What sort of Christians become Zionists?
By Stuart Littlewood | Sabbah Report | June 17, 2010
Not all Jews are Zionists. Many reject the Zionist project and fight against it.
So why on earth would a non-Jew wish to be one? Indeed, how could a genuine Christian seriously consider becoming a Zionist? It has puzzled me for a long time. The two ideas are incompatible, are they not?
So consider for a moment Anglican Friends of Israel, as an example. Their stated aims include:
- To support the people of Israel and to secure defensible borders for the State of Israel.
- To recall the Church to G-d’s Covenant with the Jewish people and to call the Church to affirm the centrality of Israel to the Jewish faith.
- To call Anglicans to repentance for the wrongs – of both word and deed – inflicted by Christians on the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.
- To fight all libels against Israel and the Jewish people and their State.
- To protect the Christian communities threatened by Islamic extremism in the Middle East.
Are they Zionists? It sounds very much like it. For them Israel can do no wrong and Christians need to apologise to the nation of Israel… er, what for?
And what makes them think that Muslims are more of a threat than Israeli extremists to Christian communities?
You should also see the sort of stuff the Anglican Friends of Israel post on their website.
AFI Press Release: The Mavi Marmara
Written by Anglican Friends of Israel
Wednesday, 02 June 2010
Anglican Friends of Israel are dismayed at international condemnation of Israel following attacks upon Israeli Defence Force personnel [by] a supposedly peaceful aid convoy… Israeli offers of peaceful means to deliver the aid into Gaza were refused. Video footage proves that the violence which tragically resulted in the deaths of some passengers and injuries to others including IDF personnel was begun by Aid convoy members… Terrorists in Gaza continue to fire rockets into Israel – over 60 this year so far – and to explode bombs in order to kill and maim Israeli citizens.
Western spokespersons might bear in mind that the terror threat to western nations springs from the same source as that faced daily by Israelis and be more circumspect in making demands on Israel before all relevant facts have emerged.
Anyone would be forgiven for thinking it was actually penned by the crapaganda unit in Tel Aviv. These Anglicans (if they are Anglicans) swallowed Israel’s poisonous concoction hook, line and sinker and re-broadcast it while the abducted flotilla aid workers – witnesses to the murderous assault and executions – were incarcerated in Israeli jails and unable to tell the outside world what really happened.
I don’t know of any danger to us from Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran, if those are the “terror” sources referred to. I doubt if groups who wish to see the Israeli nuclear threat to their region neutralised are also gunning for us, even though people like Anglican Friends of Israel and foreign secretary William Hague are doing their best to provoke them. But Israel of course wishes to make the British feel threatened and to draw us for strategic reasons into their schemes for permanent occupation and domination. There are always plenty of useful idiots to do their bidding.
A few days earlier the Anglicans issued a press release stating that the flotilla to Gaza was “a publicity stunt, not a genuine aid convoy”. The item was actually a statement by the Israeli embassy repeated word for word and containing meaningless information like… “Since last year’s January cease fire, 133 million liters of fuel entered Gaza from Israel – That’s more than enough fuel to fill the fuel tank of every car and truck in Israel!” and “Since the ceasefire, well over a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Israel – That’s almost a ton of aid for every man woman and child in Gaza.”
Meaningless, because the figures lacked context. You have to go to the UN for that. Whatever Israel lets in, says the UN, it’s only one-fifth of what’s needed.
Some apparently responsible people, it seems, would rather accept without question the disinformation fed them by the Israeli authorities than on-the-spot assessments and reports by the UN and various charities.
Actually Israel is letting in only a quarter of what it let in before Hamas was elected.
Without question there was a publicity angle to the voyage. The organisers had a political point to make – the whole ugly US/UK-created mess out there is a political cesspit. The Israelis couldn’t afford to see their illegal blockade breached. The evidence points to a planned execution raid on the Mavi Marmara in the dead of night with a pre-prepared hit-list.
And in a letter to the BBC these Anglicans insisted that Operation Cast Lead (Israel’s blitzkrieg on Gaza after breaking the ceasefire with Hamas, subsequently killing 1400, maiming heaven knows how many and making hundreds of thousands homeless) was an act of “self-defense”.
If you are as bewildered as I am why so-called Christians are persuaded to sign up to Zionism, a short paper explaining the phenomenon is available from Sadaka, The Ireland Palestine Alliance – see www.sadaka.ie. I found it very helpful.
“The destiny of the Jewish people is to return to the land of Israel and reclaim their inheritance promised to Abraham and his descendants forever. This inheritance extends from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates. Within their land, Jerusalem is recognised to be their exclusive, undivided and eternal capital, and therefore it cannot be shared or divided.
At the heart of Jerusalem will be the rebuilt Jewish temple, to which all the nations will come to worship God. Just prior to the return of Jesus, there will be seven years of calamities and war known as the tribulation, which will culminate in a great battle called Armageddon, during which the godless forces opposed to both God and Israel will be defeated.
Jesus will then return as the Jewish Messiah and king to reign in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and the Jewish people will enjoy a privileged status and role in the world.”
That’s the Zionist dream in a nutshell.
… Zionists claim Jerusalem is theirs by heavenly decree. However, this holiest of cities was already 2000 years old when King David captured it. It dates back 5000 years and was named after the Canaanite God of Dusk.
Historians say that Jerusalem, in its ‘City of David’ form, lasted a mere 73 years. In 928BC the kingdom divided into Israel and Judah, and in 597BC the Babylonians conquered the city and destroyed Solomon’s temple. The Jews recaptured it in 164BC but finally lost it to the Roman Empire in 63BC. Before the present-day conflict the Jews, in total, controlled Jerusalem for some 500 years, whereas it was subsequently ruled by Muslims for 1,277 years. Before the Jews it belonged to the Canaanites. And for nearly 90 years it was also a Christian kingdom. A lot of competing claims, then, which is probably why the UN declared it should be independently administered as an international city.
In 1187 Saladin restored the city to Islam while allowing Jews and Christians to remain. Today Jewish religious groups want control of the city for their spiritual centre and for a third temple to be built in accordance with ancient prophecies. The plan to make the Israeli occupation permanent threatens especially the Muslim but also the Christian holy places and serves to keep political tension boiling. It is no surprise, given Israel’s reliance on ‘black’ propaganda, that when the Iranian president quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying the unfriendly regime occupying Jerusalem “must vanish from the page of time”, he was immediately reported as wanting to wipe Israel off the map.
Sadaka puts the genuine Christian position by quoting The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, a statement by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued in 2006…
We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.
We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organizations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of world.
We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from ideologies of militarism and occupation. Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!
The Declaration, explains Sadaka, asserts that “Christian Zionists have aggressively imposed an aberrant expression of the Christian faith and an erroneous interpretation of the Bible, which is subservient to the political agenda of the modern State of Israel… Christian Zionism thrives on a literal and futurist hermeneutic in which Old Testament promises made to the ancient Jewish people are transferred to the contemporary State of Israel in anticipation of a final future fulfillment.”
I haven’t yet seen credible response from the Christian Zionists.
Alarmingly, the US-based Unity Coalition for Israel brings together over 200 organisations and is the largest pro-Israel network in the world. They claim to have 40 million active members and lobby on behalf of Israel through 1,700 religious radio stations, 245 Christian TV stations and 120 Christian newspapers.
The question I’d like answered is this. Are we to believe that an all-powerful supernatural Being has chosen and elevated one group of humans to a position of supremacy above all others, and has approved the use any means including murder and brutal eviction to achieve their goal, and now mobilizes millions of lesser mortals from around the globe, like those who regard themselves as upstanding Christians, to serve as tools and sing the praises of this ‘Grand Design’?
In the meantime I’m with the Churches of Jerusalem on this one.
AEI Does Syria
Demonization with Coffee and Croissaints
By FARRAH HASSEN | June 17, 2010
I knew what I was getting into when I decided to attend the Washington D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute’s Syria conference on June 10. Just look at the suggestive title: “Bashar’s Syria at Ten: Does the Eye Doctor See Straight?”
As I looked at the program I noticed that the panelists, supposedly an “international array of experts,” mainly came from the AIPAC allied Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which gave me little reason to believe that a three hour session on Syria at a conservative think tank—which housed notable cheerleaders for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example—would focus on the facts. AEI’s own Danielle Pletka served as a moderator on the “Terrorism” panel but mainly offered snark (and not even funny snark); female analysts were noticeably missing in action.
Despite this not-so-friendly environment for serious analysis, policy prescriptions and dare I say, dissent, I decided to attend this event because as a Syrian-American, as someone with family still living in Syria, I have a stake in U.S. Middle East policy.
I’ve met Palestinian and Iraqi refugees in Damascus, people who serve as a living testament to the consequences of war and occupation. With a Syrian filmmaker I walked around his destroyed hometown, Quneitra, in Syria’s Golan, occupied by Israel following the 1967 war. In the middle of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, I volunteered at a shelter in Damascus and served food to the thousands of Lebanese who sought temporary refuge in Syria. I’ll never forget hearing one woman say, “I hope my child doesn’t grow up to hate America,” referring to unquestioning U.S. government support for Israel.
