By Michael Gillespie, Contributing Editor

Pro-Israel neoconservatives may beat the drums for war, but dozens of antiwar activists gathered in Des Moines, Iowa’s Nollen Plaza on the evening of February 21 to urge Washington politicians to “Talk to Iran” instead.

“We’ve had way to much war in the Middle East,” declared Tony Salem of Des Moines.

“I’m out here to send a message to politicians that we don’t need another war in the Middle East,” said Ismael Hossein-zadeh, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Drake University.

Hossein-Zadeh described the situation as “quite frightening, because the constellation of forces in the region, especially in the Persian Gulf is such that a small mistake could lead to a big confrontation with unpredictable consequences.”

Furthermore, economic sanctions can be acts of war under international law, and increasingly punitive sanctions may prompt Iran to defend its people by trying to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which could lead to hostilities, said the author of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism.

A war against Iran would be much more destructive than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and would have many more consequences, said Hossein-zadeh.

Israelis are the most influential and insistent proponents of an attack on Iran, while, “as far as the United States in concerned, the signals are mixed.  There are those who are supporters Israel and who are supporters of aggression against Iran, but there are some hesitant and ambivalent forces like the president himself, who I am afraid is not leading here.  When you don’t lead, then you are going to be led,” said Hossein-zadeh.

“The time is now for diplomacy,” said Jeffrey Weiss, Director of Catholic Peace Ministry and a rally organizer.

“Iran has recently made a number of overtures.  The time for talking is now, and we are here because we are concerned that a shooting war, a major catastrophe, could begin.  It is time to talk to Iran,” said Weiss.

Lewis and Winnie Pinch, who lived and worked at the American Presbyterian Hospital at Mashad from 1967 to 1970 and who visited Iran more recently, drove from Omaha to take part in the rally across from the Civic Center where Ariana Huffington was speaking.

“An attack on Iran would be a serious problem, not just for Iran but for the United States and for Israel, where we hear that most of the war talk comes from, Israel” said Lewis Pinch.

“We get a distorted picture of Iran from our media here in the United States.  The Iranian people are lovely people by and large.  Some of them agree with their government, some of them don’t, just like here in the U.S.  The people are very friendly to the United States, in contradistinction to what you might hear, and I don’t think most people here realize that,” said Pinch.

“They loved us when we went back, October a year ago.  They’d come up to us and we were the people to be celebrated.  They wanted to know where we came from and after they found out it was the United States they said, ‘Oh we’re so glad you’re here.  We love you.  We wish more of you came here.’  They’d want photos of us with them.  They’d telephone their friends to tell them that they were talking to Americans,” said Winnie Pinch.

“I’m out here tonight because I don’t want to see more homeless veterans out under the bridges and having PTSD and TBI,” said  James Marren, Treasurer of the Veterans National Recovery Center and a member of the Des Moines Chapter of Veterans for Peace.

“The money that is being wasted on war could be spent on social issues, helping out with healthcare, helping people get jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure here.  It’s time to bring that money home and help our people.  The people of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are victims of our war policy just as much as our veterans are.  We see the neocons pushing for their agenda – permanent war – and there are victims on all sides.  We don’t need more homeless veterans; they don’t need their families destroyed by our war machine.  That’s why I’m here tonight,” said Marren.

“There may be some people who wouldn’t like to hear this,” said longtime antiwar activist and member of the Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting Sherry Hutchison, “but I think Israel is permanently paranoid about Iran.  I think it would be a good idea if our government would say, ‘If you bomb them, no more aid to Israel from the U.S.’”

Paul Pillar, former CIA official, is one of several high-profile critics of Israel

With Hamas and Fatah meeting this week in Cairo, reconciliation between the rival Palestinian political parties is likely only a matter of time. Official U.S. policy holds that Hamas is only a terrorist entity, and any agreement between the two factions jeopardizes continued U.S. aid.  There is reason to believe, however, that more flexible, productive positions will be expressed in the U.S. media. Slowly but unmistakably, space is opening up among the commentariat for new, critical ideas about Israel and its relationship to the United States.

