Now you see it, now you don’t. One minute Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes is speaking directly, clearly, honestly and spontaneously about what he organically saw with his own eyes, what he was feeling and thinking as suspicious security personnel behaved oddly the night before the Paris shooting. The next minute Hughes is pulling a “Michael Hess” post-9/11 style 180-degree artificial retraction on his testimony.
Of course the controllers realize that the first organic version of the story confirms foreknowledge on the part of security. That foreknowledge would fit perfectly with the lack of clear evidence of the official story version of the story. The retracted artificial NEW narrative attempts to conveniently remove this foreknowledge and suspicious behavior. But in the end notice that the actual odd behavior and the security personnel who were mysteriously not working that day is still factual, only now we’re asked to chalk it up to coincidence. Now where have we heard this before?
We’ve seen these classic about-faces in many false flag shootings in the past including assassinations of JFK and RFK and almost all false flag events including 9/11 where WTC 7 firsthand “explosions” eyewitness Michael Hess spilled the beans only to later then pull a 180 and completely changed his story. In the aftermath of the RFK assassination we have live recordings of detectives literally forcing a key witness to change her story in what is said to be part of MKUltra mind control experiments conducted on witnesses who told stories damning to the official version.
In every case we see people telling a genuine story from the bottom of their heart, and after apparently being intimidated or mind controlled (as with RFK witnesses) by the controllers to redact their testimony, all of a sudden put out comments that are completely and directly opposite of what they had previously stated.
No one should be fooled by these sudden retractions that realign the story back to the original fake reality we call the “official story”. Sorry mainstream media, but I wholeheartedly believe Mr Hughes’ ORIGINAL testimony. He said it when he was expressing his organic reality, free of coercion. Now it is crystal clear to see that he is under outside pressure and control to say otherwise. No one speaks their heart honestly and then without any coercion whatsoever suddenly changes their story. That is about as unnatural a behavior as you can get. We ONLY see this behavior in movies; usually it’s the part where the mafia-government agent threatens the witness. This behavior would never happen otherwise.
This is a perfect example of what we mean by distinguishing the full-dimensional, real, full and organic reality versus the 2-dimensional artificial world the control system needs you to believe. This thing is real and anyone who threatens the artificial reality they have worked so hard to create and maintain will be threatened or intimidated in some way as I’m sure Hughes now understands very clearly.
Hughes is no different than any other musician, actor or celebrity who all came under attack in Operation Chaos of the 1960s. Everyone should research Operation Chaos, a CIA counterculture operation where “anti-government” celebrities with powerful influence were systematically drugged, blackmailed, threatened, intimidated, silenced and murdered if they did not cooperate the same way that Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes is doing now.
So we can rest assured that Hughes had a talk with someone who told him that for his own safety, perhaps for the sake of the future of his band he better change his story. And clearly whatever he was told worked. His “story” now fits in comfortably with the official story just a couple of days later, mind you. He is no longer a threat to their narrative and their agenda, and for him all is well again. The threat of exposure of the globalist agenda, as far as the controllers are concerned, is now over – order, they hope, can now be restored.
Hughes told the Fox Business Network last week that six guards at the Bataclan venue never came to work the night of the attack, and “it seems rather obvious that they had a reason not to show up.”
On Friday, Hughes apologized: “I humbly beg forgiveness from the people of France, the staff and security of the Bataclan, my fans, family, friends and anyone else hurt or offended by the absurd accusations I made.”
“My suggestions that anyone affiliated with the Bataclan played a role in the events of November 13 are unfounded and baseless — and I take full responsibility for them,” he said in a statement.
Disturbingly, the 180-degree retraction sparks memories of MKUltra experiments and how a key Robert F Kennedy assassination witness was coerced and intimidated. As we saw with the RFK witness intimidation, Hughes later goes on to blame HIMSELF suggesting he was possibly delusional about his original beliefs:
Hughes blamed the lingering effect of the attack for his accusations that the security team may have been in on the attack.
“I’ve been dealing with non-stop nightmares and struggling through therapy to make sense of this tragedy and insanity. I haven’t been myself since Nov. 13,” he wrote. “I realize there’s no excuse for my words, but for what it’s worth: I am sincerely sorry for having hurt, disrespected or accused anyone.”
