| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 12:22 pm Post subject: The Israel Lobby and the Left: Uneasy Questions |
| The Israel Lobby and the Left: Uneasy Questions
Jeffrey Blankfort
Who Makes up the Lobby?
It is important to note that the Israel lobby is much more than AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), which primarily focuses on Congress and directs funding from Jewish PACs and individuals to those politicians it considers to be deserving. Its other more visible components are the biggest Jewish organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress, but there are also a number of others, not the least of which is the extreme right wing Zionist Organization of America, which at the moment is extremely influential in Washington.
All of these organizations form part of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, whose current president is Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the NY Daily News and US News and World Report. Its job is to lobby the President. At the grass-roots you have hundreds of local Jewish federations and councils that cultivate the support of city councilors and supervisors and select the more promising among them to run for Congress, assured that they will be solid votes for Israel.
While not officially part of the lobby, since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the AFL-CIO has been one of its most solid cornerstones. It has provided millions of dollars for pro-Israel Democrats; it has blocked all international efforts to punish Israel for its exploitation and abuse of Palestinian workers, and it has encouraged its member unions to invest millions of dollars of their pension funds in State of Israel Bonds, thereby linking their members' retirement to the health of the Israeli economy. Over the past year, the lobby has cemented ties with the Christian evangelical right, which gives it clout in states where there are few Jews and access to hundreds of thousands of new donors toIsrael's cause.
-- Jeffrey Blankfort
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC27WebPages/IsraelLobby.html
It was 1991 and Noam Chomsky had just finished a lecture in Berkeley on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was taking questions from the audience. An Arab-American asked him to explain his position regarding the influence of America's Israel lobby.
Chomsky replied that its reputation was generally exaggerated and, like other lobbies, it only appears to be powerful when its position lines up with that of the "elites"who determine policy in Washington. Earlier in the evening, he had asserted that Israel received support from the United States as a reward for the services it provides as the US's "cop-on-the-beat"in the Middle East.
Chomsky's response drew a warm round of applause from members of the audience who were no doubt pleased to have American Jews absolved from any blame for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, then in the fourth year of their first Intifada.
What is noteworthy is that Chomsky's explanation for the financial and political support that the U.S. has provided Israel over the years is shared by what is generically known as the Israel lobby, and almost no one else.
Well, not quite "almost no one."Among the exceptions are the overwhelming majority of both houses of Congress and the mainstream media and, what is equally noteworthy, virtually the entire American Left, both ideological and idealistic, including the organizations ostensibly in the forefront of the fight for Palestinian rights.
That there is a meeting of the minds on this issue between supporters of Israel and the Left may help explain why the Palestine support movement within the United States has been an utter failure.
Chomsky's position on the lobby had been established well before that Berkeley evening. In The Fateful Triangle, published in 1983, he assigned it little weight:
The "special relationship"is often attributed to domestic political pressures, in particular the effectiveness of the American Jewish community in political life and in influencing opinion. While there is some truth to this… it underestimates the scope of the "support for Israel,"and… it overestimates the role of political pressure groups in decision making. (p.13) [1]
A year earlier, Congress had applauded Israel's devastating invasion of Lebanon, and then appropriated millions in additional aid to pay for the shells the Israeli military had expended. How much of this support was due to the legislators' "support for Israel"and how much was due to pressures from the Israel lobby? It was a question that should have been examined by the left at the time, but wasn't. Twenty years later, Chomsky's view is still the "conventional wisdom."
In 2001, in the midst of the second intifada, he went further, arguing that "it is improper - particularly in the United States - to condemn ‘Israeli atrocities,'"and that the "US/Israel-Palestine conflict"is the more correct term, comparable with placing the proper responsibility for "Russian-backed crimes in Eastern Europe [and] US-backed crimes in Central America."And, to emphasize the point, he wrote, "IDF helicopters are US helicopters with Israeli pilots."[2]
Prof. Stephen Zunes, who might be described as a Chomsky acolyte, would not only relieve Israeli Jews from any responsibility for their actions, he would have us believe they are the victims.
In Tinderbox, his widely praised (by Chomsky and others) new book on the Middle East, Zunes faults the Arabs for "blaming Israel, Zionism, or the Jews for their problems."According to Zunes, the Israelis have been forced to assume a role similar to that assigned to members of the Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe who performed services, mainly tax collection, as middlemen between the feudal lords and the serfs in earlier times. In fact, writes Zunes, "US policy today corresponds with this historic anti-Semitism."[3] Anyone comparing the relative power of the Jewish community in centuries past with what we find in the US today will find that statement absurd.
Jewish power has, in fact, been trumpeted by a number of Jewish writers, including one, J. J. Goldberg, editor of the Jewish weekly Forward, who wrote a book by that name in 1996.[4] Any attempt, however, to explore the issue from a critical standpoint, inevitably leads to accusations of anti-Semitism, as Bill and Kathy Christison pointed out in their article on the role of right-wing Jewish neo-cons in orchestrating US Middle East policy, in Counterpunch (1/25/03):
Anyone who has the temerity to suggest any Israeli instigation of, or even involvement in, Bush administration war planning is inevitably labeled somewhere along the way as an anti-Semite. Just whisper the word "domination"anywhere in the vicinity of the word "Israel,"as in "U.S.-Israeli domination of the Middle East"or "the U.S. drive to assure global domination and guarantee security for Israel,"and some leftist, who otherwise opposes going to war against Iraq, will trot out charges of promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the old czarist forgery that asserted a Jewish plan for world domination.[5]
Presumably, this is what Zunes would call an example of the "latent anti-Semitism which has come to the fore with wildly exaggerated claims of Jewish economic and political power."[6] And that it "is a naïve asumption to believe that foreign policy decision-making in the US is pluralistic enough so that any one lobbying group… can have so much influence."[7]
This is hardly the first time that Jews have been in the upper echelons of power, as Benjamin Ginsberg points out in The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State; but there has never been a situation anything like the present. This was how Ginzberg began his book:
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 2 % 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.[8]
That was written in 1993. Today, ten years later, ardently pro-Israel American Jews are in positions of unprecedented influence within the United States and have assumed or been given decision-making positions over virtually every segment of our culture and body politic. This is no secret conspiracy. Regular readers of the New York Times business section, which reports the comings and goings of the media tycoons, are certainly aware of it. Does this mean that each and every one is a pro-Israel zealot? Not necessarily, but when one compares the US media with its European counterparts in their respective coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the extreme bias in favor of Israel on the part of the US media is immediately apparent.
This might explain Eric Alterman's discovery that "Europeans and Americans… differ profoundly in their views of the Israel/Palestine issue at both the elite and popular levels…, with Americans being far more sympathetic to Israel and the Europeans to the Palestinian cause…"[9]
An additonal component of Chomsky's analysis is his insistence that it is the US, more than Israel, that is the "rejectionist state,"implying that were it not for the US, Israel might long ago have abandoned the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians for a mini-state.
Essential to his analysis is the notion that every US administration since that of Eisenhower has attempted to advance Israel's interests in line with America's global and regional agenda. This is a far more complex issue than Chomsky leads us to believe. Knowledgeable insiders, both critical and supportive of Israel, have described in detail major conflicts that have taken place between US and Israeli administrations over the years in which Israel, thanks to the diligence of its domestic lobby, has usually prevailed.
In particular, Chomsky ignores or misinterprets the efforts made by every US president, beginning with Richard Nixon, to curb Israel's expansionism, to halt its settlement building and to obtain its withdrawal from the Occupied Territories.[10]
"What happened to all those nice plans?"asked Israeli journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery. "Israel's governments… mobilized the collective power of US Jewry - which dominates Congress and the media to a large degree - against them. Faced by this vigorous opposition, all the presidents; great and small, football players and movie stars - folded, one after another."[11]
Gerald Ford, angered that Israel had been reluctant to leave the Sinai following the 1973 war and backed by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, not only suspended aid for six months in 1975, but in March of that year made a speech calling for a "reassessment"of the US-Israel relationship. Within weeks, AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), Israel's Washington lobby, secured a letter signed by 76 senators "confirming their support for Israel, and suggesting that the White House see fit to do the same. The language was tough, the tone almost bullying."Ford backed down.[12]
We need to only look at the current Bush presidency to see that this phenomenon is still the rule. In 1991, the same year as Chomsky's talk, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir asked the first Bush administartion for $10 billion in loan guarantees in order, he said, to provide for the resettlement of Russian Jews. Bush Sr. had earlier balked at a request from Congress to appropriate an additional $650 million dollars to compensate Israel for sitting out the Gulf War, but gave in when he realized that his veto would be overridden. But now he told Shamir that Israel could only have the guarantees if it freezes settlement building and promised that no Russian Jews would be resettled in the West Bank.
An angry Shamir refused and called on AIPAC to mobilize Congress and the organized American Jewish community in support of the loans guarantees. A letter, drafted by AIPAC was signed by more than 240 members of the House demanding that Bush approve them, and 77 senators signed on to supporting legislation.
On September 12, 1991, Jewish lobbyists descended on Washington in such numbers that Bush felt obliged to call a televised press conference in which he complained that "1000 Jewish lobbyists are on Capitol Hill against little old me."It would prove to be his epitaph. Chomsky pointed to Bush's statement, at the time, as proof that the vaunted Israel lobby was nothing more than "a paper tiger. It took scarcely more than a raised eyebrow for the lobby to collapse,"he told readers of Z Magazine. He could not have been further from the truth.[13]
The next day, Tom Dine, AIPAC's Executive Director, declared that "September 12, 1991 is a day that will live in infamy."Similar comments were uttered by Jewish leaders, who accused Bush of provoking anti-Semitism. What was more important, his friends in the mainstream media, like William Safire, George Will, and Charles Krauthammer, not only criticized him; they began to find fault with the economy and how he was running the country. It was all downhill from there. Bush's Jewish vote, which has been estimated at 38% in 1988, dropped down to no more than 12%, with some estimates as low as 8%.[14]
Bush's opposition to the loan guarantees was the last straw for the Israel lobby. When he made disparaging comments about Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem in March, 1990, AIPAC had begun the attack (briefly halted during the the Gulf War). Dine wrote a critical op-ed in the New York Times and followed that with a vigorous speech to the United Jewish Appeal's Young Leaders Conference. "Brothers and sisters,"he told them as they prepared to go out and lobby Congress on the issue, "remember that Israel's friends in this city reside on Capitol Hill."[15] Months later, the loan guarantees were approved, but by then Bush was dead meat.
Now, jump ahead to last Spring, when Bush Jr. forthrightly demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdraw his marauding troops from Jenin, saying "Enough is enough!"It made headlines all over the world, as did his backing down when Sharon refused. What happened? Harsh criticism boomed from within his own party in Congress and from his daddy's old friends in the media. George Will associated Dubya with Yasser Arafat and accused Bush of having lost his "moral clarity."[16] The next day, Safire suggested that Bush was "being pushed into a minefield of mistakes"and that he had "become a wavering ally as Israel fights for suvival."[17] Junior got the message and, within a week, declared Sharon to be "a man of peace."[18] Since then, as journalist Robert Fisk and others have noted, Sharon seems to be writing Bush's speeches.
There are some who believe that Bush Jr. and Presidents before him made statements critical of Israel for appearances only, to convince the world, and the Arab countries in particular, that the US can be an "honest broker"between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But it is difficult to make a case that any of them would put themselves in a position to be humiliated simply as a cover for US policy.