Article courtesy Salon; Photo of Paul Pillar courtesy Rolling Stone

By Philip Giraldi

One might regard the pledges made to Israel and its friends in the United States by aspiring presidential candidates as pro forma and vaguely amusing, but that would be a mistake. Policy commitments, even if they are lightly entered into, are a serious matter with real-world consequences. At the moment, the obligation to Israel goes far beyond the willingness to give Tel Aviv billions of dollars in aid and unlimited political cover each year. Every Republican candidate but one has affirmed that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of a “Jewish state,” the precise formula demanded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and each has affirmed his or her eagerness to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would end forever any chance of actual peace talks with the Palestinians and would also invite a violent reaction against Americans in many parts of the Muslim world. Michele Bachmann has even found a private “donor” willing to pay for the move. Newt Gingrich, who would shift the embassy to Jerusalem within his first two hours as president and who has also promised to name John Bolton as his secretary of state, has meanwhile discovered that the Palestinian people do not actually exist, which certainly solves the problem of the two-state solution or any solution at all. They were invented by hostile Arabs and are out to destroy Israel.

Mitt Romney and Gingrich might well take the prize for lack of any connection with reality with their demand that U.S. Ambassador Howard Gutman, who is Jewish, be fired for suggesting that some anti-Semitism might be the result of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Romney has also criticized President Barack Obama for “insulting” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, surely one of the most interesting inversions of truth and fiction ever to occur. Not to be outdone, Rick Perry has promised to increase assistance to Israel, calling it “strategic defensive aid” that benefits the United States.

While this kind of ignorant crackpottery is unfortunately what one expects, there might be worse to come. As part of the pro-Israel package, the same presidential hopefuls have made clear their willingness to go to war with Iran on behalf of Israel even if Israel is the initiator of the conflict, while the media and the  Republican Party have together conspired to keep any contrary opinions on that issue marginalized and nearly invisible.

As Washington has demonstrated itself unwilling to negotiate with Iran over outstanding issues and has refused every attempt by the Iranians to compromise, there can be only one outcome to the game that is being played, and that is war. And the characteristically chickenhawk Republicans are ready to rock and roll based on the pseudo-information about the perfidious Persians. Gingrich again leads the charge, calling for a stepped-up program of sabotage and assassination inside Iran coupled with a covert operation to shut down the country’s main oil refinery, which will supposedly lead to “regime change.” Newt also suggested that the United States and Israel join together in “joint operations” to attack the Iranians. Perry and Rick Santorum also agree that it is time to order military strikes, while Mitt Romney is keen on indicting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for “the crime of incitement to genocide.”

The overly ambitious and ethically challenged wannabes who pass as statesmen in today’s United States fail to appreciate that the feckless promises made in their lust for high office could produce a catastrophic result. War is serious stuff, as the past 10 years have surely taught us, and Iran, which has had seven years to prepare for an attack, is a much larger and tougher nut than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Numerous commentators have observed how fuel prices would soar because of threats to close the Straits of Hormuz. Many in the Pentagon, including current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and former Secretary Robert Gates, oppose such a conflict in recognition of the fact that Tehran would have the ability to hit U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. As the subsequent involvement of Hezbollah from Lebanon is a near certainty, the strike against Iran would quickly escalate into a regional war and would spin out of control.

No matter how one feels about Iran’s government and its ambitions, everyone should be taking notice of what is happening to fuel the drive to war. The drumbeat is incessant, fed by weekly warnings from leading Israeli politicians and truculent editorials and poorly informed op-eds in leading American newspapers. On Dec. 9 and 11 alone, the Washington Post ran three op-eds and a lead editorial all calling for more pressure on Iran. The op-ed by Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute accused Tehran of building a nuclear weapon that could be ready by January 2013. Thiessen also charged Iran with complicity in al-Qaeda attacks, which most observers would find ridiculous.

The American people are being told over and over again that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, that Tehran is threatening U.S. soldiers, and that Ahmadinejad has pledged to wipe Israel off the map.Though  all those assertions can be challenged and even debunked, the case is being made that Tehran’s perceived intransigence is irreversible, and this is making war inevitable. A majority of Americans already believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon and that it poses a threat to the United States that should be dealt with, using military force if necessary.

Pushing back against the tide of conformity on the Iranian menace is Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Paul’s crimes against the status quo consist of saying that he would eliminate all foreign aid, of which Israel is the principal beneficiary, and that he would not go to war with Iran for Israel because Israel, with its large nuclear arsenal and sophisticated military, is quite capable of making its own decisions relating to its security. Paul is also willing to talk with the Iranians instead of constantly threatening them. Those positions, which appear to be reasonable enough, arouse an almost palpable anger among some pundits. Paul was the only leading Republican excluded from last week’s Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) presidential debate, where many of the positions in support of Israel made by leading Republicans and related above were actually spelled out. RJC Executive Director Matthew Brooks explained that Paul was “far outside of the mainstream of the Republican Party and this organization.”

