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.”
Williams asked: “Where does this all end?” Engel’s response speaks volumes:
This whole movement in the Middle East–I’m worried about it, because while people in the region deserve more rights, and they want more rights, and they’re embracing more of the will of the Arab street, well, the will of the Arab street is also ferociously anti-Israel, against Israel. And there’s many people who believe that if you empower the Arab street, and the Arab street wants to see a war or more justice for the Palestinians, that down the road, three to five years, this could lead to a major war with Israel. It could also force a negotiated settlement. But I think over time, this thing ends in Jerusalem
Iraqi scientists and doctors are increasingly expressing alarm about threats to their lives as the numbers targeted in killings rise while a weak government seems unable to provide adequate security.
The latest victim in the spree of apparently targeted killings was Zaid Abdul Mun’im, head of research of the molecular department at al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. He died after a bomb went off in his car on April 3.
Prior to his death, Mohammed Alwan, a prominent Baghdadi surgeon and the dean of faculty of medicine of the same university, was assassinated on March 29.
Neither of the men had any known political affiliations.
“A government that cannot protect its people, does not deserve to be a government,” said Hikmat Jamil, head of the self-funded group International Society of Iraqi Scientists, and a professor of medicine at the Wayne State University in Michigan.
“We have sent letters to al-Mustansiriya University and the government condemning the assassination of Dr. Mun’im,” he told alarabiya.net.
The British newspaper The Independent placed the death toll of Iraqi academics at more than 470 by the end of 2006.
Reports from the Iraqi Physicians Union said that more than 500 of Iraq’s leading medical professionals have been assassinated and more than 7,000 have been forced to leave the country after receiving death threats.
Analysts have offered many theories as to why physicians and academics have been targeted, but nothing has been substantiated. Some point the finger at Israeli intelligence services. Others believe the U.S. is aware of the planned killings and silently endorses them.
“The [incidents of targeted killings] seem to be continuing since 2003, and I don’t think it will stop in the near future,” said Iyad al-Zamily, founder and editor-in-chief of the Iraqi cultural website, Kitabat.com, based in Germany.
“Some of the academics were forced to seek protection by militias and political parties and to change their political views to blend in, since the government is not capable of protecting them,” he added.
Mr. al-Zamily said he believes there are solutions to combat these target killings, but they get lost amid the political divisiveness which ends up exacerbating security problems.
While the Iraqi parliament is mulling laws to protect Iraqi physicians, them carrying a weapon being the latest, al-Zamily said “all Iraqis are entitled to protection, as everyone is [a target].”
Adil E. Shamoo, an Iraqi-American who is a senior analyst for the think tank Foreign Policy In Focus in Washington and author of Who Assassinated Iraqi Academics? said: “The evidence so far is sufficient to warrant a thorough investigation by an independent body. Iraqis, Americans, and the world need to know the truth.”
The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, and the U.S. have called on the Obama Administration to “open a serious and transparent investigation” into possible “crimes against humanity.”
Before the 2003 toppling of its then-president Saddam Hussein, Iraq was known for its healthcare. Technologically, its facilities were more advanced than most other Middle East countries. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion, students in the region flocked to Baghdad’s universities and other educational institutions.
(Dina Al Shibeeb of Al Arabiya, can be reached via email at: dina.ibrahim@mbc.net)
Majed: I have mixed feelings about the speech. On one hand, it wasn’t anywhere near the unrealistic expectations some officials alluded to, namely Bouthaina and Sharaa. But on the other hand, the speech was a display of strength and confidence, following a strong show of support by the Syrian people for the President a day earlier. As much as I would like to see reforms, doing so immediately following this suspicious and unpopular uprising could be interpreted as a sign of weakness that could weaken Syria’s resolve and embolden its enemies. There is no denying that the President is popular in Syria and throughout most of the Arab world; so why should he not capitalize on his popularity and turn this into an opportunity to consolidate and regroup. Why should he appease those with questionable agendas who are looking to even the score and embarrass Syria? I still think the President is a reformist. He has been slowly introducing economic reforms, and will, in due time, bring in gradual political reforms, perhaps starting this year. However, he is not willing to do it under pressure, or be black mailed into it by Syria’s enemies who are obviously trying to rob Syria out of its political gains from the recent revolutions in the “moderate Arab” camp who sided with Israel and the U.S against Syria and the Palestinian cause. Let’s face it, Syria has been vindicated since the Arab uprising, as those “moderate Arabs” and their masters suffered unprecedented humiliation. By giving in under the current environment, Syria will look indistinguishable from those who sold out to Israel and U.S, thus greatly diluting its hard earned gains.