This apparently is the telltale sign of someone who is completely under their control. Blame yourself and talk about yourself like you are mentally struggling, thus wiping away any possible self-credibility you thought you had. Nobody in their right mind tells a clear story then blames themselves for being mentally unclear and in need of “therapy” for saying what they said.
Was Hughes under mind control when he put out this statement? Did someone write this retraction out for him and force him to put his name behind it? The possibilities are endless, but the important thing is to realize what is happening here.
Stories like these serve as indicators of who is under the control of the control system and who is not. The system will harass and destroy anyone who does not cooperate – plain and simple. For this reason it is important to remember that celebrities are nothing more than puppets for the ruling elite or they wouldn’t be celebrities to begin with.
The lesson to learn here is that if you are going to come against the system don’t expect the system to work for you. You must choose who your master will be and you cannot serve two masters. Either you stand for truth at any cost and that which is real, organic and genuine; or you stand with the deceivers who control the media, Hollywood, all the politicians and all the celebrities. Do not mistake that which is real and that which is artificial.
Idaho’s public school students may soon have an additional reference text in science class — the Bible.
Senate Bill 1342, which will be heard this week by the House Education Committee, would authorize the use of the Bible “for reference purposes” in any class where “an understanding of the Bible may be useful or relevant.” Of course, our courts have repeatedly made clear that instruction in the Bible and creationism is neither useful nor relevant nor constitutional in science class. But that didn’t stop the bill’s drafters from explicitly listing astronomy, biology, and geology among the courses into which teachers may incorporate the Bible.
The ACLU of Idaho opposed the bill in the Senate, pointing out that religious texts and beliefs about the origin of life have no place in science class. So, what was the “fix” offered by the Senate Education Committee? They deleted the bill’s references to astronomy, biology, and geology. They also amended the bill to provide that other religious texts could be used as well.
Neither of these cosmetic changes, however, fixes anything; they merely attempt to better mask the measure’s serious flaws. As amended, the bill still allows for teachers to use the Bible in “any topics of study” where a teacher personally believes it is “useful or relevant,” including science classes. And based on the bill’s original text and the current title of the relevant subsection, which remains — “USE OF THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS” — we know that’s exactly what was intended all along.
Authorizing and encouraging teachers to incorporate the Bible into science classes not only shortchanges Idaho’s students, who deserve a sound science education that will prepare them for college, but it is also a violation of the separation of church and state.
Indeed, even in non-science classes, allowing teachers to incorporate the Bible or other religious texts into class on a whim — regardless of state educational standards and approved curricula — raises serious constitutional concerns. Without in-depth training from a non-religious source and appropriate teaching materials, such as those available for a comparative religion course, it is very likely that teachers will inject their personal beliefs into these lessons, resulting in the violation of students’ First Amendment rights and a real risk of costly litigation for schools.
Unfortunately, the Idaho Senate has already passed the amended bill. But hopefully, as members of the House Education Committee consider the bill this week, they will take a much closer look and conclude, as we have, that Senate Bill 1342 is no gem.
Home Secretary Theresa May’s Investigatory Powers Bill, dubbed the snoopers’ charter, breaches international surveillance standards and is “unfit for purpose,” more than 200 senior lawyers have warned.
In a letter to the Guardian, the lawyers, including numerous Queen’s Council representatives and academics, said the bill will destroy privacy.
MPs are due to vote on the bill for the first time on Tuesday afternoon, and it is expected they will pass the motion. The bill itself sets out a series of legal frameworks for the government’s interception of data by GCHQ and establishes the breadth of government surveillance operations.
Chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee Kirsty Brimelow QC has signed the letter, as well as academics from 40 British law schools.
“A law that gives public authorities generalized access to electronic communications contents compromises the essence of the fundamental right to privacy and may be illegal,” the letter reads.
“The investigatory powers bill does this with its ‘bulk interception warrants’ and ‘bulk equipment interference warrants.’”
A well as bulk interception, the letter warns against “targeted interception warrants” which could be taken out on groups, organizations, or premises. The letter also warns that there need only be “reasonable suspicion” to intercept data, not demonstrable proof of threat.
