Digg.com infested with pro-Zionist Megaphonies

http://futurenewstoday.blogspot.com/2009/01/israeligirl-violates-digg-tos.html

I was recently banned from Digg. Again. This time according to the email it is permanent. Here is their email informing me of their decision.

Your account was removed for violating the Digg Terms of Service (digg.com/tos) that you agreed to.

“By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree not to use the Services:

with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the ‘digg count’, blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg’s services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services;”

Due to the nature and severity of abuse, your account will not be re-instated. This decision is final and irreversible.

- Digg Support Team

And here is my reply which I never received a response to.

Hi,

It seems to me that there must be a mistake. Can you be more specific including describing the specific act that caused my account to be closed? I am not aware that I ever did any of the things that you mention below. And I would very much like to have my account re-instated.

According to your email I violated the TOS through one of the following:

with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the ‘digg count’, blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg’s services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services;”

1. I have never created a separate user count.
2. I have never received any remuneration in exchange for votes.
3. The only “organized effort” that I have engaged in to “alter the results” is to send shouts. Is this not allowed?

I will gladly admit that I sent a shout asking that my friends bury an article. If this is the action that was in violation of the TOS then I apologize and will not do it again. I would have logically thought that shouting to bury an article would be no different than shouting in favor of an article. But again if this is the case, then I will gladly promise to not do this again.

Is it because I placed links in comments to other Digg articles and asked people to digg them? Again, I would have thought that this would be allowed, but if it isn’t then I won’t do it again.

Certainly sending shouts is not “participating in any other organized effort”. So I’m very confused as to what is the nature of my offense, and inclined to believe that a mistake has been made in my case.

It seems highly unusual and unfair to me to close my account without pointing out the specific act that prompted this severe action. I have been an active member of Digg for quite some time. I have always tried to act responsibly on Digg. Again I ask that my account be re-instated, or at the very least to have a clear explanation of the specific act or acts that caused my account to be closed.

Thanks,
Frank

So in my humble opinion Digg sucks big time. I’m convinced that the only reason that I was banned was for my political point of view. It seems that anti-Zionists are not welcome on Digg. I’m not the only one. I can name at least 10 others that have recently been banned that were also anti-Zionist. Meanwhile there are numerous Zionist trolls that place highly objectionable comments on Digg which have never been banned.

But, one particular Zionist user stands out recently because of the number of articles this user has placed on the front page recently. And that user is IsraeliGirl. Here’s her user profile page.
http://digg.com/users/israeligirl

On that page, in the about section, it says:

I’ve been a marketing consultant to high tech companies for the last 10 years. I am also one of the founders of giyus.org, a pro-Israeli public diplomacy group.

So I went to GIYUS.org to see what kind of a group it is. There homepage is as you might expect.
http://giyus.org/

GIYUS it turns out is an acronym for Give Israel Your United Support. And here is what is displayed on the front page of GIYUS.org.

Today’s conflicts are won by public opinion.
Now is the time to be active and voice Israel’s side to the world.

Join the effort in 3 easy steps:

1. Download and install Megaphone desktop tool
2. Receive desktop alerts on key articles and surveys
3. Click alerts to easily voice your opinion

Help us by reporting relevant articles and surveys.

Together we can make a difference!

In case you don’t now about Megaphone, it is described in Wikipedia as “the pro-Israel lobbying software tool”. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Megaphone.

The Megaphone desktop tool is a Microsoft Windows application distributed by the World Union of Jewish Students and other pro-Israel organizations, through the Giyus.org website. Released on July 19, 2006, it delivers real-time alerts about key articles, videos, blogs, and surveys to subscribers so that they can voice their opinions and work together to support Israel on the public opinion front.

So now you can see the relationship:
IsraeliGirl->founder of GIYUS.org->distributor of Megaphone->pro-Israel lobbying software->work together to support Israel

Now that reminds me of something in the Digg TOS that was supposedly the reason for banning me from Digg. What could it be? Oh right! I remember.

or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services

Is it just a coincidence that the day before I was banned I sent out a shout asking my friends to bury a particular article submitted by IsraeliGirl, and also suggested that they bury any other articles posted by IsraeliGirl? Why am I the one that got banned, when clearly IsraeliGirl and the Megaphonies are the ones gaming the system on Digg?

Is Digg another “Israeli-Occupied Territory” on the internet? Why does Digg allow someone who blatantly advertises their connection to a coordinated effort to manipulate internet public opinion to continue to be a member? IsraeliGirl is clearly in gross violation of the Digg Terms of Service, yet she has been allowed to become one of the most powerful Digg members recently. And this is at a time when Israel is engaging in the massacre of innocent Palestinians.

If Digg didn’t claim to be a democratic and politically neutral site, then this would be no problem. But if Digg is pursuing a pro-Zionist agenda while pretending to be neutral, then Digg is a fraud and needs to be exposed.

See also this article from the Times Online:
“Israel backed by army of cyber-soldiers”
[This article is from 2006 when Israel invaded Lebanon in a brutal attack against civilians similar to the attack against Gaza.]

WHILE Israel fights Hezbollah with tanks and aircraft, its supporters are campaigning on the internet.

Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.

In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special “megaphone” software that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.

It is clear from this article that the Israeli government itself is behind GIYUS and Megaphone, so again – Why isn’t IsraeliGirl banned from Digg?

Here is one last article that shows the link between Megaphone and the Israeli government. This one is from Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian website.

“Israel’s Foreign Ministry provides Free Internet Tool to online activists”
[The article quotes a letter from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is from 2006.]