Paul: Let me understand one thing: what could one have really expected Bashar to say? That from today on Syria is a democratic country? That people will obey traffic laws? That corruption will be over in a pass of magic? That the price of arghile will be lowered? In the circumstances I think he acted in the best possible way. Not in desperation but recognizing that change is needed. If he really understands where the wind is blowing he’ll do it slowly but surely. If not it will happen much faster and painfully.
Nabu: The people of Syria want a defiant leader, a leader with balls and that’s the image he showed in the speech. The people of Syria want a leader that doesn’t order things twice, not a weak and that’s the image he showed in the speech. Today’s speech was a gamble, I will admit. A gamble because the minority of the people who are not scared to say things they think will not like it and they’ll get again to the street. But the reaction will be strong and that’s the image he now wants to show on the ground. The govt knows it’s coming, and it will tackle it. The liberty seekers will be cornered everywhere just like he cornered them in Hama. Whatever he said, he is backed for every word he mentioned inside and outside Syria. He thought about it, he took his time and he thinks this is the best for the long run for him, his image, his community and for Syria.
Talib: I thank Mr. President, Dr. for his care and genuine feelings when he talked about the unity of the Syrian people and when he thanked us for doing our duty and focusing on the importance of the wisdom of the people in rejecting the foreign conspiracies.
Zeina: President Assad said: “The Blood that was spilled was Syrian blood. We all care about it. Those victims are our brothers. Their parents are our parents. And we should find the reasons behind the killings and those who killed them.”
Aamer: A thousand congratulations. A thousand thanks to God, and thousands of congratulations for our big victory over the campaigns of destruction and corruption.
Equus: For all who keeps lingering about the emergency law. Look at the Egyptians..they toppled Mubarak on Feb. 11th and YET the emergency law is NOT lift with no specific date in sight despite the extreme pressure from the US. So why the media wants Assad to lift his in 24 hours.
“If Tunisia can move toward democracy, Algerians and Egyptians and even Libyans will wonder why they cannot. This kind of thing may catch on.” – Elliott Abrams, January 7, 2011
Degenerate globalist co-conspirator Elliot Abrams, has been consistently supporting the recent conflagration throughout the Arab world and is pushing for ever-expanding US meddling in the region. In his recent piece, featured in the Washington Post titled “Ridding Syria of a Despot,” he fleshes out what is a fairly predictable plan of action already taking shape against the Bush-era “Axis of Evil” member.
Elliot Abrams is a member of the corporate-financier Council on Foreign Relations, a Project for a New American Century signatory, and former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush. He was convicted for his involvement in the Iran-Contra conspiracy and promptly pardoned by George Bush Sr. He would later go on to be implicated for his involvement in the 2002 Venezuela coup attempt against Hugo Chavez. His history of betraying and disgracing his country, and getting away with it, is probably why he feels perfectly comfortable making broad, sweeping threats toward entire nations today.
Elliot Abrams recently issued a personal threat to Libya’s Qadaffi and his intelligence chief, stating that they would both meet the “same fate as Saddam Hussein” if any American is attacked in the wake of increasing US threats and actions against Libya. He also had weighed in on Egypt in his piece “Less ‘Engagement,’ More Democracy” in the New York Times. In this piece he criticizes the current policy of engaging as equals with nations he deems as repressive regimes and calls for a revisit to George Bush’s “freedom agenda.” In other words – the export of “democracy” that has brought America the trillion dollar military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya at the cost of thousands of US soldiers’ lives and the lives of millions of foreigners killed, maimed, or displaced.
It should be no surprise then that Abrams, who has never shouldered a rifle for his nation himself, is more than eager to move on to Syria with a myriad of aggressive attacks on its sovereignty prepared and ready in hand.
Abrams calls on the White House and Congress to condemn Syria, in particular the Assad government. He suggests that Syria be immediately brought before the UN Security Council, who just recently finished extra-legally ordaining the war with Libya. The Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court are also mentioned as possible avenues to pressure Assad and the Syrian government.
Regarding the newly US-reordered Tunisia and Egypt, Abrams suggests they convene the Arab League and expell Syria as a member, as he claims they just did to Libya. Abrams’ suggestion echos fellow globalist policy wonk Kenneth Pollack’s proposal in his Brookings Institute report, “Bifurcating the Middle East.” Bifurcate, meaning to “divide,” indicates the classic gambit of divide and conquer is in play. Pollack, like Abrams, suggests that the “Arab street” after being “reformed” be rallied against states like Libya, Syria, and of course, Iran.
Abrams also suggests that Europe begin acting against Syria. Nicolas Sarkozy of France seems to have gotten the memo and is already making lofty threats toward Syria, including threats of military action, citing the ongoing atrocity in Libya as a stern warning for other Arab nations to consider. Sanctions are also being pushed by Abrams, but to what extent the Europeans are willing to carry them out remains to be seen.
