On another disturbing front, Israel Radio (Kol Yisrael), reported on Oct. 3, 2001, that Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had boasted at a Cabinet meeting, "I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it."      William Hughes "Lieberman's Conflict of Interest?" CounterPunch (USA) August 23, 2002 www.counterpunch.org/hughes0823.html
   

    Over the years, that segment, the organized American Jewish community - in short, the Israel lobby - has amassed unparalleled political power through skillfully combining the wealth of its members with its extraordinary organizational skills to achieve what amounts to a corporate takeover of the U.S. Congress and virtual veto power over the presidency. There is virtually no sector of the American body politic that has been immune to the lobby's penetration. [...] It was no secret that Israel had long been interested in eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and redrawing the map of the Middle East to enhance its power in the region. Initiating that undertaking became a task for key individuals in and around the White House with deep roots in right-wing Israeli politics. The attack on the World Trade Center supplied the opportunity. That Iraq had nothing to do with it was immaterial. The lobby's propaganda apparatus would make the American people believe otherwise. The first step has been completed. Saddam Hussein has been removed, not by Israel, but by the U.S. and its "coalition of the willing." From the perspective of the Israelis and, one must assume, the lobby, it is better that American and foreign soldiers do the shedding of blood, Iraqi and their own, rather than those of Israel, the world's fourth ranked military power. Such an accusation will most assuredly draw cries of "blood libel" from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, but it is a conclusion that one can readily draw from the facts. The degree to which the present Iraq situation, as well as the first Gulf War, can be attributed to efforts of key individuals and the major Jewish organizations that constitute the lobby is what this article will examine.     Jeffrey Blankfort "A War For Israel" Left Curve (USA) April 2004 www.leftcurve.org/LC28
WebPages/WarForIsrael.html    

    Judith Miller is one of the [New York Times]'s most senior journalists. A Pulitzer Prize winning writer and regarded expert on Middle East issues and WMD, Miller has written extensively on Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network. In the run-up to the Iraq war, Miller became a key reporter on that country's supposedly documented WMD's. She wrote many articles relayed around the globe on the Bush administration's doomsday reading of Saddam's regime. She painted a terrifying picture of his arsenal with apparently sound intelligence sources to back her claims. (...) Who is Judith Miller? According to a report in Editor and Publisher by William E. Jackson Jr., she is "not a neutral, nor an objective journalist": "This can be acceptable, if you're a great reporter, 'but she ain't, and that's why she's a propagandist,' stated on old New York Times hand..." Regarded as a neo-conservative with a deep sympathy for the Bush administration's agenda and a vocal supporter of Saddam's overthrow, Miller has close links with the pro-Israeli camp, some of whom have channelled Israeli intelligence through her work. (...) Miller's reporting on Iraq's WMD was constantly flawed and yet her senior editors gave her carte blanche to continue being the main conduit through which these serious issues were covered in the NYTimes.     Antony Loewenstein "Engineering consent: The New York Times' role  in promoting war on Iraq" The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) March 23, 2004 www.informationclearinghouse.info/
article5931.htm    

    As Pat Buchanan put it in the run-up to the invasion:
"We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people's right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity. They charge us with anti-Semitism - i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a 'passionate attachment' to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what's good for Israel is good for America." [...] This theme - that an Israeli- centric foreign policy is the real reason for this war - was not looked on with favor when the shooting began. But a year later, by a simple process of elimination, it is the only rational explanation left standing. [...] That left only the truth, and it is this: Israel is the chief beneficiary of this war, with Bin Laden coming in a close second. [...] In undertaking what promises to be a project of many years, the U.S. invasion has shifted the balance of power - already weighted in Israel's favor, thanks to massive American military aid - decisively and perhaps permanently in favor of the Israelis. Bristling with
weaponry, including nuclear arms, and not shy about mobilizing its international amen corner to aggressively defend its interests, Israel is fast achieving the status of regional hegemon. Israel seems to be the one exception to the new U.S. theory of global preeminence - what might be called the Wolfowitz Doctrine, since he was one of the first to put it in writing - that no power should rival U.S. hegemony in any region of the world. [...] Strip away the ideological pretenses, the sexed-up "intelligence," and the "patriotic" window- dressing, and what you see is the naked reality of Israel's fifth column in America. [...] Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation, cites a former U.S. ambassador with strong ties to the CIA: "According to the former official, also feeding information to the Office of Special Plans was a secret, rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. This unit, which paralleled [Abram N.] Shulsky's - and which has not previously been reported - prepared intelligence reports on Iraq in English (not Hebrew) and forwarded them to the Office of Special Plans. It was created in Sharon's office, not inside Israel's Mossad intelligence service, because the Mossad - which prides itself on extreme professionalism - had views closer to the CIA's, not the Pentagon's, on Iraq. This secretive unit, and not the Mossad, may well have
been the source of the forged documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium for weapons from Niger in West Africa, according to the former official." [...]
    Justin Raimondo "The Neocons' War" June 2, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/
justin/?articleid=2727    

    Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a separate government.
 
