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American

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  • Hasidic G.O.P operative quits following interview questioning his zionism
    • American June 21, 2012 at 2:09 pm

      Religion when combined with politics, when combined with pro or anti zionism......what a can of worms.

  • BDS victory: TIAA-CREF drops Caterpillar from social choice funds
    • American June 23, 2012 at 3:37 pm

      I'm game PZ......I think it likely that some off the wall zio fanatic(s) with 'connections ' or some other non Jewish apocalyptic fanatic(s) with 'connections' wanting to throw fuel on the flames of 911 to encourage that' clash of civilizations war' both types are eager to see did it. One thing is for certain it wasn 't some random off the street fanatic because it was proven how limited the access was ( only two facilites I think) to the strain of anthrax used. It wasn't something any John Doe could pick up off the street.

    • American June 23, 2012 at 1:00 am

      Oh shut up Mooser.....Bremmer as far as I know isn't Jewish.
      But do I think some of the well placed Israel firster zios and AIPAC'ers in Bremmer's Iraq office would hestitate to shuffle some money to Israel?...hell no I don't think they would hestitate.... Israel has stolen a whole country, what's a little cash.

    • American June 22, 2012 at 4:16 am with 10 replies

      I would love it if Justice came across some of that 9 billion that disappeared from Iraq that I bet you dollars to doughnuts landed in Israel. ....maybe Dan Senior and Bremmer will show up on secret bank accounts..LOL....woudn't that be wubderful?

    • American June 22, 2012 at 4:05 am with 13 replies

      This could also be interesting. Also interesting that congress seems determined to unseat Holder at Justice. I am sure some Israel firsters are keeping tabs on this investigation by Justice.

      link to cnbc.com

      Tax Shelters: Why Israel Could Be the Next Switzerland
      Published: Tuesday, 19 Jun 2012 | 3:38 PM ET By: Eamon Javers
      CNBC Washington, DC Correspondent

      It looks like Israel is going to be the next Switzerland — at least as far as the Department of Justice’s investigation into offshore tax avoidance is concerned.

      On June 14, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against three American tax preparers for helping clients avoid taxes by moving money to Israel.

      The transgressions detailed in the indictment were relatively small-time. The indictment said the father and son duo of David and Nadav Kalai and their colleague David Almog at a firm called United Revenue Service helped several clients duck taxes by moving money to two Israeli banks, identified only as “Bank A” and “Bank B.”

      Most of the financial transactions detailed were small — in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The men could not be reached for comment.

      But the indictment revealed the existence of a grand jury that is almost surely going after much bigger fish. And the details provided in it appear to suggest that “Bank A” is Bank Leumi, whose private banking operation is headquartered in Tel Aviv, and “Bank B” is Bank Hapoalim, which also maintains its global private banking center in Israel’s second-biggest city.

      Calls to Bank Leumi for comment were not returned. Bank Hapoalim provided CNBC with a statement from its chief spokesperson, Ofra Preuss, who said, “we read the press reports and are checking into them.”

      To date, the U.S. government has successfully cracked the code of Swiss bank secrecy, forcing UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, to turn over thousands of names of American account holders to investigators, and taking similar actions against other Swiss institutions.

      Sources tell CNBC the new case is just the beginning of a potential series of indictments, which may snare some of the wealthy American clients who have hidden money in Israel, many for generations. That’s likely to be politically controversial, especially at a time when the U.S. and Israel are working closely together to contain a geopolitical threat from Iran.

      Add to that the political sensitivity of an Obama administration Department of Justice in an election year targeting a group of clients of whom many are likely to be Jewish or have historical family ties to Israel.

      “There are a substantial number of Americans with unreported assets in Israel,” said Scott Michel, a partner at the law firm Caplin & Drysdale who specializes in criminal tax fraud investigations. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it is on a par with Switzerland.”

      Attorney Bryan Skarlatos, a partner at the firm Kostelanetz & Fink LLP, said that he has clients who are being questioned in the wide-ranging investigation into Israeli bankers.

      “I have special agents asking questions about specific banks,” Skarlatos said. “They need evidence that somebody spoke to a banker and the banker had a sense that they were dealing with a U.S. person — they’re asking ‘did you give them your U.S. passport?’”

    • American June 21, 2012 at 3:05 pm

      "They attack Israel from all sides, but what they are really doing is attacking Jews. ...gilad

      BSh@t....we only attack the ones that "get in the way" including non Jews...isn't that the IDF practice/claim, attacking Palestines who "get in the way" of Israel.... you shouldn't expect different treatment.

  • Why I am using 'Israel firster' again
    • American June 24, 2012 at 11:47 am

      I know Sumud..just making examples of different people's frames of reference.
      And I am too ambiguous myself a lot of the time in my hurry to get my opinion out.

    • American June 23, 2012 at 1:20 am

      I second Taxi...keep posting.

    • American June 23, 2012 at 12:48 am

      Mooser says:
      "Wow, American, the Jews have really screwed you, and you’re hopping mad about it."

      Ha, ha Moose....what? ....I can't have a temper fit now and then about those people you don't like either. However now that you mention it some accessory might be called for the misguided "liberal" zionist..like a dunce cap. LOL

    • American June 22, 2012 at 3:01 pm

      also annie, there is some alarmism and scarifying by some in all these comments about a backlash.
      There will be no ' pogroms' or 'retribution'...that's nonsense.
      And why I say 'antisemitic" is not really a correct description for what would be " a attitude" in the public... it's a far cry from some anti semitic 'uprising' against Jews.

    • American June 22, 2012 at 2:47 pm

      annie.......you're 'allowing for time' to grow the public's awareness of zionism vr Jews.... and I also don't want to say there is no good judgement or restraint in the American masses...there obviously is...we saw that not all Americans became raving anti Muslims after 911 but the ones that did became enough of a force to influence some others.

      But the question in your position really is......is there time?
      Events have a way of over taking time......time runnth out sometimes.
      I think that was what Danaa was saying/warning on the other day.

    • American June 22, 2012 at 1:51 pm

      @ Thomson & All

      "Concerning the distinction between Zionists and Jews that we so scrupulously maintain here: Would there be Zionism without Jews?"

      Not speaking for Thomson but want to point out once again that we need to realize that we here, 'us involved' do not think like the general public, we just don't for the simple reason that we know more.
      What Thomson said above looks scary on the face of it and is in fact scary.
      I have in fact made the statement that without Jews in the US the US would have not have pro Israel policy to the extent it does.
      This not a Hitler like nazi statement or some kind of veiled get the Jews out of America prop. It's just a fact. And in fact AIPAC has had trouble establishing Jewish lobbies in other countries that don't have large Jewish populations. I posted a AIPAC article on that a while ago.
      And the reason I point it out is if you want to understand how the average Joe would respond in a showdown of seperate us and them interest look no further than the response and attitudes of many Americans to the hispanic immigration issue in the US. The ones who feel their interest threaten or object to it not only oppose it politically but many 'cop an attitude,' to put it gently, toward the hispanics themselves and blame them for coming here and creating the 'problem'.

    • American June 22, 2012 at 12:39 pm with 4 replies

      @ Danaa

      lol......some days I have to beat back my evil twin.

    • American June 22, 2012 at 3:12 am

      Sumud,

      "There will be a backlash when the general public comes to understand how much zionists have exploited the holocaust for political ends, and when they learnt about the Nakba and about just how disgusting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians really is."

      This is a subject where it is easy to misunderstand pov's on it because you might be thinking from a Jewish pov, Taxi from a ME and cosmopolitan pov, and someone like me from a American pov.
      All I can offer is what life experience and observation of human natures, particularly Americans (and our history) tells me.
      Let's say first we are all interested in the injustice and human suffering involved in I/P.
      But added to that is going to be some self interest from Jews involved, Arabs involved, Americans involved and etc..
      So when we're talking about backlashes in the US because of US zios and Israel some of that self interest comes into play.
      So then it becomes a fight or conflict between us and them.. including whoever us 'perceives', rightly or wrongly as connected to them.
      I think that is what TR meant by 'defense".
      As MRW has said often, a lot of people don't have a grip on how the average American actually thinks or reacts when he discovers he's been, is being royally screwed over. "If" that royal screwing is big enough, as in his interest being sold out for some pissant foreign country by fifth columns and politicians...then that is 'Big Enough', meaning he will have plenty of company in his community for him "join the wolf pack" and feel justified in doing so.
      Americans won't care about the holocaust being abused, they could care less, they will care about 'them and theirs' being abused.
      I am not one who thinks the US is ever going to holocaust Jews, but I do know Americans can be just as much 'mobs' in their thinking as anyone else so I don't discount anti semitic backlashes, although I don't really think anti semitism is a good word for what I think would be more like just overt 'resentment'.
      So what would a backlash look like? Probably a lot of 'hurt feelings'. Frankly, I would be o.k. with hurt feelings, although I would regret the zio spill over affected innocent Jews. But I would be o.k. with it because I think a lesson is called for.....the lesson being America isn't Israel and Americans do not owe Israel or the Jews and they have no right to "use" our country for their own select group and interest in the ways they do. IOW, if it's hurt some innocent Jewish feeling or let this abdication of US interest to Israel continue, I'm for the hurt feelings, cause they'll get over it or at least not suffer any material wear and tear.
      However I not even sure any Jews but the guilty ones would even feel that their feelings were being hurt if the NYTs did full page editorials calling for hanging fifth column Zionist for ruining the US.
      I would bet if some kind of show down ever came about, US Jews would cause a run on US flag lapel pins and the Star of David flags would disappear over night.
      My attitude might sound hard ass to you but sometimes you have to be a little hard ass to make people focus.

