- Introduction
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- Any serious effort to understand the extraordinary influence
of the Zionist power configuration over US foreign policy must examine
the presence of key operatives in strategic positions in the government
and the activities of local Zionist organizations affiliated with mainstream
Jewish organizations and religious orders.
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- There are at least 52 major American Jewish organizations
actively engaged in promoting Israel's foreign policy, economic and technological
agenda in the US (see the appendix). The grassroots membership ranges
from several hundred thousand militants in the Jewish Federations of North
America (JFNA) to one hundred thousand wealthy contributors, activists
and power brokers in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
In addition scores of propaganda mills, dubbed think tanks, have been
established by million dollar grants from billionaire Zionists including
the Brookings Institute (Haim Saban) and the Hudson Institute among others.
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- Scores of Zionist funded political action
committees (PAC) have intervened in all national and regional elections,
controlling nominations and influencing election outcomes. Publishing
houses, including university presses have been literally taken over by
Zionist zealots, the most egregious example being Yale University, which
publishes the most unbalanced tracts parroting Zionist parodies of Jewish
history (Financial Times book review section August 28/29 2010). New heavily
funded Zionist projects designed to capture young Jews and turn them into
instruments of Israeli foreign policy includes "Taglit-Birthright"
which has spent over $250 million dollars over the past decade sending
over a quarter-million Jews (between 18-26) to Israel for 10 days of intense
brainwashing (Boston Globe August 26, 2010). Jewish billionaires and the
Israeli state foot the bill. The students are subject to a heavy dose
of Israeli style militarism as they are accompanied by Israeli soldiers
as part of their indoctrination; at no point do they visit the West Bank,
Gaza or East Jerusalem (Boston Globe August 26, 2010). They are urged
to become dual citizens and even encouraged to serve in the Israeli armed
forces.
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- In summary the 52 member organizations of the
Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations which we discuss
are only the tip of the iceberg of the Zionist Power Configuration: taken
together with the PACs, the propaganda mills, the commercial and University
presses and mass media we have a matrix of power for understanding the
tremendous influence they have on US foreign and domestic policy as it
affects Israel and US Zionism.
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- While all their activity is dedicated first and foremost
in ensuring that US Middle East policy serves Israel's colonial expansion
in Palestine and war aims in the Middle East, what B'nai B'rth euphemistically
calls a "focus on Israel and its place in the world", many groups
'specialize' in different spheres of activity. For example, the "Friends
of the Israel Defense Force" is primarily concerned in their own words
"to look after the IDF", in other words provide financial resources
and promote US volunteers for a foreign army (an illegal activity except
when it involves Israel). Hillel is the student arm of the Zionist power
configuration claiming a presence in 500 colleges and universities, all
affiliates defending each and every human rights abuse of the Israeli state
and organizing all expenses paid junkets for Jewish student recruits to
travel to Israel where they are heavily propagandized and encouraged to
'migrate' or become 'dual citizens'.
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- Method: Studying Zionist Power
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- There are several approaches for measuring the power
of the combined Zionist organizations and influential occupants of strategic
positions in government and the economy. These include (a) reputational
approach (b) self claims (c) decision-making analysis (d) structural inferences.
Most of these approaches provide some clues about Zionist potential power.
For example, newspaper pundits and journalists frequently rely on Washington
insiders, congressional staff and notables to conclude that AIPAC has
the reputation for being one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.
This approach points to the need to empirically examine the operations
of AIPAC in influencing Congressional votes, nomination of candidates,
defeating incumbents who do not unconditionally support the Israeli line.
In other words analyzing the Congressional and Executive decision- making
process is one key to measuring Zionist power. But it is not the only one.
Zionist power is a product of a historical context, where media ownership
and wealth concentration and other institutional levers of power come into
play and shape the current decision-making framework. Cumulative power
over time and across institutions creates a heavy bias in the political
outcomes favorable to Israel's organized agents in America. Once again
the mere presence of Jews or Zionists in positions of economic, cultural
and political power does not tell us how they will use their resources
and whether they will have the desired effect. Structural analysis, the
location of Zionists in the class structure, is necessary but not sufficient
for understanding Zionist power. One has to proceed and analyze the content
of decisions made and not made regarding the agenda of Israel's backers
operating in the USA. The 52 major Zionists organizations are very open
about their claims to power, their pursuit of Israel's agenda and their
subservience to each and every Israeli regime.
