good evening and welcome to more politics on your host bill ford demonization of iran is underway maybe you've been convinced that iran is a nexus national threat to israel and the world that propaganda traces to you guessed israel my guest richard silberstein has cried foul over that you can are used by israel to demonize iran the world threat may actually be israel's repeat guests to more politics it's my pleasure to welcome a turning guest richard silverstein richard does the rhetoric against iran especially in regards to its nuclear program match with the real threat no i don't think it is i think that there's been a level of hysteria that has been raised by israeli politicians generals the intelligence establishment against iran that doesn't match the actual threat that israel faces currently from iran there's there's no question we should get this out of the way there's no question that iran is pursuing nuclear research it's enriching uranium and the processes that are underway scientifically within iran could eventually at some point lead to them being able to produce a nuclear weapon but producing one and producing a delivery system and all the different components that have to go into creating an actual nuclear weapon that can be delivered or very very complicated technically and everyone almost everyone even the israelis can see that iran is not there you know i mentioned earlier that you your filter and as well as now you're walking to work al jazeera tell us a little bit about that i've been blogging since two thousand and three i started just before the iraq war began and i am one of the earliest progressive jewish bloggers and blogs about the israeli arab conflict and you've covered a rand extensively oh yes for at least the last year or two i've been covering all of the developments that have  happened the sanctions that the united states government has attempted to impose the rhetoric that the israeli government is using against iran bibi netanyahu the prime minister saying that iran is late to munich in hundred thirty eight this is a an existential threat to israel that iran wants to destroy not just israel but all the jewish people and this kind of what i call nonsense and hysteria is really  creating a distortion in israeli politics that could actually lead to military action against iran and a total disaster in the region where you put your believes in the action and notice the response to the local jewish federation and apac get a real conference you hosted recently a conference of self i did you had some distinguished guests there and it was focused on peace right i looked at the program that the federation put together better iran and felt that it was very skewed towards a hawkish view of iran it wasn't realistic and i didn't think that it was factually speakers that were invited didn't really have any particular expertise in in iran itself they knew what the israeli position was towards iran and they and they presented that position but they didn't present any balance i wanted to do a program that would present a much broader much more refined  view i wanted to bring actual professors in these disciplines so we had enlisted from the university of pennsylvania is an expert on israeli politics we had a he me from the university of southern california who is an expert on the iranian nuclear program and we had keith weisman who has worked for apac in the past and was the iran specialist and so we had three people who really were well versed in all the issues did any of them attacks by iran and iran's proxies against israel possibly against the united states it would just be an utter disaster article that appeared on your tikkun olam blog about the nuclear trigger triggers is very revealing about that you can read it is used to demonize a way and want to tell the viewers about that yes the times of london produced a report that was supposedly based on authentic iranian government weapon the it needs to be triggered and this particular device is a very critical component of that so the fact that they if they could have actually found a government document that that documented that they were doing this it would have added tremendous proof authentication to those who are claiming that iran is on the road to creating a nuclear weapon that it wants to actually be able to deliver the problem was that reporters fill that the times of london was relying on a fraudulent document much like the uranium in the iranian claims that niger was providing yellowcake for saddam that were used to bolster the claim of d in in iraq do you agree that there is an ideological dimension in israel that is causing this iran a phobia any time that there is an e a nation or any group in the world that seems to have an agenda that would lead to hatred of jews or wish to kill jews this create this immediate visceral kind of time primitive  response in israel is of trying to protect themselves trying to make sure that they are not under threat and if the averages relief perceive this kind of threat they would be willing to go to any lengths to protect themselves and to do the average d this concept of the iron wall that job since he put forward which is that israel should surround itself with an iron wall that it should be impregnable to its to its enemies that for every attack that an enemy of israel makes on on israel that it should respond tenfold a very very harsh hawkish brutal kind of sense of the middle east reality in which israel is always going to be potentially at war with its neighbors it's never going to find peace in less it dominates the region so the question you raised before about hegemony is important one i think in the in the to ski mode there has to be is really a gemini israel has to control the agenda it has to control its enemies it has to take away from its enemies the right the ability to hit or harm israel even though between you and i we understand that that's impossible that's a view the job since good may have had in the one thousand nine hundred thirty s but history has changed the current times are different times are different possibility of negotiations between palestinians and israelis is rooted in job i think that many israelis believe that it's impossible to come to terms with palestinians probably the majority that doesn't mean that israelis aren't pragmatic enough to understand that they need to try to come to some kind of accommodation it doesn't mean that there can't be a negotiation and the resolution the conflict but if you have an entire people who basically doesn't believe that it's possible it really does foreclose a lot of things and i think that the job since he kind of hostility