| Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 9:48 pm Post subject: On Joe Klein and the Jewish Neoconservatives |
| Joe Klein Speaks Truth to Power
– but how long will they let him get away with it?
by Justin Raimondo
August 1, 2008
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13236
It's been just about a month since Joe Klein's column accusing "Jewish neoconservatives" of having "divided loyalties" appeared in Time magazine, and already the controversy surrounding it is taking on the grand scale of an opera – perhaps a stage adaptation of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." His original sin was writing this:
"The notion that we could just waltz in and inject democracy into an extremely complicated, devout and ancient culture smacked – still smacks – of neocolonialist legerdemain. The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives – people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary – plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel. And then there is the question – made manifest by the no-bid contracts offered U.S. oil companies by the Iraqis – of two oil executives, Bush and Cheney, securing a new source of business for their Texas buddies.
"The surge has reduced violence. We should all be thrilled about that – and honored by the brilliance of those who have served in Iraq. But what we're talking about here is whipped cream on a pile of fertilizer – a regional policy unprecedented in its stupidity and squalor."
I cite this passage in its full context, rather than lift out the controversial phrases, because the offending column was, after all, about the surge, and the utter irrelevance of its alleged success – a view I expressed here, just the other day. At any rate, Klein stuck the knife in the neocons' back at the tail end of a long peroration on the complete futility of this war, and he concludes by pointing the finger of blame – not only at "Jewish neoconservatives," but also at Bush's oilmen buddies back home on the range.
However, it's difficult to believe Bush launched his "global democratic revolution," first implanting the revolutionary flag in the arid soil of the Middle East, to enrich his cowboy buddies – whose said Iraqi riches, I might add, have yet to materialize.
Insofar as these cowboy oilmen were involved, it was as the financial patrons of the neoconservatives: Paul Gottfried and others have documented how the neocons, a relatively small group, grabbed the lion's share of big-time donors among the major conservative foundations.
Sure, lots of people made money out of the war, and are continuing to do so, and yet they didn't launch this crusade to transform the Middle East into Kansas with lots of sand. Its original authors, the real intellectual and political sparkplugs who energized Bush's bout of Napoleonic adventurism, were the neocons, who began calling for the "liberation" of Iraq the moment Papa Bush ordered US troops to stop short of taking Baghdad at the close of the first Iraq war.
The neocons chafed and griped at this "betrayal" for all the years they spent in the political wilderness, out of power albeit ensconced in lower-level jobs, tucked safely away at the National Endowment for Democracy, where they couldn't do much harm.
That changed when Bush II entered the White House: they descended on Washington like a plague of locusts, and settled at the top of the tree. The neocon network, headquartered in the office of the Vice President, extended its tentacles into virtually every major power-center in Washington, with the Department of State and the ranks of the CIA, to some degree, the only holdouts.
On September 11, 2001, the neocons were in place, ready to take advantage of the worst terrorist attack in our history. Willing and able to implement their preconceived war plans, deciding to attack Iraq rather than al-Qaeda's Afghan stronghold "because it was doable," as Paul Wolfowitz, the intellectual eminence grise of the administration's Israel-firsters, bluntly put it.
For a long time there has been a reaction building among Jewish progressives – a phrase that seems oddly redundant – against the domination of pro-Israel and Jewish organizations by right-wing extremists who represent nothing but their own prejudices, and certainly do not represent the American Jewish community. As I have pointed out before, without American Jews the organized antiwar movement would be significantly smaller as well as a lot less organized. That is certainly the case around Antiwar.com's virtual office.
In any case, Klein's outspokenness – which, I think, underestimates the power of Christian neoconservatives, and not only evangelicals – is part of this new frankness about the ethnic factor in American politics, which is coming to the fore in this era of Obamamania, and that's all to the good.
Now that he has gotten his letter from Abe Foxman – been there, done that – Klein ought to wear it as a badge of honor. Foxman, for his part, has been discredited as an embarrassment and a bit of a buffoon, with his brazen attempts to shut down all criticism of the "correct line" on Israel and its American amen corner.
In his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Klein goes on at length about this thesis that a group of individuals with key ties to the far right wing of Israeli politics achieved prominent positions within the administration's foreign policy circles and deliberately plotted a course that was detrimental to the United States in order to further Israel's interests. This isn't disloyalty, as such, but a case, as Klein puts it, of "divided loyalties," one in which too many allowed their sympathies for the Jewish state to override common sense, simple logic, and the lessons of history.
