There’s further evidence that the lobby is going the way of the wicked witch of the west

by on March 10, 2009 24

in Max Blumenthal's sharp piece in the Daily Beast on the Freeman opposition. Blumenthal says that the campaign against Chas Freeman is motivated by alleged spy Steve Rosen's opposition to the two-state solution, that the campaign had the quiet AIPAC support and has had the effect of exposing the lobby's machinations for all to see. MJ Rosenberg explains that the Freeman thing turning into a "huge story" is the opposite of what the lobby likes: quiet liquidation. And when the lobby loses, as I believe it will here, the public display of ineffectiveness will further defang it.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel Lobby, One state/Two states, US Politics

{ 24 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. otto says:
    March 10, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    The Israel lobby can't possibly be de-fanged in this way. What is possible is that a certain media-euphemism-and-smear might fail and that a step towards more open media debate. In other words, the damage that has been done to American pluralism might be remedied in part.

    But the basic strength of the Israel lobby is concentrated political interest backed by financial contributions, particularly in Congress, just like the agricultural lobby. We could even reach the point where open media debate was routinely critical of jewish colonialism without any real impact on US policy, just as open media debate is routinely critical of agricultural subsidies, which have no real intellectual defenders, but those subsidies keep being paid because of interest group mobilisation that demands them.

  2. Israel Lobby Archive says:
    March 10, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    The thing the lobby fears most is public exposure of coordinated smears, or worse, criminal activity.

    Normally, however, the US Department of Justice simply won't uphold laws on the books to protect the American people, and Congress, from the somewhat esoteric kinds of crime AIPAC routinely engages in.

    That's why the upcoming AIPAC trial is such a huge deal. Of course, once again, the lobby is being accommodated. Imagine that a thug knocked over a 7/11 at gunpoint. The AIPAC judge is essentially forcing the sheriff who caught the thug to prove that he knew what he was doing was wrong. Judge Ellis is also allowing the thug to hire the clerk to say there actually was no robbery.

    History repeating itself pretty old after awhile.

  3. Conscientious Objector says:
    March 10, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Is there any resource that shows how much each elected official has received directly from AIPAC?

    Walt-Mearshimer described how it appeared that AIPAC "bundled" potential donors by turning over lists to compliant politicians that had AIPAC members who would systematically make contributions if AIPAC "recommended" them as advocates of Israel.

    Anyway, Steve Rosen is some piece of work. The hypocracy of a disgraced, indicted Israeli citizen-lobbyist-neocon criticizing Chas Freeman's credentials is exactly what Phil calls it — a messy food fight that only exposes AIPAC-WINEP-JPPPI's Israel-Only agenda and reduces the efficacy of Abe Foxman/Alan Dershowitz's public meowling.

  4. Gert says:
    March 10, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    O/T:

    I've found the perfect asylum for Chris' Stools, in fact they've a choice of two: Mad Mel Phlips and All Things Blond

  5. Chris Berel says:
    March 10, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    Too bad Phil is so out of touch with Broadway (probably the lack of money). Turns out the Witch of the West is actually good. And that the people, rabble roused by Phil, are misguided. And it is Phil's phools who are the racists.

    Great timing. Too bad Phil will never be able to afford to see the show. It's great! Perhaps he can see it when it drifts down to community theatre.

  6. Doppler says:
    March 10, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    I think, at a certain point, politicians, university presidents, faculty senates, journalists have to ask themselves, do I want to continue to be a toady to the Lobby? It's been the safe and sure way in the past, but going forward, who's going to be remembered better with respect to the Middle East: Steve Walt or Ralph Hexter (the Hampshire College President who publicly prostrated himself to Dershowitz, begging not to be demonized by the Lobby)? Patrick Leahy or John McCain? Marty Peretz or Phil Weiss?

    Because, let's be clear, toadies are what they've all been to this point. And a bully needs a crowd of toadies in order to dominate, so they've all been enablers. My guess is thousands of them are ready to turn their backs, especially the leaders among them. Gaza did this.

    Phil invited Andrew Sullivan to explain on this blog how journalism had been manipulated, how certain topics or memes got censored, and others got stovepiped to the front page. There are some Pulitzer Prize stories to written on this topic. I think every journalist should ask this question in their own newsrooms. I think every faculty senate should ask whether and to what extent tenure and advancement have been politicized. I think every politician should ask himself or herself, do I want to defend my blind support for AIPAC in the next election?

