Incredible NEWSWEEK article either naive or disingenuous; Zakaria isn't naive.

http://tinyurl.com/n9bamy
They May Not Want The Bomb And other unexpected truths. Fareed Zakaria 6/1
****Zakaria admits Iran wants to be a nuclear power but somehow concludes that they "might" be happy with just a civilian nuke program BECAUSE that's what they say.He says that having an instant ability to "weaponize" would give them the same clout as having one but elides over the fact that instant ability to weaponize is as good as having one since it would be there whenever you want it ( and many!).(I don't have an assembled gun in my house but I have all the oiled pieces and have practiced so that I can assemble it in 20 seconds.)****... Iranians aren't suicidal. ****Zakaria denies this except for a couple of small points: a million kids were recruited to roll through mine fields during the Iraq-Iran war with plastic keys around their necks giving them instant access to heaven. Suicide bombers have received support from Iran and Iranian sources and the Iranian regime boasts that they have recruited 40000 suicide bombers to attack the West. *****In an interview last week, ...Netanyahu described the Iranian regime as "a messianic, apocalyptic cult." ...***Zakaria derides this but ignores the nature of the "Twelver" religion where the return of the 12th Imam will occur after an apocalyptic time.Z also equates world destruction with something less but which the rest of us would still call apocalyptic and cites the corruption of Iranian officials in squirreling away monies in Switzerland for their grandchildren as being hopeful of the future. He doesn't even try to square this with Rafsanjani's statement a couple of years back that he would accept the destruction of half of Iran in order to eradicate Israel. Most telling of all, and indicative of Zakaria's surprising bias for an intellectual, is his injunction to take the mullahs at their word when they say their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only and yet, somehow, ignore the clear meaning of their words promising to erase Israel from the face of the earth. I suppose that, given that Iranians lie, one could pick and choose among their statements as to which is to be believed but it is hardly possible to do so with any reliability. Finally, Zakaria tries to tar Jews with the taint of jihadism:*****One of Netanyahu's advisers said of Iran, "Think Amalek." The Bible says that the Amalekites were dedicated enemies of the Jewish people. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Now, were the president of Iran and his advisers to have cited a religious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic. ****The mis-statements here are so bald-faced as to require a more detailed response, provided in an article below. Again, Zakaria is sophisticated and able to know that what he says is misleading and false but this is a man who has a self-proclaimed ambition of being the first Muslim Secretary of State ; he never said if it was under the U.S. as it has been or only after a Muslim impairment. This piece might be considered only Islamist agitprop *****...Iran isn't a dictatorship...*****.ignoring the totalitarian nature of accusation, imprisonment, torture and murder by the state for offenses like adultery.****But neither is it a monolithic dictatorship.****So now he changes it to a "monolithic" dictatorship and spends his time arguing that there is a hierarchy of rulers in Iran.****...Even the so-called Supreme Leader has a constituency, ... ****Definition of dictatorship says: A government in which a single leader or party exercises absolute control.*** Iran might be ready to deal. .... Why not try this before launching the next Mideast war?****They also "might" be, and it is far more likely that they are, merely stalling until they actually have a working bomb so that they can forestall military action against them. ****
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/199147.........................................
Zakaria's bizarre, uninformed interpretation of something said by someone other than Netanyahu seems biased in the extreme.http://tinyurl.com/mpb837June 1, 2009 / CNN/Newsweek pundit's bizarre vision of Jewish jihad By Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein Must reading for those concerned with confronting contemporary evil and its perpetrators // Fareed Zakaria knows evil when he sees it...spelled out for tens of millions of Americans what the coming battle with Islamofascism would be about.... refusing to apologize for evil doesn't make him an expert on the subject, however. He got it very wrong in a recent piece in Newsweek about the Amalek of the Bible, and just why it might be important to Bibi Netanyahu.Zakaria reports: "One of Netanyahu's advisers said of Iran, 'Think Amalek.' ...This does not sit well with Mr. Zakaria. "Now, were the president of Iran and his advisers to have cited a religious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic." Invoking Amalek conjures up visions of a Jewish Holy War to Zakaria.Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg was the first to point out the error. Bibi's aide (who had actually addressed those words to him, Goldberg) was not hinting at a nuclear missile aimed at exterminating millions of Amalekites in Iran. What he meant was that Jews have recognized since Biblical times that there are people so evil that killing Jews or others means more to them than any other goal, and that their threats cannot be dismissed as so much bravado.What is Amalek all about? While almost everything about Amalek is shrouded in mystery, the Bible tells of a people — of unknown origin — who launched an unprovoked attack on bedraggled ex-slaves traveling through the wilderness without apparent cause, targeting the weakest among them. In rabbinic thought, Amalek was the archetype of hatred of good itself, who attacked Israel, not because of any strategic goals, but out of pure hatred and contempt. They despised the Children of Israel — whom they had never met — because they stood for an encounter with a G-d Who made demands on people of moral living. Amalek did not want to be bothered by such niceties, nor did they want anyone tugging at their conscience. It was more convenient to simply eliminate them. (The approach echoes Hitler's chilling words, saying that the rest of us cannot forgive the Jews for two things: circumcision and conscience.)The Bible's reaction to them is even more puzzling. It tells the reader to wipe out their memory, to blot it out permanently. But it explicitly orders that we remember Amalek, as if the polar opposites could not only coexist, but were codependent: we could only forget about Amalek if we remembered. Is this not a paradox?
To the scholars who had to distill the rulings of the Talmud into legal requirements, Amalek was a quagmire of doubt. Some scholars believed that it was a people that had lived once and since disappeared. Another view had it that Amalek was not a people, but a cultural expression.Without firm knowledge of who Amalek was, or how they were to be eliminated, Jews did not see destroying Amalek as a practical matter. Yet Amalek's existence and its periodic depredations of the Jews and humanity would remain a reality to contend with.Even when Jews had the power to resist — which was denied them for the last few millennia — they could not chance violating the stricture against murder. So even when Jews were allowed by their Persian ruler to battle their enemies in the Book of Esther (whose villain, according to rabbinic tradition, was an Amalekite), they used the license only to wage a defensive war against those who attacked them — not to slaughter indiscriminately.Does the Amalek urge leave Jews trigger-happy, ready to smite their enemies with blows of Biblical proportions? ...****It's clear that Egypt and others regard a nuclear Iran as an existential threat. Why do they not equally regard Israel as such, given that Israel is reputed to have had nukes for forty years?****... It even attacked Israel once or twice since Israel developed the bomb....Why wasn't Israel an existential threat, while Iran is? Egyptian generals did not factor in fears of a Jewish Apocalypse. They knew that even if things did not go well on the battlefield, Israel would not introduce weapons of destruction that would take the lives of millions. Egypt understood that eliminating Amalek by direct action is an option that has been shelved by Jews. The Biblical instruction to remember Amalek (Deuteronomy 25:17), however, has not been shelved....So when Bibi's aide says : "Think Amalek", he means — remember that we Jews have learned the hard way that unthinkable evil can quickly become a reality; that those who call for Israel's destruction have to be taken seriously. Israelis do not regard the Iranian people as Amalek, or entertain any notion of incinerating millions of innocents in a nuclear holocaust. But the once and future threat of Amalek won't let us forget that pure evil does exist — and left unchallenged it can manifest in a scope greater than we can anticipate or are prepared to recognize...