Israel: Strategic Ally or Liability?
By Stephen Sniegoski | My Catbird Seat | June 12, 2010
The claim that Israel serves as a valuable ally for the United States is made by both pro-Zionists and much of the anti-war and anti-Zionist Left that is influenced by Noam Chomsky. As a result of the Gaza flotilla massacre, which has caused a world-wide uproar against Israel, the value of Israel to the United States is being publicly questioned in more mainstream foreign policy forums.
Writing shortly before the massacre, the always astute Philip Giraldi critically analyzed the claim of Israel’s value to the United States in “The Strategic Ally Myth,” which focuses on a recent article by Israel Firster Mort Zuckerman entitled, “Israel Is a Key Ally and Deserves U.S. Support.”
Zuckerman is a real estate billionaire and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, and his article came out in that magazine. (He is also publisher/owner of the New York Daily News). Zuckerman’s writing for his own publications has credentialed him for other media outlets, and he regularly appears on MSNBC and The McLaughlin Group. Between 2001 and 2003, Zuckerman was the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Giraldi underscores Zuckerman’s pro-Israel orientation: “Zuckerman is frequently spotted on the television talking head circuit where he dispenses analysis of international events that could have been crafted in Tel Aviv or Herzliya, where the Israeli intelligence service Mossad has its headquarters.” Zuckerman’s immense wealth and media influence exemplifies why Israel has been able to gain the reputation as a valuable ally to the United States.
Giraldi, however, points out that the United States is not technically an ally of Israel’s. Giraldi writes that “to be an ally requires an agreement in writing that spells out the conditions and reciprocity of the relationship. Israel has never been an ally of any country because it would force it to restrain its aggressive behavior, requiring consultation with its ally before attacking other nations. It is also unable to define its own borders, which have been expanding ever since it was founded in 1948. Without defined borders it is impossible to enter into an alliance because most alliances are established so that one country will come to the aid of another if it is attacked, which normally means having its territorial integrity violated. Since Israel intends to continue expanding its borders it cannot commit to an alliance with anyone and has, in fact, rebuffed several bids by Washington to enter into some kind of formal arrangement.”
Zuckerman maintains that there are no drawbacks to America’s support for Israel, explicitly denying the allegation that American support for Israel causes anti-American hostility in the Islamic countries. Instead, Zuckerman maintains that the Muslims “are fighting America because they see the whole West and its culture, values, and belief in democracy as antithetical to their own beliefs.” Giraldi correctly points out that this is ridiculous—a higher-IQ version of Bush’s “they hate us for our freedom.”
It would seem almost self-evident that support for the Arabs’ fundamental enemy would lead to the hostility of Arab states or, should a particular regime remain friendly to the United States, cause groups within the state to threaten its stability. During the Cold War, US/Israeli ties caused some Arab states to turn to the Soviet Union, especially since the Soviets were willing to provide them with weapons, which they could not obtain from the US because of the opposition from Israel and the Israel lobby. American support for Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war led to the Arab oil embargo against the United States in 1973.
… Certainly, the Gaza flotilla massacre has heightened Arab and Islamic animosity to the United States, which has been recognized even by mainstream media commentators. Because of the power of the Israel Lobby the United States cannot offer harsh criticism of Israel and must work to prevent any form of United Nations sanctions against it, thus complicating its relationship with the entire Arab/Islamic world. While it must be acknowledged that hostility to the United States has also been accentuated by its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military involvement has been caused in large part by the influence of the Israel lobby.
M. Shahid Alam points out in his excellent book, “Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism,” that much of the anti-Americanism in the Middle East was initially triggered by Israel. This anti-Americanism has in turn, enabled Israel to present itself as America’s only reliable friend in the Middle East. In essence, “Israel had manufactured the threats that would make it look like a strategic asset” (p. 218), writes Alam. “Without Israel,” Alam maintains, “there was little chance that any of the Arab regimes would turn away from their dependence on the West” (p. 171).
The realization that Israel is not really a strategic ally of the United States is now being expressed by individuals far more sympathetic to Israel than Alam. Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for example, makes such a argument in his article, “Israel as a Strategic Liability.”
Cordesman served as national security assistant to the pro-Israel Senator John McCain, though he is considered a centrist. In denying that the United States supports Israel for strategic reasons, Cordesman writes that “the real motives behind America’s commitment to Israel are moral and ethical. They are a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust, to the entire history of Western anti-Semitism, and to the United States’ failure to help German and European Jews during the period before it entered World War II. They are a product of the fact that Israel is a democracy that shares virtually all of the same values as the United States.”
I would simply point out that this belief in Israel’s moral superiority is not some objective notion that is determined by an objective weighing of all the evidence, but exists primarily in United States because of the power of the pro-Zionist media and political lobby. If somehow the wealth and power conditions of American Jews and Arab Americans were reversed, and all mainstream media information coming to the American public was filtered through a pro-Arab/Palestinian slant, it is inconceivable that America would support Israel over the Palestinians. It is hard to believe that someone as sharp as Cordesman does not recognize the power of the Israel lobby in American domestic politics, and he undoubtedly does, but he is also keen enough to know that people who openly express such a view do not hold cushy positions in leading think tanks. However, so as not to go too far off track, the issue here is whether Israel is a strategic asset to the United States, not whether the US should support Israel for moral reasons, and concerning the issue at hand Cordesman comes down against the strategic asset argument.
Jim Lobe alludes to the career ramifications of speaking the truth regarding Israel when he quotes Stephen Walt, the co-author of the bombshell book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” who states: “The fact that Cordesman would say this publicly is a sign that attitudes and discourse are changing . . . . Lots of people in the national security establishment—and especially the Pentagon and intelligence services—have understood that Israel wasn’t an asset, but nobody wanted to say so because they knew it might hurt their careers.”
Intriguingly, Lobe points out that head of the Mossad, Israel’s foremost spy agency, also recently made reference to Israel’s liability to the United States. Mossad chief Meir Dagan told members of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.” In reality, it is highly questionable whether Israel has ever been a net asset to the United States.
Zuckerman tries to illustrate what assistance Israel provides the US—a good strategic location in the Middle East, a place to stockpile American weapons, and beneficial intelligence. Giraldi rebuts these alleged benefits, maintaining that “the notion that Israel is some kind of strategic asset for the United States is nonsense, a complete fabrication.” He points out that the United States cannot utilize Israeli territory to project its power throughout the region. “The US has numerous bases in Arab countries,” Giraldi notes, “but is not allowed to use any military base in Israel. Washington’s own carrier groups and other forces in place all over the Middle East, including the Red Sea, have capabilities that far exceed those of the Israel Defense Forces.” It should also be added, as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt bring out in their book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” (p. 56), that Israel does not help the United States in its key military objective in the Middle East: maintaining access to Gulf oil.
Giraldi points out that the stockpiles of US equipment in Israel are basically for Israel. “The supplies are, in fact, regularly looted by the Israelis, leaving largely unusable or picked over equipment for US forces if it should ever be needed.”
Regarding Zuckerman’s reference to the provision of “good intelligence,” Giraldi observes that “The intelligence provided by Israel that Zuckerman praises is generally fabricated and completely self serving, intended to shape a narrative about the Middle East that makes the Israelis look good and virtually everyone else look bad.” For some specific examples of actually misleading intelligence, it should be recalled that Israel was providing some of the spurious intelligence on Iraq’s alleged formidable WMD during the build-up to the 2003 US invasion (the Knesset investigated this issue) and, for the past decade, has been issuing alarmist warnings that Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weaponry. In short, the intelligence Israel provides to the United States is intended to induce it to take actions to advance Israel’s interests, which can run counter to the interests of the United States.
The idea of Israel as a strategic asset is especially significant because, as mentioned earlier, it is expressed not only by Israel Firsters but also by Noam Chomsky and his epigones, and thus is a view that looms large in the anti-war camp. Stephen Zunes, a prominent member of the Chomsky group, even implies that Israel is but the passive instrument of American policymakers (See my article: “Israel-lobby denial: The bankruptcy of the mainstream Left as illustrated by Stephen Zunes”). This approach, of course, provides psychological satisfaction to those on the left who want to believe in the ultimate evil of gentile capitalism and the perpetual victimization of Jews, but is counterproductive in actually dealing with the problem of American military intervention in the Middle East.
Actually the case of billionaire Mort Zuckerman should serve as an example to undermine the Chomskyist interpretation. The Chomskyist position is based on the idea that overriding wealth determines American foreign policy; while not strictly Marxist, it has strong similarities to Marxism. But, of course, pro-Zionist Mort Zuckerman is an individual of great wealth, and he would seem to have considerable clout in the media. And Zuckerman is far from being an aberration. A huge disproportion of the super-wealthy are Jewish. A recent analysis determined that at least 139 of the richest 400 Americans listed by Forbes are Jewish.
Since many wealthy Jews publicly promote Zionism, it stands to reason that their view should be able to shape American foreign policy especially in areas where their interest is far greater than that of other wealthy Americans. We are frequently told that the oil interests control American Middle East policy. But one would think that the combined wealth of super-wealthy pro-Zionists far exceeds the wealth of the oil barons with interests in Middle East oil. A cursory look at the list of America’s 400 wealthiest individuals showed about 20 or so of the 400 were, at least, to some extent involved in oil/energy. Those specializing in Middle East oil would be somewhat fewer, I would think.
Actually these figures provide a rough view of how wealth shapes the American foreign policy. Pro-Zionist money can sway the area where its concern is the greatest and where that of the oil interests is less so—the Israel/Palestine issue. The issue of overall Middle East policy directly involving the flow of Gulf oil, however, would be of fundamental concern to the oil industry, as well as the wealthy as a whole, since the flow of oil affects the economies of the entire industrial world. Thus, with respect to the current question of whether the US should attack Iran, hardline Zionists would seem to identify fully with the interest of Israel to eliminate an enemy, no matter what the impact on the global economy. However, those wealthy individuals whose fundamental concerns involve oil and economic matters in general are fearful of the possible negative economic effects resulting from such an attack. This explains why the United States has not yet attacked Iran.
Cordesman, who eschews any mention of Zionist influence in the United States, maintains that while the United States will defend, and presumably ought to defend, Israel for moral reasons, it should not provide Israel a blank check. It did “not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors.” In short, Israel cannot simply do anything it wants and receive the support of the United States. “It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it tests the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews. This does not mean taking a single action that undercuts Israeli security, but it does mean realizing that Israel should show enough discretion to reflect the fact that it is a tertiary U.S. strategic interest in a complex and demanding world.” Cordesman seems to believe that Israel can alter its policies to establish much improved relations with the Palestinians and its neighboring countries so that American interests would not be harmed. In short, Cordesman does not say that Israel could become a strategic asset, but that, by following conciliatory policies towards its current enemies, it could become much less of a liability to the United States.