“These are international standards found in the recent opinion of the UN special rapporteur for the right to privacy, and in judgments of the EU court of justice and the European court of human rights,” it continues.
“At present, the bill fails to meet these standards – the law is unfit for purpose.”
The aim of the bill is to establish a legal framework for interception, but critics of the bill say any bulk interception is a breach of privacy. The bill will also make it obligatory for internet companies to keep track of sites accessed by users for one year.
Other critics say the new bill will also criminalize IT staff who fail to destroy security services on its customers’ software on demand, or fail to hack into its customers’ systems upon a Home Office request.
GCHQ says it only targets an individual’s data in the context of a threat to national security, and would only pursue terrorist or criminal activity. It also argues that bulk interception is a necessary step to monitor criminal activity and the majority of intercepted material is never read.
However, the United Nations special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, also warned that the IP bill would legitimize mass surveillance.
A police investigation has been launched after a video posted online appears to show an officer macing a group of bikers on a highway in Texas.
The video was posted Monday, a day after the incident took place on the US Highway 297 in Fort Worth.
The episode began when a police officer pulled over a red pickup truck which was traveling with the bikers and issued citations to the driver for not having a license, and to two others for standing in the bed of the truck.
As the bikers approach, the video shows the officer get out of his vehicle and spray them with what seems to be pepper spray.
During the big ride today we had a law enforcement officer, that looked as if he was pulling over a truck, stepped out…
In a statement, Fort Worth officials named the policeman involved as Officer Figueroa, a “six-year veteran” who has been “removed from uniformed patrol duties and placed in an administrative capacity pending the investigation”.
Police say they had received a number of calls reporting reckless driving relating to the motorcyclists. However, the biker who shot the video disputes this claim.
Biker Jack Kinney said he did not see any reckless driving and accused the department of running a “propaganda campaign to try to mitigate the damage”, The Star Telegram reports.
“What’s in the video? The people at that time, they weren’t committing any crime,” Kinney told the local paper. “They were driving slower than the speed limit and they got pepper sprayed for it.”
Another biker called Chase Stone said the police action could have resulted in serious injury or death.
“If one or two or three of those riders had their face masks up and that would have hit them in the eyes, it would have more than likely sent them down,” Stone said.
To the Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs c/oBen Charland Executive Assistant
Dear Minister Hehr;
I want to add my voice to that of my friend and associate John Duddy. Right now Canadian public policy on the issue of terrorism draws on the substance of the US 9/11 Commission Report, a notorious document outlining conclusions based on evidence obtained illegally through torture.
The Canadian government should not be formulating Canadian public policy on outrageously flawed foreign sources, especially those obtained through the infliction of torture. Right now this uncritical acceptance of the contents of the 9/11 Commission Report makes many of our federal public officials inside and outside Parliament complicit in illegal torture. This state of affairs is unacceptable. You should do what is necessary to veer away from this travesty that is presently making you and your fellow Liberal parliamentarians complicit in torture.
The whole Global War on Terror is known by millions of citizens worldwide to be based on an elaborate psychological operation whose objectives include the incitement of Islamophobia by the dissemination of false interpretations not only of 9/11, but also of other false flag terror events including the Ottawa shooter episode of Oct. 2014. This shooter episode, used as justification for the divisive and unacceptable Bill C-51, has never been properly investigated by a genuinely neutral third-party arbiter. Eye witnesses to the shooter event have given evidence to the CBC that does not conform to the RCMP version of events. Canadian citizens have no reason to trust the RCMP version of events.
To its credit the Liberal Party ran its most recent federal election campaign on a platform opposing the incitement and political exploitation of Islamophobia by Stephen Harper and his party. Mr. Harper rode to power riding the energy of a specious, hate-mongering campaign of disinformation on 9/11.
The Liberal government can rightfully be accused of carrying on Islamophobia in public policy as well as long as it continues to avert reckoning with the lies and crimes of 9/11. Canadians need a proper federal investigation of what is true and what is fraud when it comes to the originating and justifying event for the Global War on Terror in all its incarnations and iterations, including numerous subsequent false flag terror events right up to the present day.
