| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 3:04 am Post subject: |
| General Jim David (who wrote the following) is mentioned on the cover of Paul Findley's 'They Dare to Speak Out' book (third edition) as mentioned prior:
From: BGJDAVID
Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 10:27:21 EDT
Subject: U.S. Policy a failure in the Middle East
After reading the below article you will understand why the United States must bear much of the responsibility for the ongoing unrest and violence in the Middle East. By arming Israel with the vast military arsenal that we have done so in the past and continue to do today, the Israelis have always used heavy bombardment, militarism and revenge on other countries, as a means of accomplishing their objective but as Lebanese Prime Minister Saniora says "militarism and revenge are not the answer to instability; compromise and diplomacy are.''
One must wonder if Israel's lobby in Washington hasn't done more harm than good with its extortion tactics in corrupting our politicians in becoming "yes" men for Israel and making Zionism our mandatory State religion. I am one who believes that the attack on 9-11 and the war in Iraq would've never occured if the U.S. wasn't so supportive Israel's brutal and illegal occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and of the 22 years in Southern Lebanon.
05/11: AOL News: Saniora Criticizes Israeli War Inquiry
Saniora Criticizes Israeli War Inquiry
.c The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) - Lebanon's prime minister in an op-ed piece published Friday in The New York Times urged Israel to work for a Middle East settlement based on an Arab peace initiative, and said the United States can help the parties compromise.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora also criticized an Israeli inquiry into last summer's war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah for failing to address the huge losses and damage inflicted on Lebanon by Israel's massive bombardment.
``The July war proved that militarism and revenge are not the answer to instability; compromise and diplomacy are,'' Saniora wrote. ``This should be the impetus for Israel to seek a comprehensive solution based on the Arab Peace Initiative.''
The initiative promises full peace with Arab nations in return for Israel's withdrawal from territories captured in the 1967 war and the creation of a Palestinian state. It also calls for a ``just solution'' to the issue of Palestinian refugees.
The Israeli government had no immediate comment Friday on Saniora's call. Israel has expressed reservations about the initiative and the United States has lauded the offer as a possible basis for reviving the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Thursday met in Cairo with her counterparts from Egypt and Jordan, two Arab nations that have peace treaties with the Jewish state. Cairo and Amman are trying to persuade Israel to accept the Arab peace initiative.
With the U.S. support and that of other international partners, ``we hope to use the Arab Peace Initiative as the foundation to finally bring about a comprehensive peace to our troubled region,'' Saniora wrote.
``Leading these peace efforts is not only an American responsibility, it is in the United States' interests: Peace in the Middle East would offer a gateway to reconciliation with the Muslim world during these times of increased divisiveness and radicalism,'' he wrote in the piece.
Saniora said that Arabs, too, have legitimate security concerns.
``The only way for the people of Israel and the Arab world to achieve stability and security is through a comprehensive peace settlement to the overarching Arab-Israeli conflict,'' he wrote. ``The inevitable alternative is increased extremism, intolerance and destruction.''
Israel's military campaign last summer sought to crush the pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian Hezbollah and win release of two Israeli soldiers the militants kidnapped in a cross-border raid that triggered the conflict.
Israel, however, failed to achieve those goals as Hezbollah militants fired thousands of rockets into Israel during the conflict and, although pushed back from the border, are still armed today.
The fighting ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire that called for deployment of U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.
The Winograd commission, an Israeli government-appointed inquiry into the war, has said that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was responsible for ``very severe failures'' in the conflict that ended inconclusively and killed more than 1,200 combatants and civilians, most of them in Lebanon.
05/11/07 05:32 EDT | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu May 24, 2007 12:48 am Post subject: |
| From: "E.A. Richards"
Subject: Re: US enabling of the following kind of attack by Israel against the Palestinians was the primary motivation for 9/11 and the earlier attack on the World Trade Center in 1993
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 08:39:08 -0500
The de facto capitol of the United States is Jerusalem; the capital of the United States is controlled by Jerusalem.
When will the American people wake up to realism?
Dr. E.A. Richards, P.E.
http://my.execpc.com/~drer/ear1.htm
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 6:43 AM
Subject: Re: US enabling of the following kind of attack by Israel against the Palestinians was the primary motivation for 9/11 and the earlier attack on the World Trade Center in 1993
Look what CBS News consultant (and former CIA analyst) Michael Scheuer had to say about unqualified support for Israel via the following URL (why doesn't CBS News and the other mainstream news networks make this known to the US public - we already know the answer as Paul Findley also addresses such in his 'They Dare to Speak Out' book which Jim is mentioned on the cover of!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHyUhdRFbB8
Take a look at the following URL as well:
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2007/05/enormous-injustice-perpetrated-in-1948.html
Israeli airstrike kills 8 in Gaza Strip
By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer 29 minutes ago
Palestinian rockets slammed into southern Israel on Monday morning after an Israeli airstrike hit a Hamas lawmaker's house and killed eight people in the deadliest attack of a renewed Israeli campaign against incessant rocket fire.
The Israeli airstrike Sunday night, which followed a government decision to step up operations against Islamic militants, hit the house of lawmaker Khalil al-Haya, who was not at home and was unharmed.
At least 13 people were wounded. All the dead and wounded were relatives and neighbors, his wife said. Hamas said two of the dead were militants.
Army spokeswoman Capt. Noa Meir said the airstrike was not aimed at al-Haya, but at a group of five armed Hamas men, including a senior militant, near the home.
"They, and only they, were the target, and they were hit," Meir said. Any civilian casualties, she said, "were the result of the terrorists' use of civilians as human shields."
Israel resumed its airstrikes in Gaza last week in response to increased Palestinian rocket fire at southern Israeli towns. The airstrikes have killed 36 Palestinians, most of them Hamas militants.
Early Monday, Israeli aircraft struck four more times in Gaza, the army said, killing a Hamas militant. The military said two of the targets were weapons factories. Palestinians said one was a cement factory and the other was a house.
The Israeli operations have not managed to stem the Palestinian rocket fire, and militants fired four more rockets at Israel on Monday morning.
There were no casualties. But several people have been wounded in recent days, and the rockets have severely disrupted life in the southern border town of Sderot, the militants' main target.
The Israeli airstrikes appeared to have helped cement a truce between the warring Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah that began to take hold after a week of intense violence.
"No one would condone fighting one another while the Israelis are shelling Gaza," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
At the time of Sunday night's airstrike, Al-Haya was attending an Egyptian-sponsored truce meeting meant to bring Hamas and Fatah together.
Barhoum said the attack was a sign that Israel is targeting "everyone — civilians and leaders."
"This escalation is very serious," he said, adding that "all options are open" for responding.
U.S. Ambassador Richard Jones gave a boost of support to the Israeli campaign, but urged Israel to do its best to avoid harming civilians.
"We constantly urge Israel to target its response as closely as possible at those who are responsible for the actions, and to avoid innocent collateral damage," Jones said at an academic conference Monday. "I don't think that we urge restraint, but we do urge people to be very clear that they're focused on those who are actually responsible for acts of terror against Israel."
The Israeli government decided Sunday to step up military action aimed at Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main Islamic militant groups in Gaza.
"The operations will focus on Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, who are responsible for the current escalation," the government said in a statement. It stopped short of approving a large-scale ground invasion or endorsing attacks on Hamas' political leadership.
In an interview with Army Radio on Monday, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter called for the assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who lives in exile in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
"Khaled Mashaal isn't immune, not in Damascus and not anywhere else. I'm convinced that at the first opportunity, we will bid him farewell," Dichter said. A Dichter aide told The Associated Press that he was expressing his personal opinion, not government policy.
