Obama has signalled his coming complete surrender to Zionism and its lobby

By Alan Hart* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

He did it with seven words. "Ultimately the U.S. cannot impose a solution."

He was speaking at the White House the day before the start of the new round of direct talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, after he had met with them and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah II. (In my last post I anticipated Obama saying at the point of his complete surrender that "America can't want peace more than the parties." He also said that – ahead of schedule!)

Today there is a growing number of seriously well informed people of all faiths and none (including me) who believe there will only be peace if it is imposed.

Among those who have dared to say so in public is one of the most eminent Jewish gentlemen of our time, Henry Siegman. A former national director of the American Jewish Congress, he is president of the U.S./Middle East Project, which was part of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1994 until 2006 when it was established as an independent policy institute. He is also a research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Programme of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. During his more than 30 years of involvement in the Middle East peace process, he has published extensively on the subject and has been consulted by governments, international agencies and non-governmental organizations involved in the peace process. In a comment piece for the Financial Times on 23 February 2010, (quoted in Conflict Without End? the Epilogue to Volume 3 of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews), he wrote this:

"The Middle East peace process and its quest for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that got under way nearly 20 years ago with the Oslo accords has undergone two fundamental transformations. It is now on the brink of a third.

"The first was the crossing of a threshold by Israel's settlement project in the West Bank; there is no longer any prospect of its removal by this or any future Israeli government, which was the precise goal of the settlements' relentless expansion all along. The previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who declared that a peace accord requires Israel to withdraw 'from most, if not all' of the occupied territories, 'including East Jerusalem,' was unable even to remove any of the 20 hilltop outposts Israel had solemnly promised to dismantle.

"A two-state solution could therefore come about only if Israel were compelled to withdraw to the pre-1967 border by an outside power whose wishes an Israeli government could not defy – the US. The assumption has always been that at the point where Israel's colonial ambitions collide with critical US national interests, an American president would draw on the massive credit the US has accumulated with Israel to insist it dismantle its illegal settlements, which successive US administrations held to be the main obstacle to a peace accord.

"The second transformation resulted from the shattering of that assumption when President Barack Obama – who took a more forceful stand against Israel's settlements than any of his predecessors, and did so at a time when the damage this unending conflict was causing American interests could not have been more obvious – backed off ignominiously in the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rejection of his demand. This left prospects for a two-state accord dead in the water."

On 16 August in a piece for the Huffington Post which was originally published by Ha'aretz in Hebrew, Siegman added this:

"Most Israelis, particularly the present government, have been blithely indifferent to repeated international condemnations of Israel's systematic theft of Palestinian territory on which it has been settling its own Jewish population in blatant violation of international law. Yet their reaction to what they see as an attack on the "legitimacy" of the State of Israel, a concept foreign to international law, seems to bring them to the edge of hysteria.

"In fact, Israel's legitimacy within its 1967 borders has never been challenged by the international community. It is its behavior on territory beyond its own borders to which the international community – including every U.S. administration – has objected. To construe the condemnation of violations of international law as anti-Semitism is absurd.

"It was not an anti-Semite seeking to delegitimize the Jewish state, but Theodore Meron, an internationally respected jurist and the legal advisor to Israel's Foreign Ministry, who following the war of 1967 conveyed the following legal opinion to Israel's Foreign Minister Abba Eban: 'Civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention,' to which Israel is a signatory. That Convention's ban on population transfer is 'categorical and not conditional upon the motives for the transfer or its objectives. The Convention's purpose is to prevent settlement in occupied territory of citizens of the occupying state.'"

So yes, Israel's leaders knew that settlements on Arab land occupied in 1967 are illegal. They simply didn't give (and still today don't give) a damn about international law. But this attitude, a mixture of extreme arrogance and insufferable self-righteousness, does not make them the main villains in the story of what happened after June 1967. The main villains were (and still are) the governments of the major powers and the one in Washington DC above all.

What they should have said to Israel in the immediate aftermarth of the 1967 war is: "You are not to build any settlements on occupied Arab land. If you do, you'll be demonstrating your contempt for international law. In this event the international community will declare Israel to be an outlaw state and subject it to sanctions."

If something like that riot act had been read to Israel there would have been peace many, many years ago. The pragmatic Arafat was reluctantly reconciled to the reality of Israel's existence inside its pre-1967 borders as far back as 1968. In his gun and olive branch address to the UN General Assembly on 13 November 1974 he said so by obvious implication. Thereafter he put his credibility with his leadership colleagues and his people, and his life, on the line to get a mandate for unthinkable compromise with Israel. He got it at the end of 1979 when the Palestine National Council voted by 296 votes to 4 to endorse his two-state policy. What he needed thereafter was an Israeli partner for peace. He eventually got a probable one, Yitzhak Rabin, but he was assassinated by a Zionist fanatic. The more it became clear that Israel's leaders were not interested in a genuine two-state solution for which Arafat had prepared the ground on his side, the more his credibility with his own people suffered.

It is in the context briefly sketched above that Obama's seven words have their real meaning.

At the time of writing it seems reasonably clear that Obama is hoping that Abbas and his equally discredited Fatah leadership colleagues can be bribed and bullied into accepting what Netanyahu will eventually offer – crumbs from Zionism's table. (My guess is that Abbas at a point will resign rather than trigger a Palestinian civil war). THE question is what will Obama do when Israel refuses to give enough to satisfy the demands and needs of the Palestinian people for a just about acceptable measure of justice?

We already know the answer. "Ultimately the U.S. cannot impose a solution."

Effectively those seven words tell Israel's leaders that they can go on imposing their will on the occupied and oppressed Palestinians with the comfort of knowing that Obama is not going to use the leverage he has, and every American president has had, to cause them, or try to cause them, to be serious about peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, and which a rational Israeli government and people would accept with relief.

Put another way, those seven words are effectively a green light for Zionism alone to determine the future of the Palestinians, a future which at some point will most likely see the final ethnic cleansing of Palestine, followed by another great turning against the Jews (provoked by the Zionist state's behaviour) and a Clash of Civilizations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic.

In his analysis on the day Obama delivered his seven words, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's admirable Middle East Editor, offered this thought. "There might not be room for many more failures. The conflict is changing. A religious war is now being grafted on what used to be fundamentally a competition for territory between two national movements. You can make deals with nationalists. It's much harder with people who believe they're doing God's work."

The next question asks itself. Why won't Obama be the president to call and hold the Zionist state to account for its crimes, even when doing so is necessary for the best protection of America's own interests?

Part of the answer is, of course, that he is no more willing than any of his predecessors to have a showdown with the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress and the mainstream media.

But there might be more to it.

In the privacy of his own mind Obama probably understands better than any of his predecessors how the conflict was created and what has sustained it. If that is the case, he will also know there's no guarantee that real American-led pressure on Israel to be serious about peace would work and that it could be counter-productive.

I am a supporter in principle of the case and the need for the Zionist state of Israel to be totally isolated, boycotted and sanctioned as Apartheid South Africa was, eventually. But… The danger is that even the credible threat of a real boycott and sanctions could play into the hands of those Israeli leaders – Netanyahu has long been their standard bearer – who have brainwashed Israelis, most if not quite all, into believing that the world hates Jews, always has and always will, and that Israeli Jews have no choice but to tell the world to go to hell. In this context (and as I note in the Epilogue of the American edition of my book), I think it could and should be said that Zionism succeeded, probably beyond its own best expectations, in transforming the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust from a lesson against racism and fascism and all the evils associated with them into an ideology that seeks to justify anything and everything the Zionist state does. War crimes and all.

So it could be that in the privacy of his own mind, Obama knows it is already too late (not to mention too dangerous) to try to push Israel's leaders much further than they are willing to go.

What, I wonder, will honest historians of the future make of what is happening right now? My guess is that they will conclude that when Obama launched his push for peace, the Zionist state was already a monster beyond control.