towards that of the arabs does inform that and that's where they go back to the iron wall type of hunker down mentality understand the is really probably jews in general but especially israelis and the conflict zone that the room you have to understand the whole cost do you agree oh yes definitely i think that  made a very good point he compared the impact of the holocaust has on the average israeli to post traumatic stress disorder saying that this severely traumatic experience that  not just the holocaust but if you go back in jewish history you have the crusades you have the spanish inquisition hundreds of thousands of jews throughout history have been murdered for their religion and the holocaust is sort of the crowning achievement of the jew haters throughout history and so yes i think jews almost in every day are thinking in their minds about that either about the holocaust or about the danger yes even if iran's not yes i think there's always a danger in a society if you look at serbia and slobodan milosevic and his sense of grievance and the loss of kosovo which informed  the genocide that the serbians perpetrated there it's the same thing in in israel that history has given jews this terrible sense of wounded and and trauma and it prevents them from actually seeing the reality right in front of their eyes because instead of seeing palestinians with whom there might be peace they see a nazi and it's a very strange kind of  thirty eight munich agreement which brought hitler to sway in all of europe he wants israelis to forget that these are iranians he wants them to only think about guys wearing swastikas on their arms he wants them only to think about ahmadinejad supposedly saying we will wipe israel off the face of the map and all it requires is certain it's like pavlov's dog it requires just a bell to ring the holocaust to be  mentioned and israelis go into this shutdown mode and they stop thinking about what's right in front of their face but there's no room recall that hillary clinton the pennsylvania primary went on record as saying that she would annihilate  acumen jewish voters of pennsylvania which is a heavily dominated jewish state and so seems like perceptions are depending on which side you're part of right well i think that that plays happens as well in the united states i think to a let much lesser extent because we don't have the same traumas but i think that the israel lobby here in the united states is trying to invoke that same kind of spirit there's been a lot of distortion create that has crept into the political dialogue about iran the whole sanctions movement here which is attempting to ratchet up a new level of sanctions on iran in the claim that somehow these sanctions will bring iran to heel and will make it give up its nuclear program or complicit actions ever work that way they only worked in south africa and that was a totally different historical situation but when they've been tried in other situations they haven't worked a myth that sanctions cannot work in a situation where they just hurt the average person and actually jade them from yes the party causing the sanctions that's right they will just hurt the average iranian they will just heard iranian children just like the sanctions we imposed on iraq before the war hurt the poor they hurt the children and many many hundreds of thousands of iraqis were ended up dying of malnutrition and other kinds of illnesses because of the sanctions and the same thing will happen in iran and the people that will benefit in iran will be the revolutionary guards who have control of the iranian economy and have devised all sorts of methods to circumvent sanctions that  it's a placeholder policy because we are basically bankrupt we don't have a policy that we're really engaging iran and negotiate a real resolution of this problem do you think that the this whole issue of nuclear dimona with their own nuclear program and what as he called it the studied ambiguity where israel has almost never acknowledged that it actually has nuclear weapons but the entire world knows that it has that it has nuclear weapons one hymie who olmert either deliberately or by accident conceded that israel had nuclear weapons and he was he was roundly chided by everyone in israel for that but everyone knows that israel is somewhere between sixty and two hundred i've even heard a number of size four hundred nuclear devices but it never acknowledges that it wants to let every neighbor every potentially hostile neighbor know that it will never say that it does but if they ever think of attacking israel in any way that causes serious damage they want them to know that they will not be afraid to use them it was an interesting point ruse to get which guessed your room peace conference about the use usable in a useful aspect of nuclear weapons they may be useful but they're not usable and right right there they're useful in the sense that they allow israel to impose sort of germany over the political agenda in the middle east  they they don't allow any hostile neighbor to conceive of an attack against israel that would really be an existential threat because they know that if they were to try to overrun israel or or do something along those lines that israel would use nuclear weapons of course the nuclear weapons are not usable in a place like the middle east because you will not only destroy your neighbor but you'll destroy yourself so th about existential threat really is rather hollow than if you were talking about a nuclear israel and a non nuclear neighbor but but the the irony of this situation is that israel claims that the ayatollah is in iran are so insane and they use those terms that they're willing not just to destroy israel but to in the process destroy their own country that there is a kind of view of the iranians as you know the concept of the  for the sake of their religion and their ideology they're willing like sampson to pull the pit the pillars of the temple down and destroy israel and iran and that there's some sort of holy  destructive impulse in iran that roots itself in the islam and that the whole middle east you know would run would only be happy enough to bring the entire middle east down if we could just achieve this religious goal of destroying israel which is in itself a kind of an insane notion but israel is very happy to kind of put that forward to the world and see how much of the world is willing to absorb do you think there's any possibility that israel would strike on  own iran i think that israel would like to strike iran if it could i think that obama probably has been holding them back i know for a fact from the news media that bush