THE POWER OF ISRAEL
IN THE UNITED STATES
BY JAMES PETRAS
PART I
IN THE UNITED STATES
BY JAMES PETRAS
PART I
ZIONIST POWER IN
AMERICA
CHAPTER 1
WHO FABRICATED
THE
IRAQ WAR THREAT?
The debate and criticism in the US Congress and media of the Bush
Administration's fabricated evidence of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass
destruction and a host of other misconduct (lying to Congress, military tribunals
in Guantanamo, torture in Abu Ghraib, CIA renditions, spying on
Americans, and corruption in general) has finally reached the point of a Congressional
attempt to generate an impeachment inquiry.1
The initial
investigation and testimony of top US military and civilian officials in the
Pentagon and State Department, which revealed profound differences and
divisions between themselves and the "political appointees", has now been
embellished by public statements against the Bush administration from retired
generals, who claimed to reflect the views of the active military, and
called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld.2
The testimony and evidence of
the professionals' revelations have been crucial to understanding the structure of
real power in the Bush Administration, since it is in times of crisis and
divisions in the governing class that we, the public, are given insights into
who governs, and for whom. The ongoing debate, criticism, and division in
Washington today provide just such instances.
After years of UN inspections, and a comprehensive 15-month search by
the Iraq Survey Group, following thousands of searches and interviews by
close to ten thousand US military, intelligence and scientific inspectors, it
has been definitively demonstrated, and at last admitted by President George
W. Bush, that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction (or even of
useful national defense). This raised the key question: who in the Bush
regime provided the fabricated evidence and for what purpose?
The initial response of the Bush apologists was to attribute the fabrications
to "bureaucratic errors" and "communication failures" or as then
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz cynically claimed, to the need to
"secure a consensus for the war policy". CIA Director Tenant became the self confessed
scapegoat for the "mistakes". As the investigations progressed,
however, testimony from a multiplicity of high level sources in the regime
revealed that there were two channels of policy making and advisers, 1) the
formal structure made up of career professional military and civilians in the Pentagon and State Department, and 2) a parallel structure within the Pentagon
made up of political appointees. From all available evidence it was the
"unofficial" political advisers organized by Wolfowitz, Feith, and Rumsfeld in
the Office of Special Plans (O.S.P) who were the source of the fabricated
evidence, which was used to "justify" the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The O.S.P, which only existed briefly from September 2002 to June 2003, was
headed by Abram Shulsky and included other neo-conservatives, who had
virtually no professional knowledge or qualification in intelligence and military
affairs. Douglas Feith, then Undersecretary of Defense, and Paul Wolfowitz
set up the O.S.P. Shulsky was an avid follower and protege of Richard Perle,
the well-known militarist and long time supporter of military attacks on Arab
regimes in the Middle East.
According to the testimony of a Pentagon insider, Lieutenant Colonel
Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense
for Policy, Near East and South Asia Division and Special Plans in the Pentagon,
the "civil service and active duty military professionals were noticeably
uninvolved in key areas" of interest to Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, namely
Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowski went on to
specify that "in terms of Israel and Iraq all primary staff work was conducted by
political appointees, in the case of Israel a desk officer appointee from the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy and in the case of Iraq, Abe Shulsky."
Equally important, the ex-Pentagon official addressed the existence of "cross agency
cliques". She described how the members of a variety of neoconservative
and pro-Israel organizations (Project for a New American
Century, the Center for Security Policy, and the American Enterprise Institute),
also held office in the Bush regime and only interacted among themselves
across the various agencies. She pointed out that major decisions resulted
from "group think"—the uncritical acceptance of prevailing points of view and
the uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated views. Kwiatkowski
was forced to resign by her chief after she told him that "some folks (the
cliques and networks) in the Pentagon may be sitting beside Hussein in the
war crimes tribunal" for their destructive war and occupation policies.
What became very clear was that the O.S.P and its directors, Feith
and Wolfowitz, were specifically responsible for the fabricated evidence of the
"Weapons of Mass Destruction" that justified the war on Iraq. The OSP and the
other members of the networks that operated throughout key US agencies
shared a rightwing pro-militarist ideology and were fanatically pro-Israel.
Feith
and Perle authored an infamous policy paper in 1996 for Likud Party extremist,
Benjamin Netanyahu, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the
Realm", which called for the destruction of Saddam Hussein and his replacement
by a Hashemite monarch. The governments of Syria, Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia and Iran would then have to be overthrown or destabilized, the
paper asserted, in order for Israel to be secure in a kind of 'Greater US- Israel Co-Prosperity Sphere.'
The finger clearly pointed to Zionist zealots
who directed the O.S.P, like Abram Shulsky and Feith, as the source for the
"phony intelligence" which led to the war that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were
seeking. The manner in which the Zionist zealots organized and acted—as a
clique of arrogant like-minded fanatics hostile to any contrary viewpoints
from the professional intelligence, civilian, and military officials—indicated
that their loyalties and links were elsewhere, most evidently with the Sharon
regime in Israel. As the Guardian's Julian Borger wrote on July 17,2003, the
O.S.P "forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel
Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush
administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad
was prepared to authorize."
It is interesting to note that the influential right wing
Zionists in the Bush Administration actually provided "reports" on Iraq which
were at variance with reports from the
Israeli Mossad, which did not believe that
Iraq represented any "threat" to the US or
Israel. Mossad's skepticism was shared by
the CIA, now known to have advised the
Bush administration on the non-existence
of W.M.D.3
With the primary intelligence
agencies of Israel and the US advising
otherwise, is it credible to presume that their negative findings on Iraqi W.M.D
were overruled due to better information, and not to better clout?
The Jewish Lobby, Not Big Oil
Contrary to the view of most American progressives that oil, and
specifically the interests of Big Oil, is the primary mover, there is no evidence
that the major US oil corporations pressured Congress or promoted the war in
Iraq or the current confrontation with Iran. To the contrary: there is plenty of
evidence that they are very uneasy about the losses that may result from an
Israeli attack on Iran. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to suppose that Big
Oil is far from happy about taking the rap for all that is happening in the
Middle East, particularly when it combines with public anger at high gas
prices, and leads to Senate inquiries.
There is an abundance of evidence for the past 15 years that:
1. The oil companies did not promote a war policy.
2. The wars have prejudiced their interests, operations and agreements
with prominent Arab and Islamic regimes in the region.
3. The interests of the oil companies have been sacrificed to the
state interests of Israel.
4. The power of the pro-Israel lobbies exceeds that of the oil companies in shaping US Middle East policy.
A thorough search through the publications and lobbying activities of
the oil industry and the pro-Israel lobbies over the past decade reveals an
overwhelming amount of documentation demonstrating that the Jewish lobbies
were far more pro-war than the oil industry. Moreover the public records of
the oil industry demonstrate a high level of economic co-operation with all the
Arab states and increasing market integration. In contrast the public
pronouncements, publications, and activities of the most economically powerful
and influential pro-Israel Jewish lobbies were directed toward increasing
US government hostility to the Arab countries, including exerting maximum
pressure in favor of the war in Iraq, a boycott or military attack on Iran, and
US backing for Israeli assassination and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The most striking illustration of Jewish power in shaping US policy in
the Middle East against the interest of Big Oil is demonstrated in US-Iran
policy. As the Financial Times notes: "International oil companies are putting
multi-billion dollar projects in Iran on hold, concerned about the diplomatic
standoff [sic] [US economic-military threats] over the country's nuclear
program".4
In fact, as Michael Klare pointed out:
No doubt the major U.S. energy companies would love to be working
with Iran today in developing these vast oil and gas supplies. At
present, however, they are prohibited from doing so by Executive
Order (E.O) 12959, signed by President Clinton in 1995 and
renewed by President Bush in March 2004.5
Despite the fact that billions of dollars in oil, gas and petro-chemical
contracts are in play, the pro-Israel lobby has influenced Congress to bar all
major US oil companies from investing in Iran. Through its all-out campaign in
the US Congress and Administration, the US-Jewish-Israeli lobby has created
a warlike climate which now goes counter to the interests of all the world's
major oil companies including BP, the UK-based gas company, SASOL (South
Africa), Royal Dutch Shell, Total of France, and others.
A question to ponder is whether "war for oil" is the same as "war in
the interests of Big Oil." Writing in
the prestigious French monthly, Le
Monde Diplomatique, in April 2003,
Yahya Sadowski argued:
As part of their grand plan for using a "liberated" Iraq as a base from
which to promote democracy and capitalism across the Middle
East, [the Neocons] want Baghdad to explore for new reserves,
rapidly increase production capacity
22
A question to ponder is whether
"war for oil" is the same as "war
in the interests of Big Oil".
Who Fabricated the Iraq War Threat?
and quickly flood the world market with Iraqi oil. They know that this
would lead to an oil price crash, driving it to $15 a barrel or less.
They hope that this collapse will stimulate economic growth in the
US and the West, finally destroy O.P.E.C (the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries), wreck the economies of "rogue
states" (Iran, Syria, Libya), and create more opportunities for
"regime change" and democratization...
Multinational companies—giants such as Exxon/Mobil,
British Petroleum, Shell, Total and Chevron-Texaco— have diversified
sources of production and have less to fear from a price collapse. But
the US administration does not listen to them (most are not even
American). When Bush Junior was elected, they lobbied hard for a
repeal of the Iran-Libya sanctions act and other embargo's that
curbed their expansion of holdings in the Middle East. The Bush
team rebuffed their pleas and Vice-President Dick Cheney
produced his 2001 national energy policy that focused on opening
new areas within the US for energy exploration.6
...
Multinational oil companies, US and other, have plenty to
be ashamed of, from their despoliation of the Niger Delta to their
support for state terrorism in Indonesia. But they have not been
pushing for a war against Iraq. The Bush administration planned its
campaign against Baghdad without input from these companies, and
apparently without a clue about the basics of oil economics.7
The neo-con objective of bringing down OPEC (while achieving access to
oil for Israel) was foiled by the dismal state of the Iraqi oil infrastructure, after
the impact of a decade of international sanctions (as Sadowski argued), and by
the Iraqi resistance,8
which has rendered the prospect of any bonanza from
Iraqi oil revenues moot.
To understand the central role of the Zionist ideologues in shaping
US foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere, it is important to frame it in
the context of US-Israel relations and the powerful influence of the pro-Israel
lobby inside of the US. As Patrick Seal described them in the liberal
US weekly, The Nation, 'The Friends of Ariel Sharon (among the Jewish pro-Israel
zealots) loath Arabs and Muslims... What they wished for was an
improvement in Israel's military and strategic environment".
The US invasion of Iraq and its aggressive military posture toward
most Arab regimes in the Middle East made the names of these Zionist
policymakers known to the world. Wolfowitz and Feith were second and
third in command of the Pentagon. Their proteges in the OPS included Abram Shulsky, Richard Perle, then chairman of the Defense Policy Board,
and Elliot Abrams (a defender of the Guatemalan genocide of the 1980's),
then Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs for the National
Security Council.
Washington's most influential pro-Israel zealots include
William Kristol and Robert Kagan of The Weekly Standard, the Pipes family
and a large number of pro-Israel institutes which work closely with and share
the outlook of the right wing Zionists in the Pentagon. The consensus among
US critics of the Bush Administration is that "9/11 provided the right wing
Zionist zealots with a unique chance to harness US Middle East policy and
military power in Israel's interest and succeeded in getting the United States to
apply the doctrine of pre-emptive war to Israel's enemies".9
The evidence
implicating the US Zionists in the war policy was so overwhelming that even
the mainstream Zionist organizations refrained from crying 'anti-Semitism'.
Concerned more with Israeli supremacy than US military losses, the
zealous Zionists ignored the emerging quagmire of the US military in Iraq,
and went on to plan new wars targeting
Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and
even Saudi Arabia, raising a whole
new series of "intelligence reports"
accusing the Arab countries of
funding, protecting and promoting
terrorism. Their prefabricated intelligence
continued to flow while they were in government office, and does
so even today.
As US military casualties mount daily in Iraq, with an unofficial estimate
of 2579 US deaths by August 1 st, 2006,10 as the military costs of the
war near 300 billion 11 and further undermine the US economy, the American
public has become disenchanted with the Bush Administration. As the public
investigations proceeded, the operations of the O.S.P, and the identity of its
architects and propagandists who promoted the US war against Iraq and for
Israel's supremacy were made public.
Yet what might have been anticipated as a harsh and righteous backlash
by the American public against the neo-conservative Zionist ideologues
and their networks in and out of the government in general is only slowly
mounting—and may not rise sufficiently swiftly to deflect their plans for a
forthcoming war against Iran. True, the O.S.P has been shut down, Paul
Wolfowitz has been forced out of the Pentagon and moved to the World
Bank,12 Douglas Feith seems set to find a niche in academia,13 and Richard
Perle has resigned his chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board. But Elliot
Abrams' star is on the ascendant,14 Donald Rumsfeld, however attacked by his
own generals, remains under presidential protection in the Department of
Defense, Dick Cheney remains in the saddle, and the Bush Administration
has moved on to target Iran in terms and processes startlingly similar to those which preceded the war against Iraq.
Though the understanding of the general public appears to have moved
beyond the original official reasons for war (W.M.D's, the presence of Al Qaeda,
and "bringing democracy"), and even beyond its supplemental pretexts (regime
change, human rights), the present focus of both public and progressive
criticism is directed largely towards the interests of Big Oil or "empire" as the
source of the conflict. The notion that the US went to war against Iraq for the
greater good of Israel remains largely absent from commentary in the major
media.
A very small number of progressive Jews raised serious questions
about the uncritical support of Israel by mainstream Jewish organizations
and were sharply critical of the Zionist zealots in the Pentagon. However, in
the wake of the firestorm ignited by the publication of the Mearsheimer and
Walt article, 'The Israel Lobby" in the London Review in March 2006, it seems
clear that the extent of Israeli influence not only on US Middle East policy,
but on America's democratic political institutions and processes as a whole
poses a much greater problem for progressive Americans, especially since
most progressive Jews went into denial—denying the relevance of the essay,
and denying the power of the Jewish Lobby to impact American foreign policy, a
point that will be more fully elaborated in a later chapter.
CHAPTER 2
US-IRAQ-ISRAEL-
ZIONIST
CONNECTION
Why did the US go to war against Iraq in March 2003 with further
plans to attack Syria, Iran, and probably Lebanon? The reasons given thus
far have all been discredited. No weapons of mass destruction have been
discovered. No ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda have been established. No
threats to US security existed. Many of the past and present allies of the US
have equal or worse human rights records than did Iraq. The war, conquest,
occupation, killing, and vile systematic torture and imprisonment of thousands
of Iraqis have aroused the hostility and indignation of hundreds of
millions of Christians, Muslims and free thinkers throughout the world, justly
discrediting the entire political establishment in Washington and overseas.
Who Benefited from the Iraq War?
Who benefited, then, from the US war? By examining the beneficiaries
we can get an idea who had a motive for promoting this crime against
humanity.
America itself has reaped the opprobrium of the world, which continues
to impact American individuals and businesses. Terrorism is on the rise, while
US security might be presumed to have worsened.1
The mounting costs of
the war, which some forecast could surpass two trillion dollars,2
are slowly
eating through the American infrastructure. The prospect of extending an
American empire faced by potential challenges to its hegemony is a growing
concern for empire builders, given the growing ideological, human, and
material costs in Iraq. While the OPEC countries for a time rejected US and
EU pressures to pump more oil to lower sky-high prices—partly a hostile
response to the US invasion of Iraq—today the price of oil seems resistant to
efforts to lower it, with the attendant dismal impact upon the American and
world economy.
US oil companies have been faced with a growing anti-colonial resistance,
and their investments throughout the Middle East and South Central
Asia are under siege. Big Oil may have enjoyed windfall profits, but these
were unanticipated, and its operations in Iraq are in a shambles.3
The only major beneficiary of the war has been the State of Israel,
which has succeeded in having the US destroy its most consistent Arab
adversary in the Middle East—the regime that extended the greatest political
support to the Palestinian resistance. The
decades-long US assault on Iraq has
achieved the forced demodemization 4
of Iraqi
military and civilian technological infrastructure,
the dissolution of its military, the
disarray of its governing processes, and
possibly incited the outbreak of civil war,
which carries the potential for the dismemberment and actual
disappearance of the country altogether. Iraq, together with Iran and Syria,
had formed the core resistance to Israeli expansionist plans to expel the
Palestinians and conquer and occupy all of Palestine. What were the
obstacles to Greater Israel?
1) The two Intifadas, the uprisings of Palestinians who refused to be
driven out of their country, which were able to inflict losses on the self-styled
Chosen People of God (Israel is by law an exclusively Jewish state, inhabited
by immigrants mainly from Europe and their children, and governed by
exclusionary religious dogma).
2) Hezbollah, an organization founded due to and for the purpose of
counteracting the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, had inflicted a strategic
military-political defeat on Israel, forcing them and their client Lebanese
Maronite Christian mercenary allies to evacuate from Southern Lebanon.
3) Iraq, Iran and Syria, the three countries which were most consequential
in their opposition to Israeli annexation and regional domination,
were developing economic and political ties with a multitude of countries and
especially in the case of oil contracts, signing trade and exploitation agreements
with Japan, China, Russia as well as Western European corporations.
Israel's hopes for sharing a co-prosperity economic sphere of domination
with Washington based on servile, client Arab regimes were becoming increasingly
doubtful.
4) The Iraqi regime was slowly recovering, despite the decade-long
US-European boycott and constant US-UK military aggression. With time
running out, the Israelis and their Zionist agents in the Bush administration
realized that an agreement to end the boycott and normalize relations with
Iraq was on the horizon following the UN inspection teams' certification of the
absence of W.M.D, which would lead to Iraq forming joint ventures with French
and Russian oil companies, a possible shift of the Iraqi oil trade into Euros,
and diminishing influence of Israel's protector state in the region.