The problem with Cordesman’s position, however, is that the Israeli leadership, and the Zionist establishment in the United States, really believe that Israel has to do what it does to preserve the existence of Israel, i.e., the exclusivist Jewish state. As an exclusivist Jewish state, Israel is threatened by peaceful demographics as well as by terrorism and warfare. To stave off this danger, Israel will not allow for any significant Palestinian return to Israel or any viable Palestinian state, which is exactly what the Palestinians and the Arab and Islamic countries supporting them demand. In short, the positions of Israel and the Palestinians and their backers are antithetical. The United States cannot support Israel without antagonizing the Arab and Islamic states, and vice versa. Since it is widely recognized that friendly relations with the oil-producing Middle Eastern states are vital to U.S. national security, America’s unwavering backing of Israel can only harm its strategic interests. […]
Finally, automatic support for Israel completely undermines the United States’ advocacy of a world governed by international law, a goal which President Obama has addressed on a number of occasions. As Scott Wilson writes in the article, “Obama’s agenda, Israel’s ambitions often at odds,” in the “Washington Post” (June 5) : “Since its creation more than six decades ago, the state of Israel has been at times a vexing ally to the United States. But it poses a special challenge for President Obama, whose foreign policy emphasizes the importance of international rules and organizations that successive Israeli governments have clashed with and often ignored.”
As President Obama stated in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don’t.” Then, in an implicit swipe at the Bush administration, he continued: “Furthermore, America—in fact, no nation—can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves.” This admonition could also apply to America’s tacit support for Israel’s policies.
America’s concern about international legality did not begin with Obama—Woodrow Wilson was a major proponent of the League of Nations and Franklin Roosevelt of the UN—even though America’s unwillingness to join the League of Nations resulted from its devotion to national sovereignty and opposition to permanent alliances that could force the country into unwanted wars. America’s continued support for international legality during the interwar period (while the US was outside the League of Nations) was especially illustrated by the involvement of American peace advocates and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg in framing what became known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which was a multilateral treaty outlawing war except for purpose of self-defense. It was signed by all major countries (eventually 62 signatories), except for Soviet Russia. Although sometimes ridiculed as a meaningless utopian gesture, the treaty served as the basis to judge the Nazi high command at Nuremberg in 1945-46, and was incorporated and expanded in the UN Charter.
America’s verbal support for international law is not based simply on morality, nor does it represent high-sounding but empty rhetoric. As a wealthy, powerful nation the United States has a vested interest in maintaining the international status quo in the same way as the preservation of the status quo was sought by the victors of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. (The Congress of Vienna, of course, was far more effective than the Paris Peace Conference in establishing a long-lasting peace.) International stability not only preserves America’s power position, but also provides the optimal environment for the international trade and investment that benefits the American economy.
Obviously, as Obama pointed out, when the United States seeks to use international agreements to restrain the actions of other countries, it cannot expect other countries to obey these rules if does not do so itself. And it acts in this manner when it ignores, or supports, Israel’s violations of international law and prevents UN-sponsored actions against Israel that would be undertaken if any other country in the world engaged in comparable activities.
In conclusion, it is apparent that Washington’s support for Israel interferes with a number of the United States’ basic international goals. It can only be said that Israel is a liability rather than an asset.
Egypt rejects Algerian aid into Gaza
Press TV – June 12, 2010
Egyptian authorities have refused to allow an Algerian humanitarian aid convoy to enter into the Gaza Strip which has been under a crippling three-year Israeli blockade. The ship, carrying seven tons of medicine and two tons of powder milk, docked in Egypt’s Al-Arish sea port on Friday.
Fifteen people onboard the ship including Algerian lawmakers, businessmen and peace activists were seeking to break the Gaza siege by organizing the convoy.
Algerian daily Al-Khabar said that the convoy was prevented from entering Gaza despite a prior agreement signed between the Algerian Foreign Ministry and Egypt in this regard. The daily added that the Egyptian officials only allowed three Algerian lawmakers to visit Gaza though the Rafah border crossing for a few hours.
The move came two weeks after the Israeli military attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, killing at least 20 peace activists including nine Turkish citizens on board the M.V. Mavi Marmara and injuring about 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.
Israel imposed the blockade on Gaza after the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, won parliamentary elections in June 2007.
Some 1.5 million people in the coastal strip are being denied their basic rights, including freedom of movement, and their rights to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education. Poverty and unemployment rates stand at approximately 80 percent and 60 percent respectively in the Gaza Strip.
Egypt has joined Israel in imposing a three-year-long blockade on Gaza, sealing its borders with the strip and effectively cutting off all links to the coastal sliver.
Joe Biden: In Israel’s Service
Poster Boy for “Dual Loyalties”
By JEFFREY BLANKFORT | June 11, 2010
Israel appears to be in more serious trouble diplomatically than at any time in its history following the botched attack by an “elite” commando squad on the Mavi Marmara that left at least nine dead and scores wounded. Thanks to Al-Jazeera and Iran’s PressTV, whose reporters were aboard the ship, much of the world was able to watch the attack unfold on its TV and computer screens and the result has been an avalanche of outrage and ongoing protests against the Jewish state. Within Israel this has led to finger-pointing and calls for resignations while its hasbara machinery has gone rapidly into damage-control and disinformation mode.
Lest we forget, the first U.S. official to give Israel’s bloody assault a thumbs up sign was Vice President Joe Biden. The former Delaware senator has been a key part of Israel’s hasbara branch, American section, since entering the Senate in 1973 and on the Wednesday following the Israeli attack, he appeared on the Charlie Rose Show where he showed no hesitation in defending Israel’s handling of the raid, something that President Obama had been reluctant to do.
On the following morning, Jerusalem Post Editor David Horvitz speaking for 45 minutes to Congressional staffers and AIPAC members on a conference call praised Biden’s performance. “It is not entirely clear in Israel where America stands,” he said, but “Israel was very pleased with what Joe Biden had to say.”
But isn’t that why Joe was picked for the job? Was it not to get the vote and the money from those Jews who were afraid that Barack Obama –who they suspected of being a closet Muslim—was no true friend of Israel?
Obama picked Biden “who is about as close to the pro-Israel community as any member of either house,” observed MJ Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer, on TPM Café, just after Biden’s selection. “Biden is rated 100 per cent by AIPAC … When he goes to the synagogues in Florida, he goes not as a visitor but as ‘mishpocha’ [family]. The Jews simply love the guy.”
“Bottom line,” concluded Rosenberg, “the Biden choice pretty much eliminated Obama’s ‘Jewish problem.’” That was then and now it doesn’t seem to matter what position Obama takes, Biden seems to answer to his real boss. And it ain’t Barack.
Appearing on the Charlie Rose show was but the latest assignment for Biden in his long career of serving Israel, the first 35 years of which he was drawing salary and gaining political clout as a US Senator for a state whose population is only slightly larger than that of San Francisco (783,600 to 776,733).
“Look,” Biden told Rose in a rambling monologue in which he confused Ehud Barak with Ariel Sharon, “you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not … but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know — they’re at war with Hamas — has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in. And up to now, Charlie, what’s happened? They’ve said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.’ So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people.’ ”
No big deal, Joe, at least nine dead, or four less than the number of Israelis killed since the first Palestinian rocket was fired from Gaza. And notice how easily he says “my” and pretends that rockets are still being fired from Gaza.
That “my” was not a Freudian slip. Like scores of other US politicians who have traded their political souls for access to the seemingly bottomless checking accounts of Israel’s American supporters, Biden has become a poster boy for “dual loyalty.” Given that he has done this as a member of Congress and continues to do so while now a heartbeat from the White House should probably qualify him for a treason trial and a cell next to Jonathan Pollard.
Back in 2007, on one of his many visits to Israel, he told a Shalom TV interviewer that the Jewish state was “the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East.” Going beyond the standard AIPAC scripted boilerplate, Biden stated, “When I was a young senator, I used to say, ‘If I were a Jew I’d be a Zionist.’ I am a Zionist,” he said. “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.”
Asked about his prospective cell neighbor, sentenced to life-imprisonment in 1985 for turning over mounds of top secret information to Israel, Biden spoke of leniency for Pollard but not a pardon.
“There’s a rationale, in my view, why Pollard should be given leniency,” said Biden. “But there is not a rationale to say, ‘What happened did not happen and should be pardoned.'” In other words, should Biden become president, it is likely that Pollard would be freed.
Looking at Biden’s track record, it would seem that he has not just been a key cheerleader for Israel; he has aspired to be a member of its coaching staff.
Speaking to an AIPAC meeting in 1992, he was quoted by the organization’s Near East Report as saying that it was time to “tell the American people straight out that it’s in our naked self-interest to see to it that the moral commitment and political commitment is kept with regard to Israel and that Israel is not the cause of our problem, but the essence of the solution.” This was in response to President George H.W. Bush’s second refusal to support Israel’s demand for $10 billion in loan guarantees. Which of America’s problems Israel was able to solve Biden didn’t mention.
In December, 1995, two years after Oslo, he spoke at an AIPAC meeting in San Francisco and told a lunchtime audience that included most of the Bay Area’s public officials that they needed to spend more time educating new members of Congress about the wonders of Israel and its strategic value to the US:
“Be prepared to both convert and be prepared to deal with those who are not converted….
“Israel is taking more chances on her security today than any time in her history…. Arabs make peace with Israel only when they realize that they can’t drive a wedge between the US and Israel. We cannot afford to publicly criticize Israel.” This past March, back in Israel on a “fence-mending” assignment, just before he was blindsided by the announcement of Israel’s plan to build 1600 new Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem, Biden had modified his “can’t drive a wedge” to read “there is no space between.”
At that time Biden gave his San Francisco speech, he had taken in over $100,000 from pro-Israel PACs which was small change compared to what he had received in individual donations. By far the largest of these came in 1988, when he made his first bid for the presidency. It was a $1.5 million gift from San Francisco financial real estate magnate Walter Shorenstein, who was, by no coincidence, AIPAC’s main man in California as well a major player in the state’s Democratic Party. It turned out to be a poor investment since that was the year that Biden was caught plagiarizing a speech by British Labor leader Neil Kinnock and had to withdraw from the race.
In 2007, true to form, Biden took the lead in the Senate in rejecting the Iraq Study Group’s conclusion that the United States would not be able to achieve its goals in Iraq unless it “deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” a view taken more recently by Gen. David Petraeus.
