American Israel Public Affairs Committee

WHY IS THE ISRAEL LOBBY KEEPING QUIET ON SYRIA CRISIS?

By Damian Lataan | August 29, 2013

In a recent article in Politico, Anna Palmer pondered the question of why the Israel lobby is silent on Syria. After having spoken with a number of pro-Israel activists representing pro-Israeli organisations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) she reports that most have kept quiet about the events in Syria for two main reasons: one is the uncertainty of what is going on in Syria and, two, not wanting to seem in any way influential about US foreign policy relating to affairs in the Middle East – especially after the disastrous invasion of Iraq which was strongly supported by most Israeli lobby groups on the basis that Saddam supported the Palestinian cause during the Second Intifada and had WMDs likely to be used against Israel.

Meanwhile, at Commentary online magazine, lead neocon propagandist Jonathan Tobin attempts to spin that the pro-Israeli groups in the US, better known as the Israel Lobby (‘so-called’ as Tobin would have it), don’t have a vested interest in the outcome of the Syrian war because, regardless of who wins, it will not, he says, be in Israel’s interests. He denies that the pro-Israeli organisations are not trying to keep a low profile for any nefarious reasons that they could take advantage of or that they are worried about public opinion if they supported intervention against al-Assad.

The reality, which Palmer has ignored and which Tobin would vehemently deny, is that the Israeli Zionists, including the neocons and those in AIPAC, the AJC and the other pro-Israeli organisations are hoping that the war in Syria where al-Assad is supported by Hezbollah and Iran, will spill out into Lebanon which will then provide Israel with an opportunity to attack Hezbollah. Further escalation may then even involve an attack against Iran by either Israel and/or the US.

Israel will play its usual game of provocation such as IDF incursions into Lebanon, drone flights over Lebanon, low level strike jet overflights into Lebanese airspace, shootings of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, etc., in the hope of provoking retaliation from the Palestinians and Hezbollah that would justify a full on attack against both. A US and allied attack against Syria might also provoke retaliatory attacks against Israel that would also justify Israeli action.

But, of course, none of this is likely to be talked about openly by Zionist Israelis or their representative Israel Lobby organisations are they? Hence the silence.

“Bandar ibn Israel”

August 29, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Wars for Israel | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jewish Committee, Israel, Israel lobby in the United States, Jonathan Tobin, Middle East, Syria, United States | 2 Comments

Palestinian Babies and the Banality of Israeli Racism

By Roger Sheety | Palestine Chronicle | July 9, 2013

A June, 2013 speech by Bill Clinton honoring war criminal Shimon Peres has highlighted the extent to which Israeli anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab bigotry has become acceptable within Western mainstream discourse.

In a racist echo of Golda Meir, who once admitted that she had trouble sleeping because of the number of Palestinian babies being conceived, Clinton said: “No matter how many settlers you put out there [in the West Bank], the Palestinians are having more babies than the Israelis as a whole…. You’ve got an existential question to answer.”

Clinton, who was reportedly paid $500,000 to publicly share his hatred of Palestinian babies, couched his bigotry as part of a speech on “peace” and the bankrupt “two-state solution.” Said Clinton: “If you don’t have a vision of where you want to wind up, bad things are going to happen sooner or later…. You have a better chance if you are driven by a vision of peace and reconciliation.” In plain language, if Israel does not return a mere 22 percent of the 100 percent of Palestinian land it stole, it will soon (horror of horrors) be overrun with Palestinian children.

Clinton’s racist comments, reported worldwide by mainstream media mostly without irony, were also an extension of current U.S. President Barack Obama’s own fear and hatred of Palestinian children, which he expressed clearly in May of 2011 to the delight and cheers of his American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) audience in Washington:

“Here are the facts we all must confront. First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. This will make it harder and harder—without a peace deal—to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.”

For Palestinians, of course, neither Clinton’s nor Obama’s morally abhorrent remarks come as a surprise since they have long been accustomed to Israeli racism and its accompanying violence and brutality. Racist terms like “demographic bomb” and “demographic threat” are so common in Israeli media and discourse that they barely register any protest in the so-called “Jewish and democratic state.”

We are not talking about Israeli soccer fans thuggishly chanting “death to Arabs” at sporting events (a common occurrence these days), but rather racist incitement from the highest elected officials. Both Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu, for instance, have used the phrase “demographic threat” in public statements regarding Palestinian citizens of the state. In 2003, as finance minister, Netanyahu would say, “If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens” (“Netanyahu: Israel’s Arabs are the real demographic threat,” Haaretz, December 18, 2003).

Similarly, Peres would publicly muse in 1977 on the “problem” of the growing Palestinian population of Jerusalem: “I do not want to wake up one morning to discover that Jerusalem is subject to the demographic fate of [the] Galilee” (“Israel’s Geographic-Demographic Threat to Identity,” Royal United Services Institute News Brief, January, 2011). Ehud Olmert, as well, in a speech to the Knesset in 2007, would speak in alarming tones of a pending “demographic battle drowned in blood and tears.”

In 2009, Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Atias would instigate hatred against Palestinian citizens of the state and justify apartheid in a speech to the Israel Bar Association. “I see [it] as a national duty to prevent the spread of a population that, to say the least, does not love the state of Israel,” said Atias. Speaking in particular against the Palestinian population of the Galilee, he added: “If we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don’t think that it is appropriate [for Arabs and Israeli Jews] to live together” (“Housing Minister: Spread of Arab population must be stopped,” Haaretz, July, 2009).

Michael Oren, the current Israeli Ambassador (and chief propagandist) to the U.S., would even write a lengthy and deeply racist article published in Commentary magazine in 2009, titled “Seven Existential Threats,” and which included the sub-heading “The Arab Demographic Threat.” He would opine in a grave, apocalyptic voice that “the Palestinian population on both sides of the 1949 armistice lines is expanding far more rapidly than the Jewish sector and will surpass it in less than a decade.”

This trend must not continue, continues Oren, because “Israel, the Jewish State, is predicated on a decisive and stable Jewish majority of at least 70 percent. Any lower than that and Israel will have to decide between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. If it chooses democracy, then Israel as a Jewish state will cease to exist.”

Israeli academics and intellectuals, too, have joined the racist chorus of incitement and, simultaneously, of justification of war crimes against Palestinians. So Benny Morris, for example, after documenting the destruction of Palestine, the massive ethnic cleansing, the theft of land, and the massacres and rapes of innocents, would then vindicate every crime of the Zionist colonial-settler state from 1948 to the present.

“There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing,” said Morris in a 2004 interview with Ari Shavit. “That is what Zionism faced [in 1948]. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.”

Then, jumping ahead six decades, he refers to Palestinian citizens of the state, who were not ethnically cleansed, in typically racist terms: “The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state” (“An interview with Benny Morris,” Counterpunch.org, January, 2004). Morris would thus set the stage for future ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including the current operation in the Naqab (“Negev”) where tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouin have been targeted for forcible removal from their ancestral lands.

Furthermore, these terms, once used exclusively against Palestinians, are now also utilized by both Israeli officials and citizens to shamelessly incite hatred against African asylum seekers, as well as African Jews who are, nominally, citizens of the state. As reported by Haaretz in 2010, for instance, Netanyahu said, the “flood of illegal workers infiltrating from Africa [was] a concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country.” Without skipping a beat, he would then associate asylum seekers with smuggling of drugs, terrorism, and general decadence, and so justifying the building of yet another apartheid wall to keep out the unwanted (“Netanyahu: Illegal African immigrants—a threat to Israel’s Jewish character,” Haaretz, July, 2010). See, in addition, the superb work of David Sheen who has meticulously documented recent shockingly fanatical anti-African marches in Tel Aviv, organized and led by elected Israeli officials and community leaders, in dozens of official reports, interviews, and video testimonies (www.davidsheen.com/racism/).

It is impossible to imagine Clinton, Obama, or any major political figure for that matter, talking about any other national, ethnic, or religious group in such unapologetically racist terms. Would either have made analogous comments regarding, for example, indigenous South Africans during the days of South African Apartheid? Or against North American First Nation peoples today? Would an Australian or Canadian housing minister ever speak about a minority group within their countries with the same unabashed hatred as Ariel Atias? Had they done so, the response of Western liberal pundits and intellectuals would have been swift and indignant—and rightfully so.