William Hamilton "Bush Began to Plan War Three Months After 9/11"
The Washington Post (USA)
April 17, 2004    

    Now, a new firsthand account of life in the US Defense Department shows just how pro-Israeli groups exerted their influence from within the government. Karen Kwiatkowski retired as a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force after two decades of distinguished service. Her last posting was at the Near East South Asia (NESA) directorate at the Pentagon. In a lengthy article in the online journal Salon.com, Kwiatkowski writes, "From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq." The "seizure of the reins of US Middle East policy," Kwiatkowski recounts, "was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia Policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it." All this happened under the watch of Bill Luti, the deputy secretary of defense for NESA, and went up and down the chain of command. Some of the specific incidents Kwiatkowski recalls are illustrative: "Longtime office director Joe McMillan was reassigned to the National Defense University. The director's job in the time of transition was to help bring the newly appointed deputy assistant secretary up to speed, ensure office continuity, act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies ... Removing such a critical continuity factor was not only unusual but also seemed like willful handicapping." Kwiatkowski said "the expertise on Mideast policy was not only being removed, but was also being exchanged for that from various agenda-bearing think tanks, including the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs." The main agenda of all these organizations is advocating closer US-Israel ties. She saw the "replacement of the civilian head of the Israel, Lebanon and Syria desk office with a young political appointee from the Washington Institute, David Schenker. Word was that the former experienced civilian desk officer tended to be evenhanded toward the policies of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon of Israel, but there were complaints and he was gone." As the personnel changed, so did the atmosphere; Kwiatkowski recalls that a "career civil servant rather unhappily advised me that if I wanted to be successful here, I'd better remember not to say anything positive about the Palestinians." In an official meeting at which Kwiatkowski was present, Luti openly called Marine General, former Chief of Central Command, and Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni, a "traitor" for having reservations about the march to war, and open contempt and calls for Secretary of State Colin Powell to resign were common. What she observed until her voluntary early retirement was nothing less than a full- scale assault on the intelligence and policymaking apparatus of the United States. She witnessed intelligence and careful analysis being replaced with propaganda, falsehoods and manipulation and fed to the Congress and the Executive Office of the President. This "fear peddling" was, Kwiatkowski writes, "designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses."     Ali Abunimah "It's worse than you thought: pro-Israel influence on US policy" The Electronic Intifada (USA)
March 15, 2004 http://electronicintifada.net/
v2/article2503.shtml    

    OSP [Office of Special Plans] was conceived days after September 11 by Paul Wolfowitz, deputy Secretary of Defense and a protégé of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. OSP's director was Abram Shulsky, who worked for Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle in the Reagan administration. Both Shulsky and Wolfowitz are Straussians, that is, followers of political philosopher Leo Strauss. He directed both their dissertations at the University of Chicago, and his teachings guide their actions. It was out of the Office of Special Plans that, in the best Straussian tradition, the war in Iraq was conceived, packaged, sold and delivered. (...) Shulsky, the OSP director, and Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, co-authored an article, "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence." They write that Strauss "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed it suggests that deception is the norm in political life." (...) In post-9/11 Washington, [Shadia] Drury sees the spirit of Strauss at work. "I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power."     Joel Bleifuss "A Man, a Plan, a Cabal" In These Times (USA) April 26, 2004    

    The "neoconservatives" who run the Bush regime all have close ties with the Likud government in Tel Aviv and the Zionist lobby groups in Washington. In 1997, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) declared: "Jinsa has been working closely with Iraqi National Council leader Dr Ahmad
Chalabi to promote Saddam Hussein's removal from office..." Chalabi is the CIA-backed stooge and convicted embezzler at present organising the next
"democratic" government in Baghdad. Until recently, a group of Zionists ran their own intelligence service inside the Pentagon. This was known as the Office of Special Plans, and was overseen by Douglas Feith, an under-secretary of defence, extreme Zionist and opponent of any negotiated peace with the Palestinians. It was the Office of Special Plans that supplied Downing Street with much of its scuttlebutt about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; more often than not, the original source was Israel.
    John Pilger
"The Unmentionable Source Of Terrorism"
New Statesman (Australia)
March 19, 2004
www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.
cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=5169

 

    General Anthony Zinni, who headed CENTCOM from 1997 to 2000, continued his own attack on the neocons, begun earlier this year, and had an opportunity to make his case on CBS’s 60 Minutes, namely, that the neocons conned the Resident into going to war.
Zinni specifically targeted Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, National Security Council member Elliot Abrams, and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby - all of whom happen to be Jewish – whom, Zinni claims, saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. "I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington - has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do," says Zinni. "Because I mentioned the neo-conservatives, who describe themselves as neo-conservatives,  said Zinni, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, it's unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it.” 