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- Those who deny Zionist power over US Mid East foreign
policy are left-Zionists namely Noam Chomsky and his acolytes. They never
analyze the legislative process, executive decision-making, the structures
and activity of the million member Zionist grassroots and the appointments
and background of key policy makers deciding strategic policies in the
Middle East. Instead they resort to superficial generalizations and political
demagogy, imputing policy to "Big Oil" and the "military-industrial
complex" or "US imperialism". Categories devoid of empirical
content and historical context about real existing policy making regarding
the Middle East.
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- The Making of Zionist Power in the US Government
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- To understand US submission to Israeli war policies
in the Middle East one has to look beyond the role of lobbies pressuring
Congress and the role of political action committees and wealthy Zionist
campaign contributions. A much neglected but absolutely essential building
block of Zionist power over US foreign economic, diplomatic and military
policy is the Zionist presence in key policy positions, including the Departments
of Treasury and State, the Pentagon, the National Security Council and
the White House.
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- Operating within the top policymaking positions, Zionist
officials have consistently pursued policies in line with Israel's militarist
policies, aimed at undermining and eliminating any country critical of
the Jewish States' colonial occupation of Palestine, its regional nuclear
monopoly, its expansion of Jews only settlements and above all its strident
efforts to remain the dominant power in the Arab East. The Zionist policymakers
in Government are in constant consultation with the Israeli state, ensuring
coordination with the Israeli military (IDF) command, its Foreign Office
and secret police (MOSSAD) and compliance with the Jewish State's political
line. Over the past 24 months not a single Zionist policymaker has voiced
any criticism of Israel's most heinous crimes, ranging from the savaging
of Gaza to the massacre of the humanitarian flotilla and the expansion
of new settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. A record of loyalty
to a foreign power which even exceeds the subservience of the Stalinist
and Nazi fellow travelers in Washington during the 1930s and 1940s.
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- Zionist policymakers in strategic positions depend on
the political backing and work closely with their counterparts in the "lobbies"
(AIPAC) in Congress and in the national and local Jewish Zionist organizations.
Many of the leading Zionist policymakers rose to power through a deliberate
strategy of infiltrating the government to shape policy promoting Israel's
interest over and above the interests of the US populace. While a degree
of cohesion resulting from a common allegiance to Tel Aviv can account
for suspected nepotism and selection, it is also the case that the powerful
Jewish lobbies can play a role in creating key positions in Government
and ensuring that one of their own will occupy that position and pursue
Israel's agenda.
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- Stuart Levey: Israel's Foremost Operative in the US Government
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- In 2004, AIPAC successfully pressured the Bush Administration
to create the office of Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
(UTFI) and to name its protégé Princeton graduate Stuart
Levey to that position. Before, but especially after his appointment,
Levey was in close collaboration with the Israeli state and was known as
an over the top Zionist zealot with unbounded energy and blind worship
of the Israeli state.
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- Within the confines of his Zionist ideological blinders,
Levey applied his intelligence to the singular task of turning his office
into the major foreign policy venue for setting US policy toward Iran.
Levey more than any other appointed official in government or elected
legislator, formulates and implements policies which profoundly influence
US, European Union and UN economic relations with Iran. Levey elaborated
the sanctions policies, which Washington imposed on the EU and the Security
Council. Levey, organizes the entire staff under his control at Treasury
to investigate trade and investment policies of all the world's major manufacturing,
banking, shipping, petroleum and trading corporations. He then criss-crosses
the US and successfully pressures pension funds, investment houses, oil
companies and economic institutions to disinvest from any companies dealing
with Iran's civilian economy. He has gone global, threatening sanctions
and blackballing dissident companies in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and
North America which refuse to surrender economic opportunities. They all
understood Levey operated at the behest of Israel, services Levey has proudly
performed.
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- Levey coordinates his campaign with Zionist leaders
in Congress. He secures sanctions legislation in line with his campaigns.
His policies clearly violate international law and national sovereignty,
pressing the limits of extra territorial enforcement of his administrative
fiats against a civilian economy. His violation of economic sovereignty
parallels Obama's announcement that US Special Forces would operate in
violation of political sovereignty on four continents. For all intents
and purposes, Levey makes US policy toward Iran. At each point he designs
the escalation of sanctions, and then passes it on to the White House,
which shoves it down the throats of the Security Council. Once new sanctions
approved by Levey and staff are in place they are there to enforce them:
identifying violators and implementing penalties. Treasury has become
an outpost of Tel Aviv. Not a single leftist, liberal or social democratic
publication highlights the role of Levey or even the terrible economic
pain this Old Testament fanatic is inflicting on 75 million Iranian civilian
workers and consumers. Indeed like Israel's Judeo-fascist rabbis who preach
a "final solution" for Israel's enemies, Levey announces new
and harsher "punishment" against the Iranian people (Stuart Levey,
"Iran's New Deceptions at Sea Must be Punished" FT 8/16/2010,
p. 9). Perhaps at the appropriate moment the Jewish State will name a
major avenue through the West Bank for his extraordinary services to this
most unholy racist state.
