The
Pro-Israel Lobby and US Middle East Policy:
The Score
Card for 2007
By James Petras
05/17/07
"ICH"
--- - -Never in recent history has US Middle East policy
been subject to such a barrage of conflicting pressures from
erstwhile allies, clients as well as adversaries. The
points of contention involve fundamental issues of war and
peace, foremost of which are divergent responses to the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the US-Iranian confrontation,
the US occupation of Iraq as well as the US-Ethiopian proxy
invasion and occupation of Somalia.
The major contenders for influence in the making of US
policy in the Middle East include the ‘war party’ led by the
Zionist power configuration and its followers in Congress
and its allies among the civilian militarists in the White
House led by Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Rice,
National Security Adviser for Middle East Affairs Elliot
Abrams, along with an army of scribes in the major print
media. On the other side are a small minority of
Congress-people, ex-officials linked to Big Oil, a divided
Peace Movement, Arab Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and a number
of European countries on specific sets of issues.
To date the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) has
consistently lined up its Congressional and White House
backers and steamrollered domestic opposition in securing
unconditional US backing for Israel’s position in the Middle
East. One of the latest examples of the Zionist Power
Configuration’s political and media influence is illustrated
by their dismissal or omission of a major document on human
and civil rights in Israel issued by the United Nation’s
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
(published March 9, 2007). The study compiled by two-dozen
experts offered 19 recommendations for Israel to comply with
in 25 areas of racial discrimination against Arab citizens
of Israel. Israel rejected the report, the ZPC
automatically followed suit, as did Washington.
Nevertheless there are signs (weak to be sure) that the
visible and invisible power of the ZPC is being subject to
critical public scrutiny and even ‘put on trial’ among US
clients. The Council of Gulf Cooperation composed of
Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrein and the United
Arab Emirates are the world’s biggest oil suppliers (over
40%), made up of conservative, pro-US regimes, housing US
military bases, linked to the largest US oil and financial
houses and the biggest purchasers of military hardware from
the US military-industrial complex. They met in late March
2007, and called for the US to engage Iran diplomatically
and not militarily or with economic sanctions. Israel took
a diametrically opposing view pushing for tighter sanctions
and a military confrontation. Automatically the ZPC echoed
the Israeli Party line (Daily Alert, March 26-30,
2007). Congress and Bush ignored Big Oil, the
military-industrial complex, its Arab clients and followed
the Zionist line: they escalated sanctions, increased
commando operations, added to the war-ships off the coast of
Iran and offered to send fighter-planes into Iran after
British sailors, engaged in espionage, were captured (Blair,
for once, rejected the war provocation). Once again the ZPC
out-muscled Big Oil and the military-industrial complex in
dictating US Middle-East policy.
Equally important, the US foremost Arab ‘allies’ in the
Middle East have promulgated a series of proposals and
policy options, which are directly opposed to the ZPC-Israeli
agenda. Saudi Arabia’s proposal approved by the Arab League
offering Israel recognition and normal relations in exchange
for abiding by UN resolutions and returning territory seized
in 1967 is one example. These Arab initiatives have
elicited a positive response in many governments in the
European Union and Turkey, adding to the forces arraigned
against the ZPC-Israeli direction for US Middle East
policy. Defectors from the Israeli lobby’s cause have been
especially noticeable from among conservatives, including
Robert Novack (“US War in Iraq – The Sharon War”, Haaretz,
April 4, 2007).
New Directions for US Policy: Moderate Arab Agenda?
The primary pre-occupation
of the moderate Arab regimes of the Persian Gulf is securing
political stability, avoiding disruptive regional and
internal conflicts and consolidating a favorable business
climate for the dynamic development projects they have
undertaken. The US military invasion, occupation and
prolonged violent imperial war in Iraq have been a source of
instability and internal conflict in the region. Israel’s
repeated military assaults and violent seizures of
Palestinian land, its invasion of Lebanon and threats
against Iran and, most important, their political vehicle –
the ZPC’s capacity to ensure US backing -- has created an
environment of permanent ‘high tension’. The growing
incompatibility between the conservative-business oriented
goals of the moderate Arab states and the ‘radical
militarist’ destabilizing policies of Washington and Tel
Aviv has forced a widening breach between the long-time
allies and clients. With large trade surpluses, enormous
liquidity in dollars and Euros, the Arab East is intent on
building economic empires both in the region and throughout
the globe. For that they need, above all, a secure ‘home
base’, the headquarters and operating base to sustain the
global financial, commercial and real estate networks.
The recent meeting of Arab state in Riyadh, convoked by the
Saudis, served as a platform for outlining a program for
Middle East stability and the ending of violent
destabilizing activities. Both in their formal proposals
and informal pronouncements the conservative leaders put
forth an agenda to re-direct US Middle East policy away from
the ZPC-Israel line of military confrontation and toward
diplomatic negotiations, elite reconciliation and the
strengthening of regional economic stability. Within this
conservative regional framework and the high priority given
to economic stability, the ‘new facts’ on the ground (namely
the critical position toward the US and the peace offer to
Israel) become key markers in defining Middle East politics.
‘New Facts’ and the New Middle East Realities
The old clichés lobbed by
liberal critics of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia are
highly misleading and fail to capture the new economic and
political dynamics of the region. The liberal and Zionist
images of reactionary sheiks engaged in conspicuous
consumption, luxuriating in their backward and stagnant
economies, living exclusively on ‘rents’ accruing from the
gushing oil wells and dependent on US military protection,
has largely been superseded. All the Gulf States and Saudi
Arabia are heavily engaged in long-term, large-scale
economic diversification projects, creating new business,
financial, commercial and real estate markets, based on
local capital and, in some cases, major overseas investment
banks. Major joint industrial ventures in energy,
refineries, and chemical plants between Saudi Arabia and
China and India have been consummated. Multi-billionaire
‘princes’ are major investors and part owners of global
networks of financial enterprises, hotels, ports and other
large-scale infrastructure and construction sectors.
Energy wealth from gas and petroleum is the point of
departure for the new ruling elites, reinventing
themselves as regional if not global players. While still
retaining many of the ‘external traditional religious forms’
(opposition to usury), vast armies of local financiers have
in fact invented financial instruments that pay de facto
returns equivalent to interest. Given the growing global
and regional economic interests of these conservative elites
they have everything to lose by following US-Israeli
destructive-colonial-militarist policies in the region.
