| Author | Message | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2003 6:11 am Post subject: U.S. to Consider Multi-Billion Dollar Israeli Aid Request |
| Subj: U.S. to Consider Israeli Aid Request
Date: 1/23/03 5:11:33 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: BGJDAVID
You might as well consider it approved. "One Nation Under Israel" never had a truer meaning. We don't have money to bail out United Airlines or enough money to help our senior citizens with their prescriptions, or have enough money to provide adequate medical care for our veterans, or enough money to help feed the nearly 12 million children who go to bed hungry in America every night, but we have enough money to give to Israel so they can purchase more american made one-ton bombs to drop in the center of Gaza City killing 16 innocent Palestinians, including 9 children. We have enough money to give to Israel to purchase american bulldozers to demolish more than 3000 innocent Palestinian homes within the past 28 months as reported by Amnesty International, causing more than 16,000 Palestinians (including 7,200 children) to become homeless. We have enough money to give to Israel to purchase explosive devices to blow up 62 Palestlnian shops reported just yesterday by the Associated Press. We have enough money for the Israelis to confiscate more Palestinian land and build more illegal Jewish settlements that do nothing more than prolong the violence in the Middle East, causing more american taxpayer dollars to support this Jewish State. Most Americans are not aware of how much money is poured from the US Treasury into Israel. If they did, then they would see why the State of Israel can truly be described as a gigantic, swollen parasite fastened on the American people.
U.S. to Consider Israeli Aid Request
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Israel's request for $8 billion in loan guarantees and $4 billion in special assistance will be considered by U.S. and Israeli officials in the coming weeks, the White House said Thursday.
The request is designed to offset the costs of conflict with the Palestinians and preparations for possible attack by Iraq.
``We recognize the economic impact on Israel of the ongoing war against terrorism and regional stability, and are considering how the Untied States can contribute to continuing to assure its bright future,'' said White House spokesman Sean McCormack.
Decisions on specific Israeli requests will be taken up by working groups of U.S. and Israeli officials in the coming weeks, McCormack said.
An Israel delegation met Jan. 6 with National Security Council officials, and Amos Yaron, director-general of Israel's defense ministry, talked on Jan. 7 to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
At the time, the State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said ``I wouldn't expect us to be able to react that quickly to specific dollar figures or requests. So we've had discussions with the Israelis, and I'm sure we'll continue to discuss it with them, as we consider what we can do.''
With President Bush weighing the option of war with Iraq to force its disarmament, Israel is bracing for Iraqi attacks with costly preparations that strain a budget already weighed down with the expense of trying to counter an ongoing Palestinian offensive.
Iraq fired Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Persian Gulf war but Israel held its fire at the request of the United States. This time, Bush has expressed an understanding of Israel's right to defend itself and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has indicated Israel would retaliate.
This year, Israel is receiving $2.7 billion in U.S. aid, of which $2.1 billion is military assistance and $600 million is economic help. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid.
Israel probably would receive additional aid if it reached a settlement with the Palestinians, but the Bush administration agreed last year to put its mediation on hold until after Israel's elections.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that the United States and its European partners would pursue a roadmap for a Palestinian state once the elections were over.
Turkey and Jordan also are expected to ask for special assistance in the event of a war with Iraq - on the same general theory that their budgets are strained in preparing for such a war.
01/23/03 19:17 EST
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL. | |  | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2003 6:34 am Post subject: Liberating America From Israel |
| Liberating America From Israel
by Paul Findley
Nine-eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president during the past 35 years had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president-even President Bush this very day-could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people:
Israel's present government, like its predecessors, is determined to annex the West Bank-biblical Judea and Samaria - so Israel will become Greater Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who maintain a powerful role in Israeli politics, believe the Jewish Messiah will not come until Greater Israel is a reality. Although a minority in Israel, they are committed, aggressive, and influential. Because of deep religious conviction, they are determined to prevent Palestinians from gaining statehood on any part of the West Bank.
In its violent assaults on Palestinians, Israel uses the pretext of eradicating terrorism, but its forces are actually engaged advancing the territorial expansion just cited. Under the guise of anti-terrorism, Israeli forces treat Palestinians worse than cattle. With due process nowhere to be found, hundreds are detained for long periods and most are tortured. Some are assassinated. Homes, orchards, and business places are destroyed. Entire cities are kept under intermittent curfew, some confinements lasting for weeks. Injured or ill Palestinians needing emergency medical care are routinely held at checkpoints for an hour or more. Many children are undernourished. The West Bank and Gaza have become giant concentration camps. None of this could have occurred without U.S. support. Perhaps Israeli officials believe life will become so unbearable that most Palestinians will eventually leave their ancestral homes.
