The Real Israel
"The Zionist are every bit as ruthless as the very Nazis they demonize, yet collaborated with, before and during World War II. History does indeed repeat itself, and those who do not learn from it are the ones who ensure its recurrence"
"At the time of Balfour's declaration [1917], Jews comprised less than 10% of the population and owned 2.5% of the land of Palestine. The problem of building a Jewish society among an overwhelming Arab majority came to be known as the 'conquest of land and labor.' Land, once acquired, had to remain in Jewish hands. The other half of this project, known as Labor Zionism, called for the exclusive use of Jewish labor on the land acquired by the Jews in Palestine. The Labor Zionists maintained this dual exclusionism (or apartheid, as we would now call it) in order to build up purely Jewish institutions." "To achieve the conquest of the land, the Zionists set up an arrangement whereby
Thus land was acquired in the name of 'the Jewish people,' held for their use, and not subject to market conditions. The idea was for the JNF to gradually acquire as much land as possible as the basis for the expected Jewish state. Naturally, in order for the land to serve this function, Arab labor had to be excluded. Leases from the JNF specifically prohibited the use of non-Jewish labor on JNF plots. One way to achieve this goal was to lease land only to those Jews who intended to work it themselves. In some cases, when land was bought from Arab absentee landlords, the peasants who resided on and worked the land were expelled.
"Despite these policies and even with the encouragement of the British government, in the thirty years following the Balfour Declaration, the Zionists were able to increase the Jewish-owned portion of the land of Palestine to only 7%. Moreover, the majority of the world's Jews showed no interest in settling there.
Even after the rise of Hitler, Jews in Europe did not choose Israel: out of 2.5 million Jewish victims of Nazism who fled abroad between 1935 and 1943, scarcely 8.5% went to Palestine. 182,000 went to the U.S., 67,000 to Britain, and almost 2 million to the Soviet Union.
"This policy of attaching more importance to the establishment of Israel than to the survival of the Jews led the Zionists to collaborate with Nazism and even be decorated by Hitler's government. The best-known case was that of Rudolf Kastner, who negotiated the emigration to Palestine of some of Hungary's most prominent Jews in return for his help in arranging the orderly deportation of the remainder of Hungary's Jews to the camps. For his efforts, Kastner was praised as an 'idealist' by no less an authority than Adolf Eichmann. (The best study of Zionist-Nazi relations is Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.)
The 1948 war afforded the Zionists an excellent opportunity to rectify this; as a result of the war, more than three-quarters of a million Arabs fled their homes. The case of Deir Yasin, in which Israeli paramilitary forces, under the command of future prime minister Menachem Begin, massacred over 250 civilians, sending a message to Palestinians that they should depart, is the most well known example of how this flight was brought about. [Emphasis added.]
Recent writings by Israeli revisionist historians have refuted the longtime insistence of Israeli officials that the departures were voluntary. Some of the refugees went to neighboring Arab countries; others became refugees in their own country. Those 750,000 expelled from their homes and their descendants, who together total 2.2 million people, make up the so-called refugee problem. Although the United Nations has repeatedly demanded they be allowed to return, the Israeli government has refused to agree. The war ended with the Zionists in control of 80% of Palestine. In the next year, nearly 400 Arab villages were completely destroyed. This was no accident but the result of deliberate policy, as shown in the following statement by one of the most authoritative officials of the Zionist State: 'Among ourselves it must be clear that there is no place in our country for both peoples together. The only solution is Eretz Israel, or at least the western half of Eretz Israel, without Arabs, and there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain.' Joseph Weitz, Deputy Chairman of the Board of directors of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) from 1951 to 1973, former Chairman of the Israel Land Authority (Davis, 5)." Emphasis added A few weeks spent in Palestine is always an assault on the senses, on the emotions. And after three trips to the West Bank in the past eighteen months, it is impossible not to draw some conclusions. For most Americans, the eleventh commandment of the politics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is Thou Shalt Not Reach Conclusions; for conclusions [indicate] that Israel wants the land of Palestine without the people; that the Israeli settlements, the roads accessible only to Israelis, the land confiscations, the house demolitions, the destruction of agricultural land add up to an act of ethnocide against the Palestinian people; that Israel's occupation and Israel's land greed are the root of the conflict and the root cause of terrorism. [These] are too pointed for most people, too embarrassingly descriptive of an ugly reality impossible to ignore.