Over at Red State, “mikeymike 143″ wrapped the message of hate in vitriol, declaring that Paul was an “anti-Semite loser” and that his “followers are the dirtbags of society. Conspiracy loons, antiwar leftists, and anti-Semites. That is why the Republican Jewish Coalition banned him and his Paulbots from the presidential debate they moderated.” Eric Golub of the Washington Times ramped it up a notch more, writing that “Ron Paul supporters are angry at his exclusion … despite Dr. Paul himself not publicly even caring. Supporters of the Klan do not get angry when they are excluded from NAACP banquets. Go on Ron Paul message boards, read the anti-Semitism, and then understand why nobody wants these miscreants anywhere near respectable events.”

Well, if that is the case, count me as a miscreant. Apparently objecting to the billions of dollars in foreign aid lavished on Israel and refusing to go to war on her behalf is enough to cast one out into the wilderness, but there is even more. Josh Block, a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), sent out a message on a neoconservative journalist listserv called “The Freedom Community” describing as anti-Semitic anyone who is anti-Israel or who does not agree that “Iran with a nuke is a problem.” Criticizing Israel or questioning the Iran nuclear narrative therefore makes one an anti-Semite, a conclusion that certainly simplifies thinking about the Middle East. It also makes the broader arguments being made by the friends of Israel come full circle. Any questioning of the United States’ relationship with Israel is anti-Semitism. Any change in how Washington hands out tax money that would in any way reduce aid to Israel is anti-Semitism. Any criticism of Israel’s policies with its neighbors is anti-Semitism. Any questioning of Israel’s “right” to start a regional war with Iran that will inevitably drag the United States in is also anti-Semitism. I’m sure that the picture is clear. Claims of anti-Semitism fit every situation where Israel is even peripherally involved. The slightest suggestion of anti-Semitism is the ultimate weapon, intended to end every debate and to ease the way into yet another Middle Eastern war that the United States does not need to fight, cannot afford, and from which it will likely reap the whirlwind.

Article courtesy Philip Giraldi and Antiwar.com

By William Pfaff

Most Americans would likely agree that the main shock delivered to Americans and the American government by the 9/11 attacks was that of vulnerability. Another such shock is impending. It is the national vulnerability that will be revealed this month by the American veto of a Palestinian demand for full United Nations membership.

During the century and a half preceding 9/11, Americans enjoyed national and individual invulnerability to devastating foreign attack, unlike the people of any other major nation. Much has been made in recent years of how nuclear dread lay over the land in the 1950s. My own experience was that even the Cuban Missile Crisis was not what it subsequently was made out to have been. I am sure that the people actually making decisions in Washington quaked in their boots and prayed, which is why nothing happened. The menace was on the one hand so great that there was nothing to do about it (crouching under a table or possession of a shovel notwithstanding), but on the other hand no one in power was so stupid as to initiate a nuclear attack.

The American conviction of national invulnerability marched on. The Vietnam outcome threatened it, but it was easy for Americans, especially those who were not in authority, to say well, yes, but of course we could have won if we had really wanted to use our power.

Iraq is not today really perceived by public opinion as a defeat, only as mistake, muddle and incompetence, and, besides, our troops will (supposedly) be gone by 2012, and what’s past will be past.

In Kabul, Gen. David Petraeus in 2009 promised Barack Obama and the nation that the United States Army could be relied upon for victory in 2010. Now Petraeus has left the army to pursue higher aspirations. Christopher Edley Jr., a member of the Obama presidential transition team and dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkrley, said that the team deemed the President-elect, with no military experience, vulnerable to official blackmail on national security and retroactive Bush administration justice issues, and so advised him to do whatever military and security officials proposed. Public confidence in President Obama on Middle Eastern issues may not be high today, while confidence in the Republicans seems even lower, but few Americans feel vulnerable to Middle Eastern risk. Least of all do they feel threatened by Israel’s actions.

This is likely to prove a serious mistake. National vulnerability has returned. A State Department official has confirmed that the United States intends to veto the expected Palestinian demand for U.N. Security Council recognition as a member state. The U.S. Congress, moreover, under pressure from Israel’s American friends, has declared that it will then cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority.