A better explanation was provided by Stephen Green, whose Taking Sides, America's Secret Relations with Militant Israel, was the first examination of State Department archives concerning US-Israel relations. Since the Eisenhower administration, wrote Green in 1984, "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 the tactical issues."[19]
A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but former US Senator James Abourezk (D-South Dakota) echoed Green's words in a speech before the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee last June:
That is the state of American politics today. The Israeli lobby has put together so much money power that we are daily witnessing US senators and representatives bowing down low to Israel and its US lobby.
Make no mistake. 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 at least $6 billion flows from the American Treasury to Israel each year. That money, plus the political support the US gives Israel at the United Nations, is what allows Israel to conduct criminal operations in Palestine with impunity."[20]
That is a reality that has been repeated many times in many forms by ex-members of Congress, usually speaking off the record. It is the reality that Chomsky and the left prefer to ignore. The problem is not so much that Chomsky has been wrong. He has, after all, been right on many other things, particularly in describing the ways in which the media manipulates the public consciousness to serve the interests of the state.[21] However, by explaining US support for Israel simply as a component of those interests, and ignoring the influence of the Israel lobby in determining that component, he appears to have made a major error that has had measurable consequences. By accepting Chomsky's analysis, the Palestinian solidarity movement has failed to take the only political step that might have weakened the hold of Israel on Congress and the American electorate, namely, by challenging the billions of dollars in aid and tax breaks that the US provides Israel on an annual basis.
The questions that beg asking are why his argument has been so eagerly accepted by the movement and why the contrary position put forth by people of considerable stature such as Edward Said, Ed Herman, Uri Avnery and, more recently, Alexander Cockburn, has been ignored. There appear to be several reasons.
The people who make up the movement, Jews and non-Jews alike, have embraced Chomsky's position because it is the message they want to hear; not feeling obligated to "blame the Jews"is reassuring. The fear of either provoking anti-Semitism or being called an anti-Semite (or a self- hating Jew), has become so ingrained into our culture and body politic that no one, including Chomsky or Zunes, is immune. This is reinforced by constant reminders of the Jewish Holocaust that, by no accident, appear in the movies and in major news media on a regular basis. Chomsky, in particular, has been heavily criticized by the Jewish establishment for decades for his criticism of Israeli policies, even to the point of being "excommunicated,"a distinction he shares with the late Hannah Arendt. It may be fair to assume that at some level this history influences Chomsky's analysis. But the problems of the movement go beyond the fear of invoking anti-Semitism, as Chomsky is aware and correctly noted in The Fateful Triangle.:
[T]he American left and pacificist groups, apart from fringe elements, have quite generally been extremely supportive of Israel (contrary to many baseless allegations), some passionately so, and have turned a blind eye to practices that they would be quick to denounce elsewhere.[22]
The issue of US aid to Israel provides a clear example. During the Reagan era, there was a major effort launched by the anti-intervention movement to block a $15 million annual appropriation destined for the Nicaraguan contras. People across the country were urged to call their Congressional representatives and get them to vote against the measure. That effort was not only successful, it forced the administration to engage in what became known as Contragate.
At the time, Israel was receiving the equivalent of that much money on a daily basis, without a whimper from the movement. Now, that amount "officially"is about $10 million a day and yet no major campaign has ever been launched to stem that flow or even call the public's attention to it. When attempts were made they were stymied by the opposition of such key players (at the time) as the American Friends Service Committee, which was anxious, apparently, not to alienate major Jewish contributors. (Recent efforts initiated on the internet to "suspend"military aid - but not economic - until Israel ends the occupation have gone nowhere.)
The slogans that have been advanced by various sectors of the Palestinian solidarity movement, such as "End the Occupation,""End Israeli Apartheid,""Zionism Equals Racism,"or "Two States for Two Peoples,"while addressing key issues of the conflict, assume a level of awareness on the part of the American people for which no evidence exists. Concern for where their tax dollars are going, particularly at a time of massive cutbacks in social programs, certainly would have greater resonance among voters. Initiating a serious campaign to halt aid, however, would require focusing on the role of Congress and recognition of the power of the Israel lobby.
Chomsky's evaluation of Israel's position in the Middle East admittedly contains elements of truth, but nothing sufficient to explain what former Undersecretary of State George Ball described as America's "passionate attachment"to the Jewish state.[23] However, his attempt to portray the US-Israel relationship as mirroring that of Washington's relations to its client regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, has no basis in reality.
US involvement in Central America was fairly simple. Arms and training were supplied to military dictatorships in order for their armies and their death squads to suppress the desires of their own citizens for land, civil rights and economic justice, all of which would undermine US corporate interests. This was quite transparent. Does Israel fit into that category? Obviously not. Whatever one may say about Israel, its Jewish majority, at least, enjoys democratic rights.
Also, there were no Salvadoran, Nicaraguan or Guatemalan lobbies of any consequence in Washington to lavish millions of dollars wooing or intimidating members of Congress; no one in the House or Senate from any of those client countries with possible dual- loyalties approving multi-billion dollar appropriations on an annual basis; none owning major television networks, radio stations, newspapers or movie studios, and no trade unions or state pension funds investing billions of dollars in their respective economies. The closest thing in the category of national lobbies is that of Miami's Cuban exiles, whose existence and power the left is willing to acknowledge, even though its political clout is miniscule compared to that of Israel's supporters.
What about Chomsky's assertion that Israel is America's cop-on-the-beat in the Middle East? There is, as yet, no record of a single Israeli soldier shedding a drop of blood in behalf of US interests, and there is little likelihood one will be asked to do so in the future. When US presidents have believed that a cop was necessary in the region, US troops were ordered to do the job.
When President Eisenhower believed that US interests were threatened in Lebanon in 1958, he sent in the Marines. In 1991, as mentioned, President Bush not only told Israel to sit on the sidelines, he further angered its military by refusing to allow then Defense Sectretary Dick Cheney to give the Israeli air force the coordinates it demanded in order to take to the air in response to Iraq's Scud attacks. This left the Israeli pilots literally sitting in their planes, waiting for information that never came.[24]
What Chomsky offers as proof of Israel's role as a US gendarme was the warning that Israel gave Syria not to intervene in King Hussein's war on the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Jordan in September 1970.
Clearly this was done primarily to protect Israel's interests. That it also served Washington's agenda was a secondary consideration. For Chomsky, it was "another important service"for the US.[25] What Chomsky may not be aware of is another reason that Syria failed to come to the rescue of the Palestinians at the time:
The commander of the Syrian air force, Hafez Al-Assad, had shown little sympathy with the Palestinian cause and was critical of the friendly relations that the PLO enjoyed with the Syrian government under President Atassi. When King Hussein launched his attack, Assad kept his planes on the ground.
Three months later, he staged a coup and installed himself as president. Among his first acts was the imprisonment of hundreds of Palestinians and their Syrian supporters. He then proceeded to gut the Syrian sponsored militia, Al-Saika, and eliminate the funds that Syria had been sending to Palestinian militia groups. In the ensuing years, Assad allowed groups opposed to Yasser Arafat to maintain offices and a radio station in Damascus, but little else. A year after Israel's invasion of Lebanon, he sponsored a short, but bloody intra-Palestinian civil war in Northern Lebanon. This is history that has fallen through the cracks.
How much the presence of Israel has intimidated its weaker Arab neighbors from endangering US interests is at best a matter of conjecture. Clearly, Israel's presence has been used by these reactionary regimes, most of them US allies, as an excuse for suppressing internal opposition movements. (One might argue that the CIA's involvement in the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, and Abdel Karim Kassem in Iraq in 1963, had more of an impact on crushing progressive movement in the region.)
What Israel has provided for the US to their mutual benefit have been a number of joint weapons programs, largely financed by US taxpayers and the use by the US of military equipment developed by Israeli technicians - not the least of which were the "plows"that were used to bury alive fleeing Iraqi soldiers in the first Gulf War. Since high levels of US aid preceded these weapons programs, it is hard to argue that they form the basis of US support.
Another argument advanced by Chomsky has been Israel's willingness to serve the US by taking on tasks which past US administrations were unable or unwilling to undertake due to specific US laws or public opinion, such as selling arms to unsavory regimes or training death squads.
That Israel did this at the request of the US is an open question. A comment by Israeli minister Yakov Meridor's comment in Ha'aretz, at the time, makes it unlikely:
We shall say to the Americans: Don't compete with us in Taiwan, don't compete with us in South Africa, don't compete with us in the Caribbean area, or in other areas in which we can sell weapons directly and where you can't operate in the open. Give us the opportunity to do this and trust us with the sales of ammunition and hardware. [26]
In fact, there was no time that the US stopped training death squads in Latin America, or providing arms, with the exception of Guatemala, where Carter halted US assistance because of its massive human rights violations, something that presented no problem for an Israeli military already steeped in such violations. In one situation we saw the reverse situation. Israel provided more than 80% of El Salvador's weapons before the US moved in.
As for Israel's trade and joint arms projects, including the development of nuclear weaponry, with South Africa, that was a natural alliance: two societies that had usurped someone else's land and saw themselves in the same position, "a civilized people surrounded by threatening savages."The relationship became so close that South Africa's Sun City became the resort of choice for vacationing Israelis.
The reason that Israeli officials gave for selling these weapons, when questioned, was that it was the only way that Israel could keep its own arms industry functioning. Israel's sales of sophisticated weaponry to China has drawn criticism from several administrations, but this has been tempered by Congressional pressure.
What Israel did benefit from was a blanket of silence from the US anti-intervention movement and anti-apartheid movements, whose leadership was more comfortable criticizing US policies than those of Israel's. Whether their behavior was due to their willingness to put Israel's interests first, or whether they were concerned about provoking anti-Semitism, the result was the same.
A protest that I organized in 1985 against Israel's ties to apartheid South Africa, and its role as a US surrogate in Central America, provides a clear example of the problem. When I approached board members of the Nicaraguan Information Center (NIC) in San Francisco and asked for the group's endorsement of the protest,
I received no support. NIC was the main group in solidarity with the Sandinistas and, despite Israel's long and ugly history, first in aiding Somoza and, at the time of the protest, the contras, the board voted… well, they couldn't vote not to endorse, so they voted to make "no more endorsements,"a position they reversed soon after our rally. NIC's board was almost entirely Jewish.
I fared better with GNIB, the Guatemalan News and Information Bureau, but only after a considerable struggle. At the time, Israel was supplying 98% of the weaponry and all of the training to one of the most murderous regimes in modern times. One would think that an organization that claimed to be working in solidarity with the people of Guatemala would not only endorse the rally but be eager to participate.
Apparently, the GNIB board was deeply divided on the issue. Unwilling to accept another refusal, I harassed the board with phone calls until it voted to endorse. Oakland CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) endorsed. The San Francisco chapter declined. (A year earlier, when I had been quoted in the San Francisco Weekly criticizing the influence of the Israel lobby on the Democratic Party, officials from the chapter wrote a letter to the editor claiming that I was provoking "anti-Semitism.") The leading anti-apartheid organizations endorsed the protest but, again, after lengthy internal debate.
The protest had been organized in response to the refusal of the San Francisco-based Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice, (Mobe), a coalition of movement organizations, to include any mention of the Middle East among the demands that it was issuing for a march opposing South African apartheid and US intervention in Central America.
At an organizing meeting for the event, a handful of us asked that a plank calling for "No US Intervention in the Middle East"be added to the demands that had previously been decided. The vote was overwhelmingly against it. A Jewish trade unionist told us that "we could do more for the Palestinians by not mentioning them, than by mentioning them,"a strange response which mirrored what President Reagan was then saying about ending apartheid in South Africa. I was privately told later that if the Middle East was mentioned, "the unions would walk,"recognition of the strong support for Israel that exists among the labor bureaucracy, as well as the willingness of the movement to defer to it.
