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WEF Proposes Globalized Plan to Police Online Content Using Artificial Intelligence

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 19, 2022

Warning about a “dark world of online harms” that must be addressed, the World Economic Forum (WEF) this month published an article calling for a “solution” to “online abuse” that would be powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence.

The proposal calls for a system, based on AI, that would automate the censorship of “misinformation” and “hate speech” and work to overcome the spread of “child abuse, extremism, disinformation, hate speech and fraud” online.

According to the author of the article, Inbal Goldberger, human “trust and safety teams” alone are not fully capable of policing such content online.

Goldberger is vice president of ActiveFence Trust & Safety, a technology company based in New York City and Tel Aviv that claims it “automatically collects data from millions of sources and applies contextual AI to power trust and safety operations of any size.”

Instead of relying solely on human moderation teams, Goldberger proposes a system based on “human-curated, multi-language, off-platform intelligence” — in other words, input provided by “expert” human sources that would then create “learning sets” that would train the AI to recognize purportedly harmful or dangerous content.

This “off-platform intelligence” — more machine learning than AI per se, according to Didi Rankovic of ReclaimTheNet.org — would be collected from “millions of sources” and would then be collated and merged before being used for “content removal decisions” on the part of “Internet platforms.”

According to Goldberger, the system would supplement “smarter automated detection with human expertise” and will allow for the creation of “AI with human intelligence baked in.”

This, in turn, would provide protection against “increasingly advanced actors misusing platforms in unique ways.”

“A human moderator who is an expert in European white supremacy won’t necessarily be able to recognize harmful content in India or misinformation narratives in Kenya,” Goldberger explained.

However, “By uniquely combining the power of innovative technology, off-platform intelligence collection and the prowess of subject-matter experts who understand how threat actors operate, scaled detection of online abuse can reach near-perfect precision” as these learning sets are “baked in” to the AI over time, Goldberger said.

This would, in turn, enable “trust and safety teams” to “stop threats rising online before they reach users,” she added.

In his analysis of what Goldberger’s proposal might look like in practice, blogger Igor Chudov explained how content policing on social media today occurs on a platform-by-platform basis.

For example, Twitter content moderators look only at content posted to that particular platform, but not at a user’s content posted outside Twitter.

Chudov argued this is why the WEF appears to support a proposal to “move beyond the major Internet platforms, in order to collect intelligence about people and ideas everywhere else.”

“Such an approach,” Chudov wrote, “would allow them to know better what person or idea to censor — on all major platforms at once.”

The “intelligence” collected by the system from its “millions of sources” would, according to Chudov, “detect thoughts that they do not like,” resulting in “content removal decisions handed down to the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and so on … a major change from the status quo of each platform deciding what to do based on messages posted to that specific platform only.”

In this way, “the search for wrongthink becomes globalized,” concludes Chudov.

In response to the WEF proposal, ReclaimTheNet.org pointed out that “one can start discerning the argument here … as simply pressuring social networks to start moving towards ‘preemptive censorship.’”

Chudov posited that the WEF is promoting the proposal because it “is becoming a little concerned” as “unapproved opinions are becoming more popular, and online censors cannot keep up with millions of people becoming more aware and more vocal.”

According to the Daily Caller, “The WEF document did not specify how members of the AI training team would be decided, how they would be held accountable or whether countries could exercise controls over the AI.”

In a disclaimer accompanying Goldberger’s article, the WEF reassured the public that the content expressed in the piece “is the opinion of the author, not the World Economic Forum,” adding that “this article has been shared on websites that routinely misrepresent content and spread misinformation.”

However, the WEF appears to be open to proposals like Goldberger’s. For instance, a May 2022 article on the WEF website proposes Facebook’s “Oversight Board” as an example of a “real-world governance model” that can be applied to governance in the metaverse.

And, as Chudov noted, “AI content moderation slots straight into the AI social credit score system.”

