| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2002 5:34 pm Post subject: Excellent Pro-Israel Lobby Article by Robert Fisk |
| Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2002 4:50 am Post subject: excellent (pro-israel lobby) article by robert fisk
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=313235
A strange kind of freedom
We all know about the perils of Islamic fanaticism. But, says Robert Fisk, the biggest threat to liberty in the US may come from other kinds of fundamentalism: Jewish and Christian
09 July 2002
Inside the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, the Californian audience had been struck silent. Dennis Bernstein, the Jewish host of KPFA Radio's Flashpoint current affairs programme, was reading some recent e-mails that he had received from Israel's supporters in America. Each one left the people in the church – Muslims, Jews, Christians – in a state of shock. "You mother-fucking-asshole-self-hating Jewish piece of shit. Hitler killed the wrong Jews. He should have killed your parents, so a piece of Jewish shit like you would not have been born. God willing, Arab terrorists will cut you to pieces Daniel Pearl-style, AMEN!!!"
Bernstein's sin was to have covered the story of Israel's invasion of Jenin in April and to have interviewed journalists who investigated the killings that took place there – including Phil Reeves and Justin Huggler of The Independent – for his Flashpoint programme. Bernstein's grandfather was a revered Orthodox Rabbi of international prominence but neither his family history nor his origins spared him. "Read this and weep, you mother-fucker self-hating Jew boy!!!" another e-mail told Bernstein. "God willing a Palestinian will murder you, rape your wife and slash your kids' throats." Yet another: "I hope that you, Barbara Lubin and all other Jewish Marxist Communist traitors anti-American cop haters will die a violent and cruel death just like the victims of suicide bombers in Israel." Lubin is also Jewish, the executive director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, a one-time committed Zionist but now one of Israel's fiercest critics. Her e-mails are even worse.
Indeed, you have to come to America to realise just how brave this small but vocal Jewish community is. Bernstein is the first to acknowledge that a combination of Israeli lobbyists and conservative Christian fundamentalists have in effect censored all free discussion of Israel and the Middle East out of the public domain in the US. "Everyone else is terrified," Bernstein says. "The only ones who begin to open their mouths are the Jews in this country. You know, as a kid, I sent money to plant trees in Israel. But now we are horrified by a government representing a country that we grew up loving and cherishing. Israel's defenders have a special vengeance for Jews who don't fall in line behind Sharon's scorched-earth policy because they give the lie to the charge that Israel's critics are simply anti-Semite."
Adam Shapiro is among those who have paid a price for their beliefs. He is a Jew engaged to an American-born Palestinian, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement who was trapped in Yasser Arafat's headquarters in the spring while administering medical aid. After telling CNN that the Sharon government was acting like "terrorists" while receiving $3bn a year in US military aid, Shapiro and his family were savaged in the New York Post. The paper slandered Shapiro as the "Jewish Taliban" and demeaned his family as "traitors". Israeli supporters publicised his family's address and his parents were forced to flee their Brooklyn home and seek police protection. Shapiro's father, a New York public high-school teacher and a part-time Yeshiva (Jewish day school) teacher, was fired from his job. His brother receives regular death threats.
Israel's supporters have no qualms about their alliance with the Christian right. Indeed, the fundamentalists can campaign on their own in Israel's favour, as I discovered for myself at Stanford recently when I was about to give a lecture on the media and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, part of a series of talks arranged largely by Jewish Americans. A right-wing Christian "Free Republic" outfit posted my name on its website, and described me as a "PLO butt-kisser" and asked its supporters to "freep" my lecture. A few demonstrators turned up outside the First United Methodist Church in Sacramento where I was to speak, waving American and Israeli flags. "Jew haters!" they screamed at the organisers, a dark irony since these were non-Jews shrieking their abuse at Jews.
They were also handing out crudely printed flyers. "Nothing to worry about, Bob," one of my Jewish hosts remarked. "They can't even spell your name right." True. But also false. "Stop the Lies!" the leaflet read. "There was no massacre in Jenin. Fiske [sic] is paid big bucks to spin [lie] for the Arabs..." But the real lie was in that last sentence. I never take any payment for lectures – so that no one can ever claim that I'm paid to give the views of others. But the truth didn't matter to these people. Nor did the content of my talk – which began, by chance, with the words "There was no massacre" – in which I described Arafat as a "corrupt, vain little despot" and suicide bombings as "a fearful, evil weapon". None of this was relevant. The aim was to shut me up.
Dennis Bernstein sums it up quite simply: "Any US journalist, columnist, editor, college professor, student-activist, public official or clergy member who dares to speak critically of Israel or accurately report the brutalities of its illegal occupation will be vilified as an anti-Semite." In fact, no sooner had Bernstein made these remarks than pro-Israeli groups initiated an extraordinary campaign against some of the most pro-Israeli newspapers in America, all claiming that The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle were biased in their coverage of the Middle-East conflict. Just how The New York Times – which boasts William Safire and Charles Krauthammer, those giants of pro-Israeli bias, among its writers – could be anti-Israeli is difficult to see, although it is just possible that, amid its reports on Israel's destruction in the West Bank and Gaza, some mildly critical comments found their way into print. The New York Times, for example, did repor t that Israeli soldiers used civilians as human shields – though only in the very last paragraph of a dispatch from Jenin.
