Where are Mort Zuckerman and Murdoch when you need them?

Thank God for Jimmy Carter willing to not pander. Wouldn't it be wonderful if campaigns were not 18 month affairs, spending $2 billion, and requiring funding to do so?

"sell out the Palestinians" – Thank God Sadat acted from maturity and hope rather than the cynicism of permanent refugee status that the rest of the Arab world "offers" the Palestinians in solidarity.

Phil,
The Israel Lobby is not going to go away, in the sense of financing campaigns and expressing their voice.

In the name of open dialog and democracy you advocate in many many ways shutting down pro-Israel voices FROM debate, and on the basis of their ethnicity largely.

Dissent in the negative sense that is presented here, is the long hard road, that requires you to kill 4 of your cherished jewels, for every 1 victory.

I like that Jews are sympathetic with Israel, that they are committed to NEVER AGAIN endanger Jews physically, nor accept the possibility of persecution.

I think that there is a better argument to be made, every argument that you can frame, than the tactic of demeaning Jews in general, which you do too damn frequently.

You're NOT making the better argument. Form it and make it already.

Where is your proposal for a more benign and effective strategy for the US and for Israel!!!?

Where is Mearsheimer's!!!?

This is a DIFFERENT issue than Vietnam, then South Africa. The method of civil dissent might work on limited issues. The method of mass movement against Jews is more fascist than the Italians that you decried.

The point is that self-destructive behavior on the part of the Israeli crew led to their deaths. They were killed by their own stupidity because they wanted MORE even though less would have been more prudent under the circumstances. How did these senseless deaths make Jews safer? How does a self-destructive policy in the Occupied Territories make Israel safer? The settlements are dragging Israel down into the depths.

In the name of open dialog and democracy you advocate in many many ways shutting down pro-Israel voices FROM debate, and on the basis of their ethnicity largely.

Nothing's like a good laugh to start my day. We all know there is no debate in US about their relationship with the Zionist regime, whatever atrocities IDF and jewish settlers commits. The flow of money into Israel’s warchest never stops. Not even the attack on USS Liberty could rise a debate in U.S. of Amnesia.

The MO of Horowitz, Pipes, Dershowitz, Foxman..and organizations like CAMERA, Campuswatch and ADL is to kill every sign of criticism against the Zionists.
Israel is still a young state, and like children they need guidance and learn how to behave. The lack of discipline of this US protégé in ME has led to collective sociopathy , deterioration of moral and little empathy for other people.

HAPPY ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY!

from BAR-KOCHBA132

AM ISRAEL HAI!

And placed US national security in danger (911) and now threatens the US again with the possible horror of war that Israel and selfish right-wing pro-Israel factions here in the US want with Iran.

The moment one "pre-emptive" US bomb lands in Iran, whether that's against a nuclear power plant or the Revolutionary Guard, the feeling against Israel for hijacking our foreign policy in this country will turn visceral and no one will be able to change Joe Six-Pack's mind. Instant hate and hard-headedness about it. Mark my words. And it will happen 31 years faster than finding the DAKAR submarine. Compound that with the knowledge of the 2002 MOU update that specifically guarantees Israel $3 billion in 2002-priced oil "even if it causes domestic shortages at home" and you can kiss any sympathy for Israel goodbye.

How do I know this? Informal surveys at my bar with Joe Six-Pack types for 18 months. And the change came in Dec 2007 when I heard the NIE discussed. These guys watch sports shows non-stop at the bar, but they heard about the NIE from their military buddies who convinced them there was no reason to be bombing Iran. Getting the word from military friends trumps any arcane wonky policy statement. One of the bartenders served in Iraq in 2003 and he's gone from being Bush's flag bearer to a despising the man and believing nothing that the DoD says.

"Where is your proposal for a more benign and effective strategy for the US and for Israel!!!?

Where is Mearsheimer's!!!?"

The answer to this question has been known for a long time but Witty and kindred spirits have studiously ignored it.Israel should act on Security Council Resolution 242 to which it is a party. SCR 242 demands withdrawal from territories occupied in the Six Day War except for insubstantial border corrections to straighten out the armistice line of 1949.

Israel has chosen to ignore this resolution attempting to distort the historical record in the process. And now with the connivance of the Bush administration it indulges in blackmail with the argument re 'facts on the ground'.

