Medea Benjamin wants to talk to the Tea Partiers
Medea Benjamin | April 13, 2010
On Tax Day, Tea Party members from around the country will descend on the nation’s capitol to “protest big government and support lower taxes, less government and more freedom. CODEPINK, a women-led peace movement advocating an end to war and militarism, will be sending some representatives. While we come from the opposite end of the political spectrum and don’t support the goals and tactics of the Tea Party, there is an area where we are seeking common ground: endless wars and militarism.
As Tea Partiers express their anger at out-of-control government spending and soaring deficits, we will ask them to take a hard look at what is, by far, the biggest sinkhole of our tax dollars: Pentagon spending. With the Obama administration proposing the largest military budget ever, topping $700 billion not including war supplementals, we are now spending almost as much on the military as the rest of the world combined.
Perhaps the Tea Party and peace folks can agree that one way to shrink big government is to rein in military spending. Here are some questions to get the conversation going:
At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference on April 10, Congressman Ron Paul — who has a great following within the Tea Party — chided both conservatives and liberals for their profligate spending on foreign military bases, occupations and maintaining an empire. “We’re running out of money,” he warned. “All empires end for financials reasons, and that is what the markets are telling us today….We can do better with peace than with war.” Do you agree with Congressman Paul on this?
Every taxpayer has already spent, on average, a staggering $7,367 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Obama plans to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, with a price tag of one million dollars per soldier per year. Opposition to these wars ranges from liberal Congressperson Dennis Kucinich to conservative Tea Party leader Sheriff Richard Mack. During a Congressional vote to end the war in Afghanistan that was defeated but got bipartisan support, Rep. Dennis Kucinich said, “Nearly 1000 U.S. soldiers have died. And for what? Hundreds of billions spent. And for what? To make Afghanistan safe for crooks, drug dealers and crony capitalism?” Do you think Congress should turn off the war spigot and bring out troops home?
The Cold War has been over for 20 years, yet we maintain 800-plus bases around the world, have troops stationed in 148 countries and 11 territories. Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan asks, “How we can justify borrowing hundreds of billions yearly from Europe, Japan and the Gulf states — to defend Europe, Japan and the Arab Gulf states? Is it not absurd to borrow hundreds of billions annually from China — to defend Asia from China?” Should we begin to dismantle this global web of bases?
Far and away the largest recipient of US foreign aid is Israel, a wealthy country (the 11th wealthiest in the world) that gets $3 billion a year from Uncle Sam with no strings attached and no accountability. We also give the repressive Egyptian government over a billion dollars a year to buy their support for a Middle East peace plan that is going nowhere. Are you in favor of continuing this taxpayer largesse to Israel and Egypt?
An area where Pentagon spending has mushroomed is the payment of private security contractors. While many soldiers who risk their lives for their country struggle to support their families, private security company employees can pocket as much as $1,000 a day. High pay for contract workers in war zones burdens taxpayers and saps military morale. Moreover, military officers in the field have said contractors often operate like “cowboys,” using unnecessary and excessive force that has undermined our reputation overseas. Rep. Jan Schakowsky introduced the Stop Outsourcing Security Act that would phase out private security contractors in war zones. Do you support that?
Experts on the left and the right say we could cut our military budget by 25%, including closing foreign bases, winding down the wars, and ending obsolete weapons systems, without jeopardizing our security. Do you agree? If we could make significant cuts to the military budget, how should those funds be reallocated? To pay down the debt? Increase security at home? Rebuild our infrastructure? Stimulate the economy through tax breaks?
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Meanwhile we have this from Rasmussen Reports:
Pit maverick Republican Congressman Ron Paul against President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election match-up, and the race is – virtually dead even.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters finds Obama with 42% support and Paul with 41% of the vote. Eleven percent (11%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided. […]
Paul, a anti-big government libertarian … continues to have a solid following, especially in the growing Tea Party movement.
Twenty-four percent (24%) of voters now consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, an eight-point increase from a month ago. Another 10% say they are not a part of the movement but have close friends or family members who are.
America’s Loose Nukes in Israel
By Grant Smith | April 14, 2010
Israel decided this week to send Minister for Intelligence Affairs Dan Meridor to the Nuclear Security summit. This U.S. bid to secure vulnerable nuclear stockpiles against non-state actors is both closely watched and furiously spun. Israel avoided exposing Prime Minister Netanyahu to embarrassing scrutiny of Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons arsenal. For this reason, trumpets the New York Times, Israel sent a lower-level delegation. But Israel has long responded defiantly to threats of robust U.S. oversight. A long-running investigation into how weapons-grade uranium went missing from Pennsylvania illustrates why America has been incapable of securing its own nuclear materials and know-how from insider threats. The future of that uranium may determine the success or failure of the Obama administration’s non-proliferation effort.
Steve Levin was a member of the underground Haganah – a precursor to the Israel Defense Forces – and fought during Israel’s 1948 war under Meir Amit, who later became head of Israeli intelligence. Levin was a close friend of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. In the mid-1940s while leading the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion launched a massive clandestine conventional arms financing, theft, and smuggling network [.pdf] in the United States diverting to Palestine small arms, heavy machine guns, munitions-making equipment, aircraft, ships, and tanks destined for American scrap yards after World War II.
On the nuclear front, Levin financed the purchase of the Apollo Steel Company facility in Pennsylvania for $450,000. Founder and President Dr. Zalman M. Shapiro, a genius inventor and head of a local Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) chapter, incorporated the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) at Apollo in 1956. Levin capitalized NUMEC through a stock offering in 1957 and business took off – propelled by the critical knowledge of highly talented scientists. NUMEC co-founder Dr. Leonard P. Pepkowitz previously worked on the clandestine Manhattan Project in 1944 producing America’s first atomic bombs. Pepkowitz later led analytical chemistry research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. NUMEC regularly received large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from industry giants Westinghouse and the U.S. Navy for reprocessing into nuclear submarine fuel and other specialty uses. Shapiro was meticulous in his stewardship of the company’s financial resources, carefully shopping around for banks willing to accommodate the complex demands of the fast growing NUMEC.
In the early 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began documenting suspicious lapses in NUMEC’s security, inexplicably lax record-keeping, and the ongoing presence of large numbers of Israelis at the plant. In 1962 the AEC considered suspending “classified weapons work” at NUMEC. In 1965 an AEC audit found that NUMEC could no longer account for 220 pounds of highly enriched uranium. In 1966 the FBI opened an investigation – code-named Project DIVERT – and began monitoring NUMEC’s management and Israeli visitors. On Sept. 10, 1968, four Israelis visited NUMEC to “discuss thermoelectric devices with Shapiro,” according to correspondence seeking official AEC consent for the visit from NUMEC’s security manager. Among the approved visitors was Rafi Eitan. After Eitan’s visit, 587 pounds of highly enriched uranium was classified as missing.
Former Deputy of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology Carl Duckett said the agency came to the conclusion by 1968 that “NUMEC material had been diverted by the Israelis and used in fabricating weapons.” An eyewitness gave testimony to the FBI about one late evening in 1965 when he encountered several NUMEC employees loading a flatbed truck with nuclear materials. It was unusual that material was shipping so late at night. Moreover, these particular employees (names were censored from the 2,654 pages of FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act) “never loaded trucks themselves.” The eyewitness was “sure this was high-enriched uranium products due to size and shape of the container and the labeling.” An armed guard ordered the witness away; he was later threatened to never reveal what he had seen on the loading dock.
The FBI, CIA, Congress, the GAO, and the AEC spent fruitless decades investigating the diversion. The FBI insisted on nuclear forensics to determine whether radioactivity in soil samples collected outside Dimona in Israel had any telltale NUMEC signature. But not until U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested spying for Israel in 1985 was Rafi Eitan’s importance fully understood. In 1986 investigators discovered the Eitan who entered NUMEC in 1968 had the same birth date – 11/23/1926 – as the spy handling Pollard. According to Anthony Cordesman, “There is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material.” Eitan has since been forced out of the cold as one of Israel’s top economic espionage agents for Israel’s secretive LAKAM, involved in multiple operations against U.S. targets. The Israel lobby’s role, never deeply explored by the Pollard investigators, was perceptible in the background. An operative of a U.S.-Israel business foundation provided the Washington, D.C., safe house where documents stolen by Pollard were duplicated and secreted away to Israel.