Economic diversification and dynamic internal development
has created a new bourgeoisie in the Gulf linked to European
and Asian capital (state and private), increasingly
politically independent from the US and less dependent on
‘external’ military power. These new economic facts provide
clues to the new ‘political facts’ on the ground, including
Saudi Arabia’s low key, but forthright, critique of the US
occupation of Iraq and demands for troop withdrawal. The
Gulf States backing for the Saudi initiated “Mecca
Agreements” leading to the PLO-Hamas unity government,
explicitly went against the White House-Israeli-Zionist
policy of isolating Hamas as did the explicit rejection by
Saudi Arabia and the Emirates of US and Israeli war
preparations against Iran. They have rejected Washington’s
and Israeli-Zionist’s policy of refusing to meet with Iran,
by holding separate top level meetings and discussions. The
Arab League’s offer – authored and authorized by Saudi
Arabia – to Israel of peace and recognition in exchange for
Israel’s withdrawal from the 1967 regions of occupied
Palestine has exposed Israel’s pretexts for continued
colonization and annexation of Palestinian land and US
subordination to the Zionist Power Configuration.
The new economic and political facts in the Middle East pit
an increasingly militarized US foreign policy elite,
heavily influenced by the Zionist Power Configuration,
against an increasingly marketized Arab Gulf elite.
Israel’s military-industries, central to its economy,
the political leverage of the settler parties,
religious fundamentalists and security apparatus, and the
Israeli state’s dependence on multi-billion dollar handouts
from the US treasury and wealthy right-wing militarist
Jewish donors means that Israel is structurally incapable of
coming to any peace for land agreement. The re-settlement of
a half-million armed fanatical Jewish settlers into pre-1967
Israel, the peaceful re-conversion of Israel’s military
industries and maintaining support from overseas Zionist
plutocrats without the rhetoric of ‘existential military
threats’ is beyond the boundaries of the Israeli political
class as it is currently constituted. The deep integration
and subordination of the Zionist Power Configuration to the
Israeli power structure results in the demands of Israel’s
settler-military-industrial complex getting transmitted into
the US Congress and Executive and eventually into policy.
In so far as this is the case, the ZPC is responsible for
the rigidities of US Middle East policy expressed in its
fixation on permanent warfare, and its blindness to the
yawning gap between market-driven Arab states and US-Israeli
militarism. ZPC accounts for the unchanging, unconditional
support for an anachronistic colonial regime in a time of
growing global market relations. The paralysis of US policy
is the result of the power of a modern 21st
century extraordinarily wealthy and entrepreneurial lobby
(24% of Forbes 400 richest are Jews) acting on behalf of
fundamentalist Judaic territorial claims going back to a
period almost 2500 years ago. The notion of ‘combined and
uneven development’ certainly applies to Israel’s biggest
overseas financiers.
The rigid structural parameters of Israeli politics are
transmitted via the ZPC into the basic contradictory reality
in US-Israeli relations: The rigid structural politics of a
tiny ‘isolated, militarized, settler-controlled’ state
blocking economic transactions of a globalized imperial
economy by forcing it into disastrous military adventures.
Zionist Power and the Democratic Congressional Majority
Contrary to many war critics, especially those daring enough
to attack the pro-war, neo-conservative and Zionist lobby,
the US invasion of Iraq has not been a ‘disaster’, a
‘debacle’ or a ‘defeat’. The corollary of this argument
that the ‘Iraq disaster’ has led to a ‘rout’ of the Zioncons
from the Bush Administration is also open to question.
The principle goal of the ZPC was the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein, the destruction of the Iraqi state (especially its
military and intelligence apparatus) and the societal
infrastructure in order to eliminate a key backer of the
Palestinian resistance to Israeli ethnic cleansing, a
staunch backer of secular Arab nationalism in the Middle
East and a strong challenger to Israel’s attempt to assert
hegemony in the region. The Zioncon-orchestrated war
succeeded in each and every one of Israel’s strategic
objectives: the Palestinian resistance lost a powerful
financial and political backer. The Middle East opposition
to Israel was reduced largely to clerical Muslim states and
movements. The stage was set for a new sequence of wars
with Israeli adversaries, including Hezbollah, Syria and,
most important, Iran. As a consequence of the US
destruction of the Iraqi state, Israel had a free hand in
invading and devastating Palestine, especially Gaza,
complete its ghetto-wall isolating Palestinian towns and
villages from their markets and everyday activities, and
extending its colonial settlements. US Zioncons in the
Administration were able to scuttle any serious peace
negotiations, using their scripted ‘war against terror’ as a
pretext. The departure of some of the Zioncons from
the Administration in the aftermath of the US military
occupation of Iraq was a result of having successfully
served Israeli strategic interests through a massive
commitment of US economic and military resources. But as
the Israel-serving war turned into an unpopular, prolonged
and costly war for the United States, public and highly
placed critics, investigators and military figures began to
point their finger at the key role of the Zionist officials
in the Government as the prime movers of the ‘disastrous’
war, the Zioncons ‘resigned’ from office. This
short-circuited any wide-reaching and serious investigation
into the inter-face between the US Zioncon war architects
and the Israeli Foreign Office and its military command.
Out of their successful ‘war with Iraq’ operation the
Zioncons suffered a few collateral losses. Irving ‘Scooter’
Libby, Chief of Vice President Cheney’s military planning
office, was convicted on peripheral perjury charges, which
did not directly implicate the Zioncon network’s role in the
run-up and follow-through on the war. One major and one
secondary AIPAC leaders were indicted for spying for
Israel. The two indicted spies did not in any way
materially or politically weaken AIPAC’s powerful hold over
the US Congress or White House. They continued to receive
unconditional support from the US Congressional leaders of
both parties, as well as the Vice President and Secretary of
State who gave keynote addresses at the AIPAC’s annual
conventions in 2006 and 2007.
The fact that the ZPC considers the Iraq war a ‘done deal’
in enhancing Israel’s Middle East position and has now moved
onto realizing Israel’s next strategic objective, the
destruction of Iran, has caused a visible rift with key
officials in the White House who are still stuck in a losing
war in Iraq.