Ethnic cleansing, land theft, destruction of hundreds of ancient towns and villages, massacres, military occupation, and apartheid over six and a half decades in Palestine are all deeply tied together with Israeli/Zionist racism. Indeed, Israeli bigotry has often been and continues to be used to sanction and sanctify Israeli crimes against humanity; thus do attitudes and actions simultaneously fuel and feed off each other. That even supposed progressives have adopted Israeli attitudes towards Palestinians in their public statements as their own (with little or no controversy), and therefore also excusing Israeli crimes, shows the vile depths to which mainstream media discourse has sunk.

July 10, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Morris, Bill Clinton, Israel, Obama, Shimon Peres | 2 Comments

What will Obama do?

President Obama’s actions are unlikely to stray outside the parameters the Israel lobby is willing to accept. But there is a growing movement that is challenging the lobby’s stronghold on U.S. politics.

By Alison Weir | Palestine News | Spring 2013

Whenever a US president begins a term of office many people round the world are curious about what policies he may pursue on Israel-Palestine. They wonder if he will once again call on Israel to reduce its settlement activities as almost every president has done at least once.

Will he condemn Israeli aggression, or only Palestinian rockets? Will he push a “peace process” in which virtually all the American mediators are Israel partisans[1] or will a few non-Zionists be permitted to play a role?

As Barack Obama began his second term as president, these questions came up again. But these are the wrong questions. Instead, to predict what he will do, one only needs to ask what the Israel lobby is likely to require.

The president won’t always do what the lobby demands – on rare occasions he may deviate a bit from its dictates– but a large percentage of the time he will dutifully do what the lobbyists command.

In other words, in order accurately to analyse American policies in the Middle East, to predict how they will change or not and to develop effective ways to revamp them in the directions that are so urgently needed for humanitarian relief and real peace, it is essential to understand the decisive role the Israel lobby plays in the United States.

Presidents and politicians from both major parties have long been extremely aware of this lobby. It may greatly improve or impede their chances of winning an election, of passing legislation, of receiving positive press coverage, of, quite simply, going on to bigger and better things.

Through the years the lobby for Israel has been a decisive factor in the defeat of Republicans Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey (at one time a Presidential contender) and Charles Percy (another Presidential contender) and Democrats Adlai Stevenson, William Fulbright, Earl Hilliard, Cynthia McKinney and quite likely many more.[2]

Politicians from both parties attend the annual convention of its major lobbying arm, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and pledge their loyalty to this foreign country. President Barack Obama, whose early and major backing came from members of the Israel lobby[3], gave his first post-nomination speech at the AIPAC convention.

Yet, despite the lobby’s inordinate power, most Americans are only minimally aware of it. For decades surveys have shown that the large majority of Americans don’t wish to take sides on Israel-Palestine, a reflection of a public that is uninformed about how much of our tax money goes to Israel and how decisively our government is, indeed, taking a side.

This widespread lack of awareness about the role of the Israel lobby in determining American policies is particularly startling given that the movement on behalf of Israel has been active in the United States for over 100 years and that it played a significant role in Israel’s creation.[4]

By the 1920s it was able successfully to promote its policies over those recommended by the US State Department; by the 1940s it had added Pentagon policies to those it could overrule and both presidential candidates Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey were currying its favour[5]; by 1967 it was able to push its cover story on Israel’s lethal attack on the US naval ship Liberty over opposition by high ranking admirals, the director of the CIA and the Secretary of State[6]; and by 1977 the head of AIPAC could state with accuracy: “We have never lost on a major issue.”[7]

Half a century ago the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigating lobbying activities found an illicit cycle in which the Israel lobby succeeded in procuring money for Israel, some of this was then secretly funneled back into these groups, which then used this money to lobby for still more American tax dollars to Israel.

The hearings concluded that Israel operated “one of the most effective networks of foreign influence” in the United States.[8] Yet, since the media reported on this so little, most Americans are unaware of these extremely grave findings.

The term “Israel lobby” fails to do justice to the extraordinary scope and composition of this special interest group. Below is a small sampling of the American organisations that work on behalf of Israel. Virtually all have multi-million dollar budgets; a few have endowments in the hundreds of million dollars and most of them are funded by tax-deductible donations:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC): $100 million endowment, [9] $60 million annual revenues.[10]

The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF): $26 million annual revenues.[11]

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP): $23.5 million net assets. $9.4 million annual revenues.

Anti-Defamation League (ADL): $115 million net assets,[12] $60 million annual revenues.[13]

International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (aka Stand for Israel): $100 million annual revenues.[14]

The Israel Project: $11 million annual budget.[15]

Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (FIDF): $80 million net assets,[16] $60 million annual revenues.[17]

Hadassah (Women’s Zionist Organization of America): $400 million net assets, $100 million annual revenues.

The Jim Joseph Foundation: $837 million net assets.[20]

The Avi Chai Foundation: $615 million total assets.[21]

Jewish Federations: $3 billion annual revenues.[22]

Jewish Community Relations Councils, in cities all over U.S.: Boston annual revenues $2.5 million; Louisville annual revenues $7-10 million; Detroit $734,000, New York $4.5 million, etc.[23]

Hillel: Over $26 million.[24]

JINSA Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs: $3 million annual revenues.

Center for Security Policy: $4 million annual revenues.[25]

Foreign Policy Initiative (PNAC 2.0): $1.5 million annual revenues.[26]

MEMRI Middle East Media Research Institute: $5.2 million.[27]

Birthright: $55 million.[28]

David Project: $4.4 million.[29]

CAMERA Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America: $3.5 million.[30]

In addition to these nonprofit organisations, there are dozens of political action committees (PACs) that donate to political candidates on the basis of their positions on Israel. Most of these disguise their purpose by using such deceptive names as “Northern Californians for Good Government,” “National Action Committee,” “American Principles,” etc.

While other issue-based PACs almost always announce their focus publicly[31], in 2012 only two of the pro-Israel PACs made any reference to Israel in their names.[32] While US media frequently discuss the gun rights lobby, the largely uncovered pro-Israel PACs gave almost twice as much money to candidates – and the donations went to both parties.[33]

In addition, there are numerous individuals who play an extremely important role in the Israel lobbying effort. Two examples are political campaign mega-donors Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson. Saban donated $12.3 million to the Democratic Party in 2002 alone and has contributed millions more to pro-Israel organisations.

Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate, set a new record in political donations by giving $70 million in the 2012 elections, nearly triple the previous highest amount. He also funds such pro-Israel organisations as Birthright Israel which takes thousands of young Jewish Americans on recruiting visits to Israel.

In other cases, it is individuals with a different kind of power – the power to affect which information reaches the American public and which does not. One example is Eric Weider, whose Weider History Group publishes eleven history magazines in the United States, the largest history magazine publisher in America (and, according to its website, the world).[34]

Given this reality, President Obama’s actions are unlikely to stray outside the parameters the Israel lobby is willing to accept. While the media are making a great deal over the very mild apology Israel made to Turkey for having murdered nine of its citizens, crediting Obama with this alleged break-through, none of the news reports seem to mention that Israel has largely failed to apologise to the US for the death of 19-year-old dual American Turkish citizen, Furgan Dogan, who was killed with five bullets, one to his face at point blank range.[35]

It is also relevant to note that an AIPAC-drafted letter signed by 76 out of 100 Senators was sent to President Obama on the eve of his visit to Israel in March.[36]

Congressional actions can also be expected to remain within what the Israel lobby directs, though here, too, there may be rare occasions where the lobby seems to have lost – such as the confirmation of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defence.

However, the alleged triumph that some pro-Palestinian writers are proclaiming for Hagel’s appointment is a bit overblown. Before he was allowed to take his position, he was made to grovel humiliatingly before his Congressional interrogators, retract acceptable statements he had made earlier in his life and all but swear devotion to Israel (like all top government officials seemingly must do).

This degrading spectacle surely made it clear to Hagel that he better watch his step in the future and made it even clearer to ambitious Americans of all ages that they must be extremely careful about any statements they make about Israel and its lobby if they are to achieve their political ambitions.

