Last week, Congress finally got around to finalizing the 2011 budget, which included a record-breaking appropriation of $3 billion in military aid to Israel (not including an additional $415 million in Pentagon funding for joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense projects).This money was the third installment of a ten-year Memorandum of Understanding signed by the United States and Israel to provide Israel with $30 billion in U.S. military aid from 2009-2018, an annual average increase of 25% over previous levels.
It is well-known that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid and that U.S. weapons provided to Israel make the United States intricately, deeply, and comprehensively complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians. However, until now, the extent of U.S. weapons transferred to Israel and the direct relationship between these weapons and Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians has been difficult to detail.
Not any longer. To coincide with Tax Day, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation launched a new website: How Many Weapons to Israel? to catalogue and quantify the types, values, and quantities of U.S. weapons transferred to Israel between 2000-2009. Even for someone like myself who works everyday to challenge U.S. military aid to Israel and follows the issue closely, the results of our research are eye-popping. The sheer magnitude of weapons given to Israel is staggering; the devastation caused to Palestinians by these weapons is heart-breaking. Our research shows that during the past decade, the United States provided Israel with more than 670 million weapons and related equipment, valued at nearly $19 billion, through three major weapons transfer programs. In our database, we detail more than 500 different weapons categories, along with the value and quantity of each type of weapon transferred to Israel.
How Many Weapons to Israel? paints a disturbing picture of the extent to which the United States is saturating Israel with weapons. Take just one example: in the last three years alone, the United States has provided Israel with enough ammunition (47 million pieces) to kill every Palestinian in the Occupied Territories more than ten times over! What a truly frightening thought.
If Israel were using these weapons for their intended purpose under U.S. law, which is restricted to “legitimate self-defense” and “internal security,” then perhaps these weapons transfers would raise only fiscal concerns. However, How Many Weapons to Israel? also makes clear the moral and political implications of arming Israel.
From September 2000-December 2009, roughly the same period during which the United States transferred these weapons to Israel, the Israeli military killed at least 2,969 Palestinians who took no part in hostilities, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. How Many Weapons to Israel? demonstrates the direct correlation between Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians and types of weapons provided to it by the United States. Returning to the example of ammunition, the database reveals that Israel killed 1,931 unarmed Palestinians, including 735 children, with small arms gunfire.
The US Campaign launched this website, as part of its ongoing organizing campaign to end U.S. military aid to Israel, to provide incontrovertible and irrefutable evidence that Israel is misusing U.S. weapons to commit grave human rights abuses against Palestinians in violation of U.S. and international law.
With easy-to-use slideshows and spreadsheets, the US Campaign intends for How Many Weapons to Israel?to be used by activists to raise awareness about the moral and political costs of arming Israel with our tax dollars.
This new website is designed as a complement to our sister website How Much Military Aid to Israel? which reveals the budgetary trade-offs involved in arming Israel. On that website, viewers can use our interactive map to find out how much money their city, county, Congressional district, and state provide in weapons to Israel, and which unmet social needs could be funded instead with this money.
Both websites are designed as interactive tools for activists to use in their communities to educate people about the financial, moral, and political costs of transferring weapons to Israel. Activists can also sign up to receive an organizing packet from the US Campaign to be a part of our ongoing campaign to end U.S. military aid to Israel.
And, after viewing these websites, if you are as outraged at this misuse of our taxes as I am, then you can join with me in “offsetting” the estimated $21.59 you just gave Uncle Sam for weapons to Israel this year by making a tax-deductible contribution to support the work of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
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Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 350 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Palestine/Israel to support human rights, international law, and equality. He is a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service.
April 20, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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In his powerful 2006 book titled, “The Power of Israel in the United States,” James Petras explained the enormous Jewish Lobby influence on US Middle East policies. Often harming American interests, they’re pursued anyway because of its grassroots and high-level control over government, business leaders, academia, the clergy and mass media since at least the 1960s.
As a result, anyone challenging Israeli policy risks being intimidated, blackmailed, smeared, pressured, removed from positions of authority, or called a national security or terrorist threat, leaving them vulnerable to unprincipled ostracization, persecution or worse.
Among America’s 52 Conference of Major American Jewish Organization(s) (CPMAJO), the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is the oldest, founded in 1897.
Established by B’nai Brith in 1913, perhaps the Anti-Definition League is best known.
However, in terms of its influence over US Middle East policies, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) stands out. Calling itself “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby,” it’s represented Israeli interests since founded in 1953, then incorporated in 1963 as a division of the American Zionist Council (AZC), its precursor.
In 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered AZC to register as the foreign agent of the Jewish Agency for Israel (responsible for Israeli immigration) under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). In 1963, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigated AZC’s stealth Jewish Agency funding. Weeks later, AIPAC was incorporated, replaced AZC, was later granted tax exempt status retroactive to 1953, refuses to register as an foreign Israeli agent, and gets away with it.
Today, masquerading as a domestic lobby, it’s a stealth foreign Israeli agent, supporting policies harming US interests. Calling itself “America’s leading pro-Israeli lobby,” its web site says it “works with both Democratic and Republican political leaders to enact public policy that strengthens the vital US-Israel relationship.”