  KZYX Radio (Mendocino County, USA) Takes on the World
May 26, 2004
   

    As the war planning progressed, on December 21, 2002, [George] Tenet and his top deputy, John McLaughlin, went to the White House to brief Bush and Cheney on
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Woodward reports.
The president, unimpressed by the presentation of satellite photographs and intercepts, pressed Tenet and McLaughlin, saying their information would not "convince Joe Public" and asking Tenet, "This is the best we've got?" Woodward reports. According to Woodward, Tenet reassured the president that "it's a slam dunk case" that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. In his CBS interview, Woodward said he "asked the president about this, and he said it was very important to have the CIA director, 'slam-dunk' is as I interpreted it, a sure thing, guaranteed."     CNN
"Woodward: Tenet told Bush WMD case a 'slam dunk'"
Monday, April 19, 2004 www.cnn.com/2004/
ALLPOLITICS/04/18/
woodward.book/index.html
   

    Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said [CIA Director George] Tenet presented false information to the UN during public hearings about all the top suspected weapons of mass destruction sites in Iraq before the war. The senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a member of the intelligence committee, Levin added he could "only speculate as to Director Tenet's motive."     "CIA accused of lying about WMDs" AFP February 24, 2004 Via english.aljazeera.net        

    Israel stands to benefit greatly from the US led war on Iraq, primarily by getting rid of an implacable foe in President Saddam Hussein and the threat from the weapons of mass destruction he was alleged to possess. But it seems the Israelis have other things in mind.
An intriguing pointer to one potentially significant benefit was a report by Haaretz on 31 March that minister for national infrastructures Joseph Paritzky was considering the possibility of reopening the long-defunct oil pipeline from Mosul to the Mediterranean  port of  Haifa. With Israel lacking energy resources of its own and depending on highly expensive oil from 
Russia, reopening the pipeline would transform its economy. To resume supplies from Mosul to Haifa would require the approval of whatever Iraqi government emerges and presumably the Jordanian government, through whose territory it would be likely to run. [...] According to Western diplomatic sources in the region, the USA has discussed this with Iraqi opposition groups. It is understood from diplomatic sources that the Bush administration has said it will not support lifting UN sanctions on Iraq unless Saddam's successors agree to supply Israel with oil. All of this lends weight to the theory that Bush's war is part of a masterplan to reshape the Middle East to serve Israel 's interests.     "Oil from Iraq: An Israeli pipedream?"
www.janes.com/regional_news/
africa_middle_east/news/
fr/fr030416_1_n.shtml    

    Thanks to the suffocating influence of Israel's U.S. lobby, open discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been non-existent in our government all these years. I have firsthand knowledge, because I was a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in June 1967 when Israeli military forces took control of the Golan Heights, a part of Syria, as well as the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. I continued as a member for 16 years and to this day maintain a close watch on Congress. For 35 years, not a word has been expressed in that committee or in either chamber of Congress that deserves to be called debate on Middle East policy. No restrictive or limiting amendments on aid to Israel have been offered for 20 years, and none of the few offered in previous years received more than a handful of votes. On Capitol Hill, criticism of Israel, even in private conversation, is all but forbidden, treated as downright unpatriotic, if not anti-Semitic. The continued absence of free speech was assured when those few who spoke out-Senators Adlai Stevenson and Charles Percy, and Reps. Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, Earl Hilliard, and myself-were defeated at the polls by candidates heavily financed by pro-Israel forces. As a result, legislation dealing with the Middle East has been heavily biased in favor of Israel and against Palestinians and other Arabs year after year. Home constituencies, misled by news coverage equally lop-sided in Israel's favor, remain largely unaware that Congress behaves as if it were a subcommittee of the Israeli parliament. (...) The lobby's intimidation remains pervasive. It seems to reach every government center and even houses of worship and revered institutions of higher learning. It is highly effective in silencing the many U.S. Jews who object to the lobby's tactics and Israel's brutality. 
    Paul Findley "Liberating America From Israel" September 9, 2002 www.rense.com/general29/lib.htm    

    [Senator Joseph] Lieberman, on the other hand, is noted for pushing the U.S. into the unjustified and costly war with Iraq. (...) Lieberman never missed a beat in the Congress supporting Resolutions, laws or budget requests that favored Israel. In one sentence,
Lieberman is a legislative pimp for Zionist Israel!
 
