By Philip Giraldi
December 30, 202:
Information Clearing House
--Those
Americans who dare to challenge the
strangle-hold that Israel and its friends
have over US foreign policy will likely find
themselves targeted even more aggressively
in the upcoming year. Two weeks ago the
American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
widely reckoned to be the largest and most
powerful component of the Jewish state’s
lobby,
declared that it will now begin directly
funding political candidates who are
perceived as pro-Israel. Up until now, AIPAC
has preferred to operate somewhat in the
shadows, representing itself as a
organization that is in part “educational”
to justify its 501(c)3 tax exempt status
which it uses to send all new congressmen on
propaganda trips to Israel.
Of course, that has
always been a bit of a fiction enabled by a
Justice Department that is inclined to
ignore all Israeli misbehavior. There are a
number of reasons why AIPAC should be
regarded for what it is, i.e. an
organization that has as a priority the
promotion of Israeli interests without any
concern for the damage being done to the
United States and its institutions. Under US
law, specifically the Foreign Agents
Registration Act of 1937, AIPAC should be
compelled to forfeit its special tax status
and register, which would permit the
government to have full access to its
finances and also require a record of its
frequent meetings with the Israeli Embassy
in Washington as well as with senior Israeli
officials in Israel. It would also have to
report its significant and unparalleled
lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. AIPAC
would deny that it is actually directed or
possibly funded in part by the Israeli
government, but
its website somewhat puts the lie to
that conceit where it describes itself as
“America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” before
elaborating how “We are proud to be a
diverse movement of passionate pro-Israel
Americans.”
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The other lie
promoted by AIPAC is that, up until now, it
has not funded the political campaigns of
its many friends both in Congress and in
state and local governments. The reality is
that AIPAC and some of its associated groups
have aggressively vetted candidates for
office at all levels. During its annual
summit in Washington, politicians in
attendance have routinely held fundraisers
at hotels and restaurants not at the AIPAC
event but often at hotels within walking
distance. It is known that AIPAC publishes
for-internal-use-only a candidates’ “scoring
card” prior to elections reflective of views
on Israel. As AIPAC is itself funded by
Jewish billionaires and is in regular
contact with them, the exchange of
information on who is a “friend” and
deserving of campaign money would be easily
accomplished without having to use AIPAC as
a conduit.
The new structure
will consist of a regular political action
committee (PAC) able to contribute $5,000
maximum donations to identified candidates
per race, and a super PAC, which can raise
unlimited money for an individual candidate.
AIPAC PAC will be the name of the regular
PAC, while the super PAC has not yet
received a label.
AIPAC spokesman
Marshall Wittman sent out an email
explaining the changes. In perhaps one of
the most chilling statements that I have
read recently, Wittman asserts that “The
creation of a PAC and a super PAC is an
opportunity to significantly deepen and
strengthen the involvement of the pro-Israel
community in politics.” Given Israel’s
current dominance of Congress, the White
House and the mainstream media one fears
what might come next if stronger
“involvement of the pro-Israel community in
politics” becomes a reality. Jews constitute
less than 2% of the US population and they
already are hugely overrepresented in elite
professions and politics while at the same
time reserving to themselves perpetual
victimhood to justify the preferential
anti-democratic policies that they actually
promote. Will Joe “I’m a Zionist” Biden’s
cabinet be required by law to be 100%
Jewish? Will Congress require a Jewish
majority? Will the government be setting up
gulags somewhere out west for people like me
who oppose such dominance and the “Israel
Project”? Where does this ever end to
satisfy the Jewish lobby?
One might well ask
why AIPAC is changing its platform to make
itself even more accessible since it would
seem that the shift to PACs does not much
change what happens behind closed doors when
politicians come begging for money. The
answer may lie in the perception by Jewish
groups and the Israeli government that
Zionism is in trouble due to the
accumulation of egregious human rights
violations and war crime attacks on
neighbors. The world view of Israel is
increasingly negative. So the response is to
open the door a bit to visibly dangle more
money, which the Israeli Lobby has plenty
of, to take on critics.
Israel and its
friends are particularly concerned over the
handful of progressives in Congress who have
expressed reservations about the blind
approval of Israeli crimes against humanity.
The PACs will enable a more robust response
by providing readily available money to run
pro-Israel candidates against them to bring
about their removal from Congress. The
Zionists also worry about the growing
support for the nonviolent Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS),
which seeks to put the same kind of economic
pressure on Israel that once brought about
change in South Africa. Already Israel
advocacy groups at the state level have
succeeded in passing legislation in 27
states that in one way or another punishes
anyone one who supports “boycotting” Israel.
AIPAC would like that number to become 50
and it is also pushing hard on Congress for
“hate legislation” that creates harsh
criminal and civil penalties for anyone who
questions the holocaust or criticizes
Israel, which will be defined by the
legislation as anti-Semitic acts.
Hand in hand with the
moves at the state level, Jewish groups are
rewriting text books to include more on the
so-called holocaust, to sometimes include
mandatory holocaust instruction at grade
school and high school levels. In
one bizarre incident in Washington DC,
students were made to reenact “scenes” from
the holocaust including mass executions and
burials. One student was made to portray
Adolph Hitler and instructed to include a
simulated suicide at the end of the
exercise.
This overreach all
comes packaged together with
alarming reports, put out inevitably by
Jewish groups, regarding a surge in what it
chooses to label as anti-Semitic crimes.
Such “crimes” include numerous no-victim
incidents like scrawled graffiti on walls or
display of posters defending the
Palestinians. The Anti-Defamation-League (ADL),
which leads the pack in its constant cries
of anti-Semitism,
hypocritically claims blandly that it is
working to “Combat Extremism and Hate.” That
definition apparently does not include the
treatment of the Palestinians at the hands
of its co-religionists in Israel.
Indeed, the tendency
of the Israel Lobby to overreach because it
has become so arrogant due to its power is
perhaps the key to bringing it down. A
recent exchange in Florida demonstrates how
the ADL, sensitive to any possible slight,
actually reacted harshly to
someone who was actually on its side.
Five weeks ago, rabidly pro-Israeli Governor
Ron DeSantis’ Press Secretary, Christina
Pushaw tweeted a sarcastic comment stating
that there was “no weird conspiracy theory
stuff here” about press reports regarding
the Republic of Georgia’s Prime Minister
meeting with Rothschild & Co about
investment opportunities. The ADL Florida
Regional Director Sarah Emmons took offense
and responded with the following:
“The belief that the
Rothschilds manipulate currency and
influence global events for personal
enrichment and world domination is a staple
of antisemitic conspiracy theorists. It’s
deeply disturbing to see these kinds of
conspiracies promoted by a member of
Governor Ron DeSantis’ staff. Conspiracy
theories, especially those with antisemitic
origins, don’t belong in Florida’s highest
office — or anywhere in the Sunshine State.
We’ll be reaching out to the governor’s
office to voice our concerns and discuss the
issue.”
Jews and banking in
the same sentence? Must be an anti-Semitic
trope, as the expression goes. What if
Pushaw had actually been bold enough to say
something more to the point, like “Israel is
trying to drag us into an unnecessary war
with Iran”? In any event, the Zionists are
preparing their offensive and we of the
Israel-as-ally-agnostic community will find
the upcoming year to be even more trying as
the Jewish state and its friends tighten the
screws to eliminate and even criminalize all
criticism. Be prepared!
Philip M. Giraldi,
Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council
for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax
deductible educational foundation (Federal
ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the
Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA
20134 and its email is
inform@cnionline.org.