The Ron Paul Institute has published a column arguing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "played the Holocaust card" in an effort to manipulate the United States into going to war with Iran, the
Washington Free Beacon reported.
The institute — founded in 2013 by former congressman Ron Paul, father of Kentucky senator and likely 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul — on
Friday published the column by Gareth Porter suggesting that Netanyahu has substantially exaggerated the threat posed by a nuclear Iran and "served Israel's political interest in manipulating the policy of the US government and other world powers."
By "conjuring the spectre of Iranian genocide against Israelis, Netanyahu was playing two political games simultaneously," Porter writes. By suggesting that this is something made up by the Israeli leader, Porter ignores
numerous statements by Iranian leaders over the years calling for Israel's destruction.
Porter adds that the Israeli leader "was exploiting the fears of the Israeli population associated with the Holocaust to boost his electoral prospects while at the same time exploiting the readiness of most members of US Congress to support whatever Netanyahu orders on Iran policy."
Netanyahu's "ranting" about "an Iran intending to wipe out the entire country has appealed especially to his Likud constituency and other Israelis who believe that the outside world is 'permanently hostile' to the Jewish people," Porter writes.
Critics of Netanyahu's stance on Israeli security issues seek to contrast the views of his Likud Party as "hardline" and extreme in contrast with the relatively dovish Labor Party.
But in his column, Porter portrays the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (the Israeli Labor Party leader who, despite intense domestic opposition, worked to achieve a peace settlement with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat) as also having been a purveyor of false propaganda against the Iranian government in an effort to manipulate the United States.
Rabin, Porter asserted, "deliberately exaggerated" the Iranian threat to Israel "in part to ensure that the United States would continue to see Israel as its irreplaceable ally in the Middle East and not be tempted come to terms with Iran."
But Porter's main target is Netanyahu, who he suggests has been working to unfairly malign the Islamist regime in Iran dating back to his first term as prime minister of Israel during the 1990s. Fearing a "rapprochement" between the Clinton Administration and Tehran, Netanyahu conducted a "reckless" political campaign opposing Iranian efforts to developing ballistic missiles to target Israel, he contends.
Porter blames Netanyahu's threats for "making Iran and Israel strategic adversaries for the first time."
Netanyahu (not Tehran), "bears personal responsibility for having created a conflict with Iran that had never existed before," Porter concludes.
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