Israel's attacks have been restricted to the Gaza Strip so far. But in a sign of a possible crackdown in the West Bank, Israeli troops raided two radio stations and one TV channel identified with Hamas early Monday in the city of Nablus, along with two independent TV stations. The troops confiscated equipment and videotapes, workers at the stations said, and all five went off the air.
The army had no immediate comment.
BGJDAVID wrote:
After reading the below article you will understand why the United States must bear much of the responsibility for the ongoing unrest and violence in the Middle East. By arming Israel with the vast military arsenal that we have done so in the past and continue to do today, the Israelis have always used heavy bombarment, militarismon and revenge on other countries, as a means of accomplishing their objective but as Lebanese Prime Minister Saniora says "militarism and revenge are not the answer to instability; compromise and diplomacy are.''
One must wonder if Israel's lobby in Washington hasn't done more harm than good with its extortion tactics in corrupting our politicians in becoming "yes" men for Israel and making Zionism our mandatory State religion. I am one who believes that the attack on 9-11 and the war in Iraq would've never occured if the U.S. wasn't so supportive Israel's brutal and illegal occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and of the 22 years in Southern Lebanon.
05/11: AOL News: Saniora Criticizes Israeli War Inquiry
Saniora Criticizes Israeli War Inquiry
.c The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) - Lebanon's prime minister in an op-ed piece published Friday in The New York Times urged Israel to work for a Middle East settlement based on an Arab peace initiative, and said the United States can help the parties compromise.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora also criticized an Israeli inquiry into last summer's war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah for failing to address the huge losses and damage inflicted on Lebanon by Israel's massive bombardment.
``The July war proved that militarism and revenge are not the answer to instability; compromise and diplomacy are,'' Saniora wrote. ``This should be the impetus for Israel to seek a comprehensive solution based on the Arab Peace Initiative.''
The initiative promises full peace with Arab nations in return for Israel's withdrawal from territories captured in the 1967 war and the creation of a Palestinian state. It also calls for a ``just solution'' to the issue of Palestinian refugees.
The Israeli government had no immediate comment Friday on Saniora's call. Israel has expressed reservations about the initiative and the United States has lauded the offer as a possible basis for reviving the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Thursday met in Cairo with her counterparts from Egypt and Jordan, two Arab nations that have peace treaties with the Jewish state. Cairo and Amman are trying to persuade Israel to accept the Arab peace initiative.
With the U.S. support and that of other international partners, ``we hope to use the Arab Peace Initiative as the foundation to finally bring about a comprehensive peace to our troubled region,'' Saniora wrote.
``Leading these peace efforts is not only an American responsibility, it is in the United States' interests: Peace in the Middle East would offer a gateway to reconciliation with the Muslim world during these times of increased divisiveness and radicalism,'' he wrote in the piece.
Saniora said that Arabs, too, have legitimate security concerns.
``The only way for the people of Israel and the Arab world to achieve stability and security is through a comprehensive peace settlement to the overarching Arab-Israeli conflict,'' he wrote. ``The inevitable alternative is increased extremism, intolerance and destruction.''
Israel's military campaign last summer sought to crush the pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian Hezbollah and win release of two Israeli soldiers the militants kidnapped in a cross-border raid that triggered the conflict.
Israel, however, failed to achieve those goals as Hezbollah militants fired thousands of rockets into Israel during the conflict and, although pushed back from the border, are still armed today.
The fighting ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire that called for deployment of U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.
The Winograd commission, an Israeli government-appointed inquiry into the war, has said that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was responsible for ``very severe failures'' in the conflict that ended inconclusively and killed more than 1,200 combatants and civilians, most of them in Lebanon.
05/11/07 05:32 EDT | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:02 pm Post subject: |
| BLOG | Posted 03/13/2007 @ 12:49pm
Pelosi's Disastrous Misstep on Iran
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=174804
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies in the chamber's Democratic leadership initially accepted that spending legislation designed to outline an Iraq exit strategy should also include a provision barring the president from attacking Iran without congressional approval, they opened up a monumental discussion about presidential war powers.
As such, the decision by Pelosi and her allies to rewrite their Iraq legislation to exclude the statement regarding the need for congressional approval of any military assault on the neighboring country of Iran sends the worst possible signal to the White House.
It is not too much to suggest that Pelosi disastrous misstep could haunt her and the Congress for years to come.
Here's how the Speaker messed up:
The Democratic proposal for a timeline to withdraw troops from Iraq included a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before using military force in Iran. It was an entirely appropriate piece of the Iraq proposal, as the past experiences of U.S. involvement in southeast Asia and Latin America has well illustrated that when wars bleed across borders it becomes significantly more difficult to end them. Thus, fears about the prospect that Bush might attack Iran are legitimately related to the debate about how and when to end the occupation of Iraq.
Unfortunately, Pelosi is so desperate to advance her flawed spending legislation that she is willing to bargain with any Democrat about any part of the proposal.
Under pressure from some conservative members of her caucus, and from lobbyists associated with neoconservative groupings that want war with Iran and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC), Pelosi agreed on Monday to strip the Iran provision from the spending bill that has become the House leadership's primary vehicle for challenging the administration's policies in the region.
One of the chief advocates for eliminating the Iran provision, Nevada Democrat Shelley Berkley, said she wanted it out of the legislation because she wants to maintain the threat of U.S. military action as a tool in seeking to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. "It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran," explained Berkley.
The problem with Berkley's "reasoning" -- if it can be called that -- is this: Nothing in the provision that had been included in the spending bill would have prevented Bush from threatening Iran. Nothing in the provision would have prevented war with Iran. It merely reminded the president that, before launching such an attack, he would need to obey the Constitutional requirement that he seek a declaration of war.
By first including the provision and then removing it, Pelosi and her aides have given Bush more of an opening to claim that he does not require Congressional approval.
Again and again, the Bush administration has seized any and every opening to claim powers that were never accorded the executive branch by the Constitution or the Congress. Remember that this administration has sought to justify a massive, unregulated domestic spying program by claiming authority under narrow legislation that was passed permitting the president to respond to the September 11, 2OO1, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Never mind that no mention of such spying was included in the 2OO1 legislation; the fact that it was not explicitly barred gave the administration all the room it required to claim the power to disregard the Constitution and the rule of law.
By stripping the Iran provision from the legislation that is now under consideration by Congress, Pelosi has handed Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- no believer he is the separation of powers -- exactly what they want. They can and will say that, when the question of whether Congress should require the administration to seek Congressional approval for an attack on Iran, Pelosi chose not to pursue the matter.
Anyone who thinks that Bush and Cheney will fail to exploit this profound misstep by Pelosi has not been paying attention for the past six years. The speaker has erred, dramatically and dangerously.