UN, backed by Gates Foundation, also aiming to ‘break chain of misinformation’

The WEF isn’t the only entity calling for more stringent policing of online content and “misinformation.”

For example, UNESCO recently announced a partnership with Twitter, the European Commission and the World Jewish Congress leading to the launch of the #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign, to “stop the spread of conspiracy theories.”

According to UNESCO:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a worrying rise in disinformation and conspiracy theories.

“Conspiracy theories can be dangerous: they often target and discriminate against vulnerable groups, ignore scientific evidence and polarize society with serious consequences. This needs to stop.”

UNESCO’s director-general, Audrey Azoulay, said:

“Conspiracy theories cause real harm to people, to their health, and also to their physical safety. They amplify and legitimize misconceptions about the pandemic, and reinforce stereotypes which can fuel violence and violent extremist ideologies.”

UNESCO said the partnership with Twitter informs people that events occurring across the world are not “secretly manipulated behind the scenes by powerful forces with negative intent.”

UNESCO issued guidance for what to do in the event one encounters a “conspiracy theorist” online: One must “react” immediately by posting a relevant link to a “fact-checking website” in the comments.

UNESCO also provides advice to the public in the event someone encounters a “conspiracy theorist” in the flesh. In that case, the individual shold avoid arguing, as “any argument may be taken as proof that you are part of the conspiracy and reinforce that belief.”

The #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign provides a host of infographics and accompanying materials intended to explain what “conspiracy theories” are, how to identify them, how to report on them and how to react to them more broadly.

According to these materials, conspiracy theories have six things in common, including:

  • An “alleged, secret plot.”
  • A “group of conspirators.”
  • “‘Evidence’ that seems to support the conspiracy theory.”
  • Suggestions that “falsely” claim “nothing happens by accident and that there are no coincidences,” and that “nothing is as it appears and everything is connected.”
  • They divide the world into “good or bad.”
  • They scapegoat people and groups.

UNESCO doesn’t entirely dismiss the existence of “conspiracy theories,” instead admitting that “real conspiracies large and small DO exist.”

However, the organization claims, such “conspiracies” are “more often centered on single self-contained events, or an individual like an assassination or a coup d’état” and are “real” only if “unearthed by the media.”

In addition to the WEF and UNESCO, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council earlier this year adopted “a plan of action to tackle disinformation.”

The “plan of action,” sponsored by the U.S., U.K., Ukraine, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, emphasizes “the primary role that governments have, in countering false narratives,” while expressing concern for:

“The increasing and far-reaching negative impact on the enjoyment and realization of human rights of the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or manipulated information intended to deceive and mislead audiences, either to cause harm or for personal, political or financial gain.”

Even countries that did not officially endorse the Human Rights Council plan expressed concerns about online “disinformation.”

For instance, China identified such “disinformation” as “a common enemy of the international community.”

An earlier UN initiative, in partnership with the WEF, “recruited 110,000 information volunteers” who would, in the words of UN global communications director Melissa Fleming, act as “digital first responders” to “online misinformation.”

The UN’s #PledgeToPause initiative, although recently circulating as a new development on social media, was announced in November 2020, and was described by the UN as “the first global behaviour-change campaign on misinformation.”

The campaign is part of a broader UN initiative, “Verified,” that aims to recruit participants to disseminate “verified content optimized for social sharing,” stemming directly from the UN communications department.

Fleming said at the time that the UN also was “working with social media platforms to recommend changes” to “help break the chain of misinformation.”

Both “Verified” and the #PledgeToPause campaign still appear to be active as of the time of this writing.

The “Verified” initiative is operated in conjunction with Purpose, an activist group that has collaborated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the World Health Organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google and Starbucks.

Since 2019, the UN has been in a strategic partnership with the WEF based on six “areas of focus,” one of which is “digital cooperation.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | 3 Comments

OAS Chief Almagro Praises Israel, Condemns Venezuela

teleSur | August 10, 2017

Secretary-General of the Organization of American States Luis Almagro used his one-day visit to Israel to condemn Venezuela’s leftist government while expressing “pride that Israel is a friend of the Americas,” praising what he called Tel Aviv’s record of respecting human rights and democracy.

