Ordered to Die Quietly

US President George W. Bush, through Secretary of State Colin Powell, has given notice to Israel that, should Saddam attack Israel and should Israel respond, Israel would forfeit all international support.(1)

The United States has given Israel the privilege of receiving, in real time, whatever electronic intelligence that the U.S. is generating. The report did not say what Israel was supposed to do, or allowed to do, if Saddam’s attack was non-conventional, such as NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical). I presume that Bush and Powell would expect to be notified if Israelis were to suddenly die en masse, as did the Iranians or the Iraqi Kurds (in an Iraqi town of 45,000, Halabja, in August 1988). As I recall, Saddam used a mix of Mustard Gas and a potent cocktail of nerve gases, including Tabun, Sarin and Soman. Half of the victims died in choking, blistering agony, while those hit with Sarin died as if peacefully asleep. Some may recall the photos of Saddam’s work in one photo news magazine.

The people of Halabja who survived are now suffering from tumors and cancers of all kinds, mutations in birth, eye damage, respiratory and neurological malfunctions. Children die in a few years from Leukemia and lymphomas. Miscarriages are common. Well, you get the idea. And yet, despite all this prima facie evidence, Israel is not to attack preemptively and not even after she has been struck.

Bush and Powell mentioned that Israel would "forfeit" international support. I was wondering what "International Support" they were referring to. Hopefully, the President did not mean America would remove her support if Israel fought back should it be struck with WMD (Weapons of Mass Death). Israel has always been grateful for the generous support America has given her throughout the years, and tried to repay that generosity with good intelligence and loyalty. As for the "International Community", they are not even supporting America in her fight against global terrorism and terrorist nations. If Bush and Powell were referring to the "Quartet" - namely, the United Nations, European Union (especially France and Germany), Russia and the U.S. State Department - well, Israel does not have to do anything to forfeit their support, since it was never there.

In the last Gulf War, Desert Storm 1991, Israel was promised that American, British and French aircraft would make taking out the Iraqi SCUD launchers a "top priority", if Israel did not attack Iraq and upset the Arab coalition members. Not one launcher was actually destroyed, according to the U.S. Government Accounting Office report years later. As a relevant aside, those mobile SCUD launchers were manufactured by Matrix-Churchill, an English company, later purchased by Saddam’s front companies, where Matrix also acted as a procurer for other weapons, like cluster bombs. In any case, after the 1991 Gulf War, the GAO published its findings about President George Herbert Walker Bush, then-Secretary of State James Baker and then-Chief of Staff Colin Powell regarding their pledge to attack the SCUD missile launchers. The fact surfaced that, apparently, the order was never given; but, even if it was, it was not obeyed.

Israel was hit by 39 SCUDs and if any had contained biological or chemical warheads, the casualties would have been in the tens of thousands and worse than those in Halabja. By G-d’s miracle, only one man was killed by a SCUD, although the property damage was extensive. The Patriots of that day hit the motors of the incoming SCUDS and their shrapnel and explosives hit the residential areas. Israeli pilots who are trained to fly at deck level could have found and hit those SCUDs and maybe could have saved the 28 American soldiers who were killed when their barracks in Saudi Arabia was hit by a Saddam SCUD.

Israel received many promises for additional aid and protection if they stayed out of the war in which they became targets. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir kept his side of the bargain and didn’t send Israeli aircraft, which were warmed up on the runways, to hit Iraq’s mobile SCUD launchers. But, when he later asked Bush, Baker and Powell for the promised loan guarantees for war damages and absorption of one million incoming Soviet Jews, all the administration’s promises evaporated, until Israel accommodated the State Department for Yasser Arafat. Later, after they drove Shamir out of office by interfering with the Israeli elections, they replaced him with a more accommodating Yitzhak Rabin, with Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, on their way to creating the failed Oslo experiment. Only then were the loan guarantees granted.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has kept his promise of restraint, but he only received delays when he asked President George Bush, Jr. for the promised loan guarantees, intended to offset damages from the 29 months of Arab Palestinian terror attacks and defensive preparations for the possible and probable attack by megalomaniac Saddam Hussein, in his last throes of dictatorship, with the WMD (Weapons of Mass Death) at his disposal.

