| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 7:16 am Post subject: Criticism of U.S ties to Israel draws fire |
| From: BGJDAVID
Subject: Criticism of U.S ties to Israel draws fire
Sent: Sunday, April 2, 2006 9:08 AM
The media have been trying to keep this study as quiet as possible but, no matter how much they try, it is bound to make its way to the american public. Let's just hope it makes wider publication. The American people need to know the root of the problems we face today. This passionate attachment to Israel has come to hurt America's security and the Israeli Lobby deserves much of the blame. Our leaders and our representatives are under the control of a foreign lobby and it's not a healthy situation for the American people. It has cost the loss of too many American lives and billions of wasted money. I wrote an article similar to this situation three years ago. Passionate attachment to Israel (by James J. David) - Media Monitors Network http://www.mediamonitors.net/jamesjdavid17.html The following Washington Post article appeared in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution with an Illustration of the U.S. flag with a Star of David in the union. My hats off to the AJC for the courage to publish it. I encourage all to read the the study written by Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University. It is one of the best I have ever read. LRB | John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt : The Israel Lobby:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html
http://www.ajc.com/sunday/content/epaper/editions/sunday/issue_44f2475c61f20199005a.html
MIDEAST POLICY: Criticism of U.S ties to Israel draws fire
Washington Post
Sunday, April 2, 2006
International relations scholars John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University ignited a furious debate recently with their essay "The Israel Lobby," appearing in the London Review of Books. Their argument --- that the influence of a powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States threatens U.S. national security --- has reverberated through academic and policy circles, the media and the blogosphere. A sampling of their article and the ongoing controversy:
The essay
"Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War II, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. . . .
"Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the United States, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 percent of its allocation to subsidize its own defense industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the U.S. opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank.
"Moreover, the U.S. has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the U.S. gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its NATO allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons. . . .
"Since 1982, the U.S. has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. . . .
"Saying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: The U.S. has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. . . .
"The Lobby's campaign for regime change in Iran and Syria could lead the U.S. to attack those countries, with potentially disastrous effects. We don't need another Iraq."
The blowback
Harvard Law professor Alan M. Dershowitz: "These are two serious scholars and you need to expose what they have done as ignorant propaganda." (Jerusalem Post)
University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole: "Political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt bravely take on the issue of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington and the way it distorts U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Most American Jews deeply disagree with the policies advocated by the American Enterprise Institute, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, etc., but a sliver of the political spectrum, falsely insisting that it represents all American Jews, manages to skew U.S. politics and reporting on the issue of Palestine." (juancole.com)
Dennis Ross, President Clinton's Middle East envoy: "It is basically a series of assertions. They quote only those people who basically have this point of view and don't take a serious look at anything in a more profound way. It is masquerading as scholarship." (New York Sun)
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, whose Web site says that he "has dedicated his life to the freedom and heritage of European American peoples": "It is quite satisfying to see a body in the premier American university essentially come out and validate every major point I have been making since even before the war even started." (New York Sun)
Daniel Drezner, assistant professor of political science, University of Chicago (Mearsheimer's department): "Walt and Mearsheimer should not be criticized as anti-Semites, because that's patently false. They should be criticized for doing [expletive]-poor, monocausal social science." (danieldrezner.com)
Editorial on Forward.com headlined "In Dark Times, Blame the Jews": "What is new and startling is the document's provenance. Its authors are not fringe gadflies but two of America's most respected foreign-affairs theorists. One, Mearsheimer, is a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago. The other, Walt, is academic dean of the nation's most prestigious center of political studies, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Though it's tempting, they can't be dismissed as cranks outside the mainstream. They are the mainstream. Even more startling, given who they are, is the flimsiness of their work. Countless facts are simply wrong. Long stretches of argument are implausible, at times almost comically so. . . . An undergraduate submitting work like this would be laughed out of class. A dean apparently gets to see it posted on Harvard's Web site."
Ruth R. Wisse, professor of comparative literature and of Yiddish literature at Harvard: "It would be a mistake to treat this article on the 'Israel Lobby' as an attack on Israel alone, or on its Jewish defenders, or on the organizations and individuals it singles out for condemnation. Its true target is the American public, which now supports Israel with higher levels of confidence than ever before." (Wall Street Journal)
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America: "Even a cursory examination of 'The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy' reveals that it is riddled with errors of fact, logic and omission, has inaccurate citations, displays extremely poor judgment regarding sources, and, contrary to basic scholarly standards, ignores previous serious work on the subject."
The fallout
Mearsheimer and Walt's study appeared in March as an 83-page "Faculty Research Working Paper" on the Web site of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where Walt serves as academic dean.
Following the uproar, the Kennedy School discreetly removed its logo from the paper.
The Harvard Crimson reported that "according to a statement released yesterday by Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood, the university's logo was removed after some news agencies 'were mistakenly reporting the paper as a "Harvard study" written by "two Harvard researchers." ' " And the Boston Globe quoted Ellwood as saying that the Kennedy School would now open faculty members' working papers to rebuttal and discussion by other Harvard faculty. This came in response to a request from Dershowitz that his rebuttal of the paper be placed alongside it.