None the less, the campaign of boycotts and e-mails got under way. More than 1,000 readers suspended their subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times, while a blizzard of e-mails told pro-Israeli readers to cancel their subscription to The New York Times for a day. On the East Coast, at least one local radio station has lost $1m from a Jewish philanthropist while other stations attempting to cover the Middle East with some degree of fairness are said to have lost even more. When the San Francisco Chronicle published a four-page guide to the conflict, its editors had to meet a 14-member delegation of local Jewish groups to discuss their grievances.
According to Michael Futterman, who chairs the Middle East strategy committee of 80 Bay Area synagogues, Jewish anger hit "boiling point" when the Chronicle failed to cover a pro-Israeli rally in San Francisco. Needless to say, the Chronicle's "Readers' Representative", Dick Rogers, published a grovelling, self-flagellating apology. "The paper didn't have a word on the pro-Israel rally," he wrote. "This wasn't fair and balanced coverage." Another objection came from a Jewish reader who objected to the word "terror" being placed within inverted commas in a Chronicle headline that read "Sharon says 'terror' justifies assault". The reader's point? The Chronicle's reporting "harmonises well with Palestinian propaganda, which tries to divert attention from the terrorist campaign against Israel (which enjoys almost unanimous support among Palestinians, all the way from Yasser Arafat to the 10-year-old who dreams of blowing himself up one day) and instead describes Israel's military moves as g roundless, evil bullying tactics."
And so it goes on. On a radio show with me in Berkeley, the Chronicle's foreign editor, Andrew Ross, tried to laugh off the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby – "the famous lobby", he called it with that deference that is half way between acknowledgement and fear – but the Israeli Consul General Yossi Amrani had no hesitation in campaigning against the Chronicle, describing a paper largely docile in its reporting of the Middle East as "a professionally and politically biased, pro-Palestinian newspaper".
The Chronicle's four-page pull-out on the Middle East was, in fact, a soft sell. Its headline – "The Current Strife Between The Israelis And The Palestinians Is A Battle For Control Of Land" – missed the obvious point: that one of the two groups that were "battling for control of the land" – the Palestinians – had been occupied by Israel for 35 years.
The most astonishing – and least covered – story is in fact the alliance of Israeli lobbyists and Christian Zionist fundamentalists, a coalition that began in 1978 with the publication of a Likud plan to encourage fundamentalist churches to give their support to Israel. By 1980, there was an "International Christian Embassy" in Jerusalem; and in 1985, a Christian Zionist lobby emerged at a "National Prayer Breakfast for Israel" whose principal speaker was Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to become Israeli prime minister. "A sense of history, poetry and morality imbued the Christian Zionists who, more than a century ago, began to write, plan and organise for Israel's restoration," Netanyahu told his audience. The so-called National Unity Coalition for Israel became a lobbying arm of Christian Zionism with contacts in Congress and neo-conservative think-tanks in Washington.
In May this year, the Israeli embassy in Washington, no less, arranged a prayer breakfast for Christian Zionists. Present were Alonzo Short, a member of the board of "Promise Keepers", and Michael Little who is president of the "Christian Broadcasting Network". Event hosts were listed as including those dour old Christian conservatives Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who once financed a rogue television station in southern Lebanon which threatened Muslim villagers and broadcast tirades by Major Saad Haddad, Israel's stooge militia leader in Lebanon. In Tennessee, Jewish officials invited hundreds of Christians to join Jewish crowds at a pro-Israel solidarity rally in Memphis.
On the face of it, this coalition seems natural. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League felt able to run an ad that included an article by a former Christian coalition executive director Ralph Reed, headlined "We People of Faith Stand Firmly With Israel". Christians, Reed claimed, supported Israel because of "their humanitarian impulse to help and protect Jews, a shared strategic interest in democracy in the Middle East and a spiritual connection to Israel".
But, of course, a fundamental problem – fundamental in every sense of the word – lies behind this strange partnership. As Uri Avnery, the leader of Gush Shalom, the most courageous Israeli peace group, pointed out in a typically ferocious essay last month, there is a darker side to the alliance. "According to its [Christian Zionist] theological beliefs, the Jews must congregate in Palestine and establish a Jewish state on all its territory" – an idea that would obviously appeal to Ariel Sharon – "so as to make the Second Coming of Jesus Christ possible." But here comes the bad bit. As Avnery says, "the evangelists don't like to dwell openly on what comes next: before the coming [of the Messiah], the Jews must convert to Christianity. Those who don't will perish in a gigantic holocaust in the battle of Armageddon. This is basically an anti-Semitic teaching, but who cares, so long as they support Israel?"
