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Arab Dissidents’ Strange Bedfellows

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | May 2, 2011

If it’s true that, as Shakespeare famously put it, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” then pro-democracy Arab dissidents must be very miserable indeed.

CyberDissidents.org is a project launched in 2008 by the Jerusalem-based Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies “to research and focus attention on the online activities of democracy advocates and dissidents in the Middle East, in the hope of empowering them at home and raising awareness of their plight abroad.” Until its demise in 2009, the Adelson Institute was located at the Shalem Center, a controversial research institute associated with right wing Zionist causes. Founded in 1994, the Shalem Center was initially funded by its current chairman, Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune. Lauder is also president of the Jewish National Fund, which promotes ethnic cleansing through planting forests on expropriated Palestinian land. The Adelson Institute was set up in 2007 with a $4.5 million grant from Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who, like Lauder, is a patron and confidante of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Under the direction of Natan Sharansky, the former Israeli minister who resigned his cabinet seat in 2005 in protest over Ariel Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan, the institute held a “Democracy and Security” conference in Prague in 2007. It brought together Israeli officials; their American neoconservative sympathizers with their favourite Middle Eastern dissidents in tow—most notably, Richard Perle’s Israel-admiring Syrian protégé Farid Ghadry; and the newly-installed Eastern European democrats swept to power in the wake of a wave of neocon-backed “color revolutions,” the latter group presumably serving to inspire the Arab and Iranian participants to emulate them.

One year later, Sharansky’s activist coordinator of democracy programs at the Adelson Institute, David Keyes, co-founded CyberDissidents.org and has served since then as its director. During his visit to the United States in 2009 to present the organization’s mission and progress to pro-Israeli policy-makers, activists and press, Keyes spent “significant time” with ardent Zionist academic Bernard Lewis, an advisory board member to the group during the first two years of its existence. Among his more notable contributions to the Arab world, Lewis introduced the concept of a “Clash of Civilizations” between Islam and Christendom, advocated the “Lebanonization” of the region, and was “perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq.”

Seemingly undeterred by its Israeli origins, prominent Middle Eastern pro-democracy activists have been recruited by the Adelson Institute’s project for Internet activists. On its advisory board are Egyptian dissident Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies and the Arab Organization for Human Rights and a board member of the Arab Democracy Foundation, who participated in the Prague conference; and Samer Abu Libdeh, the director of the Interaction Forum, an Amman-based civil society and democracy-promotion organization, and a senior fellow at the Center for Liberty in the Middle East (CLIME). Abu Libdeh also served as a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank created by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

On its website, CyberDissidents.org features provocative articles such as the one entitled “Shocking Videos, Photos, and Tweets from Syria,” which includes amateur videos, digital photographs and tweets from Daraa. It first appeared on The Daily Beast website, where David Keyes also blogs about the human rights abuses of practically every Middle Eastern regime, except the one occupying Palestine. Considering The Daily Beast’s insatiable appetite for Arab freedom, it’s worth noting that its creator Barry Diller, who also launched the Fox TV network, attended a 1983 Manhattan conclave convened to coordinate pro-Israeli political operations in the United States. Incidentally, fellow participant Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic, not noted for his love of Arabs, lambasted President Obama’s insufficiently enthusiastic support of the Libyan rebels as a “betrayal of the Arab revolution, of an Arab people and of Arab hope.”

Last April, David Keyes attended an event entitled “Cyber-Dissidents and Political Change” sponsored by the George W. Bush Institute. “Inspired by President and Mrs. Bush’s unwavering commitment to freedom for all people,” its website states, “the Bush Institute works to embolden dissidents and freedom advocates, creating a powerful network for moral support and education.” Keyes was one of the featured guests on a TV programme presented by the institute’s executive director, Jim Glassman, who as Bush’s Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy brought dissidents from around the world to New York for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements summit in 2008. The other guests were Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty president Jeffrey Gedmin, formerly a resident scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and a Project for a New American Century founding signatory; Christopher Walker, director of studies at Freedom House, home to indefatigable pro-Israel democracy promoters like Max Kampelman, Paula Dobriansky and Joshua Muravchik; and former Ha’aretz journalist Bari Weiss, The Wall Street Journal’s assistant editorial features editor with a soft spot for the world’s non-Palestinian dissidents.

Dissidents who put their faith in such improbable champions of Arab freedom would do well to remember the words of Sheldon Adelson. Referring to a conversation he had with Iranian dissident Amir Abbas Fakhravar at the Prague conference, the Likudnik casino magnate reportedly said, “I like Fakhravar because he says that, if we attack, the Iranian people will be ecstatic.” But when another Iranian pro-democracy activist disputed that assumption, Adelson candidly responded, “I really don’t care what happens to Iran. I am for Israel.”

Maidhc Ó Cathail has written extensively about Israel’s role in the Arab uprisings at The Passionate Attachment blog.

May 3, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Exposing ‘Democracy’ Promotion in the Middle East

argonium79 | April 28, 2011

Middle East analyst and investigative journalist Maidhc Ó Cathail exposes US governmental and quasi-governmental agencies that have been involved behind the scenes in encouraging “democratic” reform in the Middle East.

http://thepassionateattachment.com

Mentioned:
Al-Jazeera, Tahrir Square, Washington Post, George Soros, Barack Obama, Eastern Europe, Color Revolution, Open Society Institute, USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, The International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute, Mohamed ElBaradei, Muslim Brotherhood, International Crisis Group, Mondo Weiss, Israel Lobby, Arab Protests, Serbia, Srdja Popovic, Otpor, Slobodan Milosevic, April 6th Youth Movement, Belgrade, Facebook, Internet, Twitter, Canvas, Colonel Robert Helvey, Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy, Autocracy, Georgia, Ukraine, Orange Revolution, Peter Ackerman, Wall Street, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Michael Milken, Albert Einstein Institution, International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Freedom House, Thomas A. Dine, AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Max Kampelman, JINSA, The Jewish Institute For National Security Affairs, PNAC, Project for the New American Century, Neoconservative Movement, Trotskyism, Kenneth Adelman, Paula J. Dobriansky, Joshua Muravchik, Mark Palmer, Ronald Reagan, Crusade for Freedom, Allen Weinstein, Dr. Wiliam Robinson, CIA, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil, Herzliya Conference, Radical Islam, Uzi Landau, Avigdor Lieberman, Ariel Sharon, Judith Miller, Ahmed Chalabi, Steven Emerson, Council for a Community for Democracies, Frank C. Carlucci, The Carlyle Group, Jared Cohen, Google Ideas, Condoleezza Rice, Hilary Clinton, CyberDissidents.org, James Prince, Democracy Council, David Keyes, Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy, Withdrawal from Gaza, New Anti-Semitism, Israel, Zionist, Bernard Lewis, Iraq War, Dick Cheney, Clash of Civilizations, Nazism, Bolshevism, Christendom, Islam, Lebanonization, Iran, Ronald Lauder, WJC, World Jewish Congress, World Trade Center, 911, Anti Defamation League, ADL, Hungary, Austria, CME, Central European Media Enterprises, SignalOneTV, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Larry Diamond, Justice and Development, AK Party, Turkey, Gradual Democratiszation, Moderate Liberal Islamic Democracy, Carl Gershman, Oligarchy, Baathists, Islamists, Israel, Jewish People, Unemployment, Corruption