The original document also features a more detailed and prominent disclaimer: "The two authors of this Working Paper are solely responsible for the views expressed in it. As academic institutions, Harvard University and the University of Chicago do not take positions on the scholarship of individual faculty, and this article should not be interpreted or portrayed as reflecting the official position of either institution."
LECTURE
David Newman, the British-born and -educated professor of political geography at Ben Gurion University in Israel, will speak at Georgia State University this week on "Prospects for the Israel-Palestinian Peace Process after the Israeli Elections." Newman is also chief editor of the quarterly journal Geopolitics. He will speak at 11 a.m. Thursday, 500 General Classroom Building, Georgia State. Information: 404-651-4239.
CHRIS van ES / NewsArt
Illustration of the U.S. flag with a Star of David in the union.
Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/sunday/content/epaper/editions/sunday/issue_44f2475c61f20199005a.html
Keeping It Quiet: The Israel Lobby's Crushing of Dissent:
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=8791
U.S. Middle East policy motivated by pro-Israel lobby:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php | |  | | Dil_420 | | Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject: |
| Christian pro-Israel lobby
| Quote: | The lobby is slated to launch in July, during a Washington conference in which hundreds of American evangelicals are slated to participate, Hagee said at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which represents 52 national Jewish groups. He also discussed the lobby with Israel's consul general in New York, Aryeh Mekel.
Hagee said his group would be a Christian - and more powerful - version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a large pro-Israel lobby, and would target senators and congressmen on Capitol Hill. A quarter of congressmen are evangelicals, and many American legislators represent regions that include a large evangelical population, he said. |
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/701583.html
 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 7:04 pm Post subject: World War IV Advocate, Eliot Cohen, Jumps Into the Fray! |
| World War IV Advocate, Eliot Cohen, Jumps Into the Fray!
http://www.davidduke.com/?p=520 | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Cowboy | | Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 10:14 pm Post subject: |
| 
A "leak" is the unauthorized disclosure of information.
The President has absolute authority to declassify information for its disclosure.
To say that the President "approved a leak" is a ridiculous conflict in terms and entirely illogical. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 9:44 am Post subject: |
| http://www.ussliberty.com/findleybook.htm
BEYOND ASSAULT
Thirty-five years after the assault, Ennes has written a new edition of his book and finds glimmers of hope:
Every attempt to hide this story seems to bring more
attention. This past year brought a sixty-minute docu-
mentary, produced by CBS News Productions, that was
broadcast by The History Channel--much to the dismay
and over the heated objections of the Israeli Embassy
and various spokesmen for Israel, who did all in their
power to block it. CAMERA, a leading pro-Israel propa-
ganda arm, produced an extended and angry critique of
the film, accusing survivors and CBS of producing a
"propaganda-laden bogus history" that is deliberately
distorted and anti-Semitic. The History Channel's
report was aired as scheduled and rebroadcast later.
Although CAMERA urged The History Channel not to sell
a video version, it was made available anyway. In
June 2002 London's BBC released anew documentary
called DEAD IN THE WATER. It reveals secret collabor-
ation between Washington and Tel Aviv during the Six-
Day War. A new book, called Operation Cyanide, argues
that carefully laid plans were made to sink the
Liberty, and that the United States was as much to
blame as Israel for what happened.(50)
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JINSA Behind Drive To Cover-Up Israeli
Spy Scandal
(EIRNS) - One of the "Mega" agencies that mobilized to quash the Fox TV pick-up of our Israeli spy scandal was JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
JINSA President and CEO David Steinmann is also a director of CAMERA (Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America), the group that actually staged the e-mail, fax, letter, and phone call mobilization that squeezed Fox TV, to the point that they removed the transcripts of the four Carl Cameron segments from their own web site.
While CAMERA lists Tom Lantos among its advisors, along with Sharon cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, it is JINSA that is the real hotbed of "Mega" and "X Committee" clout, particular inside the Pentagon.
On its own website, JINSA boasts that "Only one think tank puts the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship {first} -- JINSA!"
JINSA lists among its directors: Richard Perle, Steven Bryen (whose wife, Shoshana Bryen is still one of the few full-time JINSA employees), Max Kampelman, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, Kenneth Timmermann, and James Woolsey.
Beyond these hardcore "X Committee" operatives, JINSA's board also includes a dozen or more retired flag grade U.S. military officers, including Lt. Gen. Anthony Burshnick (USAF), Gen. Crosbie Saint (USA), Maj. Gen. Lee Downer (USAF), Adm. Leon Edney (USN), Gen. John Foss (USA), Adm. David Jeremiah (USN), Adm. Jerome Johnson (USN), Maj. Gen. Jarvis Lynch (USMC), Rear Adm. Sumner Shapiro (USN). | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 10:15 am Post subject: |
| April 14, 2006
Neocons Turn Up Heat for Iran Attack
by Jim Lobe
Led by a familiar clutch of neoconservative hawks, major right-wing publications are calling on the administration of President George W. Bush to urgently plan for military strikes – and possibly a wider war – against Iran in the wake of its announcement this week that it has successfully enriched uranium to a purity necessary to fuel nuclear reactors.
