Tag Archives: Israel Lobby

Obama and the Neocon Middle East War Agenda

by Stephen J. Sniegoski

“Many Americans, in fact, many people in the world, have been under the impression that Obama’s approach to foreign policy, especially as it pertains to the Middle East, would be the antithesis of that of the Bush administration. This dichotomy, however, is increasingly questionable as the professed advocate of change looks more like a proponent of continuation.

In fact, even during the Presidential campaign Obama did not present a consistently peaceful foreign policy. For example, immediately after becoming the de facto Democratic presidential nominee he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby. He not only pledged full support to Israel but also expressed strong words against Iran – promising to do everything in his power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and demanding an end to Iranian support for Hezbollah and Hamas, the militant enemies of Israel, as the price for ending American economic warfare.

All of this can reasonably lead to the question: Will Obama’s Middle East policy differ significantly from that of the neoconservatives who were the driving force for the war on Iraq and have fashioned a broader Israelocentric Middle East war agenda? (The neoconservatives are the subject of my recent book: The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel). Obama himself does not appear to be completely aligned with the neocon position as was John McCain. However, the President’s close advisors, such as David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Dennis Ross, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton, tend to be ardently pro-Israel and hawkish, reflecting a neocon orientation, even though none of these individuals are actually neocons.” (Read more from antiwar.com)

Israel Lobby Losing it’s Grip? UPDATE: Hell no! UPDATE2: Freeman dares speak out

“Retired Amb. Chas Freeman, who said today that he no longer accepts an offer to chair the National Intelligence Council, has just sent this message:

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council. . . . I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. . . .

I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country . . . The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired. . . .

The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors. . . . it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

” (Read more from thecable.foreignpolicy.com)

———————————-

“Charles (Chas) Freeman, who was slated to be picked as the new chairman of the National Intelligence Council, withdrew his candidacy for the post on Tuesday.

The move was announced in Washington by Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence. Since news of Freeman’s nomination, Jewish organizations have leveled criticism at the pick due to his history of opposition to Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

This is dangerous. If the Israel Lobby can influence who joins the National Intelligence Council, they can further influence our perception of Iran. Here lies the road to (more) war.

———————————-

I’ll believe it when the Palestinians get their land back. I’ll believe it when we stop giving them billions a year in taxpayer money. Nevertheless, here are two headlines which caught my eye. I suspect the first one is just lip service.

Clinton: U.S. firm on commitment to two-state solution
(Read more from Haaretz.com)

Israel lobby fails to block key Obama intelligence appointment
“On Friday, Muckety reported: ‘Despite intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying by some Jewish groups, the Obama administration yesterday tapped veteran diplomat Chas W Freeman Jr to head the National Intelligence Council in what may be its most controversial appointment yet. As chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Freeman will be responsible for producing the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) – the classified document given to the president and senior intelligence officials that analyses threats to US security.’

In The National, Tony Karon observed: ‘If Israel and its backers are to persuade the Obama administration to accept their views on Iran, it is a less than helpful for the NIE be the province of a sceptical, independent thinker who believes that Israel’s interests are not necessarily those of the US. Renowned as a brilliant diplomat and analyst, even-handed in his assessments of the Middle East and not bound by the Israel-first consensus that the Israel lobby has fought so hard to establish in US Middle East policy, Mr Freeman was denounced by Steve Rosen, a former top American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) official, as ‘a profoundly disturbing appointment’.” (Read more from thenational.ae)

“As Americans, our job is to promote policies that are best for . . . Israel”

by Melissa Rossi Author, What Every American Should Know about the Middle East (Plume/Penguin, Jan. 2009)

“I’d thought it would just be a breezy Friday afternoon, when I clicked on today’s post of M.J. Rosenberg, here on Huffington Post.
Director of Policy for the Israel Policy Forum, Mr. Rosenberg’s blog entry concerns the upcoming Israeli election — and he tells us the outcome is ‘really not our business.’ After all, he blithely notes, ‘As Americans, our job is to promote policies that are best for America, and for Israel.’

(NOTE on Sunday, Feb 8: The above quote is from his original column on Huffington Post, which he changed over the weekend — deleting the controversial ‘and for Israel’ part. The column, however, can still be read on the Israel Policy Forum at www.israelpolicyforum.org/ — as of Sunday at least.)