April 28, 2011 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Eric Cantor and AIPAC

By DAVID SWANSON | CounterPunch | April 28, 2011

In May 2009, Congressmen Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) wrote to President Barack Obama about U.S. policy toward Israel. Their staff sent the letter as a PDF but forgot to change the name of the file to something other than “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

AIPAC stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group widely recognized as one of the most effective at lobbying Congress, and a group that consistently promotes the positions of the rightwing party of the Israeli government. AIPAC also has the distinction of having lobbied against accountability for an Israeli attack on a U.S. ship and in favor of leniency for a man convicted of selling U.S. secrets to Israel. In a separate case, six years ago, two AIPAC employees were indicted for obtaining U.S. secrets from a U.S. military employee who pled guilty. After powerful Congress members like Jane Harman (D., Calif.) lobbied on their behalf, the charges were dropped.

That’s what it means to be an effective lobby group: having your way. Need sanctions on Iran? You got em. Support at the United Nations for illegal settlements in Palestine or a blockade and bombing of Gaza? Not a problem. In fact, it would be our pleasure to provide the weapons needed, whether it’s for bombing Gaza, bombing Lebanon, or killing Turkish and American peace activists on an aid ship as happened last year. We’d be honored, and don’t let cost be a consideration! That would be an insult in these times of huge budget surpluses in Washington! (Warning, this paragraph contained sarcasm.)

We give $3 billion in “military aid” to Israel every year, more than we give to any other country. This is justified by the need to protect Israel from all the other countries in its region, most of which we also give or sell arms to. Last fall, when pressure was building in Washington to cut off foreign aid spending, Congressman Cantor proposed making an exception for Israel that would help guarantee it $30 billion over the next decade by hiding that funding in the U.S. “defense” budget. That proposal didn’t fly, but neither has any funding of Israeli weapons been cut.

Is there any spending here in Virginia that Congressman Cantor has defended this tenaciously? Would there be if we could afford it?

Cantor is listed on Maplight.org as the top recipient of campaign money from “pro-Israel” groups in the U.S. House of Representatives, having taken in over $200,000. These groups, most of them affiliated with AIPAC, dump tens of millions of dollars into U.S. elections each cycle. And they certainly appear to get what they pay for. In February, continuing a decades-long pattern that has made the United States the leader in U.N. vetoes, President Obama instructed U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to veto and overrule the other 14 Security Council members’ backing of a resolution condemning as illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The problem here is more specific than the wild-west financing of U.S. elections. The problem is that the interests of the Israeli government, far from always representing the Israeli people, in no way represent those of the American people or the people of Virginia. Our views may align or diverge. But the Israeli government’s hostility toward Iraq or Iran, Lebanon or Palestine, or to independent democratic rule in Egypt and the rest of the region, need not be our own. That should be for us to decide, open to foreign input, but free of foreign financial pressure. AIPAC raises its money in the United States but advances the agenda of a foreign nation, diverging often from the majority views of both Americans at large and Jewish Americans in particular.

Later this month, Congressman Cantor will be a featured speaker at AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington DC, but over 100 peace and justice organizations will be holding a counter-conference called “Move Over AIPAC.” I wonder if Eric Cantor will get the message.

David Swanson is an author and blogger in Charlottesville, Va.

April 28, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Finding the Right Colors for a Color Revolution

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | April 25, 2011

It takes professionals to plan a color revolution, as this Washington Post report on Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution reveals:

In months of strategizing, the media team settled on red and white as the opposition colors for the spring elections. After Hariri’s assassination, however, the team members faced an unexpected challenge: how to blend the colors into the angry demonstration, giving the movement the brand recognition that had proved so successful in Ukraine.

Despite being the primary colors of Lebanon’s flag, red and white were not obvious choices. Kassir said they considered orange. But they did not want the movement to be seen as an imitation of Ukraine’s uprising, in November and December, that overturned fraudulent elections. Many Lebanese also remembered the distinctive orange markings on the Israeli tanks that rumbled into the country in 1982.

Blue also posed complications: What shade? Israeli blue wouldn’t work. Nor would European Union blue or United Nations blue. A rainbow was briefly considered, but it evoked the international gay rights movement. “In a macho country like this one,” Kassir said, “it just wouldn’t have worked.”

They settled on red and white. In the hours after the assassination, Jumblatt’s wife, Nora, a leading organizer of the protests, commissioned the manufacture of 40,000 lengths of red-and-white cloth that opposition leaders would soon drape around their necks. This was meant to serve as a message to the young foot soldiers to set aside party banners and follow suit, opposition strategists said. Soon, only red and white could be seen on the square and in other demonstrations, including a March 7 human chain leading from the bomb site to Hariri’s grave.

“In the business, it’s called visual equity,” said Francis, whose regular clients include General Mills, Cadbury chocolates and several banks. “That day, when I saw the streets full of red and white, it was just visually stunning.”

At the time of publication, Said Francis was the regional creative director of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which had been acquired in 2000 by the Publicis Groupe, a Paris-based global marketing concern. Considering Francis’s role in mobilizing crowds against Syria and Hezbollah, it’s interesting, to say the least, that his boss is an ardent supporter of Israel.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy:

In January 2008, Lévy was bestowed the International Leadership Award 2008 from the Anti-Defamation League in recognition of his stance towards tolerance and diversity. He also financed the 2008 concert at the Trocadéro to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.

