Dundee's Blog

It's Started

2010-04-18T20:34:00.000-07:00

This was an ominous Sunday morning (4/18/10) with a sinister echo of the events which led to the horrific Iraq War. On the front page of The New York Times was a misleading warmongering article conveniently coordinated with Sunday morning talk shows.

Bill Moyers' excellent PBS DVD "Buying the War" documents over and over the way false front-page New York Times articles were planted by neocon warmongers and then further publicized on Sunday TV talk shows in the push to war.

Anonymous sources continue to predominate. Today's article quotes a "senior official" describing a January memo by Defense Secretary Gates as a "wake-up call" regarding the administration's need for planning a war with Iran. Later today, Secretary Gates called this article a mischaracterization of the memo which was in no way such a "wake-up call."

The Israel Lobby neocons' main message is that "diplomacy has failed," so we must precede to crippling sanctions and/or war. The truth is, however, that diplomacy has barely been given a chance.

For instance, as reported by Iranian expert Hooman Majd on Politico 4/13/10, there has been little notice of Iran's many diplomatic offers "including the most recent, last week, from Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki. Mottaki said Iran would put most of its enriched uranium stockpile under 24-hour IAEA supervision until it was removed from the country simultaneously with the West's delivery of fuel rods with higher-enriched uranium."

Unfortunately, we won't be seeing articles about these Iranian offers on the front pages of our major newspapers, just as we never saw the important pre-Iraq War articles by Knight Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay. Their work refuted the neocons' pro-war propaganda and should have served to save us from the unnecessary Iraq War.

How To Spot An Israel-Firster

2010-04-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

Israel-firsters are Americans who put the interests of Israel ahead of the interests of America. Here's how to spot them:

Their conditioned response to any criticism of Israeli policies is to cry out "anti-Semite!" or "self-hating Jew!"
They have an abject hatred for the United Nations because of such resolutions as UN Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
They hate the "O" word altogether, instead offering up such euphemistic pleasantries as "disputed" territories or even "war-won" territories.
They particularly avoid mentioning the Occupation when decrying actions by resistance groups such as Hamas, thus obscuring exactly what it is Hamas is resisting.
They shun international law, preferring Biblical law, as in "this land is our land because the Bible says so."
They allege we were hit on 9/11 because "Islamists want to spread their religion," hiding the fact that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he hates us because of our foreign policy bias towards Israel. (See The 9/11 Commission Report page 147).
They insist Middle East peace is impossible, so don't bother trying. They enjoy the status quo.
But if we do try to make peace, we must not be even-handed, because that would be "anti-Israel."
They specialize in re-writing history. (See previous blog "The Israel Lobby's Devious Myths" 1/17/10).
When confronted by proof of Israeli atrocities and war crimes, such as ethnic cleansing, apartheid conditions, collective punishment with white phosphorous, etc, they reflexively bellow "Remember the Holocaust!"
They are horrified at the concept of diplomacy and thus parrot their assertion that Muslims only respond to "shock and awe."
They are pushing America to go to war with the 57 nations that do not recognize Israel (because of Israel's illegal occupations). We are already fighting in five of them: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen. Iran is next on their wish list. They have no interest in preserving American blood or treasure: all must be sacrificed for Greater Israel (ie settlement expansion).

Because of our Invasion: An Opium Plague

2010-04-02T13:21:00.000-07:00

The US has long stressed to President Karzai the importance of combating corruption in Afghanistan, but of course corruption is inevitable in a narcostate. Although the Taliban had successfully banned opium production in 2000, our invasion, aided by Northern Alliance drug lords, brought it back with a vengeance. Afghanistan now supplies most of the world's opium. (See previous blog "Out of Afghanistan" September 10, 2009.)

Along with opium production comes opium and heroin addiction, not only in Afghanistan, but also in its neighbors and in the West. Due to its proximity to Afghanistan, heroin addiction is rampant in Russia, for instance. The BBC World News April 1, 2010 reported that 30,000 heroin addicts die in Russia each year. The New York Times (10/23/09) noted that the annual toll in NATO countries is estimated to be greater than 10,000. An AP report by Rukmini Callimachi (8/9/09) describes the consequences of opium in rural Afghanistan. In the town of Sarab, population 1850, half the town are now opium addicts, up from just one family years ago. A once well-to-do farmer becomes penniless, selling everything he has to buy opium, even sacrificing the children's food money and blowing opium smoke in the children's mouths instead.

In our recent Afghanistan "surge," we have "turned a blind eye" to opium cultivation. (The New York Times 3/21/10). In fact, a recent report by the State Department inspector general is highly critical of our anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan (The New York Times 12/24/09).

It is often observed that there is no military solution in Afghanistan, and President Karzai recently complained that left alone he could strike a peace deal with the Taliban, but the United States refuses to allow him. (The New York Times 3/30/10) Obviously the best thing for Afghanistan and the world is peace leading to a re-banning of the opium crop.

Netanyahu's Private Meeting with the President

2010-03-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

President Obama: "It was most rude and insulting of you to announce more settlement expansion during Vice President Biden's visit."

Prime Minister Netanyahu: "Sorry! Now about Iran..."

Obama: "But if you would make peace with the Palestinians, and thus the entire Arab/Muslim world, Iran would no longer be a concern!"

Netanyahu: "Peace would mean giving up land the Bible says is ours. Now about Iran..."

Obama: "But international law and UN Security Council resolutions say you must withdraw from the occupied territories, including occupied Arab East Jerusalem."

Netanayahu: "The Bible says we are God's chosen people and thus above the law. Now about Iran, if you don't strike, we will."

Obama: "For one thing, Iran is not close to having a bomb. For another, Americans are aware that Israel Lobby neocons lied them into a costly unnecessary war with Iraq, and Americans do not want a war with Iran, also on behalf of Israel."

Netanyahu: "No problem. We control your media so we can sell this war just as easily as we sold the last one. Your Congress is also bought and paid for. Our Speaker "Madame" easily gets the other harlots to pass any bill the Israel Lobby writes up."

Obama: "But opinion is changing. Your civilian massacres in Gaza resulted in bad publicity. And it's becoming clear that your endless persecution of the Palestinians is what inspires anti-American terrorism, as on 9/11."

Netanyahu: "Again, we are a very religious people. Our God instructs us to commit religious genocide: 'Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.' Samuel I 15:3."

Obama: "57 countries in the world do not recognize Israel because of your illegal occupations and persecutions. Already you've gotten us fighting in five of them, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, in one way or another, and that's enough. We're going bankrupt. Our US Treasury bonds are in danger of losing their triple-A rating. And if you strike Iran, there will be retaliation against our many troops in the area, dragging us into another war. Iran will surely block oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, driving up oil prices sky-high, the last thing our economy needs."

Netanyahu: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Being An American

2010-03-13T04:51:00.000-08:00

America has opened her arms to people of all races, religions, and nationalities, asking merely that they pledge their loyalty to America first and foremost. America's interests, including national security interests and economic interests, should take priority.

Currently, America faces an existential threat from some of its own citizens whose loyalty to Israel is above else. Many of these Israel-firsters serve in the Israeli military but don't bother to serve in the US military. They urge Israel to continue violating international law and UN Security Council resolutions which call for Israel's withdrawal from occupied Muslim lands, even though Israel's illegal occupations inspire anti-American terrorism as on 9/11.

Israel-firsters lie America into unnecessary wars with Israel's enemies even though this bankrupts our country. Due to Israel's illegal occupations, war crimes, and other atrocities, 57 countries do not recognize Israel. The Israel-firsters want America to fight all of them. Iran is next on their wish list.

Israel-firsters control our politicians and media so that Americans are kept in the dark. To Israel-firsters, assimilation is a bad word because their allegiance is to their "birthright" Israel and not to our country. They do not deserve to be Americans.

Warmongering

2010-02-28T17:46:00.000-08:00

Just as the Israel Lobby neocons used scare tactics to lie us into the unnecessary war with Iraq, they are undertaking a repeat performance with regard to Iran. The Israel Lobby's stranglehold on the media is most useful in selling wars. On Bill Moyers' PBS documentary "Buying the War," Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz pointed out that between August 2002 and March 2003, there were 140 front page Washington Post articles promoting the war as opposed to only a handful of articles with questions or an opposing view.

A UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report was hyped recently by the media in an attempt at fear-mongering: "IAEA Suspects Iran Seeks Nuclear Arms" The Wall Street Journal 2/19/10; "IAEA fears Iran making a warhead" The Boston Globe 2/19/10; etc. Yet if one reads the fine print, the IAEA report actually states that there are "concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile." (The New York Times 2/19/10) This is nothing new. Our own intelligence assessment concludes that in the past there had been work on a bomb but this was suspended in 2003. Speaking on the PBS McLaughlin Group 2/19/10, Pat Buchanan observed that the issuing of this report merely shows that "the IAEA is now in the pocket of the US and Israel." "ElBaradei [recently retired IAEA chief] was an honest guy." "Iran is no threat whatsoever to the USA."

The IAEA reported concerns that the Iranians were loath to disclose the whereabouts of their nuclear scientists. This is hardly surprising since the Mossad loves to murder them. In a 5/16-17/09 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Israeli journalist and author Ronen Bergman notes that under the current leadership of Meir Dagan, who was head of a secret Israeli assassinations unit in the 70's, the Mossad has focused on sabotaging the Iranian nuclear program, including crashing planes, setting labs ablaze, removing nuclear scientists, etc. On 11/24/09, the BBC reported the arrest of an Israeli in Tel Aviv for planting a bomb under a vehicle. Turns out the bomb was a fake, and the man was a Mossad agent-in-training. On January 12, 2010, an Iranian nuclear physicist was blown up by means of a motorcycle bomb. The Mossad operates ostentatiously above the law as seen with their recent Dubai murder. Talking heads in the media merely chuckle.

Similarly, the Israeli nuclear weapons program never submits to UN inspections whereas the Iranian peaceful program is heavily inspected. If there is to be a nuclear arms race in the region it will be due to the presence of Israel's nukes, since it is Israel who is the world's expansionist occupying invader, not Iran. As reported by Ronen Bergman in Newsweek 12/21/09, Dagan himself said that Iran could not have nuclear weapons before 2014.

The media in the push to war claim that diplomacy has "failed." Yet as reported by George Jahn (AP) 2/24/10, the Iranians, in an official letter, accepted the West's offer to trade its enriched uranium for nuclear fuel rods. Their stipulation is that the exchange take place simultaneously and on Iranian territory. This is not an unreasonable request considering that Iran has zero reason to trust the West which demands that Iran ship out its uranium and wait a year for fuel rods. After all, the US funds anti-Iranian terror groups, as reported by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker 7/07/08, including the Sunni group Jundallah, said to be linked to al Qaeda. Iran's security forces recently captured a Jundallah leader whom they say has ties to the CIA and the Mossad and who was carrying a US-arranged Afghan passport. Jundallah has taken responsibility for terror attacks killing numerous Iranians, including civilians. (The New York Times 2/24/10) This is where our taxpayer dollars go: fomenting wars for Israel.

Machinations of the Israel Lobby Neocons

2010-02-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

It seems Israel has launched a massive PR campaign attempting to beautify its ugly global image. (See The New York Times 2/18/2010) At the same time, however, Israel's well-deserved reputation as Murder, Inc. is reinforced by all the recent videos of its henchmen carrying out yet another targeted assassination in a foreign country. Israel will remain better known for its blood-thirsty policy of extrajudicial murders and other crimes than for its invention of the cherry tomato.

President Obama drew intense hatred from the war-mongering Israel lobby neocons when he took a well-publicized stand against illegal Israeli settlement expansionism. He has been in trouble ever since. At a NYU debate on US/Israeli relations, (See Newsweek 2/22/2010), Roger Cohen, former New York Times foreign editor, pointed out that Obama "has been told by some Jewish congressmen, if you want your health bill, step back on Israel."

Dominated by the powerful Israel Lobby, Congress is blatantly dysfunctional. with many members rooting for the failure of all Obama's initiatives, including the financial regulation so necessary to prevent a repeat of last year's costly catastrophe. A Gallop poll shows Congress' job approval in February 2010 to be only 18%.

The Israel Lobby neocons who lied us into war with Iraq are now determined to lie us into war with Iran, also designed to serve the interests of Israeli expansionism. All these unnecessary and unfunded wars are bankrupting our country, and now the Chinese are selling our bonds. There are worries about a run on the dollar, massive inflation, and high interest rates. Like rats leaving a sinking ship, Congressmen are retiring in droves. It is high time to expose the treasonous Israel-firsters.

Israel: The Monkey On Our Back

2010-02-09T06:38:00.000-08:00

Unlike China, which does not have the Zionist monkey on its back pushing it into unnecessary expensive wars, we are going deeper and deeper into debt. Our politicians, like heroin addicts, are hooked on Zionist campaign funds which dictate never-ending war spending to secure Israel's expansionism. War with Iran is next on their list. As John Prine wrote in his famous song "Sam Stone", "There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes." Politicians put their addiction first and the welfare of America last.

At the recent "Tea Party Convention", the politicians' addiction to Israel was well-represented by key note speaker Sarah Palin, who wore a US/Israeli flag pin on her lapel. Palin describes herself as a pit bull with lipstick and is thus quite suited to eulogize "Israel:Our Expensive Pit Bull" (see previous blog 1/26/10). She informed Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, 1/7/10 that she would like to see President Obama declare war on Iran for the sake of Israel. In a November 2009 ABC interview with Barbara Walters, Palin declared that "Obama has no right to tell Israel they can't expand Jewish settlements." Palin has doubtless never heard of international law, under which these settlements on occupied land are illegal. Former presidential candidate John McCain's foreign policy advisor neocon Randy Scheuneman was clearly effective in his brainwashing of Palin, whose grasp of foreign policy was revealed to be non-existent. Of course, Senator McCain and Senator Joe Lieberman are the well-known Zionese twins.

Palin complained to Fox's Chris Wallace on 2/7/09 that President Obama should be doing more to support Israel. Should he increase support of Israel's war crimes and apartheid policies? Should he increase support of Israel's strangulation of the Gazans incarcerated in their Nazi death camps where they are bombed at will? Should he tell Israel that killing 1400 Gazans in its last blitzkrieg was not enough?

As reported in The New York Sun 9/28/08, when meeting Israeli president Shimon Peres, Palin revealed the fact that the only flag in her office as Governor of Alaska was the Israeli flag. I am sure that Chinese officials flaunt the Chinese flag in their offices. China is on the way up, and we are on the way down.

Kill, Kill, Kill

2010-02-08T07:28:00.000-08:00

As Stephen J. Sniegoski points out on his book The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, it has long been Zionist strategy to foment civil wars in Muslim countries. This policy was enunciated in February 1982 by Israeli strategist Oded Yinon writing in the World Zionist Organization magazine Kivunim. Yinon relished the Iraq-Iran War which he hoped would lead to civil war and fragmentation of Iraq, Israel's most feared enemy. It did not. However, the Zionist neocons lied us into an unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003 which did foment a civil war.

Iraq authority Nir Rosen testified before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee 4/2/08 that before our invasion, Iraqis had no history of serious sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites and "viewed themselves as Iraqis first." "Intermarriage was widespread", and most tribes were mixed Sunni/Shiite. The majority of the Baath party was Shiite, as was the army, including officers. As Rosen wrote in The Washington Post 5/16/07, when we occupied the country, we "treated the Sunnis as the bad guys and the Shiites as the good guys" and imposed sectarian identities onto Iraq's regions which had not been there before.

The Zionist neocons similarly fomented a civil war in Palestine after Hamas won over Fatah in a fair, non-violent, internationally supervised election in January 2006. As President Jimmy Carter has described in his books Palestine Peace Not Apartheid and We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work, Hamas had governed well and was free of corruption unlike Fatah. This is why they were elected. Hamas had observed a long cease-fire since August 2004 and was willing to extend this for decades. Hamas did not recognize Israel, but then neither do 57 countries, one third of the United nations, because of Israel's illegal occupations, persecutions and war crimes. Hamas has been willing to accept a peace with Israel agreed to by the Palestinian people.

As David Rose wrote in Vanity Fair, April 2008, Hamas was eager to form a unity government with Fatah, but Fatah was pressured by the US and Israel to say no: money necessary to run the government was withheld. In February 2007, Saudi Arabia negotiated a unity government: "When the news hit the streets that the Saudis had promised to pay the Palestinian Authority's salary bills, Fatah and Hamas members in Gaza celebrated together by firing their Kalashnikovs into the air." Joy was short lived as the Bush neocons were livid: "Condi was apoplectic." The US "redoubled the pressure" and provided $1.27 billion (over 5 years) to arm Fatah so as to overthrow Hamas. The resulting bloody civil war resulted in the partition of Palestine.

Likewise, in Afghanistan our invasion has resulted in civil war between pro-Western elements and traditionalists. This war has managed to destabilize Pakistan causing civil warfare there too. Meanwhile, we're also spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to foment civil strife in Iran.

In Afghanistan, President Karzai would like to negotiate with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, but the Obama administration neocons say no, preferring to kill, kill, kill. Our drones terrorize the population, murdering civilians, including women and children. These deaths of course inspire even more anti-American hatred and revenge attacks. This is all modeled after the Israeli policy of assassinating Hamas leaders rather than negotiating peace. It is time to end our terrorist invasions and occupations and work for peace.

Israel: Our Expensive Pit Bull

2010-01-26T12:39:00.000-08:00

Although President Clinton's legacy to President Bush was a budget surplus, Bush destroyed this with massive war spending, leaving President Obama a budget deficit. Now we have a "tea-party" movement understandably concerned about our nation's fiscal security. While this movement vociferously opposes domestic spending on issues like health care, it seems to have an enormous blind spot concerning costly unnecessary wars.

Meanwhile, on 1/24/10, Osama bin Laden once again released an audiotape explaining why we are under attack and how to end this anti-American terrorism. He said, "America will never dream of security unless we have it in reality in Palestine." "God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue." "It is not fair that Americans should live in peace as long as our brothers in Gaza live in the worst conditions."

The billions we give in foreign aid to Israel each year are minuscule compared to Israel's overall cost. Historically, due to our support of Israel's illegal brutal occupations, we have suffered major losses, such as the Arab oil embargo in the 70's, terrorist attacks on our embassies abroad, etc, leading up to the two attacks on the World Trade Center. Following 9/11, Israel's cost has escalated as we have tried to emulate Fortress Israel and become Fortress America. Costs of our security industrial complex keep skyrocketing along with the costs of our military industrial complex.

Rather than addressing the legitimate grievances of the Muslim world, especially the plight of the Palestinians, we morphed into Israel and began invading and occupying Muslim lands, bombing civilians, and thus inspiring more anti-American terrorism. The long-term cost of the unnecessary Iraq War, for instance, which we were lied into by the Zionists who fixed the intelligence, has been estimated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, to be $3 trillion. Our war costs have all been borrowed, largely from foreigners such as China. Long-term costs include paying interest on this debt, long-term health care for wounded vets, increased costs of military recruiting, replacing damaged and destroyed equipment, etc. This is why the real figure is much higher than the publicized one.

As we are now a clone of Israel, our actions have served to spread al Qaeda around the world, resulting in even more military spending. We now have the cost of our bombings in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and doubtless many more to come. In our bombing raids we inevitably kill civilians, thus creating more "terrorists," ie those who vow revenge. Add to this our so-called "nation-building" costs. Of course it is impossible to really build a nation in the midst of civil wars caused by our invasions and occupations. The chaos thus produced makes a country ripe for crime, such as the drug trade, kidnappings, etc, in particular, and corruption in general, all increasing our cost of "nation-building." And we must add to this the cost of paying off people, like the Taliban, to fight for us rather than to fight for the other side. On a more macro level, we must pay off entire states, such as Pakistan, to fight on our side.

Bin Laden applauded the Christmas Day would-be plane bomber, vowed there will be more, and now we must add to our security costs the cost of such things as body scanners at airports. And let's not forget the cost of the expected new cancer cases in passengers resulting from the radiation from these body scanners. It is time to rein in this expensive pit bull and push hard for Middle East peace.

The Israel Lobby's Devious Myths

2010-01-17T13:09:00.000-08:00

In their determination to steal all of Palestine, the Israel Lobby has created and propagated numerous myths, such as the lie that there are really no Palestinian people. In fact the Lobby falsely claims that Palestine was an empty wasteland when Zionists were immigrating there in the late 19th-20th century.

Palestine has historically been described as the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Ancient Palestine was known as the land of Canaan and had been inhabited for thousands of years before the Hebrew invasion of around 1200 BC. Genetic evidence shows that today's Palestinian Arabs descend from a population that lived in this area from these earliest prehistoric times predating the Hebrew conquest. Indeed, as noted by the late Columbia University Professor Edward W. Said, "Palestine is the birthplace of urban life" with towns still inhabited after up to 9000 years. (Said, Blaming the Victim)

Situated at the crossroads of many cultures, Palestine has had many rulers. Following the Hebrew invasion, the land has been ruled by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, etc. By 1516 Palestine was a province in the Ottoman Empire known for its beauty and fertility. By 1853, there were about 500,000 people living in Palestine, almost all Arabs except for 20,000 Jews. The Palestinian Arabs lived in small villages with olive groves and farms producing wheat, corn, barley, sesame, cotton, etc. (Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine) Thus is another myth shattered, namely that the Arabs in Palestine were nomads who moved there to get jobs from Jewish immigrants. It is these olive groves, centuries old, which the Jewish settlers still today keep uprooting.

The "father of Zionism" Theodor Herzl, in advocating Jewish immigration to Palestine, inspired the rabbis of Vienna to send a fact-finding mission there in the late 18th century. Their two rabbis cabled back from Palestine, "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man." (Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall) In other words, the land of Palestine was beautiful but already occupied by Arabs.

