6/3/2008
And The Winner Is … The Israel lobby
By Pepe Escobar
Commentary by David Duke
–The following excerpts are from the Asia Times in an article about the real
rulers of the American government. It is an article of the type not found
in the mainstream American press, for it tells a few of the damning
facts concerning the Jewish extremist control of the American political
process. Perhaps, if you are a new reader of Davidduke.com
you may think that my language is too extreme. Yet, how can you call it
anything other than subservience when the three main candidates for President
of the United States are so obsequious to Israel to the point they can’t
even speak freely? How can you call it anything other than Jewish
supremacy when Jewish radicals dominate both the politics and media in the
United States to the point that criticism of that obvious power is nothing
short of career ending? Just consider the powerful American Senators William Fulbright of Arkansas
and Charles Percy of Illinois who
lost their seats after the Jewish powerbrokers pulled out all stops to dry up
their campaign finances, flood their opponents with money and utilize their
power in media ownership and editorship to assassinate these character of these
two respected U.S. Senators.
The world is increasingly aware of this Jewish extremist
power, but Americans, precisely because they so suffer under this
power, are the least likely to learn of it. An example is the fact that last
year the Israeli President had ceremony where he called ”heroes” and gave
medals to the Israeli terrorists who led bombing attacks against American
installations in what is called historically the Lavon Affair.
The ceremony was covered extensively in the press in Israel and throughout the
Mideast, but Americans heard nary a word of it. The Jewish masters of media
certainly don’t want Americans to even be aware of the fact that the Israeli
government committed terrorist bombings against America and is proud of it!
They have the enormous power required to keep such information from the consciousness
of the American people. They have the power to dictate what the candidates for
President of the United States say and do. If one of the three candidate simply
criticized Israel’s terrorist attacks against the United States in the Lavon
Affair or the attack on the USS Liberty, his campaign for President of the
United States would be effectively over. Now, that’s real
power and not some conspiratorial fantasy.
It is power that has led America to the tragedy of 911, led us to the
catastrophe of the War for Israel in Iraq, and provides the incipient danger of
a devastating war with Iran that would plunge the world into economic
depression and an explosion of terrorism! Wake up America!
02/06/08
“Asia Times”
— - WASHINGTON - They’re all here - and they’re all ready to party. The three
United States presidential candidates - John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of
the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And a host of
Jewish and non-Jewish political and academic heavy-hitters among the 7,000
participants.
Such
star power wattage, a Washington version of the Oscars, is the stock in trade
of AIPAC
- the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee, the crucial player in what is
generally known as the Israel lobby and which holds its annual Policy
Conference this week in Washington at which most of the heavyweights will
deliver lectures.
Few
books in recent years have been as explosive or controversial as The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,
written by Stephen Walt from Harvard
University and John Mearsheimer from
the University of Chicago, published in 2007. In it, professors Walt and
Mearsheimer argued the case of the Israeli lobby not as “a cabal or conspiracy
that ‘controls’ US foreign policy”, but as an extremely powerful interest group
made up of Jews and non-Jews, a “loose coalition of individuals and
organizations tirelessly working to move US foreign policy in Israel’s
direction”.
Walt
and Mearsheimer also made the key point that “anyone
who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant
influence over US Middle East policy stands a good chance of being labeled an
anti-Semite”. Anyone for that matter who “says that there is an Israeli lobby”
also runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism.
All the candidates in the House say yeah
Republican
presidential candidate McCain is opening this year’s AIPAC jamboree; Clinton
and Obama are closing it on Wednesday. Walt and Mearsheimer’s verdict on the
dangerous liaisons between presidential candidates and AIPAC remains
unimpeachable: “None of the candidates is likely to criticize Israel in any
significant way or suggest that the US ought to pursue a more evenhanded policy
in the region. And those who do will probably fall by the wayside.”