The timing of the Mobe's refusal was significant. Two and a half years earlier, Israel had invaded Lebanon and its troops still remained there as we met that evening. And yet, the leaders of the Mobe would not let Tina Naccache, a programmer for Berkeley's KPFA, the only Lebanese in the large union hall, speak in behalf of the demand.
Three years later, the Mobe scheduled another mass march. The Palestinians were in the first full year of their intifada, and it seemed appropriate that a statement calling for an end to Israeli occupation be added to the demands. The organizers, the same ones from 1985, had already decided on what they would be behind closed doors: "No US Intervention in Central America or the Caribbean; End US Support for South African Apartheid; Freeze and Reverse the Nuclear Arms Race; Jobs and Justice, Not War."
This time the Mobe took no chances and canceled a public meeting where our demand could be debated and voted on. An Emergency Coalition for Palestinian Rights was formed in response. A petition was drawn up and circulated supporting the demand. Close to 3,000 people signed it, including hundreds from the Palestinian community. The Mobe leadership finally agreed to one concession. On the back of its official flyer, where it would be invisible when posted on a wall or tree, was the following sentence:
Give peace a chance everywhere: The plight of the Palestinian people, as shown by the recent events in the West Bank and Gaza, remind us that we must support human rights everywhere. Let the nations of our world turn from building armies and death machines to spending their energy and resources on improving the quality of life - Peace, Jobs and Justice.
There was no mention of Israel or the atrocities its soldiers were committing. The flyer, put out by the unions ignored the subject completely.
Fast forward to February, 2002, when a new and smaller version of the Mobe met to plan a march and rally to oppose the US war on Afghanistan. There was a different cast of characters but they produced the same result. The argument was that what was needed was a "broad"coalition and raising the issue of Palestine would prevent that from happening.
The national movement to oppose the extension of the Iraq war has been no different. As in 1991, at the time of the Gulf War, there were competing large marches, separately organized but with overlapping participants. Despite their other political differences, what the organizers of both marches agreed on was that there would be no mention of the Israel-Palestine conflict in any of the protest literature, even though its connections to the situation in Iraq were being made at virtually every other demonstration taking place throughout the world. The movement's fear of alienating American Jews still takes precedence over defending the rights of Palestinians.
Last September, the slogan of "No War on Iraq - Justice for Palestine!"drew close to a half-million protesters to Trafalgar Square. The difference had been presciently expressed by a Native American leader during the first Intifada. "The problem with the movement,"he told me, "is that there are too many liberal Zionists."
If there is one event that exposed their influence over of the movement, it is what occurred in the streets of New York on June 12, 1982, when 800,000 people gathered in front of the United Nations to call for a ban on nuclear weapons. Six days earlier, on June 6th, Israel had launched a devastating invasion of Lebanon. Its goal was to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, then based in that country. Eighty thousand soldiers, backed by massive bombing from the air and from the sea were creating a level of death and destruction that dwarfed what Iraq would later do in Kuwait. Within a year there would be 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese dead and tens of thousands more wounded.
And what was the response that day in New York? In recognition of the suffering then taking place in his homeland, a Lebanese man was allowed to sit on the stage, but he would not be introduced; not allowed to say a word. Nor was the subject mentioned by any of the speakers. Israel and its lobby couldn't have asked for anything more.
Twenty-one years later, Ariel Sharon, the architect of that invasion, is Israel's Prime Minister, having been elected for the second time. As I write these lines, pro-Israel zealots within the Bush administration are about to savor their greatest triumph. After all, they have been the driving force for a war which they envision as the first stage in "redrawing the map of the Middle East,"with the US-Israel alliance at its fore. [27]
And the Left? Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a long-time activist with impeccable credentials, assured the Jewish weekly, Forward, that United for Peace and Justice, organizers of the February 15th anti-war rally in New York, "has done a great deal to make clear it is not involved in anti-Israel rhetoric. From the beginning there was nothing in United for Peace's statements that dealt at all with the Israel-Palestine issue."[28]
Notes
1. Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, South End Press, 1983, p. 13.
2. Roane Carey, Ed., The New Intifada, Verso, 2001, p. 6.
3. Stephen Zunes, Tinderbox, Common Courage Press, 2003, p. 163.
4. J. J. Goldberg, Jewish Power, Addison-Wesley, 1996.
5. Bill and Kathy Christison, "Too Many Smoking Guns to Ignore: Israel, American Jews, and the War on Iraq,"Counterpunch (online). http://www.counterpunch.org/christison01252003.html
6. J. J. Goldberg, ibid., p. 158.
7. ibid., p. 159.
8. University of Chicago, 1993, p. 1.
9. Footnote, The Nation, Feb. 10, 2003, p.13.
10. The Rogers Plan, introduced by Nixon's Secretary of State William Rogers was accepted by Egyptian President Gamal Nasser but turned down by Israel and the PLO, since at the time the Palestinians had dreams of returning to the entirety of what had been Palestine. Under the plan, the West Bank would have been returned to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt.
11. Ha'aretz, March 6, 1981.
12. Edward Tivnan, The Lobby, Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy, Simon & Schuster, 1988.
13. Z Magzine, December 1991.
14. Goldberg, op. cit.
15. Washington Jewish Week, March 22, 1990.
16. Washington Post, April 11, 2002.
17. New York Times, April 12, 2002.
18. International Herald Tribune, April 19, 2002.
19. Stephen Green, Taking Sides, America's Secret Relations with Militant Israel, William Morrow, 1984.
20. Al-Ahram, June 20-27, 2002.
21. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, 1988.
22. Chomsky, op. cit., p. 14.
23. George W. Ball and Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment, America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present, Norton, 1992.
24. Moshe Arens, Broken Covenant, Simon and Shuster, 1995, p. 162-175.
25. The New Intifada, p. 9.
26. Los Angeles Times and Financial Times, August 18, 1981.
27. Bill and Kathy Christison, op. cit.; Robert G. Kaiser, "Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy,"Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2003; p. A01
28. Forward, February 14, 2003
Jeffrey Blankfort is former editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin and has written extensively on the Israel-Palestine conflict. His photographs of the Anti-Vietnam War Movement and the Black Panthers have appeared in numerous books and magazines and are currently part of a show, "The Whole World is Watching,"He lives in San Francisco.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
US Presidential/Congressional Support for Zionism
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/11/08/us-presidential-congressional-support-of-zionism.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subj: J. Frank: Power of Pro Israeli Lobby
Date: 11/13/03 7:38:10 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: jblankfort
The actual numbers referred to in the following article on the Open Secrets chart are so far less than the reality of Israel lobby giving as to be mind boggling. Contributions from individuals last year on the chart was reported to be $4,225,399 and the total contributions of individuals and pro-Israel PACS was $8,415,200.
The truth is that one man, Haim Saban, the Egyptian-born Israeli-American gave $12.3 million last year by himself, followed by Fred Eychaner, with $7.5 million and Stephen Bing, $5 million. The money from all three went to the Democratic Party. Saban wrote one check for $7 million and the rest came afterward. These figures come from www.opensecrets.org when you look into the top donors from the Communications industry. Then go to the Finance industry. There is no other lobby that even seems to come close.
Jeff B
Ronald wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: Timothy Stinson
To: IntelligentMinds@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 11:05 PMSubject: [Al-Awda-media] Israel is Our Demise
Israel is Our Demise
by Josh FrankDissident Voice
October 4, 2003
It is well known that the pro-Israel lobby has been at the forefront in campaign contributions since the late 1980s. Buying access and influencing policy has been their forte. From Republicans to Democrats, pro-Zionist factions wield much power in Washington. The American Israel Affairs Committee (AIPAC- www.aipac.org) has been the most active of these forces; ranking in at number four on Fortune Magazine’s top ten most effectual lobbying groups in the US (www.fortune.com/fortune/power25). Although AIPAC has business partners on both sides of the aisle, Democrats reap the most benefits -- accepting over $20 million dollars more than the Republicans since 1990
(www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=Q05).
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Frank_Israel.htm | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 12:24 pm Post subject: BUSH MUST LIBERATE HIMSELF |
| BUSH MUST LIBERATE HIMSELF
by Paul Findley
Frustrated by Iraqi guerrillas who kill U.S. troops almost daily, sometimes with barbaric fury, President George W. Bush has ordered “Operation Iron Hammer,” heavy aerial bombing and tank assaults on guerrilla areas. It is a troubling echo of Israel’s bloody, failed attempt to stop resistance to its occupation of Palestine.
The rockets and one-ton bombs may kill a few Iraqi guerrillas and cause others to pull back and pause. They are also certain to kill and maim innocent civilians, level homes, turn neighborhoods into rubble, and permanently blight many lives. They create new outrage, not cooperation.
This new Iraqi carnage is piled alongside the simultaneous destruction and blighting of more American lives, an agonizing, spiraling toll that now reaches ten thousand. Ponder that grim statistic: ten thousand American service personnel killed or wounded since the war began last March.
U.S. policy in Iraq is a bloody mess, and it is getting worse. The president should ponder deeply—perhaps for the first time--why so many Iraqis, not just remnants of the Saddam regime, hate America. Burned in their memory are bitter grievances, past and present. Almost all Iraqis are glad Saddam Hussein is out of power, but many of them—the total may be a substantial majority--do not trust the U.S. government. Here are some of the reasons why:
> In the l980s--the height of Saddam’s cruel treatment of Kurds and other Iraqi citizens—the U.S. government served as the dictator’s silent, uncomplaining partner, helping him battle Iran by providing intelligence, critical military supplies, and food.
? At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi dissidents had a bitter experience with
the president’s father. President George Bush, Sr. publicly urged the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. This call for rebellion prompted a strong uprising, but it quickly ended when Bush refused support in any form. Saddam then used helicopter gun-ships to slaughter dissidents by the hundreds. He retained these lethal aircraft in a provision of the U.S.-approved armistice.
> Iraqis also remember that U.S. fighter planes enforced harsh sanctions for a decade after the Gulf War. This embargo led to immense civilian suffering, including the death of thousands of Iraqi infants from malnutrition and lack of medical services.
? Today, Iraqis are wary of President Bush Jr.’s motives and dependability.
Many doubt that his true objectives are, as he now states, establishing freedom and democracy in their country, or, as he earlier stated, destroying Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Aware that he ignored offers of conciliation from Saddam’s emissaries before the invasion, they believe he harbors dreams of an American empire and wanted the war, come what may.
> Their greatest complaint is Bush’s failure to make even the slightest move to throw off his Israeli albatross and end his dutiful support of Israel’s anti-Arab colonialism. Although he pays lip-service to statehood as a goal for the Palestinians, he has done nothing to stop Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s brutality of Palestinians: assassinations, military forays that leave vast death and destruction, high fences that confine Palestinians like cattle, and the steady usurpation of more Palestinian land.
Instead of distancing himself from Sharon, who heads the Arab hate list and who long ago helped make preemptive war standard Israeli procedure, President Bush calls him “a man of peace” and continues massive, unconditional support to Israel. This, of course, makes him fully complicit in the subjugation of Palestinian Arabs while, at the same time, trying to convince Iraqi Arabs next door that he offers them democracy and freedom.
The president deepened Iraqi concern when he summoned the prime minister’s architects of failure—of all people—for guidance on how to destroy Iraqi guerrillas and manage repressive devices like checkpoints. Consulting with Sharon’s assault team does not win Iraqi friends. Nor do his proposals for interim elections and constitutional procedures, all of which require U.S. approval. No wonder the leading Shiia leader calls them undemocratic. Such U.S. decisions lead Iraqis to wonder if the occupation will become neo-colonialism--indefinite U.S. control of Iraqi oil reserves, a U.S.-forced treaty that will keep Iraq from helping the Palestinians, and Israeli-style brutality.
