Democracy Now gatekeepers bury dancing Israeli movers and bogus art students

The below article was published on February 9, 2007, but we have just now became aware of it and feel it deserves a larger audience.

We had been acutely aware of the Israeli spying aspects described below and that both the mainstream media and Democracy Now had failed to cover them. It’s interesting to see, as the analysis below reveals, that when Democracy Now finally mentioned these, it did so in a way to minimize the impact and the facts.

On the contrary, the excellent Washington Report on Middle East Affairs had an article about this early on by editor Richard Curtiss. The Washington Report has been published since 1982 and is one of the two best print publications for information on Israel-Palestine in the U.S.. The other is AMEU’s The Link. Yet, Amy Goodman has never had editors from either publication on her program. As a result, many activists around the country don’t even know they exist. She has similarly ignored If Americans Knew, whose founder Alison Weir has been writing and speaking about Israel-Palestine for 11 years. (See related article.)

And when activists, despite Democracy Now’s omission, do learn about the Washington Report, they are sometimes told by similar left gatekeepers that the magazine is “conservative.” In reality, it is non-doctrinaire, its editors and writers are committed humanitarians, and it consistently publishes extremely strong journalism both on Israel-Palestine and on the Israel Lobby. We suspect that is why it is being “disappeared” by the left gatekeepers who so long kept Palestine out of progressive activism that Jeffrey Blankfort exposes so well. For example, he describes: 

If there is one event that exposed their influence over of the movement, it is what occurred in the streets of New York on June 12, 1982, when 800,000 people gathered in front of the United Nations to call for a ban on nuclear weapons. Six days earlier, on June 6th, Israel had launched a devastating invasion of Lebanon. Its goal was to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, then based in that country. Eighty thousand soldiers, backed by massive bombing from the air and from the sea were creating a level of death and destruction that dwarfed what Iraq would later do in Kuwait. Within a year there would be 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese dead and tens of thousands more wounded.

And what was the response that day in New York? In recognition of the suffering then taking place in his homeland, a Lebanese man was allowed to sit on the stage, but he would not be introduced; not allowed to say a word. Nor was the subject mentioned by any of the speakers. Israel and its lobby couldn’t have asked for anything more.

[The person largely responsible for this was Leslie Cagan, who similarly minimized discussion of Palestine in the post-9/11 antiwar movement. Cagan now, oddly, has a paid position with the US Boat to Gaza.]

Winter Patriot

Mitchell reportedly resigned over Dennis Ross’s “extreme bias” toward Israel, Ross working against US interests

Ma’an – A political adviser to the late president Yasser Arafat issued a statement Tuesday, alleging that US Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell resigned because of the “extreme bias” of his deputy Dennis Ross.

Bassam Abu Shareef said Ross obstructed all US initiatives aiming to achieve progress in the peace process, and blamed the deputy’s bias for Mitchell’s resignation Saturday.

Abu Shareef said senior American officials informed him that Mitchell viewed the appointment of Ross a step to obstruct the peace process. He added that Mitchell believed Ross was working against US interests.

The official paraphrased comments he said were made by Mitchell during a meeting, where he asked: “How can Dennis Ross assist in the peace process when he refuses to meet with the Palestinians, when he despises their leadership and hates their president?”

Abu Shareef also said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “rejects peace,” and would have no part of a Palestinian state with Hamas in its leadership.

“This means they are opening war on Palestinians and their nation,” he added.

Bloomberg declares May Birthright Israel month in N.Y., group plans to reach half of all young Jewish Americans

JTA — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has declared May Birthright Israel month. [No mention was made of Israel's ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 non-Jewish men, women, and children.]

Bloomberg will issue a formal proclamation at an event Wednesday evening in New York City set to be attended by more than 1,000 alumni of the free Israel trip for Jews aged 18 to 26.

The Taglit-Birthright Israel organization said May will feature events in cities across North America for trip alumni, special Birthright Shabbat celebrations at more than 100 synagogues, visits to communities by Israeli soldiers who participated in Birthright Israel trips and special donor functions.

The organization this month plans to publicize its goal of increasing participation from 30,000 a year to 51,000 a year by 2013, or one of every two young Jewish adults.

