for a backbone? Tedious purists will point out that Iran doesnÕt actually have any nuclear weapons. Indeed, late last year the U.S. intelligence agencies produced a joint intelligence estimate stating that Iran has not even been working to develop nuclear weapons for the past four years. The critics and the carpers might also point out that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons of its own, and is perfectly capable of obliterating Iran without American help. But practical politicians like Clinton know that there is always some political mileage to be gained by promising to help Israel, whether it needs help or not. On the very same day as her comments, another American was revealed to be in the business of helping Israel. His name is Ben-Ami Kadish, and he appeared in a New York courtroom charged with spying on the U.S. for Israel. Kadish, who worked at the U.S. armyÕs Armament Research, Development and Engineering Centre from 1979 to 1985, allegedly gave secrets involving information about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles to Israel in the 1980s. He was charged with four counts of conspiracy. Kadish, 84, is long retired, but he is still in touch with Israeli diplomats. When he realized on March 20 that he was going to be arrested, he called his current Israeli handler, according to the Justice Department, and was instructed: ÒDonÕt say anything....What happened 25 years ago? You donÕt remember anything.Ó This is not the first time an American citizen has been accused of spying for Israel. In the most prominent case, Jonathan Jay Pollard was convicted in 1987 of passing thousands of secret documents to Israeli agents while working at the U.S. defence department. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and ever since then Israel has been trying to secure his release. State Department spokesman Tom Casey, asked what Washington was going to do about the Kadish case, said that Israel would be informed of his arrest. ÒTwenty-plus years ago, during the Pollard case, we noted that this was not the kind of behaviour we would expect from friends and allies, and that would remain the case today,Ó he said. But there will be no diplomats expelled, none of the dramatics that you would see if the U.S. caught some American spying for the Russian or Chinese. There is a curious asymmetry in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Israel is the sole beneficiary of this alliance Ð indeed, the U.S. pays a significant price for it in terms of its relations with other Middle Eastern countries Ð and yet Israel can spy on the U.S. with impunity. During the Cold War, Israel was a valuable strategic ally for the U.S. in the Middle East, but that ended 20 years ago. Now it is not a strategic asset at all, but a brilliantly successful Israeli public relations campaign has persuaded the American public otherwise. So much so that Israel can brazenly spy on the U.S. and suffer no political penalty. Clinton presumably knows this, but she also knows that threatening mass slaughter in defence of Israel is a vote-winner. Obama obviously knows it, but although he is not going to commit political suicide by saying it out loud, at least he refused to echo her blood-curdling threat.