What should be done? “Operation Iron Hammer” kills but does not pacify. Immediate withdrawal is unthinkable. It would leave the Iraqi people with no government and no leadership. Civil war would likely ensue, unsettling the entire region and triggering wider war. The United Nations is not constituted for a quick take-over.
The president’s best war decision is a political one. He must make a clean break from Israeli scofflaw behavior. It is the only decision that makes sense. He cannot reasonably expect Iraqis to believe U.S. forces offer true liberation until he liberates himself and his administration from Israeli colonialism.
If Bush has the will, he can easily free himself. And, in freeing himself, he will transform the grim scene in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East into bright promise. Any day he chooses, the president can instantly—without firing a shot--quiet guerrilla warfare in Iraq and anti-American protests throughout the world.
All he needs to do is inform Sharon that all aid will be suspended until Israel vacates the Arab territory Israeli forces seized in June 1967. U.S. aid is literally Israel’s lifeline, so the ultimatum would be electrifying evidence that the United States, at long last, will quit buckling to the pressures of Israel’s U.S. lobby and do what is right for Arabs and Muslims. If Bush acts, the Iraqi people will have reason to believe, for the first time, that the U.S. government truly opposes colonialism and will let them organize and run their own government.
The ultimatum to Israel would prompt worldwide rejoicing, not just among Iraqis and Palestinians. Opinion polls show that a large majority of Israelis, weary of the long, costly struggle to subjugate the Palestinians, would welcome the prospect of peaceful co-existence with an independent Palestine. The ultimatum would win strong support throughout America. An impressive foundation for Bush’s ultimatum already exists: The Arab league unanimously offered peace-for-withdrawal three years ago; four retired heads of Israeli intelligence urged full, unilateral withdrawal two months ago; and a similar plan called the Geneva Accords was announced last week by former officials of Israel and Palestine
It would also help Bush’s war on terrorism. By standing resolutely for justice for Palestinians, who are mostly Muslim, he would be acting forcefully to redress one of the principal grievances of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims against the U.S. government. Even Osama bin Laden, a professed Muslim who is believed to have masterminded the dreadful carnage of 9/11, has frequently cited the U.S. role in the devastation and humiliation of Palestinians as a major grievance.
At the very least, Bush’s wise and courageous stand would weaken the ranks of terrorism and strengthen moderate forces worldwide. -0-
-----------
Paul Findley, a Member of Congress for 22 years, is the author of They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby. He writes books and articles from his home in Jacksonville, Illinois, and lectures widely on international affairs. (11-20-03) | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 12:34 pm Post subject: Israel Firsters 'PSCM' and 'ABBA-ZION'..... |
| "PSCM" and 'ABBA-ZION" belong with these other Israel Firsters shown at these two URLs (to include Bush saluting the Israeli flag at the second URL):
http://www.nowarforisrael.com
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/02/12/Counterpunch_1.html
http://nogw.com/warforisrael.html
As former Republican Congressman Paul Findley also mentions in the third edition of his 'They Dare to Speak Out' book (which one can order at a discount by making an inquiry at www.wrmea.com ), the following conveys the motivation for why the USA is so hated for its vast financial support of Israel's brutal suppression of the Palestinians (as such contributed to the motivation for the tragic 9/11 attack, but Israel Firsters don't want US to know this fact):
The Real Cost of US Support for Israel: $3 Trillion
By Christopher Bollyn
http://www.wrmea.com/us_aid_to_israel/index.htm
While it is commonly reported that Israel officially receives some $3
billion every year in the form of economic aid from the U.S. government,
this figure is just the tip of the iceberg.
There are many billions of dollars more in hidden costs and economic losses
lurking beneath the surface. A recently published economic analysis has
concluded that U.S. support for the state of Israel has cost American
taxpayers nearly $3 trillion ($3 million millions) in 2002 dollars.
The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
$3 Trillion is a summary of economic research done by Thomas R.
Stauffer.
Stauffer's summary of the research was published in the June 2003
issue of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Stauffer is a Washington, D.C.-based engineer and economist who writes
and teaches about the economics of energy and the Middle East. Stauffer
has taught at Harvard University and Georgetown University's School of
Foreign Service.
Stauffer's findings were first presented at an October 2002
conference sponsored by the U.S. Army College and the University of Maine.
Stauffer's analysis is an estimate of the total cost to the U.S.
alone of instability and conflict in the region which emanates from the
core Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Total identifiable costs come to almost $3 trillion, Stauffer
says. About 60 percent, well over half, of those costs about $1.7
trillion arose from the U.S. defense of Israel, where most of that
amount has been incurred since 1973.
“Support for Israel comes to $1.8 trillion, including special trade
advantages, preferential contracts, or aid buried in other accounts. In
addition to the financial outlay, U.S. aid to Israel costs some 275,000
American jobs each year. The trade-aid imbalance alone with Israel of
between $6-10 billion costs about 125,000 American jobs every year,
Stauffer says.
The largest single element in the costs has been the series of
oil-supply crises that have accompanied the Israeli-Arab wars and the
construction of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. To date these have cost
the U.S. $1.5 trillion (2002 dollars), excluding the additional costs
incurred since 2001, Stauffer wrote.
The cost of supporting Israel increased drastically after the 1973
Israeli-Arab war. U.S. support for Israel during that war resulted in
additional costs
for the American taxpayer of between $750 billion and $1 trillion,
Stauffer
says.
When Israel was losing the war, President Richard Nixon stepped in to
supply
the Jewish state with U.S. weapons. Nixon’s intervention triggered
the Arab
oil embargo which Stauffer estimates cost the U.S. as much as $600
billion in
lost GDP and another $450 billion in higher oil import costs.
“The 1973 oil crisis, all in all, cost the U.S. economy no less than
$900
billion, and probably as much as $1,200 billion,” he says.
As a result of the oil embargo the United States created the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to “insulate Israel and the U.S. against the
wielding of a
future Arab ‘oil weapon.’” The billion-barrel SPR has cost U.S.
taxpayers $134
billion to date. According to an Oil Supply Guarantee, which former
Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger provided Israel in 1975, Israel gets “first
call”
on any oil available to the U.S. if Israel’s oil supply is stopped.
Stauffer’s $3 trillion figure is conservative as it does not include
the
increased costs incurred during the year-long buildup to the recent war
against
Iraq in which Israel played a significant, albeit covert, role. The
higher oil
prices that occurred as a result of the Anglo-American campaign against
Iraq
were absorbed by the consumers. The increase in oil prices provided a
huge bonus
for the leading oil companies such as British Petroleum and Shell, who
are
major oil producers as well as retailers. The major international oil
companies
recorded record profits for the first quarter of 2003.
The Washington Report seeks to “provide the American public with
balanced and
accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern
states.”
The monthly journal is known for keeping close tabs on the amount of
U.S.
taxpayer money that goes to Israel and how much pro-Israel money flows
back to
Members of Congress in the form of campaign aid.
The journal’s website, www.wrmea.com, has an up-to-date counter at
the top
that indicates how much official aid flows to Israel. While the counter
curren
tly stands at $88.2 billion, it only reflects the minimum, as it does
not
include the many hidden costs.
“The distinction is important, because the indirect or consequential
losses
suffered by the U.S. as a result of its blind support for Israel exceed
by many
times the substantial amount of direct aid to Israel,” Shirl McArthur
wrote
in the May 2003 issue of Washington Report.
McArthur’s article, “A Conservative Tally of Total Direct U.S. Aid
to
Israel: $97.5 Billion – and Counting” tallies the hidden costs,
such as interest
lost due to the early disbursement of aid to Israel and funds hidden in
other
accounts. For example, Israel received $5.45 billion in Defense
Department
funding of Israeli weapons projects through 2002, McArthur says.
Loans made to Israel by the U.S. government, like the recently awarded
$9
billion, invariably wind up being paid by the American taxpayer. A
recent
Congressional Research Service report indicates that Israel has
received $42 billion
in waived loans. “Therefore, it is reasonable to consider all
government loans
to Israel the same as grants,” McArthur says.
Support for Israel has cost America dearly – well over than $10,000
per
American – however the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been
extremely costly for
the entire world. According to Stauffer, the total bill for supporting
Israel
is two to four times higher than that for the U.S. alone – costing
the global
community an estimated $6 to $12 trillion.
If you would like to get on this mailing list, respond to this e-mail with the
comment "Zionists suck" in the header.
If you would like to get off it, respond to this e-mail with the
comment "Zionists are God's chosen people" in the header.
See excepts from the video shocking the nation, "Zionist War Crimes: The Case
for the Prosecution." 56K (requires Windows Media Player, usually installed in
most PCs):
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=329340&group=webcast
(NOTE: If you have trouble with the Windows Media Video file that is linked
from the above web page, right-click on it and choose "Save target as" from the
options available. You can then download it and avoid any buffering problems.)
Let Israel do the dirty work in Iraq
by James Joseph Sanchez
Seattle
CONSIDERING the increasingly desperate situation the under-sized American
military faces in Iraq, and the reluctance of countries thousands of miles
from Iraq to send troops there, there is one obvious solution to the problem
of the shortage of troops in Iraq. That solution is bringing Israeli troops
into Iraq.
Israel has almost 4,000 tanks (more than the United States), and also has
more divisions than the United States. Israel also has the third largest
nuclear arsenal in the world, with over 600 nuclear weapons.
The American army was never intended to conduct long-term colonial
occupations, but the Israeli army has decades of experience in:-
-- shooting civilians,
-- demolishing houses,
-- attacking slums with helicopter gunships,
-- burning textbooks, etc.
During the old "Breaking of Bones" program to defeat the First Intifadah,
Israeli soldiers CRUSHED THE HANDS OF 80,000 PALESTINIAN BOYS: I am not
sure that American soldiers would obey such orders.
Israeli torturers have decades of experience in interrogation of Arabs:
American soldiers are reluctant to obey illegal orders to torture prisoners.
American troops have little experience in permanent repression of civilian
populations, but this is the great strength of the Israeli army.
I have seen pictures of Israeli tanks being confronted by Palestinian 8-year
old terrorist boys with stones, and you can bet that the men in those tanks
are not afraid. Israelis see and kill these boys fearlessly; American troops
persist in seeing such boys as, well, boys.
And, if the American military is defeated in Iraq, the RPGs and car bombs
of the Iraqi Mujahideen will not be turned on Japan, Poland, or Honduras
("coalition" partners), but rather on the Israeli settlements in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel has genuine security interests in the complete
crushing of Iraqi resistance to the Occupation, Japan has no security
interests in this war at all.
Indeed, the complete absence of genuine American security interests in Iraq
raises the question of why American troops are there at all.
The war in Iraq was staged to advance only Israeli interests: It is time that
the soldiers dying to build the Jewish empire were Jews, and not Americans.
Donkeys of Mass Destruction
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 24 November 2003
About a month into the Iraq invasion, Congress set aside $79 billion in funds
for the military. Recently, Bush requested another $87 billion because the
occupation was dragging on far longer, and was costing more in men and
materiel, than the rosy pre-war forecasts had indicated. In total, this comes
to $166 billion spent on Iraq by the Bush administration.
The actual numbers, while difficult to ascertain, are certain to be
significantly higher. Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus has
crunched the numbers, and states that the cost of this Iraq invasion exceeds
the inflation-adjusted costs of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the
Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and the Persian Gulf War
combined.
Why did we do this? We did this because George W. Bush and the members of his
administration argued, day after day, week after week, month after month, that
Iraq was in possession of massive stores of mass destruction weapons that would
be delivered to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda for use against the United States.