  7. Israel Lobby Archive says:
    March 10, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    "Is there any resource that shows how much each elected official has received directly from AIPAC?"

    The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs compiles donations from stealth PACs that coordinate donations:

    http://www.washington-report.org/archives/November_2008/0811026.html

    Of course "off the books" transactions (like AIPAC donor Haim Saban's offer of $1 million to a nonprofit housing two super donors, to get them to switch votes to Hillary) and "off shore" (the Israeli government's funding for the "Council on Middle East Affairs" laundered through the American Zionist Council and Rabinowitz Foundation) money movement is tough to track.

    If you'd like to study Israel lobby money laundering, either see the books "Foreign Agents" and "America's Defense Line: The Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government" or check out the AZC case at:

    http://www.irmep.org/ila/azcdoj/

    …and donate to Phil's blog!

  8. Colin Murray says:
    March 10, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    Judge Ellis is also allowing the thug to hire the clerk to say there actually was no robbery.

    That's a pretty good analogy. However I suggest seeing the glass as half full. That's the best defense they could come up with? It's crap. Sure most things are classified at a level higher than they should be. That's news to practically no one, and also completely irrelevant. We are not dealing with 'most' things. We are dealing with a small set of very specific charges. Let the FBI videotape of these stooges restaurant-hopping and joking about avoiding surveillance roll. They knew they were breaking the law. If the jury isn't stacked with Israel-firsters, Rosen and Weissman are headed to the pokey.

  9. Dan Kelly says:
    March 10, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    A different perspective, from Philip Giraldi at antiwar.com:

    And then there is the baleful presence of Dennis Ross, now busily furnishing his grand new office on the seventh floor of the State Department. Thomas Friedman in the New York Times hails Ross as a "super sub-secretary," part of a "diplomatic A-team" that will coordinate policy to put pressure on Iran to end its weapons program. Friedman, who has been wrong in his assessments more times than Bill Kristol, is clearly pleased at what Ross represents. Ross had his move to State announced somewhat prematurely by his colleagues at the AIPAC-affiliated Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and opposition to him almost derailed the appointment.

    In addition to WINEP, he has recently been on the Israeli government payroll, serving as chairman of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. One assumes that he has severed that particular connection, but he is nevertheless a terrible choice for any senior diplomatic post dealing with Iran. His appointment is a sign that AIPAC had to be appeased by the new administration. Because of Ross' considerable baggage, his new position was announced quietly through a press release, naming him as a special adviser for the Gulf and Southwest Asia. He is another Clinton-era legacy that America can do without, having served recently on a bipartisan commission advocating talking with Iran as a prelude to bombing it. He has powerful supporters in Congress and the Israel lobby who will undoubtedly seek to leverage his position to make him the point man for confronting the Iranians.

    A Convenient Scapegoat

  10. Duscany says:
    March 10, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    Colin Murray: "If the jury isn't stacked with Israel-firsters, Rosen and Weissman are headed to the pokey."

    But all they will need is one. He will hang the jury (and then retire in comfort to Florida for the rest of his life) and the prosecution will decide "in the bests interests of justice" not to ask for a second trial. Rosen's speaking fee will rise to $75,000 a pop.

  11. Richard Witty says:
    March 10, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    And the habitual smear of those that feel sympathy with Israel and rationally argue for fulfillment of obligations under current written and unwritten alliance (You know true to one's word. I hope that is considered to be in the US interest as well.) is an abuse as well.

    The merits of an argument is the content of the argument. We all swim upstream in our worlds all the time, and as far as policy advocacy goes, should continue to.

    We shouldn't allow cabals for, or cabals against, swing our effective and compassionate reasoning.

  12. delia says:
    March 10, 2009 at 3:19 pm

    I am close to believing, Phil. But I have seen the lobby recover from worse than this. It's the lobby's genius to be such a loosely affiliated bunch of organizations. They're like semi-autonomous terrorist cells: take one out and someone slips in to take its place. Even AIPAC is not indispensable to the Zionist cause.

  13. Israel Lobby Archive says:
    March 10, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    "And the habitual smear of those that feel sympathy with Israel and rationally argue for fulfillment of obligations under current written and unwritten alliance (You know true to one's word. I hope that is considered to be in the US interest as well.) is an abuse as well."