But Pollard’s subsequent life sentence in prison is the exception to the rule – crimes for Israel (even nuclear diversion) aren’t punished by America. In a now familiar pattern, the investigation of NUMEC uranium diversion waxed and waned into the 1990s. DIVERT was soon transformed into a futile investigation into whether Zalman Shapiro had foreknowledge or personal involvement in the caper and ways officials in agencies from the State Department to the AEC thwarted warranted law enforcement and accountability for Israel. To date, all of the uranium-diversion masterminds, financiers, and beneficiaries have escaped criminal prosecution, even as U.S. taxpayers fund a nuclear waste cleanup at the (now defunct) NUMEC Apollo facility.
That the U.S. is a sieve for Israeli nuclear espionage is well documented. In 1988 the GAO determined that Department of Energy nuclear laboratories were far too open to foreign visits from “countries identified as sensitive by DOE because they are a security and/or proliferation risk, such as Pakistan and Israel.” The lessons of Eitan went unheeded. The report found that “Of 637 visitors from countries such as India, Israel, and Pakistan, the DOE required background checks for only 77.” In addition to amassing critical knowledge, other nuclear technologies known to have been diverted from the U.S. to Israel include dual-use triggering technologies, klystrons, and krytons.
It never had to be this way. In the early 1960s, just as the problems at NUMEC began, President John F. Kennedy unleashed a robust non-proliferation and law enforcement pincer maneuver. He demanded U.S. inspections of Israel’s Dimona weapons plant in order to prevent Israel from going nuclear. Kennedy simultaneously ordered Israel’s American lobby to register as foreign agents to bring their undeclared activities out into the open. But Israel and its U.S. lobby ultimately prevailed on both counts.
In formally pressing Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while pushing for a settlement freeze and peace negotiations, the Obama administration is retracing JFK’s final footsteps. Israel’s lobby still has its own sovereign policy priorities. As Zalman Shapiro and lobby elites such as neoconservative gadfly Frank Gaffney gathered at ZOA events on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, pivoting the U.S. military from Iraq toward Syria and Iran was a top priority. The lobby also worked day and night to keep America’s front (and back) doors open for massive aid transfers and trade preferences, buffing up its own image by plucking operatives from the harsh clutches of law enforcement – even winning presidential pardons to erase or exalt other unfortunate historic events that called into question the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.” Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh noted that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) entire executive committee (the Conference of Presidents) favors releasing Jonathan Pollard on the grounds that “his crimes did not amount to high treason against the United States, because Israel was then and remains a close ally.” These unspoken, forced policies directly pit Israeli prerogatives against American national security, governance, and rule of law – they are often only won only through illegal means. As Israel ratchets up its own “project divert” effort to compel others to confront NPT signatory Iran (while derailing meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations), the rest of the world showed true commitment to non-proliferation by sending top diplomats to America’s summit.
Israel simply sent in another spy.
This is why the U.S. must demand more than Israel’s entry into the NPT. Only by recovering all purloined nuclear materials can Obama win confidence in America’s own commitment to controlling loose nukes.
US diktat on Iran pipeline not to be entertained
By Baqir Sajjad Syed | 11 Apr, 2010
Last month the US counseled Pakistan against entering into a deal with Iran for building a multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline. “We do not think it is the right time for doing this kind of transaction with Iran,” US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake said recently.
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office said on Saturday Islamabad would not entertain pressure by Washington on its decision to have cooperation with Iran in the energy sector.
“We would like to have cooperation with Iran in all areas. If there are opportunities, Pakistan will pursue those. We have concluded the IP gas pipeline project with Iran. … This is our sovereign decision and the government of Pakistan will take decisions only in consonance with its own national interests,” Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said at a media briefing.
The remarks came on the eve of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s meeting with President Obama. The meeting precedes a nuclear security summit scheduled for April 12 and 13 in Washington.
The meeting is a follow-up to last month’s strategic dialogue and part of efforts to transform the transactional nature of Pakistan-US relationship to a partnership.
Last month the US counseled Pakistan against entering into a deal with Iran for building a multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline. “We do not think it is the right time for doing this kind of transaction with Iran,” US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake said recently.
He said Pakistan had been asked to seek alternatives because of a dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme.
The situation poses a complex test for Pakistan’s diplomacy as the country aspires to have a civilian nuclear energy package from the US while pursuing the gas pipeline project with Iran.
“Our country is facing energy deficit. We are exploring all possible avenues to overcome our energy problem,” the spokesman said.
In an attempt to strike a delicate balance in its relations with the US and Iran, Pakistan has decided to attend the international disarmament conference convened by Tehran on April 17 and 18 — shortly after the nuclear summit and a fortnight before the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review.
The decision to attend the rival conference, albeit at a junior level with the country’s ambassador in Vienna representing Pakistan, is being seen in diplomatic circles as very significant because Tehran has convened the conference in a bid to counter the hardline attitude of the US-led international community towards its nuclear programme.
Moreover, it is interesting to note that Pakistan does not expect Iran to be censured at the US nuclear summit.
“We have been actively involved in the preparatory process of the nuclear security summit and I can tell you that its outcome will not be country specific,” Mr Basit said.
He said Pakistan believed all countries had the right to access nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. However, he said, countries should adhere to their international obligations and if there were differences and disputes these should be resolved through peaceful means and negotiations.
Netanyahu Worried about ‘World Silence on Iran’
Al-Manar TV, 12/04/2010
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu chided the international community for what he called “the relative silence in the face of Iranian threats” to destroy Israel, and the Islamic regime’s “race towards nuclear weapons.”
“Iran’s leaders are rushing to develop nuclear weapons as they freely announce their desire to destroy Israel,” Netanyahu said Sunday. “But in the face of these calls to erase the Jewish State from the face of the earth time and time again, we see at best mild protests, and these too seem to be fading,” he added.
“We don’t hear the forceful protests that are required, we don’t hear strong denouncement, or the angry voice,” he said. “But as usual, there are those who direct their criticisms against us, against Israel.” Netanyahu was speaking as he marked the so called Holocaust.
Speaking before the prime minister, President Shimon Peres also addressed the Iranian threat, stressing that the world could not display apathy.
“It is our right and duty to demand of the nations of the world not to repeat their indifference, which has cost millions of human lives, including theirs. The United Nations must be attentive to the threats of annihilation coming from one of its members, against another member state,” Peres said.
Evidence That Iran Is Developing Nukes? Don’t Expect Any This Time Around
By Mark R. Crovelli | April 8, 2010
Scarcely a day goes by anymore without some cocksure Israeli cabinet member or loudmouthed American “diplomat” sounding the alarm that Iran is covertly trying to develop nuclear weapons. We hear ominous warnings that the Western world will suddenly be at risk of complete annihilation by those crazy Ayatollahs, should they succeed in their quest to develop the bomb. “No one will be safe!” they cry, “Because, in addition to being hell-bent on incinerating Israel in a nuclear holocaust, those lunatic Iranians might even launch nuclear strikes against other Western countries! We have to crush and kill the Iranians right now, before they finish building their bombs – even if that means making the United States the single most despised country in the world.”
