| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 1:33 am Post subject: AIPAC: Franklin Espionage affair won't harm our work... |
| http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=579014
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Last update - 01:32 23/05/2005
AIPAC: Franklin affair won't harm our work
By Nathan Guttman
WASHINGTON - For the first time since the AIPAC-Franklin scandal broke last August, the heads of the organization have commented on it publicly and promised to ensure that all employees of the organization observe the law as well as the rules of the organization.
At the opening of AIPAC's annual convention yesterday, executive director Howard Kohr promised the 5,000 activists that the lobby would come out of the affair safely, and that their work for Israel both in Congress and the administration had not been harmed. Kohr also promised that all AIPAC employees would obey U.S. laws.
"I pledge to you that I will take any steps necessary to ensure that every employee of AIPAC, now and in the future, conducts himself in a manner that you will be proud of, using policies and procedures that provide transparency, accountability and effectiveness," he said.
Kohr also said that it was of the utmost importance that the official document submitted by the FBI to the courts in the matter of former Pentagon employee Larry Franklin proves "we now know directly from the government that neither AIPAC nor any of its current employees isn't and never was a target of this investigation."
By employing the term "current employees," Kohr made a clear distinction between the lobby and its two fired staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who have been named in the affair.
Kohr said that the strong attendance at the convention proved how great the support for it was in the American Jewish community and sent a message to Israel's and AIPAC's opponents as well as the Jewish community that "we are here to stay."
Kohr's comments were meant to communicate that the affair does not touch the organization directly or influence its work; they were the only official comments made about the investigation at the annual convention.
While everything was business as usual from the podium, praising the lobby's work and the State of Israel, the atmosphere was completely different in the convention corridors and the media, where the investigation took center stage.
AIPAC did everything possible to make sure this year's convention was the largest and most impressive in years. The participation level was at an all-time high, and so was the participation of senior officials - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is to speak today, four Congressional leaders, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and hundreds more congressmen who will take part in the ball tonight.
While the delegates are abuzz over the Franklin affair and its potential ramifications, the convention's agenda focused on the two main issues for the pro-Israel community in the U.S. - disengagement and the Iranian threat.
Last year, the lobby hadn't made up its mind about disengagement, but this year, it is fully behind it, in Congress and with the administration.
Convention organizers tried to put a human face on the disengagement, communicate the need to support it and provide assistance to delegates who will be going to Capitol Hill tomorrow to speak with congressmen about the need to help with the disengagement.
A tearful Kochi Ravivo, from Elei Sinai in the northern Gaza Strip, appears in a movie produced especially for the convention, as she talks about the difficulty of giving up her home. So does her husband Micha, as does Yochi Sadeh, who was evacuated from her Yamit home almost 30 years ago. All the people in the film, who also appeared at the convention, to the cheers and applause of the delegates, had the same message: It is difficult, but justified. The only criticism of the disengagement from the podium was expected from Natan Sharansky, due to speak last night.
The other issue AIPAC is focusing on is the Iranian nuclear threat. The basement in the new Washington convention center has been converted into an exhibit entitled "Iran's route to the bomb." Visitors journey around boxes of "nuclear material" stamped "Made in China" and through recreations of uranium enrichment and bomb manufacturing. The exhibit ends with the clear sound of a ticking clock and images of nuclear bombs.
AIPAC delegates will ask their congressmen to support stiffening sanctions against Iran in an attempt to stop its nuclear program, and ask the administration to move the issue to the UN Security Council as soon as possible.
Last edited by Alpha on Mon May 23, 2005 7:24 pm; edited 1 time in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 1:50 am Post subject: AIPAC Fifth Columnist Israel firsters push US to attack Iran |
| AIPAC Fifth Columnist Israel firsters push US to attack Iran
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/05/14/aipac-fifth-columnists-pushing-us-to-attack-iran-for-israel.php
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Last update - 03:39 20/05/2005
Impacting on AIPAC By Nathan Guttman
Howard Kohr, the executive director of AIPAC, will be the only speaker to mention the investigation from the podium at the lobby's annual policy conference, which is being held next week. "It will be a marginal reference, almost coincidental," say close sources. Aside from the brief allusion to the subject in the executive director's remarks, the Franklin-AIPAC affair will not be mentioned at all at the conference.
However, like the huge elephant in the room that everyone ignores, the FBI investigation will set the tone, even if not obliquely mentioned, at the new conference center in Washington where the conference is being held. Sources in the pro-Israeli lobby are well aware that perhaps more than anything else, attendees are interested in the investigation and its effect on the organization's future. Members of the lobby's management board and the heavy donors are constantly receiving updates and briefings, mostly by way of conference calls, about what is happening on the investigation front. The message they are bringing with them to Washington is that everything is just fine. There may be some sort of investigation by the FBI of a certain Larry Franklin from the Pentagon and another couple of people, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who used to work at AIPAC, but AIPAC as an organization? It has no connection whatsoever to all this.
