Henk Hofland en de Massa 24

Henk Hoflands bewering in De Groene Amsterdammer van woensdag 11 maart 2015, onder de suggestieve kop 'De Iraanse bom,' dat 'Netanyahu' in 'Amerika' nooit zou worden 'beschuldigd' van 'inmenging in binnenlandse aangelegenheden' van de VS, omdat 'daarvoor de vriendschap tussen Amerika en Israel te hecht [is],' getuigt van weinig kennis van zaken. Allereerst omdat die 'vriendschap' domweg niet bestaat. Hofland weet op zijn 87-ste kennelijk nog steeds niet dat 'vriendschap' belangeloos is, en belangeloos is de band tussen het zionistisch regime en Washington geenszins. Beide partijen maken gebruik van elkaar, waarbij op dit moment de 'tail wags the dog,' als gevolg van de politieke macht van de schatrijke zionistische lobby. Even absurd is de suggestie van de éminence grise van de polderpers dat 'Amerikanen' een grote sympathie koesteren voor de terreur van de zogeheten 'Joodse staat.' De vooraanstaande Amerikaanse journalist/schrijver Chris Hedges toonde op 14 september 2014 precies het tegendeel toen hij schreef:

I would like to begin by speaking about the people of Gaza. Their suffering is not an abstraction to me. I was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. I spent seven years in the region. I speak Arabic. And for much of that time I was in Gaza, including when Israeli fighter jets and soldiers were attacking it.

I have stood over the bodies, including the bodies of children, left behind by Israeli airstrikes and assaults. I have watched mothers and fathers cradle their dead and bloodied boys and girls in their arms, convulsed by an indescribable grief, shrieking in pitiful cries to an indifferent universe.

And in this charnel house, this open-air prison where 1.8 million people, nearly half of them children, live trapped in an Israeli ghetto, I have witnessed the crimes of occupation—the food shortage, the stifling overcrowding, the contaminated water, the lack of health services, the crippling poverty, the endemic unemployment, the fear and the despair. As I have witnessed this mass of human suffering I have heard from the power elites in Jerusalem and Washington the lies told to justify state terror.

An impoverished, captive people that lack an army, a navy, an air force, mechanized units, drones, artillery and any semblance of command and control do not pose a threat to Israel. And Israel’s indiscriminate use of modern, industrial weapons to kill hundreds of innocents, wound thousands more and make tens of thousands of families homeless is not a war. It is state-sponsored terror and state-sponsored murder.

The abject failure by our political class to acknowledge this fact, a fact that to most of the rest of the world is obvious, exposes the awful banality of our political system, the cynical abandonment of the most vulnerable of the earth for campaign contributions. Money, after all, has replaced the vote.

The refusal to speak out for the people of Gaza is not tangential to our political life. The pathetic, Stalinist-like plebiscite in the [U.S.] Senate, where all 100 senators trotted out like AIPAC windup dolls to cheer on the Israeli bombing of homes, apartment blocks, schools—where hundreds of terrified families were taking shelter—water treatment plants, power stations, hospitals, and of course boys playing soccer on a beach, exposes the surrender of our political class to cash-rich lobbying groups and corporate power. The people of Gaza are expendable. They are poor. They are powerless. And they have no money. Just like the poor people of color in this country whose bodies, locked in cages, enrich the prison-industrial complex.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/sacrificing_the_vulnerable_from_gaza_to_america_20140914 

Ook zijn bewering dat 'Amerikanen' vanwege de vermeende 'vriendschap' het niet in hun hoofd zouden halen om 'Netanyahu'te beschuldigen van 'inmenging in binnenlandse aangelegenheden,' is niet gebaseerd op de werkelijkheid, want er zijn talloze gerespecteerde Amerikaanse intellectuelen voor wie 'Netanyahu' niets anders is dan een 'extremist,' die via de zionistische lobby de Midden-Oosten politiek van de VS in hoge mate bepaalt. Maar omdat Hoflands kennis niet verder rijkt dan de pro-Israelische berichtgeving van de New York Times is hij hiervan niet op de hoogte. De nestor van de polderpers heeft kennelijk ook niet het opzienbarende studie gelezen van Paul Findley, 22 jaar lang een vooraanstaand Congreslid en 'senior member of the House Middle East Committee.' Zijn in 1985 verschenen 362 pagina's tellende boek They Dare To Speak Out. People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, was destijds

