You wouldn’t expect to find a major international news story being broken by a house of worship. But when Michael Millenson arrived at his North Shore synagogue August 2 he came across the following item in the weekly bulletin:
Whatever danger Iranian missiles do or don’t pose to Europe, they certainly preoccupy Israel. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called Israel a “Zionist regime…heading toward annihilation” that should be “wiped off the map.” Meanwhile, Iran seems hell-bent on developing its own nuclear-weapon capacity.
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This back story is why Millenson was astonished to find the X-band agreement with Israel covered only in his synagogue’s bulletin. He couldn’t find the story in the Washington Post or the New York Times, let alone the local media, and he wondered if Kirk, in a self-aggrandizing flourish, had leaped ahead of the facts—or at least ahead of his government’s willingness to disclose them. “As a Democrat,” Millenson e-mailed me, “I kind of doubted that Kirk was single-handedly saving Israel, anyway, and as a former journalist I also knew that no administration, Republican or Democrat, sells an advanced weapons system overseas because some congressman asks them to.”
“Madam Speaker,” he said, “we all know there is a growing Iranian threat, focused mostly on the people of Israel. Earlier this year, [congresswoman] Jane Harman joined my bipartisan letter with 70 members of Congress calling for the U.S. to extend our full ballistic missile defenses to protect Israel. Last night, the United States announced that we would make this key commitment. Secretary Gates told Defense Minister Barak that the first step will happen soon. America’s most powerful radar, the X-band, will soon defend Israel.”
Yet several days after Kirk spoke in the House I called Harman’s office and asked what was going on with the X-band. Nothing to announce yet, I was told.
I pointed out that Gates hadn’t called it a go.
The general effect of this coverage is to frame Barak’s mission to Washington as a triumph. But that’s not the only way of looking at it. A story in Haaretz on August 14 described the X-band agreement as “compensation” for the U.S. denying Israel everything else it has asked for. Iraq and Syria both learned the hard way that when Israel feels threatened it believes in preemptive strikes. According to Haaretz, Israel wanted the U.S. to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. No, said Washington. Then back us up when we attack, said Israel. No, said Washington, which also told Israel “an attack on Iran would undermine American interests.”
