Against All Odds
“Last March, 1978, listeners on a -wide transmission could view a 28-year old Benjamin Netanyahu, calling himself Ben Nitay, debated on a US TV show ‘The Advocate’ against Palestinian self determination and——should the US support ‘Self Determination for Palestinians in a Middle East Peace— during which the tumultuous relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama reached a new low.’
Key points from the debate:
Ajami challenged Netanyahu on his views about Palestinian statehood and the rights of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.
Netanyahu argued against the creation of a Palestinian state, emphasizing the existence of other Arab states and the risks of Israel’s security.
The exchange included Ajami questioning the future of democracy in Israel if it remained a ‘garrison state’ to which Netanyahu responded that Israel seeks peace and security, not perpetual militarization.
Over White House objections, the Israel Prime Minister tripped to Washington to attack the President’s signature foreign policy legacy, the Iran nuclear deal. FRONTLINE traced the stormy history of the US-Israeli relationship through the eyes of Obama and Netanyahu, two men with fundamentally different views of the world.
For Obama, his election in 2009 provided a chance ‘to recast the US as a friend of the Islamic world’ says White House insider Sandy Berger. But for Netanyahu, Obama’s vision of the Middle East threatened Israel’s existence. Told through riveting footage and interviews with political insiders in Jerusalem and Washington, ‘Netanyahu at War’ provides the essential context needed to understand the ongoing feud between Netanyahu and Obama and how it could shape the future of the Middle East.
“The Secret War Against The Jews” by John Loftus and Mark Aarons [1994] is an extraordinary book, which reads like a novel, did not enjoy the popularity bestowed on so many novels. With startling revelations such as “In order to curry favor with the Arab oil producers, precise details of the Israeli offensive were also passed onto [Arab countries by the CIA] during the course of fighting [prior to the Six Day War]”, it is not surprising that it has not been the subject of a review by the NY Times.
The thrust of this large volume, numbering approximately 50 pages with a further 100 pages dedicated to substantiating notes and references, is directed to how Western espionage betrayed the Jewish people.
An interesting item concerns an order by Winston Churchill for the bombing of the railway lines carrying Jews to Auschwitz. Apparently, Anthony Eden made sure the order was not to execute the order.
In the words of the authors, “The world’s major powers have repeatedly planned covert operations to bring about the partial or total destruction of Israel. The savage extent of the secret wars against the Jews will horrify the Western public .”
Most reviewers try to extract facts or anecdotes from the book in question to give a summation of its central thesis, or bring in contradictory evidence to prove the book’s unreliability. The sheer size and multi-generalization nature of this Twentieth Century epic almost demand that the entire book be read and carefully digested. It appears that the authors got enough for their central thesis to stand.
The book’s subtitle presents its central thesis:” How Western Intelligence Betrayed the Jewish people.”One of its authors, John Loftus, an Irish Catholic was a former prosecutor with the US Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit, and was granted access to classified CIA and NATO archives.
Mark Aarons, one of whose grandparents was Jewish, is an Australian investigative reporter. If a mere 10% of what this book alleges is true, Twentieth Century history as written by the victors is a shameful distortion, and yet a lot more than 10% of this book is probably accurate.
One of the reasons that Jews were hated is because of a clique, which included Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, had many of them being supporters of the Left, anathema to corporate internationalists.
In the view of Loftus and Aarons [or that of many intelligence officers whom they interviewed], Kissinger was a military incompetent and created a climate for war by sabotaging the Sadat/Rogers peace negotiations because he could not claim credit for these.
He dithered with intelligence , mobilization, and re-supply, plus Israel would have been in serious danger without the intervention of White House chief-of-staff [and ex-military man] Alexander Haig. Kissinger scapegoated CIA counterintelligence chief James chief James Jesus Angleton for these blunders, forcing Angleton’s retirement.
When Reagan was elected, a parallel to the Eisenhower years re-emerged. Vice-President Bush organized shadow intelligence oprations out of his offices, the best established of these being the Iran/Contra arms deal. Bush authorized a secret arms shipment to Iran, hoping Iranian pressure oon terrorist groups it supported would get Buckley back. This shipment was unwittingly intercepted by Israel [with the help of Israeli spy Johnathan Pollard], who thought the shipment was destined for the PLO. Bush’s inter meddling continued with secret arms sale to Iraq, then a punishing Gulf War against Iraq when Iraq became a bigger threat than rival Iran.