Finally, Abrams suggests that the US pull its ambassador from Syria, reiterating his belief that it was a mistake in the first place to show this token sign of mutual respect for the sovereign nation. He concludes with a breathtakingly absurd display of patriotism and propaganda by stating, “Our principles alone should lead us to this position, but the memory of thousands of American soldiers killed in Iraq with the help of the Assad regime demands that we do all we can to help the Syrian people free themselves of that evil dictatorship.” And ‘help’ the US is doing, with the entire opposition being funded, defended, supported, and even partially based out of the United States and England.
Strange that Abrams has implicated Assad as complicit in killing US troops in Iraq, when Abrams himself and his “Neo-Con” cabal have hands-down done more to send US troops off to their needless deaths with their willful lying regarding WMD’s, than any Arab with a Kalashnikov. Also interesting, considering his statement, is Abrams’ support for the armed campaign in Libya, where the US is currently providing air support and arms for Al Qaeda linked rebels who themselves have sent fighters to Iraq to kill American troops, on record.
Of course, Abrams is writing for the impressionable readership of the Washington Post, so this blinding hypocrisy is most likely fodder strictly for the public’s consumption. However, sweeping aside the propaganda, we see a very real strategy already beginning to play out in regards to Syria. Let us remember that this is already a plan in motion, and recognize the surprise displayed by our feckless “leadership” as the poorly-feigned act that it is.
In response to the youth of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank rising up on March 14 and 15 to call for Palestinian political unity, both the leaders of Fatah and Hamas pledged to enter into talks aimed at reconciliation. Most recently, President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah “met with senior Hamas officials to discuss a proposed trip to Gaza and efforts to mend internal Palestinian division by forming a unity government,” theMa’an News Agency reported.
With those talks came a spate of articles in the U.S. corporate media about the efforts at reconciliation. But in providing background on why these talks are happening, and the roots of the split between Hamas and Fatah, media outlets have deleted the crucial role the U.S. played in fomenting that split.
[Abbas had] not set foot in Gaza in the four years since a brief, bloody civil war there sent him and his Fatah colleagues fleeing to the West Bank…Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in early 2006, and, for a brief time, Fatah and Hamas had a national unity government. But tensions between them led to the fighting and a break in communications.
Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Fatah party that governs the West Bank, has accepted an invitation from rival Hamas to travel to the Gaza Strip. The visit would be the first since Hamas drove Fatah operatives out of Gaza in 2007 — throwing some off from the tops of buildings — in the turmoil that followed Hamas’ surprise victory in elections months earlier.
All of these accounts don’t mention where the “turmoil” and the breakup of the short-lived national unity government between Hamas and Fatah following the 2006 elections came from. The expose of the Bush administration’s role in the split by David Rose in Vanity Fair remains essential reading for those wanting to understand the roots of the split.
Some crucial excerpts:
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza…
Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.
Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says…
Without this back story, why there is a bitter Hamas-Fatah split remains obscured. The least the U.S. media could do is provide a sentence explaining these facts.
Sen. Joe Lieberman suggested Sunday he would support military intervention in Syria if its president resorts to the kind of violent tactics used by Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi.
Dozens reportedly have been killed in protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, raising questions about whether the international community would get involved.
Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that if Assad starts slaughtering his own people, he will risk other countries imposing a no-fly zone “just as we’re doing in Libya.” He urged Assad to, instead, negotiate with the “freedom fighters” in his country.
“There’s a precedent now that the world community has set in Libya, and it’s the right one,” Lieberman said.
The Obama administration, though, pushed back on suggestions that the United States could support another intervention.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday she doesn’t expect that to happen, describing the clashes in Syria as part of a “police action” — as opposed to a military campaign against the Syrian people.
“Each of these situations is unique,” she said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Certainly we deplore the violence in Syria.”
The Syrian revolution uses a strikingly familiar logo. The Otpor fist was originally used in Serbia in 2000, and handed off to the various movements trained by the US funded CANVAS organization, including the Tunisian & Egyptian youth movements- now the Syrian Youth Revolution.
“A prominent Syrian opposition figure says the country is “a bomb, ready to explode” as protesters demand freedom and an end to president Bashar al-Assad’s “cancerous regime,” reports Australia’s ABC News. This prominent Syrian opposition figure is “human rights activist” Haitham Maleh, of the Human Rights Association of Syria, recently released from a Syrian prison.
Freedom Now specializes in “political prisoners” from various regions around the world that attract the attention of globalist ambitions. Leveraging these “human rights abuses” affords the globalists a perceived moral high ground from which they can exert pressure on target nations. This is very similar to the operation being run by Chatham House globalist Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Peroff, who is defending western-backed Mikhail Khodorkovsky to ratchet up pressure on Russia, and Thaksin Shinawatra to exert pressure on Thailand.