Vice President Cheney, speaking at the AIPAC annual
convention in 2007, directly challenged AIPAC leaders who
seemed to be abandoning support for the Administration’s
Iraq war and pressing for more aggressive economic sanctions
and the war option strategy toward Iran. The Zioncons seek
to maximize support for their new phony ‘existential’ war
against Iran among Jewish liberals who have turned against
the Iraq war, thus leaving Cheney and Bush holding the US
body bags. At the AIPAC convention, Cheney, no neophyte to
backstabbing intrigues, offered to escalate US threats
against Iran if the Zionists maintained their support for
the Bush-Cheney-Rice war in Iraq. While Israeli Prime
Minister Olmert formally reiterated the importance of the US
continuing its occupation of Iraq for Israeli ‘security’, in
practice all his ministers attending every major Zionist
conference have emphasized to their US acolytes the Iranian
threat and the need to eliminate the Iranian regime, its
nuclear power plants and state structures. Despite the fact
that the US is bleeding white from the open wounds of the
current war in Iraq, despite the fact that over three
quarters of the US population is fed up with US involvement
in Middle Eastern wars, this has not prevented or, even more
important, weakened the ZPC effort to set the US on a course
toward new wars with the whole hearted support of the
majoritarian Democratic Party leadership.
With an eye toward campaign financial contributions, every
single Democratic and Republican presidential candidate has
pledged to unconditionally support Israeli interests,
specific pledges to the ZPC-AIPAC included.
The Pro-Israel Lobby and Bush: War Powers and the
Capitulation of the Democrats
The key factor in the Democrats’ withdrawal of constraints
of Bush’s management of the occupation of Iraq was the
Jewish Lobby. According to the Associated Press
(March 13, 2007): “Conservative Democrats, as well as
lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel, had
argued for the change in strategy…” As the Congressional
Quarterly noted: “Hawkish pro-Israel lawmakers are
pushing to strike a provision slated for the war spending
bill that would require the President to seek Congressional
approval before launching any military force in Iran.”
The Iran-related proposal stemmed from a desire by some
leading Democratic politicians to ensure that Bush did not
launch an attack without going to Congress for approval, a
measure approved by the vast majority of Democratic rank and
file. But during the week of March 5-10, the Zionist elite
both in Congress and in the Lobby banged heads in a series
of closed door sessions and literally forced the ‘leading
Democrats’ to recant and capitulate. Echoing the Olmert
line, one of several Zionist mouthpieces in Congress overtly
spoke against constitutional and legislative restraints on
President Bush because of its ‘effect’ on Israel.
Representative Shelley Berkley said in an interview, “there
is widespread fear in Israel about Iran which…has expressed
unremitting hostility about the Jewish State.” Democratic
Caucus Chairman Rahm Emmanuel, who works closely with AIPAC,
‘predicted’, “It would take away perhaps the most important
negotiating tool that the US has when it comes to Iran,”(Associated
Press March 13, 2007). He succeeded in excluding the
amendment in the Supplemental War Budget Allocation,
although it was initially favored by Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi and Representative John Murtha, Chair of the
Defense Appropriation Committee.
A smirking Vice President Cheney pointed out the hypocrisy
of the pro-Israel liberal Democratic Congresspeople and
liberal Zionists who opposed Bush on Iraq and were pressing
a pro-war policy on Iran. “It is simply not consistent for
anyone (including pro-Israel liberals! JP) to demand
aggressive action against the menace posed by the Iranian
regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from
Iraq that would leave our worst enemies dramatically
emboldened and Israel’s best friend, the United States,
dangerously weakened,” (AP March 13, 2007). Once
again the interests of Israel took precedence over the
voting preferences of the Democratic electorate. Once more
the power of Congressman Rahm Emmanuel and his fellow
‘conservative’ pro-Zionist congressional colleagues
overpowered the ‘conscience’ of other leading Democrats.
Once again AIPAC freed Bush from any Constitutional and
Congressional constraints to launch a military attack on
Iran. Once again Israel’s bellicose policy dictates were
effectively transmitted and implemented in the US Congress.
The Democrats abandoned the war authority provision of the
Constitution. Israel once again demonstrated that it is the
supreme arbiter of US Middle East war policy through its
representatives in the US Congress.
(No wonder Buchanan and others call the Congress
‘Israeli-occupied
territory’).
Bush got AIPAC backing for his arbitrary war powers; Israel
retained a President who is a willing accomplice to its war
aims in the Middle East.
Israel-AIPAC-US Middle East Wars
The role of Israel in mobilizing the Zionist Lobby in
favor of Bush’s broad war powers was evident in Israeli
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s forceful speech to the annual
AIPAC conference in Washington in March 2007. According to
the Israeli daily, Haaretz (March 12, 2007) Livni
“warned the US not to show weakness in Iraq.” She went on
to emphasize the importance of exercising violence and
power… “in a region where impressions are important,
countries must be careful not to demonstrate weakness and
surrender to extremists.” This is another way of stating
the familiar Israeli canard that ‘Arabs only understand
force’, a well-worn colonial-racist justification for
widespread and continued repression of subjugated Arab
people.
Livni instructed the thousands of cheering AIPAC loyalists
and hundreds of US Congressional followers at the convention
of the Iranian threat and incited them to escalate their
attacks on Teheran: “Iran was at the forefront of extremist
threats to Israel, the Greater Middle East and the world in
general because of its nuclear ambitions. To address
extremism is to address Iran, she said urging tougher UN
sanctions over its nuclear program,” (Haaretz March
12, 2007). Livni’s closing words touched all the agit-prop
code words that fire-up the zealotry of the AIPAC leaders,
followers and US Congresspeople. Iran, she stated, “is a
regime which denies the Holocaust while threatening the
world with a new one. To those states who know the threat
but still hesitate because of narrow economic and political
interests, let me say this: History will remember!”
Livni’s speech served several purposes. It laid down the
‘line’ to pro-Israel loyalists in the US to continue
supporting Bush-Cheney’s policy on the Iraq war,
independently of the sentiments of most American Jewish
voters. It strengthened the hand of the Lobby and its US
Congressional followers by forcing House liberals, Jews and
Gentiles, to retract their American voter-mandated
constraints on Bush’s war powers. Thirdly it laid out the
high priority agenda and campaign for its Zionist followers
to pursue with regard to Iran. Finally it ended any breach
between Cheney-Bush and the Lobby over prioritizing a ‘new’
war against Iran over the ‘old’ unpopular war in Iraq by
tying them together.
