There is a great educational need to understanding the true issue of the State of Israel today.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Poll: 71% of Israelis want U.S. to strike Iran if talks fail
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A new poll finds that 71 percent of Israelis believe that the United States should launch a military attack on Iran if diplomatic efforts fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program. (AP)
Fully 71 percent of Israelis believe that the United States should launch a military attack on Iran if diplomatic efforts fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program, according to a new poll.
The survey, commissioned by Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center and the Anti-Defamation League, found that 59 percent of Israelis still believe the war in Iraq was justified, while 36 percent take the opposite view.
Some 65 percent believe that the United States is a loyal ally of Israel, with only 11 percent saying the opposite. A slightly higher proportion, 73 percent, described U.S. President George W. Bush as friendly. Forty-eight percent attributed U.S. support for Israel to strategic considerations, while 30 percent credited American Jewry and 17 percent cited shared values and a shared democratic tradition.
Regarding America's importance to Israel, there was near consensus: 91 percent said that close relations with the U.S. are vital to Israel's security. Some 51 percent of respondents predicted that the U.S. will ultimately impose an agreement on Israel and the Palestinians, while 43 percent disagreed.
In addition, 52 percent of respondents described American Jewish support of Israel as "sufficient," while 33 percent did not. About half of all Israelis believe that American Jewry is in danger of disappearing due to assimilation, the poll found.
NEW YORK (AFP) -An upcoming book that challenges whether diplomatic and military support for Israel is in the United States' best interests 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.
"Regrettably, no. The one issue on which there will be virtually no debate is the question of whether the United States should continue to give Israel unconditional backing," they said.
Manchester, NH- Freelance reporter Matt Lepacek, reporting for Infowars.com, was arrested for asking a question to one of Giuliani's staff members in a press conference. The press secretary identified the New York based reporter as having previously asked Giuliani about his prior knowledge of WTC building collapses and ordered New Hampshire state police to arrest him.
Jason Bermas, reporting for Infowars and America: Freedom to Fascism, confirmed Lepacek had official CNN press credentials for the Republican debate. However, his camera was seized by staff members who shut off the camera, according to Luke Rudkowski, also a freelance Infowars reporter on the scene. He said police physically assaulted both reporters after Rudkowski objected that they were official members of the press and that nothing illegal had taken place. Police reportedly damaged the Infowars-owned camera in the process.
Reporters were questioning Giuliani staff members on a variety of issues, including his apparent ignorance of the 9/11 Commission Report, according to Bermas. The staff members accused the reporters of Ron Paul partisanship, which press denied. It was at this point that Lepacek, who was streaming a live report, asked a staff member about Giuliani's statement to Peter Jennings that he was told beforehand that the WTC buildings would collapse.
Giuliani's press secretary then called over New Hampshire state police, fingering Lepacek.
Though CNN staff members tried to persuade police not to arrest the accredited reporter-- in violation of the First Amendment, Lepacek was taken to jail. The police station told JonesReport.com that Lepacek is being charged with felony criminal trespass.
Lepacek did receive one phone call in jail which he used to contact reporter Luke Rudkowski. According to Rudkowski, Lepacek was scared because he had been told he may be transferred to a secret detention facility because state police were also considering charges of espionage against him-- due to a webcam Lepacek was using to broadcast live at the event. State police considered it to be a hidden camera, which led to discussion of "espionage."
Wearing a webcam at a press event is not an act of espionage. Alex Jones, who was watching the live feed, witnessed Lepacek announce that he was wearing a camera connected to a laptop that was transmitting the press conference live at approximately 9:20 EST. When Lepacek announced that he was broadcasting live, Giuliani staff members responded by getting upset at his questions and ordering his arrest.
The entire incident took place in a large press auditorium, apart from the debate stages where authorized media were able to question candidates and their handlers.
Since when do campaign operatives have the power to order state police to arrest someone on false charges or arbitrate who has the right to conduct journalism, a right guarded by the Constitution?
A warning to the press-- if candidates or police don't like your questions, you could be arrested for trespassing and even espionage in the new Orwellian America.
