Last night Ari Fleischer was on Hardball speaking up for Freedom’s Watch, a new organization that is buying ads to support George Bush’s war "plans" in Iraq. Fleischer warns that if we don’t stay the course, the whole region will "explode."
According to the Washington Post, two of the three leaders of Freedom’s Watch, including Fleischer, are associated with the Republican Jewish Coalition (the third is involved with the Holocaust Memorial). Its donors, per the Post, include three other members of the Rep. Jewish Coalition and Gary Erlbaum, a leader of the conservative Jewish community in Philadelphia. That’s a lot of right wing Jews.
I talked to Erlbaum a year ago. Israel is front and center for him. Three years ago I heard Fleischer talking to a Jewish audience in Cincinnati, urging them to vote for George Bush in the upcoming election. Fleischer made explicit pro-Israel appeals. He said that his mother was a Democrat who opposed Bush but had softened because the Iraq war had been good for Israel’s security. He said that he was proud of the fact that in all his statements on Israel/Palestine while White House press secretary, he had never used the term "cycle of violence." I.e., he masked the endless brutalization there, as if Israel is getting somewhere by bulldozing houses and performing messy assassinations that kill little children, too.
There is nothing wrong with rightwing Israel-centric Jews getting involved in American politics. Let 100 flowers bloom. But I want their agendas explicit. It’s clear to me that several members of the new group care about Israel’s security as a reason for American military engagement in the Middle East. They should say so upfront. As it is, the Freedom’s Watch website has imagery of the eagle wrapped in a flag; its big new ad shows an Iraq War veteran who continues to support the disastrous war because of 9/11, and no one on the site is talking about Israel. Fleischer didn’t mention it last night in his analysis of the regional fallout if we left Iraq. This is dangerous dishonesty. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in A Tragic Legacy, the U.S. might well be willing to fight to defend Israel’s security; but the people have a right to know that.
[I]f Americans are being induced to support wars not in American interest but in Israel’s, and if American lives and treasure are being squandered in wars justified by false premises, by a hidden agenda, they will realize that at some point…When the realization begins to dawn that at least one substantial factor as to why America waged Middle Eastern war(s) is because influential individuals with an overarching devotion to Israel pushed for war against Israel’s enemies, then an anti-Israeli backlash is highly likely to occur.
Last night Mike Barnicle played the Freedom’s Watch ad with the soldier’s appeal to stay the course; then asked Fleischer who the soldier was. Fleischer said he didn’t know. But he said that when a soldier dies in Iraq, everyone in America grieves with the family. This is b.s.; there is a real difference between supporting the war from armchairs and going to Iraq. The next guest on the show, a veteran opposed to the war, said that Fleischer’s lack of sincerity was exposed by the fact that he didn’t know the soldier’s name. I agree. And smell a rat. Fleischer’s group ought to be upfront about its concerns. Rather than manipulating public opinion.
Related posts:
- Former Indiana Congressman Says Securing Israel Was Hidden Agenda for Iraq War
- The Right–This Time the ‘Washington Times’–Identifies Pro-Israel Agenda for Iraq War
- In Neocons’ ‘Parallel Establishment,’ a Foundation Hides Its Israel Concerns
- Once Again, Freedom’s Watch’s Israel Agenda Is Ignored by the MSM
- Hollings Says Iraq War Was Launched in Large Part to Secure Israel
{ 50 comments }
I guess Phil, the question is, how many Jews does it take to, I guess contaminate a host organism. Are we a cancer, surely Jews must disclose themselve whereever we are. Its just too easy to hide. I still think the yellow star or the armband is the way to go. There is precedent.
Why is Ari Fleisher still able to run around a free man pushing for more wars? Fleisher is a radical and a traitor and has jeopardized U.S. National Security by being part of the team who outed a CIA under cover agent whose job it was was to follow the path of WMD's.
Fleisher should be behind bars for being a traitor. At the very least he should be impeached so that he can never slip back into any administration in the future.
Who is Ari Fleisher working for?
So Bill Pearlman agrees with the so called Freedom Watch's deceitful representation that they somehow represent American interests when it is clear that they are actually pursuing Zionist objectives? Remind me again, what is the Mossad's motto, Bill? And just how much antipathy does one have to have for their fellow Americans to adopt such a deceitful approach to public affairs?
pearlman is the biggest anti semite ever. he wants to make sure the israel agenda is promoted as dishonestly as possible so as to bring about another holocaust when people eventually wise up.
Something your looking forward to Lester, the next holocaust, inshallah
Fleischer is just acting to keep the heat under the boiling pot.
Iraq was invaded in the first place for the misplaced sake of Israel (why aren't Boy Feith and his mates in jail?) – oil was a side issue.
The blood lust can't be satisfied. It's got too easy killing chickens in a cage (the Pals); bigger challenges are in order.
If Foxman, Fleischer, et. al., didn't have Israel to wet their pants over, what would be left in their lives?
Lester,
Billy is just a shtetl clown, his only style is same boring sarcastic "throw hands in the air" shtik. Have you ever heard an argument from him? Too hard. Need know things. Need think. But yelling sarcastically every time that "Oh, yeah, blame the Jews, yellow stars, new holocaust" – that does not demand anything, even reading the original post. One can actually do that by a text robot! Why is he so short on actual arguments?
Easy. After his ignorant, insolent ass was whooped so many times here, he finally learned, as a Pavlov's dog "learns", that each time he tries to say something – he discredits his own cause so bad, that now he is a major embarrassment to Zionist side and we are asked by Zionists on this forum not to take him as representing their cause! Poor Billy! I can see him cry!
