Rockets hitting Israel indicate poor defense systems: Analyst

The comments come after several rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit the Israeli capital, Tel Aviv, forcing police to open all underground bunkers in the city.

An interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, author and historian, to further discuss the issue.

Q: I wanted to ask you firstly about the significance of these rockets reaching Tel Aviv, certainly this is quite an important event?

Tarpley: Well certainly it shows that this Israeli defense system that they have tautened so much where they have Arrow and David’s Sling and then Iron Dome at the bottom this is not working very well and what it sets up is the pattern that we have seen in the past, say in 2006 where they could not stop the rockets so then they tried a land invasion and that gets them into even bigger trouble. The other complicating factor of course is the attitude of Egypt.

    I would say we can be confident that civilized humanity is condemning this, the non-aligned group, the 120 countries at the United Nations, Turkey, Iran, many others have condemned it and I think that is going to be a groundswell of opinion.

At the same time, I would focus on Netanyahu. This is one desperate demagogue and he is facing an election, this is his pre-election stunt, here we would call it an October surprise but it is foreign election that is going to happen in the New Year.

Netanyahu is facing an absolutely disastrous economy and we have seen those big demonstrations inside Israel, people who just say they cannot survive. And then we have the fact that Netanyahu has bungled, botched in a really crude and stupid way his main client relationship which is with the United States.

He went out on a limb for Romney, his friend Romney, his friend for the past 35 years. He thought he could help put Romney into the White House and this is now boomerang and inside Israel public opinion is mocking him that he is a bungler, that he does not know what he is doing, he is incompetent and of course that means for the Israelis a great deal because without that relation they couldn’t do what they are doing and then perhaps even more, the network that Netanyahu was counting on for future wars is being dismantled here.

Take General Petraeus at the CIA, a Neocon General, a General who was absolutely attuned to what the Israelis wanted and similarly a group of other subversive officers that are being kicked out of the US military meaning that when Netanyahu wants to launch the attack that he has been talking about for so long-the attack on Iran-there is now a big question mark about whether he will get the US assistance that he has been so arrogant about demanding and which has landed him in this fix.

    So Netanyahu is the aggressor and this is a desperate adventure by Netanyahu.

Q: Mr. Tarpley, I also wanted to ask about regional countries and their reactions and earlier conversation with our correspondent on the ground there in Gaza, she mentioned that the Gazan people do not actually trust Egypt to do the right thing and neither do they trust Qatar although the Qatari Emir recently visited the Gaza Strip to do the right thing either. What is your assessment of that?

Tarpley: Well nobody in his right mind would trust Qatar despite that visit and Egypt of course is complex and they have their own interest. I hold out maybe some hope that we might see a revival of the Suez 1956 instinct or response here in Washington where I do not think publicly but I think privately Netanyahu is going to be told to stop it, to butt out, to stop this aggression and not to go all the way.

I would think that there would be people in Washington telling him that and whether he takes that advice is anybody’s guess. Netanyahu can start a war but he cannot finish it and maybe some people in Israel even see that as well.