Is there an Israel lobby? Barry Lando, a former producer for "60 Minutes," writes:
A few years back I did a report on AIPAC for "60 Minutes" with Mike Wallace. One after another, all the congressional offices I contacted confirmed the tremendous influence that AIPAC wielded, and the fear that could be inspired by an AIPAC threat to target a particular candidate. We were, however, unable to convince a single sitting House member, senator or staff person to talk on the record. Not that they disagreed with the premise. They were just terrified of taking about AIPAC.
That included the late John Chafee, the powerful U.S. senator from Rhode Island, who at the time was being targeted by AIPAC in his re-election campaign. Normally a stalwart supporter of Israel, Chafee had once contravened AIPAC policy by voting to supply an AWACS plane to Saudi Arabia. When the report was finally aired it was the target of more irate mail and phone calls from Jewish organizations across the country than just about any other report I ever did for "60 Minutes."
Note the adjective: "terrified." This was before the war in Iraq. And "60 Minutes" is now terrified about the idea of putting Walt and Mearsheimer on air...
The power of Jewish interests to determine
what is and what is not acceptable discourse
is beyond frightening (note the recent
humiliation of Arun Gandhi), as is the power
of Jewish money to influence American
electoral politics and to manipulate our
foreign policy in the Middle East.
And, off- and on-topic:
Lenin has finally lifted his head out of the sand to write about the Israel Lobby.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/01/israel-lobby-and-its-discontents.html
"…the idea that you can separate the influence of pro-Israeli opinion and lobbying from broader US policy designs, particularly those of the hard right, is incoherent."
Charles Keating: Inflation! Inflation dragons!
Phil: The settlers around Hebron weren't complaining about any inflation.
Witty: What? Phil! That's irresponsible and crude!
Charles Keating: This is MY genre, pal, what the hell is going on here? Are people supposed to read this crap?
MM: Absolutely not, dear Charles. No, this is for goatfeed.
Charles: Whoa.
MM: Yeah.
Witty: Can you turn down that Lead Zeppelin, I'm trying to lecture Phil about something.
Phil: Journalists have connections to illegal subsidized settlements.
David Frum: Oh yeah!? PROVE IT! PROVE IT OR I'LL SUE YOU! PROVE IT YOU EVIL F%^@%$%@!$!
Charles Keating: Hey this is gettin' good
Ed: Fuckin' Jews! Christian values, far superior.
Henry the VIII: Indeed friend, indeed.
Stalin: Let's just keep our mouths shut.
Trotsky: Agreed.
Kevin MacDonald: Oh you WOULD, wouldn't you? Murderers!
Chief Seattle: You would know about that my exciteable gringo son, wouldn't you?
Phil: It seems like Jews are in denial about this.
Witty: Lame. I'm hopeful about the future, and proud of my connection to Israel. Historians that I read say it's much more complicated than "ethnic cleansing" narratives.
P.A.Z.J.E.W.: Despite their actions and policies, Zionists really support the Palestinians by improving their land, and then leaving, as in Gaza in 2005. Several wonderful greenhouses were left blooming in the desert for them. (We all saw the result!)
Phil: If I fall into the comments pool I will certainly never escape alive! I musn't!
MM: No, Phil, we would much rather have you here arguing with us than doing "journalism"… Say, any comment on Lenin's article above?
Crickets: … … … … … …
Witty: There's no Lobby
Anonymous: OMFG ROTFLMAO
MM: Wait wait let me do the joke first!
Charles Keating: You haven't got half the words, boy, you really in for the long haul?
MM: Fuck!
Charles: Yeah.
Groundskeeper Willy: Doo it fer us ya lout!
MM: Enough, enough grandpa. I'm going
Mammy: Oh now miss Scarlett you come on and eat juss a little honey!
Scarlett: No! I'm going to have a good time today… And do my eating at the barbeque
Mammy: If you dont care what folks says about dis family I does! I is told ya and told ya that you can always tell a lady by the way she eats in front of folks like a bird and I ain't aimin' for you to go to Mr. John Wilkes and eat like a field hand and gobble like a hog!