What is extremely interesting, however, is that none of the pundits, Knesset members, presidents, congressman, or foreign lobbyists ever bother to tell us how they know that Iran is trying to build a bomb in the first place. They don’t bother to do this, quite frankly, because there is absolutely no evidence that the Iranians are trying to build nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Commission, which is charged with monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities (and to which the Iranians voluntarily submit, unlike the Israelis), has adduced not one shred of evidence that Iran has diverted any uranium for any non-civilian purposes. Not one of the 16 American intelligence agencies has adduced any evidence whatsoever that the Iranians have restarted their nuclear weapon program after having voluntarily halted it in 2003. Not a single person in the whole world has adduced any evidence that the Iranians have acquired the technological know-how to be able to build a nuclear weapon, and some prominent people even doubt that they could ever acquire the know-how, even if they wanted to.
In other words, the members of the political class in the United States and Israel once again feel free to make fantastic and terrifying claims about a Middle Eastern government in order to convince us of the need to invade and kill more people who have not attacked us. This time, however, the political class hasn’t even given us the courtesy of manufacturing a false trail of evidence in order to convince us of their claims. The political classes’ contempt for the American and Israeli citizenry is apparently so overweening this time around that they haven’t even deigned to cook up a few juicy lies about, say, aluminum tubes, to substantiate their allegations of Iran’s intention to develop and use nuclear weapons.
The political class in America has apparently learned its lesson from the reign of George II when it comes to fabricating evidence to induce needless wars. Serving up false evidence can get a politician into trouble if it looks like he is intentionally trying to mislead the public into dying and killing for pointless or idiotic reasons. Given this, why risk fabricating evidence if you don’t have to? If your electorate is stupid or gullible enough to believe anything you, a lying politician, say, why not simply omit evidence altogether? Far better is to simply make fantastic and unsubstantiated claims today, and, when those claims inevitably get exposed as utterly false at some point in the future, simply assert that “everyone” thought they were true. The American public is not asking for any evidence of Iranian ambitions to produce nuclear weapons, so why go out of your way to supply it to them?
Without a trail of traceable lies and false evidence there is no way to indict any specific politician. In fact, the politicians involved in this sort of underhanded manipulation can use the exposure of the truth to their advantage as well. For, once exposed, they can wring their hands and publicly lament that “everyone” was misled so badly. “Woe is us!” they will cry out, “We were all misled! This just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we need to spend more tax money on intelligence gathering to avoid this kind of mistake in the future” However, don’t expect them to explain how “everyone” got the erroneous idea into their heads in the first place, and don’t expect them to use the opportunity to end the pointless and murderous war they have already started. Most of all, don’t expect them to apologize for all the dead American soldiers and foreign civilians that their war will produce.
The emergence of this form of evidence-free war rationalization is an ominous sign, because politicians only pull this chicanery if they think they can get away with it. In any sane and reasonable nation, politicians know that there must be compelling and explicit reasons for people to send their children abroad in order to kill and die. Politicians in reasonable nations who are contemplating blowing up lives, fortunes and foreign people feel obligated to provide evidence to their own people that they must sacrifice and suffer for some good reason. That the current gaggle of politicians in Washington is providing no such evidence while still threatening to attack Iran, means that politicians believe that the American people are gullible, stupid or indifferent almost to the point of insanity. And it looks as though they are right. To not demand evidence of grave, imminent and real harm before going off to kill and die means that American soldiers are blindingly obedient to the point of being without conscience and without brains. To have no moral objection in invading a foreign nation that has never attacked you and has no intention of attacking you, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, is not only morally reprehensible beyond comprehension, but a sign that the most Americans are in fact just as stupid and gullible as the politicians are hoping.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for any evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons in order to justify a new war in the Middle East. The lesson’s been learned: faked evidence will only get you into trouble, and real evidence…well, there isn’t any.
Mark R. Crovelli [send him mail] writes from Denver, Colorado.
Nuclear Charades in Prague
The New START Deal
By BINOY KAMPMARK| April 9, 2010
When the two largest holders of nuclear weapons sign treaties reducing their lethal stockpile, the optimist might have reason to crow. Another step taken to rid the world of various, fabulously terrifying weapons. US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev have penned their signatures to yet another document in the Prague – a new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). According to the American president, the treaty will slash U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads by 25 to 30 percent. A limit will be placed on launchers (800), and nuclear-armed missiles and heavy bombers capped to 200 each.
There is little doubt where this is going. The Obama administration is keen to establish its disarmament, and importantly, non-proliferation credentials. In May, the government is set to argue at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference that the NPT needs a good insertion of teeth. The US Senate will then have to be convinced that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is worth their time ratifying. But this, in the vast scheme of things, is an elaborate smokescreen.
A few cruel realities remain in this game of charades we saw unfold at Prague. Such reductions simply look like trimming and weight loss programs for ungainly military beasts. Fat is being cut from these creatures in the hope of making them leaner and fitter in the task of killing. Modern technologies are being harnessed on both sides that do little for the confidence of the jaded peace activist. Money is being channelled into laboratories to ensure the ‘efficiency’ of current and future arsenals.
Fundamental to this strategy is a re-orientation of US goals in any future use of massive conventional force termed the Prompt Global Strike program. (PGS, in military nomenclature, is the capability to strike at any point within an hour of authorised launch.) Congress was already being teased with the idea in 2006, when the Pentagon, with the blessing of STRATCOM Commander, General James Cartwright, attempted wooing politicians with the idea of a Trident missile capability based on non-nuclear warheads. But the defense establishment would have to bide their time – Congress wasn’t quite ready to fall out of love with the nuclear option.
The Pentagon’s current drive to develop ballistic weapons that will neatly fill any notable gaps left by a reduction of nuclear weaponry is very much in evidence. Sceptics within the security establishment are being converted. The cut backs on nuclear weapons will be simply replaced by an arsenal of missiles armed with conventional warheads. The Russians, on this score, are justifiably worried. In the words of a pensive Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, ‘World states will hardly accept a situation in which nuclear weapons disappear, but weapons that are no less destabilising emerge in the hands of certain members of the international community.’
Ultimately, the only way one can trash the stockpile is by trashing the very idea of deterrence. Now that is a far more formidable proposition, and something activists and policy makers should tackle. No one can prove that deterrence has worked. But nor can it be shown that it has failed. A nonsensical expression such as the ‘The Long Peace’ (a term coined for the Cold War), was premised on that very assumption. The fear now is that nuclear weapons might well be phased out (a problematic assertion in itself) in favour of a mighty conventional deterrent. And so, we come full circle, paving the way for another arms race, and yet another escalation in the name of peace and security.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
The Major Jewish American Organizations Defend Israel’s Humiliation of America
By James Petras Ph.D. | Atlantic Free Press | April 7, 2010
“The Government of Israel has insulted the Vice President of the United States, and spat in the face of the President … they wiped the spit off their faces and smiled politely … as the saying goes: when you spit in the face of a weakling, he pretends that it is raining”
– Uri Avnery Israeli Jewish journalist 13/3/2010.
“We (Israel) possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets … most European capitals are targets of our air force … the Palestinians should all be deported. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago, (January 2010), it was 33 percent and now according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent”.
– Martin Van Crevel Israeli, professor of military history at Hebrew University at Jerusalem and top adviser to the Israeli Armed Forces, March 2, 2010.
Introduction
When Israel announced a major new Jews-only building project of 1600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem, it was not only “spitting in the face” of visiting Vice President Biden, it was demonstrating its power to humiliate America and Americans. Netanyahu was sending a message to world: Israel backed by its billionaire-financed Presidents of the 51 Major American Jewish Organizations, leads the US by the nose. The Jewish State can make an agreement with the White House one day and revoke it the next (with characteristic arrogance), US public opinion be damned. No sooner did the Obama Administration react to this most public show of impudence with Biden privately telling the Israeli Prime Minister that, “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”, than Netanyahu openly called on the “American Jewish community” (the major Zionist organizations) to come to the defense of Israel and its claim on all of Jerusalem. And respond they did: turning the insulted victim (America) into the bully and blaming the US, not the Israeli government, for the “crisis” and for the breakdown of Israel’s agreement not to expand colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian land. As we shall describe, the entire Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the United States (with a few notable exceptions) defended Israel’s effrontery and condemned any attempt by the US government to peacefully resolve a conflict, which threatened US lives, economic interests and prestige. This just confirmed world public opinion, which sees an American electorate willing to be humiliated by this economically insignificant state.