In fact, functioning as a virtual fifth column, it’s poisoned the body politic since exempted from operating lawfully. As a result, as part of the destructive Israeli Lobby, it has virtual veto power over war and peace, trade and investment, multi-billion dollar arms sales, and all Middle East policies under Democrat and Republican administrations alike.
Ralph Nader calls Washington corporate occupied territory. It’s also Israeli Lobby-controlled, including AIPAC, assuring what Israel wants, it gets, but not without independent voices denouncing its poisonous influence.
Included are Jewish organizations against Zionism, a topic addressed in a previous article, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/12/jews-against-zionism.html
It discussed Zionism’s hidden history, as well as opposition groups, including:
— True Torah Jews Against Zionism;
— Not In My Name;
— Jewish Voice for Peace;
— Brit Tzedek V’Shalom;
— Tikkun;
— Satmar;
— Jews Against Racist Zionism; and
— Neturei Karta International.
With like-minded organizations and individuals, they oppose a racist, extremist, undemocratic, militant ideology, relying on belligerence, occupation, repression and dispossession, contrary to core Judaic dogma, principles and tradition. They believe it harms all Jews worldwide, and that peace, reconciliation, and co-existence aren’t possible until it’s repudiated and rejected.
Confronting AIPAC
The Anti-AIPAC Group’s Facebook page calls itself:
“against Zionist lobbying installed in the United States, in particular linked to AIPAC….(an organization) constitut(ing) a danger to peace in the world because it imposes its goals (ahead) of the shared interest(s) of America….”
Founded in 1951, the American Friends of the Middle East remains an active anti-Israeli lobby.
Founded in 1980, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) calls itself the nation’s largest Arab-American grassroots civil rights organization. According to the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, a pro-Israeli front group, ADC is “very active (in) anti-Israeli political causes.”
Founded in 1982, the Council for the National Interest (CNI) “encourage(s) and promote(s) a US foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values, protects our national interests, and contributes to a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” CNI aims “to restore a political environment in America in which voters and their elected officials are free from the undue influence and pressure of foreign countries and their partisans.”
That position got CNI labeled an anti-Israeli lobby.
An earlier article on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) can be accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/10/anti-defamation-league-demagoguery-and.html
It says “hundreds of groups….organize and participate in various anti-Israeli activities,” falsely claiming they spread propaganda and don’t promote peace.
ADL’s top 10 include:
(1) Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)
Formed post-9/11, it’s been activist against war, imperialism, bigotry, and represents other issues, including civil and human rights, and support for Palestinian equity and justice.
(2) Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
It’s “committed to comprehensive public education on the rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands of origin, and to full restitution of all their confiscated and destroyed property,” according to international law.
(3) Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
In defending civil liberties, freedom of religion, diversity, tolerance, and democratic freedoms, it combats hate groups vilifying Islam and Muslims.
(4) Friends of Sabeel-North America (FOSNA)
It “promotes awareness and understanding” of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict “through educational programs for North American Christians….FOSNA seeks reconciliation between people of the Holy Land in a vision of peace based on principles of a just peace,” including “the urgency of ending US support for Israel’s illegal military occupation.”
(5) If Americans Knew (IAK)
Its mission is “to inform and educate the American public on issues of major significance that are unreported, underreported, or misreported in the American media.” It believes conflict resolution and justice depends on revealing truths, ones major US media sources suppress, supporting the worst of Israeli lawlessness.
(6) International Solidarity Movement (ISM)
A Palestinian-led initiative, it’s committed to resisting Israel’s occupation, oppression, domination, and apartheid through nonviolent, direct-action methods.
(7) Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)
It seeks equity, peace, security, and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike, through “grassroots organizing, education, advocacy, and media.” It’s the only US Jewish organization providing a voice for Jews and their allies, who believe that Middle East peace is only possible “through justice and full equality” for Jews and Muslims alike.
(8) Muslim American Society (MAS)
As a religious, charitable, social, cultural, and educational group, its mission is to “move people to strive for God, consciousness, liberty, and justice, and to convey Islam with utmost clarity.”
(9) Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
By “visualiz(ing) the Palestinian struggle,” it opposes apartheid and occupation through protests, memorials, and other ways, highlighting their plight against Israeli aggression and occupation.
(10) US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO)
It’s a “diverse coalition working for freedom from occupation and equal rights for all by challenging US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Based on human rights and international law, it seeks peace, justice, and conciliation by “chang(ing) the US role,” the essential way to do it.
Move Over AIPAC: Building a New US Middle East Policy Conference
Convening in Washington from May 21 – 24, coinciding with AIPAC’s annual meeting, it highlights a “time for a new foreign policy,” replacing AIPAC’s-controlled one. Access its web site for more information, including how to attend, through the following link:
http://www.moveoveraipac.org/about-us/
Over 50 peace and justice groups are participating sponsors, “bring(ing together) activists and concerned citizens from around the country to learn” about AIPAC’s destructive influence on US Middle East policy, and “how to strengthen an alternative that respects the rights of all people in the region.”
Organizational Endorsers and Partners include:
— American Jews for a Just Peace;
— American Friends Service Committee: Pacific Mountain Region;
— Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights;
— Build Bridges Not Walls;
— Citizens for Justice in the Middle East;
— Citizens for Palestinian Self-Determination;
— Coalition for Palestinian Rights;
— CODEPINK: Women for Peace;
— Global Exchange;
— If Americans Knew;
— Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions USA (ICHAD-USA);
— Middle East Children’s Alliance;
— Rachael Corrie Foundation;
— Stop AIPAC;
— United for Peace and Justice; and
— dozens more.