William Hughes  "Lieberman is No Roger Sherman" September 12, 2003 world.mediamonitors.net      

  Ralph Nader: The subservience of our congressional and White House puppets to Israeli military policy has been consistent. [...]   Pat Buchanan: You used the term “congressional puppets.” Did John Kerry show himself to be a congressional puppet when he voted to give the president a blank check to go to war?
RN: They’re almost all puppets. There are two sets: Congressional puppets and White House puppets. When the chief puppeteer comes to Washington, the puppets prance.
  PB: Why do both sets of puppets, support the Sharon/ Likud policies in the Middle East rather than the peace movement candidates and leaders in Israel?
RN: [...] The answer to your question is that instead of focusing on how to bring a peaceful settlement, both parties concede their independent judgment to the pro-Israeli lobbies in this country because they perceive them as determining the margin in some state elections and as sources of funding.     "Ralph Nader: Conservatively Speaking"
The American Conservative June 21, 2004
http://www.amconmag.com/
2004_06_21/cover.html    

    It was easy, almost obligatory to hate the vicious young men, who destroyed crops and starved villages. This particular settlement is known as a bulwark of the Kahanist or Judeo-Nazi creed, as the late Professor Leibovich called it. They celebrated the assassination of Prime Minister Rabbin; they worshipped Baruch Goldstein, the mass murderer from Brooklyn; they published the banned book of Rabbi Alba that openly proclaims the religious duty of the Jew to exterminate Gentiles. [...] These young crackpots were sent by the bigger hoods, too. That is why the soldiers did not bat an eyelid when the settlers attacked the farmers. It was the division of labour: the thugs starved the peasants, the army protected the thugs, and the goverment endorsed it. While the army guns kept down the Palestinians, the US army kept down Iraq, the only state in the region that might be able to provide the balance of power, and the US diplomats wielded their veto in the Security Council. And beyond them, one could see the biggest hoods that did not care for olives, peasants or soldiers. On one end of the chain of command, there was a crazy Brooklyn settler with an M-16; on the other end, Bronfman and Zuckerman, Sulzberger and Wolfowitz, Foxman and Friedman. And somewhere between, were we, the Israelis and the American Jews, who duly voted and paid taxes and supported the scheme, because without our support, Wolfowitz would have to conquer Baghdad single-handedly and Bronfman would have to burn the olives himself.     Israel Shamir "The Green Rain of Yassouf" Flowers of Galilee The Collected Essays of Israel Shamir Dandelion Books Publications, 2004    

    In my view, the legislation is dangerous. The bill authorizes a variety of cultural and economic sanctions against Syria. It is dangerous because imposing sanctions is an extreme foreign policy--only one step from war. Nothing I heard from [Senator Ron] Wyden changed my opinion that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon was the driving force behind this bill. Not even the neo-cons in Washington initially wanted it. The Bush administration announced its support --to save face--only when the bill's passage became inevitable. This bill renders absurd any further talk about a roadmap for peace. There is no roadmap: Sharon tore it to shreds last summer, and with this bill he has blown back the pieces into Bush's face. Now armed with an obsequious US Congress (one house in each pocket), Sharon is perfectly positioned to wring even more aid/concessions from the White House. [...] The question we Americans should be asking our elected representatives is: Why is this war criminal dictating US foreign policy?
    Mark Gaffney "Sharon's Favorite Senator" "Ron Wyden and Israel"
CounterPunch (USA) February 4, 2004
www.counterpunch.org/
gaffney02042004.html
   