Egypt and the Arab governments will be angry, but the Arabs have been angry before with the invulnerable United States, and nothing has come of it—except for the 9/11 attacks and a war “on terror” that has gone on for a decade.

Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and former ambassador to the U.S., has rather desperately been trying to warn America. He has published his warning in articles in The Washington Post and The New York Times, and circulated it on the Web. He writes that, if Washington vetoes the Palestinian petition, “American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region.”

A veto will provoke uproar among Muslims everywhere. Everyone already knows this, but the Obama administration ignores it.

Al-Faisal indirectly forecasts that, in the case of a veto, the American “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia will come to an end, and says that the Saudis will “adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy”—as Turkey already has done, one notes. The Saudi kingdom would oppose the American-supported Maliki government in Iraq, refuse to open an embassy there, and possibly end its support for American policy in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Al-Faisal also says that Saudi Arabia, by far the largest supporter of the Palestinian Authority, would be unable to give the Palestinians all of the financial aid and religious and political legitimacy that they would need to deal with Israel in such changed circumstances. He notes that, in recent polls, 70 percent of Palestinians anticipate a new intifada if they are vetoed at the U.N.

He warns that the region and the nations principally involved are far better served by continuing cooperation and good will between longstanding allies Saudi Arabia and the United States, and that “Saudi Arabia is willing and able to chart a new and divergent course if America fails to act justly with regard to Palestine.”

The American nation and economy, and its relations with nations far beyond the Middle East, are deeply vulnerable to the political catastrophe against which al-Faisal warns.

However, what al-Faisal does not say is that the U.S. is the only nation to possess the strength and opportunity to act preemptively to solve this crisis. Israel now is incapable of rescuing itself because of its quasi-permanent internal political deadlock.

President Obama could spectacularly reverse policy and save the day. He could declare that the U.S. will vote in support of Palestine’s full membership in the U.N. It will use all of the means at its disposal to support Israeli withdrawal of illegal settlements from territory designated as part of the Palestinian state in the 1948 U.N. partition of Mandate Palestine. It will do all in its power to impose the solution that everyone—including realistic Israelis and the Palestinians—understand to be the inevitable, permanent and just solution of this problem.

The world would be dazzled. Barack Obama’s place in history would be assured.

Article courtesy William Pfaff and Truthdig

http://www.moveoveraipac.org/

Beirut.

On April 13, 2011, more than a dozen Israel “First, last and always” US congressional leaders from both houses of Congress held an urgent conference call organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). Their purpose was to discuss how best to promote Israel during next month’s US visit by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and more importantly how to confront the rapidly changing Middle East political landscape. One consensus was that no one saw it coming and that it was dangerous for Israel.

Among those participating were Jewish former Chairs of powerful committees including Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who headed the Banking Committee; Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Commerce and Energy committee; Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), ex-chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee as well as Eric Cantor, House Majority leader, the highest ranking Jewish member of Congress in history.

What AIPAC operatives reportedly told the conference attendees was that Netanyahu is once again furious with President Obama and outraged by what he sees as a vacillating US Government attitude towards Israeli needs. They were told that the Israeli PM sees real political danger for Israel in the shifting US public opinion in favor of the young sophisticated attractive Arab and Muslims increasingly seen on satellite channels from the region who remind the American public of their own ideals.

Netanyahu, the conferees were told, wants Congress to flex its muscle with the White House and deliver a strong message to President Obama that his political future is tied to Israel’s. Hence the current “America needs Israel more than ever stupid!” campaign wafting from the Israel lobby across the talk radio airwaves.

In addition, as more Israeli officials are indicted for various domestic crimes, and some harbor fears of arrest for international ones, 68 per cent of the American Jewish community, according to one by poll commissioned last month by Forward, believe the US Israel lobby is increasingly fossilized with the likes of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) director Abe Foxman’s vindictive infighting among several of the largest Jewish lobby organizations which continue to lose memberships, especially among the young.

Congressman Eric Cantor lamented that “Israel is badly losing the US College campuses”, despite heavy financial investments the past few years to curb American students’ growing support for Gaza and Palestine. Support for Palestine is skyrocketing he claimed. “Until Palestine is freed from Zionist occupation no Arab or Muslim is truly free of Western hegemony,” according to one assistant editor of Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Crimson.