The state police in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where the arrest was made, confirmed that Lepacek is in custody on charges of criminal trespass. Police said information on who filed the trespass complaint was not yet available and would be filed in the police report.
It is clear from talking to multiple eyewitness, as well as the live webcam, that there could not have been a complainant who originated police action, because it happened spontaneously. The police need to be very careful about violating the Bill of Rights and falsely charging someone with a felony crime. This constitutes extreme official oppression and is a total violation of the reporter's civil rights. It would have been bad enough if the reporter would have just been thrown out, but to arrest him when he had a valid press pass and CNN protested his arrest is an outrage.
The arrest-- which clearly violated the First Amendment-- was recorded from two separate camera angles, including a live feed recorded remotely-- so the episode is on record in the event that police destroy or lose tapes seized from Lepacek in attempt to obfuscate the facts of the incident.
If you doubt that police would assault reporters, seize video equipment and act on political orders, then consider the experience Alex Jones had when Texas state troopers arrested him for asking George W. Bush a question during a press conference while he was governor. See video below.
These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974). Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent-minded American military leader.
Admiral Moorer knew what he was talking about. On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked the American intelligence ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173. The Israelis even strafed the life rafts, machine-gunning the American sailors leaving the stricken ship.
Apparently, the USS Liberty had picked up Israeli communications that revealed Israel’s responsibility for the Six Day War. Even today, history books and the majority of Americans blame the conflict on the Arabs.
The United States Navy knew the truth, but the President of the United States took Israel’s side against the American military and ordered the United States Navy to shut its mouth. President Lyndon Johnson said it was all just a mistake. Later in life, Admiral Moorer formed a commission and presented the unvarnished truth to Americans.
The power of the Israel Lobby over American foreign policy is considerable. In March 2006, two distinguished American scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, expressed concern in the London (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html) that the power of the Israel Lobby was bending U.S. foreign policy in directions that serve neither U.S. nor Israeli interests. The two experts were hoping to start a debate that might rescue the U.S. and Israel from unsuccessful policies of coercion that are intensifying Muslim hatred of Israel and America. The Israel lobby was opposed to any such reassessment, and attempted to close it off with epithets: “Jew-baiter,” “anti-semitic,” and even “anti-American.” Today Israeli citizens who oppose Zionist plans for greater Israel are denounced as “anti-Semites.”
Many Americans are unaware of the influence of the Israel lobby. Instead they think of the U.S. as “the world’s sole superpower,” a macho new Roman Empire whose orders are obeyed without question or the insolent nonentity is “bombed back to the stone age.” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article647188.ece)
Many Americans are convinced that military coercion serves our interest. They cite Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now they are ready to bring Iran and Pakistan to heel with bombs.
This arrogance results in the murder of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of men, women and children, a fate that many Americans seem to believe is appropriate for countries that do not accept U.S. hegemony.
Coercion is what American foreign policy has become. Macho superpatriots love it. This is the America of the Bush Regime. If some of these superpatriots had their way every “unpatriotic, terrorist supporter” who dares to criticize the war against “the Islamofacists” would be sent to Gitmo, if not shot on the spot.
These Bush supporters have morphed the Republican Party into the Brownshirt Party. They cannot wait to attack Iran, preferably with nuclear weapons. Impatient for Armageddon, some are so full of hubris and self-righteousness that they actually believe that their support for evil means they will be “wafted up to heaven.” (see http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18165.htm)
It has come as a crippling blow to Democrats that “their” political party is comfortable with Bush’s America, and will do nothing to stop the Bush regime’s aggression against the Iraqi people or to prevent the Bush regime’s attack on Iran.
The Democrats could easily impeach both Bush and Cheney in the House, as impeachment only requires a majority vote. They could not convict in the Senate without Republican support, as conviction requires ratification by two-thirds of Senators present. Nevertheless, a House vote for impeachment would take the wind out of the sails of war, save countless lives and perhaps even save humanity from nuclear holocaust.
Various rationales or excuses have been constructed for the Democrats’ complicity in aggression that does not serve America. Perhaps the most popular rationale is that the Democrats are letting the Republicans have all the rope they want with which to produce such a high disapproval rating that the Democrats will sweep the 2008 election.