“I do not accept the notion of linkage between Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Biden said during his opening remarks at a January 17, 2007, Senate hearing. “Arab-Israeli peace is worth pursuing vigorously on its own merits, but even if a peace treaty were signed tomorrow, it would not end the civil war in Iraq.” It was not that the study group said that it would but it was convenient straw man for Biden.
It was not his first comment on Iraq. It may be recalled that on May 1, 2006, Biden had co-authored an op-ed piece for the NY Times with his guru, Leslie Gelb, a former Times columnist and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, that called for Iraq to be divided into three confessional states. It was starkly similar to what had been written in a policy paper back in 1982 by Oded Yinon, a senior Israeli foreign affairs official, in which he wrote that, “To dissolve Iraq is even more important for us than dissolving Syria. In the short term, it’s Iraqi power that constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.” Gelb had first raised the issue in an op-ed in the Times in November, 2003.
During the 2008 election campaign Biden was outraged to find his loyalty to Israel being questioned by what he reportedly thought was AIPAC but which turned out to be the Republican Jewish Coalition. The RJC had accused him of not towing the AIPAC line on one or two occasions which caused Biden to defend his willingness to oppose AIPAC on some pieces of legislation.
In a 20-minute conference call with members of the Jewish media that September, Biden said it was up to the Israelis to make decisions about war and peace, including whether to launch a strike aimed at disrupting Iran’s nuclear program.
“This is not a question for us to tell the Israelis what they can and cannot do,” said the Democratic vice presidential candidate. “”Israel has the right to defend itself and it doesn’t have to ask, just as any other free and independent country. I have faith in the democracy of Israel. They will arrive at the right decision that they view as being in their own interests.” That as vice-president his job would be to protect US interests and not Israel’s and that an attack on Iran might jeopardize American interests either had not occurred to him or was of no concern.
In the interview, Biden tried to position himself as being even more pro-Israel than AIPAC, vigorously defending his record of occasionally breaking ranks with the pro-Israel lobby. “AIPAC does not speak for the entire American Jewish community,” he said. “There’s other organizations as strong and as consequential.”
Moreover, Biden insisted, “I will take a back seat to no one, and again, no one in AIPAC or any other organization, in terms of questioning my support of the State of Israel.”
“Insiders at the lobby were more bemused than offended by the outburst” wrote the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Ron Kampeas, “saying they regarded Biden as essentially pro-Israel. Sources familiar with the situation said the Obama camp’s explanation was that Biden had mistakenly thought it was AIPAC who had criticized him, as opposed to the RJC.”
Upset at the RJC’s questioning of Biden’s pro-Israel credentials The New Republic’s Marty Peretz, entered the lists in his behalf. Wrote Peretz in TNR and the Jerusalem Post in September,2008:
“If ever there was a true friend of Israel in the United States Senate it is Joe Biden. Oh yes, there were also Owen Brewster, Republican from Maine, and Guy Gillette, Democrat from Iowa. But that goes back to the very founding of the state.
“This is not hyperbole about Biden. It is true. And it is so not just on a philosophical basis but in deeds, too. Biden is a true friend on both a higher and a deeper level, and he has been that for three and a half decades. It is reckless for Jews to trifle with such allies. We have, as I’ve said, many friends. But what we do not have is many such allies – formidable, expert, truly passionate.”
Following the election and now, as vice-president, Biden continued to merit Peretz’s confidence. Speaking at AIPAC’s 2009 policy conference in Washington, he began by describing how he had been warmly welcomed on a visit to Israel in 1973 as a freshman senator by Prime Minister Golda Meir and befriended by Yitzhak Rabin. Then, to loud rounds of applause, he told his audience:
“[W]e have to pursue every opportunity for progress while standing up for one core principle: First, Israel’s security is non-negotiable. Period. Period. [sic]Our commitment is unshakable. We will continue to provide Israel with the assistance that it needs. We will continue to defend Israel’s right to defend itself and make its own judgments about what it needs to do to defend itself.”
Toward the end of his speech, Biden timorously advanced a position that has long been official US policy. “You’re not going to like my saying this,” he said, but [do]not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts, and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement.” There was no applause.
In 1994, Biden was a key player in one of the ugliest episodes in American political history and one that characterizes the subservience of Washington to Israel in its way much as did the cover-up of Israel ‘s attack on the USS Liberty 53 years ago on June 8th.
It featured a star chamber recantation before a confirmation hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Biden, of Strobe Talbott, former Soviet affairs analyst for Time, of an article he had written, following his nomination as Deputy Secretary of State by Bill Clinton. Talbott was facing the inquisition as a result of a major article he had written for the magazine in 1981, “What to do about Israel” (9/7/81). In it, Talbott had advocated a new policy towards Israel-US relations that would “rescue that relationship… starting with the delusion that Israel is, or ever has been, primarily a strategic ally.”
While expressing the obligatory degree of affection for Israel, Talbott had not been equivocal. Referring to problems that had been created for the Reagan administration by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Talbott wrote in words, especially pertinent today, “His country does need the US for its survival, but the sad fact is that Israel is well on its way to becoming not just a dubious asset but an outright liability to American security interests, both in the Middle East and worldwide.”
Talbott was referring to Israel’s destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak and a deadly bombing raid over Beirut that killed over 100 people and wounded 600 more, most of them civilians. Talbott had advised that, “If Israel continues to take international law into its own hands as violently—and as embarrassingly to the US—as it did in Baghdad and Beirut, then the next display of US displeasure ought to be more sustained and less symbolic. It might include severe cutbacks in American military aid, which is $1.2 billion for fiscal ’81 alone.[It is now officially $3 billion].
Pressed to recant, Talbott uttered the required response. As reported by the New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse,
“‘I do want to set the record straight on the question of my view of Israel as a strategic asset,’ he said, sounding chastened and contrite. ‘On that I have simply changed my opinion.’
“On the other hand, straining to reassure supporters of Israel, Mr. Talbott said, ‘I have always believed that the US-Israeli relationship is unshakable. Second, I have always believed that a strong Israel is in America’s interest because it serves the cause of peace and stability in the region…’
“During his 21 years at Time, Mr. Talbott often criticized Israel. Today he took a markedly different tone, portraying himself as a friend of Israel.”
In the article Talbott, had written that “Begin recognized that American Jews wield influence far beyond their numbers, but he also knew that there is considerable pent-up irritation in the US with the power of the pro-Israel lobby (which includes, of course, many non-Jews).” It was clearly his own opinion, as well.
Biden, according to the NY Times, jumped on that statement, calling it,“totally inappropriate,” to which Talbott, “asserting that no slight was intended,” noted that this “was simply a statement of fact,” and turned to Sen. Bernard Metzenbaum from his home state of Ohio for confirmation. Metzenbaum said that he was “satisfied” with Talbott’s remarks, but, “Maybe, in retrospect, he might have changed some phrases or some paragraphs.”
Mind you, Talbott had questioned Israel’s strategic value to the US in 1981, in the heart of the Cold War when he was considered one of the main stream media’s ranking Soviet experts. Before going before the Senate, he had become a senior adviser on the former Soviet Union to the Clinton White House. By 1994, with the Soviet bloc no longer in the picture, it was generally agreed, even in Tel Aviv, that Israel’s value to the US had been severely diminished.
Biden went on, citing the same article, noted that Talbott also had written: “Israel has been a credit to itself and its American backers.”
Playing the role of Torquemada, he asked Talbott, “Do you believe that?”
“Yes, senator, I do,” he obediently replied.
His “conversion” process having been completed, Talbott received the senator’s and subsequently the Senate’s approval.
The reader should not be left with the impression that Joe Biden’s prime passions are limited to the love of Israel.
While in the Senate, he was a key supporter of the credit card industry, much of which is based in Delaware thanks to its cozy industry friendly tax laws and he was a key beneficiary of its campaign contributions. In return, he became a leading supporter of the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005” which, despite its title, made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.
Biden was one of the first Democratic supporters of the bill and voted for it four times until it finally passed in March, 2005. Twisting the truth, a spokesman for Sen. Obama told the NY Times, “Senator Biden took on entrenched interests and succeeded in improving the bill for low-income workers, women and children.”
But even the Times wasn’t buying that. Biden, the paper noted, was one of only five Democrats who voted against a proposal that would require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month. Obama had voted for it.
Biden differed with Obama again when he helped to defeat amendments which would have strengthened protections for people forced into bankruptcy who have large medical debts or are in the military. He was also one of four Democrats who sided with Republicans to defeat an effort, supported by Obama, to shift responsibility in certain cases from debtors to the predatory lenders who helped push them into bankruptcy.
So why did Obama pick Biden for his running mate? We already know the answer.
Jeffrey Blankfort can be contacted at jblankfort@earthlink.net
Obama Goes with Neocon Flow on Iran
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | June 10, 2010
Whether wittingly or witlessly, President Barack Obama is pursuing a neocon-charted path on Iran that parallels the one that George W. Bush took to war with Iraq – ratcheting up sanctions against the “enemy,” refusing to tolerate more peaceful options, and swaggering along with the propagandistic tough-guy-ism of the major U.S. news media.
The Obama administration is celebrating its victory in getting the UN Security Council on Wednesday to approve a fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran. Obama also is expected to sign on to even more draconian penalties that should soon sail through Congress.
Obama may be thinking that his UN diplomatic achievement will buy him some credibility – and some time – with American neocons and Israel’s Likud government, which favor a showdown with Iran over its nuclear program.
However, the end result of the new sanctions may well be a greater likelihood that the debate within the Iranian government will tilt toward a decision to proceed with ever-higher-level enrichment of uranium and possibly construction of a nuclear bomb as the only means of self-defense.
That may be the opposite of what Obama seeks, but it is what the neocons and Likud would cite as justification for another Middle East war.
Just as the neocons and Israel wanted “regime change” in Iraq, they have long hungered for “regime change” in Iran, too. A favorite neocon joke at the time of the Iraq War was to speculate on which direction to go next, to Syria or Iran, with the punch-line, “Real men to go Tehran!”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that he considers the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon an “existential threat” to Israel, one that would justify a military strike. While Israel’s powerful air force would likely inflict the first blows, national security analysts believe that the U.S. military would be pulled in to finish off Iran’s military capabilities.
The neocon/Likud hope would be that these military attacks would embolden Iran’s internal opposition to rise up and overthrow the Islamic system that has governed Iran since 1979, in other words, “regime change.” Much like the neocon/Likud thinking about Iraq, however, these grandiose plans often end up with unpredictable and bloody outcomes.