Despite the power of the lobby, however, the situation is not as bleak as the above may suggest. There is a highly diverse movement in the US that opposes this lobby and it is steadily growing.

The Left, which for decades was largely silent on Israeli abuses of human rights, has finally become active on the issue. Similarly, both traditional conservatives and libertarians frequently oppose aid to Israel and this opposition is becoming more outspoken. While this stance is often motivated by fiscal considerations, in many cases it is also fuelled by outrage at Israeli cruelty and by genuine empathy with Palestinians.

The money being mobilised on this side is only a small fraction of the other and some of the groups within this movement could arguably be considered simply a more reasonable and compassionate arm of the Israel lobby in that their advocacy is often framed according to what “is good for Israel” while failing to address the inherent injustice of an ethnic state imposed on a multicultural region.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the opposition to current US policies is growing increasingly important. The tide may not yet have turned but it is certainly in the slowing phase that must come first.

To use another oft-quoted and particularly apt metaphor, lobbies thrive in the dark. More and more people in the US and elsewhere are shining light on this one, steadily reducing its power.

While there are numerous deeply significant issues, an increasing number of individuals are deciding to focus on this one, the core issue of the Middle East and the cause of war after war, including the current “war on terror” and demonisation of Muslims.

To use the framing posed by journalist Glenn Greenwald, an expanding number of people are refusing to prioritise domestic issues over the killing of Arab and Muslim children on the other side of the world.

Therefore, despite the enormous power of the Israel lobby in the US, this growing movement is quite likely to overcome the obstacles confronting it and to join history’s other successful movements against oppression.

The main question is how long this will take, and how many more massacres, and possibly wars, will occur in the interim.

[1] Even Aaron David Miller admitted they acted as “Israel’s lawyer” – Miller, Aaron David. “Israel’s Lawyer.” Washington Post 23 May 2005, posted by Matt Miller Opinion Writer. Online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200883.html

[2] Findley, Paul. They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1985. Online at http://archive.org/stream/They-Dare-To-Speak-Out-Paul-Findley/They_Dare_to_Speak_Out_Paul_Findley_djvu.txt and Mearsheimer, John J., and Stephen M. Walt. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

[3] Yearwood, Pauline Dubkin. “Obama and the Jews.” Chicago Jewish News 24 Oct. 2008.

Online at http://www.chicagojewishnews.com/story.htm?sid=212226&id=252218

[4] Weir, Alison. “Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the United States Was Used to Create Israel.” IfAmericansKnew.org. 2012. Web. http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html

[5] Weir, “Against Our Better Judgment”

[6] http://www.ussliberty.org/supporters.htm

[7] The Power Peddlers, by Russell Warren Howe and Sarah Hays Trott, Doubleday, p. 292.

http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html

[8] Smith, Grant. “Where Did AIPAC Come From?” Antiwar.com. N.p., 09 Oct. 2007. Web. http://antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=11727 and Neff, Donald. “Ulbright Called for U.S. Defense Pact With Israel But Was Labeled Anti-Semite.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs August-September (1997): 96. Online at http://www.wrmea.org/wrmea-archives/188-washington-report-archives-1994-1999/august-september-1997/2677-middle-east-history-it-happened-in-august-.html

[9] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/washington/25lobby.html?_r=1

In 2009, the Economist reported: “AIPAC has an annual budget of around $60m, more than 275 employees, an endowment of over $130m and a new $80m headquarters building on Capitol Hill.” http://www.economist.com/node/14753768

[10] http://firststreetresearch.cqpress.com/2012/03/08/aipac-still-commands-attention-among-movers-and-shakers/

[11] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3265

[12] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=10657

[13] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=10657

[14] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3889

[15] http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=ewJXKcOUJlIaG&b=7717007&ct=11735981#.UbKK4uuhU0o

[16] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3734

[17] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3734

[18] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7699

[19] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7699

[20] http://www.faqs.org/tax-exempt/CA/Shimon-Ben-Joseph-Foundation-Dba-Jim-Joseph-Foundation.html

[21] http://207.153.189.83/EINS/133252800/133252800_2010_07b9bf0d.PDF

[22] http://www.jewishfederations.org/about-us.aspx

[23] http://www.jewishlouisville.org/images/JCL/Financials/annual_report_2011-12.pdf

http://www.faqs.org/tax-exempt/MI/Jewish-Community-Relations-Council-Of-Metropolitan-Detroit.html#revenue_a

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=10095

http://jcrcny.org/images/00_media/about/jcrc-ny2011form990.pdf

[24] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4540

[25] http://www.politico.com/static/PPM152_100828_centerforsecuritypolicy.html

[26] https://bulk.resource.org/irs.gov/eo/2011_09_EO/26-4392915_990_201012.pdf

[27] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=8188

[28] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=11247

[29] https://bulk.resource.org/irs.gov/eo/2011_02_EO/16-1616489_990_200912.pdf

[30] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=5429

[31] http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/industry.php?txt=Q11&cycle=2012 and http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/industry.php?txt=Q13&cycle=2012

[32] http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/industry.php?txt=Q05&cycle=2012

[33] http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/sector.php?cycle=2012&txt=Q05

[34] Weir, Alison. “The Empire Behind World’s Largest History Magazine Chain: How American History Magazine Censored Palestine.” CounterPunch Dec. 6, 2012. Online at http://ifamericansknew.org/media/weider.html

[35] Lynch, Colum. “U.N. Panel Endorses Report Accusing Israel of Executions aboard Aid Flotilla.” Washington Post 30 Sept. 2010, A Section. Online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/29/AR2010092907110.html?wprss=rss_print/asection

[36] “Did Your Favorite Progressive Senator Sign AIPAC Letter To Obama Telling Him To Stand Up For Occupation? Here Is The List.” MJ Rosenberg, Mar. 2013. Online at http://mjayrosenberg.com/2013/03/19/did-your-favorite-progressive-senator-sign-aipac-letter-to-obama-telling-him-to-stand-up-for-occupation-here-is-the-list/

Alison Weir is the President of the Council for the National Interest (CNI) and Executive Director of If Americans Knew.

How AIPAC Rules (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Israel Lobby Dominates Congress, Media Covers it Up (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Organ trafficking & Israel – A message from Alison Weir (gilad.co.uk)

June 28, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Cynthia McKinney, Israel, Israel-Palestine, Middle East, Obama, Palestine, Pete McCloskey, United States, Washington Institute for Near East Policy | Leave a comment

How AIPAC Rules

By JEFF KLEIN | CounterPunch | May 31, 2013

Last week the Senate passed Resolution 65, mandating a new round of sanctions against Iran and promising to support Israel if it should choose to launch a unilateral war. The bill contradicted explicit US policy in a number of areas: it imposed secondary penalties on US allies; it lowered the bar for military action to Israel’s preferred language of “nuclear capability” rather than acquisition of a nuclear weapon; and it interferes with the attempt to reach a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear impasse at a delicate time. No wonder Secretary of State John Kerry implored Congress not to pass the bill when he testified before the Senate Foreign relations committee last month.

Nevertheless, the Senate bill came to a vote on May 22, and the result – in a roll call vote – was 99-0 in favor of the bill.

In the last Congress, another Iran Sanctions measure – an amendment attached to the 2012 Defense Appropriation Bill — was also opposed by the Obama administration. The provision, probably illegal under WTO rules, mandated secondary penalties against foreign banks which did business with Iran’s oil sector (US banks were already banned from doing so). Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner wrote a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee “to express the Administration’s strong opposition to this amendment because, in its current form, it threatens to undermine the effective, carefully phased, and sustainable approach we have taken to build strong international pressure against Iran.” Two State Department officials of the Administration testified against the amendment; Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry also opposed the measure.

However, when the amendment’s sponsors insisted on a roll call vote, it passed 100-0. Even Senator Kerry voted for the measure he had earlier opposed.

To understand how this can happen, it is useful to look at the Israel Lobby’s legislative MO — as well as the larger dynamic around Israel advocacy within the US Congress, in our political system and in the press.