April 25, 2011 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

In service of Israel’s interests Neocons promote regime change in Syria

Tony Cartlucci | Activist Post | April 23, 2011

It is no secret that Syria has been marked for regime change for at least two decades. In a 2007 speech given by General Wesley Clark regarding what he called a US “policy coup,” he relayed a 1991 conversation between himself and then Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz indicated that America had 5-10 years to clean up old Soviet “client regimes,” namely Syria, Iran, and Iraq, before the next super power rose up to challenge western hegemony.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Clark was again passed plans drawn to implement regime change throughout the Middle East, specifically to attack and destroy the governments of 7 countries; Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Lebanon and Libya. In 2002, then US Under Secretary of State John Bolton, would add Syria to the growing “Axis of Evil.”

In a recent CNN article, acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner stated, “We’re not working to undermine that [Syrian] government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we’re trying to do in countries around the globe. What’s different, I think, in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people.”

Toner’s remarks come after the Washington Post released cables indicating the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 under the Bush administration and was continued under Obama. To suggest America is promoting any conceivable form of democracy in Syria, when it itself is ruled by a monopolistic corporate oligarchy within which special interest driven agendas transcend presidential administrations is tenuous if not scandalous. It is quite clear that Wolfowitz’ agenda back in 1991 had long ago leaped from the drawing board and into practice, undermining the Syrian government through sanctions and seditious, foreign funded “civil society” networks.

What has ensued in Syria during the also admittedly US-funded “Arab Spring” is a puppet show of sorts, where Obama feigns surprise and confusion over what to do about Syria’s unrest. As the violence escalates, the propagandists predictably argue that Obama is doing “nothing” as Syrians yearn for “true democracy and freedom.” Undeniably, however, the US has fueled the unrest from the very beginning and most certainly is far from doing “nothing.”

In a recent AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.”

The ripple effect of course are the uprisings themselves, facilitated by yet more aid, equipment, and the complicity of the corporate owned media, disingenuously portraying the events as “spontaneous,” “genuine,” and “indigenous.” […]

With the preplanned operation to effect regime change in Syria already well underway, propagandists and co-conspirators like Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Elliot Abrams disingenuously berates Obama for standing idly by. In a recent article published on the CFR’s website, Abrams argues that “the Obama Administration should be in no “bind” or “quandary” about Syria,” citing “200 peaceful protesters now dead in the streets of Syria’s cities.”

Abrams also brings up Iran, and that collapsing Syria’s Assad regime would be a step toward isolating and collapsing Iran as well. (Syria under Asad is “Iran’s only Arab ally, able and willing to trans-ship arms to Hezbollah and through Hezbollah control Lebanon and give Iran a border with Israel.”) Also of interest, Abrams reconfirms reports that Libya indeed was amongst one of many nations that supplied fighters to Iraq, funneled through Syria he emphasizes, in an oafish attempt to bolster his argument for removing Assad from power. These fighters were drawn from eastern Libya, where many of them now are part of the US-backed rebellion against Qaddafi.

Abrams’ propaganda and similar pieces are meant to create a strategy of tension to herd the people into their political camps, create the illusion of debate, and justify an already foregone conclusion – regime change in Syria. Abrams concludes his piece by stating that the US “should side clearly with the people of Syria, who want an end to the Asad nightmare.” Quite obviously, the US already has. Just as one sitting through a bad play they already know the ending of, we too are made to endure a poorly performed act put on by puppet politicians as the corporate-financiers coax us through another leg of their agenda.

April 23, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Is Israel the sole determinant of us presidential elections?

They say they are . . .

By Sibel Edmonds | Intrepid Report | April 21, 2011

Are the elections results of US presidential elections determined by 2 percent of the population? Can the five million or so Jewish population be counted as the US majority? Does the Israel lobby shape the majority of US voters’ decisions? Is Israel the main determinant of political elections’ results when it comes to high US public offices?

I don’t know your take or answers to these questions, but we do have ‘theirs, on the record, loud and clear, and of course, delivered with hubris and cockiness:

Metzger to Obama: Release Pollard or lose reelection
By Jonah Mandel, Jerusalem Post

Chief Ashkenazi rabbi says he’s not making prophecy, just reflecting the feelings of US Jews who supported US president’s election.

Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger wants US President Barack Obama to know that unless he acts to release Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard, he will not be elected for a second time in November 2012.

“If Obama wants another term as president, he must immediately release Pollard,” the rabbi said on Saturday. …

I don’t believe the above article is in need of any interpretation or explanation. It is pretty straightforward: Mr. President if you do A, we won’t let you get reelected, but if you do B, we will; yes, we have that much power and influence. The condition put on this one way negotiation has nothing to do with the topic I am discussing here. Period. In this case it is about Jonathan Pollard, the convicted Israeli spy who betrayed his nation and endangered lives. It could very well be about Iran: Mr. Obama you either attack or advocate for an attack on country X, and we’ll ensure you get reelected, or, stand against it, and lose your chance of getting reelected. Why? Because ‘we’ have that power. Because ‘we’ perceive country X as a threat to ‘us,,’ and ‘we’ want you to put your nation at war for ‘us.’

Now you may say, ‘hey, that’s a ludicrous empty threat! Give or take two percent of the voting population can’t carry that level of influence over a United States President!’ And, you will be wrong; flat out wrong. It is true that the population of American adherents of Judaism was around 5 million, 1.7 percent of the total US population in 2007, and including those who identify themselves culturally as Jewish (but not necessarily religiously), around 6.5 million, 2.2 percent as of 2008. But who ever claimed that these things are all about size, and that only size matters?!!! If you don’t have the size you go about compensating for it; don’t you? Well, that’s exactly what ‘they’ have been doing, and doing successfully. How? In more than one way:

Shape the voters’ votes

So you want power and influence but there are too few of you, and you want your ‘men and women’ to get elected to high and mighty offices. You can’t multiply your 3 or 4 million votes by 30 or so. That option is out. But if you are shrewd and clever enough, if you are dedicated enough, and if you are rich and willing to pay for it enough, you can get the number of votes you need for your candidate. All you have to do is: shape the voters’ votes. And how do you shape the voters’ votes? One major way is to get ownership and or control and or management and or influence of the media. And ‘they’ have done exactly that, and have been doing ‘that’:

Declassified files from a Senate investigation into Israeli-funded covert public relations and lobbying activity in the United States were released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on July 23rd, 2010. The subpoenaed documents reveal Israel’s clandestine programs for “cultivation of editors,” the “stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines” as well as U.S. reporting about sensitive subjects such as the Dimona nuclear weapons facility. . . .