Nevertheless, against the desire of the Arabs living in Palestine, Jewish immigration exploded so that by 1947, the Jewish population was one third of the total and Jews owned 6-7% of the land. The Arabs opposed giving up half of Palestine as a Jewish State to compensate for the Nazi Holocaust, (why should Palestinians be punished for something the Germans did?), but they had no say in the UN decision. The myth that Arabs left Palestine of their own accord at that time has been also shown to be a lie. The Zionists had crafted a plan using terrorism to drive them out, so as to steal their land and create a Jewish state. (Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) This process continues to this day. (See previous blogs "Sandniggers" 11/16/08, "Is Israel a Racist State?" 12/24/08, "Lest We Forget: Jewish Terrorism 1/29/09, and "Religious Genocide' 5/4/09).

Another myth is that the Arabs started the 1967 war, whereas it was Israel who attacked first. Clearly this war was designed to expand Israel's territory as shown by the fact that settlements keep expanding. Still another myth is the so-called "generous offer" turned down by Palestinian President Arafat at Camp David in 2000. This offer was unacceptable to the entire Arab/Muslim world as it was not in accordance with international law and UN Security Council Resolutions. The blatantly biased pro-Israel US negotiating team at Camp David, led by Dennis Ross, doomed it to failure. We should have been even-handed. (Clayton E. Swisher The Truth About Camp David) (See previous blogs "The Myth of the Generous Offer" 5/13/07, and "A US Peace Plan" 9/29/09)

The truth is that it is the Arab/Muslim World which has long had a fair just peace plan on the table, endorsed in 2002 by Yassir Arafat as well as Saddam Hussein and virtually the rest of the world except for Israel and the US. If this had been accepted then, we would not be going bankrupt fighting all these unnecessary wars.

The Arrogance of the Israel Lobby

2010-01-14T17:35:00.000-08:00

Israel Lobby neocon Senator Joe Lieberman praised the film "Inglourious Basterds", in which Jews try to surpass Nazis in the carrying out of atrocities, relishing the burning of people to death, carving swastikas into the foreheads of live victims, scalping them, etc. (Newsweek 8/24-31/09) Lieberman pronounced this "cathartic." (Newsweek 11/23/09) Similarly, Israeli warmongers enjoy the suffering of the Palestinian people resulting from Israel's Nazi-like occupation. (See previous blog "Israelis Idea of a Fun Time" 1/16/09)

In recently boasting about the Zionists' great "success", Israel Lobby neocon David Brooks does not include the inconvenient fact that Israel has "made the desert bloom," as they say, by stealing Palestinian land and water resources. (The New York Times 1/12/10) The one-sided media presentation we suffer from here, due to the stranglehold of the Israel lobby, was experienced by the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 29,2009. Erdogan was participating in a panel discussion of Gaza moderated by David Ignatius of the Israel lobby-dominated Washington Post. (In true Washington Post neocon fashion, Ignatius had cheered us into the unnecessary war with Iraq, writing on 2/25/03 that "The Iraq War is just and defensible.")

In this one-hour forum in Davos, Ignatius allotted 25 minutes to Israel's president Shimon Peres, more than twice that allowed for the other three panelists. After Peres filibustered about how wonderful Israel's slaughter in Gaza was, Erdogan attempted to respond but was cut off after one minute by Ignatius. Erdogan managed to say, "You killed people. And I think that is wrong. The 6th Commandment: Thou shall not kill. We are talking about killing." (The Wall Street Journal 1/30/09) "I remember the children who died on the beaches. I remember two former prime ministers who said they were happy when they were able to enter Palestine in tanks." (AP 1/30/09) He told Peres, "The high tone of your voice has to do with a guilty conscience." "When it comes to killing, you know how to kill" "And so Davos is over from me from now on." The New York Times (1/30/09) "I don't think I'll come back to Davos because you don't let me speak." (The Wall Street Journal 1/30/09).

Erdogan left the stage and, needless to say, returned home to a hero's welcome. Despite the Israel Lobby's attempt at positive PR, their atrocities are universally loathed.

In their overriding compulsion for domination and humiliation of others, Israelis recently summoned Turkish Ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol to a media dressing-down designed to force Turkey to cancel a Turkish TV program. The popular drama, "Valley of the Wolves," features actions of Israeli intelligence agents. Without informing Celikkol that the cameras would be rolling, Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister, greeted Celikkol without a handshake and made him sit down on a very low sofa. Across from Cellikol, Ayalon was perched on a high chair with a coffee table in between bearing the Israeli flag. (No coffee was served.)

Ayalon then addressed the cameras in Hebrew (which Celikkol does not speak) and "explained to local TV stations that the humiliation was intentional." (AP 1/14/10) Ayalon said, "The important thing is that people see that he's low and we're high and that there is no [Turkish] flag here." Ayalon refused the videographer's request that Ayalon shake Celikkol's hand.

Ayalon's insulting stunt received such world-wide criticism that he was forced to apologize. The important thing is that power, accomplishments, and money can not buy world popularity.

Israel's Clone

2010-01-10T14:19:00.001-08:00

By becoming Israel's clone, we have magnified the hatred aimed at us as Israel's supporter. Our Israel-inspired invasions, occupations, civilian bombings, and destabilisation of Muslim countries appear endless. War-mongering neocon Senator Joe Lieberman says Yemen "will be tomorrow's war." And is Iran this evening's war? Lieberman's appetite for war is as insatiable as his fellow Zionists' appetite for Palestinian land.

Of course, our approach has of necessity aimed at more subtlety, since foreign governments we have bribed with foreign aid are deathly afraid of their public which hates our guts. In Pakistan we are (correctly) blamed for destabilizing the country and forbidden from sending in US troops. Yemen similarly opposes US troops (AP 1/6/10). We thus must be content with CIA drone bombing in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc, where our extrajudicial assassination of civilians is precisely what Israel has been doing for decades. Israel is more than happy to share the resulting hatred and revenge attacks.

An AP report (1/6/10) states, "A number of women, children, and other civilians were killed" in a December 17, 2009 bombing in Yemen", and media reports that the US was involved are painful to the government. The Yemeni government "was infuriated" in 2002 when it was made public that US cruise missiles had been used there. Similarly, Jordan has been worried as its collusion with the CIA has been widely publicized due to the recent suicide terrorist bombing of the CIA base in Afghanistan. Needless to say, destabilizing Muslim countries is what Israel loves most.

Israel: Cancer of the World

2010-01-10T05:19:00.000-08:00

Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni cleric who inspired both the Fort Hood shooter and the would-be Christmas Day plane bomber, refers to Israel as the "Cancer of the World." Israel's atrocities and war crimes perpetrated on the Palestinian Arabs have long produced a backlash against Israel's supporter, the U.S. Both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, and his nephew Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, (whose mother is Palestinian), point to our mindless support of Israel's brutal occupations as their motivation. The Fort Hood terrorist, Major Nidal Hasan, is of Palestinian origin, as was Humam al-Balawi, the Jordanian triple agent who blew up the CIA agents in Afghanistan.

Al-Balawi had featured the Gaza and Israeli/Palestinian conflict on his jihadi Web site (The New York Times 1/10/10). He had worked in a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Zarqa, Jordan, where "thousands of Palestinians live in poverty", and he was outraged at Israeli brutality against the Palestinians (Yahoo News 1/9/10). Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the assassinated Palestinian leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was also from Zarqa.

The Zionist-owned and dominated American news media of course never dwell on the Israel connection. They spin the news so as to concentrate on blaming security deficits rather than blaming our misguided foreign policy which supports Israeli atrocities and inspires terrorism around the globe. Americans are kept in the dark as we are urged to fight unnecessary war after unnecessary war, thus bankrupting our country and murdering our youth.

Our "Intelligence" Services

2010-01-06T10:09:00.000-08:00

Addressing the nation on January 5, 2010, President Obama declared, " But make no mistake. We will close Guantanamo Prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda. In fact, that was the explicit rationale for the formation of Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula."

It is a hopeful sign that at last the administration may be taking into consideration the legitimate grievances of the Arab/Muslim world. Since presumably the purpose of our various intelligence services is to keep us safe, clearly it is important to gather information about why we are targeted by terrorists. And acting on such information is of utmost importance, even, and maybe especially, to intelligence operatives themselves.

For instance, on December 30, 2009, 7 CIA members were blown up in Afghanistan by a Jordanian triple agent whom they trusted enough not to bother to search. As noted in The New York Times, 1/5/10, "The United States, and the CIA in particular, are deeply unpopular in Jordan, where at least half the population is of Palestinian origin and where Washington's support for Israel is roundly condemned." Likewise, the BBC World News reported 1/5/10 that "on the street [in Jordan] there is broad support for attacks against American CIA officials."

As broadcast on CNN's Fareed Zakaria Global Public Square 1/3/10, Kishore Mahbubani, renowned author and scholar, Dean of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, stated that "the key issue" is pushing for a two-state, Israel/Palestine solution. Such action "immediately lowers the barometer of anger in the Islamic world." Now that is "intelligence" which is indeed intelligent.

Fear of the NYC Terror trial

2009-11-15T19:55:00.000-08:00

The Israel Lobby is terrified of the upcoming NYC trial of 9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). They fear their stranglehold on the US media could be loosened as the trial may give the terrorists a media platform.

Indeed, KSM has said that the purpose of the 9/11 attacks was to "wake the American people up." As part of his original 9/11 plan, KSM was going to land one of the planes here and then "deliver a speech condemning American policy on Israel." (The New York Times 9/15/09)

The Israel Lobby certainly does not want their persecutions and war crimes against the Palestinians publicized. Worse, they do not want Americans to realize that because of our support for Israel's unjust policies, we are now a power in decline.

Before 9/11, we had a budget surplus and were poised to pay down the national debt. Now, after these unnecessary wars, we are deeply in debt to foreigners, owing more to China than to any other country, and the Israel Lobby is about to drag us into another unnecessary war as Israel plans to hit Iran. At that point the price of oil will go through the ozone layer, and our economy will plummet, this time irretrievably if no one will buy our bonds.

Of course the Israel Lobby cares not, since their loyalty lies elsewhere. Their only fear is that the truth will out.

The Lesson of Vietnam

2009-11-13T06:49:00.000-08:00

Winston Churchill famously announced, "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." As George Orwell noted, "those who control the past control the future." Thus currently history is being deviously re-written by neocons who falsely portray the Iraq invasion as an American triumph and the Vietnam War as a war which should have been won and would have been if properly fought.

This ignores the lesson of Vietnam which is that 58,000 Americans died unnecessarily. The Vietnam War, like the Iraq War, was unnecessary. Saddam Hussein was no threat to America and neither was Vietnam. Communist Vietnam is now our trading partner and a popular American tourist destination. The Cold War ended peacefully. Even Communist China is embracing capitalism in a gradual peaceful manner.

It is far better for regime change to come about through peaceful people power rather than through foreign invasions and the fomenting of bloody civil wars. Our forefathers warned against foreign entanglements, but here we are mired in Afghanistan.

Our mission in Afghanistan is supposed to be to target al Qaeda but there are only 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and our military is calling for 100,000 troops. Our presence there is destabilizing Pakistan; the Pakistanis hate us, believing we're in cahoots with Israel and India to steal their nukes.

President Obama demands to know what our exit strategy is and to whom will we hand this off. A corrupt narcostate? We are supposed to spend billions training (and paying) the Afghans, who have been traditionally recognized to be ferocious fighters. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski astutely points out that no one needs to train the Taliban!

We should leave Afghanistan and let President Karzai make peace with Taliban leader Mullah Omar as he has long wanted to do. There are increasing indications that the Taliban is willing to sever ties to al Qaeda. This war is unnecessary.

The Holocaust

2009-11-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

Spies and members of underground resistance movements have been known to carry poison pills to pop if captured: hopeless endless torture is worse than a quick death. Similarly, the Gaza Holocaust is worse than the Nazi holocaust.

The Israelis sadistically torture the Gazans incarcerated in this Nazi death camp the way a cat tortures a mouse: tossing it up in the air, letting it momentarily escape only to pounce on it again, enjoying the creature's terrified squeals until it squeals no more. Israeli collective punishment in Gaza is designed to destroy body and soul. Dante's words apply: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." At least some of the Nazis' inmates were eventually rescued by the Allied forces.

Gaza's only hope would be a peace settlement, but this is anathema to Netanyahu whose settlement expansion policy is consistent with his Likud Party's charter opposing a Palestinian state. A peace settlement would also end our involvement in these Wars for the Jewish Settlers (ie Iraq and Afghanistan) since, after all, 9/11 was motivated by our biased support of Israel and its illegal occupations. However, just as the Nazis loved to steal Jewish assets and businesses, the Israelis love to steal the Palestinian land, water resources and livelihoods, especially the super-profitable Holy Land tourist trade.

One has only to view Gaza today to see the Zionist devastation. Because one Israeli soldier was captured, (the Israelis hold over 8000 political prisoners including 390 children mostly alleged to have thrown stones), and because a small number of Israelis (less than 30 in the past 8 years) were killed by rockets from Gaza, the Israelis conducted a blitzkrieg against 1.5 million prisoners in overcrowded little Gaza. During this Reign of Terror from December 27 to January 18, 2009, Israeli war crimes were rampant, as documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Breaking the Silence, (an Israeli veterans group), and the UN Goldstone Report.

The Israelis bulldozed and intentionally bombed farms, poultry, orchards, food factories, water wells, sewerage facilities, hospitals, civilian shelters, schools containing students, thousands of houses, (later vandalized), mosques during prayers, ambulances, UN facilities, and other civilian infrastructure. The aim was to make life for Gazans unlivable forever,and it was followed by a tightening of the blockade to prevent rebuilding.

Heavy artillery and missiles from drones were used against civilians along with white phosphorous, which produces excruciating deadly burns. For instance, civilians, forced by Israeli soldiers into a house, died when the house was then shelled. Children looking out of the windows of their houses were shot. Women and children waving white flags in plain view and posing no threat were shot to death. Israelis shelled the main UN compound which was sheltering 700 civilians even though UN officials were communicating to Israelis at the time. Israelis prevented the wounded from receiving treatment. Over 1400 Palestinians died, including 252 children under 16. Ten Israeli soldiers died, including four who were shot by the Israelis themselves.

Meanwhile our Gaza Holocaust-denying Congressional whores keep turning tricks for their Israel Lobby Johns, dutifully passing every resolution the Israel Lobby writes, most recently one condemning the Goldstone report, naturally. Congress bankrupts the country by funding all the Wars for the Jewish Settlers so as to keep their Israel Lobby-generated campaign funds flowing. It is this obscene corrupted version of democracy which we so blithely try to spread around the world at gunpoint, and it's hardly surprising that no one wants it. We have thus far successfully inspired notoriously corrupt governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just as the illegal Israeli occupations generated suicide terrorists, so our non-stop occupations have generated a suicide epidemic in our young soldiers: 16 in October, bringing the year's total at the end of October to 134, poised to break last year's record of 140. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

The "O" Word and the "L" Word

2009-10-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

Our country is Occupied by Lobbyists. The health industry lobbyists make sure the greedy health insurance executives continue to make obscene profits by preventing Americans from obtaining the health care they need. The banking/finance industry lobbyists make sure there are no meaningful regulations which might prevent their greedy executives from making even more obscene profits to be paid for by yet unborn taxpayers who must fund the bailouts. The Israel Lobby, in happy collaboration with the Military Industrial Complex Lobby, makes sure America wages never-ending wars against those Muslim nations who object to Israel's greedy illegal occupations.

Israel Lobby neocons are thus currently pushing for an escalation to our occupation of Afghanistan and an escalation of crippling sanctions against Iran, which they hope will lead to yet another war on behalf of Israel. The Israel Lobby-dominated Congress and the Israel Lobby-dominated media avoid the "O" word, so that in discussions of Palestinian resistance groups, for instance, such as Hamas, it is never mentioned that it is Israel's illegal occupation which is the violence motivator. We only hear about this from bin Laden who keeps telling us that this is why we have to fight al Qaeda to begin with.

Meanwhile our Secretary of State arrogantly lectures other countries: "In Moscow, Clinton Urges Russia to Open Its Political System" (The New York Times 10/15/09) Our political system is indeed open, ie open to entrenched occupation by lobbyists to the detriment of the American people. Other countries would be wise not to follow suit.

The Afghan Strategy

2009-10-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

We suppose it is too much to hope that the administration's anti-al Qaeda Afghanistan strategy analysis includes an analysis of why we are targeted by al Qaeda to begin with. Although the counterproductive effect of civilian bombings and other intrusive aspects of our "military footprint" have been duly noted, the rabid rhinoceros in the room, which is the Israeli occupation, continues to be blithely ignored.

For decades, the Israel Lobby-dominated media has made sure that Americans never connect these dots. How many Americans are aware that the Arab oil embargo in the 70's was because of our support of Israel's illegal occupations? Al Qaeda's leader bin Laden keeps trying to wake Americans up, as in his 9/14/09 audiotape, when he reiterated the fact that al Qaeda hates us because we subsidize Israeli atrocities and war crimes.

Israel's military footprint is more ghastly than ours. During their recent scorched-earth invasion of Gaza, besides massacring 1400 and wounding God-knows-how many more, Israel has made sure that all survivors keep suffering, by bulldozing their farmlands, bombing their one operational flour factory, their chicken farms, etc. They might have considered salting Palestinian fields, but their modern equivalent is military uranium residue.

Meanwhile al Qaeda continues to spread around the world. Will the Israel Lobby neocons next be instructing us to occupy Somalia in order to prevent an al Qaeda base there? Americans would like to end our occupations but we are told we must stay indefinitely because of al Qaeda. Yet bin Laden informs us that it is because of our occupations and support of Israel's occupations that we are under attack. It is time to sever relations with the War Crimes State of Israel and bring our troops home.

A US Peace Plan

2009-09-29T05:17:00.000-07:00

Currently, we are worried about al Qaeda spreading around the world and about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet the key to solving both these problems is Israeli/Palestinian peace. Bin Laden recently reiterated that the root cause of al Qaeda's attacks against us has been our support of the brutal Israeli occupation, and the Iranian president, once again, speaking at the UN, emphasized the centrality of Israel's atrocities which prevent world peace.

It is clear that the Israelis and Palestinians can not achieve peace without our help. The charter of Israel's ruling Likud party explicitly opposes a Palestinian state in Palestine, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has no intention of stopping the illegal settlement expansion which inspires such anti-American hatred and violence.

Therefore, it is high time the US puts forth its own peace proposal. As noted in The Iraq Study Group Report, "The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict." and "The only basis on which peace can be achieved is that set forth in UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and in the principle of 'land for peace.' "

In July 2000, President Clinton brought Palestinian President Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Barak to Camp David for peace negotiations, but Arafat was not offered a fair deal in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 242 which calls on Israel to withdraw from occupied territory including occupied Arab East Jerusalem, the location of Islam's third holiest site (after Mecca and Medina). As reported in Clayton Swisher's book The Truth About Camp David (p.327), Arafat said "If anyone imagines that I might sign away Jerusalem, he is mistaken. I am not only the leader of the Palestinian people; I am also the vice president of the Islamic Conference." "I am only asking that UN Resolution 242 be implemented. I am speaking only about 22 percent of Palestine, Mr President." "Do you want to come to my funeral? I would rather die than agree to Israeli sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif." [The 22% refers to the fact that although the UN in 1947 partitioned Palestine roughly equally into a Jewish state and an Arab state, the 1967 UN Security Council Resolution 242 only accords the Arabs 22% of Palestine, ie the armistice line before the 1967 war. The Israelis ever since have been trying to whittle this 22% down farther through settlement expansion in Palestinian territory.]

After the failure at Camp David, President Clinton offered what has come to be known as the "Clinton Parameters" in December 2000. On territory, the Palestinian state would control 94-96 percent of the West Bank, with a 1-3 percent land swap from Israel proper...On Jerusalem, "Arab areas are Palestinian and Jewish ones are Israeli. This would apply to the Old City as well." (Swisher p. 396). Arafat had questions about the details but basically accepted the parameters in January 2001. (Swisher p.399-402).

Clinton's ideas were further refined at the peace talks at Taba, Egypt later that month, but by now George Bush was president,with his neocon-dominated administration, and forbade US participation. Nevertheless, the gaps lessened at Taba. (Swisher p. 402). Later, the Geneva Accord, an unofficial virtual peace accord, developed from the Taba talks. (Swisher p. 403)

In 2002, the Saudi Peace Plan was offered, calling for Israel's withdrawal from occupied territory in exchange for peace, diplomatic recognition and normalization of relations with the Arab world. Palestinian President Arafat accepted this plan in 2002. Still on the table as the Arab Peace Initiative, it has been endorsed by the entire Arab/Muslim world, including Iran. As Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal wrote in The New York Times, September 13, 2009, the initiative also calls for "the refugee issue to be solved later through mutual consent."

Late in President George W. Bush's term, Bush finally saw the light and re-started peace negotiations. Again the two sides came close to peace before Israeli Prime Minister Olmert had to step down due to corruption allegations. As reported in Newsweek June 22, 2009, by Kevin Peraino, "Olmert told me he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September 2008 and unfurled a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories. He says he offered Abbas 93.5 to 93.7 percent of the Palestinian territories along with a land swap of 5.8 percent and a safe-passage corridor from Gaza to the West Bank that he says would make up the rest. The Holy Basin of Jerusalem would be under no sovereignty at all and administered by a consortium of Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans. Regarding refugees, Olmert says he rejected the right of return and instead offered, as a 'humanitarian gesture,' a small number of returnees, although smaller than the Palestinians wanted--a very, very limited number.' "

The Economist ( February 14, 2009) has noted that the outlines of a Palestinian state have been more of less agreed to by sensible Palestinians and Israelis for the past decade: "Israel would return to the armistice line that existed before the 1967 war, with minor adjustments and territorial swaps of equal size and quality, and would probably keep the three biggest Jewish settlement blocks that bulge out from the 1967 line. Jerusalem would be tortuously but fastidiously divided, allowing each side to have its capital there, with international oversight of the holy places. Palestinians would have a symbolic right for their refugees to return on the understanding that only a small and carefully calculated proportion of them would actually do so. Palestine would be sovereign but demilitarized, with an international force, perhaps led by NATO, securing its borders, both along the Jordan Valley and maybe between Gaza and Egypt. A road-and-rail link, internationally monitored, might well connect the 50km (30 miles) or so between Gaza and the West Bank."