The power of the Israeli lobby in the United States is debated far more freely in the Israeli press than in American newspapers or on US tele- vision. There is, of course, a fine and dangerous line between justified investigation – and condemnation – of the lobby's power, and the racist Arab claim that a small cabal of Zionists run the world. Those in America who share the latter view include a deeply unpleasant organisation just along the coast from San Francisco at Newport Beach known as the "Institute for Historical Research". These are the Holocaust deniers whose annual conference last month included a lecture on "death sentences imposed by German authorities against German soldiers... for killing or even mistreating Jews". Too much of this and you'd have to join the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC – to restore your sanity. But the Israeli lobby is powerful. In fact, its influence over the US Congress and Senate calls into question the degree to which the Am erican legislature has been corrupted by lobby groups. It is to an Israeli voice – Avnery again – that Americans have to turn to hear just how mighty the lobby has become. "Its electoral and financial power casts a long shadow over both houses of the Congress," Avnery writes. "Hundreds of Senators and Congressmen were elected with the help of Jewish contributions. Resistance to the directives of the Jewish lobby is political suicide. If the AIPAC were to table a resolution abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 Senators and 300 Congressmen would sign it at once. This lobby frightens the media, too, and assures their adherence to Israel."
Avnery could have looked no further than the Democratic primary in Alabama last month for proof of his assertion. Earl Hilliard, the five-term incumbent, had committed the one mortal sin of any American politician: he had expressed sympathy for the cause of the Palestinians. He had also visited Libya several years ago. Hilliard's opponent, Artur Davis, turned into an outspoken supporter of Israel and raised large amounts of money from the Jewish community, both in Alabama and nationwide. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz noted that among the names of the first list of contributors to Davis's campaign funds were "10 Cohens from New York and New Jersey, but before one gets to the Cohens, there were Abrams, Ackerman, Adler, Amir, Asher, Baruch, Basok, Berger, Berman, Bergman, Bernstein and Blumenthal. All from the East Coast, Chicago and Los Angeles. It's highly unlikely any of them have ever visited Alabama..." The Jewish newspaper Forward – essential reading for any serious understanding of the American Jewish community – quoted a Jewish political activist following the race: "Hilliard has been a problem in his votes and with guys like that, when there's any conceivable primary challenge, you take your shot." Hilliard, of course, lost to Davis, whose campaign funds reached $781,000.
The AIPAC concentrates on Congress while the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations (CPMAJO), made up of the heads of 51 Jewish organisations, concentrates on the executive branch of the US government. Every congressman knows the names of those critics of Israel who have been undone by the lobby. Take Senator J William Fulbright, whose 1963 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee detailed how five million tax-deductable dollars from philanthropic Americans had been sent to Israel and then recycled back to the US for distribution to organisations seeking to influence public opinion in favour of Israel; this cost him the chance of being Secretary of State. He was defeated in the 1974 Democratic primary after pro-Israeli money poured into the campaign funds of his rival, Governor Dale Bumpers, following a statement by the AIPAC that Fulbright was "consistently unkind to Israel and our supporters in this country". Paul Findley, who spent 22 years as a Re publican congressman from Illinois, found his political career destroyed after he had campaigned against the Israeli lobby – although, ironically, his book on the subject, They Dare to Speak Out was nine weeks on The Washington Post bestseller list, suggesting that quite a number of Americans want to know why their congressmen are so pro-Israeli.
Just two months ago, the US House of Representatives voted 352 to 21 to express its unqualified support for Israel. The Senate voted 94 to two for the same motion. Even as they voted, Ariel Sharon's army was continuing its destructive invasion of the West Bank. "I do not recall any member of Congress asking me if I was in favour of patting Israel on the back..." James Abu Rizk, an Arab-American of Lebanese origin, told the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee afterwards. "No one else, no average American, has been asked either. But that is the state of American politics today... The votes and bows have nothing to do with the legislators' love for Israel. They have everything to do with the money that is fed into their campaigns by members of the Israeli lobby. My estimate is that $6bn flows from the American Treasury to Israel each year." Within days, 42 US governors turned up in Sacramento to sign declarations supporting Israel. California governor Gray Davis and New York govern or George Pataki – California has the largest Jewish population of any state except New York – arranged the meeting.
Sometimes the support of Israel's loyalists in Congress turns into farce. Tom Delay – reacting to CNN founder Ted Turner's criticism of Israel – went so far out of his way to justify Israeli occupation of the West Bank that he blurted out on MSNBC television that the Palestinians "should become citizens" of Israel, an idea unlikely to commend itself to his friend Ariel Sharon. Texas Republican Richard Armey went the other way. "I'm content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank. I happen to believe the Palestinians should leave... to have those people who have been aggressors against Israel retired to some other area." Do the people of Texas know that their representative is supporting "ethnic cleansing" in the Middle East? Or are they silent because they prefer not to speak out?
Censorship takes many forms. When Ishai Sagi and Ram Rahat-Goodman, two Israeli reserve soldiers who refused to serve in the West Bank or Gaza, were scheduled to debate their decision at Sacramento's Congregation B'nai Israel in May, their appearance was cancelled. Steve Meinreith, who is chairman of the Israel Affairs Committee at B'nai Israel, remarked bleakly that "intimidation on the part of certain sectors of the community has deprived the entire community of hearing a point of view that is being widely debated in Israel. Some people feel it's too dangerous..."