Many Voices Singing One Song

by Philip Giraldi
Several weeks ago the redoubtable Charles Schumer of New York announced the Yahweh himself had anointed him Israel’s defender in the US Senate. In a radio interview Schumer explained “You know, my name …. comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem (God) actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer — to be the shomer Yisrael. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body …”

Schumer’s very interesting comments, suggesting that he has a rather narrow view of his responsibility to represent all the people of New York State, were not reported anywhere in the mainstream media. It was apparently not considered newsworthy that a Senator from the Empire State had pledged love and loyalty to a foreign country. Schumer’s affections are particularly noteworthy as he is being spoken of as the next Senate Majority leader if Harry Reid takes a well deserved fall in the midterm elections. Schumer is, of course, not alone in his sentiments. His colleague from New Jersey Frank Lautenberg, who has traveled to Israel more than 80 times, has also been called, though perhaps it should be one of Israel’s Senators as there are clearly multiple candidates. Who could exclude Joe Israel’s Senator Lieberman of Connecticut? If one includes only Schumer, Lieberman, and Lautenberg Israel still has more senators representing its interests than any state in the union.

Both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin effused about their love for Israel during their vice presidential debate in 2008. Many lower house federal legislators could rightly be termed Congressmen from Israel, including Howard Berman, Eric Cantor, Jerrold Nadler, Anthony Weiner, Shelley Berkley, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Eliot Engel recently described Israel as the “best ally the United States has in the Middle East, but I would argue the best ally in the world”…adding that if the US pressures Israel “you’re going to hear it from me.” Congresswoman Jane Harman actually agreed to help an Israeli intelligence officer by using her influence to derail the trial of two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) officials. Harman is still sitting in her plush office on Capitol Hill instead of in jail, where she belongs.

But there is another category of Israel firster that differs from the homegrown variety. Has anyone wondered at the large number of foreigners who have somehow made their way into Washington’s think tank and media punditry industry? They are found most commonly at places like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Hudson Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Saban Center at Brookings, and, of course at the AIPAC-founded Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy (WINEP). They come from Australia, Europe, and Israel itself but the one thing they all have in common is that they, like Schumer, love and protect Israel. If one were suspicious, it might be possible to wonder whether there is some kind of mechanism operating whereby advocates of Israel are hand-picked and godfathered through the system. With unusual persistence and a high level of resiliency, many of them eventually become the dominant voices at the various think tanks so that eventually no dissenting opinions are allowed. Hollywood billionaire Haim Saban’s money has turned the once moderate Brookings into an Israeli mouthpiece while AEI and Heritage, which used to be traditionally conservative bastions, have now become home bases for the neocon foreign policy.

A list of the prominent foreigners who attempt to shape opinion in the United States ought to begin with one of the better known, Martin Indyk. Indyk’s trajectory would appear to be fiction, but it is, alas, true. He was born in London and educated in Australia. After a stint working for the Likud Party in Tel Aviv, he came to the United States in 1982 and settled in as a lobbyist for Israel. He became head of WINEP in 1985 and was increasingly identified advising leading Democratic politicians. The payback came when George H. W. Bush refused Israeli loan guarantees in 1992 and lost the presidential election. Bill Clinton’s narrow victory was by many attributed to the help he received from the Israel Lobby and its media friends. When the new administration moved in it was time to reward Indyk. Clinton agreed to place him on the National Security Council with the Middle East portfolio with the understanding he would be fast tracked as US Ambassador to Israel. But there was only one problem: Indyk was not an American citizen. The White House had Indyk nationalized by act of Congress in 1993 so the appointment could be made. While in Israel as US Ambassador, Indyk was regarded as extremely close to the Israeli government. So close that he apparently forgot whom he worked for. In September 2000 he was detected sharing classified information with Israeli government officials and his clearance was suspended, very unusual for an ambassador. Indyk is now Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings and appears frequently in the media discussing the Middle East.

Ilan Berman is another media fixture who is promoted as an expert on Iran and, per his official bio, “an expert on regional security in the Middle East.” Berman is a Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council, a neocon affiliated group that has run television ads promoting taking a hard line with Iran. Berman’s has written Tehran Rising: Iran’s Challenge to the United States and his latest work is Winning the Long War: Retaking the Offensive Against Radical Islam. Berman’s bio does not indicate where he was born or provide details of his education, but he would appear to be an Israeli and his actual knowledge of either Iran or of “Radical Islam” might well be derivative. He is a member of the Ariel Center, a Likud-oriented think tank in Israel, which is partially funded by California bingo magnate Irving Moskowitz.

Danielle Pletka, born in Australia, is Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policies at the neocon American Enterprise Institute. Andrew Sullivan, who once worked for her, has described the integrity of her scholarship in an article she wrote urging Washington to tighten the screws on Iran: “The form is set by the neoconservative agenda and she mobilizes a narrative that fills in the blanks to serve that agenda. Unwilling if not incapable of producing an article any other way, she is more than content to reverse engineer her position … Her final statement is telling. ‘…Iran neither needs nor wants accommodation with the West,’ and it is clear to me this would have been her conclusion regardless of what the preceding 800 words had been.” Pletka supported the Iraq war, was a leading cheerleader for Ahmed Chalabi, believes in torture, and wants to go to war with Iran.

And then there is Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch. Itamar resides in Israel but is frequently in the United States advising Americans on what they should think about Palestinians. Wikipedia reports this concerning him: “In February 2007 together with Sen. Hillary Clinton he released a report on the newest PA schoolbooks at a press conference in Washington. Marcus testified before the Education Subcommittee of the US Senate Committee on Allocations, documenting the Palestinian Authority’s indoctrination of children to seek death as Shahids –Martyrs – for public relations purposes.” Marcus is a featured source for the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. Some might recall that Obsession was a neocon DVD production mailed free to millions of Americans shortly before the 2008 election by an organization calling itself the Endowment for Middle East Truth.

Good things can sometimes come in pairs as in the case of the Wurmsers. Meyrav was born in Israel and her husband David was born in Switzerland. David was most recently the Middle East adviser to Dick Cheney and he also worked for John Bolton and Doug Feith. He was one of the authors of “A Clean Break,” a strategy document provided in 1996 to then and current Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Wurmser advocated preemptive strikes against Iran and Syria and abandonment of land for peace deals with the Palestinians. He also supports US military action against Tehran and Damascus. In 2004 he was interviewed by the FBI regarding the passage of classified intelligence to Ahmed Chalabi and also to AIPAC. David’s wife Meyrav was a co-author of “A Clean Break” and founder of Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which assiduously translates all of the “particularly virulent and anti-US and anti-Israel articles” that it can find in the Arabic press. MEMRI is widely regarded as a front for Israeli intelligence. Meyrav is currently Director of the Center for Middle East Policy for the Hudson Institute and is a contributing expert at the Ariel Center.

The list goes on and on. There are the Canadians Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute, who called US protests over the decision to announce 1600 new Jewish homes on the West Bank during Vice-President’s Biden’s visit “hysterical”, and David Frum, who allegedly coined the phrase “axis of evil” and is now advancing the new Israeli argument that peace talks with the Palestinians are irrelevant. Other prominent Israelis include Yossef Bodansky, author of The High Cost of Peace: How Washington’s Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism; Yigal Carmon, a colonel in Israeli intelligence and a co-founder of MEMRI; and Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil, who has testified in Europe and the US that the Palestinian Authority uses its money to subsidize terrorism. Peruvian-born Eleana Benador has been referred to as a “theatrical agent” for a long string of neocons, arranging their generously remunerated speeches and public appearances. Iraqi-born Rita Katz of SITE has turned monitoring of what she describes as Jihadi websites into a big business, though some believe she has hyped the threat. And there are many more foreign-born neoconservatives at American universities, institutes, and even in government, all helping each other to obtain positions, favorably review each others books, and assiduously move up the ladder. Most of them connect through associations like the Ariel Center, JINSA, AIPAC, WINEP, the Committee on the Present Danger, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the Hudson Institute, and AEI. An astonishing number of them wind up at the National Defense University. Curiously, for many of them it is not altogether clear what their qualifications are to discuss the Middle East as “experts.” How many actually speak Arabic and Farsi or have lived in the countries or among the people that they regularly excoriate?