AIPAC, of course, is the premier Israel Lobby organization. Every March at its annual Conference the group assembles a huge turnout of moneyed and grassroots lobbyists. Scores of members of Congress from both parties and political aspirants of all stripes jockey to express their loyalty to the Lobby. It is at these conferences that AIPAC’s major legislative priorities for the year are unveiled. This always includes renewed (and increased) military aid for Israel and for the last ten years or so various measures to oppose, sanction and preferably make war on to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran — Israel’s last remaining serious military opponent in the Middle East.

Here is the way it works.

–In the days before the yearly AIPAC conference in early March, reliable members of Congress from both parties – preferably non-Jews – are prevailed upon to submit AIPAC-drafted bills with a substantial number of initial bi-partisan sponsors. This year the highlighted legislation included House Res. 850, The Nuclear Iran Prevention Act of 2013, introduced on February 28 by California Democrat Rep. Edward Royce and 31 co-sponsors (16 Democrats and 15 Republicans); and Senate Res. 65, Strongly Supporting the Full Implementation of United States and International Sanctions On Iran, also introduced on February 28 by the every dependable Senator Lindsey Graham [R-SC] and 22 initial co-sponsors (13 Democrats and 9 Republicans). Another bill, apparently a late entry from the March 2-4 Conference itself, did not follow the preferred pattern. House Res. 938, The United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013 was introduced hurriedly on March 4 by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen [R-FL27] with only two Democratic co-sponsors. These three bills embodied AIPAC’s 2013 declared legislative priorities: Prevent Iranian Nuclear Weapons Capability; Strengthen U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation; Support Security Assistance for Israel.

– Then, before leaving Washington, the AIPAC Conference attendees launch themselves on Capitol Hill to recruit more co-sponsors for the AIPAC bills. Initially, this is mostly pushing on an open door, as many legislators are eager to join the bandwagon; some were simply not asked earlier in the interest of bi-partisan balance; some were not quick enough to get listed when the initial bills were introduced. Within a few weeks of the AIPAC Conference Senate Res. 65 had an additional 55 co-sponsors, House Res. 850 added more than 250 sponsors; and House Res. 983 more than 150.

–The effort continues to line up more cosponsors with the aim of securing an irresistible momentum for the bills. Many legislators simply take more time to pin down; others (few) might have been reluctant holdouts persuaded not to find themselves isolated against the AIPAC juggernaut. An AIPAC staffer once famously bragged that “in twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on a napkin”. It took a little longer this time, but Senate Res. 65 already had 91 co-sponsors before it came up for a vote. House Res. 850, still pending, now has 351 co-sponsors; H. Res. 983 has 271.

–Not all AIPAC-initiated legislation follows this pattern. Other bills or amendments come up during the year and are pushed as opportunities or needs present themselves. Some of these bills – and the frequent “Congressional Letters” of support for Israel — have little practical impact on policy but are part of AIPAC’s promotion of discipline among US legislators. I call it “puppy training,” so that members of Congress are reflexively obedient to AIPAC’s legislative agenda. The 29 standing ovations for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he addressed Congress in 2011 are a good illustration of the outcome. Pavlov had nothing on the Israel Lobby.

It might be tempting to conclude – as AIPAC and its allies contend – that Congress acts in response to the overwhelming public support for Israel. However, it is important to observe that votes on the Lobby’s bills are rarely much publicized in the US – as opposed to Israeli –mainstream media. Of course, the pro-Israel political machine, the Rightwing and Zionist blogosphere do pay close attention, ever-ready to reward or punish legislative misbehavior. Most of the public remains, by design, completely unaware of these political maneuverings. Not long ago, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor proposed voting separately on military aid to Israel so as to insulate it from potential cuts to Pentagon spending, but he was quickly persuaded to drop the idea. The Israel Lobby prefers to have the $3 billion plus in annual aid to Israel discretely hidden within the vast Defense Appropriation Bill.

So the power of AIPAC derives not fundamentally from Israel’s vast popularity. Although opinion polls do regularly confirm the public supports Israel at a much higher level than the Palestinians (no surprise), substantial pluralities still prefer that the US stay neutral in the conflict. I have seen no polling about support for the billions in military aid to Israel each year. It is hard to imagine that the majority response would be anything but negative in the light of cuts to funding other popular government programs. Not surprisingly the Lobby prefers “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on the question of yearly$billions for Israel.

The apparent dominance of the Israel Lobby in Congress stems from what I would call “asymmetric politics”. AIPAC represents the power of a well-funded and single-issue political machine. It is quick to punish recalcitrant legislators – or to reward good behavior with dollars and campaign support from the many PACS and rich donors who take its direction.

On the other side, the advocates for Palestinian rights are scattered, poor and little threat to incumbent legislators. The Arab and Muslim communities cannot match the Israel Lobby’s Jewish financial base or its mobilized grassroots numbers. Many of their communities are relatively new in the US, insecure and targeted by the well-funded complex of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim mobilization since 9/11. The great mass of the public are simply not involved and not paying much attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict or much aware of pro-Israel political power in Congress.

Seen in this light, members of Congress – ever averse to risk, as are all elected officials – are behaving rationally when they defer to the Israel Lobby. They pay little or no price for playing ball with AIPAC and risk a backlash with no apparent reward if they don’t.

As for the broader anti-war and progressive movements, even when they have adopted good positions on Palestinian rights or opposing the Lobby-supported drive for war with Iran, these issues usually turn out to be “expendable” in comparison to other agendas.

Two recent examples will illustrate this dynamic.

This Spring, a well-established national peace organization, with a significant branch in Massachusetts, decided to endorse Democratic Rep. Ed Markey prior to the special primary election for John Kerry’s vacated Senate seat. Markey is on the right side of most issues progressives hold dear, but he was also an initial supporter of the Iraq War. And he has become a very reliable backer of Israel-Lobby legislative priorities, where in Massachusetts he is something of an outlier on these issues. He was among only three Massachusetts delegation co-sponsors of H. Res. 850 and among only two of H. Res. 983. He is also a dependable signer of whatever letter AIPAC is collecting signatures for, such as the one supporting the assault on Gaza a few years ago.

Some members of the peace organization argued in favor of no endorsement for Markey – at least in the primary – because of his poor record on Iran and Palestine, but they were outvoted. The majority argued that an endorsement and fundraising for Markey would give them “access” to promote better positions on these issues after the election. A cynic may wonder whether Markey, or any other progressive legislator would take this seriously. A long-serving national board member of the group resigned in protest.

Then there is Massachusetts’ celebrity Senator Elizabeth Warren. Many of her progressive supporters were uneasy over the boiler-plate pro-Israel language on her campaign web site, however there was little doubt that she was a genuine populist on other issues and would bring a rare progressive voice to the halls of Congress. This, in large measure, she has done.

However, when push came to shove, Sen. Warren was persuaded to add her name as a sponsor to Senate Res. 65 – late to be sure (not until May 7) – and she joined in the unanimous vote in favor of the bill. Now Warren, a faculty member of Harvard Law School undoubtedly knows the score on the Israel and Iran issues. It is hard to imagine she hasn’t had certain conversations in the Faculty Club about Palestine, heard about the many events at her school on issues of Human Rights and International Law in the Middle East or understood the role of the Israel Lobby in war-promotion and military spending.

No doubt Warren rationalized her vote pragmatically. Why risk becoming an isolated Senate freshman and losing her political credibility? Why not submit to what was required in order to give her space to battle on other political issues she cared about? For Senator Warren – as for so many progressives and Liberals — her seat is worth the price of a vote for AIPAC.

This is the way asymmetric politics works for the Israel Lobby. It is the dynamic that puts our country in opposition to most of the world with respect to International Law and peace in the Middle East. And it may yet succeed in getting us into a war with Iran.

Jeff Klein is a retired local union president, peace and justice activist, Palestinian rights supporter. He just started a blog at http://atmyangle.blogspot.com/ and can be reached at jjk123@comcast.net

May 31, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Iran, Israel, Lindsey Graham | 1 Comment

Gatekeeping for Zion

By Philip Giraldi | America-Hijacked | May 9, 2013

People like myself who are either paleoconservatives or libertarians generally base their opposition to Israel and its Lobby on the costs of the de facto alliance, both financial and in terms of the wars and political chaos it has triggered. We try to demonstrate how damage to rule of law and actual U.S. interests has been a byproduct of the relationship and seek to explain what a sane U.S. foreign policy might actually look like, end of story. But it is a different sensibility coming from the more humanitarian inclined political left of the spectrum, which one would assume to have a natural inclination to oppose purveyors of oppression and human suffering. With that in mind, I would observe it is remarkable how ineffective the left has been in mobilizing any serious opposition to Israel’s policies.