Pelosi should reverse her decision and restore the Iran provision to the legislation. It is the only way to check and balance an administration that stands ready to exploit every opening it is given by a naive and inept Congress.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
John Nichols' new book is THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders' Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson hails it as a "nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the 'heroic medicine' that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to 'reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.'"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The US and the Middle East
A “Grand Settlement” Versus the Jewish Lobby
by James Petras
www.dissidentvoice.org
December 4, 2006
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec06/Petras04.htm | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:51 am Post subject: CP: Kroth: "Whatever AIPAC Wants, AIPAC Gets" |
| Subject: CP: Kroth: "Whatever AIPAC Wants, AIPAC Gets"
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:45:52 -0700
From: "Jeff Blankfort" <jblankfort@earthlink.net> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: CP: Kroth: "Whatever AIPAC Wants, AIPAC Gets"
Another new voice from academia speaking important truth about AIPAC and the Zionist lobby. No wonder the lobby and its Campus Watch are worried. They have been doing what is described here for decades with scarcely a peep from those purporting to support Palestinian rights (and there is still not a peep about the subject from the misleading organizations of the anti-war movement. How come?-JB
http://www.counterpunch.org/kroth07102007.html
July 10, 2007
"Whatever AIPAC Wants, AIPAC Gets"
Democratic Defectors and the Israel Lobby
By JERRY KROTH
In November, the American electorate repudiated Bush's Iraq debacle and established Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate promising to bring this "flawed policy wrapped in illusion" to a decisive end. Bush vetoed their withdrawal timetable, but voters urged their leaders to hold the line and not be bullied. In the end, though, 37 Democratic senators capitulated and gratuitously gave the President his $100 billion no-strings- attached blank check . . . enough money to pay tuition and fees for 1.3 million college students for four solid years!
Deep disappointment set in. Cindy Sheehan, the liberal icon, was so demoralized she resigned and returned to private life. In June, a CNN poll reported that "respect for Congress" plummeted to the lowest level "ever recorded."
Bloggers called them "traitor Democrats", and the descriptor is apropos. At the time of the vote, sixty-two percent of the American people favored a time-table for a withdrawal, but, more significantly, "seventy percent" of Democrats were so inclined. Voting against this burgeoning tide of anger betrayed the will of the people and party that put these Democrats in office.
Curiously, all of the traitor democrats were huge career recipients of funds from the Israeli lobby. If we took ten Democratic apostates and compared them to ten Democrats who stood by the voters, pro-Israeli PAC contributions were "ten times" greater for the turncoats than those who stayed with their constituencies ($322,000 versus $34,000 on average).
To be specific: Carl Levin, outspoken critic of the war and, we thought, a loyal supporter of the new regime to end it, defected and blithely turned his back on his Michigan support base. Despite his strident anti-war rhetoric, the Grand Rapids Independent reports Levin has supported Bush all the way "consistently funding the war and not introducing any meaningful legislation to bring it closer to an end." Practically unknown to his constituents, Levin is one of the largest beneficiaries of Pro-Israeli PAC funds collecting $600,000 in career contributions according to the Washington Report on Mideast Affairs.
Barbara Boxer, Denis Kucinich, and Earl Blaumenauer, all opponents of the war, collectively got $73,000, but turncoat-democrats, Dan Durbin, Max Baucus, and Frank Lautenberg scooped up in excess of a million plus untold benes like travel funds.
What comes out in the wash is the best PAC money can buy: Three months before we invaded Iraq, a New York Times poll showed only 30 percent of the American people favored an all-out invasion, but the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) did, and it prevailed. Hardly a sprinkling of Americans favored the "surge", a meager fourteen percent, but AIPAC did, and the surge is surging as we speak. Fewer than thirty percent of Democrats supported that no-strings-budget, but AIPAC did, and the conclusion plays out another hackneyed chorus of "Whatever AIPAC wants, AIPAC gets."
In 1992, the director of the Israeli lobby, David Steiner, was surreptitiously recorded bragging about playing a role in selecting the Secretary of State and what he got for Israel: "Besides the $10 billion in loan guarantees which was a fabulous thing, $3 billion in foreign, in military aid, and I got almost a billion dollars in other goodies that people don't even know about!" When the tape was made public, Steiner resigned, but it underscored the incredible power, access, and influence this lobby has.
Two professors, Mearsheimer and Walt, recently insinuated that American democracy has been suborned by the Israeli lobby, echoing Senator Fulbright's 1989 indictment that AIPAC had usurped the electoral process and could "elect or defeat nearly any congressman or senator that they wish." Such observations do not fall on deaf ears. Over half the senate and a third of the congress obediently attended the AIPAC annual convention (versus less than a dozen visiting the NAACP's event). Non-attendance can suggest a lawmaker might be soft on terrorism, or, god forbid, anti-Semitic.
Anti-war idealists might think that soon this American war crime, the shock-and-awe carnage, the torture, and the renditions are coming to an end, but the agenda of AIPAC seems bent on keeping American armies in the Middle East as an Israeli first line of defense for the indefinite future. Their major attack dog, Joe Lieberman, recently gave a hint on Face the Nation as to might be next: " military strikes" against Iran. . . all apparently to guarantee that Israel will remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East.
So if you think you voted, or are planning to vote, to bring the troops home and end this national embarrassment, some fool's gold waiting for you at the end of that rainbow.
Jerry Kroth, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology in California and author of Conspiracy in Camelot: the complete history of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He may be reached at anya@sj.znet.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:08 pm Post subject: |
| From: "Jeff Blankfort"
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:58:30 -0700
Subject: FT: Europe warns US on Iran sanctions
So now we will see a battle on Capitol Hill between the reigning champ, the Jewish Zionist lobby vs. that of the governments of Western Europe and the European-based oil companies. I wonder who the Las Vegas oddsmakers would pick to win and by what odds? Will the Zios, after likely pleading my the Bush White House, release the members of Congress to vote in the US public interest? If so, it would be a first. -JB
http://www.ft. com/cms/s/ c87fa5ba- 411a-11dc- 8f37-0000779fd2a c.html
Europe warns US on Iran sanctions
By Daniel Dombey and Javier Blas in London and Francesco Guerrera in Detroit
Published: August 2 2007 18:45b
European governments are warning Congress that US legislation aimed at Iran
could hit European energy groups, undermine transatlantic unity on Tehran’s
nuclear programme and provoke a dispute at the World Trade Organisation.
Diplomats from France, Germany and the UK, among other countries, have
stepped up a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill against moves that would
mandate sanctions on energy companies that invested more than $20m (€14.6m,
£9.9m) in Iran.
Among such companies – already marked out by a US campaign to disinvest in
energy companies that trade with Iran – are Royal Dutch Shell, Total of
France and Repsol of Spain.
Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol, which are both looking for oil in US
territorial waters in the Gulf of Mexico, are involved in a project worth up
to $10bn to produce Iran’s first liquefied natural gas. The companies are
due to take a final decision about their investment in 2008.
“It’s paradoxical that the targets of this effort are companies from
countries that are making an effort to strengthen sanctions against Iran,”
said one European diplomat, referring to the European Union’s support for a
new wave of United Nations sanctions on Iran.
“The House of Representatives will decide on this bill some time this autumn
so you have to try to talk to everybody [in Congress],” said another EU
diplomat. “We are telling them that if it became a law as it stands now, it
would be a breach in WTO rules and we would not accept that.”
President George W Bush has the power to waive sanctions on third parties
doing business with Iran, but a bill introduced by Tom Lantos, chairman of
the House foreign affairs committee, would remove his ability to do so. The
bill has 322 co-sponsors, enough to overcome a presidential veto.
Diplomats stress that a parallel bill being considered by the Senate would
leave Mr Bush’s waiver intact while seeking to introduce other measures
against Iran.
But European officials say they are unsure what would emerge from efforts to
hammer out a deal between the House of Representatives and the Senate and
are worried that it could make some sanctions mandatory.
“Which do we fear more?” asked Jon Kyl, Republican senator from Arizona,
last week. “A trade dispute with Europe or China or what Tehran will do with
the revenues of a fully reconstituted energy sector?”
In principle the Iran Sanctions Act, a successor to a 1990s measure,
requires the president to impose at least two out of six possible sanctions
on foreign companies investing more than $20m in Iran, although in practice
both Mr Bush and former President Bill Clinton have always exercised the
waiver.