U.S. Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) delivered the keynote address, in which he espoused “crippling sanctions” on Iran, without acknowledging that sanctions don’t work unless they have the backing of people against their governments (and most Iranians, like Cubans, Iraqis and yes, Syrians, don’t support sanctions). He berated the Syrian “regime”—note, according to AEI, Syria has a “regime,” not a “government,” and no speaker or audience member asking a question ever deviated from this rule—and admonished the Obama administration for sending the “wrong message” to Syria by seeking engagement.
According to the senator, Syria “must completely cut off the flow of terrorists slipping into Iraq. It must stop helping the numerous terrorist groups it supports outside of Iraq. It must recognize that Israel has a right to exist, and negotiate a real peace in good faith.” Other speakers would repeat these demands during panels on “The Bashar al-Assad Doctrine,” “Assessing Engagement” and “Terrorism.”
No one mentioned Syria’s cooperation with Iraq on border security, refugees and elections. No one mentioned that Syria as early as January 2002 opposed the invasion of Iraq, and warned the U.S. about the consequences, including the rise of extremism. No one questioned the illogic of the senator’s demand that Syria recognize Israel’s right to exist, given that Syrian and Israeli officials have been in the same room together on several occasions and have attempted to negotiate peace.
David Schenker, Andrew Tabler and Scott Carpenter, all from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Elliott Abrams, Tony Badran, Brian Fishman, Bill Harris and William Wunderle, from the Council on Foreign Relations, Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, New America Foundation, Otago University in New Zealand and the Pentagon, respectively, expressed their opinions freely—their right. However, on an intellectual level, their analysis and presentation of the facts left large holes.
I reminded the speakers after they finished presenting in the opening panel that none of them mentioned that Israel continues to occupy Syria’s Golan, a strange omission when discussing Syria’s foreign policy, or why Damascus views Hamas and Hezbollah as legitimate resistance movements. Israeli occupation of the Golan also relates to the larger impact that Israel’s occupation of Arab land has throughout the region.
Absence of context throughout the panels signaled to me that this AEI conference was an overall exercise in intellectual dishonesty and ideology, not serious analysis, much less discussion of U.S. policy toward Syria and the region.
For example, in making his case that President Bashar al-Assad is “worse” than the late Hafez-al-Assad, Schenker tried to score audience humor points by referring to a “bromance” between Assad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. In the same vein, while it is clear that Syria needs political and economic reform, Carpenter’s gloom-and-doom scenario of the human rights situation there (but not in U.S. allied Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE, for example) offered no constructive policy prescriptions.
I had hoped a panel entitled “Assessing Engagement” would actually “assess” reasons for and against engagement with Syria and cite historic precedents. Perhaps even point to examples of cooperation between Syria and the U.S., such as during the Gulf War or on intelligence sharing after 9/11, and discuss the lessons learned. Instead, Elliott Abrams, who in 1991 plead guilty to lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, concluded that present U.S. policy toward Syria is “just giveaways in exchange for nothing.” AEI could have saved time and ink by nixing such a panel and replacing it with moderator Michael Rubin informing audience-goers at the outset, “No engagement with Syria because we said so.”
What did I learn after the event concluded? When someone asked the last panelists the “where do we go from here” question, no one answered it. Nor did anyone seem to want to. Why did AEI promote such an event? Based on what I heard, it wasn’t to offer probing insights on Syria rooted in scholarly research, or promote peace and security between Syria and Israel, and throughout the region; nor to improve relations between the U.S. and Syria, or elevate reform and development in Syria. Perhaps it really was just to schedule a public demonization of another country (with free coffee, croissants and fruit).
Am I more motivated now to lobby my Members of Congress to support crippling sanctions on Syria (and Iran)? No. Will I ask them to challenge President Obama’s decision to send an Ambassador to Syria? Nope.
However, I can thank AEI for reminding me to keep pushing for improved relations between the U.S. and Syria, which includes supporting peace, security and development inside and outside Damascus.
How about a conference on that?
Farrah Hassen is a writer and videographer living in Washington DC.
Turkey Accepts the Challenge; Middle East is Changing
Turkey is escalating its involvement well beyond Israel’s comfort zone.
By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | June 17, 2010
‘Even despots, gangsters and pirates have specific sensitiveness, (and) follow some specific morals.’
The claim was made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a recent speech, following the deadly commando raid on the humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza on May 31. According to Erdogan, Israel doesn’t adhere to the code of conduct embraced even by the vilest of criminals.
The statement alone indicates the momentous political shift that’s currently underway in the Middle East. While the shift isn’t entirely new, one dares to claim it might now be a lasting one. To borrow from Erdogan’s own assessment of the political fallout that followed Israel’s raid, the damage is “irreparable.”
Countless analyses have emerged in the wake of the long-planned and calculated Israeli attack on the Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara, which claimed the lives of nine, mostly Turkish peace activists.
In “Turkey’s Strategic U-Turn, Israel’s Tactical Mistakes,” published in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Ofra Bengio suggested Turkey’s position was purely strategic. But he also chastised Israel for driving Turkey further and faster “toward the Arab and Muslim worlds.”
In this week’s Zaman, a Turkish publication, Bulent Kenes wrote: “As a result of the Davos (where the Turkish prime minister stormed out of a televised discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres, after accusing him and Israel of murder), the myth that Israel is untouchable was destroyed by Erdogan, and because of that Israel nurses a hatred for Turkey.”
In fact, the Davos incident is significant not because it demonstrates that Israel can be criticized, but rather because it was Turkey — and not any other easily dismissible party — that dared to voice such criticism.
Writing in the Financial Times under the title, “Erdogan turns to face East in a delicate balancing act,” David Gardner places Turkey’s political turn within a European context. He sums up that thought in a quote uttered by no other than Robert Gates, US defense secretary: “If there is anything to the notion that Turkey is moving Eastward, it is in no small part because it was pushed, and pushed by some in Europe refusing to give Turkey the kind of organic link to the West that Turkey sought.” But what many analysts missed was the larger political and historical context, not only as pertaining to Israel and Turkey, but to the whole region and all its players, including the US itself. Only this context can help us understand the logic behind Israel’s seemingly erratic behavior.
In 1996, Israeli leaders appeared very confident. A group of neoconservative American politicians had laid out a road map for Israel to ensure complete dominance over the Middle East. In the document entitled, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” Turkey was mentioned four times. Each reference envisaged the country as a tool to “contain, destabilize, and roll back some of .. (the) most dangerous threats” to Israel. That very “vision” in fact served as the backbone of the larger strategy used by the US, as it carried out its heedless military adventures in the Middle East.
Frustrated by the American failure to reshape the region and unquestioningly eliminate anything and everything that Israel might perceive as a threat, Israel took matters into its own hands. However, in 2006 and between 2008 and 2009, it was in for major surprises. Superior firepower doesn’t guarantee military victory. Moreover, while Israel had once more demonstrated its capacity to inflict untold damage on people and infrastructure, the Israeli weapon was no longer strategically effective. In other words, Israel’s military advantage could no longer translate into political gains, and this was a game-changer.
There are many issues the Israeli leadership has had to wrangle with in recent years. The US, Israel’s most faithful benefactor, is now on a crisis management mode in Iraq and Afghanistan, struggling on all fronts, whether political, military or economic. That recoil has further emboldened Israel’s enemies, who are no longer intimidated by the American bogyman. Israel’s desperate attempt at using its own military to achieve its grand objectives has also failed, and miserably so.
With options growing even more limited, Israel now understands that Gaza is its last card; ending the siege or ceasing the killings could be understood as another indication of political weakness, a risk that Israel is not ready to take.
Turkey, on the other hand, was fighting — and mostly winning — its own battles. Democracy in Turkey has never been as healthy and meaningful as it is today. Turkey has also eased its chase of the proverbial dangling carrot, of EU membership, especially considering the arrogant attitude of some EU members who perceive Turkey as too large and too Muslim to be trusted. Turkey needed new platforms, new options and a more diverse strategy.
But that is where many analysts went wrong. Turkey’s popular government has not entered the Middle Eastern political foray to pick fights. On the contrary, the Turkish government has for years been trying to get involved as a peacemaker, a mediator between various parties. So, yes, Turkey’s political shift was largely strategic, but it was not ill-intentioned.
The uninvited Turkish involvement, however, is highly irritating to Israel. Turkey’s approach to its new role grew agitating to Israel when the role wasn’t confined to being that of the host — in indirect talks between Syria and Israel, for example. Instead, Turkey began to take increasingly solid and determined political stances. Thus the Davos episode.
By participating at such a high capacity in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, with firm intentions of breaking the siege, Turkey was escalating its involvement well beyond Israel’s comfort zone. Therefore, Israel needed a decisive response that would send a message to Turkey — and any daring other — about crossing the line of what is and is not acceptable. It’s ironic how the neoconservatives’ “A Clean Break” envisaged an Israeli violation of the political and geographic boundaries of its neighbors, with the help of Turkey. Yet, 14 years later, it was Turkey, with representatives from 32 other countries, which came with a peaceful armada to breach what Israel perceived as its own political domain.
The Israeli response, as bloody as it was, can only be understood within this larger context. Erdogan’s statements and the popular support his government enjoys show that Turkey has decided to take on the Israeli challenge. The US government was exposed as ineffectual and hostage to the failing Israeli agenda in the region, thanks to the lobby. Ironically it is now the neoconservatives who are leading the charge against Turkey, the very country they had hoped would become Israel’s willing ally in its apocalyptic vision.
– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
Russia against unilateral Iran sanctions
Press TV – June 16, 2010
A senior Russian parliament official has expressed opposition to unilateral sanctions against Iran after EU members made a decision to unilaterally impose additional embargoes on Tehran.
Chairman of the Russian Federation Council Sergei Mironov told the weekly Novy Vzglyad that Russia is opposed to unilateral sanctions against Iran and those firms and countries working in collaboration with the country, IRNA reported.
The Russian official said such measures fall outside the framework of the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions against Iran.
The opposition comes as Moscow — Iran’s longtime energy and trade partner — voted in favor of a US-drafted UNSC resolution for a fourth set of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.
Mironov’s comments followed that of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in which he warned the US and EU against imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran.
In a recent telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Russian minister “expressed concern over coming reports about the intentions of the US and the European Union to go beyond a collective Security Council position on Iran and to impose unilateral sanctions.”
The decision by the US and EU for the imposition of new sanctions on Iran comes as Tehran rejects Western accusations of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, arguing that the International Atomic Energy Agency in numerous reports has confirmed the non-diversion of nuclear material in the country.
Flotilla attackers to feast in Italy
Press TV – June 15, 2010
Leader of Rome’s Jewish community, Riccardo Pacifici
The leader of the Jewish community in Rome has arranged a recreational trip to Italy for two Israeli forces involved a deadly attack on a Gaza aid convoy.
Riccardo Pacifici, chief of Rome’s Jewish community, invited the Israeli navy troops to Italy during his visit to Israel, where he praised and lionized them as “heroes,” IRNA reported on Monday.
Israeli commandos killed at least 20 human rights activists and injured 50 others during a May 31 onslaught on a six-ship fleet carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and 700 international activists from 42 countries to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel also arrested hundreds of the civilians on board the ships of the Freedom Flotilla, which was attempting to break the years-long siege of Gaza.
The campaigners were captured and forcefully taken into Israel from the international waters where they were attacked, but were soon released under international pressure on Tel Aviv not to deepen the crisis.
The attack sparked outrage across the globe and led to a chorus of calls for lifting the siege on the impoverished Gaza Strip.
Neocon Krauthammer Sees Israel as Victim in Flotilla Massacre
Stephen Sniegoski | June 12, 2010
While the inhabitants of Gaza are suffering under a stifling blockade and a number of peace activists have been killed (bullets in the head at close range) and wounded by Israeli commandos, whom does prominent neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer view as the victim: Israel, of course. For hyper-Zionists such as Krauthammer, Israel is always the victim (Krauthammer: “Those troublesome Jews,” Washington Post, June 4, 2010).
To Krauthammer, none of the international concern is about the suffering of the Gazans because there is no suffering. Krauthammer does not even feel it necessary to try to rebut the reports from International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the UN Environmental Program and other international organizations that describe a dire situation in Gaza resulting from the blockade.
No, according to Krauthammer the international concern about Gaza, instead of being a humanitarian act, is really a conscious effort to “de-legitimize” Israel by stopping a perfectly justified blockade. Krauthammer emphasizes that the purpose of the blockade is “to simply prevent enemy rearmament” by Hamas, though, in actuality, is hardly selective, and restricts the importation of food, medicine, building supplies, and many other commodities needed for civilian society. And a recent Israeli government document reveals that the blockade is actually designed to conduct “economic warfare” against Hamas by collectively punishing the Gazan people, which will presumably cause them to turn against Hamas rule.
On the real purpose of the blockade, also see: “Recasting the Gaza blockade as a humanitarian project,
Poor little Israel, Krauthammer laments, has to resort to a blockade because the world “de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself,” which included Israel’s “forward and active defense”—i.e., attacks on its neighbors. Of course, this “forward and active defense” is simply a violation of modern international law that is embodied in the UN Charter. It might be added that participating in such a “forward and active defense” got a number of German generals convicted at Nuremberg in 1945-1946…
Krauthammer bemoans that if Israel cannot maintain its blockade then it has nothing with which to defend itself. “The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense,” he opines. Krauthammer, however, fails to depict any lethal threat to Israel—or even that destructiveness committed against Israel compares to the lethal damage Israel has meted out to the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza. For example, during Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2008–January 2009 (code named Operation Cast Lead), there were 3 Israeli civilians and 10 soldiers killed, while Palestinian deaths exceeded 1000, the majority of whom were civilians.
To Krauthammer, the international assault on Israel goes far beyond the issue of Gaza.
He laments that the “Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons — thus de-legitimizing Israel’s very last line of defense: deterrence.” But in an effort to bring about a nuclear free Middle East (and Obama has talked of a nuclear free world), it would seem perfectly appropriate to single out the only country in the region that actually has a nuclear arsenal. It is not apparent why nuclear “deterrence” should only be allowed to Israel. It could actually be more justifiably argued that it is Israel’s neighbors who need nuclear weapons to serve as deterrence against Israel’s sizable arsenal of 200-300 nuclear warheads.
Krauthammer ends his article by comparing the situation to the Holocaust. “The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million — that number again — hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists — Iranian in particular — openly prepare a more final solution.”
In Krauthammer’s hysterical presentation, the fact that absolutely no actual constraints have been placed on Israel is completely omitted. Israel has only been faced with purely verbal complaints. It has essentially gotten away with a piratical raid and abduction in international waters in which it killed and wounded a significant number of innocent people with no concrete punishment. The international community has taken no forceful steps to try to stop Israel’s comprehensive blockade of Gaza. Nothing has been done about Israel’s maintenance of a nuclear arsenal, which it can rely on to threaten its neighbors. At the same time, sanctions are imposed against Iran, which essentially guarantee Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly (if, in fact, Iran were really attempting to develop nuclear weapons.)
There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is planning for a “final solution” for Jews but Israelis and Israel’s American supporters have made repeated references to a possible Israeli air attack on Iran. Krauthammer’s contention that Israel is being “ghettoized,” while Gaza is the victim of a comprehensive Israeli blockade, is mind boggling. In short, all the physical suffering has been inflicted by Israel on others. Yet, in all of this, Krauthammer sees another Holocaust of the Jews!
It is apparent that Krauthammer, as Andrew Sullivan puts it in his article “Israel Derangement Syndrome,” has entered an “alternate reality,” which is actually an inverted reality, where things are just the opposite of how they are in the real world.
Sullivan provides an apt description of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome”:
“This is a form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned. And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers. There is no sense of the human here; just the tribe.”
Note the Sullivan points out that Krauthammer’s only concern is his “tribe”—as opposed to concern for humanity, justice, the interests of his country (the United States), and even truth itself. One would think that educated Americans and especially liberals, with their constant preaching of universal values and denunciation of racism, would be aghast at what Krauthammer has to say. But, unfortunately, that is not the case.
Krauthammer is not a lone nut, or an exponent of a small, insignificant minority viewpoint, as some would like to believe. Of the 1840 comments on Krauthammer’s article on the Washington Post website, it appears that a substantial majority express a favorable view. Washington, DC is a politically liberal area. There are a substantial number of Jews, but they are liberal Jews who consistently vote for Democratic candidates. It would seem, therefore, that this type of thinking must resonate with many liberal Jews and others, as well.
And, of course, liberal Democratic politicos (along with almost all other elected officials in the US) have completely backed the actions of Israel, maintaining that the peace activists were responsible for their own deaths. High profile liberal Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), for example, held that “violent force [was] in fact initiated by those whose boat was boarded.” Representative Rep. Eliot Engel (D-New York) maintained that the ships were actually “filled with hate-filled provocateurs bent on violence.” Of course, politicians, in general, are not motivated so much by their own views, as by the views of people with political power.
Sullivan realizes that Krauthammer’s type of outlook influences American foreign policy. He writes:
“Something has been wrong here for a very long time, and now it is inescapable. Until the discourse is rescued from the victims of Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israel and America will slowly be drawn into wars they cannot ultimately win, lose every other ally they ever had, and embolden and fortify the very Islamist forces we are seeking to defuse and defeat.”
For another analysis of Krauthammer’s piece, see Kevin MacDonald
In assuming that the United States and Israel will act in tandem under the influence of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome,” Sullivan essentially acknowledges the influence of the Israel lobby on American foreign policy. However, I would like to make a slight correction of what Sullivan has to say. It is not that the United States would be “drawn into wars” but that this “Israel Derangement Syndrome” will cause the US to initiate or provoke wars—such as an attack on Iran. It is clearly those afflicted with this syndrome who pose a threat to the world, while believing the entire world is attacking helpless, innocent Israel. Their influence on American political culture makes Israel’s enemies America’s enemies and embroils the United States in wars that these Israel – Firsters believe will help Israel.
Sullivan initially was a supporter of the war on Iraq, who even went so far as to imply that the United States might need to make use of nuclear weapons. However, Sullivan came, somewhat belatedly, to recognize publicly the role of the pro-Israel neocons. He would write in February 2009:
“The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. That’s the conclusion I’ve been forced to these last few years. And to insist that America adopt exactly the same constant-war-as-survival that Israelis have been slowly forced into. . . . But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.”