    • American June 21, 2012 at 2:58 pm with 3 replies

      "But then I also happen to believe that out entire little universe runs a bit like a game board."...Danaa

      It kinda is...like monoply.
      The publics need to start playing strip poker.... make all the players strip down to their nakedness and reveal themselves.
      That is sorta what the net public is doing....now if we just had our own fricking army we could collect the chips we've won.

    • American June 21, 2012 at 2:43 pm with 8 replies

      O.K. ....wanna see where your average non anti semitic, even well educated on the
      zio-Israel issue, American totally loses it and becomes a becomes a slash and burn raving US nationalistic tribalist. Here it is:

      Pro-Israel Activists Break New Ground: An Anti-Arab Hate Video link to mjayrosenberg.com

      (in these excerpts).....

      "This video has to be seen to be believed. Although it has long been known that AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee and other pro-Netanyahu groups have ties to groups promoting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate, this video represents a new low.
      The ad encourages Americans who have emigrated to Israel from the United States to work from Israel to counter the effects of voting by Americans who live here, Arab-Americans.''

      'And why is Harris worried about Muslim population estimates?
      It would mean that Muslims outnumber Jews in the U.S. and it would buttress calls for a redefinition of America’s heritage as ‘Judeo-Christian-Muslim,’ a stated goal of some Muslim leaders.”

      Leaving aside the putrid GOP to whom zio Israel is just a GOP tool, how does it make me 'feel' about this gd phony "Judeo" crap claimed in America's heritage? How does it make me 'feel' about this racist anti Muslim filth they have dragged into MY country and government? How does it make me 'feel" about their trying to influence and minipulate US elections?
      You don't even want me to say how I 'feel' in my gut, not my head about this...they just better thank God that I don't and will never have my finger on the button that could turn their precious zionism and zio state into ashes on one of my totally fed up with their crap days.

    • American June 21, 2012 at 1:41 pm with 1 replies

      I think it's worse than that MR.
      I once described it as your wife throwing you out of the house and moving in her lover, and you're having to live in a tent in the back yard and watch them frolic in your pool while you work to support them financially.
      That's what it feels like to me. Betrayal, plus the betrayers living it up, while not caring you're living in that tent in the back yard and having to see them enjoying themselves at your expense.

    • American June 21, 2012 at 1:25 pm with 1 replies

      does anyone read my rants BTW? "...mous

      LOL, yea I do. And it is true some influential Jews have a 'single' loyalty...to Israel.
      Eric Alterman's famous 'if it's a toss up between Israel and the US, the US will just have to take hit'...and the famous casino king regreting he served in the US army instead of IDF.
      You wonder what makes them 'feel safe enough' to say these things publicaly in the US.......and then you wonder at the contridiciton between claiming Jews 'need' Israel for protection against anti semitism and saying things bound to raise the resentment in non Jews at their display of disloyalty to the US.
      I call it stupid for lack of a better word. Very,very stupid.

    • American June 21, 2012 at 1:08 pm

      "There are Blacks who resent that they should vote for Obama because he is black; resist it with their souls and refuse to be swayed. But there is another group, the majority, who have watched the monkey jokes, listened to the Limbaugh racism that no one has excoriated the way they did in Helen Thomas et al, and they have kept score. And you will not hear from them until it is too late to do anything about it"....MRW

      What you said MRW is true, particularly about Blacks and Obama. My town is 60% black and they do comment on the racism shown toward Obama...they know it's there...and they are keeping score. Last year when I was out getting stuff to prepare for our hurricane I got into a conversation with a black man about the racism evident during hurricane Katrina in NO..they haven't forgotten that either...it morphed into a discussion about Obama as a black president...they aren't missing the racist digs at him either.
      If we had to choose up political ethnic or race partners in the US I'm gonna choose American blacks, not because I have white racist guilt, but because blacks have (always) totally 'bought in' , they know they are 'stakeholders' in the US, not in their Africa roots or anywhere else.

    • American June 21, 2012 at 12:51 pm

      "I’d probably pick a Jew."...Colin

      That's interesting. Why?
      I'd probably pick a American Indian or some other mother nature connected ehtnic, someone who knew how to start a fire and fish...lol

    • American June 21, 2012 at 12:45 pm

      I don't think Thomson is 'purposing it'. I think he is saying that would/could be the response of the masses when Israel drops that final straw.
      For several reasons, major one being how many people out there in the US public not involved in this issue (which would be the majority) ever heard of a zionist? They dont' know zionism from a hole in the ground, they only know Israel = Jews. The msm sure as hell doesn't ever use the word zionist or explain it.
      But let's say the public was introduced to zionist as opposed to just Jews.
      You would still have a lot, a lot, of overcoming and untangling to do because to the mass mind Israel=Jews. And let's even say the public was educated on zionism....are they going to use it to separate different Jews positions or are they going to see zionism as 'the Jews' by virtue of the Zion Israel connection? Here there are still debates about whether or not zionism had some roots in Judaism..the pubic isn't going to care about that or debate it. When it comes to Israel all they hear is "for the Jews, for the Jews" from the zio mouthpieces 'and' from US politicians.
      The untangling is one of, if not the major, point of MW, observe how we all have come to target and distinguish the zios from other Jews, it's now ingrained our thinking and discourse...this is not so with the general public.
      For Israel this is the catch 22 in their use of Jewish diaspora and the linkage they have established if or when the worm turns. And it is the catch 22 for Jews.

    • American June 21, 2012 at 12:04 pm

      "I said that IN THE WEST right now, terrorism is perceived as being a major export from the Arab world, :...hoppie

      And we know why, despite 911 being 11 years ago and OBL being dead, that this "perception" grow and grows don't we? We all see and know who keeps pushing and propagandizing the Islamic and Arab terrorist meme on the US public don't we.
      It's the Israel firsters and their hired hands.

    • American June 21, 2012 at 11:59 am

      SN,

      "So what do they expect? Nothing because … Americans aren’t patriotic? Because we are stupid? Because they like anti-semitism?'
      &
      "How can anyone *not* reasonably expect *loads* of hostility from that? And thus how can anyone do what they are doing *without* feeling some contempt for us gentiles? Without feeling some glee at sticking it to us if they succeeded in freeing Pollard?""

      I think all of what you said applies to the zionist....don't know about the other whatever %, probably some. But you can definitely see this in the zionist attitude. Look at the descriptions we have seen here of the aggression and barely contained, and sometimes not contained, violent responses of the AIPAC'ers to peaceful protesters like Code Pink and others. ..there is loads of hostility and aggression in those people.
      Not to mention the contempt the zios show for America and Americans in general in their public displays of how much power they have over the US government. Yea, they do like sticking it in our eye.
      But MJ is right to worry cause some day the zios, if not stopped, will go too far and make Americans "mad' and when people are in the throes of 'mad' they aren't reasonable and don't do a whole lot of discriminating about what part of a group is friendly and what part isn't.

    • American June 20, 2012 at 3:03 pm

      MJ,

      If you don't mind I am including you, Phil, and some others and your net sites for reference, in a letter to all the North Carolina Democratic Party officers, as examples of Jews and Jewish groups in opposition to the Israel First lobby in US politics/policy and working for a settlement of I/P.

      The NC party is considering a resolution calling Israel and US politicans, all parties, to account on the human rights issue involved in I/P and for US aid enabling it.
      link to dailycaller.com

      This will no doubt be slammed by the Lobby and usual suspects as anti semitic in intent so I want to add to anything they might already have to overcome that and help refute the charge.

      So far it’s been tabled but not dismissed and whether or not they adopt it this is a opportunity to educate them, as individuals at least, and every little bit helps.

      If you don't want to be "used' ..lol... this way, so signify.

  • 'New Yorker' story recycles Israeli propaganda on death of Gazan family in 2006
  • Why is Obama winking at the military coup in Egypt?
    • American June 20, 2012 at 1:43 am

      The problem I have Dan is that you don’t seem to really do the work. You announce something is true and say it applies to “everything” the US does without any example or back up. To my knowledge none of the ‘anti zionist here even claim that ‘everything’ the US does in the ME is for Israel. What we do say and point out is what the US ‘does do and has done” strictly for Israel with absolutely no benefit to us and in a most case actually ‘against’ our interest both financially and in terms of relations with other ME countries.
      You have one answer for everything---US imperialism –---and then you insult anyone who points out what you’ re saying aint’ always so....and on top of that you never offer any evidence of why you are right and we are all wrong.
      I was serious when I ask do you ever do your own research on what you’re talking about.