Many war-gamers believe the economic, geo-political and military consequences of an attack on Iran are impossible to gauge, though some in the U.S. military fear that such a conflict could ignite a regional war and cause serious strategic damage to the United States. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Bomb-Bomb-Iran Parlor Game.”]
President Onboard?
Whether President Obama comprehends these risks – or may invite them – is unclear. What is known is that he staffed his administration with a number of hardliners on Iran, from Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State to Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. Voices of moderation, if there are any, have been noticeably silent.
Some analysts believe that the President is a relative “dove” on Iran, citing his private letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that encouraged Brazil and Turkey to work out a deal to get Iran to transfer about half its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for more highly enriched uranium that could only be used for peaceful medical purposes.
However, after Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan got Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to agree to that deal, the arrangement was denounced by Secretary of State Clinton and was ridiculed by the major U.S. news media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Even after Brazil released Obama’s supportive letter, the President would not publicly defend his position. Instead, his administration pressed ahead with the new round of sanctions.
What is also clear is that tough-guy-ism is running strong, much like it was in the months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
A New York Times editorial on Thursday praised the new round of anti-Iran sanctions, but complained they “do not go far enough.” Still, the Times took encouragement from the hope that the United States and European countries might impose much harsher sanctions on their own.
The Times also took another mocking swipe at Brazil and Turkey, which voted against the new sanctions from their temporary seats on the Security Council.
“The day’s most disturbing development was the two no votes in the Security Council from Turkey and Brazil,” the Times wrote. “Both are disappointed that their efforts to broker a nuclear deal with Iran didn’t go far. Like pretty much everyone else, they were played by Tehran.”
Though this Times point of view fits with neocon orthodoxy – that any reasonable move toward peace and away from confrontation is a sign of naivete and weakness – the fact is that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was torpedoed by the United States, after Obama had encouraged it. This wasn’t a case of the two countries being “played by Tehran.”
The Real Agenda
The Times star columnist Thomas L. Friedman has more explicitly laid out the real goal regarding Iran, not nuclear safeguards, but “regime change.” In a May 26 column, Friedman wrote that the United States should do whatever it can to help Iran’s internal opposition overthrow President Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Islamic-directed government.
“In my view, the ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran is the most important, self-generated, democracy movement to appear in the Middle East in decades,” Friedman wrote.
“It has been suppressed, but it is not going away, and, ultimately, its success — not any nuclear deal with the Iranian clerics — is the only sustainable source of security and stability. We have spent far too little time and energy nurturing that democratic trend and far too much chasing a nuclear deal.”
Friedman’s argument again tracks with the neocon case for war with Iran – as he earlier was onboard for war with Iraq – claiming that “regime change” was the only acceptable outcome.
As an institution, the New York Times also played a key role in making war with Iraq inevitable, with bogus reporting about Iraq getting aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. Similarly, in the case of Iran, the Times and other leading U.S. news outlets have promoted the propaganda line that Iran’s presidential election last June was “fraudulent” or “rigged.”
However, an analysis by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes found that there was little evidence to support allegations of fraud or to conclude that most Iranians viewed Ahmadinejad’s reelection as illegitimate.
Not a single Iranian poll analyzed by PIPA – whether before or after the June 12 election, whether conducted inside or outside Iran – showed Ahmadinejad with less than majority support. None showed the much-touted Green Movement’s candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi ahead or even close.
“These findings do not prove that there were no irregularities in the election process,” said Steven Kull, director of PIPA. “But they do not support the belief that a majority rejected Ahmadinejad.” [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It!”]
Nevertheless, President Obama has refused to contest Washington’s conventional wisdom on the Iranian election or to buck the neocon-favored trend toward a heightened confrontation with Iran.
Having let his administration rebuff the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal in favor of more UN sanctions and soon even tougher U.S. sanctions, Obama has let his foreign policy either drift – or be piloted – toward a worsening crisis.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.
New Sanctions on Iran: What’s New? How Effective? The Implicit Goal
By Mohamad Shmaysani | Al-Manar TV | 10/06/2010
It is the fourth round of sanctions on Iran. What next?
During the first three rounds of sanctions since 2006, Iran has developed its peaceful nuclear abilities and cooperated with the international nuclear watchdog (IAEA), which did not find any proof of a military nuclear program to build the A-bomb. The question is what could possibly force the Islamic Republic – the now stronger than ever Iran – to stagger from the sanctions that the international community led by the US has called “crippling”?
The answer is: Probably nothing. Tehran has already announced the sanctions will not force it to change its policy.
Citing Israeli commentators, this new round of sanctions, after a six-month delay, “will not be enough to get Iran to halt its nuclear program…The fight is set to continue in the U.S. Congress, which may vote in favor of more sanctions.” (Haaretz)
This means that Washington will put itself in a row with Beijing and Moscow, which warned the US against taking any unilateral measures against the Islamic Republic.
The new resolution aims to:
1- Ban the supply to Iran of heavy weapons, including tanks, warships, helicopter gunships and missiles.
2- Tighten up the ban on dealings with Iranian banks and individuals, including businesses and members of the Revolutionary Guard
3- Enable states to search any suspect ship or plane.
The Washington-based “Iran Watch” reported last April that the Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) had undertaken “a large-scale re-labeling of its ships, giving them new names, new managers, new ‘owners’ – in short, new identities”.
“The US blacklist has not kept up with these changes, so it is being circumvented by Iran with relatively little effort,” Iran Watch said.
“These are not the crippling sanctions that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had promised about a year ago,” said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was a National Security Council official in the Clinton administration.
The sanctions don’t limit the Islamic Republic’s ability to produce or export oil.
Although the sanctions ban the sale of many heavy weapons, countries still will be allowed to sell weapons outside those categories. For instance, Russia still may sell sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, which have been a source of concern to the United States. Moreover, many provisions of the sanctions resolution are essentially optional. For instance, governments can limit financial services provided to Iran by companies under their jurisdiction if the services are believed to further certain nuclear activities.
The resolution also says governments may inspect ships on the high seas suspected of carrying forbidden items, but only if they have the consent of the country to which a suspicious ship is registered.
US President Barack Obama and his European allies had initially sought tougher sanctions against Iran which would have included targeting the Islamic Republic’s gas and oil industries and blacklisting Iran’s Central Bank. But Moscow and Beijing rejected the measure.
Nevertheless, Russia and China did vote in favor of (softer) sanctions, but at what price?
Today, Iran supplies about 11 percent of China’s imported oil. North Korea, on the other hand, only receives oil from China – perhaps for free or subsidized – to keep its economy afloat. And China prefers the status quo on the Korean peninsula, all the better to maintain business with South Korea and Japan.
If Iran were to unilaterally cut off oil exports in response to really tough sanctions, or if Israel were to attack Iranian nuclear facilities and ignite a regional war, China’s steady economic progress would suffer.
Like China, Russia has its interests with the West and of course Iran. Voting on low-tone sanctions on Iran, knowing they will have no concrete effect on the Islamic Republic, comes in line with balancing strategic interests with all parties.
If the international community, along with the co-sponsors of the resolution, the U.S., the U.K., and France, are not convinced that the new sanctions will stop Iran’s nuclear program, then why go for them?
Historically, the West has failed to compel Iran into yielding to its hegemonic disposition. During the last presidential election in Iran, the west – namely the US, the UK, and France, employed all their covert political and intelligence gravitas to create a “green revolution” to topple the regime. The scheme failed and the “opposition”, as the West calls it, lost its momentum. The U.S., Britain, and France have been blamed by Iran for running covert operations to spark and augment the demonstrations that followed election results.
Today, it is believed that the main objective of the new sanctions was meant to breathe life into unrest from within Iran on the eve of the first anniversary of the election. Tehran can use the sanctions to boost the Iranians’ drive for more technological development and the so-called opposition can exploit sanctions to put more pressure on the regime.
However, the Iranian reaction to sanctions this morning does not support this last notion.
Newspapers, both conservative and reformist, unanimously denounced the UNSC move as “illegal measures” that “have chalked a new path of confrontation.”
The conservative Kayhan daily ran a headline on its front-page reading: “Wait for Iran’s decisive response to illegal sanctions.” It added that “the credibility of the UN Security Council is ending.”
For its part, the reformist newspaper Aftab e-Yazd carried a front-page editorial, insisting that the Security Council had “set a path to confrontation” between the West and Iran. “Now that the West, along with Russia and China, has adopted the path of confrontation, Iran’s response will be strong,” its editorial said.
“These resolutions are not worth a dime for the Iranian nation,” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments following the vote. He said he had told world powers “that the resolutions you issue are like a used hanky which should be thrown in the dust bin.”
Of the 15 members of the Security Council, only two – Turkey and Brazil, which have reached a deal under which Iran will deposit much of its low-enriched uranium in Turkey – voted against the sanctions, and Lebanon abstained.
Neo-Conservatives Lead Charge Against Turkey
By Jim Lobe | IPS | June 9, 2010
WASHINGTON – As the right-wing leadership of the organised U.S. Jewish community defends Israel against international condemnation for its deadly seizure of a flotilla bearing humanitarian supplies for Gaza, a familiar clutch of neo-conservative hawks is going on the offensive against what they see as the flotilla’s chief defender, Turkey.
Outraged by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip’s Erdogan’s repeated denunciations of the May 31 Israeli raid, as well as his co- sponsorship with Brazil of an agreement with Iran designed to promote renewed negotiations with the West on Tehran’s nuclear programme, some neo-conservatives are even demanding that the U.S. try to expel Ankara from NATO as one among of several suggested actions aimed at punishing Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) government.
“Turkey, as a member of NATO, is privy to intelligence information having to do with terrorism and with Iran,” noted the latest report by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a hard-line neo-conservative group that promotes U.S.-Israeli military ties and has historically cultivated close ties to Turkey’s military, as well.
“If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey’s arsenal) is suspect. The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organisation,” suggested the group.
Its board of advisers includes many prominent champions of the 2003 Iraq invasion, including former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director James Woolsey, and former U.N. Amb. John Bolton.
Neo-conservative publications, notably the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review, have also been firing away at the AKP government since the raid.
“Turkey now represents a major element in the global panorama of radical Islam,” declared the Standard’s Stephen Schwartz, while Daniel Pipes, the controversial director of the Likudist Middle East Forum (MEF), echoed JINSA’s call for ousting Ankara from NATO and urged Washington to provide direct support for Turkey’s opposition parties in an article published by the National Review Online.
The Journal has been running editorials and op-eds attacking Turkey on virtually a daily basis since the raid, accusing its government, among other things, of having “an ingrained hostility toward the Jewish state, remarkable sympathies for nearby radical regimes, and an attitude toward extremist groups like the IHH (the Islamist group that sponsored the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara) that borders on complicity.”