Slow learners such as Andrew Sullivan are infinitely more successful than those who early on were able to discern the obvious neocon/Israel connection, which might indicate that intellectual weakness is not an explanation for their initial false analyses. Nonetheless, Sullivan now provides an excellent description of the mindset of Israel and its American supporters, and, for people in important positions who have something to lose, it is still a view that takes a significant degree of courage to mention publicly. But it is necessary that influential individuals publicly express the truth in order to prevent the United States from engaging in endless, destructive wars at the behest of people, such as Krauthammer, who are under the influence of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome.”
Israel: Strategic Ally or Liability?
By Stephen Sniegoski | My Catbird Seat | June 12, 2010
The claim that Israel serves as a valuable ally for the United States is made by both pro-Zionists and much of the anti-war and anti-Zionist Left that is influenced by Noam Chomsky. As a result of the Gaza flotilla massacre, which has caused a world-wide uproar against Israel, the value of Israel to the United States is being publicly questioned in more mainstream foreign policy forums.
Writing shortly before the massacre, the always astute Philip Giraldi critically analyzed the claim of Israel’s value to the United States in “The Strategic Ally Myth,” which focuses on a recent article by Israel Firster Mort Zuckerman entitled, “Israel Is a Key Ally and Deserves U.S. Support.”
Zuckerman is a real estate billionaire and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, and his article came out in that magazine. (He is also publisher/owner of the New York Daily News). Zuckerman’s writing for his own publications has credentialed him for other media outlets, and he regularly appears on MSNBC and The McLaughlin Group. Between 2001 and 2003, Zuckerman was the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Giraldi underscores Zuckerman’s pro-Israel orientation: “Zuckerman is frequently spotted on the television talking head circuit where he dispenses analysis of international events that could have been crafted in Tel Aviv or Herzliya, where the Israeli intelligence service Mossad has its headquarters.” Zuckerman’s immense wealth and media influence exemplifies why Israel has been able to gain the reputation as a valuable ally to the United States.
Giraldi, however, points out that the United States is not technically an ally of Israel’s. Giraldi writes that “to be an ally requires an agreement in writing that spells out the conditions and reciprocity of the relationship. Israel has never been an ally of any country because it would force it to restrain its aggressive behavior, requiring consultation with its ally before attacking other nations. It is also unable to define its own borders, which have been expanding ever since it was founded in 1948. Without defined borders it is impossible to enter into an alliance because most alliances are established so that one country will come to the aid of another if it is attacked, which normally means having its territorial integrity violated. Since Israel intends to continue expanding its borders it cannot commit to an alliance with anyone and has, in fact, rebuffed several bids by Washington to enter into some kind of formal arrangement.”
Zuckerman maintains that there are no drawbacks to America’s support for Israel, explicitly denying the allegation that American support for Israel causes anti-American hostility in the Islamic countries. Instead, Zuckerman maintains that the Muslims “are fighting America because they see the whole West and its culture, values, and belief in democracy as antithetical to their own beliefs.” Giraldi correctly points out that this is ridiculous—a higher-IQ version of Bush’s “they hate us for our freedom.”
It would seem almost self-evident that support for the Arabs’ fundamental enemy would lead to the hostility of Arab states or, should a particular regime remain friendly to the United States, cause groups within the state to threaten its stability. During the Cold War, US/Israeli ties caused some Arab states to turn to the Soviet Union, especially since the Soviets were willing to provide them with weapons, which they could not obtain from the US because of the opposition from Israel and the Israel lobby. American support for Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war led to the Arab oil embargo against the United States in 1973.
… Certainly, the Gaza flotilla massacre has heightened Arab and Islamic animosity to the United States, which has been recognized even by mainstream media commentators. Because of the power of the Israel Lobby the United States cannot offer harsh criticism of Israel and must work to prevent any form of United Nations sanctions against it, thus complicating its relationship with the entire Arab/Islamic world. While it must be acknowledged that hostility to the United States has also been accentuated by its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military involvement has been caused in large part by the influence of the Israel lobby.
M. Shahid Alam points out in his excellent book, “Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism,” that much of the anti-Americanism in the Middle East was initially triggered by Israel. This anti-Americanism has in turn, enabled Israel to present itself as America’s only reliable friend in the Middle East. In essence, “Israel had manufactured the threats that would make it look like a strategic asset” (p. 218), writes Alam. “Without Israel,” Alam maintains, “there was little chance that any of the Arab regimes would turn away from their dependence on the West” (p. 171).
The realization that Israel is not really a strategic ally of the United States is now being expressed by individuals far more sympathetic to Israel than Alam. Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for example, makes such a argument in his article, “Israel as a Strategic Liability.”
Cordesman served as national security assistant to the pro-Israel Senator John McCain, though he is considered a centrist. In denying that the United States supports Israel for strategic reasons, Cordesman writes that “the real motives behind America’s commitment to Israel are moral and ethical. They are a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust, to the entire history of Western anti-Semitism, and to the United States’ failure to help German and European Jews during the period before it entered World War II. They are a product of the fact that Israel is a democracy that shares virtually all of the same values as the United States.”
I would simply point out that this belief in Israel’s moral superiority is not some objective notion that is determined by an objective weighing of all the evidence, but exists primarily in United States because of the power of the pro-Zionist media and political lobby. If somehow the wealth and power conditions of American Jews and Arab Americans were reversed, and all mainstream media information coming to the American public was filtered through a pro-Arab/Palestinian slant, it is inconceivable that America would support Israel over the Palestinians. It is hard to believe that someone as sharp as Cordesman does not recognize the power of the Israel lobby in American domestic politics, and he undoubtedly does, but he is also keen enough to know that people who openly express such a view do not hold cushy positions in leading think tanks. However, so as not to go too far off track, the issue here is whether Israel is a strategic asset to the United States, not whether the US should support Israel for moral reasons, and concerning the issue at hand Cordesman comes down against the strategic asset argument.
Jim Lobe alludes to the career ramifications of speaking the truth regarding Israel when he quotes Stephen Walt, the co-author of the bombshell book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” who states: “The fact that Cordesman would say this publicly is a sign that attitudes and discourse are changing . . . . Lots of people in the national security establishment—and especially the Pentagon and intelligence services—have understood that Israel wasn’t an asset, but nobody wanted to say so because they knew it might hurt their careers.”
Intriguingly, Lobe points out that head of the Mossad, Israel’s foremost spy agency, also recently made reference to Israel’s liability to the United States. Mossad chief Meir Dagan told members of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.” In reality, it is highly questionable whether Israel has ever been a net asset to the United States.
Zuckerman tries to illustrate what assistance Israel provides the US—a good strategic location in the Middle East, a place to stockpile American weapons, and beneficial intelligence. Giraldi rebuts these alleged benefits, maintaining that “the notion that Israel is some kind of strategic asset for the United States is nonsense, a complete fabrication.” He points out that the United States cannot utilize Israeli territory to project its power throughout the region. “The US has numerous bases in Arab countries,” Giraldi notes, “but is not allowed to use any military base in Israel. Washington’s own carrier groups and other forces in place all over the Middle East, including the Red Sea, have capabilities that far exceed those of the Israel Defense Forces.” It should also be added, as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt bring out in their book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” (p. 56), that Israel does not help the United States in its key military objective in the Middle East: maintaining access to Gulf oil.
Giraldi points out that the stockpiles of US equipment in Israel are basically for Israel. “The supplies are, in fact, regularly looted by the Israelis, leaving largely unusable or picked over equipment for US forces if it should ever be needed.”
Regarding Zuckerman’s reference to the provision of “good intelligence,” Giraldi observes that “The intelligence provided by Israel that Zuckerman praises is generally fabricated and completely self serving, intended to shape a narrative about the Middle East that makes the Israelis look good and virtually everyone else look bad.” For some specific examples of actually misleading intelligence, it should be recalled that Israel was providing some of the spurious intelligence on Iraq’s alleged formidable WMD during the build-up to the 2003 US invasion (the Knesset investigated this issue) and, for the past decade, has been issuing alarmist warnings that Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weaponry. In short, the intelligence Israel provides to the United States is intended to induce it to take actions to advance Israel’s interests, which can run counter to the interests of the United States.
The idea of Israel as a strategic asset is especially significant because, as mentioned earlier, it is expressed not only by Israel Firsters but also by Noam Chomsky and his epigones, and thus is a view that looms large in the anti-war camp. Stephen Zunes, a prominent member of the Chomsky group, even implies that Israel is but the passive instrument of American policymakers (See my article: “Israel-lobby denial: The bankruptcy of the mainstream Left as illustrated by Stephen Zunes”). This approach, of course, provides psychological satisfaction to those on the left who want to believe in the ultimate evil of gentile capitalism and the perpetual victimization of Jews, but is counterproductive in actually dealing with the problem of American military intervention in the Middle East.
Actually the case of billionaire Mort Zuckerman should serve as an example to undermine the Chomskyist interpretation. The Chomskyist position is based on the idea that overriding wealth determines American foreign policy; while not strictly Marxist, it has strong similarities to Marxism. But, of course, pro-Zionist Mort Zuckerman is an individual of great wealth, and he would seem to have considerable clout in the media. And Zuckerman is far from being an aberration. A huge disproportion of the super-wealthy are Jewish. A recent analysis determined that at least 139 of the richest 400 Americans listed by Forbes are Jewish.
