At this year's American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the crowd:
So from its first day, the Obama Administration has worked to promote Israel’s security and long-term success. And if you ever doubt the resolve of President Obama to stay with a job, look at what we got done for the United States last night when it came to passing quality affordable healthcare for everyone. (Applause.) And we know that, as Vice President Biden said in Israel recently, to make progress in this region, there must be no gap between the United States and Israel on security. (Applause.) And let me assure you, as I have assured you on previous occasions with large groups like this and small intimate settings, for President Obama and for me, and for this entire Administration, our commitment to Israel’s security and Israel’s future is rock solid, unwavering, enduring, and forever. (Applause.)
Our number one ally in the Middle East, though, doesn't appear to feel the same way about U.S. security.
Pivoting off a blog post in the American Conservative by Philip Giraldi, the Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports on how Israeli spies have stepped up their activity on U.S. soil as tensions with Iran have escalated by attempting to recruit American Muslims:
The CIA took an internal poll not long ago about friendly foreign intelligence agencies.
The question, mostly directed to employees of the clandestine service branch, was: Which are the best allies among friendly spy services, in terms of liaison with the CIA, and which are the worst? In other words, who acts like, well, friends?
“Israel came in dead last,” a recently retired CIA official told me the other day.
Not only that, he added, throwing up his hands and rising from his chair, “the Israelis are number three, with China number one and Russia number two,” in terms of how aggressive they are in their operations on U.S. soil...
“Oh, sure, they do that,” the other former CIA official said, waving a dismissing hand, when I asked about Giraldi’s story. “They’re all over the place.”
The FBI did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But a retired senior FBI counterintelligence official told SpyTalk, "They have always been extremely aggressive, and seem to feel they can operate whenever and wherever they want, in spite of being called on the carpet more than any other country by probably a factor of three times as often."
[Weiss postscript: Maybe this helps to explain former CIA intelligence boss Robert Grenier's attack on the Israel lobby's influence over our government, in Al Jazeera?]
Isn’t there something thoroughly debasing and abject in this rush to worship at the altar of the Israelis? What would people make of this for any other country – putting its interests ahead of the US? If anyone questions the dominance of the Israeli lobby in the US here is the proof – Obama, or any other president, has one party – Israel has both, for ever apparently.
Even the gangster Netanyahu thought it absurd that the Americans would never question Israeli policy, but is not slow to exploit it. For a country whose touchstone is the war for independence, what would its founders have made of such craven, sycophantic attitudes to a small country which is pre-eminent in creating trouble, worships war as the only ‘solution’, and is guaranteed access to American taxpayer’s dollars whatever economic hardships its citizens endure, and expects American sons and daughters to put their lives on the line in pursuit of its political goals.
One day they will wake up, and wonder what delusional mirage they were living under, that they unquestioningly supported a country whose behaviour endangered American lives. Or is this what they call ‘freedom’?
We can only hope, but it don’t look like “they will wake up” fast enough.
“They”, we, are already way entangled in israel’s tango of death. Israel’s dirty fingernails will be deep-digging into our necks and torsos till kingdom come.
There’s a slow boil going on in intel and military circles about this. It will explode, as the notion of “defending America from enemies foreign and domestic” takes hold on a personal level. It’s not there yet, but it certainly is building on veteran sites.
Yeah, well, judging by the way things have been going for so long, Israeli spying here in the USA will endure–look at who’s in so many key appointed slots regarding homeland security, finance, foreign policy in the Middle East. Some veteran sites are slowly waking up though… veterans have no power–that’s why they’re veterans in the first place.
“Some veteran sites are slowly waking up though… veterans have no power–that’s why they’re veterans in the first place.”
Not true that they don’t have power. Once something takes hold in the US military, it affects the underclass here. It becomes a reality.
There are two things to watch: the US military and the christian churches. The latter are only beginning to undergo an awakening. This is what Menachem Begin understood in the late 70s. He ruled because of it. This may change; I’m keeping an eye on this. (The Dominionists are the most vile of this group. Truly vile.)
I’ve never met a veteran grunt born to a family with any significant power or economic resources. I am one myself. History tells the same story, over and over again, around the world.
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies”
Maybe it time our military leaders reflected long and hard over the above
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I agree with MRW…anti israelism is growing….publicly …in the US
The very public figure Israel critics like Chas Freeman aren’t really disconnected from the other critics of Israel speaking out publicly against the US-Isr relationship….they are like those “loose groups” that Walts calls the Israeli lobby. LOL….Seriously though, they are ‘connected’ although you will never see a sign of it. At least not yet or until some big last straw falls.
The problem with the Israeli is they have traded on the holocaust and Jews as victims as their get out of jail card so successfully for decades they think it will never be canceled.
The good news is it will eventually be canceled, the bad news is not until they commit such an egregious act against us or someone else that we have no other choice.
The good ‘and’ bad in that, depending on where your loyalities lie, is the Israelis will do just that….they will go too far.
They will damage us further, but they then will be finished…separated from the US.
re that explosion, MRW, I’ve been pondering the aftershocks — something in the nature of a retroactive reassessment of the concept of zionism: how is zionism related to Judaism? How is zionism related to the holocaust? did zionists behave toward Germany in a fashion similar to the way zionists are behaving toward the US? Did zionists thereby implicate German Jews in zionist behavior? . . . .
This reminds me of the old saying that states don’t have friends, they have interests. I submit that neocon Zionists divide people and states into two categories, enemies, and those who have not yet become enemies. They seem constitutionally incapable of trusting anyone as a friend, much less the much lower threshold necessary to accept someone else as ‘neither friend nor enemy’, e.g. Papua New Guinea and Luxembourg.
Israeli leaders don’t see the United States as a friend, but an enemy that hasn’t turned on them yet. I wonder if they have heard of the term “self-fulfilling prophecy.” They seem to never miss an opportunity to not miss an opportunity to show their contempt for us.
Surely American Jewish leaders can see that this isn’t healthy behavior?
That’s not just the Israeli leaders; that’s the psychological core of Zionism.
read somewhere just today — maybe on Mondoweiss? — that Israel’s strategy is a play for time, that the notion of making peace or making friends is not a consideration. If Israeli leaders can keep Israel in existence for another 25 years, another 50 years, before what every Israeli leader KNOWS is its inevitable demise, then Israel will have achieved at least its short term goal. Consequences to erstwhile allies be damned; there’s always another sucker political leader who can be bought.
Anyone remember the four-part show FoxNews cancelled after one outing about Israeli spying in the US?
link to informationclearinghouse.info
There was even a classified file investigating Israeli involvement in 9/11.
hard hitting grenier didn’t mince any words either.
Major Democratic blog apparently has “rock solid commitment to Israel,” as well, despite evidence that Israel is skirting sanctions on Iran — the same sanctions that have had and are having a negative impact on American interests.
notice in some comments that excoriated the essayist as an “antisemite” and “Jew hater” did so on the basis of the essayist having made statements that were actually made by a man who stated that he was a member of AIPAC (see linked video, third word in diary) and NOT by the person who was accused of being an antisemite.
In other words, it’s easier to accuse someone of antisemitism and dismiss him –and the entire argument– as such, than it is to grapple with potentially harmful behavior on the part of someone who claims to be an ally to the USA.