Individuals who profit exceedingly well for “non-profit” organizations
Kenny’s Side Show | December 13, 2010
Haaretz reports on How much do U.S. Jewish leaders make? It is taken from the Jewish Daily Forward’s article that focuses not on some of the excessive salaries but on the disparity between the positions and pay of men and women. Without looking into each and every one, I take it they all are ‘classified’ as non-profits, charities, religious and educational organizations.
The entire chart is here but let’s look at one of them, the Anti-Defamation League and their ‘leader’ Abe Foxman.
Over a half a mil a year is a lot of profit for Foxman for his anti-truth hate speech. The ADL is classified as a not-for-profit organization recognized as tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3). What does the IRS say are the requirements?
To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates. source
In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying). A 501(c)(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status.
An organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation. source
“Some lobbying but not too much?” Who defines that? As a current example, is this the ADL advocating adoption of legislation in disregard to IRS rules?
“We urge the Senate to do its part and to pass the DREAM Act without delay.”
It sure seems as if they are advocating legislation to me. I guess the ADL gets around the rules by just saying yeah we’re lobbying, but not too much. No one in Congress or the IRS is going to call them out on it anyway.
AIPAC is a 501C4 non-profit and they pay their top dog very well for the job of seeing to it that we give Israel billions of dollars each year and fight their wars for them. Something’s very wrong when a nest of spies is classified as a non-profit.
The IRmep Center for Policy and Law Enforcement has filed a 1,389 page complaint demanding that AIPAC’s tax exempt status be retroactively revoked.
They have the details, a rock solid case, but don’t hold your breath on that one.
So check out the chart. If we had the time we could go on and on about most of them. These are not the soup kitchens and charitable groups we tend to think of non-profits as being but propagandists, Israel firsters and agenda driven profiteers. Some could be even be called thieves, sanctioned by the IRS.
Obama’s beginning of the end
By Eric S. Margolis | Khaleej Times | 12 December 2010
In 1956, Britain, France and Israel colluded to invade Egypt to overthrow its hugely popular nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. US President Dwight Eisenhower deemed the tripartite Suez aggression immoral and damaging to American interests in the Muslim world. “Ike” ordered the British, French and Israelis to get out of Egypt at once – or else. They got out.
Fast forward to 2010. President Barack Obama demands Israel stop building illegal Jewish settlements around Jerusalem and on the West Bank. Obama rightly concludes the ongoing agony of Palestine has turned the Muslim world against the United States. It is also the primary cause of what Washington calls “terrorism.”
After the Suez invasion, Israel’s American partisans set about building an influence network that would ensure no American president could ever force Israel to do anything against its will. Their brilliant success was again confirmed this week as Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel’s rightist coalition, literally spit in Obama’s face, sneeringly rejecting the president’s pleas to create a viable Palestinian state. The US Congress and rightwing media actually applauded the public humiliation of their president and vice president. How the mighty have fallen. Obama has shown himself utterly without spine, and terrified of the Israel lobby at a time when his political fortunes are plummeting. The White House understands that America’s vital interests in the Mideast are being increasingly undermined by Israel’s adamant refusal to allow a workable Palestinian state instead of apartheid-style Arab Bantustans.
A triumphant Netanyahu made clear Israel would retain all of Jerusalem, settlement blocks around it, water resources, key roads, the West Bank high ground and the Jordan River valley. In short, “useful Palestine.” The rest, waterless scrub and slums, might be left to the Arabs. Nothing was said about Israel’s illegal occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights.
Even Obama’s shameful offer of a multi-billion dollar bribe to Israel of 20 F-35 warplanes and unlimited diplomatic support, in exchange for a flimsy 90-day building freeze, was contemptuously rejected by Netanyahu. He knows the US Congress would give Israel the moon if asked. The US has already given Israel at least $114 billion since its creation in 1947.
What does Obama’s humiliation mean? His chances of being defeated in the next presidential election are growing. Obama’s arch-rival, the pro-Israeli Hillary Clinton, is positioning herself to take over the Democratic Party from Obama.