The Bigger Issue: Beyond the Biden – Netanyahu Caper
Whatever the insults and crimes of the moment, the conflict between Israel and the US is not about Netanyahu’s hyper-arrogance or a new series of Jerusalem land grabs, or even the frothy spittle on Vice President Biden’s face. It is, in essence, about the relation between states or, better still, the relation between peoples where one group (Israeli Jews and their powerful one percent fifth column agents in the US) exacts tribute and imposes wars in its own interests on another group (the US tax payers, soldiers, workers and businessmen). It arrogates power, not merely yesterday or today, but for the last 50 years.
In a broader historic context, the public humiliation of Vice President Biden in Tel Aviv pales in comparison to the Israeli’s cold blooded sneak attack, which killed and wounded over 200 American servicemen on the USS Liberty in June 1967. An arrogant and homicidal Israel humiliated the US through this attack, confident that then-President Lyndon Johnson would not retaliate but would even silence the survivors from ever telling their story to the American people. When Netanyahu calls on the “Jewish Communities” in the US he is not referring to the majority of American Jews. He, in fact, is addressing the Zionist power configuration whose strategically-placed members designed and promoted the Iraq war policy, which has caused the deaths and mutilation of thousands of US soldiers as well as over one million Iraqi civilians. In essence, the US soldier victims of the invasion of Iraq lost their lives, limbs and sanity for the interests of the Zionist “homeland”.
It is not merely that American Zionists defend the illegal construction of another Jews-only neighborhood in the middle of Palestinian East Jerusalem; the announcement was calculated to humiliate the visiting US Vice President. It’s not just a matter of US Zionist support for Netanyahu’s sabotage of a US peace initiative; nor is it about the unconditional ZPC support for Israeli crimes as they were being denounced by the United Nations and the peoples of the world. The fundamental issue is that the ZPC in the United States is turning our country and its people into defenders of Israel’s sordid crimes, casting the American people as accomplices to ethnic cleansing and degrading our moral sensibilities before the whole world.
Today and Yesterday: Castrating America
Netanyahu’s symbolic spitting in Biden’s face was a calculated act of grave significance. It marked out Israel’s ‘will to power’ – its willingness to publicly humiliate US leaders and flaunt its power over the US before the world. Israel exposed US impotence in the Middle East and beyond. This incident has world-historic consequences for anyone who is not blind. The US is a declining power, which cannot create a secure environment for its soldiers, corporations and citizens anywhere in the Middle East or beyond. No European, Asian, Latin American or Muslim country can look at the US and its citizens without thinking, “Here is a country at the feet of Israeli leaders and at the throat of Israel’s designated ‘enemies’. It is an understatement to say that the US, as a nation and as a people, has “lost prestige”.
Israel has a long and ignoble history of sabotaging peace talks in favor of grabbing land. From its very foundation, Tel Aviv undermined peace offers through unprovoked military attacks. Israel, along with Britain and France, launched a full-scale surprise invasion of Egypt to grab the Suez Canal, after it had promised to consider Egyptian President Nasser’s proposal to negotiate. In more recent times, as soon as Arafat agreed to formally recognize Israel as a state and sign a peace agreement, Jewish tanks and jets attacked the West Bank killing hundreds and surrounding Arafat’s headquarters for months. At the same time it increased the number of the Jews-only settlements in the West Bank ten fold to accommodate over 500,000 fanatical paramilitary Jewish settlers. When the elected Hamas administration implemented a unilateral cease fire, Israel launched a major military assault, ultimately devastating Gaza and killing 1400 mostly unarmed Palestinians.
Israel’s actions, past and present, including land grabs, Jews-only apartheid roads and settlements and military invasions of Palestinian refugee camps and towns have destroyed the possibility of a negotiated peace agreement, which would compromise the Zionists’ vision of an ethnically-cleansed “Greater Israel”.
Given this spiteful history, it’s not surprising that Israel’s current apologists claim that the current land grab to build more Jews-only apartment blocks in Jerusalem is “nothing new”, that it is “part of our history”, that Jews “need the living space” and that “three thousand years of Biblical history tells us that all this land is ours” (quotes from the Daily Alert, March 15 -17, 2010, official mouthpiece of the Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations).
The humiliation of Biden was not the first time that Israel acted publicly to embarrass the Obama Administration. In his first meeting with President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu openly rejected any freeze in new settlements. Indeed, Israel escalated its settlement building right after Obama addressed the Muslim-Arab world in his ‘Cairo Speech’.
What is behind Netanyahu’s perverse behavior and his US supporters’ overweening arrogance? How can the US media, hundreds of Congressional Representatives and all the leading Jewish American organizations, support an extremist racist regime, which attacked and humiliated our country with impunity? How can the American Zionists side with a foreign country over issues detrimental to basic US security interests and not be viewed as traitors by other Americans?
In the first place, Netanyahu has the support of 80% of the Israeli-Jewish population as he pursues the policy of evicting the Palestinians and expanding exclusively Jewish settlements on occupied lands despite US President Obama’s ‘peace overtures’. Humiliating the visiting US Vice President on a ‘peace mission’ from Obama only increased Netanyahu’s popularity with Israelis.
Secondly, this impudent projection of Israeli power over the reputed American ‘superpower’ appeals to the self-image of the far-right religious settlers whose leaders form the backbone of the current governing coalition (especially the Shas party).
Thirdly, insulting a gentile President and Vice President would find approval among the supporters of Netanyahu’s gangster Foreign Minister, Avi Lieberman and with the tough Eastern European Hasidic youth who routinely spit on elderly Christian monks and priests in their ancient Armenian and Greek quarters of Jerusalem.
It might seem strange for Israelis, who face increasing isolation throughout the Middle East and are condemned throughout Europe for their brutal colonial crimes, to glorify their thuggish leader as he heaps contempt on their most important military ally and economic supporter, its elected leaders and its citizens. Accumulated Israeli political resentment against world condemnation for their war crimes found an emotional outlet by identifying with Netanyahu’s antics: His relentless brutality against the ‘Untermenschen’ of Palestine and his willingness to openly defy the US Administration, even as Israel extracts $3 billion dollars a year from the Americans, re-enforces their sense of superiority. It is clear that Netanyahu’s totalitarian policies have a mass popular base among Israelis and his swaggering arrogance faithfully reflects the national psyche of Israel.
Netanyahu and his ministers calculated that no matter how hard they squeeze the hapless US taxpayers, themselves caught in the a profound economic crisis, and no matter how often the Israelis threaten to provoke a wider regional war and cause more American soldier casualties, they can always count on the unconditional support of the Zionist Power Configuration in the US to promote Israel’s interest. The entire US mass media applauded the Great Humiliator and even attacked the few American public figures as they (at least temporarily) defended American dignity against Israeli insults. The major Zionist leaders all rushed to support Israel’s humiliation of the US and to denigrate its critics. An endless parade of US politicians, editorial writers, columnists, opinion-makers, “think” tankers, and TV commentators demonstrated their special loyalty to Israel against an American president who was timidly seeking a negotiated peace in the Middle East.
The recent ‘conflict’ between Israel and America over peace in the Middle East –brought on by a crude Israeli provocation – exposed far more profound issues: At the center of power in America, there is an influential group of power-brokers willing to exploit and humiliate the American people in the service of a foreign power. In the past, patriots would have called them ‘traitors’.
Netanyahu’s Hubris ‘Rebuked’
In response to the official Washington show of anger, Netanyahu issued a half-hearted “explanation”: The problem was not the policy of building new settlements in violation of their agreement with Washington; the problem was the timing of the announcement. It was a regrettable “error” by a minor functionary in the Israeli Interior Ministry who made his announcement right after US Vice President Biden had finished groveling at Netanyahu’s feet and was busy pressuring the Palestinian Authority collaborators to rejoin the ‘peace’ charade sponsored by Washington. According to the Israeli media and their US mouthpieces it was a public relations breakdown, not a matter of strategic political and military significance affecting the US in the Middle East. In other words: With Biden out of Israel and collaborator Abbas back at the ‘table’, any announcement violating the “freeze on settlements” would be merely an Israeli “internal policy” and a “continuation of past practices”.