Are these people dangerous? Well, maybe. Many foreigners have come to the United States to make their fortunes and there is nothing wrong with that. But, in this case, there would appear to be a certain unanimity of viewpoint and a marching in lock step that is just a tad disconcerting, particularly as it has helped shape the foreign policy narrative. There is no deviation from hard right Likud positions, never any criticism of Israel, and always complete agreement on the need to confront Iran militarily. One might reasonably ask to what extent it is a coordinated effort to steer Washington in a certain direction, not unlike the neocons in the Pentagon under President George W. Bush. In any event, the presence of so many self-styled agenda-driven “experts” possessing regular media access raises questions about the objectivity of the policy-making process in Washington. If you seed enough partisans into the system and they are all singing the same tune that is then played and replayed in the media even a whole parcel of lies can eventually seem to be the truth.
http://intifada-palestine.com/2010/05/many-voices-singing-one-song/

End Israel Lobbies Pervasive and Damaging Influence in US Politics

byDebbie Menon
Mark Perry in his recent article in Foreign Policy journal “Petraeus wasn’t the First,” describes succinctly, the opposition to U.S. support for Israel, the rationale for it, and the cover-up on it among American publishers[1].

It is extremely valuable reading recommends Alison Weir, the the executive director of the website IF AMERICANS KNEW, “it corrects misconceptions that so many Americans have on the causation of U.S. support for Israel – including even some who are otherwise well informed on Palestine” she asserts[2].

Mark Perry is correct in all respects. He quotes Joe Hoar, who remind him that it’s all old history. “What’s the news here? Hasn’t this been said before?” and hasn’t it all been done before?

Has man ever learned from history? I think it says something about the nature of Man when you reflect that Einstein said “that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Key elements of the US government have always opposed the concept of a Zionist Israel, ever since the state and defence departments advised President Harry Truman not to sign up to the Zionist project, which he nevertheless did but with reservations, qualifications and conditions that were immediately ignored.

But none of these key elements of governance has influence over the Zionist-controlled US corporate press, entertainment, academic and public (mis)information media (and the corporate and business advertising budgets that drive them) where the roots of American public opinion are planted and from which the blissfully ignorant American masses take the cues for their views and feelings. Nor do they control the free-spending lobbies that buy and sell legislators and politicians on Capitol Hill with the same ease with which they trade banks and corporations on the stock market.

While this is well documented, the sad thing is that today many editors, journalists, analysts and publishers, even in the so-called progressive American media, either still do not know these facts or have chosen not to inform the public about them.

Recent “hate speech” legislation in the US Congress has already eviscerated the freedom of speech guarantees of the First Amendment. Try to persuade me that abuse and vilification of Islam and Christianity will get you the same treatment in the courts that open and objective political criticism of Israel will. The fact that it will almost certainly not is a perfect example of the power of lobbies in controlling the law of, and restricting free speech in, the USA.

The recent 300-36 vote by the US House Representatives rejecting the UN-sponsored Goldstone Report, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-initiated letter “Reaffirming the US-Israel Alliance”, which was signed by 76 senators and pressed the US president not to put pressure on Israel – and repeated the “unbreakable bond” mantra – is the best evidence of who controls US Middle East policy and how powerless the US president is to serve his own country’s interest. Barack Obama would do well to heed George Washington’s advise, when he warned in his farewell address against “passionate attachment” to an ally. (Also see Anthony Lawson’s video, “Treason by Members of the United States Congress”.)
Yes, it is about this ally’s powerful lobbying and its pervasive influence on American politics, policy and institutions that these and other writers have long written valuable books, revealing facts about the extent of the stranglehold of the Israel lobby over the US Congress and the US administration.

Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out

Edgar Tivnan, The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy

Donald Neff Fallen Pillars, US Policy Towards Palestine and Israel Since 1945

George W. Ball and Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement With Israel, 1947 to the Present

John Mulhall, America and the Founding of Israel: An Investigation of the Morality of America’s Role

James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy

Jeff Gates, Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) – his first release in the Criminal State series

American support for Israel is not only tragic and immoral, it is also extremely damaging to Americans when American Representatives continue to put Israel’s interests before the interests of Americans – a reality that U.S. analysts have noted for years, but that individuals and corporate owners in the media, academia, and elsewhere have worked to prevent the public from learning.

It’s long past time to end one of the most damaging and pervasive cover-ups in the U.S. today and time for people and institutions to confront Israel’s lobbies.
[1] Petraeus wasn’t the first

[2] If Americans Knew – what every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine

[3] US House rejects Goldstone report

[4] Signatories to Boxer-Isakson Letter – Reaffirming the U.S.-Israel Alliance

[5] Cherry-picking from Washington’s Tree
http://intifada-palestine.com/2010/04/end-israel-lobbies-pervasive-and-damaging-influence-in-us-politics/

Israel's stooges battle for British votes

By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

We can already see how disastrously the US election turned out, not just for Americans but the rest of us also. "The US president is simply the voice of the Zionist parasite," writes a friend in Norway. "It is sickening and frightening that Obama is seen toeing the Zionist line."

"Zionism has the US administration and other western governments by the balls."

Well, that's certainly the way it looks. Last month Israel's prime minister Netanyahu slapped America in the face by approving more illegal settlements during vice-president Joe Biden's visit. What did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton do? She repeated the pathetic mantra: "We have an absolute commitment to Israel's security. We have a close unshakeable bond between the United States and Israel and between the American and Israeli people".


Clinton completed her surrender to the Israeli terror machine by sharing the AIPAC Conference platform with a triumphant Netanyahu.

Whereupon over half of America's lawmakers topped Clinton's performance by signing a letter committing to the US's "unbreakable" bond with the racist regime.

Nine months earlier, speaking in a BBC interview, Obama said he believed the US was "able to get serious negotiations back on track" between Israel and the Palestinians. And when asked about Israel's defiance when called on to halt construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, he urged patience. "Diplomacy is always a matter of a long hard slog. It's never a matter of quick results."

The fact is, diplomacy doesn't work with the Israelis. Everyone knows the problem: Israel's contempt for international law and UN resolutions. And now we see Obama's contempt too. In this wobbly leader's mind Israel is somehow exempt from the laws, conventions, codes of conduct and respect for the rights of others that apply to everyone else in the civilised world.

Forcing negotiations is immoral

And Obama should know better than to keep harping on about peace negotiations. It is absurd to put a weak party and a strong party together and expect fair results when the strong party is in permanent occupation and has its military boot on the weak party's neck.

It is immoral to expect the weak party to negotiate while the strong party is in flagrant breach of international law, commits acts of piracy, maintains a crippling blockade, carries out daily air strikes on civilians and continues to steal the weak party's land and resources.

It is immoral for sponsors of negotiations to be so partisan as to refuse to recognize the democratically elected representatives of the weak party or its right to self-determination and territorial integrity.

It is immoral to force negotiations without first establishing a level playing field and ensuring both sides are compliant with international law. The international community has shirked this responsibility for decades, not because the peoples of the community of nations lack the will but because their leaders are gutless and corrupt.

Then there's the scandal of the US government's aid to Israel which runs at nearly $3 billion annually and totals well over $100 billion since 1949. The money helps pay for Israel's costly occupation of Palestinian territory, its F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, tanks, ordnance, Caterpillar bulldozers, and all the other tools of military oppression and territorial grand theft.

Israel gets more $billions in indirect aid – military support, loan write-offs, rich technology transfers and special grants. Before George W Bush left office he agreed an assistance package of $30 billion over the next ten years.

So the US taxpayer has been cheerfully funding Israeli operations to destroy Palestinian infrastructure (which in many cases has been paid for by British, EU and – yes – US taxpayers) and bring the whole civil society to its knees.

Most of this aid violates US laws that stipulate US-supplied weapons can only be used for "legitimate self-defense" and military assistance is prohibited to any country that engages in "a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights". Military assistance is also banned to any government that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or allow inspection of its nuclear facilities. But thanks to the "unbreakable" bond with Israel these inconvenient laws might as well not exist.

Israelis fiercely attack any attempt to 'de-legitimise' their ill-gotten gains while more and more people argue that the state of Israel had no legitimacy in the first place. Nevertheless the Zionist menace now has nuclear fangs and the capability to target most European cities… and, as we have seen, has no sense of restraint whatever.

Gee, thanks, America. Before you go accepting any more peace prizes, Obama, how about bringing to heel this monster the US has been nurturing?

