Congressional #Republicans who are trying to blow up US-European diplomacy with Iran would desperately like Americans to believe that they have some alternative besides war to the administration’s multilateral efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with Iran.
If any fair-minded man or woman who reads newspapers retains any doubt that this claim is fraudulent, let incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin #Netanyahu – whom congressional Republicans constantly invoke as their Supreme Guide on diplomacy with Iran – put these doubts to rest. (If the Jewish Daily Forward’s JJ Goldberg is correct in his handicapping of the Israeli election Tuesday, Netanyahu may not be Israeli Prime Minster for much longer.)
Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday was arranged by House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, without the agreement or cooperation of the White House. The day before the speech, Rabbi Lerner and Tikkun ran a full-page ad in The New York Times and, then, on Tuesday, repeated the ad in The Hill newspaper. It was topped with a simple, bold headline: “No, Mr. Netanyahu—you do not speak for American Jews. And … The American People Do Not Want a War with Iran!”
The ad, which used powerful evidence and arguments against the harmful ideas that the Israeli prime minister is spreading about both Iran and the Jewish-American diaspora, included more than 2,000 signatures from people who supported Tikkun’s protest. Rabbi Lerner spoke out in other ways, too. He had articles Tuesday on the Salon and Huffington Post websites in which he disassembled Netanyahu’s motives and arguments.
Although Netanyahu resorted to a language of hate and fear, Rabbi Lerner chose to propagate a positive message of dissidence and strength, and, most important and perhaps most courageously, an achievable plan for peace. In each ad and article, Lerner pointed toward an alternative to what the Israeli leader is so forcefully proposing. Netanyahu’s insistence on further escalating sanctions against Iran will lead to “two predictable consequences,” the rabbi argued, the first of which is that it would inspire the Iranian people to redirect their anger away from the mullahs’ regime and toward Israel and the U.S. Secondly, Lerner wrote, Iran currently requires nuclear power “to replace quickly depleting and earth-polluting energy supplies for [its] rapidly growing … population” but the nation “would move quickly to escalate its nuclear capacities and turn them toward military use” if it felt threatened by Israel and the U.S.
It’s the latest and perhaps most damaging move yet from Republicans on the Hill to piss off the Democrats who, not so long ago, were interested in helping them carry out AIPAC’s wish to blow up nuclear negotiations with Iran. Republicans have shown themselves willing to sacrifice the prospect of veto-proof legislation in order to collect a few partisan points. (Which is great, by the way. Everyone interested in securing a multilateral diplomatic deal with Iran should thank the #47Traitors for being incompetent. They always come through!)
