Israel, Israel Army Radio, and Haaretz: Spinning the threat of a nuclear war in the ME

Few days ago, I wrote that Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, has become the mouthpiece of the Israeli government in what looks like an attempt at spinning a nuclear war in the ME while coming out safely, in terms of the impact on public opinion, on Israel's military nuclear program. Now that's official. The Haaretz article below, published yesterday, wrongly cites a Canadian poll commissioned by the Canadian
Institute for Strategic Studies (CISS) revealing a massive support of Israeli public opinion for a nuclear strike on Iran. In the Haaretz article there is no link to the source of the poll. Haaretz's only source is the Israel army radio. On the CISS's website, there is no mention of the poll.

I called the CISS. They said someone called them from Reuters Jerusalem asking them about the poll. The CISS answered that it is not theirs and they know nothing about it. They did not order or commission the poll. They suggested maybe another Institute, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) commissioned the poll, and Haaretz might have mixed the names. I called the IISS. The IISS is not the source of such a poll.

Now either Haaretz is not verifying such a crucial information, or they are consciously reporting the propaganda of the Israel Army Radio. It is clear by now, as I wrote few days earlier, that Israel is manipulating middle eastern and international public opinions about a nuclear war in the ME. This propaganda could not have as a result a halt to Iran's nuclear enrichment neither a push toward consensus between Iran and the international community. The only result of this propaganda is to increase tension and rally Iran around its contested leader in accelerating its nuclear enrichment activity.

Here is an example of a short spin sequence:

October 1st, 2007. This information, published by Haaretz, has been verified by the author of this blog and proved false or, at best, unsourced.
"72% of Israelis back use of nuclear arms. The poll also showed that 75 percent of Israelis would feel safer if they knew with certainty that Israel has atomic weapons Israel has maintained an official veil of secrecy on rumors that it has in its possession nuclear weapons."

September 26, 2007. Israel lobbying to import nuclear material.
Read here my opinion about this piece of information.

May 19th, 2007. "71% of Israelis want U.S. to strike Iran if talks fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program, according to a new poll. The survey, commissioned by Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center and the Anti-Defamation League, found that 59 percent of Israelis still believe the war in Iraq was justified, while 36 percent take the opposite view."

And from Naj: "To add to the repository of Zionist lies"

Haaretz has been recently publishing, about the nuclear threat, either false polls or internal Israeli polls whose objectivity we can doubt if Haaretz, Israel, and the Israel army Radio, have been handling internal opinion polls the way they handled this last unsourced information. Not that I have any doubt about Israel's public opinion going in this direction. This is a country obsessed by its own security and strategic status in the region in total disregard for the ME and the rest of the world. But how are we to interpret the rush to elevate such a propaganda to the level of mainstream information in the present context ?

I have come to the conclusion that, at this stage, Israel is pushing Iran toward acquiring a military nuclear program. In a second stage, which may come before we realize that Iran,s nuclear capabilities are far from representing a threat to any country other than Iran and before we realize that the first propaganda stage was just lies, Israel will strike whatever Iran does or does not have as nuclear facilities, citing national defence worries. A rehearsal of this scenario was realized by the Israeli army on Syria earlier last September. In the meantime, the propaganda serves another purpose, legitimizing Israel's hidden military nuclear program in the context of an alleged Iranian nuclear threat on Israel.


UPDATE: On the day I published this post, I sent a comment to Haaretz on the unsourced article, follwed by another one the day after. They did not publish my comments as of October 4th, thursday, 8.pm, local time, and I bet they won't, but they published other comments since. Among other readers' earlier comments they published one which caught particularly my attention: it is from Petra in the USA, comment number 20.

"Title: Bomb Terhan and Mecca Let God sort them out
Name: Petra
City: State: usa
It worked for the USA against Japan. Now, Japan LOVES US!"