Understanding who these “human rights activists” are, who is supporting them, and the role they play in the latest round of the Western-backed “Arab Spring,” we can better understand articles like the Jerusalem Post’s ‘More than 100 killed in Syrian anti-government rallies.’ In the very first paragraph, the article concedes that the reports were cited from human rights activists and witnesses, thus a continuation of the absurd, unsubstantiated reporting seen earlier in Libya where unverified reports by the criminally irresponsible corporate media laid the groundwork for an equally criminal military intervention.
It is important to remember that Syria was included under George Bush’s “Axis of Evil” and mentioned in a 2007 speech by US General Wesley Clark as slated for destabilization and regime change.
The clownish London-based Syrian Human Rights Committee puts on a poorly staged demonstration outside the Syrian Embassy in England. As silly as the SHRC looks, a good majority of the information the mainstream media reports on from Syria comes from “human rights organizations” like this.
There is also Kamal Labwani, who in 2005 was arrested in Syria after returning from a trip to Europe and the United States where he met with government officials, journalists, and “human rights” groups in his effort to “change” the Syrian government. Amongst these officials Labwani consorted with was George Bush’s Deputy National Security Adviser J.D. Crouch.
Considering that the United States had openly declared Syria a rogue-state, and in a speech by John Bolton, was targeted by possible US military action, Syria’s accusations that Labwani was guilty of “communicating with a foreign country and inciting it to initiate aggression against Syria” doesn’t seem so far fetched. In most nations the punishment for treason is death, under Syria’s “cancerous regime” Labwani got 12 years.
Once again, we see an entire movement fomented and propelled by Western-backed opposition in tandem with the corporate owned media. This is all part of a now irrefutable larger plot consuming the Middle East and Northern Africa.
Just as we saw in Egypt and to a greater extent in Libya, the initial phases of unrest in Syria are marked by purposefully sloppy and confused reporting giving the destabilization efforts on the ground a chance to stampede the government from office. Should this stampeding fail, the truth will begin to trickle out, and the West’s involvement will become more overt.
What stood out from the first page was the tone—measured but firm, uncompromising but not strident. Every assertion seemed precisely weighed, put forth without exaggeration, flamboyance, or polemical excess. Also striking was the absence of gratuitous deference towards the opponent. There was no pulling of punches, no telltale signs of anxiety about the consequences of an argument taken too far, or indeed made at all. Such was my first reaction to reading John Mearsheimer’s and Steve Walt’s Israel Lobby paper, posted five years ago today on the website of Harvard’s Kennedy School, and published in shorter form in the London Review of Books. It had arrived at the opening of business one morning in an email from Michael Desch, then a professor at Texas A&M’s George H. W. Bush School of Government. I sent it across the hall to my colleague Kara Hopkins, a woman a generation my junior, somewhat less engaged than I by the Middle East, and certainly less persuaded that a coterie of neocons had gotten George W. Bush on a leash and were leading him this way and that. Three minutes later I walked into her office, where she had the paper up on her screen. “This is exactly what I believe,” said Kara, words that I had never heard from her before on any subject, much less this one.
American Christians who are neither ignorant nor bigots have a difficult time finding the right words to discuss Israel and its special relationship to the United States. Anyone with knowledge of European history knows of the connection between discourses about Jewish power and anti-Semitism. Inevitably this history has intruded on American discussions of Israel and its lobby. Save a handful of exceptions, mainstream dissent from the special relationship with Israel has taken the form of the dry aside or the understated sentence or two published amidst a lot of other stuff, almost as if the author hoped it would not be noticed. Occasionally public figures at the end of their careers made remarks that more resembled outbursts, the parting shot of the seventy- five year old senator or aging general. But more often than not, ever sensitive to the perils of anti-semitism, Americans let their fears of contributing to injustice shut off necessary debates. People rolled their eyes or took refuge in wry remarks: “What’s the matter with the rest of them?” said a friend upon seeing a Washington Post story about the 360 members of Congress who had showed up to pay homage at one of AIPAC’s annual gatherings.
The reasons differed for every individual, and were composite. There was the worry about offending close Jewish friends or colleagues, concerns over possible adverse professional consequences, or the general inhibitions associated with the Jewish power/leading to anti-Semitism/leading to the Holocaust nexus.* The result was that critical analysis of the special relationship was shoved to the margins of American political discourse. The discussions may have been richer and more involved on the Marxist and anti-imperialist Left than on the quasi-isolationist Old Right, but in neither case did they much influence the political mainstream. Even in the wake of the Iraq disaster, with the looming prospect of more American wars in the Middle East, Israel’s role was alluded at most in passing, but seldom really pursued.
The evasions could be almost comical.
In the second issue of The American Conservative, in the fall of 2002, we published an outstanding 8000 word essay by Paul Schroeder, a distinguished diplomatic historian, who argued that Americans had a great stake in preserving an international system which inhibited preventive wars of the sort Washington was preparing to wage against Iraq. After being granted 8000 words, Schroeder added some footnotes, the fourth of which stated, inter alia, “It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state.”