There weren’t comments when I started reading — but by the time I read through his post and hit the reply button, there were already five comments and more pending. All of them saying the same thing — no, Mr. Rosenberg — our job is to promote policies that are best for America. PERIOD.” (Read more from huffintonpost.com)

Dennis Ross Chairmanship of Israeli Government Funded Think Tank Could Torpedo Iran Envoy Job

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Former Clinton Administration Middle East diplomat Dennis Ross is under consideration as US State Department envoy to Iran. Ross is currently the chairman of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) in Jerusalem, established by the Jewish Agency in 2002. Ross could face legal challenges under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, if he enters US government service.

FARA protects the American people and Congress from stealth propaganda and foreign lobbying through strict public disclosure filings. The Jewish Agency has repeatedly surfaced during investigations in the US. In the 1960s the Senate Foreign Relations Committee uncovered a network of stealth Jewish Agency “conduits” financing grassroots Israel lobby startup groups through the American Zionist Council (AZC). During 1963 hearings the Senate revealed the equivalent of $35 million went toward US lobbying, including $38,000 to American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) founder Isaiah Kenen between 1960-1961.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the AZC to register as the Jewish Agency’s foreign agent in November of 1962. The AZC shifted lobbying activities over to AIPAC and shut down. In 1969 the Department of Justice ordered the Jewish Agency to file its secret 1953 Covenant Agreement with the Israeli government. The Covenant agreement reveals the Jewish Agency’s ongoing receipt of Israeli government funds for operations and powers such as executive review of legislative matters before they go to the Knesset. The Jewish Agency New York office, like the AZC, quickly shut down only to reorganize under a new US shell corporation in 1971. (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

Olmert boasts of ordering around Bush, humiliating Rice

‘”She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour,” Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

. . . .

“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,” Olmert said.

“I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone’. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

“I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour.”‘ (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

See Also:
Inquiries show Olmert version of UN Gaza vote spat closer to truth than Rice’s (from Haaretz.com)

Bill Moyers criticizes Gaza offensive, gets called anti-semitic by ADL

It’s ridiculous to accuse Bill Moyers, a class-act journalist who’d been involved in the civil rights movement, of racism. This isn’t about him being racist. This is about intimidation. A message to him an other journalists: There will be no criticism of Israel in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

***

Mr. Moyers,

In less than a thousand words, you managed to fit into your January 9 commentary: (1) moral equivalency between Hamas, a radical Islamic terrorist group whose anti-Semitic charter cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and perhaps America’s greatest ally in the world; (2) historical revisionism, asserting that Canaanites were Arabs; (3) anti-Semitism, declaring that Jews are “genetically coded” for violence; (4) ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel, claiming that checkpoints, the security fence, and the Gaza operation are tactics of humiliation rather than counter-terrorism; and (5) promotion of an individual, the Norwegian doctor in Gaza, who has publicly expressed support for the September 11 attacks.

I have seen and read serious critiques of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and I have disagreed with many of them. Your commentary, however, is different, consisting mostly of intellectually and morally faulty claims that do a great disservice to the PBS audience. It invites not disagreement, but rebuke.

On one point you are correct – “America has officially chosen sides.” And rightly so. Fortunately for our nation, very few of our citizens engage in the same moral equivalency, racism, historical revisionism, and indifference to terrorism as you. If the reverse held, it would not be a country that any decent person would want to live in.

Sincerely,

Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League

***

Dear Mr. Foxman:

You made several errors in your letter to me of January 13 and I am writing to correct them.

First, to call someone a racist for lamenting the slaughter of civilians by the Israeli military offensive in Gaza is a slur unworthy of the tragedy unfolding there. Your resort to such a tactic is reprehensible.

Earlier this week it was widely reported that the International Red Cross “was so outraged it broke its usual silence over an attack in which the Israeli army herded a Palestinian family into a building and then shelled it, killing 30 people and leaving the surviving children clinging to the bodies of their dead mothers. The army prevented rescuers from reaching the survivors for four days.”