      Let me give you an very small example without going into a long explanation, you can read the whole deal at the link below.
      Back in 2004-6 when WTO was about to end the quota system and Egypt was looking at higher duties thereafter for their cotton export industry, a major job provider industry for Egyptians. The US could have done what it in fact did, allowed QIZs for Egypt that gave them duty free access to the US markets.
      BUT....that wasn’t ALL the US did...the US ONLY allowed Egypt to have that duty free access IF they gave Israel a piece of the action....iow all Egyptian import to the US had to have a certain % of Israeli made goods.
      The NYT celebrated this as ‘cooperation” between Israel and Egypt...however there was no celebration in Egypt because that 11-12% of the action given to Israel knocked a large number of Egyptians out of jobs because the Israeli goods (button and tape to be exact) closed down some Egyptian companies that had previously supplied those items to Egyptian cotton and cotton clothing manufactures. If anyone had read the overseas paper they would have know the celebrations weren't celebrations but labor riots over the lost jobs.
      To put in plainly, the pussy whipped US was commanded by the Israel firsters and aided by their many minions that populate our trade, treasury and every other agency in the US government with the sole purpose of seeing what they get for Israel in all US business and policy, to let the Israel mafia dip their beaks into someone’s else’s business and profit just like the Mafia rackets of old.

      Now if you can spin this and hundreds of other examples exactly like this regarding the US and Israel into just US tyranny and imperialism against brown people by the US instead of what it is and shows about US-Israel... go ahead. Engaging you on this is not worth my time and effort any more.

      link to meria.idc.ac.il

      On December 14, 2004, Egypt signed a landmark trade agreement with Israel. Although the U.S. Trade Representative presided over the signing ceremonies, the negotiations had been essentially bilateral in character.1 The Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZ) Agreement allows Egypt to gain non-reciprocal, duty-free access to U.S. markets for products containing at least 11.7 percent Egyptian and 11.7 percent Israeli components.
      For the Egyptian government, the agreement came just in time, ahead of a World Trade Organization (WTO) mandated liberalization of the textile quota system. The termination of the 30-year-old quota system meant that Egypt faced the prospect of duties as high as 35 percent in certain textile manufactures in the place of generous bilateral agreements with trade partners in the industrialized countries. With 150,000 jobs in the private sector textile industry—which represent nearly 27 percent of industrial production and 25 percent of manufacturing employment in Egypt—on the line and $558.3 million in exports (or over 10 percent of non-oil exports) at stake, Egypt had little alternative but to sign.2 In essence, Egypt was motivated to sign the QIZ Agreement out of fears of a genuine opening of the global trading system to comparative advantage.3
      Although the agreement sparked heated debate in the Egyptian parliament with 3,000 demands for official explanations, President Husni Mubarak effectively muted parliamentary objections when he personally vouched for the protocol.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 5:19 pm

      @ Dan,

      Do you ever actually study periods and historic US relations with countries you talk about?
      Egypt has only been a client state since 1979, US aid to Egypt was a condition imposed in the Camp David Accords by Egypt in return for making peace with Israel. It was also a 'requirement by Israel that Israel also get aid.
      Back in the 50's Egypt sought aid from the US but the US refused, seeing no need to 'own or control Egypt at that time --BUT... then the Egyptians went to Russia and got economic and military aid from them. That is when the US took an interest in Egypt because Egypt was a leader in the Arab world and the Cold War was on.
      Still the US, specifically Eisenhower's adm, took Egypt's side when Israel, France and Britain tried to take over the Suez.
      All of this history and is available to you 'if" you look for it.

      The only two indisputable things the US has an interest in in Egypt is their peace treaty with Israel and Egypt's position as a country with major influence on the rest of the ME.

  • Tourism in Israeli settlements: Practice shooting Palestinians
    • American June 19, 2012 at 6:29 pm

      hophmi says:

      You keep digging a larger hole for yourself, Avi G. The Fogel family was murdered in cold blood. That is not a fabrication. It was done by terrorists who are Palestinian.''

      The murders of the Fogels said they did it in revenge for settler killings of Palestines.
      Face facts hoppie, they were murders sure, but Israelis are also murders.

      Bottom line is if you weren't occupying them and on their land and killing them they would have no reason or incentive to kill settlers or Jews. Maybe they were plain criminals who would have murdered someone else over something else, but they murdered the Fogels for what they represent and where they were.
      So as bad as it was, you're not going to get any traction out of calling them terrorist.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 3:41 pm

      Yea it is...like it's some kind of entertainment.
      Sick.

  • All eyes on Moscow
    • American June 20, 2012 at 1:42 pm

      "eee gads look what the cat dragged in."

      looks like a gaint hairball to me.

    • American June 20, 2012 at 1:39 pm

      "Let’s not forget the Marine Barracks in 1983"...Sassan

      Ah yes.....And let’s not forget why the US Marine were there as Peace Keeping Forces to begin with----Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
      You're and Israel's 'Way of Deception' isn't really all that deceptive....some people always know what's behind the scenes.
      So keep up the good hasbara work, countering it gives us an opportunity to enlighten even more people.

      'Israel forces clash with Marines'

      On March 14, 1983 the commandant of the Marine Corps, General R. H. Barrow, sent an unusual letter to the secretary of defense. He charged that Israeli troops were deliberately threatening the lives of Marines serving as peacekeepers in Lebanon. There was, he wrote, a systematic pattern of harassment by Israel Defense Forces that was resulting in "life-threatening situations, replete with verbal degradation of the officers, their uniform and country."

      He added: "It is inconceivable to me why Americans serving in peacekeeping roles must be harassed, endangered by an ally ... . It is evident to me, and the opinion of the U.S. commanders afloat and ashore, that the incidents between the Marines and the IDF are timed, orchestrated, and executed for obtuse Israeli political purposes."[4]

      Israel’s motives were less obtuse than the diplomatic general let on. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was deliberately creating the incidents probably in an effort to convince Washington that U.S. and Israeli forces had to coordinate their actions, so this would be taken by the Arabs as proof that the Marines were not really in Lebanon as neutral peacekeepers but as allies of the Israelis.[5] [Considering that Israel had been attacking Lebanon with bombs furnished by the U.S. from aircraft furnished by the U.S., the Arabs were well-primed to believe this.]

      The Marines’ posting to Lebanon started on August 25, 1982, as a result of Israel’s invasion 11 weeks earlier. Initially a U.S. unit of 800 men was sent to Beirut harbor as part of a multinational force to monitor the evacuation of PLO fighters from Beirut. The Marines, President Reagan announced, "in no case ... would stay longer than 30 days."[6] They did withdraw on September 10, but a reinforced unit of 1,200 was rushed back 15 days later when Israel seized West Beirut accompanied by the massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila. The U.S. forces remained until February 26, 1984.[7]

      The casualties started within a week of the return of the Marines in September 1982. On September 30th, a cluster bomb (U.S.-made) left behind by the Israelis exploded, killing Corporal David Reagan and wounding three other Marines.[8]

      While the purpose of the Marines’ first brief stay had been to separate Israeli forces from Palestinian fighters evacuating West Beirut, their new mission was - as part of a multinational force - to prevent Israeli troops from attacking the Palestinian civilians left defenseless there after the withdrawal of PLO forces. President Reagan said: "For this multinational force to succeed, it is essential that Israel withdraw from Beirut."[9]

      Israel’s siege of Beirut during the summer of 1982 had been brutal and bloody, reaching a peak on August 12. On that day at dawn, Ariel Sharon’s forces launched a massive artillery barrage that lasted for 11 straight hours accompanied by saturation air bombardment.[10] Hundreds, mainly Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, were killed.[11]

      On top of the bombardment, next month came the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, when Ariel Sharon’s troops helped Lebanese Maronites enter the camps filled with defenseless civilians. The massacres sickened the world and pressure from Western capitals finally forced Israel to withdraw from Beirut in late September. Troops from Britain, France, Italy and the United States were interposed between the Israeli army and Beirut, with U.S. Marines deployed in the most sensitive area south of Beirut at the International Airport, directly between Israeli troops and West Beirut.

      Starting in January 1983, small Israeli units began probing the Marine lines. The Marines politely but firmly turned away the Israeli troops. Soon the incidents escalated, with both sides pointing loaded weapons at each other. Tensions were so high by late January that a special meeting between U.S. and Israeli officers was held in Beirut to try to agree on precise boundaries beyond which the IDF would not penetrate.[12]

      However, on February 2 a unit of three Israeli tanks, led by Israeli Lt. Col. Rafi Landsberg, tried to pass through Marine/Lebanese Army lines at Rayan University Library in south Lebanon. (Landsberg was no stranger to the Marines. Since the beginning of January he had been leading small Israeli units in probes against the Marine lines, though such units would normally have a commander no higher than a sergeant or lieutenant. The suspicion grew that Ariel Sharon’s troops were deliberately provoking the Marines and Landsberg was there to oversee the effort, and that these Israeli tactics were aimed at forcing a joint U.S.-Israeli strategy.)