Netanyahu Comes to Washington: Backhanders for Obama, Cheers from AIPAC
Netanyahu, fresh from spitting on Vice President Biden in Tel Aviv, administered a series of humiliating ‘back-handed’ slaps in the smiling face of President Obama, right under the glaring lights of the mass media in the US capital.
Bibi Netanyahu delivered a rabble rousing speech to over 7,000 cheering Zionists at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, DC. He asserted Israel’s will to construct Jews-only housing throughout occupied Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, repeating Israel’s illegal claim that Jerusalem was the undivided capital of the Jewish people. He then demanded and secured a two-hour meeting with Obama, despite his arrogant insult against the US Administration. Adding further humiliation to the already weak US President, the Israeli government announced another Jews-only housing project in Arab East Jerusalem to be built on confiscated Palestinian property. This announcement, just hours before the planned Bibi-Barack meeting, carried an additional threat that the White House charade of ‘peace negotiations’ would be put off the table if the Americans protested this new round of illegal construction. Netanyahu, demonstrating his utter contempt for the White House and the America people, went straight to the Zion-colonized US Congress and secured the House Majority leader Pelosi’s ‘unconditional support…’ for Israeli expansion. And, as if to celebrate its victory and establish its own definition of ‘peace’, the Israeli military assassinated four un-armed Palestinians, two impoverished job-seekers and two young teenage protesters.
Loyalty to the Israeli masters was evident when thousands of Zionists fanatics jumped to their feet and cheered Bibi Netanyahu’s crude repudiation of the American efforts to protect its soldiers’ lives by promoting a peace initiative. Hillary Clinton’s call for a ‘peace settlement based on two states for two people’ was met with dead silence. The entire Zionist-dominated media and all the leading Jewish organizations backed an unprecedented series of humiliations directed against the elected US Administration and the American people. Netanyahu’s demagogic display of Israeli power over the US Congress and the American mass media and his crude willingness to degrade US political leaders in the nation’s capital mocks the very notion of the American people having any voice in their nation’s policies and subordinates America’s military high command over issues of war and peace in the Middle East.
For Pelosi and the Zionized Congress, the thousands of campaign shekels from the AIPAC crowd to fund their re-elections are far more crucial to their careers than the lives and limbs of thousands of US soldiers lost to an agenda of Israel and its domestic Fifth Column.
Israel’s Arrogance Prejudices US Interests
Israel’s leaders not only raised their domestic prestige by undermining the US Administration’s peace initiatives, they also managed to extract billions of dollars from the US taxpayers. The humiliation of the Obama regime derailed efforts by the Pentagon and the State Department to regain influence and credibility among the conservative Arab regimes, non-Arab Muslim nations and among hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world. This humbling of the US Administration by a sneering Netanyahu further jeopardizes the work and security of American businessmen and officials operating in the Middle East and undermines relations with their Muslim and Arab counterparts.
There will be major setbacks for the US in its efforts to gain support for its wars in the Middle East and South Asia and its propaganda campaign to discourage young Muslims from joining the anti-US resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The symbolic image of Vice President wiping away Israeli spittle during an official visit will encourage thousands of young Muslims to resist US occupation, which they view as promoting Israel’s agenda. If an economically insignificant Israeli state can defy the superpower, why can’t they? The logic is simple: The greater the Israeli land-grab, the more submissive the Obama regime, the more extended and profound the hostility of the Muslim people against the Americans, the more emboldened the armed resistance movements and the greater the number of dead and maimed American soldiers stuck in wars promoted by the Zionists.
While the losses of American soldiers in the Middle East have never figured in Tel Aviv’s policy moves, nor influenced the activities of its Fifth Colum in the USA, these losses do affect millions of American families and over 200 million American taxpayers. Even an occasional American General finds the courage to point out that Israel’s colonial dispossession of the Palestinian people has prolonged the war, tied up hundreds of thousands of US troops and undermined the capacity of the US armed forces to successfully operate on multiple fronts to promote US imperial interests.
When the head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Petraeus’ team of senior officers, identified “Israeli intransigence” as “jeopardizing US standing and the lives of American solders in the region (Middle East)” in a briefing before the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on January 16, 2010, Petraeus met an onslaught of severe questioning from the ZPC. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullens received the same rebuke from the powerful Israel-Firsters. This was not the first time US military and security considerations were subsumed to Israel’s agenda. Only two years earlier in 2007, the ZPC denounced and successfully buried the annual National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) prepared by 16 US military and civilian intelligence agencies, which had concluded that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons and did not pose a major threat to the US, in favor of Israeli disinformation arguing the opposite. And the same ZPC has been taking the Obama regime to task for daring to criticize Netanyahu.
Over 300 members of the US Congress signed an extraordinary letter supporting Israel against their own Administration, pledging their commitment to “the unbreakable bond that exists between [U.S.] and the State of Israel”. Hundreds of congress men and officials joined the over 7,000 participants at the March 2010 AIPAC conference to cheer Netanyahu and witness the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton hail the leader of the Israeli settler state – who had pledged “to continue building in all of Jerusalem just as it does in Tel Aviv”.
General David Petraeus, whose senior officers had expressed his concern about Israel’s policies undermining US military interests to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullins, was no match for AIPAC. The CENTCOM commander contacted his Israeli counterpart General Gabi Ashkenazi to repudiate his own criticism of Israeli policies and, in effect, pledge his unconditional support to the Jewish state even when it jeopardizes US troops.
In January, General Petraeus correctly identified how Israeli intransigence had damaged US interests and operations in the Middle East, infuriated Arabs and ultimately increased attacks on American troops. But in March, the politically ambitious General hastened to retract his briefing before the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There are few more cravenly disloyal spectacles in US military history than this be-medaled American general prostrating himself for the Zionist lobby.
And yet, for a brief moment, a few desperate anti-Zionists leftists, looked to General Petraeus and Admiral Mullen as potential allies against Israeli-Zionist control of US policy in the Middle East. They ignored the fact that these are the commanders in charge of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and were preparing to confront Iran. Petraeus’ difference with Israel was over specific policies as they undermined the smooth operations of the US war machine in the Middle East and his ‘recantation’ before the Israelis has certainly thrown cold water of this romantic fantasy of a ‘nationalist’ US General.
The tradition of ‘civilian supremacy’ in the US ensures that the military will never confront the issue of Zionist control over the Congress and White House. Petraeus’ briefing will soon be forgotten and the General’s subsequent repudiation is an eloquent example of the grotesquely opportunistic nature of the American high military command.
When civilian leaders point out how Israel’s oppression of 5 million Palestinians jeopardizes American lives and interests in the Middle East, the Zionist power configuration deflects attention from Israel and blames the US (and its ‘permissive’ society) for having instigated the growing Islamist movement, Arab hostility and attacks. When American military leaders, strategists and intelligence officers assert that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is a leading cause of regional conflict based on their decades of field expertise, the arm-chair Generals among the Zionists re-interpret this straightforward identification of Israeli policy with attacks on American interests and troops as “another point of view”. In the meantime the ZPC rounds up the usual Congressional or White House Israel Firsters to “disown” their own military.
Israel’s narrowly conceived colonial policy, the eviction of massive numbers of Palestinians and the land grabs to construct Jews-only colonial settlements, undermines US authority in the Middle East among its allies. Israel’s brazen willingness and ability to openly bash President Obama, thoroughly discredits the contention among liberal Zionist apologists like Noam Chomsky that Imperial Washington is “in command” of Western policy in the Middle East and is acting on behalf of much broader Euro-American interests.