America should endorse a fair and just plan. As stated in The Economist (September 26, 2009), as the stalemate persists, president Obama "should not blink from the prospect of reducing aid to Israel and rethinking America's knee-jerk backing for it in such forums as the UN..." Compromises over land etc. "will not weaken Israel; rather, a two-state solution is the best guarantee of its future safety." Ours too.

Diplomacy With Iran

2009-09-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

The Israel Lobby neocons have always opposed diplomacy with Iran or for that matter with anyone on their hit list. This is why they specialize in demanding preconditions designed to ensure that talks never take place. They dismiss such talks as "appeasement" and had been hoping that the election turmoil in Iran would cause President Obama to abandon diplomacy.

Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek (7/13/09) that "it is worth remembering that the United States still funds guerrilla outfits and opposition groups that are trying to topple the Islamic Republic." Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker (7/7/08) that $400 million was approved by Congress for this purpose of covert anti-Iranian regime activity. The idea has been to work "with opposition groups and pass money." All this must be taken into account when evaluating the significance of the current Iranian protests. We would no doubt object if a foreign country was passing out millions to disrupt our elections, especially to use as an excuse to ditch diplomacy.

US funding of Iranian dissident groups, including terrorists, occurs alongside of "Israel's Secret War With Iran," the title of a book and also a Wall Street Journal op-ed (5/16/09) by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman. Bergman describes actions of the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, in sabotaging Iran's uranium enrichment program with "a series of apparent accidents: the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the crash of two planes carrying cargo relating to the project, and two labs that burst into flames."

Newsweek (9/21/09) informs us that UN officials are worrying that the proliferation of misinformation which led to the invasion of Iraq is happening again with regard to Iran. Israel has been accused of exaggerating Iran's nuclear progress. Tariq Rauf, a senior official with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has written that the mainstream media are repeating the mistakes of 2003 by hyping unsubstantiated stories about the IAEA and Iran.

An example of this media hype is a recent headline (The Boston Globe 9/18/09): "UN document says Iran has the ability to make nuclear bomb." Yet when one reads the fine print one discovers the IAEA statement that the IAEA "has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapons program in Iran."

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal (9/15/09) reports that "it could take years for Iran to make a nuclear warhead and develop the ability to use it on a missile." The Washington Post (9/15/09) reported that although Iran may have enough low-enriched uranium to make one bomb, "such a move would require additional enrichment and overcoming numerous other technical hurdles." The Wall Street Journal (4/10/09) pointed out that American and UN officials emphasize that "they believe Iran has yet to master the technology to convert lower-enriched uranium into weapons grade material." And of course we recently shelved the anti-long-range nuclear-missile shield in Europe since Iran is nowhere near producing a long-range missile. It is no longer believed that Iran could produce one by 2015. Furthermore, "miniaturizing nuclear weapons for use on long-range missiles is one of the most difficult technological hurdles." (The Wall Street Journal 9/17/09)

Besides misrepresenting the Iranian nuclear program, the warmongering Israel Lobby neocons try to persuade us that an attack on Iran would help Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia. However, as reported in The New York Times (3/27/09), Syria's vice minister of foreign affairs Faisal Mekdad said that "our brothers in Saudi Arabia understand that the threat is not Iran, it is the Israeli nuclear capability. This policy of double standards is making all Arabs angry."

Meanwhile, Israel continues to threaten to bomb Iran. Newsweek (9/21/09) reports "Israel has signaled an end-of-year deadline for military action." The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens writes that such an Israeli strike could provoke retaliatory Iranian strikes against US targets in Iraq and the Persian Gulf in addition to $300 a barrel oil. (The Wall Street Journal 9/15/09) It's interesting that a recent collision between two US Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf spiked a sudden rise in oil prices. (The Wall Street Journal 3/21/09)

As the Israel Lobby neocons push for war with Iran, it is noteworthy that the 5-page talks proposal issued by Iran, "Cooperation for Peace, Justice, and Progress," called for "Tackling the root causes of terrorism" and stated that there should be joint efforts and interactions to draw a comprehensive equitable plan to help the people of Palestine achieve all-embracing peace, lasting security, and fundamental rights. This is the root of the problem.

No to Normalization

2009-09-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

In an op-ed in The New York Times (9/13/09) entitled "Land First, Then Peace," Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal explains well the Arab position on the Israeli occupation. This position is based on justice and fairness.

Since 1967, Israel has illegally occupied Palestine and parts of Syria and Lebanon. The occupations and colonization (settlements) are in violation of international law, UN Security Council Resolutions and the Geneva Convention. For this reason, numerous nations do not recognize Israel, and for that matter, neither does Hamas. Hamas has been criticized for this, but it is important to note that Israel's ruling Likud Party Charter expressly opposes a Palestinian State in Palestine.

The Saudi prince writes, "The Arab world, in the form of the Arab peace initiative that was endorsed by 22 countries in 2002, has offered Israel peace and normalization in return for Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories including East Jerusalem---with the refugee issue to be solved later through mutual consent."

This Arab plan is exceedingly generous since Israel gets 78% of Palestine, whereas the original 1947 UN partition divided Palestine roughly equally into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem left as an international city since it is holy to three religions. Palestinian President Arafat accepted this Arab peace initiative in in 2002, but the Israelis prefer continuous occupation out of greed for Palestinian land, water resources, etc. as the Jewish settlements keep growing and metastasizing.

The Israelis of course want creeping normalization without ever having to give up any land, and thus the Arab states are being pressured to make concessions. The prince is correct to just say no.

Confronting al Qaeda

2009-09-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

In a 9/14/09 audiotape, Osama bin Laden addressed the American people, saying once again that "the cause of the quarrel with you is your support of your Israeli allies who have occupied our land, Palestine." He declared that not only Muslims but also Americans suffer because of the US Israel Lobby. He described the Palestinians under siege in Gaza who were pounded with US-made incendiary phosphorus bombs, and he called on the American people to achieve peace and security by freeing ourselves from the Israel Lobby neocons who dictate our foreign policy.

Certainly no one deserves to live under foreign occupation. President Obama has said that we are in Afghanistan to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda. However, al Qaeda has now spread around the world, and we manage to successfully kill al Qaeda leaders in various countries without US military occupation. For instance, just this week US Special Operations and attack helicopters killed a most-wanted al Qaeda ringleader in Somalia, (The New York Times 9/15/09), and a US missile-armed drone killed an al Qaeda commander in Pakistan (The New York Times 9/18/09).

Although it is said that we are in Afghanistan to prevent the establishment of an al Qaeda haven, former CIA counterterrorism chief Paul Pillar wrote in a Washington Post op-ed (9/16/09) that the notion that terrorists require such a haven is unproven: "The preparations most important to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks took place not in training camps in Afghanistan but, rather, in apartments in Germany, hotel rooms in Spain and flight schools in the United States."

Clearly preventing al Qaeda recruitment is very important, and there is no question that, just as in Palestine, our occupation of Afghanistan, with our civilian bombings, etc, fuels anti-Americanism. Even massive aid hand-outs does not necessarily win hearts and minds, as pointed out by Andrew Wilder, a Tufts University research director in a Boston Globe op-ed 9/16/09. Our aid often fuels massive corruption, and the Taliban's promises of better security, justice, and less corruption are more important to the people than new roads.

This is no doubt one reason Afghanistan president Karzai wants to negotiate a peace with Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The US government opposes this and in fact appears to oppose Karzai who has called for an end to our civilian bombings, a timeline for our withdrawal, etc. In fact, American UN official Peter Galbraith was recently criticized by his UN boss, Norwegian Kai Eide, who correctly said that it isn't the UN's role to appear to be taking sides in the election. (See The Wall Street Journal 9/16/09) (Peter Galbraith incidentally has been a longtime outspoken proponent of Kurdish autonomy/independence.)

Dragging out the political election turmoil makes peace talks less likely and prolongs our occuption indefinitely. As noted in The Christian Science Monitor 9/13/09, it costs 50% more to keep a soldier in Afghanistan, with its rugged mountainous terrain, than in Iraq. However, Israel Lobby neocons are pushing for more US troops in Afghanistan, just as they pushed for war with Iraq. For instance, Israel Lobby neocon William Kristol, son of the late neocon godfather Irving Kristol, founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) which sent the notorious 1998 letter to President Clinton calling for a "willingness to undertake military action" to remove Saddam Hussein. PNAC faded away after the Iraq debacle but appears to have resurfaced. William Kristol has now helped found a new organization, The Foreign Policy Initiative, which has just sent a letter to President Obama calling for a bigger military footprint in Afghanistan. It was signed by many of the same people who signed the 1998 PNAC letter. (See The Wall Street Journal 9/16/09).

The Israel Lobby neocons want an indefinite US military presence in Afghanistan to serve as a base from which to attack Iran, Pakistan, and all of Israel's many enemies who object to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine. And thus the Jewish settlements increase along with al Qaeda recruitment.

Sanctions on Israel, not Iran

2009-09-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

A strong case can be made for imposing sanctions on Israel rather than Iran. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and its clandestine program has never been under UN oversight. Israel even jailed in solitary confinement Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu who blew the whistle on the covert nuclear weapons program.

It is Israel which threatens Iran, not vice versa. The Wall Street Journal (7/8/09) reported that "an Israeli submarine believed to be carrying nuclear-tipped missiles" had moved towards Iran. Whereas Iran has not invaded another country since the late 18th century and occupies no one, Israel invades and attacks at will and illegally occupies Palestine and parts of Syria and Lebanon. Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University 9/24/07 and elsewhere on American TV stated that he did not seek the destruction of the Israeli people but only wished for a change in their leadership so as to end their illegal occupations. Ahmadinejad said he would agree to any peace with Israel endorsed by the Palestinian people. He also explained that he did not deny that the Nazi Holocaust happened, he only wanted more research into the details and stressed that the German atrocities against the Jews should not be used to try to excuse Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians.

Many groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and even Israeli veterans have reported that Israel committed war crimes during its Gaza massacre in January. More than 1400 Palestinians were killed including at least 900 civilians according to human rights groups. Three Israeli civilians were killed. (The Boston Globe 7/16/09)

A 9/15/09 report by the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict found Israel guilty of numerous war crimes against innocent civilians. Israelis used disproportionate force and deliberately attacked civilian targets, such as schools and hospitals, with heavy artillery and precision missiles from drones. They shot in cold blood civilians who were waving white flags and following Israeli instructions. They wantonly destroyed food, water, and sewerage facilities and rained down incendiary deadly white phosphorus on civilians. They shelled mosques during evening prayers and a UN relief compound which they knew was sheltering 700 civilians and which contained stored fuel.

Meanwhile, despite US objections, illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank keep expanding. The New York Times 9/14/09 reports that the Jewish settlers plunk down their settlements between Palestinian villagers and their farmlands. The Israelis then block their way so that the Palestinians can not get to their land at which time the settlers seize the Palestinian farmland claiming that it was "abandoned." Another favorite settler trick is setting fire to the Palestinian farms and orchards. It is not surprising that Israel's brutal occupations breeds the expected response from resistance groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Israel's crimes must end. It is time for sanctions.

Out of Afghanistan

2009-09-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

Our occupation of Afghanistan is doing more harm than good and in fact inspires anti-American terrorism. For instance, recently convicted terrorist Abdulla Ahmed Ali explained in his martyrdom video that he aimed to blow up US-bound passenger jets in revenge for our troops in Muslim lands. He said, "Enough is enough." "We have warned you so many times to get out of our land and leave us alone. You have persisted in trying to humiliate, kill, and destroy us." "Yes, taste that which you have made us taste for a long time."

Afghan President Karzai has stated that he wants us to stop the air attacks which kill civilians, and he wants to make peace with the Taliban. In a March 2009 PBS interview, Karzai said that "the Taliban are not enemies of Afghanistan or of the Afghan people. They are just countryside folks...Afghans." One must remember that it was not the Taliban who hit us on 9/11. In fact the Taliban condemned the 9/11 attacks and, as reported on BBC and others (9/13/01), the Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden if the US provided clear and substantial evidence of his involvement. It is noteworthy that the Taliban had been working successfully with the UN to ban opium poppy cultivation. In 1999, Afghanistan produced 4,000 tons of opium, 75% of the world's supply. Then Mulla Mohammed Omar, the Taliban supreme leader banned opium poppies, calling it un-Islamic, and jailing farmers until they agreed to destroy their crops. Farmers switched to other crops like wheat and onions, and in 2001 Afghanistan's opium crop was down to 185 tons.

Unfortunately, we ignored the Taliban offer to help us capture bin Laden, and we invaded instead. Now Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium, and bin Laden is still free. President Obama says our mission in Afghanistan is to go after Al Qaeda, but Al Qaeda is now in Pakistan where our troops are not allowed. Furthermore, Al Qaeda has spread around the globe to places like Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Mauritania, etc. We can't occupy the whole world. Addressing legitimate grievances of the Muslim world by ending our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and ending Israel's occupations is a far better way to combat terrorism.

Democracy vs. Destabilization

2009-09-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

The Israel Lobby neocons pretend to be about spreading democracy whereas they actually are about destabilization. In his book Where the Right Went Wrong, Patrick J. Buchanan answers the question: "Who are they, the neoconservatives?" He quotes a Wall Street Journal article by Max Boot in which Boot states that support for Israel is a "key tenet of neoconservatism" and that Commentary, the American Jewish Congress magazine, is the "neocon bible." Buchanan points out that Israel Lobby neocon Michael Ledeen wrote in his book The War Against the Terror Masters: "First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the big three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria." "Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize." Of course, destabilizing the enemies of Israeli expansionism has been a longtime Israeli strategy. Thus, led by the neocon warmongers, we destabilized Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, Obama is particularly hated by these neocons as he has taken a strong stand against the expanding Israeli settlements and in favor of diplomacy rather than war with Iran.

It has been noted that democracy can only succeed when the losing party recognizes the legitimacy of the winning side. The neocons refuse to accept Obama's 2008 victory and in typical neocon fashion are now trying to destabilize our country. These far-righters refuse to work with the president to solve our nation's problems but instead practice disruption and destruction. Their rabid media leaders, who so successfully lied us into war, now mobilize shriekers to sabotage town hall meetings designed to debate national problems such as health care. They even deny the legitimacy of our election by refusing to allow school children to hear a motivational speech by President Obama. They urge parents to keep children home from school so that they will not be exposed to a speech whose main theme is the importance of staying in school. Thus they strive to guarantee that their children are as ignorant, uneducated, and narrow-minded as they are. However, their underlying goal is destabilization, a defeat of democracy.

Netanyahu Wants More Wars

2009-05-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

In March, Israeli warplanes bombed some trucks in Sudan, and a Sudanese spokesman said that more than 100 people were killed in the process: "a genocide, committed by US forces." Asked why he thought it was committed by the US, the spokesman replied, "we don't differentiate between the U.S. and Israel. They are all one." (The New York Times 3/27/09) And therein lies our problem.

In its refusal to negotiate a fair peace with the Palestinians, Israel has made enemies world-wide and we bear the consequences, as on 9/11. The Obama administration hopes to change that. As The New York Times editorialized on 5/12/09, "We have seen how former President George W. Bush's delay in engaging seriously on Israeli/Palestinian peace efforts sabotaged United States interests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran by giving Al Qaeda and other extremists a rallying point for anti-Americanism."

Unfortunately, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to procrastinate forever on Palestinian statehood as he expands Israeli settlements and pushes for war with Iran, claiming that removing Iran will lead to Israeli/Palestinian peace. We've heard that one before. This is just what we were told regarding Iraq, i.e., that "the road to Jerusalem leads through Baghdad." As Yogi Berra said, this is deja vu all over again.

On ABC-TV's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos"(5/10/09), National Security Advisor James Jones made the key point that Israel could blunt the Iranian threat by working toward a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian crisis. (The Wall Street Journal 5/12/09) Whereas the Obama administration calls for a two-state solution; whereas Pope Benedict XVI calls for a two-state solution (The New York Times 5/14/09); whereas the UN Security Council unanimously supports a two-state solution and backs the Arab Peace Plan which calls for Israel to end the occupation in return for Arab recognition (The Boston Globe 5/12/09); and whereas Iranian President Ahmadinejad has said that Iran would accept peace with Israel and a two-state solution if endorsed by the Palestinian people (ABC-TV's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" 5/10/09); nevertheless Netanyahu says no. Netanyahu wants more wars.

Netanyahu's Plan

2009-05-07T05:58:00.001-07:00

Rather than bringing about genuine peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to emphasize Palestinian "institution building." This would be laughable if it were not so tragic.

In September 2000, Palestinian President Yassir Arafat warned both Israeli Prime Minister Barak and the Clinton White House against allowing Ariel Sharon to campaign around the Islamic holy sites in Arab East Jerusalem since everyone knew this would trigger violence. Arafat's pleas were ignored though, and Sharon and 1000 Israeli police marched around Haram al-Sharif for half an hour thus triggering the second intifada. This was clearly a purposeful provocative act, and the resulting bloodshed was eventually followed by Israeli bombing of Palestinian police stations, Palestinian security annexes, Palestinian police check points, etc. As Robert Fisk questions in his book The Great War for Civilisation, how could Arafat be expected to make arrests if the Israelis destroyed all his police stations? So much for institution building.

Similarly in 2006, the Israelis targeted Lebanese civilian infrastructure, bombing airports, water and sewage treatment plants, ports, electrical facilities, roads, bridges, etc. (See Mearsheimer and Walt The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.) 16,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Likewise in Gaza, Israel blasted hospitals, schools, factories, sewage plants, police stations, the central prison, institutions such as the parliament and main ministries, not to mention thousands of homes. (See George Bisharat "Israel on Trial" The New York Times 4/4/09) Now to make matters worse, the Israeli blockade does not permit re-building materials, such as cement, to enter Gaza.

It's clear that Netanyahu has put forth this fake plan of institution building as a typical stalling device so that Israel can proceed with the hidden goal of ethnic cleansing. Meanwhile the Israelis continue to demolish Palestinian homes in Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem, and Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank continue to expand.

The Jewish State

2009-05-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is demanding that Israel be recognized as a Jewish State, but what does that mean? Does it mean a Jew-only state which would require accelerated ethnic cleansing of non-Jews? This would certainly please Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who campaigned with such anti-Arab demagoguery. Does it mean an apartheid state such as exists in the Israeli-occupied West Bank with its Jew-only cities connected by Jew-only roads? Does it mean a state in which only Jews have rights?

This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm in which the animals' 7th Commandment "All Animals Are Equal" was later amended to "All Animals Are Equal But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others." At the book's end, the farm creatures gaze in the farmhouse windows, looking from pig to man and from man to pig, and they found it was impossible to say which was which. This is true in Israel where the pig-headed gluttonous avaricious rulers have stolen Palestinian land, resources, and rights.

It is interesting that those who so strongly push the priorities of the Jewish State are the ones who so strongly oppose all Islamic states. And yet before Israel's 1967 war of occupation, secular socialism was widespread in the Arab world. Political Islam gained in favor and power following, and as a reaction to, the illegal Zionist expansion.

The Israel Lobby opposes Islamic states by falsely claiming that Islam is an intrinsically violent religion. However, Philip Jenkins points out that "The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery." (The Boston Sunday Globe 3/8/09) This is of course the Old Testament.

For instance, Moses instructs his followers that when they reach Canaan they should annihilate those who live there: "thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canannites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee." Deuteronomy 20:16-17. So, as also carried out by Napoleon the pig, the 10 commandments were amended.
"Thou Shalt Not Kill" was changed to "Thou shalt Not Kill Except For Those Whose Land You Plan To Steal----Then Commit Genocide."

Religious Genocide

2009-05-04T04:09:00.000-07:00

In 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour declared that Britain supported the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine. At that time there were 56,000 Jews and 600,000 Arabs living in Palestine. (See Avi Shlaim's book The Iron Wall page 7). The Balfour Declaration emphasized, "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

However Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion had other ideas. By 1947 Jews only owned 5.8% of the land in Palestine. Greedy for more, Ben-Gurion established an ethnic cleansing cabal, known as the Consultancy, which devised a "Plan Dalet" in March 1948 to systematically eliminate the Palestinian Arabs through terrorism, mass murder, and expulsion. (See Ilan Pappe's book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.) They were highly successful, killing thousands and creating 800,000 Arab refugees in the first six months alone.

The recent Israeli slaughter of thousands in Lebanon and Gaza is simply a continuation of this genocide. Indeed 80% of Gaza's 1.5 million residents are Palestinian refugees whose families were forced from their homes or fled due to Jewish terror in 1948. (See "Israel Is Committing War Crimes" by Professor George Bisharat Wall Street Journal 1/10-11/09.)

This religious genocide traces back to Biblical times. According to the Old Testament, the ancient Jews believed their God wanted them to commit mass murder in order to steal land. For instance, regarding the Jews' conquest of Jericho, (Joshua 6:21) "And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox,and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword."

Similarly, the Lord tells Saul "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.' (Samuel I 15:3)

And David sings to the daughter of Babylon "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." (Psalms 137:9) Certainly in Gaza we recently saw lots of dead little ones in addition to all others including animals.

It turns out the rabbis played a major role in encouraging this slaughter. As reported in The New York Times 3/22/09, the military's chief rabbi Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, a West Bank settler, told the soldiers not to show mercy to the civilians, preaching that "humanistic' values should be subordinated to the law of the Torah. Gaza was portrayed as a re-enactment of Biblical conquest, slaying non-Jews without mercy at the behest of God. Religious genocide.

The Sunday Talks

2009-04-30T06:09:00.000-07:00

Usually the Sunday TV talk shows dwell on tangential issues but on 4/26/09 they cut to the core. Jordan's King Abdullah II told David Gregory on NBC's Meet the Press that by connecting the dots we can see that all our major foreign policy problems lead back to the Israeli occupations. Until this core issue is solved there will always be instability in the region. Gregory exclaimed in surprise that most Americans believe the core issue is terrorism and al Qaeda. (Of course that's what most Americans believe since that's what the Israel Lobby-dominated media feed them.)