And that total inability to see the chessboard more than a single move ahead! He accused me of misrepresenting that I am a Jew, but never even though how would he bail out if he was wrong and made an idiot out of himself when I proposed a third party mediated large bet. Not putting your money where your mouth is – nothing can be more discrediting here in America than that! Couple of days ago His Bozoid Smuttiness suggested that my Dad was a Nazi collaborator and when I proposed public-mediated contest between my father's and my grandparents and his a WWII war awards contest he was not even able to answer a simple question on what was his Daddy did during WWII! No! Billy ran for cover! See? Every time he is trying to be smart – BANG! His ass get whooped! EVERY TIME, ladies and gentlemen, every time! Now we all know whose family was fighting Nazis and whose was doing geshefts when American and Russian boys were paying with their lives fighting Nazis! And we do not need to squeeze it out of Billy – stupid Billy volunteers delivers this embarrassment HIMSELF, by attacking others and never asking himself a question – what would I do if I will be asked back? A one-step mind! Giving our tribe's obsession with education and learning – quite a rare phenomenon… Now I think we all have a reason to ask – Are YOU a Jew, Billy? Or you're just a wannabe? 'Cause it damn looks that way very, very much!
Ari Fleischer,
You told us in so many ways
That you were in the right
The rich are quick to start a war
When it's the poor who fight
When first you suckered us into war
You promised it would be grand
We hear only the bugles at funerals now
Instead of a marching band
Don't ask why wounded heroes
Are nickel & dimed at home
Since money doesn't grow on trees
Cut benefits to the bone
You can use him as a mouthpiece
For sympathy's part of the game
But how many limbs must a veteran lose
Before you remember his name?
BTW, the USHMM is not really playing any sort of useful role in educating Americans about genocide.
I put up a short note at http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/08/one-sided-dialogue-from-us-holocaust.html on its DIFFICULT DIALOGUE SYMPOSIUM: DIALOGUE BETWEEN FORMER ENEMIES to be held at Clark University in Worcester on Nov. 1.
On second thought this comment may be more appropriate to this posting.
The Israel Lobby demonizes Arabs and Muslims the way John C. Calhoun dehumanized African slaves.
Obviously Calhoun did not want the slaves to be freed. The Israel lobby does not want Arab and Muslim Americans to be free to exercise their rights to participate fully in American society and politics.
Since Slavery there has been no Lobby like the Israel Lobby, and the US congress criminalized this sort of conspiracy against rights.
Using a state of war to subvert the US government clandestinely to serve a foreign government's interests and to negate the constitutional rights of American citizens is getting real close to an attempt to put down the US government. It is time to research the case law, for the Israel Lobby is treading very close to a violation of Title 18.2384 Seditious Conspiracy.
It has to be high crimes and misdemeanors for a sitting president to surround himself with advisors that are engaged in conspiracy against rights and very close to seditious conspiracy.
pearlman- just admit you're a masochist who's goal in life is to make people despise jews so you can point out how anti semetic they are then being
I hope that Walt and Mearsheimer's book pays some attention to Chomsky's arguments against their thesis.
US interventionist foreign policy, based on a seemingly inextricable mixture of a sense of America's unique moral mission and the hard headed interests of the arms industry and the energy corporations is much older than "The Lobby". Chomsky has a point there. He argues that US interventionism in the Middle East is quite similar to policies pursued elsewhere in the world, notably in Central America.
He doesn't talk about America's sense of a moral mission (through which I presume the population at large comes on board), but emphasizes the particular interests of the arms and oil industry. By and large he deems pre-Bush US policy to maintain control of what the State Department called half a century ago that "stupendous source of strategic power", Middle East oil, a success.
He also quotes Zunes' assertion that the lobbies related to the arms industry and energy corporations make far heftier political donations than "The Lobby" is able to do.
Gabriel Kolko has in a recent article especially emphasized the interests of the arms industry, pointing out that it is immaterial to the people involved whether the US wins or loses a conflict.
He wrote:
"There is a very profound consensus between the two parties on arms spending, which began under the Democrats a half-century ago and it will not go away – no matter how neglected the bridges and infrastructure, health, or the like. Arms lobbies are not only very powerful in Washington but create crucial jobs in most states and military spending keeps the economy afloat. Weapons producers make money regardless of whether the Pentagon wins or loses its wars – and making money is their only objective. It is surely a key causal factor even if it is far from being the sole explanation of why the U.S. intervenes where it shouldn't."
Chomsky points out that "The Lobby" only took off when Israel had performed a huge service to the U.S.Saudi energy corporations by impeding Arab secular nationalism that threatened to allocate resources to domestic needs.
It seems to me, however, that a key question now is not how large the respective political donations are but where politically applied financial power is located. Do the arms industry and energy corporations have as much influence in the mainstream media as "The Lobby"?
And how come that a large part of that "herd of independent minds" (to borrow Chomsky's quote of Rosenberg) that is located in academe has come to view "The Lobby"s platform sympathetically as well? These people would not easily be bamboozled by crude references to the interests of the arms industry and energy corporations.
What South American country receives aid like Israel?
If Findley or Percey had criticized the relationship of a South American regime and the USA, would they have been subjected to a concerted national campaign to remove them from office?
Do the arms and oil industries conduct vicious and racist campaigns of demonization against segments of the American population?
Where are the oil and arms industries' equivalents of Honest Reporting and Camera?
I know that Hollywood produces movies that are critical or criticize the arms and oil industry. Where are the Hollywood movies that criticize Israel?
High school world civilization textbooks in the Boston area are full of Zionist propaganda.
The situation is similar elsewhere.
My kids are subjected to Zionist Holocaust education that essentially distorts the history of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the history of the Czarist Empire from 1881 through 1945.
Why do we have a Holocaust memorial in Boston and not a memorial to slavery or to the Nakba/Holoexaleipsis (carried out by fanatic racist Zionist Ashkenazim) or to the Holodomor and other mass murders and genocides, in which Soviet Ashkenazim were up to the eyeballs in complicity?