The Israeli Foreign Minister’s direct intervention in the
internal politics of the US, its blatant support for the
Bush-Cheney war, and attack on the US public’s anti-war
sentiments, is reminiscent of the worst diplomatic
intrusions by the US in the banana republics of Central
America. Not a single Congress member dared to point this
out, let alone oppose Israeli interference in US politics
for fear of retaliation by the aroused mass of ‘Israel
Firsters’. Not a single ‘leftist’ or ‘progressive’
commentator noted that Livni’s attempt to universalize
Israel’s hostility to Iran was nothing but a demagogic
ploy. Extensive opinion surveys in Europe found absolute
majorities rating Israel the most threatening and ‘negative’
country in the world, exceeding Iran, North Korea and
Syria. The fact that Iran is a welcome participant in the
World Congress of Islamic Countries representing over 500
million people is a slight omission in Livni’s rhetorical
excesses. These lapses are no cause for worry in the
Israeli Foreign Office, because it is not the propagation of
deliberate and verifiable falsehoods which is a problem, but
the power of lies to arouse to action its US agents
and to discourage any possible US critics. By sounding off
on the ‘Holocaust’ and its corollary, ‘History will
remember’, Israel was guaranteed the blind fanatical
adherence of the ZPC to its bellicose war policies and the
silence and capitulation of its ineffective Jewish liberal
anti-war doubters. The Jewish-based ‘AIPAC Alternative’,
especially the ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’, spends as much time
denying the power of the pro-Israel Lobby as criticizing US
policy (Nation April 23, 2007 on AIPAC Alternative).
In an ironic and perverse twist of the pro-Israel, anti-war
slogan, ‘No War for Oil’, Livni demanded ‘No Peace for
Oil’. Livni’s warning to those “states who know the threat
but still hesitate because of narrow economic or political
interests”, is a clear reference to the United States. More
specifically it is aimed at politicians who might look
toward peaceful negotiations with Iran, or accept the Saudi
peace plan in order to safeguard US oil interests, rather
than sacrificing these interests to serve Israel’s political
and military supremacy in the Middle East. Livni is clearly
directing its ‘Israel Firsters’ in the US to trump the Oil
Appeasers, to browbeat any politicians who raise US market
concerns over Israeli and Zionist war demands.
While Livni’s perception of the danger to Israel emanates
from the peaceful-diplomatic approach of ‘narrow (sic)
economic or political interests’ (to the even narrower
Israeli concern for land grabs in Palestine and Lebanon),
what passes as a US peace movement joins in chorus by
blaming the oil industry for US Middle Eastern wars. There
is a convenient coincidence of Israeli hawks and US doves in
denouncing Big Oil, which is not such a coincidence if we
remember that what passes for the US peace movement is
inordinately influenced by prominent left Zionists, who
combine criticism of ‘Bush’s war’ with exclusion of any
mention of Israel or criticism of the war mongering Zionist
lobby. Before, during and after the AIPAC conference in
Washington several thousand of its zealots blitzed the
offices of Congress members and Senators. More than half
the Congress members and practically every Senator were
browbeaten in over 500 meetings in favor of Israel’s war
agenda against Iran.
In late March the Arab League led by Saudi Arabia proposed a
comprehensive peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. The proposal offered Arab recognition, trade and
diplomatic relations, an end of the state of belligerency
and economic sanctions, in exchange for Israel abiding by
United Nations resolutions and withdrawing from all
Palestinian lands seized during and after the 1967 war. The
Israeli Prime Minister flatly refused to accept the Saudi
proposal arguing that it was only the ‘basis of
negotiations’. The ZPC immediately echoed the Israeli party
line, calling into question the form and substance of the
proposal as well as attacking the Arab regimes. On March
29, 2007 alone, the organ of the Presidents of the Major
American Jewish Organizations published four major
propaganda pieces attacking the peace proposal and backed
Israel’s rejection. The Lobby ensured that the US Congress
and executive either supported the Israeli position or
refused to back the Saudi plan. Once again, AIPAC’s 150
full time lobbyists ran circles around pro-Arab US oil
multinationals.
House Majority Leader as Israel’s Messenger
Democratic House Majority leader Nance Pelosi’s visit to
Syria stirred a hostile response from the White House and
accolades from liberals and progressives. Bush objected to
Pelosi for interfering with his foreign policy powers and
‘non-negotiation’ position vis a vis Syria. Liberals hailed
Pelosi’s visit as opening new vistas for ‘diplomacy’ rather
than saber rattling. Both failed to recognize that Pelosi’s
main substantive task was to serve as a proxy and messenger
for the Israeli state. During her visit to Israel, prior to
going to Syria, the Israeli regime instructed Pelosi to
pressure Syria to end support for Hamas, Hezbollah and
Iran. The Israeli prime minister told his messenger,
Pelosi, to relay to the Syrians that breaking ties and
isolating itself from its only allies were the conditions
for Israel opening negotiations. This was despite the fact
that up to Pelosi’s visit to Syria, AIPAC and the entire
Zionist political machine had vilified any Congress member
who even mentioned visiting Syria. However when Israel gave
the word that Pelosi was running Israeli messages to Syria,
the Lobby did not object. The party line from Tel Aviv had
shifted and the Israeli Fifth column automatically shifted
its line, and not one of its ‘functionaries’ raised a peep.
There were far more overseas Communist dissenters when
Stalin abruptly changed the party line than there are
Zionist defectors under similar circumstances.
The almost comical back flips and ideological contortions
which the ‘Israel Firsters’ (IF) engage in to conform to the
zigzags of their Israeli handlers is evident in their
treatment of the Arab Gulf states. For the longest time the
IF did everything possible to discredit them, referring to
them as decrepit, absolutist states, and debunked the State
Department’s characterization of them as ‘Arab Moderates’.
More recently when Olmert referred to the same states as
‘moderate’ largely because they engage in covert trade with
Israel through third parties, and criticized Iran, the Lobby
revised its line and spoke favorable of them. Then when the
Saudis brokered the Hamas-PLO unity government, Israel
attacked the role of Saudi Arabia as backing the terrorist
Hamas and the Zionist propaganda machine followed suit
labeling the Saudis as financiers of Hamas terrorism. The
blind servility of the Israel Lobby to a ‘foreign power’
would simply be a matter for the Justice Department if it
didn’t have such a profound impact on US Middle East policy,
where every Israeli change in policy is automatically
reflected in US policy.