Abdullah pointed out that al Qaeda extremists are able to recruit and expand their numbers primarily because of the Israeli occupation and plight of the Palestinians. (Of course there will always be a few power-hungry radicals, but their power depends on their ability to recruit adherents. Timothy McVeigh, for instance, would have been much harder to isolate and capture if he had been able to recruit an army of followers. We did not need to launch an all-out military offensive to bring him to justice.)

Asked about Iran, Abdullah again said "connect the dots." It all leads to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and occupation of Jerusalem. He noted that 57 nations (one-third of the UN) do not recognize Israel for this reason. If this core issue were resolved, Iran would no longer be a problem. He of course opposes an Israeli attack on Iran.

Meanwhile on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Iranian President Ahmadinejad again said that whatever the Palestinians decide in the way of a peace agreement with Israel "is fine with us." Iran would accept a two-state solution that was supported by the Palestinian people. (So all the scare tactics the Israel Lobby uses to push us to war with Iran are lies. Iran and the rest of the 57 nations which do not recognize Israel would do so if Israel would abide by UN Security Council resolutions and end the illegal occupations. The Israel Lobby prefers war with 57 nations.)

War Crimes

2009-04-28T05:58:00.000-07:00

A February 2008 UN report concluded that Palestinian terrorism is the inevitable result of Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid conditions. This is why, as pointed out by professor George Bisharat (New York Times 4/4/09), many countries do not regard violence against foreign military occupation as terrorism and thus consider Hamas a resistance group.

Although Israelis pulled out of Gaza in 2005, Gaza is still de facto occupied since all land, air, and sea access is blocked, and the Israeli military murders Gazans at will ("targeted assassinations.") Furthermore, Israel has perpetuated a starvation blockade rendering Gaza "a big concentration camp," as accurately described by Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace. (New York Times 1/9/2008) This amounts to collective punishment, a war crime expressively forbidden by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel's recent mass slaughter of helpless Gaza inmates is another war crime. With 1.5 million people crammed into a tiny area, Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth. This makes it easy for Israel to falsely claim that militants "hide" amongst the population. Gaza's high density did not stop the Israeli military from using heavy tank and artillery fire, mortars, rockets, etc., to pulverize heavily populated areas. Civilians were buried alive under rubble as entire neighborhoods were flattened. In addition innocent women and children were shot dead, and ambulances were fired on or forced to turn back as the wounded bled to death. The Israelis left behind their graffiti: "Death to Arabs." (Wall Street Journal 1/28/09). The press was of course denied access so that the Israelis could hide their war crimes.

When the Israelis destroyed a UN compound filled with tons of food and medicine, they said Hamas militants were firing from that compound. Yet the UN officers deny this and state that Israeli liaison offers who had been in constant contact with them had never made such a claim. Indeed, an Israeli army representative privately admitted that the Hamas militants were several hundred yards away from the UN compound. (New York Times 1/16/09). The Israelis also used white phosphorus which is illegal to use in populated areas since it causes horrific deep burns and is very hard to extinguish. Another war crime.

The UN special rapporteur Richard Falk reported that the Israelis killed 1434 Palestinians in Gaza during the recent offensive, of which 960 were civilians and 121 children. (Bisharat, New York Times 4/4/09) On the other hand, the Israeli government stated that during this same period 9 Israeli soldiers were killed, of which four were killed by "friendly" fire from Israeli troops. (The Boston Globe 3/20/09) Now Israel has elected a prime minister who thinks Israel did not kill enough people.

America: Stop Copying Israel

2009-04-03T13:53:00.000-07:00

Because the powerful Israel Lobby dictates unconditional US support for Israel, we have long been targeted by terrorists. After 9/11, Israel Lobby neocons managed to bring about our adoption of Israeli policies such as preemptive wars and invasions, occupations, targeted assassinations, aerial bombings and missile attacks with deaths of civilians, detention of prisoners without habeas corpus, and torture.

Israel has a long history of torture. Amnesty International stated in November 1998 that "there is general acceptance by the international community that Israel has legalised the use of torture." (See Robert Fisk: The Great War for Civilisation) Israel apologist Alan Dershowitz, who of course says he is opposed to torture, nevertheless argues for legalizing it. (See his op-ed "Democrats and Waterboarding" The Wall Street Journal 11/7/07.)

The abuse, torture, and deaths at Abu Ghraib Prison resulted in increased anti-American hatred world-wide. By morphing into Israel we have swelled the ranks of terrorists. Let's hope President Obama reverses this process and restores America values. So far he has made it clear: no torture.

Reneging

2009-04-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

Nations' reneging on deals is not a good basis for world peace. For instance, North Korea was supposed to receive heavy fuel oil in exchange for disabling its nuclear reactor, as discussed in an editorial in The Boston Globe 3/16/09. This fuel has not been delivered. Libya is also complaining that it has not received the weapons and civilian nuclear cooperation it was promised in return for ending its nuclear weapons program (editorial The New York Times (3/15/09).

Meanwhile in Iraq, there has been recent fighting between members of the Sunni Awakening groups and Iraqi/US troops. These Awakening groups are angry because the Iraqi government had promised to enlist one fifth of the 94,000 Awakening members into the Iraqi police, security forces, etc, but only 5,000 have been hired (The New York Times 3/29/09).

Indeed, the recent Gaza slaughter followed the same pattern. President Jimmy Carter explained the origins of the situation in a recent interview on PBS with Charlie Rose. From July 2007 until June 2008, one Israeli had been killed by a Hamas rocket, whereas an average of 49 Palestinians per month were being killed by the Israeli military. On June 19, a ceasefire was started under the conditions that by day 13 Israel would have lifted the starvation blockade on Gaza (food, fuel, medicines, water) by 30% and then up to 100%. Rockets were then stopped 99% by Hamas but Israel only increased food to 20% and then on November 4 the Israeli military attacked Gaza killing six people. The ceasefire of course broke down.

Calling For Investigations

2009-03-31T07:02:00.000-07:00

On the floor of the Senate yesterday (3/30/09), Senator Byron Dorgan called for a select committee in the Senate to investigate the current financial crisis in which individuals made billions while the taxpayer was left funding a bailout in the trillions. He pointed out that in order to prevent this from happening again, we must understand its core and root cause. There could well be financial crimes involved which should be prosecuted.

The same can be said of the activities which led us into the $3 trillion unnecessary war with Iraq. An investigation is crucial to prevent this from happening again. Even as we speak, The Economist (3/28/09) reports, President Obama "is being badgered by fiercely pro-Israeli groups" to give the green light for an Israeli attack against Iran.

Yet Defense Secretary Gates, appearing 3/29/09 on Fox News Sunday, stated that there is no evidence that Iran can make a nuclear bomb, which requires highly enriched uranium. They do have enough low-enriched uranium (suitable for fuel), which could be further enriched, but there is no evidence that they are able to do this. The IAEA is there, and "we do not believe they are enriching beyond a low level."

Due to our biased support for Israel, her heinous actions invariably boomerang back on us, as in 9/11. Speaking of core and root causes, Israel's illegal oppressive occupations are the underlying cause of anti-American terrorism. Also, the vast sums of money and manpower necessary to combat this terrorism has resulted in the diversion of funds and resources of the FBI, etc., from other important activities such as the investigation of financial crime, as reported in The New York Times 3/26/09. This means a a decrease in our ability to combat corporate and financial fraud, including money laundering, bank, mortgage and securities fraud, etc. All this has been very convenient for the looters of the financial system.

The robber barons who looted our financial system and the Israel Lobby neocons who concocted the false intelligence to lie us into war have one important thing in common. They couldn't care less about the United States of America, its values or its future. We desperately need these investigations now.

Absolute Power

2009-03-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

A certain Lord Acton famously wrote that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This well characterizes the Israel Lobby. As Charles Freeman, whose appointment as intelligence chief was derailed by the Lobby, wrote on 3/10/09, "The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth."

An a example of this is The Wall Street Journal (3/11/09) which reported "Critics also attacked a comment in which Mr. Freeman said the Chinese government was too slow to crack down on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989." Fareed Zakaria, in interviewing Freeman on CNN's GPS (3/15/09) put up this quote attributed to Freeman: "the response to the mob scene at Tiananmen Square stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership." Freeman then explained that the Lobby had deviously left out the first part of the sentence, which was in fact the subject of the sentence, which makes it clear that Freeman was describing the dominant Chinese views and not his own views.

Freeman told Zakaria that the Israel Lobby, which he prefers to call the Likud Lobby, since it represents the hard right wing views, has a "hammerlock on both public discussion and policy. The objective of their campaign against me was to reinforce that hammerlock, to enforce the taboo against any critical discussion of Israeli policies and what they might mean for Israel's future or the future of the US......" The Lobby acted "to reinforce their veto power over appointments to the government, to ensure that analysis was not value free but pro-Israeli in orientation, and to some extent anti-Arab....."

As Freeman wrote on 3/10/09, he has been under attack "by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction of a foreign country." "It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country..." The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views..." This Lobby is "intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government."

Freeman and the Lobby

2009-03-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

Recently, the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, appointed former ambassador Charles Freeman to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which oversees the writing of the National Intelligence Estimates, etc. The Israel Lobby then threw a hysterical fit because for a moment it looked as if these Israel-firsters would not be able to fix the intelligence around their war-mongering policies so as to drag us into war with Iran as they had so easily been able to do with regard to Iraq, based on their manipulated faulty intelligence.

You see, Charles Freeman is one of the few who sees the big picture. He has even bravely stated the big truth, namely that it is our unwavering support of Israel's occupation and brutal oppression of the Palestinians which is the primary reason for America's terrorism problem. Americans are not supposed to know this, of course.

On February 19, Steve Rosen, who is awaiting trial on charges of spying for Israel while working for AIPAC, began to campaign against Freeman. Then other Israel Lobby members jumped on his bandwagon: Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Steve Israel telephoned Rahm Emanuel at the White House, Senator Joe Lieberman, The Zionist Organization of America, The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, etc., all joined in.

As pointed out by Walter Pincus in The Washington Post (3/12)/09), a lot of lobbying was done in the dark. As an example, he notes that although AIPAC officially claimed it was not involved, AIPAC's spokesman Josh Block had spoken to multiple journalists and "provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him."

Seventeen former ambassadors wrote of their support for Freeman in The Wall Street Journal on March 3, 2009. At a Senate hearing March 10, Admiral Blair strongly supported Freeman but subsequently, Freeman withdrew and posted an explanatory statement.

Freeman wrote that "there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East." "I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States."

Lest We Forget: Jewish Terrorism

2009-01-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

Currently our policy is: don't talk to terrorists. But isn't that hypocritical, considering the fact that terrorists have become our allies? Take, for instance, Jewish terrorism. Israel was actually born out of terrorism. Notorious Jewish terror groups such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang attacked the British as well as the Palestinian Arabs who had lived there 1300 years.

In 1946 the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killing 91. The Stern Gang assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish UN mediator, in 1948. The Irgun and the Stern Gang played major roles in the 1948 terrorist ethnic cleansing of Arab civilians, as is well-documented, village-by-village, in the book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. This included the massacre of the Arab village of Deir Yassin in which thirty babies were slaughtered while their mothers were raped and killed, along with many others. The massacre was proudly advertised by the Jewish leadership in order to sow terror and induce other Arabs to flee.

The leader of the Stern Gang was future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and future Israeli prime Minister Menachem Begin commanded the Irgun. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led a commando unit which blew up a building in the Arab village of Kibya killing 69 Palestinians including women and children. Twenty years later, Ariel "The Butcher of Lebanon" Sharon, then Israeli Defense Minister, was held accountable for the cold-blooded 1982 massacre of more than a thousand defenseless Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. For this Sharon was forbidden by the Israeli government from ever again becoming Defense Minister. Instead he became Israeli Prime Minister, being elected after he started the 2nd intifada (Palestinian uprising) by ostentatiously parading around the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Palestinian President Arafat had begged then Prime Minister Barak not to allow this provocation by candidate Sharon, since Arafat wanted to prevent the predictable violent reaction, but Barak refused.

Question: why is it that terrorists can become Israeli Prime Ministers and yet the policy is not to talk to terrorists?

Answer: the term terrorist is reserved for enemies of Israel's occupation.

Zionist Dissemination of Faulty Pro-War Intelligence

2009-01-22T07:28:00.000-08:00

The former president George W. Bush said recently that his biggest regret was the faulty intelligence (which took us to war with Iraq under false pretenses). A major source of this false pro-war material came from the Pentagon office of former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, as documented in the February 9, 2007 report of the Department of Defense Inspector General (Report No. 07-INTEL-04). This report found that Feith's office had expanded its role from policy to "analyzing and disseminating alternative intelligence." This "alternative intelligence" included conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community but were nevertheless disseminated to senior White House decision makers to whom the alternative intelligence was "shown as intelligence products" without clearly showing their variance with the consensus of the Intelligence Community.

As James Bamford notes in his book A Pretext for War, Douglas Feith has long been known as a Zionist zealot, publicly advocating Jewish settlement expansion in occupied Palestine and opposing peace processes such as Oslo and Camp David. In 1996 Feith joined with fellow Zionists Richard Perle and David Wurmser to produce an Israeli strategy paper "A Clean Break" for then Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. This strategy paper advocated overthrowing Saddam Hussein to benefit Israel. In 2003 this came to pass, at the great cost of American blood and treasure, because the American people were deceived by false intelligence.

Feith's office presented briefings to senior policy makers which went beyond the available intelligence and asserted that an alleged al-Qaida/Iraq Prague meeting in April 2001 was a "known contact." This unconfirmed meeting between lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer al-Ani actually never occurred but was used by senior Bush administration officials in pushing us into the unnecessary war with Iraq. Feith's office drew false conclusions about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida such as that "intelligence indicates cooperation in all categories;" that there is a "mature, symbiotic relationship with "shared interest and pursuit of WMD," and also said there were "indications of possible Iraqi coordination with al Qaida specifically related to 9/11." These statements were at variance with the conclusions of the Intelligence Community.

Feith's office furthermore did not notify the Intelligence Community of their presentations at which they further "undercut" the Intelligence Community by declaring that the Intelligence Community had "fundamental problems" assessing information. The American people were misled by the Zionists into thinking that Saddam Hussein, whom the Israel-firsters wished to depose to benefit Israel, was a threat to the United States. (He was not.) And thus we embarked on the greatest foreign policy blunder in US history.

Olmert Tells It Like It Is (Again)

2009-01-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

The New York Times reports (1/13/09) that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is boasting that he insisted President Bush order Secretary of State Rice not to vote for the recent UN Security Council Gaza cease-fire resolution. Olmert says he demanded to speak to Bush even though Bush was in the middle of a speech and that Bush "got off the podium" to take Olmert's phone call. Olmert, aware that Rice had helped draft the resolution, brags that Rice was "left pretty embarrassed" when Bush followed Olmert's command and directed Rice to abstain. (The UN Security Council cease-fire resolution passed 14-0 with the US abstaining.)

One has to admire Olmert for telling it like it is, even if it is politically incorrect. The Israel Lobby is always denying that it controls US foreign policy against the interests of the United States. However, as professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt document in their best-selling book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, the Israel Lobby does have undue influence, and this has been damaging to America.

Take the Iraq War, for instance. The Israel Lobby neocons disseminated false intelligence to sell the war to the White House and the American people so as to benefit Israel. This war, whose long-term cost is estimated at $3 trillion, all borrowed, is considered the greatest foreign policy blunder in our nation's history. The Israel Lobby busily tried to deny that the war benefited Israel, but here again Olmert came right out and said "The Iraq War was a boon for Israel's security" and "Thank God for the power and the determination and leadership manifested by President Bush." (Reuters, 11/22/06)

In September 2008, Olmert stated publicly that in order to have peace, Israel must withdraw from occupied East Jerusalem and almost all of the West Bank. He also criticized the violence of the West Bank Jewish settlers labeling it an "evil wind of extremism." (Los Angeles Times 9/30/08) Olmert is correct: evil extremism is the root of our problems.

How To Stop Hamas Rockets

2009-01-17T05:39:00.000-08:00

The July 29, 2008 Rand report found that most terrorist groups end by means other than military force, such as by joining the political process. For instance, the Catholic terrorist group IRA, which had sworn to eliminate wee Northern Ireland (majority Protestant) by incorporating it into the much larger Irish Republic (almost all Catholic), was brought into the political process. Through diplomacy the situation was resolved, and there is finally peace in Northern Ireland.

Hamas has also tried to join the political process and won the internationally sanctioned 2006 elections in Palestine. As President Jimmy Carter wrote in The New York Times 4/28/08, Hamas "gained a reputation for effective and honest administration" and "proposed a unity government with Fatah."

Unfortunately, the Israel Lobby/neocon-dominated Bush administration's no talk policy meant no diplomacy for Palestine. After heavily financing Fatah in the elections, we then heavily armed them so as to bring about a civil war. (Note: fomenting civil wars among Muslims has been a longstanding Israeli strategy, as expressed by Oded Yinon in 1982.)

Promoting a Fatah/Hamas civil war successfully resulted in the isolation of Hamas in the prison called Gaza where Israeli assassination squads could continue murdering Hamas leaders not only in Gaza but in the West Bank as well.

As President Jimmy Carter pointed out (The New York Times 4/28/08), Hamas had agreed to accept any peace agreement negotiated by Israel and Fatah's President Abbas as long as it was approved by the Palestinian people in a referendum. (Note: Speaking at Columbia University, Iran's president Ahmadinejad said Iran would also respect such a peace deal.)

Hamas does not recognize the current Israeli regime but then neither do numerous Arab/Muslim states. Under the Arab League Peace Plan, these countries have pledged to finally recognize Israel when Israel complies with UN resolutions and ends its illegal occupations.

As Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi noted in The New York Times 1/08/09, the June cease-fire between Hamas and Israel was supposed to mean that both the starvation blockade of Gaza and the Israeli assassinations ended. They did not. In November, six Hamas members were killed, and the cease-fire broke down.

Israel's mass murder of civilians in Gaza is serving to increase world-wide anti-Semitism and anti-American terrorism. The only way to stop these rockets is through a comprehensive fair and just peace settlement such as the Arab League Peace Plan.

Israelis Idea of a Fun Time

2009-01-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

As reported in The Wall Street Journal 1/08/09, Israelis now love to picnic on hilltops watching with binoculars the ongoing Israeli military massacres in the death camp called Gaza. Most of the 1.5 million captive Palestinians in tiny Gaza are from families herded there following the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Jewish terrorists. The current offensive is a continuation of this ethnic cleansing/genocide.

Israel attempts to justify the massive numbers of civilians it is slaughtering by claiming Hamas uses human shields, but the truth is that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth with its inmates packed in like sardines in a tin can. The Israelis have shelled schools, hospitals, and, yesterday, the UN headquarters where 700 Palestinian civilians were sheltered and thousands of gallons of fuel stored.

Israel claimed that Hamas militants were firing from within the UN headquarters but UN officials strongly deny this and point out that Israeli liaison officers, with whom they were in constant contact, never mentioned this concern to them (The New York Times 1/16/09) .

Furthermore, the Israelis used white phosphorus on the UN headquarters despite the fact that it has been outlawed as a weapon: such use amounts to chemical warfare resulting in horrific burns. Its only legal use is for illumination in non-densely-populated areas.

The Israeli UN bombing also destroyed hundreds of tons of food and medicine desperately needed by the suffering Palestinians. A few days earlier CNN showed an injured Palestinian woman in a hospital crying because her 6-month-old baby had died from lack of food and water due to the Israeli starvation blockade. BBC newscasts have also shown Gazans burned with white phosphorus and Palestinian children with multiple bullets in their brains. All this provides more fun times for the Israeli hilltop picnickers who can then go home and for dessert watch on TV the morbid close-up details of mangled and dead Palestinian women and children.

The 9/11/Gaza Cover-up

2009-01-05T05:21:00.000-08:00

After 9/11, NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani refused a $10 million donation to World Trade Center victims' families because the Saudi prince donor planned to tell the American people the truth about the cause of anti-American hatred. Indeed, TV talk show hosts and print journalists have lost their jobs for daring to speak the truth. And one has to really dig in the 567 pages of The 9/11 Commission Report to discover (page 147) that the mastermind of 9/11 said he hated us because of our pro-Israeli foreign policy.

Similarly, the truth of the American-supported illegal and inhumane Israeli policies in Palestine is covered-up in the current reporting and media discussion of events in Gaza. We are led to believe by the Israel Lobby-dominated media that "righteous democratic" Israel was just sitting there innocently minding its own business when rockets came sailing over the wall "for no reason," as the Israeli president told us on ABC's "This Week" yesterday.

The neocon Israel Lobby narrative always begins with the rockets and not with the ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid policies, targeted assassinations, expanding settlements, continuing confiscation of Arab land, and incarceration in Gaza of 1.5 million people lacking vital necessities due to a long-standing economic blockade. These people can have no hope of the unified economically viable Palestinian state to which they have been entitled for 60 years if greedy Israel continues to have its way.

There is no cover-up in the rest of the world, however. The Arab media, for instance, shows live unedited footage of mangled hacked-up bloodied bodies of bombed children imprisoned in the jail called Gaza. This is never to be seen on US TV which has been "sanitized." The Israel Lobby-dominated media also has censured the coverage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, of course, the lies and "fixed" intelligence which pushed us into the unnecessary war with Iraq, fought on behalf of Israel, were also hidden from the American people.

Just as there were world-wide demonstrations against our invasion of Iraq, there are now world-wide anti-Israel and anti-US demonstrations protesting the US-supported Israeli bombing of the imprisoned starving Palestinians tragically trapped in Gaza. Blocking a UN ceasefire resolution, we give Israel a green light to continue its ethnic cleansing/genocide in Palestine. This is how Israel solves its "demographic" problem.