Does President Bush? His long-awaited Middle-East speech was Israeli policy from start to finish. A group of Jewish leaders, including Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz – who said recently that the idea of executing the families of Palestinian suicide bombers was a legitimate if flawed attempt at finding a balance between preventing terrorism and preserving democracy – and the AIPAC and CPMAJO heads all sent clear word to the President that no pressure should be put on Israel. Wiesel – whose courage permeates his books on the Holocaust but who lamentably failed to condemn the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Beirut in 1982 at the hands of Israel's Lebanese allies, said he felt "sadness", but his sadness was "with Israel, not against Israel" because "after all the Israeli soldiers did not kill" – took out a full page in The New York Times. In this, he urged Bush to "please remember that Ariel Sharon, a military man who knows the ugly face of war better than anyone, is ready to m ake 'painful sacrifices' to end the conflict." Sharon was held "personally responsible" for the massacre by Israel's own commission of inquiry – but there was no mention of that from Wiesel, who told reporters in May that he would like to revoke Arafat's Nobel prize.
President Bush was not going to oppose these pressures. His father may well have lost his re-election because he dared to tell Israel that it must make peace with the Arabs. Bush is not going to make the same mistake – nor does brother Jeb want to lose his forthcoming governorship election. Thus Sharon's delight at the Bush speech, and it was left to a lonely and brave voice – Mitchell Plitnick of the Jewish Voice for Peace – to state that "few speeches could be considered to be as destructive as that of the American President... Few things are as blinding as unbridled arrogance."
Or as vicious as the messages that still pour in to Dennis Bernstein and Barbara Lubin, whose Middle East Children's Alliance, co-ordinating with Israeli peace groups, is trying to raise money to rebuild the Jenin refugee camp. "I got a call the other day at 5am," Bernstein told me. "This guy says to me: 'You got a lot of nerve going and eating at that Jewish deli.' What comes after that?" Before I left San Francisco, Lubin showed me her latest e-mails. "Dear CU-NEXT-TUESDAY," one of them begins, "When we want your opinion you fucking Nazi CU-NEXT-TUESDAY, we will have one of your Palestinian buddies fuck it [sic] of you. I hope that in your next trip to the occupied territories you are blown to bits by one of your Palestinian buddies [sic] bombs." Another, equally obscene, adds that "you should be ashamed of yourself, a so-called Jewish woman advocating the destruction of Israel".
Less crude language, of course, greeted President Bush's speech. Pat Robertson thought the Bush address "brilliant". Senator Charles Schumer, a totally loyal pro-Israeli Democrat from New York, said that "clearly, on the politics, this is going to please supporters of Israel as well as the Christian coalition types". He could say that again. For who could be more Christian than President George W Bush? | |  | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2002 5:37 am Post subject: `The Powerful Jewish Lobby' |
| Forwarded Message:
Subj: `The Powerful Jewish Lobby'
Date: 7/22/02 2:34:40 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: weber@ihr.org
A LOOK AT THE `POWERFUL JEWISH LOBBY'
By Mark Weber (June 2002)
http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/jewishlobby.html
For decades Israel has violated well established precepts of
international law and defied numerous United Nations resolutions in its
occupation of conquered lands, in extra-judicial killings, and in its
repeated acts of military aggression. Most of the world regards Israel’s
policies, and especially its oppression of Palestinians, as outrageous
and criminal. This international consensus is reflected, for example, in
numerous UN resolutions condemning Israel, which have been approved with
overwhelming majorities.
“The whole world,“ United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan recently
said, “is demanding that Israel withdraw [from occupied Palestinian
territories]. I don’t think the whole world... can be wrong.” / 1 Only
in the United States do politicians and the media still fervently
support Israel and its policies. For decades the US has provided Israel
with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more
than $3 billion each year in aid.
Why is the US the only remaining bastion of support for Israel?
Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel
Peace Prize, has candidly identified the reason: “The Israeli government
is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticize it is to be
immediately dubbed anti-Semitic,” he said. “People are scared in this
country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful -
very powerful.” / 2
Bishop Tutu spoke the truth. Although Jews make up only about three
percent of the US population, they wield immense power and influence --
vastly more than any other ethnic or religious group.
As Jewish author and political science professor Benjamin Ginsberg has
pointed out: / 3
>>
Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in
American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews
played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they
were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers
and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s
population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief
executive officers of the three major television networks and the four
largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest
newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York
Times... The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally
marked...
Jews are only three percent of the nation’s population and comprise
eleven percent of what this study defines as the nation’s elite.