The tour seemed less like the diplomacy of a “supra-president” representing the Western Hemisphere, and more like a roadshow for the OAS chief to reiterate Trump administration talking points.

“As friends, Israel and the Americas share key values such as democracy and human rights. We have opportunities to learn from each other,” he told a gathering of World Jewish Congress members in Jerusalem. Despite Tel Aviv’s globally unrecognized claims that the ancient city is its “national capital,” Jerusalem remains under illegal occupation.

The themes of democracy and human rights were repeated multiple times by the secretary-general during his time with Israeli officials, usually in such contexts as “Israeli … our essential partner in the Middle East — due to its commitment to democracy and to human rights.”

Israeli authorities face routine criticism from world legal bodies like the U.N. for their disregard of human rights standards, especially in their discriminatory treatment of the Palestinian population.

“Israel is a democratic state in which the institutions function,” Almagro told Haaretz. “The functionality of institutions and the balance of powers are fundamental for us and are the paradigm of the health of a democracy.”

Israeli institutions systematically deny the people of Palestine their right to self-determination, imposing stringent restrictions on their movement, travel, and trade. Israeli security forces have been criticized by rights organizations for resorting to excessive force, including extrajudicial killings, on a regular basis, while unarmed Palestinian demonstrators — adults and children — face imprisonment, torture, and abuse for taking part in protests against occupation activities. The construction of massive settlements deep in the occupied West Bank likewise is illegal under international law.

Almagro’s tone jars dramatically with his opinion five years ago as foreign minister of Uruguay, admitting in an interview that he voted on U.N. resolutions condemning Israeli settlements and human rights violations “with both hands” while arguing that the Israeli occupation’s crimes were irrefutable from a legal standpoint.

On the subject of Venezuela, Almagro struck an emphatic tone consistent with his prior calls to remove the country’s government through “regime change” efforts.

“It is a dictatorship, there’s no other definition for Venezuela today,” Almagro told Israeli daily Haaretz.

Seemingly oblivious to the irony in his words, he then condemned the left for having “flinched on democracy and human rights” in the South American nation.

Opining about U.S. unilateral sanctions on Venezuela, Almagro said, “no country feels comfortable in this situation … but that does not mean the sanctions don’t hit hard and hit those specific places that most affect the regime.”

Since becoming secretary-general of the OAS, Almagro has become a partisan of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, railing against alleged abuses by the “ruling regime” and issuing thousands of tweets against the Bolivarian government, accompanied by calls for foreign intervention in the country.

In contrast, Almagro has been relatively silent in respect to the Western Hemisphere’s most pressing human rights crises — such as the Mexican government’s crackdowns on social movements resisting neoliberal structural reforms, assassinations of social movement leaders and paramilitary attacks on rural and Indigenous communities throughout Latin America, and the parliamentary coup against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

The OAS chief’s contradictory messages underscore Bolivian President Evo Morales’ description of Almagro’s “submission to the North American empire.”

August 11, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 1 Comment

What Obama Should Have Told Bibi

And also the World Jewish Congress

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • November 10, 2015

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently making one of his periodic devastating plundering raids on Washington and New York. During his visit he discreetly picked up a bunch of large checks from the Wall Street crowd, benefited from the plaudits dutifully delivered by the media and chattering class and has even met with President Barack Obama, whom he quite openly despises. Netanyahu and Obama carefully concealed their mutual dislike when in front of the cameras but the president also made all the right noises about Israel’s security “needs.” Apparently all the violence occurring in Israel-Palestine is the fault of the Palestinians and Israel always has the right to do whatever it wants to defend itself. Obama will follow up on the meeting by throwing billions of dollars of additional Danegeld at Netanyahu as a token of America’s undying love and fealty to Israel’s interests.