    Since 1967, we have received some 170 billion dollars from the people of the US. This money could be used to feed and school all the underprivileged kids of America. It could pay to compensate the descendants of the African slaves and help them out of their hardship. It could save the sick and comfort the miserable; it could turn Africa into a paradise. But it was kidnapped and shipped to our shores. Every dollar invested by the Israeli lobby into senators and congressmen has been returned a hundred fold, as promised by the Bible. Besides the taxpayer's money, the supporters of Israel's ­business executives - invested billions of dollars that theirshareholders entrusted them with. There is no sound business reason behind
Intel's investment, or other similar investments. Israel has no pool of qualified workers, they have to be imported like everything else. The risk of the investments in our country is great and the profits are meager. But then again, they are playing with somebody else's money. Israel's supporters fleece America in a grand way, but they also go after other prey. [...] The Swiss and the Germans keep paying umpteen billions of dollars to Israel for the confiscated property of Jews, though Israel never paid even one penny for the confiscated Gentile property. The Europeans meekly comply under threat of the toughest of brothers Cray, the mightiest enforcer of Jewish loans, the US. Israel's supporters overseas are like a giant Hoover machine, sucking out money and sweat from all over the world. Witness Mark Rich, the thieving billionaire, pardoned by the best supporter of Israel, Bill Clinton? He was a Mossad agent. [...] Sometimes, the Palestinians and their friends bemoan their inability to build up their own Arab lobby to counteract the Israeli lobby. They miss the most important point. The Israeli lobby should not be just a Palestinian concern, but the concern of all Americans. When oil runs out of a tanker's hulk, it should concern the crew and the owners, not only the fish. Israel's supporters swindle all Americans of their money, and antagonize America's potential friends abroad. Many American politicians support the swindle in order to remain in power. For personal political ambitions, they betray the trust of their voters. John F. Kennedy told Gore Vidal, that in 1948, Harry Truman was on the verge of losing the presidential election, but a Zionist supporter brought to him 2 million dollars cash and saved his skin. It caused America to vote for the creation of the Jewish State. This pattern perpetuates itself. The politicians take bribes, sell pardons, accept "donations", and help the Israeli lobby to rob the people of America. The actual direct contribution of American Jews for the welfare of Israel is quite small and tax exempt. It would hardly cover the cost of the missiles and nerve
gas to kill Palestinians, much less support the Israeli life style to which we have become accustomed. But what Israel supporters collect in campaign contributions is enough to bribe politicians and embezzle a good chunk of American money from the US treasury. If such a swindle would be hatched by, say, the Libyan lobby, the media would rightly demand these people be registered as foreign agents of influence. That is where the Israeli lobby cashes in on the solidarity of the many American Jews and right-wing Christian Zionists in the national media. 
 
Israel Shamir "Kid Sister" February 17, 2001 www.israelshamir.net/english_articles.html    

    The performance of [American ambassador Martin] Indyk is as predictable as the stance taken by the other pro-Israeli lobbyist turned Middle East 'American' diplomat, Dennis Ross. Both men had built a career on pressuring Congress and the American government to go along with every Israeli whim. If Clinton expected them to miraculously transform themselves into neutral
mediators, he was deluded. But what he certainly must have expected was that the Israeli Lobby would show appropriate generosity by financing the political campaigns of Bill and Hill. Indyking the Palestinians turned out to be a major cash cow that financed Clinton's ambitions and got him out of some serious Lewinsky troubles. The problem with American foreign policy in the Middle East is that it is not very American. It is twisted out of shape by powerful men, in and out of government, whose main concern is marketing the Israeli agenda.
 
Ahmed Amr "Indyking the Palestinians" 2001    

    What seems to be particularly vexing to American Jews is to be reminded that this grand design originated in a paper written in 1996 by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank. The document was titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." It was intended to be a blueprint for the incoming government of Binyamin Netanyahu. The complete break with the past was to be a new strategy "based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism." Israel, according to this 1996 Perle-Feith paper, would "shape its strategic environment," beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad (Iraq and Jordan, prior to May 1958, shared a joint monarchial system). (...) For the strategy to succeed, Perle and Feith wrote, Israel would have to win broad American support for these new policies. And to ensure support in Washington, the Israeli prime minister was advised to use "language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of past U.S. Administrations during the Cold War, which apply as well to Israel." Which is exactly what Sharon did after 9/11, thus convincing president Bush that his war on terrorism and Israel's were one and the same.     Arnaud de Borchgrave "Zionism and anti-Semitism"
March 4, 2004
www.washtimes.com/
upi-breaking/20040304-112255-8322r.htm    

 
"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this," [Rep. James P. Moran] said at a gathering of antiwar activists in Reston a year ago. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should." [...] After his remark blaming Jews for the war, Mr. Moran was stripped of his post as regional whip for members of Mid-Atlantic states and asked by several Democratic House members not to run for re-election in the fall. 
 
Charles Hurt The Washington Times (USA)
March 26, 2004    

    The Pentagon, that enormous, sprawling building on the banks of the Potomac, houses most of the Department of Defense's central headquarters. It is the top command for the forces and measures which provide Americans with security in a troubled world. Across the Potomac is the Department of State, a massive eight-story building on Washington's Foggy Bottom, the nerve center of our nation's worldwide diplomatic network. These buildings
are channels through which flow each day thousands of messages dealing with the nation's top secrets. No one can enter either building without special identification or advance clearance. Armed guards seem to be everywhere, and in late 1983 concrete emplacements were added and heavy trucks strategically parked to provide extra
buffers if a fanatic should launch an attack. These buildings are fortresses where the nation's most precious secrets are carefully guarded by the most advanced technology.

But how secure are the secrets?