      In the February 2 incident, the commander of the U.S. checkpoint, Marine Capt. Charles Johnson, refused permission for Landsberg to advance. When two of the Israeli tanks ignored his warning to halt, Johnson leaped on Landsberg’s tank with pistol drawn and demanded Landsberg and his tanks withdraw. They did.[13]

      The Israeli embassy in Washington tried to laugh off the incident, implying that Johnson was trigger-happy and that the media were exaggerating a routine event. Landsberg even went so far as to claim that he smelled alcohol on Johnson’s breath and that drunkenness must have clouded his reason. Marines were infuriated because Johnson was a well-known teetotaler. Americans flocked to Johnson’s side and Landsberg soon dropped from sight.[14]

      But the incidents did not stop. These now included "helicopter harassment," where Israelis flew their U.S.-made helicopters over Marine positions at night, with glaring spotlights illuminating Marine outposts exposing them to potential attack.

      As reports of these incidents piled up, on March 12 Gen. Barrow received a letter from a U.S. Army major stationed in Lebanon with the UN Truce Supervisory Organization. The letter described a systematic pattern of Israeli attacks and provocations against UNTSO troops, including U.S. officers singled out for near-miss shootings, abuse and detention.[15]That same day two Marine patrols were challenged and cursed by Israeli soldiers.[16]

      Two days later Barrow wrote his letter, quoted above, to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who endorsed it and sent it along to the State Department. High-level meetings were arranged between the U.S. and Israel, and the incidents abated, perhaps because by this time Ariel Sharon [in what turned out to be only a temporary setback in his career] had been fired as defense minister over the Sabra and Shatila massacres.[17]

      On the night of April 17, 1983, an unknown sniper fired a shot that went through the trousers of a Marine sentry but did not harm him. For the first time, the Marines returned fire.[18]

      The next day, the U.S. embassy in Beirut was blown up by a massive bomb, with the loss of 63 lives, including 17 Americans. [According to the CIA, a group backed by Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran was responsible.]New York Times, 4/22/83 and 4/26/83.[19]

      Four months later, on August 28, Marines came under direct fire by rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at International Airport. They returned fire with rifles and machine guns. The firefight resumed the next day with Marines firing artillery, mortars and rockets from helicopter gunships against Shi’i Muslim positions. Two Marines were killed and 14 wounded in the exchange.[20]

      The combat involvement of the Marines grew. The conflict was seen in terms of the U.S., Israel and Lebanon’s Christians against Iran, Islam and Lebanon’s Shi’i Muslims.[21]

      Israel accelerated the conflict on September 3, 1993 by withdrawing its troops southward, leaving the Marines exposed behind their thin lines at the airport. The United States had asked the Israeli government to delay its withdrawal until the Marines could be replaced by units of the Lebanese army, but Israel refused.[22]

      The result was as feared. Heavy fighting immediately broke out between the Christian Lebanese Forces and the pro-Syrian Druze units, both seeking to occupy positions evacuated by Israel, while the Marines were left in the crossfire.[23] On September 5, two Marines were killed and three wounded as fighting increased between Christian and Muslim militias.[24]

      The Sixth Fleet frigate Bowen fired several five-inch naval guns, hitting Druze artillery positions in the Chouf Mountains of Lebanon that were firing into the Marine compound at Beirut airport.[25] But the Marines’ exposed location on the flat terrain of the airport left them in an impossible position. On Sept. 12, three more Marines were wounded.[26]

      On September 13, President Reagan authorized what he termed aggressive self-defense for the Marines, including air and naval strikes.[27] Five days later four U.S. warships unleashed the heaviest naval bombardment since Vietnam into Syrian and Druze positions in eastern Lebanon in support of the Lebanese Christians.[28] The bombardment lasted for three days. It was personally ordered by National Security Council director Robert McFarlane, a Marine Corps officer detailed to the White House who was in Lebanon at the time and a strong supporter of Israel.

      McFarlane issued the order despite the fact that the Marine commander at the airport, Colonel Timothy Geraghty, strenuously argued against it because, in the words of correspondent Thomas L. Friedman, "he knew that it would make his soldiers party to what was now clearly an intra-Lebanese fight, and that the Lebanese Muslims would not retaliate against the Navy’s ships at sea but against the Marines on shore."[29]

      By now the Marines were under daily attack.[30] At the same time the battleship USS New Jersey, with 16-inch guns, arrived off Lebanon, increasing the number of U.S. warships offshore to 14. The Marine contingent at Beirut airport was increased from 1,200 to 1,600.[31]

      The fight now was joined between the Shi’i Muslims and the Marines, who were pinned down in their airport bunkers and under orders not to take offensive actions. The climax of their predicament came on October 23, when [with Israeli foreknowledge] a Shi’i Muslim drove a truck past guards at the Marine airport compound and detonated an explosive with the force of 12,000 pounds of dynamite under a building housing Marines and other U.S. personnel. Almost simultaneously, a car-bomb exploded at the French compound in Beirut. Killed were 241 Americans and 58 French troops.[32][33]

      On December 3, two carrier planes were downed by Syrian missiles during heavy U.S. air raids on eastern Lebanon.[34] On the same day, eight Marines were killed in fighting with Muslim militiamen around the Beirut airport.[35]

      By the start of 1984, an all-out Shi’i Muslim campaign to rid Lebanon of all Americans was underway. The president of the American University of Beirut, Dr. Malcolm Kerr, a distinguished scholar of the Arab world, was gunned down on January 18 outside his office by Islamic militants.[36] On February 5, Reagan made a speech, saying that "the situation in Lebanon is difficult, frustrating and dangerous. But this is no reason to turn our backs on friends and to cut and run."[37]

      The next day Professor Frank Regier, a U.S. citizen teaching at AUB, was kidnapped by Muslim radicals.[38] Regier’s kidnapping was the beginning of a series of kidnappings of Americans in Beirut that would lead to the eventual expulsion of nearly all Americans from Lebanon where they had prospered for more than a century. Even today Americans still are prohibited from traveling to Lebanon. [For an account of Israel’s refusal to help regarding these hostages, see the Beirut Hostages link on the previous page of this website.]

      The day after Regier’s kidnapping, on February 7, 1984, Reagan suddenly reversed himself and announced that all U.S. Marines would shortly be "redeployed." The next day the battleship USS New Jersey fired 290 rounds of one-ton shells from its 16-inch guns into Lebanon.[39] Reagan’s "redeployment" was completed by February 26, when the last of the Marines retreated from Lebanon. During their year-and-a-half posting there, the Marines suffered a total of 268 killed.[40]

      A sympathetic U.S. Congress granted increased aid to Israel to compensate it for the costs of its invasion of Lebanon.

      Further reading
      Much of the above from "Israel Charged with Systematic Harassment of U.S. Marines" by Donald Neff, former Time Magazine Israel Bureau Chief - originally published in Washington Report, March 1995, later in Fifty Years of Israel.

      Paul Findley, Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship, Brooklyn, NY, Lawrence Hill Books, 1993.
      Michael Jansen, The Battle of Beirut: Why Israel Invaded Lebanon, London, Zed Press, 1982.
      Sean MacBride, Israel in Lebanon: The Report of the International Commission to enquire into reported violations of international law by Israel during its invasion of Lebanon, London, Ithaca Press, 1983.
      Jonathan Randal, Going all the Way, New York, The Viking Press, 1983.
      Joseph Schechla, The Iron Fist: Israel’s Occupation of South Lebanon, 1982-1985, Washington, D.C.: ADC Research Institute, Issue Paper No. 17, 1985.
      Jacobo Timerman, The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon, New York, Vantage Books, 1982.
      Israel supporters such as ARIwatch took the view that the U.S. was wrong to oppose Israel’s invasion of Beirut, whose purpose, they say, was to destroy the PLO. By the time the Israelis were "harassing" the U.S. marines, the PLO had already withdrawn from Beirut. At that point the goal of the Israelis was not to destroy the PLO, it could only have been to (1) kill Muslim Lebanese factions in the Lebanese civil war and (2) rope the U.S. into helping them do it.''

    • American June 20, 2012 at 1:13 pm

      Don't know if this has been mentioned but 89 year old Saudi King Abdullah has appointed Crown Prince Salman as his successor. Word is Salman is already in charge for all practical purposes. Reports say Salman will continue the kingdom's 'pragmatic' policies. But and not that it indicates anything, but Salman's son Prince Fasial is the one who has been very loudly and publicly threatening/warning on the US-Saudi relationship re the Israel occupation of Palestine.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 11:16 pm with 1 replies

      Well, people can call Putin what they will but he is a wily fox who has only one interest------Russia.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 11:13 pm

      "Leaders are supposed to be strong, no?"...Rich

      Yea and they're actually suppose to lead...not be led around by the nose.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 11:10 pm

      Agreed Rich...it will be bumpy.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 5:35 pm

      Disagree Dan,

      Iran would be one of the US-Russia issues...also Syria would a US-Russian issue. The global economy and euro crisis is also a issue to both leaders and countries.
      Obviously Obama needs space on everything right now.
      I can almost feel sorry for Obama he is getting squeezed every which way by everyone.
      Disagreement by US-Russia on missile defense is important but not the most 'immediate concern' I wouldn't think.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 5:29 pm

      Hum...so Israel breached the demilitarized buffer huh?
      Israel is playing with so many matches something is bound to catch fire.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 2:56 pm

      Yea annie I saw that....very (: (: (: making.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 2:53 pm

      I also wonder what Syria's position would be, a US deal made or no deal? Or an attack on Iran expanded to include Syria? Syria, has always been a ME domino that has to fall, one way or another, in Israel's plans.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 2:44 pm with 1 replies

      Everyone should read Harry's link to Petras. Although his disgust with 'racist' Israel comes though loud and clear what he describes below is exactly what the US intelligence and military have said therefore been warning against.