Click here if you want to read the report detailing how ‘they’ successfully control, direct and shape American media.

So, what else can you do?

Pay what it takes—every candidate has a price

Do I even need to expand upon this particular means of getting one’s candidate of choice? Come on people, I don’t have to tell you how far big dollars will get you when put inside political candidates’ pockets , enabling them to successfully and fruitfully campaign. And that’s another means ‘they’ have been successfully pursuing. In 2006 The Washington Post had a fairly sanitized report on the Israel Lobby’s ‘known & direct’ donations between1990–2006:

Pro-Israel interests have contributed $56.8 million in individual, group and soft money donations to federal candidates and party committees since 1990, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. (By contrast, the center says, pro-Arab and pro-Muslim groups donated $297,000 during the same period.) Between the 2000 and the 2004 elections, the 50 members of AIPAC’s board donated an average of $72,000 each to campaigns and political action committees. One in every five board members was a top fundraiser for President Bush or John Kerry.

And a more recent report had this finding:

Since 1990 the Israel lobby has contributed $78 million to congressional incumbents and $94 million when including non-incumbents. The pro-Israel lobby ranks 40 in total campaign giving as compared to more than 80 other industries, reports the Center for Responsive Politics.  . . .

I want to emphasize: these dollar figures are only known and above board donations. There are many indirect and or under the table and illegal ways of getting big dollars into your candidates’ pockets. While working at the FBI I had the pleasure (Not!) of learning about a few of these scams. And the Israel lobby is a pretty well-known participant in ‘these’ practices in the United States.

I am not writing this piece to attack anyone. I am not attacking Israel or the Israel lobby. Not really. In fact, I am giving them credit due: They are clever and shrewd, they are rich and successful, and they are dedicated (not to the United States) enough to put shrewdness and cleverness and richness to work for ‘what’ they believe in, and ‘who/what’ they are loyal to. Good for them. Terrible for us whom I am directing this article to. This is about us, the American voters. You may say, ‘hey, I ain’t got the money, and I ain’t got the position or means necessary to influence the media. So I can neither buy politicians nor use the media marketing platform!’

And my response to you is: I am not asking you to. All I am doing here is letting you see what I see, and letting you know what is out there in front of us; that is, if you haven’t already seen and don’t already know. Then, I’ll let you decide for yourself: Do I sit back, buy the things the media is marketing and selling, and let ‘them’ shape my vote easily? Or do I treat the media’s marketing campaign as I do Nike’s super performance ads when it comes to deciding on the candidate who will be getting my vote? Do I become enamored of the candidates with the glitziest and fanciest campaigns, or, do I direct my attention to the ones’ whose pockets have been left empty by foreign and special interests?

After all, it is your vote, and I am not going to spend more words or time trying to shape it, so please don’t let ‘them’ either.

April 21, 2011 Posted by | Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

New database reveals weapons to Israel, impact on Palestinians

By Josh Ruebner | Mondoweiss | April 20, 2011

Last week, Congress finally got around to finalizing the 2011 budget, which included a record-breaking appropriation of $3 billion in military aid to Israel (not including an additional $415 million in Pentagon funding for joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense projects).This money was the third installment of a ten-year Memorandum of Understanding signed by the United States and Israel to provide Israel with $30 billion in U.S. military aid from 2009-2018, an annual average increase of 25% over previous levels.

It is well-known that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid and that U.S. weapons provided to Israel make the United States intricately, deeply, and comprehensively complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians. However, until now, the extent of U.S. weapons transferred to Israel and the direct relationship between these weapons and Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians has been difficult to detail.

Not any longer. To coincide with Tax Day, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation launched a new website: How Many Weapons to Israel? to catalogue and quantify the types, values, and quantities of U.S. weapons transferred to Israel between 2000-2009. Even for someone like myself who works everyday to challenge U.S. military aid to Israel and follows the issue closely, the results of our research are eye-popping. The sheer magnitude of weapons given to Israel is staggering; the devastation caused to Palestinians by these weapons is heart-breaking. Our research shows that during the past decade, the United States provided Israel with more than 670 million weapons and related equipment, valued at nearly $19 billion, through three major weapons transfer programs.  In our database, we detail more than 500 different weapons categories, along with the value and quantity of each type of weapon transferred to Israel.

How Many Weapons to Israel? paints a disturbing picture of the extent to which the United States is saturating Israel with weapons.  Take just one example: in the last three years alone, the United States has provided Israel with enough ammunition (47 million pieces) to kill every Palestinian in the Occupied Territories more than ten times over!  What a truly frightening thought.

If Israel were using these weapons for their intended purpose under U.S. law, which is restricted to “legitimate self-defense” and “internal security,” then perhaps these weapons transfers would raise only fiscal concerns.  However, How Many Weapons to Israel? also makes clear the moral and political implications of arming Israel.

From September 2000-December 2009, roughly the same period during which the United States transferred these weapons to Israel, the Israeli military killed at least 2,969 Palestinians who took no part in hostilities, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. How Many Weapons to Israel? demonstrates the direct correlation between Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians and types of weapons provided to it by the United States.  Returning to the example of ammunition, the database reveals that Israel killed 1,931 unarmed Palestinians, including 735 children, with small arms gunfire.

The US Campaign launched this website, as part of its ongoing organizing campaign to end U.S. military aid to Israel, to provide incontrovertible and irrefutable evidence that Israel is misusing U.S. weapons to commit grave human rights abuses against Palestinians in violation of U.S. and international law.

With easy-to-use slideshows and spreadsheets, the US Campaign intends for How Many Weapons to Israel?to be used by activists to raise awareness about the moral and political costs of arming Israel with our tax dollars.

This new website is designed as a complement to our sister website How Much Military Aid to Israel? which reveals the budgetary trade-offs involved in arming Israel.  On that website, viewers can use our interactive map to find out how much money their city, county, Congressional district, and state provide in weapons to Israel, and which unmet social needs could be funded instead with this money.

Both websites are designed as interactive tools for activists to use in their communities to educate people about the financial, moral, and political costs of transferring weapons to Israel. Activists can also sign up to receive an organizing packet from the US Campaign to be a part of our ongoing campaign to end U.S. military aid to Israel.