What do fanatic racist anti-Arab group like the David Project get access to Congress and the media?
Is there anything comparable in the arms and oil industry to the marketing that the Israel Lobby does to the club scene with fuel for truth?
Who is the Alan Dershowitz for the arms and oil industry?
Why are 200 or so American University presidents condemning the decision of the British URU to consider a boycott of Israeli academia when the Israel Lobby is attempting to exclude Arab and Muslim academics by campaigns of academic assassination whenever they stray from the Zionist narrative?
Just consider the current campaign against Nadia Abu el Haj and take a look at the petition against her. It appears to be about 96% or more ethnic Ashkenazi.
Do the oil and arms lobbies run campaigns against New York charter schools like the Khalil Gibran International Academy?
Do the oil and arms industries try to make illegal attempts to feed populations that governments are trying to starve like Palestinians in Gaza (a tactic that Soviet Ashkenazim used in the Ukraine)?
I can go on for an hour at least.
Guess what. Chomsky is a Zionist.
He has never condemned as psychotic or even racist or simply immoral the idea that Eastern European Ashkenazim had the right to steal Palestine from the native population on the basis of an etymological relationship between the word "Jew" and "Judea," and he is supposed to be one of the preeminent experts in linguistics.
Yes there are many differences between the pro-Israel lobby and those other ones. I suppose that the pro-Israel lobby has to make up for its comparative lack of financial clout (if Zunes can be believed)with the disgraceful activities of its thought police.
However, that does in itself not mean that this lobby is more effective than the others in setting the course of American foreign policy. It might be but I suggest that this cannot be determined by merely pointing to its hateful visibility.
The 'Chomsky is a Zionist' bit is merely an ad hominem argument. Ironically, when Abba Eban way back pleaded for the equation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism he chose as his prime examples of anti-Zionists I.F.Stone and … Chomsky.
Abba Eban when pleading for the idea that an anti-Israel stance should be equated with anti-Semitism chose as his prime examples of anti-Zionists I.F.Stone and …Chomsky.
Anyway, this issue is
Sorry, something went obviously wrong in my last post. Phil should add a 'modify' function.
The lack of financinal clout is a red herring.
Here is an example.
Bronfman may not be as personally wealthy as ADM is valued, but as vice chairman of the board of Universal he has an awfully large megaphone that comes with the job while ADM has to pay for ad time.
Murdoch is another example. He runs his papers at a loss apparently as Zionist propaganda platforms. And I would love to understand his relationship with Purcell at the Boston Herald.
Thanks to Larry Summers, I have had to research the issue.
The Israel Lobby has formal and informal open operatives (organizations like AIPAC, the Israel Project, individuals like Haim Saban) as well as formal and informal covert operatives like the Boston CJP, which I allege to be involved in massive tax fraud, or the Bancrofts, who controlled the WSJ editorial page.
These four elements have an immense amount of resources, which are leveraged.
Then there is the whole issue of hegemonic blocking and pop culture. Melani McAlister discusses the latter issue in "Epic Encounters."
It is a hard problem in accounting to determine the financial clout of the Zionist Lobby especially because so much of it is leveraged. It might be a good PhD thesis topic, and I know people in academia that might have a good shot at coming up with a number and justifying it, but Zunes is not someone that would have come to mind.
Chomsky's perspective is Marxist, where the problem is never with individual actions but with the capitalist/imperialist structure. This approach is ingrained in the thinking of the left, and those brought up with it are not going to give it up easily. You don't need to ascribe evil motives to Chomsky to explain his position. (Although the fact that he did once choose to live in "the Jewish state" suggests that his personal sense of identity is capable of influencing his analysis — as it is with most of us.)
There's a lot of people like him, so Arie's question is an important one: how can those who are used to interpreting the world as a clash of economic forces ("big oil vs. the common man") be brought to recognize the role of the Zionist lobby. You can point out all the thousands of examples of brute power–the careers ended, the politicians humbled, the media cowed–but what these people are looking for is a theoretical framework.
The first step is to remind them that the two explanations are not mutually contradictory: a strong Zionist lobby based on ethnic tribalism does not preclude the possibility of a class of economic elites working to advance their economic interests.
Usually, the "it's all about oil" message is a red herring. Does the arms industry really make any more money when we're using up our military budget on salaries, gas, and bombs — as opposed to fancy new high-tech systems that never get used? And as for oil, can anyone claim that our strategic control over that resource has increased?
There's a lot more to be said on this topic. Like Arie, I hope that M&W elaborate how these different lobbies co-exist.
Sorry but mass movements are much more influential in American society than moneyed interests, if they can be organized. The pro-Israel movement is more influential tha Big Oil.
Basically, people like Zunes just do not want to admit that the Jewish people are capable, like all people, not only of great good and culture (I was brought up on such culture) but also of considerable evil.
To anyone interested on the people paying for those ads (and some very intriguing details), here is a very good article by Raimondo:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11498
"… Mel Sembler – A multi-billionaire shopping center magnate and real estate developer, CEO of the Sembler Company, and former ambassador to Australia, Nauru, and Italy, Sembler was also chairman of the Scooter Libby Defense Trust. His tenure in Rome was coincident with a series of rather dubious goings-on connected to the Niger uranium forgeries, including secret back channel meetings between leading neocons in the Pentagon, Iranian arms dealer and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, and convicted spy Larry Franklin, who was caught red-handed funneling classified top secret information to Israeli embassy personnel via two officials of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. As Joshua Micah Marshall put it:
"There's a lot that's still really murky about what was happening at the U.S. embassy in Rome after 9/11 with the forgeries and other matters. That was on Sembler's watch. And Libby's bad acts stem from the whole forgeries bamboozlement. (Whacking Wilson was part of the larger White House effort to keep the forgeries scam covered up – a cover-up that's still underway.)