The Israel First Lobby Blocks Big US Arms Sale
With the US trade deficit exceeding $500 billion dollars,
one of its few competitive export sectors is its arms
industry, which is number one in world arms sales, followed
by Israel. The Bush Administration’s planned arms sale to
Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies has been blocked
by Israeli action through its Zionist Lobby (NY Times,
April 5, 2007). The Administration officials twice
scheduled and canceled briefings for members of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee because of AIPAC’s influence
over the Committee and the likelihood that the arms deal
would be rejected. As a result the Administration is hoping
that Israel will call off its Lobby attack dogs in exchange
for a 20% increase in US military aid and grants to Israel –
upping the total of military aid from $2.4 billion dollars
to $3 billion annually. Secretary of Defense Gates, who was
unable to shake the Lobby’s influence over Congress, had to
fly to Israel to plead with Israel to allow the sales to go
through in exchange for receiving advanced US military
technology.
US grants
to Israel of advanced military research, design and
technology has increased Israel’s competitive position in
the world’s military high-tech market and increased its
share at the expense of the US, as seen in its recent $1.5
billion dollar military sales to India. In brief, the
Israel Lobby runs circles around the US military-industrial
complex in terms of influencing the US Congress, blocking
lucrative deals and advancing Israel’s sales in the world
market.
Democratic Party Candidates Truckle to the Lobby
Major Democratic Party Presidential hopefuls have made an
extraordinary effort to secure the Lobby’s approval: All
back Bush’s ‘military option’ toward Iran; all support the
annual $2.4 billion dollar foreign aid package to Israel,
despite Israel’s $25,000 per capita income and booming high
tech industry. Speaking before the National Jewish
Democratic Council, New York Senator Hillary Clinton called
on the US to confront Iran militarily (Jerusalem Post,
April 26, 2007). Taking advantage of the fawning behavior
of all the candidates, the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz,
promoted a panel of Israeli ‘experts’ to evaluate US
Presidential candidates on the basis of their servility to
Israeli interests. This, in turn, led Senator Obama to send
his latest, most crass and bellicose pronouncements
regarding Iran to the Israeli panel (see Robert Kagan,
‘Obama the Interventionist’, Washington Post April
29, 2007). Nonetheless, it is Hillary Clinton who leads the
pack in securing Jewish campaign financing. The Lobby’s
high regard for Clinton is not merely because of her total
and complete identification with Israel – as stated as the
March 2007 AIPAC Convention – but by the family’s notorious
track record. Former CIA Director, George Tenet, in his
latest book At the Center of the Storm, devotes an
entire chapter to then President Bill Clinton’s proposal to
free American-Israeli master-spy, Jonathan Pollard from
federal prison. Under prodding from Israel’s far right-wing
President Benyamin Netanyahu, his National Security Advisor,
the Zionlib Sandy Berger, Zioncon envoy to the Middle East
Dennis Ross and a substantial sector of the Lobby, Clinton
proposed to release the convicted spy Pollard. According to
his book, Tenet told Clinton that he would resign because he
would lose all his moral capital with the entire
intelligence apparatus that would argue that an American
traitor was being rewarded. More likely, the entire
military and intelligence community was outraged that
Clinton would follow the policies laid out by the Israeli
spymasters and their US lobbyists over American national
security concerns.
Clinton later broke precedent in granting a pardon to a
fugitive criminal, the billionaire swindler Marc Rich, now a
citizen of Israel and close friend of the Lobby and Israeli
leaders. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated that she and Bill
not only speak, but also act, for the primacy of Israeli
interests even when it involves going against the entire US
security community and its legal system. That sordid
history must count a lot in securing guarantees that the
Clintons are bona fide 100% Israel camp followers, something
none of the other candidates can boast.
In early May, the Bush Administration proposed an 8-month
timetable of steps meant to bolster prospects for peace
between Israel and Palestine. The proposal simply asked
Israel to allow Palestinians normal but urgent bus and truck
travel between Gaza and the West Bank in exchange for
Palestinians curbing the homemade cross border rocket
firings. As was predictable, the Israelis objected to even
the slightest breach in the oppressive ghettoization of the
Palestinians (Daily Alert May 2, 2007). Israeli
leaders rejected a time-table because it prevented them from
procrastinating: Israeli military officers opposed any
loosening of their stranglehold on Gaza for “security
reasons” (Daily Alert May 8, 2007). They maintained
that Hamas might increase its influence in the West Bank
through persuasion. Once the Israeli military rejected the
Bush initiative, the Zionist Power Configuration went to
work. The Democrats, including all their leading
Presidential candidates and Congressional leaders, refused
to back Bush’s anemic effort to open the Gaza ghetto. The
mass media followed suit. The pro-Israel lobby buried the
entire proposal before it even entered into public debate.
The Lobby Versus Federal Prosecutors: The AIPAC Spy Trial
On August
4, 2005 two AIPAC leaders and a Pentagon analyst, Larry
Franklin were indicted by a federal grand jury and charged
with spying for Israel. The indictment lists numerous acts
of espionage dating back to 1999 in which the two AIPAC
leaders acted as conduits for classified information flowing
from Washington to Tel Aviv.
Franklin
has confessed and cooperated with the FBI in recording his
meeting with Rosen and Weissman regarding the passing of
high security White House document related to US policy on
Iran to Israeli Embassy agents. Faced with overwhelming
evidence AIPAC ‘fired’ Rosen and Weiss, stopped paying for
their legal expenses and initially denied any responsibility
for the
pair. Subsequently however AIPAC and numerous satellite and
auxiliary organizations decided to turn the spy trial into a
campaign over ‘free speech’. Accordingly the liberal and
conservative members of the pro-Israel lobby succeeded in
rounding up a ‘Who’s Who’ of otherwise leftist journalists,
progressive news broadcasters and academics in defense of
Rosen and Weissman. Speaking in defense of the two AIPAC
functionaries, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Dorothy
Rabinowitz argued in the editorial pages of the Wall
Street Journal that handing high security government
documents to Israeli Embassy security agents are “activities
that go on every day in Washington and that are clearly
protected under the First Amendment” (Wall Street Journal,
April 2, 2007). As the trial date approaches, major
pro-Israel organizations, billionaire Hollywood producers
and most, if not all, of the Jewish press in the US have
taken the defense of Rosen and Weissman (The American
“Dreyfuss Trial’). Except for a few internet bloggers, not
a single political party, social or political movement has
dared to criticize acts of handing over classified documents
to Israel or to raise eyebrows over the equation of ‘free
speech’ with spying for a foreign power. Because of the
pervasive pressure of the Lobby, the Federal Judge T.S.
