- Experts in the West and ordinary people in Arab lands
have understood for many years that the United States does not have an
independent policy toward the Middle East. President Jimmy Carter, a man
of good will, tried to use American influence to settle the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, the source of dangerous instability in the Middle East. However,
Israel was able to block Carter's attempt, while blaming Yasser Arafat.
Carter's plan would have given rise to a Palestinian state. Israel did
not want any such state, because obvious military aggression is necessary
in order to steal the territory of an official state with defined borders.
It is much easier to steal land from a non-state.
-
- By preventing the rise of a Palestinian state, Israel
has been able to continue with its theft of the West Bank. Palestinians
who have not been driven out have been forced into ghettos, cut off from
schools, hospitals, water, and their olive groves and farmlands. In a recent
book, President Carter called the existing situation "apartheid."
Carter was demonized by the Israel Lobby for his use of this word, but
some experts consider Carter's choice of words to be an euphemism for the
continuation of what I. Pappe and N. G. Finkelstein call "the ethnic
cleansing of Palestine."
-
- That the vast majority of Americans know nothing of this
is testimony to the power of the Israel Lobby.
-
- A number of writers have exposed Israel's misbehavior
and the power of the Lobby, but until now, the Lobby has been able to marginalize
its critics by smearing them as "anti-semites," "nazis,"
and "Jew-haters." In a new book, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen
M. Walt have broken the Israel Lobby's power to suppress truth by demonizing
and intimidating all who would criticize Israel.
-
- Mearsheimer and Walt are scholars holding distinguished
appointments at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, two of
America's pre-eminent universities. Their book,
- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374177724/counterpunchmaga
- The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, published by
the highly regarded American publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is a
masterpiece of scholarship and documentation. Footnotes comprise 23 per
cent of the book's pages.
-
- Mearsheimer and Walt easily succeed in making their case
that neither strategic nor moral grounds can explain U.S. support for Israel.
Only the power of the Israel Lobby can explain the juxtaposition of a dwindling
moral and strategic case with ever-increasing U.S. backing for Israel,
even to the disadvantage of U.S. national and strategic interests. Indeed,
both executive and legislative branches are so completely compromised by
the Lobby that the different elements of U.S. Middle East policy "have
been designed in whole or part to benefit Israel vis-a-vis its various
rivals."
-
- Chapter by chapter, Mearsheimer and Walt demonstrate
the deleterious effects the Lobby has had on U.S. relations with Palestinians,
Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. The two scholars conclude:
-
- "The lobby's influence helped lead the United States
into a disastrous war in Iraq and has hamstrung efforts to deal with Syria
and Iran. It also encouraged the United States to back Israel's ill-conceived
assault on Lebanon, a campaign that strengthened Hezbollah, drove Syria
and Iran closer together, and further tarnished America's global image.
The lobby bears considerable, though not complete, responsibility for each
of these developments, and none of them was good for the United States.
The bottom line is hard to escape, although America's problems in the Middle
East would not disappear if the lobby were less influential, U.S. leaders
would find it easier to explore alternative approaches and be more likely
to adopt policies more in line with American interests."
-
- There is nothing anti-semitic about this book. Mearsheimer
and Walt do not challenge Israel's right to exist or the legitimacy of
the Israeli state. They believe the U.S. must defend Israel from threats
to its survival. They even regard AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, as a legitimate American lobby and not as an unregistered agent
of a foreign state.
-
- The motives of the two scholars, apart from respect for
truth and the obligation to speak it, are to further Israel's and America's
legitimate interests. Mearsheimer and Walt agree with numerous Israeli
historians and commentators that Israel's policy toward Palestine and the
Arabs, together with the Lobby's suppression of critics, have been "directly
harmful to Israel." The inflexibility that Israel has imposed on U.S.
foreign policy has America mired in wars--now a half decade or more old--in
Iran and Afghanistan. Even as Muslim rage threatens to engulf America's
puppet in Pakistan, vice president Dick Cheney, Israel and its neoconservative
allies strive to initiate war with Iran.