The first book to speak out against the pervasive influence of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on American politics, policy, and institutions resonates today as never before. With careful documentation and specific case histories, former congressman Paul Findley demonstrates how the Israel lobby helps to shape important aspects of U.S. foreign policy and influences congressional, senatorial, and even presidential elections. Described are the undue influence AIPAC exerts in the Senate and the House and the pressure AIPAC brings to bear on university professors and journalists who seem too sympathetic to Arab and Islamic states and too critical of Israel and its policies. Along with many longtime outspoken critics, new voices speaking out include former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, Senator Robert Byrd, prominent Arab-American Dr. Ziad Asali, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and journalist Charles Reese. In addition, the lack of open debate among politicians with regard to the U.S. policy in the Middle East is lamented, and AIPAC is blamed in part for this censorship. Connections are drawn between America’s unconditional support of Israel and the raging anti-American passions around the world—and ultimately the tragic events of 9/11. 

http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/they-dare-to-speak-out-products-9781556524820.php 

Dat Hofland een propagandistische voorstelling van zaken geeft, blijkt tevens uit de wijze waarop de zionistische lobby in de VS de hechte zogeheten 'vriendschap' afdwingt.  Paul Findley's uitgebreid onderzoek toont gedocumenteerd aan hoe Amerikaanse volksvertegenwoordigers door deze pro-Israel lobby permanent worden gechanteerd. Zo beschreef hij het lot van één van de belangrijkste naoorlogse senatoren, te weten senator William Fulbright de ‘longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’ en 30 jaar lang lid van het Amerikaanse Congres. Dat hij één van de meest gerespecteerde senatoren was uit de Amerikaanse geschiedenis blijkt tevens uit de opmerking van de bekende senator Frank Church, 'candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1976 presidential election, losing to Jimmy Carter. He is known for heading the Church Committee, which investigated abuses in the U.S. intelligence agencies.' Church verklaarde: 'When all of us are dead, the only one they'll remember is Bill Fulbright.' Om een waarheidsgetrouw beeld te krijgen van William Fulbright, naar wie het 'prestigieuze Amerikaanse uitwisselingsprogramma voor studenten in het Hoger Onderwijs, het zogenaamde Fulbright-programma, werd genoemd,' blijf ik wat langer bij hem stilstaan. Bovendien laat zijn loopbaan zo duidelijk het verzet zien tegen de corrumpering van de Amerikaanse politiek. Eerst een fragment uit Fulbright's boek The Pentagon Propaganda Machine (1971):

Since the 1950s, as we have moved from crisis to crisis, the constitutional responsibilities of the Congress have been eroded in dangerous measure by the diversion of power to the President and the Joint Chiefs and the Department of State.

It seems to me we have grown distressingly used to war… War and the military have become a part of our environment, like pollution.

Violence is our most important product. We have been spending nearly $80 billion a year on the military, which is more than the profits of all American business, or, to make another comparison, is almost as much as the total spending of the federal, state, and local governments for health, education, old age and retirement benefits, housing, and agriculture. Until the past session of the Congress, these billions have been provided to the military with virtually no questions asked.

The military has been operating for years in that Elysium of the public relations man, a seller's market. Take the climate into which the Sentinel ABM program was introduced. Many people looked on it, as they now look on Safeguard, not as a weapon but as a means of prosperity. For the industrialist it meant profits; for the worker new jobs and the prospect of higher wages; for the politician a new installation or defense order with which to ingratiate himself with his constituents… There are 22,000 major corporate defense contractors and another 100,000 subcontractors. Defense plants or installations are located in 363 of the country's 435 congressional districts. Even before it turns its attention to the public-at-large, the military has a large and sympathetic audience for its message.

These millions of Americans who have a vested interest in the expensive weapons systems spawned by our global military involvements are as much a part of the military-industrial complex as the generals and the corporation heads. In turn they have become a powerful force for the perpetuation of those involvements, and have had an indirect influence on a weapons development policy that has driven the United States into a spiraling arms race with the Soviet Union and made us the world's major salesman of armaments…

Militarism has been creeping up on us during the past thirty years… Today we have more than 3.5 million men in uniform and nearly 28 million veterans of the armed forces in the civilian population… The American public has become so conditioned by crises, by warnings, by words that there are few, other than the young, who protest against what is happening.

The situation is such that last year Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, hardly an apostle of the New Left, felt constrained to say:

‘For almost twenty years now, many of us in the Congress have more or less blindly followed our military spokesmen. Some have become captives of the military. We are on the verge of turning into a military nation.’