Dear friends,

Many of us recognize the importance of the Internet as the new battleground for Israel’s image. It’s time to do it better, and coordinate our on-line efforts on behalf of Israel. An Israeli software company have developed a free, safe and useful tool for us – the Internet Megaphone.

Please go to www.giyus.org, download the Megaphone, and you will receive daily updates with instant links to important internet polls, problematic articles that require a talk back, etc.

We need 100,000 Megaphone users to make a difference. So, please distribute this mail to all Israel’s supporters.

Do it now. For Israel.

Amir Gissin

Director Public Affairs (Hasbara) Department
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem

This article suggests that pro-Palestinian users should download Megaphone and use it to track what the Zionist forces are doing and use it as a tool against them. It also mentions that GIYUS translates into “mobilization”. It also points to webpage where you can see the online alerts issued by GIYUS without having to sign up for the sign up for Megaphone.

GIYUS.ORG Online Alerts
http://ws.giyus.org/points/list

I am posting this link so that anti-Zionist forces can track the Zionists attempts to sway public opinion via the internet, and so that we can counter the Israeli attempts to manipulate the internet as they have manipulated the main-stream media (MSM)

Flashback: “Why It Rains: Hamas holding Israeli gas reserves hostage”

Is this the real reason behind the Gaza attacks?

Found link to this story on Stef Zucconi’s blog.

Source: The Electonic Intifada.

An unexpected energy windfall on Israel’s doorstep promises to resolve Israel’s energy security concerns for years to come. Unfortunately for Israe[l], it is the Palestinian Authority that controls the licensing of these reserves. So, as Operation Summer Rains washes away the administrative and political structures in the occupied territories, has Israel decided to use Hamas as an excuse to dismantle the PA and seize its energy assets?

After the Iranian Revolution cut-off energy supplies in 1979, and the loss of Sinai’s oil in 1982, Israel became dependent on expensive, long-distance energy imports. Towards the end of the 1990s, in an attempt to alleviate concerns over its energy security and reduce its dependency on imported oil, Israel decided to place a greater emphasis on natural gas. The architect of Israel’s energy strategy at the time was Netanyahu’s Minister of National Infrastructure, Ariel Sharon.

After Netanyahu’s election defeat in 1999, Ehud Barak sought to take advantage of improved relations with Egypt to import some of Israel’s gas from the Nile Delta [1]. There was, however, political resistance to the deal from within both countries and, when relations with Egypt began to deteriorate with the start of the 2nd Intifada and Sharon’s subsequent rise to power, the $3 billion deal was put on the back-burner. However, the possibility of avoiding dependence on such a politically contentious source arose in 2000 when several energy companies, including British Gas (BG), announced the discovery of �significant deposits� of natural gas off the Israeli coast [2].

Estimated at 100 billion cubic meters of proven reserves, these discoveries potentially offer enough gas to meet Israel’s goal of supplying 25% of its energy needs for more than 20 years – even without further imports [3]. The discovery has also raised realistic expectations of locating oil deposits beneath the gas fields.

Unfortunately for Israel, 60% of these reserves are in waters controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which has signed a 25-year contract with British Gas for further exploration in the area. Since this discovery, Israel has proceeded with the development of its reserves with the US-Israeli company Yam Tethys, but has been faced with an obvious dilemma over the Palestinian deposits [4]. Keen to secure the gas for its domestic market but unwilling to submit its sensitive energy supplies (and their profits) into the hands of the Palestinians, Israel has for the past 6 years pursued a policy of non-commitment, stalling and obstruction.

Despite early endorsement of the British Gas plan to develop the PA reserves for the Israeli market, the intensification of tensions during the Intifada allowed Sharon to veto the Gaza deal on security grounds. With the exploitation of the Palestinian reserves halted and the Egyptian deal put on hold, Israel has used the Yam Tethys supply as a stopgap. However, as its hungry economy quickly bought up these reserves and prices began to rise Israel needed to act to guarantee its future supplies. After years of on-off negotiations between the two reluctant trade partners, in July 2005, Israel signed a 15-year contract for Egyptian gas [5].

However, following the signing of the deal it was revealed that – impatient with Israeli intransigence – Egypt, British Gas and the Palestinian Authority had also been secretly negotiating a deal to sidestep the problematic Israeli market. Within a month, the three parties announced their plan to extract Gazan gas, transport it to Egypt in an Egyptian controlled pipeline, and then ship it on in liquefied form to the international market [6].

The possibility that Israel could be permanently excluded from such a tempting energy windfall on their doorstep, and that the main beneficiaries would be Egypt and the Palestinians, has since prompted Olmert to reverse Sharon’s veto and reopen negotiations with BG over the supply of Gazan gas to Israel. Despite the ongoing international isolation of Hamas, the BG deal was high on the agenda during Olmert’s recent meeting with British Chancellor Gordon Brown [6].

Despite BG’s commitments to Egypt and the PA, the company has announced that it is willing to enter into a deal with Israel. Within Israel, political legitimacy for the reversal has come from increasing criticisms of high prices caused by Egypt’s effective monopoly of Israeli gas supply. Also, according to Haaretz, Israel is confident that it has enough influence to persuade Egypt to back out of the Gazan deal, with senior government sources�asserting that: The gas off Gaza will come to Israel in the end. [6].

Until last week, Israel’s confidence did not make any sense. The security situation that provoked Sharon’s original veto of Gazan gas had not improved and it seems inconceivable that Israel would allow the PA, let alone Hamas, to reap the benefits of the Gazan gas fields. BG has made it clear that its Gazan gas will be developed soon, whether Israel likes it or not, but if Hamas is not to be the partner, then who is?