Once beloved worldwide, the U.S. government finds itself reviled in most countries because it provides unconditional support of Israeli violations of the United Nations Charter, international law, and the precepts of all major religious faiths.
How did the American people get into this fix?
Nine-eleven had its principal origin 35 years ago when Israel's U.S. lobby began its unbroken success in stifling debate about the proper U.S. role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and effectively concealed from public awareness the fact that the U.S. government gives massive uncritical support to Israel.
Thanks to the suffocating influence of Israel's U.S. lobby, open discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been non-existent in our government all these years. I have firsthand knowledge, because I was a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in June 1967 when Israeli military forces took control of the Golan Heights, a part of Syria, as well as the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. I continued as a member for 16 years and to this day maintain a close watch on Congress.
For 35 years, not a word has been expressed in that committee or in either chamber of Congress that deserves to be called debate on Middle East policy. No restrictive or limiting amendments on aid to Israel have been offered for 20 years, and none of the few offered in previous years received more than a handful of votes. On Capitol Hill, criticism of Israel, even in private conversation, is all but forbidden, treated as downright unpatriotic, if not anti-Semitic. The continued absence of free speech was assured when those few who spoke out-Senators Adlai Stevenson and Charles Percy, and Reps. Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, Earl Hilliard, and myself-were defeated at the polls by candidates heavily financed by pro-Israel forces.
As a result, legislation dealing with the Middle East has been heavily biased in favor of Israel and against Palestinians and other Arabs year after year. Home constituencies, misled by news coverage equally lop-sided in Israel's favor, remain largely unaware that Congress behaves as if it were a subcommittee of the Israeli parliament.
However, the bias is widely noted beyond America, where most news media candidly cover Israel's conquest and generally excoriate America's complicity and complacency. When President Bush welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, sometimes called the Butcher of Beirut, as "my dear friend" and "a man of peace" after Israeli forces, using U.S.-donated arms, completed their devastation of the West Bank last spring, worldwide anger against American policy reached the boiling point.
The fury should surprise no one who reads foreign newspapers or listens to BBC. In several televised statements long before 9/11, Osama bin Laden, believed by U.S. authorities to have masterminded 9/11, cited U.S. complicity in Israel's destruction of Palestinian society as a principal complaint. Prominent foreigners, in and out of government, express their opposition to U.S. policies with unprecedented frequency and severity, especially since Bush announced his determination to make war against Iraq.
The lobby's intimidation remains pervasive. It seems to reach every government center and even houses of worship and revered institutions of higher learning. It is highly effective in silencing the many U.S. Jews who object to the lobby's tactics and Israel's brutality.
Nothing can justify 9/11. Those guilty deserve maximum punishment, but it makes sense for America to examine motivations promptly and as carefully as possible. Terrorism almost always arises from deeply-felt grievances. If they can be eradicated or eased, terrorist passions are certain to subside.
Today, a year after 9/11, President Bush has made no attempt to redress grievances, or even to identify them. In fact, he has made the scene far worse by supporting Israel's religious war against Palestinians, an alliance that has intensified anti-American anger. He seems oblivious to the fact that nearly two billion people worldwide regard the plight of Palestinians as today's most important foreign-policy challenge. No one in authority will admit a calamitous reality that is skillfully shielded from the American people but clearly recognized by most of the world: America suffered 9/11 and its aftermath and may soon be at war with Iraq, mainly because U.S. policy in the Middle East is made in Israel, not in Washington.
Israel is a scofflaw nation and should be treated as such. Instead of helping Sharon intensify Palestinian misery, our president should suspend all aid until Israel ends its occupation of Arab land Israel seized in 1967. The suspension would force Sharon's compliance or lead to his removal from office, as the Israeli electorate will not tolerate a prime minister who is at odds with the White House.
If Bush needs an additional reason for doing the right thing, he can justify the suspension as a matter of military necessity, an essential step in winning international support for his war on terrorism. He can cite a worthy precedent. When President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation that freed only the slaves in states that were then in rebellion, he make the restriction because of "military necessity."
If Bush suspends U.S. aid, he will liberate all Americans from long years of bondage to Israel's misdeeds.