And, after viewing these websites, if you are as outraged at this misuse of our taxes as I am, then you can join with me in “offsetting” the estimated $21.59 you just gave Uncle Sam for weapons to Israel this year by making a tax-deductible contribution to support the work of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

~

Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 350 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Palestine/Israel to support human rights, international law, and equality.  He is a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service.

April 20, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

The Israeli Lobby’s Poisonous Influence on US Policy

By Stephen Lendman | April 19, 2011

In his powerful 2006 book titled, “The Power of Israel in the United States,” James Petras explained the enormous Jewish Lobby influence on US Middle East policies. Often harming American interests, they’re pursued anyway because of its grassroots and high-level control over government, business leaders, academia, the clergy and mass media since at least the 1960s.

As a result, anyone challenging Israeli policy risks being intimidated, blackmailed, smeared, pressured, removed from positions of authority, or called a national security or terrorist threat, leaving them vulnerable to unprincipled ostracization, persecution or worse.

Among America’s 52 Conference of Major American Jewish Organization(s) (CPMAJO), the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is the oldest, founded in 1897.

Established by B’nai Brith in 1913, perhaps the Anti-Definition League is best known.

However, in terms of its influence over US Middle East policies, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) stands out. Calling itself “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby,” it’s represented Israeli interests since founded in 1953, then incorporated in 1963 as a division of the American Zionist Council (AZC), its precursor.

In 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered AZC to register as the foreign agent of the Jewish Agency for Israel (responsible for Israeli immigration) under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). In 1963, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigated AZC’s stealth Jewish Agency funding. Weeks later, AIPAC was incorporated, replaced AZC, was later granted tax exempt status retroactive to 1953, refuses to register as an foreign Israeli agent, and gets away with it.

Today, masquerading as a domestic lobby, it’s a stealth foreign Israeli agent, supporting policies harming US interests. Calling itself “America’s leading pro-Israeli lobby,” its web site says it “works with both Democratic and Republican political leaders to enact public policy that strengthens the vital US-Israel relationship.”

In fact, functioning as a virtual fifth column, it’s poisoned the body politic since exempted from operating lawfully. As a result, as part of the destructive Israeli Lobby, it has virtual veto power over war and peace, trade and investment, multi-billion dollar arms sales, and all Middle East policies under Democrat and Republican administrations alike.

Ralph Nader calls Washington corporate occupied territory. It’s also Israeli Lobby-controlled, including AIPAC, assuring what Israel wants, it gets, but not without independent voices denouncing its poisonous influence.

Included are Jewish organizations against Zionism, a topic addressed in a previous article, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/12/jews-against-zionism.html

It discussed Zionism’s hidden history, as well as opposition groups, including:

— True Torah Jews Against Zionism;

— Not In My Name;

— Jewish Voice for Peace;

— Brit Tzedek V’Shalom;

— Tikkun;

— Satmar;

— Jews Against Racist Zionism; and

— Neturei Karta International.

With like-minded organizations and individuals, they oppose a racist, extremist, undemocratic, militant ideology, relying on belligerence, occupation, repression and dispossession, contrary to core Judaic dogma, principles and tradition. They believe it harms all Jews worldwide, and that peace, reconciliation, and co-existence aren’t possible until it’s repudiated and rejected.

Confronting AIPAC

The Anti-AIPAC Group’s Facebook page calls itself:

“against Zionist lobbying installed in the United States, in particular linked to AIPAC….(an organization) constitut(ing) a danger to peace in the world because it imposes its goals (ahead) of the shared interest(s) of America….”

Founded in 1951, the American Friends of the Middle East remains an active anti-Israeli lobby.

Founded in 1980, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) calls itself the nation’s largest Arab-American grassroots civil rights organization. According to the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, a pro-Israeli front group, ADC is “very active (in) anti-Israeli political causes.”

Founded in 1982, the Council for the National Interest (CNI) “encourage(s) and promote(s) a US foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values, protects our national interests, and contributes to a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” CNI aims “to restore a political environment in America in which voters and their elected officials are free from the undue influence and pressure of foreign countries and their partisans.”

That position got CNI labeled an anti-Israeli lobby.

An earlier article on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) can be accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/10/anti-defamation-league-demagoguery-and.html

It says “hundreds of groups….organize and participate in various anti-Israeli activities,” falsely claiming they spread propaganda and don’t promote peace.

ADL’s top 10 include:

(1) Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)

Formed post-9/11, it’s been activist against war, imperialism, bigotry, and represents other issues, including civil and human rights, and support for Palestinian equity and justice.

(2) Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

It’s “committed to comprehensive public education on the rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands of origin, and to full restitution of all their confiscated and destroyed property,” according to international law.

(3) Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

In defending civil liberties, freedom of religion, diversity, tolerance, and democratic freedoms, it combats hate groups vilifying Islam and Muslims.

(4) Friends of Sabeel-North America (FOSNA)

It “promotes awareness and understanding” of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict “through educational programs for North American Christians….FOSNA seeks reconciliation between people of the Holy Land in a vision of peace based on principles of a just peace,” including “the urgency of ending US support for Israel’s illegal military occupation.”

(5) If Americans Knew (IAK)

Its mission is “to inform and educate the American public on issues of major significance that are unreported, underreported, or misreported in the American media.” It believes conflict resolution and justice depends on revealing truths, ones major US media sources suppress, supporting the worst of Israeli lawlessness.

(6) International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

A Palestinian-led initiative, it’s committed to resisting Israel’s occupation, oppression, domination, and apartheid through nonviolent, direct-action methods.

(7) Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)

It seeks equity, peace, security, and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike, through “grassroots organizing, education, advocacy, and media.” It’s the only US Jewish organization providing a voice for Jews and their allies, who believe that Middle East peace is only possible “through justice and full equality” for Jews and Muslims alike.

(8) Muslim American Society (MAS)

As a religious, charitable, social, cultural, and educational group, its mission is to “move people to strive for God, consciousness, liberty, and justice, and to convey Islam with utmost clarity.”

(9) Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)

By “visualiz(ing) the Palestinian struggle,” it opposes apartheid and occupation through protests, memorials, and other ways, highlighting their plight against Israeli aggression and occupation.