The arrival of Summer Rains gives us a sour answer. If the ongoing attacks on Gaza succeed in destroying the Palestinian Authority as a viable political entity, all commercial contracts with the Authority, such as that with British Gas, will become worthless and will have to be renegotiated with the Israeli government. Perhaps the most valuable hostage that Hamas has in the current crisis then is not the 19-year old Israeli soldier, but the Palestinian gas reserves that Israel claims as its own, and may go to extreme lengths to rescue.

Jake Bower is the pseudonym of a postgraduate historian in the UK who specialises in the strategic and tactical framework behind American foreign interventions. The above article was edited from a wider analysis of the regional and global dynamics of the new great game for control of energy resources and transit infrastructure.

Relentless Propaganda Alert! U.S. says Iran has missile that could hit Europe

Excellent comment about this from Signs of the Times:

Enough already! with this “Iran wants to destroy the world” nonsense. It is repeated ad nauseam, like some insane machine. This rabid ranting comes from the one regime that DOES seem hell bent on destroying the world, and as such represents the highest level of hypocrisy imaginable. Of course, this should be patently obvious to anyone willing to follow the threads of cause and effect, as documented daily here on SoTT, but somehow it still exerts its hypnotic and extremely dangerous effect on public opinion.

Source: David Morgan, Reuters.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that Iran has the ability to launch a ballistic missile capable of hitting sections of eastern and southern Europe.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defence Agency, told reporters he believes Iran now has a missile with a range of 2,000 km, but he declined to say whether the weapon has been test-fired.

Iran said last week it conducted two missile tests involving a number of weapons including what Iranian state television called a “new” Shahab-3 missile, a medium-range missile that could be used to strike Israel.

Tensions over Iran’s missile arsenal and accusations from the United States and its allies that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons have roiled international financial markets with fears of a possible military confrontation.

Iran denies it wants nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is designed to produce electricity to increase its output of oil and natural gas.

Older versions of the Shahab-3 have a 1,300-km range. But a new extended version is believed to have a range of up to 1,250 miles, making it capable of hitting targets as far away as Greece, Serbia, Romania and Belarus.

Iran is also developing a solid-fuel missile known as the Ashura with a range of 1,250 miles, according to the Pentagon.

U.S. officials and independent missile experts have said last week’s tests involved no new or enhanced technology, or even the latest generations of missiles known to be in Iran’s arsenal.

Obering did not dispute those assertions in a briefing for Pentagon officials on Tuesday.

But his description of Iran’s missile capability was stronger than what U.S. officials have said up to now.

“The Iranians themselves are describing … a 2,000-km range missile launch,” Obering said of last week’s tests, adding that Iran also claimed to have such a missile in November.

“I believe, based on what I have seen, that they have the ability to do that and to continue to advance in the future, based on what I have seen so far from those (Iranian state media) reports and from the intelligence reports,” he added.

“I won’t go into detail as to what was fired when. That’s something I think the intel community should answer,” he said.

The Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency, which monitors major weapons threats to the United States and its allies, was more vague in its February 27 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Iran continues to develop and acquire ballistic missiles that can hit Israel and central Europe, including Iranian claims of an extended-range variant of the Shahab-3 and a new 2,000-km medium range ballistic missile called the Ashura,” DIA director Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples told the panel.

U.S. officials and analysts dismissed last week’s missile tests as an angry Iranian response to recent military exercises including an Israeli air exercise in June that some have called a rehearsal for an attack on Iran.

The Bush administration has used concern about Iranian missiles to press forward with plans for a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, capable of protecting both Europe and the United States from attack.

Washington and the Czech Republic signed an agreement last week to place missile-tracking radar on Czech soil. U.S. officials are now hoping for a deal to station the system’s interceptor missiles in Poland.

The Mainstream Media and Israel: Rendering public opinion irrelevant

Source: Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com.

One of the most striking aspects of our political discourse, particularly during election time, is how efficiently certain views that deviate from the elite consensus are banished from sight — simply prohibited — even when those views are held by the vast majority of citizens. The University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes — the premiere organization for surveying international public opinion — released a new survey a couple of weeks ago regarding public opinion on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including opinion among American citizens, and this is what it found:

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel’s side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.

The worldwide consensus is crystal clear — citizens want their Governments to be neutral and even-handed in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not tilted towards either side. And that consensus is shared not just by a majority of American citizens, but by the overwhelming majority. Few political views, particularly on controversial issues, attract more than 70% support among American citizens. But the proposition that the U.S. Government should be even-handed — rather than tilting towards Israel — attracts that much support. That’s not an “anti-Israeli” view — to the contrary, it’s a position that America can and should resolve that violent, four-decades-long dispute by being even-handed rather than one-sided. 

Similarly, when asked “How well do you think Israel is doing its part in the effort to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict,” citizens around the world, by a large margin, believe that Israel is doing either “not very well” or “not well at all” (54% — compared to 23% that say it’s doing “very well” or “somewhat well”). And there, too, that worldwide view corresponds to American public opinion as well. 59% of Americans say Israel is doing either “not very well” or “not well at all” — compared to only 30% that say it’s doing “very well” or “somewhat well.” And Palestinians don’t fare much better worldwide (38-49%) and fare worse in the U.S. (15-75%).

Yet not only is the view of “even-handedness” completely unrepresented among mainstream political figures in the U.S., it’s deemed political death to go anywhere near expressing that view. Back in 2003, then-presidential-candidate Howard Dean expressed the exact position favored by an overwhelming majority of Americans, yet triggered an intense and even ugly controversy by doing so:

Dean’s Israel troubles began at a Sept. 3 campaign event in Santa Fe, N.M. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said that day, “It’s not our place to take sides.” Then, on Sept. 9, he told the Washington Post that America should be “evenhanded” in its approach to the region.