The US diplomatic, intelligence and military establishment has got the message, loud and clear: don’t mess with Israel. The last US president who tried to restrain Israel’s West Bank colonisation, George H.W. Bush, failed to win re-election; his able secretary of state, James Baker, was slandered as an “anti-Semite.” By caving in to Israel’s hard right over the West Bank, Obama sends a message of profound weakness to the rest of the world. He is signaling that Israel, not the White House, really makes America’s Mideast policy. Israel also increasingly influences US policy towards Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Iran and North Korea. The humiliated Palestinian Authority is shown as a helpless puppet of the Americans and Israelis, as rival Hamas has long charged.
Obama’s defeat suggests Israel now has “carte blanche” to move ahead and attack Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah, Syria, and eventually Iran. In fact, Israel now seems to have the power to plunge the US into war against Iran whenever it decides the time is right and the risk worthwhile.
Since the US has become a helpless giant, it’s up to the rest of the world to end the suffering in Palestine. Brazil and Argentina have taken an important step forward by recognising a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 borders. The 2002 Saudi peace plan still offers all parties concerned the fairest, most practical road to peace.
The UN General Assembly should again endorse this plan and call for more pressure on Israel. But Netanyahu and his fellow rightwing zealots are determined to hold on to every meter of the West Bank and Golan. Some far rightists want to expand Israel into Lebanon and Syria. Israel’s refusal to compromise over Palestine is at the heart of its increasingly dangerous confrontation with Iran.
Obama’s shameful failure will haunt the world for decades.
Justice Department Prepares for Ominous Expansion of “Anti-Terrorism” Law Targeting Activists
By Michael Deutsch | t r u t h o u t | 11 December 2010
In late September, the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and antiwar offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids, the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several antiwar and community organizations. In carrying out these repressive actions, the Justice Department was taking its lead from the Supreme Court’s 6-3 opinion last June in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project, which decided that nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy “coordinated with” or “under the direction of” a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as “terrorist” was a crime.
The search warrants and grand jury subpoenas make it clear that the federal prosecutors are intent on accusing public nonviolent political organizers, many of whom are affiliated with Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), of providing “material support” through their public advocacy for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The Secretary of State has determined that both the PLFP and the FARC “threaten US national security, foreign policy or economic interests,” a finding not reviewable by the courts, and listed both groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTO).
In 1996, Congress made it a crime – then punishable by 10 years, which was later increased to 15 years – to anyone in the US who provides “material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization or attempts or conspires to do so.” The present statute defines “material support or resources” as:
… any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safe houses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel and transportation except medicine or religious materials.
In the Humanitarian Law Project case, human rights workers wanted to teach members of the Kurdistan PKK, which seeks an independent Kurdish state, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which sought an independent state in Sri Lanka, how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes and obtain relief from the United Nations and other international bodies for human rights abuses by the governments of Turkey and Sri Lanka. Both organizations were designated as FTOs by the Secretary of State in a closed hearing, in which the evidence is heard secretly.
Despite the nonviolent, peacemaking goal of the Humanitarian Law Project’s speech and training, the majority of the Supreme Court nonetheless interpreted the law to make such conduct a crime. Finding a whole new exception to the First Amendment, the Court decided that any support, even if it involves nonviolent efforts towards peace, is illegal under the law since it “frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends,” and also helps lend “legitimacy” to foreign terrorist groups. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts, despite the lack of any evidence, further opined that the FTO could use the human rights law to “intimidate, harass or destruct” its adversaries, and that even peace talks themselves could be used as a cover to re-arm for further attacks. Thus, the Court’s opinion criminalizes efforts by independent groups to work for peace if they in any way cooperate or coordinate with designated FTOs.
The Court distinguishes what it refers to as “independent advocacy,” which it finds is not prohibited by the statute, from “advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization,” which is, for the first time, found to be a crime under the statute. The exact line demarcating where independent advocacy becomes impermissible coordination is left open and vague.
Seizing on this overbroad definition of “material support,” the US government is now moving in on political groups and activists who are clearly exercising fundamental First Amendment rights by vocally opposing the government’s branding of foreign liberation movements as terrorist and supporting their struggles against US-backed repressive regimes and illegal occupations.
Under the new definition of “material support,” the efforts of President Jimmy Carter to monitor the elections in Lebanon and coordinate with the political parties there, including the designated FTO Hezbollah, could well be prosecuted as a crime. Similarly, the publication of op-ed articles by FTO spokesmen from Hamas or other designated groups by The New York Times or The Washington Post, or the filing of amicus briefs by human rights attorneys arguing against a group’s terrorist designation or the statute itself could also now be prosecuted. Of course, the first targets of this draconian expansion of the material support law will not be a former president or the establishment media, but members of a Marxist organization who are vocal opponents of the governments of Israel and Colombia and the US policies supporting these repressive governments.
