- "It's no great secret why the Jewish agencies continue
to trumpet support for the discredited policies of this failed administration.
They see defense of Israel as their number-one goal, trumping all other
items on the agenda. That single-mindedness binds them ever closer to
a White House that has made combating Islamic terrorism its signature campaign.
The campaign's effects on the world have been catastrophic. But that
is no concern of the Jewish agencies." December 8, 2006 statement
by JJ Goldberg, editor ofForward (the leading Jewish weekly in the United
States)
-
-
- Introduction:
-
- Many Jewish writers, including those who
are somewhat critical of Israel, have raised pointed questions about our
critique of the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the United States
and what they wrongly claim are our singular harsh critique of the state
of Israel. Some of these accusers claim to see signs of 'latent anti-Semitism',
others, of a more 'leftist' coloration, deny the influential role of the
ZPC arguing that US foreign policy is a product of 'geo-politics or the
interests of big oil. With the recent publication of several widely circulated
texts, highly critical of the power of the Zionist 'lobby', several liberal
pro-Israel publicists generously conceded that it is a topic that should
be debated (and not automatically stigmatized and dismissed) and perhaps
be 'taken into account.'
-
- ZPC Deniers: Phony Arguments for Fake Claims
-
- The main claims of ZPC deniers take several
tacks: Some claim that the ZPC is just 'another lobby' like the Chamber
of Commerce, the Sierra Club or the Society for the Protection of Goldfish.
Others claim that by focusing mainly on Israel and by inference the 'Lobby',
the critics of Zionism ignore the equally violent abuses of rulers, regimes
and states elsewhere. This 'exclusive focus' on Israel, the deniers of
ZPC argue, reveals a latent or overt anti-Semitism. They propose that
human rights advocates condemn all human rights abusers everywhere (at
the same time and with the same emphasis?). Others still argue that Israel
is a democracy at least outside of the Occupied Territories (OT)
and therefore is not as condemnable as other human rights violators
and should be 'credited' for its civic virtues along with its human rights
failings. Finally others still claim that, because of the Holocaust and
'History-of-Two-Thousand-Years-of-Persecution', criticism of Jewish-funded
and led pro-Israel lobbies should be handled with great prudence, making
it clear that one criticizes only specific abuses, investigates all charges
especially those from Arab/Palestinian/United Nations/European/Human
Rights sources -- and recognizes that Israeli public opinion, the press
and even the Courts or sectors of them may also be critical of regime policies.
-
- These objections to treating the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab
conflict and the activities of Zionist Lobbies as central to peace and
war serve to dilute, dissipate and deflate criticism and organized political
activity directed at the ZPC and its directors in Israel.
-
- The response of the critics of Israel and
the ZPC to these attacks has been weak at best and cowardly at worst.
Some critics have responded that their criticism is only directed toward
a specific policy or leader, or to Israeli policies in the OT and that
they recognize Israel is a democracy, that it requires secure borders,
and that it is in the interests of the Israeli 'people' to lower their
security barriers. Others argue that their criticism is directed at securing
Israeli interests, influencing the Zionist Lobby or to opening a debate. They
claim that the views of 'most' Jews' in the US are not represented by the
52 organizations that make up the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations
of America, or the thousands of PACs, local federations, professional associations
and weekly publications which speak with one voice as unconditional supporters
of every twist and turn in the policy of the Zionist State.
-
- There are numerous similar lines of criticism,
which basically avoid the fundamental issues raised by the Israeli state
and the ZPC, and which we are obliged to address. The reason that criticism
and action directed against Israel and the ZPC is of central importance
today in any discussion of US foreign policy, especially (but not exclusively)
of Middle East policy and US domestic policymaking is that they play a
decisive role and have a world-historic impact on the present and future
of world peace and social justice. We turn now to examine the 'big questions'
facing Americans as a result of the power of Israel in the United States.
-
- The Big Questions Raised by the ZPC and Israeli Power
in the USA:
-
- War or Peace:
-
- Critical study of the lead up to the US invasion of Iraq,
US involvement in providing arms to Israel (cluster bombs, two-ton bunker
buster bombs and satellite surveillance intelligence) prior to, during
and after Israel's abortive invasion of Lebanon, Washington's backing of
the starvation blockade of the Palestinian people and the White House and
Congress' demands for sanctions and war against Iran are directly linked
to Israeli state policy and its Zionist policy-makers in the Executive
branch and US Congress. One needs to look no further than the documents,
testimony and reports of AIPAC and the Presidents of the Major American
Jewish Organizations to observe their claims of success in authoring legislation,
providing (falsified) intelligence, engaging in espionage (AIPAC) and turning
documents over to Israeli intelligence (now dubbed 'free speech' by liberal
Zionists).