Speakers include, Helen Thomas, Ralph Nader, Ali Abunimah, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Phyllis Bennis, former Senator James Abourezk, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Laila El Haddad, Anna Baltzer, and many others.
A Final Comment
AIPAC is a malignancy in America, lobbying for:
— regional wars and occupation;
— Gaza’s siege;
— Palestinian persecution, exploitation, disempowerment, and isolation; denying them their fundamental guaranteed rights under international law;
— Israeli’s Apartheid Wall;
— dispossession and illegal settlements;
— neutralizing Israel’s adversaries;
— subsidizing Israel lavishly with annual billions of dollars and latest weapons and technology; and
— overall placing Israel’s interests over America’s, a scandalous agenda nearly the entire Congress and every administration endorse.
Returning America’s agenda to sanity starts with expunging this corrupting influence, replacing it with a new moral ethic for peace, reconciliation, co-existence, and equal respect for the rights of everyone abroad and at home.
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
April 19, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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True we are a Republic with elected president and members of both houses, Senate and House of Representatives (not House of Lords). However when it comes to the “people’s houses” there is no president, there is only a King, and the King is always the Israeli Prime Minister. Welcome to America’s Knesset. So far Israel has cost the US tax payers over $ Trillion ($1,000,000,000,000,) just imagine what this $ Trillion could do for our country, in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Montana, Michigan, Vermont and New Hampshire not to mention all the other states.
In two separate statements coming out of Tel-Aviv and Tel-Aviv West (Washington-DC) both the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and House Speaker John Boehner announced that Bibi Netanyahu is invited to speak before a Joint Session of Congress, an honor that is afforded to very few heads of state. For Netanyahu this will not be the first but his second time before a Joint Session, the first was on July 10, 1996. Bibi is the fourth Israeli prime minister invited to speak at the Joint Session of the American Knesset.
John Boehner who represents a poor and “working class district” much run down, can only hear the “cash register” as he announced through his spokesman “America and Israel are the closest of friends and allies, and we look forward to hearing the Prime Minister’s views on how we can continue working together for peace, freedom and security”.
Nancy Pelosi also an ardent and loyal Zionists seconded the statement of John Boehner as she “Looks forward to the Prime Minister’s address to the Joint Session during this critical time in history for the Middle East”.
For his part Bibi Netanyahu announced to his Likud members that his speech before the Joint Session of Congress will cover two fundamental issues and priorities for Israel stating “The two most important are, first of all, Palestinians recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and the second principle is real security arrangements on the ground”. Of course Netanyahu said nothing and will say nothing about ending the Jewish Occupation that began in 1967, will say nothing about the eviction and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, will say nothing about house eviction and house demolitions to make room for “Jewish Settlers” and will say nothing about the 600 “security checkpoints” with daily humiliations of Palestinians choking their freedom and economy. Only Israel can ask for things (Chosen People) but not the Palestinians, they can only accept what the Jews give them.
Of course Netanyahu knows he is at home in the American Knesset, with political support far more than he has in the Israeli Knesset where he is often hounded by the opposition, as opposed to the American Knesset where members of both houses will wait in line to kiss his ring if not his behind. In the words of Aluf Benn “they love him there or at least scared of the lobby that supports him”. Of course we all know that AIPAC, the American Jewish Party is the majority party in the American Knesset that counts on 90 Senators among its members and counting on some 300 members of the House as members also. The American Jewish Party is the true majority party in the American Congress with no apposition, and if there is an opposition, no one dares to speak up.
Netanyahu’s invitation to the Joint Session is orchestrated to thwart international efforts by the Palestinians to gain official recognition in the UN for a Palestinian State within 67 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital, an effort that will for sure be opposed by the American Knesset if not by the White House.
To preempt this effort, Netanyahu will most likely announce a limited deployment of the Occupation Army from the West Bank, a deployment similar to the one that took place in Gaza, making sure the areas evacuated by the Jewish Army are put under siege, increasing the number of security checkpoints. Of course there is never any talks of evacuating the settlements (Israel for sure will ask the American Knesset compensation exceeding $2 million dollars for each person evacuated and at least $5 million for each “trailer caravan” evacuated, making sure Israel milk the American tax payers as it expand settlements and as it evacuate “illegal settlements” and with the American Knesset more than happy to foot the bill for and on behalf of poor American tax payers who are held hostage by the American Jewish Party and its members in Congress.
Of course Netanyahu knows he is the Boss in the American Knesset and he wants Barack Obama to know that very well. When it comes to the American Knesset, it is Bibi, the Israeli Prime Minister and not the President of the United States that has a say so.
Obama who is often being accused by Israelis and their partners in the US and among Zionist and Christian Evangelical circles as Anti-Israeli and Anti-Semite and lacking birth credential to become the president of the United State, notwithstanding that his entire Middle East team is made up of Israeli loyalists if not agents. And as president has the most “Zionists” in his cabinet and his inner circles of advisers.