Ellis has made several procedural rulings weakening the case
of the prosecution. Once again the Zionist Power
Configuration seems to have successfully out-muscled US
institutions, in this case Federal prosecutors and the FBI.
AIPAC and Israel: Strategic Informant in the White House
The spy
trial of two top officials of AIPAC, who admitted to handing
over strategic documents to Israeli diplomats, (and who have
been defended on the basis of ‘free speech’ by a host of
American progressive left Zionists) has turned up further
evidence of their deep penetration of the highest echelons
of the White House. In the preliminary hearings of the spy
trial, defense attorney Abby Lowell, in an attempt to
exonerate the Zionist spy suspects, announced that the
accused received ‘explosive’ and even more volatile
information from then National Security Adviser Condeleeza
Rice (Jewish Telegraph Agency, April 10, 2007).
There is little doubt that the Rice’s transmission of
confidential security information to AIPAC was also handed
over to the Israeli embassy and its undercover Mossad agents
operating in Washington.
The Lobby spy network extends beyond confessed Pentagon spy,
Laurence Franklin, who handed confidential documents to the
accused AIPAC officials. According to the Jewish
Telegraph Agency quoting Attorney Abby Lowell, “Rice had
not merely been Rosen’s interlocutor but had leaked
information identical to and at times more sensitive than
examples cited in the indictment.” In addition Lowell said
the information Rice provided was more volatile than the
information described in the indictment. Lowell claimed
that ‘three other current and former Middle East policy
officials, in addition to Rice” were providing information
to the AIPAC accused Israeli spies.
The
Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC): Cultural Repression at
the Service of Israel
Racist rabble-rousing against Muslims runs rife among
zealous Zionists inside the US Government and outside among
mainstream pro-Israel organizations with no apparent
reprimands. The Conference of Presidents of the Major
Jewish Organizations (CPMJO) backed co-thinker and
Israeli-US dual citizen Michael Chertoff’s (head of the
Department of Homeland Security) efforts to curtail Muslim
visits to the US, including British citizens, of what the
New York Times (May 2, 2007) diplomatically refers to as
of “Pakistani origin”. In a follow up lead article in the
CPMJO news bulletin The Daily Alert (May 9, 2007)
they featured a xenophobic article by Josh Meyer and Erika
Hayasaki titled, “Six Foreign-born ‘Radical Islamists’
Charged in Plot to Strike Fort Dix Army Base.” When
pro-Israel zealots in high government positions engage in
blatant racist witch-hunts against Muslims and respectable
mainstream Zionist umbrella organizations publish
inflammatory, xenophobic rhetoric, no Congress members or
Justice Department officials call for public hearings or
inquiries.
The power of ZPC far exceeds the political lobbying of AIPAC.
It extends to every realm of US cultural and intellectual
life. The frenzied vitriolic nation-wide mass media
personal assaults on former President Jimmy Carter for
authoring a critical book documenting Israel’s apartheid
system is one example of the extensive web of Zionist
propagandists. Many are situated in major academic and
media institutions and share a common set of hardened
doctrinaire beliefs in Israel’s infallibility. The same
malicious treatment was dished out to University of Chicago
Professor Mersheimer and Harvard Professor Walt for writing
a critical article on the US Zionist lobby. Apart from the
wave of ideological screeds condemning the essay and
slandering the authors with the usual banalities
(‘anti-Semites’), several wealthy Jewish ‘philanthropists’
forced the Harvard corporation to dissociate itself from the
essay on its Kennedy School website. The same Zionist
octopodian reach was manifested in the canceling of a
meeting discussing Israel, which included New York
University Professor Tony Judt, a rather mild critic of the
Jewish state and its Lobby. Most pernicious, and in some
ways even more demonstrative of the brazen repressive
cultural role of the Zionist Power Configuration is their
power to prevent a play which is based on the writings of
the murdered American human rights worker Rachel Corrie, who
was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer in the Gaza Strip
in April 2003. In New York, Miami and Toronto, publicly
scheduled performances of My Name is Rachel Corrie
were forced to cancel because of financial threats by local
Jewish ‘philanthropists’ and ‘patrons of the arts’. The
seriousness of these blatant acts of political and cultural
censorship reveals the ZPC’s profound and open hostility to
the best examples of US humanitarian solidarity and embrace
the worst kinds of Israeli violence. Not a single leftist
or progressive critic dared to raise the issue of American
Zionist complicity in this egregious ‘hate crime’ committed
by a foreign power against an American human rights worker.
No other group can successfully back the cold-blooded
killers of an American citizen with impunity, anonymity and
continue to retain credentials as ‘patrons of the arts and
culture’. To this day, 40 years after the fact, the same
pro-Israel crowd defends or excuses Israel’s deliberate
military attack on the unarmed US naval surveillance ship
the USS Liberty in international waters, killing and
wounding about 150 US sailors. This gang of ‘Israel
Firsters’ is honored in their communities here in the United
States, welcome to high office and secure in their affluent
surroundings.
Highly qualified candidates with outstanding résumés are
denied academic and professional appointments or threatened
with loss of tenure or expulsion for the mere reason of
criticizing Israel. The cases of Professor Juan Cole’s
appointment at Yale and Professor Norman Finkelstein at De
Paul University are the most notorious cases. The
world-renowned Palestinian American scholar, Edward Said was
persecuted and slandered up to his recent death by the
attack hounds of the Lobby.
The theoretical and practical point is that the ZPC
includes hundreds of local organizations and tens of
thousands of individuals who take local initiatives in
defending Israeli policy, its image and interests by
trampling on the Constitutional and academic freedom of
other Americans.
For every play which is banned, producer chastised and
theater put in the red, thousands of other cultural
workers and institutions are intimidated. They
internalize the repressive codes imposed by the Zionists
and self-censor. They submit to ZPC dictates of what can
and cannot be performed, what is or is not offensive to
‘Jewish sensibilities’, that exquisitely stated euphemism
for Zionist power.
Manifestations of Zionist cultural authoritarianism is found
at the local level and is closely linked with national
campaigns to monopolize the entire discussion of US Middle
East policy, and in particular, to exclude any criticism of
Israel and the powerful role of the Zionist Lobby. That
monopoly is most evident in any systematic study of the
op-ed pages of the big circulation print media and the
panels of ‘experts’ included in the major broadcast media.
The role of the pro-Israel repressive cultural-ideological
hydra especially finds expression among the great majority
of ‘progressive’ critics. ‘Marxist’ ideologues and ‘peace’
advocates deliberately and totally ignore the ZPC’s
influence in Congress, the Executive and in cultural life.