One wonders if Obama had his fingers crossed behind his back to indicate that he was lying to Bibi except for the intention to come up with more money, which is always an easy way out for America’s ruling class. It is generally convenient to pay off blackmailers like Netanyahu in hopes that they will stop whining. The president will in any event have to prepare himself to endure the usual firestorm coming from GOP presidential candidates later this week over his less than enthusiastic support for America’s greatest ally and best friend, which would have been a consequence of the visit no matter how it had turned out.

Last Thursday a full page ad placed by the World Jewish Congress appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The group’s president Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics company heir, provided the White House with suggestions for how to deal with the visiting Israeli leader. Predictably, he delivered some debatable assertions in constructing his argument as to why the president and prime minister should kiss and make up.

Lauder wants to “reinvigorate” the relationship with Israel because “never has this relationship been more important.” Wrong Ron, the Israeli connection is an enormous liability for the United States strategically speaking that has cost well in excess of $100 billion to the American taxpayer and has done untold political damage. Compared to other strategic partners in the region including Turkey and Egypt Israel is of little or no importance but for the fact that it has an enthusiastic, politically powerful and extremely wealthy domestic lobby conniving on its behalf. Which includes you, Ron.

Lauder goes on to cite “human disaster in Syria, ISIS moving on Iraq, [and] Iran’s bid to destabilize the region.” Well Ron, the human disaster in Syria and ISIS in Iraq have been caused by policies pushed by Israel and carried out by the United States, all starting with the Iraq war which was initiated at least in part for Israel by a cadre of neocons in the Bush Administration. Iran may not be a friend of the United States, but its support is desperately needed to eliminate ISIS and help stabilize Iraq. As always, Israel sees a U.S. led military solution to each and every problem dealing with Muslims. That might provide a comfort zone for Israeli politicians but it is bad for the United States and to be completely honest it is not even good for the Israeli people.

The ad also cites “the ongoing violent attacks against Jews in Israel” and that Israel is the “only democracy” in the Middle East. Ron, more than seven Palestinians have been killed for each dead Israeli, many of them shot execution style, but you seem to have forgotten that. The simple solution to the attacks would be for Israel to give up its endless and endlessly brutal occupation of the West Bank as well as its siege of Gaza. The knifings would end.

And what about democracy when it only applies to Jews? Netanyahu has proposed expelling thousands of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, where they and their ancestors have lived for centuries. And the continuous theft of Arab land and destruction of their livelihoods proceeds at an accelerated pace. If Ron Lauder and his friends really cared about suffering humanity instead of only the Jewish subset he would be using his considerable leverage to complain directly to Netanyahu and ask him to reverse his policies.

And how to fix things? Lauder claims that Netanyahu has “the greatness, the vision and the courage to move this relationship forward on a positive path.” Sure. And pigs have wings. Let’s face it Ron, Bibi is quite likely clinically insane. Even many Israelis are saying so, though they still vote for him based on his government’s relentlessly implemented and self-fulfilling program of inciting fear of Arabs.

For what it’s worth, this is what I propose Obama should have said to Bibi but didn’t, with a transcript of the conversation also faxed over to Ron Lauder at the World Jewish Congress:

