adminbetween an innocent man and a notorious and condemned murderer, the people would most surely pick the innocent man and so Pilate could save himself from condemning an innocent man.
Pilate had overestimated the people’s intelligence and underestimated the hatred of those who wanted to see Jesus dead. The people cried out for Barabbas, “Give us Barabbas!” Here we stand almost 2 000 years later and still we are ask the same question. Who do you want freed Iran or Israel?
Well the neocons in Israel and the United States are escalating their rhetoric to prepare us for war with Iran. Even the infamous John Yoo, architect of George W Bush’s illegal torture and spying programs, is calling on the Republican presidential candidates to “begin preparing the case for a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.”
Under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has the legal right to produce nuclear power for peaceful purposes. The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta recently said on CBS that Iran is not currently trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Nevertheless, the US and Israel are mounting a campaign of aggression against Iran. The US has imposed punishing sanctions against Iran that are crippling Iran’s economy, and pressuring other countries and strong-arming financial institutions to stop buying oil from Iran, the world’s third largest exporter. The Obama administration is also preparing new punitive measures that target the Central Bank of Iran. And the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass the Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011 which would outlaw any contact between US government employees and some Iranian officials.
There is also evidence that Israel, with the possible assistance of the US, has orchestrated the assassinations of at least five Iranian nuclear scientists or engineers since 2007. The New York Times reported: “The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on (January 11) when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran’s morning rush hour.” These assassinations constitute acts of terrorism. There have also been cyber-attacks on Iranian centrifuges and an explosion at a missile facility last year that killed a senior general and 16 other people.
These acts of aggression are designed to provoke Iran to retaliate, including possibly closing the Strait of Hormuz, which will spark a war that could spread to the entire Middle East.
In addition, the US has shifted combat troops and warships to the Middle East, and supplied Israel with bunker-busting bombs. Moreover, Barack Obama has deployed 9 000 US troops to Israel to participate later this year with thousands of Israeli troops in “war games” to test the US/Israeli air defence system; this exercise will be the largest ever joint drill between the two countries. Panetta said the exercise is designed “to back up our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.
Iran is not a threat to Israel’s security. Iran has not attacked any country in some 200 years. In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup that replaced a democratic government in Iran with the vicious Shah. He ruled Iran with an iron hand for 25 years, wreaking torture and terror on Iranians while keeping Iran open to Western investment. When I visited Iran in 1978 as a human rights observer, there were dozens of US corporations in downtown Tehran. One year later, the chickens came home to roost. The Iranian revolution overthrew the Shah, replacing him with a revolutionary theocracy that said
Iran for Iranians. But that does not mean that Iran, if it does obtain nuclear weapons, will attack Israel. The Iranian government knows that Israel and the US would retaliate with unimaginable military force that would devastate Iran and much of the Middle East.
Article 2 of the United Nations Charter requires the peaceful settlement of international disputes between Iran and the United States. Both the US and Iran are signatories of the Kellogg-Briand Peace
Pact of 1928, which states, “The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.”
Yet the United States has been illegally threatening war against Iran, dating back to the administration of George W Bush. Security Council Resolution 687, that ended the first Gulf War, requires a
weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East. Israel, which reportedly has an arsenal of 200-300 nuclear weapons, stands in violation of that resolution. Israel refuses to sign the NPT,
thus avoiding inspections by the IAEA.
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the Israel lobby in the US, has tremendous support in the US Congress. Even Zionist Thomas Friedman wrote in the Times last month that the standing
ovation Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got in Congress “was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
Online Reporter