      (excerpt)
      "To approach Iran’s nuclear facilities Israeli and US forces will confront well-equipped and defended bases, missile installations, maritime defenses and large-scale fortifications directed by the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Armed Forces. Moreover, the defense systems protecting the nuclear facilities are linked by civilian highways, airfields, ports, and backed by a dual purpose (civilian-military) infrastructure, which includes oil refineries and a huge network of administrative offices. To ‘knock out’ the alleged nuclear sites will require expanding the geographic scope of the war. The scientific-technological capacity of the Iranian civilian nuclear program involves a wide swath of its research facilities, including universities, laboratories, manufacturing sites, and design centers. To destroy Iran’s civilian nuclear program would require Israel (and thus the US) to attack much more than research facilities or laboratories hidden under a remote mountain. It would require multiple, widespread assaults on targets throughout the country, in other words, a generalized war.''

    • American June 18, 2012 at 2:06 pm with 5 replies

      You know it's doubly insane for the US to be fixated on Iran to the exclusion of almost everything else, couldn't be a worse time global economy wise with so many countries hanging by their fingernails..Greece, Spain... the euro problems.....one slip and we have a global depression.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 1:52 pm with 1 replies

      Good coverge annie.

      And as for this quote...
      "Moscow could not accept if Russian firms and banks become potential victims of such unilateral actions from the U.S., Ushakov warned."

      I keep saying and saying the US is gonna have it's lunch eaten eventually if it keeps demanding and pushing other countries into actions that harm their own economy and interest Pariculary when they understand it's not even in the US real interest.
      They might actually go along with it if they believed it really did threaten the world's super cop that a lot of them turned over world policing responsibility to because they don't want to or can't assume that role themselves.....but for Israel? nope, they see it for what it is.

  • Ros-Lehtinen bashes occupation and illegal settlements
    • American June 19, 2012 at 3:33 pm

      I don't think anyone 'born' in a foreign country should be allowed to hold office. Very undemocratic of me, but the instances of those like Ros-Lehtinen, who as children were influenced by their parents resentment and bitterness of fleeing from other country, particluary when cost them their former privilaged status, are too numerous to take a chance on their being reps of American interest.
      There was another Cuban American in Bush Jr's era who ran and got elected to the house who published this speech in the Miami papers that said his "Sole" goal in US politics was lining up policies for US aid after Cuban Americans "retook" Cuba so they could return "home".
      Can't remember his name but I posted it here on MW a long time ago.
      Also before he even ran for congress he was appointed to some agency, Treasury I think. Not the kind of political "purposes" I want in people within my government.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 1:56 pm with 2 replies

      With Ros-Lehtinen everything is about Israel or Castro's Cuba.

  • Doublethink in the 'LA Times'
    • American June 18, 2012 at 1:01 pm

      Ditto that.
      My head explodes every time I see this kind of double think/ double speaking.

  • My wife explains the conflict to a friend
    • American June 20, 2012 at 3:22 pm

      O.K. boys let's get off wives and mothers.....they aren't fair game.
      Phil can say whatever he wants about his wife and his mother, but it's not cricket for others to go there.

    • American June 20, 2012 at 2:02 pm

      Yea Mooser you do get touchy now and then.
      Look, I can see why you would and don't blame you, I would too.......its hard to keep seeing Jewish,Jewish,Jewish connected all the time, and if you are Jewish, particulary not a zionist, it feels like you/they are getting unfairly beat over the head with it all the time.
      But I think you know what Citizen meant.

    • American June 20, 2012 at 2:03 am

      "You say this because you generally agree with Phil. And so do I. People tend to let the piccadilloes of others go unnoticed when they are of like mind on other topics."..Dan

      I agree with Phil on many things, some things I don't, he's way more idealistic than I am....sometimes he has a touch of elitism himself.....but there was no elitism in what his wife said...none.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 6:47 pm

      I don't take the reference to Cornell and Oxford as elitest at all.
      I think it was making the point that Palestines "are like us"....not some uncivilized backward society not interested in education or learning.

      You guys are overdoing the elitest criticism on this.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 3:10 pm

      I don't know that being educated has anything to do with it.
      Sometimes I think it's just a trait of certain brains.
      Sometimes out of the mouth of children.....remember one day when an Aunt was visiting and she kept saying as visitors do, I have to go now, I really should go now....and my youngest son, about 5 piped up and said 'Aunt Margaret you keep saying you have to go but you don't go".

    • American June 18, 2012 at 2:26 pm with 14 replies

      ""They say it's complicated, but it's not. It's actually really simple."..Phil's wife

      Bravo Phil's wife.
      Real intelligence ( to me at least) is the ability to see thru a convoluted problem and distill it to it's core in a way even a child can understand.

  • Romney gives a thumb-up to Israeli strike on Iran
    • American June 17, 2012 at 5:57 pm with 1 replies

      "American evangelicals that are the real core of American support for an aggressive, expansionist Israel.""

      The evangelicals don't funnel money to politicians, AIPAC and their multi dozen unrelated pacs do and that is "the core" support for Israel.
      On a day to day and voting-contributing basis the evangelicals are much more concerned with abortion and gays.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 5:52 pm

      " talk because Americans have an ideology of religious exceptionalism. "

      The fringes do is more accurate....unfortunately the fringes are the only ones the politicians pander to.

  • Rebranding Israel
    • American June 20, 2012 at 12:31 pm

      @ritzl

      I do think the Presbyterian and Methodist movements have a lot to do with it. Particulary in the South, churches are the social unity rail or centers and a grapevine in communities, so even if the members don't pay much attention to politics or FP they do know what their churches are doing and saying.

    • American June 20, 2012 at 3:25 am with 2 replies

      Ha,Ha,Ha...rebrand this Israel. Even if this doesn't pass it's a fricking first.
      And just the beginning in my state.....more will come.

      June 20, 2012

      NC Dems considering resolution attacking Israel for ‘illegal occupation’ of Palestine

      Published: 6:30 PM 06/18/2012
      By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller

      The North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP) is seriously considering passing a resolution that would criticize Israel for its “illegal occupation” of Palestine, the latest in a long line of controversial moves coming out of one of the major battleground states President Barack Obama’s team is banking on to win re-election.

      The resolution didn’t pass at this weekend’s NCDP state convention, but was tabled and referred to the executive committee for further consideration later. It attacks the United States for providing Israel with “$3 billion annually in military aid,” while the “Israeli occupation, disenfranchisement and impoverishment of significant numbers of the Palestinian population, and Israel’s overwhelming military might and its role as the only nuclear power threaten stability in a region witnessing increased demands for democracy and an end to autocratic rule.”

      In the resolution, which is titled “Bringing a Just Peace to the Middle East: Israel and Palestine,” the authors accuse Israel of using “this aid to continue its illegal occupation, demolition of Palestinian homes, expansion of existing illegal settlements built on expropriated Palestinian land, and a continued blockade of essential goods from Gaza, a blockade causing a U.N.-documented humanitarian crisis.”

      The resolution also says that the United States’ aid causes “violence and insecurity to Israelis, Palestinians, and helps subvert any prospect for peace.” It also accuses Israel of “human rights violations” and “illegal occupation” that “violate international and U.S. law.”

      If it ends up being passed, the resolution would mean the NCDP “would hold its elected congress members and senators accountable for helping end our government’s role in continuing the Israeli Palestinian tragedy by making the human rights of both peoples central to U.S. foreign policy by ending Israel’s illegal occupation, by advocating for a viable Palestinian state, and membership of that state in the United Nations.”

      It would also, if passed, mean the NCDP would advocate its congressional delegation bring “all parties, including Hamas, to the table to negotiate an end to the Israeli Occupation and a secure peace based on the 1967 borders,” among other things.

      This resolution was the only one that didn’t pass at Saturday’s NCDP convention – but the party is still considering it, according to the Raleigh News and Observer.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 6:10 pm

      Lorna S says:

      None of these responses are worthy of reply. Invective, ad hominem attacks, snap judgments, and general refusal to address the issues rather than attack the writer: none of these constitute informed dialogue.''

      Then why did you reply?
      Our dialogue was very informed.
      We nailed you as what you are right off the bat with your own words and previous writings.
      Yes, I know you have to unload some of that venom on all your enemies now and then or bust.