These sanctions include denial of Export Import Bank loans, denial of US
bank loans exceeding $10m, prohibition of US government procurement and
restrictions on imports from the company concerned.
This week, the House of Representatives backed a separate piece of
legislation, that would oblige the federal government to keep a record of
energy companies violating the $20m threshold and make it easier for state
pension funds to disinvest in them.
Some states have passed or are considering legislation to move towards
disinvestment in such companies.
Public sector pension funds such as Calpers and Calstrs, the giant
California pension plans, are opposed to any forced divestments of companies
involved in Iran. They have argued the move would be counterproductive as it
would hurt their returns and restrict their ability to provide for billions
of dollars in pension liabilities.
Caution has been urged from unexpected quarters. “If we go forward and we
begin to sanction foreign companies through more stringent sanctions in the
Iran Sanctions Act, I think there will be serious repercussions for our
multilateral effort,” said Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise
Institute, the conservative Washington think-tank. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:01 pm Post subject: |
| AIPAC's criminal history -- a new study reviewed
Foreign Agents
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright
Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal
By Grant F. Smith
Book Review by Terry Walz
CNI Staff
Many citizens concerned by the undue influence of the Israel lobby are
dismayed by the action of the US Congress that adopts resolution after
resolution favoring Israel with nary of word about its failure to make
peace
with the Palestinians, whose land it inhabits, or with its neighbors,
whose
borders it abutts. Last year Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, two
professors from prestigious American universities, began a public
debate on
the power of the lobby - a cause long advocated by the Council for the
National Interest - giving hope that a public airing of the American
Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), its work, financing, and political
connections would help Americans understand the gross misdirection of
Middle
East foreign policy over the last forty years. Grant F. Smith's new
book,
Foreign Agents, decisively pushes this debate forward and shows just
how
brazen and criminal the lobby has acted since its beginnings.
Smith traces the development of AIPAC from its early days under founder
Si
Kenen, who in 1947 registered with the US Department of Justice under
the
Foreign Agents Registration Act as an employee of the American Zionist
Committee for Public Affairs. He was representing himself then as an
agent
working for Israel. He continued to register as a foreign agent
during the
late forties and fifties, working for various organizations funded by
the
Israel government, but in 1959, the name of the American Zionist
Committee
was changed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to
better reflect, as Kenen said, that it "raised its funds from both
Zionists
and non-Zionists." Its focus of work never changed, which was to
promote
the cause of Israel in both the executive and legislation branches of
government, yet the organization no longer filed as a foreign agent.
AIPAC
eventually developed an extensive grassroots national network of
organizations that engaged in all manner of illegal activities, from
transgressing federal elections laws, to economic and industrial
espionage,
to flouting congressional laws regarding the use of arms exported to
foreign
countries, and passing classified and secret information to the Israeli
government via the Israeli embassy in Washington. In 2005, after a
nine-year
investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, two of AIPAC's
top
officials were arrested for espionage, and the role that AIPAC played
over
the years as a covert agent for Israel was given unusual light.
The book uses as a primary source the historic and remarkable hearings
that
Senator William Fulbright held in 1963 to investigate the "activities
of
agents of foreign principals in the United States." The Committee's aim
was
to look at the work of all organizations working on behalf of foreign
countries, but in the process it discovered that the American Zionist
Committee (AZC) was funded by the Jewish Agency, an arm of the Israeli
government, and by the Israeli embassy, although its principals were
not
registered as foreign agents. The hearings disclosed the secret world
of the
AZC and the Jewish Agency, finding a pattern of money laundering that
became
a hallmark of AIPAC in the years to come. Both the Agency and the
embassy
typically hid the support that they provided by using private
foundations
and individuals as fronts so that it would appear the AZC was funded by
American, not foreign, sources. Thus they bypassed the terms of the
Foreign Agent Registration Act and sought to obscure their aim, which
was to
represent the interests of the Israeli government.
To measure the influence of the emerging lobby, Smith covers a wide
spectrum
of illegal and criminal activity. He begins by examining AIPAC's
efforts to
promote Israeli economic interests to the disadvantage of American
workers.
During the 1984 negotiations that preceded the creation of a "US-Israel
Free
Trade Agreement," AIPAC obtained a copy of the classified document
spelling
out the American negotiating strategy. Thus Israeli negotiators were
aware
of American positions well in advance of the meeting. AIPAC then
managed to
persuade the House Ways and Means Committee to provide special
protections
for Israeli imports of certain products should a free-trade zone be
established. Even Congressional members, with long experience in
Israeli
lobby tactics, couldn't help but notice AIPAC's heavy hand in this
instance.
The pressure exerted by AIPAC during congressional and presidential
elections is well known, though consistently denied by the
organization.
Smith here focuses on the California Senate race of 1986 and the role
played
by Michael Goland, a real estate developer, who contributed $1 million
via
various conduits to derail a potential dangerous opponent of Sen. Alan
Cranston, who was seeking reelection that year and was an AIPAC
favorite.
Goland was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for election fraud.
Goland had been a member of the board of AIPAC and had been highly
visible
in AIPAC's successful effort to unseat Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois
in
1984.
AIPAC also had a hand in the defeat of Sen. Fulbright in 1968, and of
Congressman Paul Findley in 1986. Findley's series of books about the
lobby,
especially his Dare to Speak Out, have been noted for the light they
have
thrown on the power of the lobby and its illegal activities.
AIPAC set up a series of political action committees (PACs), all with
innocuous names, with the aim of influencing the election of
congressional
representatives all over the country. It made sure that internal
firewalls,
as Smith describes them, were set up so that no one could detect
AIPAC's
hand. But the line between them and the actions of the committees
was
hardly invisible. One "activist," a Chicago businessman, attempted to
explain in a New York Times interview in 1987 how he and AIPAC operated
independently, in the course of which it became apparent that the
opposite
was true, that there was tight coordination between AIPAC and dozens on
pro-Israel committees. In 1988 the Washington Post published an
internal
AIPAC memo, reproduced in Foreign Agents, revealing now active AIPAC
was in
illegally coordinating PAC distributions to favored candidates.
The many instances of election fraud prompted a group of former US
government officials to sue the Federal Election Commission for failure
to
require AIPAC to publish details of its income and expenditures, which
political action committees are required to do. Among this group were
George Ball, former secretary of state, Paul Findley, former
congressman and
founder of the Council for the National Interest, Andrew Kilgore,
publisher
of the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs and former ambassador
to
Qatar, and James Akin, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The FEC
delivered
a report on the complaint that cleared the PACs but professed a desire
to
further study the actions of AIPAC, but in fact the chief complaints
were
ignored. Appeals to the Supreme Court were turned aside on various
points
and the case remains in legal limbo to this day.
In the last twenty years, AIPAC has continued to develop its political
networks. Steve Rosen, AIPAC Director of Policy, notoriously likened
the
lobby to "a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."
It
funds dozens of congressional "educational" trips to Israel every year
through its affiliate the American Israel Education Foundation; it
continues
to publish Si Kenen's Near East Report, which serves as a propaganda
arm of
the Israel government; it established a "think tank," the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, which maintains a roster of "experts"
providing cover for Israeli government positions (many of whose Board
members have served as Board members of AIPAC); it maintains a large
public
relations office in Manhattan; and works in tandem with the new Saban
Center
for Middle East Policy, whose president, Martin Indyk, was deputy
director
of AIPAC and a former US ambassador to Israel. Thus Middle East
policy at
Brookings Institution, once a formidable independent think tank, has
been
usurped by pro-Israeli interests.