The total amount of weapons held by Iraq, according to the administration, is
described on a WhiteHouse.gov webpage entitled 'Disarm Saddam Hussein.
According to this page, Iraq possessed 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters
of botulinum toxin, 1,000,000 pounds of sarin, mustard and VX gas, 30,000
munitions to deliver these agents, plus mobile biological weapons labs, uranium
from Niger to produce nuclear bombs, along with deep and abiding al Qaeda
connections.
"Simply stated," said Dick Cheney (Vice President) on August 26 2002, "there is
no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there," said Ari Fleischer (White
House Press Secretary) on January 9 2003.
"There is no doubt," said General Tommy Franks (Commander - Centcom - Cetral
Command, USA) on March 22 2003, "that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses
weapons of mass destruction."
"We know where they are," said Don Rumsfeld (Defence Secretary) on March 30
2003, later denying to the press that he ever said such a thing. "They are in
the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
"We have sources that tell us," said George W. Bush (US President) on February
8 2003, "that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use
chemical weapons."
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt,"
continued Bush on March 17 2003, "that the Iraq regime continues to possess and
conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
In his February 5 2003 speech to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin
Powell warned of the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist
network."
George W. Bush, on March 18, had delivered a letter to Congress explicitly
indicating that an attack on Iraq was an attack upon those who perpetrated
September 11. Paragraph two reads, "The use of armed force against Iraq is
consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the
necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations,
including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized,
committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."
On May 1 2003, when he announced the end of "major combat operations," Bush
proclaimed, "We've removed an ally of Al Qaeda."
It is now the 24th of November. Some 9,000 American soldiers have been wounded
in Iraq, according to an official Pentagon count. Well over 400 American
soldiers have died. The occupation itself has almost completely bogged down.
Even the 'safe' areas in northern Iraq have seen a startling upsurge in
violence. The two Blackhawks recently downed, to the tune of 17 Americans
killed, were attacked in northern Iraq. Two soldiers had their throats cut in
northern Iraq today, with a third killed by a bomb outside Baghdad.
The uranium claims were based on crudely forged documents, the mobile labs were
weather balloon launching platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the 1980s,
the al Qaeda claims are utterly impossible to establish as true, any connection
between Iraq and September 11 was publicly denied by George W. Bush himself
recently, and the mass destruction weapons are utterly and completely absent.
Despite the fact that Iraq lacks any aspect of the formidable arsenal described
by the Bush administration, fighters against the American occupation have
managed to slay and maim our troops with sharp and deadly accuracy.
How? How are people without the vast amounts of money, weapons and training
enjoyed by American forces succeeding in killing and wounding so many of our
soldiers? The answer lies in the same two ingredients that brought defeat to
America on bicycles and oxen and human backs down the length of the Ho Chi Mihn
Trail: Ingenuity and will.
The Palestine Hotel and the Iraq Oil Ministry building came under rocket attack
last week. The missiles were not fired by Iraqi men, but from the backs of
donkey carts. The fuses to remotely launch these missiles were fashioned out of
car batteries. The missiles struck home, gravely wounding a civilian employee
of the American petroleum company Halliburton.
Halliburton had fashioned huge siege walls to protect the Palestine Hotel, an
interesting fact in and of itself. One is forced to wonder exactly how a
company whose purpose is to pull oil out of the ground came to be so adept at
preparing military-style defenses. More interesting, though, is the fact that
those defenses were defeated by donkeys. Not anthrax, not botulinum toxin, not
VX gas, not with any of the 30,000 munitions Bush claims Iraq possessed, not
with a nuclear bomb fashioned with material from Niger, and not with the help
of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Halliburton was attacked by pack mules.
Americans continue to die, the cost of this invasion continues to skyrocket,
and all of the dire threats we were told of do not, in any way, exist. In
short, the donkeys are kicking our ass.
-------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York
Times and international best-selling author of three books - "War On Iraq,"
available from Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available
from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in
August from Context Books.
© : t r u t h o u t 2003
Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):
Free Americans Resisting the Fourth Reich on Behalf of All Species.
NOTE: Thanks to Bill Smirnow for this. -- kl, pp
A Time for Truth on DU
Steven Rosenfeld, senior editor
TomPaine.com Dec 21 2003
http://www.tompaine.com
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9652
The health impacts of depleted uranium (DU)
munitions on soldiers who
served in the Iraq and the Persian Gulf Wars will
be studied by
Congress' | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 12:40 pm Post subject: Zionist Theses and Anti-Theses |
| CounterPunch.org
November 9, 2002
Political Geography
Zionist Theses and Anti-Theses
by M. SHAHID ALAM
A Martian political delegation to our planet arriving in 1948 remarked how lucky they were to have come at a time when Earth's political geography was undergoing a sea change.
They observed that the two major wars in the three previous decades were behind some of this ferment. Britain and France, the two great colonial powers, were being pushed aside by two new ones, United States and the Soviet Union. They observed the beginnings of another historic process. Taking advantage of the capitalist wars, the colonized peoples of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean were ratcheting their own independence movements. The age of colonial empires and settler colonies was coming to a close. Or so it seemed.
In addition to these broad-brush changes, the Martians noted some anomalous details. They wrote of events in the Levant-in Palestine to be precise-that ran contrary to the global trends away from colonial empires and settler-colonization. In particular, they reported the creation in May 1948 of Israel, a Jewish state, in Palestine; it was the culmination of a colonial-settler movement launched at Basle in 1897 by the powerful but despised Jews of Europe. This new state had expelled, both before and after its creation, some 800,000 Palestinians from their homes.
One of the Martian observers, in a dissenting note to the delegation's re-port, observed that the creation of Israel did not bode well for Earthlings. In a language that appeared to be taken from Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State written in 1895, he wrote that "the existence of this rampart of Europe against Asia, this outpost of Western civilization, could only be guaranteed by Europe." He predicted that since this new state had been created abnormally, in opposition to the new trends in global morality, it would face the greatest difficulty in securing the moral support of the publics in United States and Europe.
On this last point, our Martian observer was in error. He seemed to lack a clear understanding of the forces that had chaperoned this new state into existence. First, there was the longstanding desire of many Westerners to be rid of the Jews from their midst. [1] Second, most Westerners nursed an even stronger antipathy towards the Ishmaelites-variously known as Saracens, Hagarites, Mahometans and Arabs-the other branch of the Semitic family. Third, there was the guilt many Westerners felt over the Holocaust. Ironically, all these forces contributed to the founding of Israel. In creating Israel, the West could reduce its own Jewish population, assuage its guilt over the Holocaust, and oppose the Israelites against the Ishmaelites. The creation of Israel was one project on which the Jews and Western anti-Semites could cooperate heartily.
Our Martian observer also had little notion of the resources commanded by the Jews. Already, by the sixteenth century, the Jews had established themselves as Europe's leading bankers, since the Church banned Christians from usurious activities. In turn, the European Enlightenment brought equal rights for all citizens, allowing Jews to move out of the ghettoes, and rise to distinction in various professions. Far from being an "inferior race"-as the Goyims claimed-the Jews demonstrated that they had enormous gifts. In his book, The Jewish State (London: H. Pordes, 1967, 16), Theodor Herzl, explains that this was the result of "Jew-baiting" which had "merely stripped off our weaklings; the strong among us were invariably true to their race when persecution broke out against them."
The moral case for Israel succeeded like a Spielberg blockbuster, a success produced by Jewish power and ingenuity, working to take advantage of Islamophobia, Holocaust guilt, and anti-Semitism. In hundreds of movies, television serials, books, magazines, and newspapers, the Zionists constructed a narrative of Jewish rights to Israel, Israel's distinctiveness, Israeli achievements, the victimization of Israel by its barbaric Arab neighbors, and an Islamic hatred of all things Western (chiefly Israel). Those who remained skeptical of this narrative were neutralized by more direct methods, including denial of tenure, defeat at the ballot, smear campaigns, and, occasionally, worse. [2] For too long, these campaigns of persuasion and coercion have represented Israel as a small, beleaguered but heroic country, defending Western values against the onslaught of Islamic vandals. Next to the creation of Israel, the launching of this narrative has been the greatest triumph of the Zionist movement.
Is it then foolhardy to oppose this political juggernaut? One might answer with Noam Chomsky (Milan Rai, Chomsky's Politics, 1995, 50) who was speaking about the media in United States, that "Any system that's based on lying and deceit is inherently unstable." The Zionist narrative about Israel too is unstable. It is unstable because it is founded on egregious lies that strain our credulity; it is unstable because the Palestinians have refused to make a quiet exit; it is unstable because Israeli repression escalates as it contends with Palestinian resistance; it is unstable because Israel contains the dynamics that pushes the world towards a clash of civilizations. It is all too obvious that as the Palestinian resistance rises, Israel has been seeking to draw United States directly into its war with the Arabs.
It is scarcely surprising then if the hegemonic Zionist narrative has begun to fray at the edges even in these United States. One visible sign of this is the movement to divest from Israel, which began some two years ago at UC Berkeley, and has already spread to more than forty campuses nationwide. In addition, there are indications that the growing anti-war movement is linking its opposition to the war on Iraq to justice for Palestinians. In Western Europe, the Zionist narrative has fared worse. A survey of recent opinion polls indicates that there has already occurred a quite significant shift in European sympathies towards the Palestinians. [3] A survey of Britain's leading writers, conducted by the Independent in October 2002, found that about half of the thirty-five writers see greater justice on the Palestinian side, only three on the Israeli side, and several of the uncommitted writers expressed strong sympathy for the Palestinians in their comments. [4]
All of this suggests that the time is ripe for examining again, case by case, some of the leading Zionist theses of the past century. More than ever before, American audiences are perplexed by the dominant narratives about Israel, the sources of 9-11, and the inevitable clash of civilizations. We are at a turning point of history, for better or worse. If we can unravel the fabric of lies woven over the past century, we can perhaps nudge this historical turning point just a little bit towards better outcomes.
Promised by God
According to this thesis, the Jews have a legal right to Palestine because God, in the Torah, promised it to Abraham and his descendents some four thousand years ago.
There is one slight problem with this thesis. It has never been established in any system of laws that a religious document, purporting to record statements made by God, could form the basis of legally enforceable claims to property in this world. Imagine what would happen if courts began to accept individual or collective claims to land, buildings, rivers, and mountains that were backed by divine promises. Saddam Hussein might claim that he had a dream in his youth, which he had never revealed before, in which God had chosen the Iraqis to inherit the entire United States.
Apart from the legal questions, it would be a little hard proving that European Jews, those who demanded the right to emigrate to Palestine, were in fact descended from Abraham. Even the world's leading geneticists would feel challenged, trying to establish a connection between a present population and a putative ancestor whose existence has never been established historically. What if this connection was tenuous, or a stronger connection was discovered between Abraham and the Arabs?
A Historical Connection
More secular Zionists pressed their claims on the basis of a historical connection to Palestine. The historical connection is valid, but it will not support Zionist claims.
It is worth pointing out that the historical connection ended some two thousand years ago, when the overwhelming majority of Jews left Pales-tine for other destinations, mostly in the Mediterranean world. In addition, even during the few centuries when Jews had political dominion over Palestine, they were not its only inhabitants. But these are only minor problems.
The real problem with this thesis is that claims of a historical connection, quite ancient in this case, cannot be used to justify present claims to territory. If this is accepted as a valid principle for appropriating territory, we should all start by vacating United States, since the Indians have a historical connection to this land that is quite a bit weightier than any Jewish connection to Palestine. The Indians had a connection to United States that was exclusive until the 1600s, and spanned some twenty thousand years.
A Distinct People
The Jews are a 'distinct' people, and, hence, they must have a state of their own. In this case, it does not matter where; it could be in Argentina, Uganda, or Palestine.