Scarlett: Fiddle-dee-dee! Ashley told me he likes to see a girl with a healthy appetite!
Mammy: What gentlemen says and what they thinks is 2 diffrent things, and I ain't noticed Mr. Ashley askin' for to marry you
Scarlett: [Turns around slowly to face Mammy then throws her umbrella and stuffs food into her mouth]
Mammy: Now don't eat too fast. Ain't no need for it come right back up again!
Scarlett: [With her mouth full] Why does a girl have to be so silly to catch a husband?
Charles Keating: That's just lazy!
MM: I know!
Anonymous: Not one of your better ones
MM: Drats. Only an hour down the drain I guess.
Charles Keating: Loser.
Witty: Phil, did you hear my latest dream about how I want you to give up criticizing Zionism and embrace our collective dreams of fear and paranoia? It was a beautiful dream, everything in black and white, except me!
Phil: Up here I'm safe
Comment pool sharks: chomp! slash! (waves rise out of the pool)
Bill Kristol: We really need to go into to Iran
The End
Nope. Serving members of Congress won't touch the subject of AIPAC with a ten-foot pole, though half of them attend its conference every year to swear their eternal fealty to Israel in grovelling speeches.
But some who have retired will venture into the minefield, the classic example being former Illinois Rep. Paul Findlay's "They Dare To Speak Out." The book was successfully marginalized when it was published in 1989, despite one notable chink in the Mainstream Media's gray wall of denial: the Washington Post said "Former congressman Paul Findley's message is straightforward and valid: Israeli influence in the United States, including in the inner sanctums of government, is very strong."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Findley
Thanks to Mearsheimer-Walt glasnost, the book may get a second wind, as one of the few extant (though dated) accounts from an insider about how the Lobby works.
Some of Findlay's stories, such as civilian constituents cheerfully lobbying for the sharing of highly classified weapons with Israel before the U.S. military had even acknowledged their existence, are just chilling. No wonder we ended up with Jonathan Pollards and Larry Franklins.
Only a raving 'coincidence theorist' could whistle past the graveyard, believing that this is just normal, everyday democracy at work (as the Lobby likes to claim — "Nobody here but us Americans!").
I don't blame any of the Senators. Here is why–JFK refused nuke carrying missiles to Israel—within 3 months dead. LBJ approved them in a week and got to live of an old age. Now Junior Kennedy wanted to run in Newyork againist Hitlary Rodenhurst Clinton as Senator–Newsweek pulled the story July 1999–Robert's plane dives and guy is dead.
MOSSAD and AIPAC are a dangerous cult.
Phil: I don't completely agree with Chomsky – I think he underestimates the proactiveness of Israel, and how Israel manipulates the United States. In a way, if you did a rational analysis like M & W, you would say that [America's support of Israel] is counter-productive for the United States. It is messing up the whole Muslim world, it is messing up oil, and now there is occupation of Iraq and its comparison in Gaza The alliance of America and Israel made sense in the Cold War – An Israeli joke use to be Israel was America's largest aircraft carrier. Maybe then it made sense, but today?
Anon: The key that everyone is missing, though Chomsky has picked up on it, is that Israel has located itself very strategically right in the centre of the global arms industry. Israel's sophisticated military hardware and military software are very important to weapons development in the United States. Israel has also become the main subcontractor of American arms. About five years ago, Israel signed a contract to train and equip the Chinese army. It signed another multi-billion dollar contract to train and equip the Indian army. What did it equip them with? American weapons.
Israel is very important, because on the one hand it is a very sophisticated, high-tech, arms developer and dealer. But on the other hand, there are no ethical or moral constraints: there is no Congress, there are no human rights concerns, there are no laws against taking bribes – the Israeli government can do anything it wants to. So you have very sophisticated rogue state – not a Libyan rogue state, but a high tech, military-expert rogue state. Now that is tremendously useful, both for Europe and for the United States.
For example, there are American Congressional constraints on selling arms to China because of China's human rights problems. So what Israel does is it tinkers with American arms just enough that they can be considered Israeli arms, and in that way bypasses Congress.