However, Jews constitute more than 25 percent of the elite journalists
and publishers, more than 17 percent of the leaders of important
voluntary and public interest organizations, and more than 15 percent of
the top ranking civil servants. <<
Stephen Steinlight, former Director of National Affairs of the American
Jewish Committee, similarly notes the “disproportionate political power”
of Jews, which is “pound for pound the greatest of any ethnic/cultural
group in America.” He goes on to explain that “Jewish economic influence
and power are disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television,
and in the news industry.“ / 4
Two well-known Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, pointed out
in their 1995 book, Jews and the New American Scene: / 5
>>
During the last three decades Jews [in the United States] have made up
50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals... 20 percent of
professors at the leading universities ... 40 percent of partners in the
leading law firms in New York and Washington ... 59 percent of the
directors, writers, and producers of the 50 top-grossing motion pictures
from 1965 to 1982, and 58 percent of directors, writers, and producers
in two or more primetime television series. <<
The influence of American Jewry in Washington, notes the Israeli daily
Jerusalem Post, is “far disproportionate to the size of the community,
Jewish leaders and US official acknowledge. But so is the amount of
money they contribute to [election] campaigns.” One member of the
influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations “estimated Jews alone had contributed 50 percent of the
funds for [President Bill] Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign.” / 6
“It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and
prominence in popular culture,” acknowledges Michael Medved, a
well-known Jewish author and film critic. “Any list of the most
influential production executives at each of the major movie studios
will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names.” / 7
One person who has carefully studied this subject is Jonathan J.
Goldberg, now editor of the influential Jewish community weekly Forward.
In his 1996 book, Jewish Power, he wrote: / 8
>>
In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio
executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these
businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation...
Hollywood at the end of the twentieth century is still an industry with
a pronounced ethnic tinge. Virtually all the senior executives at the
major studios are Jews. Writers, producers, and to a lesser degree
directors are disproportionately Jewish -- one recent study showed the
figure as high as 59 percent among top-grossing films.
The combined weight of so many Jews in one of America’s most lucrative
and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal of
political power. They are a major source of money for Democratic
candidates. <<
Reflecting their role in the American media, Jews are routinely
portrayed as high-minded, altruistic, trustworthy, compassionate, and
deserving of sympathy and support. While millions of Americans readily
accept such stereotyped imagery, not everyone is impressed. “I am very
angry with some of the Jews,” complained actor Marlon Brando during a
1996 interview. “They know perfectly well what their responsibilities
are... Hollywood is run by Jews. It’s owned by Jews, and they should
have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering.”
/ 9
A Well-Entrenched Factor
The intimidating power of the “Jewish lobby” is not a new phenomenon,
but has long been an important factor in American life.
In 1941 Charles Lindbergh spoke about the danger of Jewish power in the
media and government. The shy 39-year-old -- known around the world for
his epic 1927 New York to Paris flight, the first solo trans-Atlantic
crossing -- was addressing 7,000 people in Des Moines, Iowa, on
September 11, 1941, about the dangers of US involvement in the war then
raging in Europe. The three most important groups pressing America into
war, he explained, were the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt
administration.
Of the Jews, he said: “Their greatest danger to this country lies in
their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press,
our radio, and our government.” Lindbergh went on:
>>
...For reasons which are understandable from their viewpoint as they are
inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, [they] wish
to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what
they believe to be their own interests, but we must also look out for
ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other
peoples to lead our country to destruction. <<
In 1978, Jewish American scholar Alfred M. Lilienthal wrote in his
detailed study, The Zionist Connection: / 10
>>
How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?... It is
the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the
amazing pull on non-Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power... In
the larger metropolitan areas, the Jewish-Zionist connection thoroughly
pervades affluent financial, commercial, social, entertainment, and art
circles. <<
As a result of the Jewish grip on the media, wrote Lilienthal, news
coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in American television,
newspapers and magazines is relentlessly sympathetic to Israel. This is
manifest, for example, in the misleading portrayal of Palestinian
“terrorism.” As Lilienthal put it: “One-sided reportage on terrorism, in
which cause is never related to effect, was assured because the most
effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media
control.”
One-Sided ‘Holocaust’ History
The Jewish hold on cultural and academic life has had a profound impact
on how Americans look at the past. Nowhere is the well entrenched
Judeocentric view of history more obvious than in the “Holocaust” media
campaign, which focuses on the fate of Jews in Europe during World War
II.
Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, a professor at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem, has remarked: / 11
>>
Whether presented authentically or inauthentically, in accordance with
the historical facts or in contradiction to them, with empathy and
understanding or as monumental kitsch, the Holocaust has become a ruling
symbol of our culture... Hardly a month goes by without a new TV
production, a new film, a new drama, new books, prose or poetry, dealing
with the subject, and the flood is increasing rather than abating. <<
Non-Jewish suffering simply does not merit comparable attention.
Overshadowed in the focus on Jewish victimization are, for example, the
tens of millions of victims of America’s World War II ally, Stalinist
Russia, along with the tens of millions of victims of China’s Maoist
regime, as well as the 12 to 14 million Germans, victims of the flight
and expulsion of 1944-1949, of whom some two million lost their lives.