This militarism that has crept up on us is bringing about profound changes in the character of our society and government-changes that are slowly undermining democratic procedure and values.

James William Fulbright. The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. 1971

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pentagon_military/Pentagon_Propaganda_JWF.html 
En: http://eca.state.gov/fulbright/about-fulbright/history/j-william-fulbright 
En: http://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-propaganda-machine-William-Fulbright/dp/0871405229 

Dat Fulbright een ware Democraat was blijkt uit zijn kritische opstelling tegenover iedereen die naar fanatisme neigde. Paul Findley in They Dare To Speak Out:

Fulbright first gained national attention by condemning the 'swinish blight' of McCarthyism. (de heksenjacht op progressieve Amerikanen. svh) In 1954 while many Americans cheered the crusade of the Wisconsin Senator's Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, Fulbright cast the lone vote against a measure to continue the subcommittees funding. Because of this vote he was accused of being 'a Communist, a fellow traveler, an atheist, [and] a man beneath contempt.'

Fulbright opposed U.S. intervention in Cuba in 1961 and in the Dominican Republic four years later, and was ahead of his time in calling for detente with the Soviet Union and a diplomatic opening with China. When he proposed a different system for selecting presidents, Harry Truman was offended and called him 'that over-educated Oxford son of a bitch.' Twenty-five years later, in 1974, the New York Times recognized him as 'the most outspoken critic of American foreign policy of his generation. 

His deepest and most abiding interest is the advancement of international understanding through education, and thousands of young people have broadened their vision through the scholarships that bear his name. But Fulbright became well known for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War as 'an endless, futile war, […] debilitating and indecent' — a stand which put him at odds with a former colleague and close friend, President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Fulbright geloofde evenwel niet in de zogeheten 'dominotheorie,' waarbij het communisme alle landen in het grondstoffenrijke Zuid-Oost Azië één voor één in handen zou krijgen, maar zag onmiddellijk dat hier sprake was van wat hij de 'arrogance of power' noemde van de Amerikaanse  politieke en economische elite. Even kritisch stond hij tegenover de verregaande zionistische invloed op de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek. Findley:

In 1963 Fulbright chaired an investigation that brought to public attention the exceptional tax treatment of contributions to Israel and aroused the ire of the Jewish community. The investigation was managed by Walter Pincus, a journalist Fulbright hired after reading a Pincus study of lobbying. Pincus recalls that Fulbright gave him a free hand, letting him choose the ten prime lobbying activities  to be examined and backing him throughout the controversial investigation. One of the groups chosen by Pincus, himself Jewish, was the Jewish Telegraph Agency — at that time a principal instrument of the Israeli lobby. Both Fulbright and Pincus were accused of trying to destroy the Jewish Telegraph Agency and of being anti-Semitic. 

Pincus remembers, 'Several Senators urged that the inquiry into the Jewish operation be dropped. Senators Hubert Humphrey and Bourke Hickenlooper (senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee) were among them. Fulbright refused.'

The Fulbright hearings also exposed the massive funding illegally channelled into the American Zionist Council by Israel. More than five million dollars had been secretly poured into the Council for spending on public relations firms and pro-Israel propaganda before Fulbright's committee closed down the operation. 

Despite his concern over the pro-Israel lobby, Fulbright took the exceptional step of recommending that the United States guarantee Israeli's borders. In a major address in 1970 he proposed an American-Israeli treaty under which the United States would commit itself to intervene militarily if necessary to 'guarantee the territory and independence of Israel' within the lands it held before the 1967 war.

Maar zoals vandaag de dag bekend is, willen de zionistische extremisten dit nu juist niet, omdat voor het chronisch met waterschaarste kampende Israel, de Westbank, met zijn omvangrijke aquifers, wordt gezien als onvervreemdbaar Joods. Vanuit die optiek moet het bericht worden geïnterpreteerd op de voorpagina van de International New York Times van dinsdag 17 maart 2015, dat 'Netanyahu says he won't back state for Palestinians.' Vandaar ook dat de grenzen van de meeste illegale Joodse nederzettingen parallel lopen met de ondergrondse watervoorraden. Findley schreef in They Dare To Speak Out over Fulbright's voorstel voor een Amerikaans-Israelisch verdrag dat de 'Joodse staat' zou beschermen:

The treaty, he said, should be a supplement to a peace settlement arranged by the United Nations. The purpose of his proposal was to destroy the arguments of those who maintained that Israel needed the captured territory for its security.