5) There was a deepening internal crisis in Israel over the economic
costs and personal insecurity accompanying the policy of the colonial settlements
and savage repression in the Occupied Territories. Israel's out-migration was now exceeding its in-migration, its Jewish-based welfare policies were
eroding, and hundreds of active reservists were refusing military duty in the
dirty colonial war. The plan to "democratize" the Middle East proposed by US
Zionists in the government in essence intended joint control by the US and
Israel over the entire Middle East via a series of wars.5
A series of US wars
against independent Arab regimes, beginning with Iraq, was clearly in the
interests of the Israeli state and so it was perceived by the Sharon regime, its
secret police (Mossad), the Israeli military, and right wing Zionists in positions
of influence in Washington.
How was the Israeli state able to influence the US imperial state into
pursuing a series of wars, which would imperil its own imperial economic and
security interests and further those of Israel? The most direct answer is to
be found in the role played by key pro-Zionist officials in and around the most
important policy making positions in the Bush administration. These US
officials had long-standing ideological and political ties to the Israeli state,
including policy advisory positions. Throughout most of their political lives
they had dedicated themselves to furthering Israel's state interests in the
US.
While the design and execution of the US war strategy was in the
hands of Zionist civilian militarists in the Pentagon, they were only able to
succeed because of the powerful support exercised by Sharon's acolytes in
the major Jewish organizations in the US. The Conference of Presidents of
Major Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, A.I.P.A.C, and thousands
of their activists—doctors, dentists, philanthropists, real estate
magnates, financiers, journalists, media moguls, and academics—acted in
concert with key Jewish politicians and ideologues to press the case for a
war because, they would argue, it was in the interest of the State of Israel to
destroy Saddam Hussein and the secular Baath Party state apparatus.
But who can say that doing so was in the interests of imperial US,
which in Saddam already had a strongman in place, prepared to act in the
service of America? How did Saddam, another of those known as "our" son-of-a bitch,6
manage to get himself in the cross hairs of America? By invading
Kuwait (which received the "go ahead" from US Ambassador April Glaspie, and
was widely viewed in the Arab world as his entrapment)? Or by his noncooperation
concerning the multiple interests of Israel (oil, water, and Palestine).
The issue of access to oil has long been problematic for Israel, due to
its inability to purchase oil from neighboring countries. In typical fashion, this
problem was resolved through the September 1 st, 1975 Israel-US Memorandum
of Agreement Concerning Oil, whereby the US agreed to guarantee Israel's
access to oil—an agreement which has been regularly renewed over the
subsequent period, at some cost to US taxpayers (see below). By 2003,
however, with pro-Zionist forces calling the shots in the US government and
Operation Iraqi Freedom afoot, the prospect of Israeli access to Iraqi oil neared fruition. Israeli National Infrastructures Minister Joseph Paritzky requested
an assessment of the condition of the old oil pipeline from Mosul to Haifa,
with an eye toward renewing the flow of oil "in the event of a friendly postwar
regime in Iraq".7
Paritzky noted that the pipeline would cut Israel's energy
bill drastically, probably by more than 25 per cent, since the country was
currently largely dependent on expensive imports from Russia. On June 21,
2003, Reuters reported: "Netanyahu says Iraq-Israel oil line will open in near
future." By August 2003, Haaretz was to report that: "The United States has
asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries
in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon
official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem."8
(Now who might that
have been...?) By 2006, three US bases were under construction in the north
of Iraq falling along the potential construction line of an oil pipeline from Kirkuk
oil fields to the Israeli shipping seaport and petroleum-refining city of Haifa
(see diagrams below), with a view to turning that city into a "New Rotterdam".9
US-Israel relations have been described in a variety of ways. Politicians
refer to Israel as the US 's most reliable ally in the Middle East, if not
the world. Others speak of Israel as a strategic ally. Some speak of Israel
and the US as sharing common democratic values in the war against terrorism.
On the Left, critics speak of Israel as a tool of US imperialism for
undermining Arab nationalism, and a bulwark against fundamentalist Islamic
terrorism. Very few writers point to the "excess influence" which the Israeli
governments exercise on US government policy via powerful Jewish lobbies
and individuals in media, financial and governmental circles, or their exercise of
that influence for the primary benefit of Israel, irrespective of how that
impacts the well-being of the United States.
While there is a grain of truth in much of the above, there are numerous unique aspects in this relationship between the US, an imperial power, and Israel, a regional power. Unlike Washington's relation with the EU, Japan and Oceania, it is Israel which pressures and secures a vast transfer of financial resources (by 2004, $2.8 billion per year, $84 billion over 30 years).10 Israel secures the latest arms and technology transfers, unrestrictive entry into US markets, free entry of immigrants, unconditional commitment of US support in case of war and repression of colonized people, and guaranteed US vetoes against any critical UN resolutions.
From the angle of inter-state relations, it is the lesser regional power which exacts a tribute from the Empire, a seemingly unique or paradoxical outcome. The explanation for this paradox is found in the powerful and influential role of pro-Israel Jews in strategic sectors of the US economy, political parties, Congress and Executive Branch. The closest equivalent to past empires is that of influential white settlers in the colonies, who through their overseas linkages were able to secure subsidies and special trading relations.
The Israeli "colons" in the US have invested and donated billions of dollars to Israel, in some cases diverting funds from union dues of low paid workers to purchase Israel Bonds, which in turn were used to finance new colonial settlements in the Occupied Territories. In other cases Jewish fugitives from the US justice system have been protected by the Israeli state, especially super rich financial swindlers like Mark Rich, and even gangsters and murderers. Occasional official demands of extradition from the Justice Department have been pointedly ignored.
In turn, the colonized Empire has gone out of its way to cover up its subservience to its supposed ally, but in fact hegemonic power. In 1967, the USS Liberty, a communications and reconnaissance ship sent to monitor belligerents in the third Israeli-Arab war, was bombed and strafed by Israeli fighter planes in international waters for nearly an hour, killing 34 seamen and wounding 173 of a crew of 297. Intercepted Israeli messages as well as the clearly displayed US flag demonstrate that this was a deliberate act of aggression. Washington acted as any Third World country would when faced with an embarrassing attack by its hegemon: it silenced its own naval officers who witnessed the attack, and quietly received compensation and a proforma apology.11
Not only was this an unprecedented action in US military and diplomatic relations with an ally, there is no case on record of an imperial country covering up an assault upon itself by a regional ally.12 On the contrary, similar circumstances have been followed by diplomatic and bellicose responses. This apparent anomaly cannot in any way be explained by military weakness or diplomatic failures: the US is a military superpower, and its diplomats are capable of forceful, even bullying, representation to allies or adversaries, when the political will is present. But the Jewish/American Lobby, Congress people, media and Wall Street moguls strategically located in the US politico-economic system ensured that President Johnson would behave like a docile subject. No direct pressures were necessary, for a hegemonized political leadership acts seemingly on its own beliefs, having learned the rules of the political game. The bottom line is this: the Israel-US relationship is so entrenched that not even an unprovoked military attack could call it into question. Like all hegemonized powers, Washington threatened the US Naval witnesses with a court marital if they spoke out, while they coddled their attackers in Tel Aviv.13
Another illustration of the asymmetrical relation is found in one of
the most important espionage cases during the Cold War involving an Israeli
agent, Jonathan Pollard, and the Pentagon. Over several years Pollard stole
and duplicated bagfuls of top-secret documents about US intelligence, counterintelligence,
strategic plans, and military weaponry, and turned them over to
his Israeli handlers. This was the biggest case of espionage carried out against
the US by any ally in recent history. Pollard and his wife were convicted in
1986. The US Government privately protested to the Israeli government. The
Israelis, on the other hand, through their Jewish-American allies, organized a
lobby to propagandize in his favor. Eventually all top Israeli leaders and Jewish/American
lobbyists campaigned for his pardon, and almost succeeded with
President Clinton.
The unequal relation is clearly evident in the case of a major fugitive
from justice, Marc Rich. A financier and trader, he was indicted in the US
federal court on several counts of swindling and defrauding clients. He fled to
Switzerland and subsequently obtained an Israeli passport and citizenship,
investing hefty sums of his ill-gotten wealth into Israeli industries and charities.
Despite the seriousness of his offense, Rich hobnobbed with top political leaders in Israel and its economic elite. In the year 2000, the Prime Minister of
Israel and numerous pro-Israeli Jewish personalities, including Rich's ex-wife,
convinced Clinton to pardon him. While an outcry was raised about a linkup
between the Rich pardon and his wife's $100,000-plus contribution to the
Democratic Party, the underlying relationship of subordination to Israeli
influence and the power of the Israeli Lobby in the US was clearly more
important. It is worth noting that it is extraordinarily unusual for a US President
to consult with a foreign ruler (as Clinton consulted with Barak) in dealing
with an accused swindler. It is unprecedented to pardon an indicted fugitive
who fled his trial and never served any sentence. But then, the US faces
great difficulty in securing any extraditions whatsoever from Israel—even private
citizens wanted for committing murder in the US are not returned for
trial,14 despite the purported closeness of the two states. What are the implications
for the American criminal justice system of a "home free" territory for
Jewish-American criminals?
The power of Israel is manifested in the numerous annual pilgrimages that influential US politicians make to Israel to declare their loyalty to the Israeli state, even during periods of intensive Israeli repression of a rebellious subject people.15 Rather than reprimanding Israel for an aggressive act of war against another state and for internationally-condemned human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, US satraps of the Israeli mini-empire applauded its bloody repression of Intifada's I and II, and the Jewish state's invasion of Lebanon in 1982—as they do in 2006— and opposed any international mediation to prevent further Israeli massacres, thereby sacrificing US credibility in the United Nations and in world public opinion.
In votes in the United Nations, even in the Security Council—despite overwhelming evidence of human rights violations presented by EU allies— Washington has toiled in the service of its hegemon. Sacrificing international credibility and deliberately alienating 150 other nations, Washington labeled criticisms of Israeli racism as "anti-Semitic". But this does not mark the high point of Washington's servility to Israel.
The most recent and perhaps the key indicator of US servility occurred in the months preceding and following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On December 12, 2001 Fox News learned from US intelligence sources and federal investigators that 60 Israelis engaged in a long-running effort to spy on US government officials had been detained since 9/11. Many of those arrested were active Israeli military or intelligence operatives. They had been arrested under the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act. Many failed polygraph questions dealing with surveillance activities in and against the United States.
More seriously, federal investigators had reason to believe that the Israeli operatives gathered intelligence about the September 11 attacks in advance and did not share it with its Washington ally. The degree of Israeli involvement in September 11 is a tightly guarded secret. A highly placed federal investigator told Fox News there are "tie-ins". When asked to provide details, the federal investigator refused. "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/ 11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information."16
Nothing so exemplifies the power of Israel over Washington as this case of Israeli espionage. Even in the case of the worst attack on the American mainland in US history, Washington suppressed federally collected evidence linking known Israeli spies to possible evidence about prior knowledge. Clearly this evidence might raise questions about the links and ties between political and economic elites, as well as undermine strategic relations in the Middle East. More important, it would pit the Bush Administration against the Jewish-American Lobby and its powerful informal and formal networks in the media, finance, and in government.17
Fox News obtained numerous classified documents from federal investigators probably frustrated by the cover-ups of Israeli espionage by political leaders in Washington. These documents brought to light by Carl Cameron revealed that even before September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secret investigation of large-scale, longterm Israeli espionage in the United States. Not one of the other major print or electronic media reported on these arrests. Neither the President nor any Congressional leaders spoke out on Israeli's pervasive and sustained effort to obtain key US military and intelligence information.
The classified documents detailed "hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country" that investigators claimed could be Israeli organized intelligence gathering activities. Israeli agents targeted and penetrated military bases, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the IRS, the INS, the EPA, the US Marshall's Service, dozens of government facilities, and even secret office and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel, according to the Federal documents cited by Fox News. A document issued by the Government Accountability Office (an investigatory arm of the US Congress), also cited, referred to Israel as "Country A", saying "the government of Country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the US of any US ally." A Defense Intelligence report said Israel has a "voracious appetite for information... It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the US is a high priority."
Carl Cameron's Fox News Report appeared on the Fox News Internet site briefly in December, 2001 (Dec. 12, 2001) and then disappeared—there was no follow up—or, as might be expected in cases of error, no disclaimer or official correction and/or apology. None of the other mass media picked up on this major espionage report. No doubt the powerful pro-Israeli influential in the mass media played a role. More significantly than direct "pressure", Israeli hegemony "persuades" or "intimidates" the media establishment and political leaders to operate with maximum discretion in limiting reporting about Israel's appropriation of strategic information.
While the web of Israeli agents are sometimes subject to arrest, interrogation and expulsion, the Israeli state and the ministers in charge are never publicly condemned, nor are there any official diplomatic ripostes such as the symbolic temporary withdrawal of the US Ambassador. The closest parallel to US behavior toward Israeli spies is the response of poor, dependent Third World countries to US espionage. In that context docile rulers quietly ask the Ambassador to rein in some of the more aggressive agents.
Now, however, that US federal investigators have revealed that the Israelis may have known about the attack before it occurred and did not share the information, this raises further questions concerning the relationship between the Arab terrorists and the Israeli secret police. Did the Israelis penetrate the group or pick up information about them?18 Federal investigators' confidential information could probably clarify these vital questions. But will the confidential information ever become public? Most likely not—for the very reason that it would expose the extent of Israeli influence in the US via its secret agents and more importantly via its powerful overseas lobby and allies in the US government and finance. The lack of any public statement concerning Israel's possible knowledge of 9/11 is indicative of the vast, ubiquitous and aggressive nature of its powerful Diaspora supporters.19 Given the enormous political and economic importance which the mass media have given to 9/11, and the sweeping powers, funding, and institutions created around the issue of national security, it is astonishing that no further mention has been made about Israel's spy networks operating in the US's most delicate spheres of counter-terrorism.
But then, it is not astonishing at all if we understand properly the "unique relationship" between the US Empire and Israel, a regional power.
Moreover Israel establishes limits on US-Middle Eastern policy in the international forums. Israel's hegemonic position has endured under both Democratic and Republican presidencies for almost half a century. In other words it is a structural historical relation, not one based on personalities, or particular transitory policy making configurations.
Several hypotheses emerge from an examination of this unique relationship.
The first stems from the fact that the territorial Israeli state has little power of persuasion, economic reach, or military clout in comparison to the major powers (Europe and the US). The power of Israel is based on that of the Diaspora, the highly structured and politically and economically powerful Jewish networks which have direct and indirect access to the centers of power and propaganda in the most powerful imperial country in the world. Tribute is exacted via the influence of these "internal colonialists" who operate at the level of mass media opinion makers and via Congress and the Presidency. Close to 60 percent of Democratic Party funding and 35 percent of Republican Party funding comes from pro-Israeli Jews. For every dollar spent by the Jewish networks in influencing voting outcomes, the Israeli state receives $50 in aid to finance the building and arming of colonial settlements in the Occupied Territories complete with swimming pools, Romanian gardeners and Filipino maids.
Through overseas networks the Israeli state can directly intervene and set the parameters to US foreign aid in the Middle East. The overseas networks play a major role in shaping the internal debate on US policy toward Israel. Propaganda associating Israeli repression of Palestinians as the righteous response of the victims of the Holocaust has been repeated and circulated throughout the mass media. Iranian President Ahmadinejad's suggestion that Holocaust victims might more properly be compensated by land located in Europe or in the countries that victimized them was misreported, then highly circulated to fuel, instead, the notion of a rabid anti-Semitic Iran. From the height of the network to the lawyers' boardrooms, and the doctors' lounges, the pro-Israel supporters of the network aggressively attack as "anti-Semites" any critical voices. Through local intimidation and malicious intervention in the professions, the zealots defend Israeli policy and leaders, contribute money, organize voters, and run for office. Once in office they tune in to Israeli policy needs.
The phenomenon of overseas expatriates attempting to influence an imperial power is not an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. The Cuban exiles in Miami exercise significant influence in both major parties. But in no other case has linkage led to the establishment of an enduring hegemonic relationship: an empire colonized by a regional power, with the US paying tribute to Israel, subject to the ideological blinders of its overseas colons, and launching aggressive wars on its behalf.
Many questions remain to be answered as the Empire aggressively pursues its military expansion and the internal voices of repression narrow the terms of public debate.
As the colons extend their influence throughout the political and intellectual spheres of the US, they feel more confident in asserting Israel's superiority to it, particularly in the areas of political coercion and war. They brazenly boast of Israel's superior security system, its methods of interrogation including its techniques of torture, and demand that the US follow Israel's war agenda in the Middle East. In Israel, there is acknowledged state-sanctioned physical and mental abuse of prisoners in interrogation, which has broad public support.21
Seymour Hersh even urged the US FBI and intelligence agencies to
follow the Israeli secret police's tactics and use or threaten to use torture of
family members of terror suspects.22 (See more on Hersh's pro-Israel bias in
Chapter 4.) The US followed suit by imprisoning the wives and daughters of
wanted Iraqi Baathists. Richard Perle, then highly influential in Rumsfeld's
Defense Department, advocated the Israeli tactics of offensive bombing of
adversaries. "In 1981 the Israelis faced an urgent choice: should they allow
Saddam Hussein to fuel a French built nuclear reactor near Baghdad or
destroy it? The Israelis decided to strike preemptively. Everything we know
[sic] about Saddam Hussein forces [sic] President Bush to make a similar
choice: to take a pre-emptive action or wait, possibly until it is too late."23
Another prominent colon, Senator Joseph Lieberman, called on the
US to bomb Syria, Iraq and Iran immediately after 9/11, echoing Prime Minister
Sharon's policy advice to President Bush. Alan Dershowitz, Harvard
Law professor, publicly endorsed both torture and repressive legislation in the
US—modeled on the Israeli system of unlimited detention of Palestinians.24
The colons subordinate US policy to Israel's foreign policy needs, independent of the US's own circumstances and in reflection of the extremities to which Israel's colonial policies push it. Moreover as representatives of Israeli hegemonic power in the US, they even try to micro manage security measures—torture in interrogation—as well as becoming vociferous advocates of a generalized Middle East war. The colons have successfully influenced the US government to block any EU initiatives toward international mediation, as well as the US-sponsored Mitchell Plan, advocating peace observers in the occupied territories. In a word, the US, despite its occasional inconsequential criticism of Israel's excesses, has not only been an unconditional supporter of Israel, but it has done so in the context of a prolonged bloody repression and occupation of Palestinian territories, which Washington is a party to securing. Israeli hegemony over the US via its colons affords it a formidable weapon for neutralizing the US's NATO allies, Arab petroleum clients, the vast majority of the General Assembly in the United Nations, and even its own public on certain Middle Eastern issues.