The well-financed Holocaust media and “educational” campaign is
crucially important to the interests of Israel. Paula Hyman, a professor
of modern Jewish history at Yale University, has observed: / 12
>>
With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to forestall political
criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense of Jews as an
eternally beleaguered people who can rely for their defense only upon
themselves. The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews under
the Nazis often takes the place of rational argument, and is expected to
convince doubters of the legitimacy of current Israeli government
policy. <<
Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar who has taught political science at
City University of New York (Hunter College), says in his book, The
Holocaust Industry, that “invoking The Holocaust” is “a ploy to
delegitimize all criticism of Jews.” / 13 “By conferring total
blamelessness on Jews, the Holocaust dogma immunizes Israel and American
Jewry from legitimate censure... Organized Jewry has exploited the Nazi
holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel’s and its own morally
indefensible policies.” He writes of the brazen “shakedown” of Germany,
Switzerland and other countries by Israel and organized Jewry “to extort
billions of dollars.” “The Holocaust,” Finkelstein predicts, “may yet
turn out to be the ‘greatest robbery in the history of mankind’.”
Jews in Israel feel free to act brutally against Arabs, writes Israeli
journalist Ari Shavit, “believing with absolute certitude that now, with
the White House, the Senate and much of the American media in our hands,
the lives of others do not count as much as our own.” / 14
Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff,
has spoken with blunt exasperation about the Jewish-Israeli hold on the
United States: / 15
>>
I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to
them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they
want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the
point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people
understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they
would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what
goes on. <<
Today the danger is greater than ever. Israel and Jewish organizations,
in collaboration with this country’s pro-Zionist “amen corner,” are
prodding the United States -- the world’s foremost military and economic
power -- into new wars against Israel’s enemies. As the French
ambassador in London recently acknowledged, Israel -- which he called
“that shitty little country” -- is a threat to world peace. “Why should
the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?,” he
said. / 16
To sum up: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States.
The “Jewish lobby” is a decisive factor in US support for Israel.
Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In
fact, they often conflict.
As long as the “very powerful” Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there
will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of current affairs
and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system,
Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and
non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.
-----------------------------------
Notes
1. Quoted in Forward (New York City), April 19, 2002, p. 11.
2. D. Tutu, “Apartheid in the Holy Land,” The Guardian (Britain), April
29, 2002. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4403427,00.html
3. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (University
of Chicago, 1993), pp. 1, 103.
4. S. Steinlight, “The Jewish Stake in America's Changing Demography:
Reconsidering a Misguided Immigration Policy,” Center for Immigration
Studies, Nov. 2001. http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/back1301.html
5. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene
(Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 26-27.
6. Janine Zacharia, “The Unofficial Ambassadors of the Jewish State,”
The Jerusalem Post (Israel), April 2, 2000. Reprinted in “Other Voices,”
June 2000, p. OV-4, a supplement to The Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs.
7. M. Medved, “Is Hollywood Too Jewish?,” Moment, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1996),
p. 37.
8. Jonathan Jeremy Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish
Establishment (Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 280, 287-288. See also pp.
39-40, 290-291.
9. Interview with Larry King, CNN network, April 5, 1996. “Brando
Remarks,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1996, p. F4 (OC). A short time
later, Brando was obliged to apologize for his remarks.
10. A. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978),
pp. 206, 218, 219, 229.
11. From a 1992 lecture, published in: David Cesarani, ed., The Final
Solution: Origins and Implementation (London and New York: Routledge,
1994), pp. 305, 306.
12. Paula E. Hyman, "New Debate on the Holocaust," The New York Times
Magazine, Sept. 14, 1980, p. 79.
13. Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry (London, New York:
Verso, 2000), pp. 130, 138, 139, 149.
14. The New York Times, May 27, 1996. Shavit is identified as a
columnist for Ha’aretz, a Hebrew-language Israeli daily newspaper, “from
which this article is adapted.”
15. Interview with Moorer, Aug. 24, 1983. Quoted in: Paul Findley, They
Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby
(Lawrence Hill, 1984 and 1985), p. 161.
16. D. Davis, “French Envoy to UK: Israel Threatens World Peace,”
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 20, 2001. The French ambassador is Daniel Bernard.
-------------------------------------
Mark Weber (weber@ihr.org) is director of the Institute for Historical
Review (http://www.ihr.org/index.html). He studied history at the
University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland
State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). For nine years he
served as editor of the IHR’s Journal of Historical Review.
======================================================== | | | | Guest | | Posted: Thu Jul 25, 2002 9:08 am Post subject: power of the jewish lobby in the usa |
| "Ninety-eight per cent of the US Senate and 94 per cent of the House of
Representatives supported Sharon's government, which could never manage to muster more than 60 per cent support in Israel's own Knesset. This is a remarkable phenomenon that Americans would do well to consider carefully."
http://www.jordantimes.com/Mon/opinion/opinion2.htm
--
Israeli blackmail to silence critics
Fahed Fanek
THE ANTI-Semitism weapon turns dud, but the Jewish lobby remains potent. Many people are being accused of anti-Semitism these days. The European right, the American left, the free and independent press and various writers and thinkers across the world were all recently described as being anti-Semitic. Even such organisations as Amnesty International turned out to be anti-Semitic.