It is doubtful that the Democrats would assume that men as cunning as Karl Rove and Dick Cheney do not understand the electoral consequences of a low public approval rating and are walking blindly into an electoral wipeout. Rove’s departure does not mean that no strategy is in place.
So what does explain the complicity of the Democratic Party in a policy that the American public, and especially Democratic constituencies, reject? Perhaps a clue is offered from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune news report (August 1, 2007) that Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison will spend a week in Israel on “a privately funded trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Federation. The AIEF--the charitable arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)--is sending 19 members of Congress to meet with Israeli leaders. The group, made up mostly of freshman Democrats, has plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The senior Democratic member on the trip is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has gone three times. . . . The trip to Israel is Ellison’s second as a congressman.”
According to the Star-Tribune, a Republican group, which includes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, Minn), led by Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Va) is already in Israel. According to news reports, another 40 are following these two groups during the August recess, and “by the time the year is out every single member of Congress will have made their rounds in Israel.” This claim is probably overstated, but it does show careful Israeli management of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Elsewhere on earth and especially among Muslims, the suspicion is rife that the reason the war against Iraq cannot end, and the reason Iran and Syria must be attacked, is that the U.S. must destroy all Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine, turning an entire people into refugees driven from their homes and from the lands on which they have lived for many centuries. Americans might think that they are merely grabbing control over oil, keeping it out of the hands of terrorists, but that is not the way the rest of the world views the conflict.
Jimmy Carter was the last American president who stood up to Israel and demanded that U.S. diplomacy be, at least officially if not in practice, even-handed in its approach to Israel and Palestine. Since Carter’s presidency, even-handedness has slowly drained from U.S. policy in the Middle East. The neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime has abandoned even the pretense of even-handedness.
This is unfortunate, because military coercion has proven to be unsuccessful. Exhausted from the conflict, the U.S. military, according to former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, is “nearly broken.” Demoralized elite West Point graduates are leaving the army at the fastest clip in 30 years. (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2147052,00.html)
Desertions are rapidly rising. A friend, a U.S. Marine officer who served in combat in Vietnam, recently wrote to me that his son’s Marine unit, currently training for its third deployment to Iraq in September, is short 12-16 men in every platoon and expects to be hit with more AWOLs prior to deployment.
Instead of re-evaluating a failed policy, Bush’s “war tsar,” General Douglas Lute, has called for the reinstitution of the draft. Gen. Lute doesn’t see why Americans should not be returned to military servitude in order to save the Bush administration the embarrassment of having to correct a mistaken Middle East policy that commits the U.S. to more aggression and to debilitating long-term military conflict in the Middle East.
It is difficult to see how this policy serves any interest other than the very narrow one of the armaments industry. Apparently, nothing can be done to change this disastrous policy until the Israel Lobby comes to the realization that Israel’s interest is not being served by the current policy of military coercion.
-- Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
REPUBLICAN presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has just announced that the Palestinians should not have a state of their own and that the United States must continue to support the state of Israel.
The former New York mayor’s close affinity to the Israel lobby is no secret. According to Giuliani, it is not in America’s interests to help create a state “which will support terrorism”. He added that Washington’s protection and support of Israel must be a “permanent” feature of its foreign policy. When he plays the Israeli card, he is doing the anticipated. In one respect it is good that Giuliani has nailed his colors to this mast so soon in the campaign. Effectively he has indicated that he too, like so many previous actual incumbents of the White House, is ready to sacrifice the direction of US Middle East policy to the dictates of an ungrateful “ally” that has been prepared to have its spies steal those few weapons secrets that the United States has been unwilling to supply for free.
Yet by abandoning the basic Bush stand —however feeble it may have been in execution — that the Palestinians should have their own independent state, is Giuliani perhaps representing the covert beliefs of the Republican political establishment? Can it be that the official statement of US principle, which even leading Israeli politicians have accepted in outline, is in fact so much hokum served up merely to assuage the widespread anger at Washington’s consistent partiality toward the state of Israel?