"The leaks to Israel are fantastic. If I have something I want the secretary of state to know, but don't want Israel to know, I must wait till I have a chance to see him personally." The declaration comes from an ambassador still on active duty in a top assignment, reviewing his long career in numerous posts in the Middle East.
Although hardly a household name in the United States, his is one of America's best-known abroad. Interviewed in the State Department, he speaks deliberately, choosing his words carefully. "It is a fact of life that everyone in authority is reluctant to put anything on paper that concerns Israel if it is to be withheld from Israel's knowledge," says the veteran. "Nor do such people even feel free to speak in a crowded room of such things."     Paul Findley Former Congressman from Illinois They Dare To Speak Out - People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby Lawrence Hill Books, 1989, p. 139      

    The political season is upon us and it is with some measure of dread that one watches the contenders stumble over themselves to curry favor with an electorate that represents less than two per cent of the voting public. And that small portion of the electorate that puts Israel's interests first wants its derriere kissed, no doubt about it. [...] Not to be outdone, John Kerry the Democratic candidate -- showing that there's not a nickels worth of difference between the major parties on this issue -- has pledged his strong support for Israel and vowed not to follow the Oslo path (spoken like a true Likudnik) at a meeting with Jewish leaders and politicians. He also said if elected, he'll be the nation's first president with Jewish roots. Now that's some serious kissing-up, and it's not even mistletoe season. [...] Politicians have a herd mentality, following the stampede if they believe it in their interest to do so. They have been led to believe that all Jews in the U.S. are passionate supporters of Israel and since that segment of society wields a lot of power they are catered to in no uncertain terms. It's not a question of right or wrong for that never enters the equation. Whatever Israel wants, Israel gets including massive financial and military aid. Letters to the sitting president supporting Israel are written, and signed, by an overwhelming majority of senators and congressmen whenever he shows the slightest sign of faltering in that support. Scorecards are kept of who is a "friend" of Israel and the tacit implication is, if you want to be reelected, you'd better be on that list.
    Raff Ellis
"All ye politicians pucker up -- yon Israeli derriere is awaiting''
Yellow Times (USA)
March 18, 2004

    Why then is the Zionist lobby so powerful when their own scholars write endlessly about the alienation of their youth from the movement? The answer is simple: the Jews are the richest ethnic or religious stratum in the US. Because their standard of living is so high, they are the most educated. Because they are the most educated, they are the most scientific oriented, hence most inclined towards atheism or religious skepticism. But the true believer minority still has an unbelievable amount of money to throw at the politicians.   In 1991, I interviewed Harold Seneker, then the editor of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, for an article in The Nation. I told him that I found Jews, 2.2% of the population, to be about 25% of the 400. [...] My estimate is that 84 of the latest 400 are Jews. The magazine doesn't list religious affiliations unless the person involved is distinctive in giving to religious charities, etc. And not all of the Jews are pro-Zionists. Some listees are among the educated disaffiliated we are discussing. But Zionist money is prodigious. James Tisch, chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations isn't on the list, altho he is CEO of Loews Corp., listed on the Fortune 500 list. But daddy, Laurence, is, at $2 billion, and uncle Preston is worth $2.3 billion. His predecessors at the Conference were Ronald Lauder, $1.8 billion, and Mort Zuckerman, who struggles along with a penny ante $1.2 billion. Chaim Sabon, $1.7 billion, is a University of California regent. Mayhaps he got the job because he gave the Democrats the largest campaign contribution in American history?   [...]   Both major parties pick their candidates via primaries which any member can enter. So occasionally an honest Democrat or Republican is elected to Congress and begins to criticize their party's Israel über alles line. Usually it doesn't take long before a tidal wave of Zionist cash pours in against them in the next election and out they go. [...] Many leftists don't like to talk about it because of their fear of raising anti- Semitism. They want to talk about oil money. That's fine. Any kid who they let cross streets alone knows that oil is the major reason that the US is so deeply involved in the Middle East. But that doesn't explain why the two capitalist parties are so pro-Zionist. Indeed their pro-Zionism creates problems for them with the Arab masses. And it doesn't explain why liberal Democrats are as zealous for Israel as the most fanatic Republican Christian Zionist. [...] The moral of the story is that, while it is crucial to talk about oil industry domination of US foreign policy, it is just as crucial to talk about Zionist funding and its enormous influence on domestic politics.     Lenni Brenner "The Demographics of American Jews" CounterPunch (USA) October 24, 2003 www.counterpunch.org/
brenner10242003.html    