In January, the government of Israel announced that it would contribute $100 million to Taglit-Birthright Israel over the next three years. Birthright also plans to increase its fundraising this year by $10 million to $58.6 million, and then add another $20 million next year in order reach its participant goal for 2013.

JTA: Republican Jewish Coalition blasts Ron Paul

JTA: “Republican Jews express concern about Paul candidacy”– The Republican Jewish Coalition blasted U.S. Rep. Ron Paul before he announced his third bid for the presidency.

“As Americans who are committed to a strong and vigorous foreign policy, we are deeply concerned about the prospective presidential campaign of Congressman Ron Paul,” the RJC’s executive director, Matt Brooks, said in a May 12 statement about the Texas lawmaker. “While Rep. Paul plans to run as a Republican, his views and past record place him far outside of the Republican mainstream.”

Paul launched his campaign for the Republican nomination on Friday. Like his son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Paul has advocated cutting $3 billion in annual defense assistance to Israel, as well as to deny funding to its Arab neighbors.

In 2008, Paul mounted an insurgent campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and built a passionate base of support with his libertarian views and denunciations of American foreign policy. He was not a serious contender, however, in the primaries.

Paul had run as the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988.

“His candidacy, as we’ve seen in his past presidential campaigns, will appeal to a very narrow constituency in the U.S. electorate,” Brooks said. [In reality, Paul draws from across the political spectrum.] “Throughout his public service, Paul has espoused a dangerous isolationist vision for the U.S. and our role in the world. He has been a virulent and harsh critic of Israel during his tenure in Congress.”

Book Review: Carefully researched “Transparent Cabal” shows that invasion of Iraq was fomented to advance Israeli interests

MIDDLE EAST BOOK REVIEWS

Stephen J. Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, Foreword by Paul Findley, Introduction by Paul Gottfried, Norfolk, Virginia: Enigma Editions, 2008, xvi + 447 pages

By David W. Lutz, The Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya

The thesis of Stephen J. Sniegoski’s carefully-researched and persuasively-argued book is that the primary aim of the calamitous invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not to avenge an assassination plot against the President’s father, to liberate the Iraqi people, to combat terrorist threats to US security, to enhance US global power, to spread democracy, nor to control oil reserves, but rather to improve the strategic position of Israel: “The origins of the American war on Iraq revolve around the United States’ adoption of a war agenda whose basic format was conceived in Israel to advance Israeli interests and was ardently pushed by the influential pro-Israeli American neoconservatives, both inside and outside the Bush administration” (p. 351). Sniegoski’s assertion is not that the “neocons” deliberately promoted Israel’s interest at the expense of the United States, but rather that they “viewed American foreign policy in the Middle East through the lens of Israeli interest, as Israeli interest was perceived by the Likudniks” (p. 5).

Sniegoski explains: “The aim of the neoconservative/Likudnik foreign policy strategy was to weaken and fragment Israel’s Middle East adversaries and concomitantly increase Israel’s relative strength, both externally and internally. A key objective was to eliminate the demographic threat posed by the Palestinians to the Jewish state, which the destabilization of Israel’s external enemies would achieve, since the Palestinian resistance depended upon external support, both moral and material” (p. 5). Although the neocons saw an identity of interests between the United States and Israel, the countries’ respective interests did not in fact coincide. The United States stood to benefit from stability in the Middle East, so that the flow of oil would not be interrupted; Israel would gain relative strength from instability.

The neoconservatives are a group of Americans (some with strong ties to Israel) who became dissatisfied with socialism and moved to the “right”.

The half-Jewish Nazi who saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Supreme Court Justice Brandeis assisted

Ha’aretz, Raphael Ahren – Thanks to the late Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Chabad Lubavitch is a well-known and powerful Hasidic movement, with 4,000 emissaries now stationed around the world [teachings include the belief that non-Jews are a separate, inferior species]. But few people know that the rebbe’s predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, owes his life to a half-Jewish Nazi officer acting under the direct order of the head of the Third Reich’s military intelligence agency.

Who is the Real Reactionary? Is Ron Paul more progressive than Obama?

CounterPunch, Charles Davis – Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I’ll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn’t protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn’t overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government’s criminal behavior.

Can the same be said for Barack Obama?

Yet, ask a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and you’ll quickly be informed that yeah, Ron Paul’s good on the war stuff — yawn — but otherwise he’s a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy who’d kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. He’s more cosmopolitan, after all; less Texas-y. He’s a Democrat. And gosh, even if he’s made a few mistakes, he means well.