On Monday, it ran an op-ed by long-time hawk Victor Davis Hanson that labelled the IHH “a terrorist organisation with ties to al-Qaeda”, while an earlier op-ed, by Robert Pollock, its editorial features editor, called Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, “demagogues appealing to the worst elements in their own country and the broader Middle East”.
Meanwhile, in an op-ed published by ‘The Forward’, a Jewish weekly, Michael Rubin, a Perle protégé at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), accused Turkey of having “become a conduit for the smuggling of weapons to Israel’s enemies”, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The onslaught is ironic both because of the neo- conservatives’ long cultivation of Turkey and their avowed support for promoting democratic governance – of which they have singled out Turkey for special praise – in the Muslim world.
Neo-conservatives were among the most important promoters of the military alliance between Israel and Turkey that began to take shape in the late 1980s and was consolidated by the mid-1990s.
In fact, Perle and another of his protégés, former undersecretary of defence for policy, Douglas Feith, worked as paid lobbyists for Turkey during that period, in major part to persuade the powerful “Israel Lobby” on Capitol Hill to promote Ankara’s interests on Capitol Hill.
In 1996, the two men participated in a task force chaired by Perle that proposed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he work with Turkey and Jordan to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power as part of an alliance designed to transform the strategic balance in the Middle East permanently in favour of Israel.
But the Turkey promoted by Perle and his fellow-neo-cons in the 1980s and ’90s was one that was dominated by a secular business and political elite carefully monitored by an all- powerful military institution that mounted three coup d’etats between 1960 and 1980 and intervened a fourth time in 1997 to oust an Islamist-led government.
Despite its close links to both the U.S. and Israel, however, the Turkish military badly disappointed the neo- cons in the run-up to Washington’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Instead of insisting that the civilian government at the time grant U.S. requests to use Turkish territory as a major launching pad into northern Iraq, the armed forces decided to defer to overwhelming parliamentary and public opposition to the invasion.
“I think for whatever reason they did not play the strong leadership role on that issue that we would have expected,” complained then-Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, a long-time Perle friend and colleague who, despite his lavish praise of Turkey as a model Muslim democracy, headed repeated efforts by the George W. Bush administration to persuade Turkey’s national security council – where the military’s voice was dominant – to effectively overrule its parliament.
Erdogan, who became prime minister just a week before the invasion and whose political and economic reforms have been widely praised in the West, at first sought good relations with Israel. As late as 2007, he arranged for Shimon Peres to become the first Israeli president to address the Turkish parliament.
By then, however, many neo-cons had become concerned about Erdogan’s efforts to weaken the military’s power, his warm reception of a top Hamas leader in 2005, criticism of Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in 2006, and rapprochement with Syria.
When the military not so subtly threatened to intervene against Erdogan and the AKP in 2007, some neo-cons, notably Perle, suggested that the U.S. should not try to discourage it. Others, including the Standard’s Schwartz and Pipes, encouraged it as the lesser of two evils, even as the Journal defended the AKP as “more democratic than the secularists”.
Since Erdogan’s furious denunciation of Israel, and Peres personally, at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) of Israel’s Cast Lead operation in Gaza in Jan 2009, however, neo-cons of virtually all stripes – including those, like the Journal’s editorial writers, who have praised the AKP as a democratising force – have turned against Ankara. And the flotilla incident, combined with Erdogan’s perceived defence of Iran’s nuclear programme, has raised their animus to new heights.
“A combination of Islamist rule, resentment at exclusion from Europe, and a neo-Ottomanist ideology that envisions Turkey as a great power in the Middle East have made Turkey a state that is often plainly hostile not only to Israel but to American aims and interests,” wrote Eliot Cohen, professor at Johns Hopkins University, in a Journal op-ed Monday.
Israeli request for more arms from US raises fears of regional violence
By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem | The Independent | 9 June 2010
Israel has approached the United States for more bombs and asked Washington to increase an emergency arms cache stowed on Israeli soil by 50 per cent, according to the leading newspaper Ha’aretz.
The approach, made by Defence Minister Ehud Barak during a recent visit to Washington, reflects the heightened tensions in recent months between the Jewish state and its neighbours that have given rise to widespread fears within Israel of an imminent regional conflict.
News of the request emerged as members of the international community stepped up the pressure yesterday for a thorough and impartial probe of last week’s Israeli raid of a Turkish vessel bound for Gaza with humanitarian aid that ended in a bloodbath.
The Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, who was attending a regional security summit in Turkey, added to the criticism of Israel and said he would raise the question of who would conduct an inquiry with the United Nations.
Israel has agreed to carry out an investigation, which could be overseen by two international observers, but would be limited to a theoretical debate of the merits of the raid and the blockade. The commandos who led the raid would not be questioned.
Israel has defended its land and sea blockade of Gaza, arguing that it prevents the flow of weapons to Hamas, the Islamist group that governs the strip. Critics say it constitutes collective punishment that has led to a humanitarian crisis.
Fearing that its enemies are rearming along its borders, Jerusalem has asked Washington to increase the emergency stores by $400m (£278m) to $1.2bn and is also seeking to buy more Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs from the US, the liberal newspaper Ha’aretz reported, citing unnamed sources.
The JDAM is a sophisticated satellite-guided bomb used extensively by Israel in the Lebanon War in 2006 and in its Gaza offensive at the end of 2008.
The Israeli Ministry of Defence refused to comment on the report and the US State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Washington agreed in December to double stores to $800m worth of arms, including rockets, bombs and armoured vehicles, allowing the Israeli forces to use the equipment with US approval in the case of an emergency.
Israel has already done so in the past, falling back on the US munitions during the Lebanon War in which at least 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis were killed… Full article
The Outrage at Helen Thomas
While Israel Kills and Maims …
By ALISON WEIR | June 9, 2010
Whenever Israel commits yet another atrocity, its defenders are quick to redirect public attention away from the grisly crime scene.
Currently, there are headlines about allegedly anti-Semitic comments made by senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Pundits across the land evince outrage at her off-the-cuff 25-second statement made to a man who appears to be holding a camera right in her face.
Thomas issued a public apology for her words, but this was insufficient to assuage the wounded feelings of powerful antagonists, and she has now retired from a long and distinguished career.
Before we examine her comments and evaluate their possible validity, let’s look at other recent events having to do with Israel.
On May 31st Israeli commandos killed at least nine unarmed volunteers attempting to take humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
According to eyewitness reports and forensic evidence, many of these aid volunteers were shot at close range, including a 19-year-old American citizen killed by four bullets to the head and one to the chest fired from 18 inches away.
Israel immediately imprisoned eyewitnesses and hundreds of other aid participants, confiscated their cameras, laptops, and other possessions, and prevented them from speaking to the press for days. Among the incarcerated were decorated U.S. veterans and an 80-year-old former ambassador who had been deputy director of Reagan’s Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism.
When they finally emerged and were able to tell their stories, many described horrific scenes of Israeli commandos shooting people in the head, of those tending the injured being shot in the stomach, of people bleeding to death while flotilla participants waved white flags and pled for help.
They also described being beaten brutally by Israeli forces, again and again – including those on ships that, in the U.S. media’s judgment, experienced “no violence.” A 64-year-old piano tuner from California, Paul Larudee, described hundreds of Israeli commandos boarding his ship. When he refused to cooperate with them, soldiers then beat him numerous times both on board the ship and after he was imprisoned on land.
Eventually he was taken by ambulance to an Israeli hospital. He wasn’t treated, however, and Larudee believes he was taken there because Israel didn’t want media to see his black eye, pronated joints, bruised jaw and body contusions.
Marine veteran Ken O’Keefe described similar beatings while in Israeli custody. In his case, the public was able to see his bloodied, battered face in video clips and still images – but only on the Internet, since American mainstream media failed to report on his press conference or to publish the many still photos of his injuries.
Other gruesome photos available to the American public only on the Internet are of Emily Henochowicz, a 21-year-old American student whose eye and eye socket were recently shattered by Israeli forces. She has since had her eyeball removed, three metal plates inserted in her face, and her jaw wired shut.
Henochowicz was not on the flotilla; she was taking part in a nonviolent demonstration against the Israeli assault when an Israeli soldier shot a high-velocity teargas canister into her face.
A Swedish citizen standing with Henochowicz said, “They clearly saw us. They clearly saw that we were internationals and it really looked as though they were trying to hit us. They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face.”
Henochowicz is not the first to have been shot by such a canister.
Thirty-year-old Basem Ibrahim Abu Rahmeh died when an Israeli soldier shot one at him at close range while Abu Rahmeh participated in a demonstration against Israeli confiscation of Palestinian farmland. A video of this is also available on You Tube; U.S. networks have also chosen not to broadcast this.
Californian Tristan Anderson was shot in the head by a similar canister while he was taking photographs following another demonstration. Part of Anderson’s brain was removed and he was in a “minimally responsive state” for 6-7 months.
He is now in a wheelchair, has almost no movement in his left arm and leg, is blind in one eye, and his mental functioning is significantly reduced. Photos of the shooting are also available on the Internet.
Since at least 2006 Israeli forces have closed off Gaza to the outside world, essentially imprisoning 1.5 million men, women, and children, and denying them foodstuffs, medicines, and building materials, as documented by such agencies as Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Christian Aid, which said that Israel was using food and medicine as weapons.
One of the multitudinous victims of this illegal siege is five-year-old Taysir Al Burai, who suffers from an acute neurological disorder and requires round-the-clock care. According to the UK Guardian, he could be cured if Israel would allow him to leave Gaza, but to date his parents’ repeated requests have been denied.
Another victim is 7-month-old Mohammad Khader, whose swelling in the brain required specialized treatment unavailable in Gazan hospitals depleted by the Israeli siege. His distraught parents’ applications asking Israel to allow them to travel abroad were similarly denied. Their tiny son died a few days ago.
Such stories go on and on.
Thomas’ “outrageous” statement
Yet, the rage we see in the U.S. media is directed against none of this. People shot in the head, eyes and brain parts destroyed, the elderly beaten, small children and infants caused to suffer and die, parents to grieve – none of this has caused a hint of anger. In fact, most of it has been considered of too little importance even to report.
Instead, media reports are filled with outrage at “anti-Israel” words spoken by 89-year-old Helen Thomas.
In Thomas’s lifetime Israel has ethnically cleansed over a million people, replaced them with colonists from around the world, committed dozens of massacres, tortured thousands of people, killed and maimed untold numbers of children, mangled limbs, and committed outrages on women, old people, the weak and the infirm.