Polls indicate that even if he wins the Republican nomination, Giuliani is unlikely to make it to the Oval Office. After all, it’s unthinkable that the Republican conservative religious base that got the current president into office would vote for a man who is pro-choice and has expressed support for gay civil unions — a stance he only recanted earlier this year for obvious political reasons. Unfortunately whether the Democrats’ eventual candidate is Clinton or Obama, it will be harder to sell the idea of dialogue than military force. The only true anti-war candidate in the mix is the much-ignored presidential contender Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.
If American voters felt they could somehow hit back and expunge the shame of defeat in Iraq brought on by the bungling Bush, they might support a tough-talking candidate like Giuliani. And the former New York mayor has one big card yet to play — his city leadership at the time of the 9/11 attacks, which he will doubtless claim brought him right into the front line of the US war on international terror. (Critics will no doubt point to firefighters suffering from health issues related to Giuliani’s handling of the 9/11 cleanups, but at a national level he is still “America’s Mayor”).
Justice for Palestinians and US Middle Eastern double standard count for nothing when a man is aiming to become the most powerful man on the planet.
posted by HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace at 2:05 AM0 comments
Saturday, April 14, 2007
The Israel Lobby (AIPAC): A Danger to the World
Introduction
byaoibhgreine
The first 10 minutes of a Dutch documentary series about the Israel lobby (particularly AIPAC) in the USA.
The whole episode was available on Google video,but was suppressed by the traditional enemies of the truth after it had more than 8500 views and 160 overwhelmingly positive ratings within one day: (seehttp://xrl.us/vrbs)
Featuring interviews with Mearsheimer, geostrategist Lawrence Wikerson, Richard Perle, historian and critic Tony Judt, John Hagee, former Congressman Earl Hilliard, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, Michael Massing and Daniel Levy.
(Note: The introduction of this documentary was adapted -- with footage of the former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and with some other things)
In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the “Israel Lobby." This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.
To view responses to this paper from Harvard University faculty members, click here
The "either-or" framework - the Lobby or U.S. strategic interests - isn't, in my opinion, very useful:
1) Apart from the Israel-Palestine conflict, fundamental U.S. policy in the Middle East hasn't been affected by the Lobby. If for different reasons, both U.S. and Israeli elites have always believed that the Arabs need to be kept subordinate. However, once the U.S. solidified its alliance with Israel after June 1967, it began to look at Israelis - and Israelis projected themselves as - experts on the "Arab mind." Accordingly the alliance with Israel has abetted the most truculent U.S. policies, Israelis believing that "Arabs only understand the language of force" and every few years (months?) this or that Arab country needs to be banged up. The spectrum of U.S. policy differences might be narrow but in terms of impact on the real lives of real people in the Arab world these differences are probably meaningful, the Israeli influence making things worse;
(2) The claim that Israel has become a liability for U.S. "national" interests in the Middle East misses the bigger picture. Sometimes what's most obvious escapes the eye. Israel is the only stable and secure base for projecting U.S. power in this region. Every other country the U.S. relies on might, for all anyone knows, fall out of U.S. control tomorrow: the U.S. discovered this to its horror in 1979 after investing so much in the Shah. On the other hand, Israel was a creation of the West, it's in every respect - culturally, politically, economically - in thrall to the West, notably the U.S. This is true not just at the level of a corrupt leadership as elsewhere in the Middle East but - what's most important - at the popular level. Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but among the whole population. Come what may in Israel, then, it's inconceivable that this fundamental orientation will change. Combined with its overwhelming military power, this makes Israel a unique and irreplaceable American asset in the Middle East;
(3) In this regard it's useful to recall the rationale behind British support for Zionism. Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann once asked a British official why the British continued to support Zionism despite Arab opposition: Didn't it make more sense for them to keep Palestine but drop support for Zionism? "Although such an attitude may afford a temporary relief and may quiet Arabs for a short time," the official replied, "it will certainly not settle the question as the Arabs don't want the British in Palestine, and after having their way with the Jews, they would attack the British position, as the Moslems are doing in Mesopotamia, Egypt and India." Another British official judged retrospectively that, however much Arab resentment it provoked, British support for Zionism was prudent policy, for it established in the midst of an "uncertain Arab world…a well-to-do educated, modern community, ultimately bound to be dependent on the British Empire." Were it even possible the British had little interest in promoting real Jewish-Arab cooperation because it would inevitably lessen this dependence. Similarly the U.S. doesn't want an Israel truly at peace with the Arabs, for such an Israel could loosen its bonds of dependence on the U.S., making it a less reliable proxy. This is one reason why the claim that Jewish elites are "pro"-Israel makes little sense. They are "pro" an Israel that is useful to the U.S. and therefore useful to them. What use would a Paul Wolfowitz have of an Israel living peacefully with its Arab neighbors and less willing to do the U.S.'s bidding?