-
- This is a high price to pay for Israeli territorial expansion
even if the U.S.-Israeli policy of war and coercion succeed. If military
aggression fails to bring the Middle East under the hegemony of the U.S.
and Israel, the dangers to energy flows and Israel's existence could result
in the use of nuclear weapons. It is insane for the United States to expose
the world to such risks for the sake of Israel's misguided policy toward
Palestine.
-
- Other scholars, especially those whose sense of justice
is offended by the cruel oppression Palestinians suffer at the hands of
Israel, are more critical than Mearsheimer and Walt. The latter do Israel
and the Lobby a service by defining the issue as one of U.S. and Israeli
legitimate national interests rather than casting it as a case of crimes,
inhumanity, and injustice.
-
- It remains to be seen how much more blood and treasure
Zionist fanaticism will extract from Americans. But one thing is certain:
the Israel Lobby is far too powerful for America's good and Israel's.
-
- Forty years ago the Lobby was sufficiently powerful to
force President Lyndon Johnson to cover up the intentional Israeli attack
on the USS Liberty that resulted in 34 Americans dead and 174 wounded.
Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff declared: "No American President can stand up to Israel."
-
- Forty years later the Israel Lobby is able to reach into
Catholic universities and to overturn tenure decisions. The courageous
scholar Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University in Chicago,
Illinois, because he is an effective critic of Israeli policies.
-
- In America today academics and intellectuals who fail
to toe the Lobby's line are unlikely to receive support from conservative
or liberal foundations. Even Mearsheimer and Walt's article, "The
Israel Lobby," commissioned by the Atlantic Monthly and from which
their book evolved, had to be published overseas in The London Review of
Books when the Atlantic Monthly's editors' courage failed them.
- American patriots who glorify in their country's status
as the "sole superpower" have much to learn about the subservience
of their country's foreign policy to a tiny state of five million people.
There is no better place to begin than with Mearsheimer and Walt's <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374177724/counterpunchmaga>The
Israel Lobby.
-
- Paul Craig Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the
U.S. Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of
- The Tyranny of Good Intentions
- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/076152553X/counterpunchmaga
-
-
- Comment
- Kieth Norman...Canada
11-19-07
-
-
- The article yields yet again another rhetorical episodic
story line ("put it off to another day") as that of literally
thousands of aspiring writers who have kicked their keyboards endlessly
in a tempestuous yet disingenuous and sycophantic manner that one
asks the transparent question that they and this article's author pose
as they compose and capitalise their "here is the rationality-reason"
header.
-
- WHAT EXACTLY is the form of unreasonableness
(for AIPAC compliance) is actively being undertaken by the 'LOBBY'
in order that once proud and honest (wo)men who under normal circumstances use
the mind creatively, grovel, cringe, fawn, and cower to similar intelligent
people (pure assumption, of course) that the media - talking heads
and well respected bloggists, etc - have so much difficulty in even
"hinting" at the PROBABLE FEAR that House and Senate
Politicians and Cabinet Ministers (whomever) and possible other people
are living with...24 hours a day...17,520 and 52,560 hours per
term respectively. These wannabe Wordsworthians repeat and repeat
the facts (some fiction) resting on the ground, only subject to the dusting
off for further publication. However, providing a finite answer or an understandable
resolution with its guts spread across the page is quite foreign and unachievable
to these impressionists of the literary genre.
- Case in Point...Example of common sense application
-
- Consider YOURSELVES in a position of responsibility,
obligation and representation. The vote on the floor is to permit ALL
Government departments the legal authority to access the personal files
of all your constituents... inescapably (per status quo) phrased in
euphemistically veiled and capsulated language...and 500 pages in length. Following
this (at home), is a PUBLIC VOTE to allow ALL your Local
Authorities (or Government) to gain entry to your family's records:
financial banking arrangements, banking accounts, properties, stock market
accounts, medical records, emails, letters, phone calls, travel...right
down to your last will and testicle.. :-).
-
- Would you vote 'yes' or 'no' to either or both propositions?
Ask yourself what is the BIG DIFFERENCE HERE....
- The answer is...NUMBERS.
-
- Can you imagine the very first and everlasting reaction
of the lobbyist and especially 'THE LOBBY' when they realise that
threat, bribe and smear is now really going to be a full-time applications
programme and a big-ticket item in man-hours and finance and not just an
incidental as 'THE LOBBY' currently views it ...where they need
to grapple (by dual nationality extrapolation and computation) with just
85 Senators and 400 House Representatives. It would seem a lost cause for
anyone to attempt to smear, bribe or even physically harm 10,000 to 1,000,000 voters
who have said NO.