Instead they repeatedly criticize Bush, Cheney, the
Republicans and Democrats without mentioning their prime
movers among the hundreds of thousands of Zionist zealots
and thousands of prime political donors. It is no wonder
that the Zionist power configuration has greater power than
any other lobby in Washington – they are the only power
group which has no opposition, no organized group willing to
name them, let alone challenge and fight their
stranglehold over Congress. Worse still, some of the most
influential critics of the war in Iraq provide ideological
cover by denying the ZPC’s dominant role and
deflecting attention to either non-existent
war-makers (Big Oil) or to secondary political actors,
who carry out Lobby initiatives.
Re-arming Clients: Washington and the ZPC’s War Machine
Rolls On
The political-military
setbacks inflicted on US-Israeli policy in the Middle East
in 2006-2007 has not led to any moves toward serious
diplomacy or negotiations. On the contrary the lessons
drawn by Washington and Tel Aviv is to escalate the
militarization of client groups and prepare for destructive
civil and ethnic wars.
In response to the failure of the US-backed Israeli attack
on Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah, Washington has been engaged
in a large-scale rearming of right-wing Christian, Druze and
Sunni militias in Beirut and throughout North-Central
Lebanon (Guardian, April 11, 2007). The purpose is
to provoke an armed conflict with Hezbollah which will force
it to move its resistance fighters northward and weaken its
defense of the Southern Lebanese border. A US-Israeli
induced ‘civil war’ will, it is presumed, divide the
Lebanese army and weaken any auxiliary role it might play in
defending the country from Israeli cross border attacks or
invasions. Given the widespread violence, resulting from a
conflict, Israeli aircraft, now engaged in daily
over-flights and reconnaissance would be free to bomb and
destroy any and all reconstruction and Hezbollah defenses.
Israeli-backed American arming of a Palestinian military
force led by longtime CIA collaborator, Mohammed Dahlen,
working with ‘President’ Abbas, is advancing rapidly with
the training of hundreds of officers in Jordan, pre-selected
for political loyalty by Israeli and US officials. A
heavily-armed force of 12,000 US-paid Palestinian
mercenaries is being prepared to oust Hamas from power,
destroy its police and defense forces and hunt down its
leaders and intimidate its electoral supporters.
The Zionist lobby succeeded in inserting an extraordinary
clause in Bush’s military aid to the Abbas faction in the
Palestinian government. The lobby secured Israeli as well
as US political screening of all Palestinian trainees before
they are allowed to travel to Jordan for the US-funded
training. In defense of the Jewish state’s right to oversee
the administration of US military aid, the Lobby argued that
the clause was necessary because of Israeli ‘fears’ – in
other words – Israeli interests in retaining Palestine as a
colony policed by Israeli screened Palestinian mercenaries
(Adam Entous, Reuters News Service quoted in the
Daily Alert, March 29, 2007.)
A Palestine destroyed by US-Israeli induced ‘civil strife’
will be in no position to negotiate any peace agreement that
returns Israel to its pre-1967 borders. The idea is to
establish a pro-US Palestinian-run police state within the
territorial limits dictated by Israel.
The third area of militarization involves Northern Iraq
where the US and Israel have financed the Kurdish military
build-up. They politically support Kurdish separatists who
for all intents and purposes operate as an independent
state. According to Laura Rozen’s article, “Kurdistan:
Covert Back Channels”, published in Mother Jones,
April 12, 2007, the US and Israel support a willing Kurdish
client in the plot to break up Iraq, impoverish Baghdad as
its capital and set up Irbil as their capital. In June
2004, US top official Paul Bremer ‘transferred $1.4 billion
US dollars from Iraq’s oil for food funds to the Kurds.
Israeli ‘counter-terrorist’ training given to Kurdish
security forces is used by Kurdish death squads under US
direction in Northern Iraq and elsewhere. Seymour Hersh,
writing in the New Yorker (June 2004), stated that
Israeli-trained Kurdish commandos infiltrate Iran and
Syria. According to Rozen, the Mossad station chief Eliezer
Geizi Tsafrir in Irbil, the ‘capital’ of Iraqi Kurdistan,
set up a Kurdish intelligence service for the war-lord
Mustafa Barzani. He is better known as the ‘rent-a-Kurd’
mercenary leader, who has served the US CIA, the former Shah
of Iran and whoever else could pay him. The Kurds provide
the bulk of what General David Petraeus has called ‘reliable
Iraqi troops’ collaborating with the US colonial occupation
forces. They have been active in infiltrating Iraqi
resistance groups and fomenting ethnic-religious strife.
They are responsible for the massive forced eviction of
Iraqi Arabs, Turkomen and Assyrian Christians from Kirkuk
and other multi-ethnic towns and cities in the north and
repopulating them with Kurds. The Kurdish leaders in
Northern Iraq have provided bases and arms for pro-US armed
groups operating in Iran, Syria and Turkey, although the
latter is without formal US approval. The Kurds serve as
commandos and guides for US Special Forces engaged in
assassination missions in Iran. The Kurds based in Northern
Iraq are instructed to incite ‘separatist’ regional
movements in Iran. With strong backing from the US, the
Kurds have seized control of the rich oil wells in Kirkuk
and surrounding areas, have signed oil contracts with
European and US oil companies, de facto privatizing Iraqi
public enterprises. The Kurds play a vital role in the
US-Israeli strategy of breaking up Iraq into a multiplicity
of mini-client entities divided by sectarian
ethnic-religious identities with no influence in the region
and incapable of ousting long-term US military bases in the
country.
In the Horn of Africa, the US has armed and directed the
Ethiopian client regime to restore the totally discredited
‘Transitional Regime’ to power in Mogadishu, killing over
one thousand Somali civilians and displacing over 300,000
civilians during April-May 2007. The Ethiopian mercenary
armed forces caused over $1.5 billion dollars in destruction
with the advice of US Special Forces officers and Israeli
counter-insurgency advisers. Once again, US policy is
directed at destroying an Islamic country as much as it is
defeating a potential political adversary – the Islamic
Court Councils. Certainly the policy of relying on the
military might of a hated Ethiopian dictator to invade and
occupy Somalia has no possibility of creating a viable
client regime. Washington’s quick resort to military
escalation follows recent defeats and is preparatory to its
forthcoming large-scale air war supplemented by mercenary
ground attacks against Iran. This is where the ZPC comes
into play as key policy makers and propagandists.