Auschwitz-Gaza

2009-01-05T04:49:00.000-08:00

Hitler illegally occupied his neighbors, and Israel illegally occupies Palestine and parts of Syria and Lebanon. Nazi Germany was a racist state, and so is Israel with its ethnic cleansing of native Palestinian Arabs who have lived there 1300 years. In occupied Palestine there are expanding Jew-only settlements connected by Jew-only roads which serve to constrict, disconnect, and isolate the Palestinian people. Gaza is a massive Nazi-like concentration camp where 1.5 million inmates are crowded into a tiny narrow strip of land sealed off from the outside world. Israel controls the air, land, and sea walling off the prison. There has been an inhumane economic blockade for 18 months, not lifted despite Hamas cease-fires which were broken, as usual, by Israel's targeted assassinations. Now Israel is bombing and invading this captive population which has grossly inadequate food, water, and medical necessities. In the Israelis' goal of killing all those who hate them, they of course increase the hatred by infinite multiples.

Meanwhile the US is blocking a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire, just as we delayed a ceasefire in Israel's 2006 trashing of Lebanon, so as to give the Israeli murderers more time to kill and maim innocent Lebanese civilians. As professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out in their 2006 best-selling book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, between 1972 and 2006, the US vetoed 42 UN Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel. It is not surprising that the rest of the world identifies us with Israel, and that there are currently world-wide demonstrations against Israel's bombing of Auschwitz.

Is Israel A Racist State?

2008-12-24T09:17:00.000-08:00

A subject much discussed these days is: is Israel a racist state? Israel and the U.S. walked out of the U.N.'s 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban because there had been criticism of Israel, and Israel has already refused to attend a follow-up conference in Geneva April 2009.
In Durban, Israel's policies had been described as "apartheid," a situation well-documented subsequently by President Jimmy Carter in his 2006 best-selling book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.

Israel claims to be both a "democracy" and a "Jewish state," but the problem is that when the U.N. carved Israel out of Palestine, the land was already populated by Arabs who had lived there 1300 years. A writer, whose letter to the editor was published in The Wall Street Journal 12/10/07, stated that although he had been taught in Hebrew School that Jews returned to an empty land, he later discovered the truth. Early Jewish leaders had ethnically cleansed out the Arab population through terrorism, massacres, and mass expulsion, as documented in Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's important 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. After six months in 1948 there were 800,000 Palestinian Arab refugees. However, large numbers of Arabs remain and are referred to as the "demographic problem." Arabs in Israel are not granted the same rights as Jewish citizens. After 60 years Israel still has no constitution because of the impossibility of reconciling "democracy" with "Jewish state" given the "demographic problem."

Although Arabs have agreed to a just peace, as in the Arab Peace Plan, Israel refuses to end its illegal occupation and colonization. Meanwhile Jewish "settlers" keep grabbing Palestinian Arab land, expanding "settlements" connected by Jews-only roads, and attacking Arabs, their homes, and crops. Even murder of Arabs leads to scant punishment, as documented in the book Lords of the Land, written by Israeli scholars, Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar. On the other hand, the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din reported that West Bank Palestinian Arabs receive almost automatic conviction, being convicted 99.7% of the time. (AP 1/7/08)

This Palestinian Holocaust-In-Slow-Motion can be visualized as collective macro-torture with a mammoth vise implacably closing in on a population which can be murdered at will, reminiscent of the Pit and the Pendulum.

One might say: so what? What does this matter to Americans? Yet even those who do not subscribe to the "I'm my brother's keeper" philosophy might consider that our support of Israel-right-or-wrong has meant that in the Arab/Muslim world, America is identified with Israel.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, says his hatred of us is due to our bias in favor of Israel (see The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 147). The same thing was said by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nephew Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center attack and vowed to return (see James Bamford's A Pretext for War). Being considered Israel's Siamese twin, it's crucial that we work to rectify Israel's racist apartheid policies by pushing for a just Israeli/Palestinian peace.

Iraq War: Don't Blame Big Oil

2008-12-17T10:44:00.000-08:00

Although it has been very fashionable to claim we invaded Iraq for oil, the truth is that it was the Israel Lobby, not the oil lobby, which pushed for war. Unlike pro-Israel strategists who seek to trash and destabilize Israel's many enemies, Big Oil prefers stability which is better for business.

As stressed in three recent books: John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy; James Petras' The Power of Israel in the United States; and Stephen J. Sniegoski's The Transparent Cabal---The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, it is not the oil companies who are the war-mongers. In fact, it's quite the opposite: oil companies have a history of lobbying to repeal sanctions on so-called rogue states in order to facilitate oil industry investment and development.

Furthermore, the oil companies were not the ones who manipulated the intelligence to trick us into the preemptive unnecessary war with Iraq, whose long-term cost is estimated to be $3 trillion by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. On the other hand, Zionist neocons, who had previously written strategy papers for Israel, such as "A Clean Break" in 1996, advocating preemptive Middle East wars to benefit Israel, formed a network at the highest levels in the Bush administration from which emanated the now-discredited pro-war garbage parroted by Cheney and Bush. These Israel Lobby neocons are ideologically linked to the far-right Israeli Likud Party war-mongers who serve to make the racist apartheid occupation of Palestine permanent. No land for peace.

In contrast, peace is what benefits Big Oil. Indeed, the entire global economy requires stability and peace to achieve its best results. Oil-rich states have long been willing to make a just peace with Israel: the 2002 Saudi Peace Plan, now known as the Arab Peace Plan, was accepted by Saddam Hussein as well as by Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat. Iranian leaders and Hamas leaders have likewise said they would abide by any peace settlement acceptable to the Palestinians.

Such a peace would not only end anti-American terrorism, but would also take the pressure off the requirement for a shotgun approach to our energy crisis. Developing alternative energy sources is important but doing it right requires time and money, currently in short supply. In the meantime, there is abundant Middle East oil and all these countries eager to sell it. Tragically, Israel rejects peace by refusing to relinquish stolen Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese land and therefore hates to see even one penny paid to its enemies for oil.

Iraq's Farewell Kiss

2008-12-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad to boast about his legacy and to sign the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). However, Bush's surprise was a 28-year-old journalist, Muntader al Zaidi, who hurled his shoes at Bush, shouting that this was a "farewell kiss" to the "dog" from "the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq." These mother-of-all-insults are designed to portray Bush as not only less-than-human but also as lower and filthier than the dirt under one's shoes.

As Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski points out in his outstanding 2008 book The Transparent Cabal---The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, the neocons' motive in taking us to war was to create instability in Iraq to benefit Israel. Israeli and neocon strategists have long promoted the destabilization and fragmentation of Israel's many enemies.

For example, Sniegowski cites the important work of Israeli Oded Yinon entitled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," published in the World Zionist Organization's Kivunim February 1982, which advocated the dissolution of Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula, along ethnic/religious lines. The goal was to create numerous small powerless statelets so that Israel could reign supreme.

The blatant lack of planning by the neocons for post-war Iraq is thus explained by the fact that the neocons wanted instability. This would be an excuse for a prolonged or permanent occupation by US forces, which in turn would serve as a base from which to wage war on Israel's other enemies, such as Iran.

Ironically, the SOFA which Bush came to sign stipulates not only that our forces leave on a scheduled timeline, but also that we not use Iraq as a base from which to attack Iraq's neighbors, such as Iran. Moreover, Bush's legacy of horrible suffering inflicted on the Iraq people returned to him in the form of two shoes.

The Neocon Dilemma

2008-12-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

A brilliantly colorful full-page advertisement in The New York Times 11/10/08 features flags of over 50 countries which have endorsed the Arab Peace Initiative calling for Israel to end the occupation of Palestine in return for peace and normalization of relations with all these countries. Like Hamas, many countries do not recognize Israel because of its brutal racist apartheid occupation, which is in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 242, etc.

Since the Israel Lobby/neocons have no intention of ending this occupation, their dilemma is: which country do we go to war with next? Or better still, which country do we pressure America into fighting next?

Of course, it appears that what the Israel Lobby/neocons really want is a world-wide conflagration pitting Israel, the US, India, Georgia and whatever other countries they can enlist against the Arab/Muslim world, especially Pakistan, Syria, and Iran, plus Russia and whoever else dares defy this neocon alliance.

This is why the neocons are so excited at the prospect of re-starting the Cold War with Russia: the US and Israel armed Georgia who complied by firing missiles into South Ossetia, where there are internationally sanctioned Russian peace keepers, on August 7, 2008. The Russians responded as expected. Now the neocons are pushing for Georgia to join NATO and for the US to further provoke Russia with missiles and missile shields at Russia's doorstep. The US and Israel have also grandstanded relations with India, including highly publicized nuclear deals, along with flamboyant Indian investment in Afghanistan, which is highly unsettling to Pakistan.

It is noteworthy that the recent Mumbai attacks included targeting a Jewish center. The surviving terrorist, Azam Amir Kasab, said the attack on the Chabad House was to avenge Israeli atrocities in Palestine.

Rather than promoting peace between India and Pakistan and between Israel and the Arab/Muslim world, the Israel Lobby/neocons clearly prefer endless war.

Sand Niggers

2008-11-16T10:20:00.000-08:00

As reported in The Boston Globe 11/14/08, Benjamin Emanuel, father of Barack Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, told an Israeli newspaper that obviously his son would influence Obama to be pro-Israel, "Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to be mopping floors at the White House!" Rahm Emanuel served in the Israeli army, and his father Benjamin was in the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe documents some of the activities of the Irgun in his 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. In March 1948, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion and ten others devised a plan for the systematic expulsion of native Palestinians from the land where these Arabs had lived for 1300 years. The terrorist group Irgun played a major role in this plan which involved bombarding Arab villages and villagers, burning and demolishing homes, planting mines, carrying out massacres, mass murder of innocent civilians, torture, throwing bombs into crowds, shooting villagers in their beds at night, blowing up inhabited houses at night, destroying crops, olive groves, citrus groves, etc. The idea was not only to terrorize the population but also to incite a desire for retaliation so as to provide an excuse for even greater violence in a situation characterized by a huge mismatch of power. Thousands of Arabs died and in six months there were 800,000 Palestinian refugees. The native Palestinians had no chance.

If Americans had been informed about this ethnic cleansing, 9/11 would not have been a surprise. However, the Israel Lobby-dominated media has prevented this truth from coming out, as journalists such as Robert Fisk well know. In his book The Great War for Civilisation, Fisk complains that one of the most depressing experiences in his long career has been trying to report on the unjust displacement of the Palestinians. He writes, "those of us who witnessed Israel's killing of civilians were to be abused as liars, anti-Semites, or friends of 'terrorism.' " (p. 378) Jewish terrorism was never allowed to be called terrorism.

Zionists not only cover up Jewish terrorism against Palestinians but also traditionally have treated the native Palestinians the way white racists have treated the blacks. Indeed, in an article "Among the Settlers. Will they destroy Israel?" (The New Yorker 5/31/2004), Jeffrey Goldberg reports that across the door of a closed Palestinian shop in the West Bank is written "Arabs Are Sand Niggers." Presumably they are expected to mop the floors.

The World Waits

2008-11-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

Before 9/11, Israel was the most hated country in the world. This is understandable considering Israel's longstanding brutal occupation of Palestine which followed its 1948 ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians. West Bank Palestinians now live in apartheid conditions in which rabid Jewish "settlers" pillage and murder at will. No wonder, as stated in The 9/11 Commission Report, p.147, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, based his hated of America on our biased support of Israel. Osama bin Laden also listed US sponsorship of the Israeli occupation as one of his three reasons for anti-US hatred leading to 9/11. The other two reasons, US troops in Saudi Arabia and the deadly sanctions imposed on Iraq, no longer exist. Yet after 9/11, America engendered more anti-US hatred by effectively morphing into Israel: invading, trashing, and occupying Muslim lands. Now it is the US which is the most hated country in the world. Like Israel, we bomb innocent civilians thus creating more terrorists in the process.

A July 29, 2008 Rand report noted that our so-called War on Terror has been a failure. "Al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, than it was during its prior history and the group's attacks since then have spanned an increasingly broader range of targets in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa..." The Rand Study found that most terrorist groups end by joining the political process or by being eliminated through police and intelligence efforts, not by military force. Surely the Bush administration has been dominated by war-mongering neocons, and thus it has often been said that the American people are good, it is just our government which is bad. Now the world is hoping that the election of Barack Obama will bring about change consistent with true American values. The US plans to withdraw from Iraq, and there is now talk of negotiations towards peace with the Taliban. However, it must be recognized that not only must US/foreign troops be removed from Iraq and Afghanistan, more important is ending the root cause of anti-American hatred and terrorism, namely the Israeli occupation. Barack Obama has promised that Israeli/Arab peace will be a major goal from the start of his administration. The world waits.

War With Iran, Part 6

2008-07-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

In interviews with NBC's Brian Williams, Sept 06 and July 08, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad commented on certain US hypocrisies. For instance, although we ignore the fact that Israel has hundreds of nuclear warheads with no UN inspections, we will not allow Iran to have a peaceful nuclear energy program with UN inspections. Williams had observed that in Iran today there are two hour lines for gasoline. President Ahmadinejad pointed out that nuclear energy is clean, renewable, environmentally friendly, and that all nations should be entitled to possess it. This would serve to bring down the high cost of oil. Regarding terrorism, Ahmadinejad noted that the US had not only supported Saddam's horrendous war brought against Iran in the 80's, but the US also supported terrorists who killed Iranian authorities and officials.

In The New Yorker, July 7/14 2008, Seymour Hersh informs us that in late 2007, Congress agreed to provide $400 million for covert operations to fund and arm terrorists inside Iran aimed at regime change. These operations include supporting al-Qaeda-related groups such as the Baluchi fundamentalists, whose members include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, and his nephew Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Our money, arms, and communications gear also go to groups such as the Jundallah, a violent Salafi organization whose followers attend the same madrassas as the Taliban; the M.E.K., a group on the State Department's terrorist list, and PJAK, a Kurdish terrorist group based in Northern Iraq which attacks not only Iran but also Turkey. In other words, our tax dollars go towards terrorism, kidnapping, rendition, torture, and targeted assassinations. Yet Bush, the Master Hypocrite, says he's fighting the War on Terror.

War With Iran, Part 5

2008-07-10T06:57:00.000-07:00

Last month Israel put on a big aerial show which was recognized to be a trial run for a pre-emptive attack on Iran. No wonder oil prices are sky-rocketing: the oil speculators realize that war with Iran would drastically cut off oil supplies. All Iran has to do is to sink one ship in order to block the narrow Strait of Hormuz through which 40% of all globally traded oil is shipped. Indeed Iran has promised to do this if attacked. As reported in The Wall Street Journal 7/7/08, "Some investment houses were saying last week that it was more likely than not that a war with Iran would break out this fall."

Certainly Bush, Lieberman, McCain and the other neocon Death Eaters are dead set on war with Iran. They are terrified at the prospect of an Obama presidency since Obama favors diplomacy. Death Eaters are allergic to diplomacy. Iran is hated by the Zionist neocons because Iran supports Hamas and Hezbollah who are considered freedom fighters in their resistance to Israel's detested occupation.

Iran occupies no country and has not invaded another country in centuries. Furthermore, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, speaking at Columbia University 9/24/07, stated that Iran would accept any peace with Israel accepted by the Palestinians. Thus the root of our problems is the Israeli occupation. This is why The Iraq Study Group Report stresses the importance of Israeli/Palestinian peace and also recommends diplomacy with Iran and Syria.

War With Iran, Part 4

2008-06-09T06:13:00.000-07:00

Now that Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee, the war-mongering US Israel Lobby knows it may only have until early January to pressure the Bush administration into bringing about another unnecessary war, also, of course, on false pretenses. John McCain, the Republican nominee happily sings "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," but Obama vows to meet not only with leaders who are our friends, but also with leaders from countries such as Iran and Syria.

As outlined in The Iraq Study Group Report, meetings with Iran and Syria are necessary to produce stability in Iraq. Obama plans to withdraw from Iraq, whereas McCain says he wouldn't mind staying there 100 years. McCain ignores the fact that our presence as a foreign occupying force serves to produce instability.

Meanwhile a long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report documents the fact that Bush and Cheney misrepresented and exaggerated intelligence to the American people in order to sell their unnecessary war with Iraq. (My word for this is lying.) For instance, as noted in a The New York Times editorial 6/6/08, Cheney stated 8/29/02 that there was no doubt Saddam was amassing WMD to use "against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Yet the Senate report found that "there was no evidence that Mr. Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, and the intelligence community never said there was." It's clear that just as this administration concocted evidence to railroad us into an unnecessary war with Iraq, it is now concocting evidence to railroad us into an unnecessary war with Iran.

War With Iran, Part 3

2008-04-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

Heard at recent Congressional hearings on Iraq were more alarm bells warning of war with Iran, much to the delight of the Israel Lobby. General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker seemed obsessed with Iranian influence in Iraq. Apparently it is fine for us to invade and occupy a country which had done nothing to us, thereby bringing about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its innocent citizens, but now we must also insist on no Iranian influence in our beloved occupation. Indeed we are now using "Iranian influence" as an excuse never to leave. It so happens that the Iraqi government we are responsible for creating is friends with Iran. Horrors! It also so happens that many Iraqi government officials were in exile in Iran for years during Saddam's rule. There are strong cultural ties between the two neighbors; Iranians in large numbers make religious pilgrimages into Iraq. In their testimony, Petraeus and Crocker described Iranian training, funding, and arming of so-called "special groups," claiming these groups are killing our soldiers. Yet Iraqis have made it clear that they do not want their country to be a battleground between Iran and the US. It's bad enough that our invasion brought in Al Qaeda, which the Iraqis had successfully managed to keep out before. Although the obvious solution is for us to end our occupation and withdraw from Iraq, it's equally clear that the Israel Lobby plans to use our Iraqi occupation as a staging ground from which to attack Iran.

War With Iran, Part 2

2008-03-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

When Admiral William Fallon took over Central Command from General John Abizaid in March 2007, it looked ominously as if the neocons had the US Navy poised to bombard Iran as it did Lebanon in 1983. However, Admiral Fallon turned out to be a man of wisdom and integrity, not the war-monger the Israel Lobby had hoped for. Indeed, as reported in yesterday's The Wall Street Journal, Admiral Fallon argued "publicly that the White House's hard-line rhetoric and implied threats of military force against Iran were dangerous and unproductive." He also said an attack on Iran "would be a mistake." Similarly, Barack Obama, unlike Hillary Clinton and John McCain, favors diplomacy over unnecessary wars. Obama has pledged to meet with Iranian leaders. An article about Fallon in the current Esquire magazine by Thomas P. M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, is entitled "The Man Between War and Peace." Now Admiral Fallon has abruptly resigned, and it looks as if Barack Obama is the only man between war and peace. The is why the Israel Lobby is trying to destroy Obama.

War With Iran, Part 1

2008-03-11T15:04:00.000-07:00

Although most American Jews are peace-loving, normal people, there is a powerful minority of ultramilitaristic Zionists who control the agenda. As professors Mearsheimer and Walt demonstrate in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, this radical lobby has a strong control over the politicians and the media. Just as the Israel Lobby successfully lied us into an unnecessary war with Iraq, it is now hankering for war with Iran, also to benefit Israel. Thus, the Lobby ranks the presidential candidates in order of the likelihood that his or her election would result in war with Iran. Their favorite is John McCain who is so militaristic he thinks we should never have left Vietnam, a battleground of the Cold War which produced the cold dead bodies of 50,000 US troops. To the chagrin of the neocons, the Cold War ended diplomatically, not militarily. The Lobby's least favorite candidate is Barack Obama who opposed the Iraq War from the start. Whereas McCain is often termed "Bush-on-steroids," Obama is the "Anti-Bush," and Hillary Clinton is "Bush-lite." The war-mongering Lobby likes Hillary because she voted for the 2002 Lieberman-Warner-McCain Resolution authorizing war with Iraq and more importantly, the 2006 Lieberman-Kyl Resolution giving a green light to attacking Iran. As former candidate Mike Gravel pointed out on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer on 10/1/07, it was the Israel Lobby, specifically AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, which was behind the Iran resolution. Furthermore, Hillary faithfully follows the neocon " no diplomatic talks without preconditions" policy, which translates to no diplomacy. Diplomacy is anathema to the war-mongers.

God's Warriors

2008-01-26T06:33:00.000-08:00

In August 2007, CNN presented a three-part documentary "God's Warriors," which featured extremist elements in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Israel Lobby immediately complained since apparently in their view Jewish extremists are not extreme. Indeed, the Israel Lobby sees nothing wrong with fanatic Jewish "settlers" building colonies in occupied Palestinian land even though this is against international law, UN resolutions, and the Geneva Convention.

UN Security Council Resolution 242 (November 22, 1967) reads "Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." (See Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" p. 217-218) Amazingly, the Israel Lobby claims that this UN resolution only calls for withdrawal from some, not all, of the occupied Palestinian territory! The Lobby's interpretation is ridiculous and clearly goes against the spirit of not only the UN resolution but of the UN Charter as well. The resolution does not read "Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war sometimes or to some extent"! It obviously means that such acquisition is never admissible.

Furthermore, the Fourth Geneva Convention "forbids an occupying power from transferring any parts of its civilian population into territories seized by military force."(See Carter p. 193) Therefore, Israel should return to the 1967 borders and evacuate the apartheid settlements, all of which are illegal under international law.

The religious zealots exposed in this excellent documentary claim that the Bible justifies their illegal and violent acts. Such people must be denounced no matter what religion they practice. In the media we hear loud calls for Muslims to speak out against Muslim radicals, but where are the calls for Jews to speak out against Jewish radicals? Incidentally, the next time I saw this series on TV, only the two parts on Christian and Muslim extremists were shown.

Gaza: An Israeli Prison Camp

2008-01-25T05:30:00.000-08:00

A 1949 film "Act of Violence," shown recently on TV, revolves around an attempted escape of hungry desperate inmates from a Nazi prison camp. Currently on TV, we are witnessing a mass escape from Gaza, the Israeli prison camp, whose 1.5 million inmates are also hungry and desperate. Tens of thousands of incarcerated Gazans broke out into Egypt on Wednesday, January 23, through the previously blockaded crossing at Rafah. This included one elderly woman who exclaimed, "My heart is happy now! We Gazans are not living. We're buried alive." (BBC News 1/24/08) A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud Zahar, said, "We warned the Egyptians yesterday that people are hungry and dying." (The New York Times 1/24/08) The day before, Tuesday, January 23, four hundred Gazan women had protested at the Rafah crossing but had been met with clubs, tear gas, and bullets.