Yours Sincerely,
Anthony Hall
Professor of Globalization Studies
University of Lethbridge
Editor In Chief, American Herald Tribune
Co_Host, False Flag Weekly News
Tunisia strongly opposes any military intervention in Libya outside the framework of international law, Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui told Sputnik.
In January, media reported that US President Barack Obama was making plans to open a third front against Daesh in Libya, following military operations in Syria and Iraq started by a US-led coalition in 2014.
“The impact of any foreign involvement or military strikes in Libya will be significant to our security. We are saying to our partners, who are willing to hit the strongholds of terrorists, that they have to inform us about their plans and, of course, we are against any strikes without legal ground. We think that any strike should be made [according to] the international legal framework and UN,” the minister said.
He added that the international community should shift its focus and help Libyans strengthen bonds and resolve their differences.
“We would like to see a new national accord government in Libya assume power and taking care of the terrorism issue. It is a task for the Libyans, not for foreigners to fight terrorism in Libya,” Jhinaoui pointed out.
Libya has been engulfed in conflict since the 2011 overthrow of long-term leader Muammar Gaddafi and the subsequent civil war. There are currently two governments in Libya: the internationally-recognized Council of Deputies based in Tobruk and the Tripoli-based General National Congress. The two sides came to an agreement on December 17, paving the way to the formation of the Government of National Accord.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that any military operations against terrorists in Libya should only be possible if the UN Security Council agrees to them.
Syria is teetering on the brink and it will be difficult to rebuild it as a united country, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told Sputnik in an interview.
“Syria tinkers on the brink. I do not know if or how it will be possible to rebuild Syria as a united country. For Israel, we are greatly concerned by the threat of Hezbollah, and importantly it is clear that there is a need to prevent Iran from promoting instability in the region, else no solution to the problems has a real chance to hold,” Rivlin said in regard to resolving the political crisis in Syria.
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that Syria had been effectively partitioned and is unlikely to be reunified into the state it had been in the recent past.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously endorsed the creation of an independent Kurdish state, arguing it would be a bulwark of stability in the region.
Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces fighting numerous opposition factions and radical Islamists. The Swiss city of Geneva currently hosts the UN-backed proximity talks between the Syrian opposition and the government’s delegation to put an end to the deadly conflict.
Discussion of Syria’s federalization during the ongoing peace talks has been supported by opposition factions represented in Geneva, as well Syrian Kurds. Meanwhile, Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has rejected both federalization and the partition of the country.
The recent scandal in Paris concerning the decoration with the Légion d’honneur by the French government of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammad Ben Nayef, highlights the importance of the absolutist Gulf Monarchy to France’s imperial strategy in the Middle East. The spurious left/right divide in French politics between the Socialist Party and the Republicans, is manifested in a Middle East geopolitics of the Socialist Party’s special relationship with Saudi Arabia, while UMP, formerly led by Nicolas Sarkozy, tends to favor Qatar, the irony being that Qatar is a tad more liberal than the ‘socialist’ backed Saudi behemoth.
While there was muted outrage in the French capital over the decision to honor Ben Nayef on his own request, in order to boost his international ‘credibility’, I believe the French government’s actions were perfectly logical and reasonable. Why wouldn’t the French government honor Saudi officials? Since the creation of a unified kingdom with British backing in 1932, the Saudi dictatorship has served its function well. It has, along with its sister Israel, constituted a bulwark against the two threats to Western, Zionist suzerainty in the Middle East and North Africa: Arab nationalism and revolutionary Shiism.
The Wahhabi regime does this by keeping so many of the Muslims of the former Ottoman Empire indoctrinated in an obscurantist death cult, under the supreme authority of a degenerate ruling caste who, instead of developing the industrial sector of their country so as to improve the lives of the poor, squander billions on Western arms deals in order to better oppress their own people and those of neighboring countries such as Yemen, who are attempting to emancipate themselves from the neocolonial yoke.