That’s all Dean said. It’s a view held by more than 70% of Americans. It ought to be completely uncontroversial — if anything, it ought to be that view that is deemed a political piety. But what happened? This, according to an excellent account of that “controversy” in Salon by Michelle Goldberg:

The media and the Democratic establishment reacted as if Dean had called Yasser Arafat a man of peace. On Sept. 10, 34 Democratic members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, wrote Dean an open letter. “American foreign policy has been — and must continue to be — based on unequivocal support for Israel’s right to exist and to be free from terror . . .” they wrote. “It is unacceptable for the U.S. to be ‘evenhanded’ on these fundamental issues . . . This is not a time to be sending mixed messages; on the contrary, in these difficult times we must reaffirm our unyielding commitment to Israel’s survival and raise our voices against all forms of terrorism and incitement.” 

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Dean had badly damaged his own campaign. “Sources in the Jewish community say that Dean has wrecked his chances of getting significant contributions from Jews . . .” the paper wrote. “Many believe Dean’s statement will drive more Jews toward Lieberman and Kerry, enabling Kerry to take the lead again.”

Dean was roundly attacked by the political elite for uttering “anti-Israel” comments, notwithstanding the fact that Dean is married to a Jewish woman, raised his children as Jews, and, most amazingly of all, had a campaign that was managed by Steve Grossman, a former President of AIPAC. But no matter: Dean had uttered a Forbidden Thought — forbidden even though it is embraced by the vast majority of Americans — and thus Grossman and Dean had to subject themselves to abject Apology Rituals:

According to the Dean campaign, the uproar involved semantics, not substance. “Here’s what I think happened,” says Grossman, Dean’s campaign co-chair. “Howard made some comments in someone’s backyard in New Mexico that were shorthand, if you will, for some of his Middle East views. In the course of those remarks and some others in the subsequent days, he used some language that gave people consternation, and it was immediately jumped on by Joe Lieberman and John Kerry that somehow Howard Dean was breaking faith with this 55-year tradition of the United States’ special relationship with Israel, which is patently absurd”. . . . 

If Dean’s Israel position really puts him far out on the left, it proves that not showing unequivocal support for the Jewish state remains a political poison pill — for members of either political party. . . .

After all, according to Grossman, the candidate remains in sync with the goals of Bush’s Israel policy. . . . No serious candidate took a position to the left of Bush. Indeed, it’s precisely because there’s no real leftist alternative that Dean’s been cast in that role. . . . . But a campaign is always more about images and impressions than carefully formulated positions, and that’s where Dean has blundered.

It was conventional wisdom that that Dean had committed some grave mistake even though, as The Nation‘s John Nichols highlighted at the time, Dean was expressing the overwhelming majority view even back in 2003:

More troubling is the condemnation by Pelosi and other party leaders of even a hint of “evenhandedness.” That smacks of the old game of positioning Democrats to the right of the Republicans on Middle East policy — in a perceived contest for Jewish-American votes and contributions. The problem with this approach, as Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes points out, is that “this suggests you cannot be firmly committed to Israel and question [Israel's hawkish Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon’s policies. If that’s where Democrats put themselves, they don’t leave room to debate Bush on the issue.” They’ll also have a tougher time appealing to American voters — 73 percent of whom, according to a recent University of Maryland poll, prefer that the United States not take sides.

It’s pretty extraordinary that in a democracy, the political elite is able to render completely off-limits a view that the vast majority of Americans support. They actually render majority-held views unspeakable and then remove the issue entirely from what is debated. No matter what one’s views are, there is no denying that our policy towards Israel is immensely consequential for our country. Yet, by virtue of the fact that presidential candidates are required to affirm essentially the same orthodoxies, there’s very little difference in their positions towards Israel and therefore our current policy approach towards Israel will simply not be part of anything that is debated, even though most Americans overwhelmingly oppose that course. 

Indeed, as soon as he secured the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama made a pilgrimage to AIPAC in order to avoid the “Howard Dean mistake” and to vow that there would be no such debate over Israel in this election:

I have been proud to be a part of a strong, bi-partisan consensus that has stood by Israel in the face of all threats. That is a commitment that both John McCain and I share, because support for Israel in this country goes beyond party. . . . 

And then there are those who would lay all of the problems of the Middle East at the doorstep of Israel and its supporters, as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of all trouble in the region. These voices blame the Middle East’s only democracy for the region’s extremism. They offer the false promise that abandoning a stalwart ally is somehow the path to strength. It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.

Our alliance is based on shared interests and shared values. Those who threaten Israel threaten us. Israel has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.

That starts with ensuring Israel’s qualitative military advantage. I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat — from Gaza to Tehran. Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As President, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade — investments to Israel’s security that will not be tied to any other nation.

In fairness, Obama did attack what he called the “failed status quo”; disputed that “America’s recent foreign policy has made Israel more secure”; and pointed to “eight years of accumulated evidence that our foreign policy is dangerously flawed.” Moreover, Obama — to his great credit — spent the primary season making some important and unorthodox points about Palestinian suffering and pointing out that the President should not be blindly supportive of everything Israel’s right-wing does, that being “pro-Israel” doesn’t mean a refusal to oppose Israeli actions. 

But by uttering such Forbidden (though quite mainstream) thoughts, Obama was mercilessly attacked as anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic, and with the nomination secured, the crux of his June AIPAC speech was an affirmation of our political establishment’s mandated Israel orthodoxy: the continuation of America’s one-sided alliance with Israel, as highlighted by commitments such as this:

Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation. . . . That is the change we need in our foreign policy. Change that restores American power and influence. Change accompanied by a pledge that I will make known to allies and adversaries alike: that America maintains an unwavering friendship with Israel, and an unshakeable commitment to its security. . . . 