(10) US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO)

It’s a “diverse coalition working for freedom from occupation and equal rights for all by challenging US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Based on human rights and international law, it seeks peace, justice, and conciliation by “chang(ing) the US role,” the essential way to do it.

Move Over AIPAC: Building a New US Middle East Policy Conference

Convening in Washington from May 21 – 24, coinciding with AIPAC’s annual meeting, it highlights a “time for a new foreign policy,” replacing AIPAC’s-controlled one. Access its web site for more information, including how to attend, through the following link:

http://www.moveoveraipac.org/about-us/

Over 50 peace and justice groups are participating sponsors, “bring(ing together) activists and concerned citizens from around the country to learn” about AIPAC’s destructive influence on US Middle East policy, and “how to strengthen an alternative that respects the rights of all people in the region.”

Organizational Endorsers and Partners include:

— American Jews for a Just Peace;

— American Friends Service Committee: Pacific Mountain Region;

— Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights;

— Build Bridges Not Walls;

— Citizens for Justice in the Middle East;

— Citizens for Palestinian Self-Determination;

— Coalition for Palestinian Rights;

— CODEPINK: Women for Peace;

— Global Exchange;

— If Americans Knew;

— Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions USA (ICHAD-USA);

— Middle East Children’s Alliance;

— Rachael Corrie Foundation;

— Stop AIPAC;

— United for Peace and Justice; and

— dozens more.

Speakers include, Helen Thomas, Ralph Nader, Ali Abunimah, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Phyllis Bennis, former Senator James Abourezk, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Laila El Haddad, Anna Baltzer, and many others.

A Final Comment

AIPAC is a malignancy in America, lobbying for:

— regional wars and occupation;

— Gaza’s siege;

— Palestinian persecution, exploitation, disempowerment, and isolation; denying them their fundamental guaranteed rights under international law;

— Israeli’s Apartheid Wall;

— dispossession and illegal settlements;

— neutralizing Israel’s adversaries;

— subsidizing Israel lavishly with annual billions of dollars and latest weapons and technology; and

— overall placing Israel’s interests over America’s, a scandalous agenda nearly the entire Congress and every administration endorse.

Returning America’s agenda to sanity starts with expunging this corrupting influence, replacing it with a new moral ethic for peace, reconciliation, co-existence, and equal respect for the rights of everyone abroad and at home.

~

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

April 19, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Netanyahu, King of the Hill

SAMI JAMIL JADALLAH | Veterans Today | April 18, 2011

True we are a Republic with elected president and members of both houses, Senate and House of Representatives (not House of Lords). However when it comes to the “people’s houses” there is no president, there is only a King, and the King is always the Israeli Prime Minister. Welcome to America’s Knesset. So far Israel has cost the US tax payers over $ Trillion ($1,000,000,000,000,) just imagine what this $ Trillion could do for our country, in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Montana, Michigan, Vermont and New Hampshire not to mention all the other states.

In two separate statements coming out of Tel-Aviv and Tel-Aviv West (Washington-DC) both the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and House Speaker John Boehner announced that Bibi Netanyahu is invited to speak before a Joint Session of Congress, an honor that is afforded to very few heads of state. For Netanyahu this will not be the first but his second time before a Joint Session, the first was on July 10, 1996. Bibi is the fourth Israeli prime minister invited to speak at the Joint Session of the American Knesset.

John Boehner who represents a poor and “working class district” much run down, can only hear the “cash register” as he announced through his spokesman “America and Israel are the closest of friends and allies, and we look forward to hearing the Prime Minister’s views on how we can continue working together for peace, freedom and security”.

Nancy Pelosi also an ardent and loyal Zionists seconded the statement of John Boehner as she “Looks forward to the Prime Minister’s address to the Joint Session during this critical time in history for the Middle East”.

For his part Bibi Netanyahu announced to his Likud members that his speech before the Joint Session of Congress will cover two fundamental issues and priorities for Israel stating “The two most important are, first of all, Palestinians recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and the second principle is real security arrangements on the ground”.  Of course Netanyahu said nothing and will say nothing about ending the Jewish Occupation that began in 1967, will say nothing about the eviction and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, will say nothing about house eviction and house demolitions to make room for “Jewish Settlers” and will say nothing about the 600 “security checkpoints” with daily humiliations of Palestinians choking their freedom and economy. Only Israel can ask for things (Chosen People) but not the Palestinians, they can only accept what the Jews give them.

Of course Netanyahu knows he is at home in the American Knesset, with political support far more than he has in the Israeli Knesset where he is often hounded by the opposition, as opposed to the American Knesset where members of both houses will wait in line to kiss his ring if not his behind.  In the words of Aluf Benn “they love him there or at least scared of the lobby that supports him”. Of course we all know that AIPAC, the American Jewish Party is the majority party in the American Knesset that counts on 90 Senators among its members and counting on some 300 members of the House as members also. The American Jewish Party is the true majority party in the American Congress with no apposition, and if there is an opposition, no one dares to speak up.

Netanyahu’s invitation to the Joint Session is orchestrated to thwart international efforts by the Palestinians to gain official recognition in the UN for a Palestinian State within 67 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital, an effort that will for sure be opposed by the American Knesset if not by the White House.

To preempt this effort, Netanyahu will most likely announce a limited deployment of the Occupation Army from the West Bank, a deployment similar to the one that took place in Gaza, making sure the areas evacuated by the Jewish Army are put under siege, increasing the number of security checkpoints. Of course there is never any talks of evacuating the settlements (Israel for sure will ask the American Knesset compensation exceeding $2 million dollars for each person evacuated and at least $5 million for each “trailer caravan” evacuated, making sure Israel milk the American tax payers as it expand settlements and as it evacuate “illegal settlements” and with the American Knesset more than happy to foot the bill for and on behalf of poor American tax payers who are held hostage by the American Jewish Party and its members in Congress.

Of course Netanyahu knows he is the Boss in the American Knesset and he wants Barack Obama to know that very well. When it comes to the American Knesset, it is Bibi, the Israeli Prime Minister and not the President of the United States that has a say so.

Obama who is often being accused by Israelis and their partners in the US and among Zionist and Christian Evangelical circles as Anti-Israeli and Anti-Semite and lacking birth credential to become the president of the United State, notwithstanding that his entire Middle East team is made up of Israeli loyalists if not agents. And as president has the most “Zionists” in his cabinet and his inner circles of advisers.

