| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 6:55 am Post subject: MIDEAST POLICY: 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 attachement 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 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 8:08 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 | | Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:24 am Post subject: Top White House posts go to Jews |
| Top White House posts go to Jews
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Nathan Guttman, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 25, 2006
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After appointing Joshua Bolten to be the White House chief of staff, US President George W. Bush nominated another Jewish staffer, Joel Kaplan, to serve as Bolten's deputy, putting him in charge of the daily policy planning.
The fact that White House policy is now in the hands of two Jews is not seen as significant by activists in the American Jewish community.
"He is simply appointing the best people for the job," said Nathan Diament, who heads the Washington office of the Orthodox Union. Another Jewish activist added that he "wouldn't read too much into it."
Bolten, who first served as head of the Office of Management and Budget, was the first Jewish member of Bush's cabinet. Ever since Bush took office, there has been a custom of opening cabinet meetings with a brief prayer and so, before his first cabinet meeting, Bolten's assistant contacted Diament and asked for help in finding a Jewish prayer for the security and well-being of the cabinet members. The Orthodox Union provided him with the text in English and in Hebrew and Bolten read it aloud at the next cabinet meeting.
Bolten and Kaplan will probably be the most prominent Jewish members of the Bush administration, but not the only ones. Apart from Bolten, there is another Jewish cabinet member, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and there are other Jewish senior staff members, including Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and White House staffer Jay Lefkowitz.
In the past year, several Jews who were holding senior posts in the administration have left, among them deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, undersecretary of defense Doug Feith, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby and political adviser Ken Mehlman, who now heads the Republican National Committee.
Yet the policy of the administration has little to do with the religious beliefs of the staffers. "The president sets the policy goals and it is now the job of Josh [Bolten] and Joel [Kaplan] to help achieve these goals," said Noam Neusner, who served as the liaison to the Jewish community in Bush's White House from 2002-2005.
Other Jewish activists, both Republican and Democrat, agree that the nomination of Bolten and Kaplan have no affect on policy.
For Republicans, there is still a feeling that Bush does not receive the credit he deserves from the Jewish community. "We have Israel's best friend and it still hasn't changed the way the Jewish community sees him," said Fred Zeidman, a close friend of Bush and chairman of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. "I keep hoping that one day our community will see the light and support President Bush."
Neusner recalled that in the Bush White House there was always great respect for religious practices of the staffers and predicted that this policy would remain now that Bolten is running its daily operations.
One tradition likely to go on is the reading of the Purim megilla led by Chabad Rabbi Levi Shemtov, which attracts many of the Jewish staffers.
The relatively small number of Jews in Bush's cabinet became an issue largely due to the comparison with his predecessor, Bill Clinton. The former administration had such Jewish cabinet members as Robert Reich, Robert Rubin, Sandy Berger, Lawrence Summers and Madeline Albright and State Department officials Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk and Aaron Miller.
"I don't support this idea of bean counting," said Jay Footlik, who was Clinton's liaison to the Jewish community. He sees the fact that the former administration had many Jewish members as significant to the policy the president had in regard to the Jewish community. According to him, the reason Jews were so visible in Clinton's administration was merely a result of the community being "drawn to public involvement and political activity."
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