While one can debate whether the latest wave of US military
escalation is the ‘dying gasp’ of a desperate empire, an
irrational miscalculation by civilian militarists pursuing a
military victory to bolster flagging domestic support or a
continuation of long-standing imperial policies in the
region, the fact remains that the principle domestic backer
of the re-escalation strategy is the ZPC. No other
organized political-economic force consistently
supports all US military efforts in each of
the zones of conflict. No other group backs US military
action in countries where there is little or no oil. No
other group totally ignores the ‘overstretch’ of the US
military – the over-extension of US military forces in the
Middle East and the Horn of Africa at the expense of
providing military defense of other strategic imperial
regions. Only the ZPC, of all theoretically possible
influential ‘interest groups’ has put all countries –
Islamic or secular – critical of Israel on the US’s military
hit-list. Only the ZPC has orchestrated legislation to bar
US financial institutions, pension funds and major oil and
gas companies from lucrative investments in Arab and Persian
markets. Not a single oil company has favored or benefited
from the restrictive legislation on Iran authored by AIPAC,
sponsored by Zionist Congressman Tom Lantos and approved by
a Congress dominated by the Zionist ‘lobbies’ – the alphabet
soup of organizations -- whose prime reason for existence is
to promote Israeli state power. Every big oil company in
Europe and Asia opposes the US confrontational posture to
Iran. As the Financial Times states, “Europe’s oil
majors have plans to invest billions (in Iran) but US
sanctions mean they are reluctant to go ahead.” (Financial
Times May 10, 2007 p.2)
The self-styled ‘alternative’ Jewish lobbies, which claim to
speak for liberal Jews critical of Israel, maintain that
AIPAC is merely ‘one of many factors’ influencing US policy,
in a ‘complex mosaic of changing circumstances’. Using the
argument of ‘complexities’ and packaging the ZPC with
‘numerous groups’ they downplay or eliminate the essential
role of the pro-Israel forces and join their mainstream
brethren in smearing as ‘anti-Semite’ writers who put the
ZPC at the center of their analysis of US policy toward Arab
and Muslim countries. The liberal Zionists have a
disastrous impact on the peace movement, by deflecting its
attention away from a prime mover of US military policy and
thus giving the ZPC an uncontested and open terrain for
continuing their dominance of US Middle East policy. The
liberal Jewish lobby willfully ignores Israeli
geopolitical interests, Israeli reliance on military rather
than diplomatic measures, its pursuit of ethnic cleansing
and the ZPC influence on US policy, in terms of the
methods and strategies that Washington should pursue.
They deliberately and continuously ignore the opposition of
all the major oil companies to US sanctions against Iran.
Conclusion
From 9/11 to the present, the pro-Israel power configuration
has broadened its definition of ‘the areas of interest for
Israel’, and thus the issues on which it will intervene,
thus narrowing the parameters for discussion and
policymaking in the US. By defining the limits of action
that the US President and Congress can take on issues
relating to Israel, the ZPC now influences US policies
toward the entire Middle East. Today issues of war and
peace, trade and investment agreements by US, European and
Asian oil companies and banks in the Middle East,
multi-billion dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia are subject
to ZPC scrutiny and veto. The new ‘broad definition’ of
what effects Israel includes Lobby backing for Bush’s
shredding of Constitutional restraints on his war powers.
According to Zionist ideologues unleashing presidential
authoritarianism at the service of Israeli extremism is no
vice.
The Lobby’s concept of what ‘relates to Israel’ – its
guiding light for intervening in US politics – has been
stretched, along with Israel’s expanding interests. During
the 1940’s to 50’s, the main focus of the Lobby was to
secure US diplomatic support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing
of Palestine. The Lobby’s focus on areas of ‘interest to
Israel’ extended to Israel’s wars with Egypt and Syria in
the 1960’s and 1970’s; to Lebanon and Iraq during the 1980’s
and 1990’s; and to Iraq and Iran during the current decade.
The extension of the Lobby’s intervention in US Middle East
politics mirrors Israel’s growing regional aspirations. But
according to both Israel and its bucket carriers in the
Lobby, it is not merely regional expansion which ‘interests
Israel’ but economic and military aid and sales – namely who
determines what military goods the US can sell to Arab
states as well as what high end military technology the US
should provide to the world’s second biggest arms merchant –
Israel (which is also the US’s biggest arms export
competitor).
What ‘relates to Israel’ involves the Lobby in intervening
and determining the US votes in the United Nations, what
pressures it will exert on the European Union in the
Security Council, and how the White House should react to
peace proposals from its clients in the Gulf states. As
Jeff Blankfort correctly points out: every US President
starting with Richard Nixon has attempted to pressure Israel
to withdraw from land it occupied in 1967. And except for
Jimmy Carter forcing Israel out of Sinai, Israel has
successfully pressured the Israeli Lobby to mobilize the US
Congress to end these presidential efforts. Today the
‘Israel Firsters’ do not have to ‘mobilize the Democratic
Congress’ – they are automatically programmed to work for
Israel, as is the US President. As former Israel Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon once said: “We tell him (Bush) what to
do, and he does it.”
The score card for the ZPC under the Bush Presidency and the
Democratic Congressional majority is 11 for the Israel Lobby
to 0 (zero) for the American People. These ’11 Points’ are:
1.
No limits
on the Presidential war agenda toward Iran.
2.
No end of
sanctions against Palestine
3.
No arms
sales to Saudi Arabia without Israeli approval.
4.
No
withdrawal from Iraq.
5.
No land for
peace agreement to end Israeli colonization of Palestine
6.
No end of
US escalation of troops in Iraq
7.
No end to
the power of the Lobby in making US Middle East policy
8.
No end to
Israeli spying on the US (its even called ‘free speech)
9.
No end to
the censoring of US cultural and intellectual work critical
of Israel and to uncontested harassment of Muslims
10.
Undisputed
Judge and Jury of the beauty contest of US Presidential
candidates.
11.
No end to
the Peace Movement’s silence and cover-up of the Lobby’s
power over US Middle East policy.
James
Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton
University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class
struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in
brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization
Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry Veltmeyer, Social
Movements and the State: Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and
Argentina, will be published in October 2005.
James
Petras latest book, The Power of Israel in the United
States (Clarity Press: Atlanta, 2006). His forthcoming
book is Rulers and Ruled (Bankers, Zionists and Militants
(Clarity Press, Atlanta).