      *BTW, we charge $200 an hour for this kind of mental health catharsis outlet to zios in meltdown ..so go pay your bill at the MW donation button.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 5:52 pm

      @ Colin

      In what way are you a racist?
      Do you think people's rights or treatment should be based on their race?
      If you do then I agree you are racist.
      But having a ' distaste' for certain cultures or their habits or beliefs is not quit the same as actual racism.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 3:17 pm with 4 replies

      Sean,

      You need to add to Lorna's list:

      Jews vr Jews
      Jews vr Blacks
      Jews vr Jesus

      Blacks are Bad and Anti Semites
      link to aserblazer.blogspot.com

      Liberal Jews have a Jesus complex and that is why they support Jew killing by Palestines and Muslims
      link to lornasalzman.com

      Zionist Attack on the Green Party...Lorna is a Zionist
      link to vfpdissident.blogspot.com

      There is another really nifty article by Lorna where, concerned citizen that she is, she blames Africians and Arabs for world over population, and mentions how they are "unlike" the Jews who don't over populate the earth..lol.

      We have our own Pam Geller here now. This should be fun.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 1:50 pm with 2 replies

      Well, well, I do believe Lorna has just outed herself as 'a racist' not 'a rationalist.' LOL
      Your ordinary run of mill racist combined with the typical fanaticism on whatever issues their deranged little minds latch onto.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 12:58 pm

      Sean,

      There is something to Judaism having become nationalistic early on.
      The period in which Judaism arose was pluralistic, people worshipped many different Gods. Historians say that the leaders of Judaism imposing on their community the idea of Yahweh as the only God was a way "to untify" for nationalist purposes and have more support and power.

      This was the exact opposite of what large kingdoms of the day did, kings could only manage truly large and diverse empires like Egypt's by allowing their population to worship as they pleased in return for their loyalty.

      So the effect was to make adherents and converts of Judaism intolerant of and hostile to worshippers of other Gods.. for the purpose of being some kind of unified power or army that could expand and build a kingdom.

      Relgion, as we see, has always been used by some as a unifier for nation or empire bulding.

    • American June 19, 2012 at 12:22 pm

      "But they have also strengthened the emergence of latent anti-Semitism, which is perfectly illustrated on this blog by bile, vilification and suffocating anger that exactly mirrors the hatred Arabs have had for Jews for centuries. The Israeli left and its American Jewish allies have provided cover for those who agree with the Arabs about the need to kill Jews.
      "..Lorna

      Perfect example of the cult...except now even US Jews are collaborating with Arabs to kill Israeli Jews.
      Gets wilder and wilder.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 1:23 pm with 1 replies

      talknic says:

      More lipstick!!!!
      >>>>>>

      ROTFLMAO!

    • American June 18, 2012 at 3:46 am

      "I mean, what kind of a statements were Golda Meir’s comments “We will have peace with the Arabs when they
      love their children more than they hate us” or “When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.” "..lyn117

      What kind of statement? The statement of a criminal narcissist. Criminal narcissist is actually a criminal profile classification of certain types of criminals.
      They are often surprised to have their acts considered criminal because they have no conception of why anyone should care about anyone but them.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 2:54 am with 7 replies

      I'd say Israel meets a lot of the markers.....

      Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

      1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

      2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

      3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

      4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
      domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

      5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

      6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

      7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

      8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

      9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

      10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

      11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

      12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

      13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

      14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. ''

      And I would say today's US Republican party is definitely fascist.
      I would further say the US government already practices 1,2,3,4,6,7,9,13 and 14 and if the republicans get in 5,8,10 and 12 will put us totally into fascism.

  • The betrothal ritual
    • American June 18, 2012 at 1:50 am

      "Israel needs Jews in the diaspora "...talknic

      Yea it does. If there were no Jews in the US to support it Israel would probably be long gone.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 6:23 pm

      For the 1000th time.....these Rabbis and others who are so 'in love' with Israel....why don't they live there, move there?
      If I were in love with some place, if it was my identity and my religous and idealistic soul mate and made my heart go pitter padder I'd go live there.

  • Israeli army OK's attack dogs as 'non-lethal weapons'
    • American June 19, 2012 at 1:36 pm

      "I have an agenda, of course and it is to cause those who automatically support the Palestinians to consider that there is another party in the region and the story is not only about one side.
      Jewish history and religious books, The Torah and the Bible were not written during the past few hundred years, but thousands of years ago. Whether you agree with what is written in them or not, the fact is that there is a triangle between them, the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.""...gilad

      Yea .....and there is a 'triangle of connection' between me and the cave etchings of homo sapiens and the continents they inhabited also.....lol

      There is no "massive" significance to anything Jewish in the area more so than any others, the Jews were only one among many.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 11:42 am

      You can't blame the dog or his breed for what someone used him for.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 1:12 am

      "have the deed to the city which is the Torah"..gilad

      You are an idiot.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 5:27 pm

      And don’t believe for a second the nonsense that attack dogs can be “retired”""...Mooser

      Actually they can "if" they were trained as most police dogs are to only follow 'commands'. A police dog is trained to do two things, protect it's handler and follow his commands.
      Dogs also are territorial but a trained police dog isn 't necessarily more so than an average dog.
      Or so says my friendly local dog trainer.
      I've had German Shepard's all my life since a childhood but never found it necessary to take one to a trainer, they are naturally intelligent and protective without being vicious.
      If a dog has been deliberately made to be vicious that's a different story.
      I volunteer with a Animal Rescue Group here and couple of times we have taken in Pit bulls that were used in fighting...makes you sick what is done to these dogs...but the local dog trainer guy works with them..takes a professonal at that to handle them,wouldn't have the average person try it...and we've had some success at placing them after they were normalized, but they usually can only go to homes without other dogs.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 5:04 pm

      @ gilad

      Further educational material for you that simply recaps a few main discoveries that debunk the bible and zionist claims.
      .....a few excerpts.....

      link to worldagesarchive.com

      Harper's Magazine

      Not long ago, archaeologists could agree that the Old Testament, for all its embellishments and contradictions, contained a kernel of truth. Obviously, Moses had not parted the Red Sea or turned his staff into a snake, but it seemed clear that the Israelites had started out as a nomadic band somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Mesopotamia; that they had migrated first to Palestine and then to Egypt; and that, following some sort of conflict with the authorities, they had fled into the desert under the leadership of a mysterious figure who was either a lapsed Jew or, as Freud maintained, a high-born priest of the royal sun god Aton whose cult had been overthrown in a palace coup. Although much was unknown, archaeologists were confident that they had succeeded in nailing down at least these few basic facts.

      That is no longer the case. In the last quarter century or so, archaeologists have seen one settled assumption after another concerning who the ancient Israelites were and where they came from proved false. Rather than a band of invaders who fought their way into the Holy Land, the Israelites are now thought to have been an 'indigenous culture that developed west of the Jordan River around 1200 B.C. Abraham, Isaac, and the other patriarchs appear to have been spliced together out of various pieces of local lore.

      The Davidic Empire, which archaeologists once thought as incontrovertible as the Roman, is now seen as an invention of Jerusalem-based priests in the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. who were eager to burnish their national history. The religion we call Judaism does not reach well back into the second millennium B.C. but appears to be, at most, a product of the mid-first.

      This is not to say that individual elements of the story are not older. But Jewish monotheism, the sole and exclusive worship of an ancient Semitic god known as Yahweh, did not fully coalesce until the period between the Assyrian conquest of the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. and the Babylonian conquest of the southern kingdom of Judah in 586.

      Some twelve to fourteen centuries of "Abrahamic" religious development, the cultural wellspring that has given us not only Judaism but Islam and Christianity, have thus been erased. Judaism appears to have been the product not of some dark and nebulous period of early history but of a more modern age of big-power politics in which every nation aspired to the imperial greatness of a Babylon or an Egypt. Judah, the sole remaining Jewish outpost by the late eighth century B.C., was a small, out-of-the-way kingdom with little in the way of military or financial clout. Yet at some point its priests and rulers seem to have been seized with the idea that their national deity, now deemed to be nothing less than the king of the universe, was about to transform them into a great power. They set about creating an imperial past commensurate with such an empire, one that had the southern heroes of David and Solomon conquering the northern kingdom and making rival kings tremble throughout the known world. From a "henotheistic" cult in which Yahweh was worshiped as the chief god among many, they refashioned the national religion so that henceforth Yahweh would be worshiped to the exclusion of all other deities. One law, that of Yahweh, would now reign supreme.
      This is not, of course, the story that we have all been led to believe is, at least to some degree, history.
      A growing volume of evidence concerning Egyptian border defenses, desert sites where the fleeing Israelites supposedly camped, etc., indicates that the flight from Egypt did not occur in the thirteenth century before Christ; it never occurred at all.

