Politics > Politics-USA > Elephant in the Room -- AIPAC makes Israel the Third Rail of American Foreign Policy
| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"can_o_worms" |
| Date: |
26 Apr 2006 07:07:01 AM |
| Object: |
Elephant in the Room -- AIPAC makes Israel the Third Rail of American Foreign Policy |
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/printer_1157963.php
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
From Monsters and Critics.com
US Features
Touching the third rail
By Arnaud De Borchgrave Apr 24, 2006
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- A quarter of
a million people marched in Manhattan. One hundred
thousand squeezed into Madison Square Garden, many
of them in uniform. Over 100,000 telegrams deluged
the White House. All demanded the 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 six 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 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
after 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.
http://www.ussliberty.org/
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 over
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 Congressmen who have been critical of
Israel over the past 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 website 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,
director of Mideast affairs at the White House;
David Wurmser, Mideast affairs advisor to Vice
President 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 underway 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 Perle, Feith and
Wurmser who put their names to a 1996 policy
blueprint for the then incoming Netanyahu 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
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 Perle and
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 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 Rosen, as AIPAC`s
brilliant director of foreign policy issues, has a
global Rolodex of 6,000 influential friends. For
the past 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. Ellis authorized defense
subpoenas for calling Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns,
two ranking officials Rosen claims also shared
classified information. 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.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/printer_1157963.php
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
http://www.ussliberty.org/
--
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
John J. Mearsheimer
University of Chicago - Department of Political Science
Stephen M. Walt
Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
.
|
|
| User: "zzpat" |
|
| Title: Re: Elephant in the Room -- AIPAC makes Israel the Third Rail ofAmerican Foreign Policy |
26 Apr 2006 10:58:29 AM |
|
|
can_o_worms wrote:
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/printer_1157963.php
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
From Monsters and Critics.com
US Features
Touching the third rail
By Arnaud De Borchgrave Apr 24, 2006
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- A quarter of
a million people marched in Manhattan. One hundred
thousand squeezed into Madison Square Garden, many
of them in uniform. Over 100,000 telegrams deluged
the White House. All demanded the 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 six 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 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 same republican party that whines when a US family needs help
(welfare, Katrina, health care, unemployment benefits, higher minimum
wage, lower gas prices, etc.) has no problem giving welfare money to
Israel or spending $10 billion a month in Iraq.
Israel is welfare state. Without massive US aid it wouldn't be able to
survive militarily or economically.
--
Pat
Impeach Bush
http://zzpat.bravehost.com/
Articles of Impeachment
Center for Constitutional Rights
http://zzpat.bravehost.com/april_2006/articles_of_impeachment.html
.
|
|
|
| User: "can_o_worms" |
|
| Title: Re: Elephant in the Room -- AIPAC makes Israel the Third Rail of American Foreign Policy |
26 Apr 2006 07:25:48 PM |
|
|
On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:58:29 -0500, zzpat <zzpatrick@gmail.com> wrote:
can_o_worms wrote:
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/printer_1157963.php
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
From Monsters and Critics.com
US Features
Touching the third rail
By Arnaud De Borchgrave Apr 24, 2006
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- A quarter of
a million people marched in Manhattan. One hundred
thousand squeezed into Madison Square Garden, many
of them in uniform. Over 100,000 telegrams deluged
the White House. All demanded the 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 six 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 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 same republican party that whines when a US family needs help
(welfare, Katrina, health care, unemployment benefits, higher minimum
wage, lower gas prices, etc.) has no problem giving welfare money to
Israel or spending $10 billion a month in Iraq.
Israel is welfare state. Without massive US aid it wouldn't be able to
survive militarily or economically.
Pat
Impeach Bush
http://zzpat.bravehost.com/
Articles of Impeachment
Center for Constitutional Rights
http://zzpat.bravehost.com/april_2006/articles_of_impeachment.html
Quite so as regards Uncle Sugar's extracting tribute
from secular U.S. taxpayers for the Promised Land
but if the Democrats are going to impeach : They'd
better include Cheney for both the obvious reason
and because he had more direct involvement
in appointing Likud Palestinian cleansing fanatic
Douglas Feith to cherry-pick intel to justify the Iraq
war............ And then there are all of those blatant
lies that Cheney is on video record of telling to the
people who actually fight wars for this country.
The special U.S.-Israel relationship encountered
another major hiccup during the 1967 Six-Day War
when friend and foe alike whistled with admiration
after 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.
( a MUST see )
http://www.ussliberty.org/
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