But when you are in Palestine, when you see hundred-year-old olive groves bulldozed to make way for the wall, when you see entire city blocks bulldozed and cleared of homes where thousands once lived, when you actually watch a home being demolished, when you see huge Israeli colonies and small outposts on every hilltop, when you see markets closed because the wall has separated commerce from its customers, when you see destruction all around, denial is no longer possible. You must conclude that there is a deliberate scheme here. You must acknowledge the unthinkable, that Israel has been built from the beginning on the ruins of another nation, that Israel has all but destroyed another people in order to have a Jewish-majority state, that Israel is not moral as its friends claim, not a light unto the nations." How ignorant they all are, these politicians who are supposed to represent us, about the realities of life under the dominion of Israel. How ignorant they all are of the facts: This also good for the media, which gets a rest from hard reporting on human . Americans have not heard anything from the mainstream media about 400 newly dead Palestinians." "Support for President Bush and his handling of the Iraq war has dropped among American Jews during the past year, according to a new poll released by the American Jewish Committee. American Jews stand well to the left of the overall American population on a broad range of domestic and foreign-policy issues, and are much more critical of the Bush administration, judging from a comparison of the AJCommittee poll and other recent surveys.
During the same period, according to the latest poll, Senator Kerry's support jumped from 59% to 69%, with 2% of American Jews now backing independent candidate Ralph Nader and 5% still undecided. Along with the decline in electoral support for Bush has come a jump in the proportion of American Jews who disapprove of the Iraq war -from 54% to 66%. The results of the AJCommittee poll appear to undermine repeated Republican claims that Bush has made inroads with American Jews and stood to increase significantly the 19% of the Jewish vote that he captured in 2000. In addition, the poll flies in the face of the notion that American Jews supported the Iraq invasion because the war eliminated a major regional threat to Israel." The latest AJCommittee findings also point to a gap between American Jews and Jewish organizations. Most major Jewish groups offered varying levels of support for the American military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein two years ago. In contrast to the growing number of American Jews who disapprove of Bush's leadership on Iraq, many Jewish organizations continue to voice support for the president's foreign policy, and none are believed to have withdrawn their endorsement of the war." "What is perhaps most surprising is to encounter so many people, Israelis as well as internationals, who agree with these conclusions and who speak openly and almost casually about their distaste for Zionism and the flaws inherent in the system it has generated. For the second year running, at a work camp sponsored by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) to rebuild a recently demolished Palestinian home in the village of Anata, just outside East Jerusalem, we encountered more people than we knew existed, from more organizations than we knew existed, working to oppose the occupation and help Palestinians oppose Israel's expansionism. These are people who put their own personal safety at risk and their own personal comfort aside in order to help Palestinians rebuild, protect Palestinians from Israeli settlers and soldiers, bring the Palestinian message to the world, stand in solidarity with Palestinians in distress. ICAHD itself, founded and led by Jeff Halper, is both an activist and an education organization, with a small core staff of Israeli and Palestinian experts, starting with Halper himself, who know every road in the West Bank, every settlement, the details of every Israeli expansion plan,every mile of the separation wall."
by
Ted Lang
Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
Read here for full article by Ted Lang
- Ted Lang
Edited excerpts from Ted Lang's article:
Defenders of Zionism offer numerous Biblical passages to justify the political entity that is the state of Israel.
The state of Israel is, however, an artificial creation of Man, not God.
Narrow interpretations employing selective Christian fundamentalism sanctifying a manmade political artifact will never justify ethnic mass murder and genocide.
