Franklin Lamb: Israel May Not Survive the Arab Awakening!

Three weeks after being named by President Obama in January 2009 as the 19th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and during his first day on the job, Leon Panetta, now US Secretary of Defense, signed off on a March 2009 "eyes only" CIA Report that had just been completed by his new agency. As reported at the time, the CIA Report predicted the demise of Israel within 20 years, if present political trends in the region continued. The CIA intelligence analysts concluded that it was unlikely that Israeli leaders would grant even minimal concessions in order to achieve a settlement with their neighbors, which comprise increasingly disillusioned and rapidly growing dignity and justice-seeking populations. The CIA Report noted that Israeli officials felt emboldened in taking Palestinian land by the myriad support Israel was receiving from the leadership of Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and three other Arab leaders. Israel and its two most powerful US lobbies, the US Congress and AIPAC, quickly squelched the 2009 Report, and only seven copies were eventually acknowledged, one by AIPAC and the others by staffers of select supporters of Israel on key Congressional Committees. During last week's meetings with Israeli officials, both sides knew that the 2009 CIA study was front and center even without Panetta being the first one to refer to it. President Obama sent Panetta to engage in frank discussions, which included the White House displeasure at Netanyahu's repeated humiliation of the President over the past 18 months, and Israeli threats to cut off Jewish aid to Obama's 2012 re-election campaign!