These two articles are attempting to analyze the strange and curious decision made by the U.S. State Department to sanction Ofer Brothers Shipping, an Israeli company that is involved in business deals with Iran. Russ Baker’s article focuses on the awkwardness of the business deals themselves between two countries that are supposed to be arch-enemies. He underlines the increasingly concentrated wealth in the hands of a few Israeli families, which is, according to Baker, reminiscent of what happened in the U.S. in the past. Apparently, 20 families would control 25% of the country’s listed companies. Baker also alludes briefly to certain changes that occured in the economic and financial sectors of Israeli society, that made it depart from its socialist model of the first years following the Independance, to embrace the new economic model that is now accepted worldwide since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and that is called globalism. Transnationalism, to refer to another term, affects all regions of the world and Israel is no exception.
Caroline Glick’s article, of the Center For Security Policy, brings the light rather on the intelligence aspects of the incident. She explains that numerous reports have literally poured since the announcement of the sanction by the State Department, that the Mossad and the IDF were using the company as a shell to infiltrate Iran. That certainly makes a lot of sens. Glick continues by saying that the sanction was deliberately made to humiliate Israel and that it has to be seen as a payback or retaliation for not complying with Obama’s policy on the Middle East, especially with the question of the 1967 lines. The decision might have been made, in all appearances, to deliberately sabotage the intelligence process of Israel and to weaken its public support in the U.S.
Whether the business deals were motivated just by pure greed or for intelligence purposes is hard to tell. Although I don’t reject Russ Baker’s analysis, I would tend personally to believe that the intelligence aspects of it was the key factor. For me, it is just another proof that Obama is not a friend of Israel. He couldn’t care less about what will happen to the Israeli people. He seems to be prefering to please his pseudo-democratic rioting friends in the Middle-East and their Muslim Brotherhood controllers. That’s sad but it seems that we have reached such a terrible predicament.