It will not justify apartheid.
Much has been written about the origins of the Zionist state of Israel.
Looking at the state of Israel from its actual inception in 1948 as opposed to some ecclesiastical reference dating back to Biblical times is not only tantamount to fraud, but criminally intended as justification for mass murder and war.
A more straightforward reporter's account of the political origins of Israel are in order.
Many readers are confused, and deliberately so, such that a simple approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is shrouded in the "mysteries" of two foreign religions in a faraway, strange corner of the world.
The great imperial and colonial powers of the two preceding centuries, the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the British Empire, both struggled for control of the Middle East.
Great Britain eventually won. Woodrow Wilson's failed socialist scheme of a League of Nations was reborn as the United Nations after World War II.
Writer Noel Ignatiev , writing for Counterpunch on June 17, 2004, in his piece entitled, "Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine," offers:
From its inception, Jews creating Israel intended a policy of apartheid for its subjugated Arab majority.
How was this accomplished?
Ignatiev again:
The foregoing is a perfect example of lawyer and politician-friendly legalistic manipulations created to emit the sweet smell of justice, while in reality reeking of tyranny and despotism.
land was acquired not by individuals, but by a corporation, known as the Jewish
National Fund (JNF). The JNF acquired land and leased it only to Jews, who were
not allowed to sublet it.
Jewish landholders who refused to exclude Arab labor could lose their leases or be faced with a boycott."
As United Nations, British and American support continued to strengthen and legitimize the emerging totalitarian state of Israel, continued Israeli expansionism and apartheid of the Arab majorities included new and more effective tactics: terrorism and mass murder.
Yet Israel's progress in achieving total control in the area and advancing to ethnocide and increasingly brutal apartheid wasn't without difficulties.
Ignatiev writes,
Ignatiev then turns to the collaboration of Zionist Jews with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
In the years between 1920 and 1932, only 118,000 Jews moved to Palestine, less than 1% of world Jewry.
After the war, the U.S. began to encourage Jewish settlement in Palestine. Aneurin Bevin, postwar British Foreign Minister, publicly blurted out that American policy mainly arose from the fact that 'they did not want too many of them in New York.'"
Those that shout "Never again!" the loudest are the very same Zionist Jews of the Abraham Foxman ilk and their Anti-Defamation League, the same ADL that worked in conjunction with the Jewish Sulzberger family [The New York Times] against Jews in America in the 1930s as documented by Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin in chapter two of their online book on the Bushes.
Pertaining to the collaboration of Zionist and Nazis, Ignatiev writes:
This is the real Israel.
The Zionists knew they had to rid themselves of the Arab majority in order to have a specifically Jewish state. Although 75,000 Jews moved to Israel between 1945 and
1948, Jews still constituted a minority in Palestine.
In his book, The Revolt, Begin boasted that without Deir Yasin there would have been no Israel, and adds, 'The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting 'Deir Yasin' (quoted in Menuhin, 120).
This is how it got started; effective organization, legalistic mumbo-jumbo, legislation favoring a minority, and eventually, terrorism and mass murder.
Sound familiar?
Kathleen and Bill Christison identify themselves as former CIA Analysts. Writing for Counterpunch and posted September 24th as "Random Impressions from Palestine," the article begins: "
Considering these observations, isn't it much easier now to understand the atrocities against our land by Zionists as demonstrated by the Rosenbergs, the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, the 26 mutinying Israeli Air Force pilots, the Jonathan Pollard spy incident, the current AIPAC spy incident, and the warmongering neoconservative PNAC cabal that led US into an unnecessary war with Iraq?
Without conclusions, American friends of Israel can live comfortably in denial, believing that although the occupation may be misguided, ultimately Israel is good and innocent, it is only protecting its security, the whole conflict is the Palestinians' fault.
The PNACers and Israel are now making arrangements for the unauthorized, unlawful and unconstitutional invasion of Iran, probably to be led off by a sneak attack on Iranians by the Israeli Air Force.
