When Israel’s government under Benjamin Netanyahu says “all options” are available in dealing with the supposed threat post by Iran, this includes sending Mossad operatives to assassinate President Obama, contends Andrew Adler, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times.

In an essay that was quickly pulled from the web (but is archived here), Adler discussed what he called “Kobayashi Maru options” for dealing with what he considers an existential threat to Israel’s survival. The name is drawn from Star Trek, describing a training scenario used to test officer cadets at Starfleet Academy: The cadet is placed in a hopeless battle situation in which defeat seems certain. Although the training simulation was originally designed as a test of character — to determine how well a potential starship commander can continue to exercise command authority in the face of inevitable defeat and certain death — one renegade cadet named James Tiberius Kirk recognized that the exercise itself was a “cheat” and re-wrote it to “change the conditions” of the test. By changing the rules, he was able to carry out the rescue the stranded ship at the heart of the scenario and beat the test.

Adler’s essay assumes that Israel –a nuclear-armed power that enjoys prohibitive military superiority over any of its potential regional rivals — confronts a mortal threat from Iran, and a no-win scenario in preserving its security. That assessment is not shared by the current head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, who has said explicitly that Iran is “not an existential threat.” Nonetheless, Adler encourages his readers to contemplate a “Kobyashi Maru”-type scenario in which radical, outside-the-box thinking is necessary “to preserve Israel’s existence.”

There are “essentially only three options available to Israel,” Adler concludes: 1. attack Hezbollah and Hamas; 2. “order the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities at all costs”; 3. assassinate Obama.

In the third scenario, Adler writes, Israel’s Prime Minister would “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current Vice President to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States. policy includes its helping the Jewish State obliterate its enemies.”

“If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?” asks Adler, who appears determined to live down to every conceivable anti-Jewish caricature and stereotype. The image of a Jewish cabal manipulating American politics — promoting politicians seen as suitably servile, while destroying the reputations of some seen to be intransigent, and even arranging the assassination of particularly troublesome figures — is regarded, and routinely described, as a staple of anti-Semitic propaganda. Adler, who displays no evidence of being a “self-hating Jew,” apparently considers that depiction to be materially true, or at least plausible.

So far it appears that Adler’s endorsement of a presidential assassination by agents of a foreign power has not been resulted in a knock on the door by the U.S. Secret Service — even though far less pointed threats, such as a UFC fighter’s statement that he wanted to “knock some sense” into Obama, have resulted in visits by Secret Service agents.
“I very much regret it, I wish I hadn’t made reference to it at all,” Andrew Adler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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