The growing arrogance of AIPAC, which in recent years acted with brazen
impunity, was not unnoticed by the FBI counterintelligience which began
probing the organization's activities as far back as 1999. In 2005,
Col.
Lawrence Franklin, who was working in the office of Douglas Feith,
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, was arrested and charged with
giving
classified documents to two top officials at AIPAC who passed them on
to the
Israeli embassy. The information concerned US positions toward Iran.
The
AIPAC officials were also arrested and charged with espionage. Lawrence
was
found guilty and sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison and
fined
$10,000 for passing classified information to AIPAC and an Israeli
diplomat.
The trial against Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman has been delayed on
several occasions and is now scheduled to begin in January 2008. The
espionage charges have been dropped. A full analysis of the trial and
its
various permutations can be found in Smith's Chapter Five.
The case appropriately summarizes the extent of the illegalities that
AIPAC
has engaged in since its beginnings some fifty years ago. Senator
Fulbright
was on to something much bigger than even he could have imagined .
Spawned
by the Jewish Agency, it has abetted efforts that have encouraged
"charitable" organizations in the US to contribute more than US $50
billion
to illegal settlements in Gaza and the West Bank while appropriating
and
developing lands that belong to Palestinians. The money laundering
activities of the Agency and the US donors have been brought to the
attention of the US Department of Justice, thanks to work by the
Institute
for Research: Middle Eastern Policy and the Council for the National
Interest but as yet no action has taken place to stop the illegal
operations. As Smith states, "This follows an established pattern of
law
enforcement failures since the Fulbright foreign agent hearings."
Foreign Agents shines light on the murky world of AIPAC and its efforts
to
divert policy and push Israel's rightwing interventionist agenda in
Washington. It garnered support for a war and occupation of Iraq in
Congress. Contrary to the assertions of many now claiming how AIPAC
was
not promoting war, Smith documents how it helped prompt the American
invasion of Iraq and now threatens to coordinate an intervention by the
US
in Iran. The consequences for the American public have been huge, as
the
response to Hurricane Katrina made clear, and has rendered the US the
least
popular country in the world. The book also discusses in detail how
tenuous
are AIPAC's claims to even be a legally constituted nonprofit
corporation.
Most of all, it serves to remind us that the American Israel Public
Affairs
Committee does not serve US interests, but works as a foreign agent for
the
government of Israel and should be required to register as a foreign
agent.
Only then will be operations and financing be made transparent and
public.
In fact, this book makes a convincing case that America - and the world
-
would be better off without AIPAC.
(end) | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:20 pm Post subject: |
| http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2348741.ece
From The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy
By John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt
Reviewed by Max Hastings
Five years ago, Atlantic Monthly commissioned two academics, John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard, to write a significant article about the influence of the Israeli lobby on American foreign policy. When the piece was at last completed, the magazine declined to publish, deeming it too hot for delicate American palates. It eventually appeared in 2005, in the London Review of Books, provoking one of the most bitter media and academic rows of recent times. The authors were accused of antisemitism, and attacked with stunning venom by some prominent US commentators. Mearsheimer and Walt obviously like a fight, however, for they have now expanded their thesis into a book.
Its argument is readily summarised. The authors support Israel’s right to exist. But they are dismayed by America’s unconditional support for its governments’ policies, including vast sums of cash aid for which there is no plausible accounting process. They reject the view articulated as a mantra by all modern American presidents (and 2008 presidential candidates) that Israel and America share common values, and their national interests march hand in hand.
On the contrary, say the authors, America’s backing for Israel does grave damage to its own foreign-policy interests. And many Israeli government actions, including the expansion of West Bank settlements and the invasion of Lebanon, reflect repressive policies that do not deserve Washington’s endorsement: “While there is no question that the Jews were victims in Europe, they were often the victimisers, not the victims, in the Middle East, and their main victims were and continue to be the Palestinians.”
The authors argue that American policy towards Israel is decisively and
They quote the experience of a Senate candidate who was invited to visit AIPAC early in his campaign for “discussions”. Harry Lonsdale described what followed as “an experience I will never forget. It wasn’t enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually, I was told what my opinion must be . . . Shortly after that . . . I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel . . . that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called; they gave from Florida to Alaska”.
When congresswoman Betty McCollum, a liberal with a solid pro-Israel voting record, opposed the AIPAC-backed Palestinian AntiTerrorism Act, which was also opposed by the state department, an AIPAC lobbyist told McCollum’s chief-of-staff that her “support for terrorists will not be tolerated”. Former president Jimmy Carter incurred not merely criticism but vilification when he published a book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, likening Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians to that of the old white regime in South Africa towards its black majority.
Whatever view Europeans take of Israel, most find it difficult to comprehend the sheer ferocity of American sentiment. Ian Buruma wrote an article for The New York Times entitled How to Talk About Israel. He said how difficult it is to have an honest debate, and remarked that “even legitimate criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, is often quickly denounced as antiSemitism by various watchdogs”.
Such remarks brought down a storm on his head. The editor of The Jerusalem Post, also a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, published an open letter to Buruma that began: “Are you a Jew?” He argued that nonJews should discuss these issues only in terms acceptable to Jews.
The American media, claim the authors, even such mighty organs as The New York Times and The Washington Post, do less than justice to the Palestinians, much more than justice to the Israelis. Robert Bartley, a former editor of The Wall Street Journal, once said: “Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me.” There is no American counterpart to such notably Arabist British polemicists as Robert Fisk.
Mearsheimer and Walt’s book argues its points at such ponderous length that it makes pretty leaden reading. But it is extraordinary that, in a free society, the legitimacy of the expression of their opinions should be called into question. “We show,” say the authors, “that although Israel may have been an asset during the cold war it is increasingly a strategic liability now that the cold war is over. Backing Israel so strongly helps fuel America’s terrorism problem and makes it harder for the United States to address the other problems it faces in the Middle East.”
Americans ring-fence Israel from the normal sceptical proc-esses of democracy, while arguments for the Palestinians are often denounced as pernicious as well as antisemitic. All the 2008 presidential candidates, say Mearsheimer and Walt, know that their campaign would be dead in the water if they hinted that Israel would receive less than 100% backing if they win. They note that many Israelis are much bolder in attacking their own governments than any American politician would dare to be.
Part of the trouble is that AIPAC faces no significant opposition. Palestinians, and indeed all Arabs, command negligible sympathy in America, especially since 9/11. The authors think that the most helpful step towards diminishing the Israel lobby’s grip would be for election campaigns to be publicly financed, ending candidates’ dependence on private contributions: “AIPAC’s success is due in large part to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who do not.”
But the authors know reform will not happen. The Israel lobby is vastly strengthened by the support of America’s Christian Zionists, an important element of George W Bush’s constituency. Some may think these people are lunatics, but there are an awful lot of them. They are even more strident in their opposition to Arab rights in Palestine than the Israeli Likud party.
Mearsheimer and Walt conclude, weakly but inevitably, with a mere plea for more open debate in the US about Israel. “Because most Americans are only dimly aware of the crimes committed against the Palestinians,” they say, “they see their continued resistance as an irrational desire for vengeance. Or as evidence of unwarranted hatred of Jews akin to the antisemitism that was endemic in old Europe.
“Although we deplore the Palestinians’ reliance on terrorism and are well aware of their own contribution to prolonging the conflict, we believe their grievances are genuine and must be addressed. We also believe that most Americans would support a different approach . . . if they had a more accurate understanding of past events and present conditions.”
