It’s a headline that speaks volumes: “U.S. Presidential Hopefuls Campaigning in Israel.” Not in the Granite State, New Hampshire, but Israel. “Three Presidential hopefuls appeared in Israel or spoke through a satellite link this week at the Herzliya Conference in an effort to show their support for Israel,” reports Arutz Sheva. As should be expected, the “campaign” issue is Iran, not American domestic politics, basically an irrelevancy.

“Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney called for more severe sanctions on Iran and added that a military strike should be considered” and John McCain, the Manchurian candidate for AIPAC, “said through a satellite link that he backs ties between Israel and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)” and declared a “friendly democracy under siege should be closer partners to the world’s most successful security alliance,” never mind, back when I was in grade school, NATO revolved around Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, stating “that an armed attack against one or more [parties] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” But then, when you think about it, since the rulers of Israel are of European stock, it very well may make sense this “democracy”—that is, a “democracy” jus sanguinis, i.e., for Jews only—join NATO.

As should be expected, John Edwards demonstrated the classical conflicts of a Democrat, wanting to please all, but coming down decidedly on the side of the Likudites. “Democrat John Edwards of North Carolina called for tougher sanctions but also backed dialogue with Tehran. ‘I support being tough, but I think it’s a mistake strategically and ideologically not to engage them on this issue,’ he explained.” In short, Mr. Edwards desires to talk with the Iranians before bombing them, whereas the neocons simply want to bomb them without the necessity of “dialogue,” that is dictating terms in Israel’s favor.

Meanwhile, as America’s political candidates kiss the Zionist hem, Israel is working overtime on the Bomb Iran master plan. “Israel is launching a campaign to isolate Iran economically and to soften up world opinion for the option of a military strike aimed at crippling or delaying Tehran’s uranium enrichment program,” reports the Guardian, predictably emphasizing the neocon fantasy that feverish Iranian scientists are working around the clock underground on the Shia Nuke to be used in some fantastic and suicidal Armageddon scenario against Israel, never mind both the CIA and the IAEA have determined there is no evidence of such nefarious atomic building behavior.

In addition to the standard round of arm twisting of corporations into not doing business with Iran, “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be pursued in international courts for calling the Holocaust a myth, and saying Israel should be wiped off the map. The case will be launched under the 1948 UN convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, which outlaws ‘direct and public incitement to genocide,’” an absurdity, to say the least, as declaring the Holocaust is a myth is hardly the same as rounding people up and feeding them into gas chambers and ovens.

But then, of course, in certain parts of the world, for instance in Germany, where Ernst Zündel wastes away in prison, disagreeing with the official historical orthodoxy—in other words, daring the exercise free speech, the natural right of every human on the planet—is a punishable crime. As for Ahmadinejad declaring Israel should be “wiped off the map,” this is an easily demonstrated and particularly vile ruse dreamed up by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Zionist disinfo operation run by Yigal Carmon, an Israeli who worked for the IDF/Intelligence Branch from 1968 to 1988. MEMRI deliberately mistranslated Ahmadinejad and now supposedly respectable newspapers such as the Guardian are rehashing the propaganda as verified truth.

Finally, as the cardboard cut-out presidential wannabes trek to Israel for acceptance, bending over backwards to parrot the Likudnik line on Iran, we turn to Ilan Pappe, an Israeli-born professor at Haifa University. Pappe was recently interviewed by Today’s Zaman, a Turkish web site. Going after Iran, Pappe insists, has nothing to do with nukes. Instead, it has everything to do with the Zionist project, i.e., the task of dispossessing Palestinians of their land and inflicting privation upon them.

“Israel has its own plan for imposing its will and this is in Palestine,” Pappe told Ali Cimen. “It wishes unilaterally to annex large parts of the areas it occupied in 1967 and to imprison the Palestinians in small Bantustans and by that destroy the Palestine will and aspirations. Only two movements, Hezbollah and Hamas, and only two states, Syria and Iran, oppose this scheme. Israel sees the present American administration and mood as providing a rare window of opportunity to use its military might for destroying the only forces willing to resist its policies in Palestine.”

Naturally, come the election next year, with the American election selectees all lined up neatly in a row like rubber ducks with their Likudnik endorsements in hand, we will hear nothing of this long planned ethnic cleansing campaign, although we will assuredly hear about the threat of Iran, determined to cobble together a nuclear bomb or two and take out Israel in one last suicidal gasp.

Of course, come the election, large areas of Iran may be already smoldering under a dreadful radioactive pall cast by “mini-nukes,” as only a blind, deaf, and dumb person—or one tuned in incessantly to Fox News—is unable to hear the alarm bells screaming, drawing closer from the distance, foretelling a terrible calamity right around the corner.