There is a kind of groupthink that might provide an explanation for the lack of results in spite of what sometimes appears to be frenzied activity on the part of the cluster of liberal groups that focus on the Middle East. Gatherings to “Expose AIPAC” often focus on strategy and training, hardly discussing or challenging the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at all. They also frequently fail to confront the full array of predominantly Jewish groups actively promoting Israel to include The Hudson Institute, WINEP, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, MEMRI, the American Enterprise Institute’s foreign policy wing, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The plethora of well-resourced and actively engaged Jewish groups involved in foreign policy and more particularly Israel promotion is a fact of life inside the Beltway and a critical element supporting the interventionist narrative in spite of the country as a whole becoming decidedly war weary.

At the same time, most American Jews are actually either cool or even hostile to the policies of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Peter Beinart has called for a boycott of goods produced in the Israeli settlements while Jeffrey Goldberg has denounced a coalition partner in Netanyahu’s government, writing “The Jewish Home party advances an ideology that will bring about the destruction (the self-destruction) of Israel.” This reaction to the Israeli drift rightwards politically speaking probably explains why most organizations on the political left that are critical of Israel are themselves led by American Jews and, to their credit, they are very outspoken regarding Israel’s human rights violations and its policies towards the Palestinians. But it sometimes seems that they are restrained in their critiques, something that might be attributed to what could be referred to as Jewish identity politics. Instead of biting the bullet and confronting the fact that it is leading Jewish organizations and their in-the-pocket politicians that have quite plausibly been the sine qua non in unleashing a series of actual and impending wars against the Muslim world, they instead sometimes serve as gatekeepers to frame and divert an uncomfortable truth while looking for alternative explanations.

Part of the problem is that even though major Jewish organizations’ support of interventionism represents what is only a minority opinion among Americans in general, they pretend to represent everyone who is Jewish and have successfully sold that canard to both congress and the media. And make no mistake, it is the financial and political muscle of Jewish groups like Anti-Defamation League, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, The American Jewish Committee, and the AIPAC that have given the green light to the hard line Israeli governments that have done so much damage to U.S. interests over the past decade. Christian Zionists are highly visible and are frequently cited to demonstrate the diversity of the Israeli Lobby, but they are largely irrelevant in terms of the actual dynamics of the pro-Israel effort. The reality is that no other national lobby can gather 13,000 of the faithful to its convention and count on the enthusiastic presence of numerous politicians from both parties as AIPAC does every year. But in spite of the quite visible power of the Jewish organizations it is sometimes more convenient and less troubling to look instead for other reasons to explain Tel Aviv’s misbehavior.

Progressives who are nervous about mentioning the shameless politicking of Jewish organizations frequently parrot what I call the Noam Chomsky rationalization, engaging actively in criticizing Israeli behavior while at the same time blaming the Middle East farrago on outside forces like American imperialism, capitalism, or oil. This approach largely exonerates Israel from actual blame for what it does and it also by extension minimizes the role of the Jewish groups that constitute the core of the pro-Israel lobby because it is claimed that Washington drives the Israeli government’s behavior based on its own self-interest not vice versa. As a result, the critics seldom question the legitimacy of the self-defined Jewish state and they are sometimes reluctant to support any measures that would actually do damage to Israel and its perceived interests.

Norman Finkelstein, a reliable progressive critic of Israeli actions, is of the Chomsky persuasion. He believes that the United States would have attacked Iraq anyway based on its own interests whether or not the fervently pro-Israel neocons had occupied key positions in the Pentagon, National Security Council, and White House. Finkelstein, in an article on the Israel Lobby, maintains that “fundamental U.S. policy in the Middle East hasn’t been affected by the Lobby,” rejects the view that Israel is a liability for U.S. national interests and states instead that it is a “unique and irreplaceable American asset.” He describes American Jewish elites as only “’pro’ an Israel that is useful to the U.S.” He insists that the neocons do not “generally have a primary allegiance to Israel [or] in fact, any allegiance to Israel.” The evidence, however, suggests otherwise: even agreeing that the Iraq war had a number of godfathers, the folks in the Pentagon and White House who cooked the books and led the charge had extremely well documented strong personal and even financial ties to Israel, so much so that several of them were accused of passing classified information to the Israeli Embassy.

The shaping of the narrative to minimize the role of organizations that are demonstrably Jewish – albeit unrepresentative of Jewish opinion in America -has also been very effective in some media circles. An April 2007 ninety minute presentation on PBS’s Frontpage with Bill Moyers “Buying the War,” a critical look at the genesis of the Iraq invasion, did not mention Israel’s supporters even once. And one only has to consider the recent Obama trip to Israel as well as the interrogation at the Chuck Hagel nomination, which was driven by organizations like AIPAC from behind the scenes, to realize that the United States government is no free agent when it comes to Middle Eastern policy. Ignoring the dominant role of “Jewish leaders” and the well-funded organizations that they head which falsely pretend to represent their entire community is a convenient obfuscation if one does not want to address causality, a bit like being concerned about global warming without looking at the actual science.

President Obama recognizes the power represented by Jewish groups acting as a cohesive and focused political entity when he meets with them collectively in the White House, so why the reluctance in recognizing and confronting their persistent pro-war, pro-intervention agenda? At a March 7th session, shortly before his trip to Israel, Obama met with Alan Solow, Lee Rosenberg and Michael Kassen of AIPAC; Barry Curtiss-Lusher of the Anti-Defamation League; David Harris of the American Jewish Committee; Jerry Silverman of Jewish Federations of North America; Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz; former Congressman Robert Wexler; Dan Mariaschin of B’nai B’rith; Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street; and Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Admittedly the linking of Jewish organizations’ easy access to policymakers with their possible role in launching a string of failed wars in Asia and still more in the offing on behalf of Israel makes many people uncomfortable because it invites the dual loyalty critique and even more extreme commentary that is ultimately racist in nature, but there you have it. The president knows who is pulling his strings and so should the rest of us.

Americans can either confront the ugly realities of what has been going on for the past twelve years or they can pretend that what they are seeing is not really there. The gatekeepers are understandably concerned lest Washington’s next war be blamed on American Jews so it is far better to suggest against all evidence that Israel is a pawn of American imperialism or that recent wars have been about oil or capitalist exploitation. The reality is that if progressives (and the rest of us) really want to stop a proxy war against Syria followed by a catastrophic conflict with Iran we have to take the blinkers off and be willing to confront Jewish groups like AIPAC and the ADL directly and persistently.

Israel’s Fraying Image (nationalinterest.org)
AIPAC Bill Runs Into Unusual Resistance In Congress (alethonews.wordpress.com)

May 11, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jews, Christian Zionists, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Israel, Middle East, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, The American Jewish Committee, United States | 2 Comments

AIPAC Bill Runs Into Unusual Resistance In Congress

By Mitchell Plitnick | LobeLog | April 12, 2013

In an article published in The Hill, Mike Coogan reports that some of the key legislation that emerged from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) 2013 annual policy conference is running into significant difficulties in Congress. The bills, which Lara Friedman only half-jokingly called the “Israel Best Ally With Benefits” bills, have not gained close to the overwhelming support that AIPAC has come to expect from Congress.

Indeed, more than five weeks after the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013 was introduced in the Senate, it has gathered only 18 co-sponsors. That’s a shockingly low total for a focal point of AIPAC lobbying. It has done better in the House of Representatives, with 171 co-sponsors, but given the more hawkish nature of the House, even that’s not a success by AIPAC’s standards.

While one shouldn’t make too much of this, it certainly seems like AIPAC reached a little too far with this bill. The main issue is a portion of the bill which, in the Senate version, would grant a US visa exemption for Israeli citizens without requiring a reciprocal arrangement from Israel. The US has visa exemption arrangements with 37 other countries, but all of them reciprocate.