As members of AIPAC, you have helped advance this bipartisan consensus to support and defend our ally Israel. And I am sure that today on Capitol Hill you will be meeting with members of Congress and spreading the word. But we are here because of more than policy. We are here because the values we hold dear are deeply embedded in the story of Israel.

Again, the point has nothing to do with one’s views of the best policy towards Israel. The point is that a position which the vast majority of Americans embrace is one that, simultaneously, is forbidden to be expressed, and the election consequently will involve no debate over that issue. 

That profoundly anti-democratic dynamic is by no means confined to Israel. That’s just an example. A different University of Maryland poll was released in April of this year, which surveyed public opinion in Iran and the U.S. regarding the disputes between those two countries. The populations of both countries have strikingly similar views with regard to those matters, with large majorities favoring the same deal to resolve the dispute (Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy accompanied by IAEA inspections to prevent weaponization), and large majorities also favor the NPT’s goal of “eliminating all nuclear weapons.” More strikingly, the citizens of both countries overwhelmingly favor the same policies of rapproachment and cooperation, rather than the bluster, threats, and ongoing provocative acts engaged in by both of their governments:

Remarkably, this desire for cooperation rather than confrontation is the view of most Americans despite the Iraq-level misinformation and propaganda which our political elite has disseminated about Iran:

And while Iranian President Ahmadinejad is depicted by our political class as the Equivalent of Adolf Hitler, savagely oppressing Iranians as some sort of insane, vicious tyrant, that isn’t how they see it:

Iranian public opinion distinguishes between the U.S. Government and the American people — holding favorable views towards the latter and unfavorable views towards the former (“some portrayed the American people, like the Muslim people, as victims of the American government”) — and to the extent there is “anti-Americanism” in Iran, it is based on this widespread assessment:

That, too, is a belief widely held in many places in the world, yet is one that no mainstream politician in the U.S. could express.

There are all sorts of reasons why our presidential elections center on personality-based sideshows (even Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell said as much about her own paper’s coverage today). Those gossipy matters are easier for our slothful, vapid media stars to digest and spout. They require very few resources to cover. The campaign consultants who run national political campaigns are experts in P.R. strategies for packaging personalities and indifferent to policy debates, etc. etc.

But one principal reason is that so many of the Government’s most consequential actions are concealed behind a wall of secrecy and thus not subject to public debate. Meanwhile, those policies which are publicly disclosed are kept off-limits from any real debate and, even when they are debated, public opinion is almost completely marginalized in favor of the minority elite consensus (see, for instance, the endless Iraq war even in the face of long-standing, overwhelming support for its end).

That remarkable dynamic of debate-suppression is most conspicuous — and most urgent — when the policies favored by the political establishment are ones that are vigorously rejected by the citizenry. Thus we have the extraordinary fact that a policy that has long been favored by the vast majority of Americans — even-handedness in the Israel-Palestinian conflict — is one that no mainstream American politician of any national significance can espouse without triggering an immediate end to their political career. That discrepancy is a rather potent commentary on how our democracy functions.

AIPAC’s Hirelings Rush to Resolution

Source: William Cook, Media with Conscience.

Perception is often the stepchild of ignorance, especially when controlled by those with the most to gain. It is especially difficult for our Congress to perceive clearly when it grovels at the feet of its master, AIPAC. America’s Knesset, servile hirelings of Israel’s lobby, rush to pass yet another resolution conceived by AIPAC and authored and co-signed by its most slavish puppets, Ackerman and Ros-Lehtinen in the House and Lieberman and Bayh in the Senate, Resolutions H. Con. 362 and S. 580, the “Iran War Resolution.” Virtually all Congressmen with the exception of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich and all Senators, including McCain and Obama, will vote to support this resolution. Passage provides Bush with power to impose a unilateral blockade on Iran, an act, if done without UN sanction, is an act of war. This resolution, a virtual carbon copy of the resolution that has mired us in Iraq, does nothing for the security of the United States, indeed it does the opposite, but it does secure continued funding of Republicans and Democrats by AIPAC and Israel.

The wise man seeks to see through the eyes of his perceived enemy; only then will he know his perceived failures and the rationale that gives purpose to those arraigned against him. Our Congress is driven, like the horse carriage of old, with blinders that prevent vision beyond that dictated by Israel’s interests, not America’s. Consider the “Iran War Resolution” from the perspective of the nations that compose the United Nations General Assembly, not the Security Council that is controlled by the U.S. veto.

Let’s rewrite the legislation so that it expresses the sense of the United Nations General Assembly regarding “the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital security interests of the United Nations by Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony.”