Even more dangerous is the irrational paranoia that the colons transfer from Israeli politics to the US. All Arabs are suspect as was evident in the Zionist-instigated congressional outcry about the purchase of US ports by a Dubai firm. Middle Eastern adversaries should be threatened if not bombed. Secret military tribunals and summary justice should be meted out to suspected terrorists. The mass media is especially tuned to pick up the Israeli paranoid syndrome: magnifying every threat, celebrating Israeli resolution and efficiency against Arab "terrorists". The paranoid style of politics had led to Israel's attacks on Arab countries in the Middle East, espionage on the US, illegal purchase of nuclear devices in the US, and unremitting violence against the Palestinians and Lebanese. The assimilation of the Israeli hyper-paranoid style by the US has vast and dangerous consequences not only for the Mideast but also for the rest of the world, and for democratic freedom in the US.
What the intellectual colons and other Israeli publicists forget to mention is that Israeli security policy in the Occupied Territories is a total disaster: bus stations, public malls, five star hotels, and pizzerias in Israel and all Israeli frontiers have been attacked. Hundreds of Israeli citizens have been killed and injured. Tens of thousands of educated Israelis have fled the country precisely because of insecurity and the proximity of violence, which neither the Shin Ben, the Army nor the settlers are capable of preventing. A few Israeli intellectuals are especially embittered by the enormous costs of the settlement movement.25
Blind to Israel's security failures, the colons insist on creating conditions for internal repression and external war. Given their influential role in the mass media, their prominence in the editorial and opinion pages of the most prestigious newspapers, the colons' message reaches far beyond their limited numbers and the mediocrity of their intellect. Location and money can make up for their psychological and political pathologies as well as override any qualms about dual loyalties.
Without external aid Israel's economy would require severe cutbacks in living standards and working conditions, leading to the likely flight of most Israeli professionals, businessmen, and recent overseas immigrants. The Israeli military budget would be reduced and Israel would be obligated to reduce its military interventions in the Arab East and the Occupied Territories. Israel would cease being a rentier state living on overseas subsidies and would be obligated to engage in productive activity—a return to farming, manufacture and services minus the exploitation of low paid Asian maids, imported Eastern European farm workers, and Palestinian construction laborers.
Europe continues to privilege the importation of Israeli exports 28 and financial services, despite overt and malicious attacks by leaders of both Israeli parties. Prominent Jewish organizations linked to major parties in France and England have muted any efforts to use the "trade card" to pressure Israel to accept European Union or United Nations mediation. European trade and financial ties to Israel however are not the basic prop for the Israeli war machine. The principle basis for long-term, large-scale financial support is found in the US, among public and private institutions.
In the United States there are essentially four basic sources of financial, ideological and political support for the Israeli rentier economy:
1. Wealthy Jewish contributors and powerful disciplined fund-raising organizations.
2. The US government—both Congress and the Presidency.
3. The mass media, particularly the New York Times, Hollywood, and the major television networks.
4. The trade union bosses and the heads of pension funds.
There is substantial overlap in these four institutional configurations. For example, Jewish supporters in the Israeli lobby work closely with Congressional leaders to secure long-term, large-scale US military and economic aid for Israel. Most of the mass media and a few trade unions are influenced by unconditional supporters of the Israeli war machine. Pro-Israel Jews are disproportionately represented in the financial, political, professional, academic, real estate, insurance and mass media sectors of the American economy. While Jews are a minority in each and every one of these categories, their disproportionate power and influence stems from the fact that they function collectively: they are organized, active, and concentrate on a single issue—US policy in the Middle East, and specifically in securing Washington's massive, unconditional, and continuing military, political and financial support for Israel. Operating from their strategic positions in the power structure, they are able to influence policy and censor any dissident commentators or views from circulating freely in the communications and political system.
In the political sphere, pro-Israeli politicians and powerful Jewish organizations have joined forces with (and even animate)29 pro-Israel ultra right wing mass-based Christian fundamentalist powerful political leaders tied to the military-industrial complex, such as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. Israel's unconditional support of Washington's Cold War and subsequent anti-terrorist military offensive has further strengthened ideological and military ties between US right wing political leaders, pro-Israeli politicians and the leaders of the leading Jewish organizations. The politics of Washington's new imperialism coincides splendidly with the Sharon-Olmert conquest and destruction of the Occupied Territories.
Wealthy and organized Jewish organizations, compliant Congressional representatives and right wing fundamentalist organizations are not the only financial supporters of Israel. US taxpayers have been funding the Israeli war machine with over $3 billion a year of direct assistance for over 35 years totaling over $100 billion and continuing to mount).
The data below, compiled by the C.R.S Issue Brief in 2004,30 provide some notion of the extent of U.S. aid and its special features:
• Israel has received more than $90 billion in US aid up to 2003, of which $75 billion has been in grants (i.e. nonrepayable), and $15 billion in loans.
• Since 1985, the United States has provided $3 billion in grants annually to Israel.
• Resettlement assistance for Soviet and Ethiopian immigrants peaked in 1992 at $80 million, but continues to be subsidized at $60 million for 2003, $50 million in 2004 and again in 2005.
• In 1990, Israel requested $10 billion in loan guarantees, which would enable Israel to borrow from US commercial establishments, with their loans guaranteed against default by the US government. In 2004, a further $9 billion in loan guarantees was included in P.L. 1088-11. (NOTE: Loan guarantees is the area of financial support to Israel that the US government attacks to indicate its displeasure with Israeli settlement activities. The $10 billion authorized in loan guarantees for 1993-1996 was reduced by $774 million in penalties for settlement expansion.31 No matter: Israel only drew loans on the $10 billion worth about 6.6 billion—annulling any effect from the purported penalty.)
• Economic aid became all grant cash transfer in 1981, and military aid similarly in 1985.
What might be called optimization techniques are employed to further increase (and disguise?) the actual extent of financing, such as:
• Loans with repayment waived (or a pledge to provide Israel with economic assistance equal to the amount Israel owes the United States for previous loans). Since 1974 through 2003, Israel received more than $45 billion in waived loans.
• Since 1982, the US pays Israel E.S.F funds in one lump sum early in the fiscal year, rather than in four quarterly installments, as is the usual practice with other countries. "The United States pays more in interest for the money it borrows to make lump sum payments. AID officials estimate that it cost the United States between $50 million and $60 million per year to borrow funds for the early, lump-sum payment. In addition, the U.S. government pays Israel interest on the E.S.F funds invested in U.S. Treasury notes, according to AID officials. It has been reported that Israel earned about $86 million in U.S. Treasury note interest in 1991."32 The practice has continued in subsequent years.
In addition, the US has supported the development of the Israeli military defense industry, inter alia through:
• $625 million to develop and deploy the Arrow anti-missile missle.
• $1.8 billion to develop the Lavi aircraft. "On August 20, 1987, the Israeli cabinet voted to cancel the Lavi project, but asked the United States for $450 million to pay for canceled contracts. The State Department agreed to raise the FMF earmark for procurement in Israel from $300 million to $400 million to defray Lavi cancellation costs."33
• US military assistance for military purchases in Israel (26.3%). This meant that in 2004, $568 million in military aid could be spent in Israel. (Most US military aid is for purchases of US arms.)
Further support comes through the US government's guarantee of Israel's access to oil, via the Israel-United States Memorandum of Agreement, 1 September 1975. According to Ed Vuillamy, writing in the London Observer.
The memorandum has been quietly renewed every five years, with special legislation attached whereby the US stocks a strategic oil reserve for Israel even if it entailed domestic shortages—at a cost of $3 billion (£1.9bn) in 2002 to US taxpayers.34
Any major development in or initiated by Israel seems to give rise to its own "special costs" which in turn are placed at the door of the United States, whether it concerns support for the migration of Soviet or Ethiopian Jews, or withdrawal from occupied territories. In 2005, Israel moved to request American aid to cover some of the $2 billion to $3 billion cost of its "disengagement" from Gaza, but withdrew that request once hurricanes hit America's Gulf coast.35 With the ascendancy of Olmert, however, the putative costs of the disengagement plan as a whole (which was unilateral despite the US government's demand that it be negotiated) far superseded that, witness his "future intention to seek international financial assistance to defray the cost of the plan, estimated by Israeli economists at $10 billion to $25 billion."36
According to the Development Corporation for Israel prospectus, the bonds are used for eight categories of infrastructure development projects, such as building ports, power grids, transportation, communications, etc. But as Russell Mokhiber points out:
What the prospectus does not mention, however, is that such 'development' projects also include Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Other bond revenues are transferred from the Israeli government's development account to its ordinary budget, to be spent on the military, the Israeli intelligence services, and other agencies, according to the statistical abstract published each year by the Israeli government.38
Rank and file trade union members might have been surprised to learn that their pension funds had been invested in Israel Bonds with below normal rates of return and higher risk. Despite the poor investment quality of Israel Bonds, some of the largest US trade unions, employee pension funds, and major multi-national corporations have collectively loaned billions of dollars to the Israeli regime. In all cases, the decisions to purchase a foreign government's bonds were made by the trade union bosses and corporate fund managers without consulting the membership or stockholders.39 Nathan Zirkin, a financial director of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, when asked if his union would continue to purchase Israel Bonds despite Israel's repression and arrest of Palestinian trade unionists and activists, replied "Absolutely. The Palestinians didn't have a damn thing until Israel came in."40
Many of the trade unions, which are purchasers of Israeli bonds, are controlled or influenced by the Mafia. The Teamsters Union is the biggest purchaser of Israel Bonds; it is also the union which has seen more senior officials indicted for Mafia ties, illicit use of union funds, and massive robbery of membership pension funds. In this case the trade union Mafioso were buying favorable propaganda from the mass media and support from the "respectable" Jewish organizations via the purchase of Israel Bonds.
Union pension funds have also been used by trade union bureaucrats to purchase Israel Bonds. The most notorious case is the former International Ladies Garment Workers Unions (ILGWU), now called UNITE, a union whose workers are 95% Black, Hispanic, and Chinese, most earning at or below the minimum wage. UNITE's leadership and staff is overwhelming Jewish and earning between $100,000 to $350,000 a year plus expenses.41 By channeling over $25 million in pension funds to Israel, the US workers are deprived of access to loans for housing, social services, legal defense, etc. Clearly the Jewish trade union bosses have a greater affinity for the State of Israel and its oppression of Palestinian workers than they have with their own poorly organized workers, employed under some of the worst working conditions in the US.
Israel Bond promoters, with support from Mafia-influenced corrupt trade union bosses, have sold vast holdings of Israel bonds to 1500 labor organizations at interest rates below those of other available securities and well below what most investors would expect from loans to an economically troubled foreign government like Israel. On March 22, 2002, the Jewish weekly Forward actually put a figure on that amount, quoting the director of the National Committee for Labor Israel as estimating that "the American labor community holds $5 billion in Israel Bonds."
Many factors accounted for the US trade union bosses channeling their members pension funds and union dues into Israel Bonds: political protection and respectability in being associated with Israel and its lobbyists—this was especially important to Mafia-linked and corrupt officials.
Ideological and ethnic ties between Jewish trade union leaders and Israel has been a second factor.
While Israel bonds may represent a diminishing factor in the contemporary Israeli economy—perhaps because the $US 10 billion loan guarantee terminated in 1998?42—they are nonetheless still purchased and held, inter alia, by state and city governments, teachers, universities, and police in the United States, as well as 100,000 individuals.
Interestingly, the US did vote in favor of the resolution creating a UN investigatory commission of Israel's near total destruction of Jenin in the spring of 2003. But the UN investigation got no further than its creation. It evoked the hostility of the entire Israeli political class. Shimon Perez (then the self-styled labor moderate in Sharon's government) accused the 170- plus member United Nations Organization of "blood libel". The Israeli security cabinet decided that Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, had not met its demands for amending the mission's mandate, "so there is no possibility of beginning the inquiry...." As Alan Philips of the Daily Telegraph put it:
Apparently having lost his trial of strength with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, Mr Annan recommended to the UN Security Council that the team—which has been waiting in Geneva for three days for permission to go to Israel— should be sent home.43
Wealthy and powerful reactionary Jews in the Diaspora also gravitated toward Sharon. Seven of the eight billionaire Russian Mafia Oligarchs have donated generously to the Israeli state, were on excellent terms with Sharon and Shimon Peres, and have no use for dissident military reservists.In fact, two of these, Israeli-Russian partners of the Russian oil company, Yukos, have taken up residence in Israel to avoid Interpol interdiction, while a third, Boris Berezovsky, though resident in London, is an Israeli citizen.44 Six out of the seven are Jews.45
Because of powerful unconditional external financial and military support primarily from influential Jews in the US, Christian Fundamentalists, the military industrial complex, Pentagon extremists, and corrupt US trade unionists, Israel is able to defy world public opinion, slander humanitarian organizations and human rights leaders, and brazenly continue its genocidal policies. Israeli leaders know "their people": they know they have unconditional supporters who have already been tested. They know that their bankers, professionals and fundamentalists will back them up to the last murdered Palestinian: the march of the 100,000 pro-Zionists in Washington in the midst of the Jenin massacre proved it. The huge turnout of politicians at the annual A.I.P.A.C conference during the massacres in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza strip confirms that they in turn supported the butchers of Rafah.
Influence is wielded via direct influence by Zionist representatives in the Government (most notably in the Pentagon under Bush) both in the Executive branch as well as in the Congress, and indirectly via its use of campaign funds 1) to influence the selection of candidates within the two major political parties and 2) to defeat critics of Israel and reward elected officials who will toe the Israel line.
The parameters of political debate on Israel-related issues—which have broadened over time—are shaped by pervasive Zionist and Jewish organizational influence in the mass media, censoring and virulently attacking critics, and pushing pro-Israel "news" and commentaries. The mass media in the US, particularly the "respectable" New York Times, has been in the forefront of propagandizing Israeli conquest and destruction as a "defensive", "anti-terrorist war". Not a single voice or editorial in the New York Times has spoken of the mass killing of Palestinian civilians and Israel's destruction of priceless Christian historical and religious sites that go back over 2000 years.46 While Israel's war machine destroys ancient monasteries and the heritage of world culture, the pro-Israeli mass media in the US focus their critical lenses on the scandals of the Catholic clergy. The Church's protests at the Israeli shelling of the Church of the Nativity and the murder of those seeking sanctuary are thus silenced.
The fourth circle of influence is through local and sectoral organizations, local and state Jewish federations, and through them in local professional bodies, trade unions, pension funds. Activists may be affiliated with the national apparatus and/or embedded in local "civil society". This is probably the most serious threat as it inhibits average US citizens from voicing their doubts and criticisms of Israeli policy, and mutes the effectiveness of the advocacy sector of American society, which in other arenas has assumed a critical progressive role in relation to US policy. All over the US, local editors, critical intellectuals and activists, and even doctors have been branded as "neo-Nazis" and have suffered threatening phone calls and visits by local pro-Israel zealots—including 'respectable' members of the Jewish community. The threatened consequences usually stop discussions and/or intimidate local citizens advocating an independent and democratic foreign policy.
Moreover the Z.P.C's formal and informal structure has a crucial dynamic element to it: each power center interacts with the rest, creating a constant "movement" and activity, which converges and energizes both leaders and followers. Secondly those non-Jewish or even non-Zionist political, media and civic leaders influenced by the Z.P.C in turn influence their constituency, multiplying several fold the initial influence of their "hegemons". The relative absence of an informal, organized and active grassroots democratic foreign policy movement, particularly in relation to Mideast policy, had for some time given the Z.P.C a clear field with virtually no competitors. Only recently has it been challenged by a growing campaign for divestment from Israel which has won varying degrees of support from Christian denominations (Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians) and on university campuses—though this movement proceeds only tentatively and with much organized opposition. As an instance, the City of Somerville, MA intended to divest from Israel, then backed off after Jewish representations to city council.
Over time the same pattern of Zionist influence has manifested itself in US executive agencies. The State Department's "Arabists" are being replaced by pro-Zionists as is the case with senior civilian militarists in the Pentagon, in the Mideast think tanks and the Council of Foreign Relations, among others. It should be noted that the so-called "single issue" (US-Middle East Policy) focus of the Z.P.C of the past has been replaced by the new Zionist strategies in the Pentagon and right wing think tanks who link the expansion of Israeli power beyond Palestine to US-European relations (especially French bashing), US nuclear policy, and US military and energy strategy. This analytical framework is useful in understanding the US-Iraq war, and macro-imperial policy as well as micro-colonial practices.