In his foreword to Nelson Mandela’s recent autobiography “Conversations with Myself,” President Obama wrote that “Mandela’s sacrifice was so great that it called upon people everywhere to do what they could on behalf of human progress. … The first time I became politically active was during my college years, when I joined a campaign on behalf of divestment, and the effort to end apartheid in South Africa.” At the time of Mr. Obama’s First Amendment advocacy, Mr. Mandela and his organization the African National Congress (ANC) were denounced as terrorist by the US government. If the “material support” law had been in effect back then, Mr. Obama would have been subject to potential criminal prosecution. It is ironic – and the height of hypocrisy – that this same man who speaks with such reverence for Mr. Mandela and recalls his own support for the struggle against apartheid now allows the Justice Department under his command to criminalize similar First Amendment advocacy against Israeli apartheid and repressive foreign governments.
Senate Hawks Push ‘Zero Enrichment’ for Tehran
By Ali Gharib | IPS | December 9, 2010
WASHINGTON – Five senators sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama Monday warning the administration not to offer concessions in upcoming talks with Iran over its nuclear programme. If Obama takes the advice, experts say, it could sink his engagement efforts with Tehran.
The letter, first reported by Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin, calls for zero enrichment on Iranian soil as a U.S. pre- condition for any negotiated deal to end Iran’s standoff with the West over its nuclear programme.
“[G]iven the government of Iran’s patterns of deception and noncooperation, its government cannot be permitted to maintain any enrichment or reprocessing activities on its territory for the foreseeable future,” said the letter. “We would strongly oppose any proposal for diplomat endgame in which Iran is permitted to continue these activities in any form.”
But the Iranians have placed a high priority on domestic enrichment, and would likely oppose a deal precluding such activity. Iran denies accusations from the West that eventual weaponisation is the goal of its nuclear programme, which is widely considered a point of Iranian national pride.
Even some U.S.-based non-proliferation experts are questioning the wisdom of taking such a hard line as the senators’ letter.
“There are mixed views in the arms control community,” said Peter Crail, a non-proliferation analyst at the Arms Control Association (ACA). “But there seems to be growing sentiment that if we’re looking at a negotiated solution, ‘zero enrichment’ is not going to be an option.”
“This attempt by congress to bind the administration would kill negotiations,” he added.
Signed by Senators Jon Kyl, Mark Kirk, Kirsten Gillibrand, Robert Casey and Joe Lieberman, with John McCain reportedly later adding his name, the letter also called on Obama to “continue ratcheting up” U.S. and international pressure on Iran.
Iran should be squeezed until it freezes enrichment and passes International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, including submitting to the Additional Protocols, an extended set of safeguards measures, the letter said.
The senators wrote that their positions are “reflective of a consensus among a broad, bipartisan majority in Congress”. Despite Peter Baker of the New York Times’s suggestion that the Senators’ letter was a show of “bipartisan support”, it appeared to instead be a threat of push-back from Congress should Obama pursue a deal that allows any Iranian enrichment.
“[T]he letter makes the point that there will be very strong opposition to any kind of proposal that allows the Iranians to keep some sort of enrichment capability,” an anonymous Senate aide, explaining the “thinking behind the letter”, wrote the Washington Post’s new neoconservative blogger Jennifer Rubin. “This is an extremely dangerous idea that it is important to knock down.”
But experts think the tack – pressure for strict pre- conditions to talks – could be repeating the same mistakes of recent U.S.-Iran relations, where Iran was further isolated as its nuclear programmes continued.
“This again shows that part of the problem in negotiations has been a lack of political space domestically for both sides,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council and a Woodrow Wilson Center fellow. “Obama realises that in order to get a deal, there needs to be mutual compromises on both sides.”
“What you have now is that some members of Congress are adopting the (President George W.) Bush position, that, ‘No, we’re not going to compromise on anything, It has to be maximalist approach,” Parsi said. “That has caused problems in the past because it makes it impossible to have a real negotiation.”
The senators pressed Obama just as the first two-day round of talks between the P5+1 group, which includes the U.S., were getting underway. Little had been accomplished as the negotiations drew to a close Tuesday, but another round is expected in January. Going into the latest round, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted in an interview in Bahrain that the U.S. might be willing to accept Iranian enrichment.