Fulbright saw Israel's withdrawal from the Arab lands it occupied in the 1967 war as the key to peace: Israel could not occupy Arab territory and have peace too. He said that Israeli policy in establishing settlements on the territories 'has been characterized by lack of flexibility and foresight.' Discounting early threats by some Arab leaders to destroy the state of Israel, Fulbright noted that both President Nasser of the United Arab Republic and King Hussein of Jordan had in effect repudiated such Draconian threats, 'but the Israelis seem not to have noticed the disavowals.'

During the 1970s Fulbright repeatedly took exception to the contention that the Middle East crisis was a test of American resolve against Soviet interventionism. In 1971 he accused Israel of 'communist-baiting humbuggery' and argued that continuing Middle East tension, in fact, only benefited Soviet interests.

Appearing on CBS television's Face the Nation in 1973, Fulbright declared that the Senate was 'subservient' to Israeli policies that were inimical to American interests. He said that the United States bore 'a very great share of the responsibility' for the continuation of Middle East violence. 'It's quite obvious [that] without the all-out support by the United States in money and weapons and so on, the Israelis couldn't do what they've been doing.'

Fulbright said that the United States failed to pressure Israel for a negotiated settlement, because:

The great majority of the Senate of the United States-somewhere around 80 percent-are completely in support of Israel, anything Israel wants. This has been demonstrated time and time again, and this has made it difficult for our government.

The senator claimed that 'Israel controls the Senate' and warned, 'We should be more concerned about the United States' interests.' Six weeks after his 'Face the Nation' appearance, Fulbright again expressed alarm over Israeli occupation of Arab territories. He charged that the United States had given Israel 'unlimited support for unlimited expansion.'

His criticism of Israeli policy caused stirrings back home. 17 Jews who had supported him in the past became restless. After years of easy election victories, trouble loomed for Fulbright in 1974. Encouraged, in part, by the growing Jewish disenchantment with Fulbright, on the eve of the deadline for filing petitions of candidacy in the Democratic primary Governor Dale Bumpers surprised the political world by becoming a challenger for Fulbright's Senate seat.

Bumpers werd werd naar voren geschoven met steun van de zionistische lobby om de kritische stem van Fulbright in de Senaat tot zwijgen te brengen, zoals bleek uit de feiten. Findley:

Following the election, a national Jewish organization actually claimed credit for the young governor's stunning upset victory. Fulbright had a copy of a memorandum circulated in May 1974 to the national board of directors of B'nai B'rith. Marked 'confidential,' the memo from Secretary-General Herman Edelsberg, announced that 'all of the indications suggest that our actions in support of Governor Bumpers will result in the ousting of Mr. Fulbright from his key position in the Senate.' Edelsberg later rejected the memorandum as 'phony.'

Following his defeat, Fulbright continued to speak out, decrying Israeli stubbornness and warning of the Israeli lobby. In a speech just before the end of his Senate term, he warned, 'Endlessly pressing the United States for money and arms-and invariably getting all and more than she asks-Israel makes bad use of a good friend.' His central concern was that the Middle East conflict might flare into nuclear war. He warned somberly that 'Israel's supporters in the United States... by underwriting intransigence, are encouraging a course which must lead toward her destruction-and just possibly ours as well.'

Pondering the future from his office three blocks north of the White House on a bright winter day in 1983, Fulbright saw little hope that Capitol Hill would effectively challenge the Israeli lobby:

'It's suicide for politicians to oppose them. The only possibility would be someone like Eisenhower, who already feels secure. Eisenhower had already made his reputation. He was already a great man in the eyes of the country, and he wasn't afraid of anybody. He said what he believed.'

Then he added a somewhat more optimistic note: 'I believe a president could do this. He wouldn't have to be named Eisenhower.' Fulbright cited a missed opportunity:

'I went to Jerry Ford after he took office in 1975. I was out of office then. I had been to the Middle East and visited with some of the leading figures. I came back and told the president, 'Look, I think these [Arab] leaders are willing to accept Israel, but the Israelis have got to go back to the 1967 borders. The problem can be solved if you are willing to take a position on it.'