Klein really has the neocons in a lather, and it's a wonderful sight to behold: they hate stuff like this, and they're baring their teeth fangs first, like Jennifer Rubin of Commentary:
"Try as I might to formulate a further response to Joe Klein's rant, I cannot. One can argue facts, one can differ on interpretation of events, or one can discuss policy. But one cannot debate raging venom."
Rubin's invective amounts, in effect, to the position taken by radical leftists who regularly disrupt far right-wing meetings and other events they consider beyond the pale, which is: you can't debate fascists. You fight them in the streets, and enact anti-hate laws to shut them up: you jail them and beat them up. But you don't sit down to tea with them and have a serious discussion. Rubin's is a neocon version of this "no platform for fascists" stance: she purports to be shocked that such views as Klein's are allowed to be expressed at all: "More disconcerting than Klein's raving," she moans, "is that the canard of Jewish disloyalty has now apparently found a home at a major MSM publication." Why, the poor dear has a case of the vapors: won't someone shut that man up?
Writing in National Review, Peter Wehner urges Klein to give up interviews as well as blogging:. After characterizing the Time columnist as motivated by "anger and even hatred," and his arguments as expressions of "unfiltered rage," Wehner avers:
"Joe Klein is free to say what he wants. And the rest of us are free to point out the foolish and ad hominem nature of his pronouncements, as well as his past words."
I have to say that Wehner certainly does a bang-up job of debunking Klein's claim, in the Atlantic interview, that he opposed the Iraq war: Wehner cites chapter and verse, with links, showing that Klein drank the neocon Kool-Aid, too, albeit not as deeply as others. Klein, at least, was able to recover: Wehner is too far gone for that.
Ad hominem is the only way to go for the neocons, at this point, and it's always been their weapon of choice: look what they tried to do to Pat Buchanan. Not to mention John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and a long list of others too numerous to mention: in his Atlantic interview, Klein mentions one poor guy who served for a time on Barack Obama's advisory group:
"They seem to have the power to hurt people's careers. I was really angry about what happened with Rob Malley. You know, it's amazing to be attacked as an antisemite by extremists who I think are very dangerous. And they seem to think, when you look at what Pete Wehner said, or what Jennifer Rubin said on their blog a couple of days ago, ‘I can't imagine why Time hasn't shut this guy down and fired him and blah blah blah blah blah.' That's what they want to do. They want to stifle opinions that are different from theirs. I'm certainly not going to back down."
Good for Joe! – and good for "J Street," and good for Philip Weiss, who has done yeoman's work in this area: people are finally beginning to stand up in the Jewish community, and say: Enough with the extremism. Enough is enough. Let them join with the overwhelming majority of the American people who want to take back our foreign policy from a small but influential minority of Israeli-centric ideologues, and start putting American interests first, in the Middle East and everywhere.
~ Justin Raimondo
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On Joe Klein and the Jewish Neoconservatives
This piece also appears at Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-levy/on-joe-klein-and-the-jewi_b_115999.html
You may have missed it, but renowned Time columnist Joe Klein and the Jewish neoconservative blogosphere are at war with one another. The reason this is more important than an argument on who sits where in shul is that Klein has refused to cower, and as a respected member of the mainstream media is pushing back against one of the uglier and more debate-restricting phenomena of recent years. Here is what Joe had to say on ‘Swampland’, his blog on the Time website:
There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then successfully helped provide the intellectual rationale for George Bush to do it in 2003… Happily, these people represent a very small sliver of the Jewish population in this country…I remain proud of my Jewish heritage, a strong supporter of Israel…But I am not willing to grant these ideologues the anonymity they seek…I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America's long-term interests and because they believe Israel's existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I'm not going to be intimidated by them.
It came in response to the latest outburst from Podhoretz Jr. at the Commentary blog: “As for his [Klein] use of classic anti-Semitic canards, I am happy to report that the Jewish people will long survive Joe Klein”. Mazal Tov, Joe, you have became a thing that the Jewish people will survive, no less.