Since many wealthy Jews publicly promote Zionism, it stands to reason that their view should be able to shape American foreign policy especially in areas where their interest is far greater than that of other wealthy Americans. We are frequently told that the oil interests control American Middle East policy. But one would think that the combined wealth of super-wealthy pro-Zionists far exceeds the wealth of the oil barons with interests in Middle East oil. A cursory look at the list of America’s 400 wealthiest individuals showed about 20 or so of the 400 were, at least, to some extent involved in oil/energy. Those specializing in Middle East oil would be somewhat fewer, I would think.
Actually these figures provide a rough view of how wealth shapes the American foreign policy. Pro-Zionist money can sway the area where its concern is the greatest and where that of the oil interests is less so—the Israel/Palestine issue. The issue of overall Middle East policy directly involving the flow of Gulf oil, however, would be of fundamental concern to the oil industry, as well as the wealthy as a whole, since the flow of oil affects the economies of the entire industrial world. Thus, with respect to the current question of whether the US should attack Iran, hardline Zionists would seem to identify fully with the interest of Israel to eliminate an enemy, no matter what the impact on the global economy. However, those wealthy individuals whose fundamental concerns involve oil and economic matters in general are fearful of the possible negative economic effects resulting from such an attack. This explains why the United States has not yet attacked Iran.
Cordesman, who eschews any mention of Zionist influence in the United States, maintains that while the United States will defend, and presumably ought to defend, Israel for moral reasons, it should not provide Israel a blank check. It did “not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors.” In short, Israel cannot simply do anything it wants and receive the support of the United States. “It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it tests the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews. This does not mean taking a single action that undercuts Israeli security, but it does mean realizing that Israel should show enough discretion to reflect the fact that it is a tertiary U.S. strategic interest in a complex and demanding world.” Cordesman seems to believe that Israel can alter its policies to establish much improved relations with the Palestinians and its neighboring countries so that American interests would not be harmed. In short, Cordesman does not say that Israel could become a strategic asset, but that, by following conciliatory policies towards its current enemies, it could become much less of a liability to the United States.
The problem with Cordesman’s position, however, is that the Israeli leadership, and the Zionist establishment in the United States, really believe that Israel has to do what it does to preserve the existence of Israel, i.e., the exclusivist Jewish state. As an exclusivist Jewish state, Israel is threatened by peaceful demographics as well as by terrorism and warfare. To stave off this danger, Israel will not allow for any significant Palestinian return to Israel or any viable Palestinian state, which is exactly what the Palestinians and the Arab and Islamic countries supporting them demand. In short, the positions of Israel and the Palestinians and their backers are antithetical. The United States cannot support Israel without antagonizing the Arab and Islamic states, and vice versa. Since it is widely recognized that friendly relations with the oil-producing Middle Eastern states are vital to U.S. national security, America’s unwavering backing of Israel can only harm its strategic interests. […]
Finally, automatic support for Israel completely undermines the United States’ advocacy of a world governed by international law, a goal which President Obama has addressed on a number of occasions. As Scott Wilson writes in the article, “Obama’s agenda, Israel’s ambitions often at odds,” in the “Washington Post” (June 5) : “Since its creation more than six decades ago, the state of Israel has been at times a vexing ally to the United States. But it poses a special challenge for President Obama, whose foreign policy emphasizes the importance of international rules and organizations that successive Israeli governments have clashed with and often ignored.”
As President Obama stated in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don’t.” Then, in an implicit swipe at the Bush administration, he continued: “Furthermore, America—in fact, no nation—can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves.” This admonition could also apply to America’s tacit support for Israel’s policies.
America’s concern about international legality did not begin with Obama—Woodrow Wilson was a major proponent of the League of Nations and Franklin Roosevelt of the UN—even though America’s unwillingness to join the League of Nations resulted from its devotion to national sovereignty and opposition to permanent alliances that could force the country into unwanted wars. America’s continued support for international legality during the interwar period (while the US was outside the League of Nations) was especially illustrated by the involvement of American peace advocates and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg in framing what became known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which was a multilateral treaty outlawing war except for purpose of self-defense. It was signed by all major countries (eventually 62 signatories), except for Soviet Russia. Although sometimes ridiculed as a meaningless utopian gesture, the treaty served as the basis to judge the Nazi high command at Nuremberg in 1945-46, and was incorporated and expanded in the UN Charter.
America’s verbal support for international law is not based simply on morality, nor does it represent high-sounding but empty rhetoric. As a wealthy, powerful nation the United States has a vested interest in maintaining the international status quo in the same way as the preservation of the status quo was sought by the victors of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. (The Congress of Vienna, of course, was far more effective than the Paris Peace Conference in establishing a long-lasting peace.) International stability not only preserves America’s power position, but also provides the optimal environment for the international trade and investment that benefits the American economy.
Obviously, as Obama pointed out, when the United States seeks to use international agreements to restrain the actions of other countries, it cannot expect other countries to obey these rules if does not do so itself. And it acts in this manner when it ignores, or supports, Israel’s violations of international law and prevents UN-sponsored actions against Israel that would be undertaken if any other country in the world engaged in comparable activities.
In conclusion, it is apparent that Washington’s support for Israel interferes with a number of the United States’ basic international goals. It can only be said that Israel is a liability rather than an asset.
Egypt rejects Algerian aid into Gaza
Press TV – June 12, 2010
Egyptian authorities have refused to allow an Algerian humanitarian aid convoy to enter into the Gaza Strip which has been under a crippling three-year Israeli blockade. The ship, carrying seven tons of medicine and two tons of powder milk, docked in Egypt’s Al-Arish sea port on Friday.
Fifteen people onboard the ship including Algerian lawmakers, businessmen and peace activists were seeking to break the Gaza siege by organizing the convoy.
Algerian daily Al-Khabar said that the convoy was prevented from entering Gaza despite a prior agreement signed between the Algerian Foreign Ministry and Egypt in this regard. The daily added that the Egyptian officials only allowed three Algerian lawmakers to visit Gaza though the Rafah border crossing for a few hours.
The move came two weeks after the Israeli military attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, killing at least 20 peace activists including nine Turkish citizens on board the M.V. Mavi Marmara and injuring about 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.
Israel imposed the blockade on Gaza after the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, won parliamentary elections in June 2007.
Some 1.5 million people in the coastal strip are being denied their basic rights, including freedom of movement, and their rights to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education. Poverty and unemployment rates stand at approximately 80 percent and 60 percent respectively in the Gaza Strip.
Egypt has joined Israel in imposing a three-year-long blockade on Gaza, sealing its borders with the strip and effectively cutting off all links to the coastal sliver.
Joe Biden: In Israel’s Service
Poster Boy for “Dual Loyalties”
By JEFFREY BLANKFORT | June 11, 2010
Israel appears to be in more serious trouble diplomatically than at any time in its history following the botched attack by an “elite” commando squad on the Mavi Marmara that left at least nine dead and scores wounded. Thanks to Al-Jazeera and Iran’s PressTV, whose reporters were aboard the ship, much of the world was able to watch the attack unfold on its TV and computer screens and the result has been an avalanche of outrage and ongoing protests against the Jewish state. Within Israel this has led to finger-pointing and calls for resignations while its hasbara machinery has gone rapidly into damage-control and disinformation mode.
Lest we forget, the first U.S. official to give Israel’s bloody assault a thumbs up sign was Vice President Joe Biden. The former Delaware senator has been a key part of Israel’s hasbara branch, American section, since entering the Senate in 1973 and on the Wednesday following the Israeli attack, he appeared on the Charlie Rose Show where he showed no hesitation in defending Israel’s handling of the raid, something that President Obama had been reluctant to do.
On the following morning, Jerusalem Post Editor David Horvitz speaking for 45 minutes to Congressional staffers and AIPAC members on a conference call praised Biden’s performance. “It is not entirely clear in Israel where America stands,” he said, but “Israel was very pleased with what Joe Biden had to say.”
But isn’t that why Joe was picked for the job? Was it not to get the vote and the money from those Jews who were afraid that Barack Obama –who they suspected of being a closet Muslim—was no true friend of Israel?
Obama picked Biden “who is about as close to the pro-Israel community as any member of either house,” observed MJ Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer, on TPM Café, just after Biden’s selection. “Biden is rated 100 per cent by AIPAC … When he goes to the synagogues in Florida, he goes not as a visitor but as ‘mishpocha’ [family]. The Jews simply love the guy.”
“Bottom line,” concluded Rosenberg, “the Biden choice pretty much eliminated Obama’s ‘Jewish problem.’” That was then and now it doesn’t seem to matter what position Obama takes, Biden seems to answer to his real boss. And it ain’t Barack.
Appearing on the Charlie Rose show was but the latest assignment for Biden in his long career of serving Israel, the first 35 years of which he was drawing salary and gaining political clout as a US Senator for a state whose population is only slightly larger than that of San Francisco (783,600 to 776,733).
“Look,” Biden told Rose in a rambling monologue in which he confused Ehud Barak with Ariel Sharon, “you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not … but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know — they’re at war with Hamas — has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in. And up to now, Charlie, what’s happened? They’ve said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.’ So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people.’ ”
No big deal, Joe, at least nine dead, or four less than the number of Israelis killed since the first Palestinian rocket was fired from Gaza. And notice how easily he says “my” and pretends that rockets are still being fired from Gaza.
That “my” was not a Freudian slip. Like scores of other US politicians who have traded their political souls for access to the seemingly bottomless checking accounts of Israel’s American supporters, Biden has become a poster boy for “dual loyalty.” Given that he has done this as a member of Congress and continues to do so while now a heartbeat from the White House should probably qualify him for a treason trial and a cell next to Jonathan Pollard.