Israel's 'Voices' compete for British vote

Here in Britain we have our own version of AIPAC. The Foreign Office has been under Zionist influence for decades. Our most important security bodies – the Intelligence & Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee – are headed by Israel flag-wavers. They have embedded themselves in nearly ever nook and cranny of parliamentary life.

Right now these stooges are battling for our votes in a general election.

Before the election campaign the main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, were so wedded to the Zionist cause that both wished to change our laws to protect Israeli leaders from arrest on war crimes charges and provide them with a safe haven in Britain.

Now they keep very quiet about their pro-Israel antics, no doubt hoping the question won't be brought under the public spotlight or need explaining.

Labour has been in power 13 years and is now under Blair's successor Gordon Brown, a Zionist sympathizer and patron of the Jewish National Fund. The party's 115-page manifesto barely mentions the fate of the Holy Land except to say: "We support the creation of a viable Palestinian state that can live alongside a secure Israel." Note that it's a secure Israel but only a viable Palestine. Israel must remain comfortably secure while continuing its ethnic cleansing and thieving.

The Conservative Party is favourite to win the election – or was until its leader, David "I'm-a-Zionist" Cameron, flunked a televised leaders' debate. Cameron too is a dutiful patron of the JNF. His party's 118-page manifesto says nothing about Britain's responsibility towards the Palestinians apart from promising support for a two state solution to the Middle East Peace Process. That's all, full stop.

80% of Conservative MPs and MEPs, it is claimed, are passionate admirers of racist Israel. But they don't shout it from the rooftops at election time. No, they are furtive because they know deep down that it is a grubby, indefensible position and the public would react with revulsion if the party's allegiance to a foreign military power that makes war of Christian communities was exposed in the mainstream media.

Sad to say, then, there is no sign of Labour or the Conservatives deviating from the path of betrayal.

Thankfully a third party, the Liberal Democrats, is emerging strongly. Its leader, Nick Clegg, is no rabid Zionist though readers will remember he recently sacked Baroness Jenny Tonge to appease the Israel lobby. However, the Liberal Democrats at least believe Britain and the EU must put pressure on Israel and Egypt to end the blockade of Gaza and talk of borders "which are secure and based on the situation before the 1967 conflict".

This party looks less corruptible than the others and less likely to worship at the altar of Zionism. Not being considered serious contenders till now, Clegg and his team probably haven't been groomed by the US administration's spivs and pimps. So we can expect big efforts to discredit them in the days ahead.

In my simple way I see a glimmer of hope here.

When a proper history comes to be written, Americans will struggle to explain how the most powerful nation on earth was so easily conned and mugged for countless billions of tax dollars to finance the ambitions of a bunch of extremists bent on defiling the Holy Land and spreading their tentacles into every crevice of the western world.

The British also will have some explaining to do.

Failure of Attempts to Discredit the Goldstone Report and its Authors

There has been a prolonged and concerted campaign to discredit anyone who is brave enough to speak out against the Zionist policies of Israel. The list of academics, lawyers, activists, politicians and private citizens who have been lambasted by Zionists for daring to speak out against Israel is absurdly long and is growing every day. It is becoming almost comical how one can predict the tag of “anti-Semite” being flung at anyone who dares even raise a minor point of concern over Israel’s growing list of human rights abuses and breaches of international law.

It’s not really Colonel Travers but the Goldstone Report which is essentially under attack.

Colonel Desmond Travers is one such individual who has recently found himself subject to a flurry of completely unjustified attacks on his person simply because he has been brave enough to demand that Israel be held to account for its crimes in accordance with international law. Colonel Travers (a retired Colonel in the Irish Army with a distinguished military career spanning over 40 years and member of the board of directors for the Institute of International Criminal Investigation in The Hague) is one of the four co-authors of the landmark Goldstone Report who has recently been subjected to a barrage of completely unjustified abuse from Zionist apologists. If you look at the substance of the complaints levelled against him however, you will see that each criticism is completely unfounded and does not in any way relate to Colonel Travers as an individual but is merely in response to his association with and defence of the Goldstone report. His very association with the report has been enough to make him a target of the Zionist lobby.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself said that Israel has three main enemies Iran, Palestine and Goldstone. It seems that many Zionists have taken those comments to heart and are trying to defeat what is perceived to be one of the biggest threats to Israel, namely the Goldstone Report. This has also spilled over to include viewing anyone associated with the report as an enemy of Israel as well, which is grossly unfair considering the unbiased nature of the individuals involved as well as the fact that the report was the result of a desperately needed UN sanctioned fact-finding mission into a major, illegal, military attack on the civilian population of Gaza.

The report itself has been attacked as flawed, misguided and biased. However, to any objective person who has actually taken the time to read it, it is clearly an exceptionally well crafted and well researched report and the criticisms of it are generally the unfounded rantings of supporters of Israel who refuse to hear a single word said against their beloved state, no matter how well founded the criticisms of Israel may be. Like many others therefore, Travers is simply an innocent casualty standing too close to indiscriminate Israeli fire.

But let’s look at some of the recent criticisms levelled against him anyway.

Hamas rockets were an “excuse” not a justification for Operation Cast Lead

One of the criticisms that keeps coming up and which Zionists are attempting to use to discredit Colonel Travers are his comments in an interview with the Middle East Monitor relating to Hamas rocket fire. Colonel Travers was asked whether Israel’s claim of “self-defence” justified their attack on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. After remarking, quite rightly, that every country has an inherent right to self-defence, he then again, quite rightly, pointed out that this justification did not apply in the case at hand. He explained that, as everyone knows, there had been a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas since June 2008, brokered by Egypt, which Hamas had scrupulously observed. For four months (between July and October) Hamas had not fired a single rocket into Israel, and no Israelis were killed. This is something that even Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev has himself admitted to, live on air. However, Israel then broke that ceasefire on November 4th 2008 when they killed 6 Palestinian men. It is only following Israel’s breach of the ceasefire therefore, that rockets started to be fired into Israel once again. It is a testimony to the strength and control of Hamas that throughout the ceasefire period they managed to ensure that their people, as well as most other Palestinian groups, adhered to the agreement. It is especially impressive considering the fact that Israel has kept Gaza under an illegal siege for years now, preventing access to food, medicine, humanitarian aid, clean water and so on. As such, Hamas’ success at restraining Palestinians who have been imprisoned by Israel and preventing them from retaliating in the only way that they can, by firing off a few homemade rockets cobbled together in a dusty basement somewhere, was a feat indeed.

However, while it is true that immediately following Israel’s breach of the ceasefire there was an increase in the number of rockets fired towards Israel, as Travers said, that does not make it directly attributable to Hamas. It must be borne in mind that just because a rocket is fired into Israel from Gaza does not mean that it was Hamas that fired it. Many breakaway factions exist in Gaza, in addition to Fatah supporters, as well as undercover Israeli agents.

If Israel really is interested in defending itself, perhaps it should stop attacking Palestinians. Can Israel really expect to be able to breach a ceasefire agreement, kill Palestinians, and then when there is retaliation claim that their next act of violence is in self-defence? That is in abuse of the very term. You can not provoke a reaction and then use self-defence as a justification for a new attack.

It is hard to understand why this line of argument has come as such a shock to some people. Colonel Travers is by no means the first or only person to point out the fact that Israel initiated the violence by breaching the ceasefire. Professor Avi Shlaim from Oxford University, for example, has similarly pointed out that “the home-made Qassam rockets fired by Hamas militants from Gaza on Israeli towns were only the excuse, not the reason for Operation Cast Lead”. Regarding the ceasefire, as Prof. Shlaim says, “contrary to Israeli propaganda, this was a success: the average number of rockets fired monthly from Gaza dropped from 179 to three. Yet on 4 November Israel violated the ceasefire by launching a raid into Gaza killing six Hamas fighters…”

The Pro-Israel Lobby in Britain

In a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) they complain that in the MEMO interview, Colonel Travers made the remark that “Britain’s foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists.” By making this statement, they assert, “Travers implies that British Jews have interests that differ from Britain’s own national interests and that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government is influenced by these considerations. This statement, unless corrected, places Travers in a position in which his views are suspect of being motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices.”