      Indeed, the chief disagreement among scholars nowadays is between those who hold that David was a petty hilltop chieftain whose writ extended no more than a few miles in any direction and a small but vociferous band of "biblical minimalists" who maintain that he never existed at all.
      A new generation of archaeologists has taken everything its teachers said about ancient Israel and stood it on its head. Two myths are being dismantled as a consequence: one concerning the origins of ancient Israel and the other concerning the relationship between the Bible and science. Back in the days when archaeology was buttressing the old biblical tales, the relationship between science and religion had warmed considerably; now the old chill has crept back in. The comfy ecumenicism that allowed one to believe in, say, modern physics and Abraham, Isaac, et al. is disappearing, replaced by a somewhat sharper dividing line between science and faith. ''

    • American June 17, 2012 at 4:56 pm

      @ giladg

      Please, there is the myth of your cult and then there is real history and science. And you wonder why people call you trolls and idiots? It's becuase you base all your claims on bible and other myths and refuse to acknowledge real science and history. Posters here have posted time and again the history of the region that historians and archelogy that both agree on.

      So once again:

      Jerusalem was not founded by Jews, i.e. adherents of the Jewish religion. It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But when it was founded Jews did not exist.
      Jerusalem was founded in honor of the ancient god Shalem. It does not mean City of Peace but rather ‘built-up place of Shalem.”
      The “Jewish people” were not building Jerusalem 3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE. First of all, it is not clear when exactly Judaism as a religion centered on the worship of the one God took firm form. It appears to have been a late development since no evidence of worship of anything but ordinary Canaanite deities has been found in archeological sites through 1000 BCE. There was no invasion of geographical Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 1200s BCE. The pyramids had been built much earlier and had not used slave labor. The chronicle of the events of the reign of Ramses II on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave revolts or flights by same into the Sinai peninsula. Egyptian sources never heard of Moses or the 10 plagues & etc. Jews and Judaism emerged from a certain social class of Canaanites over a period of centuries inside Palestine.

      Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent “Jewish people” in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not ‘the city of David,’ since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens, don’t know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine.

      Since archeology does not show the existence of a Jewish kingdom or kingdoms in the so-called First Temple Period, it is not clear when exactly the Jewish people would have ruled Jerusalem except for the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in the 330s BCE. Alexander’s descendants, the Ptolemies ruled Jerusalem until 198 when Alexander’s other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took over Jerusalem with the help of the Parthian dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine in 6 CE (CE= ‘Common Era’ or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium ruled Jerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.

      The Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 and ruled it until 1099 when the Crusaders conquered it. The Crusaders killed or expelled Jews and Muslims from the city. The Muslims under Saladin took it back in 1187 CE and allowed Jews to return, and Muslims ruled it until the end of World War I, or altogether for about 1192 years.

      Adherents of Judaism did not found Jerusalem. It existed for perhaps 2700 years before anything we might recognize as Judaism arose. Jewish rule may have been no longer than 170 years or so, i.e., the kingdom of the Hasmoneans.

      Therefore if historical building of Jerusalem and historical connection with Jerusalem establishes sovereignty over it as Netanyahu claims, here are the groups that have the greatest claim to the city:

      A. The Muslims, who ruled it and built it over 1191 years.

      B. The Egyptians, who ruled it as a vassal state for several hundred years in the second millennium BCE.

      C. The Italians, who ruled it about 444 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450 CE.

      D. The Iranians, who ruled it for 205 years under the Achaemenids, for three years under the Parthians (insofar as the last Hasmonean was actually their vassal), and for 15 years under the Sasanids.

      E. The Greeks, who ruled it for over 160 years if we count the Ptolemys and Seleucids as Greek. If we count them as Egyptians and Syrians, that would increase the Egyptian claim and introduce a Syrian one.

      F. The successor states to the Byzantines, which could be either Greece or Turkey, who ruled it 188 years, though if we consider the heir to be Greece and add in the time the Hellenistic Greek dynasties ruled it, that would give Greece nearly 350 years as ruler of Jerusalem.

      G. There is an Iraqi claim to Jerusalem based on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, as well as perhaps the rule of the Ayyubids (Saladin’s dynasty), who were Kurds from Iraq.

      Source, Thomas Thompson (“The” archeological expert)..according to all non zionist historians--- iows, the real historians.

      link to amazon.ca

  • 44 Senators, including many Democrats, sign AIPAC letter to Obama against Iran negotiations
    • American June 18, 2012 at 1:39 pm

      From what I observe in comments elsewhere on the net and Jewish publications most Jews support Israel--- but it's divided between those who live and breathe Israel and the zionist dream, and others who aren't necessarily obsessed with Israel but when asked or called on reflectively support it just because of their Jewish identity.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 12:03 pm

      thanks Kathleen......I needed that reminder.
      I actually watched his testimony that day in the senate on c-span....love that guy.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 11:56 am

      Allenbee,

      All of that has already happened and Chicago hasn't even been attacked.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 2:40 pm

      "it’s having remarkably little to do with Judaism. I mean, considering"...Colin

      None of it has anything to do with Judaism that I can see, except the sense that Zionism has invaded a lot of Judaism.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 2:31 pm

      @ Danaa

      Totally agree with everything you said.
      Particularly the fact that Israel does not know when to stop, they are totally gone, have become "legends in their own minds", their fantasy vision of being a 'power' on par with the big 5 of the world.

      pabelmont is accurate in saying what should be done...
      ''There is only one way to “Burn Washington to the Ground and Start Over”. And that is to change the constitution (or its interpretation) to [1] disallow any but American citizens to take “political action” in the USA and, equally important, [2] to put a cap on the amount of money any American can spend in any year cumulatively on “political action”.

      But the problem with that, why it won't work, and the hopelessness of our political situation is this can't be done because it would have to be done by the same people and system that created it to begin with...it's like expecting the criminals to enact laws that would put them behind bars.

      That's why I say 'unconventional means' will have to be used to change anything. Voting and political activism isn't going to do it, won't change
      '' the system'', or corruption therein, will only change who is part of it from time to time.

      I don't think all violence could be avoided in even in some peaceful uprising by the population caused by some event, even if 150 million Americans, half our population, showed up in Washington in a peaceful protest, I think police violence would be used against them, that the sheer number of the discontented Americans wouldn't matter to government powers, that's how far gone our politicians are.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 1:52 pm with 1 replies

      "That is kind of an interesting hypothetical. Just what would Israel have to do to get Americans to wake up?"...Colin

      Probably have congress pass a law that requires all non Jews to wear a scarlet letter arm band in public and tithe 50% of their income on monthly automatic bank draft to AIPAC or Israel.
      LOL .....actually not too far fetched, the zionist are the only ones who don't think the Protocol of the Elders is a forgery.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 1:42 pm

      Another oil embargo like 73 would do it but it would have to be coupled with linking it directly to Israel as they did in 73.... and the media having to report it as such.
      The time is perfect ...it would cripple not only the US but the world economy, particularly right now with Europe on a tightrope, countries like Greece on the edge of a cliff, Germany being expected pull the euro out of the ditch. I doubt the OPEC Arabs are entertaining that idea...yet anyway.
      The Arabs would get their share of the blame but it certainly would blow the whole situation wide open and clear the air.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 1:38 am with 3 replies

      I have also wondered how Phil is escaping attack....and why Israel lets him in the country...they are bound to know who he is.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 1:35 am

      wiseman...you not too wise.
      First, Pew isn't exactly known for the accuaracy of it's polls, it's more know for supplying the results it's client wants...those polls are commissioned by someone you know. Google around on Pew and it's Think Tank.
      Second, MW'ers are a little more educated on the Israel and ME issue than the run of the mill cause we have some very astute and well informed members -- I won't name all of them cause I might leave somebody out-- but go to any site, any msm on line site, the WP, any of them and look at the comment responses on articles about Israel and on Iran...they are all overwhelming negative on attacking Iran and negative on Israel.
      You're whistling thru the graveyard .....

    • American June 16, 2012 at 5:29 pm with 8 replies

      Does Levin actually have Israeli citizenship?
      Like he applied for and officially received it?
      Or do you mean just in the sense that all Jews are considered as or can get Israel citizenship?

    • American June 16, 2012 at 4:50 pm

      BTW.....big shout out to MJ (and Phil-MW)...keep on rolling.
      My idiot senator signed it too but she isn't up for re election for another 2 years, there will be a load of ammunition to use on her by then. She has signed everyone of these AIPAC missives and if I can believe what others tell me she's had a lot of complaints from the district...people here pay even more attention to the Iran war drums because we have several huge military bases as well as lots of retired military.

    • American June 16, 2012 at 4:36 pm with 1 replies

      Fools & Cowards. I think by 2016 being a public AIPAC stooge will hurt politicians more than help them.

      Thinking of the other post here about whether AIPAC is defeatable I went back to Jim Moran and his famous 2003 slamming of Israel firsters over the Iraq war:

      ""Protest" against Moran "
      Meanwhile, protests continue against U.S. Rep. James Moran of Virginia, who said last week that Jews were behind the buildup toward war with Iraq. Six fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives said that his comments were "offensive,'' "ignorant'' and "grossly irresponsible,'' and that if he seeks another term, they would not back him. The six, all of whom are Jewish, are Henry Waxman of California, Martin Frost of Texas, Tom Lantos of California, Sander Levin of Michigan, Benjamin Cardin of Maryland and Nita Lowey of New York. The Washington Post also came out strongly against Moran, saying that his remarks perpetuate anti-Semitic views and "confirm our opinion that he is unfit to serve in Congress."