Israel and its supporters have, of course, made these accusations with the purpose of silencing critics of Israeli policies. Had these critics attacked Jews as such, the accusations of anti-Semitism would have been more understandable; but all they criticised was Israel's high-handed and aggressive behaviour vis-ý-vis the unarmed and helpless Palestinian people. Their “crime” was to criticise Israel's bloodthirsty leader Ariel Sharon as a war criminal whose rightful place was behind bars rather than at the helm of a supposedly democratic government.
Critics of Israel were complaining about the policies and behaviour of the Israeli army. They were voicing opposition to the continued illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian soil. They were denouncing the Israeli practices of building Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land, and Israel's racist policies, bordering on ethnic cleansing, against the Palestinians, including one million among them holding Israeli citizenship.
The fact of the matter is that Israel has been getting away with things too lightly, its atrocious behaviour only drawing mild criticism from the international community. Had it been any other country committing such hideous crimes, the “civilised world” would not have been so tolerant.
Using the anti-Semitism card, however, is about to lose its effectiveness. It has always been a shabby blackmail weapon and is beginning to cause genuine anger and contempt. Yet, it still is an extremely effective weapon in Washington, where no member of Congress from either party dares vote against Israel, despite knowing deep down that their votes support an outlaw state.
Even the president of the United States, the most powerful man on the planet, who sees himself as Israel's staunchest friend and ally, fears the American Jewish lobby, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which can easily set the US media against him.
That is why President George Bush described Sharon as a “man of peace” — a statement that was met with universal derision. The Israeli prime minister wouldn't describe himself thus. In fact, he sees peace as a threat to Israel's existence.
Washington's pro-Israel lobby is the strongest pressure group in the American capital as far as foreign policy is concerned. Some 60,000 strong, AIPAC has more than enough clout to make or break politicians. Last month, the Senate passed a strongly worded bill expressing unreserved support for Israel's actions against Palestinian towns and refugee camps with a majority of 94 to 2. In the House of Representatives, the bill got 352 votes in favour and 21 against.
Senators and congressmen vie with each another to show their backing for the Jewish state, but the New York Times published a letter by Senator Ernest Hollings of North Carolina, suggesting that the strong pro-Israel vote might have been influenced by his colleagues' interest in Jewish funding for their reelection campaigns.
Such overtly biased bills do not ordinarily come in for criticism by the American press. Most US newspapers do not dare raise their voices against the all-powerful Jewish lobby for fear of being accused of anti-Semitism. Ninety-eight per cent of the US Senate and 94 per cent of the House of Representatives supported Sharon's government, which could never manage to muster more than 60 per cent support in Israel's own Knesset. This is a remarkable phenomenon that Americans would do well to consider carefully.
When AIPAC held its annual conference last April, some 50 senators and 90 congressmen attended, as well as 13 senior Bush administration officials — including the White House chief of staff, who cheered Israel in Hebrew and received a standing ovation.
There are 52 major Jewish organisations in the United States. Presidents of these organisations meet regularly in New York to coordinate their efforts and actions under the stewardship of Malcolm Hoenlein, the most powerful Jewish leader in America today.
American newspapers, meanwhile, are either Jewish-owned or else are scared of being branded anti-Semitic by the Jewish lobby — and for good reason. The Los Angeles Times lost 1,000 subscriptions in a single day recently for printing reports that were not deemed sufficiently supportive of Israel's military actions in the West Bank.
The New York Times was forced to apologise to its readers for printing a photograph of a pro-Israel rally, which also showed a few anti-Israel demonstrators in the background — an unacceptable transgression, it seems, in the land of free speech and press objectivity.
Such overwhelming Jewish domination — indeed, terrorism — will definitely result in a violent reaction. The pro-Israel lobby cannot use the weapon of anti-Semitism indefinitely to suppress the anger of ordinary Americans at the domination of their government and media.
Monday, July 22, 2002 | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2002 6:00 pm Post subject: does congresswoman cynthia mckinney face the same from aipac |
| Forwarded Message:
Subj: TIME.com: The Middle East -- in Alabama?
Date: 7/1/02 11:32:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: sbahour@palnet.com
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/frank/article/0,9565,267696,00.h
tml
Saturday, Jun. 29, 2002
The Middle East — in Alabama?
Post-9/11 politics takes on a new twist in Alabama's 7th
congressional district
BY MITCH FRANK
Time.com
This is the story of the strangest primary (yet) of this election year.
This week, Alabama congressman Earl Hilliard, running for his sixth
term, was upset by a young black lawyer named Arthur Davis. The
lack of GOP challengers means Davis is all but assured a victory in
the fall — a victory that will be traceable not to his positions on
traditional Democratic issues, but to the vagaries of post-9/11
politics.
Alabama's seventh congressional district, which Hilliard has
represented for years, is one of the nation's poorest. It stretches
from black neighborhoods in Birmingham down through the rural,
cotton-growing counties in the southwestern corner of the state.