gave a red light to owner when he went to washington and i believe his chief of staff also went to washington to try to get an agreement on that and bush wouldn't give it and certainly bush wouldn't give it obama i can't believe would now the question is is israel crazy enough or desperate enough or whatever the word you want to use to do it on its own without the support or with the deliberate opposition of the united states that i'm not sure about i think that israel definitely wants to wait to play out the sanctions issue and give time to that to see whether that quote unquote works which it won't there may be time in the next few months that will come up where they'll say to the world the sanctions haven't worked we now we want to see what the next step is what the world is willing to do for us and if you're not willing to take whatever the next step should be then we're going to have to consider doing it ourselves and that might be the point at which israel long report about this issue and he claims that there is very little likelihood that israel could actually succeed on its own in its cheating its goal in iran which would be to set back seriously set back the nuclear research the nuclear program it would require so much interest coordination of of military equipment and it would require so much success in terms of targeting bombs they have to get to the exact right place they have to have so much intelligence to know exactly where to strike that it's almost impossible for him to conceive israel could succeed and israel would certainly we cannot so by taking this action certainly in the court of world it would weaken its often a lot of ways because if you look at it from just a pragmatic that it will succeed in destroying them if they attack israel now if israel attacks iran and it doesn't succeed it doesn't create any long term damage to the program it's lost the to turns that's what happened in two thousand and six with  lebanon military means cannot be used to impose its will on its neighbors and that's what you have had since he believed was the only way for israel to go and that's what the current israeli government believes if you think the jabotinsky of zionism is coming home to roost so speak that the elites of israel are living in greater fear not only from their enemies but from their own government's actions and that they're immigrating from israel and that it's leaving behind it even more radical on average population i don't think that that that concept permeates maybe the top level the senior leadership but it certainly does impact younger well educated and i am lost dick has done a lot of research on the outflow of intellect of intellectual property of the brain drain from israel that happens as a result of this ceaseless is an ending drone of war and conflict and  hostility that happens that many is really especially younger israelis see that this could be what happens over the next decade two three four and they see their entire lives living under this paul and they don't want to and that's why they consider leaving israel now if if you israel does attack iran that ratchets that up even higher and then more people more younger people will be thinking about doing that unfortunately it leaves the true believers in place in israel the  netanyahu is that we could party these right wing nationalists who are so fervent in their beliefs and so certain of their beliefs that they're willing to take israel down the road to to war and potential destruction seen what cheaper alternative to planes and tanks an option that george mitchell mentioned recently on the charlie rose show on p b s and he said that if israel continues to be intransigent about resolution the israeli palestinian conflict that the u has some serious options at hand that it provides three billion dollars to israel each year in the form loan guarantees they're used to purchase weapons and various other things that in the past of the  george bush sr used the money that the us provides israel and cut it off in order to pressure israel and when that money was cut off israel a topple the government and be entered into the i believe that if the us threatened to withhold and or didn't withhold if it needed to that money that that would cause a huge impact in his written these internal israeli political dynamic and that is something that we need to not be afraid to use but i think real politic of the the israel lobby is that even these i think that it is feasible i think that there will be a huge amount of screaming and kicking on the part of the lobby when that sort of thing is  broached but i think the the average american realizes that this is a conflict that could engulf either the whole region or the whole world if you no clear weapons were to be used and that's simply something that we cannot what can they do how can they make a difference well that's a that's a good question i think that first of all what they need to do is just educate themselves i think they should start looking in whatever media outlets that they read online or the newspaper they should try to find sources which educate them about what is going on in the middle east but we can go on record saying that there is no access to israel from iran no there i don't believe that that's the case at all and i think that people owe it to themselves try to find the sources in the media that will educate them about that type of issue read people like roger cohen the columnist in the new york times and  others that are putting forward really sound well reasoned coverage of iran and of the relationship between israel and iran and also support n g o s in israel and here that are trying to ratchet down the level of conflict human rights n g o s like human rights watch in israel it's wonderful organizations there's one called the selling which is the human rights organization there's peace now which is an organization some of our lives  viewers might have heard of those are very very important groups in an israeli context because they put forward a message that is not heard in the mainstream media as much and is not heard certainly in the political echelons and that is that there is hope for peace through negotiation and there is a possibility of a nuclear free middle east countries in the middle east either have nuclear weapons or they want the rise and the more that this process goes on where iran is engaging in this kind of research that could lead that way other countries will then need to do it so the more countries in the middle east that have only their weapons the more likelihood that eventually one will be used so a nuclear free middle east seems the sane ist and most rational