In what is a virtual cacophony of protest from our leaders in government, it is clear that our elected representatives in Washington will arrange yet another cover-up for the current Israeli-AIPAC spy scandal.
As regards our representatives, the Christisons offer:
It is painfully clear that the partnership of our Zionist-owned and operated media, and our unrepresentative government, will work jointly to cover up completely the embarrassment of Israeli orchestrated treason to implicate America's wealth and its military for the sole benefit of Israel.
Just as Israel succeeded in throttling the overwhelming Arab majority, so too has a tiny minority of efficiently organized pressure groups, such as AIPAC, the ADL, the ACLU, NOW, NAACP, been able to sabotage the socio-political founding philosophy of America. It is this undermining of American principles that is rapidly engulfing US in socialism and fascism.
The weekly Yiddish news and opinion journal, The Forward, which originates out of New York City said it best in their September 24th article, "Support for President, War Drops Among Jews, According to New Study. "
Clearing pointing to a widening gap between American Jews and the so-called "Jewish" organizations that represent them, the article begins,
Another sobering observation by The Forward: "
The AJCommittee poll, which has a 3% margin of error and was based on interviews with 1,000 American Jews conducted during the last two weeks of August, found that 24% of Jews would vote for Bush. An earlier survey, released by the organization in December 2003, tracked Bush's support at 31%.
The Christisons point out in their article, that increasingly, many Jews in Israel, probably a majority, seek to end the Zionist terror campaigns against their Arab neighbors. They offer,
What this says is that many Jews in America, Israel, and all over the world, oppose Zionism and its political maneuvers, legalistics, terrorism, ethnocide and apartheid.
The latter practice alone in the former Union of South Africa generated such animosity against the South African government that the unified condemnation of apartheid helped to bring the government down.
It appears if there is one unmistakable trait as regards tyranny, it is the manipulative ability of a minority to impose its narrow will on an overwhelming majority.
Those who support such tyranny are the first to point out the small numbers of those who are behind the schemes and plots, deliberately downplaying the magnifying and synergistic power of government force used to carry out their immoral deeds.
As Zionists scream "Never again!" they repeat with increased brutality Man's inhumanity to his fellow Man in metrics that surpass even the very Nazis they rail against.
They continually point to "the Kristallnacht," the signifying the beginning of Jewish persecution by the Nazis.
But burning synagogues, and smashing stores is bad enough, but no comparison to the destruction of cities, homes, businesses, and the bulldozing and crushing to death of people inside their homes and destroying hundred-year-old olive groves.
This represents ultimate brutality and murder driven by intense hatred!
The Zionist are every bit as ruthless as the very Nazis they demonize, yet collaborated with, before and during World War II.
History does indeed repeat itself, and those who do not learn from it are the ones who ensure its recurrence.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Sunday, September 26, 2004
POLL: Most Americans Say Its OK Their President Is NOT Truthful About Iraq War
Bush retained his lead despite the fact that:
Read here full article by Kenneth Bazinet of Washington Daily News
25th September 2004
New polls yesterday indicated most Americans still prefer President Bush to John Kerry.
Yet Bush kept a 50%-44% lead.
Friday, September 24, 2004
WHY IRAN WANTS TO BUILD NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Hard-liners in the United States are encouraging Israel to mount a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear industry before it produces bombs.
But, Israelis say that they need nuclear weapons in case one day an opportunistic Egypt and Syria, sensing that Israel's guard is down, revert to their old stance of total hostility and attack Israel. It is the Arabs who should be worried by Israel's might, rather than the other way round.
Read here full article by Jonathan Power "Deterring the deterrents
Edited article:
The United States, Britain and France insisting Iran to discontinue its nuclear programme is hypocritical. These Western powers have argued for decades that nuclear deterrence keeps the peace - and themselves maintain nuclear armories long after the cold war has ended.