Most voters here, 62 percent of whom are black, are concerned with
improving their struggling economy, paying for rising health care
costs and fixing their schools. But when the district held its
Democratic primary runoff Tuesday, none of those issues were
considered paramount; instead, much of the campaign focused on
U.S. - Middle East relations. This twist has all of Alabama and much
of D.C. talking.
Earl Hilliard was the first black candidate elected to Congress from
Alabama since 1877, at end of Reconstruction. He built a liberal
voting record in the House, and his district votes almost entirely
Democratic (Al Gore beat George W. Bush by 46 points here two
years ago.) Hilliard also has a long record of pushing for better
relations with Muslim countries. Sometimes that tendency caused
controversy: in 1997, Hilliard visited Libya, defying U.S. sanctions.
Davis, a young lawyer, tried to make hay of the issue during his 2000
campaign against Hilliard, but to no avail — Hilliard won reelection
easily. This year, however, the Davis campaign was in luck: Hilliard
raised more eyebrows when he voted against resolutions supporting
Israel and condemning Palestinian suicide bombings, a move that
spurred Jewish and pro-Israel groups to throw their support behind
Davis.
While campaigning in the district, Davis didn't make much of
Hilliard's controversial stands in the district. At home he focused on
education, health insurance and the economy. (And he did a
particularly good job of appealing to young voters, who are
considerably less swayed by the considerable might of the state's
Civil Rights-era black caucuses.) Once he was outside the state,
however, Davis used the Middle East issue to raise donations. In
fact, 82% of his campaign money came from donors outside
Alabama. Realizing what was happening, Arab American groups
started throwing their support behind Hilliard, who ended up raising
68% of his money outside his state. In 2000, Davis raised just over
$84,000 for his campaign while Hilliard raised more than $480,000.
This year Hilliard collected over $550,000 and Davis took in more
than $879,000. That money allowed Davis to run a lot of ads — and
they changed the outcome of the election.
Now those election results are causing a small uproar in
Washington, particularly among Democrats. Members of the
Congressional Black Caucus criticized House Democratic Leader
Richard Gephardt and the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee for not doing more to support Hilliard in his time of need.
Republicans are already trying to use their strong support of Israel to
win over traditionally Democratic Jewish voters. Will Gephardt and
the DCCC have to choose between black and Jewish voters? The
voters back in Alabama's seventh district may be surprised to know
the turmoil their votes unleashed. But the post-9/11 political
landscape is still evolving, and no one is quite sure what effect these
changes will have on November's elections. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2002 6:37 am Post subject: cynthia mckinney's brave stand |
| Subj: Re: this is what cynthia mckinney is facing...
Date: 7/28/02 5:56:02 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: BGJDAVID
This is a letter to the editor that I wrote a few days ago on the subject.
Cynthia McKinney's Brave Stand
It seems that Jewish constituents and pro-Israel campaign contributors are
gearing up for an assault on Rep. Cynthia McKinney to see that she is
defeated by her opponent Denise Majette in the Aug. 20 Democratic primary (
"Israeli lobby sends wake-up call," July 26). These Jewish groups are upset
with the Georgia congresswoman because of her outspoken criticism of Israel
and her refusal to vote in favor of continued aid to Israel. It has also led
many in the Jewish communities to label her an an "anti-Semite."
Cynthia McKinney's past voting records against continued aid to Israel and
her latest criticism should be acknowledged as an act of honor and courage.
Our politicians in Washington have been bribed and corrupted by the Israeli
lobby in order to continue the massive $5.6 billion of american taxpayer
money flowing to the Jewish State each and every year. Israel is one of the
richest countries in the world yet it receives more U.S. aid than any other
nation. This fact alone is astonishing when you consider that more than 12
million children in the United States live in poverty.
Instead of trying to refute critiques of Israeli policies, it's much easier
to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, a timeworn way of
preventing or short-circuiting real debate on the merits of the issues. If I
lived in her district, Cynthia McKinney would have my vote.
James J. David
Marietta, GA
James J. David is a retired brigadier general who served active duty in the
Middle East in 1967-1969. | | | | FoxtrotAlpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2002 7:49 pm Post subject: |
| | Is this the nazi board. Answer this. Who never fired back when Iraq attacked them in the gulf war. Could it be Isreal???? | | | | Anglo Thug | | Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2002 11:05 pm Post subject: |
| | FoxtrotAlpha wrote: | | Is this the nazi board. Answer this. Who never fired back when Iraq attacked them in the gulf war. Could it be Isreal???? |
You are a ******* ***** [self censored out of respect for the decent people who read these messages]! Have you read any of these messages? I am days away from you Foxtrot and then the game is up. Expect to hear from me soon, this time on your territory. When the lights go out just remember you brought it on yourself. | | | | Anglo Thug | | Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2002 11:09 pm Post subject: |
| Foxtrot,
A little birdie has advised me not to worry about you and I'm taking that advice. Play on. | | | | dondan1 | | | | Guest | | Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2002 9:31 am Post subject: |
| Friendly fire presupposes you do not know the identity of the attacked.
This then was not friendly fire. Case not closed, although you would like it to be. Get used to it, its not going to go away becuase you want it to. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