Whereas Israel is NOT a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), has NOT foresworn the acquisition of nuclear weapons by ratification of the NPT, and is therefore able to avoid declaration of all its nuclear activity and defy constant monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);

Whereas for nearly 50 years, in clear contravention of the explicit obligations of the NPT, Israel operated a covert nuclear program until it was revealed by Mr. Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years in solitary confinement for providing the world information on this deceit, and, recently, by Prime Minister Olmert and former President Jimmy Carter;

Whereas Israel continues to expand the number of illegal nuclear weapons available to its military forces, as has become evident in its most recent invasion of a neighbor in 2006, Lebanon, and continues in defiance of binding UNSC resolutions demanding suspension of all such illegal activities;

Whereas the Israeli nuclear weapons capability poses a grave threat to international peace and security by fundamentally altering and destabilizing the strategic balance in the Middle East, and severely undermining the global nonproliferation regime;

Whereas Israel’s overt sponsorship of several terrorist groups, especially those aligned with the Settlers occupation in Palestine, and its close ties to the United States, demonstrates that Israel and the U.S. share their nuclear materials and technology with others;

Whereas Israel continues to develop ballistic missile technology and pursues its capability to field intercontinental ballistic missiles, a delivery system suited almost exclusively to nuclear weapons payloads;

Whereas Israeli leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Palestine and Lebanon, respected members of the United Nations;

Whereas Israel’s support for its rogue terrorist group, the IDF, has enabled that group to wage war against the government and people of Lebanon and Palestine leading to the invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and its political and physical domination of Palestine;

Whereas Israel’s support for its Settlers and IDF has enabled it to illegally seize control of the West Bank and Gaza and to continuously bombard and devastate Palestinian civilians with F-16s, bulldozers, tanks, and missiles;

Whereas through these efforts, Israel seeks to establish regional hegemony, threatens longstanding friends and allies of all nations in the mid-east, and endangers vital United Nations security interests; and

Whereas nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Israel: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the United Nations General Assembly that the world’s international body

1. Declare that Israel disband all nuclear weapons capability;
2. Join the nations of the mid-east in signing the NPT;
3. Remove its troops from the occupied territory of Palestine;
4. Tear down the illegal wall that it has used to imprison the Palestinians;
5. Return all natural resources to the people of Palestine;
6. Pay reparation for its destruction of Lebanon;
7. Return occupied land to Lebanon and Syria;
8. Provide for the refugees illegally prevented from returning to their legitimate homes;

The above document modifies the wording of the House and Senate resolutions to indicate a totally different perspective on world affairs, one built on Justice, the requisite foundation for a lasting peace, not those of Israel alone. Considering the magnitude of the reality that exists in Israel versus Iran relative to nuclear capability alone, the absurdity, the hypocrisy, the sheer arrogance of these resolutions boggles the mind. How can the world respect a nation whose representatives avoid seeing the world from the eyes of those most impacted by the threat that Israel poses in the mid-east? How can the world understand that a nation rejects the testimony of its own CIA National Intelligence Estimate that Iran has not actively pursued nuclear weapon capability since 2003 and the evidence brought to the United Nations by the IAEA’s Director, El Baradei, after nine unannounced investigations of Iran’s nuclear facilities in this past year all revealing no evidence of weapon development? How can the world respect a Democracy that is led to such acts of vengeance by a small nation more invested in its own interests than those of America as Mearsheimer and Walt’s report testifies.

The most evil deceit resides in the conceit of those who pretend to be a friend and achieve their end by flattery, bribery, or coercion; those who fall victim to such evil remain forever the bondslave of their Overseer. They have, in effect, surrendered their principles, their conscience, and their personal freedom to a ruthless, merciless, amoral force, willingly sacrificing in the process the people they represent. Such is the state of affairs in our spineless Congress.
William Cook, A senior editor of MWC News, is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Deception: Bush’s Mideast Policy

By this author: http://mwcnews.net/william-cook

Congress Delivers Promised Israel Aid Bump Despite Budget Cuts to Domestic Programs and Crumbling U.S. Infrastructure

No money for bridges, dams, or levees. No money for veterans. No money for libraries, schools, or fire departments. Does anyone else see a pattern here? We no longer have a government that puts our country’s needs first. We need to fire the fuckers behind this outrage.

By Nathan Guttman, The Jewish Daily Forward.

Washington – While almost all federally financed programs were denied any funding increase for the coming year, aid to Israel from the United States will increase thanks to a legislative loophole and some deft maneuvering by pro-Israel lobbyists.

Congress bypassed the normal appropriation process on June 26 when it approved a $170 million raise in military aid to Israel, as part of a larger supplemental spending bill. The increase contrasts with the standstill in budgeting for almost all other government programs. Due to fighting between Democrats and Republicans over the federal budget, most government spending will be held in what is known as a “continuous resolution,” which maintains all spending at the same level as in the previous fiscal year and allows no raise in government spending.

Aid to Israel would normally be covered by this resolution, but legislators made the aid into an amendment to special legislation covering funding for the military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to an official in the Washington pro-Israel community, the only other instance in which aid to Israel went through this channel was after the first Gulf War, 16 years ago.

The move was quickly applauded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“The effort to secure this vital increase in American aid to our ally Israel could not have happened without the active support of the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate and Aipac applauds their effort,” Aipac spokesman Josh Block said in a statement published following the aid increase approval.

Israel had been promised a bump in military aid before the current wrangling over the budget.

Last August, Jerusalem and Washington signed an agreement that should direct $30 billion to Israel over 10 years.

For the agreement to actually turn into cash for Israel, Congress is required to appropriate the money. This legislative process has become increasingly difficult to complete in recent years, since Republican and Democratic lawmakers could not find common ground on spending bills. A continuous resolution this year would have put the promised increase in aid in jeopardy and would have left the implementation of the new aid package in the hands of a new administration and new Congress.

The first indication of the special maneuvers came at the annual conference of Aipac, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took the podium.

“I don’t know if Harry or John Boehner told you this earlier,” Pelosi said in her June 4 address, referring to Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Minority leader John Boehner, “but the first installment of this increase, $170 million, will be in the supplemental appropriation bill the House will consider soon, in fact, that we are considering now, so we can expedite this.”

The pro-Israel community’s desire to see the aid increase, even in the face of a Continuous Resolution had been raised earlier by members of Norpac, a New Jersey-based pro-Israel political action group, in a lobbying day they held May 21.