For Europeans, all this adds up to a bleak picture. Only America might be capable of inducing the government of Israel to moderate its behaviour, and it will not try. Washington gives Jerusalem a blank cheque, and all of us in some degree pay a price for Israel’s abuses of it.
After that remark, I shall be pleasantly surprised to escape an allegation from somebody that I belong in the same stable of antisemites as Walt and Mearsheimer. Yet otherwise intelligent Americans diminish themselves by hurling charges of antisemitism with such recklessness. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the United States faces its responsibilities there in a much more convincing fashion than it does today, partly for reasons given in this depressing book.
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt
Allen Lane £25 pp496
Buy the book here at the offer price of £22.50 (inc p&p)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just saw the following posted at www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\31\story_31-8-2007_pg4_2
New book challenges US support for Israel
NEW YORK: An upcoming book challenging whether diplomatic and military support for Israel is in the best interests of the United States is set to spark fresh debate on Washington’s role in the Middle East.
“The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” written by two of the United States’ most influential political science professors, is set to hit the bookshelves next Tuesday and promises to break the taboo on the subject. Written by John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt from Harvard, the book follows an article they published last year that stirred impassioned debate by setting out a similar position.
Their thesis is that US endorsement of Israel is not fully explained by strategic or moral reasons, but by the pressure exerted by Jewish lobbyists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-conservatives with Zionist sympathies.
The result, according to the book, is an unbalanced US foreign policy in the Middle East, the US invasion of Iraq, the threat of war with Iran or Syria and a fragile security situation for the entire Western world. “Israel is not the strategic asset to the United States that many claim. Israel may have been a strategic asset during the Cold War, but it has become a growing liability now that the Cold War is over,” the authors said.
“Unconditional support for Israel has reinforced anti-Americanism around the world, helped fuel America’s terrorism problem, and strained relations with other key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” they added.
According to the two writers, “backing Israel’s harsh treatment of the Palestinians has reinforced Anti-Americanism around the world and almost certainly helped terrorists recruit new followers.”
Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, described the book as “an insidious, biased account of the Arab-Israeli conflict and of the role of supporters of Israel in the US,” in an interview with AFP.
“Everything about American policy toward the conflict is presented in exaggerated form, as if America is completely one-sided in support of Israel and that those policies are simply the product of the Israel lobby.” He is countering Mearsheimer and Walt’s book with his own title: “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control,” due out on the same day.
Mearsheimer and Walt highlight the three billion dollars in US economic and military aid that Israel receives every year - more than any other country. They also point to Washington’s diplomatic support: between 1972 and 2006, the United States vetoed 42 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, while watering down many others under threat of veto. Foxman counters that the special relationship works both ways and that the United States has gained much out of its ally.
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs canceled a public debate on the issue planned for September and featuring Mearsheimer and Walt when they were unable to schedule a time that Foxman could also manage.
In the conclusion of their book, Mearsheimer and Walt say that the United States must change its policy towards Israel. “The United States would be a better ally if its leaders could make support for Israel more conditional and if they could give their Israeli counterparts more candid advice without facing a backlash from the Israel lobby.” With just over a year until the 2008 US presidential election, however, they said the issue was unlikely to even enter the debate. afp
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Walt & Mearsheimer's Proof That 'Tail Wagged the Dog' Points American Jews to a Universalist Ethos:
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/09/more-on-walt-me.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Lobby Strikes
Posted by Justin Raimondo on August 27, 2007
The publication of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a book-length version of the now-famous essay by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, is—naturally!—an occasion for the Lobby to go into high gear, and the intimidation tactics are already well along. Mearsheimer and Walt were invited by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs to speak before the group, but the event was cancelled by the group’s president, Marshall Bouton, who gave out the party line that the two could not be permitted to speak without a “balancing” point of view by none other than Abe ”What Armenian Genocide?” Foxman. That’s the Lobby’s “argument”—that Mearsheimer and Walt’s thesis is so “toxic” that it cannot be allowed to stand alone, without a “corrective” offered by the Anti-Defamation League or some other outfit associated with the Thought Police.
This just goes to confirm the authors’ thesis, expressed in their London Review of Books piece:
“The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.”
Article URL: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_lobby_strikes/
The above was linked in the following article by Justin Raimondo:
War with Iran Its Already Started:
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11521
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Additional on Mearsheimer/Walt:
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 Sep 05, 2007 7:04 am Post subject: |
| Author Stephen Walt Takes On 'The Israel Lobby':
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14154082
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Ed Corrigan"
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:03:13 -0400
Subject: Review of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book on the Israel Lobby: "Iraq, Israel, Iran - Huffington Post, By David Bromwich Posted September 4, 2007
Here is another review of Mearsheimer and Walt's book on the Israel lobby. It makes an number of excellent points.
Ed Corrigan
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/iraq-israel-iran_b_62995.html?load=1&page=1#comments
Iraq, Israel, Iran - Huffington Post
David Bromwich Posted September 4, 2007
When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article on
the Israel Lobby appeared in the London Review of
Books, after having been commissioned and killed by
the Atlantic Monthly, neoconservative publicists
launched an all-out campaign to slander the authors as
anti-Semites. Now that their book The Israel Lobby and
U.S. Foreign Policy has appeared--a work of
considerable scope, carefully documented, and not just
an expanded version of the article--the imputation of
anti-Semitism will doubtless be repeated more
sparingly for readers lower down the educational
ladder. Meanwhile, the literate establishment press
will (a) ignore it, (b) pretend that it says nothing
new or surprising, and (c) rule out the probable
inferences from the data, on the ground that the very
meaning of the word "lobby" is elusive.
The truth is that many new facts are in this book, and
many surprising facts. By reconstructing a trail of
meetings and public statements in 2001-2002, for
example, the authors show that much of the leadership
of Israel was puzzled at first by the boyish
enthusiasm for a war on Iraq among their
neoconservative allies. Why Iraq? they asked. Why now?
They would appear to have obtained assurances,
however, that once the "regime change" in Iraq was
accomplished, the next war would be against Iran.
A notable pilgrimage followed. One by one they lined
up, Netanyahu, Sharon, Peres, and Barak, writing
op-eds and issuing flaming warnings to convince
Americans that Saddam Hussein was a menace of
world-historical magnitude. Suddenly the message was
that any delay of the president's plan to bomb,
invade, and occupy Iraq would be seized on by "the
terrorists" as a sign of weakness. Regarding the
correct treatment of terrorists, as also regarding the
avoidance of weakness, Americans look to Israelis as
mentors in a class by themselves.
So a war projected years before by Richard Perle and
Paul Wolfowitz--a war secured at last by the fixing of
the facts around the policy at the Office of the Vice
President--was allowed to borrow some prestige at an
intermediate stage by the consent of a few
well-regarded Israeli politicians. Yet their target of
choice had been Iran. They accepted the change of
sequence without outward signs of doubt, possibly
owing to their acquaintance with the Middle East
doctrine espoused by the Weekly Standard and the
American Enterprise Institute--a doctrine which held
that to create a viable order after the fall of Iraq,
regime change in Iran and Syria would have to follow
expeditiously.
To sum up this part: the evidence of Mearsheimer and
Walt suggests that Israel was never the prime mover of
the Iraq war. Rather, once the Cheney-Wolfowitz design
was in place, the Israeli ministers who trooped
through American opinion pages and news-talk shows did
what they could to heat up the war fever. This war was
on the cards before they threw in their lot with
Cheney and Bush; by their efforts they merely helped
to confer on the plan an aura of legitimacy and
worldly wisdom.