Sure he’s a murderer, in other words, but at least he’s not a Republican!

Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans – liberals – are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldn’t be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, saying they’d prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist.

Video from BBC documentary: Author says Al-Qaeda myth was manufactured

From the BBC documentary, “The Power of Nightmares,” produced by Adam Curtis:

AIPAC, a not-so-benign night flower: Spying connections, PACS, Harman, Pelosi, Hoyer…

Middle East Monitor, Janet McMahon – One could be forgiven for thinking that the last three letters of AIPAC stand for “political action committee.” But since the American Israel Public Affairs Committee does not itself make campaign contributions to political candidates, technically it is not a PAC. Curiously, however, the 30-odd “unaffiliated” pro-Israel PACs, most with deceptively innocuous names, all seem to give to the same candidates-almost as if there were a guiding intelligence behind their contributions. In the eyes of the Federal Election Commission, AIPAC is a “membership organization” rather than a political committee. This means that, unlike actual PACs, AIPAC is not required to file public reports on its income and expenditures.

Not for nothing, however, did Fortune magazine once name it the second most powerful lobby in Washington. So it’s easy to understand why, like a night flower that blooms in the dark and dies with the light of day, this particular organization which advances the interests of a foreign government has fought long and hard to ensure that its funding sources and expenditures are not exposed to public scrutiny.

Despite its best efforts, however, unwanted light does occasionally shine on AIPAC’s activities. Most dramatically, perhaps, two of its top operatives, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted on espionage charges in 2005. Four years later federal prosecutors dropped the charges when it became clear that Judge T.S. Ellis’ numerous rulings in favor of the defendants would require the release of sensitive government documents. Rosen then sued his former employer for defamation, claiming that AIPAC routinely dealt in classified information and that he was in no way a rogue employee, as AIPAC had claimed.

A related case of unwanted publicity involved former Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), who was overheard on a 2006 NSA wiretap talking to someone described by CQ’s Jeff Stein as a “suspected Israeli agent”-thought to be Haim Saban, a major AIPAC contributor. “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel,” Saban described himself to The New York Times.

Petraeus at CIA: values his deep relationship with pro-Israel neocons

CounterPunch, Ray Mcgovern: “Can He Tell the Truth?” Petraeus at CIA – ……Petraeus also deeply values his relationship with prominent neoconservatives who have received extraordinary access to war zones – personally arranged by the general – in exchange for their service to him as his cheering section in influential Washington opinion circles.

A couple of e-mails that Gen. Petraeus inadvertently sent to an unintended recipient confirmed his cozy relationship with hard-line neocon Max Boot, as Petraeus begged Boot to head off any suggestion that Petraeus was less than 100 percent supportive of Israel.

Progressives and Conservatives: More in common than the media makes us think

CounterPunch, Sam Husseini, “Time to Break Out:How Obama and Trump Imprison Voters” – …..This is particularly tragic because most Principled Progressives and Conscientious Conservatives agree on so much, though it might not seem that way because establishment politicians (and corporate media) dwell on the differences between each other, which are frequently trivial. Consider:

• Foreign policy: Cutting the military budget, ending the U.S.’s wars, dismantling the network of military bases around the globe, stopping support for tyrannical governments like Saudi Arabia, ending support of Israel’s aggressions and occupations.

• Economy: Stopping the Wall Street bailouts, ending the Federal Reserve, curtailing runaway corporate power and corporate welfare, ending trade deals like NAFTA that obliterate jobs in the U.S. while impoverishing many in other countries, challenging the IMF and WTO.

• Freedom Agenda: Ending the so-called “Patriot” Act, stopping government use of secret “evidence” to prosecute individuals, insisting on accountability for torture and illegal detentions and renditions, stopping government spying on citizens, ending the drug war and the mass imprisonment that causes, and challenging the media establishment while enhancing solutions like local low power radio and net neutrality.

Oh yeah, and supporting WikiLeaks and whilstleblowers like Bradley Manning.

But Big Media keep telling progressives they’re supposed to hate “The Tea Party” — as if there were no difference between Sarah Palin and Ron Paul. And the establishment and corporate media have kept conservatives from seeing the insights of authentic progressives, people like Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and Mike Gravel — demonizing or marginalizing them in a plethora of ways.