This claim is fraught with difficulties. The Jews were a distinct people some two thousand years ago when they inhabited a single territory, shared the same faith, spoke a common language, and shared the same traditions. But since their dispersal, the Jews have been divided into many distinct Jewish communities living amongst gentiles, blending with their hosts through marriages, and creating new Jewish communities through conversions. Over centuries, these Jewish communities grew apart from each other, racially, culturally, and even in terms of their religious life. How much was there in common between the Jews of Russia, Morocco, Iran and Ethiopia, that could define them as a 'distinct' people?
Another difficulty with this thesis lies in its unstated second premise. It assumes that all distinct peoples have a state of their own. This is patently incorrect. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of distinct peoples-with distinct languages, cultures, religions, and lineages-through out the world who do not have a state of their own. In addition, most of these distinct peoples have a much stronger claim to statehood than the Jews since they constitute a majority in the areas they inhabit.
One encounters the greatest difficulty in this argument when the demand for a state arises from a 'people,' as in the case of the Jews, who do not constitute a majority in any of the areas they inhabit. In the event, such a people can establish their own state only by conquering another people and/or expelling them. Indeed, that is how the Jews established the state of Israel in Palestine, by invading it under the cover of the British mandate, and, then, expelling the great majority of the Palestinians.
Many Arab States
The Arabs already have several states of their own. If they were not motivated by anti-Semitism, they would not object to the creation of the only Jewish state. Instead, they would welcome and resettle the Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel.
This is a racist argument. It assumes that the Jewish need for a state has moral precedence over the rights of Palestinians to their own homes, their history, their ancestral lands, their towns and villages. It blames the Arabs for not showing proper deference towards the desire of the Jews for their own state, a state that would be established solely at the cost of the Arab peoples.
The Europeans too have many states-in fact many more than the Ar-abs-but would they agree to give up one of their states to create a state for some truly distinct people living in the Middle East-say, the Kurds-who are without a state of their own?
Israel Attacked in 1948
In order to paint Israel as the victim, the Zionist narrative claims that Arab armies from Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel the day after it was created on May 14, 1948.
Were the Arabs attacking an established state with a moral, legal and historical right to Palestine, or were they merely defending themselves-their lands, their homes, their historical rights-against a foreign occupation supported successively by two imperialist powers, Britain and United States?
The Zionist aggression against the Arabs had been set in motion well be-fore 1948. At the First Zionist Congress, convened at Basle in 1897, the Zionists openly declared that their aim "is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law." By "public law" they meant the consent and support of Britain, the leading imperialist power at the time. In his diary, the same year, Theodor Herzl (The Jewish State, 4-5) wrote: "At Basle I founded the Jewish State." In 1917, exactly twenty years later, the British gave the Zionists the imperialist support they needed. Later, the same year, once the British forces had occupied Palestine, the Zionist agencies began setting up the civilian, security, and military infrastructure for the emergence of a Jewish state in Palestine. And most ominously, Palestine was opened up to Jewish immigration. The Zionist invasion of the Arab heartland had begun.
When the British wavered in their commitment to the Zionist enterprise, especially during the Second World War, they were replaced by United States, the new hegemonic power. United States threw its weight behind the Zionist project, and pushed the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state. Although the Jews in 1948 were still only a third of the population and owned only 6 percent of the land, the UN partition plan gave the new state 55 percent of the land, which included the best agricultural lands, most of the coastline, and access to the Gulf of Aqaba. Thanks to United States, the Jewish invasion of Palestine now carried the imprimatur of international law.
Should the Arabs, including the Palestinians, have acquiesced to an inva-sion of their lands merely because it had been sanctified by United States? One might well ask, what would the Americans have done if the UN-in a world in which Japan had won the Second World War-had first allowed unlimited immigration of Jews into Massachusetts, and then authorized its partition to create a Jewish state of Israel in 55 percent of Massachusetts? In 1948, the Arabs had done what I have no doubt the Americans would have done: they defended themselves against an alien invasion.
Only Democracy
The Zionists repeat ad nauseum that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. This happens every time the discussion turns to some egregious Israeli violation of human rights.
This mantra serves several useful purposes. Its objective is to remind Western audiences of their affinity to Israel. 'Democracy' is a code word for Western. In claiming that Israel is a democracy-and not any of the Arab countries-the Zionists are affirming that Israel is a Western country, it is one of us, it belongs to the Western family of nations. Therefore, go easy on us, because we are fighting your battles against those Arab barbarians. There is also the sense that if Israel is a democracy then it can do no wrong. As a democracy, Israel represents a higher civilization, which cannot engage in gratuitous violence against Palestinians. Finally, this seeks to convey the impression of Israel as a solitary democracy, beleaguered by, and heroically doing battle against those brutal Arab dictatorships.
But is Israel really a democracy? This depends on what are the boundaries of Israel. Israel is the only country in the world that has never declared or demarcated its borders. And for thirty-five years now, since the 1967 war, its undeclared borders have included the West Bank and Gaza together with their three million Palestinian inhabitants. Israel has been building illegal settlements in these territories since 1967, which did not stop even after the 1993 Oslo Accord. The expanding, armed Jewish settlements are proof positive that Israel never planned to give up these territories. In other words, the true borders of Israel encompass three million Palestinians who have no political and very few civil rights within these de facto borders. Is Israel then a democracy? Reverend Desmond Tutu, a leading opponent of South African apartheid, prefers to describe it as an apartheid society similar to the one that existed in his own country for more than forty years.
A Beleaguered State
The Zionists deflect criticism from Israel by portraying it as a small country-a lamb amongst lions-whose very existence is threatened by hostile Arab armies. This image is hardly supportable.
Israel is a small country that packs a lot of military strength. Just consider the wars this country has waged against its neighbors. In the 1948-49 war, Israel fielded an army that was stronger and better equipped than all the Arab armies on the war front. As a result, Israel expanded its territory to 78 percent of historical Palestine, well beyond the 55 percent awarded by the UN Partition Plan. On October 29 1956, Israel invaded Egypt, in concert with Britain and France, and occupied all of Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Intense American pressure forced their withdrawal in March 1957. In June 1967, Israel launched a 'pre-emptive' war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and in less than six days occupied Sinai, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and West Bank. Only Sinai has been vacated so far. In March 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon, penetrating as far as ten miles into Lebanese territory, but withdrew in June of the same year. In June 1981, Israel launched an attack against Iraq to destroy a nuclear reactor under construction near Baghdad. Israel invaded Lebanon again in June 1982, advancing up to Beirut, and remained in occupation of parts of Southern Lebanon till May 2000. Is this the record of a small country, beleaguered, threatened by its neighbors?
How does one explain this paradox-a small country with such awesome offen-sive capability? Israel was conceived by its founding father, Theodor Herzl (The Jewish State, 30), as a "rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism." It was clear from the outset that Israel would be a praetorian state, an armed encampment, with weapons supplied by Europe and United States. According to a conservative estimate, Israel has received to date some 95 billion dollars of American economic assistance. [5] It has used this largesse mostly to buy military hardware, the latest in the American arsenal, occasionally even before it is available to the American military. Israel has drawn, and continues to draw, upon the world's most sophisticated pool of manpower-the Jewry of United States, Europe, and Russia. As if all this were not enough, this lamb amongst lions has the power to bring doom upon its Arab neighbors. It is the only country in the region with an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
How could the Arabs, backward, still reeling under the impact of colonialism, divided, their strength sapped, their development blocked by archaic monarchies, match the power of a messianic but modern state, wielding the power of the most advanced segment of core capital?
Coda
A Martian political delegation returning to Earth in 2002 would observe how an anomalous detail from 1948 had now grown to threaten world peace. They might well credit a prescient ancestor who had foreseen all this at the very beginning.
That anomalous detail was the creation of Israel, an alien state implanted, with help from two successive imperialist powers, in the Islamic heartland. This was not a normal state. It was an imperialist creation, a colonial-settler enterprise launched in the twentieth century. Like all such enterprises before, it could only be implemented through ethnic cleansing, or it would have to construct an apartheid state-with the indigenous Palestinians tolerated as a class of disenfranchised workers. The ethnic cleansing was enforced during Israel's creation, and later, in 1967, when Israel expanded to include another three million Palestinians, it turned into an apartheid, more brutal than the one dismantled in South Africa.
After the Oslo Accord of 1993, it appeared that the Israeli apartheid was going to work. The PLO recognized the state of Israel within 1967 borders, thereby conceding the right of Israel to 78 percent of historic Palestine. In a delusional state of mind, Yaser Arafat, the PLO chairman, had convinced himself that he could have the remaining 22 percent, and run it, not as a Bantustan, but as a state. The Israelis had different plans. This was clear to all but the purblind from Israel's ongoing-and accelerated-settlement building activity, in violation of the Oslo Accord itself. But this did not disturb Arafat's delusion; he was getting quite comfortable with the policing authority over his Bantustans. This delusion would not last. If Arafat was to retain leadership of the Palestinian movement, he would have to show more grit, which he did at Camp David by rejecting the Israeli offer of Bantustans. And that led to the second, bloodier Intifada.
Many Israelis-perhaps a majority-are now looking at their second preferred option. They are openly talking about a third, more massive round of ethnic cleansing that will get rid of all Palestinians, even those within Israel's 1967 borders. This will be the final solution of Israel's demographic problem. In the global conditions created by 9-11, when the Bush cabal openly embrace Israel's extremist agenda, this solution is gaining credibility. This cleansing will be launched in the fog of the war against Iraq. Two destinations for the cleansed Palestinians-at least, those who survive the cleansing-are being proposed. One is Jordan, whose King would be 'transferred' to another kingdom carved out of Saudi Arabia. The second favored site is the deserts of Iraq. The C-130 Transports are ready.
I am sure that even as these plans for ethnic cleansing are being developed, and their logistics worked out, there are others-in the scholarly branch of the Zionist enterprise-who are developing new theses to explain, justify, and morally validate this new demographic adjustment in the Middle East as another victory for Western civilization and, of course, world peace. I can imagine a conclave, consisting of Bernard Lewis, Thomas Friedman and Daniel Pipes-assisted by many lesser lights-vigorously debating the merits of the new Zionist theses that will sustain Israel through another millennium of hegemony over the Arab world.
Footnotes:
[1] Ironically, Sir James Balfour, one of the leading architects of the new state, in an earlier incarnation--as British prime minister-had introduced a bill to limit Jewish immigration into Britain. Ian J. Bickerton and Carla L. Klausner, Arab-Israeli Conflict NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1998): 40.
[2] Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1985).
[3] Richard Curtiss, "Support for Palestinians Growing," The Palestine Chronicle, July 26, 2002.
[4] The Independent, October 9, 2002.
[5] http://www.wrmea.com/html/usaidtoisrael0001.htm.
M. Shahid Alam teaches economics at Northeastern University, Boston. His re-cent book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave (2000). The author may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
Copyright: M. Shahid Alam | | | | Top | | Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 5:42 pm Post subject: Re: Zionist Theses and Anti-Theses |
| | Alpha wrote: |
Numerous articles, boggling the mind
|
Alpha, I mean the postings are too NUMEROUS. Way too much too read. Tell me what you think, write it out, the spamming is getting old. Get into the conversation brother!
TOP | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 1:14 am Post subject: Israel's Threat To World Peace |
| Subj: Israel's Threat To World Peace, by James David and Elite Israeli Troops refuse to serve in Palestinian Territories and oppress its people, by Molly Moore, Washington Post - REVOLTING!