Relations between the Saudi monarchy and the French government are currently so good, the words ‘honey moon’, have been used to describe them. When President Holland visited Riyadh Just months after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in January 2015, French press pundits on the capitalist ‘left’ and ‘capitalist right’, were waxing lyrical about the ‘great friendship’ that exists between Saudi Arabia and France. In June 2015, the French government signed over 10,3 billion dollars in contracts with the Saudi regime in areas extending from military, aeronautics, health, transport and solar energy. This means that a sizable portion of the French bourgeoisie, what President Clemenceau once referred to as “the syndicate of interests”, are perfectly happy with the Franco-Saudi status quo.
French imperialism currently bears the distinction of having surpassed the United States in bellicosity. The French led the carpet bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011; they have led in the destruction of Syria too. In negotiations with Iran, the Quai d’Orsay was the most intransigent; this won it more favor with Riyadh. With US/Saudi relations strained, due to American détente with Iran, Paris is using Saudi insecurity about its future to gain more influence in the Arabian Peninsula.
The French government sold more arms than ever in 2015 and they intend to sell even more this year, thanks to the ‘honey moon’ relationship with the head chopping regime in Riyadh; a regime openly promoting the Wahhabi death cult all around the world, including in France’s sprawling proletarian banlieux, where mis-fortunate youths such as the infamous Kouachi brothers fall under their influence. The fact that the Saudi regime promotes and funds Takfiri terrorism is not a secret; US Vice President Joe Biden candidly admitted this to students at the Kennedy Business School in Harvard University in 2014.
While US presidential candidate Donald Trump, in what appeared to be a veiled critique of Israeli terrorism, recently declared that ‘everyone knows’ the Saudis are behind Takfiri terrorism.
In fact, it is regularly admitted by the French corporate and establishment media that the Saudis are funding terrorism in Syria and other countries, yet Riyadh remains the privileged partner of countries claiming to be fighting an international ‘war on terrorism’! None of this makes sense but, of course, that is because it doesn’t have to make sense. For this global war on terrorism is a war without a real enemy. The enemies are fabricated by the panoply of agencies that constitute the military-industrial-media-intelligence complex; a netherworld of special interests and high finance.
In this post-modern wasteland of consumerist meaninglessness and zero-consciousness, the terrorist is a shifting signifier. The ‘War on Terror’ narrative operates like Derridean deconstruction, whereby the terrorist is both real and unreal, present and absent, constantly deferred, displaced, with no essential being outside the labyrinthine obfuscations of the war on terror’s ever expanding mythos. And the political elites, who serve corporate and financial power, no longer care what the public thinks of them. They are now discretely admitting that the war on terror is a fraud, that the French government supports the most outrageous dictatorships on earth, that human rights, as Marx noted, signify nothing more than vile property rights ; that money is God and that they have nothing but snickering contempt for the French public.
Everything is now out in the open. We are governed by criminals and tyrants and they don’t mind us taking cognizance of that fact. Therefore, the media disclosure of emails showing how the French government attempted to play down the Légion d’honneur affair will not bother them. Speaking to France Inter last week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, said: ” Diplomacy can sometimes surprise us. One should see it like that” In other words, this is an affair of state and we have no duty to explain our policies to the public. Procul, procul, este profani! Be off, be gone, ye uninitiated!
In 1999, a relative of Ben Nayef was arrested in Paris in possession of 20 tons of cocaine. The Saudi prince was smuggling drugs from Latin America into Europe, in order to finance Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. The prince escaped to Saudi Arabia but was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison by a French court. The fact that this convicted, felonious relative of Mohammad Ben Nayef was under the protection of the Saudi regime did not even enter into the agenda of the French delegation to Riyadh in 2015.
Why would it? Drug trafficking is a key component of class rule, constituting the carefully concealed underbelly of the global, capitalist system.
Drug dealers operating under the aegis of the French Socialist Party were responsible for crushing the massive French labor strikes of 1948, when there was a real chance of the French Communist Party, (PCF )taking power. In cahoots with the CIA, Socialist Mayor of Marseilles, Gaston Deferre used the drug trafficking mafia clans to crush the worker’s movement. Today, cities like Marseilles are awash with drugs, delinquency, and poverty. The workers are no longer organized as immigration keeps them disunited and demoralized, while Saudi princes party with their French counterparts along the French Riviera. Meanwhile, ‘socialist’ leaders meet farcically in Paris to discuss the “danger of the far right”, movements whose ranks are increasingly being filled with demoralized workers.