Back in 2007, on one of his many visits to Israel, he told a Shalom TV interviewer that the Jewish state was “the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East.” Going beyond the standard AIPAC scripted boilerplate, Biden stated, “When I was a young senator, I used to say, ‘If I were a Jew I’d be a Zionist.’ I am a Zionist,” he said. “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.”
Asked about his prospective cell neighbor, sentenced to life-imprisonment in 1985 for turning over mounds of top secret information to Israel, Biden spoke of leniency for Pollard but not a pardon.
“There’s a rationale, in my view, why Pollard should be given leniency,” said Biden. “But there is not a rationale to say, ‘What happened did not happen and should be pardoned.'” In other words, should Biden become president, it is likely that Pollard would be freed.
Looking at Biden’s track record, it would seem that he has not just been a key cheerleader for Israel; he has aspired to be a member of its coaching staff.
Speaking to an AIPAC meeting in 1992, he was quoted by the organization’s Near East Report as saying that it was time to “tell the American people straight out that it’s in our naked self-interest to see to it that the moral commitment and political commitment is kept with regard to Israel and that Israel is not the cause of our problem, but the essence of the solution.” This was in response to President George H.W. Bush’s second refusal to support Israel’s demand for $10 billion in loan guarantees. Which of America’s problems Israel was able to solve Biden didn’t mention.
In December, 1995, two years after Oslo, he spoke at an AIPAC meeting in San Francisco and told a lunchtime audience that included most of the Bay Area’s public officials that they needed to spend more time educating new members of Congress about the wonders of Israel and its strategic value to the US:
“Be prepared to both convert and be prepared to deal with those who are not converted….
“Israel is taking more chances on her security today than any time in her history…. Arabs make peace with Israel only when they realize that they can’t drive a wedge between the US and Israel. We cannot afford to publicly criticize Israel.” This past March, back in Israel on a “fence-mending” assignment, just before he was blindsided by the announcement of Israel’s plan to build 1600 new Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem, Biden had modified his “can’t drive a wedge” to read “there is no space between.”
At that time Biden gave his San Francisco speech, he had taken in over $100,000 from pro-Israel PACs which was small change compared to what he had received in individual donations. By far the largest of these came in 1988, when he made his first bid for the presidency. It was a $1.5 million gift from San Francisco financial real estate magnate Walter Shorenstein, who was, by no coincidence, AIPAC’s main man in California as well a major player in the state’s Democratic Party. It turned out to be a poor investment since that was the year that Biden was caught plagiarizing a speech by British Labor leader Neil Kinnock and had to withdraw from the race.
In 2007, true to form, Biden took the lead in the Senate in rejecting the Iraq Study Group’s conclusion that the United States would not be able to achieve its goals in Iraq unless it “deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” a view taken more recently by Gen. David Petraeus.
“I do not accept the notion of linkage between Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Biden said during his opening remarks at a January 17, 2007, Senate hearing. “Arab-Israeli peace is worth pursuing vigorously on its own merits, but even if a peace treaty were signed tomorrow, it would not end the civil war in Iraq.” It was not that the study group said that it would but it was convenient straw man for Biden.
It was not his first comment on Iraq. It may be recalled that on May 1, 2006, Biden had co-authored an op-ed piece for the NY Times with his guru, Leslie Gelb, a former Times columnist and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, that called for Iraq to be divided into three confessional states. It was starkly similar to what had been written in a policy paper back in 1982 by Oded Yinon, a senior Israeli foreign affairs official, in which he wrote that, “To dissolve Iraq is even more important for us than dissolving Syria. In the short term, it’s Iraqi power that constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.” Gelb had first raised the issue in an op-ed in the Times in November, 2003.
During the 2008 election campaign Biden was outraged to find his loyalty to Israel being questioned by what he reportedly thought was AIPAC but which turned out to be the Republican Jewish Coalition. The RJC had accused him of not towing the AIPAC line on one or two occasions which caused Biden to defend his willingness to oppose AIPAC on some pieces of legislation.
In a 20-minute conference call with members of the Jewish media that September, Biden said it was up to the Israelis to make decisions about war and peace, including whether to launch a strike aimed at disrupting Iran’s nuclear program.
“This is not a question for us to tell the Israelis what they can and cannot do,” said the Democratic vice presidential candidate. “”Israel has the right to defend itself and it doesn’t have to ask, just as any other free and independent country. I have faith in the democracy of Israel. They will arrive at the right decision that they view as being in their own interests.” That as vice-president his job would be to protect US interests and not Israel’s and that an attack on Iran might jeopardize American interests either had not occurred to him or was of no concern.
In the interview, Biden tried to position himself as being even more pro-Israel than AIPAC, vigorously defending his record of occasionally breaking ranks with the pro-Israel lobby. “AIPAC does not speak for the entire American Jewish community,” he said. “There’s other organizations as strong and as consequential.”
Moreover, Biden insisted, “I will take a back seat to no one, and again, no one in AIPAC or any other organization, in terms of questioning my support of the State of Israel.”
“Insiders at the lobby were more bemused than offended by the outburst” wrote the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Ron Kampeas, “saying they regarded Biden as essentially pro-Israel. Sources familiar with the situation said the Obama camp’s explanation was that Biden had mistakenly thought it was AIPAC who had criticized him, as opposed to the RJC.”
Upset at the RJC’s questioning of Biden’s pro-Israel credentials The New Republic’s Marty Peretz, entered the lists in his behalf. Wrote Peretz in TNR and the Jerusalem Post in September,2008:
“If ever there was a true friend of Israel in the United States Senate it is Joe Biden. Oh yes, there were also Owen Brewster, Republican from Maine, and Guy Gillette, Democrat from Iowa. But that goes back to the very founding of the state.
“This is not hyperbole about Biden. It is true. And it is so not just on a philosophical basis but in deeds, too. Biden is a true friend on both a higher and a deeper level, and he has been that for three and a half decades. It is reckless for Jews to trifle with such allies. We have, as I’ve said, many friends. But what we do not have is many such allies – formidable, expert, truly passionate.”
Following the election and now, as vice-president, Biden continued to merit Peretz’s confidence. Speaking at AIPAC’s 2009 policy conference in Washington, he began by describing how he had been warmly welcomed on a visit to Israel in 1973 as a freshman senator by Prime Minister Golda Meir and befriended by Yitzhak Rabin. Then, to loud rounds of applause, he told his audience:
“[W]e have to pursue every opportunity for progress while standing up for one core principle: First, Israel’s security is non-negotiable. Period. Period. [sic]Our commitment is unshakable. We will continue to provide Israel with the assistance that it needs. We will continue to defend Israel’s right to defend itself and make its own judgments about what it needs to do to defend itself.”
Toward the end of his speech, Biden timorously advanced a position that has long been official US policy. “You’re not going to like my saying this,” he said, but [do]not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts, and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement.” There was no applause.
In 1994, Biden was a key player in one of the ugliest episodes in American political history and one that characterizes the subservience of Washington to Israel in its way much as did the cover-up of Israel ‘s attack on the USS Liberty 53 years ago on June 8th.
It featured a star chamber recantation before a confirmation hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Biden, of Strobe Talbott, former Soviet affairs analyst for Time, of an article he had written, following his nomination as Deputy Secretary of State by Bill Clinton. Talbott was facing the inquisition as a result of a major article he had written for the magazine in 1981, “What to do about Israel” (9/7/81). In it, Talbott had advocated a new policy towards Israel-US relations that would “rescue that relationship… starting with the delusion that Israel is, or ever has been, primarily a strategic ally.”
While expressing the obligatory degree of affection for Israel, Talbott had not been equivocal. Referring to problems that had been created for the Reagan administration by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Talbott wrote in words, especially pertinent today, “His country does need the US for its survival, but the sad fact is that Israel is well on its way to becoming not just a dubious asset but an outright liability to American security interests, both in the Middle East and worldwide.”
Talbott was referring to Israel’s destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak and a deadly bombing raid over Beirut that killed over 100 people and wounded 600 more, most of them civilians. Talbott had advised that, “If Israel continues to take international law into its own hands as violently—and as embarrassingly to the US—as it did in Baghdad and Beirut, then the next display of US displeasure ought to be more sustained and less symbolic. It might include severe cutbacks in American military aid, which is $1.2 billion for fiscal ’81 alone.[It is now officially $3 billion].
Pressed to recant, Talbott uttered the required response. As reported by the New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse,
“‘I do want to set the record straight on the question of my view of Israel as a strategic asset,’ he said, sounding chastened and contrite. ‘On that I have simply changed my opinion.’
“On the other hand, straining to reassure supporters of Israel, Mr. Talbott said, ‘I have always believed that the US-Israeli relationship is unshakable. Second, I have always believed that a strong Israel is in America’s interest because it serves the cause of peace and stability in the region…’
“During his 21 years at Time, Mr. Talbott often criticized Israel. Today he took a markedly different tone, portraying himself as a friend of Israel.”
In the article Talbott, had written that “Begin recognized that American Jews wield influence far beyond their numbers, but he also knew that there is considerable pent-up irritation in the US with the power of the pro-Israel lobby (which includes, of course, many non-Jews).” It was clearly his own opinion, as well.