Apparently you do not have to say very much at all to be branded as an anti-Semite then. The mere observation that Britain’s foreign interest policies “seem” to be “influenced” by pro-Israeli lobbyists is apparently enough to get you into the club. This should reassure the countless others who have been unjustly branded as such that they are not alone. Furthermore, you would probably be hard pressed to find any right thinking individual who did not agree with Colonel Travers statement.

In any event, what really seems to be the problem with the comments Colonel Travers has made with regards to the pro-Israel Lobby? Why are the Zionists so defensive? Are the critics really trying to deny that such a lobby exists? In a world where a lobby exists for almost anything, from the gun lobby in America to the fox hunting lobby in the UK, are they trying to suggest that one does not exist for Israel? Surely Israel, the lauded masters of PR spin, has a lobby too. I can’t imagine that anyone is really trying to suggest that they do not. That would just be a facile position to try and maintain.

Instead then, are they objecting to the strength and influence which is being attributed to the pro-Israel lobby in British politics? Again, I find it hard to believe that they would agree that they do have a pro-Israel lobby but that it is a weak and feeble lobby with no real significance, influence or power. Surely that is not what they want us to believe either, which is good, since it is literally unbelievable. So what are the critics objecting to? They do not make that clear. Apparently just alluding to the very existence of a pro-Israel lobby is enough to raise their hackles; but why?

The pro-Israel lobby hardly operates under the radar anymore; what with the Labour Friends of Israel; the Conservative Friends of Israel; Gordon Brown’s 2007 appointment as Patron to the Jewish National Fund UK; the funding and wooing of politicians as uncovered by Peter Oborne’s “Inside Britain’s Israel lobby“ documentary on Channel 4; it would be hard to argue that the lobby did not exist.

One need only look at the state of British relations with Israel to see the presence and influence of the Israel lobby lurking in the foreground. For instance, who is behind Britain’s refusal to abide by its international legal obligations to pursue and arrest Israeli war criminals? Give us one good reason why Britain is risking its international reputation to protect Israeli war criminals? The pressure being brought to bear on British politicians to change the law to accommodate such offenders and protect them when they visit our shores is surely coming from one primary source; the pro-Israel lobby.

In one of the many on-line attempts to mar the character of Colonel Travers a posting on Wikipedia1 said, under the heading “controversy”, that “when asked about his controversial statement about the influence of “Jewish lobbyists” at the London School of Economics on 8th March 2010, Travers chose not to answer the question or make any comment, even when urged to do so repeatedly by an audience member.”

However, what the “critic” failed to explain was who that audience member was. The question was raised by Jonathon Hoffman who is a vice-chair of the Zionist Federation in the UK and he has recently been banned from attending public events as a result of his aggressive anti-social conduct at public events. In July last year for instance, War on Want’s Executive Director John Hilary told the Jewish News that Hoffman had been banned from an event because of fears that he would ‘disrupt’ activities, saying: “It has been advised to us by fellow organisers of similar events that Jonathan Hoffman attends these functions strictly to disrupt proceedings. When he applied to attend the meeting, we informed him he would not be permitted, as we want to ensure the event is not hijacked by people who cannot act respectfully.”

In the weeks surrounding Colonel Travers’s excellent talk at the LSE Hoffman was removed by Parliamentary police on at least two occasions following him disrupting speakers as they delivered talks on Israel and Palestine, one of which was during a talk by Ilan Pappe and Ronnie Kasrils. Hoffman has become notorious for his rude heckling of guest speakers who in anyway criticise Israel. When the wikipedia1 critic therefore says that Travers did not answer a question “even when urged to do so repeatedly by an audience member”, that comment has a little more meaning when viewed in the light of who was asking the question and the rude manner in which the question was asked. In any event, it is ridiculous to assert, as the JCPA do, that Travers’s reference to a pro-Israel lobby in the UK “places Travers in a position in which his views are suspect of being motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices.” The leap that they have made from his mere observation, to them branding him an anti-Semite is one more feeble attempt to discredit him and through him the Goldstone Report; one that, as usual, looked at closely, holds no weight at all.
The term Anti-Semitism is being abused by Zionists

Jews have a right to be very upset with Israel right now and indeed many of them are. Israel is committing atrocious acts of violence and barbarism and is daily committing gross violations of human rights in their name.

Even President Obama has been accused of being anti-Semitic, (by Netanyahu’s own brother in law, Dr Hagi Ben-Artzi no less) and this is despite his country giving billions of dollars to Israel, supplying them with weapons, supporting them in the UN, and being their closest ally. If Obama has been branded as anti-Semitic then how can Colonel Travers, or indeed anyone else, expect to fair any better?

It has been said that Travers avoided the “difficult question of anti-Semitism.” It is not a difficult question however. It is an easy one. Criticism of Israel does not equal anti-Semitism. It is as simple and easy as that. Amidst all of their spurious allegations of anti-Semitism there has not yet been a single statement of his in which Travers reveals even the slightest hint that he holds any ill will, prejudice or hostility towards Jewish people. Therefore, either his critics are sadly misinformed as to the true meaning of the words anti-Semitic or their claims are false. There is not a shred of evidence of any anti-Semitism on his part. He is merely being branded, as so many other critics of Israel have been, in the hope that this will cast doubt as to his true motivation in taking part in the Goldstone Report and consequently in the hope that, in this way, the report itself might lose credibility. It will not however, as at each turn critics of the report are failing. Following months and months of scrupulous nitpicking and dissection if what is out there so far is the best that critics can come up with, the soundness of the Goldstone report has been demonstrated. It has stood up remarkably well to assaults from every angle and it still stands.

Lastly, the JCPA state that Travers “clearly emerges as an individual who is not qualified to take part in any serious fact-finding mission and the U.N. should not seek his services in the future. Given his statements, Justice Richard Goldstone should repudiate Col. Travers and completely reject the conclusions that he reached as a result of his work.” Again this is baseless. The charges laid against him are flimsy at best and merely attempts to divert attention away from the larger picture; Israel’s actions itself. In what has been referred to as a tactic of “distraction” Israel and its supporters try to deflect attention away from its own offences and attack the messengers instead. By complaining that Colonel Travers has dared to allude to a pro-Israel lobby in the UK or by complaining that he would not answer every single question of a well known Zionist heckler in a university lecture, they are trying to draw attention away from Israel’s crimes. But no amount of distraction will make us forget that the IDF killed some 1,400 Palestinians, including 300 children, and hundreds of other unarmed civilians, including more than 115 women and some 85 men aged over 50 during Operation Cast Lead.

Nothing will make us forget that Gaza has been under a virtual lock-down – siege – for over one thousand days now; that children are dying from lack of medical care; mental health is deteriorating; malnutrition is common place; 95% of the water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption; thousands of Palestinian homes have been illegally destroyed; Israel’s use of illegal weapons have left children mutilated and orphaned. These are the matters that must stay in focus. We will not be hoodwinked by Israel’s tactics of distraction. Colonel Travers is just one messenger and the Goldstone is just one message and we will not let Israel shoot the messenger or destroy the message. Support the Goldstone report and all those who support it.
http://intifada-palestine.com/2010/04/failure-of-attempts-to-discredit-the-goldstone-report-and-its-authors/

Why the Israel lobby wins

by Jeffrey Blankfort

Despite the repeated humiliations by his hosts during his recent recent visit to Israel US Vice President Joe Biden completed the tour with his game face on. Yet, according to Yediot Ahronoth, Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Biden had privately complained to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel’s behavior was “starting to get dangerous for us.” “What you’re doing here,” he reportedly said, “undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace.” That Biden made such a statement has been denied by the White House, but it follows closely an earlier memorandum sent by General Petraeus to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his testimony before a US Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

In his prepared statement, Petraeus depicted the Israeli-Arab conflict as the first “cross cutting challenge to security and stability” in the CENTCOM area of responsibility [AOR]. “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR.”

Treading in an area where few members of the US military have dared to go before, Petraeus observed that “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.” It should be noted that neither the New York Times’s Elizabeth Bumiller nor the Washington Post’s Anne Flaherty included any reference to these comments by Petraeus in their coverage of his testimony.