 
Since 9-11, a small group of "neo-conservatives" in the Administration have effectively gutted--they would say reformed--traditional American foreign and security policy. Notable features of the new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use of unilateral force, and the undermining of the United Nations and the principle instruments and institutions of international law....all in the cause of fighting terrorism and promoting homeland security.
Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons' past academic and professional associations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. The administration's new hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S. soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current belligerent neo-con campaign against the other two countries which constitute a remaining counterforce to Israeli military hegemony in the region--Iran and Syria.
Have the neo-conservatives--many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Department, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President--had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies?
A review of the internal security backgrounds of some of the best known among them strongly suggests the answer.     Stephen Green "Serving Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration" CounterPunch (USA) February 28 / 29, 2004 www.counterpunch.org/
green02282004.html    

    Given the state of opinion within Israel, and still assuming unchanging U.S. "support for Israel," what long-term policies is Israel likely to pursue, apart from continued steps towards integration of the occupied territories in either the Likud or Labor style? Surely Israel will not tolerate any military build-up in the surrounding region that it considers a potential threat, and there will be no end to such threats if there is no political settlement, a prospect virtually guaranteed by U.S.- Israeli rejectionism. Furthermore, the costs of a permanent state of war are immense, and mounting, costs that Israel is increasingly unable to bear and that cannot be reduced as long as tension exists and its adversaries are not crushed. Hence the inducement to undertake a preemptive strike will always be high, and with it, the likehood of regional or even global war. It is only natural to expect that Israel will seek to destabilize the surrounding states, for essentially the reasons that lead South Africa on a similar course in its region. In fact, given continuing military tensions, that might be seen virtually as a security imperative. A plausible long-term goal might be what some have called an "Ottomanization" of the region, that is, a return to something like the system of the Ottoman empire, with a powerful center (Turkey then, Israel with U.S.-backing now) and much of the region fragmented into ethnic-religious communities, preferably mutually hostile. A clear version of such a picture was presented just prior to the Lebanon war by Oded Yinon, who was formerly in the Israeli foreign service, in the ideological journal of the World Zionist Organization. (...) On the other fronts, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula must also be dismembered into smaller "factors," religious and ethnic, as in the Levant during the Ottoman period. (...) With regard to Iraq, Ze'ev Schiff observed just before the Lebanon war that it would be in Israel's interest for it to be divided into three states, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish - and it is difficult to see why Israel would refrain from seeking this objective. (...) Consider the study edited by Daniel Elazar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Federal Studies, published by the American Enterprise Institute, which I have cited several times. In his summary remarks for this collection of scholarly essays, Elazar argues that "ethno-religious communities," not states, are the natural form of organization in the Middle East: any general political settlement must remain "dubious about those who claim statehood on the basis of fifteen or thirty or even fifty years of national self-identification." A possible model is the Ottoman millet system, he suggests. He rules out returning the occupied territories to Jordanian or Egyptian rule, or the establishment of a Palestinian state.     Noam Chomsky The Fateful Triangle / 4.1.2. From Coexistence to Hegemony
South End Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999 (1983)
Pages 455-460    

    Almost all influential individuals and groups in the U.S. political landscape still shy away from discussing the degree to which this Israeli connection has been a major factor in determining the entire complex of U.S. policies on Iraq and the Middle East since September 11. In the eyes of most Americans, the correctness of the ever stronger ties between the right-wing governments of the United States and Israel is simply not to be questioned. (If you do question these ties, you must be prepared to deal either with suspicions of anti-Semitism that may be directed at you, or, more likely, with suggestions that you are simply "too far out" of the mainstream and therefore deserve no further consideration. In the latter case, an unspoken motive of your interlocutors is often that they fear being charged with anti-Semitism, or with being "self-hating Jews," if they seem to agree with you.)   [...]   Although the war was sold to Congress and the public on the basis of the WMD issue, many of us believed for months before the war that the actual reasons the Bush administration invaded Iraq were the U.S. drive for global domination, oil--and Israel. [...] It is vital that we break through the taboos, which have, if anything, grown stronger in recent months.     Bill and Kathleen Christison "The Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli Connection" CounterPunch (USA) December 13/14, 2003 www.counterpunch.org/
christison12132003.html    

    I interviewed [Richard] Perle when he was buzzing around the Reagan Administration in the 1980s, and I was struck by how truly fanatical this man was. He was then voicing the views of total war. All of Bush's extremism comes from the Reagan years. That's why people like Perle, Wolfowitz, and other refugees from that period have found favor again. I singled out Perle in the book because I thought he rather eloquently described the policies of the Bush regime. September 11 has given these people, this clique, an opportunity from heaven. [...] It's very clear that the Bush Administration is out of control. It contains some truly dangerous people.
    John Pilger interviewed by David Barsamian  The Progressive (USA)   November 2002 
   

