The Israel Project is a neoconservative organization that threw itself into the fight against the Iran Deal, and lost. Maxwell Woolley is director of Digital Communications at the organization. He sent out a fundraising email the other day that described a meeting with soldiers recently in Israel.
[A] few IDF soldiers who served in Gaza last summer came to thank me and express how much it meant to know that people were working to tell the world the truth — that Israel wasn’t isolated as they had feared. I told them, they had no reason to thank me —they were the ones risking their lives; I was just doing what was right.I was fighting back tears when they told me: “You were fighting the same as us. You don’t have to risk your life to be a part of the fight. Moreover, they said they couldn’t win the fight without the kind of work we do at The Israel Project.
It was one of the most meaningful things any one had ever said to me. These soldiers put their lives at risk to defend Israel. I sit behind a computer desk in DC. But to them, I was fighting the war just as they were.
And if I was fighting so were you. Without your contributions, The Israel Project wouldn’t exist and I couldn’t do my job. We are fighting every day to tell Israel’s true story in the face of lies and hate that demonize the Middle East’s only democracy… [to] fight for Israel’s survival.
I am proud to be part of that fight. When you contribute to TIP, you become a part of that fight.
Thank you for supporting a country I love.
A couple of points. Woolley’s email expresses the core idea of the Israel lobby: Israeli soldiers could not fight without the support of American lobbyists (who corrupt US policymaking; we give that country more than $3 billion a year in military aid).
The American government throws Palestinian-Americans in jail when they give to charities that are said to have some kind of connection to Hamas, a Palestinians resistance group that arose because Palestinians were thrown out of their homes and villages, etc. But Woolley gets to raise money happily on behalf of a military force that killed 2300 Palestinians in Gaza, including 500 children, just a year ago (and that executed 18-year-old Hadeel al-Haslamoun at a checkpoint in illegally occupied territory last week). At the very least the U.S. ought to be neutral in this conflict. But we’re on one side.
Woolley’s comments are reminiscent of Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, who told the Center for Jewish History several years ago that young American Jews had to be in Israel’s army, serving in their schools against Israel’s attackers. The appeal was considered over the line by even Eric Alterman, who found it amazing, and wrote:
It reminded me of the time that Norman Podhoretz insisted, years ago, that “the role of Jews who write in both the Jewish and general press is to defend Israel,” period. Talk about your dual loyalties. Talk about your intellectual dishonesty. … Scary that these kids were hearing this stuff from a Harvard professor.
The American special relationship with Israel won’t end until American Jews split over this scary question, and actually call out such appeals as contributions to a foreign, militant racist state that only hurts the American interest in the Middle East. (I believe this confusion is built into Zionism; Alterman has himself said that he has “dual loyalty” to Israel.)
I love that attack on Alterman. This quote is surreal:
How is this dishonest? It’s refreshingly honest because it spells out what Zionism entails.
Alterman doesn’t really attack the notion per se, he attacks talking out loud about it. When Blumenthal released his first Israel book, we all saw the crazied frenzy with which Alterman went after the book.
When pushed into a corner, people show their true colors. Alterman can write whatever claptrap he wants, but when the chips are down he is absolutely a soldier for Israel in the media. The only difference between him and Podhoretz was that Podhoretz was transparent about his wishes.
We need more of that.
Years ago I saw on TV a speech by one of the top female politicians from California. It may have been Pelosi, it may have been one of the senators; I don’t recall who it was. (It doesn’t matter: on I/P they run together.) She was eliciting applause by rejecting an “even handed” policy regarding I/P. “We don’t want even handed; we want pro-Israel,” she said, or words to that effect. I don’t know the audience, but it was clear where their sympathy lay. No danger for her of suffering Percy’s fate.
It seems that at least since ’67, and probably since ’48, most (not all) American Jews have regarded Israel as La Cosa Nostra: our thing, our operation. It is entirely legitimate to use American resources and power to support it; it is entirely legitimate to demean and destroy anyone who would impede their doing so. Maybe things are changing, but I have not seen evidence of that manifesting in official Washington.
PHIL- “The Israel Project is a neoconservative organization that threw itself into the fight against the Iran Deal, and lost.”
Don’t get carried away with the illusion of an Obama ‘victory’. Our actual relations with Iran are significantly determined by Obama’s anti-Iranian, pro-Israel, Zionist appointees who remain in office. That he hasn’t fired them says volumes about his real intentions. The sanctions against Iran are likely to get worse before they get better. A quote followed by a link:
“Iranians believe that some trade between Iran and the west will no doubt occur in the coming months. Economists tend to agree. But it won’t amount to much anytime soon if AIPAC and its partner, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC) succeed in their continuing their anti-Iran campaign which has been revered up since this summer’s Congressional vote in favor JCPA.
Also engaged in keeping the pressure on Iranians is Adam Szubin, AIPAC supporter and former director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) which enforces sanctions. Mr. Szubin has recently been appointed the U.S. Treasury’s acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. He has made plain this past month that pressure on Iran will intensify and those who fantasize about doing business with the Islamic Republic, with or without sanctions, will face more hurdles. The latter includes for example, that any foreign banks who knowingly or unknowingly engage in and transaction with any firm doing any business with Khatam al-Anbia (the Iranian construction company owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC), they will be barred from U.S. markets.” (Franklin Lamb) http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/29/how-aipac-ofac-are-working-to-maintain-iran-sanctions/
“IDF soldiers who served in Gaza last summer came to thank me and express how much it meant to know that people were working to tell the world the truth”
The “truth” for them is that Jews have a right to drive non-Jews from their homes and lands at gunpoint. This “truth” derives from their core belief that Jews are superior beings and non-Jews are inferior beings.
The U.S. should not support this belief and its barbaric policies any more than it supports the supremacist beliefs and policies of slavery. They are the same at their core. They share this core with the Nazi belief in Aryan supremacy. They are all bullsh*t, even if they are in the Bible.
The only reason this OBVIOUS point is not made on EVERY talk show discussing Israel’s war is Israel’s tyrannical grip on the U.S. mainstream media. It must be a bummer being a true reporter and not be able to report on your country’s free speech and democracy being squashed by barbarians.
We are definitely complicit in many of Israel’s crimes against unarmed civilians. In fact after the Iran deal, we will be giving the war criminals even more:
Article by Josh Rueben
“Israel is likely to get recompensed for the Iran nuclear deal in two ways.
The first is through Congressional authorization of the transfer to Israel of advanced weaponry such as bunker-buster bombs. For example, Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey who broke with his former mentor Rabbi Shmuley Boteach by supporting the deal, stated that the “US should provide Israel with access to the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) to help deter Iranian cheating.”
And Obama appears amenable to upping the quality of weapons the US provides Israel. In a letter to Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic representative for New York, Obama pledged that “Our support for Israel is also an important element in deterring Iran from ever seeking a nuclear weapon.”
Thus Israel is likely to receive from the US the weapons it would need to threaten or actually carry out the attack on Iran the US just potentially avoided with the nuclear deal.
Second, Israel will likely reap an enormous windfall from the United States by negotiating a new 10-year deal for additional military aid. During the George W. Bush administration, the US signed an agreement to provide Israel with $30 billion in military aid from 2009 to 2018.
Ever since he visited Jerusalem in March 2013, Obama has repeatedly made clear that he wants to extend — and even increase — military aid to Israel.”
https://electronicintifada.net/content/has-israel-lobby-really-lost-its-mojo/14853