In a wider context, Israel’s arrogance damages attempts by US private investors to broker oil deals for multi-national corporations. Arab oil countries, which see themselves as threatened by a regional militarist power like Israel, with its colonial expansion and hegemonic ambitions, are unlikely to cooperate with America, especially when the superpower is impotent to curb Israel’s worst excesses.
Israeli Colonial Ambitions and US Strategic Interests
For Israel and its Fifth Column backers none of the US strategic concerns are as important as the Jewish state’s colonial conquests and its regional projections of power. Nor are the interests of the American people given much consideration when they come in conflict with Israeli expansionist colonial goals. The ZPC never considers or even discusses the fact that Americans have suffered major losses as a result of Israel’s relentless pursuit of military-driven power in the Middle East.
Israel’s primary goal of grabbing land and dispossessing Palestinians goes against the post-colonial ethos of the American people, who experience increased hostility overseas. The only beneficiaries of Israel’s colonial expansion are the small but powerful 51 American Jewish Zionist organizations which identify with and are loyal to the Israeli state.
Israel’s unilateral military aggression and threats against neighboring countries, including Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and its cross-border covert assassinations, most recently in Dubai, are of great importance to Israeli militarists as Israel projects power in the Middle East. The self-esteem of Israel’s militarized citizens is directly linked to their policy of aggression and assassinations without regard to national sovereignty. On the other hand, Israeli power projections have undermined the US efforts to diplomatically expand its own sphere of influence and negotiate multi-billion dollar military sales, trade and investment agreements in the Middle East. The fact that Israeli policies have jeopardized millions of jobs for American workers is an issue of no importance to the Jewish state and its affluent Israel First backers in the US.
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon forced the pro-US Hariri faction to form a coalition with the anti-imperialist Hezbollah political-military movement. Israel’s attempt to impose its will on Lebanon through its bombing campaign, torpedoed US diplomatic and political efforts to consolidate its influence with President Hariri.
Netanyahu’s successful bullying of Obama and Biden simply reinforced the ties between the pro-Western Lebanese and the anti-colonial Muslim left, in the face of Washington’s incapacity to constrain the Israeli ‘wildmen’ or resist the ‘internal rot’ eroding an independent American initiative: Better to join forces with Hezbollah, which after all fought Israel to a standstill in 2006.
Israel’s loyal accomplices in the US government have caused enormous damage to the US economy and threaten even greater loss of American lives, as Israel seeks to direct US policy toward Iran. Under the forceful and aggressive direction of Israel Firsters and the powerful Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Stuart Levey, every major US oil and gas company, bank, petroleum exploration and drilling firm and countless other business concerns have given up hundreds of billion dollars in lucrative economic trade and investment deals in the interest of Israel, which has extracted over $60 billion dollars of US taxpayer money and handouts and aid during the last decade.
Iran, which backed the US imperial attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, provided the US military with far more strategic assistance than all the Israeli advisers, ‘experts’ and contracted ‘interrogators’ in Baghdad and Iraqi ‘Kurdistan’ put together. Despite the US recognition of Iranian assistance in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is demonized as ‘the enemy’ by Israeli agents within the US because Tehran opposes Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Israel’s Fifth Column churns out hundreds of articles a month demanding brutal economic sanctions against Iran and a pre-emptive military blitz aimed at destroying the Iranian economy and a nation of over 70 million. Every US military commander in the Middle East has acknowledged that an attack on Iran will expand the war, cut vital shipping of oil in the Persian Gulf plunging the world economy into recession, and threaten the lives of scores of thousands of American soldiers. They also are aware that the prospect of thousands of American casualties would not deter the 51 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, the AIPAC-controlled US Congress members, or the likes of Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey from promoting or provoking a war with Iran. The leading Israel-First advocates for war with Iran are unconcerned with the inevitable thousands of US military casualties and the millions of American jobs lost, as they promote the expansion and supremacy of “Greater Israel” in all its arrogance and glory throughout the Middle East.
Zionist Power Configuration: How Dare You Resist Humiliation!
Is it any wonder that, when visiting American leaders are openly insulted by the racist regime of Prime Minister ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, American Zionists automatically side with Israel and condemn those who protest in defense of American dignity?
The Daily Alert, principle bulletin of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, provides a useful compilation of the articles, editorials and government documents, defending Israel against the US Administration’s efforts to seek diplomatic solutions. From March 15 – 19, 2010 the Israeli-ZPC juggernaut released a remarkable propaganda offensive, vividly underscoring the immense power of the Zionist power configuration in the US. As soon as the White House publicly rebuked Prime Minister Netanyahu for insulting Vice President Biden during his official visit to Israel, the Zionist power configuration, claiming to speak for all the “Jewish communities”, came out in defense of Israel and attacked the Obama Administration. A barrage of articles, editorials and press conferences materialized overnight, with the usual parade of zombie-like Congressional mouthpieces parroting the Zionist line and applying direct pressure on the White House. This multi-prong Zionist offensive, under Netanyahu’s direction, was successful in persuading the White House to return to its characteristic belly-crawl: Clinton, Biden and the rest of their gang retreated, reasserting the US “unconditional defense of Israel”, declaring the ‘non-existence’ of the crisis and asserting the ‘rock solid’ American relationship with Israel. The chain of command is revealing: The Israeli state orders the Zionist power configuration into action; the mass media disseminates the line; Congress marches lock-step for the Zionists and the White House retreats. Delighted with their success, Zionist propagandists roll out their own polls claiming the US public support for Israel — a public saturated with Israeli manufactured and American Zionist trumpeted propaganda. Clearly what such “polls” measure is the effectiveness of a monolithic mass media campaign.
The propaganda tactics utilized in this blitzkrieg media campaign involved placing blame on the insulted victim and attacking “the Administration for sparking a full blown crisis” (Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2010). It went on to denounce the US Administration officials for “condemning” and “pushing” Israel (Washington Post, March 15 – 19, 2010). Other publications accused President Obama of ‘playing into the hand’ of Arab extremists and “fanning the flames” ,(Fox News and Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 2010). It was the US President, who had been “hindering the peace talks” by “encouraging Palestinian intransigence”. Haaretz, Israel’s liberal newspaper, which has published articles critical of the Israeli Occupation, released a series of articles, opinion pieces and editorials by ‘experts’ and ‘military strategists’ accusing the US Administration of “orchestrating the crises” (March 14, 2010) and called for the Israeli government not to ‘grovel’ by apologizing to the US Vice President (March 15). CBS claimed that “Obama was pushing the US-Israeli alliance to the brink” (March 15). And on March 17, the Boston Globe accused Obama of “aggravating Israel’s mistake”. AIPAC methodically contacted its usual Congressional flunkeys to denounce the White House for rebuking the Israeli government.
By March 19, the Washington Post had published over a dozen diatribes calling for US acceptance of Israel’s settlement expansion. Zionist think tanks and front groups with deceptive names, like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, blamed the displaced Palestinians for sabotaging “the peace process” by protesting the accelerated Israeli land confiscation and settlements (Scripps – Howard and Fox News, March 18, 2010). Predictably, the New York Times provided a slightly liberal gloss by calling for reconciliation and an end to the crises, while never mentioning the public Israeli humiliation of Vice President Biden or considering how Israel’s latest grab of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem might endanger US lives and interests. The Times ignored General Petraeus testimony before Congress and his briefing, critical of Israeli policy, before the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while giving prominence to Netanyahu’s “peace talks” (March 18, 2010).
A few fissures have appeared in the pro-Israel monolith: David Axelrod, Obama’s chief adviser, condemned Netanyahu’s provocation as an “insult”; New York Times top columnist, Thomas Friedman, described the Israeli leaders as “drunken drivers”; and a leading US rabbi called for a building freeze in Jerusalem. These few liberal Zionist critics were overwhelmed by scores parroting ZPC ‘talking points’: Bronner and Sanger of the New York Times, Walter Mead of American (SIC) Interest and Goldberg of the New Yorker, among others.