The Clinton Administration's vigorous intervention in favor of Yeltsin's seizure of power and backing of the Russian (Jewish) Oligarchs played a major role in dismembering and weakening its former adversary to world domination. Clinton's unconditional support for Israel and more importantly, for the formulation of a Mideast strategy convergent with Israeli foreign policy was tied to three sets of policies:
1) destroying the military and economic power of one of Israel's main critics in the Mideast (Iraq) via economic boycotts, arms inspections and unilateral disarmament of Iraq, while Israel stockpiled nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction;
2) financing and arming Israeli expansion and colonization of Arab Palestine;
3) maintaining an economic boycott of Libya and Iran (supporters of the Palestinians) while subsidizing Arab client states friendly to Israel (Egypt and Jordan), whose recognition of and relations with Israel required increasing repression of opinion and resistance within those states (and further expenditures by the US in order to be accomplished).
Direct Zionist influence over US Mideast policy was shaped by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who, while a convert from Catholicism to the more elite Episcopalian Church, benefited from her newly-discovered Jewish ancestry. Albright infamously justified the US-induced deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children during her tenure in office, declaring "It was worth it." Secretary of Defense Cohen was instrumental in promoting Israeli military dominance in the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke, a closet Zionist, was one of the most influential Clinton advisers on the Middle East "peace negotiations". President Clinton and the Democrats laid the basis for the eventual capture of US foreign policy making by the Zionists in the subsequent Bush administration by accepting Zionists in strategic foreign policy positions influencing Mideast policy and shaping US policy to fit Israeli expansionist aims.
To be sure, Clinton and his "moderate" Zionists did not threaten Israel's critics such as Saudi Arabia or the rest of the Arab countries with military attacks—as did the Bush regime dominated by the ultra-Zionist militarists. Nor did his regime follow the Israeli line of accusing all of Europe, especially France, of being anti-Semites for criticizing Israel's slaughter of Palestinians. The Clinton regime and its moderate Zionist influential believed it was possible to establish US dominance by consulting with Europe and conservative Arab regimes and sharing the economic benefits of imperial spoils in the Mideast while supporting Israeli expansionism.
The Bush regime represented a qualitative advance in Zionist power in US policies, both foreign and domestic. The key economic policymaker was Alan Greenspan, head of the US Central Bank (Federal Reserve Bank), a long time crony of Wall Street financial interests and promoter of the major pro-Israeli investment houses—responsible for the speculative boom and bust economy of the 1990's.
The influence on US Middle East policy of this neo-conservative cabal far exceeded their formal positions because they were backed by an array of influential Zionist academic ideologues (Kagan, Cohen, Pipes), political pundits (Kristols, Krauthamer, Peretz etc) and directors of war think-tanks (Pipes, Rubin) who continue to be given constant access to the opinion pages of the major US newspapers, or interviewed as Middle East "experts" on pro-Israeli television and radio shows—advancing their war propaganda designed to promote US defense of Israel's Middle East agenda, despite the evident quagmire in Iraq, and growing public rejection of that war. These policy and opinion makers, backed by the mass media, worked in close consultation and in tandem with the major Jewish organizations in the US and in close "consultations" with top officials in the Sharon regime—and will continue to do so with Olmert. Mossad agents, Israeli diplomats and key officials in the Sharon regime had free access to the offices of the Zionist officials in Washington and interchanged information on how to optimize Israeli interests.
Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, all the Zionists in key policy positions and their counterparts in Congress backed a US war with Iraq. After 9/11, Wolfowitz and Senator Lieberman immediately proposed a war against Iraq—demanding that the intelligence agencies "find" the connection and accusing the military of being cowards for not engaging in war to "protect" Israel. Despite Herculean efforts by Feith et al. to twist CIA and Ml reports to serve their pro-war Israeli line, their bellicose rhetoric lacked substance. They then invented the—now callously admitted—BIG LIE (by Wolfowitz) of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction threat to US security. It was a classic case, as became evident when the secret Downing Street Memo was made public, of fitting the facts to suit the policy.48
To pursue this line, the Zionists in the Pentagon bypassed the traditional military/intelligence agencies and created their own propaganda- "intelligence" agency or "Office of Special Plans". The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) was set up by Bruce Jackson, a former director of the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century, to press for regime change in Iraq. Other members of the CLI included Bush advisor Richard Perle, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and the editor of the of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, as well as Senators John McCain and Bob Kerry.
Zionist power manifested itself first in the making of the war and then in imposing impunity on the crimes of the war makers in the government. The Zionists had knowingly painted a totally unrealistic and false picture of the war, its consequences and the likely response of the Iraqi resistance to an Israeli-style conquest and colonization—knowingly, indeed, since it was they who put the figures in place whose purported special knowledge supported their arguments. The Zionists were initially able to marginalize high military officials like General Anthony Zinni who questioned the war and opposed the way the war was launched, and the length and breadth of the engagement. They shut out all debate on who would benefit and who would lose from the war: US soldiers killed, rising oil and energy costs, huge budget deficits, and, of course, massive loss of life and property among the Iraqis.
Wolfowitz claimed that the invading army would be welcomed as liberators (evoking the liberation of Paris). Perle claimed "the Arabs" would offer little or no resistance (being a "tribal" society). Kagan claimed that "one big bomb" would silence the Arab street and public opinion.
While the US military had conducted a campaign of forced demodernization in the first Iraq War, attacking even civilian technological infrastructure related to water and sewage, in the second attack on Iraq by the Bush, Jr. administration, Feith and Wolfowitz concentrated on the destruction of Iraqi society, as such. They promoted the massive purge of the entire Iraqi civil service, professions, universities, schools and hospitals of Baathists, as well as the dismantling of the Iraqi army and dismissal of 400,000 Iraqi military and police personnel—over the shocked objections of experienced senior US military officers who had expected to work with the surrendered military and administrative structure of Iraq to control the colony. This opened the way for the pillage of Iraq's complex infrastructure and historic treasures and libraries, as well as the growth of criminal gangs involved in theft, kidnap for ransom, murder and rape—activities virtually unknown under the tight Baathist regime. Rumsfeld dismissed the massive destruction of Iraqi society as the "messiness of freedom".
Many top US military officials objected, as did the first US proconsul, former general Jay Garner, who stated that he "fell out with the Bush circle because he wanted free elections and rejected an imposed program of privatization."49 But the Zionists in the Pentagon and their partners in crime, Rumsfeld and Cheney, were determined to dismantle the secular Iraqi state in order to institute a policy to turn Iraq into a desert kingdom—a loose collection of at least three "tribal" client mini-states based on ethnicities, religious-tribal loyalties, and forever incapable of opposing Israeli expansionism, particularly in Northern Iraq.50
However, instead of easy conquest, the 'Israel First' Pentagonistas provoked a massive popular opposition, which unified the religious and secular groups in opposition to the US occupation, and swelled the ranks of the armed resistance with thousands of discharged armed professionals. In the course of pursuing a policy of strengthening Israel's regional position, the Zionists weakened the US colonial occupation and any medium term plans to convert Iraq into a US oil colony. The result has been thousands of US military and client collaborators dead, maimed and wounded, and a burgeoning worldwide opposition, particularly in the Arab East, and among several hundred million Muslims.
The Israel First Pentagonistas successfully promoted the idea that the Israeli military and intelligence experts had a lot to teach their ignorant American counterparts on "urban warfare" and "information gathering" drawing on Israel's wealth of experience of over 50 years of expelling and destroying Palestinian communities and developing interrogation and torture techniques on Palestinian and Lebanese captives.51 The purpose of the Pentagon Zionists was to deepen the ties with Israel's security apparatus as part of a middle term goal of making "the cause of Israel as the cause of America" (as prostrate Presidential candidate Kerry pledged).52 The long-term goal was to leverage military security and the co-manufacture of military weaponry between the US and Israel into the Grand Scheme of a Greater Middle East US-Israel Co-Prosperity Sphere.53 Imperial Israel would then have access to water, oil, capital and markets, which the heavily subsidized rentier militarist state lacks at the present.
The torture-interrogation techniques taught by the Israeli instructors converged nicely, updating and refining the older CIA torture manuals, more specifically introducing specificities pertaining to torturing Muslims and especially Arabs.54 But once again the Zionist-Israeli priorities undermined US imperialist policies: the photo revelations of US soldiers torturing, raping and humiliating Iraqi prisoners discredited the US occupation worldwide, heightened Arab and Muslim resistance throughout the Middle East and discredited the Bush regime. Congressional hearings and mass media reportages even provoked a burst of public disapproval of the invasion of Iraq and Bush's handling of the occupation. Throughout the country there were calls, including from members of Congress, for Rumsfeld's resignation.
Curiously enough, there were virtually no calls for the resignation of the Israel First Pentagonistas—who were equally implicated and responsible for the mass torture of Muslim detainees. According to Newsweek, it was Douglas Feith who was actually in charge of setting policy on Iraqi detainees.55 Even in the face of this horrible crime against humanity, even in the general national outcry to investigate, impeach and hold responsible those involved, Paul Wolfowitz, the top Zionist architect of the war and responsible head (number 2) of Pentagon intelligence in the Iraq war involved in ordering the torture, has escaped official public censure, protected as he has been up to now by the pro-Israel pundits, political fundraisers, presidential campaign fundraisers and influential, (see Chapter Four on the expose of Seymour Hersh's expose). As for number 3, despite the fact that he is still a key subject of a Phase II Senate Intelligence Committee investigation on pre-war planning and post-invasion failures (Phase I focused primarily on intelligence failures), Douglas Feith was invited to teach a course on the Bush Administration's strategy behind the war on terrorism to students in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Fall 2006.
While the Mossad was later chastised for "intelligence failures" by the Israeli Knesset after release of the Steinitz Report on March 29, 2004, their Zionist counterparts in the Pentagon—Shulsky, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Abrams—however they may have been publicly criticized and even investigated, have yet to be officially and publicly reprimanded for their collaboration with the Mossad. Much will depend on an ongoing investigation by the FBI— which holds more promise than the Congressional whitewashing. As Robert Dreyfuss put it in The Nation: "Did Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, run a covert program with operatives in high-level US government positions to influence the Bush Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq? The FBI wants to know."56 In fact, the FBI appears to be one American institution which is willing to address the issue of Zionist power in America, as its efforts related to the AlPAC-spying scandal (see Chapter 5) seem to indicate.
Amid the widespread condemnation of these war crimes and the media exposure of the systematic lies of the Pentagonistas, the fear that the highly influential and visible role of the Israel Firsters might lead to an antiIsrael backlash raised alarm bells among some of the most astute Congressional Zionists.57 Senator Frank Lautenberg (Democrat-New Jersey) a committed Zionist, called for the "replacement" of Wolfowitz and Feith in order to get them out of view and further, louder, anti-Zionist-related condemnation. 'The men in charge have let down the soldiers in uniform. Simply replacing Secretary Rumsfeld will change little at the Pentagon if his discredited team of advisers remains in high-level positions. It is time for us to bring in new civilian leadership at the Defense Department".58 Lautenberg made it abundantly clear whom he thought was central to the whole US war effort, from beating the war drums, to cooking the data, designing the war strategy, to micromanaging the business of interrogation-torture.
Several former top US military professionals objected to the Zionist control over US policy and their close network of collaborators. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski has given us an inside picture of the Feith/Shulsky operation whose links to the Mossad seemed closer than to the US military. The Rumsfeld-Zionist group's monopolization of military policy, war strategy, military calculations and military promotions all alienated the military high command. Some who clearly foresaw the disastrous consequences of the policies of the Israel First crowd on US global ambitions were silenced and marginalized.
It is likely that the release of the torture photos to the media was deliberately encouraged or promoted by highly placed military officials or former officials as a way of discrediting Rumsfeld and the Pentagon Zionists.59 This move severely undercut the war effort, which more and more of the military high command sees as destined to fail, but they were determined not to become the neo-cons' scapegoats. However to gain an "honorable" withdrawal they must know that they have to remove Rumsfeld and his Zionist colleagues, whose criteria for evaluating the war has less to do with the aims and standing of the US military and more to do with Israeli expansionist goals in the Middle East.
While the Pentagon Zionists and the powerful network of pro-Israel Jewish organizations have seen their Iraqi serial war strategy fall behind schedule, they have succeeded in securing Presidential economic sanctions against Syria and binding US political support for Sharon's (and now Olmert's) destruction and annexation of the remnant of Palestine. Moreover the leading Jewish organizations were able to secure a near unanimous vote in Congress (407 to 9) in favor of Bush's declaration supporting Israel's "new borders" in Palestine.60 Once again the Zionist Lobby demonstrated its power—even turning Bush and Congress into self-effacing political idiots before Sharon. After Bush put all of his limited credibility in Mideast politics in his "Roadmap" for a Middle East peace accord, Sharon unilaterally declared a policy of "annexation and separation" and told Bush to swallow it. All the major Jewish organizations backed Sharon's plan. Bush submitted and endorsed this, alienating virtually every European country and all Arab countries, and clearly demonstrating the slavish complicity of US policymakers who once again renounced US Middle East imperial interests in order to accommodate Israel's expansion into the remnants of Palestine. Bush's policy reversal was backed by the vast majority of Congress who are forever fearful of Zionist-Jewish retaliation for the least deviation from unconditional and total support for Israel.
During the invasion and occupation of Iraq, some Congress members have been critical of the war. Hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated their disapproval. Many Jewish Americans have participated in the protests and in some cases have led the protests. Mass media outlets have on occasion (especially after the torture expose) publicized adverse news on the war (tortures, civilian victims, wedding parties bombed, and homes and orchards bulldozed). While the US pursues the war in Iraq, the Israeli government has been equally brutal: engaging in premeditated assassination of Palestinian leaders, systematically destroying thousands of homes, farms, orchards, stores, schools, mosques and factories, and killing and maiming thousands of Palestinians activists, civilians, women and children. They have also resorted to the routine hooding, manacling and torture of detainees.
All the major pro-Israel Jewish groups in the US, high and low, have defended all these crimes against humanity, successfully pressuring both major parties, the Congress and President, to say nothing—no protest, no investigation, no punishment. This, while the US, smarting from the exposure of torture at Abu Ghraib and pursued by the UN Committee on Torture, Amnesty International and other human rights groups, has been forced to put on trial more than 100 armed forces' staff accused of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq, the scope of which in and of itself points to a practice rooted in policy.61 More perversely in the face of the Israeli mayhem, pro-Israel Jewish groups have secured $10 billion dollars more in aid and lucrative joint-venture military contracts (no outcry here about Halliburton-type contracting).
The Jewish authoritarians have already partially succeeded. Their press releases have been published by the mass media without allowing for rebuttal by the academics under attack. Harvard University has demanded that the identification of the Harvard Kennedy School be removed from the paper. The financier of the professorial chair (in his name) which Professor Walt, as academic dean, occupies at the Harvard Kennedy School, is no longer mentioned in his publication. Ultra-Zionist and torture advocate Professor Dershowitz and his fellow Harvard zealots called into question their moral and academic qualification to teach—this concerning professors of the highest standing, with an established record at America's top universities.
In both the United States and France, legislation is being prepared to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and to criminalize as a 'hate crime' the free expression of outrage over Israeli atrocities and any criticism of the Lobby's control of US Middle East policy.62 In the US, the proposed legislation 63 would take the form of withdrawing federal funding from any academic institution where the policies of Israel are criticized.
Other attacks on American academics include the effort by Daniel Pipes, director of Middle East Forum, to establish a campus blacklist through his neo-McCarthyite Campus-Watch website. Pipes is part of a "band of neo-conservative pundits with strong allegiances to Israel [who] took on the task of launching a more focused assault on Middle East Scholars."64 This effort was but the latest in a long history of attempts to curtail academic discussion of issues that might relate to Israel.65
In New York City, a major theater production of the life of Rachael Corrie, an American humanitarian volunteer murdered in the Occupied Territories by an Israeli Defense Force soldier driving a bulldozer, was canceled because of Jewish pressure and financial threats. The theater admitted that the cancellation had to do with the "sensitivities" (and pocket book) of the Israel-Firsters. Even the progressive magazine, Mother Jones, went to the trouble of running an article critical of Corrie, heading it:
NEWS: Martyr, idiot, dedicated, deluded. Why did this American college student crushed by an Israeli bulldozer put her life on the line? And did it matter? 66
The pro-Israel lobby's defense and support of a minority opinion in favor of Middle East aggression is now extending its authoritarian reach into undermining the basic right of Americans to free and open expression. There is no group of investors or financiers willing to fund a civil rights campaign in defense of free speech, academic and artistic freedom, to counter the minority Zionist financial and professional elite.
The leaders of the peace movement, both Jews and non-Jews, reject any effort to include Israel's genocidal war against Palestine for fear of alienating the "public" (read the major Jewish organizations) and the self-styled progressive Jews, who are ever protective of everything Jewish—even war crimes. Worse still, with a few rare exceptions, the "progressive" Jewish critics of the war and Israel are forever and adamantly determined to avoid criticizing the role of powerful Zionist policymakers in the government, their ties to Israel and the significant support they receive from the major Jewish organizations in all matters which pertain directly or remotely to Israeli interests.
With blind simplicity, they all see Israel as simply a "tool" of the US for weakening the Arabs in the service of US oil interests. Apparently they have never consulted US petrol CEOs, advisers or investment brokers, who all agree that US support for Israel is destabilizing the region, threatening oil supplies, boosting prices to US consumers and creating enemies out of Arab client rulers who invest in the US, buy US currency to keep it from collapsing, and raise OPEC quotas to help lower US prices. By its blind support for Israeli colonial brutality, the US has alienated several hundred million Muslims, millions of Arabs of all faiths, the great majority of Europeans, Africans and Asians, thereby heightening US global isolation. The American alliance with Israel has been one of the world's greatest energizers of anti-imperialist movements, crossing racial, religious and gender boundaries.
