Universal recognition of Israel, including by Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, would be a start.

Then with acceptance as the horse, the cart will follow.

"Nobody likes it when their neighbor gets nukes…"

Nope. But the U.S. and Israel tend to get all pre-emptive about it. Along those lines, the ever-chauvinist JPost offers a spin on the recent shake-up of U.S. Air Force leadership that the U.S. press (I guaran-damn-tee you) will not touch with a ten-thousand-foot pole. Frankly, I'm shocked that even the scrappy Israeli press would stick they toe into these murky waters:

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US Defense Secretary Robert Gates launched the US Air Force in a new direction Monday by announcing an unusual choice as the service's next uniformed chief. Gates recommended that President Bush nominate Gen. Norton Schwartz, a Jewish 35-year veteran with a background in Air Force special operations, as the new Air Force chief of staff, replacing Gen. Michael Moseley, who has been sacked.

When the Jewish Community Centers Armed Forces and Veteran's Committee presented its Military Leadership Award to Schwartz in 2004, he said he was "Proud to be identified as Jewish as well as an American military leader."

http://tinyurl.com/66jzfk

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Now to the 64,000-shekel question. With the U.S. and Israel locked in an escalating confrontation with Iran — the Israeli minister Mofaz last Friday having described armed conflict with Iran as "unavoidable" — is it antisemitic to ask whether Schwartz can be objective? To ask whether he is a Jewish neocon?

I mean, we don't want a rerun of the Dreyfus affair or anything. But was Moseley fired for resisting the rush toward aerial intervention, and replaced by "attack Jew" Schwartz who is onboard with Olmert's proposed sound-and-light show over Tehran?

[Note that Bush is in Europe today, urging that Iranian bank assets in Europe be frozen. This is not unlike Roosevelt's policy during 1941 of isolating and starving out Japan, to provoke it into a military attack.]

For perspective, consider a hypothetical case: the U.S. is in an escalating war of words with mainland China; a Taiwanese minister describes armed conflict as "unavoidable." And in the midst of this, the U.S. fires its air force chief and replaces him with a Taiwanese-American. Would Americans be entitled to question the advisability, objectivity and timing of such a choice, without being labeled as "yellow peril" reactionaries?

If the Israel Lobby succeeds in pushing the U.S. into armed aggression against Iran, it will be a crime that — unlike their insider-cabal maneuvering to goad on the Iraq attack — they will be unable to deny. Sanctioning Iran has been the noisy headline theme of the last several AIPAC policy conferences.

http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2008/06/09/daily22.html

Madness reigns in the land of the free!

In this connection we should note that in their very supportive comment on the firings, the reliably Zionist NYTimes editorial board refers to the loose nukes incident. The latter was widely interperated as a signal from the saner minds in the military that they were rejecting Bushes orders to attack Iran. For some reason their heads did not roll right away, but now Gates has managed it.
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Lets put aside the Jewish Lobby for a minute and consider a related but even more sinister phenomenon. To wit:

The same odious thugs who are behind AIPAC are also the major financeers of the politics of the Jewish State.

This bombshell was dropped on me by the great political philosopher Schlomo Avineri, writing in the opinion section of the indispensable Haaretz. I will copy it to here. Yet again.

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Last update – 13:01 08/06/2008

Not what the Zionist forefathers had in mind

By Shlomo Avineri

Tags: Israel

Every year, intellectuals and public figures hold what seems like an endless spate of symposia on the various aspects of Israel-Diaspora relations – gatherings that touch on a number of crucial theoretical, religious, ethical, historic and political dimensions. Yet one issue that is never discussed is campaign contributions from wealthy Diaspora Jews to Israeli political candidates – be they for party primaries or the general election – as well as these donors' influence on the Israeli political system. The time has come for a serious examination of this issue.

This matter has never been a secret. Nearly every investigation into the activities of our sitting prime ministers have focused on the various methods of campaign fund-raising from foreign donors in one way or another. Even if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is speaking the truth when he says all the cash Morris Talansky gave him was for his campaign for Jerusalem mayor and for Likud chairman, this is a practice that must stop. Over the past few weeks, Israelis have been bombarded with newspaper stories detailing how most of the country's political figures have raised enormous amounts of cash from Jews abroad. Without going into specifics and naming names, we all know that some have evaded criminal investigations by the skin of their teeth. In addition, the identities of the most generous donors and their political affiliations are known to all.

The law limits the amount of money Israeli citizens and corporations may donate to political candidates. Indeed, there is no financial law that cannot be circumvented in some creative way, yet the issue of foreign donations remains a loose end. The sums from abroad are astronomical.

The need to raise money for political campaigns, especially party primaries, is one of the key factors that has corrupted the norms of government in this country. Yet soliciting donations from abroad is a serious blow to the main principle of democracy. It usurps a significant part of the will of the sovereign – in this case, the citizens – and enables well-heeled foreigners who are not citizens to directly influence the election results.

No other democratic state in the world permits campaign funding from foreigners. It is clear that the special ties that bind Israel and Diaspora Jewry have created a unique situation. We live in a world where Jews abroad express solidarity with Israel and the Zionist enterprise by way of contributions – to the United Jewish Appeal, academic institutions, local municipalities, non-profit athletic organizations, educational programs and the like. This slippery slope eventually led to funding for political candidates, and the regrettable experiment of directly electing the prime minister only solidified the link between candidates and their foreign financial backers.

This situation must end. Israel correctly denies Diaspora Jews the right to vote, and Israelis who reside abroad cannot cast a ballot. How does one reconcile wealthy Jews – some of whom earned their fortune in ways that would best be left unexplored at the moment – using their financial muscle to determine who will be prime minister, minister or mayor?

Every piece of legislation designed to regulate or limit the scope of foreign donations is destined to fail, as was proven in the investigation into the various non-profit groups. There is only one way, extreme and drastic as it is, to put an end to this subversion of the democratic order: an absolute ban on all foreign donations, direct or indirect, whether for primaries or general elections.

The only effective sanction should be similarly drastic and simple: Anyone who violates the law will be ineligible for office. I'm not naive – this law also could be circumvented, though doing so would be much more difficult.

Israel is a Jewish state and a state of all its citizens. It serves as a rallying point for the Jews of the Diaspora. And yet, letting a group of Jewish millionaire and billionaire non-citizens use their wherewithal to interfere in Israel's political matters is intolerable, undemocratic and corrupting. None of the founding fathers of the Zionist movement could have dreamed of a Jewish state whose fate was determined by Jews in the Diaspora. It's time to seriously examine the issue, despite the opposition – self-serving and expected as it may be – of most of the country's political leadership. In the meantime, Israelis would be well-advised to demand each and every candidate declare that he does not receive foreign contributions. It is likely to be an effective step.

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Does that clarify the direction of the Jewish State for you? A little?

What is the source of the power of this taboo? He doesnt say, but I think its not hard to figure it out. The dirty secret is that the Jewish State was not the creation of its citizens, but of a group of foreigners, the rich American Jews who prevailed on Truman to get the United Nations to legitimize the Jewish State. In other words, the Jewish State is fundamentally inauthentic. Not only is its course determined by foreigners now, but it was thus from the beginning.

And now I am guessing, but I suspect that the Americans behind the creation of Israel were not, on the whole, the nicer sorts of Jews. Not people one would like to invite for dinner. More like the Meyer Lanskys, perhaps.
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With such a weighty nugget of truth coming from such an unimpeachable source, I think we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Jewish State.
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