Ron Kampeas quotes a staffer from a leading pro-Israel lawmaker in the US House of Representatives as saying that “It’s stunning that you would give a green light to another country to violate the civil liberties of Americans traveling abroad.”

The US concern is particularly profound after a Palestinian-American, who taught English at the Friends’ School in Ramallah, was barred by Israel in January from returning to her West Bank job after a trip to Jordan, despite having a visa that allowed her to leave and re-enter Israeli-controlled territory. Israel, undoubtedly, is concerned that a reciprocal agreement would compromise its ability to bar not only Palestinian-Americans, but also pro-Palestinian activists, from entering the country.

The House version of the bill does not exempt Israel from reciprocity, but merely calls on the Secretary of State to report to Congress on the extent of Israel’s compliance with the reciprocity requirement and “…what additional steps, if any, are required in order for Israel to qualify for inclusion in such program.” That may be one reason the House bill has done better.

The bill includes other troublesome aspects. Friedman points out that the Senate bill includes shockingly weak language in support of a two-state solution: “…language that disconnects the issue from U.S. national security interests and in doing so creates a formulation that inconsistent with the actual foreign policy of the Obama Administration or ANY previous administration.”

Even so, it remains surprising that a bill that emerged as a focal point from an AIPAC policy conference would have this much trouble. Coogan thinks this is a sign that AIPAC’s grip on Congress might be weakening.

It certainly adds to a sense that AIPAC might have reached a tipping point. Equally telling is what Coogan says about how AIPAC brought this bill to the Hill: “Numerous public reports and off-the-record accounts from legislators and staff signaled that the brazenness and late release of the Israel lobby’s legislative demands blindsided both individual members and various committees. Provisions appeared tone deaf and legally problematic, even among Israel’s strongest supporters.”

I haven’t been able to locate those “numerous public reports,” but my own sense from talking to people on Capitol Hill and other informed colleagues is that there is indeed some tension there. That’s on top of congressional bristling at AIPAC’s efforts to exempt aid to Israel from the sequestration cuts. Dylan Williams of J Street told The Forward that the possibility that AIPAC might try to lobby for exempting aid to Israel from the sequester “…seems a little tone deaf,” and that some Hill staffers were “surprised that some groups — that people from AIPAC — were asking for this.”

Does all this mean AIPAC is losing its grip? Probably not, but as members of Congress grow less enthusiastic about complying with AIPAC’s demands, the possibility that more politicians will test the widely-held but unproven maxim that opposing AIPAC is electoral suicide arises. That could make things very interesting.

Barbara Boxer, AIPAC seek to codify Israel’s right to discriminate against Americans

April 14, 2013 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Congress, Israel, United States | Leave a comment

‘Iran can’t covertly produce atomic bomb’ – US intelligence chief

RT | March 12, 2013

Iran cannot produce enough highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon without being found out by the international community, the US National Intelligence Director told Congress. He also countered claims Tehran had decided to build an atomic bomb.

Developments in Iran’s nuclear capabilities intended to “enhance its security, prestige, and regional influence” would ultimately “give the Islamic Republic the ability to develop a nuclear weapon,” US National Intelligence Director James Clapper told a Senate panel during an annual report on global threats on Tuesday.

Despite these advances, “we assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU (weapons-grade uranium) before this activity is discovered,” he continued.

Clapper further said “we do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

His assessment reiterated last year’s analysis from intelligence agencies stating “Iran’s nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach” which had subsequently precluded efforts to build a bomb.

“…We have not changed our assessment that Iran prefers to avoid direct confrontation with the United States because regime preservation is its top priority,” he continued.

Clapper’s statements come on the same day an Iranian news agency reported Tehran plans on telling the UN it has no plan of building an atomic bomb.

“Iran plans to declare in the UN that it will never go after nuclear bombs,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quotes Vice President Mohammed Reza Rahimi as saying.

Rahimi provided no further details on when such an announcement might be made.

The reports foreshadow President Barack Obama’s upcoming trip to Israel, where top officials have warned that the world has until the summer to stop Iran from acquiring the bomb.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to pre-emptively strike Iran if it crosses the red line where Israel believes Iran would be able to build a nuclear weapon.

“It’s still not crossed the red line I drew with the United Nations last September,” Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee earlier this month.

“But Iran is getting closer to that red line, and it is putting itself in a position to cross that line very quickly once it decides to do so.”

Netanyahu reiterated previous warnings that on-going efforts must be “coupled with a clear and credible military threat if diplomacy and sanctions fail.”

On Tuesday Israeli President Shimon Peres told the European Parliament that the Iranian regime was “the greatest danger to peace in the world.”

“Nobody threatens Iran,” the Jewish Chronicle cites him as saying. “Iran threatens others.”

Israel has long pushed the White House to use military force to halt Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, demands which have mostly been rejected by the Obama administration.

The White House, while refusing to take the military option off of the table, has thus far relied on diplomacy and increasingly harsh sanctions to force Iran to fully comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On Tuesday President Obama extended the “national emergency with respect to Iran” sanctions package against the Islamic Republic for an additional year.

In February, the United States introduced sanctions which “effectively bar Iran from repatriating earnings from its oil exports, depriving Tehran of much needed hard currency,” the IEA said in its monthly report on the world oil market.

The new sanctions came six months after the US said it would deny access to the US financial system to countries buying Iranian oil.

Iran has long maintained that its uranium enrichment program is solely for peaceful purposes.

Massimo Calabresi’s ‘Path To War’ (alethonews.wordpress.com)

March 13, 2013 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Wars for Israel | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Israel, James R. Clapper, United States, Zionism | 8 Comments

John Baird, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Speaks at AIPAC

By Jim Miles | Palestine Chronicle | March 7, 2013

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, was in comfortable territory at the current AIPAC policy conference meeting in Washington, D.C.

I have deconstructed his arguments before, as he reiterates the current Harper government of Canada position in its unqualified support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and all that goes along with that. I will not repeat those arguments here as they are the same old-same old regurgitations of support for the militaristic Israeli state from a Canadian government that does not truly represent the majority of the people of Canada.

Baird presents the same arguments about Palestine living up to all previous agreements without recognizing that Israel has a lot to live up to as well; in particular that the UN Security Council has previously recognized withdrawal from occupied territories and the right of return of refugees. And as usual, the fault of the violence is the very nature of Arab/Palestinian social-political life, a mythology that Israel and its western supporters are careful to nurture.

What interested me most about his current statements, apart from the ego flattering standing ovations the AIPAC audience rendered unto him, are his comments about stopping aid to the Palestinian National Authority. Baird threatened a similar stopping of aid during the vote to recognize Palestine at the UN, then backed off after the overwhelming support displayed for Palestine.

These threats are being renewed again, against Palestine taking Israel to the International Criminal Court, but one has to wonder if the Canadian government is really aware of what the consequences of that cut might be.

Most of Canada’s aid to Israel is bound into corporate military research and development, including the realm of security and surveillance. The aid to the Palestinian Authority helps the PA maintain their fragile grip on the Palestinian population as it is used for similar areas of security, surveillance, and support for the few Palestinian elites who harvest the aid supplies for their own benefit. The Canadian military and the Canadian national police force, the RCMP, serve as trainers for the PA authorities own militarized units.

So what happens if the aid to Palestine is cut? Many things are possible, the most counterproductive one from the Israeli perspective would be the decrease in the control that the PA is able to exert over the Palestinian population on its behalf as the money supplies dry up. The Palestinian economy, such as it is, mainly in the West Bank, where the majority of the funds are utilized, would suffer even more.

With more economic weakness, and with a weakened PA no longer able to buy influence among its own people, the Palestinians would certainly be more restive and perhaps more aggressive towards their own elites as well as the Israelis – a third intifada would become more probable. Of course, more Palestinian violence would only make the current Canadian government say, “See, we told you they were a violent people,” and so the mythology of Israeli victimization will continue.

It would be a good thing perhaps to shed the yoke and burden of foreign control bought by the power of foreign dollars manipulating the economy and political scene in Palestine. The outcomes of such a cut are indeterminate, but usually in the world of political manipulation, unexpected outcomes are to be expected. For that reason alone, one can expect John Baird and the Harper government to prevaricate over cuts for some time to come.

– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle.

March 8, 2013 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Canada, International Criminal Court, Israel, John Baird, Palestine, Palestinian National Authority, West Bank, Zionism | Leave a comment

AIPAC aims to play ‘major strategic ally’ card to save aid for Israel from US cuts?

RT | March 03, 2013

US aid to Israel may be saved from sequestration and moved into Pentagon budget. That might be the result if the Israeli lobby in Washington gets its way and the American people aren’t paying attention, political analyst Robert Naiman told RT.

The annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is reportedly focused on the congressional designation of Israel as a “major strategic ally” of the US, a unique status that would be enjoyed only by the Jewish state. The move is seen as facilitating Israel’s military action against Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, which also appears on the conference agenda.

But according to the policy director at Just Foreign Policy Robert Naiman, the pro-Israel conference is focusing on Iran so as not to draw attention to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict – as well as protecting US funding of Israel from budget cuts.

RT: The US has been Israel’s faithful ally since the foundation of the state. Why does it need to become official, why the formalization?

RN: Well, according to lobbyists associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, it has to do with the coming threat of budget cuts. Under this sequester… there’re supposed to be across-the-board cuts to the US budget. So that should mean that the US aid to Israel, which is substantial, billions of dollars a year, should also be cut – but the Israel lobby doesn’t want the aid to Israel to be cut. So their long game is that with this designation of ‘major strategic ally’ they would move things that are currently paid out of the US aid to Israel into the base Pentagon budget. They’ll argue, ‘well, this is about the national security needs…’

So their goal here is to exempt aid to Israel from the so-called across-the-board cuts. But of course they don’t want to announce that on the marquee, because Americans are going to be told: ‘oh, now we have to cut Head Start early childhood education because of the sequester cuts, but meanwhile aid to Israel is going to be protected.’ That’s going to make a lot of people in the United States very angry.

RT: It’s clear how Israel would benefit from this. But the US rubber-stamping the status of Israel as its ‘major strategic ally’ – how do they benefit from it?

RN: Well, they don’t – it has nothing to do with the benefit to the US. This is about what you can get away with if you’re lobbyist in Washington and the American people aren’t paying attention. If AIPAC and members of Congress are in a closed room, they’re going to agree on one thing. If the American people don’t find that out, it’s not reported in the press. This isn’t in the New York Times, it’s not in the Washington Post. It’s in the insider press that covers the stuff, Jewish telegraphic agency, for example, that covers AIPAC. So outside the people who follow such news, this is not in the mainstream American media yet.

RT: The conference will focus mainly on Iran, which is seen as the emerging threat. But the conflict with the Palestinians is very real and has been for decades. Why isn’t solving that on the agenda?

RN: Well, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee doesn’t want to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they’re completely content with the status quo. They want Israel to retain control of the West Bank, they want Israeli settlements in the West Bank to expand, so they’re completely happy with that. In fact, these are the people that do a lot to drive the focus on Iran, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Israeli government, which are like two twin brothers. This focus now actually helps them change the channel from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They don’t want anybody to think about or talk about… three million Palestinians who don’t get to vote for the government that rules their lives, while their neighbors can stir in the Israeli Knesset.

AIPAC To Hill: Don’t Touch Israel Aid (theuglytruth.wordpress.com)

March 3, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Iran, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Jewish Voice for Weizmann

By Gilad Atzmon | March 3, 2013

I just came across a JVP press release (Jewish Voice for Peace) reporting a  massive advertising campaign to counter the AIPAC Annual Conference in Washington. Apparently, from today 100 billboards will be stationed in DC Metro bearing a simple but important message.

“AIPAC Does Not Speak for Me”.

AIPAC is certainly a danger to world peace and yes, it is a positive development that a Jewish organization should confront its impact on American foreign policy.

But still, JVP’s tactics are problematic. If anything, they reveal the deep confusion inherent in Jewish politics in general, and Jewish progressive thinking in particular.

On the one hand, JVP’s campaign is simple and transparent: it states “AIPAC does not speak for me. Most Jewish Americans are pro-peace. AIPAC is not.” But on the other hand, JVP falls short in offering any universal or ethical solution to the conflict in the Middle East.

“According to a recent poll by pollster Jim Gerstein” reads the JVP’s press release, “82% of Jewish Americans support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

So, if I understand it correctly, 82% of Jewish Americans support a solution that dismisses the most essential and elementary Palestinian right to return to their land, in effect supporting the existence of a Jewish State in historic Palestine, at the expense of the Palestinians and their rights. In other words, the so-called ‘good peace-seeking Jews’ ,who are the vast majority of Jewish Americans (according to JVP), support an utterly non-ethical solution.

But the reference to Gerstein’s statistics is even more embarrassing. Are we interested in what the Dutch think about the solution of the conflict in Ireland? Do we care if Indians approve the Italian recent polls? No, we don’t but, for some reason, we are desperate to find out what ‘Jewish Americans’ think of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The reason for this is obvious – Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and many Jewish Americans see Israel as their homeland and obviously, they care about their homeland and its politics. In that respect, Zionism should be seen as a success story – a trap into which JVP is foolish enough to fall. By referring to Gerstein’s statistics, JVP actually confirms that Jews are bonded spiritually and politically with their Jewish state and so are subject to an intense conflict of identity.

Chaim Weizmann, the legendary Zionist and the first Israeli President, somehow knew of all those JVPs to come. Already in the early days of Zionism, he observed the Jewish political inclination towards marginalism; he wrote “there are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.” Whether Weizmann was correct or not is open to discussion, but clearly, JVP accepts Weizmann’s observation. JVP refers to the American Jews as ‘Jewish Americans’. It regards Jewishness as a primary political quality and it refers to Jews as a distinctive marginal ethno-centric group.

Interestingly, the ‘anti’ Zionist JVP is actually the embodiment of Weizmann’s Zionist wet dream. It may not agree with AIPAC on some side issues to do with settlements, occupation and Israeli policies, but it agrees on the fundamentals – “there are no American Jews, but only Jews living in America.” And as if this is not enough, JVP, like AIPAC supports the existence of a Jews only State in Palestine.

I guess that from Weizmann’s perspective JVP is Zionist to the bone. It openly promotes the two state solution because, like AIPAC, it is primarily concerned with Jewish tribal interests rather than human rights, ethics, or universal thinking.

JVP, like any other Jews-only ‘progressive’ organisation, may speak universal but it still thinks tribal.

March 3, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Gilad Atzmon, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine, United States, Zionism | 4 Comments

How a Group of Christians Smearing Muslims Benefits the Zionist State

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | Washington Report on Middle East Affairs | November/December 2012

In the course of his much-ridiculed albeit deadly serious ACME bomb speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that “the medieval forces of radical Islam” stand in the way of Israel’s desire for “a Middle East of progress and peace.” As evidence of these freedom-hating, anti-modern forces supposedly “bent on world conquest,” Netanyahu cited the Sept. 11 besieging of U.S. embassies throughout the region.

The Israeli prime minister was repeating a theme he had been given the opportunity to develop earlier in an interview on prime-time American television. Addressed by NBC’s “Meet the Press” host David Gregory as “the leader of the Jewish people” (Gregory himself is Jewish), Netanyahu was asked whether he thought a “containment strategy” would work on Iran, as it had with the Soviet Union. Iran was different, Netanyahu responded, because its “rationality” could not be relied upon since it is “guided by a leadership with an unbelievable fanaticism.” To emphasize the purported threat of nuclear-armed mullahs in Tehran, the Israeli leader drew a terrifying mental picture for his American audience: “It’s the same fanaticism that you see storming your embassies today. You want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?”

While there is much controversy about the reasons for the assaults on U.S. diplomatic missions on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, widespread Muslim outrage over a YouTube video insulting the Prophet Muhammad was clearly a factor in triggering at least some of the ensuing anti-American riots. In light of Netanyahu’s subsequent emphasis on these vivid examples of “fanaticism” to advance the narrative of an Iranian “nuclear threat” in an increasingly unstable region in which Tel Aviv remains Washington’s “one reliable ally,” it’s certainly worth exploring whether the deliberately offensive anti-Islam video may have been the work of pro-Israel provocateurs. As former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said on NBC’s “Morning Joe” regarding what position America should take toward the Muslim world, “If there are evil forces at work trying to provoke violence between us and you, we have the obligation to investigate and to crack down.”

