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Israel/Zionism See other Israel/Zionism Articles Title: de Borchgrave on the Zio-Yentas. Quite ballsy (my title). Touching the third rail By Arnaud de Borchgrave April 29, 2006 A quarter of a million people marched in Manhattan. 100,000 squeezed into Madison Square Garden, many of them in uniform. More than 100,000 telegrams deluged the White House. All demanded immediate recognition of the about-to-be-born new state of Israel. Most of President Truman's Cabinet was against it. The most formidable naysayer was then-Secretary of State Gen. George Marshall. Following World War II, foreign policy professionals wrote scores of position papers that warned an independent Jewish state would trigger a "reject phenomenon" throughout the Middle East. David K. Niles, in charge of Jewish affairs at the White House, was a persuasive advocate of, and organizer for, Israel. The Holocaust of 6 million Jews, the telegrams and the marchers in New York clinched it for Truman, Israel was born at midnight (local time) May 14, 1948. U.S. recognition followed 11 minutes later. A geopolitical honeymoon lasted until 1956 when Israel, France and Britain secretly joined forces, without informing President Eisenhower, to invade Egypt to wrest back control of the Suez Canal nationalized by president Abdel Gamal Nasser, then a budding Soviet protege. The Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev seized the moment to invade Hungary to suppress an anti-communist revolution, and then rattled his rockets at Eisenhower over Suez. Eisenhower, angry and indignant at allied perfidy, and anxious to avoid a wider conflict, told the three conspiring powers to clear out of Egypt pronto. The special U.S.-Israel relationship encountered another major hiccup during the 1967 Six-Day War when friend and foe alike whistled with admiration when Israel decimated three Arab armies in less than a week. Israeli warplanes repeatedly attacked the USS Liberty, a ship intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides, flying the U.S. flag on a clear day, 15 miles off the Sinai coast, killing 34 sailors, wounding 171. . Since then Israeli and U.S. interests have gradually merged, a perception carefully nurtured by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, arguably Washington's most powerful lobby, or at least co-equal in influence with the NRA (National Rifle Association) and AARP (American Association of Retired Persons).With some 200 employees and 100,000 wealthy benefactors, AIPAC claims it doesn't have to register as a foreign agent because all its funding comes from U.S. sources. There are also more than 500,000 Israelis with dual citizenship, a number of them AIPAC contributors. Over the years, AIPAC has maneuvered to make Israel the third rail of American foreign policy. The handful of members of Congress who have been critical of Israel over the last 40 years have been publicly chastised with a figurative dunce cap, or, worse, lost their seats to AIPAC-backed opponents. Israel is an integral part of America's body politic. Yet the recent publication of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," an 83-page paper published on Harvard's Web site by two prominent academics, ran into a firestorm of vilification from government, academia and the media for documenting what is already well established. The co-authors are neither neo-Nazi skinheads nor anti-Semites. John J. Mearsheimer is a political science professor and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago. Stephen M. Walt is academic dean and a chaired professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Both are members of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. Some of their conclusions about the Israel lobby's goals: "No lobby has managed to divert foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical." American supporters of Israel promoted the war against Iraq. The senior administration officials who spearheaded the campaign were also in the vanguard of the pro-Israel lobby, e.g. then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; Elliott Abrams, Mideast affairs at the White House; David Wurmser, Mideast affairs for Vice President Richard Cheney; Richard Perle, first among neocon equals, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an influential advisory body of strategic experts. A similar effort is now under way to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. AIPAC is fighting registering as foreign agents because this would place severe limitations on its congressional activities, particularly in the legislative electoral arena.... American politicians remain acutely sensitive to campaign contributions and other forms of political pressure and major media outlets are likely to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it does. The co-authors recall it was Messrs. Perle, Feith and Wurmser who put their names to a 1996 policy blueprint for Benjamin Netanyahu's then incoming government in Israel. Titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm [Israel]," the three neocons said the rebuilding of Zionism must abandon any thought of trading land for peace with the Palestinians (i.e., repeal the Oslo accords). Next Saddam Hussein must be overthrown and democracy established in Iraq, which would then prove contagious in Israel's other Arab neighbors. When NBC's Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" asked Mr. Perle about his geopolitical laundry list for Israel's benefit, he replied, "What's wrong with that?" For all this to succeed, the neocon strategic thinkers wrote, "Israel would have to win broad American support." And to ensure this support, they advised the Israeli prime minister to use "language familiar to Americans by tapping into themes of past U.S. administrations during the Cold War, which apply as well to Israel." An Israeli columnist in Ha'aretz said Mr. Perle and Mr. Feith had been "walking a fine line" between "their loyalty to American governments" and "Israeli interests." Clearly, the FBI did not understand the role and power of AIPAC when it launched an investigation into espionage on behalf of Israel. The accused was Larry Franklin, an Iranian expert in Mr. Feith's 1,600-strong Pentagon shop. Classified Pentagon documents on Iran had been shared with senior AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. An Israeli diplomat was the ultimate recipient. When Franklin was arrested, the Israeli was promptly recalled. AIPAC fired its two senior officials who then were also indicted on charges of receiving and transmitting classified defense information in violation, not of the Espionage Act, but an obscure World War I-era statute. Franklin was sentenced to a prison term of almost 13 years -- but allowed to remain free with a promise of a much-reduced sentence if he helped the prosecution of Rosen-Weissman. But Mr. Rosen, as AIPAC's brilliant director of foreign policy issues, has a global Rolodex of 6,000 influential friends. For the last 23 years, he has been the architect of numberless congressional initiatives to meet Israel's strategic and funding needs. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III and prosecutors were running in to an invisible buzzsaw of pressure for a dismissal motion. Judge Ellis authorized defense subpoenas for calling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, two ranking officials Mr. Rosen claims also shared classified information. Judge Ellis then postponed the trial from May 17 to early August when most chattering class cognoscente will be on vacation and a motion to dismiss will hardly be noticed.