“They can enrich uranium at some future date once they have demonstrated that they can do so in a responsible manner in accordance with international obligations,” Clinton reportedly told the BBC.
“During the Obama period, there has been some ambiguity about whether (zero enrichment) is the American red line,” said NIAC’s Parsi, pointing to Clinton’s comments. “The position that these lawmakers are taking (in the letter) is identical with the Israeli and Bush red lines, and seems to be at odds with the Obama red line.”
Rumors are already flying that the second round of the latest talks, to be held in Turkey, could see the U.S. offer a deal whereby a fuel swap agreement – involving sending nuclear fuel to Russia for reprocessing – would allow Iran to maintain domestic enrichment.
While Iran says it has a right to domestic enrichment as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Crail of the ACA notes that the treaty only guarantees “a peaceful nuclear programme.”
“In the end, there is an implicit understanding that, yes, countries can enrich,” he said, adding, however, that he prefers that the technology not spread and all nuclear fuel production be internationalised.
But Crail emphasised that Iran, too, must be willing to make some concessions: “According to the NPT, in order for Iran to get all its rights under the NPT, Iran needs to cooperate with international inspections.”
WikiLeaks: Advancing an Israeli Agenda?
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | Intifada Palestine | December 11th, 2010
Like 9/11, WikiLeaks has been singularly good for Israel.
Asked on the night of September 11, 2001 what the terrorist attacks meant for U.S.-Israel relations, Benjamin Netanyahu, the then former prime minister, tactlessly but accurately replied, “It’s very good.” And on the day after WikiLeaks’ publication of U.S. diplomatic cables, Netanyahu “strode” into a press conference at the Israeli Journalists Association, looking “undoubtedly delighted” with the group’s latest embarrassment of U.S. President Barack Obama.
“Thanks to WikiLeaks,” Aluf Benn wrote in Haaretz, “there is now no fear Washington will exert heavy pressure on Israel to freeze settlement construction or to accelerate negotiations on a withdrawal from the territories.” Instead, also courtesy of WikiLeaks, the world’s attention had been shifted exactly where a “vindicated” Netanyahu wanted it – toward Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons programme.
“Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of 60 years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat,” Netanyahu told the assembled journalists. “In reality leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history there is agreement that Iran is the threat.” While there is considerable dispute about the extent to which Arab leaders share Netanyahu’s understanding of “the Iranian threat,” the Arab public overwhelmingly considers Israel to be a far greater threat.
Nevertheless, according to Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, Julian Assange “has shattered the accepted dogma on the understanding in the Middle East in the 21st century.” WikiLeaks, crowed Shavit, “proved” that the Israeli occupation and colonisation of Palestine was not the main cause of instability in the Middle East. Instead, the secret cables “revealed” that “the entire Arab world” is concerned about “one problem only — Iran, Iran, Iran.” Thus, Shavit concluded, the only way to bring peace to the region was to deal with “Iran first.”
Strangely, the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange seems to accept the Israeli vision of “war is peace” in the Middle East. In an interview with Time magazine, Assange singled out Netanyahu as an example of a world leader who believed the publication of Arab leaders’ provocative privately expressed comments “will lead to some kind of increase in the peace process in the Middle East and particularly in relation to Iran.”
Even more puzzling, Assange had an op-ed piece in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, in which he quoted something the media mogul had written in 1958: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.” In choosing another pro-Israel apologist as a model of transparency, is it possible that Assange is ignorant of the key role played by Murdoch’s media empire in propagating the lies that led the New York Times to dub the war in Iraq “Mr. Murdoch’s War”?
Assange seems equally oblivious to the significant contribution made by the New York Times itself to the war whose conduct he now claims to oppose. On September 8, 2002, the paper of record led with a front-page story by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, which falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy aluminium tubes as part of its “worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb.” As Michael Massing later wrote, “In the following months, the tubes would become a key prop in the administration’s case for war, and the Times played a critical part in legitimizing it.” Chosen by Assange to publish its leaked documents because it is one of “the best newspapers in the world for investigative research,” the pro-Israel Times is now busily spinning the leaks to push America into an equally unnecessary but even more disastrous war with Iran.