The abandonment
Why, really, was AIPAC in such a rush to cut its ties with Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who are suspected of receiving and transferring information from Franklin? A major Jewish activist said this week that he resents this very much, mainly as it concerns Steve Rosen, who, the activist says, gave his life for AIPAC. "Why didn't they fight back?" he asks, adding that he is not the only one frustrated by the way AIPAC abandoned its senior officials.
In the same briefings held for the major players, a senior AIPAC official recently explained that the decision to fire the two men was not taken by heads of the lobby, but by attorney Nathan Levine, who is representing AIPAC in the affair. The senior official told listeners that Levine said that he was aware of the incriminating information in the possession of the FBI against both men and there was therefore no choice but to dismiss them. He did not detail what that information might be.
Aside from that, the lobby is continuing to pay for the legal representation of the two, even after their dismissals. This is no trifling matter - according to one report, legal fees have already come to $1 million, and an indictment has not even been served yet. Even if the sum seems exaggerated, the mere fact that this number is widely known and the fact that everyone engaged in Jewish causes in Washington knows that "AIPAC is paying Rosen's lawyer," proves that it was important to someone in AIPAC to let it be known that the lobby did not abandon its higher-ups when they got into trouble.
The branch
Steve Rosen founded AIPAC's government branch. Before him, AIPAC was another lobby that concentrated its activity on Congress and even achieved some nice successes. Rosen invented the idea of lobbying within the administration - in the White House, in the State Department and in the Pentagon, and succeeded through his own efforts to open the doors to AIPAC. In order to succeed in such a role, Washington insiders say, you need a Rolodex with a lot of names. The business cards in Steve Rosen's Rolodex - or in modern terms, his Palm Pilot - were of extraordinary quantity and quality.
Rosen and his Rolodex are no longer at the lobby. He had outstanding contacts with everyone important in the foreign policy sphere in Washington, and everyone who was going to be important. Not only did he found AIPAC's government branch, he was the government branch.
Sources in the lobby are trying to soothe anxieties, and say that nothing has changed in the way AIPAC works, neither in Congress nor in the administration. "There are a lot of talented people in AIPAC," they add. Which is true, of course, but not everyone has a big Rolodex and not everyone will get an answer when they pick up the phone to call the National Security Council or try to make an appointment at the State Department.
The success
A survey recently commissioned by the National Journal magazine among members of Congress ranked AIPAC second on a list of the most effective lobbies in Congress. What does that mean? That even under investigation, AIPAC still has immense power and that members of Congress are not unnerved by the rumors and reports.
In addition, the fact that the annual conference that opens Sunday will be graced by the presence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the four majority and minority leaders in the Senate and the House of Representatives and the prime minister of Israel is ample evidence of the organization's strength. The conference will also set new records for the organization - the number of participants (5,000), the number of lobbyists who will go on Tuesday to Capitol Hill on behalf of Israel (4,500) and the number of registered members of the organization (currently more than 100,000).
And what does that say? One, that the Jewish community continues to believe in AIPAC and support it. Two, that AIPAC went to great efforts to arrange a conference that would surpass all preceding conferences, in order to demonstrate a facade of business as usual.
The marketing
The most salient change that the lobby has undergone since the affair came out is its demonstrative effort to market itself. In the past, AIPAC was thought of as a bunker. Lobbying on Capitol Hill and in the administration was not talked about; achievements were not lauded about; and no effort was made to persuade the public of the lobby's success. The assumption was that anyone who was really important knew. There was no need to show off. It could only lead to trouble.
Now, after those troubles have come upon it, AIPAC is placing an emphasis on achievements and happily reporting legislation initiatives and actions in Congress.
AIPAC now employs a professional responsible for handling the media, an expert in crisis management. The last job held by this individual, Patrick Dorton, was rescuing the Arthur Andersen accounting firm from crisis following its involvement in the Enron affair. Unlike Enron, Arthur Andersen is still around and is even making a recovery, so AIPAC has cause for optimism.
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Treason at a high level: Pentagon Zionists, AIPAC and Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/08/treason-in-high-places-pentagon-zionists-aipac-and-israel.php
Last edited by Alpha on Mon May 23, 2005 5:49 am; edited 3 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 1:57 am Post subject: Best Policy: Talk Tough with Israel |
| http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/15057
Best Policy: Talk Tough with Israel
by James J. David
(Sunday 22 May 2005)
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"If the people in Washington didn't have this double standard of always allowing Israel to get away with violating international law while punishing other nations that do, then maybe the United States wouldn't be in the mess it finds itself in today. Maybe the Muslim world, and for that matter, all other people around the world wouldn't hate us as much as they do."
In his latest Op-Ed, " The Best P.R.: Straight Talk." New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, expresses his criticism of President Bush "for not offering a single word of condemnation for those who went out and killed 16 people in Afghanistan in riots linked to a Newsweek report." He goes on to say that this lack of condemnation "pretty much explains why we're struggling to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world today."