It is this close circle of Zionists that made it impossible for Barack Obama to deliver on his promise in Cairo to bring about peace, and it is this close circle of Israel loyalists that has backtracked on the issue of settlements, offering Israel tens of billions to stop moving few trailer caravans with one F-35 for each Israeli caravan removed from the West Bank.

Don’t worry about Barack Obama, he does not have what it takes to bring about peace in the Middle East based on a two state solution one is Israel and the other is Palestine within 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. No one sitting in the White House dares to announce such principle and continues to remain president of the United States for 24 hours, and President Obama knows that too.

That is why the Palestinian leadership must and could not count on the US supporting their demands to the UN General Assembly and for sure the US will not dare even abstain and will for sure “Veto” such a resolution. It vetoed the UN Security Council Resolution calling for an end to the Israeli settlements, and does Ramallah really think that Washington with its American Knesset could support an independent free state in Palestine? We all must remember, the US was never a fair and honest broker, and the US was never fully committed to Israel ending its Occupation that began in 1967, and the US not only gives political support to Israel at the UN it also gives it money and weapons to keep its occupation and to use such weapons to kill and murder innocent Palestinians as it did in its War on Gaza and as it continues to use American weapons and planes to bomb Palestinians on a daily basis. As long as there is an American Knesset in Washington forget about the US being a partner in any peace in the Middle East. The US must first be free from Israel before it can bring freedom to the Palestinians.

~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sami Jamil Jadallah is born in the Palestinian city of El-Bireh (presently under Israeli Military and Settlers Occupation). Immigrated to the US in 62. After graduating from high school in Gary, Indiana was drafted into the US Army (66-68) received the Leadership Award from the US 6th Army NCO Academy in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Five of us brothers were in US military service about the same time (Nabil-Army), (Lutfi-Marines), (Sam-Army) and (Taiseer-Marines) with two nephews presently with US Army. Graduated from …Read Full Bio

April 18, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Israel thanks US for taxpayer dollars

Press TV – April 16, 2011

The Israeli Prime Minister has thanked Washington for approving new military aid to Tel Aviv at a time when Americans are protesting at the US government’s military spending.

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that the move is further evidence of the close friendship between Israel and the US.

Congress passed a budget bill authorizing military aid to Israel this week, AFP reported.

The stipulation gives an additional USD 205 million in aid to Israel for the acquisition of four new batteries of the Iron Dome missile system.

Two batteries, each holding twenty missiles, were deployed last week during Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

Last week, thousands of peace, labor and community activists took to the streets of New York to voice concerns over the funding of wars abroad. They expressed their concern over the struggling US economy and reduction in social programs.

Since 2007 Washington has been giving Tel Aviv USD three-billion in aid every year. The money is spent almost entirely on purchasing American weapons as part of a ten-year agreement.

The US Congress Office for Technology Assessment says Israel, the largest recipient of US aid since World War II, has undeclared chemical weapons and an offensive biological warfare program.

Tel-Aviv’s nuclear program is described as an open secret. Israel is believed to be the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East with an arsenal bigger than that of Britain or France.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Lobby, lobbification and the lobbified: the corruption of the USA’s elected representatives

By Lawrence Davidson | Redress | 18 April 2011

Lobbification is a word I have just coined for the corruptive process that bends politicians to the will of special interests, that is, to the will of lobbies. The result of lobbification can be seen in the stilted and fawning behaviour of the lobbified political brain. Politicians with lobbified brains become the obedient instruments of the lobbies which have captured their political souls. Below are a few examples of the results of lobbification.

An example from the House of Representatives

The majority of the politicians who sit on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee are victims of lobbification. Among the major lobbies that have, over the decades, carried out this corrupting process are the Zionist organizations in their various Jewish and Christian manifestations. In their present state, the lobbified minds of these committee members, so influential in the foreign policy formulation process of our country, are utterly incapable of questioning, much less defying, the hypnotic power of either American Zionists or the Israelis. Here is just one illustration of the resulting mental paralysis.

On Tuesday 5 April 2011 three Israelis appeared before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two were retired Israeli armed forces generals and one was  Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs. Gold is one of those transplanted Americans who have chosen careers as Israeli spokesmen. (As an aside, he is also an Inspector Clouseau look alike.) He served as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and political advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Among other dubious accomplishments, it was Gold who convinced the Clinton administration not to press Israel on the issue of the Golan Heights. The Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once described him as “simply hatred’s scribe”. Here is some of what Gold and his fellow Israelis told the Foreign Affairs Committee:

1. Israel is confronting a new diplomatic assault that could well strip it of territorial defences in the West Bank that have provided for its security for over 40 years…”

2. “The 1993 Oslo agreements envisioned a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with borders to be decided by the parties themselves and not imposed by international coalitions or by unilateral acts.”

3. “Traditional US policy recognized that Israel is not expected to withdrew from all territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War. This was enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242…”

4. “…the entire Middle East is engulfed in flames. Just as Israel faces complete strategic uncertainty … it is being asked to acquiesce to unprecedented concessions that could put its very future at risk.” Therefore, “…to agree to a full withdrawal from the West Bank and to acquiesce to the loss of defensible borders pose an unacceptable risk for the Jewish state.”

During this lament our Congressional Representatives sat there, in their collective lobbified frame of mind, and swallowed it all in as if it were gospel. This was completely predictable. The Foreign Affairs Committee is chaired by Florida Representative  Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, an ardent anti-Castro Cuban American who has spent her political life doing two things: first, distorting our foreign policy toward Cuba so that no vestige of national interest can be found therein, and second, promoting a tactical alliance between reactionary Cuban American groups and the Zionists. Ros-Lehtinen has recently confirmed her lobbified status by demanding that Congress “make it US policy to demand that the UN General Assembly revoke and repudiate the Goldstone Report“. She did this despite the fact that three of the four signatories of the report have avowed its accuracy and continued relevance. The senior Democratic Party member on the committee is  Howard Berman who has never been able to figure out who he should represent more diligently, his California district constituents or Israel.

Both these leading committee members clearly suffer from lobbification and most of the other standing members also display this condition to one extent or another. As a result, when it came to the discussion that followed the Israelis’ presentation, all the possible probing questions remained unasked. Here are some of them, figuratively addressed to Ambassador Dore, and others:

1. What do you mean by “diplomatic assault”, “imposed by international coalitions”, and “unilateral acts”? Do you mean the rather feeble US and European suggestion that your country negotiate in good faith and cease its own series of illegal unilateral acts such as the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem?