"So Sembler just seems like a pretty big part of this story to be collecting money for the one person under indictment for their role in it."
Sembler's bio veers from the neoconnish to the nightmarish when we consider his founding of "Straight, Inc.," a teen drug rehabilitation program that was forced to close on account of numerous successful lawsuits by former clients who were tortured, raped, and systematically humiliated. Their hair-raising testimony of sadistic abuse while in custody at Sembler's teen-Guantánamo can be read here. Apparently, an entire movement of Sembler's victims has risen up spontaneously – that's how many lives "Straight, Inc." destroyed. All this bad publicity required a name change, and "Straight, Inc.," was reconstituted, in 1996, as the Drug Free America Foundation. As a result of Sembler's political clout, the Foundation is prospering, thanks to federal subsidies, $720,000 in the year 2000 alone.
The drug war, the Iraq war, Scooter Libby's private war against Valerie Plame and her husband – with Sembler, it's always wartime, and that's the way he likes it.
John Templeton, Jr. – The son of renowned investor John Templeton, is in charge of the Templeton Foundation, which, last year, poured some $60 million into numerous projects broadly dedicated to "bringing science under the guiding hand of religion." Templeton is an evangelical Christian, and his generosity has funded a wide variety of projects dear to conservative hearts, such as the theory of "intelligent design" and the re-election of George W. Bush. Some libertarians have also been in on the gravy train: the Cato Institute received funding for its Russian-language web site, cato.ru – and presumably to pay for the dubious services of such pro-war blowhards as Cato senior fellow Andrei Illarionov, who has openly called for the West to prepare for a military conflict with Russia.
Sheldon G Adelson – He's the third richest person in the U.S., worth $20.5 billion, with a rags-to-riches story: the son of a Boston cabdriver, Adelson inaugurated the Comdex computer trade show, and then went into tourism, real estate, and casinos. He is CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., which operates the Venetian Casino Resort and the Sands Expo and Convention Center. Adelson is a major contributor to Jewish and Israeli causes, and to the GOP. This series of ads isn't his only propagandistic foray: the Vegas casino king has also gone into the newspaper business – in Israel. Yisrael Hayom is a new daily paper closely tied to the ultra-nationalist wing of the Likud party, and Benjamin Netanyahu's political aspirations. It was recently launched with a massive free mailing to hundreds of thousands, and has attracted considerable attention.
Richard Fox – He made his fortune in real estate, with properties centered in eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, and is a co-founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Gary Erlbaum, owner of Greentree Properties in Ardmore, Pa., an ardent Republican organizer in the Orthodox community and a Giuliani supporter, as well as a staunch advocate for Israel.
Anthony Gioia, former ambassador to Malta, and the head of Gioia Management. He's on Giuliani's "finance team."
Howard Leach, former ambassador to France, CEO of Leach Capital Corp. and president of Foley Timber and Land Co.
Ed Snider, chairman of Comcast Spectacor, which includes TicketMaster and the Philadelphia Spectrum sports center. He also is the proprietor of Prism, the biggest pay-per-view TV network in America. Snider sits on the board of the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust museum in Los Angeles, and is owner of the Philadelphia Flyers pro hockey team.
Kevin E. Moley, once a senior advisor to Dick Cheney and formerly US representative to international organizations in Geneva.
President of this astroturf outfit is Bradley A. Blakeman, formerly a deputy assistant to the president and now with the public relations firm of Gordon and Gregg."
I think the problem with Chomsky is not so much that he is a Zionist but that he is deeply attached to ideas about how the world works.
That said, Mearsheimer and Walt, like Chomsky are under no obligation to produce interpretations that focus on everything possible, as if there were such a thing. Mearsheimer and Walt have produced a commonplace in academia, which is to bring to light overlooked or neglected forces involved in events. They do not claim to tell the "whole" story, as no one can, but they instead shed a strong partial light on the role of Israel's lobby in distorting U.S. policy. There's nothing unacademic about that; it just seems that way to people outside the academy who don't do scholarship in a day to day way and recognize that there are many different kinds of scholarly articles that get written. Or to those inside and outside the academy that wanted to attack them, which surprised nobody inside the academy. The most important academic works have always been those that provoke and disturb.
As for Ari Fleisher and these ads, it is clear that the sponsors who are tied to AIPAC and other questionable interests are so far afield of U.S. public opinion, it will be very interesting to see if the ads have any impact at all. I just don't think the argument "we're surrendering" washes for the majority of the U.S. public. These ads are disgusting in the same manner that these people and others got us into the Iraq war. I just think that the U.S. public has had enough or John Warner wouldn't have called today for troop reductions–yeah, yeah, I know what they mean by troop reductions, but that felt he had to make this move speaks more about the unpopularity of the war than anything else.
freespeechlover has gone straight to the heart of the matter:
'Mearsheimer and Walt have produced a commonplace in academia, which is to bring to light overlooked or neglected forces involved in events.'
Check the photos of these two – you couldn't get anything more pedestrian.
If these two were writing about anything, literally anything other than Israel and the Israel lobby, even about the criminality of the junta occupying the WHite House, the publication of their book would be just another ho-hum event.
The Israel lobby is a cult, a self-lobotomising force. If it was just like most other cults, where they go about their business poisoning the minds (and the pocketbooks) of the gullible and the young, then tut-tut, but laisser-faire is in order. Give free rein to the cult busters for their own interest. But when this cult seeks to dictate foreign policy across a number of states, in facilitating largesse to and tolerance of a state for whom ethnic cleansing is a raison d'etre, in the process jeopardising our own national and personal security, then it is a noxious pest to be cleansed from the body politic.
