Israel won't 'dignify' Brzezinski with response

By Aaron Klein

Carter adviser suggested U.S. shoot down Jewish state's aircraft if they attack Iran

JERUSALEM – Both the Israeli government and the military here refused to respond to comments by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, who said the U.S. should confront Israeli jets if that nation chooses to take military action against Iran's nuclear installations.

"We will not dignify Brzezinski with a response," a source in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office told WND.

Netanyahu's spokesmen and the Israel Defense Forces refused to provide an official reply.

Discussing the possibility of an Israeli airstrike against Iran, Brzezinski declared in an interview with the Daily Beast website, "We are not exactly impotent little babies."

"Are we just going to sit there and watch?" Brzezinski asked.

He said the U.S. has to be "serious" about denying Israel the right to fly over U.S.-patrolled airspace in Iraq to attack Iran

"That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not," he said.

"No one wishes for this, but it could be a Liberty in reverse," he said.

The Liberty was a U.S. ship in international waters in the Middle East during the Six-Day War in 1967 that was hit by Israeli gunfire.

Brzezinski advised Carter on confrontations in Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East during Carter's White House tenure.

He said the Obama administration also already should have developed "a clearer position on what we are prepared to do to promote a Palestinian-Israeli peace."

"Simply giving a frequent-traveler ticket to George Mitchell is not the same thing as policy. It took a long time to get going on Iran, but there is an excuse there, the Iranian domestic mess. And we are now eight months into the administration, and I would have thought by now we could have formulated a strategy that we would have considered 'our' strategy for dealing with Iran and Pakistan," he said.

"For example, the Carter administration, which is sometimes mocked, by now had in motion a policy of disarmament with the Russians, which the Russians didn't like, but eventually bought; it had started a policy of normalization with the Chinese; it rammed through the Panama Canal treaty; and it was moving very, very openly toward an Israeli-Arab political peace initiative," he said.

Source: WND

Brezinski urges Obama to shoot down Israeli jets

Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has urged US President Barack Obama to make it clear that if the IAF tries to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities via Iraqi airspace, the US Air Force will shoot down the Israeli jets.

"We are not exactly impotent little babies," Brzezinski told The Daily Beast in an interview published Sunday. "They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? ... We have to be serious about denying them that right.

That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a 'Liberty' in reverse."

The USS Liberty was a US Navy technical research ship accidentally struck by the IAF on the fourth day of the Six Day War, after being misidentified as an Egyptian warship.

Brzezinski, who was former president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, endorsed Barack Obama's presidential campaign. However, he has no role in the current administration.

Meanwhile, in an interview with CNN aired on Sunday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that President Shimon Peres had assured him that Israel was not planning a military strike on Iran.

"When he visited me in Sochi, Israeli President Peres said something important for us all: 'Israel does not plan to launch any strikes on Iran, we are a peaceful country and we will not do this'," Medvedev said.

On Thursday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted as saying that Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel.

"I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel," he told Yedioth Aharonot. "Israel is strong, I don't see anyone who could pose an existential threat."

Source: Jpost

US officials to Obama: Talk to Hamas

By Herb Keinon

A top economic adviser to US President Barack Obama, along with nine former senior officials, is calling on the American leader to open dialogue with Hamas, The Boston Globe reported Saturday.

According to the report, Paul A. Volcker and other members of the bipartisan group - including former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski - have sent a letter to Obama urging him to engage Hamas in order to coax the terrorist organization to disarm and join a peaceful Palestinian unity government.

The letter was reportedly handed to Obama days before he took office.

Another member of the group, US/Middle East Project President Henry Siegman, said the White House has promised to allow the group to make its case before Obama.

"I see no reason not to talk to Hamas," Scowcroft said.

"The main gist is that you need to push hard on the Palestinian peace process," he added. "Don't move it to the end of your agenda and say you have too much to do. And the US needs to have a position, not just hold their coats while they sit down."

Other members of the group are former Republican senators Chuck Hagel and Nancy Kassebaum Baker, former House International Relations Committee chairman Lee Hamilton, former World Bank president James Wolfensohn, former United Nations ambassador Thomas Pickering, former US trade representative Carla Hills and former special counsel to President John F. Kennedy Theodore Sorensen.

The report is not the first instance of cracks appearing in the international boycott of local terror organizations. Britain recently announced that it would hold discussions with Hizbullah's political wing.

Bill Rammell, the UK Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, told the British Parliament earlier this month that the decision was made "in the light of more positive developments in Lebanon, and the formation of the national unity government in which Hizbullah is participating."

"Our over-riding objective is to press Hizbullah to play a more constructive role and move away from violence," he said.

The British move has been roundly condemned in Jerusalem.

Source: Jerusalem Post
H/T: Weasel Zippers

Nancy Kassebaum Baker
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Chuck Hagel
Lee Hamilton
Carla Hills
Brent Scowcroft
Henry Siegman
Theodore Sorensen
Paul Volcker
James Wolfensohn
Latest recipients of The Dhimmi Award

Supporters of Hamas should be:
	I am a Muslim
	Praised
	Left alone
	Shunned
	Jailed until the War on Terror is over
	Forever rotting in Gitmo
	Shot on sight
	I am not a Muslim
	Praised
	Left alone
	Shunned
	Jailed until the War on Terror is over
	Forever rotting in Gitmo
	Shot on sight