2. And how is it that you are now telling us that, for the last 40 years, your “territorial defences” have made you secure? For the past 40 years you have been telling us how insecure you are! Are we to understand that your constant claim of insecurity was a gross exaggeration? Perhaps nothing more than an addictive frame of mind? Or has it been just a facade behind which you carry on expansion in violation of international law?

3. Why do you bring up the Oslo accords? For the last few decades you have been telling us that they are dead letters, irrelevant to current circumstances. You seem to trot them out when they serve your purposes and cast them into oblivion when they do not. Also, are you not aware that in the past your country has violated these accords at will?

4. Is Israel’s determined refusal to negotiate rational concessions really a function of the assertion that the “entire Middle East” is allegedly “engulfed in flames”? If we simply go back to a period when there was no “complete strategic uncertainty” we find that Israel’s position on compromise was exactly the same as it is today. So isn’t this new concern really a contrived excuse to justify your country’s refusal to come to just and fair settlement with the Palestinians?

5. Why are you bringing up the possibility of “full withdrawal” from the West Bank as if it was a spectre gazing over your shoulder? When is the last time the US government or the European Union demanded this of you? Is not the present understanding of the final character of borders based upon the 1967 Green Line one that includes mutually agreed upon and equitable land swaps? Is not this the recognized contemporary understanding of UN Resolution 242?

6. And what is this business of “defensible borders”? When was the last time your country’s borders proved indefensible to conventional military attack? Isn’t it true that, even without the West Bank, your borders have never been seriously crossed by such forces? Your vulnerability lies in your inability to counter guerrilla and terrorist attacks, and to prevent missile penetration. Ultimate security against these threats does not rest in a policy of colonial expansion but rather in an equitable peace agreement.

What a memorable and actually useful committee meeting it would have been if these or similar questions had been posed. But alas, the lobbified brain functions something like Israel’s apartheid wall. Meaningful questions about Israel and doubts about the real consequences of Zionism cannot easily get over or around the nine-metre-high conditioning that is lobbification.

An example from the US Senate

The on-line magazine Politico tells us that “even as they push for huge cuts, 11 freshman GOP [Grand Old Party – the US Republican Party] senators say the US must continue to provide foreign aid to its strongest ally in the Middle East: Israel”.

In a letter to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) the security conscious 11 stated, “as we work to reduce wasteful government spending … we must continue to prioritize the safety of our nation and the security of our allies, including Israel”.

Only the thoroughly lobbified brain can advocate cutting 500 million dollars from federal programmes for health and nutrition for women, infants and children and simultaneously insist on continuing to give Israel 3 billion dollars a year – and, do so in the name of “prioritizing the safety of our nation”!

The senator who organized the letter to McConnell is  Marco Rubio of Florida (a male version of Ros-Lehtinen) and he sits on what committee? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of course. His lobbified state apparently makes it impossible for him to see the connection between our open-ended support of Israel, Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and our nation’s insecurity. It should come as no surprise that Senator Rubio has said that the US must “stand with Israel without equivocation or hesitation” and cease pressuring Israel over its settlement policies.

Conclusion

As the approximately 206.8 million adult Americans go about their daily lives most probably do not realize that they, or at least the approximately 57 per cent who bother to vote in federal elections, have placed into positions of power individuals who have been corrupted by lobby power. This is due to the fact that most Americans do not understand and/or pay attention to how their own political system works. Few and far between are the school “civics” courses that, in theory, explain its intricacies. And, once the Republicans get done gutting the education budgets, those remaining courses will most likely disappear.

Ignorance is not bliss. It is often the prelude to sudden destruction. It is not bliss to be ignorant of the corruption that is undermining your government . Lobbification is synonymous with just that – a dangerous form of political corruption. Our political system is riddled with it. It has been so for a long time and the situation is not improving.

This condition has recently manifested itself in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Ohio and a host of other states in the form of feverish acts of self-destruction. And, as we have seen, Congress has no immunity. Yet the citizenry goes blissfully about its business.

To quote the immortal Samuel Johnson, “Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2001, p. 411, No. 19).

Perhaps it is so.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Livni pushes int’l code to police Arab elections and bar some parties (hint: Muslim Brotherhood)

By Philip Weiss on April 16, 2011

Simon Schama has a slavering interview with Tzipi Livni, the champion of Gaza, at the Financial Times. Says my tipster: go straight to the last paragraph, where you’ll see she “champions” a new “international standard” for elections–which would outlaw “in Muslim countries” anyone using “democratic means” to “overthrow democracies.” It is an implicit reference to Muslim Brotherhood in the previous paragraph.  I suppose Israel will now define democracy for the world.

That, she explains, is the true conflict at the heart of the Middle East, one even bigger than the enmity of Jew and Arab: the genuinely irreconcilable clash between theocratic and autocratic regimes, and liberal democracies. Right now, and for a little time perhaps, an Israeli party of reason might be able to make the peace with its Palestinian counterpart. Evidently there has been something like a meeting of minds across the “security fence”. But not forever. No one knows which side – Islamic militancy or democratic secularism – will emerge from the Arab spring. But that uncertainty only makes the need for an early settlement more, not less, pressing.

Not least because Israel, too, has a domestic cultural conflict on its hands that is undoing assumptions about what kind of Jewishness the Jewish state is supposed to embody. Between the Jerusalem ultra-orthodox Haredim, for whom the only true Jewish state is one based on rigid obedience to halacha, the precepts of the religion, and those whose Israel is pluralist and secular, there is as wide a gulf as between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Tweeters of Tahrir Square. The two crises – of the outer borders of the Jewish state and its inner identity – Livni sees as organically connected. It says something about her forthrightness as well as her optimism that Livni wants a written Israeli constitution that would make a clear demarcation between synagogue and state.But then she is a great believer in the strength of principle, championing an international code of practice to govern elections in newly born democracies. Recalling that in Israel the expulsionist Kach party was disbarred from participating in elections, she wants the same principle to apply to parties in Muslim countries that use democratic means to overthrow democracy. Hitler, she remembers, came to power through the ballot box. “This would not be patronising or imperialist,” she says. “They can all do what they like. But if they want to participate in an international community they should abide by those conventions.”

April 16, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

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