Mr. Paul Findley, who served as a Republican congressman from Illinois for 22 years, is the author of 'They Dare to Speak Out' and a member of the American Educational Trust's Foreign Relations Committee. | | | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2003 6:48 am Post subject: Zionism Unbound (in US Government) |
| Zionism Unbound
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Pettifer_Zionism.htm
Dissident Voice | December 11, 2002
Zionism Unbound By Ann Pettifer
In the spring of 1986, Gore Vidal, novelist and chronicler of US history, published an essay in The Nation which became instantly notorious. Called "The Empire Lovers Strike Back," its subject was the relationship of American Jewish neo-conservatives to the state of Israel. He chose as exemplars of the phenomenon, Commentary magazine editor, Norman Podhoretz, and spouse, Midge Decter (mother-in-law of Elliot Abrams of Iran Contra infamy; Abrams, a racial purist who disdains intermarriage, now serves as White House Director of Middle Eastern Affairs). Podhoretz and Decter had once been liberals, but an aggressive Zionism led them to pitch their tent in the Republican Party. Their aim was to use US economic and political heft to advance Israel's interests in the Middle East. The essay was vintage Vidal and it greatly provoked his critics. To ensure that no one took seriously what he had to say - to silence the debate before it started - he was rubbished as the worst kind of anti-Semite.
So, exactly what had Vidal said to earn this most feared of labels? In recent weeks we have heard a good deal about the cynical alliance between fundamentalist Christian Zionists in the US and Jewish settlers (supported by the right-wing Likud party) in the Occupied Territories. Sixteen years ago in a display of considerable prescience, Vidal wrote: "since spades may not be called spades in freedom's land, let me spell it out.
In order to get military and economic support for Israel, a small number of American Jews, who should know better, have made common cause with every sort of reactionary and anti-Semitic group in the United States, from the corridors of the Pentagon to the TV studios of the evangelical Jesus Christers all in the interest of supporting the likes of Sharon as opposed to the Peace Now Israelis whom they disdain."
Central to Vidal's case was the indifference to US history which he discerned among these Jewish neo-conservatives. When he was writing a play set during the American Civil War, he recalls Norman Podhoretz asking him, "Why are you writing a play about, of all things, the Civil War?"
When Vidal explained that this was/is "the great, single tragic event that gives resonance to our Republic" Podhoretz replied, "To me, the Civil War is as remote and irrelevant as the War of the Roses." Vidal calls Podhoretz and his ilk Fifth Columnists (Israeli division) to indicate their extra-territorial priorities. They pursue political power not in order to make the US a better place, to right wrongs or to fight inequality here, but to promote Israel's pre-eminence in the Middle East, to confine Palestinians to a couple of Bantustans or, better still, engineer their expulsion to Jordan. Judith Shulavitz, writing last month in The New York Times about Podhoretz's new book, The Prophets: Who They Were And What They Are, observes that for Podhoretz the biblical prophet's message is: "the Jews are the people chosen to redeem the world's They will perform their divinely appointed duty only if they cling to the Covenant between God and themselves and support Zionism." Any appropriation of the prophets in support of social justice he dismisses as false - a Christian overlay or redaction.
The influence of old-guard Jewish neo-cons, such as Podhoretz and Decter, was exercised mainly through journals of opinion they edited or owned (in addition to Commentary, Martin Peretz's New Republic comes to mind). Now, however, a new generation has its hand on the tiller of power. In September, Bill Keller profiled Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, for The New York Times' Sunday Magazine. Wolfowitz and fellow Jewish neo-cons Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have emerged as the Pentagon's Paladins, their aim being to subdue the Islamic world through decisive, pre-emptive use of American military superiority. While Wolfowitz is pressing for war against Saddam Hussein, Keller notes his "scholarly detachment" from the disastrous Vietnam War (as remote as the War of the Roses?), in which, while eligible, he had chosen not to serve.
Wolfowitz first formed ties to Israel when he accompanied his father there for a sabbatical year. He is known to have close links to Israeli generals and Likud politicians. Keller, somewhat hesitatingly, discloses that there are people in Washington who hint at Wolfowitz's "dual loyalties." The (London) Guardian columnist, Hugo Young, is less reticent: "Only in Washington does one get a true sense of the obsession of these Pentagon civilians. Conversationally, it is common talk that some of them, not including Rumsfeld, are as much Israeli as American nationalists. Behind nervous, confiding hands come sardonic whispers of an American outpost of Likud. Most striking of all, however, is how unmentionable this is in the liberal press."