So why shouldn't Iran, which is in one of the world's most dangerous neighborhoods, have a deterrent too?
And where is the source of the threat that makes Iran, a country that has NEVER started a war in 200 years, feel so nervous that it must now take the nuclear road?
If Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with its nuclear ambitions, used to be one reason, the other is certainly Israel.
The United States refuses to acknowledge formally that Israel has nuclear weapons, even though top officials will tell you privately that it has 200 of them.
Until this issue is openly acknowledged, America, Britain and France are probably wasting their time trying to persuade Iran to forgo nuclear weapons.
The supposition is that Israel lives in an even more dangerous neighborhood than Iran. It is said to be a beleaguered nation under constant threat of being eliminated by the combined muscle of its Arab opponents.
Israel's nuclear weapons are politically unusable and militarily irrelevant, given the real threats it faces. But they have been very effective in allowing India, Pakistan, Libya, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, North Korea and now Iran to think that they, too, had good reason to build a nuclear deterrent.
The way to deal with Iran is to prove to its leadership that nuclear weapons will add nothing to its security, just as they add nothing to Israel's.
It would also mean America coming clean about Israel's nuclear armory and pressuring Israel to forgo its nuclear deterrent.
If Western powers want to grasp the nettle of nuclear proliferation, they need to take hold of the whole plant, not just one leaf.
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
US NEOCONS Peddling Influence on Bush to Criticise Putin
Israel admitted yesterday that it is buying 500 "bunker-buster" bombs, which could be used to hit Iran's nuclear facilities, as Teheran paraded ballistic missiles as a warning against attack. The BLU-109 bombs, which can penetrate more than 7ft of reinforced concrete, are among "smart" munitions being sold to Israel under America's military aid programme.Read here for more After these horrors, Putin acted to centralize power over his Balkanizing country. He called on parliament to approve a plan to let him name the governors of Russia's 89 provinces, rather than have them elected. Most of the governors approved. But Western elites are howling as though Putin were using the Beslan horror as Hitler used the Reichstag fire – to railroad his rivals to Dachau.
Kagan demanded that Bush denounce Putin – which Bush and Colin Powell both mildly did, infuriating Moscow – and even consider sanctions against Russia.
In Russia, what is vital to us is that we have a stable, friendly government and reliable partner in combating terrorism. How Russia chooses its regional or provincial leaders or parliament is none of our business. What are Western media and politicians doing hectoring Putin and mucking around in Russia's internal affairs?
And they have used their vast fortunes to buy up intellectuals in Western capitals to agitate against him.
These are the same ideologues who engineered the war to "democratize" Iraq and prevailed on Bush to declare "world democratic revolution" the overarching goal of his foreign policy.
Read here full article by Pat Buchanan "Bin Laden's Useful Idiots "
September 22, 2004
Patrick Buchanan
Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books.
Edited article:
Ronald Reagan began his term declaring the Soviet Union an "evil empire". By the end of his tenure, he was strolling through Red Square with Mikhail Gorbachev to the cheers of the Russian people.
That the Cold War ended without our tearing our nations to pieces, as Britain and Germany did, was a triumph, especially considering the awesome power of our weaponry.
And since the Cold War ended, Americans have seemed to understand the importance of good and strong relations with Russia.
The Washington-Moscow connection is among the most critical on the planet.
Why, then, this raft of attacks on President Vladimir Putin over his efforts to consolidate power to combat his terrorist threat?
In The Washington Post, Robert Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and The Weekly Standard calls Putin's plan an "unambiguous step toward tyranny in Russia." Putin "is imposing dictatorship," rails Kagan. "Putin is not really 'with us.' ... A dictatorial Russia is at least as dangerous as a dictatorial Iraq. ... A Russian dictatorship can never be a reliable ally of the United States."
"[T]he aspiring dictator of Russia has forced President Bush to reveal how committed he really is to the cause of democracy around the world."
Query: Have we lost our minds?