To Schroeder’s consternation, this footnote was the only item from his argument mentioned a few months later in a Washington Post oped, where it was cited amongst other examples of the supposed anti-semitism of Iraq war critics who had deigned to notice that the push for war was connected to Israel.
Five years ago, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard stepped directly into these bogs of understatement, circumlocution and the relegation of major points to footnotes. Here are some of the points the two made in the first pages of their paper:
For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S. support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security…
More importantly, saying that Israel and the United States are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: rather, the United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around…
This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state?
In the essay that followed, the two backed up these and other equally forceful assertions with tightly-argued, factually-based paragraphs and extensive footnotes. They were not, of course, the first pioneers in pursuing this subject from an establishment vantage point: on at least two occasions, the Israel subject had been addressed by Americans of comparable eminence. George W. Ball, probably the wisest figure to hold high positions in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, had late in life co-authored with his son an important book on America’s “entangling alliance” with Israel —a book whose antecedent was in an article written for Foreign Affairs in the late 1970’s, proposing that America “save Israel from itself” by stopping its incipient campaign to colonize the West Bank. A few years earlier, Senator William Fulbright, probably the leading foreign policy intellectual among Americans who held elective office in the postwar era, bemoaned the Israel lobby’s influence, and pushed for an American security guarantee for Israel within the 1967 borders.
Both Fulbright and Ball came to the subject at the close of long careers. In contrast Mearsheimer and Walt published their paper during their professional primes. Their argument had none of that “Now I can finally say it” quality; instead the authors arrived with every intent of carrying their argument forward. They had tenure at two of the country’s top universities. They had reached the top of a profession which rewards clear writing and thinking, and possessed the argumentative eloquence that comes from years of lecturing before the nation’s brightest students. They were political moderates—whose careers had placed them squarely in the “vital center” of American academic foreign policy discourse. They were fully prepared to go larger, and in eighteen months turned the paper into a best-selling book.
Of course it mattered somewhat that the Israel lobby used every tool at its disposal to smear the authors and bury their argument. Every journal and newspaper that had ever felt the need to stress its “pro-Israel” credentials published a negative review of the book. (The Israel Lobby received generally far more favorable reviews in Europe and, in fact, in Israel.) But the sheer volume and intensity of the attacks on the paper may have been self-defeating. By April 2006, it seemed that everyone with an interest in foreign policy had read the article and was eager to talk about it. (I would note that in that month I went on a trip with a church group to Syria, Israel, and the occupied West Bank, on a schedule that included five or six meetings a day for ten days. Excepting the purely religious figures, it is no exaggeration to say that every single Arab intellectual, government or NGO official we met with mentioned the Mearsheimer and Walt paper. It was also the very first topic raised by Owen Harries, the very wise retired editor of The National Interest, at a private dinner I gave in his honor when he was visiting from Australia that May. )
Like the original essay, the book itself was a blend of precise analysis and exact documentation. As a resource it is unparalleled. If someone confidently asserts that Israel and its backers had nothing whatever to do with encouraging the United States to invade Iraq ( a “canard” is the usual dismissal phrase), one can find in The Israel Lobby five or six pages of quotes from television appearances and op-eds by leading Israeli political and military figures, who utilized their untrammeled media access to convey their war-mongering points to the American public. The same holds true for dozens of other subtopics of their broader subject: precise generalizations, supported by facts, authoritatively and contextually presented in a rhetoric that neither overheats nor backs down.
There are several different frames of reference in which to discuss Israel, the Palestinians, and the United States. One potentially critical new front is now being opened by some Jewish liberals, who charge that Israel’s longstanding occupation policies contravene Jewish values. But important as this argument is, it initiates a debate in which the vast majority of Americans have no standing to participate.
This underscores the achievement, and the yet unrealized potential, of Mearsheimer and Walt’s essay and book. As international relations scholars and centrist “realists,” the two examined the American relationship with Israel through the prism of American national interests and values—or at least the non-racist and democratic values America has aspired to for most of the past century. They found the Israel relationship deficient on both counts. In doing so they not only wrote a milestone paper and book— what political work in the past decade comes close to The Israel Lobby in importance? They provided the tens of millions in the vast American political center with a vocabulary and a conceptual frame to discuss a subject of critical importance to them. Non-Jews especially, for the reasons discussed above, desperately needed such a vocabulary, for without it they were all but mute. No matter that this potential remains, as yet, relatively underutilized: it is still there, ready to be deployed. In the long run, this may prove the greatest contribution of the two scholars, one which far surpass what the book has achieved thus far.