If dragons' teeth are being sown by American foreign policy in the Middle East, the urgent question is why a craven liberal press is not addressing the Israeli nationalism of the policy's architects. Thinking I might find clues, I trawled through a piece by Cliff Rothman in The Nation, entitled "Jewish Media Stranglehold?" At the outset, Rothman de-legitimizes the question by reminding us that it was Richard Nixon who first posed it; he then proceeds to associate it with White Power rhetoric, trailer parks and compounds in Montana. Nothing of substance emerges. There was, however, an interesting exchange with Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harpers, whose essays are surely some of the best political writing in the US. When the question was put to him, Rothman writes that Lapham "ventured onto the treacherous terrain of hypothosizing a unique Jewish sensibility impacting the media because of the sheer number of Jewish editors and writers. But, Lapham then recoiled: 'If I am going to take shit, I may as well write my own column.'"
About three years ago, Nightline's Ted Koppel came to the University of Notre Dame to give the Red Smith journalism lecture. I remember summoning every ounce of courage during question time in order to express my concern about the importance of even-handedness in the US media when reporting on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Then I asked Koppel how he felt, as a Jewish-American, about a foreign policy team which at that time was overwhelmingly Jewish. Madelaine Albright and her spokesman, James Rubin, were at the State Department, Sandy Berger was Security Advisor and William Cohen Secretary of Defense; Richard Holbrooke was Ambassador to the UN. I was sure that had the shoe been on the other foot - had the team's composition been almost entirely Arab-American - the issue of fairness would most certainly have been raised. Koppel was nonplussed by the question and responded that in the US gifted individuals, regardless of background, could rise to the top - an answer that did not address my concern.
Each week, I have a marathon phone conversation with a Jewish friend, an octogenarian whose mental vigor remains undiminished. A retired college teacher, her take on virtually every political issue of importance is exemplary. Our friendship is very close and has easily survived occasional squalls over the one topic on which we have some disagreement, namely Israel and the Occupation. After reading something I had written on the neocon Zionists at the Pentagon, she gave me a no-holds-barred dressing down. In identifying Paul Wolfovitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, the Pentagon troika planning the war against Saddam Hussein, as Jewish-Americans, I had crossed the line into anti-Semitism. Go after them as bad guys, not as Jews, she said. After all, there were lots of Jews, herself included, who find the troika a frightening bunch. For days I brooded about her comments, but in the end I demurred. Sure these are bad guys, but it is as Zionists that they are pursuing their war aims. The connections Gore Vidal was making in 1986 still need to be made in 2002.
Robert Dreyfus, a senior correspondent at The American Prospect, came close in a first class expose on how the Pentagon's "well-placed hawks" are muzzling the CIA so that intelligence data that contradicts the case for war is not presented to the White House. Dreyfus is blunt: "For Perle, Wolfovitz and FeithSan attack on Iraq is a strategic necessity, not because Saddam Hussein is a threat, but because America needs to display an overwhelming show of force to keep unruly Arabs and Muslims all over the world in line."
However, Dreyfus still cannot mention the elephant in the room, namely that these well-placed hawks are Jewish-Americans and it is their hard-core Zionism that is shaping American foreign policy. Zionism is fast becoming a poisoned chalice, yet the US is poised for a war largely propelled by its agenda. Most of the country is ignorant or in denial, and the mainstream media either too conflicted or in cahoots to sound the alarm. In the meantime, Richard Perle, addressing British members of parliament even as UN arms inspectors were returning to Iraq, asserted that the US will go to war no matter what. And on the BBC World Service, The Washington Times' Barry Fein proclaimed war as absolutely necessary, saying that from now on the US would decide what constituted international law. There is real madness here, but who will stop it?
Do I think the case against Zionism could be made more effectively by Jews themselves? Certainly, but the evidence suggests it is not any easier. In the early 1960s, there was a bitter correspondence between two German Jews, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Kabbalah. Much of the disagreement turned on Arendt's rejection of Zionism which led the Zionist Scholem to accuse her of having no love for the Jewish people. Arendt acknowledged that she had no love for any nation or collective - believing, as she did, that love of humankind trumped tribal or parochial affections. Insofar as Zionism had led Jews from belief in God to belief in themselves, she continued, "in this sense I do not love the Jews."
Ann Pettifer is a freelance writer and the publisher of Common Sense, the alternative newspaper at the University of Notre Dame. She can be reached at awalshe@nd.edu
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