Gaza Attack Is First Phase of Israeli War Against Iran—With Obama's Complete Support

In a disgusting support for the Israeli war that has spared no effort in destroying property while killing civilians including a pregnant mother and an 11 month old child, Obama took the first opportunity in his trip to Asia to put all the blame on the Palestinians. Obama said, "Let's understand what the precipitating event here was that's causing the current crisis, and that was an ever-escalating number of missiles; they were landing not just in Israeli territory, but in areas that are populated. And there's no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders. So we are fully supportive of Israel's right to defend itself from missiles landing on people's homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians."

Obama did not mention the killing of Palestinian civilians, nor the assassination of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari, who was the leading figure to bring about a long-lasting truce between Hamas and Israel.

As EIR has reported for months, an Israeli attack on Gaza is a piece of at least one version of the war plan that Israel has mapped out against Iran, a piece aimed at eliminating the possibility of irregular warfare counterattacks by Iran's sympathisers. According to that version of the war plan, described repeatedly to EIR by sources close to the Israel military, both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon have to be "neutralised" in order to hold down the number of Israeli casualties, when Israel attacks Iran.

And, as Obama was giving a press conference in Thailand, blaming the Palestinians for the war and giving Netanyahu's Israel 100% support, the link between Israel's war on Iran and the Gaza attacks was being exposed on Britain's BBC and on CBS-TV's Face the Nation in the U.S.

CBS reported on Nov. 19, "Israel may soon take its airstrikes into Hamas-controlled Gaza to Lebanon, as practice for ‘a likely war with Iran,'" Washington Post defense writer David Ignatius suggested.

"Some people think... Israel [is] testing the rockets that would be fired against [Israel] from Gaza, next from Lebanon," Ignatius said. "So we may see something with Lebanon soon because it's a preliminary; this is a, kind of, warm-up round for the real conflagration that's ahead that involves Iran."

Ignatius was being interviewed by former Washington Post defense writer and military author Tom Ricks, who "agreed there's a good chance Israel would strike Iran to try to take out its nuclear facilities," said CBS.

Ricks noted the Gaza link to the Iran war buildup saying, "especially given the timing of the Gaza thing.... They [the Israelis] waited until after the elections were over, and now they're getting down to business."

On November 16, Ha'aretz warned that now that the U.S. election is over, Netanyahu could move ahead with the Iran war.

"At first glance, Operation Pillar of Defense seems to be aimed at the Palestinian arena," Ha'aretz wrote, "but in reality it is geared toward Iranian hostility against Israel.

"For Netanyahu ... the dark cloud in the Gaza skies might serve as ... preface to an Iran operation.... So as not to leave a shred of doubt, the IDF spokesman emphasised that ‘the Gaza Strip has become Iran's frontline base.'"

Then in an incident on BBC, Chief Rabbi Sacks told the BBC that the current escalation of tensions between Israel and Hamas has "got to do with Iran, actually." Rabbi Sacks apparently thought that he was off-air when the comment was made and quickly changed the subject to praying for peace, when warned that he was live-on-the-air by the co-host of the BBC show.

Many are wondering and condemning the Israeli overkill: as of this morning, the Israels had killed no less that 88 people, wounded 700, hit 1,350 targets and was threatening a ground invasion. One has to ask why Israel is calling up 75,000 reservists for a ground offensive into Gaza, unless they are preparing for a larger war.