Admitting that the Mossad did not foresee even the Tunisian or Egyptian uprisings, some AIPAC staffers, admit to not knowing how to react to the topics they were presented with for discussion, some of which included:

· The Egyptian public emphatic insistence that the 1978 Camp David Accords be scrapped and that the Rafah crossing be opened. The latter has just been announced and the former is expected to be achieved before the end of the year.

· The change of regimes and the dramatic rise in publicly expressed anti-Israel sentiment and insistence that Israel close its embassy and Egypt withdraw its recognition of the Zionist state.

· The apparent rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas which has been increasingly demanded by the Palestinians under occupation and in the Diaspora.

· The fact that the new regime in Cairo is seeking to upgrade its ties with Gaza’s Hamas rulers as well as Iran.

· With respect to possible PA-Hamas rapprochement, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor is trying to reassure Israel before Netanyahu’s visit by announcing this week that “The United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace, but to play a constructive role in achieving peace, any Palestinian government must renounce violence, abide by past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

AIPAC frequently knocks heads with the Israeli embassy in Washington for control of visiting Israeli PMs’ and important government’s schedules will control what Netanyahu says and does. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr recently told a group of visiting Jewish student activists from California that “sometimes there is confusion in this town over just where the Israeli Embassy is located but let me assure you it’s no more than 300 yards from the Capitol Dome on North Capitol Street, NW.”

AIPAC, not the Israeli Embassy will write the final draft of Netanyahu’s speeches including the themes he will emphasize. According to a Congressional source with AIPAC connections, Netanyahu’s visit will focus on the following:

· Bashing Iran to please the White House. However, this mantra will have to compete with the democratic revolutions that are sweeping the Arab world and which are terrifying not just Netanyahu, but also AIPAC and their hirelings in congress.

· Warning against the dangers to “the peace process” of any PA-Hamas unity government.

· Warnings about the threats to Israel from Egypt and popular calls for scrapping of the 1978 Camp David Accords, ending the Egyptian subsidy and supply of 40 per cent of Israel’s natural gas, calls for closing the Israeli Embassy, the dangers of permanently opening the Rafah border crossing “that will allow Hamas to in the words of, an Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity to the Washington Post that Gaza’s Hamas rulers had already built up a “dangerous military machine” in northern Sinai which could be further strengthened by opening the border.

· The tried and tested bromide that “Israel has no peace partner to negotiate with will be used but this too has lost its bite, given that the Palestine Papers has shown that the PA for five years habitually caved into Israel demands and are widely viewed as collaborators with Israel in preserving the status quo– so what more could be expected from them? The truth is that Mahmoud Abbas and Salem Fayyad are Netanyahu, Liberman’s and Barak’s favorite “peace partners.”

· Netanyahu will hint at and AIPAC will drill in the idea that the Obama administration has been too hard on Israel.

While Netanyahu announced this week that “I will have the opportunity to air the main parts of Israel’s diplomatic and defense policies during my visit in the United States”, informed sources report that his main goal and timing of his visit is to undermind a rumored initiative that President Obama’s team has been working on.

Netanyahu, according to AIPAC, also plans to attack the UN’s plan to admit Palestine and its offices are preparing a media blitz in an attempt to undermine the U.N. recognition of Palestine by arguing that such a General Assembly action would not in reality mean Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and East Jerusalem because of the fact that Israel currently controls those territories. AIPAC is arguing that such United Nations recognition of Palestine would only reiterate the principle, previously articulated by the U.N which denies the legitimacy of Israel’s claim to territories acquired by force in the war of June 1967.

In reality, and as AIPAC well knows, UN recognition of Palestine would have a devastating effect on Israel’s legitimacy and would fuel an international campaign to force every colonist out of the West Bank. Given the feelings of virtually all people in the Middle East and North Africa toward Israel this could dramatically undermine the apartheid state. AIPAC and Israel’s agents in Congress also ignore the fact that the U.N. is the only the international body that admitted Israel as a member state in May 1949, although the resolution noted a connection between Israel’s recognition and the implementation of resolution 181 of November 1947, which called for partition of what had been British Mandate Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

The reason that intense angst and even fear stalks the Houses of Congress and AIPAC is that some US officials are starting to express treasonous thoughts long kept to themselves.

One seemingly shocking statement was made to a visiting Oregon delegation during a recent visit to Congressional offices by a Member of Congress never known for being publicly critical of Israel. As reported via email: “He said recent events suggest that while (the revolts spreading, across the Middle East) are not the immediate end of the State of Israel, he believes they are harbingers and signal the ‘beginning of the end of the State of Israel as we have known it. And that will be good for America and humanity.”