But now the American war with Iran they originally
wanted is coming closer. Last Tuesday, when the mass
media were crammed to distraction with the behavior of
a senator in an airport washroom, few could be
troubled to notice an important speech by President
Bush. If Iran is allowed to persist in its present
state, the president told the American Legion
convention in Reno, it threatens "to put a region
already known for instability and violence under the
shadow of a nuclear holocaust." He said he had no
intention of allowing that; and so he has "authorized
our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's
murderous activities." Those words come close to
saying not that a war is coming but that it is already
here. No lawmaker who reads them can affect the
slightest shock at any action the president takes
against Iran.
Admittedly, it was a showdown speech, reckless and
belligerent, to a soldier audience; but then, this has
been just the sort of crowd and message that Cheney
and Bush favor when they are about to open a new round
of killings. And in a sense, the Senate had given the
president his cue when it approved, by a vote of 97-0,
the July 11 Lieberman Amendment to Confront Iran. It
is hardly an accident that the president and his
favorite tame senator concurred in their choice of the
word "confront." The pretext for the Lieberman
amendment, as for the president's order, was the
discovery of caches of weapons alleged to belong to
Iran, the capture of Iranian advisers said to be
operating against American troops, and the assertion
that the most deadly IEDs used against Americans are
often traceable to Iranian sources--claims that have
been widely treated in the press as possible, but
suspect and unverified. Still, the vote was 97-0. If
few Americans took notice, the government of Iran
surely did.
That unanimous vote was the latest in a series of
capitulations that has included the apparent end of
resistance by Nancy Pelosi to the next war. After the
election of 2006, the speaker of the house declared
her intention to enact into law a requirement that
this president seek separate authorization for a war
against Iran. On the point of doing so, she addressed
the AIPAC convention, and was booed for criticizing
the escalation of the Iraq war. Pelosi took the hint,
shelved her authorization plan, and went with AIPAC
against the anti-war base of the Democratic party.
This much, one might know without the help of
Mearsheimer and Walt. But without their record, how
many would trace the connection between the removal of
Philip Zelikow as policy counselor of the state
department, at the end of 2006, and a speech Zelikow
had given in September 2006 urging serious negotiation
and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine? The
ousting of Zelikow was a blessing to the war party,
since it freed them from a skeptical confidant of
Secretary of State Rice--perhaps the only person of
stature anywhere near the administration whom she
treated as an ally and friend. And the meaning of the
change was clear when Zelikow's replacement turned out
to be Eliot Cohen: a neoconservative war scholar and
enthusiast, an early booster of the "surge" on the
pundit shows, and incidentally a shameless slanderer
of Mearsheimer- Walt ("Yes, It's Anti-Semitic, "
Washington Post, April 5, 2006).
>From Zelikow to Cohen was only a step on the long path
of humiliation that now stretched before Condoleeza
Rice. When, in March 2007, amid suggestions of a
renewal of diplomacy, she intimated that talks might
be helpful in dealing with the Hamas-Fatah unity
government (whose formation the Arab world had greeted
as offering a promise of peace), she was demolished by
an AIPAC-backed advisory letter bearing the signatures
of 79 senators, which directed her not to speak with a
government that had not yet recognized Israel. From
that moment Rice was effectively neutralized.
The hottest cries for another war have been coming
this summer from Joe Lieberman. He has called for
attacks on Iran, and for attacks on Syria. It is as if
Lieberman, with his appetite for multiple theaters of
conflict, spoke from the congealed memory of all the
wars he never fought. But Joe Lieberman is a
stalking-horse. He would not say these things without
getting permission from Vice President Cheney, a close
and admired friend. Nor would Cheney permit a
high-profile lawmaker whom he partly controls to set
the United States and Israel on so perilous a course
unless he had ascertained its acceptability to Ehud
Olmert.
Yet the chief orchestrater of the second
neoconservative war of aggression is Elliott Abrams.
Convicted for deceptions around Iran-Contra, as Lewis
Libby was convicted for deceptions stemming from
Iraq--and pardoned by the elder Bush just as Libby had
his sentence commuted by the younger--Abrams now
presides over the Middle East desk at the National
Security Council. All of the wildness of this
astonishing functionary and all his reckless love of
subversion will be required to pump up the "imminent
danger" of Iran. For here, as with Iraq, the danger
can only be made to look imminent by manipulation and
forgery. On all sober estimates, Iran is several
months from mastering the nuclear cycle, and several
years from producing a weapon. Whereas Israel for
decades has been in possession of a substantial
nuclear arsenal.
How mad is Elliott Abrams? If one passage cited by
Mearsheimer- Walt is quoted accurately, it would seem
to be the duty of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee to subject Abrams to as exacting a challenge
as the Senate Judiciary Committee brought to Alberto
Gonzales. The man at the Middle East desk of the
National Security Council wrote in 1997 in his book
Faith or Fear: "there can be no doubt that Jews,
faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are
to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It
is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart--except
in Israel--from the rest of the population." When he
wrote those words, Abrams probably did not expect to
serve in another American administration. He certainly
did not expect to occupy a position that would require
him to weigh the national interest of Israel, the
country with which he confessed himself uniquely at
one, alongside the national interest of a country in
which he felt himself to stand "apart...from the rest
of the population." Now that he is calling the shots
against Hamas and Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran, his
words of 1997 ought to alarm us into reflection.
Among many possible lines of inquiry, the senators
might begin by recognizing that the United States has
other allies in Asia besides Israel. One of those
allies is India; and there is a further point of
resemblance. In a distinct exception to our
anti-proliferation policy, we have allowed India to
develop nuclear weapons; just as, in an earlier such
exception, we allowed Israel to do the same. But
suppose we read tomorrow a statement by the director
of the South Asia desk of the National Security
Council which declared: "There can be no doubt that
Hindus are to stand apart from any nation in which
they live. It is the very nature of being Hindu to be
apart--except in India--from the rest of the
population." Suppose, further, we knew this man still
held these beliefs at a time of maximum tension
between India and Pakistan; and that he had recently
channeled 86 million dollars to regional gangs and
militias bent on increasing the tension. Would we not
conclude that something in our counsels of state had
gone seriously out of joint?
The Mearsheimer- Walt study of American policy deserves
to be widely read and discussed. It could not be more
timely. If the speeches and saber-rattling by the
president, the ambassador to Iraq, and several army
officers mean anything, they mean that Cheney and
Abrams are preparing to do to Iran what Cheney and
Wolfowitz did to Iraq. They are gunning for an
incident. They are working against some resistance
from the armed forces but none from the opposition
party at home. The president has ordered American
troops to confront Iran. Sarkozy has fallen into line,
Brown and Merkel are silent, and outside the United
States only Mohammed ElBaradei of the International
Atomic Energy Agency stands between the war party and
a prefabricated justification for a war that would
extend across a vast subcontinent. Unless some
opposition can rouse itself, we are poised to descend
with non-partisan compliance into a moral and
political disaster that will dwarf anything America
has seen.
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _ | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 6:21 pm Post subject: |
| Just saw the following at www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/books/06grim.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
September 6, 2007
Books of the Times
A Prosecutorial Brief Against Israel and Its Supporters
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Skip to next paragraph
THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
484 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” arrives carrying heavy baggage. John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, set off a furor last year by arguing, in an article that appeared in The London Review of Books, that uncritical American support for Israel, shaped by powerful lobbying organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, does grave harm to both American and Israeli interests.
A bitter debate has raged ever since, with accusations of anti-Semitism leveled by, among others, Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, and Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the principal lobbying organizations taken to task by Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt.