Even the crude, virulent anti-European ideology propagated by Israeli ideologues and their transmission belt Jewish organizations in the US and Europe has influenced the US government. At a time when Muslims and Arabs are conquered and persecuted, with thousands jailed and many "disappeared" by the US, Israeli and European governments, Secretary of State Powell convened a meeting in Europe on the rising danger of ... "antiSemitism"!! And the UN, under Kofi Annan, followed suit with its own meeting on 'anti-Semitism' during the ongoing devastation in the Rafah refugee camps in the Gaza Strip! The major Jewish organizations repeat the Sharon and now Olmert line that "anti-Zionists" are "anti-Semites"—and it becomes established policy in the US and in some countries of Europe... to the point that individuals critical of Zionism are fired, cultural institutions are pressured into censoring anti-Zionist events and creating a general culture of fear of offending the hegemonic Jewish organizations. Even Webster's recent dictionary equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Surprisingly, in the midst of this, the major Jewish organizations in France openly condemned the manufactured hysteria as an Israeli mechanism to encourage the migration of French Jews to Israel.67
Jews in North America, South America and Europe are disproportionately in the highest paid positions, with the highest proportion in the exclusive, prestigious private universities, with disproportionate influence in finance and the media. It is clear that "anti-Semitism" is a very marginal global issue and, in point of fact, that Jews are the most influential ethnic group.
The tragic myopia or perverse refusal of leftist Jews to face up to the prejudicial role of the major Zionist and Jewish groups promoting the Israel First policy and imposing it on the electoral agendas substantially undermines their and our efforts to secure peace and justice in the Middle East and to forge a democratic US foreign policy.
next....THE LIBBY AFFAIR AND THE INTERNAL WAR
footnotes
Chapter 1
1 Thirty US House Representatives signed on as sponsors or cosponsors of H. Res 635, which would create a Select Committee to "investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment. " The bill was referred to the House Committee on Rules on December 18th, 2005.
2 David S. Cloud and Eric Schmitt, "More Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation", New York Times, April 16, 2006. The generals are: Major General Paul D. Eaton, General Anthony C. Zinni, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Major General John Batiste, Major General John Riggs, and Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr.
3 Recent revelations by retired CIA officers, such as Paul Pillar and Ty Drumheller, indicate that the CIA advised the Bush administration on the nonexistence of WMD, but was ignored. See Larry Johnson, "Why Did Goss Resign?" Truthout, May 6th, 2006.
4 Financial Times, March 18/19, 2006 p.1.
5 Michael Klare "Oil, Geopolitics and the Coming War with Iran," TomDispatch.com, April 11, 2005. Klare totally ignores the role of the Zionist lobby, resorting to the oil interest ploy, even after demonstrating their inability to shape US policy!
6 See Michael Klare, "United States: energy and strategy", Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, November 2002.
7 Yahya Sadowski, "No War for Whose Oil?" Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2003.
8 The Iraqi resistance may have been a major factor in blocking the privatization of Iraqi oil. As Greg Palast noted: "Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces...'We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, 25 The Power of Israel in the United States / James Petras pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming.'" Greg Palast, "Secret U.S. Plans for Iraq's Oil", BBC News, March 17, 2006.
9 Patrick Seale, "A Costly Friendship", Nation, July 21, 2003.
10 For a running casualty count, see the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website at
11 For a running total of the costs of war to the US taxpayer, see National Priorities
Project website at
12 See Chapter 5, concerning, inter alia, FBI investigations of Wolfowitz, Feith et al.
13 Douglas Feith has just been appointed Visiting Professor and Distinguished Prac
titioner in National Security Policy at Georgetown University, commencing Fall
2006. Since leaving government, he served as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of
the conservative Hoover Institution of Stanford University and co-chaired a task
force on strategies for combating terrorism at Harvard University's Kennedy
School of Government.
14 Elliot Abrams is making headway within the Bush regime, serving now as Deputy
National Security Adviser and head of President George W. Bush's Global Democ
racy Strategy.
Chapter 2
1 The U.S Country Reports on Terrorism 2005 indicates that terrorism is on the rise, with the bulk of the increase in Iraq.
2 Tom Regan, "Report: US war costs could top $2 trillion", Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 2006.
3 As Bernhard Zand points out, "On the eve of the war, Iraq was pumping about 2.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. In the first three months of this year, the rate of export was just over 1.7 billion barrels." See Bernard Zand, "On the Verge of Collapse," Der Speigel, May 1, 2006.
4 Steven Graham, "Switching Cities Off", Routledge, 2005.
5 "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, et al, Institute of Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. 1996.
6 There are actually numerous contenders for this epithet. See Kevin Drum, "Political Animal", Washington Monthly, May 16, 2006, who lists Anastasio Somosa, Francisco Franco and Dominican dictator Trujillo. Geoffrey Kemp, head of the National Security Council, is cited as the source of the epithet in relation to Saddam. See Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, New York, Times Books, 1990, p. 85.
7 See Akiva Eldar, "Infrastructures Minister Paritzky dreams of Iraqi Oil Flowing to Haifa", Haaretz, March 31, 2003. 57 The Power of Israel in the United States / James Petras
8 Amiram Cohen, "US checking the possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa via Jordan", Haaretz, August 23, 2003.
9 This pipeline, once the Mosul-Haifa pipeline, closed in 1948 with the advent of the Zionist state, is now resurrected as the Kirkuk-Mosul-Haifa pipeline. Our source for the maps is http://judicial-inc.biz/pipeline_blown_mossad.htm, though they appear elsewhere on the internet.
10 US Financial Aid to Israel: Facts, Figures and Impacts, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 2004
11 Forty years later, on June 8, 2005, the USS Liberty Veterans Association filed a formal report with the US Department of Defense of War Crimes Committed Against U.S. Military Personnel on June 8, 1967 by elements of the Israeli military forces.
12 James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Doubleday, New York, 2001.
13 James Ennes, Assault on the Liberty, Random House, 1980. See also Statements by Ward Boston, Jr., Captain, JAGG USN (Ret), January 9, 2004 and Admiral Thomas Moorer, USN (Ret) January 11, 2003.
14 Alison Wier, "Russia, Israel and Media Omissions", Counterpunch.org, February 7, 2005.
15 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Pro-Israel PAC Contributions to 2002 Congressional Candidates, June 2003.
16 See Carl Cameron Investigates (Parts 1-4) Fox News Network, Dec. 17, 2001, available at.
17 Compare this to the Bush Administration's prosecution and heated call for the
death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui, for just such a pre-knowledge of 9/11 and
failure to forewarn.
18 Richard Reid, the ex-con and would-be shoe bomber, convicted for trying to blow
up an American Airlines passenger jet over the Atlantic in December 2001, managed
to enter Israel on an El Al flight despite his unusual background, BBC News, Dec.
28, 2001.
19 See Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The
Life and Murder of a Media Mogul, (Caroll and Graf, New York, 2002) for in depth
discussion of the powerful media links with Israel.
21 Frankel, Glenn, "Prison Tactics a Longtime Dilemma for Israel", Washington Post,
June 16,2004, p. A01.
22 National Public Radio Interview, October 2004.
23 New York Times, December 28, 2001, p. 19.
24 CBS News September 20, 2002.
25 Gideon Levy,"Compensate settlers for what?", Haaretz, June 15, 2004.
26 Congressional Research Service Issue Brief for Congress titled "Israel: U.S.
Foreign Assistance" by Clyde R. Mark, updated July 12,2004. Order code IB86055.
27 See Global Income Per Capita 2005, compiled from World Bank Development
Indicators, at
28
The EU's effort to curtail duty-free imports by Israel of goods produced in the
Occupied Territories was resolved by its decision to charge duty on products
labeled, say, "made in Ariel, Israel" but not on those marked "made in Tel Aviv,
Israel". "It appears to save Israeli face by using the word 'Israel' to describe the
location of the settlements, but allows the EU to make its point by charging a tariff on
goods produced beyond the pre-1967 Green Line", noted the August 5, 2004
Reuters article "EU, Israel resolve trade dispute over settlements". However,
Reuters might more significantly have pointed out that this decision resulted in the EU
officially referring to contested territories as being in Israel.
29 Eli Kintisch, "Group
Raising Millions to Launch a Christian AIPAC", Forward, June 21, 2002. Kintisch
writes:
While a handful of pro-Israel Christian groups exist around the country, Reed
and Eckstein believe their connections and the International Fellowship's $30
million annual budget will bring heighten advocacy for the Jewish state.
58
US-lraq-lsrael-Zionist Connection
"It's always been an informal relationship," Reed said of the Christian right's
ties with Israel. Reed added that organizations such as the Christian Coalition
had always taken pro-Israel positions, but "it was always one of 25 issues."
What Stand for Israel would add to the pro-Israel mix, Eckstein said, is the ability
to mobilize the groups' 100,000 affiliated churches and 250,000 donors to call
into Washington at crucial times.
30 Supra, endnote 26.
31 The CRS Issue Brief for Congress by Clyde R. Mark pointed out that "no US aid can
be used by Israel in the occupied territories because the United States does not
want to foster the appearance [sic] of endorsing Israel's annexation of the territories
without negotiations [italics added]."
32 CRS Issue Brief, supra, endnote 26.
33 CRS Issue Brief, supra, endnote 26, p. 9.
34 Ed Vuillamy, "Israel Seeks Pipeline for Iraqi Oil", The Observer, April 23, 2003. Also
see endnote 7, supra.
35 Ori Nir, "Olmert Begins to Lay Out Unilateral Plan", Forward, May 19, 2006.
36 Ibid.
37 Avi Machlis, "As Israel Bonds turn 50, Is once critical role waning?", Jewish News
Weekly, June 16, 2000.
38 Ibid.
39 "Israel Bonds Raise $130 million from US Labor", Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2001.
See also "El Al Moves to Avoid Tiff with Big Labor—Sharon Steps in", Forward,
Feb. 21,2003.
40 Russel Mokkiber, "Bonds of Affection", Multinational Monitor1988. See
41 Rachel Donadio, "Talking the Talk at Jewish Labor Dinner", Forward, March 22,
2004; see also Robert Fitch, "The Question of Corruption", Metro Labor Press
Association, October 21, 1999, and Robert Fitch, Testimony, House of Representatives,
Hearing on Workplace Competitiveness, March 31, 1998.
42 "Since 1995,
the Israeli government has secured a foothold on international markets in order to
create alternative stable financing frameworks following the end of a $10 billion U.S.
loan-guarantee program in 1998." Machlis, supra
43 Alan Philips, "UN Team to disband as Jenin inquiry is derailed", Daily Telegraph,
May 1, 2002.
44 Weir, supra, endnote 14.
45 Uri Avnery, cited in Weir, Ibid.
46 William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain, Harper Collins, 1997. Chapter 5
chronicles the systematic devastation of the ancient Orthodox Christian communities
in Israel and the Occupied Territories, including the Armenians.
47 Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-1999 fiscal years, February 18, 1992.
48 "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunc
tion of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around
the policy." See the secret Downing Street Memo, posted on Information Clearing
House website at
49 David Leigh, "General Sacked by Bush Says He Wanted Early Elections", Guard
ian, March 18, 2004. However, as Robert Dreyfuss noted, "For more than a
decade, both during his military service and then in retirement, Gamer established
a pattern of close ties to the Israeli military and its U.S. supporters. Forward, the
English-language version of the venerable Yiddish weekly newspaper, recently
carried a headline referring to Garner that read, 'Pro-Israeli general will oversee
reconstruction of postwar Iraq.'" Robert Dreyfuss, "Humpty Dumpty in Baghdad",
American Prospect, May 1, 2003. Since Garner was also a member of the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and must have been fully aware of
the true program he had been chosen to implement, the actual reasons for his
removal may lie elsewhere.
50 "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", Richard Perle, Douglas
Feith, David Wurmser, et al, Institute of Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.
1996. See also Leslie Gelb, "The Three-State Solution", New York Times, November
25, 2003 and Seymour Hersh,"Plan B", The New Yorker, June 28, 2004 on Israeli
activity in Kurdish Northern Iraq.
51 Glenn Frankel, "Prison Tactics A Longtime Dilemma for Israel", Washington Post,
June 16, 2004.
52 John Kerry, Perspectives: An Israel Review, Brown University Publication, November
19, 2003.
53 How this might shape up is foreshadowed in the new Free Trade Agreement
(FTA) with Jordan, which has already been described as having descended into
"human trafficking and involuntary servitude" by the National Labor Committee for
Worker and Human Rights.
54 Matthew Clark, "Concrete, razor wire, ID cards", Christian Science Monitor,
December 8, 2003.
55 Newsweek Magazine, June 7, 2004, p. 35.
56 Robert Dreyfuss, "Agents of Influence", The Nation, October 4, 2004.
57 See Haaretz, April 24, 2004 where Israeli deputy ambassador to UN, Arye Mekel,
complained that criticisms "only enhance suspicions ... linking us with Iraq where we
have no business", and Nathan Guttman, "Prominent US Jews and Israel Blamed
for Start of Iraq War", Haaretz, May 31, 2004.
58 Newsday May 13, 2004.
59 Martin Sieff, "Army, CIA want torture truths exposed", United Press International,
May 18, 2004.
60 "Sharon praises US on West Bank Refugees", Haaretz, June 25, 2004.
61 "US Gives New Details on Iraq, Afghan Abuse Probes", Reuters, May 8, 2006.
62 Canada and some other European countries that claim to honor free speech have
already passed laws making "Holocaust denial" a criminal offense. United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan (whose Jewish wife is related to the prominent
Swedish Raoul Wallenburg family) stated that the world must challenge those who
deny the Holocaust happened.
63 The International Studies in Higher Education Act (HR 3077) passed the House in
2003 and is presently with a Senate Committee.
64 Joel Beinin "The new American McCarthyism: policing thought about the Middle
East", Race and Class, Vol. 46(1), p. 104.
65 Beinin's article includes a valuable history of the intimidation of American academics
in relation to issues pertinent to Israel. Ibid.
66 Joshua Hammer, "The Death of Rachel Corrie", Mother Jones, September-October
2003.
Xavier Ternisien, "Des responsables communautaires protestant contre un "plan"
isralien incitant les juif francais a emigrer," Le Monde, June 17, 2004.
60
C
While there is a grain of truth in much of the above, there are numerous unique aspects in this relationship between the US, an imperial power, and Israel, a regional power. Unlike Washington's relation with the EU, Japan and Oceania, it is Israel which pressures and secures a vast transfer of financial resources (by 2004, $2.8 billion per year, $84 billion over 30 years).10 Israel secures the latest arms and technology transfers, unrestrictive entry into US markets, free entry of immigrants, unconditional commitment of US support in case of war and repression of colonized people, and guaranteed US vetoes against any critical UN resolutions.
From the angle of inter-state relations, it is the lesser regional power which exacts a tribute from the Empire, a seemingly unique or paradoxical outcome. The explanation for this paradox is found in the powerful and influential role of pro-Israel Jews in strategic sectors of the US economy, political parties, Congress and Executive Branch. The closest equivalent to past empires is that of influential white settlers in the colonies, who through their overseas linkages were able to secure subsidies and special trading relations.
The Israeli "colons" in the US have invested and donated billions of dollars to Israel, in some cases diverting funds from union dues of low paid workers to purchase Israel Bonds, which in turn were used to finance new colonial settlements in the Occupied Territories. In other cases Jewish fugitives from the US justice system have been protected by the Israeli state, especially super rich financial swindlers like Mark Rich, and even gangsters and murderers. Occasional official demands of extradition from the Justice Department have been pointedly ignored.
In turn, the colonized Empire has gone out of its way to cover up its subservience to its supposed ally, but in fact hegemonic power. In 1967, the USS Liberty, a communications and reconnaissance ship sent to monitor belligerents in the third Israeli-Arab war, was bombed and strafed by Israeli fighter planes in international waters for nearly an hour, killing 34 seamen and wounding 173 of a crew of 297. Intercepted Israeli messages as well as the clearly displayed US flag demonstrate that this was a deliberate act of aggression. Washington acted as any Third World country would when faced with an embarrassing attack by its hegemon: it silenced its own naval officers who witnessed the attack, and quietly received compensation and a proforma apology.11
Not only was this an unprecedented action in US military and diplomatic relations with an ally, there is no case on record of an imperial country covering up an assault upon itself by a regional ally.12 On the contrary, similar circumstances have been followed by diplomatic and bellicose responses. This apparent anomaly cannot in any way be explained by military weakness or diplomatic failures: the US is a military superpower, and its diplomats are capable of forceful, even bullying, representation to allies or adversaries, when the political will is present. But the Jewish/American Lobby, Congress people, media and Wall Street moguls strategically located in the US politico-economic system ensured that President Johnson would behave like a docile subject. No direct pressures were necessary, for a hegemonized political leadership acts seemingly on its own beliefs, having learned the rules of the political game. The bottom line is this: the Israel-US relationship is so entrenched that not even an unprovoked military attack could call it into question. Like all hegemonized powers, Washington threatened the US Naval witnesses with a court marital if they spoke out, while they coddled their attackers in Tel Aviv.13
The power of Israel is manifested in the numerous annual pilgrimages that influential US politicians make to Israel to declare their loyalty to the Israeli state, even during periods of intensive Israeli repression of a rebellious subject people.15 Rather than reprimanding Israel for an aggressive act of war against another state and for internationally-condemned human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, US satraps of the Israeli mini-empire applauded its bloody repression of Intifada's I and II, and the Jewish state's invasion of Lebanon in 1982—as they do in 2006— and opposed any international mediation to prevent further Israeli massacres, thereby sacrificing US credibility in the United Nations and in world public opinion.
In votes in the United Nations, even in the Security Council—despite overwhelming evidence of human rights violations presented by EU allies— Washington has toiled in the service of its hegemon. Sacrificing international credibility and deliberately alienating 150 other nations, Washington labeled criticisms of Israeli racism as "anti-Semitic". But this does not mark the high point of Washington's servility to Israel.