Due to the Israeli blockade of food supplies, medicines and fuel, Gazans have been living in cold, dark houses. Many medicines, such as antacids, are unavailable. A Gaza Health Ministry official, Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, said, "We have the choice to either cut electricity on babies in the maternity ward or heart surgery patients or stop operating rooms." The British group Oxfam called Israel's cutoff "unlawful."(The Boston Globe 1/21/08) As reported in The New York Times, 1/25/08, "The United Nations Human Rights Council demanded Thursday [1/24] that Israel lift its blockade of Gaza and condemned its 'grave' human rights violations."

According to Israelis, their collective punishment of 1.5 million people is in revenge for rockets fired from Gaza. Over the past six years, twelve people in Israel have been killed by Gazan rockets which are fired in retaliation for the 3534 Palestinian civilians, including 804 children, who have been killed by the Israelis since 2000. In the last week alone, the Israelis killed at least 10 Palestinian civilians. (The Boston Sunday Globe 1/20/08)

On CNN World News, 1/24/08, as the imprisoned Gazans were shown breaking out en masse, CNN correspondent Aneesh Raman explained, "It's not just about supplies. It's also about families for the first time in years being reunited." The sudden appearance of one Gazan man greatly surprised his cousin in Egypt, since they had not been in touch for three years. The cousin proclaimed, "We never know if they're alive there [in Gaza]. But when I saw my cousin I can't describe how happy I was!" The Gazan told CNN, "In Israel they have hospitals for dogs. In Gaza we don't even have working hospitals for humans. All we want is to be treated as good as the animals are treated in Israel. That is how bad it is in Gaza. We have nothing there."

Israel's Cash Cow

2008-01-21T07:35:00.000-08:00

America, Israel's cash cow, has mad cow disease and is not long for this world. We provide Israel not only with billions in annual foreign aid; weapons, such as cluster bombs to kill Lebanese civilians and attack helicopters to kill Palestinian civilians; but also with enormous sums of private donations which fund illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.

CNN's 2007 documentary "God's Warriors" highlights a prestigious plush Manhattan fund-raiser which finances Israel's apartheid lawless colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, well described in Zertal and Eldar's book Lords of the Land. Because of their brutalization of the Palestinians and refusal to accept the fair and just Arab League Peace Plan, Israel is hated around the world. As a consequence of this, we must wage endless wars on Israel's behalf and set up military bases in Muslim lands where they are not wanted. Iraq became our enemy because Saddam Hussein provided financial aid to Palestinians whose homes were destroyed by Israeli/US missiles and bulldozers. Likewise, Iran is our enemy because of Iran's support of groups opposed to Israel's illegal occupations.

Osama bin Laden has many times explained that it is precisely because of this foreign policy that we have become hated worldwide. Our country is going bankrupt because some of our powerful citizens are loyal to another country which is morally bankrupt. The US dollar is plummeting, and we are deeply in debt to foreign countries which are buying up our companies and assets. We are heading into a recession or depression. The leading political candidates are too beholden to the Israel Lobby to suggest meaningful change. It is tragic to live at a time when the world's greatest democracy is dying.

The Lobby's Psychotic Thought Processes

2008-01-17T16:35:00.000-08:00

A hallmark of sanity is the realization that peace, justice, truth, and diplomacy are superior to wars, injustice, lies, and oppression. Yet the Israel Lobby prefers to ignore the fact that Israel's unjust, illegal, and murderous occupation of Palestine must end for the good of Israel, Palestine, the US, and the world. Serious diplomacy is required, but there are many who oppose peace talks.

For instance, Jeff Jacoby, writing in yesterday's The Boston Globe ("Death of the Bush Doctrine"), objects to the Annapolis policy of final status peace negotiations which are currently ongoing. Jacoby wishes to return to the failed Road Map policy requiring that diplomacy wait for the peace which will never come. In this he is joined by Israeli legislator Avigdor Lieberman, who has withdrawn from Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's government because Lieberman also opposes the resumption of peace talks. Instead of believing in justice and diplomacy, Lieberman favors exchanges of populations, i.e. ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel, as reported in today's The New York Times. (This Lieberman is not to be confused with our own Senator Joe Lieberman, affectionately known as the Senator from Tel Aviv for his sponsorship of two infamous war-mongering resolutions: the 2002 Lieberman-Warner resolution authorizing war with Iraq and the 2006 Lieberman-Kyl resolution declaring part of Iran's military a terrorist group.)

The US Israel Lobby has traditionally set impossible pre-conditions for peace talks, especially a cessation of all violence. Yet, from time immemorial patriots have resisted occupation. This is well dramatized in the 1969 French film "Army of Shadows" in which French resistance fighters refuse to give in to their Nazi occupiers. Such is the insane status quo preferred by the Israel Lobby.

Bush's trip to the Middle East

2008-01-16T17:06:00.001-08:00

President Bush appears to have two nefarious goals in his current Middle East trip, both of which are thankfully being thwarted. First, he is hoping to persuade Arab states to accept Israeli terms for Israeli/Palestinian peace, terms which are quite the opposite of the fair and just Arab League Peace Plan. The Israelis do not care to return to the 1967 borders, which would include the sharing of Jerusalem, and they do not care to allow even one Palestinian refugee to return home. The Arab League Peace Plan offers peace and recognition of Israel, including full normalization of diplomatic and trade relations, in exchange for an end to the occupation, i.e. a return to the 1967 borders, and justice for the Palestinian refugees. Israel and the Bush neocons only like the first part: they want full recognition of Israel with restoration of diplomatic ties right now without any justice for the Palestinians. The Arab states rightfully say no. Bush's second main goal is the creation of a war-mongering anti-Iranian alliance of neighboring Arab states, and the Arab states are correctly saying no to that too. As pointed out in a letter to the editor in today's The New York Times by Professor William O. Beeman, "The Truth About Iran," the Arab states have deep longstanding ethnic, cultural, and economic ties to their neighbor Iran and thus have a aversion to hostility. The Arab states favor diplomacy and reject the wars preferred by the Bush neocons and Israel. Clearly the Middle East is waking up to the Israel Lobby's goal of perpetual Muslim vs. Muslim wars, which succeed in fracturing Muslim societies while benefiting Israel and the military industrial complex. With that in mind, the fact that Arab states are buying up our economy, which is being bankrupted by the Iraq war, may not be a bad thing.

Missing the Point

2008-01-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times lead editorial, "Still Waiting to Seize the Moment," as usual misses the point. Our nation was attacked on 9/11 because of our foreign policy towards Muslims, especially our support of Israel's occupation of Palestine. President Bush's first peace initiative, the "Road Map," an incrementalist approach with negotiations only occurring at at the end, has been a failure. Having no precise definition of the borders of a proposed Palestinian state, there has been no incentive for those fighting the occupation to cease and desist, especially as Jewish settlements in the occupied territory keep increasing. President Bush now recognizes this and has called for immediate negotiations on the core issues: borders, refugees, and Jerusalem, without waiting for Road Map preconditional goals, such as disarming militants and ending settlement expansion, to be achieved. Ever since Israeli Prime Minister Sharon provoked the second intifada by means of his Temple Mount performance, Israel has refused negotiations on core issues. Tragically, Arafat kept pleading for a continuation of the Taba peace talks which came so close to an agreement. Now Bush declares that the occupation must end and that Palestinians have waited long enough for a state, which must be viable, contiguous, and not of the Swiss cheese variety offered to Arafat. Today's editorial argues that "Israelis and Palestinians won't be willing to think about making compromises until they see tangible improvements in their lives." This is the old failed Road Map mentality. The point is that only when a fair and just peace settlement, which ends the occupation, is agreed upon and voted upon by all parties, including those in Gaza, only then will violence end. At this point there will indeed be very tangible improvements in everyone's lives, including ours.

So-called "Christian" Zionists

2007-12-20T05:38:00.000-08:00

As described in a previous blog, ("Christian Zionist Crusaders" 4/24/06), so-called "Christian" Zionists are anything but Christian. That which they preach and practice is quite the opposite of the teachings of Christ. Indeed, "Christian" Zionist leaders, with their powerful mega-churches and TV empires, can be downright murderous. For instance, Pat Robertson once "advocated the assassination of the president of Venezuela" (Boston Sunday Globe 7/9/06).

Also, at the time of the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in which Israel perpetrated its typical collective punishment policy by killing "more than eleven hundred Lebanese, most of whom were civilians and roughly a third of whom were children" (Mearsheimer and Walt The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy p. 306), Pat Robertson's response was to oppose a cease fire. ("Pat Robertson Laments Middle East Cease Fire" AP 8/15/06) In addition, CNN reported (1/6/06) that Robertson had claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for removing Jewish settlers from Gaza. However, after a threat from Israel to exclude Robertson from involvement in a proposed $50 million tourism site in Israel, Robertson apologized and then worked with the Israeli government to film a TV commercial designed to attract Christian tourists to Israel. (The New York Times 11/14/06) Certainly there are billions of dollars to be made in Holy Land tourism.

A CNN documentary "God's Warriors" (August 2007) highlights thousands of "Christian" Zionists, like a flock of dim-witted sheep, mindlessly waving Israeli flags in the luxurious Texan mega-church of John Hagee. Hagee instructs his flock that the Old Testament claims all of Palestine for the Jews, including all of Jerusalem.

Indeed, "Christian" Zionists derive not only their war-mongering ethics from the Old Testament, but their entire knowledge of Middle East history comes from the Old Testament as well. Thus, they are unaware that when the UN partitioned Palestine in 1947, (see map in Jimmy Carter's book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid p. xiii), Jerusalem was left as an international city since it is holy to three religions. The Palestinian Arabs, who have resided in Palestine for over 1300 years, built the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 685. It is the third most holy site in Islam. Yet the brainwashed "Christian" Zionists claim that the Old Testament commands Jews to steal all of Palestinian land. Jesus would puke.

The Bandwagon

2007-12-18T10:23:00.001-08:00

Lurking in the background of all societies are would-be war profiteers and looters hoping for war. Since it would be too obvious for them to advocate war by themselves, they perpetually lie in wait for an opportunity to arise. In the case of Iraq, their opportunity was created by Zionist neoconservatives who disseminated fabricated intelligence to make a case for war, a war designed to benefit Israel. (See previous blogs "Why Iraq?" and "Faulty Intelligence" January 2006.) Then, the Israel Lobby, through its control of politicians and the media, promoted the war, brainwashing the American public.

Once the Zionist neocons had started up the war bandwagon, the war profiteers and looters pounced on board. The Zionists knew full well that the WMD pretext was a scam and that toppling Saddam would lead to civil war, but that is precisely what they wanted. (See previous blogs "Civil War Advocates" 4/16/06 and "Muslim vs. Muslim War" 6/4/07.) Once the American public became aware that the US was stranded in an unnecessary civil war which was bankrupting the country, the Israel Lobby shifted the blame to its accomplices, claiming the war was all about looting Iraqi oil.

Certainly, it is true that the oil bill which the Bush administration has been trying to push through the Iraqi legislature is designed to greatly profit US oil companies. Indeed, many claim that Iraqi oil is necessary in the interest of US national security. Yet no one mentions the fact that most countries, who are not joined at the hip to Israel and who, therefore, have friendly relations with Muslim countries, do not have this problem. (See previous blogs "Why They Hate Us" January 2006.) China, for instance, who buys oil from Iran, does not need to invade or occupy Muslim countries to obtain oil. Moreover, China has the wherewithal to buy this oil, whereas, thanks to the Iraq war, we are becoming more in debt to China with every passing minute.

What Really Went Wrong

2007-12-15T09:50:00.000-08:00

The Israel Lobby promotes the thesis that the Arab/Muslim nations hate us because, through their own fault, they have a less prosperous and advanced civilization than we do. This thesis conveniently ignores the destabilizing role of Israel in the region.

When the State of Israel was established in Palestine, there was a population of Arab Palestinians there who had lived in Palestine for 1300 years. Then, over 700,000 Arabs were driven out in a process of ethnic cleansing and told they could never return. This was done so that Israel could be a Jewish State not just in name and structure, but in population as well.

Yet, a mass influx of refugees into neighboring countries is intrinsically destabilizing: witness the Iraqi refugee crisis. Many countries simply can not cope. Of course, almost all refugees dream of returning to their homeland and in fact have that right under international law. After 60 years, Palestinian refugees now number around 4 million. Refugees are destabilizing not just because of the demands placed upon the host country for food, housing, jobs, health care, etc., but also because of generated political unrest.

When one country illegally occupies another and drives out its inhabitants, these refugees have the right to fight back. Certainly if the Nazi's had driven us out of our homeland, we would not rest until we returned. Thus, the presence of displaced Palestinians within Lebanon, for instance, has brought about instability and civil wars (which are also fomented by Israel and the Israel Lobby as a matter of policy, as discussed in previous blog "Muslim vs Muslim Wars" 6/4/07). In addition, there have been two Israeli invasions of Lebanon. Indeed, another thesis promoted by the Israel Lobby is that Arab/Muslim countries understand only force. The opposite is true, which is why Israeli hyper-force has only made matters worse. The answer is not force but justice.

Abject Lies

2007-12-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Railroading us into war with Iraq to benefit Israel, President Bush declared that in order to win the war against terror, it was necessary to defeat Saddam Hussein, who had weapons of mass destruction. This was, of course, an abject lie, but it is what the Israel Lobby told him to say. Currently, some presidential candidates are trying to railroad us into war with Iran to benefit Israel. On the CBS Evening News, December 12, 2007, Mitt Romney said, "Iran is a nation which speaks of genocide and is rushing headlong to develop weapons that will allow them to carry it out...." "Iran speaks about giving nuclear material to other groups, not just nations, to other groups that would oppose the West." Rudy Giuliani said, "Iran is moving toward accomplishing the worst nightmare of the Cold War....nuclear weapons in the hands of an irresponsible regime, and then they're threatening the use of these weapons."....Iran "tells us they want to destroy Israel and kind of take us over as well." These candidates' statements are also abject lies but this is what the Israel Lobby tells them to say. We are supposedly trying to spread our democracy around the world, but is our version of democracy worth spreading? Time will tell.

Annapolis

2007-11-30T10:36:00.000-08:00

The Annapolis meeting last Tuesday had its strengths and weaknesses. Its major strength was the restarting of peace negotiations, which hopefully will pick up right where talks in Taba, Egypt left off in January 2001, when the disastrous elections of Bush and Sharon put an end to them. At that point, negotiations were very close to a peace agreement, and Arafat begged for their continuation, but to no avail. Since then, the incrementalism of the "road map" plan has, of course, been fatally flawed. (See previous blog "The Road Map" 1/13/06.)

Before there can be any incentive to end anti-occupation resistance and violence, there must be an agreed upon final solution. Thus, the new Annapolis plan fortunately has final status talks running parallel with the so-called confidence-building measures of the road map, such as cessation of settlement expansion and violence. The second strength of the Annapolis plan is the insertion of American monitors to investigate and report on the progress or lack thereof of the confidence-building measures. Third, the inclusion of so many countries at Annapolis was a strength, but the exclusion of Iran and Hamas was a weakness.

Considering the fact that the US had encouraged Palestinian democratic elections, it was wrong to fail to recognize their fairly elected government, especially after Saudi Arabia had helped form a unity Fatah/Hamas government. It is even worse for the US to arm Fatah so as to foment civil war among Palestinians. Of course we know that fomenting Muslim vs Muslim wars is longstanding Zionist policy. (See previous blog "Muslim vs Muslim Wars" 6/4/07.)

Indeed, the major weakness of Annapolis was the fact that the Israel Lobby falsely publicized it as a gathering of the enemies of Iran and even falsely implied that current fear of Iran is the only reason Arab states are now interested in Israeli-Palestinian peace. This ignores the fact that the Arab League Peace Plan has been on the table since 2002 when it was endorsed by all Arab leaders, including Arafat and Saddam Hussein. Certainly the Fear-Of-Iran card will be used, hopefully unsuccessfully, in an attempt to bully the Arab states into downsizing their plan, whittling down the size of the Palestinian state to suit the greedy Israelis. Most important, it is chilling to think that the Annapolis meeting represented an attempt to build another "coalition of the willing," this time for an invasion of Iran.

Why the Zionist Neocons Hate the U.N.

2007-11-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

After World War II, it was recognized that in order to prevent future wars of aggression, there was a need for an international organization, one more powerful than the League of Nations which the US had refused to join. Unfortunately, one of the United Nations' first creations, the state of Israel, turned into a Frankenstein monster occupying its neighbors. As shown on the map on page xiii in Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," the 1947 UN Partition Plan divided Palestine into two roughly equal parts, but since then Israel has occupied the whole area.

The Israel Lobby-dominated media gave much publicity to Saddam Hussein's non-compliance with UN resolutions but America knows little about Israel's non-compliance. Yet, it was pointed out in "The Iraq Study Group Report," that Israeli-Palestinian peace is key to solving our problems in the Middle East and that peace should be based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). The texts of these resolutions can be found in Carter's book: Appendix 1 (p.217) and Appendix 2 (p.219). Resolution 242 states that "Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war..," Israel should withdraw from occupied territories. Resolution 338 reaffirms this. Israel, of course, refuses to comply and instead builds illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land.

There would be many more UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, but between 1972 and 2006 the US has vetoed 42 such resolutions. (See Mearsheimer and Walt "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" p. 40.) There have, however, been numerable UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel which have passed overwhelmingly, opposed mainly by the US and Israel. For instance, as noted in Norman Finkelstein's book "Beyond Chutzpah" (p.6) , a 1989 UN General Assembly resolution calling for a two-state solution and Israel's withdrawal to the 67 borders passed 151-3, opposed only by the US, Israel, and Dominica. Similarly in 2004, a General Assembly resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 passed 160-6 with only the US, Israel, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Uganda opposing. Thus, the UN highlights the fact that the world opposes Israel's never-ending occupations. This is why the Zionist neocons hate the UN and work to destroy it.

Debating Torture

2007-11-20T17:25:00.000-08:00

Who would have ever thought that Americans would be debating the pro's and con's of torture. This shows how low we have already sunk as we morph into Israel. (See previous blog "Morphing into Israel" 1/25/06.) As Norman G. Finkelstein writes in his book "Beyond Chutzpah," "Human rights organizations have extensively documented Israel's systemic torture of Palestinian detainees." (p. 142) Here is another reason for the US to dissociate itself from Israel. (See previous blog "Time to Dissociate" 11/17/07.) The first reason is that our support of Israel's repugnant occupation has served to incite worldwide anti-American hatred. The second reason to dissociate is that like "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," America is thereby becoming a monster. The Israel Lobby is pushing us to wage a multi-generational World War 111 against so-called "Islamofascists" while ignoring the ultra-Zionist settlers, "Judeofascists," who brutalize the Palestinians on our dime and in our name. (See previous blog "What Americans Don't Know" 11/10/07.) As Ken Burns PBS documentary on World War 11 so well illustrates, war creates bestiality on both sides. Thus, in the process of going to war on behalf of Israel, we terrorize and kill civilians through air bombings, we suspend habeas corpus and torture prisoners, we allow private security firms to shoot civilians with impunity. All this serves to inspire more anti-US hatred, which is just what the Israel Lobby wants. These Israel-firsters are pleased that Israel is not alone in being the object of world hatred. These American traitors are disinterested in the fact that America is losing troops, treasure, and most important her soul merely to perpetuate the Israeli occupation.

Time to Dissociate

2007-11-17T19:40:00.000-08:00

With the Israel/Palestine peace talks coming up in Annapolis, the Israelis as usual are dragging their feet, refusing to talk about substantive issues. Israel has no interest in peace. Meanwhile, the Israel Lobby is pushing for war with Iran just as they pushed for war with Iraq, to the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of the US. Frank Rich describes the propaganda to which the American public has been subjected ("The NY Times" 11/4/07) with the result that "A Zogby poll last month found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons." The Iranian president is perpetually misquoted and demonized.

The US says it has so-called evidence on Iran's nuclear programs ("The NY Times" 11/16/07) but keeps this secret, as was the case with our so-called evidence of Saddam's WMD. If we had shared our Iraq evidence with the UN inspectors, as they requested, it would have been shown to be false, and the Iraq invasion could have been prevented. Instead, the US Air Force recently commissioned a book, "Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War" byWilliam M. Arkin, which is a study of this war designed to advise about future US wars. Stephen Erlanger ("The NY Times" 10/14/07) writes that Arkin "said, 'We're looking into a future that involves pre-emption and wars against terrorism' -- wars like Israel's." Instead of fighting "wars like Israel's" we should dissociate ourselves from this peace-averse war-mongering country.

What Americans Don't Know

2007-11-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

Americans are told that Muslims hate us because they hate our freedom and democracy, but this is not the case. They hate us because they believe we hate them. The truth is that their hatred is based not on ideology but on reality, the facts on the ground. Currently Gaza is a concentration camp, and the West Bank is even worse.

The book, "Lords of the Land," by two Israeli scholars, was reviewed in "The New York Times Book Review," October 14, 2007, by Adam LeBor. LeBor writes that the West Bank is "a lawless place, where the Jewish settler, rifle in one hand and prayer book in the other, is undisputed king. The settlers have their own roads, guarded by the Israeli army, water, electricity, supplies and ----occasional if well-publicized crackdowns aside---substantial impunity from the law. Much of the land on which their settlements stand, was, as Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar detail in this important book, simply stolen. The settlements are illegal, in contravention of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to occupied territories." LeBor notes that more than a third of the West Bank is "now off limits to Palestinians." The book also documents the minimal sentences handed down to settlers who kill Arabs. These sentences consist of a few months community service or a small amount of time in jail.