  • “Nice to have you back Prime Minister, but not really as it’s close to lunchtime, to which, incidentally, you are not invited. Why don’t you stay home? You have been interfering in our politics and denigrating both me personally and my office for far too long. How would you like it if I were to go to Israel and endorse one of your opponents? If you keep up this crap I will revoke your visa and you’ll never visit here again.”
  • “And by the way, your plan to expel thousands of Arabs from East Jerusalem and to shoot kids throwing stones at your occupying army is not acceptable to us. And then there are new reports of your harvesting organs and other medical transplant material from the bodies of Palestinians that you have killed. There’s a long history of that in your country, but it’s a bit much even by your standards, isn’t it, and it begs the question whether there is anything that you won’t do. Next time a motion comes up in the United Nations condemning your brutality we will support it. Maybe we’ll co-sponsor or even propose it to show that we’re serious.”
  • “We are running out of money here in Washington and are thinking of cutting benefits to our own people. I note that Israelis have free medical care and university education, which means that we are subsidizing things that we Americans do not have so it hardly seems fair. We have been giving you more than $3 billion in aid every year and also looking the other way when you benefit from tax free charitable contributions that actually are illegal under American law. By executive order, I am stopping the cash flow and asking the IRS to look at your friends over here.”
  • “And speaking of Israel’s many friends, your good buddy at the State Department Victoria Nuland is now working down in the mail room. And I am asking the Justice Department to register the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as a foreign agent, subject to having its finances and operations monitored by U.S. authorities. Oh, and your spy Jonathan Pollard will be denied parole later this month and will be the guest of a federal prison for the next twenty years.”
  • “I cannot see where you have done anything for us except complain. As you are now pledging Israel to continue its occupation of Palestinian land and ‘live by the sword’, meaning the killing of Arabs will accelerate, I am suspending all military cooperation with you until you come up with a plan to remove most of your settlers from the West Bank. Come back when you have something to show me. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

Well, okay, it was never bloody likely to happen that way, but I can dream, can’t I? If you think Obama is spineless when confronted by Ron Lauder and the usual suspects, just think of how bad it will be when we have President Clinton or President Rubio, proxies for their Israel firster donors Haim Saban and Paul Singer respectively. The new president and his or her staff will have to learn how to perform proskynesis whenever Netanyahu enters the oval office.

November 10, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Israel considers leaving UN Human Rights Council after Gaza probe – report

RT | June 29, 2015

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly questioned his country’s membership in the United Nation’s Human Rights Council following its recent report on last summer’s Gaza conflict.

The announcement, in which Netanyahu referred to the UNHRC commission as a “hypocritical committee,” was made during a closed-door meeting with top Israeli officials on Monday.

“In light of the [UN Gaza] report, we will consider whether or not to stay in the Human Rights Council,” Netanyahu said, according to Army Radio.

It’s not the first time Israel has been at odds with the Council during the UNHRC’s 9 year-long history. Back in 2012, then-foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman made a decision to quit the council over its probe into Jewish settlements in the West Bank. However, Israel reinstated its membership a year later.

Lieberman, who also was present at Monday’s meeting, reportedly reminded Netanyahu about the precedent. “As foreign minister, I ended Israel’s involvement in the Human Rights Council. Why did you change that decision?” he asked.

On Monday afternoon, about 1,000 people from several European countries, both Jews and Christians, rallied in Geneva to support Israel, as the UN Human Rights Council had another debate on the matter.

“The reason we are here today is to tell the United Nations that it needs to change. It needs to overcome its obsession with Israel. This obsession is destructive and it stands in the way of an effective human rights policy that is so badly needed,” World Jewish Congress (WJC) CEO Robert Singer told demonstrators.

The UN Human Rights Council report on the 2014 Gaza conflict was released last week. It concluded that both Israeli Defense Forces and the Hamas Palestinian group had committed war crimes. The organization also accepted the Palestinian death count, which estimated that 65 percent of those killed in the seige were civilians, or 1,462 out of a total of 2,251 Palestinians killed.

“The report is biased,” Netanyahu said upon the release of the report. “Israel is not perpetrating war crimes but rather protecting itself from an organization that carries out war crimes. We won’t sit back with our arms crossed as our citizens are attacked by thousands of missiles.”

June 30, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Should the US Go to War for Israel?

By James M. Wall | March 10, 2012

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the annual AIPAC conference earlier this week. He also held a private meeting with US President Barack Obama.

In his AIPAC speech, Netanyahu evoked the Holocaust as the source of Israel’s special privileged status that permits Netanyahu to do whatever he decides to do to “control Israel’s fate”.