Rosner on the counter-campaign:
WALT-MEARSHEIMER AND THE WAR OVER THE ISRAEL LOBBY, ROUND TWO
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=897116&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1
Here's a longer version of the Rosner piece–
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896812.html
Freespeechlover wrote re Chomsky's critique of Walt and Mearsheimer:
"They do not claim to tell the "whole" story, as no one can, but they instead shed a strong partial light on the role of Israel's lobby in distorting U.S. policy. There's nothing unacademic about that; it just seems that way to people outside the academy who don't do scholarship in a day to day way and recognize that there are many different kinds of scholarly articles that get written."
Apparently Tony Judt is one of those people "who don't do scholarship in a day to day way".Did he in his NYT Op-Ed just fleetingly refer to other factors that might be considered when "explaining American actions overseas" ("the domestic "energy lobby"… the influence of Wilsonian idealism, or imperial practices left over from the cold war"), in a television interview for "INN World Report" with Lenny Charles on Oct.5 2006 he was more direct. There he said that Walt and Mearsheimer "probably needed to focus on other explanations … the Israel lobby is hugely influential and very damaging but so is the oil lobby and a lot of other groups" (I have no transcript but I am pretty sure that that is what he said – you can listen to it for yourself on http:///www.innworldreport.net/archives/2006/10/05/index.html).
In an earlier post I simply expressed the hope that W.& M.would respond to Chomsky's criticism in their book. I might have missed something but I don't think he was included in their "first round rebuttals" which is a bit strange seeing that they drew on his work in the main text.
Corrected address for the Judt interview:
http://www.innworldreport.net/archives/2006/10/05/index.html
Corrected text for Judt-quote: "a lot of other groups" should be "various other groups".
Corrected address for the Judt interview:
http://www.innworldreport.net/archives/2006/10/05/index.html
Corrected text for Judt-quote: "a lot of other groups" should be "various other groups".
The last two bits of the address keep falling away. They are: index.html
There is plenty of hysteria on both sides.
The Iraqis were not able to run a normal country when they were independent. Not under Hassa, Sidqi, Qassem, Saddam…
Now they are at least shielded from the mad leaders of Iran, and can work out a normalcy.
The USA can not leave Iraq while the Khomeini-Khaminei junta is in power in Iran. It will be the worst tyranny in history if Iran and Iraq can be united under Khaminei. Assad is also a danger to the area.
Iraq must rise to a decent internal arrangement with a well organized representative government, and only then can the USA leave.
It is possible to make a decent society under occupation if the people recognize that the internal decency is a priority over a weak immediate independence, which may to leave to dependency on Iran.
As a strong and decent society, Iraq will not need the USA military.
Let us calm down.
As I said, Arie, there are many ways to do scholarship. I don't disagree with Judt, by the way. There is a kind of scholarship in academia; it is "ground-clearing." It's done in all fields. That doesn't mean everyone does it.
As for responding to Chomsky, maybe they should have, although I will tell you publishers always always always limit authors–they are in the business of book selling, and they are scared to death of lengthy books. Even academics as prominent as these are subjected to editors' constraints which are considerable. Clearly, there were others who mattered more to them, and I imagine they're people like Dennis Ross and the politicians-cum-intellectuals who have worked with AIPAC, etc.
New Freedom's Watch Commercial
http://podblanc.ath.cx/?q=node/5423
The upcoming book gets an appreciative mention on the Time/CNN site:
http://time-blog.com/middle_east/2007/08/storm_over_the_israel_lobby_1.html
Have Walt & Mearsheimer's reply to their critics been posted yet? If anybody knows where it's posted online, let me know.
The head of that "Freedom's Watch" astroturf group, Brad Blakeman, appeared on the PBS Lehrer Newshour on Friday, but REFUSED to appear with a representative from the opposition "Americans Against Escalation In Iraq." When questioned about this he said that they were illegitimate because they didn't have as much money as they said they did! Basically he was claiming the right NOT to debate the issue because he was also claiming the right to DECIDE who should be included in any debate! Apparently, the only legitimate opponent whom he was willing to debate was an empty chair. How arrogant!
PeterH:
In May 2006 they published a letter in the LRB addressing some of the early responses to the paper–
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/letters.html
There was also a debate at the Cooper Union–
http://www.scribemedia.org/2006/10/11/israel-lobby/
Here is their CAIR speech on the Lebanon War, where they address some of the issues raised by critics–
http://www.c-span.org/Search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=Mearsheimer
Steven wrote:
"The USA can not leave Iraq while the Khomeini-Khaminei junta is in power in Iran. It will be the worst tyranny in history if Iran and Iraq can be united under Khaminei. Assad is also a danger to the area.
Iraq must rise to a decent internal arrangement with a well organized representative government, and only then can the USA leave."
This amounts to the belief that only he who has shattered the vase can glue it together again.
This opinion interests me because it seems so flagrantly at odds with reality. Is here the "American Ideology" at play?
Anatol Lieven wrote in an interesting article in the Financial Times of Sept.6 2006:
"The belief that it is the US's national right, duty and destiny to spread "democracy" and "freedom"
in the world is ingrained in most Americans from early childhood. This belief stems from the faith in the constitution, law
and democracy that forms the so-called "American creed", the foundation of America's collective national identity.
In the
words of the great American historian Richard -Hofstadter: "It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies, but
to be one."
This American creed shares with Soviet communism the belief that it is applicable not just to its host nation, but to all
mankind. …
The nationalist myths attendant on the creed include a widespread belief that America is exceptional in its allegiance to
democracy and freedom and that America is, therefore, exceptionally good. Because America is exceptionally good, it
both deserves to be exceptionally powerful and by nature cannot use its power for evil ends. The creed is therefore also
a foundation of belief in America's innate innocence. So, if as has often been said, Mr Bush occupies a kind of
ideological bubble, it is a bubble made of steel and he shares it with tens or even hundreds of millions of other
Americans."