Given that the WikiLeaks revelations have been such an unexpected “diplomatic coup” for Israel, its American lobby appears to be strangely divided over the issue. On one side, there are those like David Frum, Jeffrey Goldberg, and Michael Ledeen who delight in being able henceforth to cloak their incessant Iran warmongering behind a specious Arab cover. “Those who suggest that it’s some ‘Israel lobby’ or Jewish cabal that is driving the confrontation with Iran” should be embarrassed by the leaks, writes Frum. “WikiLeaks confirms that the region’s Arab governments express even more anxiety than Israel about the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”
Meanwhile, the most virulent attacks on WikiLeaks have come from some of Israel’s staunchest supporters. William Kristol, editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard, wants Congress to enable Obama to “Whack WikiLeaks.” Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, appear only too willing to oblige. Both senators have called for the prosecution of Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act. Feinstein is also working with Senator Charles Schumer on media legislation that would allow the prosecution of organizations like WikiLeaks.
How do we reconcile the Israel lobby’s apparently schizophrenic reaction to WikiLeaks? Could it be that Julian Assange has killed two birds for Israel with one document dump?
Thanks to WikiLeaks, the well-publicised remarks of a few Arab leaders provide much-needed cover for pro-Israelis as they relentlessly press America to whack Iran. At the same time, the disclosure of U.S. diplomatic secrets has given the likes of Joe Lieberman another excuse to “kill the internet” — to prevent Americans from ever finding out how they got into such a mess in the Middle East.
But just like 9/11, no matter how much WikiLeaks has benefited Israel, most observers still seem loath to consider the Tel Aviv connection.
Maidhc Ó Cathail writes extensively on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East.
Israel, NATO Launch Spying Operation against Iran at Afghan Borders
FARS NEWS AGENCY | December 7, 2010
TEHRAN – A prominent Afghan military analyst unveiled that Israel has deployed its troops at a NATO base in Afghanistan near Iran’s border to launch joint operations against the Islamic Republic.
Speaking to FNA about NATO’s $184 million plan to upgrade Shindand Air Base in Western Afghanistan and 20 miles from the Iranian border, Javid Kohestani said, “The NATO member states are reconstructing the base in a bid to harm the Islamic Republic of Iran and to spy against Iran.”
He recalled previous reports about the deployment of Israeli forces in Shindand base, and noted, “Accordingly, the reconstruction of the base by the NATO is considered as one of the NATO’s clandestine programs to harm the Islamic Republic of Iran and promote Israel’s spying activities in the region.”
Kohestani believes that the base has been handed to Israel for conducting sabotage operations in Iran’s eastern regions.
The United States and NATO have 150,000 troops in Afghanistan, following a military surge ordered by President Barack Obama.
Senior Iranian security officials have always underlined that the terrorists who carried out terrorist attacks in Iran’s Southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan had certainly been funded by certain foreign countries.
WIKILEAKS REPRISED — A WHIFF OF…WHAT?
From what the press is reporting about this Wikileaks “dump,” perhaps 10% are Secret or Confidential, the rest Unclassified, and nothing is Top Secret or above.
ALAN SABROSKY – My Catbird Seat – December 8, 2010
I have followed the unfolding teapot-tempest drama of the latest Wikileaks release with a certain bemusement, accompanied by a growing suspicion shared with others that all is not as it seems with these supposed revelations. But my initial impression, based of course on what I am reading in the mainstream and alternative media and not in the cables themselves, is that it is surprising how little damaging material is there about much of the world. Secretary Clinton cannot be happy at having the UN people know what she told her people there to do, of course, and there is a great deal to whet assorted salacious appetites. More substantive issues will doubtless emerge, but I expect most if not all to be embarrassing rather than destructive.
The Cables
Perhaps the principal reason for this largely titillating, trivial aspect of so many of the released cables is the cables themselves. It is worth understanding that in the US government, even material that is taken from newspapers and clipped together can end up being classified “Secret” or “Confidential.” Really important or sensitive material (as in truly “national security” sensitive) is classified “Top Secret” or above.
From what the press is reporting about this Wikileaks “dump,” perhaps 10% are Secret or Confidential, the rest Unclassified, and nothing is Top Secret or above. This reflects the VERY low-level diplomatic “gossip column” character of much of what has been released and discussed in the media so far. But I suspect the general reaction of politicians and diplomats everywhere, all of whom send the same type of cables about others, will be a blend of public umbrage and private amusement, coupled with overtures to Ukraine for nursing support.