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#2. To: Starwind, your biblical perspective on this sandpit please (#0)
bump
I'm not entirely sure where (or if) to begin. There's little "biblical" about the article or the context aside from the reality of Israel's existance. I'm not clear on the point de Borchgrave is trying to make, aside from the usual 'beware the Israeli lobby' stuff, which is in part factual and in part old news and over-spun. de Borchgrave's selective history is too spotty on which to base an informed opinion. The article doesn't seem all that significant on any level - nothing new, and even old positions are rehashed poorly. He's also a day late to jump in the Mearsheimer-Walt discussion, and a dollar short in that he quotes their paper: but fails to grasp that Mearsheimer-Walt didn't actually specify at all "what the American national interest would otherwise suggest" (they were silent on what American policy would or should have been sans Israel, so they really have no basis to evaluate 'how far diverted' actual policy was - ie they provided no point of comparison, they merely assumed an unsubstantiated result) nor does de Borchgrave add anything on that score. de Borchgrave presumes much to think he knows what the FBI thinks about AIPAC or Judge Ellis's management of Rosen's trial. It seems speculation, it certainly isn't investigatve - nothing like Jason Leopold's writing. That's roughly my perspective on this particular article...
I see nothing selective with his recant of the Ziocon's rationale for war. It's fact.
Current rationale (anyone's) is not history. I was speaking to his "history" in the first 3 paragraphs and the absence of any recent history for the last 40 years - very spotty old history and no 'recent' history. When you say "recant", did you mean "recount"?
Fact. The Zio bastards managed to convince The Religious Wacko posing as President that this scheme (A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm) was viable. As we know it's a cluster fuck.
I'll grant you it is fact that Bush, "the decider", decided to attack Iraq. But what is argued is that it was only because the "Zio bastards managed to convince [him]". That is entirely a presumption, and I don't even think a plausible one. Yes it's screwed up, yes Bush wanted regime change in Iraq (and eleswhere), but no not because of Israel's benefit. Bush had bigger reasons than Israel, not necessarily smart ones, but bigger non-Israeli reasons. He can be stupid all on his own - he doesn't need (and in fact rejects any and all) advice. He does what he wants for his reasons and if someone else benefits as well, then they owe him favors. But we're arguing rational - not history. And Bush was jamming the Road Map for Peace down Sharon's throat - and may yet though it depends largely on being able to rebuild US influence and credibility - not likely at this juncture. Point being Israel does not get everything it wants, more than it should perhaps, but not everything it wants and some things it doesn't want from the US.
But what is argued is that it was only because the "Zio bastards managed to convince [him]". That is entirely a presumption, and I don't even think a plausible one. Yes it's screwed up, yes Bush wanted regime change in Iraq (and eleswhere), but no not because of Israel's benefit. Bush had bigger reasons than Israel, not necessarily smart ones, but bigger non-Israeli reasons. He can be stupid all on his own - he doesn't need (and in fact rejects any and all) advice. He does what he wants for his reasons and if someone else benefits as well, then they owe him favors. Bush the decider "IS NOT A FACT" this is a naieve assumption. Bush is surrounded by the PNAC Sanhedrin, these Zio-Nazis were soliciting regime change years before "smirk" was elected. Bush having bigger reasons than Israel to attack the Middle-East is an unbelieveable assumption. Bush is a puppet subject to the string pulling zio-nazi Rothschild Israeli Fraud. Now let's all say a Talmudic prayer with the latest fag zionist, Josh Bolten, the President's new Chief of Staff (Gate Keeper).
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