The craven capitulation, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was inevitable. On March 16 Secretary Clinton declared that, “we have an absolute commitment to Israel’s security. We have a close unshakeable bond between the United States and Israel and between the American and Israeli people”. To prove her fealty to Israeli and Zionist interests, Clinton became featured speaker at the APAC Conference, March 21 – 26, 2010, sharing the platform with a triumphant Bibi Netanyahu.
Conclusion
Israel had to openly humiliate the US as a show of its power. Given Israel’s strategic domination of the US political system and the ZPC control over mass media and their enormous wealth, a Zionist-controlled administration, like Obama’s, would have to capitulate. Israeli and US Zionist pressure forced the American leaders to subordinate their international image and national self-respect and accept the unlimited expansion of Jews-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, no matter how this might undermine US standing in the region and jeopardize US troops. By ‘whipping’ the Obama Administration into line, Israel has set the stage for the launching of its top priority: Forcing a direct US military confrontation with Iran in Israel’s strategic interests. It is clear that the entire ZPC will stand with Israel as it promotes its militarist agenda against Iran, regardless of the consequences to the United States.
It has been proven beyond a doubt by the recent events, that the ZPC has the ultimate say with the Obama Administration, against the advice of top US military officials and against the basic interests of the American people. In plain English, we are a people colonized and directed by a small, extremist and militarist ‘ally’ which operates through domestic proxies, who, under any other circumstance, would be openly denounced as traitors.
Can the ZPC be defeated? They are the “most powerful lobby in Washington”, to whom Presidents, Administration officials, Generals and Congress people must submit or risk having their careers ruined and being ousted from public office. Meanwhile,outside of the United States, the international community openly despises Israel as a brutal, racist colonial state, a war criminal and chronic violator of human rights and international law. The Middle East Quartet, made up of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, has condemned Israel’s plan to build another 1,600 homes exclusively for Jewish extremist settlers in Arab East Jerusalem. The Quartet demanded “the speedy creation of a Palestinian state and the end to provocative actions”. But the ‘Quartet’ is powerless to stop Israeli plans. The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations tell their followers that global “anti-Semitism” motivates the ‘Quartet’. The huge AIPAC “Hail Israel” Conference in Washington D.C. in late March celebrated the triumph of unfettered Israeli expansionism.
Nevertheless, some Israelis are beginning to express unease. After their initial euphoria over Netanyahu’s slap-down of Biden and face-up to Clinton, there is growing fear of Israeli being ‘weaned’ away from the American treasury and losing their unfettered access to the US latest military technology. A poll published on March 19 in Yedroth Ahronoth, one of Israel’s biggest dailies, revealed that 46% of their readers responded that the government should freeze settlement building in East Jerusalem, much to the chagrin of the US Israel Firsters, who might in other circumstances, have labeled these Jews anti-Semites.
Fissures in the Zionist monolith are beginning to appear. These would deepen if and when the American public realizes that Israel’s’ dispossession of Palestinians is raising havoc with American lives and with American interests in a vital part of the world populated by 1.5 billion Muslim. As more issues arise, the critical choice between following the lead of the ZPC in pledging unconditional allegiance to Israel and enduring its provocations and humiliations, or standing up for the dignity, basic interests and integrity of America, will have to be made. More fissures will appear and the AIPAC and other members of the ZPC will be seen for what they are: Swaggering bullies acting on behalf of a foreign power.
Illinois Rep. Kirk has to hide his Israel love away
By Jeffrey Blankfort on April 5, 2010
Here is a what appears to be a very strange situation, but is not so strange after all. This link is to Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk’s page for Jewish voters, replete with Hebrew, which makes it appear that he is running for the Israeli Knesset and not the US Congress. Now this link is to his Senate campaign home page, where I was unable to find any link to his pro-Israel page (oh, wait, you can find it when you click on National Security issues).
The Pentagon’s doubts about Israel began with its creation
By Mark Perry | April 1, 2010
In early February of 2006, I submitted a book proposal about the wartime relationship between Generals George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower to a group of New York publishers. I had worked on the proposal for nine months and believed it would garner significant interest. Two weeks after the submission, I received my first response — from a senior editor at a major New York publishing firm. He was uncomfortable with the proposal: “Wasn’t Marshall an anti-Semite?” he asked. I’d heard this claim before, but I was still shocked by the question. For me, George Marshall was an icon: the one officer who, more than any other, was responsible for the American victory in World War Two. He was the most important soldier of his generation — and a man of great moral and physical courage.
That Marshall was an anti-Semite has been retailed regularly since 1948 — when it became known that, by that time as US Secretary of State, he not only opposed the U.S. stance in favor of the partition of Palestine, but vehemently recommended that the U.S. not recognize the State of Israel that emerged. Harry Truman disagreed and Marshall and Truman clashed in a meeting in the Oval Office, on May 12, 1948. Truman relied on president counselor Clark Clifford to make the argument. Clifford faced Marshall: the U.S. had made a moral commitment to the world’s Jews that dated from Britain’s 1919 Balfour Declaration, he argued, and the U.S would be supported by Israel in the Middle East. The Holocaust had made Israel’s creation an imperative and, moreover, Israel would be a democracy. He then added: Jewish-Americans, were an important voting bloc and would favor the decision.
Marshall exploded. “Mr. President,” he said, “I thought this meeting was called to consider an important, complicated problem in foreign policy. I don’t even know why Clifford is here.” Truman attempted to calm Marshall, whom he admired — but Marshall was not satisfied. “I do not think that politics should play any role in our decision,” he said. The meeting ended acrimoniously, though Truman attempted to placate Marshall by noting that he was “inclined” to side with him. That wasn’t true — the U.S. voted to recognize Israel and worked to support its emerging statehood. Marshall remained enraged.
When Marshall returned to the State Department from his meeting with Truman, he memorialized the meeting:
I remarked to the president that, speaking objectively, I could not help but think that suggestions made by Mr. Clifford were wrong. I thought that to adopt these suggestions would have precisely the opposite effect from that intended by him. The transparent dodge to win a few votes would not, in fact, achieve this purpose. The great dignity of the office of the president would be seriously damaged. The counsel offered by Mr. Clifford’s advice was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem confronting us was international. I stated bluntly that if the president were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice, and if I were to vote in the next election, I would vote against the president.
Put more simply, Marshall believed that Truman was sacrificing American security for American votes.
The Truman-Marshall argument over Israel has entered American lore – and been a subject of widespread historical controversy. Was Marshall’s opposition to recognition of Israel a reflection of his, and the American establishment’s, latent anti-Semitism? Or was it a credible reflection of U.S. military worries that the creation of Israel would engage America in a defense of the small country that would drain American resources and lives? In the years since, a gaggle of historians and politicians have weighed in with their own opinions, the most recent being Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Writing in the Washington Post on May 7, 2008, Holbrooke noted that “beneath the surface” of the Truman-Marshall controversy “lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple – oil, numbers and history.”
But that’s only a part of the story. In the period between the end of World War Two and Marshall’s meeting with Truman, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued no less than sixteen (by my count) papers on the Palestine issue. The most important of these was issued on March 31, 1948 and entitled “Force Requirements for Palestine.” In that paper, the JCS predicted that “the Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the United States] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.” The JCS speculated that these objectives included: initial Jewish sovereignty over a portion of Palestine, acceptance by the great powers of the right to unlimited immigration, the extension of Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine and the expansion of “Eretz Israel” into Transjordan and into portions of Lebanon and Syria. This was not the only time the JCS expressed this worry. In late 1947, the JCS had written that “A decision to partition Palestine, if the decision were supported by the United States, would prejudice United States strategic interests in the Near and Middle East” to the point that “United States influence in the area would be curtailed to that which could be maintained by military force.” That is to say, the concern of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not with the security of Israel — but with the security of American lives.