“What seems to have particularly upset him was his own mentioning to the group was a recent report about a conference of Rabbis in Israel who are demanding the expulsion of non-Jews, especially Palestinians, from occupied Palestine in order to maintain the “ethnical and religious purity of the peoples of Israel.”

He quoted Dov Lior, the rabbi of Kiryat Araba, an illegal settlement near Hebron, who according to media reports told a conference organized to discuss how to get non-Jews in mandatory Palestine to leave the country for the sake of Jewish immigrants who had no roots in Palestine: “Today there is a lot of land in Saudi Arabia and in Libya, too. There is a lot of land in other places. Send them there.” As scholar Khalid Amayreh reminds us, it was Lior, who in 1994 praised arch-terrorist Baruch Goldstein for massacring 29 Arab worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown Hebron, said peace in the Holy Land was out of the question because the Arabs wouldn’t allow Jews to usurp the land.

Meanwhile, a large coalition of pro peace and pro-Palestinian organizations, under the umbrella of http://www.moveoveraipac.org/ is preparing a new and different American reception for the Israeli Prime Minister.

(Courtesy Franklin Lamb and CounterPunch.org)

Franklin Lamb

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in meeting with President Obama

Apologists for Israel sometimes argue that critics of that nation hold the government in Tel Aviv up to an impossibly high standard, that many condemn Israelis for doing things that other countries in the world also do routinely. That argument has a certain persuasiveness in that Bahrain’s Sunni rulers treat the country’s Shi’a majority just as badly as Israeli Jews treat Palestinian Arabs, but it misses the point. How Israel treats its own minority citizens, Gazans, and residents of the West Bank, and its neighbors might be significant from a humanitarian point of view, but it is not a vital interest of the United States. That Washington has become a victim of the internal politics of the Middle East is largely due to manipulation by Israel and its lobby, which has turned all Americans into enablers of Israeli policies, no matter how short-sighted or ill-conceived. It is the US national interest that has been sacrificed in the process. That is the point.

For those who would argue that such a view of the US interest versus that of Israel is simplistic, I would point out three developments over the past several weeks that together make the case that Israel has extraordinary ability to manipulate Washington. First would be the budget debate, in which Republicans united to call for deep cuts in the proposed federal budget before settling for less than one tenth of one percent. Senator Rand Paul had courageously raised the possibility of ending all foreign aid, including to Israel, but generally speaking any reduction in assistance at the current $3 billion plus level was off the table. Several congressmen, including Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor explicitly stated their opposition to any reduction in aid to Israel. But the real surprise came in the final spending bill. Israel not only was not cut in its assistance level, it received $205 million in additional funding for its Iron Dome defensive missile development, which competes with US defense firm Raytheon’s Patriot system.

That billions of US taxpayer dollars are going to Israel at a time when programs like Medicare and Social Security are facing cuts is absolutely indefensible. That Congress would be so tone deaf as to vote more money for Israel when domestic programs are being slashed is symptomatic of the hold that the Lobby has over the US government. Israel does not need money from the United States. It has a strong economy and in per capita income it ranks at the same level as Great Britain. Its citizens receive free medical care and education through university level. It has received generous trade and co-production concessions from Congress that some claim amount to $10 billion a year in aggregate national income while its own markets are difficult for US companies to penetrate. The only explanation for Israel’s being showered with American taxpayer largesse is that the Lobby wants it to be so, to provide a tangible sign of America’s unflinching support.

A second indication of Israel’s control over Congress even when it is not in the US national interest is the issuance of frequent resolutions by both the House and Senate in support of every move taken by Israel. Ever since the United Nations’ Goldstone Report was released, detailing Israeli war crimes in its Cast Lead invasion of Gaza in January 2009, there have been efforts to delegitimize the report’s findings. Normally, the US is able to block any investigation into Israeli missteps, as it successfully did when Lebanon was bombed and invaded in 2006, an event that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described as “birth pangs of a new Middle East,” but the devastation of UN sponsored relief facilities and schools resulting from Cast Lead was such that an international investigation could not be avoided.