When American troops committed a similar atrocity in Vietnam, it was called My Lai and Lt. Calley went to prison for it. As the publisher of a large newspaper at the time, I instructed our editorial staff to cover the atrocity fully because Americans should know what our military was doing in our name and with our funding. To say “my country right or wrong” is like saying “my mother drunk or sober.” Patriots owe their country more than that, whether their government and their taxes are supporting atrocities in Vietnam, Iraq, or, in this case, Gaza. . . .

(Read more at PBS.org)

Anti-Defamation League joins YouTube

The widely popular video sharing website YouTube has reached out to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for its expertise in dealing with hate on the Internet. As a result of this partnership, the League is now a contributor to YouTube’s newly launched Abuse & Safety Center, where users are empowered to identify and confront hate, and to report abuses.

The YouTube Abuse & Safety Center features information and links to resources developed by ADL to help Internet users respond to and report offensive material and extremist content that violates YouTube?s Community Guidelines on hate speech. . . .

“We commend YouTube for their efforts to provide users with access to important information from those with expertise, such as ADL and others, on how to effectively respond to hate on the Internet and to report abuses,” Foxman said. (Read more from haaretz.com)

There is concern this well-meaning effort will result in further censorship of Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.

New ‘pro-Israel, pro-peace’ lobby J Street hopes for Obama-era growth

WASHINGTON – Will the “Obama effect” that enabled Democratic candidates to ride the party’s presidential candidate into Congress also contribute toward changing the map of Jewish influence on Capitol Hill? J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group and Political Action Committee (PAC) formed just last April and seen as the left’s answer to the veteran American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is counting on it.

Though only about six months old, J Street already managed to raise $570,000 for 41 Congressional candidates, most of them Democrats. Six of them lost their races, and three are still awaiting the final results. (Read More from Haaretz.com)

Obama’s first pick: Rahm Emanual

Yes, it’s Change, as The One chooses his one, Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), to be his H.R. Haldeman. Emanuel is known for being smart and intense, mailing dead fish to people he hates, and freaking out at subordinates. Loving revenge, never forgiving a slight, and brooking no dissent, he’s famous as an enforcer. Such figures are valued in the state (and the Mafia), if not in private society. Emanuel, with Pelosi’s blessing, famously blocked antiwar Democrats from running for the House in 2006 (he controlled the money for new candidates). Emanuel is an advocate of endless war in the Middle East. No chickenhawk, during the Gulf War, he volunteered as a civilian worker for the Israeli army. His father Benjamin, a physician, was a guerilla fighter for the Irgun against the British occupation of Palestine. The Irgun, a secret insurgent group, is described by unfriendlies as a terrorist organization for such acts as bombing the King David Hotel and ethnically cleansing with extreme prejudice Arab villages. Rahm’s mother, Martha, was a civil-rights activist and rock ‘n roll nightclub owner in Chicago. (from lewrockwell.com: Rahm Rahm Rahm, Rahm Rahm Iran)

See Also:
-Video: Rahm and the wars Rahm helped ensure pro War Democrats running for Congress got better funding than anti-war ones. Fucking asshole.
–ABCNews: Emanuel Was Director Of Freddie Mac During Scandal
–examiner.com: Obama’s chief of staff choice favors compulsory universal service “It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service. …”

Iran Resolution Shelved in Rare Defeat for AIPAC

“‘We’ll resubmit it when Congress comes back, and we’ll have even more signatures,’ the resolution’s main author, New York Democrat Rep. Gary Ackerman, told the Washington Times, adding that the resolution currently has 270 co-sponsors, or some two-thirds of the House’s entire membership.

Still, the decision by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration or any successor administration to take military action against Iran.” (Read more from antiwar.com)

VPs both kiss AIPAC Ass

Sarah Palin Appearances Cancelled; Meets With AIPAC

Biden: Israel will be more protected with Obama

Okay, let’s say there are two countries which border one another, and one keeps getting smaller because its land is being confiscated by the other, should we be talking about the security of the country that’s shrinking or the one that’s growing? Should we be talking about the right to exist of the country that’s expanding at the expense of its neighbor, or about the rights of the one victimized?

Meanwhile: Israeli navy arrests three Palestinian fishermen in Gaza waters