The Middle East Exception
The one striking exception in all of this global tour de farce <sic.> is the Middle East. Certainly, even aside from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s fulsome praise of Binyamin Netanyahu, what is said and what is not represent the message Israel and its partisans in the US Government (itself heavily Zionist and “Israel First” in orientation) want the world to hear, believe and accept. The message coming across in the US diplomatic cables could have been designed and drafted by Avigdor Lieberman, and who knows? It may have been….
The overt theme in the Middle East cables consists of a blend of attacks on prominent political figures in Turkey and Iran, coupled with critical and disparaging commentaries about their actual or alleged policies and ambitions. One might think that the architects of the Ottoman and Persian Empires in their times of splendor were simultaneously on the move again, with everything between them (except poor, brave, steadfast and enduring Israel, of course) trembling in fear and awe.
Complimenting this is a region-wide belief attributed to many Arab leaders of the need for stronger action, including military strikes, to thwart Iran’s regional and especially nuclear ambitions — precisely what Israel has been saying all along. Now, this may be true. I know, for example, that the Sunni leadership in many of those countries have their own concerns about Iran, just as Iran’s current leadership have with some of them.
But at least two things cause me to question this supposed thesis. One is the odd attribution in at least one of the cables to an Arab leader of a remark on Iran being an “existential threat.” Yet no one except Israel and its proponents refer to any other country as an “existential threat” to anyone, suggesting quite clearly that either some of the released cables regarding Iran are forgeries, or they were deliberately cast in terms to create an impression that Arab leaders really want the US and/or Israel to attack Iran, true or not.
And the Israeli Exception
The other part of the covert theme is the apparent absence of anything tough on Israel, which means that anything of the sort is Top Secret or better, was excised from the cables that were released, or simply doesn’t matter at all to anyone in or out of the Middle East. The Arab nations for many years have feared a real nuclear threat from Israel, not a fabricated threat by Iran, but nothing like that comes across, despite 60-plus years of hostility from most to Israel and its ambitions.
Far more significant to me is the utter lack to date of scathing commentaries on Israel and its policies, leadership and actions from SOMEWHERE in the world. Even if Arab leaders felt there was no point in doing so with the Americans, most others would not feel so constrained. Something surely must have come to the attention of the US ambassadors to (e.g.) Turkey, South Africa, Brazil and Ireland, just to name a few of the many who have bitterly condemned Israel, and especially the disgusting duo of Netanyahu and Lieberman to say nothing of their predecessors, for what they have done to Palestine and the Lebanon; for Operation Cast Lead; for the settlements; for flagrant violations of UN Resolutions and the murder of UN officials; for Israel’s hostility to the Goldstone Report; for the blockade; for land expropriation; and for sheer thuggery and brutality.
Surely something so scathing would have been communicated back to Washington, alongside which Iran and its president would come off smelling like several bouquets of roses — slightly wilted roses, perhaps, but vastly better than the Israeli stinkpot.
Reprise
But nothing like that is there, or at least has yet surfaced, which makes me increasingly inclined to see this as just another game of rhetorical smoke and mirrors, with a lot of real cables and real victims (like the poor US soldier who presumably gave Assange at least some of the cables), but with many or most of the Middle East cables “cooked” if not fabricated outright.
So these, at least, are probably the handiwork of Israeli-Americans or just Israelis putting their own spin on things, included in a mass of otherwise legitimate cables as camouflage and for validation. An Australian news website concluded that “[the] WikiLeaks cables [are] the 9/11 of world diplomacy.” Too, too true – same source, different vehicle and venue, all helping pave the road to yet another needless war in Israel’s service, this time against Iran. The gods weep — but not, presumably, Yahweh.
Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net
Hasbara at Work: Oren Promotes Fantasies
By Ira Glunts | Palestine Chronicle | December 6, 2010
Three years ago I heard the American-born Israeli Michael B. Oren promoting his new book Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present at a university near my home in upstate New York.
Oren is a tall, good looking man who radiated a quiet confidence. His book had the truly fanciful goal of showing that the intense American involvement in the Middle East and especially our engagement with the idea of a renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the region was not a recent development. Oren claimed that both the Zionist idea and the friction between Americans and Muslims is an important and persistent narrative thread running through American history from very early times. For instance, he describes the military confrontations of a young American republic with the Barbary pirates as the first battles in what we now call the “War on Terror.” My own conclusion after reading his book, was that Oren’s role as a conservative Israeli think-tanker had completely subsumed any desire he may have had to be an honest American historian. I assumed that he believed that this was a good career move for someone who simultaneously lived in Israel and taught at Yale University. At that point this apparently mild-mannered, obviously intelligent scholar seemed harmless enough. Of course, it was impossible to have known then that Oren would become Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ambassador to the United States.
