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Israel's Defense minister: I would prefer Islamic State to Iran in Syria
- Thread starter AcademicSaucer
- Start date
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AuthenticM
Member
That fucking government... man. Will it ever change?
DEAD RABBIT
Member
Because it is easier to justify killing obviously evil bad guys to people who you try your darnedest to paint as evil?
Shuggananas
Banned
nope
From his perspective, which is the military defense of Israel and nothing else, he sees two groups who want to destroy Israel; but only one group has conventional military power. So his statement is not really controversial.
This.
I hardly see his statement as controversial you're basically asking if you'd like an enemy that has ballistic missiles, tanks, professionally trained soldiers, and all the rest v. a rag tag terrorist group made up of disparate groups equipped with whatever they've manged to pillage. Clearly, they'd prefer to fight ISIS over Iran.
Generally I don't comment on the state of Israel, because it seems I have friends and acquaintances on both sides who will blame the other for actions of countries across the ocean, and I really don't have the patience to understand a conflict that as far as I can tell both Han and Greedo shot first.
But good lord that is some dumb comments to make from a government official.
But good lord that is some dumb comments to make from a government official.
JordanN
Banned
Iran funds terror attacks against Israel.
Honestly, outside of a very vocal minority of Iranians, I think after the nuclear deal I think the vast majority of Iran wants to just get back into the global economy that they've been denied for decades. Israel isn't much of concern to them. ISIS? Yes. Israel? Now? Not so much at least comparatively
otoh the likelihood of israel being attacked by isis is much, much higher than a real threat from iran
Buba Big Guns
Banned
It really goes both ways when it comes to Iran and Israel.
He is talking about hypothetical situations in which either ISIS or Iran takes control of parts of Syria.
Are you saying that Israel finances terrorism against Iran because that is simply not the case.
Rktk
Member
Maybe the threat from Iran is that they are a relatively stable Islamic state.
i don't think that would make iran any more likely to want to fight the US military
Gentleman Jack
Member
Let's ask the families of those assassinated nuclear scientists.
Someone else can speak for terrorism, but I'll speak for military cyber attacks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
The Albatross
Member
Pretty sure he's talking about the organizational strength of Iran, versus of that of IS. From an Israeli perspective, Iran has been financing real threats to Israel in Lebanon and Syria for decades (whether you find these threats as Israeli's just desserts or not isn't relevant to the fact that one poses a greater threat). ISIS does not have that kind of funding or organization to pose a legitimate existential threat to Israel, Iran -- the Israeli Defense minister argues -- does.
I know we're all supposed to laugh and insult Israel and their government whenever they're mentioned on neoGaf but... I think he's right?
Israel has been attacked thousands of times over the last 30 years from groups backed by Iran. Regardless of whether we think Israel and Israelis deserve it or not, it's just factually true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Israel_proxy_conflict
I know we're all supposed to laugh and insult Israel and their government whenever they're mentioned on neoGaf but... I think he's right?
Israel has been attacked thousands of times over the last 30 years from groups backed by Iran. Regardless of whether we think Israel and Israelis deserve it or not, it's just factually true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Israel_proxy_conflict
hydrophilic attack
Member
Fuck the current Israeli government
Isreal does it the more American way of using their superior military capabilities to just combat it's percieved threats themselves.
Why fund terrorism when you're fully capable of assassinating and disrupting your enemies yourself with no realistic military reprocussions?
1. Introducing a cyber program to stop the development of a nuclear weapons program is not terrorism.
2. A state carrying out an assassination of a state controlled nuclear scientist is also not terrorism.
Are you really going to compare those two acts with a bomb detonating on a crowded bus in the middle of Jerusalem?
EDIT:
This isn't semantics, terrorism is the willful targeting of innocent civilians by an outside actor/group usually to affect some sort of political will/change. Military scientists working on a secret weapons program would not count as innocent civilians.
beato_angelico
Member
It should be clear that isreal's priorities and the west priorities are different in this phase.
Isis has never targeted isreal. Iran don't train and inspire suicide bombers, but has supported for years isreal's immediate enemies, pluse the whole atomic bomb thing.
Isis has never targeted isreal. Iran don't train and inspire suicide bombers, but has supported for years isreal's immediate enemies, pluse the whole atomic bomb thing.
That's silly. The moment ISIS or anybody were to take control of Syria or Iran they would instantly have the conventional military power.
Why are you choosing to ignore the fact that I specifically said Stuxnet wasn't terrorism, but was a military attack? I didn't call it terrorism.
TheRealTalker
Banned
didn't those so called assassins on motorcycles stick bombs on cars and blew them up
bomb also killed people around it
I mean what is the objective of that technique.... to instil fear to the Iranian scientist that if they continue to work on a nuclear program they will be killed
beato_angelico
Member
what?
See no evil on your part huh. Well the government of Israel is as bad as the terrorist they are trying to defeat.