It is this close circle of Zionists that made it impossible for Barack Obama to deliver on his promise in Cairo to bring about peace, and it is this close circle of Israel loyalists that has backtracked on the issue of settlements, offering Israel tens of billions to stop moving few trailer caravans with one F-35 for each Israeli caravan removed from the West Bank.
Don’t worry about Barack Obama, he does not have what it takes to bring about peace in the Middle East based on a two state solution one is Israel and the other is Palestine within 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. No one sitting in the White House dares to announce such principle and continues to remain president of the United States for 24 hours, and President Obama knows that too.
That is why the Palestinian leadership must and could not count on the US supporting their demands to the UN General Assembly and for sure the US will not dare even abstain and will for sure “Veto” such a resolution. It vetoed the UN Security Council Resolution calling for an end to the Israeli settlements, and does Ramallah really think that Washington with its American Knesset could support an independent free state in Palestine? We all must remember, the US was never a fair and honest broker, and the US was never fully committed to Israel ending its Occupation that began in 1967, and the US not only gives political support to Israel at the UN it also gives it money and weapons to keep its occupation and to use such weapons to kill and murder innocent Palestinians as it did in its War on Gaza and as it continues to use American weapons and planes to bomb Palestinians on a daily basis. As long as there is an American Knesset in Washington forget about the US being a partner in any peace in the Middle East. The US must first be free from Israel before it can bring freedom to the Palestinians.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sami Jamil Jadallah is born in the Palestinian city of El-Bireh (presently under Israeli Military and Settlers Occupation). Immigrated to the US in 62. After graduating from high school in Gary, Indiana was drafted into the US Army (66-68) received the Leadership Award from the US 6th Army NCO Academy in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Five of us brothers were in US military service about the same time (Nabil-Army), (Lutfi-Marines), (Sam-Army) and (Taiseer-Marines) with two nephews presently with US Army. Graduated from …Read Full Bio
April 18, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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The Israeli Prime Minister has thanked Washington for approving new military aid to Tel Aviv at a time when Americans are protesting at the US government’s military spending.
Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that the move is further evidence of the close friendship between Israel and the US.
Congress passed a budget bill authorizing military aid to Israel this week, AFP reported.
The stipulation gives an additional USD 205 million in aid to Israel for the acquisition of four new batteries of the Iron Dome missile system.
Two batteries, each holding twenty missiles, were deployed last week during Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.
Last week, thousands of peace, labor and community activists took to the streets of New York to voice concerns over the funding of wars abroad. They expressed their concern over the struggling US economy and reduction in social programs.
Since 2007 Washington has been giving Tel Aviv USD three-billion in aid every year. The money is spent almost entirely on purchasing American weapons as part of a ten-year agreement.
The US Congress Office for Technology Assessment says Israel, the largest recipient of US aid since World War II, has undeclared chemical weapons and an offensive biological warfare program.
Tel-Aviv’s nuclear program is described as an open secret. Israel is believed to be the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East with an arsenal bigger than that of Britain or France.
April 17, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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Lobbification is a word I have just coined for the corruptive process that bends politicians to the will of special interests, that is, to the will of lobbies. The result of lobbification can be seen in the stilted and fawning behaviour of the lobbified political brain. Politicians with lobbified brains become the obedient instruments of the lobbies which have captured their political souls. Below are a few examples of the results of lobbification.
An example from the House of Representatives
The majority of the politicians who sit on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee are victims of lobbification. Among the major lobbies that have, over the decades, carried out this corrupting process are the Zionist organizations in their various Jewish and Christian manifestations. In their present state, the lobbified minds of these committee members, so influential in the foreign policy formulation process of our country, are utterly incapable of questioning, much less defying, the hypnotic power of either American Zionists or the Israelis. Here is just one illustration of the resulting mental paralysis.
On Tuesday 5 April 2011 three Israelis appeared before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two were retired Israeli armed forces generals and one was Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs. Gold is one of those transplanted Americans who have chosen careers as Israeli spokesmen. (As an aside, he is also an Inspector Clouseau look alike.) He served as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and political advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Among other dubious accomplishments, it was Gold who convinced the Clinton administration not to press Israel on the issue of the Golan Heights. The Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once described him as “simply hatred’s scribe”. Here is some of what Gold and his fellow Israelis told the Foreign Affairs Committee:
1. Israel is confronting a new diplomatic assault that could well strip it of territorial defences in the West Bank that have provided for its security for over 40 years…”
2. “The 1993 Oslo agreements envisioned a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with borders to be decided by the parties themselves and not imposed by international coalitions or by unilateral acts.”
3. “Traditional US policy recognized that Israel is not expected to withdrew from all territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War. This was enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242…”
4. “…the entire Middle East is engulfed in flames. Just as Israel faces complete strategic uncertainty … it is being asked to acquiesce to unprecedented concessions that could put its very future at risk.” Therefore, “…to agree to a full withdrawal from the West Bank and to acquiesce to the loss of defensible borders pose an unacceptable risk for the Jewish state.”