    A central objective of the neocon agenda is increasing the power of Israel. Indeed, many of the so-called neocons have deep-seated connections, interests and relationships with the right-wing Likud party and with other Israeli fringe groups. Many are die-hard Zionists, true believers in Israeli hegemony over the Middle East, if not the world. From their government offices they direct US foreign policy in favor and in direction of Israel, supporting the Sharon government and assuring that US and Israeli interests are placed above that of the rest of the world. The attack on Iraq was in no small measure a war to defend Israel's interests, thereby helping it increase its power over the Middle East. A large part of the neocon vision for the Middle East is for the benefit of the Jewish state, to assure for its survival and expansion, if not territorially, then economically. This fact must not be forgotten: the neocons oftentimes place the interests of Israel and Likud ahead of those of the US. The rogue government is in many ways making us subservient to Israel's Likud party run by Ariel Sharon.     Manuel Valenzuela
"The Enemy Within: The Neocon Hijacking of America" Axis of Logic December 15, 2003 http://www.axisoflogic.com/
artman/publish/article_3981.shtml    

    Jewish power has, in fact, been trumpeted by a number of Jewish writers, including one, J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Jewish weekly Forward, who wrote a book by that name in 1996. Any attempt however, to explore the issue from a critical standpoint inevitably leads to accusations of anti-Semitism, as Bill and Kathy Christison pointed out in their article on the role of right-wing Jewish neo-cons in orchestrating US Middle East policy, in CounterPunch (1/25/03):   "Anyone who has the temerity to suggest any Israeli instigation of, or even involvement in, Bush administration war planning is inevitably labeled somewhere along the way as an anti-Semite. Just whisper the word 'domination' anywhere in the vicinity of the word 'Israel', as in 'U.S.-Israeli domination of the Middle East' or 'the U.S. drive to assure global domination and guarantee security for Israel", and some Leftist who otherwise opposes going to war against Iraq will trot out charges of promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the old czarist forgery that asserted a Jewish plan for world domination."   [...]   This is hardly the first time that Jews have been in the upper echelons of power, as Benjamin Ginsberg points out in The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State, but there has never been a situation anywhere like the present. This is how Ginsberg began his book:   "Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade's corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely 2 % of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation's largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times."   That was written in 1993. Today, ten years later, ardently pro-Israel American Jews are in positions of unprecedented influence within the United States and have assumed or been given decision making positions over virtually every segment of our culture and body politic. This is no secret conspiracy. Regular readers of The New York Times business section, which reports the comings and goings of the media tycoons, are certainly aware of it. Is each and every tycoon a pro-Israel zealot? Not necessarily, but when one compares the US media with its European counterparts in their respective coverage of the Israel- Palestine conflict, the extreme bias in favor of Israel on the part of the US media is immediately apparent.   [...]   A better explanation was provided by Stephen Green, whose Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with Militant Israel was the first examination of State Department archives concerning US-Israel relations. Since the Eisenhower administration, wrote Green, in 1984, "Israel, and friends of Israel in America, have determined the broad outlines of US policy in the region. It has been left to American Presidents to implement that policy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and to deal with the tactical issues."   An exaggeration, perhaps, but former US Senator James Abourezk (D-South Dakota) echoed Green's words in a speech before the American-Arab Anti- Discrimation Committee last June:   "That is the state of American politics today. The Israeli lobby has put together so much money power that we are daily witnessing US senators and representatives bowing down low to Israel and its US lobby. Make no mistake. The votes and bows have nothing to do with the legislators' love for Israel. They have everything do to with the money that is fed into their campaigns by members of the Israeli lobby. My estimate is that at least $6 billion flows from the American Treasury to Israel each year. That money, plus the political support the US gives Israel at the United Nations, is what allows Israel to conduct criminal operations in Palestine with impunity."   That is a reality that has been expressed many times in many forms by ex-members of Congress, usually speaking off the record.     Jeffrey Blankfort "The Israel Lobby and the Left" Published in: The Politics of Anti-Semitism Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair CounterPunch and AK Press, 2003, pp. 101-106    

    With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel. [...] Bush felt tax cuts would hold his crowd together and spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats. You don't come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq.     Senator Ernest F. Hollings "Bush failed Mideast policy is creating more terrorism" The Post and Courier (USA) May 6, 2004 www.charleston.net/stories/
050604/com_06hollings.shtml      

    IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 – the 9/11 commission – in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East. Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security. The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States. (...) To date, the possibility of the United States attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration. Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.     Emad Mekay
"9/11 Commission Director: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel"
Inter Press Service March 30, 2004 
antiwar.com/ips/mekay.php?
articleid=2208