Meanwhile the settlers are protected by the Israeli army whose violent behaviour has been described in a recent study by Nufar Yishai-Karin, an Israeli psychologist, as reported by Conal Urquhart in "The Observer," October 21, 2007. Yishai-Karin interviewed soldiers who recounted incidents of brutality and murder. They described shooting innocent Palestinians and leaving them to die, brutally beating little children, breaking their bones for no reason. Urquhart writes that one soldier told of a woman throwing a clog at him, "I kicked her here[pointing to the crotch], I broke everything there. She can't have children. Next time she won't throw clogs at me. When one of them [a woman] spit at me, I gave her the rifle butt in the face. She doesn't have what to spit with anymore."

Of course, Americans know none of this. Jerome Slater's article "Muting the Alarm over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" ("International Security" Vol. 32, no.2 (Fall 2007), pp84-120) documents the coverage in the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" versus "The New York Times," and shows that the Israeli media is more balanced in its coverage than is the US media. Americans are kept in the dark.

Disillusion

2007-10-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Many of us grew up believing in the greatness and goodness of our beloved country, America. We believed that in America, the great melting pot, immigrant citizens shed former allegiances and became loyal Americans. Now we find that there are Americans belonging to a powerful Israel Lobby whose loyalty is to Israel, not America. We also were led to believe that our government of the people represented the American public. Now we find that our congressmen only represent those special interest groups whose money funds their election campaigns and who therefore are able to dictate foreign policy. Paramount among these groups is the Israel Lobby which leads us into wars for Israel to the detriment of America. As America goes into bankruptcy borrowing $3 billion per week to fund the Iraq war, we should reflect upon instances of third world debt also incurred by self-serving leaders. Many of these countries have never recovered.

Peace Talks vs the War on Terror

2007-10-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

It is hard to hold peace talks when one party, namely Israel, has no interest in even discussing the vital components of peace. Since Israel illegally occupies Palestinian land, illegally colonizes that land, and clearly plans to illegally annex that land, it is inconvenient for Israel to jeopardize the status quo with a peace plan. The Arab League Peace Plan offers Israel comprehensive peace and normalized relations with all Arab states in return for an end to the occupation and a just solution for the refugees. Israel is delighted to normalize relations by sitting at the table for meaningless peace talks with the Arab states, but of course Israel refuses to give up the occupied land. As usual, Israel hopes to get something for nothing. The Israel Lobby, dominated by those who favor Israeli expansionism, also has no interest in peace talks and instead is happy to bankrupt America by dragging us into war after war to fight those who oppose Israeli expansionism. Those who fight against Israeli expansionism are conveniently and simplistically labeled "terrorists." Thus, instead of meaningful peace talks, we have the never-ending so-called "war on terror."

Speaking Out

2007-10-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

Speaking on Jim Lehrer's PBS NewsHour on October 1, 2007, presidential candidate Mike Gravel, former senator from Alaska, denounced the September 26 Senate resolution which designated the Iranian Guard a terrorist group. Indeed Seymour Hersh, writing in "The New Yorker," October 8, 2007, notes that the Bush administration keeps changing excuses for war and is now planning strikes against the Iranian army. Just as the excuse for war with Iraq kept changing from WMD (non-existent), to links to 9/11 (non-existent), to spreading democracy (read spreading civil war leading to break-up of Iraq), excuses for war with Iran now are also changing.

Apparently Americans don't buy the notion that the incipient Iranian nuclear energy program is an imminent US threat, so now the excuse is changing to a charge that Iran is meddling in our occupation. General Petraeus, a big supporter of escalating our involvement in Iraq's civil war, in which we are fighting both Shiites and Sunni's, (Petraeus expects we will be there as long as ten years), is now the point man on talking up Iranian interference. Of course there is no evidence that the Iranian government is involved, and arms smuggling is omnipresent from all sides, not just Iran.

Mike Gravel, however, hit the nail on the head. He pointed out that Senator Joe Lieberman was the sponsor of the infamous October 2002 resolution giving President Bush a blank check for war with Iraq. Lieberman also sponsored this recent Senate resolution on Iran, and Gravel said that AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, put Lieberman up to it. The Israel Lobby is railroading us into another unnecessary, unwinnable, and unending war. Although all Muslim nations, including Iran, would accept the Arab League Peace Plan, thus negating all potential threats to Israel, the Israel Lobby prefers wars. One wonders how many of ithe Lobby's financiers are war profiteers. At any rate, it's clear they have zero loyalty to America and care even less about America's future.

The Lobby at Work

2007-09-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

When the Israel Lobby aims to destroy someone, first they demonize him, then they try to prevent him from having a fair hearing. Thus, The Lobby tried to prevent Iranian President Ahmadinejad from speaking at Columbia University on September 24. There were rabid crowds of Zionists protesting outside, and TV newscasts featured women spitting, reminiscent of previous TV newscasts of Israeli West Bank "settlers" spitting at caged Palestinians.

Columbia's President Bollinger, no doubt hoping to counter the potential withdrawal of Zionist funding from Columbia, astonished the world by turning his introduction of an invited guest into a torrent of invective and insults. It was important for The Lobby to silence and/or discredit President Ahmadinejad because Americans are not supposed to know about the plight of the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, Ahmadinijad spoke clearly, "You know quite well that Palestine is an old wound, as old as 60 years. For 60 years these people are displaced. For 60 years these people are being killed. For 60 years on a daily basis there's conflict and terror. For 60 years innocent women and children are destroyed and killed by helicopters and airplanes that break the houses over their heads. For 60 years children in kindergartens, in schools, and in high schools are imprisoned and being tortured. For 60 years security in the Middle East has been endangered. For 60 years the slogan of the expansionists: 'From the Nile to the Euphrates' is being chanted by certain groups in that part of the world."

Of course in its reporting of the event, the Lobby-dominated media chose to ignore the Palestinian issue, which was only the root cause of 9/11, and instead, the media concentrated on the very important issue of the presence of homosexuals in Iran. Meanwhile The Lobby was busily and successfully pressuring US senators, who have been prostituted by Lobby-generated campaign funding, to pass a resolution designating Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Thus, The Lobby now has its pretext for yet another war.

The Book

2007-09-09T10:41:00.000-07:00

The Book on The Lobby has arrived, hopefully in time to prevent The Lobby from driving the last nail into the American coffin. The Lobby pushed us into this unnecessary, unwinnable, and unending war with Iraq and now is pushing us into another unnecessary, unwinnable, and unending war with Iran. The University of Chicago's Professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard's Professor Stephen Walt have elaborately documented The Lobby's role in undermining U.S. foreign policy for decades. Their book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," is an exquisitely organized, elegant presentation detailing the mechanism by which The Lobby continues to destroy our country by generating anti-American hatred around the world.

The Lobby has relentlessly blocked Israeli/Palestinian peace, thus inspiring terrorist attacks such as 9/11. The Lobby's deathly stranglehold on politicians and the media prevents the U.S. from combatting terrorism appropriately through international cooperation and police work. The Lobby prefers wars. Rather than utilizing diplomacy to address the legitimate grievances of the Arab and Muslim world, The Lobby prefers to utilize the military industrial complex for such niceties as targeted assassinations (missiles), collective punishment (bombing civilians), and trashing countries such as Iraq and Lebanon. Their prevailing attitude seems to be that if America perishes as a result of The Lobby's policies, so be it.

Giuliani's Foreign Affairs

2007-08-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

In truth, Giuliani is currently involved in only one foreign affair, i.e. with Israel. Giuliani has been Israel's favorite candidate, (see previous blog "The Two Great Myths" 1/29/07), based on his refusal to accept a $10 million donation for 9/11 victims from a Saudi prince. This refusal was because the prince wanted to explain that the attack was related to our foreign policy, especially our support of the Israeli occupation. Giuliani echoed this in his response to Ron Paul in the 5/15 debate; clearly, Giuliani is incapable of entertaining the notion that our foreign policy could inspire Islamic terrorism. He must be blind as to the positive effect of the Iraq occupation on Al Qaeda recruitment.

Certainly, when Giuliani cleaned up New York City, he was justified in viewing crime in black and white, "good vs evil" terms. Law-abiding citizens are not to blame for muggings. Yet a knowledge of history does provide an understanding of why Americans are hated in the Arab/Muslim world. (See previous blogs"Why They Hate Us Parts 1-4" 1/05-1/08 /2006.) Sadly, Giuliani's knowledge comes from the neocons.

As pointed out by Peter Boyer in "The New Yorker" August 20,2007, p. 60, Giuliani has chosen as a senior foreign policy advisor arch-neocon Norman Podhoretz, who recently in "Commentary," "made the case for a unilateral American air assault on Iran." In "Foreign Affairs" Sept./Oct. 2007, Giuliani describes his foreign policy views. He, like Podhoretz, believes we are engaged in World War IV, a long war just beginning, in which we must destroy all enemies. He apparently believes that we should still be fighting in Vietnam: the problem was that we didn't stay long enough. He thinks that withdrawing from Lebanon in 1983 was also a mistake. Obviously he does not know that we were merely aiding Israel's invasion as well as entering into the Israel-induced civil war. (See previous blog "Iraq and Lebanon" 4/10/06.) He no doubt believes, along with the neocons, that we should have joined in Israel's repeat performance invasion of Lebanon last summer.

Patrick Buchanan ("Where the Right Went Wrong" p.51-52) lists the numerous countries that the neocons, including Podhoretz, regarded as "targets for destruction by America" and notes that the destruction list is identical to that compiled by Douglas Feith and Richard Perle in their strategy paper for Israel, "A Clean Break." (See previous blogs "Why Iraq? Parts 1-7" 1/15-1/21/06.) Finally, of course, Guiliani thinks we should forget about creating a Palestinian state. Rather than reading Podhoretz's book "World War IV," Giuliani should, as Ron Paul suggested, read "The 9/11/Commission Report" as well as "The Iraq Study Group Report."

Why We Deposed Saddam Hussein

2007-08-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

Despite all the false excuses given for our invasion of Iraq, the truth is that we deposed Saddam Hussein because he was a strong supporter of the Palestinians. He provided money to those whose homes were bombed or bulldozed by Israel in retaliation after a member of the extended family had become a suicide bomber.

Historically, he had been a ruthless dictator, but he had been our ruthless dictator. We supported him in his invasion of Iran and provided battlefield intelligence, satellite imagery, advisers, etc. A 1994 report by the US Senate Banking Committee showed that the US government approved shipments to Iraq of materials which could be used for biological and chemical WMD. (See Robert Fisk "The Great War For Civilisation" pp. 211-212) Even knowing that he was gassing his enemies, we continued diplomatic ties. (See previous blog entry "Attack Iran? Part 2" 2/8/07)

Before his invasion of Kuwait, our ambassador April Glaspie reportedly told Saddam that this issue was an "Iraqi-Kuwaiti matter." (See Fisk p. 589) In other words, we did not warn him adequately of the dire consequences or explain that this was different from the previous invasion which we backed. Once there, Saddam offered to end his occupation of Kuwait if Israel would end its occupation of Palestine. (See Fisk, p.590) Instead, we massacred his army which was trapped in the desert trying to retreat from Kuwait. Then we encouraged the Iraqi Shiites to revolt, and Saddam's not unexpected retribution resulted in the mass graves we discovered after our invasion.

Although President Bush claims that Saddam tried to kill his father, the evidence for this is not complete. The physical evidence was in question and defendants may have been tortured. Seymour Hersh suggested that "the Kuwaitis might have concocted the plot or at least its connection to the Iraqi government" (See James Bamford "A Pretext for War" p. 259)

In the June 5 debate, Mitt Romney falsely claimed that if Saddam had allowed IAEA weapons inspectors into Iraq and if they had found no WMD, our invasion would have been unnecessary. Of course we all know that Saddam did allow these inspectors in, with free access everywhere. The inspectors found no WMD, but President Bush ordered them to leave since our invasion was predetermined, and WMD were irrelevant.

Excuses, excuses

2007-08-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

Even after Ariel Sharon 's Temple Mount performance triggered the second intifada, as Yassir Arafat had feared, and even after Sharon was then elected Israeli prime minister, Arafat still pleaded for peace talks to continue, but Sharon said no. Now, seven years later, Israel still chooses permanent occupation instead of peace, as shown by the multitude of excuses they think up in order to avoid serious peace talks. For years, Israel and the US Israel Lobby have insisted that there must be an end to all violence before serious peace negotiations take place, but of course, only a fair and just peace will end all violence. Then they have insisted that the Palestinian government be free of all corruption, as if either the Israeli or US governments are corruption-free. Then they claim that the current Israeli and Palestinian governments are too weak to negotiate the serious final solution issues, such as borders, status of Jerusalem, and refugee question. Yet peace discussions are meaningless without addressing these issues, and it is the lack of peace which makes their governments weak. It is in this spirit of never-ending incrementalism (see previous blog entry) that the international envoy Tony Blair is prohibited from tackling these final status peace issues, even though he is a famous peace-maker. Most recently, the excuse is that a premature discussion of final issues could unleash violence if talks break down. After forty years of occupation, it is clear that talks should never break down. Until peace is achieved, negotiations must continue despite everything, including the additional excuses which will surely materialize along the way.

Incrementalism

2007-07-22T04:45:00.000-07:00

The Israeli policy has long been to build and expand Israeli settlements (colonies) on Palestinian land. Arab land is confiscated, Arabs evicted, and Arab homes bulldozed. These settlements then constitute a "reality on the ground," designed to guarantee permanent Israeli occupation. Thus, President Bush in his Middle East address, 7/17/2007, stipulated that peace talks must reflect "current realities," i.e. settlements. The settlement policy has been enabled by the favored US/Israeli peace process of Incrementalism, which affords time for building settlements and also ensures that the goal of peace is never attained.

As reported in Clayton E. Swisher's "The Truth About Camp David," US negotiator Dennis Ross insisted that the 1993 Oslo agreement included a promise by Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat to prevent violence. (p. 137) Even though the CIA and Israeli intelligence provided "assistance and training," and "heavy-handed" means were used, including torture and assassination, Arafat was never able to achieve the zero violence required. (p. 138-139) This of course was the whole point of the incrementalist policy! Meanwhile Israeli settlements kept multiplying and were connected by Israeli-only roads, creating the apartheid state. Swisher describes "Dennis Ross's slow moving incrementalist mediation," (p. 164), and this indeed led to the downfall of Arafat. His people had yearned for peace, but peace was not in the US/Israeli game plan. President Bush's "Road Map" is just another incrementalist policy devised so as to never reach a destination. Thus, it was not surprising that the Palestinians voted in Hamas in 2006; the Fatah party of Arafat and Abbas had only achieved settlement expansion.

Division Through Trickery

2007-07-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

Sixty years ago, the UN divided Palestine roughly equally into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Today Israeli greed demands more and more, and thus even the Arab League Peace Plan, offering Israel 78% of Palestine, is not enough. Over the years, Israeli policy has been to divide Arab states by making peace with each singly, with the goal of leaving Palestinians without allies or hope. Egypt and Jordan have fallen prey to this plan, and Syria has been the most recent target.

As detailed in Clayton E. Swisher's "The Truth About Camp David," Syria's King Asad was tricked into taking part in the Geneva Summit in March 2000 because he had been falsely led to believe that a just settlement would be proposed, i.e. a return of Syrian land in exchange for peace. Previously, Egypt's President Sadat had agreed to the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978 because Israel returned all Egyptian land, having uprooted all Israeli settlements. However, as described in Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," Israel had also agreed, as part of the Camp David Peace Accords, to end the occupation of Palestine, but this turned out to be just a trick. President Sadat was then assassinated.

At the 2000 Geneva Summit, Israeli Prime Minister Barak, President Clinton, and US negotiator Dennis Ross made it clear they had no intention of returning all the stolen Syrian land for peace. Of course they then blamed the summit failure on President Asad, who had not wanted to attend in the first place, suspecting such trickery. The scenario was then repeated at Camp David II with Yassir Arafat. (See previous blog "The Myth of the Generous Offer" 5/13/07) Is it any wonder there is such anti-American hatred in the Muslim world and that American motives, in Iraq and elsewhere, are so distrusted?

Bush's Brainless Peace Plan

2007-07-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

Perhaps because President Bush is so famously brainless, he believes that we are too. Thus he presents his recent Israeli/Arab peace strategy believing that we won't notice the Israel Lobby parading him around with a ring through his nose. For instance, the Arab League Peace Plan offers peace (an end to violence) and recognition of Israel, including diplomatic relations, in exchange for Israel ending the occupation. So Bush believes he is very clever to offer a re-starting of peace negotiations in exchange for an end to violence and recognition of Israel, including diplomatic relations. Who would be so dense as to fall for that? Perhaps Bush? The Arabs are supposed to offer everything in exchange for a promise to discuss whether Israel will offer anything? Bush probably wonders why all the intelligence reports state the obvious: our occupation of Iraq has increased terrorism. Obviously the Israel Lobby (clearly Bush's only source of information) has never divulged to him the fact that it was American support of Israel's occupation of Palestine which led to the 9/11 attacks (See "The 9/11 Commission Report" p. 147). Bush keeps parroting his stipulation that an end to all violence is a precondition for talks on ending the occupation, yet he is too brainless to realize that occupations always have and always will result in violence.

The Specialization of Politics

2007-06-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

To be successful, politicians must become specialized, that is, specialized in raising campaign money. This means, of course, that they must cozy up to the special interests, particularly the well-heeled Israel Lobby. The result is is that with regard to our foreign policy, which is destroying the country, there is no significant difference between the parties. It is the Republican whores vs. the Democrat prostitutes. One group wants to stay in Iraq on behalf of Israel, the other group, realizing that Israel's goal of trashing Iraq has been accomplished, wants to leave Iraq and attack Iran.

In his recent book, "Second Chance," former National Security Advisor Zbigniev Brzezinski grades the past three presidents. He notes that "only those in a state of self-serving denial" can claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn't ignite "widespread Arab hostility toward America." (p.191) With regard to Middle East policy he gives President Clinton a "D" (p.185), saying he "left office with Israeli/Palestinian relations in a worse condition," and that his policy was "contaminated by a domestic political calculus." (p.130) At Camp David II, Clinton's negotiating team was biased towards Israel. With upcoming elections, including that of Clinton's wife Hillary, Israel-Lobby-generated campaign funds were essential. (See previous blog "The Myth of the Generous Offer" 5-13-07.) Yet Clinton did better than President George W. Bush, who received an "F" on Brzezinski's presidential report card.

In my view, if one were to go back further, however, and grade presidents by their long-term legacies, President Harry S. Truman surely would rank near the bottom. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, (dropped unnecessarily in the view of many), killed hundreds of thousand of innocent civilians. This was indeed terrorism on a grand scale. Then in 1948, with a tough presidential election coming up against Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, Truman aligned himself with the Zionist cause. "More important even than Jewish votes to the destitute Democrat party could be Jewish campaign contributions." (David McCullough's "Truman" p. 596) Secretary of State George Marshall and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal opposed this alignment foreseeing Middle East problems down the road. Indeed alternative plans involving UN peacekeepers were proposed to avoid war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Although Truman defeated Dewey in '48, his legacy is a Middle East in flames complicated by nuclear proliferation.

For Now We See Through a Glass, Darkly

2007-06-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

America is hated around the world because of our foreign policy, the inner workings of which we are unaware. Now and then, we are afforded a glimpse, as in the case of a secret Downing Street memo. Appearing in London's Sunday Times 5-1-05, this memo recapped a briefing on 7-23-02 of Prime Minister Blair by Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Services, recently back from Washington. "Military action is now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." In other words, at least eight months prior to the Iraq invasion, it had been decided to concoct intelligence and facts to support unnecessary preemptive war. Indeed, for years before that we had tormented the Iraqi people with cruel sanctions and bombings. After 9/11, Osama bin Laden listed three reasons we were under attack: 1. our support of the Israeli occupation, 2. our troops in the Arabian holy land, 3. the inhumane sanctions on the Iraqi people. Scott Ritter, a leader of UN weapons inspections teams in Iraq from 1991-1998, reveals US ulterior motives in his book, "Iraq Confidential---The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein." The official UN policy was to lift sanctions once Saddam had disarmed. However, the US government was not interested in disarmament; it aimed to perpetuate sanctions with the ultimate goal of regime change. Saddam was aware of this and also of the inter-relationship between CIA and the inspectors. A CIA-attempted coup was foiled during this period. The UN inspections were finally halted in 1998 so that the US could carry out bombing missions. From the viewpoint of a British diplomat, Carne Ross describes in his book "Independent Diplomat--Dispatches From An Unaccountable Elite," the way sanctions were perpetrated even though they were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Diplomats favoring sanctions prevailed at the UN by using one-sided arguments while summarily dismissing human rights evidence on the other side. The reality of the situation in Iraq played no role in these discussions. Ross compares this to the cherry-picking of intelligence to make the faulty case for war. And thus were the Iraqi people wronged by foreign governments who kept their own people in the dark.

Brave Souls

2007-06-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

In contrast to the presidential candidates who have lost their souls to the Israel Lobby, (see previous blog entry), there were a few brave souls at the recent debates. At the first Democratic debate on 4/26, Mike Gravel declared that other candidates frighten him. "When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran, --that's code for nukes, nuclear devices!" He reminded us that "the entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain, and they're dying in vain right now this very second. And you know what's worse than a soldier dying in vain, it's more soldiers dying in vain." He also noted that "we are mischaracterizing terrorism. Terrorism has been with civilisation from the beginning, and it will be there till the end." He explained that we have to change our foreign policy: the Iraq invasion created terrorists. Dennis Kucinich stated, "The global war on terror has been a pretext for aggressive war. As president of the US, I intend to take America in a different direction, rejecting wars as an instrument of policy.....I'd also put on the front of the agenda peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians because I can play an evenhanded role in reaching out to bring those peoples together." In the second Democratic debate on 6/3, Kucinich spoke out against state-sponsored assassination, "I don't think that a president of the US who believes in peace and wants to create peace is going to be using assassination as a tool." In the second Republican debate on 5/15, Ron Paul pointed out that we were attacked on 9/11 as blowback from our foreign policy. Later he referred to "The 9/11 Report" as confirmation of this fact. In the third Republican debate on 6/5, answering a question as to what is the most pressing moral issue in the US right now, Paul said, "it is the acceptance just recently that we now promote preemptive war. I do not believe that's part of the American tradition. We had in the past always declared war in defense of our liberties or to go to aid somebody, but now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war. We have rejected the just-war theory of Christianity, and now tonight we hear that we're not even willing to remove from the table a preemptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security. I mean we have to come to our senses about this issue of preemption and go back to traditions and our constitution and defend our rights but not think that we can change the world by force of arms and to start wars."

