The al-Jazeera channel gave Netanyahu’s speech limited coverage, and in its Internet site – which is full of reports about the military revolution in Egypt against the legitimate regime of the Muslim Brotherhood – it is difficult to find any reference to the speech. This is apparently because the channel’s content editors do not trust Netanyahu, since they do not believe that there is actually anything credible in the Israeli threat against Iran. For years, the channel has been saying that Israel will not carry out an attack Iran by itself, for a number of reasons: 1) The distance between Israel and Iran, which prevents Israel from transporting bombs and soldiers secretly, so that Israel could mount a surprise attack; 2) To carry out an attack, Israel would have to pass over the territory of enemy countries; 3) The danger that Iran may begin a missile war against Israel; 4) The Israeli fear that Hizb’Allah will launch thousands of rockets over the entire territory of Israel; 5) The fear in Israel that the United States and Europe would object to the Israeli military action and cut it off prematurely, by means of harsh anti-Israeli resolutions of the Security Council before Israel will have succeeded to achieve any of its goals. Therefore it seems that the al-Jazeera channel does not regard Netanyahu’s speech and his threats seriously, which explains the limited coverage of his speech.
The Iranian attitude toward Netanyahu’s speech was as expected. The foreign minister of Iran called Netanyahu a “liar,” although he gave no reason for calling the prime minister of Israel this name. How could he counter the citations that Netanyahu brought from Rouhani’s book, in which he boasts that he had fooled the world? Besides, the Iranians do not need to try hard, because the West is in their pocket anyway, owing to a few smiles, interviews and moderate speeches that Rouhani has given lately. The Iranians are laughing all the way to the bomb because they know that the world will not allow Netanyahu to spoil the party when Obama, Merkel, Cameron and Hollande all sit around the campfire together with Rouhani and sing “Kumbaya.”
The Israeli Diplomatic Failure
Despite all the well-deserved respect that the Israeli people have for the prime minister on account of the brilliant speech that he gave at the UN this year, and also for the speech that he gave last year, we cannot ignore the fact that all of Netanyahu’s speeches, all of the messages that prime ministers of Israel have sent to world leaders, all of the delegations that Israel has dispatched throughout the world and all of the briefings that leaders and politicians hosted by Israel have received about the danger that Iran poses to Israel and the peace of the region and the world, all of this could not stand up against a few smiles and pronouncements from Rouhani, including the talk about the phantom fatwa that supposedly cites a religious prohibition against the creation of nuclear weapons. How can it be that after all of these diplomatic efforts and explanatory information, that Iran, in the space of only one month and with a series of smiles and soft talk, manages to change from a Pariah country to the darling of the international community, from a nuclear threat to a partner for negotiations, without giving up one iota of its diabolical plan?
Of course, one could cast blame on the world, saying that just as the world stood by when millions of Jews were led to slaughter in the years of the forties, the same world is not too upset about the possibility that Iran will try to carry out another holocaust on the people that dwells in Zion. Because what is the difference between then and now? Doesn’t the same anti-Semitism that existed then still exist today?
We could blame Russia and China as well, who used their veto power in the Security Council to overturn the decisions against Iran, frustrating the efforts of the international community to carry out any resolution against Iran and its nuclear project. We could blame the world’s addiction to oil and gas from Iran and say that it’s all money, and economic interests take precedence over ethical considerations.