Take
what Clinton said in February at an AIPAC meeting in New York: “Israel is a
beacon of what’s right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of
radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism.” A year before, Clinton was in
favor of sitting and talking to Iran’s leadership.
And
take what Obama said in March at an AIPAC meeting in Chicago; no reference at
all to Palestinian “suffering”, as he had done on the campaign trail in March
2007. Obama also made it clear he would do nothing to alter the US-Israeli
relationship.
No
wonder AIPAC is considered by most members of the US Congress as more powerful
than the National Rifle Association or the American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations.
AIPAC
has explicit Zionist roots. The founder, “Si” Kenen, was head of the American
Zionist Council in 1951. The body was reorganized as a US lobby - the American
Zionist Committee for Public Affairs - in 1953-4, and then renamed AIPAC in
1959. Under Tom Dine, in the 1970s, it was turned into a mass organization with
more than 150 employees and a budget of up to US$60 million today. Dine was
later ousted because he was considered not hawkish enough.
The
top leadership - mostly former AIPAC presidents - is always more hawkish on the
Middle East than most Jewish Americans. AIPAC only dropped its opposition to a
Palestinian state - without endorsing it - when Ehud Barak became Israeli prime
minister in 1999.
AIPAC
keeps a very close relationship with an array of influential think-tanks, like
the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Hudson
Institute, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Middle East
Forum, the The Project
for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy. Sprinkled neo-cons in these think-tanks can be regarded as a
microcosm of the larger Israel lobby - Jews and non-Jews (It’s important to remember that Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and five other neo-cons drafted the infamous “A Clean Break” document to Benjamin
Netanyahu in 1996 - the ultimate road map for
hardcore regime change all over the Middle East.)
The house that AIPAC built
AIPAC
in the US Congress is a rough beast indeed. Former president Bill Clinton
defined it as “stunningly effective”. Former
speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich called it “the most effective general-interest group across the entire
planet”. The New York Times as
“the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel”.
Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert, before his involvement in a corruption scandal, said. “Thank God we
have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world.”
AIPAC maintains a virtual stranglehold over the US Congress.
Critics of the Israel lobby other than Walt and Mearsheimer also contend that
AIPAC essentially prevents any possibility of open debate on US policy towards
Israel. Compare it with a 2004 report by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board,
according to which “Muslims do not hate our freedom,
but rather they hate our policies”.
AIPAC
should not be crossed. It rewards those who support its agenda, and punishes
those who don’t. In the end, it’s all about money - specifically campaign
contributions. From 2000 to 2004, according to the Washington Post, AIPAC
honchos contributed an average of $72,000 each to campaigns and political
committees. For pro-AIPAC politicians, money simply pours from all over the US.
Every member of the US Congress receives AIPAC’s bi-weekly newsletter, the Near East Report. Walt and Mearsheimer stress that
Congressmen and their staff “usually turn to AIPAC when they need info; AIPAC
is called upon to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics,
research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes”.
Hillary
Clinton has learned long ago she should not cross AIPAC. Clinton used to
support a Palestinian state in 1998. She even embraced Suha Arafat, Yasser’s
wife, in 1999. After much scolding, she suddenly became a vigorous defender of
Israel, and years later wholeheartedly supported the 2006 Israeli war against
Hezbollah in Lebanon. Clinton may have gotten the bulk of Jewish American
donations for her 2008 presidential campaign.
Rice
also learned about facts on the ground. She tried to restart the eternally
moribund “peace process” when visiting the Middle East in March 2007. Before
the trip, she got an AIPAC letter signed by no less than 79 US senators telling her not
to talk to the new Palestinian unity government until it “recognized
Israel, renounced terror and agreed to abide by Palestinian-Israeli
agreements”.
AIPAC and Iraq
It
has become relatively fashionable for some members of the Israeli lobby to deny
any involvement in the build-up towards the war on Iraq. But few remember what
AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr
told the New York Sun in January
2003: “Quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of
force in Iraq was one of AIPAC’s successes over the past year.”