During this lament our Congressional Representatives sat there, in their collective lobbified frame of mind, and swallowed it all in as if it were gospel. This was completely predictable. The Foreign Affairs Committee is chaired by Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, an ardent anti-Castro Cuban American who has spent her political life doing two things: first, distorting our foreign policy toward Cuba so that no vestige of national interest can be found therein, and second, promoting a tactical alliance between reactionary Cuban American groups and the Zionists. Ros-Lehtinen has recently confirmed her lobbified status by demanding that Congress “make it US policy to demand that the UN General Assembly revoke and repudiate the Goldstone Report“. She did this despite the fact that three of the four signatories of the report have avowed its accuracy and continued relevance. The senior Democratic Party member on the committee is Howard Berman who has never been able to figure out who he should represent more diligently, his California district constituents or Israel.
Both these leading committee members clearly suffer from lobbification and most of the other standing members also display this condition to one extent or another. As a result, when it came to the discussion that followed the Israelis’ presentation, all the possible probing questions remained unasked. Here are some of them, figuratively addressed to Ambassador Dore, and others:
1. What do you mean by “diplomatic assault”, “imposed by international coalitions”, and “unilateral acts”? Do you mean the rather feeble US and European suggestion that your country negotiate in good faith and cease its own series of illegal unilateral acts such as the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem?
2. And how is it that you are now telling us that, for the last 40 years, your “territorial defences” have made you secure? For the past 40 years you have been telling us how insecure you are! Are we to understand that your constant claim of insecurity was a gross exaggeration? Perhaps nothing more than an addictive frame of mind? Or has it been just a facade behind which you carry on expansion in violation of international law?
3. Why do you bring up the Oslo accords? For the last few decades you have been telling us that they are dead letters, irrelevant to current circumstances. You seem to trot them out when they serve your purposes and cast them into oblivion when they do not. Also, are you not aware that in the past your country has violated these accords at will?
4. Is Israel’s determined refusal to negotiate rational concessions really a function of the assertion that the “entire Middle East” is allegedly “engulfed in flames”? If we simply go back to a period when there was no “complete strategic uncertainty” we find that Israel’s position on compromise was exactly the same as it is today. So isn’t this new concern really a contrived excuse to justify your country’s refusal to come to just and fair settlement with the Palestinians?
5. Why are you bringing up the possibility of “full withdrawal” from the West Bank as if it was a spectre gazing over your shoulder? When is the last time the US government or the European Union demanded this of you? Is not the present understanding of the final character of borders based upon the 1967 Green Line one that includes mutually agreed upon and equitable land swaps? Is not this the recognized contemporary understanding of UN Resolution 242?
6. And what is this business of “defensible borders”? When was the last time your country’s borders proved indefensible to conventional military attack? Isn’t it true that, even without the West Bank, your borders have never been seriously crossed by such forces? Your vulnerability lies in your inability to counter guerrilla and terrorist attacks, and to prevent missile penetration. Ultimate security against these threats does not rest in a policy of colonial expansion but rather in an equitable peace agreement.
What a memorable and actually useful committee meeting it would have been if these or similar questions had been posed. But alas, the lobbified brain functions something like Israel’s apartheid wall. Meaningful questions about Israel and doubts about the real consequences of Zionism cannot easily get over or around the nine-metre-high conditioning that is lobbification.
An example from the US Senate
The on-line magazine Politico tells us that “even as they push for huge cuts, 11 freshman GOP [Grand Old Party – the US Republican Party] senators say the US must continue to provide foreign aid to its strongest ally in the Middle East: Israel”.
In a letter to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) the security conscious 11 stated, “as we work to reduce wasteful government spending … we must continue to prioritize the safety of our nation and the security of our allies, including Israel”.
Only the thoroughly lobbified brain can advocate cutting 500 million dollars from federal programmes for health and nutrition for women, infants and children and simultaneously insist on continuing to give Israel 3 billion dollars a year – and, do so in the name of “prioritizing the safety of our nation”!
The senator who organized the letter to McConnell is Marco Rubio of Florida (a male version of Ros-Lehtinen) and he sits on what committee? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of course. His lobbified state apparently makes it impossible for him to see the connection between our open-ended support of Israel, Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and our nation’s insecurity. It should come as no surprise that Senator Rubio has said that the US must “stand with Israel without equivocation or hesitation” and cease pressuring Israel over its settlement policies.
Conclusion
As the approximately 206.8 million adult Americans go about their daily lives most probably do not realize that they, or at least the approximately 57 per cent who bother to vote in federal elections, have placed into positions of power individuals who have been corrupted by lobby power. This is due to the fact that most Americans do not understand and/or pay attention to how their own political system works. Few and far between are the school “civics” courses that, in theory, explain its intricacies. And, once the Republicans get done gutting the education budgets, those remaining courses will most likely disappear.
Ignorance is not bliss. It is often the prelude to sudden destruction. It is not bliss to be ignorant of the corruption that is undermining your government . Lobbification is synonymous with just that – a dangerous form of political corruption. Our political system is riddled with it. It has been so for a long time and the situation is not improving.
This condition has recently manifested itself in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Ohio and a host of other states in the form of feverish acts of self-destruction. And, as we have seen, Congress has no immunity. Yet the citizenry goes blissfully about its business.
To quote the immortal Samuel Johnson, “Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2001, p. 411, No. 19).
Perhaps it is so.