(I owe this article to the interesting collection David Seaton presented to the readers of his blog as a holiday gift.)
OBAMA: DENNIS ROSS GIVES ME MIDEAST ADVICE
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/print/20070824rossobama.html
"The Democratic presidential hopeful made the disclosure during a closed meeting in New York with 25 Jewish leaders. … It comes, as the senator's campaign is making a concerted effort to reach out to the Jewish community across the country."
Very nice collection of articles indeed. It is a compressed (winzip) pdf file. Here is the link:
http://www.geocities.com/seatonsnet/2006-2007-BestofSeason.zip
And Seaton's blog:
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/
Some things which were left out of 1978 edition of Sharett's diaries, mainly in the "dirty-tricks" category–
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896787.html
My impression is that there's still a split within the U.S. power elite between a pro-Lobby and anti-Lobby faction (which has helped to promote the book of the former Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) consultant). Although the AIPAC-Cheney-JINSA faction seems more powerful, a former Chevron board member still is the U.S. Secretary of State; and doesn't Novak's recent book also talk about the negative special influence of the Lobby in U.S. foreign policy-making decisions?
As I've indicated on the http://www.bfeldman68.blogspote.com recently, one reason Columbia University President Lee Bollinger (who also sits on the board of directors of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate) may be opposing the academic boycott campaign is that one of the law firm that lobbies for Columbia's land-grabbingcampus expansion project has financial ties to the Israeli establishment. But unlike James Petras, I'm not sure that the Big Oil companies,the military-industrial complex and the CIA folks that often keep a lower public profile than AIPAC these days are no longer able to check AIPAC, at times, when their special economic interests or strategic goals in the Middle East appear to be endangered by the Lobby's adventurist strategic proposals/pressure.
Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's 1990s book, Dangerous Liasison: The Inside Story of the U.S-Israeli Covert Relationship might possibly be out-of date in the post-2001 era. But according to Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's book: "The success of Israel in using American power and money to advance the position has depended on far more than just a lobby. It has been one result of a symbiotic relationship between the two countries that functions in ways in which the public knows little but that has helped mold the world and change the fate of nations and people."
Despite MIT Professor Chomsky's recent tendency to minimize the power of the Lobby, some of what he wrote in his Towards A New Cold War book might still be somewhat relevant: "The fundamental concern of the U.S. government is not Israel and its immediate neighbors but rather control over the vast reserves of energy in the Middle East. During World War II, the United States established a firm hold over Saudi Arabian reserves…
"The relation between the U.S. government and the energy corporations in this regard is complex. There are, of course, the major American international corporations, and their role in designing U.S. foreign policy has always been great…Despite the ultimate congruity of interests, conflicts have arisen in the past and still do. For several years, American oil companies operating in the Arab world have been urging the government to modify its support for Israeli occupation of the territories conquered in 1967…Israeli power protected the `monarchical regimes' of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from `a militarily strong Egypt' in the 1960s, thus securing American interests in the major oil-producing regions…Eddward Behr reports that CIA payments to Israel in the mid-1960s amounted to millions of dollars and that in the late 1960s, checks for several hundred thousand dollars each were frequently delivered by U.S. government officials to the Israeli foreign ministry in Jerusalem…to be channelled to the African recipients."
Also, the CIA found the Israeli government to be a useful tool for arming the CIA's right-wing allies in Central America during the 1980s. And in Colombia in the 21st-century, I think there's some evidence that CIA allies are also being armed by the Israeli government.
Even if tax-exempt status was taken away from all U.S. domestic pro-Israeli government lobbying organizations,the special influence of the lobby within U.S. media and cultural institutions were reduced by anti-war movement mass pressure, and political campaign contributions to Dem and GOP politicians by members of pro-Israeli lobbying organizations were prohibited, etc., I'm not sure U.S. foreign policy would automatically become less imperialist or move in a pacifist direction– unless the Big Oil companies were also nationalized under democratic control, the U.S. military budget were dramatically cut and the CIA and IDA were abolished, etc.
"… I'm not sure U.S. foreign policy would automatically become less imperialist or move in a pacifist direction."
I agree, but I'm sure the outlook for the Palestinian people (and millions of other Arabs) would suddenly become considerably brighter. And I'm sure the hatred for the U.S. which led to 9-11 would suddenly shrink.
Jean Bricmont had a nice article on this subject–
"It is true that a change in the U.S. policy with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict would change nothing about traditional imperialism– the United States would still support traditional elites everywhere, and press countries to provide a "favorable investment climate". But the conflict in the Middle East, involving Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, has all the aspects of a religious war-with Islam on one side and Zionism as a secular Western religion on the other. And wars of religion tend to be the most brutal and uncontrollable of all wars. What is at stake in the de-Zionization of the American mind is not only the fate of the unfortunate inhabitants of Palestine but also unspeakable miseries for the people of that region and maybe of the rest of the world. The ultimate irony in all this is that the fate of much of the world depends of the American people exercising their right to self-determination, which, of course, they should."
http://www.counterpunch.org/bricmont08122006.html
"OBAMA: DENNIS ROSS GIVES ME MIDEAST ADVICE"
That is a bit like a British prime ministerial hopeful of the nineties choosing the Reverend Ian Paisley as his adviser on Northern Ireland.
Lots of money been thrown around lately. It seems the Lobby and relevant organizations have their hands full, what with W&M, the boycott campaign, Freedom Watch etc. Now the Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen trial estimated to be one of the costliest in US history ($10 million). AIPAC will pay.
Trial moving toward a January 2008 date:
http://www.forward.com/articles/11284/
Arie wrote: "That is a bit like a British prime ministerial hopeful of the nineties choosing the Reverend Ian Paisley as his adviser on Northern Ireland."