British journalist John Laughland has looked behind the attacks on Putin and discovered the "oligarchs" – Russian billionaires who looted the privatized assets of the old Soviet Union, men like Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin has run them out of Russian or locked them up.
Also agitating against Putin is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, a front group of neocons such as Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Michael Ledeen and Kenneth ("Cakewalk") Adelman.
ACPC wants Bush to cut Putin adrift in the name of democracy.
These neoconservatives are demanding that Putin negotiate with the Chechens rebels. Many favor a NATO presence in Chechnya along the lines of the NATO missions in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Putin sees them as pressuring him to negotiate with child-murderers and as pursuing a devious Western strategy to further weaken and break up Russia.
In interviews, he has expressed a growing bitterness toward the West – reacting just as Andrew Jackson would have if Czar Nicholas I had loudly demanded that Jackson sit down and start negotiating with the Cherokees.
him his presidency. Nothing they promised has been delivered.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Attacking Racism: The Flight from London to Johannesburg
Scene took place on a BA flight between Johannesburg and London. A white woman, about 50 years old, was seated next to a black man. Obviously disturbed by this, she called the air hostess. The hostess asked, The white woman responded, "You obviously do not see it then? You placed me next to a black man. I do not agree to sit next to someone from such a repugnant group. Give me an alternative seat." The hostess then replied, The Hostess went away and then came back a few minutes later. " Madam, just as I thought, there are no other available seats in the economy class. I spoke to the captain and he informed me that there is also a seat in the business class. All the same, we still have one place in the first class." Before the woman could say anything, the hostess continued: "It is not usual for our company to permit someone from the economy class to sit in the first class. However, given the circumstances, the captain feels that it would be scandalous to make someone sit next to someone so disgusting." She turned to the black guy, and said, At that moment, the other passengers who were shocked by what they had just witnessed stood up and applauded.
The following anecdote was posted on Jeff Ooi's blog, Screenshots.
Worth a thought. "Madam, what is the matter?"
"Be calm please. Almost all the places on this flight are taken. I will go to see if another place is available."
"Therefore, Sir, if you would like to, please collect your hand luggage, a seat awaits you in First Class."
Friday, September 17, 2004
Scanning update......
Monday, September 13, 2004
SCANNING...SCANNING.. SCANNING
Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Read here for more
"I supported my commander-in-chief as president because there were supposed to be weapons of mass destruction," the Richwood Democrat, who is not seeking re-election, told about 80 politicians and businessmen at Covington's Metropolitan Club."But I have to tell you from all the stuff that we've gotten I really feel like I was misled," Lucas said, responding to a question during the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce's monthly Government Forum. Read here for more
Robert Fisk: We should NOT have allowed 19 murderers to change our world
"... She missed 11 September 2001 by three years and a day. But there was one thing she would, I feel sure, have agreed with me: That we should not allow 19 murderers to change our world.
George Bush and Tony Blair are doing their best to make sure the murderers DO change our world. And that is why we are in Iraq."
- Robert Fisk
Transcribed from Robert Fisk's Article that appeared in The Independent UK
11 September 2004
So, three years after the international crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania we were bombing Fallujah. Come again? Hands up those who knew the name of Fallujah on 11 September 2001. Or Samarra. Or Ramadi. Or Anbar province. Or Amarah. Or Tel Afar, the latest target in our "war on terror'' although most of us would find it hard to locate on a map (look at northern Iraq, find Mosul and go one inch to the left).
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.
Three years ago, it was all about Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida; then, at about the time of the Enron scandal and I have a New York professor to thank for spotting the switching point it was Saddam and weapons of mass destruction and 45 minutes and human rights abuses in Iraq and, well, the rest is history.
And now, at last, the Americans admit that vast areas of Iraq are outside government control. We are going to have to "liberate" them, all over again.
Like we reliberated Najaf and Kufa, "to kill or capture Muqtada Sadr'', according to Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, and like we lay siege to Fallujah back in April when we claimed, or at least the US Marines did, that we were going to eliminate "terrorism'' in the city.