Last week Michael Oren, as Israeli Ambassador to the United States, visited Atlanta in order to lay a wreath upon the grave of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King. In addition to the wreath, Oren used his Atlanta visit to lay some of his country’s particularly odious hasbara (meaning public relations, some say propaganda) upon no doubt unsuspecting Georgians.
According to Martha Dalton of Atlanta radio station WABE, Oren exploited the ceremony honoring King by making a statement about the imminent danger Iran’s nuclear program presents to both Israel and the rest of the world. This is far from a universally accepted claim, but after having it repeated enough times in the U.S. media, most accept it as fact. The ambassador also expressed concern about fallout from the recent Wikileaks release of thousands of diplomatic cables, some of which were embarrassing to Israel. [Oren’s fantasy world hasbara at work]
In an opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on November 26 entitled “A 63-Year Search For Mideast Peace” Oren took full advantage of the leeway American newspaper editors give to public figures and especially to pro-Israel columns. According to Oren, Israel has been engaged in a 63-year struggle to make its neighbors and those it expelled from its territory understand that all it has ever wanted is to peacefully share the land it claims for itself with its indigenous population.
The United Nations voted to partition what is now Israel 63 years ago into Jewish and Palestinian states. The wisdom of this decision, which was rejected by the region’s Arab governments and populations, is very much in question today. However to Oren, whose views reflect his own blind faith in Israeli power and a generous serving of fantasy, the partition decision (UN resolution 181) expresses the incontestable truth that “[t]he Arab world was to welcome the Jews, after 2,000 years of exile back to their homeland.”
Surprisingly, at least according to Oren, the Arabs did not understand the imperative that they were morally obligated to welcome the Zionists and their proposed Jewish State on lands upon which the Palestinians had lived for centuries. A war ensued, in which according to Oren (repeating one of the favorite false claims of countless pro-Israel propagandists) “the weakly-armed Israeli defenders defeated the much stronger Arab armies.” This description is on its face false. Of course, the stronger army won, do you think it was God who made the Israelis triumph despite their weakness? (For an extensive and detailed description of the relative military strengths of both sides in the 1948 War see the Israeli historian, Benny Morris’ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.)
Continuing to mercilessly ladle on the hasbara (which literally means explanation in Hebrew), Oren writes that despite the Palestinians’ history of rejection of continuous Israeli goodwill, his government persists in reaching out with generous peace proposals. The ambassador points to examples of Palestinian recalcitrance in their refusal to accept the Israeli offers of “full statehood” in 2000 and 2008. The reader is not told how full statehood for the Palestinians is compatible with Israeli control of Palestinian water sources, no foreign policy, no army, and Israeli overflight rights among many other crippling limitations, which are conditions upon which the Israelis always insist. Oren also neglects to mention that this “generous offer” of statehood does not now include Gaza nor its democratically-elected government.
To this point Oren’s op-ed had been a rehash of the Israeli and pro-Israel lobby talking points. But suddenly and unexpectedly the mild mannered ex-historian turned diplomat seeks to incite his audience with an original gem of hasbara. Oren declares, “Hamas …[is a]… group dedicated to the murder of all Israelis – indeed all Jews worldwide.”
Hamas is a political party and a social service organization which was democratically elected to rule the Palestinian territories. It also is a liberation and resistance movement which has employed violence against the Israeli army of occupation, the illegal Israeli settler/colonists, and ordinary Israeli civilians. However, the general statement that Hamas is dedicated to the murder of all Israelis is as valid as saying that the Israeli occupation army is dedicated to killing all Palestinians. The second charge, that Hamas is dedicated to killing all Jews worldwide is as fantastic as Oren’s claim in Power, Faith and Fantasy that the American founding-fathers were proto-Zionists who spent inordinate amounts of resources fighting implacable Muslim enemies. Actually, Hamas explicitly rejects the use of violence against targets outside the occupied territories and Israel. Its behavior has reflected that policy.