In a veritable blitz of editorials and opinion pieces published Wednesday and Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and National Review warned that Tehran had passed a significant benchmark in what they declared was its quest for nuclear weapons and that the administration must now plan in earnest to destroy Iran's known nuclear facilities, as well as possible military targets, to prevent it from retaliating.
Comparing Iran's alleged push to gain a nuclear weapon to Adolf Hitler's 1936 march on the Rhineland, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol called for undertaking "serious preparation for possible military action – including real and urgent operational planning for bombing strikes and for the consequences of such strikes."
"[A] great nation has to be serious about its responsibilities," according to Kristol, a leading neoconservative champion of the Iraq war and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, "even if executing other responsibilities has been more difficult than one would have hoped."
National Review, another prominent right-wing weekly, echoed the call. "Any air campaign should … be coupled with aggressive and persistent efforts to topple the regime from within," advised its lead editorial, entitled "Iran, Now," and almost certainly written by Michael Ledeen of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
"Accordingly, it should hit not just the nuclear facilities, but also the symbols of state oppression: the intelligence ministry, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard, the guard towers of the notorious Evin Prison."
The hawks' latest campaign appeared timed not only to exploit the alarm created by Iran's nuclear achievement and by a spate of reports last weekend regarding the advanced state of U.S. war plans, but also to counter new appeals by a number of prominent and more mainstream former policymakers for Washington to engage Iran in direct negotiations.
The Financial Times Wednesday published a column by Richard Haass, president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations and a top adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell during Bush's first term, in which he called for Washington to make "a fair and generous diplomatic offer" to Iran that would permit it to retain a small uranium enrichment program, if for no other reason than to rally international opinion behind the U.S. in the event rejects it.
Arguing that the "likely costs of carrying out such an attack substantially outweigh probable benefits," Haass noted that "the most dangerous delusion [among those who support military action] is that a conflict would be either small or quick."
On Thursday, he was joined by Powell's deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, who, in an interview with the Financial Times, also called for direct talks.
"It merits talking to the Iranians about the full range of our relationship … everything from energy to terrorism to weapons to Iraq," said Armitage, who is considered a strong candidate to take over the Pentagon if Donald Rumsfeld resigns or is forced out.
"We can be diplomatically astute enough to do it without giving anything away," he added, noting that Washington could be patient "for a while" given the estimated five to 10 years the U.S. intelligence community believes it will take before Tehran can obtain a nuclear weapon.
Such statements are anathema to the hawks, who have long depicted any move to engage Iran as equivalent to the appeasement policies toward Hitler of France and Britain in the run-up to World War II.
"Is the America of 2006 more willing to thwart the unacceptable than the France of 1936?" asked the title of Kristol's editorial, which, despite the reports of advanced Pentagon planning that included even the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons against hardened Iranian targets, asserted that the administration's policy had been "all carrots and no sticks."
His view echoed that of the neoconservative editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, who said the administration's "alleged war fever is hard to credit, given that for three years the Bush Administration has deferred to Europe in pursuing a diplomatic track on Iran." The Journal said the government must give priority to developing "bunker buster" nuclear bombs.
While Kristol insisted that the "credible threat of force" should initially be used in support of diplomacy with Washington's European allies, he also called for "stepping up intelligence activities, covert operations, special operations, and the like," as well as "operational planning for possible military strikes."
What he had in mind was laid out in a companion article by ret. Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a member of the ultra-hawkish Iran Policy Committee (IPC), entitled "Target: Iran."
If Iran resists diplomatic pressure, according to McInerney, Washington should be prepared to carry out a "powerful air campaign" led by 60 stealth aircraft, and more than 400 non-stealth strike aircraft with roughly 150 refueling tankers and other support aircraft, 100 unmanned aerial vehicles, and 500 cruise missiles to take out some 1,500 nuclear-related and military targets.
Before or during such an attack, he wrote, "a major covert operation could be launched, utilizing Iranian exiles and dissident forces trained during the period of diplomacy." The IPC has long advocated support for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), an Iraq-based paramilitary group listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.
In yet another op-ed published in Thursday's Washington Post, Mark Helprin, a novelist and Israeli military veteran, called for anticipating the possibility that U.S. forces in Iraq and its broader interests in the region could be imperiled by Iranian retaliation and popular outrage in the Arab Middle East.
To prepare for such an eventuality, "we would do well to strengthen – in numbers and mass as well as quality – the means with which we fight, to reinforce the fleet train with which to supply fighting lines, and to plan for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates."
Such concerns, counseled Reuel Marc Gerecht, a Gulf specialist at AEI, are overblown. In a lengthy analysis of the possible costs of a military attack that was also published in the Standard, he argued that Washington should "not be intimidated by threats of terrorism, oil-price spikes, or hostile world opinion."
"What we are dealing with is a politer, more refined, more cautious, vastly more mendacious version of bin Ladenism," according to the article, entitled "To Bomb, or Not to Bomb: That Is the Iran Question." "It is best that such men not have nukes, and that we do everything in our power, including preventive military strikes, to stop this from happening."
(Inter Press Service)
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8852
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
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