      Well the six Jews in congress and the ADL, and AIPAC, and the Washington Post and every Jewish org who vowed to unseat him lost big time...Moran got reelected with 68% of the vote and got re elected again in his last race with 61% of the vote in a three way race with a republican and Green candidate. And it's interesting that his district is northern Virginia right across the river (Alexandria-Arlington-etc ) from AIPAC. Evidently Virginians pay no attention to the power of AIPAC or the Washington Post...it might even have helped him. lol
      Go Irishman, take no sh@t from those cretins.

    • American June 16, 2012 at 2:14 pm with 10 replies

      " at least we have a written record, with signatures, of the responsible senators."......Denis

      Yes we will, but we had a record on Iraq also and none of them really paid a price for that either.
      I hate to have keep sounding like a wild eyed revolutionary or anarchist with my Burn Washington to the Ground and Start Over rantings, but 'clearly' as they say,
      Americans are going to have to use unconventional means to get rid of this foreign controlled US congress.
      My advice to everyone , without sounding like a loony survivalist fanatic, is to try to insulate yourself financially and other ways to cope with any big events, even if we avoid a war on Iran as long as Israel is in control of our government they won't quit pushing for some apocalyptic Zionist showdown of Isr'merica power against their many enemies and sooner or later it will happen.

  • How do we make Zionism 101 an everyday reality? Yeah, how?
    • American June 18, 2012 at 5:10 pm with 2 replies

      BTW WJ, we do dialogue, we keep giving you reasons and proofs that sane, reasonable and fair people agree on as to why zionism is a destructive ideology and Israel is a country that operates on racism in fundamental ways. And even if liberal zionist agree on some points they still go back in the end to that higher good for Jews in taking and keeping Palestine.
      It's a hopless run around in a circle debate.

    • American June 18, 2012 at 4:56 pm with 4 replies

      WJ,

      How do we dialogue with people who truly believe that Jews were entitled to displace and oppress and steal from other people because of a "higher good for Jews"?
      Not to mention those who believe in bible claims to land.
      Or those who believe that Jews make up some kind of seperate 'race like' ethnic instead of a religious 'culture and tradition' despite all evidence to the contrary.
      I am seriously asking you these questions.
      I don't know how to talk to people who believe that they are justified in doing wrong to people who haven't wronged them, because it was done to them by someone else. And to systematically do it for decades while pretending to be victims and lying about their motives for doing it.
      In every single conversation I have ever seen or had, the zionist circular wheel on Israel always comes back to the claim of 1) the higher good for the Jews and 2) their right to some kind of 'special' self determination.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 2:50 pm with 1 replies

      Allen,

      All the 'elements' might have been there but highly doubtful the British could have imposed a Israel nation on the Arabs, (that they would have had to back up themselves) by themselves.
      Israel had to have more than British backing or private Jewish backing to be 'created' as a nation. That's where post war politics re the Holocaust came in with the US and UN.
      "If" the US hadn't signed on for Israel at the UN and the Arabs knew the US wouldn't interfer for Israel, then Israel would have been, if not totally wiped out, reduced to a small colony that Palestines might accept.
      That's just the reality of it...US,UN, world backing after the WWII -holocaust is the only thing that created the official version of Israel or kept it there.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 2:43 pm

      "The “moral” appeal was uniquely selective."

      Of course, that's what zionism is about...themselves and only themselves.

    • American June 17, 2012 at 3:18 am with 7 replies

      @ Citizen..

      I agree with you on this.....

      "So should the US pressured UN give the Roma people their own state? It’s never even appeared in as a wispy thought in the West’s head. The sole reason Israel the state exists is because of Zionist big dollars and Jewish media influence."

      But the reason they used in their influencing, along with the money, was the holocaust......the zionist enterprise was cloaked in 'moral' appeal on behalf of the Jews. Amazing how politicians can find moral grounds for anything connected to money.

    • American June 16, 2012 at 3:25 pm

      Israel has morphed into a ethnocracy 'at the expense of the world' if you want to be even more accurate.

    • American June 16, 2012 at 1:28 pm with 13 replies

      "The central question of why the Jews deserve a democratic nation of their own must be discussed—and answered"

      What is the answer to why Jews deserve a nation of their own?
      If you go the beginning of zionism and leave out the holocaust you are still stuck with the victim justification.
      And the more I look into events in BC history the less I think Jews were any more victimized than any other tribes or groups in those times, all groups were in constant conflict with and killing each other off.
      Even going into AD times, Christian, Catholics, Muslims ,as well as Jews, all had their turn at being oppressed, discriminated against and victimized.
      So the Jewish holocaust of WWII looks to me like the only real legitimate example of unusual victimization above and beyond others, and I am not sure if Israel would exist today if it not been for that holocaust .

      So what does 'self determination" for Jews actually mean anyway? If you discard the holocaust re Israel as a safe haven factor (faulty as it is) then the 'self determination' for Jews simply means a Jewish 'ruled' state that privileges Jews above others and discriminates against non Jews. I think that would be Zionism 101.

  • On Syria, Clinton spins a fast one
    • American June 17, 2012 at 2:22 am

      Same old Israel "Clean Break'' plan on Syria with a few minor alterations, Turkey and Jordon have dropped out and Iraq didn't work out.
      But the goals are still the same.

      ''Moving to a Traditional Balance of Power Strategy

      TEXT:

      We must distinguish soberly and clearly friend from foe. We must make sure that our friends across the Middle East never doubt the solidity or value of our friendship.
      Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which Asad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently signaled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam.

      But Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the 'natural axis' with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity.

      Since Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq, including such measures as: visiting Jordan as the first official state visit, even before a visit to the United States, of the new Netanyahu government; supporting King Hussein by providing him with some tangible security measures to protect his regime against Syrian subversion; encouraging — through influence in the U.S. business community — investment in Jordan to structurally shift Jordan’s economy away from dependence on Iraq; and diverting Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon.

      Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite.

      King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet’s family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein. ""

    • American June 17, 2012 at 2:08 am

      In the 'Clean Break' plan for Israel, they planned for Turkey to play a part in bringing down Syria..ha,ha...the best laid whacko plans of mice and men.

    • American June 16, 2012 at 3:35 pm

      "The Enemy Within" - the threat of radical Islamics --special segment last night on Fox news featured Joe Lieberman and what'sher name, the female senator who lisps like she has some speech impediment.

      Anyone see it? BIG, big propaganda piece, hour long. Islam Arab terriers, booga, booga, tora, tora existential threat of the Arabs among us here in America!.....sickening, sickening, sickening. Promoting more surveillance, profiling and gawd knows what else--probably interment camps next-- of US Muslims and Arabs.

    • American June 15, 2012 at 4:09 pm with 4 replies

      annie, Russia has sent troops to Syria , reported by abc, msnbc today.

  • American living in Jerusalem squeezes Obama on 'Audacity of Hope' (the boat, that is)
    • American June 15, 2012 at 4:04 pm with 1 replies

      When I look at Obama I see a man who is averse to or afraid to make powerful enemies both as a man and a politician.
      It's really pathetic because he has or had more power than anyone, all that 'Hope' power with the public and the world after his election, but he didn't use it because he doesn't really trust Americans to accept some truth and rally around it or him.
      So now he's just another politician, getting elected by pandering to niches and identities. Yesterday it was gays, today he's pandering to illegals on immigration, tomorrow it will be public employees and so it goes on and on while Romney will be pandering to Christians, anti abortinist and gay haters.
      I notice that some pundits are finally beginning to put down the pandering and niche campaigning of Obama and Romney.

    • American June 15, 2012 at 3:39 pm

      The zios gang has always used US courts like their own private mafia collector and enforcer...'Sue" is their middle name. I can't even list all the bizarre lawsuits I have seen by the Israeli or holocaust or victim groups, it's in the hundreds, maybe thousands.
      People should start suing them in other countries courts not so friendly to zios and seizing their assets..that might slow them down...I don't know why more people don't do that.

  • Wright: Obama is 'drifting toward war with Iran' out of 'pathetic' fear of blowback from the lobby
    • American June 15, 2012 at 7:24 pm with 2 replies

      "Indeed. I think they have killed antisemitism by beating it too often off the head of anyone who points out that what they are doing is nuts'..seafoid

      When I first started discussing and exploring the Israel-US and I/P problem years ago the replies to everything I said no matter what it was .....was anti semite, closet anti semite, etc..
      Even if my comment was a just a question, the reply was still 'you must be a anti semite'...iow, to 'even question' any position of Israel or why US was supporting it was anti semitic.
      Things have changed a great deal since then. And where the Jews as a whole are concerned that change has been better for them... not worse as some think and fear.... because as the discussions got bigger and bigger it helped people see the differences among Jews regarding US-Israel-I/P.

    • American June 15, 2012 at 7:01 pm

      You could be right Woody, I don't know any more..it's all a crap shoot.

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