It has assassinated people throughout the world, invaded numerous countries, spied on the U.S., killed and injured 200 American servicemen (the anniversary is this week), and tortured and imprisoned Americans. All while receiving more American money than any other country on earth.
For years, long before her recent words, Thomas has been the target of Israel’s vicious American volunteers, the Zionist blogosphere abounding with nasty slurs on her looks and her Lebanese ancestry, this latter also consistently emphasized by the media, despite her Kentucky birth and upbringing.
One of the reasons for the ferocious animosity toward her is the fact that Thomas is one of the very few mainstream reporters to challenge the neocon engendered lies that led the U.S. into wars that have caused massive death, destruction and tragedy and to continue to expose ongoing policies of violence and cruelty.
As the same groups and individuals who pushed the US into attacking Iraq have in recent years been escalating their efforts to push the U.S. to now similarly decimate Iranians under the pretext that Iran might be developing nuclear weapons, Thomas’s questioning attempted to elicit from Obama the fact that Israel already possesses nuclear weapons. While the rest of the press corps has conspired in the cover-up of this fact and others, Thomas worked to expose them.
Not surprisingly, the many people complicit in these manipulations, such as former Bush spokesperson Ari Fleischer, have led the charge against her.
It is useful to examine the video and context of Thomas’s allegedly “anti-Semitic” comment.
A man, apparently holding a camera right in her face, asks for her comments about Israel. She says, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land…” He interrupts her and asks where they should go. She responds, “They should go home. To Germany, Poland, America, and everywhere else.”
While Thomas has since apologized for her hasty words and many Israelis have the right to continue living where they are, the reality is that Israeli settlers did, indeed, come from elsewhere; they are, in fact, illegally occupying Palestinian land (a fact acknowledged even by the U.S. State Department); and international law does require that they leave.
Many commentators evince particular anger at Thomas’s inclusion of Germany and Poland as places to which Israeli colonists should return, suggesting that Hitler is still in control and waiting to pounce.
The happy fact is, however, that World War II and the Nazi holocaust ended well over half a century ago. In Poland today there is a vibrant Jewish revival with a 10-foot tall Menorah being lit in the center of Warsaw during Hanukah, and Germany has become, according to the New York Times, “a country where Jews want to live.” In fact, in recent years more Jews have chosen to immigrate to Germany than to Israel.
Thomas’s call for colonists to return to America (this destination was left out of many articles) is far from outrageous given that a great many West Bank settlers are from the U.S.
Overall, reporting on the incident has largely departed from the standard journalistic practice of quoting people from both sides of an issue. Quotes from Thomas supporters are missing, even though the You Tube page featuring the infamous video contains a large number of comments supporting her. In contrast, quotes from Thomas’s detractors, almost all of them Zionists, are ubiquitous, but generally fail to divulge the speakers’ frequent conflicts of interest.
For example, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz quotes Jeffrey Goldberg without mentioning that Goldberg is an Israeli citizen who served as a prison guard at an Israeli prison that held hundreds of Palestinians without charge, some killed in cold blood by the prison commander.
Mainstream media organizations do not seem to have investigated reports that the man who videotaped Thomas, Rabbi David Nesenoff, also made an offensive video featuring himself and another man impersonating a buffoonish Catholic priest and Mexican immigrant.
Similarly, news reports that a high school had disinvited Thomas as a graduation speaker almost never inform readers that many of the school’s parents and students wished Thomas to remain, even though this unreferenced group may represent a majority of the school. Members of this group have created a Facebook page, “Helen Thomas should have been our graduation speaker,” that states:
“The purpose of this group is to quietly but firmly protest the ability of a small minority to impose its will on the larger group through engaging or threatening to engage in disruptive discourse. This group affirms a belief in reasonable discussion and feel that in this scenario, a clear minority was able to override a larger majority by distorting the issues and discussion.”
It is not known who will take over Thomas’s front-row seat at White House briefings. Given the record of the current press corps, it is likely that Israel partisans are breathing a sign of relief.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. Photos and videos referenced in the article can be viewed on the website (http://ifamericansknew.org) She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org
The USS Liberty, a flubbed-up false flag
By Deanna Spingola | RenewAmerica | June 8, 2010
By 1948, under David Ben Gurion’s direction, the Israeli government developed the Israeli Terrorist Cell, Unit 131. In the mid 1950s, the U.S. was friends with Gamal Abdel Nasser and Egypt. Ben Gurion, an avid Zionist and the Israel’s first Prime Minister, envisioned an Egyptian terrorist attack against the U.S. in order to destroy that alliance. However, that wasn’t a probability, given the relationship between the two countries. So the Israeli government developed a pattern of using young Israelis who disguised themselves as terrorists of whichever country they were attempting to implicate. This concept would be applied during Operation Cyanide, involving the USS Liberty, in an attempt to initiate World War III.
On May 23, according to instructions from the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Cyrus R. Vance, the Liberty, commanded by William L. McGonagle, was directed to the eastern Mediterranean via Rota, Spain and placed under the direction of the Commander-in-Chief, Europe upon its arrival at Rota. [1] Frank Raven, the G Group Chief resisted such a risky move, “The ship will be defenseless out there. If war breaks out, she’ll be alone and vulnerable. Either side might start shooting at her…I say the ship should be left where it is.” [2]
Army General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, of Northwoods fame, put Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. (father of Senator John McCain), the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy in Europe in charge. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, per President Johnson’s instructions had advanced Admiral McCain to a four-star commanding position in February 1967. [3] Admiral John McCain directed operations from his office in London. [4] Johnson promised continued support and help in re-opening the Straits of Tiran, previously closed to Israel by Egypt. Israel was already developing a nuclear program in the Negev desert, but also wanted additional military assistance including — 100 Hawk missiles, 140 Patton tanks, and 24 Skyhawk jets. [5] John P. Roche, an avid supporter of Israel, wrote Johnson’s speech regarding the Straits of Tiran which was delivered in May 1967. [6] Johnson had many Jewish advisors and friends including Mathilde Krim.
Mathilde Krim’s first husband was David Danon, a Bulgarian Jew and member of the Irgun, a terrorist group. She converted to Judaism and associated with many of Israel’s future leaders, as she had been a dedicated gunrunning member of Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, prior to 1948. She was also friendly with the Stern Gang, another Zionist terrorist group founded by Avraham Stern and headed by Yitzhak Shamir. In 1958 she married Arthur B. Krim, a New York attorney and head of United Artists and a close advisor to Johnson and an avid Zionist. Krim was the finance chairman for the Democratic national committee and ran the President’s Club, Johnson’s fund-raising apparatus that held a $1,000 a plate dinner in New York on June 3, 1967. Arthur Krim built a huge vacation mansion next door to Johnson’s Texas ranch. [7]
On June 3, 1967, the USS Liberty was trolling in international waters off the coast of the Gaza Strip where the ship was to engage in an “extended independent surveillance operation in the eastern Mediterranean.” [8] Israel launched a long-planned war against her Arab neighbors at 7:45 a.m. Sinai time on June 5, 1967. In 1982, Menachem Begin, then Israel’s Prime Minister, admitted, “The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” [9] Mordechai Bentov, a member of Israel’s coalition cabinet during the war, said, “All this story about the danger of extermination has been a complete invention and has been blown up a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territories.” [10]
President Johnson, an apparently energetic philanderer given the number and notoriety of his sexual exploits, was in Texas until June 1 when he returned with his “friend” Mathilde Krim who remained at the White House with Johnson for the next week. When Johnson, who was absolutely dazzled by Mathilde’s blonde beauty and intelligence, was informed of the beginning of the war on the morning of June 5. The very first person he informed was Mathilde Krim. Official records indicate that Mathilde passed documents from Israel directly to Johnson over the duration of the crisis. Johnson didn’t meet with his advisors, except Walt Rostow, nor any Israeli or Arab officials during the duration of the very short war, he knew exactly what was going on with the Israelis due to his intimate relationship with Mathilde Krim. [11]
It was evident, as that first day progressed, that Egypt was unprepared and inundated by Israel’s aggressiveness. Ambassador Michael Hadow, a British expert on Israel and the Middle East didn’t believe that war was inevitable. [12] Yet his advice, as well as negotiation possibilities were ignored. He sent a telegram to the British Foreign Office, “It looks as if the Israelis started it. We have been led up the garden path.” [13] Abba Eban, Israel’s Foreign Minister, told U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour that his government was going to protest Egypt’s actions to the U.N. Security Council. [14] Eban, along with other dignitaries, misled the entire world but never offered any apologies for his deception about Egypt initiating the war. The Western media characterized Israel as a vulnerable country threatened with extinction by its Arab neighbors. Rather than a war of land seizure, it was portrayed as a defensive war of survival. However, Israel kept the land her military grabbed. [15]
Of course it was all over the news and millions of Americans believed that the Arabs had started the war and attacked the poor defenseless state of Israel, an act that could have erupted into World War III. Although both parties, the Arabs and the Jews had participated in the warfare, the Israelis were the only people who had immediate access to President Johnson any time they wanted. Conversely, the Arabs were silenced by their inaccessibility to the White House and the U.S. media. [16]
Yitzhak Rabin, former Chief of Staff and then Ambassador to the United States, said, “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war…The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.” Rabin recognized that any country with good intelligence, like Israel, could ascertain that Egypt had no plans to wage war against Israel. The CIA, before the war, embraced Israel’s views about Egypt’s intentions. Israel would have won any war, a veritable turkey shoot, in a week. [17] Further, Israeli intelligence had broken the Arab codes as soon as the fighting started. The Israelis also had the ability to block and alter all communications between King Hussein in Cairo and Egypt’s military. Israel, with military and tactical superiority, altered the communications to give the Arabs the impression that they were winning when in fact they were being ambushed and summarily slaughtered. [18]