    Very eloquent. But consider the crimes committed in the name of "sympathy."

    1. Classified information theft: Diaries of the Mufti leaked in the press and UN branding Arab as Nazis in the interest of forming the state. Theft of classified information today to compel US attack on Israel's enemies.

    2. Arms theft: Haganah smuggling, nuclear funding, designs theft.

    3. Enforcement of "obligations" (and unwritten alliance, there certainly is no written one in terms of defense) and tribute payments average Americans never had a referendum on. (Quietly paid for with cash payments to Truman, Johnson, Clinton, and uncounted members of Congress).

    The water analogy is fine though: US Middle East Policy is a dam named corruption, constructed over the river of American values.

    It is about to burst.

  14. Julian says:
    March 10, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    "The AIPAC judge is essentially forcing the sheriff who caught the thug to prove that he knew what he was doing was wrong. Judge Ellis is also allowing the thug to hire the clerk to say there actually was no robbery."

    Judge Ellis has been upheld unanimously on appeal, but I'm sure you are a greater legal scholar than him.
    Check this out from Secrecy News:
    link to fas.org
    />

  15. seethelight says:
    March 10, 2009 at 3:51 pm

    Witty:

    I would feel much more sympathy for Israel if it fulfilled some of its obligations to the Geneva Conventions, which it signed. Here's just a few:
    1. end colonization of occupied territory. In this case, dismantle the settlements, many of which are built on private Palestinian property;
    2. provide for the well-being of people under occupation;
    3. provide for the right of return of people to their homes after armed conflict;
    4. end collective punishment, such as home demolitions.

    Israel would be in a much better place with its Mideast and international neighbors if it demonstrated that a democracy is true to its word when it signs this foundational international agreement.

  16. Sin Nombre says:
    March 10, 2009 at 4:07 pm

    I think this Freeman business has broken the dam somewhat given its order of magnitude difference from what has gone on before. Specifically, seeing a guy like Rosen attacking a guy like Freeman, and then seeing Rosen being supported in this, and his attack then being mimicked and repeated, and then not being disavowed by others … just beyond the pale.

    Like evidence that as to a hard-core cabal at least they are willing even to go to a kind of war against the U.S. if they think it helps them. After all what else do you call it when you have a guy like Rosen attacking a guy like Freeman but a subversive attack on American patriotism and interests?

    Unlike with most of the other stuff people aren't just disgusted with this, they're mad, and realizing that they're facing a war-like mentality. And war can be waged in two directions.

    Let the cabal attack the next person; I suspect people are going to remember this.

    A big miscalculation; very revealing.

  17. MRW. says:
    March 10, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    It IS a big miscalculation because what AIPAC is engendering is derision. Pat Lang told the Zionists to piss off and go infect some other blog: they weren't welcome. He didn't mince words.

    Furthermore, the lies Israel arrogantly tells the world about its own actions in Gaza are like listening to the deceptions from Wall Street. You can't pull the veil off violently from one part of society and expect it to remain draped over another. That is one indirect consequence of Madoff.

  18. Israel Lobby Archive says:
    March 10, 2009 at 4:41 pm

    "Judge Ellis has been upheld unanimously on appeal, but I'm sure you are a greater legal scholar than him."

    That actually supports the theory that the US Justice system has been rather thoroughly corrupted in cases involving the Israel lobby. Ellis is usually rather tough, sentencing one FBI mole to 27 years for passing secrets to Moscow. He never asked what Earl Edwin Pitt's "state of mind" was. Nor did Ellis let the Russian consulate hire a government classification expert who was briefed on the case to defend him.

    http://news.google.com/archivesearch?ned=us&hl=en&q=T.S.+Ellis+sentenced

    After convicting Pitts and Larry Franklin on the black and white statutes, it is wholly uncharacteristic of Ellis to get so philosophical on the states of mind of the handlers, or whether they intended to harm the US. The 1917 Espionage Act rightly says nothing about such ephemeral matters.