-
- So maybe each State represented in the House, albeit by
its population proportionality, should increase their representation, say
20 fold, with California at 1060 and the total at 8700 seats (amending
Public Law 62-5). One could always house them in the new American Embassy
in Iraq. (Is that a light I see above your head? :-))
- So, what number will Democracy for the People really
be effective at? Surely not the current House and Senate numbers.
Did the Founding Fathers ever consider that future political achievers would
be so gullible and FLEECE-ABLE?
-
- That be the case, then, what are the alternatives? Think
about it Mr. Roberts and Mr. Reese and return here with some
practical answers.
- "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
-
- Now, one may think that old Del was speaking to
a very pre-emptive yet promising new lobbying group that many years later
would blossom into the "fear mongers" themselves. Perhaps he
was. Who knows? Rumsfeld, maybe?
-
- What is this FEAR that permeates and percolates the souls
of these Politicians and White House brigands?
-
- Are they concerned about Money...Power...or Respect...and
the consequences for their Family, Faith/Religion and Sexuality? Or, is
it genuine fundamental ignorance? Moreover, and more importantly, what
about the cerebriac mental health conditions of the purveyors, providers,
suppliers and predators themselves who freely walk the Corridors Of
Power (COP) akin to a hungry lion laying in wait in the shadows of a Romanesque
amphitheater. How much is a young American and Brit soldier's
life worth?
- Will they sell out for...
- 1. MONEY - This person is in severe debt or wants
a 'better life' for their family. In all likelihood, this
person will eventually appraise the limits of their capitulation and
end their unsavoury and morally offensive conduct..Very few will take the
gamble that their children particularly, and friends will forever
be unaware.
-
- To forgo the probable slime and smear and possible physical
threats to family and themselves..they will throw in the towel, surrendering
the reigns to the surrogate elect who has ALREADY been cared for and
inducted/corrupted by their handlers (The LOBBY). Rating
out of 10(most defective/detested)...say 4.
- 2. POWER - The person is extremely confident and
self assured of their personal 'magnetism' and scholarly attributes,
implanted by friends and family initially, but now primarily by their most
secretive and closest-fitting associates. They believe (they only) that
others (important people) will automatically see them as the Messiah.
If not initially wealthy, then their sense of greed for power,
money, respect and sometimes sexuality rapidly become reprehensively active.
There is no honest faith within their grasp.
-
- How much is a young American or Brit soldier's life
worth to this person? Maybe 10 cents? (in 2007 US dollars) He, unlike the
'Money Person,' will not concern the feelings and beliefs of family and
friends but is empowered by the nodding heads they see in Committee. Quite
elemental and unproblematic for the LOBBY to manipulate this person. Rating
out of 10 (most defective/detested)...say a 9.
- 3. RESPECT - The person strives for unequivocal
and expressed acceptance. They already have wealth stimulated by their
power that is inherent in their demeanour and manner in which
they "do business". Their faith, religious and/or personal, however
foolish or unenlightened in the eyes of others, is their moral backbone.
They are totally unaware that false-flag Historical Religious events will
be unleashed by the LOBBY against their belief if compliance is not forthcoming.
-
- What is other possible weaknesses and imperfections
that the LOBBY can exploit and eventually control such people? Is it their
sexuality (false flag or truth) and/or physical threats to self and
family. Initially setting an example against a friend or associate.
- Rating out of 10 (most defective/detested)...say, a 7.
- Question
-
- Why is it that nobody ever seems to find or attempt to
find the skeletons in the closet of the LOBBY and AIPAC? What are the names
(etc) of ALL of their executives, their corridor lobbyists, their sayanims,
their business ties? Where are all those American patriots who shout their
heads off but will remain absolutely silent when the casualties
of war increase and increase? Will it take a draft...or?
-
- "All personal vows we are likely to make, all personal
oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the
next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and
abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our personal
vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths."...Kol
Nidre
- Kieth Norman(WelshBrit)
- Canada
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