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Friday December 21, 2007

AIPAC head: Iran still a menace

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

OK, let’s take the National Intelligence Estimate at its word; perhaps Iran really did deactivate its nuclear weapons programs. Howard Kohr is willing to accept that.

But when a country has fissile, enriched uranium and the missiles to put it in — as Iran does — isn’t that bad enough?

Kohr, the pro-Israel lobby’s executive director, spoke in front of more than 1,400 at the San Francisco AIPAC membership luncheon Monday, Dec. 17. And he brazenly brushed aside the sense of relief many felt from the recently released NIE report on Iran’s stalled weapons programs.

Now, he says, is not the time to go easier on Iran. Rather, the United States should push harder. “Iran continues to fund the most radical regimes in the world,” he said, “and not just in the Middle East but in South America and Central America — our doorstep.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the NIE document “a surrender by the U.S. and the West,” Kohr continued. “He said that on Iranian television, and that’s how he feels about this.”

AIPAC also held events in Sacramento, Santa Clara and Oakland.

The large regional audiences were greeted by a familiar subject: Kohr has lectured on the menace of a nuclear Iran since the mid-1990s. Last year he told audiences that Iran was “now moving full steam ahead on their nuclear project, feeling nothing can stop them.”

Although the release of the report by America’s intelligence establishment earlier this month casts this statement into doubt, Kohr has no doubt that Iran continues to work toward creating a world without Israel or the United States.

There has never been a more important time for divestment and sanctions, he said, even though Chinese, Russian and European businesses are clamoring to get a piece of Iran’s oil market.

These businesses should be given a choice, he said: Either make deals with Iran, or make deals with the United States.

Kohr acknowledged that Jews’ continuing advocacy for a hard-line Iran policy will lead to statements like, “There they go, the friends of Israel, the Jews, talking about getting us into war.

“But the things we’re encouraging are meant to do the opposite — we want to avoid war,” he said.

Preceding Kohr was Rabbi Daniel Gordis, vice president of Jerusalem’s Shalem Center. Gordis fired up the crowd with a speech excoriating those who would question Israel’s right to exist, 60 years after the founding of the Jewish state.

“There was no reason to believe, 61 years ago, that Judaism had a future,” Gordis said.

“One of the reasons Jews need a state is that, without a state, Jews have learned there is simply no hope. Israel is the hope given to Jews. After the mid-20th century, it gave them reason to believe in the possibility of a future.”

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