But a source following the issue closely said Aipac leaders were surprised by Pelosi’s pledge, saying it was an initiative that came from the highest congressional ranks.

On June 19, Aipac’s director of legislative policy and strategy briefed congressional staffers and explained the need for increasing foreign aid to Israel, stressing that the Jewish state’s expenses on security are higher than any other country in the industrialized world because of the threats it faces.

Bipartisan support for bypassing legislative hurdles was apparent in the June 27 Senate vote, which tallied 92 supporters and only six senators opposing the bill. Aid to Jordan and Mexico are the two other foreign military assistance items included in the bill.

The $170 million raise to Israel will bring the overall military funding to $2.38 billion — the highest of any such package.

The new aid to Israel is part of a larger deal which includes multi-billion-dollar arms deals with Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries, all aimed at strengthening nations seen as crucial in curbing Iran’s influence in the region. That package is an arms deal and does not require the appropriation of any funds.

Remember the USS Liberty Attack: June 8, 1967

Counterpunch has an in-depth article about the attack.

http://www.gtr5.com/

On June 8, 1967, US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was suddenly and brutally attacked on the high seas in international waters by the air and naval forces of Israel. The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that this was an American ship and lied about it. Survivors have been forbidden for 40 years to tell their story under oath to the American public. This USS Liberty Memorial web site tells their story and is dedicated to the memory of the 34 brave men who died.

The Attack

After surveilling USS Liberty for more than nine hours with almost hourly aircraft over flights and radar tracking, the air and naval forces of Israel attacked our ship in international waters without warning. USS Liberty was identified as a US naval ship nine hours before the attack by Israeli reconnaissance aircraft and continuously tracked by Israeli radar and aircraft thereafter. Sailing in international waters at less than five knots, with no offensive armament, our ship was not a military threat to anyone.

The Israeli forces attacked without warning and without attempting to contact us. Thirty four Americans were killed in the attack and another 174 were wounded. The ship, a $40 Million Dollar state of the art signals intelligence platform, was later declared unsalvageable and sold for scrap.

The Cover Up

Despite a near-universal consensus that the Israeli attack was made with full knowledge that USS Liberty was a US Navy ship, the Johnson administration began an immediate cover-up of this fact. Though administration officers continued individually to characterize the attack as deliberate, the Johnson administration never sought the prosecution of the guilty parties or otherwise attempted to seek justice for the victims. They concealed and altered evidence in their effort to downplay the attack. Though they never formally accepted the Israeli explanation that it was an accident, they never pressed for a full investigation either. They simply allowed those responsible literally to get away with murder.

Anti-Semitism and the Anti-American Apologists

The USS Liberty Memorial web site abhors the racist and extreme positions taken by antiSemitic, Holocaust denial, conspiracy theorist and other such groups which often seek to identify with us and to usurp our story as their own. We have no connection with and do not support or encourage support from any of these groups including National Alliance, National Vanguard, The New Order, National Socialists, The French Connection, Liberty Lobby, American Free Press, Republic Broadcasting, AFP’s Liberty Radio Hour, or other such groups. We wish harm to no one and encourage social justice and equality for everyone; we seek only accountability for the criminal acts perpetrated against us and can do that without help from hate-mongers.

On the Israeli side, the group of pro-Israel, anti-American critics of our story, while small, persists in launching loud, vicious ad hominem attacks on anyone who attempts to discuss the deliberateness of the attack. These anti-American apologists refuse to discuss the facts of the case. Instead, they rely on propaganda and charge anyone who questions the Israeli position with being antiSemitic.

For detailed and authoritative accounts of the power and influence of the pro-Israel lobby, please see The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by Mearsheimer and Walt and The Pro-Israel Lobby by Edward Herman.

The Betrayal of American Veterans
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Americans who volunteer for military service effectively write a blank check, payable to the United States of America for an amount “up to and including my life.” The United States, in turn, promises to spend these checks responsibly. That bargain implicitly includes a promise by the United States to protect them and to seek retribution against anyone who harms them. In the case of USS Liberty, the United States has failed to keep its promise.

US, Israel and the media charade on Iran!

By Debbie Menon, Khaleej Times.

The US actions on the ground in the past six years speak louder than words, but, the world media has been busily debating and discussing the smoke and mirrors which US-Israel throws out in its charade. Peace Laureates Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu et al have been lamenting and wringing their hands about the truth, in recent weeks. But everyone will continue swallowing the stories and distractions thrown up by US-Israel charade, as if they were the real thing, which they are not.

US and Israel have been effectively and efficiently destroying Palestine now for sixty years, and the debate and discussions in the media still go on today, just as serious and hopeful as ever, as if it were real; and now they talk about the same threat from Iran that they spoke of Iraq, as if it were real! C’mon!

The mainstream media will ignore a lot of facts and history which say that the Iran objective is not a question of policy change, nuclear armament or disarmament, or even simple regime change in Iran, but is, instead the same as it has always been, to wit: Israel wants Iran destroyed as a state and Balkanized in the manner in which they have done Palestine, and the US has done in Iraq and will settle for nothing less! All else is wind. A charade!

The name of the game is “Destroy Iran”. Not because it is a threat to Israel, because it isn’t, not because they are a nuclear threat, for they aren’t; but simply because it stands in the way of Israeli domination of the entire Middle East, and all that oil under their soil belongs to America, anyway, so let’s go get it like they did Iraq!

To rationalise, discuss, describe and debate the non-issues of policy, regime change, nuclear weaponry, peaceful nuclear power development and all this US-Israeli cover story which US mainstream media peddles is to play into the hands of the US-Israel propaganda campaign, as if it were real, and ignore their actual motives and objectives: Destroy Iran! Utterly!