All of this came on the heels of an earlier and none-too-friendly exchange of letters between Klein and the Anti-Defamation League, when the latter saw fit to attack Klein over his characterization of the role of the Jewish neoconservatives in the run-up to the Iraq War. Joe stood his ground then, too, effectively dismissing the claim of anti-Semitism and explaining that “most Jews disagree with their [the Jewish neocons] politics and many Jews are disgusted with their behavior.”
I would suggest that this is not just Klein’s private kerfuffle: it matters to Jewish America, to America and Israel too, and to being able to have a more serious conversation about anti-Semitism in the future.
The Klein thesis shared by a great many commentators and analysts (this writer included) goes something like this: Bush administration policies in the Middle East have had disastrous consequences for the US; Israel too is in a less secure and worse place as a result of these policies; ultimate responsibility for all this lies with the President himself and his hawkish and close group of senior aides—principal among them Veep Cheney; the neoconservatives played an important role in providing an ideological framing for these policies; within that neoconservative world there operates a prominent and tight-knit group of Jewish neocons who are ideologically driven in part by an old school Likudist view of Israeli interests.
Were the Jewish neocons in control and did they make the fatal decisions? No. Are all Jews neoconservatives or are all neoconservatives Jews? Please! Are the Jews or Israel to blame for the Bush Middle East debacle? Get outta here.
Something did happen though—there was a failure within the mainstream, Jewish and non-Jewish, to identify the existence of a particular Jewish neoconservative narrative and then to challenge that narrative as being fundamentally flawed in its reading of both American and Israeli interests. One of the causes of that vacuum was the abuse and cheapening of the term anti-Semitism as it was hurled at many who went after Podhoretz, Perle, Feith, and co. They tried, and sadly rather successfully, built a wall of untouchability. Klein is taking his shofar, or trumpet, to that wall, as many have done before, but Joe is particularly MSM, and therefore important.
Too many Jewish communal leaders and institutions made the mistake of not standing up and speaking out more against the right-wing excesses of a small minority of their co-religionists. Some even embraced and feted the neocons—a mistake AIPAC particularly excelled in and something I get the impression that AIPAC is at least partially trying to walk itself back from. Israeli leaders, interestingly enough, appear to be less enthusiastic—there is evidence that Prime Minister Sharon thought the Iraq War not to be a good idea and outgoing Prime Minister Olmert has begun proximity talks with the Syrians.
Similar mistakes are being made with the far-right Christian Evangelical Zionists, and John Hagee’s group CUFI. Can there be a more vile poster-boy for Israel than Hagee?!
Polls consistently show that American Jewish opinion is in a very different place. Over a decade ago, J.J. Goldberg described how what he called the “new Jews”, who were out of sync with the majority, assumed the mantle of leadership in the American Jewish community. In his book Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, Goldberg claimed that a set of facts had emerged by the mid-1970s that transformed organized Jewry, based around the 1967 Israeli military victory, the role of the Soviet Jewry campaign in Soviet-US relations, and the belated rise of popular Holocaust awareness with its attendant “never again” maxim. This created the counter-revolution of the “new Jews”—a passionate minority of defensive nationalists, driven by a terrible vision, living amidst an overwhelming majority of still optimistic Jewish liberals. To quote J.J. Goldberg, “their defiance was so strident, and their anger so intense, that the rest of the Jewish community respectfully stood back and let the new Jews take the lead.”
The “new Jews” of Goldberg’s 1997 book are today’s Jewish neoconservatives, and the reason this is so important right now is the issue raised by Joe Klein—their aggressive advocacy of a military strike against Iran, a position that again places them out of step with the majority of American Jews. There have been a series of articles advocating such military action. It is true that such voices are also heard in Israel (and some even appear in the NY Times op-ed page, most notably this truly horrific and pathetically argued piece by Benny Morris).
I would argue that Israel has made a strategic mistake in making the gevalt approach so central in its response to suspected Iranian nuclear ambitions. Israel is stronger than that and it also has the capacity to deter Iran. It also has U.S. support. It is worth remembering that Israel, evidently, has not attacked Iran, so in practice, at least so far, the military is not the preferred option. In their declarations, Israeli leaders express a preference for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear question. And prominent ex- and even current officials have endorsed American engagement with Iran as the best option, including ex-Mossad chief Efraim Halevy and ex-Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami. In private, Israeli leaders are apparently more circumspect. This report appeared some time ago in Haaretz about Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni:
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel…Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.