    The only explanation for the courts' strange behavior is that like the 1962 AZC foreign agents case, the 1988 AIPAC PAC coordination case, the 1984 AIPAC FTA syping case, and the Eric Holder pardon of Marc Rich, that Ellis is going to ignore clear statutes, or invent novel interpretations, and allow the Israel lobby to break the law with impunity. I can't wait for him to brief the jury. "Now jurors, you must get into Rosen and Weissman's minds. Your eylids are getting heavy. Did they intend to do harm to the United States? You are getting verryyy sleepy…"

    It may not be a coincidence that the appeals court strung out their decision until seeing which way the political winds were shifting (after the election). The Israel lobby's criminal history is so repetitive, that it would even be rather boring if American lives and wealth weren't on the line.

  19. Chris Berel says:
    March 10, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    Seethe, too bad we'll have to do without your sympathy. Funny how that poor preganant woman and her four young daughters, murdered in cold blood, the unborn child murdered first while he nestled in his mother's womb elicits no sympathy unless the Israeli do what they are not required by any law to do.

    You see, your demands are not actions that the Israelis are bound by in the disputed territories.

    However, the Palestinians are bound by law to give up terrorism.

  20. Arie Brand says:
    March 10, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    Not 'disputed territories', Berel. I have cited chapter and verse for the fact that under international law they are 'occupied territories'. You just keep repeating the same falsehoods.

  21. Arie Brand says:
    March 10, 2009 at 7:25 pm

    Further to my last post:

    Israel and its fellow travellers have come up with a number of arguments against the classification of the West Bank and Gaza as 'occupied territories' and the Knesset approved on 15th July 2003 a draft resolution claiming that they weren't. But that is all neither here nor there. The Knesset cannot define current international law. That role is reserved for the UNSC and the International Court of Justice. Both these august bodies have declared that we were and are dealing here with 'occupied territories' and that therefore inter alia the Fourth Geneva Convention was and is fully applicable to them.

    The irony of the situation is that the legal adviser of the Israeli Foreign Ministry at the time of the Six Day War warned the government that civilian settlements in the newly administered territories would contravene the Fourth Geneva Convention which he deemed applicable in this case. Compare the following fragment of an article in The Independent:

    26 May 2007

    "A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that he still believes that he was right.

    The declaration by Theodor Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's legal adviser at the time and today one of the world's leading international jurists, is a serious blow to Israel's persistent argument that the settlements do not violate international law, particularly as Israel prepares to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the war in June 1967.

    The legal opinion, a copy of which has been obtained by The Independent, was marked "Top Secret" and "Extremely Urgent" and reached the unequivocal conclusion, in the words of its author's summary, "that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

    Judge Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia until 2005, said that, after 40 years of Jewish settlement growth in the West Bank – one of the main problems to be solved in any peace deal: "I believe that I would have given the same opinion today."

    Judge Meron, a holocaust survivor, also sheds new light on the aftermath of the 1967 war by disclosing that the Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, was " sympathetic" to his view that civilian settlement would directly conflict with the Hague and Geneva conventions governing the conduct of occupying powers.

    Despite the legal opinion, which was forwarded to Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister, but not made public at the time, the Labour cabinet progressively sanctioned settlements. This paved the way to growth which has resulted in at least 240,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank today."

  22. Chris Berel says:
    March 10, 2009 at 9:56 pm

    Bush received legal opinions okaying the use of torture. So that clears him and you're okay with that.

    I thought not. That good old antisemitic double standard. You just can't get away from it.

  23. Arie Brand says:
    March 10, 2009 at 11:08 pm

    You don't seem to know the difference between legal opinions and international law.

    Antisemitic, huh. In that case the Israeli Supreme Court must be packed with anti-semites as well. It has consistently held that these territories are under 'belligerent occupation'. Cp.for instance this sentence in its 2004-judgment in Beith Sourik Village Council vs.Govt. of Israel and Commander of IDF Forces in the West bank:
    "Since 1967, Israel has been holding the areas of Judea and Samaria [hereinafter – the area] in belligerent occupation."

    When you are at your wits' end (which is generally pretty soon) you take recourse to abuse and/or hide behind accusations of anti-semitism. Weak,weak.

    But do go on because, as I said earlier. with each of your posts our aversion against the case you are trying to defend deepens.

  24. Rowan says:
    March 11, 2009 at 12:10 am

    Bush received legal opinions okaying the use of torture. So that clears him and you're okay with that. I thought not. That good old antisemitic double standard. You just can't get away from it.

    Hitler also received legal opinions okaying everything he did. Read about Carl Schmitt. Then, consider his influence on Leo Strauss, the core neocon political philosopher, if there is such a thing.

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