Date: 12/25/03 2:28:50 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: josephanthony.yuja@tin.it
First the eloquent and compelling article by retired Brig. General James David on MMN on why ISRAEL's criminal apartheid policies against millions of Palestinians with Washington's support show utter contempt for Human Rights , morality and civilized behaviour/feelings everywhere and constitute the biggest threat to World Peace!!
General David's opinion is confirmed by the increasing number of senior Israeli officers and military people including recently Pilots, Elite troops who refuse to take part in missions and attacks that have nothing to do with their country's security (Washington Post article and Israeli Combatants' letter below) but whose wicked purpose (not so hidden anymore) is to further "dominate, expel, starve and humiliate" entire Palestinian Populations in the name of an expansionist and jewish only Israel on all of historical Palestine!! AJGY
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http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/3289/
Israel's Threat To World Peace
by James J. David
(Wednesday 24 December 2003)
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"Libya has never been a threat to the United States, and for that matter, Iraq was never a threat to the United States. The only threat Iraq or Libya posed was a threat to Israel's dominance of nuclear weapons in the Middle East."
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It seems that the entire world is praising American and British diplomacy for its efforts in convincing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in announcing that Libya would cease work on its programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. This is quite an accomplishment, considering that Libya has been listed for more than 17years by the U.S. State Department as one of the major countries supporting state terrorism.
As wonderful as this news may be, the United States needs to concentrate its efforts towards the real obstacle to world peace. Libya was no threat to world peace, and neither was Iraq. If the United States devotes as much effort in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as they did with Libya's weapons of mass destruction then maybe the American people could rest a bit easier.
According to a recent poll by the Anti-Defamation League, forty-two percent of the American people consider Israel as a threat to world peace. What's even more astonishing is the result of a recent European poll that found 59 percent of Europeans considered Israel as the major threat to world peace with the United States coming in second. Libya wasn't even mentioned.
Libya has never been a threat to the United States, and for that matter, Iraq was never a threat to the United States. The only threat Iraq or Libya posed was a threat to Israel's dominance of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
While Iraq failed to obey one UN resolution fast enough, Israel has steadfastly refused to obey not just one UN resolution, but an incredible 69 UN resolutions. Israel's actions have brought outrage from a majority of the UN's member states on 69 separate occasions. They have condemned Israel for the destruction of Arab villages, for the murder of innocent women and children, for making war on neighboring states, for refusing to withdraw from invaded and occupied territory, for killing protesting students, for killing civilians protesting being expelled from their homes, for a transcontinental bombing raid against Tunisia, and for dozens of other violations. And on 29 other occasions, UN resolutions with real teeth in them, calling for Israel to withdraw from stolen land and allow self-determination for the Palestinian people among other things, would have been adopted but were vetoed by the one dissenting vote of the United States. When it comes to the exercising of any kind of real power against those who violate UN resolutions, it seems that some countries are "more equal than others." Israel gets away not only with an expansionist foreign policy, but with repeatedly and endlessly violating the most elementary human rights of her subject peoples. Although Israel's PR men would have us believe that Israel is an island of Western values in the Middle East, the truth is quite the opposite. Not only does Israel violate the most fundalmental human rights laws but Israel is also guilty of assassination, kidnapping, expulsion, detention without charges or trial, land confiscation, and collective punishment - not to mention Israel's long-standing practice of espionage against the United States, its principal benefactor and the attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 American sailors and injured another 171.
Hardly a day goes by without the Israelis killing innocent Palestinian men, women, and children. Today they killed 8 Palestinians and wounded an estimated 300. Three days ago they killed a 6-year-old Palestinain boy just hours before a 13-year-old Palestinian boy died from a gunshot to his head. Twenty Palestinians have been killed in the past two weeks even though there hasn't been even one suicide bombing in over two months. And just last week the Israelis shot and killed a 21-year-old pregnant Palestinian mother trying to take her young son to the hospital. The Israelis have killed more than 500 women and children in the past 3 years. They have demolished more than 3000 Palestinian homes, causing more than 17,000 homeless, including 2300 children.
These stories never make the Headline News or the front pages of your local newspapers. You don't see President Bush or Condoleezza Rice out on the front lawn of the White House condemning the Israelis for killing innocent men, women, and especially children. The United States talks about a balanced Middle East Policy but just look at what we actually practice. We have one standard for the treatment of Israelis that is so high they cannot be criticized no matter what grisly crimes they commit. Then we have a second standard for the treatment of Palestinians that is so low we publicly finance their ethnic cleansing and torture.
President Bush may refer to Israeli policies as obstacles to peace but when it comes time for a vote in the U.N. Security Council on the illegal settlements, or the apartheid wall, or on assassinations, or any of the other Israeli criminal acts, the United States vetoes every move to condemn Israeli aggression. The United States could not even bring itself to condemn the Qana Lebanese refugee camp massacre of 1996 in which 103 innocent Lebanese civilians were killed. Is it any wonder the Arab world hates us? Is it any wonder America was attacked? How can the United States strive for world peace when Israel is allowed to do whatever it pleases? Supporting Israel may be politically correct, but the more we look the other way, the more violence there will be. American politicians jump on the Zionist bandwagon simply because they know that is where the power is. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Lobby and Jewish interest groups have effectively silenced any politician who is critical to Israeli policy.
Is the Israeli lobby and the Jewish control of our American politicians so powerful that our elected officials have lost all sense of moral right? Evidently, former President Jimmy Carter thought so when he was prompted to say, after he left office of course, that no politician dared to oppose its demands, because to do so would be "political suicide." They take our money, we fight and die in their wars, and, since both political parties are in their pocket, the American people don't have any choice in the matter. Sheilding Israel is an international embarrassment and places U.S. citizens in danger around the world, let alone danger to our own nation. It is time for the American people to face the fact that supporting Israel's criminal activities is the greatest threat facing America today. Disguising America's threat with anything else is nothing more than political spin and a decoy used as a means of savings one's career. Placing the blame on Israel would end one's political career.
The recent decision by Libya to abandon its weapons of mass destruction is just one step towards world peace. The bigger step would be for Israel to do the same. It is time for the United States to free itself from the grips of the Jewish lobby and to take a stand on the side of human mankind. It is time to use our foreign aid as leverage and to insist on Israel to abandon its weapons of mass destruction and to abide by International Law. It is time we stop fooling the American people. It is time to get tough with Israel. After all, Israel is the biggest threat to world peace.
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Elite Israeli Troops Refuse To Serve in the Territories
by Molly Moore (Washington Post) 22/12/2003
http://www.seruv.org.il/english/article.asp?msgid=86
ENGLISH SITE OF ISRAEL'S "COURAGE TO REFUSE" AND THE COMBATANTS' BRAVE AND ELOQUENT LETTER
http://www.seruv.org.il/english/default.asp
Courage to Refuse > Combatants Letter
We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, self-sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty in the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people.
We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides,
We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Occupied Territories destroy all the values that we were raised upon,
We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society,
We, who know that the Territories are not a part of Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated,
We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
We hereby declare that we shall continue serving the Israel Defense Force in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.
The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.
Additional Articles Appear at the Following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/index.php | | | | Shnozzle | | Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 7:04 pm Post subject: |
| The Zionist power significant in this country. Soon, Joe Sixpack Sheeple may have a president who qualifies for Israel's LAW OF RETURN, and hence have Israeli/American dual citizenship...
Wind-up-George: http://www.gentileworld.com/HTMLobj-1474/aniGif.gif | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 12:26 pm Post subject: McKinney is running again Defying pro-Israel lobby |
| Subj: McKinney is running again Defying pro-Israel lobby
Date: 2/4/04 10:55:38 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: jblankfort@earthlink.net
http://www.sfbayview.com/020404/cynthiamckinney020404.shtml
Cynthia McKinney is running again
Defying pro-Israel lobby’s efforts to control Black agenda
by Jeff Blankfort
Cynthia McKinney, an even more popular speaker since her re-election defeat, challenges tyranny on the right and disunity on the left at rallies around the country, including last year’s protests in San Francisco that drew hundreds of thousands.
Cynthia McKinney has announced that she will be running to regain her old seat in Congress this year, the one she lost in 2002 by failing to express her devotion to the state of Israel and to the dictates of its domestic lobby.
While there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, at least not yet, that demands of our members of Congress that they swear their fidelity to Israel, there is considerable evidence that such a requirement does, in fact, exist. San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Whip, and therefore the party’s most powerful member in the lower house, set what was, perhaps, a new standard for such subservience when she pledged her “unshakable” bond to Israel at least a dozen times in a speech in Washington last April to 5,000 members of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the organization’s annual convention.
AIPAC is Israel’s officially registered lobby with headquarters in the nation’s capital and branch offices throughout the country. To give the reader a good idea of how deeply Israel has penetrated our political system, AIPAC representatives, uniquely, do not have to register as agents of a foreign government.
If they did, organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), for example, would also be required to register because much of their work is done in behalf of Israel. The AJC, not as well known outside of the Jewish community, quietly lobbies foreign governments in behalf of Israel.
Moreover, it is not just organizations that are doing this. According to the Jerusalem Post, San Francisco’s other representative in Congress, Tom Lantos, a Hungarian-born Jew, has represented Israel in countries where it has no diplomatic relations, such as Syria and, most recently, Pakistan and Libya. Whether as an organization or as an individual, this is an activity that normally requires those engaging in it to register as foreign agents.
Half of the Senate attended that AIPAC meeting last year as did a third of the House. Two of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) who were reportedly among the guests were Artur Davis and Denise Majette, both African-Americans, who, with the support of AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and pro-Israel Jewish donors from across the country, defeated veteran civil rights activist Earl Hilliard and his younger colleague, Cynthia McKinney, in the 2002 Democratic Party primaries in Alabama and Georgia, respectively.
Controlling the Black political agenda as well as Black leadership have long been high priorities of the overall pro-Israel lobby and the CBC has always been one of its main concerns. Those who speak up for the Palestinians, who refuse to support Israel and genuflect to the lobby, and who don’t feel obliged to repeatedly sanctify Jewish suffering have found themselves hounded by the ADL, added to its list of “Black Demagogues” and shunted to the political margins. The lobby will not necessarily target a member of Congress that doesn’t always vote its way, but it will not tolerate any Black politician who has the guts to stand up to it, to challenge Israel publicly or to speak up for Palestinian rights.
One of those who stood up and paid the price was Gus Savage, a Chicago congressman who in 1993 was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the Foreign Aid Bill that raised U.S. aid to Israel to $4.5 billion, or one third of the aid budget and nearly seven times the allocation for sub-Saharan Africa.
When AIPAC put up Mel Reynolds, another African-American candidate, and started soliciting funds from Jews across the country to defeat him, Savage went public with the names of the Jewish contributors, none of whom lived in the district. For that he was attacked as an “anti-semite,” described as “Savage Savage” in a racist headline in Washington Jewish Week, and denied funds by Democratic party chair and lobby favorite Ron Brown. Two years later, he was redistricted and defeated by Reynolds.
This time around, Hilliard was the first to go. The mainstream Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz found his defeat significant, citing it as one reason for President Bush’s newfound affection for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Here is how Akiva Eldar, a Ha’aretz columnist, described it:
“It’s worth taking a look at the Web site of the U.S. Federal Election Commission. Look for contributors to Artur Davis, a Black lawyer who won the Democratic primaries in the 7th Congressional District in Alabama …. Davis beat his rival, the 60-year-old, five-term Earl Hilliard, who is also Black, by a 56-44 percent vote. Here are some of the names from the first pages of the list of his contributors: there 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, let alone the 7th Congressional District. (Now recall what happened when Savage named names like that.)