*These inhibitions included the fear of offending other non-Jews. My wife, whose father was a UN official with extensive responsibilities for Middle East peacekeeping, grew up with a far more critical attitude towards Israel than I had. It was not until my own (previously neoconservative) views began to change in the mid 90’s, fifteen years into our marriage, that she acknowledged to me some of her pro-Palestinian sympathies.
One of the key distinctions between a capitalist and a non-capitalist (socialist, feudal, absolutist state) economy is the separation of state and private enterprise. In a capitalist state, economic enterprises are supposed to operate according to market principles, seeking to maximize profits and expand market shares. The state is supposed to act on behalf of capitalist enterprises, ensuring their protection and furthering their pursuit of profits and markets.
Recent history of foreign relations provides ample evidence that the reverse is true: private corporations, especially banks have been converted into adjuncts of the US state, serving as transmission belts of US military policy, by sacrificing markets, profits and opportunities for future economic growth. Another important reason for keeping US multinational corporations out of a country. Moreover, the state both in the US and Europe have seized billions in private investment funds and dispossessed their owners, in the process scuttling major financial transactions adversely affecting the biggest Western financial houses.
The dispossession of private capitalists and the harnessing of private firms to state policy have grown in scope and depth over the current decade, revealing the growing subordination of private capitalism to a militarist imperialist state. Sacrificing private profits and free markets to the edicts of state officials has been implemented via state coercion and severe sanctions against any transgressors.
How and why the world’s biggest propagandist of “free enterprise” and de-regulated capitalism has successfully converted major international financial and industrial enterprises into tools of foreign policy at enormous costs to their bottom line is yet an untold story. Given the enormity of the historical change in the relation between state and market, the shift in power has enormous consequences for peace, prosperity and freedom.
How the State Dominates “the Market”: The Historical Context
Beginning in the 1990’s under President Clinton and escalating under Bush and Obama, the US imperial state imposed economic sanctions first in Iraq and later on Iran and more recently on Libya. In effect the state dictated to its petroleum multi-nationals and biggest banks that they should sacrifice lucrative investment opportunities, ongoing profits and markets to serve imperial state interests. Billions of dollars were lost during the 1990’s, in the face of Iraq sanctions, forcing many US oil companies to engage clandestine “third party” intermediaries, to secure a reduced share of the petrol market. The imperial state imposed severe penalties – fines, jailing’s and exclusion from the US market – to any of the CEOs and private corporations that did not abide by the sanctions. Clearly the state was in command; the corporate ruling class became the executive committee of the imperial state.
The sanctions policy applied to the Middle East under Clinton was only the beginning; it was deepened and vastly expanded under Presidents Bush and Obama, especially after 2004.
The Levey Levy: How American Zionists Freeze Financial Profits
In 2004 a little noticed administrative add-on in the US Treasury Department took place that has had world historic significance: AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) pressured Treasury to create the position of “Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence”. Equally important, under strong pressure from AIPAC, a zealous Zionist of immense energy, Stuart Levey was appointed to head the new agency.
Levey used all the administrative mechanisms in the Treasury, from threats of penalties, fines and ostracism, to friendly and hostile persuasion, to line up US federal and state public and private pension funds to sacrifice lucrative investments in targeted countries, most of whom, lo and behold, were adversaries of Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Even as Levey was imposing state constraints over the operations of private investors in the US, he organized his entire staff to police the financial world abroad. Levey and his Zionist allies in the so-called “Israel lobby” called on their Congressional cronies to approve sanction policies which not only affected US banks, manufacturers and construction companies but which penalized any European, Asian and Middle Eastern bank which had economic dealings with Iran and other countries on his list (Cuba, North Korea among others).
Levey extended the sanctions to cover firms and investors with even indirect economic ties to the US: his secret financial police located funds which passed from one private bank to another which had tangential links to US banks and Levey applied and secured hundreds of millions in fines against Swiss, Chinese (Macao) English and other banks. Effectively the US imperial state via its Undersecretary of Treasury, harnessed the entire world’s financial system to serve US and Israeli foreign policy. Levey is explicit about his role in creating a state within a state. “The US Treasury is the only Treasury in the world with a fully functioning intelligence office.” He might have added that the US Treasury is the only Treasury in the world which sacrifices the economic interests of its private investors and those of its allies in pursuit of the interests of a foreign power (Israel).
The Levey regime by leveraging ties with private US financial institutions and access to US markets, effectively controls the financial transactions and market operations of European, Asian and Middle Eastern private enterprises.
What appears as merely a relatively minor administrative post in Treasury has in fact created an administrative empire which has effectively converted private international banking and manufacturing corporations into instruments of US and Israeli policy.
In office, Levey engineered the seizure of billions of dollars of overseas assets of private and public funds of adversaries. One of his last moves before leaving office (March 2011) was to seize $32 billion in Libyan funds using the pretext that the non-US bank to which the funds were entrusted invested in US Treasury notes.