In other words, in the view of Gen. Petraeus, resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is critical to the US national interest and that, plus his reference to the “perception” of Washington’s pro-Israel bias, is what may have been what, for the moment, occasioned President Obama through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ratchet up the criticism and publicly brand Israel’s treatment of Biden as “insulting.”

Rather than letting the issue die, she had her office publicize the fact that she had given a piece of her mind to Netanyahu in a 43 minute phone call in which, according to her spokesperson, P.J. Crowley, she described the planned units in East Jerusalem as sending a “deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip” and that “this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”

Moreover, she made three demands of Netanyahu that were spelled out in the Israeli press but which were only alluded to in the US media: cancelling the decision to approve the 1600 units, making a “significant” gesture to the Palestinian Authority to get it back to the bargaining table, and issuing a public statement that the indirect talks will deal with all the core issues, including Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. Pretty heady stuff for those used to see Clinton falling all over herself to show her loyalty to Israel.

To emphasize the US position, the Obama administration cancelled the scheduled visit of Middle East envoy George Mitchell who had planned to meet with Israelis and Palestinians in what had been touted by the administration as “proximity talks.”

The gravity of the situation was not lost upon Israel’s new ambassador, American-born historian, Michael Oren, who, in a conference call with Israel’s US consulates, reportedly expressed the opinion (which he now denies) that this was the worst crisis in US-Israel relations since 1975 when Pres. Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger publicly blamed Israel for the breakdown of negotiations with Egypt over withdrawing from the Sinai. As a consequence, Ford announced that he was going to make a major speech calling for a reassessment of Israel-US relations. Although hardly the powerhouse that it has become today, AIPAC, the only officially registered pro-Israel lobby, responded to the threat by getting 76 senators to sign a harsh letter to Ford, warning him not to tamper with Israel-US relations. Ford never made the speech and it would not be the last time that AIPAC got three quarters of the US Senate to sign a letter designed to keep an American president in check.

Others point to the nationally televised speech on September 12, 1991 of the first President Bush, who, upon realizing that AIPAC had secured enough votes in both houses of Congress to override his veto of Israel’s request for $10 billion in loan guarantees, went before the American public depicting himself as “one lonely man” battling a thousand lobbyists on Capitol Hill. A national poll taken immediately afterward gave the president an 85 per cent approval rating which sent the lobby and its Congressional flunkies scuttling into the corner but not before AIPAC director, Tom Dine, exclaimed at that date, Sept. 12, 1991, “would live in infamy.” Following the election of Yitzhak Rabin the following year and up for re-election himself, Bush relented and approved the loan guarantee request.

There are those who, while aware of what happened to Ford and of the subsequent humiliations visited by Israel upon American presidents and secretaries of state, view the Biden affair as a charade designed to placate the heads of Arab governments as well as their respective peoples and give the impression that there is a space between Israel and the US when it comes to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict when, they assert, none exists.

Viewing the unrelenting expansion of Jewish settlements and settlers in the West Bank through one US administration after another for the past four decades they would appear to have a solid argument. It is undermined, however, by one obvious fact: while the rest of the world considers the Israel-Palestine conflict to be a foreign policy concern, for Washington and both Democrats and Republicans it has been and remains primarily a domestic issue. In that arena there is only one player, the pro-Israel “lobby” which is represented by a multitude of organizations, the most prominent of which is AIPAC.

As if it needed more help, flocking to Israel’s side in increasing numbers over the past several decades have come the majority of America’s Christian evangelicals whose doomsday theology fits in nicely with that of Israel’s ultra right wing settler movement. The result is that in each election cycle anyone with any hope of being elected to a national political office, be it in the White House or Congress, whether incumbent or challenger, feels obligated to express his or her unconditional loyalty to Israel by shamelessly groveling for handouts from Jewish donors and the nod from Jewish voters who make up critical voting blocs in at least six states.

This being the case, it is not so strange that a string of leading elected American officials would willingly submit to public humiliation by a country so politically and militarily dependent on the U.S. and whose population is less than that of New York City or Los Angeles County, even when doing so has made the U.S. seem weak in the eyes of a world in which Washington has other, more pressing interests, than pleasing Israel. There is no better example of this phenomenon than Barack Obama whose stature as leader of “the world’s only superpower” has been severely undercut by repeated verbal face-slappings at the hands of Netanyahu and his cabinet ministers.

It clearly has been in the US interest that the Israel-Palestine conflict be peacefully resolved. There is nothing in the proposed “two-state solution” that would interfere with Washington’s regional objectives. On the contrary, the creation of a truncated Palestinian statelet, allied and dependent, politically and financially on the US, as it most certainly would be, would be a boon to US regional interests and ultimately viewed as a setback for anti-imperialist struggles worldwide.

What the insult to Biden was clearly designed to do, as were the previous humiliations, was to remind the current and future occupants of the White House that when it comes to making decisions concerning the Middle East, it is Israel that calls the tune. As Stephen Green spelled it out in “Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with Militant Israel” (Morrow, 1984) a quarter century ago, “Since 1953, Israel, and friends of Israel in America, have determined the broad outlines of US policy in the region. It has been left to American presidents to implement that policy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and to deal with tactical issues.”

That Netanyahu was also taken unawares by the announcement concerning the housing units as he claimed is questionable, particularly since he has apologized only for its timing, not its content and the offending minister remains unpunished. Netanyahu was surely cognizant that next week he will be coming to Washington to speak before AIPAC’s annual policy conference where he will find a greater degree of support than anywhere in his own country. Last year’s conference attracted a record 7,000 attendees plus half of the US Senate and a third of the House and it is likely to be ever larger this year in response to the administration’s perceived hostility to Israel.

Netanyahu will no doubt happily recall that before he met with President Obama for the first time last year, 76 US senators, led by Christopher Dodd and Evan Bayh, and 330 members of the House, sent AIPAC-crafted letters to the president calling on him not to put pressure on the Israeli prime minister when they met. The only report of this in the mainstream media was by a Washington post blogger who noted the AIPAC tagline on the pdf that was circulated among House members. Netanyahu will also be succored by memories of the House’s near unanimous support of Israel’s assault on Gaza and by its 334 to 36 vote condemning the Goldstone Report in its aftermath.

In addition, during last year’s Congressional summer recess, 55 members of the House, 30 Democrats led by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and 25 Republicans, led by Eric Cantor, the House’s lone Jewish member, visited Jerusalem. Both groups met with Netanyahu and afterward held press conferences in which they expressed their solidarity with Israel, particularly with its claims on East Jerusalem, at a time when the Obama administration was calling for a settlement freeze. These visits, too, went unreported in the mainstream media.

Under the present circumstances, we can expect to see AIPAC extend every effort to make this year’s event the largest and more successful yet and there should be no doubt that those attending will give a far more rousing welcome to Netanyahu and to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is also on the AIPAC program, than to Secretary of State Clinton.

AIPAC is already posting statements on its website from members of Congress who are taking the Obama administration to task for making its differences with Israel public and for keeping the issue alive when the focus should not be on Jewish settlements but on the growing threat of a nuclear Iran which has been at the top of AIPAC’s agenda since the beginning of the Iraq War.

Nevertheless, given that the Democratic Party remains dependent on wealthy Jewish donors for the bulk of its major funding, estimated to be at least 60 per cent, and that this is an election year, we can expect Clinton to reach out and once again embrace Israel as she did at the 2008 AIPAC conference when, Biden-like, she said, “I have a bedrock commitment to Israel’s security, because Israel’s security is critical to our security….[A]ll parties must know we will always stand with Israel in its struggle for peace and security. Israel should know that the United States will never pressure her to make unilateral concessions or to impose a made-in-America solution.”

For those with short memories, here is a sampling of past humiliations of US presidents and secretaries of state at the hands of our loyal ally:

March, 1980, President Carter was forced to apologize after US UN representative Donald McHenry voted for a resolution that condemned Israel’s settlement policies in the occupied territories including East Jerusalem and which called on Israel to dismantle them. McHenry had replaced Andrew Young who was pressured to resign in 1979 after an Israeli newspaper revealed that he had held a secret meeting with a PLO representative which violated a US commitment to Israel and to the American Jewish community.

