Cutting-edge neocon group runs scare ad "It's Time to Act" in presidential election campaign. It doesn't get any more blatant than this: The Emergency Committee for Israel, founded by the aristocrats of the "Commentary crowd," the original Republican Likudniks, is now screaming for Obama to attack Iran.  ECI put out a press release yesterday announcing that "in light of yet another failed round of nuclear talks with Iran this week," its 30-second, scare-the-shit-out-of-'em ad, "It's Time to Act," which began airing last week in New York and Washington, is debuting this weekend in the November election's battleground states.  It's running "on broadcast and cable in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, with dozens of spots featured in major markets during Sunday shows,…

One of these lazy, sunny days, we're likely to hear on the news that Israel has just bombed Iran. The question of whether Israel will soon attack Iran is one of those things where your senses completely deceive you. The more Israeli politicians and generals talk about it, the closer it seems, and the more fearful you become - but the bombast is a good sign that it's not about to happen because if it was, they wouldn't be talking about it so loud for Iran to hear. No, it's when the rhetoric has quieted down, when things seem too peaceful for a war to just suddenly break out - when…

Polls say most Israelis oppose Netanyahu on Iran, but there hasn't been a protest, a press conference or even a bumper sticker to give them a voice The world is worried more and more that Israel is going to attack Iran and start a Middle Eastern war, yet the Israeli peace camp, which used to put hundreds of thousands of people in the streets to protest war and occupation, is sitting there, excuse the expression, with its thumb up its ass. Not one demonstration (unless you count a few dozen nuclear disarmament folks standing on the street), not a press conference, not a TV interview, not an ad in the newspapers, not a bumper sticker. "I spoke…

The public doesn't know it, but ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan and his opposition to war with Iran have company Retired army general Nathan Sharony, head of the Council for Peace and Security, which includes over 1,000 former high-ranking security officials with dovish views, says the positions of ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan and ex-army intelligence head Shlomo Gazit against an attack on Iran are "acceptable" to him. Retired army colonel Yiftah Shapir, the leading expert on missile warfare at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), Israel's premier security think tank, says he "does not think the price we will have to pay [for an attack on Iran] is worth the benefit." He argues that the most Israel can do is delay Iran's…

At any given time, about 200,000 missiles are aimed at Israel, Aviv Cochavi, chief of army intelligence, told the VIPs today at the Herzliya Conference. Two-hundred thousand missiles - another important fact that will go in one ear of the Israeli public and out the other. It plays havoc with a basic national conviction, so it will be discarded. It's a basic national conviction that if "the Arabs" could annihilate this country, they would, no matter the cost to themselves. That's why we bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor, the Syrian nuclear reactor, and why we're probably going to bomb the Iranian reactors, or some of them anyway,…

Barak/Netanyahu - they are "one hand" - are presenting an Israeli attack as an inevitability. It seems the die has been cast - Netanyahu and Barak have decided to bomb Iran in a matter of months, as Ronen Bergman concluded in the New York Times Magazine - and now it's time to close ranks around the decision. This is my impression from the continual news stories about Israel's plans for Iran over the last couple of days. The clearest sign came from former IDF chief Gabi Ashekenazi, who apparently defected from Meir Dagan's antiwar camp. "When the moment comes, I don't know if we won't be alone, and for this reason Israel…