In the wake of my March 13 article in these pages (“The Petraeus Briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story”) a storm of outrage greeted my claim that Israeli intransigence on the peace process could be costing American lives. One week after that article appeared, I called General Joe Hoar, a former CENTCOM commander and a friend. We talked about the article. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What’s the news here? Hasn’t this been said before?” If history is any guide, the answer is simple: it was said sixty years ago by one of America’s greatest soldiers. George Marshall wasn’t an anti-Semite. But he was prescient.
Mark Perry’s most recent book is Talking To Terrorists (Basic Books, 2010). He is also the author of Partners In Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace (2007) and Four Stars, The Inside Story of the Battle between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America’s Civilian Leaders (1989).
A tip of the hat to Paul Woodward.
The Bomb-Bomb-Iran ‘Parlor Game’
Robert Parry | Consortium News | April 2, 2010
Normally, if two countries with powerful nuclear arsenals were openly musing about attacking a third country over mere suspicions that it might want to join the nuclear club, we’d tend to sympathize with the non-nuclear underdog as the victim of bullying and possible aggression.
You might think that – unless you were told that the two nuclear-armed countries are Israel and the United States and the non-nuclear country is Iran. Then, different rules apply, especially it seems in leading American news outlets like the New York Times.
In what reads like a replay of the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Times and other major U.S. news media appear onboard for war, again happy to make the likely aggressors the “victims,” and to turn the prospect of a bloody conflict in a Muslim country into a parlor game.
Indeed, the New York Times on March 28 presented the idea of “imagining a strike on Iran” as “Washington’s grimmest but most urgent parlor game,” assessing how a military strike by Israel, “acting on its fears that Iran threatens its existence,” would play out.
That same day, the Times also led its front page with an alarmist story about Iranian atomic energy official Ali Akbar Salehi saying Iran might soon begin work on two new nuclear enrichment sites built into mountains to protect against bombings.
The article by reporters David E. Sanger and William J. Broad repeated a recurring falsehood in the Times, that it was President Barack Obama who “publicly revealed the evidence of a [previous] hidden site,” a hardened facility near Qum.
The actual chronology was that Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency about the non-operational Qum site on Sept. 21, four days before Obama joined with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in highlighting its existence.
At the time, the Obama administration spun Iran’s earlier disclosure of the Qum facility as having been prompted by Tehran’s awareness that the United States was onto the plant’s existence, but there was no independent evidence of that and the undisputed fact is that Iran disclosed the facility’s existence before Obama’s revelation.
Yet, the Times has now altered the chronology to put Obama’s announcement first, and thus cast Iran into a more sinister light.
Who’s the Victim?
The Times’ biased approach toward the Iranian nuclear issue is underscored further by the Times’ refusal to mention that the presumed “victim” in this story, Israel, possesses one of the world’s most sophisticated nuclear arsenals yet has neither publicly admitted that it has nukes nor signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Indeed, it is the fact that Iran is a treaty signatory — and renounces any interest in building a nuclear bomb — that is the basis for IAEA inspections of its facilities and for the legal requirement that it disclose new facilities, such as the one at Qum.
But the through-the-looking-glass quality of the Times coverage is that it portrays Israel as the “victim,” although it is a rogue nuclear-weapons state and refuses to abide by international inspections or other safeguards, restrictions that Iran accepts.
Even more remarkable, Israel is openly contemplating bombing Iran, an act that supposedly would be justified by Israel’s assertion that a possible Iranian nuclear bomb would represent “an existential threat” to Israel.
It is true that some Iranian leaders favor a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian impasse, i.e. making the territory of Israel and the West Bank into a non-religious state where both Jews and Arabs would live as equals. Israel also has cited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s wish that the “Jewish state” would disappear.
This claim of an “existential threat,” in turn, has become the rationale for Israel openly plotting to bomb Iran and its nuclear facilities.
On March 28, David Sanger wrote a “Week in Review” story about the unabashed discussions underway in Tel Aviv and Washington about the geopolitical consequences of attacking Iran, doing what Sen. John McCain once playfully sang about as “bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran.”
Sanger’s article noted that in 2008, “the Israelis secretly asked the Bush administration for the equipment and overflight rights they might need some day to strike Iran’s … nuclear sites. They were turned down, but the request added urgency to the question: Would Israel take the risk of a strike? And if so, what would follow?
“Now that parlor game question has turned into more formal war games simulations. The [U.S.] government’s own simulations are classified, but the Saban Center for Middle East Policy [a neoconservative adjunct] at the Brookings Institution created its own in December.”
The war game, directed by Kenneth M. Pollack, assumed that Israel would attack Iran without notifying the Obama administration, which would then demand that Israel halt the bombing even as Washington beefed up its own military forces in the Persian Gulf.
As the war game played out, Iran would retaliate against both Israeli targets and Saudi oil fields, spiking oil prices and pushing the United States toward the brink of its own attacks to destroy Iran’s military capability to disrupt oil supplies. At that point – a hypothetical eight days into the conflict – the war game ended.
It would seem that if the Times truly wanted to provide an objective assessment of the Iranian nuclear issue – including Tehran’s possible motives for wanting a nuclear bomb – the Times would routinely make reference to the region’s rogue nuclear states of Israel, India and Pakistan.
That the Times typically ignores that key fact suggests the Times sees its journalism on Iran as similar to its credulous reporting about Iraq’s non-existent WMD in 2002-03, more as propaganda than as a fair-minded presentation of the relevant facts.
US ‘fabricated documents’ in pursuit of Iranian engineer
Press TV – April 2, 2010
The US authorities have been accused of presenting fabricated documents to French courts to support their demand for extradition of an Iranian engineer, as his court postpones deciding his fate for the sixth time.
Majid Kakavand, 37, was arrested in France in March 2009, at the request of US authorities, as he was returning to Iran after a short holiday in France.
The United States requested his extradition to stand trial for allegedly breaching US embargo against Iran.
He is alleged to have purchased a number of items that may have been of US origin through a Malaysian company, while residing in Iran.
In order for an extradition request to be approved, French courts must decide whether the alleged acts of Kakavand would have violated French law, had they occurred in France. This prerequisite is known as “dual criminality.”
Having detained Kakavand, the French courts have repeatedly requested further information from the US Department of Justice regarding the allegations against the Iranian.
However, since the US failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove the existence of dual criminality, the judge asked for expert advice from France’s “General Delegation for Ordnance” (DGA), which is the body responsible for weapons development and evaluations, and the country’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). After evaluating the electronic components that Kakavand is alleged to have imported into Iran, both agencies declared that the goods could not be used for military purposes as dual-use technology. DGSE further advised that the case against the Iranian was weak and that he should be released.
Tehran has also highlighted Kakavand’s plight and has demanded his immediate release. On March 16, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said: “The innocence of (Majid) Kakavand is evident and we urge France not to be trapped in American propaganda and release him.”
Now, according to Kakavand’s French lawyers, it appears that, in their enthusiasm for his extradition, the US authorities have stepped over the legal line and have used forged documents to try to sway the French court to hand him over.
Advocate Diane Francois says that some of the documents included “email copies with attachments that did not have corresponding dates,” concluding that the documents were falsified, reported Expatica.com on March 31.
“We will ask San Francisco prosecutors to open a federal investigation of the documents provided by the US authorities,” she said.
Kakavand too denies that he did anything illegal. Additionally, legal experts believe that, as the US embargos against Iran are unilateral, they have no legal force outside the territory of the US, especially when applied extraterritorially, such as has been applied to Kakavand, who is alleged to have traded in US-origin goods outside of the US.
The European Union has repeatedly rejected extraterritorial enforcement of US embargos on its territory.
Nevertheless, this is not the only time that the US has pursued Iranians across the world on similar spurious charges. In 2006, they had Jamshid Ghassemi arrested in Thailand and in 2007 Yousef Boushvash was detained in Hong Kong; both for alleged breaches of extraterritorial US embargo.
Both were released by respective authorities, once it became clear that the US demand for their extradition had no legal basis.
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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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