Before Oren went to Atlanta he made an appearance at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans. In addressing the assembly, Oren urged American Jews to make it a priority to ensure that US politicians continue to give Israel “bipartisan support” even if these same American Jews may believe that Israel’s policies are wrong. Oren insisted that it is not only the duty of American Jews to fall into line with Israel’s wishes, but he further declared, “we [Israelis] expect American Jews to refute” any criticism of Israeli policy.
Ambassador Oren wants American Jews to become hasbara agents who blindly follow Israeli government policy while simultaneously inciting them with false fears of being murdered by what for them is a totally imagined enemy. In assuming his new diplomatic role, Michael B. Oren has, unfortunately, been given the authority and platform to promote fantasies about which he could only theorize, three years ago, when I heard him merely urging his audience of college students to buy his book.
– Ira Glunts first visited the Middle East in 1972, where he taught English and physical education in a small rural community in southern Israel. He was a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces in 1992. Mr. Glunts lives in Madison, New York where he operates a used and rare book business, writes and is a part-time reference librarian. Contact him at: gluntsi[at]morrisville[dot]edu.
START for Israel; START against Iran
Ali Gharib | Lobe Log | November 22nd, 2010
Earlier today on National Review’s The Corner blog, Foundation for Defense of Democracies head honcho Cliff May wrote:
I’m now hearing from more than one source on the Hill that the Obama administration has just added a new argument in favor of lame-duck ratification: failure to adopt START will “hurt Israel.”
May demurs, naturally (the New START is an Obama Administration initiative, after all), then tells a joke, sets up a straw man, and knocks it down. May thinks the Obama administration scare tactic will be that without START, Russia’s nukes will start “somehow leaking out and getting into the hands of Iran’s bad boys or other terrorists.”
But that wasn’t the Israel angle played by Jewish groups later in the day — though their tack does have something to do with Iran.
Laura Rozen reports for Politico:
Both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) cited the importance of passage of the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty in order to maintain American-Russian cooperation in countering the Iran nuclear threat.
“We are deeply concerned that failure to ratify the New START treaty will have national security consequences far beyond the subject of the treaty itself,” the ADL said in a letter sent to every Senator Friday.
“The U.S. diplomatic strategy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons requires a U.S.-Russia relationship of trust and cooperation,” ADL continues. “The severe damage that could be inflicted on that relationship by failing to ratify the treaty would inevitably hamper effective American international leadership to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”
The New START treaty may indeed be a necessary step for global security, but questions should be raised about linking it to Iran. This support by pro-Israel groups may prove to haunt U.S. policy towards Iran in the future.
One might compare this tack in pushing START to the sort of message Benjamin Netanyahu took away from meeting with Barack Obama about engaging in Palestinian-Israeli peace talks: that getting the job done (or at least getting to the table) will help the U.S. isolate Iran and contain its nuclear ambitions.
How many of these bargains can Obama enter into before he must pay the piper and make the ultimate escalation against Iran? If the diplomatic strategy fails, then what?
Perhaps this is pointing out the obvious: Something is truly amiss when a treaty to limit nuclear proliferation is being sold as the way to defend and protect a country that has an ever expanding — and clandestine — nuclear arsenal.
Update:
Obama Pushes START Treaty to Top of Legislative Agenda
By Jim Lobe | IPS | December 2, 2010
WASHINGTON – With time running out before he faces a much more hostile and Republican Congress, President Barack Obama appears to have made Senate ratification of the pending New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia his top legislative priority.
Not only has he bowed to Republican demands to allocate more money for Washington’s nuclear arms programme, but he has suggested that he’s also willing to cave in to Republican demands to extend tax cuts for high-income households – despite record federal deficits – in order to gain START ratification.
And he’s getting considerable help from big guns in what remains of the Republican foreign policy Establishment, including five former secretaries of state whose service spanned the last five Republican administrations.
In an op-ed heralded by the White House on the eve of its publication in Thursday’s Washington Post, former secretaries Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger and Colin Powell concluded that the New START was “clearly in our national interest” and should be ratified. […]
Obama, who had promised during the 2008 election campaign not to raise taxes on households earning 250,000 dollars a year or less, had hoped that allowing the cuts to expire on those earning more than that would help cut the federal deficit by several hundred billion dollars over the next few years.
His apparent willingness to compromise on this issue in order to secure START is causing growing dismay among his supporters. … Full article by Jim Lobe
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Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
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
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