Well, how about having Elliott Abrams as Rice's top Mideast adviser?
"In his capacity as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, Mr. Abrams will assist Mr. Hadley in work on the promotion of democracy and human rights, and will provide oversight to the NSC's directorate of Democracy, Human Rights, and International Organization Affairs and its directorate of Near East and North African Affairs. Working with Secretary Rice and Mr. Hadley, he will maintain his involvement in Israeli/Palestinian affairs."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050202-10.html
Sort of good cop/bad cop. If Dennis Ross is good cop, Elliott is Dirty Harry:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/969
In my opinion, he is an Israeli "asset". So is Michael Ledeen (recently unofficial advisor to Bush) and Richard Perle.
P.S. I remember reading an interview of Perle and suddenly Bibi (Netanyahu) shows up in the midst of the interview, for coffee or something. These guys are so tight you can't tell one from the other.
"As I've indicated on the http://www.bfeldman68.blogspote.com recently, one reason Columbia University President Lee Bollinger (who also sits on the board of directors of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate) may be opposing the academic boycott campaign is that one of the law firm that lobbies for Columbia's land-grabbingcampus expansion project has financial ties to the Israeli establishment."
Bollinger could always hire a different law firm, but he seems to have had an attack of the stupids since the David Project broadsided him with its propaganda film "Columbia Unbecoming."
Even without the copious documentation that most Israeli academics consider themselves primarily to be footsoldiers in the service of Zionism and only secondarily to be scholars, as long as the US Israel Lobby is running a defamation campaign against Arab and Muslim American academics one by one (including right now Columbia/Barnard Professor Nadia Abu el Haj), American universities and scholars committed to independent scholarship and unfettered academic discourse have a categorical obligation to support a boycott of Israeli academia.
Ok, I found it. It was part of Stephen Gaghan's research for his script for the movie "Syriana". Read this, it is hilarious!
"… Traveling with the real life Bear through the Middle East provided Gaghan the opportunity to meet with Hezbollah leaders, but his most interesting research might just have been done on US soil. "I’m in Richard Perle’s kitchen and he’s talking about plans and he’s going to be on boards of directors, he’s passing out favors in the Bush White House and I said ‘I just have one question: who’s gonna run Iraq?’" Gaghan remembers. Doing his best Perle imitation he continues, "‘well it’s a shame we haven’t done a better job. How's your cappuccino Steve?’ ‘It’s delicious Richard.’" Gaghan continues, "He [Perle] steeples his fingers, like Mr. Burns in the Simpsons, and he looks at me and the doorbell rings ‘ding dong’ and he goes, ‘Excellent I’ll introduce you to BiBi on your way out.’ It was Benjamin Netanyahu dropping by for a little visit. So we’re on our way out the door Netanyahu’s there with body guards. Perle has a Wheaton terrier puppy named Reagan, 9 month old puppy, pawing the crotch of Benjamin Netanyahu. True story. Netanyahu doesn’t go ‘what a cute puppy you got there Perle’ or ‘get your dog off me Perle,’ he just stands there, looks down at the dog and shakes with rage. I pulled the dog away from the crotch of Benjamin Netanyahu and say ‘now now Reagan, not on the former heads of state.’ And out the door I go."
http://www.screentalk.biz/interviews/stephengaghan_interview.php
In Israeli arguments against a boycot of Israeli academe it is often overlooked that Israel has now already for decades in actual fact imposed a non-declared boycot on Palestinian education:
Viz:
"Under Israeli occupation, all eleven Palestinian universities have been closed, the longest being Birzeit between 1988 and 1992, and the most recent Hebron Polytechnic which was closed by military order for 8 months in 2003.
During these periods community-based classes were criminalized and its teachers and students arrested. Since 2000, 185 schools have been shelled and scores of teachers and students have been shot at and arrested.
Then there are the less extreme but just as effective obstacles like the 700 restrictions of movement by checkpoints, road-blocks and earth mounds. Through creating and controlling a system of internal borders in the occupied territories, the Israeli military prevents students from accessing Palestinian universities far from their homes.
University campuses are then increasingly ghettoized; Birzeit now attracts the vast majority of its new students from the Ramallah and Jerusalem areas, and its intake of people from Jenin has dropped by 100%.
This also means students are limited in their course choices; 12 students from Gaza have been denied permission to go to Bethlehem and study Occupational Therapy (a course not available in Gaza) despite them not representing a security threat to Israel – a point the military admitted at the Israeli High Court where the decision is currently being challenged.
However, the latest round of Israeli attacks on Palestinian education has been through the control of its external borders. As an occupying power, Israel is legally responsible for guaranteeing all human necessities and rights in the occupied territories, including the right to education, and is in de facto control of all that goes in and out of the territories, including foreign academics, researchers and students."
Read on at:
http://www.flwi.ugent.be/cie/Palestina/palestina226.htm
University of Manchester Partners with University of Death
Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 10:20:21 pm PST
The University of Manchester in Britain, at the demand of Islamist student groups, is partnering with one of the most debased, evil institutions in the world, Al-Najah University in Nablus—scene of an exhibit celebrating the Sbarro Pizzeria mass murder, and spawning ground for a host of suicide bombers and murderers: UK, West Bank universities twinned.
The University of Manchester in northern England has been “twinned” with al-Najah University in the West Bank following the passing of a motion filled with anti-Israel rhetoric by the student’s union last week.
Some 19 Palestinian suicide bombers have originated from al-Najah, and in 2001, the university organized a display to celebrate and recreate the suicide bomb attack on the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, which killed 15 Israelis.