The Obama Administration has persistently questioned the Goldstone Report’s conclusions, the media has largely ignored the crimes against civilians that it describes, and Congress has been working hard to put pressure on the United Nations to rescind the report in its entirety. The objective of Israel’s friends is to protect its government and defense forces from any accountability for the deaths of 1,400 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians and many of whom were children. Israel’s independent investigation into possible war crimes committed by its soldiers has been essentially bogus, with only one soldier receiving seven months in jail for fraudulently using a stolen credit card.

The strenuous efforts by the United States government to shield Israel make all Americans complicit in a cover-up of war crimes, which is precisely how the rest of the world sees it. Senate Resolution 138, which passed by a unanimous consent vote on April 14th, called on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone Report, demanded that the UN Human Rights Council be reformed so that it will stop criticizing Israel, and urged the White House to take the lead to “limit the damage that this libelous report has caused to our close ally Israel…” But it did not have any teeth in terms of compelling a UN response.

That failure has been addressed by the House of Representatives. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House is currently considering a bill, HR 1501, “To withhold United States contributions to the United Nations until the United Nations formally retracts” the Goldstone Report. As the committee is headed by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a passionate supporter of Israel, it is certain that the bill will go to the full House for approval, where it will likely pass overwhelmingly. However one feels about the United Nations in general, it is difficult to understate what this bill will do to America’s standing vis-à-vis a number of international bodies. There is no possible explanation for this bill but to protect Israel from any and all legitimate criticism. As is frequently the case, the United States and its citizens will pay the price in terms of America’s approval rating sinking even lower worldwide. Defending Israel from criticism does not appear either in the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights and sacrificing American interests for those of a foreign power is just not acceptable, but Congress has long since abandoned any attempt to mandate minimal standards of accountability, either for itself or for the state of Israel.

Finally, there is the invitation by Congress to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session. Netanyahu will do so during the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual convention at the end of May. The speech is at the invitation of the new Republican leadership of the House of Representatives, but it is sure to have bipartisan support. In a widely reported meeting with Netanyahu in November 2010, Eric Cantor, House majority leader, met privately with Bibi Netanyahu and said the Republican Party would serve “as a check on” the Obama Administration over its policies in the Middle East. Then “He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.” In other words, Cantor was meeting with the leader of a foreign country and promising to do whatever he could to influence and even subvert the foreign policy of his own country. Cantor apparently is delivering on his pledge because the timing of the Netanyahu visit and speech is clearly designed to preempt any peace plan offered by the White House that Israel might object to, meaning that Congress is again undercutting on behalf of Israel the prerogative of the president to conduct foreign policy.

It has already leaked that Netanyahu will likely reveal what he calls a new peace plan asserting forcefully that Israel’s security must be guaranteed. Which means a Palestinian state with no authority to do anything that states normally do, disarmed and not even controlling its own borders or airspace. It would essentially be the status quo wrapped up as a totally bogus peace agreement and there is no sign that Netanyahu might be willing to abandon his most ardent supporters, 500,000 strong in the settlements built on Palestinian land.

It is difficult to see what the American interest is in offering a congressional bully pulpit to a man like Netanyahu who has clearly condoned war crimes and it would seem pointless to listen to yet another Israeli attempt to prevaricate and, let’s face it, lie. Conservative columnist Joe Sobran once commented on an earlier Netanyahu speech before Congress back in 1996. He likened the response to that given to Josef Stalin when addressing the Supreme Soviet, with everyone standing up and applauding wildly because no one dared to be seen as the first to stop clapping. Hopefully both Ron and Rand Paul and Dennis Kucinich will not bother to applaud at all.

And looking ahead there will be congressional and White House moves to stop the Palestinians from attempting to declare statehood when the UN General Assembly reopens in September, a move that Israel and AIPAC condemn. Stay tuned. If there is a genuine American national interest in any of these shenanigans, it completely escapes me as to what it might be, but one has to conclude that there is nothing good for the United States and its citizens in any of this.

(Courtesy Antiwar.com and Philip Giraldi)

By Sami Bishara Mashney

        Immediately after becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and shamelessly wearing the Israeli flag on his lapel, Barak Obama heartlessly crushed the hopes of millions of unsuspecting Americans who supported and voted for him, when he nakedly pandered to the Zionist Lobby at its annual conference held recently.

        Among other things, Obama lavished praise at the Apartheid Jewish state; promised to give the Jewish state—which overtly discriminates against Christians and Muslims—thirty billion dollars of our hard-earned, predominantly-Christian secular tax dollars; behaved like a three-brass-monkey occupation-denier on the multigenerational Israeli occupation of Palestine and its enslavement of long-suffering Palestinian People; advocated the bankrupt so-called two-state solution which recreates Apartheid South Africa and its Bantustans in Occupied Palestine, etc.