In fact, its local military commander has since had his head chopped off by the insurgents and Fallujah, save for an occasional bloody air raid, remains outside all government control.
These past two weeks, I've been learning a lot about the hatred Iraqis feel towards us.
Trowelling back through my reporter's notebooks of the 1990s, I've found page after page of my hand-written evidence of Iraqi anger; fury at the sanctions which killed half a million children, indignation by doctors at our use of depleted uranium shells in the 1991 Gulf War (we used them again last year, but let's take these things one rage at a time) and deep, abiding resentment towards us, he West.
One article I wrote for The Independent in 1998 asked why Iraqis do not tear us limb from limb, which is what some Iraqis did to the American mercenaries they killed in Fallujah last April.
But we expected to be loved, welcomed, greeted, fêted, embraced by these people. First, we bombarded Stone Age Afghanistan and proclaimed it "liberated", then we invaded Iraq to "liberate" Iraqis too. Wouldn't the Shia love us? Didn't we get rid of Saddam Hussein?
Well, history tells a different story.
We dumped the Sunni Muslim King Feisal on the Shia Muslims in the 1920s. Then we encouraged them to rise against Saddam in 1991, and left them to die in Saddam's torture chambers. And now, we reassemble Saddam's old rascals, their torturers, and put them back in power to "fight terror'', and we lay siege to Muqtada Sadr in Najaf.
We all have our memories of 11 September 2001.
I was on a plane heading for America. And I remember, as the foreign desk at The Independent told me over the aircraft's satellite phone of each new massacre in the United States, how I told the captain, and how the crew and I prowled the plane to look for possible suicide pilots. I think I found about 13; alas, of course, they were all Arabs and completely innocent. But it told me of the new world in which I was supposed to live. "Them'' and "Us''.
In my airline seat, I started to write my story for that night's paper. Then I stopped and asked the foreign desk in London by this time the aircraft was dumping its fuel off Ireland before returning to Europe to connect me to the newspaper's copytaker, because only by "talking" my story to her, rather than writing it, could I find the words I needed. And so I "talked" my report, of folly and betrayal and lies in the Middle East, of injustice and cruelty and war, so it had come to this.
And in the days to come I learnt, too, what this meant.
Merely to ask why the murderers of 11 September had done their bloody deeds was to befriend "terrorism". Merely to ask what had been in the minds of the killers was to give them support.
Any cop, confronted by any crime, looks for a motive. But confronted by an international crime against humanity, we were not to be allowed to seek the motive.
America's relations with the Middle East, especially the nature of its relationship with Israel, was to remain an unspoken and unquestioned subject.
I've come to understand, in the three years since, what this means. Don't ask questions.
Even when I was almost killed by a crowd of Afghans in December 2001 furious that their relatives had been killed in B-52 strikes The Wall Street Journal announced in a headline that I had "got my due" because I was a "multiculturalist". I still get letters telling me that my mother, Peggy, was Adolf Eichmann's daughter.
Peggy was in the RAF in 1940, repairing radios on damaged Spitfires, as I recalled at her funeral in 1998.
But I also remember, at the service in the chancel of the little stone Kentish church, that I angrily suggested that if President Bill Clinton had spent as much money on research into Parkinson's disease as he had just spent in firing cruise missiles into Afghanistan at Osama bin Laden (and it must have been the first time Bin Laden's name was uttered in the precincts of the Church of England) then my mother would not have been in the wooden box beside me.
She missed 11 September 2001 by three years and a day. But there was one thing she would, I feel sure, have agreed with me: That we should not allow 19 murderers to change our world.
George Bush and Tony Blair are doing their best to make sure the murderers DO change our world.
And that is why we are in Iraq.