The most recent and perhaps the key indicator of US servility occurred in the months preceding and following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On December 12, 2001 Fox News learned from US intelligence sources and federal investigators that 60 Israelis engaged in a long-running effort to spy on US government officials had been detained since 9/11. Many of those arrested were active Israeli military or intelligence operatives. They had been arrested under the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act. Many failed polygraph questions dealing with surveillance activities in and against the United States.
More seriously, federal investigators had reason to believe that the Israeli operatives gathered intelligence about the September 11 attacks in advance and did not share it with its Washington ally. The degree of Israeli involvement in September 11 is a tightly guarded secret. A highly placed federal investigator told Fox News there are "tie-ins". When asked to provide details, the federal investigator refused. "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/ 11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information."16
Nothing so exemplifies the power of Israel over Washington as this case of Israeli espionage. Even in the case of the worst attack on the American mainland in US history, Washington suppressed federally collected evidence linking known Israeli spies to possible evidence about prior knowledge. Clearly this evidence might raise questions about the links and ties between political and economic elites, as well as undermine strategic relations in the Middle East. More important, it would pit the Bush Administration against the Jewish-American Lobby and its powerful informal and formal networks in the media, finance, and in government.17
Fox News obtained numerous classified documents from federal investigators probably frustrated by the cover-ups of Israeli espionage by political leaders in Washington. These documents brought to light by Carl Cameron revealed that even before September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secret investigation of large-scale, longterm Israeli espionage in the United States. Not one of the other major print or electronic media reported on these arrests. Neither the President nor any Congressional leaders spoke out on Israeli's pervasive and sustained effort to obtain key US military and intelligence information.
The classified documents detailed "hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country" that investigators claimed could be Israeli organized intelligence gathering activities. Israeli agents targeted and penetrated military bases, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the IRS, the INS, the EPA, the US Marshall's Service, dozens of government facilities, and even secret office and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel, according to the Federal documents cited by Fox News. A document issued by the Government Accountability Office (an investigatory arm of the US Congress), also cited, referred to Israel as "Country A", saying "the government of Country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the US of any US ally." A Defense Intelligence report said Israel has a "voracious appetite for information... It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the US is a high priority."
Carl Cameron's Fox News Report appeared on the Fox News Internet site briefly in December, 2001 (Dec. 12, 2001) and then disappeared—there was no follow up—or, as might be expected in cases of error, no disclaimer or official correction and/or apology. None of the other mass media picked up on this major espionage report. No doubt the powerful pro-Israeli influential in the mass media played a role. More significantly than direct "pressure", Israeli hegemony "persuades" or "intimidates" the media establishment and political leaders to operate with maximum discretion in limiting reporting about Israel's appropriation of strategic information.
While the web of Israeli agents are sometimes subject to arrest, interrogation and expulsion, the Israeli state and the ministers in charge are never publicly condemned, nor are there any official diplomatic ripostes such as the symbolic temporary withdrawal of the US Ambassador. The closest parallel to US behavior toward Israeli spies is the response of poor, dependent Third World countries to US espionage. In that context docile rulers quietly ask the Ambassador to rein in some of the more aggressive agents.
Unanswered Questions:
September 11 and the Israelis
Following September 11, rumors circulated throughout the Arab East
that the bombing was an Israeli plot to incite Washington to attack Muslim/Arab
adversaries. These stories and their authors provided nothing more than
circumstantial evidence and motive, namely that Bush's anti-terrorism
campaign would legitimate Sharon's "anti-terrorist" repression of Palestinians.
The stories implicating Israel were completely dismissed by all the media
and political leaders across the spectrum. Now, however, that US federal investigators have revealed that the Israelis may have known about the attack before it occurred and did not share the information, this raises further questions concerning the relationship between the Arab terrorists and the Israeli secret police. Did the Israelis penetrate the group or pick up information about them?18 Federal investigators' confidential information could probably clarify these vital questions. But will the confidential information ever become public? Most likely not—for the very reason that it would expose the extent of Israeli influence in the US via its secret agents and more importantly via its powerful overseas lobby and allies in the US government and finance. The lack of any public statement concerning Israel's possible knowledge of 9/11 is indicative of the vast, ubiquitous and aggressive nature of its powerful Diaspora supporters.19 Given the enormous political and economic importance which the mass media have given to 9/11, and the sweeping powers, funding, and institutions created around the issue of national security, it is astonishing that no further mention has been made about Israel's spy networks operating in the US's most delicate spheres of counter-terrorism.
But then, it is not astonishing at all if we understand properly the "unique relationship" between the US Empire and Israel, a regional power.
Theoretical Issues
The relationship between the US—a global imperial power—and Israel,
a regional power, provides us with a unique model of inter-state relations. In
this case the regional power exacts tribute ($2.8 billion annually in direct
contributions from the US Congress), free access to US markets, protection of
overseas felonious Jews from prosecution or extradition to the US, while
engaging in pervasive espionage and money laundering.20 On Friday, June
23, 2000 Haaretz reported Israel as
one of the world's leading havens for
illegal international money laundering. Moreover Israel establishes limits on US-Middle Eastern policy in the international forums. Israel's hegemonic position has endured under both Democratic and Republican presidencies for almost half a century. In other words it is a structural historical relation, not one based on personalities, or particular transitory policy making configurations.
Several hypotheses emerge from an examination of this unique relationship.
The first stems from the fact that the territorial Israeli state has little power of persuasion, economic reach, or military clout in comparison to the major powers (Europe and the US). The power of Israel is based on that of the Diaspora, the highly structured and politically and economically powerful Jewish networks which have direct and indirect access to the centers of power and propaganda in the most powerful imperial country in the world. Tribute is exacted via the influence of these "internal colonialists" who operate at the level of mass media opinion makers and via Congress and the Presidency. Close to 60 percent of Democratic Party funding and 35 percent of Republican Party funding comes from pro-Israeli Jews. For every dollar spent by the Jewish networks in influencing voting outcomes, the Israeli state receives $50 in aid to finance the building and arming of colonial settlements in the Occupied Territories complete with swimming pools, Romanian gardeners and Filipino maids.
Through overseas networks the Israeli state can directly intervene and set the parameters to US foreign aid in the Middle East. The overseas networks play a major role in shaping the internal debate on US policy toward Israel. Propaganda associating Israeli repression of Palestinians as the righteous response of the victims of the Holocaust has been repeated and circulated throughout the mass media. Iranian President Ahmadinejad's suggestion that Holocaust victims might more properly be compensated by land located in Europe or in the countries that victimized them was misreported, then highly circulated to fuel, instead, the notion of a rabid anti-Semitic Iran. From the height of the network to the lawyers' boardrooms, and the doctors' lounges, the pro-Israel supporters of the network aggressively attack as "anti-Semites" any critical voices. Through local intimidation and malicious intervention in the professions, the zealots defend Israeli policy and leaders, contribute money, organize voters, and run for office. Once in office they tune in to Israeli policy needs.
The phenomenon of overseas expatriates attempting to influence an imperial power is not an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. The Cuban exiles in Miami exercise significant influence in both major parties. But in no other case has linkage led to the establishment of an enduring hegemonic relationship: an empire colonized by a regional power, with the US paying tribute to Israel, subject to the ideological blinders of its overseas colons, and launching aggressive wars on its behalf.
Many questions remain to be answered as the Empire aggressively pursues its military expansion and the internal voices of repression narrow the terms of public debate.
As the colons extend their influence throughout the political and intellectual spheres of the US, they feel more confident in asserting Israel's superiority to it, particularly in the areas of political coercion and war. They brazenly boast of Israel's superior security system, its methods of interrogation including its techniques of torture, and demand that the US follow Israel's war agenda in the Middle East. In Israel, there is acknowledged state-sanctioned physical and mental abuse of prisoners in interrogation, which has broad public support.21
The colons subordinate US policy to Israel's foreign policy needs, independent of the US's own circumstances and in reflection of the extremities to which Israel's colonial policies push it. Moreover as representatives of Israeli hegemonic power in the US, they even try to micro manage security measures—torture in interrogation—as well as becoming vociferous advocates of a generalized Middle East war. The colons have successfully influenced the US government to block any EU initiatives toward international mediation, as well as the US-sponsored Mitchell Plan, advocating peace observers in the occupied territories. In a word, the US, despite its occasional inconsequential criticism of Israel's excesses, has not only been an unconditional supporter of Israel, but it has done so in the context of a prolonged bloody repression and occupation of Palestinian territories, which Washington is a party to securing. Israeli hegemony over the US via its colons affords it a formidable weapon for neutralizing the US's NATO allies, Arab petroleum clients, the vast majority of the General Assembly in the United Nations, and even its own public on certain Middle Eastern issues.
Even more dangerous is the irrational paranoia that the colons transfer from Israeli politics to the US. All Arabs are suspect as was evident in the Zionist-instigated congressional outcry about the purchase of US ports by a Dubai firm. Middle Eastern adversaries should be threatened if not bombed. Secret military tribunals and summary justice should be meted out to suspected terrorists. The mass media is especially tuned to pick up the Israeli paranoid syndrome: magnifying every threat, celebrating Israeli resolution and efficiency against Arab "terrorists". The paranoid style of politics had led to Israel's attacks on Arab countries in the Middle East, espionage on the US, illegal purchase of nuclear devices in the US, and unremitting violence against the Palestinians and Lebanese. The assimilation of the Israeli hyper-paranoid style by the US has vast and dangerous consequences not only for the Mideast but also for the rest of the world, and for democratic freedom in the US.
What the intellectual colons and other Israeli publicists forget to mention is that Israeli security policy in the Occupied Territories is a total disaster: bus stations, public malls, five star hotels, and pizzerias in Israel and all Israeli frontiers have been attacked. Hundreds of Israeli citizens have been killed and injured. Tens of thousands of educated Israelis have fled the country precisely because of insecurity and the proximity of violence, which neither the Shin Ben, the Army nor the settlers are capable of preventing. A few Israeli intellectuals are especially embittered by the enormous costs of the settlement movement.25
Blind to Israel's security failures, the colons insist on creating conditions for internal repression and external war. Given their influential role in the mass media, their prominence in the editorial and opinion pages of the most prestigious newspapers, the colons' message reaches far beyond their limited numbers and the mediocrity of their intellect. Location and money can make up for their psychological and political pathologies as well as override any qualms about dual loyalties.
Who Finances the State of Israel?
The question of who is financing the Israeli state is basic because
Israel as we know it today is not a viable state without massive external
support. As the July 2004 updated Congressional Research Service Issue
Brief for Congress titled "Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance" points out in its
opening statement: "Israel is not economically self-sufficient, and relies on
foreign assistance and borrowing to
maintain its economy."26 Despite what
might seem an insurmountable obstacle not
just to Israel's prosperity, but to its
sustainability, the country has nonetheless
done rather well. Billions of dollars are raised from a variety of Jewish and
non-Jewish institutions to sustain the Israeli war machine, its policy of generous
subsidies for Jews enticed to settle in colonies in the Occupied Territories and in
Israel—sufficient to place the country as the world's 28th highest in living
standards for Israel's Jewish citizens.27 Without external aid Israel's economy would require severe cutbacks in living standards and working conditions, leading to the likely flight of most Israeli professionals, businessmen, and recent overseas immigrants. The Israeli military budget would be reduced and Israel would be obligated to reduce its military interventions in the Arab East and the Occupied Territories. Israel would cease being a rentier state living on overseas subsidies and would be obligated to engage in productive activity—a return to farming, manufacture and services minus the exploitation of low paid Asian maids, imported Eastern European farm workers, and Palestinian construction laborers.
Europe continues to privilege the importation of Israeli exports 28 and financial services, despite overt and malicious attacks by leaders of both Israeli parties. Prominent Jewish organizations linked to major parties in France and England have muted any efforts to use the "trade card" to pressure Israel to accept European Union or United Nations mediation. European trade and financial ties to Israel however are not the basic prop for the Israeli war machine. The principle basis for long-term, large-scale financial support is found in the US, among public and private institutions.
In the United States there are essentially four basic sources of financial, ideological and political support for the Israeli rentier economy:
1. Wealthy Jewish contributors and powerful disciplined fund-raising organizations.
2. The US government—both Congress and the Presidency.
3. The mass media, particularly the New York Times, Hollywood, and the major television networks.
4. The trade union bosses and the heads of pension funds.
There is substantial overlap in these four institutional configurations. For example, Jewish supporters in the Israeli lobby work closely with Congressional leaders to secure long-term, large-scale US military and economic aid for Israel. Most of the mass media and a few trade unions are influenced by unconditional supporters of the Israeli war machine. Pro-Israel Jews are disproportionately represented in the financial, political, professional, academic, real estate, insurance and mass media sectors of the American economy. While Jews are a minority in each and every one of these categories, their disproportionate power and influence stems from the fact that they function collectively: they are organized, active, and concentrate on a single issue—US policy in the Middle East, and specifically in securing Washington's massive, unconditional, and continuing military, political and financial support for Israel. Operating from their strategic positions in the power structure, they are able to influence policy and censor any dissident commentators or views from circulating freely in the communications and political system.
In the political sphere, pro-Israeli politicians and powerful Jewish organizations have joined forces with (and even animate)29 pro-Israel ultra right wing mass-based Christian fundamentalist powerful political leaders tied to the military-industrial complex, such as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. Israel's unconditional support of Washington's Cold War and subsequent anti-terrorist military offensive has further strengthened ideological and military ties between US right wing political leaders, pro-Israeli politicians and the leaders of the leading Jewish organizations. The politics of Washington's new imperialism coincides splendidly with the Sharon-Olmert conquest and destruction of the Occupied Territories.
Wealthy and organized Jewish organizations, compliant Congressional representatives and right wing fundamentalist organizations are not the only financial supporters of Israel. US taxpayers have been funding the Israeli war machine with over $3 billion a year of direct assistance for over 35 years totaling over $100 billion and continuing to mount).
Support for Israel from
the US Government
Jewish support for Israel exercised in the above-mentioned sectors of
American society leads in turn to an exacerbated support for Israel by the US
government that is demonstrable in the lavish dispensation of US aid to Israel.
As the CRS Issue Brief notes, "Israel receives favorable treatment and special
benefits under U.S. assistance programs that may not be available to other
countries." The C.R.S Issue Brief elaborates these benefits under the following
topics: cash flow financing, E.S.F cash transfer, F.M.F offsets, early transfers,
F.M.F draw down, unique F.M.F funding arrangements, F.M.F for R&D, F.M.F for in country
purchase. The data below, compiled by the C.R.S Issue Brief in 2004,30 provide some notion of the extent of U.S. aid and its special features:
• Israel has received more than $90 billion in US aid up to 2003, of which $75 billion has been in grants (i.e. nonrepayable), and $15 billion in loans.
• Since 1985, the United States has provided $3 billion in grants annually to Israel.
• Resettlement assistance for Soviet and Ethiopian immigrants peaked in 1992 at $80 million, but continues to be subsidized at $60 million for 2003, $50 million in 2004 and again in 2005.
• In 1990, Israel requested $10 billion in loan guarantees, which would enable Israel to borrow from US commercial establishments, with their loans guaranteed against default by the US government. In 2004, a further $9 billion in loan guarantees was included in P.L. 1088-11. (NOTE: Loan guarantees is the area of financial support to Israel that the US government attacks to indicate its displeasure with Israeli settlement activities. The $10 billion authorized in loan guarantees for 1993-1996 was reduced by $774 million in penalties for settlement expansion.31 No matter: Israel only drew loans on the $10 billion worth about 6.6 billion—annulling any effect from the purported penalty.)
• Economic aid became all grant cash transfer in 1981, and military aid similarly in 1985.
What might be called optimization techniques are employed to further increase (and disguise?) the actual extent of financing, such as:
• Loans with repayment waived (or a pledge to provide Israel with economic assistance equal to the amount Israel owes the United States for previous loans). Since 1974 through 2003, Israel received more than $45 billion in waived loans.
• Since 1982, the US pays Israel E.S.F funds in one lump sum early in the fiscal year, rather than in four quarterly installments, as is the usual practice with other countries. "The United States pays more in interest for the money it borrows to make lump sum payments. AID officials estimate that it cost the United States between $50 million and $60 million per year to borrow funds for the early, lump-sum payment. In addition, the U.S. government pays Israel interest on the E.S.F funds invested in U.S. Treasury notes, according to AID officials. It has been reported that Israel earned about $86 million in U.S. Treasury note interest in 1991."32 The practice has continued in subsequent years.
In addition, the US has supported the development of the Israeli military defense industry, inter alia through:
• $625 million to develop and deploy the Arrow anti-missile missle.
• $1.8 billion to develop the Lavi aircraft. "On August 20, 1987, the Israeli cabinet voted to cancel the Lavi project, but asked the United States for $450 million to pay for canceled contracts. The State Department agreed to raise the FMF earmark for procurement in Israel from $300 million to $400 million to defray Lavi cancellation costs."33
• US military assistance for military purchases in Israel (26.3%). This meant that in 2004, $568 million in military aid could be spent in Israel. (Most US military aid is for purchases of US arms.)
Further support comes through the US government's guarantee of Israel's access to oil, via the Israel-United States Memorandum of Agreement, 1 September 1975. According to Ed Vuillamy, writing in the London Observer.