The Saudi prince deserves the Légion d’honneur, for the Saudi regime is a worthy partner of French imperialism. It is waging war against the Syrian people, waging war against the Yemeni people, and would soon be waging war against the Iranian people, were it not for the fact that Persia is capable of flattening it.
The Wahhabi regime poisons the minds of millions of young Muslims, diverting their social anger at the ruling class into sectarian hatred of their class allies, killing other poor Muslims and Christians instead of the tyrants spreading hate, oppression and permanent war. The Saudi regime is a Zionist entity, which wages permanent war on Muslims mostly, murdering and defaming them and sullying the Islam. For the deeply unpopular French regime instituting a police state, Saudi Arabia is a role model. In this sense, by bestowing the highest honors of the state on despot Mohammad Ben Nayef, the French government is revealing to the world the true meaning, the transcendental signification of their oft incanted ditty of ‘human rights’, ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’.
I am reluctant to write two weeks in a row about Israel’s malignant influence over the United States but as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is meeting in Washington for its annual Summit beginning next Sunday some commentary would seem desirable. AIPAC’s website claims that its “… mission is to strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of Israel and the United States. Our staff and citizen activists educate decision makers about the bonds that unite the United States and Israel and how it is in America’s best interest to help ensure that Israel is safe, strong and secure.”
That is, of course, a self-serving bit of nonsense. U.S. national security would be best enhanced by telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a hike and never come back. AIPAC is a political pressure group, not an educational foundation, which is purely a pretext exploited to secure it tax exemption. It uses every means, fair and foul, to influence and even intimidate the U.S. government and media to maintain the fiction that Israel is somehow America’s “best friend” and “closest ally” even though it is neither. Its objective is to maintain the flow of U.S. dollars from the U.S. Treasury while keeping the firewall of political protection in place to insulate Israeli politicians from the consequences of their own actions.
This year AIPAC, which has an annual budget of $70 million and more than 200 employees, is expecting 16,000 supporters and two thirds of Congress. It will be featuring a keynote speech by Hillary Clinton, which should be fascinating. As Hillary and her husband Bill already constitute a fully owned subsidiary of the Israel Lobby and New York financial services interests, which often amount to the same thing, her attendance might be regarded as de rigueur. And she has already pledged to invite Netanyahu to the White House during her first month in office while also promising to move the Israeli relationship to a “new level,” a concept that is both difficult to imagine and positively frightening in terms of what it might portend. Will she move the entire U.S. government to Jerusalem? Or only the Treasury Department?
Donald Trump will also be speaking at AIPAC, for the first time. Trump has rattled Israel’s friends in the U.S. by calling for an even handed role by Washington in Middle East peace negotiations and through his insistence that he does not need the money from Jewish mega-donors to run his campaign and “can’t be bought.” But he has also said “First of all, there’s nobody… that’s more pro-Israel than I am. OK. There’s nobody. I am pro-Israel. I was the Grand Marshall, not so long ago, of the Israeli Day Parade down 5th avenue. I’ve made massive contributions to Israel. I have a lot of — I have tremendous love for Israel. I happen to have a son-in-law and a daughter that are Jewish, OK? And two grandchildren that are Jewish.” So one should assume that he will talk fulsomely about his love of Israel but at the same time it has to be hoped that he will assert his independence when it comes to policy affecting the United States.
Netanyahu also regularly appears at AIPAC. Last year he used the platform provided to harangue the American public and the inside the beltway chattering class about the dangers posed by Iran while also exploiting the opportunity to do some serious fundraising in New York. The visits also frequently provide an opportunity to meet with and scold the President of the United States or to address Congress on how the U.S. should conduct its foreign policy. It is a given in Washington that Netanyahu will show up in the nation’s capital personally to kick some butt at least twice a year but it is also understood that Bibi will not fail to dish out some harsh criticism the rest of the time by way of the media, his own patented form of international extortion.