I will not go too deeply into the Iran policy debate, but a more compelling case than that of Podhoretz and co. is that military action would be a disaster for Israel, for America, and for the American Jewish community, too.
The problem for the American Jewish community would not seem to be with exposing the objectionable positions of Jewish neoconservatives and then having a debate. The danger is in the opposite approach—in creating the impression that the Jewish neoconservative voice is the Jewish voice, or that of the “pro-Israel” lobby, and in drowning out, or more accurately, suppressing the voice of the majority. That would be a way to not only increase the risk of an extremely dangerous policy being pursued and to make support for Israel the partisan domain of the far-right bomb-bomb-bomb Iran crowd, but it would also cede the ground to those who are emptying the charge of anti-Semitism of all meaning. And those are good enough reasons for Joe Klein’s cause to be our cause too.
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Joe Klein: Neocons Trying To Have Me Fired From Time
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/30/joe-klein-neocons-trying_n_115775.html
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/07/when_extremists_attack.html
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July 31, 2008
Neocon Flap Highlights Jewish Divide
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lubanlobe.php?articleid=13232
by Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe
A mushrooming media controversy pitting neoconservatives against a prominent Jewish-American political commentator could mark a new stage in the growing battle over who speaks for the US Jewish community on foreign policy issues, particularly regarding the Middle East.
Time columnist Joe Klein's accusations that Jewish neoconservatives, who played a particularly visible role in the drive to war in Iraq and have since pushed for military confrontation in Iran, sacrificed "US lives and money...to make the world safe for Israel," have spurred angry charges of anti-Semitism and personal attacks from critics at such neoconservative strongholds as the Weekly Standard, National Review, and Commentary.
But the fierceness of the controversy surrounding Klein, generally considered a political centrist, highlights the growing antagonism between neoconservative hardliners and prominent US Jews whose more moderate views are aligned more closely with those of the foreign policy establishment.
The controversy began Jun. 24, when Klein argued in a Time blog post that the "fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives – people like [independent Democrat Sen.] Joe Lieberman and the crowd at Commentary – plumped for this war [in Iraq], and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties."
Within a day, Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, accused Klein of espousing ,"age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government."
The reaction from the right-wing press was even harsher. Commentary editor John Podhoretz reiterated the accusation of "anti-Semitic canards," and called Klein "manifestly intellectually unstable."
Writing in National Review, former George W. Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner called Klein "a man who cannot control his anger and even hatred."
But Klein has refused to back down, accusing his attackers of using charges of anti-Semitism to silence criticism of neoconservative policies.
"When [Commentary writer] Jennifer Rubin or Abe Foxman calls me anti-Semitic, they're wrong," he said in an interview. "I am anti-neoconservative."
In its broad contours, the controversy is a familiar one, as critics accuse neoconservatives of exercizing pernicious influence on US Middle East policy and neoconservatives reply with charges of anti-Semitism and conspiracy-mongering.
What distinguishes the recent furor over Klein, however, is that it involves someone who is widely regarded as an exemplar of the centrist political establishment.
Klein is best known for his 1996 novel Primary Colors a thinly-veiled and largely unflattering portrait of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign that was originally published anonymously and subsequently made into a Hollywood movie. A frequent critic of Clinton, Klein has at times expressed admiration for George W. Bush.
He also endorsed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (although he has since expressed regret for his support) and describes himself as "a strong supporter of Israel."
The Klein dust-up is the latest in a series of events over the last several years that have placed neoconservatives both in the spotlight and on the defensive.
Neoconservatism, a predominantly – but by no means exclusively – Jewish movement, got its start in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a small but influential group of Democrats began distancing themselves from the party which, in their view, had become too dovish toward the Soviet Union and too sympathetic toward Arab demands against Israel.
By 1980, most had become strong supporters of Ronald Reagan. A number of prominent neoconservatives joined his administration, including many who would later play key roles in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.
Consigned to the political wilderness under President George H.W. Bush, the neoconservatives became increasingly identified in the 1990s with Israel's right-wing Likud Party. It was also during the same period that they began agitating for "regime change" in Iraq, arguing that such a move would transform the balance of power in the Middle East decisively in favor of both Israel and the US.
They experienced a rebirth with the election of Bush's son in 2000, and particularly after the 9/11 attacks, when they played a major role, both inside the administration and in the media, in rallying the public and Congress behind war in Iraq.