And
in a New Yorker profile of Steven Rosen,
AIPAC’s policy director during the run-up to the war on Iraqi, it was stated
that “AIPAC
lobbied Congress in favor of the Iraqi war”.
Compare
it with a 2007 Gallup study based on 13 different polls, according to which 77%
of American Jews were opposed to the Iraq war, compared to 52% of Americans.
Walt
and Mearsheimer contend “the war was due in large part to the lobby’s
influence, and especially its neo-con wing. The lobby is not always
representative of the larger community for which it often claims to speak.”
AIPAC and Iran
Now
it is Iran time. Walt and Mearsheimer contend “the
lobby is fighting to prevent the US from reversing course and seeking a
rapprochement with Tehran. They continue to promote an
increasingly confrontational and counterproductive policy instead”. Not
much different from the embattled Olmert, who told Germany’s Focus magazine in
April 2007 that “it would take 10 days … and 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles” to
set back Iran’s nuclear program.
A
measure of Walt and Mearsheimer’s power to rattle reputations is that the
Zionist establishment had to bring out all its big guns to refute their
argument, again and again.
Walt
and Mearsheimer are no ideologues. They are realpolitik practitioners - very
much at ease in the top circles of US foreign policy establishment. Perhaps the
most fascinating aspect of their book is that they argued four points that the
establishment never mentions in public. Essentially these are:
The
US has already won its major wars in the Middle East, against Arab secular
nationalism and against communism, and does not need Israel quite as much.
Israel is now so
much more powerful than all Arab nations combined that it can take care of
itself.
The unconditional
support for Israel, regardless of its outrageous deeds, does harm US interests,
destabilizes pro-US regimes like Hosi Mubarak’s Egypt and King Abdullah’s
Jordan, and plays into the hands of Salafi-jihadi radicals.
Fighting Israel’s
wars on its behalf is the surefire way to lead to the collapse of US power in
the Middle East.Walt and Mearsheimer also seem not to accept that oil, and
rivalry with Russia and China, have also played a crucial part in why the US
went to war in Iraq and may attack Iran in the near future. Anyway only
insiders as themselves - with unassailable establishment credentials - could
have started, at the highest levels of public debate, a serious discussion of
extreme pro-Zionism in the public and political life of the US.
Meanwhile,
the power of the lobby seems unassailable. In March
2007, the US Congress was trying to attach a provision to a Pentagon spending
bill that would have required President George W Bush to get congressional
approval before attacking Iran. AIPAC was strongly against it - because it
viewed the legislation as taking the military option “off the table”. The
provision was killed. Congressman Dennis Kucinich said this was due to AIPAC.
AIPAC
made a lot of waves in 2002, when the theme of the annual meeting was “America and Israel standing against terror”.
Everyone bashed Arafat, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Hamas,
Hezbollah, Iran and Syria at the same time - just as in PNAC’s letter to Bush
in April 2002 claiming that Israel was also fighting an “axis of evil”
alongside the US.
During
AIPAC’s jamboree in 2004, Bush received 23 standing ovations defending his Iraq policy.
Last year, the star was Cheney, making the case for the troop “surge” in Iraq.
Pelosi was dutifully present. But it was pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement
McCain recently refused, who really made a killing - even though Hagee
maintains that “anti-Semitism is the result of the Jews’ rebellion against
God”.
On
Iran, Hagee definitely set the tone:
“It is 1938; Iran is Germany and [President Mahmud]
Ahmadinejad is the new [Adolf] Hitler. We must stop Iran’s nuclear threat and
stand boldly with Israel.” He received
multiple standing ovations. McCain may be sure to get the same treatment this
year - and he’ll certainly have no trouble remaining on message.
Pepe
Escobar is the author of Globalistan:
How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007)
and Red
Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. He may be reached at
pepeasia@yahoo.com.
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