Isn't it ironic that Thomas Friedman would be so critical of President Bush's lack of condemnation for those Muslims who killed 16 people in Afghanistan but yet never criticized Bush or any other Washington politician for being so silent in offering any condemnation when Ariel Sharon and his Israeli military dropped a one-ton bomb in the center of a Gaza City apartment complex a few years ago that killed 16 innocent Palestinians including 9 children?
Mr. Friedman must know by now that rarely do you see President Bush or Condoleezza Rice or any members of Congress voice any condemnation against Israel. What other nation on this planet would be allowed to destroy more than 12,000 homes of innocent people, or to uproot more than 100,000 of their olive orchards, or to assassinate dozens of their political leaders, or to grab land that doesn't belong to them, or to build illegal settlements on confiscated land, or to build an apartheid wall outside their own borders that cuts deeply in the territory which the international community earmarked for creation of a Palestinian state?
The construction of Israel's illegal settlements in the occupied territory continue today and the only voice we hear out of Washington is its disappointment that the construction continues. Disappointment? Is that all we get? The construction of illegal settlements is a severe violation of international law, specifically of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring and settling its own citizens in the occupied territory. Where's the outrage from Washington? Is it too much to ask for some stronger words or for some immediate action? After all, what better leverage does Washington have than that of its generous foreign aid package we give to the Jewish state? President Bush has the perfect opportunity to get tough with Israel, especially after Ariel Sharon promised to end further construction of these illegal settlements during his recent visit to Washington just to do an about face upon his return to Israel. Why is there no action from the president? Is it because he remembers when his father, back in 1991, did something similar by suggesting to delay the $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel as long as it continued to build illegal settlements on the West Bank only to see his father have to apologize a few days later for suggesting such a move?
We demand that Syria leave Lebanon, but say nothing about Israel's illegal occupation of Syria's Golan Heights. President Bush had the perfect opportunity to put pressure on Israel immediately when Syria left Lebanon just a few weeks ago.
We demand Iran to abandon any thought of building nuclear weapons but we say nothing about Israel's 200 nuclear weapons. As a matter of fact, we don't even require Israel to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or even require them to allow international inspections. And it was Iran who has called for a nuclear-free Middle East but the United States opposed the idea. They opposed the idea because it would require Israel to give up its nukes. Maybe if Israel didn't have nuclear weapons then other countries in the Middle East wouldn't feel threatened to the extent that they too needed to defend themselves. After all, it was Israel who bombed the nuclear reactor in Iraq.
If the people in Washington didn't have this double standard of always allowing Israel to get away with violating international law while punishing other nations that do, then maybe the United States wouldn't be in the mess it finds itself in today. Maybe the Muslim world, and for that matter, all other people around the world wouldn't hate us as much as they do.
Unfortunately, Israel has a very powerful lobby in Washington and no one dares speak of big brother unless in praise or on bended knees. American taxpayers have been forced to hand over more than 120 billion dollars in foreign aid since 1960 and there is no end in sight, even while our domestic problems continue to mount. Our deficit and our national debt is at an all time high, our social security funds are about defunct, and now we need to close military installations to save money. Yet, you will never hear any person up on the hill suggest a reduction of aid to Israel. They know, that such a suggestion would disbar them from the cliques of political power.
We may be failing to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world, as Thomas Friedman points out in today's New York Times, but it's not because President Bush failed to condemn those who killed 16 Afghanistans in riots linked to a Newsweek report. The real reason we fail to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world, and for all other parts of the world, is because of a lopsided Middle East Policy that favors Israel no matter what crimes she commits.
by courtesy & © 2005 James J. David
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James J. David is a retired Brigadier General and a graduate of the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, and the National Security Course, National Defense University, Washington DC. He served as a Company Commander with the 101st Airborne Division in the Republic of Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 and also served nearly 3 years of Army active duty in and around the Middle East from 1967-1969. He is a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN).
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Make a commitment to subscribe, donate and/or place all of your book and other product orders from Amazon.com and others through MMN Shopping web-site by clicking here. The percentage we get from these sales pays for maintaining and expanding MMN. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 7:00 pm Post subject: CNIF Ad Calling on AIPAC to Register as an Agent for a Forei |
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Washington, DC
May 23, 2005
CNIF Ad Calling on AIPAC to Register as an Agent for a Foreign Government to Appear in New York Times and Washington Times Tomorrow, Tuesday, May 24, 2005
A full-page ad calling for AIPAC to register as an agent of a foreign government will appear in the Tuesday editions of the New York Times and the Washington Times. The ad, placed by the Council for the National Interest Foundation, is designed to draw attention to the need to hold the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to standards of accountability and transparency during its annual convention May 22-24, 2005.
A copy of the ad is available online at http://www.cnionline.org/pubs/ads/AIPACs-Agenda.pdf. Any further questions should be directed to Mr. Terry Walz or, in his absence, to Carlton Cobb at (202) 863-2951.
The Council for the National Interest is one of the organizations participating in a rally in opposition to the annual AIPAC Conference at Massachusetts Ave and 7th, Washington, DC, on Monday evening from 6 PM to 8 PM. Copies of the advertisement will be available.
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