Biden, according to the NY Times, jumped on that statement, calling it,“totally inappropriate,” to which Talbott, “asserting that no slight was intended,” noted that this “was simply a statement of fact,” and turned to Sen. Bernard Metzenbaum from his home state of Ohio for confirmation. Metzenbaum said that he was “satisfied” with Talbott’s remarks, but, “Maybe, in retrospect, he might have changed some phrases or some paragraphs.”
Mind you, Talbott had questioned Israel’s strategic value to the US in 1981, in the heart of the Cold War when he was considered one of the main stream media’s ranking Soviet experts. Before going before the Senate, he had become a senior adviser on the former Soviet Union to the Clinton White House. By 1994, with the Soviet bloc no longer in the picture, it was generally agreed, even in Tel Aviv, that Israel’s value to the US had been severely diminished.
Biden went on, citing the same article, noted that Talbott also had written: “Israel has been a credit to itself and its American backers.”
Playing the role of Torquemada, he asked Talbott, “Do you believe that?”
“Yes, senator, I do,” he obediently replied.
His “conversion” process having been completed, Talbott received the senator’s and subsequently the Senate’s approval.
The reader should not be left with the impression that Joe Biden’s prime passions are limited to the love of Israel.
While in the Senate, he was a key supporter of the credit card industry, much of which is based in Delaware thanks to its cozy industry friendly tax laws and he was a key beneficiary of its campaign contributions. In return, he became a leading supporter of the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005” which, despite its title, made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.
Biden was one of the first Democratic supporters of the bill and voted for it four times until it finally passed in March, 2005. Twisting the truth, a spokesman for Sen. Obama told the NY Times, “Senator Biden took on entrenched interests and succeeded in improving the bill for low-income workers, women and children.”
But even the Times wasn’t buying that. Biden, the paper noted, was one of only five Democrats who voted against a proposal that would require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month. Obama had voted for it.
Biden differed with Obama again when he helped to defeat amendments which would have strengthened protections for people forced into bankruptcy who have large medical debts or are in the military. He was also one of four Democrats who sided with Republicans to defeat an effort, supported by Obama, to shift responsibility in certain cases from debtors to the predatory lenders who helped push them into bankruptcy.
So why did Obama pick Biden for his running mate? We already know the answer.
Jeffrey Blankfort can be contacted at jblankfort@earthlink.net
Obama Goes with Neocon Flow on Iran
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | June 10, 2010
Whether wittingly or witlessly, President Barack Obama is pursuing a neocon-charted path on Iran that parallels the one that George W. Bush took to war with Iraq – ratcheting up sanctions against the “enemy,” refusing to tolerate more peaceful options, and swaggering along with the propagandistic tough-guy-ism of the major U.S. news media.
The Obama administration is celebrating its victory in getting the UN Security Council on Wednesday to approve a fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran. Obama also is expected to sign on to even more draconian penalties that should soon sail through Congress.
Obama may be thinking that his UN diplomatic achievement will buy him some credibility – and some time – with American neocons and Israel’s Likud government, which favor a showdown with Iran over its nuclear program.
However, the end result of the new sanctions may well be a greater likelihood that the debate within the Iranian government will tilt toward a decision to proceed with ever-higher-level enrichment of uranium and possibly construction of a nuclear bomb as the only means of self-defense.
That may be the opposite of what Obama seeks, but it is what the neocons and Likud would cite as justification for another Middle East war.
Just as the neocons and Israel wanted “regime change” in Iraq, they have long hungered for “regime change” in Iran, too. A favorite neocon joke at the time of the Iraq War was to speculate on which direction to go next, to Syria or Iran, with the punch-line, “Real men to go Tehran!”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that he considers the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon an “existential threat” to Israel, one that would justify a military strike. While Israel’s powerful air force would likely inflict the first blows, national security analysts believe that the U.S. military would be pulled in to finish off Iran’s military capabilities.
The neocon/Likud hope would be that these military attacks would embolden Iran’s internal opposition to rise up and overthrow the Islamic system that has governed Iran since 1979, in other words, “regime change.” Much like the neocon/Likud thinking about Iraq, however, these grandiose plans often end up with unpredictable and bloody outcomes.
Many war-gamers believe the economic, geo-political and military consequences of an attack on Iran are impossible to gauge, though some in the U.S. military fear that such a conflict could ignite a regional war and cause serious strategic damage to the United States. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Bomb-Bomb-Iran Parlor Game.”]
President Onboard?
Whether President Obama comprehends these risks – or may invite them – is unclear. What is known is that he staffed his administration with a number of hardliners on Iran, from Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State to Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. Voices of moderation, if there are any, have been noticeably silent.
Some analysts believe that the President is a relative “dove” on Iran, citing his private letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that encouraged Brazil and Turkey to work out a deal to get Iran to transfer about half its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for more highly enriched uranium that could only be used for peaceful medical purposes.
However, after Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan got Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to agree to that deal, the arrangement was denounced by Secretary of State Clinton and was ridiculed by the major U.S. news media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Even after Brazil released Obama’s supportive letter, the President would not publicly defend his position. Instead, his administration pressed ahead with the new round of sanctions.
What is also clear is that tough-guy-ism is running strong, much like it was in the months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
A New York Times editorial on Thursday praised the new round of anti-Iran sanctions, but complained they “do not go far enough.” Still, the Times took encouragement from the hope that the United States and European countries might impose much harsher sanctions on their own.
The Times also took another mocking swipe at Brazil and Turkey, which voted against the new sanctions from their temporary seats on the Security Council.
“The day’s most disturbing development was the two no votes in the Security Council from Turkey and Brazil,” the Times wrote. “Both are disappointed that their efforts to broker a nuclear deal with Iran didn’t go far. Like pretty much everyone else, they were played by Tehran.”
Though this Times point of view fits with neocon orthodoxy – that any reasonable move toward peace and away from confrontation is a sign of naivete and weakness – the fact is that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was torpedoed by the United States, after Obama had encouraged it. This wasn’t a case of the two countries being “played by Tehran.”
The Real Agenda
The Times star columnist Thomas L. Friedman has more explicitly laid out the real goal regarding Iran, not nuclear safeguards, but “regime change.” In a May 26 column, Friedman wrote that the United States should do whatever it can to help Iran’s internal opposition overthrow President Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Islamic-directed government.
“In my view, the ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran is the most important, self-generated, democracy movement to appear in the Middle East in decades,” Friedman wrote.
“It has been suppressed, but it is not going away, and, ultimately, its success — not any nuclear deal with the Iranian clerics — is the only sustainable source of security and stability. We have spent far too little time and energy nurturing that democratic trend and far too much chasing a nuclear deal.”
Friedman’s argument again tracks with the neocon case for war with Iran – as he earlier was onboard for war with Iraq – claiming that “regime change” was the only acceptable outcome.
As an institution, the New York Times also played a key role in making war with Iraq inevitable, with bogus reporting about Iraq getting aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. Similarly, in the case of Iran, the Times and other leading U.S. news outlets have promoted the propaganda line that Iran’s presidential election last June was “fraudulent” or “rigged.”
However, an analysis by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes found that there was little evidence to support allegations of fraud or to conclude that most Iranians viewed Ahmadinejad’s reelection as illegitimate.
Not a single Iranian poll analyzed by PIPA – whether before or after the June 12 election, whether conducted inside or outside Iran – showed Ahmadinejad with less than majority support. None showed the much-touted Green Movement’s candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi ahead or even close.
“These findings do not prove that there were no irregularities in the election process,” said Steven Kull, director of PIPA. “But they do not support the belief that a majority rejected Ahmadinejad.” [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It!”]
Nevertheless, President Obama has refused to contest Washington’s conventional wisdom on the Iranian election or to buck the neocon-favored trend toward a heightened confrontation with Iran.
Having let his administration rebuff the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal in favor of more UN sanctions and soon even tougher U.S. sanctions, Obama has let his foreign policy either drift – or be piloted – toward a worsening crisis.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.
New Sanctions on Iran: What’s New? How Effective? The Implicit Goal
By Mohamad Shmaysani | Al-Manar TV | 10/06/2010
It is the fourth round of sanctions on Iran. What next?
During the first three rounds of sanctions since 2006, Iran has developed its peaceful nuclear abilities and cooperated with the international nuclear watchdog (IAEA), which did not find any proof of a military nuclear program to build the A-bomb. The question is what could possibly force the Islamic Republic – the now stronger than ever Iran – to stagger from the sanctions that the international community led by the US has called “crippling”?
The answer is: Probably nothing. Tehran has already announced the sanctions will not force it to change its policy.
Citing Israeli commentators, this new round of sanctions, after a six-month delay, “will not be enough to get Iran to halt its nuclear program…The fight is set to continue in the U.S. Congress, which may vote in favor of more sanctions.” (Haaretz)
This means that Washington will put itself in a row with Beijing and Moscow, which warned the US against taking any unilateral measures against the Islamic Republic.
The new resolution aims to:
1- Ban the supply to Iran of heavy weapons, including tanks, warships, helicopter gunships and missiles.
2- Tighten up the ban on dealings with Iranian banks and individuals, including businesses and members of the Revolutionary Guard
3- Enable states to search any suspect ship or plane.