While the focus of this book is the secret war against the Jews, it raises larger questions about how clandestine intelligence operations have distorted our appreciation of history and made it nearly impossible for the average citizen to follow rationally his country’s foreign policy initiatives.
Surprisingly, Al Jazeera published, “Iran committed crimes against humanity during protest” on March 8, 2024. It discusses Tehran’s violent crackdown on peaceful protests and discrimination against women and girls triggered serious rights violations, many amounting to crimes against humanity as reported by the UN, particularly Iran.
The mission urged Tehran to provide “justice, truth and reparations” to victims of rights violations in connection with the protests. The Iranian authorities refused to cooperate with the mission. However, it has provided further international pressure on Iran amid wider Western concerns about its advancing nuclear program, Iran’s arming of Russia in Moscow’s war on Ukraine and the continued harassment and and imprisonment of activists, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi.
“Enforced disappearances and torture and other ill-treatment were widespread and systematic. Cruel and inhuman punishments, including flogging and amputation, were implemented. The death penalty was used arbitrarily, disproportionately affecting ethnic minorities and migrants.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the best, if not the best expositors of Islam’s Jihad against the West. She admirably defines radical Islam’s campaign and methods.
What she misses, however, is that Islam would not even have a foothold in America without the aid of the subversive elements of our society, who aid and shield the advance of the Islamic enemy who seeks to destroy us. As it was with communism, it is the subversives in our midst who are our most dangerous enemies.
On June 20, 2025, Daniel Greenfield posted in Front Page Magazine, “Iran has been at war with the US for 46 years.” He commences with, “America can’t d o a damn thing against us,” Ayatollah Khomeini bragged while holding our hostages. The Carter administration had undermined the Shah’s government in favor of the Islamists who seized power in 1979 and then prevented the Tehran embassy’s Marine guards from defending the facility and the people inside against the Muslim “student” groups who claimed to be coming in peace.
America couldn’t stop its diplomats and soldiers from being taken hostage and paraded through the streets. By the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian IEDs alone had accounted for as many as 1,000 American victims.
In 1983, Iranian-backed terrorists set off truck bombs in Beirut that killed 220 US Marines and 21 other service members. In 1984, Hezbollah kidnapped, tortured and killed CIA station chief William Francis Buckley, whose identity the terrorists learned from classified documents seized from the embassy in Tehran. Buckley was transferred to Lebanon. Videos distributed by Iran’s Jihadist showed him in agony.
Once again , America did not do a “damn thing.” In 1985, Hezbollah hijacked TWA Flight 847. One of the terrorists was Imad Mughniyeh, who had also interrogated Buckley.”They were jumping in the air and landing full force on his body. He must ha ve had all his ribs broken.”
Instead of sending a message and holding Iran and its terrorists accountable, the US made a deal to have Israel free hundreds of Jihadists. In1996, Shi”te terrorists
backed by Iran bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American service members, but Iran was also pursuing other options, including a new Sunni terror group.
Al Qaeda built a relationship with Iran. The 9/11 Commission noted, “Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11.”[with the aid of Suleiman later taken over by Trump] and”Al Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezbollah.”
The Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton administrations for the most part failed to act. The Obama andBiden administrations took it one step further by adding Iran. President Trump was the 1st to stand up to Iran and show the Islamic terrorist state that there would be consequences.
All Israel News published in ’13 Days of War and Hamas Captivity’ on Feb. 16, 2024, “Huge reward for terrorism –Israel opposes Palestinian State, Netanyahu tells Biden.” Its introduction reads, “Israel rejects the imposition of a Palestinian state in the wake of the October 7 massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Joe Biden in a 40-minute phone conversation on Thursday night.”
Following the phone call, which came during a meeting with CIA director William Burns and meetings of the Security War and Security Cabinets, Netanyahu released a late-night statement ‘regarding the recent talk of imposing a Palestinian state on Israel.