April 17, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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Simon Schama has a slavering interview with Tzipi Livni, the champion of Gaza, at the Financial Times. Says my tipster: go straight to the last paragraph, where you’ll see she “champions” a new “international standard” for elections–which would outlaw “in Muslim countries” anyone using “democratic means” to “overthrow democracies.” It is an implicit reference to Muslim Brotherhood in the previous paragraph. I suppose Israel will now define democracy for the world.
That, she explains, is the true conflict at the heart of the Middle East, one even bigger than the enmity of Jew and Arab: the genuinely irreconcilable clash between theocratic and autocratic regimes, and liberal democracies. Right now, and for a little time perhaps, an Israeli party of reason might be able to make the peace with its Palestinian counterpart. Evidently there has been something like a meeting of minds across the “security fence”. But not forever. No one knows which side – Islamic militancy or democratic secularism – will emerge from the Arab spring. But that uncertainty only makes the need for an early settlement more, not less, pressing.
Not least because Israel, too, has a domestic cultural conflict on its hands that is undoing assumptions about what kind of Jewishness the Jewish state is supposed to embody. Between the Jerusalem ultra-orthodox Haredim, for whom the only true Jewish state is one based on rigid obedience to halacha, the precepts of the religion, and those whose Israel is pluralist and secular, there is as wide a gulf as between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Tweeters of Tahrir Square. The two crises – of the outer borders of the Jewish state and its inner identity – Livni sees as organically connected. It says something about her forthrightness as well as her optimism that Livni wants a written Israeli constitution that would make a clear demarcation between synagogue and state.But then she is a great believer in the strength of principle, championing an international code of practice to govern elections in newly born democracies. Recalling that in Israel the expulsionist Kach party was disbarred from participating in elections, she wants the same principle to apply to parties in Muslim countries that use democratic means to overthrow democracy. Hitler, she remembers, came to power through the ballot box. “This would not be patronising or imperialist,” she says. “They can all do what they like. But if they want to participate in an international community they should abide by those conventions.”
April 16, 2011
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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The U.S. establishment, including the corporate media, have been worried about the people’s uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa because, in part, of what it might mean for Israel, as Phil Weiss pointed out last January. Brian Williams interviewed Richard Engel, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, last night to talk about the Arab revolts, and it’s one more example of the Israeli filter that the establishment views the Middle East through. (Hat tip to As’ad AbuKhalil at his indispensable Angry Arab blog.)
Williams asked: “Where does this all end?” Engel’s response speaks volumes:
This whole movement in the Middle East–I’m worried about it, because while people in the region deserve more rights, and they want more rights, and they’re embracing more of the will of the Arab street, well, the will of the Arab street is also ferociously anti-Israel, against Israel. And there’s many people who believe that if you empower the Arab street, and the Arab street wants to see a war or more justice for the Palestinians, that down the road, three to five years, this could lead to a major war with Israel. It could also force a negotiated settlement. But I think over time, this thing ends in Jerusalem
April 15, 2011
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Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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Iraqi scientists and doctors are increasingly expressing alarm about threats to their lives as the numbers targeted in killings rise while a weak government seems unable to provide adequate security.
The latest victim in the spree of apparently targeted killings was Zaid Abdul Mun’im, head of research of the molecular department at al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. He died after a bomb went off in his car on April 3.
Prior to his death, Mohammed Alwan, a prominent Baghdadi surgeon and the dean of faculty of medicine of the same university, was assassinated on March 29.
Neither of the men had any known political affiliations.
“A government that cannot protect its people, does not deserve to be a government,” said Hikmat Jamil, head of the self-funded group International Society of Iraqi Scientists, and a professor of medicine at the Wayne State University in Michigan.
“We have sent letters to al-Mustansiriya University and the government condemning the assassination of Dr. Mun’im,” he told alarabiya.net.
The British newspaper The Independent placed the death toll of Iraqi academics at more than 470 by the end of 2006.
Reports from the Iraqi Physicians Union said that more than 500 of Iraq’s leading medical professionals have been assassinated and more than 7,000 have been forced to leave the country after receiving death threats.
Analysts have offered many theories as to why physicians and academics have been targeted, but nothing has been substantiated. Some point the finger at Israeli intelligence services. Others believe the U.S. is aware of the planned killings and silently endorses them.
“The [incidents of targeted killings] seem to be continuing since 2003, and I don’t think it will stop in the near future,” said Iyad al-Zamily, founder and editor-in-chief of the Iraqi cultural website, Kitabat.com, based in Germany.
“Some of the academics were forced to seek protection by militias and political parties and to change their political views to blend in, since the government is not capable of protecting them,” he added.
Mr. al-Zamily said he believes there are solutions to combat these target killings, but they get lost amid the political divisiveness which ends up exacerbating security problems.
While the Iraqi parliament is mulling laws to protect Iraqi physicians, them carrying a weapon being the latest, al-Zamily said “all Iraqis are entitled to protection, as everyone is [a target].”
Adil E. Shamoo, an Iraqi-American who is a senior analyst for the think tank Foreign Policy In Focus in Washington and author of Who Assassinated Iraqi Academics? said: “The evidence so far is sufficient to warrant a thorough investigation by an independent body. Iraqis, Americans, and the world need to know the truth.”
The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, and the U.S. have called on the Obama Administration to “open a serious and transparent investigation” into possible “crimes against humanity.”