Lost Souls

2007-06-11T03:43:00.000-07:00

Due to Nazi policies of invasion, occupation, and death camps, Germany lost its soul. Similarly, Israel has lost its soul under policies of invasion, occupation, and deathly persecution of Palestinians. As America morphs into Israel, (see previous blog "Morphing into Israel" 1-25-06), our politicians have also lost their souls, as evidenced in the recent debates. Candidates for US president now endorse torture, nuclear preemptive strikes, and targeted assassinations with deaths of innocent civilians. One would think they were campaigning to become godfathers of the Mafia. Of course, given their financial dependence on Israel Lobby-generated campaign funds, this is not surprising. Furthermore, just as the Lobby lies about history to give Israel a good name, our politicians follow suit. For instance, in the 6-5-07 Republican debate, Mitt Romney claimed that the Iraq war was necessary because Saddam Hussein would not let UN weapons inspectors into Iraq. Yet anyone who was awake at the time knows that in the fall of 2002, Saddam did allow inspectors back in. They were forced to leave the following spring so that we could administer shock and awe. Continuing on the subject of lies, candidates favored pardoning convicted liar Scooter Libby. Lying is, of course, eminently pardonable, since it was part of Libby's job description as a member of the administration which lied us into war.

Muslim vs Muslim Wars

2007-06-04T04:20:00.000-07:00

The Israel lobby's neocons have been very successful in fomenting civil wars to benefit Israel. (See previous blog "Civil War Advocates" 4/15/06) For instance, adding to the civil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have been arming Fatah so as to bring about civil war against Hamas in Palestine. Furthermore, Seymour Hersh reports that we are bolstering militant Sunni extremist groups in Syria and Lebanon which are sympathetic to Al Qaeda. (The New Yorker, 3-5-07) In Syria these groups are being armed for the purpose of attacking the Syrian government. In Lebanon they are being armed in order to fight Hezbollah. Interestingly, one of these Sunni extremist groups is Fatah al-Islam, located in the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. Currently, the Lebanese Army, also armed by us, is attacking this group within the camp, as usual killing innocent civilians in the process. This is reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq War where we also provided arms for both sides as Henry Kissinger famously said that it was too bad both sides couldn't lose. (See previous blog "Somaliization" 1/11/07) There's apparently nothing that makes the Israel Lobby happier than Muslim vs Muslim wars. Indeed promoting such wars is part of the Lobby's strategy for countering Muslim resistance to Israel's never-ending occupation of Palestine.

The Myth of the Generous Offer

2007-05-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

A favorite talking point of the Israel Lobby is the lie that "inflexible" Palestinian President Yassir Arafat "chose war over peace" by rejecting Israel's "generous offer" at Camp David in July 2000. The truth is the exact opposite. It is the inflexible Israelis who continually choose war over peace as they greedily build settlements on stolen Palestinian land in disregard of UN Resolution 242. The UN 1947 Partition Plan, (shown in the map on page xiii in Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid"), divided historic Palestine into roughly equal Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem, holy to three religions, left as an international zone. The next map (p. xiv) shows Israel in 1967. Then after the 1967 war, Israel occupied all of Palestine. UN Resolution 242 (see Carter, p. 217 Appendix 1) called for Israel to withdraw from occupied territories "emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" in accordance with the UN Charter. Israel believes that it is the exception and that it is admissible for Israel to acquire territory by war as long as settlements are built on it. In contrast, it was Arafat who was flexible and generous in accepting UN Resolution 242 in 1988 as it only allots 22% of historic Palestine to the native Palestinian Arabs. Israel, however, wants more than 78% as shown in the Camp David negotiations. Arafat was tricked into attending the Camp David summit since Israel and the pro-Israeli-biased US team had no intention of making him a just offer. As is well-documented in Clayton E. Swisher's "The Truth About Camp David," President Clinton falsely promised Arafat he would not be blamed if the summit failed (p.226). Then Clinton tried to browbeat Arafat into accepting an unjust offer consisting of less land than that to which Palestinians were legally entitled, inadequate control or sovereignty over Arab East Jerusalem and Islamic holy sites, lack of solution to the refugee situation, etc. Arafat heroically stood for justice and refused. Furthermore, Arafat pleaded with Israeli Prime Minister Barak to prevent Ariel Sharon from parading himself around the Islamic holy sites showing off Israeli sovereignty, since that was sure to provoke violence. (See Swisher, p. 380) Yet Sharon was allowed to strut up to the holy sites and the second intifada was born. Arafat was then blamed for "choosing war over peace," an outcome pleasing to the Israel Lobby. Meanwhile President Clinton was madly pursuing Jewish votes and money for his wife's senate campaign. (Swisher, p. 361) It is important to remember that Arafat accepted the 2002 Saudi (Arab League) Peace Plan, whereas Israel still steadfastly rejects it.

Primary Sources

2007-05-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

Given the omnipresent deceptive media spin, it is always best to go directly to primary sources to determine, for instance, what motivates terrorists. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, testified on March 10, 2007 at a Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing. He said, "Usama bin Laden, he did his best conference in American media. Mr. John Miller he been there when he made declaration against Jihad, against America. And he said, it is not no need for me now to make explanation of what he said, but mostly he said about American military presence in Arabian peninsula and aiding Israel and many things." (ISN #10024, p.21) This interview with Osama bin Laden is part of a PBS "Frontline" documentary "Hunting bin Laden" and took place in Afghanistan May 1998. Responding to questions from his followers as well as from ABC's John Miller, Bin Laden voiced objections to the presence of American troops in the Muslim Holy Land, saying they were there to support Jewish expansionism. He stated, "For over half a century, Muslims in Palestine have been slaughtered and assaulted and robbed of their honor and of their property. Their houses have been blasted, their crops destroyed." "The leaders in America and in other countries have fallen victim to Jewish Zionist blackmail. They have mobilized their people against Islam and against Muslims." "Your position against Muslims in Palestine is despicable and disgraceful. America has no shame...We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans." "The American government is leading the country towards hell...We say to the Americans as people and to American mothers, if they cherish their lives and if they cherish their sons, they must elect an American patriotic government that caters to their interests not the interests of the Jews."

Trashing Iran

2007-04-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

Currently the big question is what incident or circumstance will be fabricated, exaggerated, disguised, or otherwise manipulated by the Bush neocons in order to create a pretext for trashing Iran. As was the case with Iraq, Iran is no threat to the U.S. This is all about Israel. (Like all other Muslim countries, Iran despises Israel's brutal occupation and colonization of Muslim lands.) Inasmuch as we are already going bankrupt losing two wars, it is clear we can not afford a third. However, as exemplified by Israel's extensive bombing of Lebanon last summer, the neocon goal is not winning wars but trashing Israel's enemies. Meanwhile, to further benefit Israel, why not foment some more civil wars along the way! Seymour Hersh reports that we are bolstering Sunni extremist groups in Syria and Lebanon which are sympathetic to Al Qaeda ("The New Yorker" 3/5/07) Never mind the fact that these groups hate Americans more than they hate the Shiites we're paying them to bomb. It turns out there's no way to prevent the money and weapons provided to these Sunni extremist groups from ending up in the hands of the Sunnis who are attacking our troops in Iraq. Indeed, the enormous black hole into which US taxpayers' grandchildren's billions have disappeared, unaccounted for, in Iraq is being used as a money pot to finance these Sunni extremist groups. No matter! We must continue to instigate civil wars in Israel's enemies as advocated by Obed Yinon. (See previous blog entry "Civil War Advocates" 4-15-06.) And who knows? As an added bonus, these "covert actions" may even provoke an Iranian response giving the Bush neocons an excuse to trash Iran.

Refugees' Rights

2007-04-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

During the Israel-Lobby-dominated media frenzy propelling us into war with Iraq, how often we were reminded that Saddam Hussein was in violation of UN resolutions! Yet, never mentioned was the fact that Israel has been in defiance of many more serious UN resolutions for a much longer period of time. These include UN Resolution 242, calling for Israel to withdraw from occupied territory in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, and UN Resolution 194 which states "that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace should be allowed to do so..." (See Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" p. 4.) Unfortunately, Zionists burn the midnight oil devising devious excuses for defying these UN resolutions so that they can keep their stolen land and continue ethnically cleansing out its rightful inhabitants. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert recently stated that "Israel would not allow a single refugee to return to what is now Israel." (The New York Times, 3-31-07) Olmert's fake excuse is his claim that it is the Arabs' own fault for leaving. Of course, he ignores the role of Jewish terrorist groups which massacred innocent Arab civilians, including women and children, causing the rest to flee. (See Patrick Buchanan's "Where The Right Went Wrong" p. 114) In fact, the main reason Israel refuses to accept refugees (some of whom still have keys to their houses), as part of a peace plan, is the fear that a growing number of non-Jews could eventually out-vote the rest, with the result that Israel could cease being a Jewish state. The obvious solution is for Israel to drop the pretense that it is a democracy. For a country can not be both a democracy and a permanent Jewish state. There looms always the possibility that the Jewish state aspect could be voted out. This is one reason that Israel, after all these years, still has no constitution. Clearly, a constitution should be written which mandates a permanent Jewish state no matter what. Only those refugees pledging allegiance to this constitution should be allowed back into Israel. Refugees only have a right to return if doing so does not endanger the existence of the Jewish state.

Pardon Libby?

2007-03-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

Although Al(phonse) Capone had dominated organized crime in Chicago for years, he was able to escape punishment until 1931 when he was sent to prison for tax evasion. Similarly, neoconservatives, who treasonously tricked America into waging a war which is against our national interest, have thus far escaped punishment. I(rving) Libby, however, like Capone, has been convicted of lesser offenses. As noted by Bob Woodward, Libby, a "protege of Paul Wolfowitz," powerfully held "a trifecta of positions probably never before held by a single person." ("Plan of Attack" p. 48) He was the Vice President's Chief of Staff, the Vice President's National Security Advisor, and Assistant to the President. James Bamford ("A Pretext for War" p. 315) reports that "archneoconservative" Libby had been "one of the key people pushing the separate intelligence channel," i.e. the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which cherry-picked unverified pro-war material and stove-piped it directly to the White House, specifically to Libby himself. Libby then disseminated this material, as in, for instance, a January 25, 2003 presentation concluding that Saddam Hussein had WMD and numerous strong ties to al Qaeda. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage "was appalled at what he considered overreaching and hyperbole. Libby was drawing only the worst conclusions from fragments and silky threads." (Woodward, p.289-290) Cheney and Libby would go to the CIA to pressure analysts to support their claims that Saddam was trying to build a nuclear bomb and had links to al Qaeda. (Bamford, p. 335-336) Michael Isikoff and David Corn write, "Battered by administration officials on the al-Qaeda and Baghdad link, [Paul] Pillar and other CIA officials were looking to be on the team in other ways. So the CIA, perhaps in an act of bureaucratic overcompensation, was willing to give the White House what it wanted on the WMD issue. Indirectly--but significantly--the obsession of Feith and Wolfowitz at the Pentagon and Scooter Libby and Cheney at the White House to find 'the connection' between Saddam and Osama bin Laden was a factor that led to the CIA's overstating the WMD case." ("Hubris" p. 140) For Colin Powell's infamous Feb. 5 UN address, Libby provided Powell with a "60-page version of the case" [for war.] (Woodward, p. 297) Libby was also a member of the secret White House Iraq Group (WHIG), set up in August 2002, whose "job was to sell the war to the general public." (Bamford, p. 318) Libby's pro-war credentials were long-standing. In 1992, as deputy to then secretary of defense Wolfowitz, Libby and Wolfowitz wrote the "Defense Planning Guidance" or Wolfowitz memorandum. (Patrick Buchanan "Where the Right Went Wrong" p. 42) "Disowned by the Bush I White House, the memo was seemingly forgotten. But in Sept 2002, with Cheney, Wolfowitz and Libby restored to power, the Wolfowitz memo reappeared in an official document released by the White House, titled The National Security Strategy of the United States." (Buchanan, p. 44) George Packer writes, "The Defense Planning Guidance of 1992 foreshadows with uncanny accuracy, down to the wording of key sentences, the second President Bush's National Security Strategy of 2002, which poured the foundation for what came to be called the Bush Doctrine, and its first test, the Iraq War." ("The Assassins' Gate" p 14) This Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive unilateral wars is destroying America. Pardon Libby?

Attack Iran? Part 2

2007-02-08T13:36:00.000-08:00

In 1951, democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who held the quaint notion that a country's natural resources should benefit the country's population rather than foreigners, proceeded to nationalize the oil industry. As a result, the US and British secret services orchestrated a coup, overthrowing Mossadegh and replacing him with Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Shah was a pro-Israeli/Western puppet famous for his murderous security service Savak with its gruesome torture techniques. As Robert Fisk points out ("The Great War For Civilisation" p. 99), "A permanent secret US mission was attached to Savak headquarters." By 1979, the Iranians had had enough and overthrew the Shah, seizing the US Embassy, and taking American hostages. Fisk writes (p. 127-128) that 2300 documents, shredded by the Americans, were pasted back together over six years revealing much incriminating information, such as associations between Savak and Mossad, Israel's secret service. The next year, the US supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran. Fisk notes, "Iraq was already using gas to kill thousands of Iranian soldiers when Donald Rumsfeld made his notorious 1983 visit to Baghdad to shake Saddam's hand and ask him for permission to reopen the US embassy." (p. 166) Fisk also documents the fact that the US supplied Saddam with materials for both chemical and biological WMD. (p. 211-212) It would appear that instead of invading Iran, we should apologize to them.

Attack Iran? Part 1

2007-02-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

The Israel Lobby, determined to attack Iran, is forever quoting Iranian President Ahmadinejad's expressed desire to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Actually, this sentiment is commonplace in the Arab and Muslim worlds, thanks to the sin that dares not speak its name (in the US), i.e. the Israeli occupation and persecution of the Palestinians. (This is why establishing justice in Palestine is key to peace in this region.) Whereas Israel occupies Palestine and parts of Syria and Lebanon, and whereas the US occupies Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran occupies nobody. Indeed, it was Iraq, backed by the US, which invaded Iran in 1980, initiating the Iran/Iraq War in which a million soldiers died. Our war-mongering, trigger-happy president, who is allergic to diplomacy and oblivious to the other side of any issue, is threatening an attack on Iran. Given his pathological history, we must take such threats seriously. President Bush is apparently not content for our soldiers to be merely fighting Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, al-Queda, and messianic cults in Iraq, he wants them to take on the Iranian army as well. Could he be suffering from megalomania?

The Two Great Myths

2007-01-29T11:12:00.000-08:00

The Israel Lobby disseminates two great myths in order to perpetuate Israel's occupation of Palestine and to promote the death and destruction of Israel's enemies. The first myth is that the U.S. is under attack from "Islamofascists" for the purpose of spreading Islam. The second myth is that Israeli/Palestinian peace is impossible, so don't bother trying. Looking ahead to the 2008 elections, the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" has an article entitled "Rosner's Domain----The Israeli Factor: Ranking the presidential candidates." On a score of one to ten: worst for Israel is one, and best for Israel is 10. See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerPage.jhtml Leading the pack at 8.13 is Rudy Giuliani under whose picture is written, "The former New York mayor returned a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince after 9/11 following his comments on Israel." In other words, Giuliani is a hero to the Lobby because he keeps the truth from the American people, thus helping to keep myth #1 alive. The $10 million, intended for families of 9/11 victims, was contingent upon the prince being able to tell the American people that we were attacked on 9/11 because of our foreign policy favoring Israel. This was of course eventually shown to be true by the 9/11 commission (see previous blog "The Great Debate, Part 3" 10/19/06). At the bottom of the pack is Senator Chuck Hagel at 3.88. Under his picture is stated, "The Senator for Nebraska believes that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to Middle East peace." That is the death knell for Hagel as far as the Lobby is concerned since the Lobby prefers to deny the truth that Israel was a factor, for instance, in our invasion of Iraq (see previous blogs "Why Iraq? Parts 1-7" 1/15/06-1/21/06). Most elected officials are merely politicians who prostitute themselves to the Lobby to raise funds for their re-elections. Rarely, however, there comes along a true statesman willing to debunk myths for the greater good of our country.

The JINSA Crowd, Part 2

2007-01-23T11:48:00.000-08:00

After 9/11, the neoconservative/Zionists had persuaded President Bush to include the Palestinians in his War Against Terror and to refuse to meet with duly-elected Palestinian President Arafat. As Karen DeYoung writes, "In his new 'with us or against us' view of the world, Powell thought Bush tended to see the Israeli/Palestinian situation in black-and-white terms---'Sharon good, Arafat bad.' " ("Soldier---The Life of Colin Powell," p. 356) This was particularly tragic because in 2002, the Arab League endorsed the Saudi Peace Plan, (See previous blog "The Saudi Peace Plan" 1/11/06), which was accepted by Arafat's Palestinian government and virtually the rest of the world except for Israel and the U.S. Rather than Mideast peace, Bush had his heart set on war with Israel's enemy, Iraq. Just as the neoconservative/Zionists trumped up false evidence supporting an Iraq invasion, they trumped up false evidence against Arafat. From Israel came death threats against Arafat in line with their beloved policy of targeted assassinations. In September 2003, the U.N. General Assembly voted 133-4 to condemn Israeli threats against Arafat. The four opposed to the condemnation were Israel, the US, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. An article in "The Guardian" (UK) 4/24/04 , entitled "Sharon: 'We May Kill Arafat,' " quoted Sharon, (having just spoken to President Bush), "I told the president the following. In our first meeting about three years ago, I accepted your request not to harm Arafat physically. I told him I understand the problems surrounding the situation, but I am released from that pledge." A few months later Arafat died of a "mysterious illness," poisoning, no doubt. Thus, instead of Mideast peace, we have increasing numbers of civil wars in countries which oppose Israel's occupation. The Zionists may believe this is fine for Israel, but it is fatal for the U.S.

The JINSA Crowd, Part 1

2007-01-21T20:27:00.000-08:00

Speaking before the National Press Club on October 11, 2001, Winston Churchill, grandson of Britain's famous prime minister, recalled asking Israel's General Sharon in 1967 what was to become of the Palestinians. Churchill stated that Sharon's "chilling" reply was, "We'll make a pastrami sandwich of them." By this he meant that Palestinians in the occupied territories would be separated by layers of Israeli settlements. Surely, that has come to pass. Churchill went on to say that after the 1973 war, Sharon telephoned Churchill boasting, "We have peace. A piece of Egypt. A piece of Lebanon. A piece of Jordan. And a piece of Syria." One might wonder if it was to this definition that President Bush was referring when he labeled Sharon "a man of peace." Bush's statement was made following a peace-making trip which Secretary of State Colin Powell made to the Middle East in 2002, as described in Karen DeYoung's book "Soldier---The Life of Colin Powell." Powell realized the importance of Israeli/Palestinian peace but was up against strong opposition. DeYoung writes, "Cheney, Rumsfeld and their senior aides continued to urge Bush to think small in terms of any Mideast initiative, although Powell privately questioned why the defense secretary was being allowed a decisive say on what was essentially a diplomatic issue." (p.355) "Powell referred to Rumsfeld's team as the 'JINSA crowd.' JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, was a Washington-based organization that equated U.S. national security with a strong backing for Israel's defense needs. Feith, a Washington lawyer who had actively opposed Mideast peace talks for most of his career, had served on its board, as had Perle and Cheney." (p.356)

The Lobby's Blitzkrieg, Part 2

2007-01-18T19:28:00.000-08:00

If the hysterical falsehoods hurled at President Carter sound familiar, it is because they are slung at all others who dare speak out. Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, who published the taboo-shattering paper "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" (See previous blogs "The Lobby" and "WSJ Response" 3/26/06 and "The Great Debate, Parts 1-4" 10/17/06-11/26/06) , were subjected to the same verbiage verbatim. It is crucial to The Lobby's agenda that the American public be kept in the dark concerning Israel's despicable treatment of the Palestinians, as described in Carter's book. It is important that America be kept unaware of the real reason we are hated in the Muslim world. Otherwise America might wake up to the importance of establishing a just peace in Palestine not only #1: to prevent future 9/11's, but also #2: to be able to enlist Muslim nations to join us in establishing peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, and #3: to prevent the Israel Lobby from pushing us into invading more countries, such as Iran, on behalf of Israel, as was true with Iraq. A just peace between Israel and her neighbors, as outlined in the 2002 Arab League Peace Plan, (see previous blog "The Saudi Peace Plan" 1/11/06) , would bring this unnecessary so-called war on terror to an end. The problem is, of course, Israel does not want to give back its stolen land.

The Lobby's Blitzkrieg, Part 1

2007-01-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

The goose-stepping footsoldiers of the Israel Lobby have their marching orders. Order #1: Prohibit any criticism of Israel, including any discussion of Israel's occupation of Palestine. Order #2: Crucify those who disobey Order #1. President Jimmy Carter is the Lobby's latest victim. Carter had the audacity to publish his observations of conditions in Israeli-occupied Palestine. (See "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid") He has thus been branded a bigot, a fabricator, a plagiarist, a liar, a dangerous terrorist-abetter, and of course, an anti-Semite. Defense attorney Alan Dershowitz called Carter's book "indecent" and plans to confront him when Carter addresses students and faculty at Brandeis later this month. The speech is not open to the public except for Dershowitz, it appears. Dershowitz vows, "This will be the toughest encounter he has ever had in his professional career." (The Boston Globe, 1/11/07) Carter has written, "The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks..." (Los Angeles Times 12/8/06) In this country all those who discuss the plight of the Palestinians are called anti-Semites unless they are Jewish. In that case, they're called "self-hating Jews." In other words, Jews who uphold the high moral precepts of Judaism should hate themselves. One gets the impression that the venomous Lobby is hoping the 82-year-old former president has a heart attack on the Brandeis podium.