The memorandum has been quietly renewed every five years, with special legislation attached whereby the US stocks a strategic oil reserve for Israel even if it entailed domestic shortages—at a cost of $3 billion (£1.9bn) in 2002 to US taxpayers.34
Any major development in or initiated by Israel seems to give rise to its own "special costs" which in turn are placed at the door of the United States, whether it concerns support for the migration of Soviet or Ethiopian Jews, or withdrawal from occupied territories. In 2005, Israel moved to request American aid to cover some of the $2 billion to $3 billion cost of its "disengagement" from Gaza, but withdrew that request once hurricanes hit America's Gulf coast.35 With the ascendancy of Olmert, however, the putative costs of the disengagement plan as a whole (which was unilateral despite the US government's demand that it be negotiated) far superseded that, witness his "future intention to seek international financial assistance to defray the cost of the plan, estimated by Israeli economists at $10 billion to $25 billion."36
Israel Bonds
Over its fifty years of existence, the sale of Israel Bonds raised some
$22 billion for the State of Israel. Gideon Pratt, CEO of Israel Bonds, claims
the bonds have financed over 50% of Israel's development,37 though this is
clearly disputable, in view of its proportion to grants, etc. from the US government
as outlined above. According to the Development Corporation for Israel prospectus, the bonds are used for eight categories of infrastructure development projects, such as building ports, power grids, transportation, communications, etc. But as Russell Mokhiber points out:
What the prospectus does not mention, however, is that such 'development' projects also include Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Other bond revenues are transferred from the Israeli government's development account to its ordinary budget, to be spent on the military, the Israeli intelligence services, and other agencies, according to the statistical abstract published each year by the Israeli government.38
Rank and file trade union members might have been surprised to learn that their pension funds had been invested in Israel Bonds with below normal rates of return and higher risk. Despite the poor investment quality of Israel Bonds, some of the largest US trade unions, employee pension funds, and major multi-national corporations have collectively loaned billions of dollars to the Israeli regime. In all cases, the decisions to purchase a foreign government's bonds were made by the trade union bosses and corporate fund managers without consulting the membership or stockholders.39 Nathan Zirkin, a financial director of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, when asked if his union would continue to purchase Israel Bonds despite Israel's repression and arrest of Palestinian trade unionists and activists, replied "Absolutely. The Palestinians didn't have a damn thing until Israel came in."40
Many of the trade unions, which are purchasers of Israeli bonds, are controlled or influenced by the Mafia. The Teamsters Union is the biggest purchaser of Israel Bonds; it is also the union which has seen more senior officials indicted for Mafia ties, illicit use of union funds, and massive robbery of membership pension funds. In this case the trade union Mafioso were buying favorable propaganda from the mass media and support from the "respectable" Jewish organizations via the purchase of Israel Bonds.
Union pension funds have also been used by trade union bureaucrats to purchase Israel Bonds. The most notorious case is the former International Ladies Garment Workers Unions (ILGWU), now called UNITE, a union whose workers are 95% Black, Hispanic, and Chinese, most earning at or below the minimum wage. UNITE's leadership and staff is overwhelming Jewish and earning between $100,000 to $350,000 a year plus expenses.41 By channeling over $25 million in pension funds to Israel, the US workers are deprived of access to loans for housing, social services, legal defense, etc. Clearly the Jewish trade union bosses have a greater affinity for the State of Israel and its oppression of Palestinian workers than they have with their own poorly organized workers, employed under some of the worst working conditions in the US.
Israel Bond promoters, with support from Mafia-influenced corrupt trade union bosses, have sold vast holdings of Israel bonds to 1500 labor organizations at interest rates below those of other available securities and well below what most investors would expect from loans to an economically troubled foreign government like Israel. On March 22, 2002, the Jewish weekly Forward actually put a figure on that amount, quoting the director of the National Committee for Labor Israel as estimating that "the American labor community holds $5 billion in Israel Bonds."
Many factors accounted for the US trade union bosses channeling their members pension funds and union dues into Israel Bonds: political protection and respectability in being associated with Israel and its lobbyists—this was especially important to Mafia-linked and corrupt officials.
Ideological and ethnic ties between Jewish trade union leaders and Israel has been a second factor.
While Israel bonds may represent a diminishing factor in the contemporary Israeli economy—perhaps because the $US 10 billion loan guarantee terminated in 1998?42—they are nonetheless still purchased and held, inter alia, by state and city governments, teachers, universities, and police in the United States, as well as 100,000 individuals.
Accomplices to Genocide
In April 2002, over 100,000 people, mostly Jews and Christian fundamentalists,
marched in support of the Sharon regime in the midst of the
siege of Jenin, and were addressed, inter alia, by Paul Wolfowitz, William
Bennett, Hillary Clinton, Dick Armey, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Gephardt, and AFLCIO
president John Sweeney. In Israel two out of three Israelis (65 percent)
polled in late April 2002 supported Sharon and almost 90 percent believed
the regime's propaganda that the UN commission to investigate Israeli devastation
of the Occupied Territories "will not be fair to Israel." The Israeli
public, the US trade union bosses, and the American political and financial
elites who financed Sharon thereby became accomplices to the crimes against
the Palestinian people. Obviously the shrinking minority of Jews in Israel who
oppose the military machine have little or no influence in policy, in the media, or
in securing overseas financial support. Interestingly, the US did vote in favor of the resolution creating a UN investigatory commission of Israel's near total destruction of Jenin in the spring of 2003. But the UN investigation got no further than its creation. It evoked the hostility of the entire Israeli political class. Shimon Perez (then the self-styled labor moderate in Sharon's government) accused the 170- plus member United Nations Organization of "blood libel". The Israeli security cabinet decided that Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, had not met its demands for amending the mission's mandate, "so there is no possibility of beginning the inquiry...." As Alan Philips of the Daily Telegraph put it:
Apparently having lost his trial of strength with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, Mr Annan recommended to the UN Security Council that the team—which has been waiting in Geneva for three days for permission to go to Israel— should be sent home.43
Wealthy and powerful reactionary Jews in the Diaspora also gravitated toward Sharon. Seven of the eight billionaire Russian Mafia Oligarchs have donated generously to the Israeli state, were on excellent terms with Sharon and Shimon Peres, and have no use for dissident military reservists.In fact, two of these, Israeli-Russian partners of the Russian oil company, Yukos, have taken up residence in Israel to avoid Interpol interdiction, while a third, Boris Berezovsky, though resident in London, is an Israeli citizen.44 Six out of the seven are Jews.45
Because of powerful unconditional external financial and military support primarily from influential Jews in the US, Christian Fundamentalists, the military industrial complex, Pentagon extremists, and corrupt US trade unionists, Israel is able to defy world public opinion, slander humanitarian organizations and human rights leaders, and brazenly continue its genocidal policies. Israeli leaders know "their people": they know they have unconditional supporters who have already been tested. They know that their bankers, professionals and fundamentalists will back them up to the last murdered Palestinian: the march of the 100,000 pro-Zionists in Washington in the midst of the Jenin massacre proved it. The huge turnout of politicians at the annual A.I.P.A.C conference during the massacres in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza strip confirms that they in turn supported the butchers of Rafah.
The Zionist Power
Configuration in the United States
C. Wright Mills once wrote that the US "power elite" ruled by denying
it held power. The Zionist elite follows this formula, but defends itself by
accusing its adversaries of being "anti-Semites" and pursuing retributive measures
that would please former Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Zionist power
configuration (ZPC) cannot be
understood merely as the "Jewish
Lobby" or even the AIPAC, as formidable
as it is, with 150 full-time
functionaries. The ZPC can best
be understood as a complex network
of interrelated formal and
informal groupings, operating at
the international, national, regional and local levels, and directly and
systematically subordinated to the State of Israel, its power holders and key
decision makers. Configuration in the United States
Influence is wielded via direct influence by Zionist representatives in the Government (most notably in the Pentagon under Bush) both in the Executive branch as well as in the Congress, and indirectly via its use of campaign funds 1) to influence the selection of candidates within the two major political parties and 2) to defeat critics of Israel and reward elected officials who will toe the Israel line.
The parameters of political debate on Israel-related issues—which have broadened over time—are shaped by pervasive Zionist and Jewish organizational influence in the mass media, censoring and virulently attacking critics, and pushing pro-Israel "news" and commentaries. The mass media in the US, particularly the "respectable" New York Times, has been in the forefront of propagandizing Israeli conquest and destruction as a "defensive", "anti-terrorist war". Not a single voice or editorial in the New York Times has spoken of the mass killing of Palestinian civilians and Israel's destruction of priceless Christian historical and religious sites that go back over 2000 years.46 While Israel's war machine destroys ancient monasteries and the heritage of world culture, the pro-Israeli mass media in the US focus their critical lenses on the scandals of the Catholic clergy. The Church's protests at the Israeli shelling of the Church of the Nativity and the murder of those seeking sanctuary are thus silenced.
The fourth circle of influence is through local and sectoral organizations, local and state Jewish federations, and through them in local professional bodies, trade unions, pension funds. Activists may be affiliated with the national apparatus and/or embedded in local "civil society". This is probably the most serious threat as it inhibits average US citizens from voicing their doubts and criticisms of Israeli policy, and mutes the effectiveness of the advocacy sector of American society, which in other arenas has assumed a critical progressive role in relation to US policy. All over the US, local editors, critical intellectuals and activists, and even doctors have been branded as "neo-Nazis" and have suffered threatening phone calls and visits by local pro-Israel zealots—including 'respectable' members of the Jewish community. The threatened consequences usually stop discussions and/or intimidate local citizens advocating an independent and democratic foreign policy.
Moreover the Z.P.C's formal and informal structure has a crucial dynamic element to it: each power center interacts with the rest, creating a constant "movement" and activity, which converges and energizes both leaders and followers. Secondly those non-Jewish or even non-Zionist political, media and civic leaders influenced by the Z.P.C in turn influence their constituency, multiplying several fold the initial influence of their "hegemons". The relative absence of an informal, organized and active grassroots democratic foreign policy movement, particularly in relation to Mideast policy, had for some time given the Z.P.C a clear field with virtually no competitors. Only recently has it been challenged by a growing campaign for divestment from Israel which has won varying degrees of support from Christian denominations (Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians) and on university campuses—though this movement proceeds only tentatively and with much organized opposition. As an instance, the City of Somerville, MA intended to divest from Israel, then backed off after Jewish representations to city council.
Over time the same pattern of Zionist influence has manifested itself in US executive agencies. The State Department's "Arabists" are being replaced by pro-Zionists as is the case with senior civilian militarists in the Pentagon, in the Mideast think tanks and the Council of Foreign Relations, among others. It should be noted that the so-called "single issue" (US-Middle East Policy) focus of the Z.P.C of the past has been replaced by the new Zionist strategies in the Pentagon and right wing think tanks who link the expansion of Israeli power beyond Palestine to US-European relations (especially French bashing), US nuclear policy, and US military and energy strategy. This analytical framework is useful in understanding the US-Iraq war, and macro-imperial policy as well as micro-colonial practices.
The Z.P.C in Action:
The Iraq War
The major theoretical strategist of US World Empire is Paul Wolfowitz
who first presented a detailed outline of action in 1992.47 The argument for
permanent wars, unilateral action, pre-emptive warfare and colonial conquest
was spelled out for the first Bush Administration, and later supported implicitly
during the Clinton Administration's continued military attacks against Iraq,
its unconditional backing of Israel's war against the Palestinians, the Balkan
wars, and the de facto takeover of the ex-Communist states of Eastern
Europe, the Baltic states and the South-Central Republics of the ex-USSR. The Clinton Administration's vigorous intervention in favor of Yeltsin's seizure of power and backing of the Russian (Jewish) Oligarchs played a major role in dismembering and weakening its former adversary to world domination. Clinton's unconditional support for Israel and more importantly, for the formulation of a Mideast strategy convergent with Israeli foreign policy was tied to three sets of policies:
1) destroying the military and economic power of one of Israel's main critics in the Mideast (Iraq) via economic boycotts, arms inspections and unilateral disarmament of Iraq, while Israel stockpiled nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction;
2) financing and arming Israeli expansion and colonization of Arab Palestine;
3) maintaining an economic boycott of Libya and Iran (supporters of the Palestinians) while subsidizing Arab client states friendly to Israel (Egypt and Jordan), whose recognition of and relations with Israel required increasing repression of opinion and resistance within those states (and further expenditures by the US in order to be accomplished).
Direct Zionist influence over US Mideast policy was shaped by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who, while a convert from Catholicism to the more elite Episcopalian Church, benefited from her newly-discovered Jewish ancestry. Albright infamously justified the US-induced deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children during her tenure in office, declaring "It was worth it." Secretary of Defense Cohen was instrumental in promoting Israeli military dominance in the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke, a closet Zionist, was one of the most influential Clinton advisers on the Middle East "peace negotiations". President Clinton and the Democrats laid the basis for the eventual capture of US foreign policy making by the Zionists in the subsequent Bush administration by accepting Zionists in strategic foreign policy positions influencing Mideast policy and shaping US policy to fit Israeli expansionist aims.
To be sure, Clinton and his "moderate" Zionists did not threaten Israel's critics such as Saudi Arabia or the rest of the Arab countries with military attacks—as did the Bush regime dominated by the ultra-Zionist militarists. Nor did his regime follow the Israeli line of accusing all of Europe, especially France, of being anti-Semites for criticizing Israel's slaughter of Palestinians. The Clinton regime and its moderate Zionist influential believed it was possible to establish US dominance by consulting with Europe and conservative Arab regimes and sharing the economic benefits of imperial spoils in the Mideast while supporting Israeli expansionism.
The Bush regime represented a qualitative advance in Zionist power in US policies, both foreign and domestic. The key economic policymaker was Alan Greenspan, head of the US Central Bank (Federal Reserve Bank), a long time crony of Wall Street financial interests and promoter of the major pro-Israeli investment houses—responsible for the speculative boom and bust economy of the 1990's.
The influence on US Middle East policy of this neo-conservative cabal far exceeded their formal positions because they were backed by an array of influential Zionist academic ideologues (Kagan, Cohen, Pipes), political pundits (Kristols, Krauthamer, Peretz etc) and directors of war think-tanks (Pipes, Rubin) who continue to be given constant access to the opinion pages of the major US newspapers, or interviewed as Middle East "experts" on pro-Israeli television and radio shows—advancing their war propaganda designed to promote US defense of Israel's Middle East agenda, despite the evident quagmire in Iraq, and growing public rejection of that war. These policy and opinion makers, backed by the mass media, worked in close consultation and in tandem with the major Jewish organizations in the US and in close "consultations" with top officials in the Sharon regime—and will continue to do so with Olmert. Mossad agents, Israeli diplomats and key officials in the Sharon regime had free access to the offices of the Zionist officials in Washington and interchanged information on how to optimize Israeli interests.
Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, all the Zionists in key policy positions and their counterparts in Congress backed a US war with Iraq. After 9/11, Wolfowitz and Senator Lieberman immediately proposed a war against Iraq—demanding that the intelligence agencies "find" the connection and accusing the military of being cowards for not engaging in war to "protect" Israel. Despite Herculean efforts by Feith et al. to twist CIA and Ml reports to serve their pro-war Israeli line, their bellicose rhetoric lacked substance. They then invented the—now callously admitted—BIG LIE (by Wolfowitz) of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction threat to US security. It was a classic case, as became evident when the secret Downing Street Memo was made public, of fitting the facts to suit the policy.48
To pursue this line, the Zionists in the Pentagon bypassed the traditional military/intelligence agencies and created their own propaganda- "intelligence" agency or "Office of Special Plans". The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) was set up by Bruce Jackson, a former director of the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century, to press for regime change in Iraq. Other members of the CLI included Bush advisor Richard Perle, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and the editor of the of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, as well as Senators John McCain and Bob Kerry.
Zionist power manifested itself first in the making of the war and then in imposing impunity on the crimes of the war makers in the government. The Zionists had knowingly painted a totally unrealistic and false picture of the war, its consequences and the likely response of the Iraqi resistance to an Israeli-style conquest and colonization—knowingly, indeed, since it was they who put the figures in place whose purported special knowledge supported their arguments. The Zionists were initially able to marginalize high military officials like General Anthony Zinni who questioned the war and opposed the way the war was launched, and the length and breadth of the engagement. They shut out all debate on who would benefit and who would lose from the war: US soldiers killed, rising oil and energy costs, huge budget deficits, and, of course, massive loss of life and property among the Iraqis.
Wolfowitz claimed that the invading army would be welcomed as liberators (evoking the liberation of Paris). Perle claimed "the Arabs" would offer little or no resistance (being a "tribal" society). Kagan claimed that "one big bomb" would silence the Arab street and public opinion.
While the US military had conducted a campaign of forced demodernization in the first Iraq War, attacking even civilian technological infrastructure related to water and sewage, in the second attack on Iraq by the Bush, Jr. administration, Feith and Wolfowitz concentrated on the destruction of Iraqi society, as such. They promoted the massive purge of the entire Iraqi civil service, professions, universities, schools and hospitals of Baathists, as well as the dismantling of the Iraqi army and dismissal of 400,000 Iraqi military and police personnel—over the shocked objections of experienced senior US military officers who had expected to work with the surrendered military and administrative structure of Iraq to control the colony. This opened the way for the pillage of Iraq's complex infrastructure and historic treasures and libraries, as well as the growth of criminal gangs involved in theft, kidnap for ransom, murder and rape—activities virtually unknown under the tight Baathist regime. Rumsfeld dismissed the massive destruction of Iraqi society as the "messiness of freedom".
Many top US military officials objected, as did the first US proconsul, former general Jay Garner, who stated that he "fell out with the Bush circle because he wanted free elections and rejected an imposed program of privatization."49 But the Zionists in the Pentagon and their partners in crime, Rumsfeld and Cheney, were determined to dismantle the secular Iraqi state in order to institute a policy to turn Iraq into a desert kingdom—a loose collection of at least three "tribal" client mini-states based on ethnicities, religious-tribal loyalties, and forever incapable of opposing Israeli expansionism, particularly in Northern Iraq.50
However, instead of easy conquest, the 'Israel First' Pentagonistas provoked a massive popular opposition, which unified the religious and secular groups in opposition to the US occupation, and swelled the ranks of the armed resistance with thousands of discharged armed professionals. In the course of pursuing a policy of strengthening Israel's regional position, the Zionists weakened the US colonial occupation and any medium term plans to convert Iraq into a US oil colony. The result has been thousands of US military and client collaborators dead, maimed and wounded, and a burgeoning worldwide opposition, particularly in the Arab East, and among several hundred million Muslims.