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- The Strategic Role of Local Power
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- The Israel Lobby Archive recently released declassified
documents of the American Zionist Council (AZC) subpoenaed during a US
Senate investigation between 1962-63. The documents reveal how the Israeli
state through its American Jewish conduits the mainstream Zionist
organizations penetrated the US mass media and propagated its political
line, unbeknownst to the American public. Stories written by a host of
Jewish Zionist journalists and academics were solicited and planted in
national media such as The Readers Digest, The Atlantic Monthly, Washington
Post among others, including regional and local newspapers and radio stations
(Israel Lobby Archive, August 18, 2010). While the national Zionist organizations
procured the journalists and academic writers and editors, it was the local
affiliates who carried the message and implemented the line. The level
of infiltration the Senate subpoenaed Zionist documents in the 1960's reveal
has multiplied a hundred fold over the past 50 years in terms of financing,
paid functionaries and committed militants and above all in structural
power and coercive capability.
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- While the national leaders in close consultation with
Israeli officials receive instructions on which issues are of high priority,
the implementation follows a vertical route to regional and local leaders,
politicians, and notables who in turn target the local media and religious,
academic and other opinion leaders. When national leaders ensure publication
of pro Israeli propaganda, the locals reproduce and circulate it to local
media and non-Zionist influentials on their "periphery". Letter
campaigns orchestrated at the top are implemented by thousands of militant
Zionist doctors, lawyers and businesspeople. They praise pro-Israel scribes
and attack critics; they pressure newspapers , publishing houses and magazines
not to publish dissidents. The national and local leaders promote hostile
reviews of books not promoting the Israeli line, influence library decisions
to pack their shelves with pro Israeli books and censor and exclude more
balanced or critical histories. Local militants in co-ordination with
Israeli consuls saturate the public with thousands of public meetings and
speakers targeting Christian churches, academic audiences and civic groups;
at the same time local Zionist militants and, especially millionaire influentials,
pressure local venues (university administrators, church authorities and
civic associations) to disinvite any critic of Israel and their supporters
from speaking. In the last resort, local Zionists demand that a pro-Israel
propagandist be given equal time, something unheard of when an Israel apologist
is scheduled to speak.
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- Local Zionist organizations make yeoman efforts to recruit
mayors, governors, local celebraties, publishers, church people and promising
young ethnic and minority leaders by offering them all expenses paid propaganda
junkets to Israel and then to write or give interviews parroting what they
were fed by Israeli officials. Local leaders mobilize thousands of militant
activist Zionists to attack anti-Zionist Jews in public and private.
They demand they be excluded from any media roundtables on the Middle East.
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- Local Zionist functionaries form rapid response committees
to visit and threaten any local publisher and editorial staff publishing
editorials or articles questioning the Israeli party line. Local leaders
police ("monitor") all local meetings, speaker invitations, as
well as the speeches of public commentators, religious leaders and academics
to detect any "anti-Zionist overtones' (which they label "covert
anti-Semitism"). Most of the major Jewish religious orders are lined
up as the clerical backbone of local Israeli fundraising, including the
financing of new "Jews only" settlements in the Palestinian West
Bank.
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- Local functionaries are in the forefront of campaigns
to deny independent Middle East specialists and public policy academics,
appointments, tenure or promotion, independently of the quality of their
scholarship. On the other hand, academic hacks who toe the pro-Israel
line, by publishing books with blanket attacks on Israeli critics among
Christians and Muslims and countries like Turkey, Iran or whoever is a
target of Israeli policy, are promoted, lauded and put on the best seller
list. Any book or writer critical of Zionist Power or Israel is put on
a local and national 'index' and subject to an inquisition by slander from
a stable of Jewish Torquemadas.
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-
- Conclusion
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- The power of Israel in the US does not reside only in
the influence and leadership of powerful Washington based "pro-Israel
lobbies", like AIPAC. Without the hundreds of thousands of militant
locally-based dentists, podiatrists, stockbrokers, real estate brokers,
profesors and others, the "lobby" would be unable to sustain
and implement its policy among hundreds of millions of Americans outside
the major metropolises. As we have seen from the Senate declassified documents,
over a half-century ago, local Zionist organizations began a systematic
campaign of penetration, control and intimidation that has reached its
pinnacle in the first decade of the 21st century. It is no accident or
mere coincidence that University officials in Northern Minnesota or upstate
New York are targeted to exclude speakers or fire faculty members critical
of Israel. Local Zionists have computerized databanks operating with an
index of prohibited speakers, as the Zionists themselves admit and flaunt
in contrast to "liberal" Zionists who are prone to label as "anti-Semitic"
or "conspiracy theorists" writers who cite official Zionist documents
demonstrating their systematic perversion of our democratic freedoms.