That, of course, includes bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu drew a parallel between the exchange of letters between the US War department and the World Jewish Congress in 1944.

The Wall Street Journal described the scene at the AIPAC conference:

Netanyahu got out copies of two letters he said he keeps in his desk, between the World Jewish Congress and the War Department in 1944, when the WJC called on the United States to bomb the extermination camp at Auschwitz, and the War Department refused.

The refusal included the argument that attacking the camp might unleash even more “vindictive” behavior.

“Think about that,” Netanyahu said. “Even more vindictive than the Holocaust!”

During his meeting with Obama, Netanyahu elaborated further:

“Israel must reserve the right to defend itself. After all, that’s the very purpose of the Jewish state, to restore to the Jewish people control over our destiny.

That’s why my supreme responsibility as prime minister of Israel is to ensure that Israel remains master of its fate.”

In an editorial comment, the British Economist responded:

News flash: Israel is not master of its fate. It’s not terribly surprising that a country with less than 8 million inhabitants is not master of its fate. Switzerland, Sweden, Serbia and Portugal are not masters of their fates.

These days, many countries with populations of 100 million or more can hardly be said to be masters of their fates. Britain and China aren’t masters of their fates, and even the world’s overwhelmingly largest economy, the United States, isn’t really master of its fate.

What gives this leader of a foreign nation the license to speak in Washington with such confidence that he expects the US to join him in an attack on Iran, a nation that poses absolutely no threat to the US or its citizens?

Indeed, US intelligence agencies report that they have found no reason to believe that Iran poses an immediate threat to Israel.

So why should the US go to war for Israel over an issue that poses no more immediate danger to Israel than Iraq’s non-existent WMDs threatened its neighbors? That non-existent threat led to a disastrous and costly war for the US, a war that was strongly encouraged by Israel and its US allies in Congress.

Why is there even any serious discussion with a foreign nation over what the US should do regarding an attack against yet another Muslim nation that has made no threats against us?

There are two reasons why;  first, there is the US Congress, and second, there is AIPAC.

After Obama delivered his required obescient speech to AIPAC, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, said the speech was “a step in the right direction,” but  ”we need to make sure that this president is also going to stand by Israel and not allow his administration to somehow speak contrary to what our ally thinks is in its best interest.”

No one in the US administration shall speak contrary to what our ally thinks is its best interest?  Where would Rep. Cantor hear such a thing? Surely not in a Tea Party rally where loyalty to God and country are paramount.

We must look to AIPAC as the source of Rep. Cantor’s courage to denigrate the President of the United States.

President George Washington warned the new American nation in his 1796  farewell address that a “passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils”. He explained why:

“Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”

The US has usually managed to adhere to Washington’s advice, until, that is, AIPAC was established.

On the Anti-War website,  Grant Smith described how, in 1948, AIPAC began to seize control of US foreign policy.

Recently declassified FBI files reveal how Israeli government officials first orchestrated public relations and policies through the US lobby. Counter-espionage investigations of proto-AIPAC’s first coordinating meetings with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the head of Mossad provide a timely and useful framework for understanding how AIPAC continues to localize and market Israeli government policies in America.

Although AIPAC claims it rose “from a small pro-Israel public affairs boutique in the 1950s,” its true origin can be traced to Oct. 16, 1948. This is the date AIPAC’s founder Isaiah L. Kenen and four others established the Israel Office of Information under Israel’s UN mission. It was later moved under the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

AIPAC controls the US Congress through its network of Political Action Committees that follow AIPAC’s instructions on which candidates to politically and financially support, and which candidates to jettison.

The incumbent Israeli Prime Minister travels to Washington to personally lobby members of Congress. He also hosts visiting congressional delegations on their regular trips to Israel.  An annual address to AIPAC is an essential part of that lobbying campaign.