‘Israel outright rejects international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. Such an arrangement will be reached only through direct negotiations between the parties, without preconditions. Israel will continue to oppose the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.
Such recognition in the wake of the October 7 massacre would give a huge reward to unprecedented terrorism and prevent any future peace settlement. The once close relationship between Biden and Netanyahu had markedly deteriorated, reaching a boiling point during a December 28 phone call after a tense exchange of words regarding the reported mounting of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip.
Biden reportedly urged Netanyahu to shift the war to a less intensive phase and got so angry. Perhaps, if he had studied, “Islam Through the Looking Glass” by J.B. Kelly, he would have behaved differently. Almost the whole of the strategy pursued by the Western powers in the Middle East since the end of the the Second World War lies about us in ruins, leaving our vital economic and political interests in the region virtually defenseless—and this at a time when they are most gravely menaced than ever before.
All we could have done is to look at one of the major causes of this disastrous failure in foreign policy, viz, the misconceptions which had prevailed in the West about the nature of Islamic society and government in the Middle East. For more than a generation, we had been told by those in government, the media and the academies who consider it their place to instruct and enlighten us about the world’s affairs that we had nothing to fear from Islam, least of all any deep-rooted animosity against the West.
Through their vacillation and willful self-delusion over the past decade, the Western nations have left a themselves no alternative but to project their military power into the Gulf region. For the perils of inaction in the present disturbed condition of affairs in the Gulf region, are far more serious than the risks attendant upon resolute action.
In 1978, when the tumultuous relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama reached a new low. Over White House objections, the Israeli Prime minister tripped to Washington to attack the President’s foreign policy legacy signature on Iran.
BBC News published, “Netanyahu: A shrewd leader who reshaped Israel” by Yolande Knell on 14 June 2021. He had been called “the King of Israel” and “the great survivor” for a generation, Benjamin Netanyahu, or “Bibi”, as he is popularly known, dominated Israeli politics. Known for his combative style, the country’s longest-serving leader played a key role in its drift to a more right-wing, nationalist outlook.
On the international scene, Netanyahu has been the face of Israel, speaking in fluent US accented English and ensuring his small country punches above its weight. For one biographer, a main part of Mr Netanyahu’s legacy has been to oversee a change which “totally shifts the paradigm” away from seeing Israel only through the prism of its long-standing conflict with the Palestinians.
In early, 2015, as the US led talks to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Mr Netanyahu angered the president by going behind his back to address the US Congress directly. He told lawmakers a prospective deal posed a “grave threat, not only to Israel , but to the peace of the entire world”. But soon relations with Israel’s strongest ally were to change dramatically. Mr. Netanyahu called President Trump his country’s “greatest friend” ever in the White House.
The US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving its embassy from Tel Aviv overturning decades of US policy and international consensus. Those moves infuriated the Palestinians—who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their own hoped-for state—and caused them to break off ties with Washington. The Americans also withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear pact, in a step hailed by Mr. Netanyahu.+
ISRAPUNDIT published, “Netanyahu in message to US: We Reject international dictates on Palestinian state” by Elad Benari, INN on Feb 16, 2024.
Israel will not be pressured into accepting a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday, following a Washington Post report that Israel’s main ally the United States was moving plans to establish a Palestinian state.
“Israel categorically rejects international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians,” said Netanyahu, in a statement published following a call with U.S. President Joe Biden. “Israel will continue to oppose unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.”
Gatestone published, “The ‘Two-State’ Solution to Murder Jews” by Bassam Tawil on November 2, 2023. He argues as follows:
Abbas and the PA have proven again and again that they hate Israel as much, if not more, than Hamas hates Israel.
Creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank would mean turning it into another Iran-led base for Jihad against Jews.
What appears to be missed by many in the West is that it is Israel’s security and civilian presence in the West Bank that is preventing Hamas, or groups such as Al Qaeda or ISIS from seizing control of the area.
It is high time for Biden and other Western leaders to stop pushing delusional ideas that will quickly lead to a repeat of the October 7 massacre. How many Jewish babies must be beheaded or baked alive in an oven, one wonders, for them to see that Palestinian leaders have radicalized their people against Israel to a point where they brag about slaughtering Jews with their own hands.