Before the 2003 toppling of its then-president Saddam Hussein, Iraq was known for its healthcare. Technologically, its facilities were more advanced than most other Middle East countries. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion, students in the region flocked to Baghdad’s universities and other educational institutions.
(Dina Al Shibeeb of Al Arabiya, can be reached via email at: dina.ibrahim@mbc.net)
April 10, 2011
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Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes, Wars for Israel |
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Majed: I have mixed feelings about the speech. On one hand, it wasn’t anywhere near the unrealistic expectations some officials alluded to, namely Bouthaina and Sharaa. But on the other hand, the speech was a display of strength and confidence, following a strong show of support by the Syrian people for the President a day earlier. As much as I would like to see reforms, doing so immediately following this suspicious and unpopular uprising could be interpreted as a sign of weakness that could weaken Syria’s resolve and embolden its enemies. There is no denying that the President is popular in Syria and throughout most of the Arab world; so why should he not capitalize on his popularity and turn this into an opportunity to consolidate and regroup. Why should he appease those with questionable agendas who are looking to even the score and embarrass Syria? I still think the President is a reformist. He has been slowly introducing economic reforms, and will, in due time, bring in gradual political reforms, perhaps starting this year. However, he is not willing to do it under pressure, or be black mailed into it by Syria’s enemies who are obviously trying to rob Syria out of its political gains from the recent revolutions in the “moderate Arab” camp who sided with Israel and the U.S against Syria and the Palestinian cause. Let’s face it, Syria has been vindicated since the Arab uprising, as those “moderate Arabs” and their masters suffered unprecedented humiliation. By giving in under the current environment, Syria will look indistinguishable from those who sold out to Israel and U.S, thus greatly diluting its hard earned gains.
Paul: Let me understand one thing: what could one have really expected Bashar to say? That from today on Syria is a democratic country? That people will obey traffic laws? That corruption will be over in a pass of magic? That the price of arghile will be lowered? In the circumstances I think he acted in the best possible way. Not in desperation but recognizing that change is needed. If he really understands where the wind is blowing he’ll do it slowly but surely. If not it will happen much faster and painfully.
Nabu: The people of Syria want a defiant leader, a leader with balls and that’s the image he showed in the speech. The people of Syria want a leader that doesn’t order things twice, not a weak and that’s the image he showed in the speech. Today’s speech was a gamble, I will admit. A gamble because the minority of the people who are not scared to say things they think will not like it and they’ll get again to the street. But the reaction will be strong and that’s the image he now wants to show on the ground. The govt knows it’s coming, and it will tackle it. The liberty seekers will be cornered everywhere just like he cornered them in Hama. Whatever he said, he is backed for every word he mentioned inside and outside Syria. He thought about it, he took his time and he thinks this is the best for the long run for him, his image, his community and for Syria.
Talib: I thank Mr. President, Dr. for his care and genuine feelings when he talked about the unity of the Syrian people and when he thanked us for doing our duty and focusing on the importance of the wisdom of the people in rejecting the foreign conspiracies.
Zeina: President Assad said: “The Blood that was spilled was Syrian blood. We all care about it. Those victims are our brothers. Their parents are our parents. And we should find the reasons behind the killings and those who killed them.”
Aamer: A thousand congratulations. A thousand thanks to God, and thousands of congratulations for our big victory over the campaigns of destruction and corruption.
Equus: For all who keeps lingering about the emergency law. Look at the Egyptians..they toppled Mubarak on Feb. 11th and YET the emergency law is NOT lift with no specific date in sight despite the extreme pressure from the US. So why the media wants Assad to lift his in 24 hours.
March 31, 2011
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Civil Liberties, Economics, Wars for Israel |
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“If Tunisia can move toward democracy, Algerians and Egyptians and even Libyans will wonder why they cannot. This kind of thing may catch on.” – Elliott Abrams, January 7, 2011
Degenerate globalist co-conspirator Elliot Abrams, has been consistently supporting the recent conflagration throughout the Arab world and is pushing for ever-expanding US meddling in the region. In his recent piece, featured in the Washington Post titled “Ridding Syria of a Despot,” he fleshes out what is a fairly predictable plan of action already taking shape against the Bush-era “Axis of Evil” member.
Elliot Abrams is a member of the corporate-financier Council on Foreign Relations, a Project for a New American Century signatory, and former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush. He was convicted for his involvement in the Iran-Contra conspiracy and promptly pardoned by George Bush Sr. He would later go on to be implicated for his involvement in the 2002 Venezuela coup attempt against Hugo Chavez. His history of betraying and disgracing his country, and getting away with it, is probably why he feels perfectly comfortable making broad, sweeping threats toward entire nations today.
Elliot Abrams recently issued a personal threat to Libya’s Qadaffi and his intelligence chief, stating that they would both meet the “same fate as Saddam Hussein” if any American is attacked in the wake of increasing US threats and actions against Libya. He also had weighed in on Egypt in his piece “Less ‘Engagement,’ More Democracy” in the New York Times. In this piece he criticizes the current policy of engaging as equals with nations he deems as repressive regimes and calls for a revisit to George Bush’s “freedom agenda.” In other words – the export of “democracy” that has brought America the trillion dollar military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya at the cost of thousands of US soldiers’ lives and the lives of millions of foreigners killed, maimed, or displaced.