Israel, ADL pressure Facebook to remove page calling for Arab Spring for Palestine to begin May 13th

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat, THIRD PALESTINIAN INTIFADA: All Arabs to March on Israel on May 15th – All of the popular uprisings that swept through the Arab world have been preplanned and officially launched on facebook pages weeks in advance.

Pro-Israel lobbying. An Israeli Cabinet minister, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a massive American-Zionist campaign have succeeded in pressuring Facebook into removing the“third Intifada” page, which clearly calls for an all-Arab uprising against Israel.

What’s in it for us, Mr. Obama? Billions more for Israel while Congress cuts Americans

Council for the National Interest, Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served 18 years overseas and is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

Apologists for Israel sometimes argue that critics of that nation hold the government in Tel Aviv up to an impossibly high standard, that many condemn Israelis for doing things that other countries in the world also do routinely. That argument has a certain persuasiveness in that Bahrain’s Sunni rulers treat the country’s Shi’a majority just as badly as Israeli Jews treat Palestinian Arabs, but it misses the point. How Israel treats its own minority citizens, Gazans, and residents of the West Bank, and its neighbors might be significant from a humanitarian point of view, but it is not a vital interest of the United States.

That Washington has become a victim of the internal politics of the Middle East is largely due to manipulation by Israel and its lobby, which has turned all Americans into enablers of Israeli policies, no matter how short-sighted or ill-conceived. It is the US national interest that has been sacrificed in the process. That is the point.

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

In Light Of Palestinian Unity Deal, U.S. Threatens To Cut Aid To P.A.

The United States and Israel have launched a large-scale international campaign meant to block the Palestinian declaration of an independent state.

IMEMC, Saed Bannoura – The United States issued a statement on Wednesday denouncing the provisional unity deal signed between the rival Fateh movement of President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Hamas movement. The U.S. said that such a deal could lead Washington to cut U.S.. aid to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.).

According to “Your Jewish News”, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, U.S. House Affairs Chairwoman, issued a statement denouncing the unity deal, and stating that under existing U.S. laws, the P.A. cannot receive fund from the U.S.

Ros-Lehtinen further stated that Abbas’s reach to Hamas, and his efforts for reconciliation “with a group considered by the U.S.. as a terrorist organization, will oblige Washington to end its aid”.

How Congressional leader Eric Cantor assists the Israel Lobby over needs of Americans and his own Virginia constituents

CounterPunch, David Swanson – In May 2009, Congressmen Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) wrote to President Barack Obama about U.S. policy toward Israel. Their staff sent the letter as a PDF but forgot to change the name of the file to something other than “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

Helen Thomas and the Political Cleansing of America – James Abourezk

My view is the major reason for the political cleansing of outspoken people such as Helen Thomas, Norman Finkelstein, Judge Goldstone and others is that the American taxpayer is footing the bill for Israel’s criminal activities [$8 million per day], and Israel cannot afford to have this knowledge exposed to our public, to those who pay the taxes.

CounterPunch – You remember Helen Thomas? She was the senior White House Correspondent who always opened Presidential press conferences and closed them by saying the magic words: “Thank you Mr. President.” Her Wikipedia entry cites her professional accomplishments:

“Helen Thomas (born August 4, 1920) is an American author and former news service reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and opinion columnist.[1] She worked for the United Press International (UPI) for 57 years, first as a correspondent, and later as White House bureau chief. She was a columnist for Hearst Newspapers from 2000 to 2010, writing on national affairs and the White House. She covered every President of the United States from the last years of the Eisenhower administration until the second year of the Obama administration. She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club. She has written six books; her latest, with co-author Craig Crawford, is Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do (2009).”

Helen was cashiered from her position as a Hearst columnist after she answered a question by a Rabbi with a video camera who asked her to talk about Israel. She answered—honestly—that the Israelis should get the hell out of Palestine. The Rabbi’s follow up question was, “Where should they go?”

Israel lobby strikes again as Seattle billboards are canceled?

Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah – You may recall that in January the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign had contracted with the local bus company to place ads calling for an end to aid to Israel on area public buses. However, under Zionist pressure, King County officials, responsible for the bus system, reneged on the contract and censored the ads before they appeared. This prompted the ACLU to sue the local authorities.