For the most part, Israel is the subcontractor for American arms to the 'Third World.' There is no terrible regime – Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile during the time of the colonels, Burma, Taiwan, Zaire, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone – there is not one that does not have a major military connection to Israel. Israeli arms dealers are there [acting as] mercenaries – the guy behind Noriega was Michael Harari, an Israeli, who got out of Panama. Israeli mercenaries in Sierra Leone go around the UN boycotts of what are called blood diamonds, same in Angola. Israel was very involved in South Africa, of course, during the apartheid regime. Now Israel is developing missile systems with England, developing a new jet aircraft for Holland, and it just bought three sophisticated submarines from Germany. So Israel is playing with the big boys.
Israeli arms dealers are at home, they're like fish in water in the rough and tumble countries that eat Americans alive: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, China, Indonesia, these countries where Americans just cannot operate, partly because of business practices, and partly because they have [Congressional] constraints and laws.
So this is the missing piece. If you read the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) website, the main pro-Israel lobby in the US, there's one piece called 'Strategic Cooperation.' The United States and Israel have a formal treaty, a formal alliance, which gives Israel access to almost all of American military technology.
When AIPAC sells Israel to Congress, it doesn't go to Congressmen and ask them to support Israel because it is Judea Christian, or because it is the 'only democracy in the Middle East,' which it also does. It sells it on this basis: 'You are a member of Congress and it is your responsibility to support Israel, because this is how many industries in your state have business links to Israel, this is how many military research people are sitting in universities in your district, this is how many jobs in your district are dependent on the military and the defence industry,' and they translate it down to the extent to which your district is dependent on Israel. Therefore, if you are voting against Israel, you are voting against the goose that lays the golden egg.
In most of the districts in the United States, members of Congress have a great dependence on the military. More than half of industrial employment in California is in one way or another connected to defence. Israel is right there, right in the middle of it all. And that is part of its strength.
And then we (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, for example) come to a member of Congress, we talk about human rights, about occupation, about Palestinians, and he says: 'Look I know, I read the papers, I'm not dumb, but that is not the basis on which I vote. The basis on which I vote is what is good for my constituents.'
So in terms of activism, when you are thinking of an international campaign, an important part of it must be to expose Israel's links to the defence industry, the arms industry, Israel's support of terrible regimes and their violations of human rights, and what that is doing to the world.
If you want to talk about Empire, although it is a tiny country, Israel is a key member of the Empire. If you look at the AIPAC website they'll say in black and white that the job of Israel is to protect American economic interests in the Middle East. They say we are developing laser weapons from outer space to protect American interests. It's all upfront. Israel sees itself, and is proud of being a part of the American Empire. Where Israel has a great PR advantage is that it presents itself as a victim. It a country surrounded by a sea of Arabs, and Arabs are all terrorists, and Muslims are fanatics.
Phil: And playing the victim becomes a political tool, much like anti-Semitism.
Anon: Yes. Anti-Semitism feeds on the idea that Israel is a victim. The Foreign Ministry of Israel invented a new form of anti-Semitism in the last few years called the 'New anti-Semitism,' and they then found some professors willing to give it some academic credibility. The New anti-Semitism that is now being spread all over says that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, period. And it has been very effective.
Charles Keating: I want to puke.
Where did Barry Lando's comment come from? I'd like to know how people are managing to speak about this.
It is my understanding that any Orthodox Jew is considered to be a citizen of Israel and subject to military service there. It is written, "No man can serve two masters". No one with so-called "dual citizenship" should serve in any U.S. political office, elected or appointed.
Gee, where is that written? The USA has the most fluid dual citizenship available; that's why the water is so murky.
"Where did Barry Lando's comment come from?"
Good question, Seth. Perhaps it's an aside from his new book on Iraq, "Web of Deceit" (2007).
I think it's from Truthdig. I supplied Lando with the Sara Roy essay he used in that article & I believe Phil is quoting from Truthdig.
Giving Israel a Pass:
Thanks, Richard.
Richard Silverstein is a great citizen.
CBS '60 Minutes' refusing to cover Mearsheimer/Walt book:
link to itszone.co.uk