Israel's
extreme right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a habit of
repeatedly claiming without any evidence that his enemies supposedly
have weapons of mass destruction. But a look at some of Netanyahu's
public speaking over the past 30 years shows that he has a long
history of crying wolf.
In a
dramatic speech on April 30, Netanyahu used stage props and a
cartoonish PowerPoint presentation to falsely claim that Iran had a
secret nuclear weapons program and that it had been concealing.
Yet this
dishonesty is far from new. For decades Netanyahu has been falsely
accusing Israel's enemies of secretly harboring nuclear weapons. As
far back as 1990, when Netanyahu served as Israel's deputy foreign
minister, he claimed Iraq had a nuclear program that was, quote,
"fast accelerating." In an interview on NBC News Today Show
in December 1990, Netanyahu warned of what he called Saddam
Hussein's, quote, "weapons of destruction."
In
reality, the catastrophic and illegal U.S.-led war and occupation in
Iraq set the region ablaze, destabilizing numerous countries leading
to the deaths of more than 1 million people, fueling extremist Salafi
jihadist groups like al Qaeda, and eventually giving birth to ISIS.
But
Netanyahu was an absolutist. He declared that there was no other
option but to dismantle the government in Baghdad. Benjamin Netanyahu
insisted that the United States did not need approval from the
international community to wage war on Iraq.
Whether
it's 1990, 2002, or 2018, it's clear that Netanyahu is still
repeating the same refrain: investigations don't work, diplomacy is a
dead end, and evidence is not necessary. The only path that can and
should be pursued is more war. And Israel's longest serving prime
minister has more than demonstrated his willingness to tell a few
lies to sell those wars to the public.
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