June, 1980 After Carter requested a halt to Jewish settlements and his Secretary of State, Edmund Muskie, called the Jewish settlements an obstacle to peace, Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced plans to construct 10 new ones.

In December, 1981, 14 days after signing what was described as a memorandum of strategic understanding with the Reagan administration, Israel annexed the Golan Heights “which made it appear that the US either acquiesced in the move or else has absolutely no control over its own ally’s actions. In both cases the US looks bad….he has once again poked his ally, the source of all his most sophisticated weapons and one third of his budget in the eye.” (Lars Erik-Nelson)

In August, 1982, the day after Reagan requested that Ariel Sharon end the bombing of Beirut, Sharon responded by ordering bombing runs over the city at precisely 2:42 and 3:38 in the afternoon, the times coinciding with the two UN resolutions requiring Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

In March, 1991, Secretary of State James Baker complained to Congress that “Every time I have gone to Israel in connection with the peace process.., I have been met with an announcement of new settlement activity… It substantially weakens our hand in trying to bring about a peace process, and creates quite a predicament.” In 1990, he had become so disgusted with Israel’s intransigence on the settlements that he publicly gave out the phone number of the White House switchboard and told the Israelis, “When you’re serious about peace, call us.”

In April 2002, after Pres. George W Bush demanded that Ariel Sharon pull Israeli forces out of Jenin, declaring “Enough is enough!,” he was besieged by a 100,000 emails from supporters of Israel, Jewish and Christian and accused by Bill Safire of choosing Yasser Arafat as a friend over Sharon and by George Will, of losing his “moral clarity.” Within days, a humiliated Bush was declaring Sharon “a man of peace” despite the fact that he had not withdrawn his troops from Jenin.

In January 2009, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly boasted that he had “shamed” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by getting President Bush to prevent her from voting for a Gaza cease-fire resolution at the last moment that she herself had worked on for several days with Arab and European diplomats at the United Nations.

Olmert bragged to an Israeli audience that he pulled Bush off a stage during a speech to take his call when he learned about the pending vote and demanded that the president intervene.

“I have no problem with what Olmert did,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Forward. “I think the mistake was to talk about it in public.”

That episode and Foxman’s comment may have summed up the history of US-Israel relations.
http://pulsemedia.org/2010/03/20/israel-and-the-lobby-against-the-us-a-sort-of-crisis/

The Pro-Israel Lobby And The New Israel

Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic has a good read:

In a response to Dowd, Goldblog acknowledges:

It is undeniably true that Jewish fundamentalists wield disproportionate power in Israeli decision-making; it is true that a small minority -- fundamentalist settlers -- has kept Israel entangled in the lives of the Palestinians on the West Bank; it is true that, because of the power of the Orthodox rabbinate, it is easier in some ways to be Jewish in America than in the Jewish state (Just ask women who try to pray at the Western Wall.) All this is not to say that Israel isn't still the most enlightened democracy in the Middle East, but there's not much of a competition. And it should be cause for deep worry when the Saudis -- not especially known for their liberalism -- have a point about illiberal Israel.

What I found telling was MoDo's more recent column in which she came up with the following brilliant formulation that reflects on the pro-Israel voices so over-represented in the MSM punditariat:

Obama created an obstacle for himself by demanding that Israel stop expanding settlements when it was not going to do so — even though it should — and when that wasn’t the most important condition to Arabs

Got that? Now I have no idea what Maureen means when she says that a settlement freeze "wasn’t the most important condition to Arabs." Much that I've read seemed to suggest that the various Sunni Arab regimes were looking for precisely a freezing of further Israeli colonization of the West Bank as proof that Obama really was going to break from the whatever-Israel-wants policy of the previous eight years.

But notice that it is Obama's fault for asking an alleged ally merely to freeze - not reverse - construction settlement as a good faith gesture to the peace process and as a favor to the US in trying to recapture the role of an honest broker in the region. It is not Israel's fault - even though Maureen thinks Israel should have done it.

Nothing illustrates better the total bizarreness of the US-Israel relationship. No one in Washington - apart from a few Likudniks and Palinite end-timers - actually supports more settlements or any settlements i the West Bank. At the same time, Washington exercizes a UN veto to protect Israel from international law, funnels a vast amount of foreign and military aid to the country, helped finance the pulverization of Gaza last year, provides absurd international cover for Israel's 150 nukes, has worked tirelessly to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capacity, and on and on.

In return? Fuck you, Obama. To which the overwhelming response in Washington is: Obama screwed up.

There is something completely awry here and it has rarely been more evident than in the last twelve months.
http://irish4palestine.blogspot.com/2010/03/pro-israel-lobby-and-new-israel.html

Mohamed Khodr – 2050: The Re-Birth of a New Just Nation

In 1915 D. W. Griffith produced the movie “The Birth of a Nation” based on Thomas Dixon’s book “The Clansman”. It was hailed as a breakthrough movie in terms of its cinematic techniques. It became the most popular and highest grossing movie of its time among White America. It was even screened in the White House for President Woodrow Wilson, ironically, the architect of the League of Nations as an organization to establish peace in the world after World War One. President Wilson was quoted in the movie itself praising the heroic story of the Klu Klux Klan, a white racist supremacist group, in its valor to save a white woman from the barbaric animalistic instinct of a “negro” accused of raping and soiling the purity of the white woman.

In fact, in 1992 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant film" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. For decades thereafter Hollywood studios, a Jewish founded and run institution, continued to portray all minorities such as Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Arabs and Muslims in stereotypical roles as inferior, primitive, often barbaric peoples who serve the White Man’s racial and violent nature.

Admittedly things have changed for the better for America’s minorities; after all we have an African American President. But in many other ways things have not changed. Minorities are still marginalized and under-represented in every American Institution especially in positions of power from Academia, to the Media, Television, Hollywood and local, state and federal governments, especially in Congress.

The powerful elite in America are still white, rich, well educated, corporate barons who in effect run our financial and banking system, are the bedrock of campaign financing and thus own our politicians, and who have the media power to make or break ambitious Americans seeking a piece of the Corporate or Political Pie. (See George Carlin’s Video below on the powerful elite)

Tragically absent from such a system and its institutions are the “forgotten” impoverished, less educated, ghetto and housing project residents, who have little to no opportunities to advance. They are perceived by white America as lazy, violence-prone, immoral, or who survive on white taxes and welfare programs. They are acceptable as athletes for white sports owners, as maids, servants, janitors, cooks, baggage handlers, and taxi drivers. While the Elite are in boardrooms, hold political and economic power, are members of expensive often exclusivist clubs, live in their suburban mansions to escape the “violence and filth of inner cities” but are clueless to the marginalization and suffering of America’s minorities often ethnically profiled, hounded for their immigrant status, and who serve longer jail sentences than their white counterparts for the same crime. There are more African Americans in jail than are in colleges and universities.

No group has the largest political and economic influence in this country than Jewish Americans. Although they comprise less than 1.7% of the population they are over-represented in every American institution from academia, to the financial and banking sector, politics, the media, Hollywood, in powerful highly influential special interest groups (ex. AIPAC, ADL) whose main priority is not America’s interests, such as serving the have-nots of this country, but whose true allegiance is to a foreign nation, Israel.

American Minorities must study the example and rapid rise of Jewish Americans as an example for their future role in this country. Jewish Americans are the richest, most educated, most ambitious ethnic group in the country. They overcame racism and flagrant discrimination to become the power house they are today through hard work and an overemphasis and appreciation of education as keys to their success.

Examples of Jewish American Success:

Economic Power:

A longtime revolving door exists between officials (mainly Jewish) leading Wall Street Financial and Banking institutions and high government jobs, especially in the White House, State and Treasury Departments. This situation has created a corrupt system whereby government policy and hundreds of billions of bailout dollars favor Wall Street where current government officials were CEO’s or Directors of such banks, financial institutions and brokerage firms.

Although the TARP tax dollar bailout was publicly reported to be less than $800 Billion a closer study reported in Mother Jones Magazine (Jan/Feb 2009) revealed the true cost to tax payers of this bailout of Wall Street, the very banks responsible for the recession and economic crisis, is actually $14 Trillion dollars.