This year, Prime Minister Netanyahu had Iran at the top of his agenda. He wants, and he fully expects, President Obama and the Congress to support Israel in its military assault against Iran’s nuclear installations.

There is no guarantee that Iran is even close to developing a nuclear capability, but in Netanyahu’s mind, even the possibility that Iran might one day develop an operational nuclear arms capability is sufficient cause for Israel, backed by the US, to destroy Iranian nuclear sites.

In short, the prime minister is ready for war against Iran, and he expects the US to fall in line behind him.

The irony of this arrogance is that Israel may well be at its lowest point of support from the world community.

David Remnick describes the extent to which Israel has become isolated from the world community. He writes in a Talk of the Town essay in the February issue of the New Yorker:

Israel has reached an impasse. An intensifying conflict of values has put its democratic nature under tremendous stress. When the government speaks daily about the existential threat from Iran, and urges an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, it ignores the existential threat that looms within. . . .

The political corrosion begins, of course, with the occupation of the Palestinian territories–the subjugation of Palestinian men, women and children–tht has lasted for forty years.

Peter Beinart, in a forthcoming and passionately urged polemic, The Crisis of Zionism, is just the latest critic to point out that a profoundly anti-democratic, even racist, political culture has become endemic among much of the Jewish population in the West Bank, and threatens Israel proper. . . .

In 1980, twelve thousand Jews lived in the West Bank, “east of democracy,” Beinart writes; now they number more than three hundred thouand, and include Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s wildly xenophobic Foreign Minister. .  .  .

To [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, the proper kind of ally is exemplified by AIPAC and Sheldon Adelson–the long-time casino tycoon and recent bankroller of Newt Gingrich–who owns a newspaper in Israel devoted to supporting him.

Remnick correctly takes note of the degree to which support for Israel affects the current US presidential campaign.

We know pretty much all we need to know about Netanyahu’s feelings toward Obama. The Prime Minister orders the President about like he might order a lowly member of his Israeli cabinet.  He would be very happy to see the White House back in Republican hands.

No doubt, he is following the Republican presidential nomination fight as it unfolds state by state. He cannot be unhappy over the strong link between the Republican candidates and the Christian evangelical conservatives, a segment of the American population already safely ensconced within the Republican base.

The latest victory for the pro-Israel/Christian evangelical base came this weekend when Republican Candidate Rick Santorum won, as reported by The Wichita Eagle, an impressive caucus victory, two to one, over Mitt Romney.

Santorum won with the strong support of that state’s governor, Sam Brownback, a former two-two term member of the US Senate. Governor Brownback is both a conservative evangelical Christian, and a strong supporter of Israel.

Salon describes Kansas as “ground zero for the takeover of the GOP by Christian-infused movement conservatism and the extinction of middle-of-the-road Republicanism.”

Southern primaries Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi should go to either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, a political development that will force Romney to veer even deeper into the ”Christian-infused movement conservatism”/pro-Israel zealotry of his Republican base.

Israel’s media campaign about Iran as a threat was examined by Sheera Frenkel of McClatchy Newspapers. Among her conclusions:

Israeli officials acknowledge that the widespread acceptance in the West that Iran is on the verge of building a nuclear weapon isn’t based just on the findings of Israeli intelligence operatives, but relies in no small part on a steady media campaign that the Israelis have undertaken to persuade the world that Iran is bent on building a nuclear warhead.

“The intelligence was half the battle in convincing the world,” an Israeli Foreign Ministry official told McClatchy, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the inner workings of Israel’s outreach on the topic. “The other half was Israel’s persistent approach and attitude that this was not something the world could continue to ignore.”

The official had recently returned from a trip to Washington and marveled at how the topic has become a major one in the United States. “U.S. politicians were falling over each other to talk about Iran,” he said. “In some ways, that is a huge success for Israel.”

If the US is led by Israel to participate in another war in the Middle East, these McClatchy findings suggest that this war could be one of the biggest sales promotion successes in modern political history.

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March 11, 2012 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 9 Comments