“The Israel Lobby,” an extended, more fully argued version of the London Review article, has done nothing to calm the waters. The authors have been barred from making appearances by at least one university and several cultural centers to discuss their subject, and continue to reap a whirlwind of criticism and abuse. If they were looking for a fight, they have found it.
Slowly, deliberately and dispassionately Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt lay out the case for a ruthlessly realistic Middle East policy that would make Israel nothing more than one of many countries in the region. On those occasions when Israel’s interests coincide with America’s, it should count on American support, but otherwise not. What Americans fail to understand, the authors argue, is that most of the time the two countries’ interests are opposed.
The reason they do not realize this, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt insist, can be explained quite simply: The Israel lobby makes sure of it. Working closely with members of Congress, public-policy organizations and journals of opinion, energetic, well-financed groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee, along with dozens of political-action committees, perpetuate the myth, as the authors see it, of Israel as an isolated, beleaguered state surrounded by enemies and in need of America’s unstinting financial and military support.
This lobby is particularly adept at stifling debate before it begins, the authors argue. “Whether the issue is abortion, arms control, affirmative action, gay rights, the environment, trade policy, health care, immigration or welfare, there is almost always a lively debate on Capitol Hill,” they write. “But where Israel is concerned, potential critics fall silent and there is hardly any debate at all.”
There is nothing underhanded or devious about this, the authors say. Like the National Rifle Association or the AARP, the Israel lobby relies on the traditional political weapons available to any special-interest group in pressing its agenda. It just happens to be unusually skillful and effective.
“It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel’s case within the United States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state,” they write.
The problem, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, is that Israel has become a strategic liability with the end of the cold war and a moral pariah in its dealings with the Palestinians and, most recently, the Lebanese. Uncritical American support for its closest Middle East ally has damaged American credibility in the Arab world, encouraged terrorism, stymied the search for a solution to the Palestinian problem, and in every way made America’s international position weaker and more dangerous.
Coolly, not to say coldly, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt mount a prosecutorial brief against Israel’s foreign and domestic policies, and against the state of Israel itself. They describe a virtual rogue state, empowered by American wealth and might, that blocks peace at every turn, threatens its cowering neighbors with impunity, crushes the national aspirations of the Palestinians and, whenever the opportunity arises, bites the hand that feeds it.
Working tirelessly in the background is the Israel lobby, playing Iago to America’s Othello, leading president after president down ever more dangerous paths. Without intense pressure from the Israel lobby, the authors argue, America would not have undertaken the war in Iraq.
Most American readers will bristle at the authors’ characterization of Israel. This is to be expected, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, because of the completely false image of Israel and its history that has been manufactured by the Israel lobby. As a result, Americans completely misinterpret the Palestinian issue and fail to support a productive policy that would tilt away from Israel and toward the Palestinians.
The authors state, on several occasions, their belief that Israel has a moral and legal right to exist, but the effect of their book is to leave it dangling by a moral and strategic thread. In essence they call for the United States to cut Israel loose, to return more or less to American policy before the 1967 war, when the United States tried to occupy a middle ground between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Strangely, the authors do not itemize the fabulous benefits delivered by this approach in the 1950s and ’60s.
It is a little odd that so chilly a book should generate such heat. Most of Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt’s arguments are familiar ones, and it is hardly inflammatory to point out that the major Jewish organizations tend to take a much tougher line on, say, a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem, the Iraq war or settlements in the West Bank, than most American Jews favor. The writers stand on eminently defensible ground when they argue for a more constructive, creative American role in peace talks.
The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way.
They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on.
“It is time,” Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt write, “for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.” But it’s not. And America won’t. That’s realism.
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C-SPAN viewer Call for GAO head David Walker which mentioned Walt and Mearsheimer book
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2007/09/israel-lobby-and-us-foreign-policy.html
http://tinyurl.com/2KHCED
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/1422235
Drumbeat For Attack on Iran Grows Louder in Washington:
Talk about a U.S. attack on Iran appears to be growing louder in Washington. There are reports that Vice President Dick Cheney's office has issued instructions to conservative think tanks to start a drumbeat for attacking Iran. On Monday the American Enterprise Institute is hosting two events related to Iran. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is giving a speech on how the war on terrorism should be viewed as a "a world war that pits civilization against terrorists and their state sponsors who wish to impose a new dark age." Later in the day former CIA director Jim Woolsey and others will meet to discuss a new book by longtime Iran hawk Michael Leeden titled "The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots" Quest for Destruction." The Heritage Foundation recently hosted an interagency Bush administration war game attempting to anticipate Iranian responses to a U.S. bombing campaign. Meanwhile the Sunday Times of London has reported the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against twelve hundred targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days. The main source of the article was an official at another conservative Washington think tank – the Nixon Center.
Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2007/09/05/cheney-orders-media-to-sell-attack-on-iran.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 10:09 pm Post subject: |
| Israel Lobby Slammed at Start of Book Tour
By Terry Walz
CNI Staff
John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt, the Chicago/Harvard University professors whose article last year on the Israel Lobby caused an uproar amongst hardline supporters of Israel have started a national book tour in connection with the publication of their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26.00), now available.
They made two appearances in Washington , DC on September 5, addressing packed audiences at the Cosmos Club and at the city's famous bookstore, Politics and Prose. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
At the Cosmos Club event, which I attended, the authors addressed two questions: Is there an Israel Lobby? (Walt) and Is the Lobby's impact positive or negative? (Mearsheimer). The object was to bear out the thesis of their book, that such a lobby does exist (which had been preposterously denied by Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross in a debate a year earlier at Cooper Union in New York City), and that it has worked extremely well, often to the detriment of both American and Israeli interests.
Walt told the audience how the initial reaction to the article in the London Review of Books in March 2006 had prompted a vociferous response, one that was often laced with charges of anti-Semitism, none of which was true, and "sloppy scholarship", a charge aimed at demeaning and dismissing the views of the authors. But the response by interested people has been significant. According to the webmaster at the Harvard University website where the longer version of the article was posted, it had been downloaded 265,000 times as of July 2006.
The lobby's successes in congressional hallways have come by wielding a heavy axe, often forcing nervous congressional representative to realize that criticism aimed at Israel would likely result in electoral defeat at the polls. The lobby's ability to steer money to their electoral opponents was among the tools the Lobby used without hesitation. In this, it was perhaps no different than other lobbies, which as Walt averred, were "as American as apple pie."
And yet, the Israel Lobby's agenda, Mearsheimer stated, has led the United States into an alliance with Israel that in the long run undermines both the strategic interests of the United States in the Middle East as Israel 's own interests within that region. It has also led the American government to hold positions that are not only opposed by the majority of Americans polled - for example, on Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, on the continued occupation of the West Bank - but also by most peoples in the world. In a post-colonial world, it has tolerated Israel to construct colonies in the West Bank . There is no doubt, Mearsheimer said, that the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis was among the reasons that led to the 9/11 attacks, and to continues attacks on American interests. There is also no doubt that, whatever leaders of the Israeli government may have thought, the Lobby solidly backed neoconservative efforts to promote the war on Iraq, which has produced nothing but continued death, destruction, and turmoil in the Middle East, to neither American nor Israeli strategic interests in the area, nor the welfare of the people in the region.
Whatever else happens with the book, the authors concluded, their hope is that it would open up the debate on Israel and the American policy in the Middle East , and move the United States to adopt more sensible policies there.
The 355 page book is backed up by an additional 108 pages of footnotes.
The a list of Mearsheimer and Walt's upcoming appearances in California (San Francisco, Los Angeles) and elsewhere during September and October, see their website
http://www.israellobbybook.com/appearances.html and also Farrar Straus and Giroux's (author appearances).
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