But with the deterioration of the situation in Iraq, the influence of neoconservatives inside and outside the administration began to wane, and critics began charging that they had led the US astray.
A series of incidents also focused critical scrutiny on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful lobbying group whose hawkish right-wing leadership has often defied both the views of the broader US Jewish community and the policies of Israeli governments.
In 2004, the Justice Department charged Pentagon staffer Lawrence Franklin with passing classified US government documents to two AIPAC lobbyists, who had then given the documents to an Israeli Embassy official. In January 2006, Franklin was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, while the AIPAC staffers are still awaiting trial.
In March 2006, the well-respected and staunchly realist international relations scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published the article "The Israel Lobby" in the London Review of Books. That article, which charged that the lobby had for decades skewed US policy towards Israel in a direction detrimental to US interests, became the basis for their 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
Mearsheimer and Walt's thesis was instantly controversial. Like Klein, they were accused by critics, including the ADL and Commentary, of anti-Semitism and of perpetrating stereotypes about shadowy Jewish conspiracies.
But as a result of their stature, the two authors' work clearly created political space for those, both within the foreign policy establishment and within the US Jewish community, who had been long privately critical of the neoconservatives but had been worried about the consequences of going public with their misgivings.
More recently, AIPAC has come under fire for its close alliance with right-wing Christian Zionists, particularly controversial pastor John Hagee and his organization Christians United for Israel (CUFI).
Hagee views an undivided Israel as a precondition for precipitating the Armageddon, and his group has accordingly pushed for hawkish US policies in the Middle East that have been consistent with the neoconservatives' own preferences.
Matters came to a head earlier this year, when Republican presidential candidate John McCain was compelled to repudiate Hagee's endorsement after comments came to light in which the pastor suggested that the Holocaust was biblically ordained in order to force Jews to resettle in Israel.
Nonetheless, Hagee and CUFI have maintained close ties with the neoconservatives, and a collection of prominent Israel hawks, including Senator Lieberman, spoke at CUFI's summit in Washington earlier this month.
The belief that AIPAC has failed to accurately represent the views of the US Jewish community led to the foundation earlier this year of J Street, a Jewish lobbying group that aims to push for a more moderate stance on Middle East issues.
In the wake of these developments, many observers have taken Klein's comments – and particularly his refusal to back down in the face of withering criticism from neoconservatives – as a sign that new political space is being created for the public airing of more moderate views on Middle East policy.
M.J. Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer now associated with the moderate Israel Policy Forum, expressed the hope that commentators would stop equating neoconservatism with Judaism and start treating it as a political movement subject to political criticism.
"Although most neocons are Jews, few Jews are neocons," he wrote Wednesday. By equating the two groups, "[the neocons] want Americans not to follow the trail of war-mongering that leads not to Jews but to them."
(Inter Press Service)
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July 16, 2008
Turning the Tables
on the Israel-Firsters
http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=13139
by Michael Scheuer
Now that the dust has settled in the spat between journalist Joe Klein and the ideologues at Commentary, it is time to regret the ink spilled over the non-issue of "dual loyalties." The idea that there are U.S. citizens who have equal loyalties to the United States and Israel is passé. American Israel-firsters have long since dropped any pretense of loyalty to the United States and its genuine national interests. They have moved brazenly into the Israel first, last, and always camp. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Norman Podhoretz, Victor Davis Hanson, the Rev. Franklin Graham, Alan Dershowitz, Rudy Giuliani, Douglas Feith, the Rev. Rod Parsley, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Bill Kristol, the Rev. John Hagee, and the thousands of wealthy supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) appear to care about the United States only so far as Washington is willing to provide immense, unending funding and the lives of young U.S. service personnel to protect Israel. These individuals and their all-for-Israel journals – Commentary, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal – amount to nothing less than a fifth column intent on involving 300 million Americans in other peoples' religious wars, making them pay and bleed to protect a nation in which the United States has no genuine national security interest at stake.
The Israel-firsters' success is, of course, the stuff of which legends are made. Most recently, for example, we heard President Bush echo Sen. Lieberman's insane and subversive contention that the United States has a "duty" to ensure the fulfilling of God's millennia-old promise to Abraham regarding the creation and survival of Israel. Bush told the Knesset all Americans are ready to endlessly bleed and pay to ensure Israel's security. And where does the president derive authority to make such a commitment in the name of his countrymen? From the Constitution? On the basis of America's dominant religion? From – heaven forbid – a thoughtful, hardheaded analysis of U.S. interests?