(4) The historical record strongly suggests that neither Jewish neo-conservatives in particular nor mainstream Jewish intellectuals generally have a primary allegiance to Israel - in fact any allegiance to Israel. Mainstream Jewish intellectuals became "pro"-Israel after the June 1967 war when Israel became the U.S.'s strategic asset in the Middle East: i.e., when it was safe and reaped benefits. To credit them with ideological conviction is, in my opinion, very naive. They're no more committed to Zionism than the neo-conservatives among them were once committed to Trotskyism: their only ism is opportunism. As psychological types these newly-minted Lovers of Zion most resemble the Jewish police in the Warsaw ghetto. "Each day, to save his own skin, every Jewish policeman brought seven sacrificial lives to the extermination altar," a leader of the Resistance ruefully recalled. "There were policemen who offered their own aged parents, with the excuse that they would die soon anyhow." Jewish neo-conservatives watch over the U.S. "national" interest, which is the source of their power and privilege, and in the Middle East it happens that this "national" interest largely coincides with Israel's "national" interest. If ever these interests clashed who can doubt that, to save their own skins, they'll do exactly what they're ordered to do, with gusto?
(5) Unlike elsewhere in the Middle East, U.S. elite policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict would almost certainly not be the same without the Lobby. What does the U.S. gain from the Israeli settlements and occupation? In terms of alienating the Arab world, it's had something to lose. The Lobby probably can't muster sufficient power to jeopardize a fundamental American interest, but it can significantly raise the threshold before U.S. elites are prepared to act - i.e., order Israel out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as they finally pressured the Indonesians out of Occupied East Timor. Whereas Israel doesn't have many options if the U.S. does finally give the order to pack up, the U.S. won't do so until and unless the Israeli occupation becomes a major liability for it: on account of the Lobby the point at which "until and unless" is reached significantly differs. Without the Lobby and in the face of widespread Arab resentment, the U.S. would perhaps have ordered Israel to end the occupation by now, sparing Palestinians much suffering;
(6) The Lobby makes a huge difference in terms of broadening public discussion on the Israel-Palestine conflict. It seems that in the current "either-or" debate on whether the Lobby affects U.S. Middle East policy at the elite level, it's been lost on many of the interlocutors that a crucial dimension of this debate should be the extent to which the Lobby stifles free and open discussion on the subject. Especially since U.S. elites have no entrenched interest in the Israeli occupation, the mobilization of public opinion can have a real impact on policy-making - which is why the Lobby invests so much energy in suppressing discussion.
I am Israeli Royalty and a kidnapped Political Hostage of the United States still being held illegally by the US against International court judgment; as a Diplomatic Israeli National.
Nevertheless, I am the soul representative of the country as not just the monarchy; but leader (Caliph) as it has been since 9,500 B.C. ("Who is the living embodiment of the country").
As it has always been for the welfare and harmony of all who live in my country, since the beginning.
As it has been written, I am known as the "Mother" of the country.
I am also the person that was prayed for sixty-three years ago, by both the Jewish Community and the Islamic Ummah and I share a very compassionate, loving embrace for both religious bodies; along with not just the gratitude of these two religions, but for Allah (Hashem)for sending me.
As to the whole of humanity, my arms in unconditional love and justice which
extends to the circumference of the four winds; as a mother would give milk to her children in kindness.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A new poll finds that 71 percent of Israelis believe that the United States should launch a military attack on Iran if diplomatic efforts fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program. (AP) 