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- Over the decades, the distinction between Zionist power
exercised by a "lobby" outside the government and operatives
"inside" the government has virtually vanished. As we have seen,
in our case study, AIPAC secured the undersecretary position in Treasury,
dictated the appointment of a key Zionist operative (Stuart Levey) and
accompanies his global crusade to sanction Iran into starvation and destitution.
The planting of operatives within key Middle East positions in government
is not the simple result of individual career choices. The ascent of so
many pro-Israel Zionist to government posts is part of their mission to
serve Israel's interest at least for a few years of their careers. Their
presence in government precludes any Senate or Congressional investigations
of Zionists organizations acting as agents of a foreign power as took place
in the 1960's.
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- As the major Zionist organizations and influentials
have accumulated power and abused the exercise of power on behalf of an
increasingly bloody racist state, which flaunts its dominance over US institutions,
public opposition is growing. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign
is gaining strength even in the US (see Harvard divestment in Israeli companies).
US public support for Israel, by all measures, has dropped below 50%,
while polls in Western Europe show a marked increase in hostility to Israel's
ultra-rightist regime. Anti-Zionist Jews are growing in influence especially
among young Jews who are appalled by the Israeli slaughter in Gaza and
assault on the humanitarian flotilla. Equally important the presence of
anti-Zionist Jews on panels and forums has given courage to many otherwise
intimidated non-Jews who heretofore were fearful of being labeled "anti-Semitic".
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- The Zionist power configuration rests on a declining
population base: most young Jews marry outside the confines of the ethno-religious
Jewish-Israeli nexus and many of them are not likely to form the bases
for rabid campaigns on behalf of a racist state. The Zionist leadership's
high intensity and heavily endowed effort to fence in young people of Jewish
ancestry via private schools, subsidized "summer programs" in
Israel etc. are as much out of fear and recognition of the drift away from
clerical chauvinism as it is an attempt to recruit a new generation of
Israel First militants.
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- The danger is that the US Zionist support for the ultra-rightist
and racist regime in Israel is leading them to join forces with the far
right in the US. Today Jewish and Christian Manhattan rednecks are fermenting
mass Islamic hatred (the so called "Mosque controversy") as a
distraction from the economic crises and rising unemployment. Zionist
promotion of mass Islamofobia, so near to Wall Street, where many of their
fat cats who profit from plundering the assets of America operate, is a
dangerous game. If the same enraged masses turn their eyes upward toward
the wealthy and powerful instead of downward to blacks and Muslims, some
unpleasant and unanticipated surprises might rebound against, not only
Israel's operatives, but all those wrongly identified as related to a misconstrued
Jewish Motherland.
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-
- Appendix
- Conference of Presidents
- of Major American Jewish Organizations
- Member Organizations
- Ameinu
- American Friends of Likud
- American Gathering/Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
- America-Israel Friendship League
- American Israel Public Affairs Committee
- American Jewish Committee
- American Jewish Congress
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
- American Sephardi Federation
- American Zionist Movement
- Americans for Peace Now
- AMIT
- Anti-Defamation League
- Association of Reform Zionists of America
- B'nai B'rith International
- Bnai Zion
- Central Conference of American Rabbis
- Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
- Development Corporation for Israel/State of Israel Bonds
- Emunah of America
- Friends of Israel Defense Forces
- Hadassah, Women's Zionist Organization of America
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
- Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
- Jewish Community Centers Association
- Jewish Council for Public Affairs
- The Jewish Federations of North America
- Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
- Jewish Labor Committee
- Jewish National Fund
- Jewish Reconstructionist Federation
- Jewish War Veterans of the USA
- Jewish Women International
- MERCAZ USA, Zionist Organization of the Conservative
Movement
- NA'AMAT USA
- MCSK" Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine,
the Baltic States & Eurasia
- National Council of Jewish Women
- National Council of Young Israel
- ORT America
- Rabbinical Assembly
- Rabbinical Council of America
- Religious Zionists of America
- Union for Reform Judaism
- Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
- United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
- WIZO
- Women's League for Conservative Judaism
- Women of Reform Judaism
- Workmen's Circle
- World ORT
- World Zionist Executive, US
- Zionist Organization of America
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