-
- If, as the overwhelming evidence indicates, the ZPC played
a major role in the major wars of our time, wars capable of igniting new
armed conflicts, then it ill behooves us to dilute the role of the Zionist/Jewish
Lobby in promoting future US wars. GivenIsrael's militarist-theocratic
approach to territorial aggrandizement and its announced plans for future
wars with Iran and Syria, and given the fact that the ZPC acts as an unquestioning
and highly disciplined transmission belt for the Israeli state, then US
citizens opposed to present and future US engagement in Middle East wars
must confront the ZPC and its Israeli mentors. Moreover, given the extended
links among the Islamic nations, the Israel/ZPC proposed 'new wars' with
Iran will result in Global wars. Hence what is at stake in confronting
the ZPC are questions which go beyond the Israeli-Palestine peace process,
or even regional Middle East conflicts: it involves the big question of
World Peace or War.
-
- Democracy or Authoritarianism
-
- Without the bluster and public hearings of former Senator
Joseph McCarthy, the Jewish Lobby has systematically undermined the principal
pillars of our fragile democracy. While the US Congress, media, academics,
retired military and public figures are free to criticize the President,
any criticism of Israel, much less the Jewish Lobby, is met with vicious
attacks in all the op-ed pages of major newspapers by an army of pro-Israeli
'expert' propagandists, demands for firings, purges and expulsions of the
critics from their positions or denial of promotions or new appointments.
In the face of any prominent critic calling into question the Lobby's
role in shaping US policy to suit Israel's interests, the entire apparatus
(from local Jewish federations, AIPAC, the Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations etc) go into action smearing, insulting and
stigmatizing the critics as 'anti-Semites'. By denying free speech and
public debate through campaigns of calumny and real and threatened repercussions
the Jewish Lobby has denied Americans one of their more basic freedoms
and constitutional rights.
-
- The massive, sustained and well-financed hate campaigns
directed at any congressional candidate critical of Israel effectively
eliminates free speech among the political elite. The overwhelming influence
of wealthy Jewish contributors to both parties but especially the
Democrats results in the effective screening out of any candidate
who might question any part of the Lobby's Israel agenda. The takeover
of Democratic campaign finance by two ultra-Zionist zealots, Senator Charles
Schumer and Israeli-American Congressman Rahm Emanuel ensured that every
candidate was totally subordinated to the Lobby's unconditional support
of Israel. The result is that there is no Congressional debate, let alone
investigation, over the key role of prominent Zionists in the Pentagon
involved in fabricating reports on Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction',
and in designing and executing the war and the disastrous occupation policy.
The Lobby's ideologues posing as Middle East 'experts' dominate the op-ed
and editorial pages of all the major newspapers (Wall Street Journal, New
York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post). In their pose as Middle
East experts, they propagandize the Israeli line on the major television
networks (CBS, NBC,ABC, Fox, and CNN) and their radio affiliates. The
Lobby has played a prominent role in supporting and implementing highly
repressive legislation like the Patriot Act and the Military Commission
Act as well as modifying anti-corruption legislation to allow the Lobby
to finance congressional 'educational' junkets to Israel. The head of
Homeland Security with its over 150,000 functionaries and multi-billion
dollar budget is none other than Zionist fanatic Michael Chertoff, head
persecutor of Islamic charity organizations, Palestinian relief organizations
and other ethnic Middle Eastern or Moslem constituencies in the US, which
potentially might challenge the Lobby's pro-Israel agenda.
-
- The biggest threat to democracy in its fullest sense
of the word the right to debate, to elect, to legislate free of coercion
is found in the organized efforts of the Zionist lobby, to repress
public debate, control candidate selection and campaigning, direct repressive
legislation and security agencies against electoral constituencies opposing
the Lobby's agenda for Israel. No other lobby or political action group
has as much sustained and direct influence over the political process
including the media, congressional debate and voting, candidate selection
and financing of congressional allocation of foreign aid and Middle East
agendas as the organized Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) and its indirect
spokespeople heading key Congressional positions. A first step toward
reversing the erosion of our democratic freedoms is recognizing and publicly
exposing the ZPC's nefarious organizational and financial activities and
moving forward toward neutralizing their efforts.
-
- Their Foreign Policy or Ours?
-
- Intimately and directly related to the loss
of democratic freedoms and a direct consequence of the Jewish lobby's influence
over the political process is the making of US Middle East policy and who
benefits from it. The entire political effort of the Lobby (its spending,
ethnic baiting, censorship and travel junkets) is directed toward controlling
US foreign policy and, through US power, to influence the policy of US
allies, clients and adversaries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The
Lobby's systematic curtailment of our democratic freedoms is intimately
related to our own inability to influence our nation's foreign policy.
Our majoritarian position against the Iraq War, the repudiation of the
main executioner of the War (the White House) and our horror in the face
of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and destruction of Gaza are totally
neutralized by Zionist influence over Congressional and White House policymakers.