“What do the Adlers and Bergmans have to do with an unknown lawyer running for a Congressional seat from Alabama. Why should Jews from all over the United States send hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign coffers, which reached $781,000 - compared to the $85,000 he had in his coffers the last time he ran, and lost? The answer can be found in the AIPAC index of pro-Israel congressmen. Hilliard, who once visited Libya, is paying (with) his Congressional seat for a number of votes the Jewish lobbyists didn’t like.
“The most recent vote was when he did not vote with the overwhelming majority of congressmen who passed a resolution in support of Israel’s war on terrorism. A little while later, his opponent, Davis, discovered that a shower of checks was pouring into his campaign chest. Most of the signatures on the checks had Jewish names. The message was clear - this is what happens to politicians who upset Israel’s friends.”
Apart from what it says about the subversion of our political system, can anyone imagine an article like that appearing in an American daily newspaper?
McKinney was to meet the same fate. In 1999, Bill Nigut of the Atlanta Jewish Times did a sympathetic background article on her, noting, “In 1992, in her first race for Congress in what was then Georgia’s 11th District, McKinney made it clear she wouldn’t be beholden to … AIPAC,” which was “heavy-handed in demanding her endorsement of its positions in return for its support.”
McKinney refused to play ball. Nigut quoted a one-time Jewish supporter who told him, “Here was a young woman who had not yet been elected to Congress, and AIPAC was saying, ‘This is our point of view; sign off on this.’ Cynthia being Cynthia was not going to do that. … I think Cynthia was taken aback by the aggressiveness that is how AIPAC does business.”
On the eve of her defeat, the New York Times’ Philip Shenon, described “(t)he races in Alabama and Georgia … as evidence of new strains between African-Americans and Jewish Americans, who for decades were seen as unshakable political allies, given their shared history of discrimination.” (To suggest that American Jews and American Blacks have hardly shared discrimination equally is, of course, taboo.)
“Unfortunately, this is symptomatic of the tensions between the Black and Jewish communities,” the ADL’s National Director Abraham H. Foxman, told the Times. “But, Mr. Foxman said, it made sense that Jewish Americans would want to contribute to efforts to replace Ms. McKinney and Mr. Hilliard because of the lawmakers’ records on matters of interest to the Jewish community.”
What are those interests? As reported in the Jewish weekly Forward more than a dozen years ago, Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, told the annual conference of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, “There’s only one issue members (of Congress) think is important to American Jews — Israel.”
McKinney had further angered the lobby by calling for an investigation of Israel’s prolonged attack on the USS Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War, which took the lives of 34 U.S. sailors and wounded 171. This attack on a lightly armed U.S. spy vessel, which Israel claimed to have been a case of “mistaken identity,” has been covered up by the White House and Congress for the past 36 years and only recently has begun to attract national attention. That the Israelis were able to kill U.S. servicemen and get away with it is considered by many to be the defining act in the U.S.-Israel relationship.
McKinney and Hilliard were the last of the outspoken members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and their departure was a major victory for the lobby. But it’s not content with that. As part of its 2003 convention, AIPAC honored CBC Chair Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and on its eve, it hosted the rest of the caucus at a special dinner, attended by nearly 1,000 AIPAC donors from around the country. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, AIPAC wanted to honor Cummings “and the members of the CBC for their long-standing support of Israel and to reaffirm to our own community that most members of the Caucus support a strong and secure Israel.”
The results of that effort have been mixed. A letter to President Bush, drafted that month by AIPAC and expressing concerns about the U.S.-supported “road map,” was signed by 313 House members, but only 18 of 39 members of the CBC were willing to affix their names.
And Cynthia McKinney is running again and running to win. What will you do to help?
Email Jeff Blankfort at jblankfort@earthlink.net. | | | | foppe37 | | Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 8:47 am Post subject: Henry Ford sr and Sharon/ Perle |
| | Where Henry Ford sr failed around 1920 it more and more looks as if Sharon/ Perle & cronies will succeed. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:18 am Post subject: McKinney is running again Defying pro-Israel lobby |
| Subj: McKinney is running again Defying pro-Israel lobby
Date: 2/4/04 10:55:38 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: jblankfort@earthlink.net
http://www.sfbayview.com/020404/cynthiamckinney020404.shtml
Cynthia McKinney is running again
Defying pro-Israel lobby’s efforts to control Black agenda
by Jeff Blankfort
Cynthia McKinney, an even more popular speaker since her re-election defeat, challenges tyranny on the right and disunity on the left at rallies around the country, including last year’s protests in San Francisco that drew hundreds of thousands.
Cynthia McKinney has announced that she will be running to regain her old seat in Congress this year, the one she lost in 2002 by failing to express her devotion to the state of Israel and to the dictates of its domestic lobby.
While there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, at least not yet, that demands of our members of Congress that they swear their fidelity to Israel, there is considerable evidence that such a requirement does, in fact, exist. San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Whip, and therefore the party’s most powerful member in the lower house, set what was, perhaps, a new standard for such subservience when she pledged her “unshakable” bond to Israel at least a dozen times in a speech in Washington last April to 5,000 members of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the organization’s annual convention.
AIPAC is Israel’s officially registered lobby with headquarters in the nation’s capital and branch offices throughout the country. To give the reader a good idea of how deeply Israel has penetrated our political system, AIPAC representatives, uniquely, do not have to register as agents of a foreign government.
If they did, organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), for example, would also be required to register because much of their work is done in behalf of Israel. The AJC, not as well known outside of the Jewish community, quietly lobbies foreign governments in behalf of Israel.
Moreover, it is not just organizations that are doing this. According to the Jerusalem Post, San Francisco’s other representative in Congress, Tom Lantos, a Hungarian-born Jew, has represented Israel in countries where it has no diplomatic relations, such as Syria and, most recently, Pakistan and Libya. Whether as an organization or as an individual, this is an activity that normally requires those engaging in it to register as foreign agents.
Half of the Senate attended that AIPAC meeting last year as did a third of the House. Two of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) who were reportedly among the guests were Artur Davis and Denise Majette, both African-Americans, who, with the support of AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and pro-Israel Jewish donors from across the country, defeated veteran civil rights activist Earl Hilliard and his younger colleague, Cynthia McKinney, in the 2002 Democratic Party primaries in Alabama and Georgia, respectively.
Controlling the Black political agenda as well as Black leadership have long been high priorities of the overall pro-Israel lobby and the CBC has always been one of its main concerns. Those who speak up for the Palestinians, who refuse to support Israel and genuflect to the lobby, and who don’t feel obliged to repeatedly sanctify Jewish suffering have found themselves hounded by the ADL, added to its list of “Black Demagogues” and shunted to the political margins. The lobby will not necessarily target a member of Congress that doesn’t always vote its way, but it will not tolerate any Black politician who has the guts to stand up to it, to challenge Israel publicly or to speak up for Palestinian rights.
One of those who stood up and paid the price was Gus Savage, a Chicago congressman who in 1993 was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the Foreign Aid Bill that raised U.S. aid to Israel to $4.5 billion, or one third of the aid budget and nearly seven times the allocation for sub-Saharan Africa.
When AIPAC put up Mel Reynolds, another African-American candidate, and started soliciting funds from Jews across the country to defeat him, Savage went public with the names of the Jewish contributors, none of whom lived in the district. For that he was attacked as an “anti-semite,” described as “Savage Savage” in a racist headline in Washington Jewish Week, and denied funds by Democratic party chair and lobby favorite Ron Brown. Two years later, he was redistricted and defeated by Reynolds.
This time around, Hilliard was the first to go. The mainstream Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz found his defeat significant, citing it as one reason for President Bush’s newfound affection for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Here is how Akiva Eldar, a Ha’aretz columnist, described it:
“It’s worth taking a look at the Web site of the U.S. Federal Election Commission. Look for contributors to Artur Davis, a Black lawyer who won the Democratic primaries in the 7th Congressional District in Alabama …. Davis beat his rival, the 60-year-old, five-term Earl Hilliard, who is also Black, by a 56-44 percent vote. Here are some of the names from the first pages of the list of his contributors: there 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, let alone the 7th Congressional District. (Now recall what happened when Savage named names like that.)
“What do the Adlers and Bergmans have to do with an unknown lawyer running for a Congressional seat from Alabama. Why should Jews from all over the United States send hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign coffers, which reached $781,000 - compared to the $85,000 he had in his coffers the last time he ran, and lost? The answer can be found in the AIPAC index of pro-Israel congressmen. Hilliard, who once visited Libya, is paying (with) his Congressional seat for a number of votes the Jewish lobbyists didn’t like.
“The most recent vote was when he did not vote with the overwhelming majority of congressmen who passed a resolution in support of Israel’s war on terrorism. A little while later, his opponent, Davis, discovered that a shower of checks was pouring into his campaign chest. Most of the signatures on the checks had Jewish names. The message was clear - this is what happens to politicians who upset Israel’s friends.”
Apart from what it says about the subversion of our political system, can anyone imagine an article like that appearing in an American daily newspaper?
McKinney was to meet the same fate. In 1999, Bill Nigut of the Atlanta Jewish Times did a sympathetic background article on her, noting, “In 1992, in her first race for Congress in what was then Georgia’s 11th District, McKinney made it clear she wouldn’t be beholden to … AIPAC,” which was “heavy-handed in demanding her endorsement of its positions in return for its support.”
McKinney refused to play ball. Nigut quoted a one-time Jewish supporter who told him, “Here was a young woman who had not yet been elected to Congress, and AIPAC was saying, ‘This is our point of view; sign off on this.’ Cynthia being Cynthia was not going to do that. … I think Cynthia was taken aback by the aggressiveness that is how AIPAC does business.”
On the eve of her defeat, the New York Times’ Philip Shenon, described “(t)he races in Alabama and Georgia … as evidence of new strains between African-Americans and Jewish Americans, who for decades were seen as unshakable political allies, given their shared history of discrimination.” (To suggest that American Jews and American Blacks have hardly shared discrimination equally is, of course, taboo.)
“Unfortunately, this is symptomatic of the tensions between the Black and Jewish communities,” the ADL’s National Director Abraham H. Foxman, told the Times. “But, Mr. Foxman said, it made sense that Jewish Americans would want to contribute to efforts to replace Ms. McKinney and Mr. Hilliard because of the lawmakers’ records on matters of interest to the Jewish community.”
What are those interests? As reported in the Jewish weekly Forward more than a dozen years ago, Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, told the annual conference of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, “There’s only one issue members (of Congress) think is important to American Jews — Israel.”
McKinney had further angered the lobby by calling for an investigation of Israel’s prolonged attack on the USS Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War, which took the lives of 34 U.S. sailors and wounded 171. This attack on a lightly armed U.S. spy vessel, which Israel claimed to have been a case of “mistaken identity,” has been covered up by the White House and Congress for the past 36 years and only recently has begun to attract national attention. That the Israelis were able to kill U.S. servicemen and get away with it is considered by many to be the defining act in the U.S.-Israel relationship.
McKinney and Hilliard were the last of the outspoken members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and their departure was a major victory for the lobby. But it’s not content with that. As part of its 2003 convention, AIPAC honored CBC Chair Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and on its eve, it hosted the rest of the caucus at a special dinner, attended by nearly 1,000 AIPAC donors from around the country. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, AIPAC wanted to honor Cummings “and the members of the CBC for their long-standing support of Israel and to reaffirm to our own community that most members of the Caucus support a strong and secure Israel.”
The results of that effort have been mixed. A letter to President Bush, drafted that month by AIPAC and expressing concerns about the U.S.-supported “road map,” was signed by 313 House members, but only 18 of 39 members of the CBC were willing to affix their names.
And Cynthia McKinney is running again and running to win. What will you do to help?
Email Jeff Blankfort at jblankfort@earthlink.net. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