Levey has clearly defined the new relation between private capital (the market) and the State: “Governments around the world see the power of these types of measures and the relevance of the private sector to the overall [imperial] effort and that is something that has changed in the last four or five years.” (Financial Times, March 10, 2011, pg. 5).
The “measures” that Levey refers to are the state sanctions and the coercion and penalties applied to the private sector to ensure their conformity with imperial and Israeli military interests at the expense of profits and markets.
The Visible Hand of the State
Levey and his Zionist colleagues have ensured that his “state within a State” will continue beyond his tenure in office. He was succeeded by David Cohen, his former law firm partner and promoter of the very same Israeli interests. Levey/Cohen have institutionalized and set in stone the mechanisms to further imperial state control over market operations. Cohen’s appointment ensures the continuation of the Zionist dynasty in the “State within the State”.
The biggest economic losers in the state centered “sanction” policies pursued by Treasury (read Levey/Cohen) have been the international banks, petroleum and gas companies and pension funds. The banks have lost access to investment funds and lucrative management fees; the petroleum companies have lost profits and access to oil fields. The military-industrial complex has lost arms sales. The agro-exporters have lost markets in food deficit oil producers. Who have been the “winners” – certainly not the Generals who are engaging in a third costly war when the sanctioners decided to escalate to the ‘military option’, once their sanctions policies failed to result in the overthrow of the Libyan regime.
On the surface the main ‘winners’ of sanction policies are their advocates in the White House, Congress, Treasury, the leaders of the two major parties and the ideologues and Islamaphobes in the mass media. And of course, the biggest winners of them all are Israel and their Zionist power configuration embedded in the key agencies of Treasury, the key committees in Congress, and their colleagues in the most influential Middle East posts in the State Department (James Steinberg, Mark Grossman, Dennis Ross, Jeffrey Feltman) and Treasury (Cohen).
If one asks the logical question why doesn’t Big Banking or Big Petroleum make a fight over policies prejudicing their economic interests and subjecting them to the harsh oversight of Levey/Cohen investigators in Treasury, the most reasonable assumption is that they are not willing to engage in a knockdown fight with three potent adversaries: the politically influential Zionists in the government who design, implement and enforce sanctions; their counterparts in the prestigious mass media who support their policies and the 300,000 active members of the 52 major American Jewish organizations who threaten to organize boycott campaigns. An implausible assumption is that the bankers and oil majors have become altruistic and patriotic and are willing to sacrifice billion dollar deals to serve our “national security” as defined by Levey/Cohen and their cohorts in AIPAC. When we speak of US ‘sanction policies’ or when we read of European bankers “following Washington’s lead” let’s be clear about what “state” within the US we are talking about and which agencies in Washington are ensuring that European banks follow “our” lead.
While we might not shed tears about an intrusive government curtailing the profit-making of Big Oil and Big Banks, or interfering with free market operations, let us not forget that “the state within the state” that dictates economic policy is not accountable to our citizens; moreover, if it dictates foreign economic policy to the multi-nationals surely it has no scruples in doing the same to ordinary Americans. Next on the AIPAC/Levey/Cohen agenda is a “request” by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for an additional $20 billion dollars in “aid” to ensure Israel’s protection from the pro-democracy movements sweeping the Arab world and to finance a new batch of settlements in the West Bank.
Israel needs US aid like American taxpayers need a hole in their pockets. According to the latest study of billionaires published in the March 20 2011 of Forbes, Israel has more billionaires per capita than any country in the world.
~
James Petras’ most recent books are: What’s Left in Latin America?, coauthored with Henry Veltmeyer (Ashgate Press, 2009), and Global Depression and Regional Wars (Clarity Press, 2009).
The handing over of the Ghent Charter in Defense of Iraqi Academia by Hans von Sponeck to Ms Marie-Paule Roudil, representative of UNESCO in Brussels, during the official signing ceremony, 8 March 2011
In the past eight years hundreds of academics have been killed in Iraq. They were not accidental victims of the violence prevailing in the country, but the target of a focused and systematic campaign to destroy the Iraqi state, researchers say. In Ghent specialists from all over the world gathered to investigate the humanitarian catastrophe.
MENARG (Middle East and North African Research Group) of Ghent University, the BRussells Tribunal, and numerous other organizations brought together the cream of Iraq specialists at the Aula in Ghent. For three days they have talked about the “least known humanitarian crisis” (in the words of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres).
These figures are staggering. The BRussells Tribunal collected 455 files on murdered academics. The number of teachers in Baghdad has fallen by 80 percent. In the two years after the start of the war in Iraq 84 percent of higher education institutions were looted, destroyed or burned. More than 335 students and staff died or were seriously injured by bombings of Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Approximately 40 percent of the Iraqi middle class has fled the country.