Israel had air supremacy immediately after their surprise attack on Egypt. Within hours, Israeli jets pummeled twenty-five air bases from Damascus, in Syria to Luxor. They used machine guns, mortar fire, tanks and air power in their assault against the Jordanian section of Jerusalem and the Jordan River’s west bank. Israeli tanks and auxiliary personnel transporters assaulted the Sinai moving towards the Suez Canal. They transformed the area into a “massive killing field” as Egyptian deaths, according to one Israeli general, amounted to between 7,000 to 10,000 people. His losses were only about 275 soldiers. Indian peacekeeper soldiers, flying the U.N. flag, were also attacked on their way to Gaza. Fourteen peacekeeper soldiers were killed in what one Indian officer called the “deliberate, cold-blooded killing of unarmed U.N. soldiers.” [19]
The Israelis had captured some Egyptians and held them in the town of El Arish. By June 8, the prisoners had become annoyances as the Israelis had no place to house them and insufficient forces to guard them and too few vehicles to move them to regular prison camps. Consequently, the Israelis transformed the town into a “slaughterhouse” by methodically “butchering” their Egyptian prisoners. They lined up sixty unarmed Egyptians with their hands tied behind their backs and, with machine guns, slaughtered them in cold blood. Another group of thirty prisoners were killed nearby. The Israelis directed some Bedouins to bury those victims. In another incident, the number of Egyptian prisoners killed totaled about 150, as witnessed by an Israeli journalist, Gabi Bron. Some prisoners were forced to dig graves for the dead and then they were shot. Aryeh Yitzhaki, an Israeli army historian, and other officers collected testimony from dozens of soldiers who admitted killing Egyptian prisoners. According to Yitzhaki, Israeli soldiers murdered about 1,000 Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai, including about 400 in El Arish. Ariel Sharon was close to El Arish at the time of the incidents. Yitzhaki said that the Israeli leadership, Dayan, Rabin and others knew about the slaughter. [20]
The Liberty, close to El Arish at the time, and loaded with $10.2 million of sensitive equipment eavesdropped on Israel’s Six-Day War with Egypt, then known as the United Arab Republic. The Israelis were aware by 10:55 the morning of June 8 that a clearly-marked U.S. ship was off the coast and unmistakably visible from El Arish. [21] On that day, June 8, 1967, without any warning and apparently without reason, the Israeli Navy and Air Force attacked the ship with torpedoes, rockets, white phosphorous, cannons and armor-piercing bullets. The Israelis used napalm, a flammable liquid or jellied gasoline to turn the Liberty’s deck into a 3,000-degree holocaustic firestorm. Thirty-four Americans were killed and 171 others were wounded, one of which died later from his wounds. [22] Napalm is designed to kill and maim, generate panic and cause confusion. [23]
The first wave of attacks, comprised of as many as eight planes using heat-seeking missiles, destroyed the transformers (miraculously, all except one) which fed the aerial systems. This was a well-planned, premeditated strategy to prevent the USS Liberty from alerting the world of this murderous attack. The surveillance ship was no longer able to listen in to the war or send messages. If that was the objective of the attack, then the goal was met and the attack should have subsided. However, the real objective was to slaughter the crew and send the ship to the bottom. [24] Finally, the planes left only to be followed up by three surface craft which fired torpedoes. One hit below the water line and made a hole which measured 45 feet by 34 by 37. Amazingly, the ship didn’t sink but listed eleven degrees. When the crew inflated the lifeboats, the torpedo boats even destroyed those boats. [25]
The war was over by June 8 and Egypt had lost. The men on the Liberty first assumed that the Arabs, in unmarked planes and ships, were attacking their ship in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel. [26] There were 294 survivors from the premeditated Israeli attack, directed by Moshe Dayan. The remains of five men were never found and body parts were put into sacks for burial. [27]
Vice Admiral William I. Martin, a former World War II test pilot and “Pentagon loyalist,” had assumed command of the Sixth Fleet in April 1967. [28] During Israel’s assault there were several U.S. ships in the area, the aircraft carrier Saratoga commanded by Captain Joseph Tully, the Flagship commanded by Vice Admiral Martin, a Cruiser commanded by Rear Admiral Roger Payne, the USS America, a new aircraft carrier was under the command by Captain Don Engen. Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis was the Sixth Fleet carrier Division Commander. Additionally, there were approximately a dozen escorting destroyer ships. The Saratoga’s Communications Officer received a message from the Liberty, addressed to any or all U.S. ships or stations, “Liberty is under attack by unknown enemy air and surface units. Request Assistance.” [29]
Help was only about 15 to 20 minutes away from the Liberty. Captain Tully notified Vice Admiral Martin and said, “Unless otherwise directed, I plan to launch my Ready Strike Group in support of Liberty.” Martin approved and directed the USS America to launch their Ready Strike Group. However Rear Admiral Geis of the USS America recalled his aircraft which created a dilemma for Captain Tully. Vice Admiral ordered another strike to give aid to the Liberty but it was again recalled by Rear Admiral Geis. [30] [31] According to an independent, unofficial study, the “The White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack…” [32] McNamara recalled the aircraft that had been launched from the Saratoga within minutes. Certainly, he would not have made such a move without Johnson’s approval. [33]
Secretary McNamara ordered the aircraft recalled a second time. Admiral Geis was told that President Johnson had ordered the aircraft to be returned, “He would not have his allies embarrassed, he didn’t care who was killed or what was done to the ship.” [34] According to Admiral Geis, President Johnson, known for his ruthlessness and vile profanity told Geis, “I want that goddamn ship going to the bottom. No help — recall the wings.” [35] Tony Hart, a Navy communications technician stationed at the U.S. Navy Base in Morocco in June 1967 reported that McNamara responded, “We are not going to war over a bunch of dead sailors.” [36] If the Liberty had sunk, as Johnson wanted, Egypt would have been blamed. Government officials, including the McCains have maintained absolute silence about the Liberty’s assault.
The attack ended at about 3:15 pm. A while later, Israeli helicopters circled the ship. Some of the crewmembers, not yet realizing that Israel was the perpetrator of the attack, were glad to see their friendly ally. Then one crewmember shouted, “They’ve come to finish us off.” The copters just hovered as the Israeli troops watched without signaling and then soared away as if the attack had finally been called off. The survivors were stunned by what had happened and by the total lack of response from U.S. rescue planes. The ship generated sufficient steam to start moving from the area. There were 851 rocket hits and it was estimated that there were at least fifteen planes that had targeted the USS Liberty. One hit could be rationalized as an accident but not 851. [37]
Captain Ward Boston, the chief Navy attorney for the 1967 U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, revealed that the clear-cut evidence demonstrated that the ship was clearly marked as an American ship. On October 9, 2003, Captain Boston said, “Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack…was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.” Captain Boston stated that Admiral Kidd had, in 1967, concluded that the attack was “a case of mistaken identity” because he was “under direct orders to do so by Defense Secretary McNamara and President Johnson.” [38] At the time, Congress, failing in their check and balances responsibility, opted not to convene a formal investigation of the situation. Israel was not held accountable and no one was punished or reprimanded. [39] The U.S. Navy prohibited its investigators from going to Israel to question Israeli pilots and boat captains. The Navy conducted an eight-day inquiry and issued a top-secret final report. [40]
Prior to the attack, Petty Officer Phil Tourney had determined that there had been at least thirteen over flights by Israeli planes. Two of the over-flights were by planes that had the prominent Star of David plainly visible. One plane got so incredibly close that Tourney waved and smiled at the pilot or co-pilot and he smiled and waved back. [41] The survivors knew that the attack was not the result of an identification error. On the fourth day of the war the men on the USS Liberty who were monitoring radio traffic during the war between Israel and Egypt could see the smoke of the fighting even though the ship was thirteen miles from land within international waters. The militarily superior Israelis were decidedly victorious over Egypt. [42]
Yitzhak Rabin, the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, concluded that Israel was not to blame for the attack on the USS Liberty but said, “In any event, to express our goodwill and humanitarian concern, the Israeli Government paid $13 million in compensation to the families of the Americans killed or wounded in the attack.” [43]
On June 19, 1967, Abba Eban, Israel’s Foreign Minister, delivered a speech to the Special Assembly of the United Nations in which he claimed, “The danger to his country was great.” He said, “The military build-up in Egypt proceeded at an intensive rate. It was designed to enable Egypt to press its war plans against Israel while maintaining its violent adventures elsewhere. In the face of these developments, Israel was forced to devote an increasing part of its resources to self-defense.” Eban claimed he heard the following on a Cairo broadcast on May 25, 1967, “The Arab people is firmly resolved to wipe Israel off the map and restore the honour of the Arabs of Palestine.” Levi Eshkol, Israel’s Prime Minister, in a newspaper article in October 1967, “The Egyptian layout in the Sinai and the general military build-up there testified to a military defensive Egyptian set-up south of Israel.” Ezer Weizman, chief of the operations staff under Rabin, told an Israeli newspaper that there was “no threat of destruction.” He admitted that the attack against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria was intended to allow Israel to “exist according to the scale, spirit and quality she now embodies.” [44] Rabin’s deceptive claims were designed to win the world’s support and ultimately blame the war on Nasser. [45]
Operation Cyanide was the reason that the USS Liberty was sent to the war zone without protection. Yet, thirty years after the attack, there isn’t a single reference to Operation Cyanide despite numerous Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the attack. The Government archives for this period are kept at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. Among all of the papers about the Liberty there is one dated April 10, 1967 stamped — SECRET — EYES ONLY. That document was “sanitized” in December 1988. It was apparently the minutes from a meeting on April 7, 1967 that included Walt Rostow (National Security Advisor), Ambassador Foy Kohler (Deputy Under Secretary of State), Cyrus Vance (Deputy Secretary of Defense), and Admiral Rufus Taylor (CIA Deputy Chief). [46]
Apparently, Operation Cyanide included an Israeli war against Egypt in order to depose Gamal Abdul Nasser, a purported Soviet puppet. U.S. intelligence and military specialists were sent to Israel months before to plan and prepare for the operation. The operation was an agreement between Johnson and Israel during which the USS Liberty was supposed to be sunk, along with all of her crew. When Israel’s attack failed to sink the ship, the game plan changed which included an apology from Israel and a phony cover story. [47] According to author Peter Hounam, a U.S. intelligence agent claimed that Captain McGonagle was aware of the pretext and the intentions of the U.S. to attack Egypt and had been briefed to anticipate a superficial strafing attack on the USS Liberty. [48] The attack unexpectedly accelerated, perhaps because what the Liberty’s surveillance revealed about Israel’s terrorism against the Egyptians.