The motion stated that “Palestinian education has been severely hindered since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 by blanket curfews, the presence of roadblocks and recently the erection of the wall. The cumulative effects of these measures have put the future of many Palestinian universities at grave risk.“ …
The motion was introduced by a student group called ”Palestine Action," a subsidiary of the British Respect Party, itself made up of an alliance between Islamists and far-Left activists, and supported by the university’s Islamic Society, a Jewish student representative told Ynetnews.
I simply do not understand the logic by which the Israeli Zionist interlopers and their racist supporters in the USA expect Zionist thieves and murderers to be able to live in peace and security in a country that they stole from the native population and whose residents they either murdered, drove out or continue to murder and drive out.
Israel supporters typically point to the history of the USA to justify their support for Zionist genocidaires even though there is no logical argument to justify Zionist crimes on the basis of historical misdeeds in N. America.
For the first 87 years of the existence of the USA, slavery was legal and then we Americans fought a war over the abolition of the slave system. By the logic and precedent of US history, we Americans should now use military force to eradicate the Zionist system.
I am not surprised that Gore Vidal recounts a story of Norman Podhoretz' lack of interest in the US conflict over slavery and the American Civil War.
Bill wrongly reports that the "twinning" is between the universities as such. This is unfortunately not yet the case. It is thus far only a matter of a closer tie between two student unions. Manchester University is the biggest university in Europe. The Union there chose Al-Najah because it is the biggest Palestinian university.
As to the term "University of Death": groups that support a country that murders people on a daily basis have lost any moral basis for coming up with this type of accusation.
The text of the relevant motion of the University of Manchester Student Union is informative.
This Union notes:
1. That the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees equal rights for all, including the promise that ‘Everyone has the right to education’ (Article 26). That the status of the Palestinian territories (including West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem) is described in International Law as “Occupied territories”, and that the Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949 states that “The occupying power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.” (Article 50)
2. That over one third of the Palestinian population are students in full-time school or University education. That the 700 IDF roadblocks and other military obstacles frequently prevent students from being able to attend university.
3. That Birzeit University has been closed down by Israeli military order 15 times in its history; and that all the Palestinian universities and the majority of schools, including kindergartens, were closed down by military order between the years 1988-1992, when Palestinian education was effectively made ‘illegal’ by the Israeli occupation, denying a whole generation their right to education.
4. That Hebron University and the Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron were closed down by Israeli military order for much of 2003; and that the students of Hebron had to physically break down the gates to their universities, in defiance of the Israeli Army, to reconvene classes and demand their right to an education.
5. That students from Gaza are banned from reaching the 8 Palestinian Universities in the West Bank: In 2000 there were 350 Gazan students at Birzeit University, in April 2005 there were only 35.
6. That 362km of the projected 730km of the Israeli separation wall has been constructed, all of it on Palestinian lands, dividing, isolating and encircling Palestinian areas and Universities.
7. That 8 out of the total 11 universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been shelled or broken into by the Israeli Army since September 2000.
8. That Al-Najah University of the occupied city of Nablus is a central location for students from other west bank districts such as Qalqilya, Jenin and Tulkarem.
9. That students from Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Jenin represent 50% of the 13000 students of Al-Najah University. A lot of those students are denied access to education due to the direct impact that the Apartheid Wall has on their cities. e.g. Qalqilya is totally enclosed by the Wall.
10. That the 2 major Israeli checkpoints of Howara and Beit Iba enclose the city entirely and have negative impacts on students who aim to reach the University.
11. That the village of Asira Alshamaleyah is 6km from Nablus, and in normal circumstances should not take the students more than 10 minutes to get to the University. Currently, with the presence of Checkpoints, the journey takes 2 or more hours (if they are permitted to pass).
12. That some Palestinian students left their villages due to the harassments and delays faced on checkpoints, and are currently renting accommodation in Nablus: an extra and unnecessary burden on students.
13. The economic impacts (taking into account that Nablus suffered the most from Israeli Occupation, siege and closure) made students postpone their education, and in other cases some have left the university to work in order to support their families or to pay their fees. This phenomenon has increased more during the last year due to the economic blockade suffered by the Palestinians.
This Union Believes:
1. Palestinian education has been severely hindered since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 by blanket curfews, the presence of roadblocks and recently the erection of the Wall. The cumulative effects of these measures have put the future of many Palestinian universities at grave risk.
2. The measures noted above violate international law including provisions against collective punishment and guarantees for the protection of civilian populations under military occupation, students’ right to education and the fundamental rights of human beings to live in dignity and freedom.
3. Education is critical to the healthy functioning of Palestinian society, as well as the possibility of peace and reconciliation between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. It is the responsibility of governments, civil society organizations and ordinary people to defend the universal right to education and to demand its realisation.
This Union resolves:
1. To send a letter of support and a copy of this motion to Al-Najah University Student Union inviting them to twin with UMSU.
2. To lobby the University to provide at least three scholarships for Palestinian students who wish to study at the University of Manchester.
3. To lobby the University to drop International Fees for all Palestinian students and charge them only home fees.
4. To support the students of Birzeit “right to education campaign” and to campaign for Human Rights for all Palestinians, both within the territory of mandate Palestine and for Palestinian refugees.
5. To raise the above concerns with colleagues in the National Union of Students and encourage NUS to support Palestinian students’ right to education.
6. To publicise our policy of twinning with Al-Najah University Student Union by erecting a plaque, like that which publicises our links with Steve Biko, in the lobby of the Steve Biko building with the following words:
Palestine and the Right to Education
The University of Manchester Students’ Union is twinned with the Al-Najah National University in Nablus. Students in Palestine have had their right to education consistently denied by the Israeli Occupation: checkpoints, attacks on Universities and limitations on movement seriously hinder the ability of students in Palestine to learn. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that everyone has the ‘right to education’: we fully support the struggle of our Palestinian brothers and sisters to realise this fundamental Human Right.
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