The researchers say the destruction of academic life in Iraq is no side effect of the war. “This is the official theory of the Iraqi government. The academic community was -like the rest of Iraq- victim of ethnic and sectarian violence after the invasion. Our research shows that academics as a group are the target of violence,” said Pedro Rojo from CEOSI, who has written several books on Iraq.
Who was and is behind that violence? Pedro Rojo: “Firstly, the militias aligned to the government. They want to destroy the education system. There is also the Mossad (Israeli Security Agency, ed) that targeted scientists who have or may have had a hand in the production of weapons of mass destruction.”
Why?
But why would someone destroy the education of a country? According to the American Professor Raymond Baker Iraq is a clear case of “state ending”. The aim of the war was the destruction of the Iraqi state. The killings of academics are a part of that war strategy.
Former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Hans von Sponeck, said the attempt to destroy the Iraqi state started much earlier. “It started in 1990 with the sanctions after Iraq invaded Kuwait. The oil for food program could have been adequate, but it was not. The UN was simply abused as a tool to destroy Iraq. They could have saved at least primary education, but they did not. Then I realized that the US wanted to destroy the old Iraq to create a new Iraq,” said von Sponeck, who resigned in 2000.
The researchers in Ghent do not only want to accuse, but also try to formulate solutions. “We need a network of Iraqi and European researchers who through a thorough research can map the situation in Iraq,” said Pedro Rojo. “It is not enough to say that there is now a “blossoming” democracy in Iraq and that we can rebuild the country. The murderers are still waving the stick. Impunity is the problem. ”
Von Sponeck also calls for objective and fair research and investigation. “Non-ideological and no hidden agendas. So other people can better defend the Iraqi cause. Ending the occupation seems to be a prerequisite to have hope for change. At this time throughout the Arab world, young people are on the streets. An ideal time to those who give objective information,” said von Sponeck.
The Arab riots are encouraging. The Iraqi writer Haifa Zangana has hopes for her homeland. “Over the last two months there were constant demonstrations. Even in areas where there were never demonstrations before, like in the Kurdish provinces. The people on the streets formulate a rainbow of demands. But the repression has been merciless. 31 protesters have already been killed. And in the Western media there is a total blackout. As if there is no more occupation, as if democracy flourishes in Iraq again.”
Translation: Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal executive Committee
In a remarkable Israeli position in terms of its background and connotations, and referencing the extent of anxiety and fear the Israeli entity is witnessing in the wake of revolutions in the Arab world, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel might ask the US for additional $20 billion in military assistance.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Tuesday, Barak said that Israel should not fear regional changes or the risk of offering valiant concessions to the Palestinians.
Barak said that while Israel did not “face an immediate threat to its security, the issue of qualitative military aid for Israel becomes more essential for us, and I believe also more essential for you [the US]. Israel should not fear the movement of Arab societies toward modernity.”
He nevertheless stressed that the Egyptian public might influence the new leadership in such a way which could cause it to distance itself from the peace treaty with Israel.
“It might be wise to invest another $20 billion to upgrade the security of Israel for the next generation or so….A strong, responsible Israel can become a stabilizer in such a turbulent region.”
He believes it is too early to tell whether Iran is taking advantage of regional unrest to expand its influence. Barak also noted that prior to the wave of Arab protests “You could see Arab leaders starting to hedge their bets on who is the strongest leader here, Iran or the United States.” In the interview Barak said that according to a senior Egyptian official, whose name he did not mention, Israel should expect “the cold shoulder” from Cairo if it fails to advance the Palestinian peace process.
Israel spends roughly nine percent of its gross national product to guard from potential threats. Its military expenditure amounted to USD 17 billion this year, of which US aid is USD 3 billion.
Tel Aviv has kept a wary eye on a recent tidal wave of anti-government protests that has raced across the Middle East, originating with revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, which have swept longstanding autocratic rulers from power.
Several Israeli media agencies, known for their close affiliation with Israel security and political devices, published a number of reports slamming the new interim Egyptian Prime Minister, Dr. Isam Sharaf, and described his as an “enemy to Israel”, and also described him and the new Foreign Minister as anti-smite.
Israeli TV stations, Channel 7 and Channel 10 along with The Marker and Maariv newspapers held extensive coverage of the swear-in ceremony of the new government headed by Dr. Sharaf.
They claimed that Dr. Sharaf is “known for his anti-Israel positions”, and opposes the Israeli policies towards the Palestinian people, and that Sharaf “insisted on showing his anti-Semitism by choosing another anti-Semite, the new Foreign Minister, Nabil Al Arabi”.
According to some Israeli reports, Dr. Sharaf and his new government “pose a threat to Israel and its interests, especially with Egypt”, and that he adopts stances that reject normalization with Tel Aviv.
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News
Aletho News 