It should be no surprise then that Abrams, who has never shouldered a rifle for his nation himself, is more than eager to move on to Syria with a myriad of aggressive attacks on its sovereignty prepared and ready in hand.
Abrams calls on the White House and Congress to condemn Syria, in particular the Assad government. He suggests that Syria be immediately brought before the UN Security Council, who just recently finished extra-legally ordaining the war with Libya. The Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court are also mentioned as possible avenues to pressure Assad and the Syrian government.
Regarding the newly US-reordered Tunisia and Egypt, Abrams suggests they convene the Arab League and expell Syria as a member, as he claims they just did to Libya. Abrams’ suggestion echos fellow globalist policy wonk Kenneth Pollack’s proposal in his Brookings Institute report, “Bifurcating the Middle East.” Bifurcate, meaning to “divide,” indicates the classic gambit of divide and conquer is in play. Pollack, like Abrams, suggests that the “Arab street” after being “reformed” be rallied against states like Libya, Syria, and of course, Iran.
Abrams also suggests that Europe begin acting against Syria. Nicolas Sarkozy of France seems to have gotten the memo and is already making lofty threats toward Syria, including threats of military action, citing the ongoing atrocity in Libya as a stern warning for other Arab nations to consider. Sanctions are also being pushed by Abrams, but to what extent the Europeans are willing to carry them out remains to be seen.
Finally, Abrams suggests that the US pull its ambassador from Syria, reiterating his belief that it was a mistake in the first place to show this token sign of mutual respect for the sovereign nation. He concludes with a breathtakingly absurd display of patriotism and propaganda by stating, “Our principles alone should lead us to this position, but the memory of thousands of American soldiers killed in Iraq with the help of the Assad regime demands that we do all we can to help the Syrian people free themselves of that evil dictatorship.” And ‘help’ the US is doing, with the entire opposition being funded, defended, supported, and even partially based out of the United States and England.
Strange that Abrams has implicated Assad as complicit in killing US troops in Iraq, when Abrams himself and his “Neo-Con” cabal have hands-down done more to send US troops off to their needless deaths with their willful lying regarding WMD’s, than any Arab with a Kalashnikov. Also interesting, considering his statement, is Abrams’ support for the armed campaign in Libya, where the US is currently providing air support and arms for Al Qaeda linked rebels who themselves have sent fighters to Iraq to kill American troops, on record.
Of course, Abrams is writing for the impressionable readership of the Washington Post, so this blinding hypocrisy is most likely fodder strictly for the public’s consumption. However, sweeping aside the propaganda, we see a very real strategy already beginning to play out in regards to Syria. Let us remember that this is already a plan in motion, and recognize the surprise displayed by our feckless “leadership” as the poorly-feigned act that it is.
March 29, 2011
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Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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In response to the youth of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank rising up on March 14 and 15 to call for Palestinian political unity, both the leaders of Fatah and Hamas pledged to enter into talks aimed at reconciliation. Most recently, President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah “met with senior Hamas officials to discuss a proposed trip to Gaza and efforts to mend internal Palestinian division by forming a unity government,” the Ma’an News Agency reported.
With those talks came a spate of articles in the U.S. corporate media about the efforts at reconciliation. But in providing background on why these talks are happening, and the roots of the split between Hamas and Fatah, media outlets have deleted the crucial role the U.S. played in fomenting that split.
The New York Times explained that:
[Abbas had] not set foot in Gaza in the four years since a brief, bloody civil war there sent him and his Fatah colleagues fleeing to the West Bank…Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in early 2006, and, for a brief time, Fatah and Hamas had a national unity government. But tensions between them led to the fighting and a break in communications.
TIME magazine’s Karl Vick similarly put it this way:
Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Fatah party that governs the West Bank, has accepted an invitation from rival Hamas to travel to the Gaza Strip. The visit would be the first since Hamas drove Fatah operatives out of Gaza in 2007 — throwing some off from the tops of buildings — in the turmoil that followed Hamas’ surprise victory in elections months earlier.
All of these accounts don’t mention where the “turmoil” and the breakup of the short-lived national unity government between Hamas and Fatah following the 2006 elections came from. The expose of the Bush administration’s role in the split by David Rose in Vanity Fair remains essential reading for those wanting to understand the roots of the split.
Some crucial excerpts:
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza…
Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.
Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says…
Without this back story, why there is a bitter Hamas-Fatah split remains obscured. The least the U.S. media could do is provide a sentence explaining these facts.
March 28, 2011
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Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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Sen. Joe Lieberman suggested Sunday he would support military intervention in Syria if its president resorts to the kind of violent tactics used by Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi.
Dozens reportedly have been killed in protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, raising questions about whether the international community would get involved.
Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that if Assad starts slaughtering his own people, he will risk other countries imposing a no-fly zone “just as we’re doing in Libya.” He urged Assad to, instead, negotiate with the “freedom fighters” in his country.
“There’s a precedent now that the world community has set in Libya, and it’s the right one,” Lieberman said.
The Obama administration, though, pushed back on suggestions that the United States could support another intervention.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday she doesn’t expect that to happen, describing the clashes in Syria as part of a “police action” — as opposed to a military campaign against the Syrian people.
“Each of these situations is unique,” she said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Certainly we deplore the violence in Syria.”
March 27, 2011
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Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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