Ephraim Evron, the Minister of the Israeli Embassy in Washington in 1967 and an avowed Socialist, served with Ambassador Avraham Harman. Evron, who viewed Johnson as a hero, was frequently invited to Johnson’s Texas ranch. In addition to Evron and Harman, Harry McPherson, Special Counsel in the White House, served as a link between Johnson and the country’s Jewish population and represented their interests. Evron greatly admired Johnson and regarded him as the greatest thing that had ever happened to America for the “social revolution” that Johnson was “going to achieve.” He believed that Johnson, Israel’s best friend, would never do anything that would hurt Israel. Johnson’s affection for Jews and Israel had more to do with their votes and financial support than sentimentality or principles. The very generous U.S. Jewish community, amounting to 5.5 million, supported Johnson’s divisive Vietnam policies. [49]
In the mid 1990s Rabin attempted to achieve peace with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with the U.S. acting as the mediator. Some of the other Zionists saw this as a hindrance to their plans of expanding Israel’s control of the area for an ultimate “greater Israel.” Consequently, whether acting on his own or as an agent, Yigal Amir, a young law student, shot five bullets into the Prime Minister when he was attending a 1995 peace rally. He later told investigators that he had absolutely no regrets. In the New York Times, dated November 27, 1995, Rabin’s assassin reportedly claimed, “According to Jewish law, the minute a Jew betrays his people and country to the enemy, he must be killed. No one taught me that law. I’ve been studying the Talmud all my life, and I have all the data.” [50]
Senator John McCain, backed by William Kristol in the 2000 presidential race, has always supported Israel. Representative Vin Weber, a pro-Israel member of the CFR, helped found William Kristol’s Empower America. Weber backed McCain in the 2000 and advised McCain during his campaign. Representative Weber sabotaged “an effort to force a congressional investigation of Israel’s terroristic 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty.” [51] Robert S. McNamara later claimed, in his memoirs, that he didn’t know what happened and didn’t “take the time to find out.” The attack on the USS Liberty, part of Operation Cyanide, had to be concealed and all evidence had to be whitewashed. [52]
It took another false flag, 9/11, to get the U.S. embroiled in the Middle East. A 9/11 Commission was convened despite Bush and Cheney’s efforts. But, it took time to gather the right people to staff the commission which predictably failed to reach accurate conclusions because essential evidence was withheld by the government. One member, Bob Kerrey, admitted that 9/11 was a thirty- year conspiracy. [53] Shortly after 9/11, Eckehardt Werthebach, the former president of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz said, “the deathly precision” and “the magnitude of planning” behind the attacks would have required “years of planning.” [54] Was 9/11 another false flag, with blame again placed on the Arabs, to compensate for the flubbed-up false flag on June 8, 1967? And if that is the case, did the planning begin shortly after the first failure? Benjamin Netanyahu, the day after the horrific event, said that the 9/11 terror attacks were good for Israel. [55] The five Israelis who were in the U.S. prior to 9/11 and were caught photographing the event admitted, “Our purpose was to document the event.” [56]
© Deanna Spingola
Report: Israeli Government Asked The US For More Weapons
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – June 08, 2010
During his most recent visit to the US, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu requested that the US provide him with Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs, rockets, aircraft ammunition and other weapons to vastly increase the “emergency stores” of weapons held by the US in Israel.
Israeli forces used Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs during its 2006 invasion of Lebanon, and its 2009 assault on Gaza. In both of these invasions, the Israeli use of these U.S. supplied weapons resulted in heavy civilian casualties among those attacked by the Israeli army.
The Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs are constructed by the US weapons manufacturer Boeing, which claims that the bombs are free-fall bombs converted into guided missiles. Israeli officials say the bombs are needed for an upcoming prolonged, protracted war that would extensively utilize the Israeli airforce, according to Israeli sources.
The Israeli sources also claimed that Netanyahu, along with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Defense Ministry Director-General Udi Shani, have requested on multiple occasions in recent months that the US government double its so-called ’emergency stores’ of weapons inside Israel in order to prepare for this planned protracted war. Although the report did not name any country, Israel’s recent threats against Iran make it clear that this is the potential ‘protracted war’ that is referenced in these requests.
Currently, the US stores of weapons in Israel are estimated at around $800 million worth of weapons, but Israel would like the US government to increase the store to $1.2 billion worth of weapons. These weapons stores were created by the Obama administration in December 2009, in preparation for a potential war, or to assist US forces currently fighting other wars in the Middle East. The US military is free to use the weapons from these stores as needed, and Israeli forces can use them with U.S. government permission.
Israel Derangement Syndrome
By Andrew Sullivan | The Atlantic Monthly | 04 June 2010
To read Charles Krauthammer today is to enter a twilight zone of an alternate reality. A country permanently occupying and colonizing a neighboring region, and treating its original inhabitants as dangerous interlopers, is the victim. An elite commando unit attacking a ship carrying toys and wheelchairs in the hours before dawn are those we should feel pity for. A country with 150 nuclear warheads and the strongest military in its region, the victor in every conventional war it has always fought, is somehow also always fighting for its very existence. A country backed by the sole superpower, supplied with aid by huge majorities in the US Congress, is facing extinction. Self-defense requires not civilly disabling and inspecting the cargo of an unarmed ship but raiding it at dawn and killing nine and injuring dozens. Basic human revulsion at a military that can kill over a thousand people – including scores of women and children in a trapped, impoverished enclave – can only be a function of anti-Semitism. A territory that is being systematically populated with Israelis in illegal settlements in contravention of the Geneva Conventions is merely a “buffer zone”. You need to colonize buffer zones?
Invasion and occupation of neighboring countries is “forward defense”. And asking that a two-state solution be moved forward by freezing illegal settlement construction and allowing a blockade that, while interdicting arms, doesn’t seek to kill civilians and restrict the import of basic necessities is to deprive a country with 150 nuclear warheads of any legitimate form of self-defense.
This is a form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned. And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers. There is no sense of the human here; just the tribe.
Something has been wrong here for a very long time, and now it is inescapable. Until the discourse is rescued from the victims of Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israel and America will slowly be drawn into wars they cannot ultimately win, lose every other ally they ever had, and embolden and fortify the very Islamist forces we are seeking to defuse and defeat.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly
Rep. Sherman: Prosecute U.S. Citizens involved with Gaza Flotilla
Ali Gharib | Lobe Log | June 4th, 2010
On a press call hosted by a pro-Israel organization, Rep. Brad Sherman, Democrat of California, told reporters that he intends seek the prosecution of any U.S. citizens who were aboard or involved with the Freedom Flotilla.
“The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 [PDF] makes it absolutely illegal for any American to give food, money, school supplies, paper clips, concrete or weapons to Hamas or any of its officials,” Sherman said on the Israel Project call, conflating Hamas and Gaza’s civilian population. “And so I will be asking the Attorney General to prosecute any American involved in what was clearly an effort to give items of value to a terrorist organization.”
Sherman also said that he plans on working with the Department of Homeland Security to make sure that any non-U.S. citizen involved with or aboard the Flotilla are excluded from entering the U.S.
Hamas, considered a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 and has held de facto rule over the Gaza Strip since it took the area by force in 2007 in anticipation of an impending U.S.-backed coup d’etat by the rival Fatah faction.
The Freedom Flotilla was organized by the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza — in place since Hamas’s takeover — and deliver tons of food aid, medical and school supplies and building materials to repair buildings damaged in the month-long Israeli assault of Gaza in Dec. 2008 and Jan. 2009. The Flotilla was raided by Israeli commandos in international waters during the early hours of Monday morning, leaving at least nine people, including one U.S. citizen, dead.
Though the nine were killed by the IDF, Sherman criticized the Obama administration for not directly blaming Hamas, using the logic that the militant movement brought the blockade on itself: “I think the U.S. could be better now about condemning Hamas as responsible for those nine deaths.”
The blockade and the land siege (by Israel and Egypt) have, by international consensus (leaving out Israel and its hard-line American allies) caused a humanitarian crisis among Gaza’s civilian population.
The Congressman, known as a pro-Israel stalwart who has, in the past, joined as the sole Democrat on Republican criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy toward Israel, denied that there was a “hunger crisis” or “humanitarian crisis” in the Gaza Strip. “The health circumstances in Gaza are better than they are in many American cities,” he added later.
Questions about the legality of the Israeli blockade and its enforcement in international waters were quickly dismissed by Sherman, who said that the U.S. had itself blockaded Germany in both World Wars, Japan in the Second, Cuba during the missile crisis, and, curiously, the Confederacy during the Civil War.
The irony of the last example was, I’m sure, lost on Sherman. It was in that war, of course, that another man named Sherman, a Union officer, led a scorched-Earth campaign against the blockaded Confederacy. There are similar examples from the recent Gaza War, which I’d bed Rep. Sherman also had no problem with. (And are we really reduced to using a conflict from 150 years ago to justify military actions of the IDF?)
While Israel alleges ties between IHH, a Turkish relief organization involved in the Flotilla, and terror groups, many credible doubts have been raised about that assertion (see LobeLog contributors Marsha Cohen and Max Blumenthal’s pieces on the subject). Nonetheless, Sherman insisted the group has “clear terrorist ties.”
The California Congressman also blamed the media for the harsh criticisms of Israel since the incident on the Med (even from tiny Central American countries). Sherman employed what he called the “Kent State Rorschach Test” — referring to a generation of journalists who grew up in the Vietnam War-era and viewed Western governments critically because of incidents like the 1970 Kent State massacre.
“The liberal media is misled by that Kent State Rorschach Test that is a belief that those who are poorer, less technological, and more scruffy looking are right,” he said, alluding to skepticism of “Westerners, Europeans, and the U.S.”
All of Israel’s problems, said Sherman, are a distraction from Iran’s nuclear program, which he alleged is aimed at nuclear weapons. If Iran acquires those weapons, he said, the U.S. itself will be in danger: “You could smuggle one into the States in a bale of marijuana.”
“What really matters is the Iran nuclear program and we have a short amount of time to stop that program,” Sherman went on. “And our failure to take all the action to stop that program could force Israel to take an action far more controversial than what they’ve done this week.”
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Sanctions, War and the Policy of Dual Containment
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH | March 17, 2008
It is now nearly three decades since the Unites States adopted the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. While much has been written about the containment of Iraq, there has been very little in-depth analysis of this policy when it comes to Iran. In a book that is going to be released on March 31, 2008, entitled The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment (Routledge), I attempt to address this shortcoming by investigating when and why the US policy of containment of Iran came about, how it evolved, and where it stands today.[1] To the extent that Israel has been involved in US policy making, the study will also include the role that Israel has played in the containment of Iran. Also, since the fate of Iran has been inextricably linked to that of Iraq, occasionally the investigation will overlap with the containment of Iraq.
The policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq originated during the Carter Administration, but it was not until the Clinton Administration that the expression “dual containment” became popular. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- No Vote, No Representation, No State: Democracy, Israeli Style
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- New Report: “Scholasticide and Genocide in Gaza: Assessment, Testimonies and Legal Analysis”
- ‘THAAD Delusion’: Iran war exposes US missile shield limits – The Atlantic
- Moscow issues warning to NATO over Russian exclave
- Yes, the Iran war has destroyed Trump’s presidency
- The fallacy of US delusions about Iran’s economic collapse
- Hezbollah denies Syria cell link, warns of Israeli plan to sow discord
- The legacy of US sanctions, war, and occupation in Iraq
- If Americans Knew
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- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
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- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
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