Nothing illustrates the unbridgeable abyss between the media/talking head vision of Israel promoted by the Israel Lobby and folks like Hillary and the real thing more than the recent embarrassments and indignities being delivered by the Netanyahu government, which AIPAC really represents. Benjamin Netanyahu is, to everyone’s surprise, not coming to AIPAC this year but will instead address the conference by video link. The visit was planned but canceled at the last moment and, per Netanyahu, the fault is that of the president of the United States who had reportedly said that he would not be available for a meeting due to the upcoming trip to Cuba.
The Obama Administration was genuinely puzzled, partly due to the fact that it first learned of the cancellation through a newspaper story rather than from the Israeli Embassy or Foreign Ministry. It was also astonished by the explanation given as it had indeed set up a presidential meeting at Netanyahu’s request in spite of a very tight schedule. The White House did not complain openly about the deliberate snub, but it was clear to everyone involved that Netanyahu was yet again sending a message to the Administration regarding who was in charge.
Netanyahu benefits from the fact that his tendency to ridicule critics makes many in the media reluctant to challenge his behavior, but when it became embarrassingly clear that he had been fibbing about why he was not coming to Washington he immediately resorted to Plan B, stating that he did not want to interfere in the presidential primaries currently underway. No one believed that argument either as Netanyahu has not hesitated to interfere in American politics in the past, notably when he made clear that he would prefer a Republican president in 2012 and appeared in ads in Florida endorsing Mitt Romney.
The White House meanwhile resorted to its own Plan B when confronted by a truculent Netanyahu. It first groveled a bit about how much it loves Israel and then expressed hope that Vice President Joe Biden, who was in the air on his way to Tel Aviv, would be able to calm the situation. Indeed, the original objective of the Biden trip turned out to be the real reason for the contretemps with Netanyahu. Netanyahu was miffed because the United States has hesitated to provide him with a no-strings-attached long term agreement to give Israel at least $5 billion dollars per year in military assistance, up from the current $3 billion.
To be fair to Netanyahu, the demand for more “assistance” was no secret. The Israelis had made it clear since they failed to stop the Iran nuclear deal that they would feel a whole lot better if Washington were to give them a lot more money. And it would have to be guaranteed cash, tied to a security package that would run for at least ten years.
Biden had been sent to help negotiate an agreement over the assistance, which had been stalled due in part to Israeli expectations that they might do better with a GOP Administration or Hillary if they wait a few months. Obama’s insistence that any deal would require the Israeli government to forego lobbying directly to congress for more cash also was a stumbling block. The President of the United States has thereby found himself in a situation engineered by Netanyahu in which he has to beg Israel to take more money with the only condition being that it not make trouble with the nation’s legislature. In return for the largesse, Israel would not be committed to do anything that would directly benefit the United States.
In the event, Biden’s role as a negotiating intermediary was unsuccessful and he wound up looking foolish so he too has decided to speak at AIPAC where he will undoubtedly say many unctuous things that no one will believe.
There are several things that can be done to address the wildly asymmetrical situation with Benjamin Netanyahu and AIPAC. First, it must be recognized that the United States and Israel are actually two separate countries with very little in the way of common interests. The notion that they have many mutual concerns is largely a myth. AIPAC, the principal purveyor of the myth, is an agent of Israel and should be compelled to register with the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which would require it to maintain transparency in terms of who funds it. It should also be stripped of its tax exemption as it is demonstrably not an educational foundation. Taking those two steps would enable the American public to understand just exactly what AIPAC represents.
Second, President Obama should cut off aid to Israel completely since it is uninterested in there being any quid pro quo for the billions that it receives. If Obama wants to be gracious, he can consider renewing the subsidy if and when Israel rolls back its illegal settlements in Jerusalem and on the Palestinian West Bank. If Israel is not interested in peace and not willing to reverse policies that many believe constitute war crimes then it will not receive any support of any kind from the United States.
The annual reappearance of AIPAC in Washington should remind everyone that there are those among us who regard any allegiance to the common interests that should bind together all Americans as secondary at best. In the case of Israel, billions in taxpayer money should not be regarded as a convenient mechanism to bribe a foreign state to behave. It is past time to cut the ties that bind to despicable rogues like Benjamin Netanyahu and to make clear to Americans politicians that dual loyalty to a state that has been nothing but trouble for the past twenty years will no longer be considered acceptable.
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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