Most mainstream journalists have always been fence straddlers, go along-get along types, and has, and have simply failed to come to grips with the bottom line in this US-Israel plot either because they are too ignorant, too timid, or like their jobs too much. So while everyone else bickers and dickers over the non-issues which these journalists and their brothers write about, the US-Israeli, Zionist-American panzer is on the road and rolling and their target is Teheran. Keep your eye on the left hand, and you will never see what the right hand is doing… it is picking your pocket, and stealing the rabbit out of your hat.

The Zionist plan is incredible; the ramblings of anti-Semites, madmen, a phoney anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about ‘The Elders Of Zion’ who do not even exist, and all of that…so, the Plan is not real. But what is happening on the ground, and has been happening for 60 and more years, is real. And when you compare notes, it sounds as if someone is playing the score perfectly and not missing a single note!

It looks like the same thing, and is having the same affect whether “planned” or not! One by one, create dissention and division among each and all of Israel’s neighbors, until they are so embroiled in their own turmoil that they are not only no longer a threat to Israel, but a pushover like Palestine for eventual occupation. Well, Palestine has not become the “pushover” they thought it was going to be, but Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, et al have become.

There are parallels, between the media rhetoric about Iraq’s nuclear threat prior to the US invasion and the rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear programme today. In repeatedly misinterpreting the statements of Iran’s Ahmadinejad, the US-Israel media paints him as the Hitler of the Middle East. There was no reality check before Iraq and there is no reality check now.

The Iranian military is a fifth rate force, equivalent to a National Guard army with no defensive capabilities or ability to take troops across water. Iran has no air force because US sanctions prevent Iran from buying spare parts for its aircraft. And Iran is left with virtually navy after the US sank the Iranian fleet in an unpublicised attack during the first Gulf War in 1991. The endless sanctions imposed on Iran are really about the US-Israel campaign to cripple Iran’s economy.

Concerning Iran’s nuclear threat, Mohamed ElBaradei of IAEA has repeatedly said that there is no evidence of Iran using nuclear material for military use. But – as in the case of Iraq in 2003 – the US Administration argues that Iran has dangerous intentions concerning nuclear ambitions. The administration seems to think that this is enough to justify a US intervention. The “threat” that the US would have the world believe is not consistent with reality.

The excuses, arguments, issues, et al, are all a charade and have nothing to do with the why and what, of what America and Israel are doing to all these states in the Middle East, and what they are going to do to Iran. Iran has been around a helluva lot longer than America and most of Europe. They have had better days. Why should they dance to some petty carnival fiddler’s tunes when they have a history of having had some of the finest orchestras that the world has ever known?

The much-talked about Mafioso offer made recently to Iran by the six power nations “that just cannot be refused,” works only in places like America, and American movies. When offered to men of principle, who have centuries of moral conviction and history behind them, it’s a laughingstock proposition…the suggestion of a fool!

With the failure of US leadership in the Middle East, or more correctly, their diminishing ability to “twist arms,” and make offers which no one can refuse, there seems to be a power vacuum. In such a situation, there is the possibility that the Middle Eastern countries themselves might work out their problems – as they did in Lebanon last week. An even-handed settlement is what Qatar put together. It succeeded.

It is possible. Whether it is probable, we will never know until they have been given the opportunity to try. They have never had, or been allowed the opportunity, so what is there to lose except of course Western hegemony which has been the real obstacle to Middle East peace and prosperity, since the days of Richard Coeur de Leon?

The patient has been sick for a long, long time. He will be a long time recovering!

THE A.I.P.A.C. CONFERENCE – HATE IRAN WEEK GETS UNDERWAY IN WASHINGTON.

By Damian Lataan.

The annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference got under way yesterday and wasted no time in kicking off the proceedings with Republican presidential candidate John ‘Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran’ McCain launching into a hate tirade against Iran by accusing his likely presidential election opponent, Barack Obama, of having ‘policies toward Iraq and Iran [that] would create chaos and endanger the United States and Israel’. It’ll be interesting to see how Obama responds to McCain’s accusations when he gets to address AIPAC. Hillary Clinton too is down to address the conference and, if by the time she appears she has decided that she’s still in the running, it’ll be interesting to see what she has to say as well. If, on the other hand, Hillary has decided to withdraw from the Democrat race, it will be just as interesting to see how closely whatever remarks she makes to the conference fall in line with Obama’s. Either way, it’s going to be interesting.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to address the conference. He will, no doubt, be telling them and the world how evil the Iranians are for developing nuclear power and how underhanded they are being because they may be pursuing nuclear weapons. And the audience, of course, will be totally oblivious to the superb irony of an underhandedly nuclear armed Israel telling the world that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Well, why not? The world fell for it last time when they accused that other thorn in the side of Israeli aspirations for a Greater Israel, Iraq, of secretly developing nuclear weapons long after they’d actually given the idea away. Surely, they believe, the world will fall for it again. And, while they’re at it, they will more than likely accuse Syria of the same thing in the hope that two birds might be killed with the same stone if they could just get America to do the job for them.

And while the US is dealing with Iran, it would leave Israel free to deal with Hamas in the Gaza and Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

There’s a lot riding on this years AIPAC conference what with it being the last one to be held during the Bush administration and, therefore, the last opportunity the American Israel Lobby has to effectively call for America to attack Iran. They know that a US under an Obama administration will not be likely to attack Iran. For this reason, the ‘Hate Iran Week’ will be the most intense yet.

And the winner is … the Israel lobby

By Pepe Escobar, 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.
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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.