Lest anyone dismiss his concerns, note that Israel's former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, a man known for extreme taciturnity, publicly warned that Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu proposed to a senior ministerial committee in 2010 that Israel attack Iran. Dagan almost single-handedly persuaded a majority of the ministers to defer an attack and to try nonlethal means instead, such as the Stuxnet cyber-attack, which Israel is known to have devised with likely US assistance. The Mossad director called a military attack on Iran the "stupidest thing I've ever heard." He knew, as Anthony Cordesman has reported, it would likely kill thousands of Iranians (directly) and Israelis (indirectly through revenge terror attacks), lead to massive responses by Iran and its proxies and possibly cause the closing of the Straits of Hormuz, a skyrocketing in world oil prices and potential economic catastrophe.
The material published included references to Israeli diplomats briefing President-elect Obama on Operation Cast Lead while the war was being prosecuted, presumably in an effort to persuade him of the importance of continuing it, despite the pressure the incoming president was under to speak out against it. They revealed private, late-night meetings between the Israeli ambassador and a key Obama operative at which they presumably discussed how and whether the war would end in relation to the president-elect's upcoming inauguration. Note that the war ended on January 18, and Obama was inaugurated on January 20. I'm certain this was no accident, but rather a carefully choreographed deal between the two sides. Obama never criticized the war publicly. Now we know why.
I noted that an Israeli diplomat ghost wrote some or all of a Boston Herald op-ed attacking Iran, to which a prominent Jewish attorney and community leader signed his name. In Minneapolis, the local Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) briefed the Chicago Israeli Consulate on the travel schedule and a meeting it held with Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim-American elected to Congress. Ellison, according to the tapes, was viewed as hostile to Israeli interests. In fact, the JCRC official told the Israeli diplomat that Ellison had just led a local trade delegation to Saudi Arabia (a big no-no) and was planning to join Rep. Brian Baird (D-Washington) in a fact-finding mission to Gaza in the aftermath of the war. This trip, too. was viewed with alarm by both parties in the transcripts.
I went public for two reasons: one was to expose Israel's propaganda campaign in this country against Iran. But just as importantly, I wanted Americans to know why Shamai Leibowitz did what he did. I wanted them to know that not only was he a whistleblower, a profile in courage, but that he is a person of conscience, who faced the full force of the US government during his prosecution. I wanted the world to know Shamai was a sacrificial victim who deserved to be honored rather than imprisoned.
