Israel: Hawks Pressing their Case

The NY Times runs down the players in the increasingly loud ratchet up to a third US war in the Middle East:

With Israeli leaders warning of an existential threat from Iran and openly discussing the possibility of attacking its nuclear facilities, pro-Israel groups on all sides have mobilized to make their views known to the Obama administration and to Congress. But it is the most hawkish voices, like the Emergency Committee’s, that have dominated the debate, and, in the view of some critics, pushed the United States closer to taking military action against Iran and another war in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, US Generals, following on a classified war game, are not happy about the loose talk:

A classified war simulation exercise held this month to assess the American military’s capabilities to respond to an Israeli attack on Iran forecast that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.

When the exercise had concluded earlier this month, according to the officials, General Mattis [who commands all American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, ] told aides that an Israeli first-strike would likely have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there.

Peter Beinhart, in an Opinion piece headlines To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements argues that to preserve a two-state solution, which Israel is in the process of making a mockery of, and which he claims  a new Palestine initiative called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) could could also destroy:

…we should call the West Bank “nondemocratic Israel.” The phrase suggests that there are today two Israels: a flawed but genuine democracy within the green line and an ethnically-based nondemocracy beyond it. It counters efforts by Israel’s leaders to use the legitimacy of democratic Israel to legitimize the occupation and by Israel’s adversaries to use the illegitimacy of the occupation to delegitimize democratic Israel.