In what appears to have been an artfully contrived red herring, initial reports did indeed point to an Israeli source of the provocative video. The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press—two media outlets often accused of pro-Israel bias—were suspiciously credulous of someone claiming to be an Israeli-American real estate developer who said he was the writer and director of “Innocence of Muslims.” This “Sam Bacile” gratuitously added that the production had been funded by “about 100 Jewish donors.” Almost immediately, the dubious story was debunked by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg—a former prison guard in the Israel Defense Forces whose reporting has at key junctures served to advance Tel Aviv’s interests—when a self-described “militant Christian activist” named Steve Klein assured him that “the State of Israel is not involved.” Absolving the Jewish state of any culpability, Klein eagerly pointed the finger at Egyptian Copts and American evangelicals. A self-satisfied Goldberg summed up the story in a tweet: “A group of Christians smearing Muslims libels Jews.”

Notwithstanding Goldberg’s terse dismissal of an Israeli connection, the Jew-libeling Christians actually turned out to have close ties to the pro-Israel Islamophobia network led by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. Spencer’s Jihad Watch group has been indirectly funded by Aubrey Chernick, a Los Angeles-based software security entrepreneur and former trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the influential think tank created in 1985 by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Spencer’s provocative writings on Islam are also publicized by The Gatestone Institute, whose founder and director Nina Rosenwald has held leadership positions in AIPAC and other mainstream pro-Israel organizations. In a July 2012 profile in The Nation magazine, Max Blumenthal dubbed the heiress to the Sears Roebuck fortune “The Sugar Mama of Anti-Islam Hate.”

This past February, in a post on her Atlas Shrugs blog entitled “A Movie about Muhammad: An Idea whose Time Has Come,” Geller solicited funds for a film that would show “Muhammad’s raids, plunders, massacres, rapes, assassinations and other crimes.” According to the controversial pro-Israel provocateur, it was “a brilliant idea” by Ali Sina, whom she introduced as a “renowned ex-Muslim author, founder of FaithFreedom.org and SION Board member.” SION, whose similarity to Zion is hardly coincidental, stands for “Stop Islamization of Nations,” a group co-founded by Geller and Spencer which held its inaugural International World Freedom Congress in New York on Sept. 11 “to combat the Islamic supremacist war against free speech.” Ali Sina’s solicitation for funds assured readers of Geller’s blog that “given the subject matter” it could become “one of the most seen motion pictures ever.” Revealingly, he asked them, “Recall Danish cartoons?”—an earlier media-catalyzed provocation in which pro-Israel, anti-Islam propagandists such as Daniel Pipes cited freedom of speech as they incited Muslim outrage against the West.

Two years earlier, on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, Geller and her partners-in-provocation held a rally to protest the construction of an Islamic community center a few blocks from the site of the demolished World Trade Center. Among those who took part were a couple of extremist Coptic Christian activists who would later be involved in the making and distribution of “Innocence of Muslims.” Meanwhile, in the nation’s capital, another Egyptian-American named Morris Sadek was filmed with a crucifix in one hand and in the other a Bible with the American flag sticking out of it, shouting “Islam is evil!”

As McClatchey reported on Sept. 15, it was Sadek who had triggered the anti-American outrage in the Muslim world with a timely phone call to an Egyptian reporter. On Sept. 4, the Washington, DC-based provocateur phoned Gamel Girgis, who covers Christian emigrants for the al Youm al Sabaa daily newspaper, to tell him about a movie he had produced. According to Girgis, Sadek wanted to screen it on Sept. 11 “to reveal what was behind the terrorists’ actions that day—Islam.”

As with most of the mainstream media’s coverage of the post-Bacile story, the McClatchey report made no mention of Morris Sadek’s ties to the Geller-Spencer Islamophobia network or his extreme pro-Israel views. On his blog dedicated to the “National American Coptic Assembly”—of which he describes himself as “a president”—Sadek provides an erratically punctuated outline of what he claims should be “The Coptic Position on Israel”:

We recognize the sacred right of the state of Israel and the Israeli people to the land of historic Israel.

“The right of Return” of the Jewish people to the land of their foremothers and forefathers is a sacred right. It has no statute of limitation. The return must continue to enrich the Middle East.

We recognize Jerusalem as simply a Jewish city, It must never be divided. She is, and shall always be, the united capital of Israel.

The future of the Palestinians lies with the Arab states. A Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria constitute an imminent danger to world peace.

The Chantilly, Virginia-based National American Coptic Assembly, Inc., a private company with a staff of two, has an estimated annual revenue of $97,000. Considering the fawning pro-Israel statements of its principal—not to mention his priceless contribution to Netanyahu’s relentless campaign to induce a U.S. attack on the “fanatics” in Tehran—it’s not too difficult to speculate as to the most likely source of that income.

Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

November 29, 2012 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Middle East, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Zionism | 2 Comments

Churches In U.S. Call On Government To Review Aid To Israel

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | October 12, 2012

Israeli Radio reported that 15 church organizations in the United States issued a statement calling on the United States to review the financial aid to Israel, and to question its unconditional financial assistance to the country, adding that this unconditional aid will not help improve the situation but will only sustain the status quo of the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The Churches said that the U.S. Congress must hold Israel accountable for its actions by placing a condition that the U.S military aid to Israel should depend on Israel’s compliance with the laws and policies of the United States.

The call caused controversy while former official of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), MJ Rosenberg, wrote an angry column nearly describing the 15 Church organizations as “anti-Semites”.

He added that American Jewish organizations are furious with the call to evaluate the aid.

The Churches did not call for boycotting Israel but asked the Congress to reconsider the [annual] $3.5 Billion of U.S. aid to Israel, and said that U.S. Congress members should determine each year, before sending the aid, whether Tel Aviv is violating U.S. laws and principles.

The Churches said that Christian leaders have the responsibility to question the continuation of this unconditional aid to Tel Aviv, adding that achieving a long and lasting peace in the region requires accountability.

Angered by the statement, AIPAC said that it rejects the evaluation of the aid, and accused the signatories of the letter of distancing themselves from the “mainstream values”.

They said that protecting the Israeli American relations is a wise investment America makes to protect its people and interests in the region.

October 12, 2012 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Wars for Israel | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel, United States | 8 Comments

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Revisionist History Books Banned by Amazon

By Michael Hoffman • Unz Review • August 25, 2018

On August 13, 2018 Amazon banned Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded, which was published in 2011 and sold by Amazon for the past seven years. Along with the much larger study, Judaism Discovered, (sold by Amazon since 2008), it has had an international impact both as a softcover volume as well as a digital book circulating on the Amazon Kindle.

Sales to India, Japan and the Middle East were rapidly growing. The digital Kindle format is particularly important for the free circulation of books because it bypasses borders and customs and hurdles over the prohibitive cost of shipping which the US Postal Service imposed on mail to overseas destinations several years ago (eliminating economical surface mail).

Amazon has also banned The Great Holocaust Trial: The Landmark Battle for the Right to Doubt the West’s Most Sacred Relic (sold by Amazon since 2010).

These volumes maintain a high standard of scholarly excellence, had a majority of favorable reviews by Amazon customers, are free of hatred and bigotry and have sold thousands of copies on Amazon. Out of the blue we were told that suddenly “Amazon KDP” discovered that the books are in violation of Amazon’s “content guidelines.” Asking for documentation of the charge results in no response. It is enough that the accusation has been tendered. The accused are guilty until proved innocent, although how proof of innocence is presented is anyone’s guess. There is no appeals process. This is what is known as “Tech Tyranny.”

There is a nationwide purge underway that amounts to a new McCarthyism — blacklisting and banning politically incorrect speech and history books under the rubric of “hate speech” accusations, initiated in part by two Zionist thought police organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It’s a flimsy pretext for censoring controversial scholarly books that can’t be refuted.

In addition to our books being hate-free, we note that there are hundreds of hate-filled Zionist and rabbinic books brimming with ferocious bigotry for Palestinians, Germans and goyim in general, which are sold by Amazon. … continue

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