I remember that, when the Gaza settlers threatened all kinds of mischief in case they were forced to leave, Hillel Halkin proposed to give them the choice to live under Palestinian sovereignty but without any protection by the IDF. He foresaw a miraculous effect on their willingness to leave. Why wouldn't the same apply on the West Bank?

I believe that the last time the original American policy on SCR 242 was fully stated was in December 1969 when Nixon's Secretary of State, William Rogers, did so.

Donald Neff quotes him in his book on U.S. policy towards Palestine and Israel (Fallen Pillars, 1995) as follows:

"Resolution 242 ‘calls for withdrawal from occupied territories, the non-acquisition of territory by war, and recognized boundaries'. We believe that while recognized political boundaries must be established, and agreed upon by the parties, any changes in the preexisting lines should be confined to insubstantial alternations (sic) required for mutual security. We do not support expansionism." (quoted in Neff. P.102)

Uri Avnery wrote:

"Usually, Israeli governments use two deadly torpedoes in their arsenal: the US Congress and the American media. William Rogers, President Nixon's secretary of state, for example, proposed a peace plan that included the withdrawal of Israel to the pre-1967 border, with "insubstantial changes".

Israel released its torpedoes and sunk Rogers together with his plan. His job was taken over by the Jewish megalomaniac, Henry Kissinger, and that was the end of peace plans."

But even Kissinger, wrote in his memoirs:

"Jordan’s acquiescence in Resolution 242 had been obtained in 1967 by the promise of our United Nations Ambassador Arthur Goldberg that under its terms we would work for the return of the West Bank of Jordan with minor boundary rectifications and that we were prepared to use our influence to obtain a role for Jordan in Jerusalem." (quoted in Neff, p.103).

Yet, ten years later, the lack of US assertiveness in this area led President Carter to ask for a State Department report "to determine if there was any justice to the Israeli position that the resolution did not include all the occupied territories". Though this report was secret it was apparently leaked to Neff who quotes copiously from it. It says among other things:

"Support for the concept of total withdrawal was widespread in the Security Council, and it was only through intensive American efforts that a resolution was adopted which employed indefinite language in the withdrawal clause. In the process of obtaining this result, the United States made clear to the Arab states and several other members of the Security Council that the United States envisioned only insubstantial revisions of the 1949 armistice lines. Israel did not protest the approach." (Neff, p.101)

Carter discussed the matter with Menachem Begin and the Israeli PM "asked the president to stop talking in public about resolution 242 meaning minor adjustments to the frontiers". Neff draws on publications by William B.Quandt, a key member of the National Security Council Staff under Presidents Gerald Ford and Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s security adviser, to report what happened next. In a note on his meeting with Begin, Carter wrote:
Begin "asks that we not use phrase ‘minor adjustments’ without prior notice to him – I agreed. He will try to accommodate us on settlements."

Less than one week later, writes Neff, "Begin’s government conferred legal status on three Jewish settlements in the occupied territories." Carter kept mum on the "minor adjustments". (Neff, p.104)

The vast majority of Jews have no interests in common with the 400-500 hyperwealthy Zionists that pay for the Israel Lobby.

From http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/05/05/from-the-financ.html#comment-60062 <p>happy independence day...zionism is a madness that has enthralled the judaic masses...no heart, not even when it came to saving the lives of european jewry. judaic zionist worship the golden calf, israel: state worship.</p> <p>Yitzchak Greenbaum<br /> Yitzhak Gruenbaum was chairperson of the Jewish Agency's Rescue Committee.<br /> In the beginning of February, 1943, Yitzchak Greenbaum addressed a meeting in Tel Aviv on the subject, "The Diaspora and the Redemption" in which he stated:<br /> "For the rescue of Jews in the Diaspora, we should consolidate our excess strength and the surplus of powers that we have. When they come to us with two plans--the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe or the redemption of the land--I vote, without a second thought, for the redemption of the land. The more said about the slaughter of our people, the greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraization of the land. If there would be a possibility today of buying packages of food with the money of the "Keren Hayesod" (United Jewish Appeal) to send it through Lisbon, would we do such a thing? No! and once again No!"<br /> ...Holocaust Victims Accuse, pp 26.</p> <p>Excerpted from a speech in 1943 </p> happy independence day…zionism is a madness that has enthralled the judaic masses…no heart, not even when it came to saving the lives of european jewry. judaic zionist worship the golden calf, israel: state worship.