Buba Big Guns
Banned
....
Jundallah, MEK, and Mossad itself are huge players when it comes to terrorism in Iran.
You'd have to be willfully ignorant to believe otherwise.
http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news...nuclear-scientists-us-officials-tell-nbc-news
http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/01/13/false-flag/
No, it is not silly. Not at all. Because military equipment has only value if you have trained personnel to use it. And even if you'd fine a few, let's say, pilots to adequately fly combat aircraft, you'd still be miles away from the proficiency of a stable nation state with a stable and loyal military.
?
My point is that ISIS taking over a nation would likely involve absorbing a large amount of their conventional weaponry.
AcademicSaucer
Member
Their treatment of the palestinians tells me that they are almost equal.
You're assuming defections are incredibly low. If there's one thing we've seen with middle eastern militaries it's that they are more than happy to switch sides when shit isn't looking good.
And very few weapons of war approach the complexity of operating and maintaining combat aircraft.
It's not just about defections, which I think you overstate, especially when it comes to the loyalty and efficiency of the resulting band of people. Another factor, for instance, is that a large military needs good logistics and the production capabilities of a nation state to support it in times of combat. For instance, by producing ammunition, fuel, etc. Iran has that. Syria in the hands of ISIS would not.
BossDarkseid
Member
I understand what he says on a basic level but my first reaction was still pretty much...
Still seems like a silly thing to say but oh well, Israeli-government gonna somethingsomething
Still seems like a silly thing to say but oh well, Israeli-government gonna somethingsomething
They would if they could.
beato_angelico
Member
You really don't understand what "isis taking over" means?
They're not doing a military or political coup, or a revolution, like for example the islamists in iran in 1979.
They're doing long, bloody civil wars. You don't take over a state this way and magically at the end you have access to a sizable conventional military force.
Um, did I say that? I was responding to the specific claim that Israel was supporting active terrorism within Iran. The carrying out of targeted assassinations of military officials would not fit the definition of terrorism. I did not say that such attacks were justified or accepted.
Those reports hardly lay out evidence that Israel actually financed terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians, the only real evidence is that Israel help train and back Iranian dissident groups to carry out the assassination of nuclear scientists. It doesn't tie Israel to the bombings carried out by Junudallah inside Iranian mosques or the kidnapping of innocent Iranian civilians.
To be clear, I am no blind support of Israel. I think Nenthanyahu is a mad man and a warmonger who cares not one bit about peace and has only made the Palestinian situation worse. But, to compare Iranian efforts against Israel through their repeated financing of actual terrorist attacks against Israel to Israels efforts against their nuclear weapons program as equal is nonsense.
The Albatross
Member
I think it's amazing how out of touch everybody is to what this defense minister is saying, which is ... completely true. Iran poses a larger existential threat to Israel than Isis does. He's not making any other point than that (from what we can tell from this article), and he's right.
We have such anti-Israeli blinders on that when somebody like the Israeli Defense Minister says something that is true we immediately type "fuck the israeli government!" it's just a handful of posters stop to actually consider his point before hitting "submit reply"
*edit*
Also I think it's rich that we all think we're more informed about Isis than a guy whose sole responsibility is to monitor threats (perceived or real) to Israel.
Almost all legal definitions of terrorism do not mention anything about innocent civilians. For instance both the attack on the USS Cole and the 1983 Beirut Marines barracks bombing were classed by the US as an act of terrorism.
In the UK, the legal definition (as defined by the Terrorism Act 2000)
In the US Title 18 of the US code defines it as
The proposed UN comprehensive convention on International Terrorism proposes the following definition.
Israeli assassination of noncombatants (Iranian nuclear scientists) would fall under each of those definitions. Now you might argue that Israeli action is understandable or far more targeted and limited in scope than Iran financing of terrorist groups and that's fine, but by most definitions blowing up folk in the middle of a street to enact governmental change in policy IS terrorism.
The problem with those definitions as I've always found is that they make the definition too broad. Under those definitions any attack by another State either directly or indirectly could be classified as a terrorist attack. Israel bombing a nuclear weapons facility would fall under that definition of terrorism the same as a group detonating a bomb in a crowded school bus. That cannot possibly be right or equated as the same thing.
I actually don't consider things like the Cole bombing or the Beirut military barracks bombings as terrorist attacks since they were against strictly military personnel. That more resembles guerrilla warfare.
DrGonzo615
Banned
This. too many gut reactions without actually thinking about it.
Yes a country with basically 200 years of history in pacifism is the biggest threat to Israel.
Not the actual real threat of a region in chaos, not the threat of the US government not supporting every single action Israel takes both internally or externally, not the threat of imminent environmental crisis due to water shortages in the region. Big bad Iran, funding those pesky Palestinian terrorist groups.
The biggest threat to the existence of Israel is the far right politicians running the country
Now, this is rich.
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