Fulbright predicted that the American people would back Ford if he demanded that Israel cooperate. He reminded him that Eisenhower was reelected by a large margin immediately after he forced Israel to withdraw after invading Egypt:

'Taking a stand against Israel didn't hurt Eisenhower. He carried New York with its big Jewish population. I told Ford I didn't think he would be defeated if he put it the right way. He should say Israel had to go back to the 1967 borders; if it didn't, no more arms or money. That's just the way Eisenhower did it. And Israel would have to cooperate. And politically, in the coming campaign, I told him he should say he was for Israel, but he was for America first.'

Ford, Fulbright recalled, listened courteously but was noncommittal. 'Of course he didn't take my advice,' said Fulbright. Yet his determination in the face of such disappointment echoes through one of his last statements as a U.S. senator:

'History casts no doubt at all on the ability of human beings to deal rationally with their problems, but the greatest doubt on their will to do so. The signals of the past are thus clouded and ambiguous, suggesting hope but not confidence in the triumph of reason. With nothing to lose in any event, it seems well worth a try.' 

Fulbright died on February 9, 1995, ending one of the most illustrious careers in American politics. Reared in the segregationist South, he left an imposing legacy as a fearless, scholarly, and determined champion of human rights at home and abroad.

 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Israel/TheyDareToSpeakOut.html 

President Bill Clinton, Senator Fulbright, Mrs. Fulbright,Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1993.

Fulbright's voorspelling dat 'It's suicide for politicians to oppose' de zionistische lobby is juist gebleken, zo juist dat zelfs een Amerikaanse president in het Congres bestraffend kan worden toegesproken door een extremistische zionist als premier Netanyahu en daarvoor beloond wordt met een — in Hoflands woorden — 'ovationele bijval.' De enige waarheidsgetrouwe conclusie moet zijn dat 'money talks' in een corrupte 'democratie.' Maar juist deze waarheid wordt door een al even gecorrumpeerde opiniemaker als Henk Hofland in De Groene Amsterdammer als 'vriendschap' verkocht. En om te demonstreren hoe corrupt tevens Hoflands zelfbenoemde 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder is, kan de 'beste journalist van de twintigste eeuw'deze propaganda ook nog eens onweersproken verspreiden. Meer over mijn corrupte collega's volgende keer. 

De beloning voor zoveel jaren trouwe dienst aan de gevestigde wanorde. 


March 17, 2015

Tomgram: Nan Levinson, America's New Military Mystique

I should be used to it by now. I’m talking about the ever-more-ingrained civilian habit of eternally thanking American troops and veterans for “their service.” The most recent example that caught me off-guard: New York Times reporter Matt Richtel, covering a story about the marijuana business in Colorado, came upon a former Afghan War vet running a security company and, evidently while on the job, automatically thanked him for his service. Later, Richtel discovered how uncomfortable that former soldier and other vets from our not-exactly-stellar recent wars often feel about those regular civilian pats on the back.

And I don’t blame them. In fact, I couldn’t believe that a Timesreporter did that while on the clock. At my advanced age, I experience that increasingly all-American habit, like a number of other commonplaces of our post-9/11 world (including the word “homeland”), as distinctly un-American. In my 1950s childhood, such a habit would have been nothing short of nonsensical.

Let me explain by analogy: if you go to the grocery store, buy the makings for your dinner, and cook it yourself, you don’t sit down at the table and say, “Thank you for cooking this.” For that, you have to go to someone else’s house and consume a meal for which you did nothing whatsoever but appear. In “thank you for your service” terms, in 1950s America the military was, in an everyday sort of way, simply a part of American life. It was a draft citizen’s army and so not only ours, but us. Enormous numbers of Americans had served in World War II, a war that no one doubted was justified and necessary. As a citizen, to thank them or those then in uniform for their service was, in essence, to thank yourself. It would have made no sense whatsoever. It would have been like patting yourself on the back.

The present thank-yous reflect a new reality: Americans now feel as if the military isn’t theirs, has nothing to do with them, and is no part of their lives. It’s someone else’s dinner party (or nightmare, if you prefer). In other words, it’s a habit that reflects just how far American war, even as it has become ever more permanent in our world, has also become more alien, ever less us.

And of course there’s another obvious question to deal with: What exactly are you thanking those veterans for? By 2013, American support for the war Richtel thanked that vet for fighting had dropped below 20% and so, based on polling figures, had become possibly the “most unpopular” in our history. In other words, Richtel was thanking that vet for fighting a war that Americans in staggering numbers now believe we shouldn’t have fought. Which makes the eternal gratitude a little strange on the face of it.