The Washington-based “Iran Watch” reported last April that the Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) had undertaken “a large-scale re-labeling of its ships, giving them new names, new managers, new ‘owners’ – in short, new identities”.
“The US blacklist has not kept up with these changes, so it is being circumvented by Iran with relatively little effort,” Iran Watch said.
“These are not the crippling sanctions that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had promised about a year ago,” said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was a National Security Council official in the Clinton administration.
The sanctions don’t limit the Islamic Republic’s ability to produce or export oil.
Although the sanctions ban the sale of many heavy weapons, countries still will be allowed to sell weapons outside those categories. For instance, Russia still may sell sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, which have been a source of concern to the United States. Moreover, many provisions of the sanctions resolution are essentially optional. For instance, governments can limit financial services provided to Iran by companies under their jurisdiction if the services are believed to further certain nuclear activities.
The resolution also says governments may inspect ships on the high seas suspected of carrying forbidden items, but only if they have the consent of the country to which a suspicious ship is registered.
US President Barack Obama and his European allies had initially sought tougher sanctions against Iran which would have included targeting the Islamic Republic’s gas and oil industries and blacklisting Iran’s Central Bank. But Moscow and Beijing rejected the measure.
Nevertheless, Russia and China did vote in favor of (softer) sanctions, but at what price?
Today, Iran supplies about 11 percent of China’s imported oil. North Korea, on the other hand, only receives oil from China – perhaps for free or subsidized – to keep its economy afloat. And China prefers the status quo on the Korean peninsula, all the better to maintain business with South Korea and Japan.
If Iran were to unilaterally cut off oil exports in response to really tough sanctions, or if Israel were to attack Iranian nuclear facilities and ignite a regional war, China’s steady economic progress would suffer.
Like China, Russia has its interests with the West and of course Iran. Voting on low-tone sanctions on Iran, knowing they will have no concrete effect on the Islamic Republic, comes in line with balancing strategic interests with all parties.
If the international community, along with the co-sponsors of the resolution, the U.S., the U.K., and France, are not convinced that the new sanctions will stop Iran’s nuclear program, then why go for them?
Historically, the West has failed to compel Iran into yielding to its hegemonic disposition. During the last presidential election in Iran, the west – namely the US, the UK, and France, employed all their covert political and intelligence gravitas to create a “green revolution” to topple the regime. The scheme failed and the “opposition”, as the West calls it, lost its momentum. The U.S., Britain, and France have been blamed by Iran for running covert operations to spark and augment the demonstrations that followed election results.
Today, it is believed that the main objective of the new sanctions was meant to breathe life into unrest from within Iran on the eve of the first anniversary of the election. Tehran can use the sanctions to boost the Iranians’ drive for more technological development and the so-called opposition can exploit sanctions to put more pressure on the regime.
However, the Iranian reaction to sanctions this morning does not support this last notion.
Newspapers, both conservative and reformist, unanimously denounced the UNSC move as “illegal measures” that “have chalked a new path of confrontation.”
The conservative Kayhan daily ran a headline on its front-page reading: “Wait for Iran’s decisive response to illegal sanctions.” It added that “the credibility of the UN Security Council is ending.”
For its part, the reformist newspaper Aftab e-Yazd carried a front-page editorial, insisting that the Security Council had “set a path to confrontation” between the West and Iran. “Now that the West, along with Russia and China, has adopted the path of confrontation, Iran’s response will be strong,” its editorial said.
“These resolutions are not worth a dime for the Iranian nation,” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments following the vote. He said he had told world powers “that the resolutions you issue are like a used hanky which should be thrown in the dust bin.”
Of the 15 members of the Security Council, only two – Turkey and Brazil, which have reached a deal under which Iran will deposit much of its low-enriched uranium in Turkey – voted against the sanctions, and Lebanon abstained.
Neo-Conservatives Lead Charge Against Turkey
By Jim Lobe | IPS | June 9, 2010
WASHINGTON – As the right-wing leadership of the organised U.S. Jewish community defends Israel against international condemnation for its deadly seizure of a flotilla bearing humanitarian supplies for Gaza, a familiar clutch of neo-conservative hawks is going on the offensive against what they see as the flotilla’s chief defender, Turkey.
Outraged by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip’s Erdogan’s repeated denunciations of the May 31 Israeli raid, as well as his co- sponsorship with Brazil of an agreement with Iran designed to promote renewed negotiations with the West on Tehran’s nuclear programme, some neo-conservatives are even demanding that the U.S. try to expel Ankara from NATO as one among of several suggested actions aimed at punishing Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) government.
“Turkey, as a member of NATO, is privy to intelligence information having to do with terrorism and with Iran,” noted the latest report by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a hard-line neo-conservative group that promotes U.S.-Israeli military ties and has historically cultivated close ties to Turkey’s military, as well.
“If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey’s arsenal) is suspect. The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organisation,” suggested the group.
Its board of advisers includes many prominent champions of the 2003 Iraq invasion, including former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director James Woolsey, and former U.N. Amb. John Bolton.
Neo-conservative publications, notably the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review, have also been firing away at the AKP government since the raid.
“Turkey now represents a major element in the global panorama of radical Islam,” declared the Standard’s Stephen Schwartz, while Daniel Pipes, the controversial director of the Likudist Middle East Forum (MEF), echoed JINSA’s call for ousting Ankara from NATO and urged Washington to provide direct support for Turkey’s opposition parties in an article published by the National Review Online.
The Journal has been running editorials and op-eds attacking Turkey on virtually a daily basis since the raid, accusing its government, among other things, of having “an ingrained hostility toward the Jewish state, remarkable sympathies for nearby radical regimes, and an attitude toward extremist groups like the IHH (the Islamist group that sponsored the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara) that borders on complicity.”
On Monday, it ran an op-ed by long-time hawk Victor Davis Hanson that labelled the IHH “a terrorist organisation with ties to al-Qaeda”, while an earlier op-ed, by Robert Pollock, its editorial features editor, called Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, “demagogues appealing to the worst elements in their own country and the broader Middle East”.
Meanwhile, in an op-ed published by ‘The Forward’, a Jewish weekly, Michael Rubin, a Perle protégé at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), accused Turkey of having “become a conduit for the smuggling of weapons to Israel’s enemies”, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The onslaught is ironic both because of the neo- conservatives’ long cultivation of Turkey and their avowed support for promoting democratic governance – of which they have singled out Turkey for special praise – in the Muslim world.
Neo-conservatives were among the most important promoters of the military alliance between Israel and Turkey that began to take shape in the late 1980s and was consolidated by the mid-1990s.
In fact, Perle and another of his protégés, former undersecretary of defence for policy, Douglas Feith, worked as paid lobbyists for Turkey during that period, in major part to persuade the powerful “Israel Lobby” on Capitol Hill to promote Ankara’s interests on Capitol Hill.
In 1996, the two men participated in a task force chaired by Perle that proposed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he work with Turkey and Jordan to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power as part of an alliance designed to transform the strategic balance in the Middle East permanently in favour of Israel.
But the Turkey promoted by Perle and his fellow-neo-cons in the 1980s and ’90s was one that was dominated by a secular business and political elite carefully monitored by an all- powerful military institution that mounted three coup d’etats between 1960 and 1980 and intervened a fourth time in 1997 to oust an Islamist-led government.
Despite its close links to both the U.S. and Israel, however, the Turkish military badly disappointed the neo- cons in the run-up to Washington’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Instead of insisting that the civilian government at the time grant U.S. requests to use Turkish territory as a major launching pad into northern Iraq, the armed forces decided to defer to overwhelming parliamentary and public opposition to the invasion.
“I think for whatever reason they did not play the strong leadership role on that issue that we would have expected,” complained then-Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, a long-time Perle friend and colleague who, despite his lavish praise of Turkey as a model Muslim democracy, headed repeated efforts by the George W. Bush administration to persuade Turkey’s national security council – where the military’s voice was dominant – to effectively overrule its parliament.
Erdogan, who became prime minister just a week before the invasion and whose political and economic reforms have been widely praised in the West, at first sought good relations with Israel. As late as 2007, he arranged for Shimon Peres to become the first Israeli president to address the Turkish parliament.
By then, however, many neo-cons had become concerned about Erdogan’s efforts to weaken the military’s power, his warm reception of a top Hamas leader in 2005, criticism of Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in 2006, and rapprochement with Syria.
When the military not so subtly threatened to intervene against Erdogan and the AKP in 2007, some neo-cons, notably Perle, suggested that the U.S. should not try to discourage it. Others, including the Standard’s Schwartz and Pipes, encouraged it as the lesser of two evils, even as the Journal defended the AKP as “more democratic than the secularists”.
Since Erdogan’s furious denunciation of Israel, and Peres personally, at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) of Israel’s Cast Lead operation in Gaza in Jan 2009, however, neo-cons of virtually all stripes – including those, like the Journal’s editorial writers, who have praised the AKP as a democratising force – have turned against Ankara. And the flotilla incident, combined with Erdogan’s perceived defence of Iran’s nuclear programme, has raised their animus to new heights.
“A combination of Islamist rule, resentment at exclusion from Europe, and a neo-Ottomanist ideology that envisions Turkey as a great power in the Middle East have made Turkey a state that is often plainly hostile not only to Israel but to American aims and interests,” wrote Eliot Cohen, professor at Johns Hopkins University, in a Journal op-ed Monday.
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From the Archives
The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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