        The first African American presidential nominee of a major party promised to perpetuate the Jewish Apartheid regime in Occupied Palestine! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. trembled in his grave and Nelson Mandela screamed murder!

        And while Obama is not the first politician to appease the Israel-first Zionist Lobby, many naively hoped that his message of “change” meant that he will also change our government’s shameful and self-injurious policy of unconditionally supporting Israeli occupation of Palestine, and its enslavement of the Christian and Muslim Palestinians under a segregationist political system which legislatively guarantees supremacy to Jews over gentiles.

        The millions of people who falsely believed that Obama is a breath of fresh air in American politics, the one who would valiantly rescue America from the paralyzing claws of special interest, political corruption, economic downfall and international disrespect, are now anti-climatically dumfounded and wondering whether they should vote for McCain; Ralph Nader or Bob Barr!

        Progressive Democrats; Independents and Republicans, who viewed Obama as the long-awaited agent-of-change-political-Messiah, and propelled him to the top front are now very dis-euphorically despaired and wondering if true change will ever come to American politics as long as the one-issue American Israel Public Affairs Committee (“AIPAC”) conclusively determines the foreign and domestic policy of our government before our president is elected!

         Using a variety of diabolical tactics, AIPAC, aka the Israeli Lobby or the Amen Corner, has an iron grip over our American Politics. AIPAC has public opinion manipulating scribes implanted in our media who will maliciously smear and politically-crucify as “anti-Semitic” anyone who does not bend over to Israel. It also controls tens or hundreds of political action committee (“PACs”) and directs them to funnel their money to the candidates who unconditionally support Israel. Furthermore, the majority of politically-active Jews are extremist fundamentalist Zionists who will blindly follow AIPAC’s political gospel and vote as a block for those whom AIPAC labels as “friends” of Israel.

        Many politicians made 180 degrees turn in their political positions towards Israel after being threatened by AIPAC. Examples are Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa who left a private meeting with AIPAC crying and soon changed his stance towards Israel. Congressman Carl Lewis and many shameless others went through similar politically-traumatizing experiences and became loyal and obedient servants to the Israeli Lobby.

        It is a well-known fact that most politicians complain privately that their voting record on Israel is the opposite of their true feelings towards it and that they find themselves forced to give our tax money to Israel and deny its occupation of Palestine because they fear AIPAC and also fear being labeled as “anti-Semitic.”

        Many hoped that Obama will break this vicious cycle of political corruption where our national interest is being damaged and subordinated to the parochial interest of the fifth column Israeli Lobby in its blind and sectarian support to Israeli occupation of Palestine and its denial of the Palestinian People the most basic of human rights.

        Obama is still only a presumptive nominee today and he appears to have a good chance of becoming the next president of the United States. If he is to be judged today, he cannot claim to be the “change” agent because he scandalously shortchanged change when he publicly and unabashedly surrendered to the Israeli Lobby like McCain, Clinton, Bush and other political prostitutes did before him. There is no change here whatsoever!

        If and when Obama becomes president, if he, like his predecessors, continues to be an occupation-denier and funder; and Jewish Apartheid-supporter, he will have the dishonored place in history of being yet another gutless emasculated politician who never had the courage and intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Israeli Lobby and serve his country and his American—as opposed to Israeli—People.

        If, however, once Barak Obama becomes president, he manages to facilitate the political, legislative and bloodless demise of the Apartheid Jewish system in Occupied Palestine and help usher the much-and-long-awaited secular democratic state in Occupied Palestine, Barak Obama can then potentially claim his unique place in history as the true agent of change in the same manner Nelson Mandela can rightly and indisputably claim such an historical honor.

        Today, the global litmus test of political honesty is how a politician behaves towards the Israeli Lobby. There is no shortage of corrupt politicians. There is, however, a chronic shortage—almost to the point of absence—of honest ones.

        Where will Obama’s place in history be? In the crowded Uncle Tom trash bin of corruption or on a pedestal in the company of Christ, Ghandi and Mandela?

        Only Obama knows and only time will tell!

The writer is an Anaheim, CA attorney of Palestinian descent and is the publisher of The Independent Monitor, the national newspaper of Arab Americans. He can be reached at Info@TIMonitor.com.