Nan Levinson has spent a lot of time with the veterans of America’s recent wars and produced a new book in which they are neither simply heroes to be thanked nor victims to be pitied, but actors in their own complicated story. War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement They Built offers a grunt’s eye view of this country’s two recent occupations -- in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the complicated, unnerving world American soldiers face (including all those civilians thanking them) on returning home. Today, she considers what in the world we are to make of the new military mystique that envelops our country and the strange war culture that goes with it. Tom

The Big Dick School of American Patriotism 
And What We Make of It  

By Nan Levinson

Let’s face it: we live in a state of pervasive national security anxiety. There are various possible responses to this low-grade fever that saps resolve, but first we have to face the basis for that anxiety -- what I’ve come to think of as the Big Dick School of Patriotism, or (since anything having to do with our present version of national security, even a critique of it, has to have an acronym) the BDSP.
The BDSP is based on a bedrock belief in how America should work: that the only strength that really matters is military and that a great country is one with the capacity to beat the bejesus out of everyone else. Think of it as a military version of 50 Shades of Grey, with the same frisson of control and submission (for the American citizen) and the assumption that a good portion of the world is ripe to be bullied.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

Bin Laden and Bibi, Together At Last

Israel’s alliance with al-Qaeda

by Justin Raimondo, March 16, 2015

Print This | Share This

Remember the brouhaha a few months ago when it was revealed that fighters of the Nusra Front, the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, had seized territory adjacent to Israel? The "let’s intervene in Syria" crowd was up in arms: this supposedly proved the absolute necessity of going full-bore into the region, with US bombing raids and unrestrained support for "moderate" jihadists out to overthrow Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. After all, we can’t leave our loyal ally, Israel, at the mercy of Osama bin Laden’s heirs, can we?

As it turns out, however, Nusra has left the Israelis alone – and, indeed, it looks like there is a de facto alliance between bin Laden’s boys and Bibi’s bombardiers. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

"Nusra Front, however, hasn’t bothered Israel since seizing the border area last summer – and some of its severely wounded fighters are regularly taken across the frontier fence to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals."

We are told by the Israelis that they don’t check the identities of these injured fighters: "We don’t ask who they are, we don’t do any screening… Once the treatment is done, we take them back to the border and they go on their way," says one Israeli military official. This from a country one can’t enter from the United States without an extensive interrogation at the airport. 

Like most reporting on Israel, this story is chock full of hasbara, with the disturbing news of terrorist fighters treated in Israeli hospitals leavened with a touching tale of a young Syrian boy given a prosthetic arm due to the beneficence of his Israeli hosts. Yet this is overlaid with some darker overtones. While reporter Yaroslav Trofimov is careful to note "it would be a stretch to say that the U.S. and Israel are backing different sides in this war," he goes on to write:

"But there is clearly a growing divergence in US and Israeli approaches over who represents the biggest danger – and who should be seen, if not as an ally, at least as a lesser evil in the regional crisis sparked by the dual implosion of Syria and Iraq."

Indeed, Trofimov’s reportage refutes his careful qualifications. He points out that, while leaving Nusra alone – its encampments are "yards" away from a border that is a frequent site of tours by Israeli schoolchildren – the Israelis have begun attackingAssad’s troops and their Hezbollah allies. He also cites Amos Yadlin, former chief of Israeli military intelligence and a likely defense minister if Bibi should lose the election, who avers:

"There is no doubt that Hezbollah and Iran are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy. Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90% of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy – maybe it isn’t Israel." 

This has always been the Israeli perspective, no matter who sits in the Prime Minister’s office. In a 2003 meeting with then undersecretary of state John Bolton, Ariel Sharon made a point of saying that, while the US should indeed attack Iraq, "Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq." Israel is clearly taking a side in the religious civil war wracking the Muslim world: while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms supply weapons and money to Sunni jihadists fighting for control of the Levant – including not only Nusra but also ISIS – the Israelis are bombing Assad and sending injured jihadists back onto the battlefield. 

None of this is very surprising. Israel has never hesitated to ally with the worst elements on earth in order to advance what its leaders regard as the Jewish state’s interests. From South Africa’s apartheid regime to the death squads of Central and South America, to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) – an Iranian exile group of Marxist terrorists – Israel has always given a helping hand to whoever merits it according to their amoral calculus. And as Israeli and American interests began to radically diverge – a process that has been ongoing since the demise of the Soviet Union – it makes perfect sense that they should align with our worst enemies.