Where can this unimaginable money going to Wall Street be better spent? (This excludes the $145 Billion bonuses bank executives are receiving courtesy of tax payers this year alone)

According to the same Mother Jones article this money can meet most needs of the American people.

Just to mention a few projects this money can support:

–$347 Billion: Sending all 2009 US high school grads to private college
–$860 Billion: 20 years of High Quality Universal Pre School Education in US
–$878 Billion: Buying a house for every homeless American
–$2.2 Trillion: 10 years of private health insurance for uninsured Americans
–$3.5 Trillion: Paying off 1/3 of US home mortgages

The extraordinary over-representation of Jewish Americans in the public–private economic and financial sectors as well as in Foreign Policy positions that primarily focus on the Middle East to the benefit of Israel’s national interest, not America’s, is incredulous. It is the Neoconservatives, mainly Jewish, who lyingly pushed for the Iraq War for the sake of Oil and Israel’s interests. None of these neoconservatives ever served in the U.S. military yet do not hesitate to send Americans to die for their causes, mainly for corporations and Israel.

A few examples of Jewish Americans holding the top economic positions in the White House, Treasury, Federal Reserve and Wall Street::

White House ↔ Treasury ↔ Federal Reserve ↔ Wall Street

Rahm Emmanuel Timothy Geithner Benjamin Bernanke Goldman Sachs

Larry Summers Neil Wolin Bear Stearns

Paul Volcker Gene Sperling Lehman Brothers

Peter Orszag Kenneth Feinberg Many CEO’s: Jewish

Jared Bernstein Neil Barofsky

Lael Brainard

Stuart Levey

An example of Jewish tribal unity and collaboration is Time Magazine’s choice for 2009 Man of the Year: Benjamin Bernanke.
Ben (Benjamin) Shalom Bernanke (Jewish), Chair of the Federal Reserve, is facing a rocky Senate confirmation for a second term as Chair of the Federal Reserve. To assist him and support him in this confirmation process Richard Stengell (Jewish), Managing Editor of Time Magazine and who makes the final decision on Man of the Year, chose Bernanke as Time’s 2009 Man of the Year despite documented failures in his job. Time Magazine is part of Time Warner whose CEO and Chairman is Jeffrey L. Bewkes (Jewish). This is tribal unity and collaboration at its finest. No one doubts his reconfirmation to his present position.
WEALTH STATISTICS:

– Jewish Americans, 1.7% of Populations, but are 49% of American Billionaires: (TransWorldNews: 11/6/09)

As of 2008 18% of Jewish households had a net worth of $1 million plus. Twenty of the richest 50 are Jewish. Those top 20 control some $211.8 billion in personal wealth. In the top 20 only one African American makes the list, Oprah Winfrey.

The Jerusalem Post, October 11, 2007 reported the following:

According to Vanity Fair’s list of the 100 of the "world's most powerful people," 51% are Jewish. It's an exclusive, insular club, one whose influence stretches around the globe but is concentrated strategically in the highest corridors of power.

The article also states that “the list is populated by a Cohen and a Rothschild, a Bloomberg and a Perelman, the list would seem to conform to all the traditional stereotypes about areas of Jewish overrepresentation.”
Foreign Aid to Israel versus Africa, Central and South America:

According to a Christian Science Monitor Article written seven years ago, since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by 2007’s U.S. population this amounts to each American paying $5,700 per person. So far that’s more than double the cost of the Vietnam War. (Christian Science Monitor: “Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US”, Dec. 9, 2002)

That’s not the entire story. Israel annually requests additional loans (Israel has never paid these loans) worth anywhere from $4 to $10 Billion. Obama just recently approved an additional $30 Billion aid to Israel over the next decade. This amount was originally set for America’s Child Health Program (SCHIP) but was diverted to Congress’ greater priority, Israel. The constant lie is that Israel only receives $3 Billion annually but funding to Israel is added to multiple agency appropriations.

All this foreign aid comprising one third of total U.S. foreign aid to a nation that is only 0.001% of the world’s population and is the sixteenth richest country in the world with a higher per capita income than several European nations when our own country is facing huge deficits and where money is needed for the homeless, unemployed and hungry Americans is an outrage that Americans are unaware of. It’s tantamount to middle class Americans sending aid to Bill Gates. That’s the power of Israel and the Jewish Lobby in America over our government, especially Congress.

In addition, there is more than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds that go to Israel annually in the form of $1 billion in private tax-deductible donations and $500 million in Israeli bonds, all tax deductible, which is an additional cost to American taxpayers.

Only Israel can raise illegal funds in the U.S to build more illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories in direct violation of U.S. Laws, U.S.foreign policy, U.N. Resolutions, and the Fourth Geneva Convention. But our government overlooks such violations due to the intimidation and power of the Israeli Lobby and its hold on Congress and the Media, which is mostly founded, owned or run by Jewish Americans.
Population by Race/Ethnicity in 2008 and Projection to 2050:

Compare the above information and statistics to the actual population figures by Race/Ethnicity today and projected to 2050 to truly understand the magnitude of the power of a minority elite who monopolize the wealth, priorities and policies of this nation to the detriment of America’s minority populations. The income gap between the rich and poor continues to expand exponentially. At times of an economic recession as experienced today the self serving elite continue to get richer at the expense of America’s low and middle class by siphoning more government money to their institutions while cutting governmental expenditure and aid to low and middle class Americans. America’s families, especially the children, end up sacrificing their health and welfare to the benefit of the financial barons.

Education, Education, Education

There is no future without a strong educational foundation. Minorities have the highest high school drop out rates with small percentages pursuing higher education. This is a complex issue that is related to family structure, cultural attitudes, unemployment, educational opportunities, and socio economic status. We must enter educational fields that impact our capitalistic society—Education, Political Science, Economics, Business, Media and Journalism, Advertising, Academia, International Relations, Medicine, Law, Sciences, Public Relations, Public Health and Movie making.

The journey to the future will rise or fall depending on educating our youth and parents as well. It is up to community members to study and strategize to remedy this tragedy.
C. Massive Voter Registration Campaigns.
D. Working with Law enforcement, Faith Groups, Schools, Community Organizations, Public Health Departments, Hospitals, and the media to cleanse the community of gangs, drug and alcohol sales and use, abstinence or safe sex education to prevent out of wedlock births and sexually transmitted diseases.

Fund Raising
All Americans who care about our national future where the national debt, budge and trade deficits, poor educational outcomes, a broken health care system, an almost bankrupt Social Security System and Medicare, huge income gaps between the rich and poor, a corrupt campaign financing system that favors the rich, a lost youthful generation, loss of moral priorities, dominance of special interest groups and what George Washington called a “Passionate Attachment” to foreign nations (today none more so than with Israel) due to the influence of powerful minorities, constant wars, and much more, must organize to raise the funds necessary to finance valued, well organized, led and purposeful community organizations. If every employed and able American just donates one dollar a month that will raise over $1.5 Billion as a down payment for our future that must begin with improving our school infrastructure, hiring more qualified and well paid teachers, thus improving our educational outcomes. Such subjects as Geography, History, Civics, World Religions and Cultures, Science, Languages, Art and Music and physical education have been sacrificed in our middle and high schools to ineffective standardized testing that emphasize reading, writing and math.

Indeed, it’s simpler to enumerate plans and strategies than to implement them. But we either change and prepare from today for our majority role in the future or our numbers will simply be an asterisk in the history books as a people who failed themselves, their nation and the world. Wasting this unprecedented and historic opportunity will be a sin and a crime against humanity. We will be doomed to accept our status quo and the fault will be all ours to bear. Our children born today will pay for our apathy and we will be directly responsible and complicit in their dismal miserable lives.

What will we do to prepare for a more united just America? Only you and I individually and collectively can answer this question.

As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday it’s important to recall his 1967 speech “A Time to Break Silence” where he outlined his opposition to the Vietnam War. In the speech he called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” For his principled stand Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
His words resonated then as it does now as it will forever. He challenged America to commit to a revolutionary change to reclaim its present and future to a more just and peaceful cause here and abroad.
“If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight……

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”

–The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, “A Time to Break Silence”, April 4, 1967
Time to begin the first step, time to reclaim America for all Americans.
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