No, Bush's pledge was based on none of these. Bush's decision to more deeply involve America in the eternal Arab-Israeli war was based on nothing less than the corruption wrought on the American political system by the Israel-firsters, AIPAC's enormous treasury, and the lamentable but growing influence of America's leading evangelical Protestant preachers.
The Israel-firsters started the Iraq war and now have the United States locked into an occupation of that country that may not end in any of our lifetimes. Unless Americans ignore the likes of Hanson, Podhoretz, Lieberman, Woolsey, and Wolfowitz, the cost in blood and treasure will ultimately bankrupt America.
AIPAC is a perfectly legal organization, and the wealth of its members is channeled into reliable campaign contributions for any candidate from either party who will put Israel's interests above America's. From McCain to Obama, from Pelosi to Giuliani, from Hillary Clinton to Vice President Cheney, AIPAC pumps money to any and every American politician who is willing to adopt an Israel-first policy.
Leading American Protestant evangelical preachers – men like Hagee, Parsley, and Graham – are the newest and perhaps most anti-American members of this fifth column. They serve two purposes: (1) to reinforce in the minds of their flocks the Bush-Lieberman absurdity that the United States has a "duty" to ensure Israel's survival; and (2) to use religious rhetoric to steadily convince the Muslim world that U.S. leaders are interested only in taming – and if need be, destroying – Islam.
The reality and power of this anti-American, pro-Israel triangle – Israel-first politicians, civil servants, and pundits; AIPAC's corrupting influence; and the warmongering of major evangelical Protestant preachers – is so obvious and palpable that the only way its members can blur reality is to deny the triangle's existence and identify their critics as anti-Semites. Well, the time has come to simply ignore these folks' knee-jerk hurling of that epithet. Indeed, the slur ought to understood for what it is: a sure sign that the Israel-firsters know that their fifth column would be destroyed in a minute if their fellow Americans come to recognize that their sons and daughters are dying in Iraq and soon elsewhere to protect an Israeli state whose existence is just as important to U.S. interests as the creation of a Palestinian state – that is, of no importance whatsoever.
American voters must start using the democratic process to begin removing themselves from the religious war known as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Disengagement will take time, hard work, and a steadfast commitment to the rule of law. Three actions are well within the voters' capability, and their use would bring pressure on federal officials to stop killing America's children in wars between Arabs and Israelis.
Voters should press federal representatives to end taxpayer funding for the National Endowment for Democracy and other such organizations. These organizations' main function is to promote the fallacy that U.S. interests are served by making sure that Israel – "the embattled island of democracy in the Middle East" – is protected, and that the lives of American children should be joyfully spent to bring democracy to foreigners in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Voters should not vote for any candidate for federal office who accepts contributions from AIPAC or any other Israel-first organization. This decision would be an important step in beginning to sweep clean the Augean stable that is American politics.
Voters of all faiths must press their religious leaders to regularly, publicly, and specifically denounce the evangelical Protestant preachers whose fire-and-brimstone support for Israel involves Americans in religious wars in which U.S. interests are not threatened.
Neutralizing the Israel-first fifth column must be done, but it must be accomplished using legitimate democratic tools: voting, lobbying, free speech, and support for candidates pledged to keep America out of other peoples' religious wars. The invocation of the anti-Semite epithet by the Israel-firsters should be ignored. To be silenced by the slurs of the Israel-firsters is to ignominiously invite the end of American independence by subordinating U.S. interests to those of a foreign nation, as well as to forget the warning of the greatest American. "If men are precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind," George Washington said in March 1783, "reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter." As long as the Israel-firsters can define the limits of acceptable public discourse, Americans are on their way to the slaughter.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAehMPVFFE0
Michael Scheuer (former head of CIA Bin Laden unit) was on Bill Maher. He said:
" Israel is not worth an American life or an American dollar." and
"Our unqualified support of Israel has brought the US a great deal of pain and increasingly dead Americans, fighting wars that are not ours to fight." and
" America is fighting a war that does not exist -- our politicians have lied to us-it is not about hating freedom, womens' rights etc.---it is about our policies in the Middle East ."
http://neoconzionistthreat.com | |