So, dear Jews of Israel, you have been ordered not to make a fuss and to die quietly. You remember how to do that - just like you did when you waited for the "International Community" to come to your rescue 60 years ago: No bombing of the death camps, the crematoria, the rail-lines to the death camps; the conferences of the "International Community" in Bermuda and Evian, where the leading nations among the Allies decided it would be better not to rescue, feed or clothe Jewish victims until after Germany was defeated. Yes, indeed, we Jews had better be more careful this time, lest we irritate the "International Community". We must be very careful not to defend ourselves and our country, just in case we "forfeit" their support.

So, how about it President Bush? Play fair with the Israelis, because now you know you cannot buy the loyalty or affection of the U.N., E.U., France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, or Arafat’s Arab Palestinians no matter how much you push Israel to the wall. Remember, only the British and the Israelis stepped up immediately next to the American troops when it counted. Let America treat an ally and a friend with the honor and respect it deserves. It is small, but it has proven its fighting spirit against overwhelming forces. And now, America faces the same enemy.

1. “U.S. Military Plugs Israel into Real-Time War Monitoring” by Nathan Guttman, Ha’aretz English Edition (March 4, 2003).

Emanuel A. Winston is a Middle East analyst and commentator with the Gamla and Freeman organizations.

Note the source, Ha’aretz . It's an overreaction to the last line of the article.

U.S. military plugs Israel into real-time war monitoring

Unprecedented access to command intelligence aims to keep IDF out of Iraq conflict

By Nathan Guttman

WASHINGTON - Israel and the United States have set up a joint command post next to the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv at which Israeli army officers will be able to view real-time pictures of the movements of American war planes over Iraq in the event of a war.

In addition, an American early warning system that is hooked directly into U.S. intelligence satellites over Iraq was transferred to Israel a few weeks ago, giving Israel direct access to information on any Iraqi missile launches at its terrority, with no delays and no filtering.

Both of these are unprecedented measures, according to a report in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The aim is to prove to Israel that the U.S. is doing everything in its power to prevent Iraqi missiles from landing here, and therefore to convince it not to retaliate should any missiles nevertheless hit.

According to the Journal, Israel will be the only country other than the U.S. hooked directly into the U.S. Central Command's communications system. The joint command post in Tel Aviv will enable Israel Defense Forces officers to view what is termed the "common air picture" - essentially an upgraded version of a flight command and control system that enables the viewer to follow the activities of all American and Iraqi aircraft in real time. Israeli officers will thus be viewing exactly the same pictures as the U.S. officers running the war from the CENTCOM base in Qatar.

A senior U.S. official told the Journal that this decision was made because the Americans' experience in the 1991 Gulf War convinced them that the best way to restrain the Israelis was to let them see for themselves that the U.S. was doing everything possible to eliminate the Iraqi threat.

However, Israel will not be able to use this real-time information to launch its own attack on Iraq, since the Israeli air force will not be able to enter Iraqi airspace unless the U.S. supplies it with the IFF codes that distinguish friend from foe.

The other measure, the loan of the early warning system, is equally revolutionary. During the Gulf War, Israel received U.S. information about incoming Iraqi Scuds only three minutes after the missile launch - greatly shortening the available reaction time, since a Scud takes only six or seven minutes to travel from western Iraq to Tel Aviv.

The satellite data was first relayed to America's ALERT system in Colorado, then to the U.S. Army command and only then to Israel. In 1996, the Clinton administration decided to hook Israel directly into the ALERT system, but even with this improvement, there was a 90-second lag time before Israel received the information.

The loan of America's JTAGS early warning system will reduce the lag time to almost zero, giving Israel ample time to operate its Arrow and Patriot anti-missile batteries. The truck-sized system is linked directly to American intelligence satellites, thereby eliminating the time spent in transferring the data to Colorado and from there to Israel.

In addition, unlike the ALERT system, JTAGS does not filter out any of the data. Thus Israel will have full access to all the information collected by American satellites over Iraq, even if it does not relate to Iraqi missile launches.

The U.S. has also decided to set up a special sub-command, headed by a general from one of its special forces units, for the destruction of missile launchers in western and southern Iraq. The subcommand was established pursuant to America's promise to Jerusalem that destroying missile launchers in western Iraq would be given high priority in the early phases of the war. The command will seize one or two airfields in western Iraq even before America begins the ground war and will use them as bases for anti-missile operations in the area. The U.S. will employ pilotless drones to locate and destroy the missile launchers.

America's hope is that all these measures will persuade Israel to exercise restraint even if Iraq scores a successful missile strike on Israel. The U.S. has also warned Israel that should it respond to an Iraqi attack with non-conventional weapons, it would immediately forfeit all international support.

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