The conventional wisdom that the 9/11 attacks showed there’s no daylight between the US and Israel – "We’re all Israelis now!" exulted the Israel Firsters before the smoke cleared over Manhattan – was quite wrong. Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan University "We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” Al-Qaeda’s act, he averred, had “swung American public opinion in our favor."

Yet American opinion has always been pro-Israel, with very little sympathy for the Palestinians: what Bibi meant was that the Israeli strategic perspective – constantly pushing for the US to fight its wars – was more popular as the Bush administration began its rampage across the Middle East.

However, this war fever was necessarily of limited duration: once the madness had worn off, and the backlash against the post-9/11 hysteria began to roll in, the US public turned against the War Party. That’s when the long range impact of the "war on terrorism" on the "special relationship" between Washington and Tel Aviv began to be felt.

It didn’t take long for the "We’re all Israelis now" propaganda to wear thin in Washington. For in order to defeat radical Islamism it was necessary for the US to split the jihadist base from the leadership and dry up the pool of recruits that were flocking to bin Laden’s banner. Far from drawing away from the Muslim world, it was more than ever important for Washington to court it – and to eventually take advantage of the Sunni-Shi’ite split in favor of the latter.

We are seeing this today in the war against ISIS, with Iranian-led Iraqi Shi’ite troops on the ground getting air support from the US – and the Israelis helping the other side, albeit as discreetly as possible, along with their de facto Saudi and Gulf state allies. The open propaganda war now being waged by the Israelis against their supposed American allies is increasingly taking on a military aspect in the battle for the Levant. 

The Obama administration is determined to forge a deal with the Iranians for the simple reason that it cannot defeat the jihadists without occupying not only Iraq but also Syria and parts of Lebanon – a political, economic, and military impossibility. The Israelis, who see Iran as their principal – indeed, only – rival for regional hegemony are equally determined that this must not come to pass. The "special relationship," which has been strained ever since the latter part of George W. Bush’s second term, has now reached the breaking point. And this is going to be true no mater who sits in the Oval Office. 

Bibi is now playing the only card he has left: the well-funded and politically entrenched Israel lobby, which could formerly make or break politicians. Yet the power of this lobby has necessarily diminished over the years as the geopolitical realities of the post-9/11 era set in.

On the intellectual front, the publication of The Israel Lobby, by leading foreign policy "realists" John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, set the tone for what was to come. In exposing the key role played by Israel’s fifth column in distorting the making of American foreign policy – and dragging us into the disastrous Iraq war – the book broke the lobby’s monopoly on elite opinion and set the stage for its subsequent political defeats. The lobby’s attempt to quash the nomination of Chuck Hagel was not only defeated, but the sheer nastiness of the smear campaign aimed at him discredited the Israel Firsters among key opinion-makers and in Democratic party circles.

The final straw was Sen. Tom Cotton’s "open letter" to Iran’s leaders – which was really a letter to the American people, telling them that in any conflict between Washington and Tel Aviv GOP hard-liners would side with the latter. The backlash against this open attempt to sabotage American diplomacy in the interests of a foreign power provoked outraged cries of "treason" and calls for the 47 Senators to be charged under the Logan Act. While Cotton’s letter hardly falls under the restrictions imposed by the Logan Act – and the call itself is a dangerous not to mention stupid invocation of the growing authoritarian impulse in American politics – this kind of reaction is telling. It shows that the American people are waking up to the inordinate – and inappropriate – influence wielded by the Israeli government on our domestic political scene, and that Bibi’s playing of this particular card no longer trumps the President’s hand.

And that’s a cause for optimism. For the Israel lobby and the War Party are, in many instances, virtually identical. Diminish the power of the former, and you have clogged the engine of the latter. Which is not to say the machinery that churns out endless war propaganda has been silenced – far from it – but it is getting more difficult to start it, and, once started, it tends to stall. 

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud. 

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

Read more by Justin Raimondo

• Is Venezuela Really a Threat to US National Security? – March 12th, 2015
• Rand Paul’s Munich – March 10th, 2015
• ‘F—k the EU,’ Revisited – March 8th, 2015
• ISIS in Ukraine – March 5th, 2015
• Bibi Wants War – March 3rd, 2015

Print This | Share This | Send a letter to the editor | Letters

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/03/15/bin-laden-and-bibi-together-at-last/