The Israel First Pentagonistas successfully promoted the idea that the Israeli military and intelligence experts had a lot to teach their ignorant American counterparts on "urban warfare" and "information gathering" drawing on Israel's wealth of experience of over 50 years of expelling and destroying Palestinian communities and developing interrogation and torture techniques on Palestinian and Lebanese captives.51 The purpose of the Pentagon Zionists was to deepen the ties with Israel's security apparatus as part of a middle term goal of making "the cause of Israel as the cause of America" (as prostrate Presidential candidate Kerry pledged).52 The long-term goal was to leverage military security and the co-manufacture of military weaponry between the US and Israel into the Grand Scheme of a Greater Middle East US-Israel Co-Prosperity Sphere.53 Imperial Israel would then have access to water, oil, capital and markets, which the heavily subsidized rentier militarist state lacks at the present.
The torture-interrogation techniques taught by the Israeli instructors converged nicely, updating and refining the older CIA torture manuals, more specifically introducing specificities pertaining to torturing Muslims and especially Arabs.54 But once again the Zionist-Israeli priorities undermined US imperialist policies: the photo revelations of US soldiers torturing, raping and humiliating Iraqi prisoners discredited the US occupation worldwide, heightened Arab and Muslim resistance throughout the Middle East and discredited the Bush regime. Congressional hearings and mass media reportages even provoked a burst of public disapproval of the invasion of Iraq and Bush's handling of the occupation. Throughout the country there were calls, including from members of Congress, for Rumsfeld's resignation.
Curiously enough, there were virtually no calls for the resignation of the Israel First Pentagonistas—who were equally implicated and responsible for the mass torture of Muslim detainees. According to Newsweek, it was Douglas Feith who was actually in charge of setting policy on Iraqi detainees.55 Even in the face of this horrible crime against humanity, even in the general national outcry to investigate, impeach and hold responsible those involved, Paul Wolfowitz, the top Zionist architect of the war and responsible head (number 2) of Pentagon intelligence in the Iraq war involved in ordering the torture, has escaped official public censure, protected as he has been up to now by the pro-Israel pundits, political fundraisers, presidential campaign fundraisers and influential, (see Chapter Four on the expose of Seymour Hersh's expose). As for number 3, despite the fact that he is still a key subject of a Phase II Senate Intelligence Committee investigation on pre-war planning and post-invasion failures (Phase I focused primarily on intelligence failures), Douglas Feith was invited to teach a course on the Bush Administration's strategy behind the war on terrorism to students in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Fall 2006.
While the Mossad was later chastised for "intelligence failures" by the Israeli Knesset after release of the Steinitz Report on March 29, 2004, their Zionist counterparts in the Pentagon—Shulsky, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Abrams—however they may have been publicly criticized and even investigated, have yet to be officially and publicly reprimanded for their collaboration with the Mossad. Much will depend on an ongoing investigation by the FBI— which holds more promise than the Congressional whitewashing. As Robert Dreyfuss put it in The Nation: "Did Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, run a covert program with operatives in high-level US government positions to influence the Bush Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq? The FBI wants to know."56 In fact, the FBI appears to be one American institution which is willing to address the issue of Zionist power in America, as its efforts related to the AlPAC-spying scandal (see Chapter 5) seem to indicate.
Amid the widespread condemnation of these war crimes and the media exposure of the systematic lies of the Pentagonistas, the fear that the highly influential and visible role of the Israel Firsters might lead to an antiIsrael backlash raised alarm bells among some of the most astute Congressional Zionists.57 Senator Frank Lautenberg (Democrat-New Jersey) a committed Zionist, called for the "replacement" of Wolfowitz and Feith in order to get them out of view and further, louder, anti-Zionist-related condemnation. 'The men in charge have let down the soldiers in uniform. Simply replacing Secretary Rumsfeld will change little at the Pentagon if his discredited team of advisers remains in high-level positions. It is time for us to bring in new civilian leadership at the Defense Department".58 Lautenberg made it abundantly clear whom he thought was central to the whole US war effort, from beating the war drums, to cooking the data, designing the war strategy, to micromanaging the business of interrogation-torture.
Several former top US military professionals objected to the Zionist control over US policy and their close network of collaborators. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski has given us an inside picture of the Feith/Shulsky operation whose links to the Mossad seemed closer than to the US military. The Rumsfeld-Zionist group's monopolization of military policy, war strategy, military calculations and military promotions all alienated the military high command. Some who clearly foresaw the disastrous consequences of the policies of the Israel First crowd on US global ambitions were silenced and marginalized.
It is likely that the release of the torture photos to the media was deliberately encouraged or promoted by highly placed military officials or former officials as a way of discrediting Rumsfeld and the Pentagon Zionists.59 This move severely undercut the war effort, which more and more of the military high command sees as destined to fail, but they were determined not to become the neo-cons' scapegoats. However to gain an "honorable" withdrawal they must know that they have to remove Rumsfeld and his Zionist colleagues, whose criteria for evaluating the war has less to do with the aims and standing of the US military and more to do with Israeli expansionist goals in the Middle East.
While the Pentagon Zionists and the powerful network of pro-Israel Jewish organizations have seen their Iraqi serial war strategy fall behind schedule, they have succeeded in securing Presidential economic sanctions against Syria and binding US political support for Sharon's (and now Olmert's) destruction and annexation of the remnant of Palestine. Moreover the leading Jewish organizations were able to secure a near unanimous vote in Congress (407 to 9) in favor of Bush's declaration supporting Israel's "new borders" in Palestine.60 Once again the Zionist Lobby demonstrated its power—even turning Bush and Congress into self-effacing political idiots before Sharon. After Bush put all of his limited credibility in Mideast politics in his "Roadmap" for a Middle East peace accord, Sharon unilaterally declared a policy of "annexation and separation" and told Bush to swallow it. All the major Jewish organizations backed Sharon's plan. Bush submitted and endorsed this, alienating virtually every European country and all Arab countries, and clearly demonstrating the slavish complicity of US policymakers who once again renounced US Middle East imperial interests in order to accommodate Israel's expansion into the remnants of Palestine. Bush's policy reversal was backed by the vast majority of Congress who are forever fearful of Zionist-Jewish retaliation for the least deviation from unconditional and total support for Israel.
During the invasion and occupation of Iraq, some Congress members have been critical of the war. Hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated their disapproval. Many Jewish Americans have participated in the protests and in some cases have led the protests. Mass media outlets have on occasion (especially after the torture expose) publicized adverse news on the war (tortures, civilian victims, wedding parties bombed, and homes and orchards bulldozed). While the US pursues the war in Iraq, the Israeli government has been equally brutal: engaging in premeditated assassination of Palestinian leaders, systematically destroying thousands of homes, farms, orchards, stores, schools, mosques and factories, and killing and maiming thousands of Palestinians activists, civilians, women and children. They have also resorted to the routine hooding, manacling and torture of detainees.
All the major pro-Israel Jewish groups in the US, high and low, have defended all these crimes against humanity, successfully pressuring both major parties, the Congress and President, to say nothing—no protest, no investigation, no punishment. This, while the US, smarting from the exposure of torture at Abu Ghraib and pursued by the UN Committee on Torture, Amnesty International and other human rights groups, has been forced to put on trial more than 100 armed forces' staff accused of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq, the scope of which in and of itself points to a practice rooted in policy.61 More perversely in the face of the Israeli mayhem, pro-Israel Jewish groups have secured $10 billion dollars more in aid and lucrative joint-venture military contracts (no outcry here about Halliburton-type contracting).
Israel and the Right of Free Speech
There is presently an inability in America even to formulate or sustain
a discourse related to the subject of Israeli influence on the United States. Such
an opportunity seemed to open with the courageous publication of a well-documented essay written by Professor Walt of Harvard University and
Professor Mearsheimer of University of Chicago critical of the Lobby's influence
on US Middle East policy. However, a virulent campaign against
Mearsheimer and Walt was then waged by all the major Jewish publications
and pro-Israel organizations. From the ultra right wing
Orthodox Jewish Press (which claims to be
the largest "independent" Jewish newspaper in the
US), to the formerly social democratic Forward, to
the Jewish Weekly, all have launched, together with
all the major Jewish organizations, a propaganda
campaign of defamation ("the new Protocols of
Zion", "anti-Semitic", "sources from Neo-Nazi
websites...") and pressure for their purge from academia. The Jewish authoritarians have already partially succeeded. Their press releases have been published by the mass media without allowing for rebuttal by the academics under attack. Harvard University has demanded that the identification of the Harvard Kennedy School be removed from the paper. The financier of the professorial chair (in his name) which Professor Walt, as academic dean, occupies at the Harvard Kennedy School, is no longer mentioned in his publication. Ultra-Zionist and torture advocate Professor Dershowitz and his fellow Harvard zealots called into question their moral and academic qualification to teach—this concerning professors of the highest standing, with an established record at America's top universities.
In both the United States and France, legislation is being prepared to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and to criminalize as a 'hate crime' the free expression of outrage over Israeli atrocities and any criticism of the Lobby's control of US Middle East policy.62 In the US, the proposed legislation 63 would take the form of withdrawing federal funding from any academic institution where the policies of Israel are criticized.
Other attacks on American academics include the effort by Daniel Pipes, director of Middle East Forum, to establish a campus blacklist through his neo-McCarthyite Campus-Watch website. Pipes is part of a "band of neo-conservative pundits with strong allegiances to Israel [who] took on the task of launching a more focused assault on Middle East Scholars."64 This effort was but the latest in a long history of attempts to curtail academic discussion of issues that might relate to Israel.65
In New York City, a major theater production of the life of Rachael Corrie, an American humanitarian volunteer murdered in the Occupied Territories by an Israeli Defense Force soldier driving a bulldozer, was canceled because of Jewish pressure and financial threats. The theater admitted that the cancellation had to do with the "sensitivities" (and pocket book) of the Israel-Firsters. Even the progressive magazine, Mother Jones, went to the trouble of running an article critical of Corrie, heading it:
NEWS: Martyr, idiot, dedicated, deluded. Why did this American college student crushed by an Israeli bulldozer put her life on the line? And did it matter? 66
The pro-Israel lobby's defense and support of a minority opinion in favor of Middle East aggression is now extending its authoritarian reach into undermining the basic right of Americans to free and open expression. There is no group of investors or financiers willing to fund a civil rights campaign in defense of free speech, academic and artistic freedom, to counter the minority Zionist financial and professional elite.
The leaders of the peace movement, both Jews and non-Jews, reject any effort to include Israel's genocidal war against Palestine for fear of alienating the "public" (read the major Jewish organizations) and the self-styled progressive Jews, who are ever protective of everything Jewish—even war crimes. Worse still, with a few rare exceptions, the "progressive" Jewish critics of the war and Israel are forever and adamantly determined to avoid criticizing the role of powerful Zionist policymakers in the government, their ties to Israel and the significant support they receive from the major Jewish organizations in all matters which pertain directly or remotely to Israeli interests.
With blind simplicity, they all see Israel as simply a "tool" of the US for weakening the Arabs in the service of US oil interests. Apparently they have never consulted US petrol CEOs, advisers or investment brokers, who all agree that US support for Israel is destabilizing the region, threatening oil supplies, boosting prices to US consumers and creating enemies out of Arab client rulers who invest in the US, buy US currency to keep it from collapsing, and raise OPEC quotas to help lower US prices. By its blind support for Israeli colonial brutality, the US has alienated several hundred million Muslims, millions of Arabs of all faiths, the great majority of Europeans, Africans and Asians, thereby heightening US global isolation. The American alliance with Israel has been one of the world's greatest energizers of anti-imperialist movements, crossing racial, religious and gender boundaries.
Even the crude, virulent anti-European ideology propagated by Israeli ideologues and their transmission belt Jewish organizations in the US and Europe has influenced the US government. At a time when Muslims and Arabs are conquered and persecuted, with thousands jailed and many "disappeared" by the US, Israeli and European governments, Secretary of State Powell convened a meeting in Europe on the rising danger of ... "antiSemitism"!! And the UN, under Kofi Annan, followed suit with its own meeting on 'anti-Semitism' during the ongoing devastation in the Rafah refugee camps in the Gaza Strip! The major Jewish organizations repeat the Sharon and now Olmert line that "anti-Zionists" are "anti-Semites"—and it becomes established policy in the US and in some countries of Europe... to the point that individuals critical of Zionism are fired, cultural institutions are pressured into censoring anti-Zionist events and creating a general culture of fear of offending the hegemonic Jewish organizations. Even Webster's recent dictionary equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Surprisingly, in the midst of this, the major Jewish organizations in France openly condemned the manufactured hysteria as an Israeli mechanism to encourage the migration of French Jews to Israel.67
Jews in North America, South America and Europe are disproportionately in the highest paid positions, with the highest proportion in the exclusive, prestigious private universities, with disproportionate influence in finance and the media. It is clear that "anti-Semitism" is a very marginal global issue and, in point of fact, that Jews are the most influential ethnic group.
The tragic myopia or perverse refusal of leftist Jews to face up to the prejudicial role of the major Zionist and Jewish groups promoting the Israel First policy and imposing it on the electoral agendas substantially undermines their and our efforts to secure peace and justice in the Middle East and to forge a democratic US foreign policy.
next....THE LIBBY AFFAIR AND THE INTERNAL WAR
footnotes
Chapter 1
1 Thirty US House Representatives signed on as sponsors or cosponsors of H. Res 635, which would create a Select Committee to "investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment. " The bill was referred to the House Committee on Rules on December 18th, 2005.
2 David S. Cloud and Eric Schmitt, "More Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation", New York Times, April 16, 2006. The generals are: Major General Paul D. Eaton, General Anthony C. Zinni, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Major General John Batiste, Major General John Riggs, and Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr.
3 Recent revelations by retired CIA officers, such as Paul Pillar and Ty Drumheller, indicate that the CIA advised the Bush administration on the nonexistence of WMD, but was ignored. See Larry Johnson, "Why Did Goss Resign?" Truthout, May 6th, 2006.
4 Financial Times, March 18/19, 2006 p.1.
5 Michael Klare "Oil, Geopolitics and the Coming War with Iran," TomDispatch.com, April 11, 2005. Klare totally ignores the role of the Zionist lobby, resorting to the oil interest ploy, even after demonstrating their inability to shape US policy!
6 See Michael Klare, "United States: energy and strategy", Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, November 2002.
7 Yahya Sadowski, "No War for Whose Oil?" Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2003.
8 The Iraqi resistance may have been a major factor in blocking the privatization of Iraqi oil. As Greg Palast noted: "Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces...'We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, 25 The Power of Israel in the United States / James Petras pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming.'" Greg Palast, "Secret U.S. Plans for Iraq's Oil", BBC News, March 17, 2006.
9 Patrick Seale, "A Costly Friendship", Nation, July 21, 2003.
10 For a running casualty count, see the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website at
Chapter 2
1 The U.S Country Reports on Terrorism 2005 indicates that terrorism is on the rise, with the bulk of the increase in Iraq.
2 Tom Regan, "Report: US war costs could top $2 trillion", Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 2006.
3 As Bernhard Zand points out, "On the eve of the war, Iraq was pumping about 2.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. In the first three months of this year, the rate of export was just over 1.7 billion barrels." See Bernard Zand, "On the Verge of Collapse," Der Speigel, May 1, 2006.
4 Steven Graham, "Switching Cities Off", Routledge, 2005.
5 "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, et al, Institute of Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. 1996.
6 There are actually numerous contenders for this epithet. See Kevin Drum, "Political Animal", Washington Monthly, May 16, 2006, who lists Anastasio Somosa, Francisco Franco and Dominican dictator Trujillo. Geoffrey Kemp, head of the National Security Council, is cited as the source of the epithet in relation to Saddam. See Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, New York, Times Books, 1990, p. 85.
7 See Akiva Eldar, "Infrastructures Minister Paritzky dreams of Iraqi Oil Flowing to Haifa", Haaretz, March 31, 2003. 57 The Power of Israel in the United States / James Petras
8 Amiram Cohen, "US checking the possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa via Jordan", Haaretz, August 23, 2003.
9 This pipeline, once the Mosul-Haifa pipeline, closed in 1948 with the advent of the Zionist state, is now resurrected as the Kirkuk-Mosul-Haifa pipeline. Our source for the maps is http://judicial-inc.biz/pipeline_blown_mossad.htm, though they appear elsewhere on the internet.
10 US Financial Aid to Israel: Facts, Figures and Impacts, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 2004
11 Forty years later, on June 8, 2005, the USS Liberty Veterans Association filed a formal report with the US Department of Defense of War Crimes Committed Against U.S. Military Personnel on June 8, 1967 by elements of the Israeli military forces.
12 James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Doubleday, New York, 2001.
13 James Ennes, Assault on the Liberty, Random House, 1980. See also Statements by Ward Boston, Jr., Captain, JAGG USN (Ret), January 9, 2004 and Admiral Thomas Moorer, USN (Ret) January 11, 2003.
14 Alison Wier, "Russia, Israel and Media Omissions", Counterpunch.org, February 7, 2005.
15 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Pro-Israel PAC Contributions to 2002 Congressional Candidates, June 2003.
16 See Carl Cameron Investigates (Parts 1-4) Fox News Network, Dec. 17, 2001, available at
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