The recently victorious Congressional Democrats repudiate their electorate
and follow the advice and dictates of the pro-Zionist leadership (Nancy
Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emmanuel, Stephan Israel and others) by backing
an escalation of troops and an increase in military spending for the war
in Iraq. Bush follows the war policy against Iran proposed by the zealous
Zionist fanatics in the American Enterprise Institute, repudiating the
diplomatic proposals of the bi-partisan Baker Commission. Congress quadruples
US arms stored in Israel (supposedly for dual use) in the aftermath of
Israel's bombing of Southern Lebanon with one million anti-personnel bomblets
from cluster bombs in direct defiance of US electoral opinion. While hundreds
of millions of undernourished women and children suffer and die in Africa,
Latin America and Asia, the Lobby ensures that over half of US foreign
aid goes to Israeli Jews with per capita incomes of over $22,000 USD.
-
- No other organized political action group
or public relations firm acting on behalf of the Cuban and Venezuelan exiles
or Arab, African, Chinese or European Union states comes remotely near
the influence of the Zionist lobby in shaping US policy to serve the interest
of Israel.
-
- While the Lobby speaks for less than
2% of the US electorate, its influence on foreign policy far exceeds the
great majority who have neither comparable organizational nor financial
muscle to impose their views.
-
- Never in the history of the US republic or
empire has a powerful but tiny minority been able to wield so much influence
in using out nation's military and economic power and diplomatic arm-twisting
in the service of a foreign government. Neither the Francophiles during
the American Revolution, the Anglophiles in the Civil War and the German
Bund in the run-up to World War Two, nor the (anti-China) Nationalist Taiwan
Lobby possessed the organizational power and sustained political influence
that the ZPC has on US foreign and domestic policy at the service of the
State of Israel.
-
- Confronting the Lobby Matters
-
- The question of the power of the Lobby over
US policies of war or peace, authoritarianism or democracy and over who
defines the interests served by US foreign policy obviously go far beyond
the politics of the Middle East, the Israeli-colonial land grabs in Palestine
and even the savage occupation of Iraq. The playing out of Zionist influence
over the greatest military power in the world, with the most far-reaching
set of client states, military bases, deadly weapons and decisive voice
in international bodies (IMF/World Bank/United Nations Security Council)
means that the Lobby has a means to leverage its reach in most regions
of the world. This leverage power extends over a range of issues, from
defending the fortunes of murderous Russian-Jewish gangster oligarchs,
to bludgeoning European allies of the US to complicity with Israel's ethnic
cleansing ofPalestine.
-
- The ZPC represents a basic threat to our
existence as a sovereign state and our ability to influence whom we elect
and what agendas and interests our representatives will pursue. Even worse,
by serving Israeli interests, we are becoming complicit with a State whose
Supreme Court legalizes political assassinations across national boundaries,
torture, systematic violations of international law and a regime which
repudiates United Nations resolutions and unilaterally invades and bombs
its neighbors and practices military colonist expansionism. In a word
Israel resonates and feeds into the most retrograde tendencies and brutal
practices of contemporary American politics. In this sense the Lobby through
its media, Congressional influence and think tanks is creating an Israeli
look-alike. Like Israel, the US has established its own Pentagon assassination
teams; likeIsrael, it invades and colonizes Iraq; like Israel, it violates
and rejects any constitutional or international legal restraints and systematically
tortures accused but untried prisoners.
-
- Because of these fundamental considerations,
we cannot oblige our Jewish 'progressive' colleagues and compatriots and
refrain from confronting the Zionist Lobby with force and urgency. Too
many of our freedoms are at stake; too little time is left before they
succeed in securing a greater military escalation; too little of our sovereignty
remains in the face of the concerted effort by the Lobby and its Middle
Eastern 'expert-ideologues' to push and shove us into a new and more devastating
war with Iran at the behest of Israel's pursuit of Middle East dominance.
-
- No other country, abuser or not, of human
rights, with or without electoral systems, has the influence over our domestic
and foreign policy as does the state of Israel. No other Lobby has the
kind of financial power and organizational reach as the Jewish Lobby in
eroding our domestic political freedoms or our war-making powers. For
those reasons alone, it stands to reason, that we American have a necessity
to put our fight against Israeland its Lobby at the very top of our political
agenda. It is not because Israel has the worst human rights agenda in
the world other states have even worst democratic credentials
but because of its role in promoting its US supporters to degrade our democratic
principles, robbing us of our freedom to debate and our sovereignty to
decide our own interests. The Lobby puts the military and budgetary resources
of the Empire at the service of Greater Israel and that results in
the worst human rights in the world.
-
- Democratic, just and peaceful responses to
the Big Questions that face Americans, Europeans, Muslims, Jews and other
peoples of the world passes through the defeat and dismantlement of the
Israeli-directed Zionist Power Configuration in America. Nothing less
will allow us to engage in an open debate on the alternatives to repression
at home and imperialism abroad.
-
-
|