Friday, September 10, 2004
AIPAC Spying Scandal: Pro Israel US Congressmen and Senators Question FBI Probe JAKARTA BOMBING OF AUSTRALIAN EMBASSY: Read here full article by Ori Nir " White House Draws Fire From Congress, Officials
September 10 2004 Below edited article: Lawmakers and Jewish organizational leaders are questioning the motivation for the investigation and its two-year course, stressing that no indictments have emerged — only leaks from administration officials familiar with the FBI probe. In addition to expressing outrage over the media leaks, several Congressmen are also condemning the investigation itself, which they say has spawned unfair accusations of disloyalty against Aipac and represents an abuse of power on the part of Attorney General John Ashcroft.
"To think that one of the leading American Jewish organizations has been investigated for two years, and the highest people at the White House were aware of it, is extremely unsettling. If there was an individual or group who broke the law, they need to be held accountable. But the broad-brushing of Aipac and the American Jewish community is extremely inflammatory and needs to be stopped." Wexler, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Ashcroft last week demanding that the Justice Department either submit charges or "exonerate the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of this public castigation."
Also voicing criticism were the two Jewish Republican senators, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of Minnesota.
Norm Coleman said that "the real issue here is preventing leaks — of classified materials and about ongoing investigations." TheMinnesota senator argued that "to leak details about an ongoing FBI investigation and the alleged role of Aipac is premature at best and a smear campaign at worst." Representative John Conyers of Michigan, was calling for a congressional investigation regarding the substance of the allegations. Conyers, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, asked the committee's Republican chairman, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, to open an investigation into the claim that a "rogue element of the United States government" may have worked with a foreign government in possible contravention of foreign policy.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, suggested that the administration and media had blundered. He said, "There will be a lot of hard questions that will have to be answered by a lot of people when this is all over. People will have to be held to account. What happened? Why it happened? What was going on in the last two years?" Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, echoed several other Jewish organizational leaders in demanding an investigation into the leaks. Contrary to the predictions of Aipac leaders, the controversy is not fading away.
• The investigation into possible wrongdoing by Aipac was launched more than two years ago, based on suspicions that Aipac employees passed secret information to Israel. One report said that the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and her top deputy, Stephen Hadley, were informed of the probe not long after Bush took office in 2001. • The alleged transfer of a secret White House policy brief by a Pentagon Iran analyst, Larry Franklin, to Aipac staffers last summer was seen by investigators as the "smoking gun." It advanced the investigation, particularly after Franklin agreed to cooperate with investigators. • FBI agents wiretapped the homes of two senior Aipac staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who were interviewed by FBI agents August 27, the day the story broke. Their offices were searched and the hard drive of Rosen's computer was copied, according to reports. Abbe Lowell, a criminal lawyer who specializes in white-collar criminal defense, is representing Rosen and Weissman. In the past, Lowell has defended politicians accused of ethics violations. • At the Pentagon, agents focused on Franklin but also interviewed other officials at the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. Feith was also interviewed, and some of these Pentagon officials, are also being investigated on suspicion that they may have told Iraqi dissident Ahmed Chalabi that the United States has broken secret Iranian communications codes . The Chalabi investigation is linked with connections between Pentagon officials and pro-Israel lobbyists. • Franklin was in contact not only with the political counselor at Israel's Washington embassy, Naor Gilon, but also with the intelligence attaché, a colonel who was identified by his first initial, Y. The colonel, according to the daily Ma'ariv, received information from Franklin and reported his contacts with the American analyst to his superiors at Israel's military intelligence command in Tel Aviv. • The FBI had reportedly been conducting surveillance of Israeli diplomat Gilon. The Aipac investigation and the surveillance of Gilon reportedly converged — and led to the Pentagon — after Franklin walked into a meeting between Gilon and the two Aipac staffers at a Washington restaurant a year ago. • Despite its denials, Israel still runs an aggressive spying operation in the United States, which American counterterrorism agents are surveying. The wave of allegations and leaks has Jewish activists worried. "The longer this story is out there without concrete facts or some conclusion, the more we will bleed," one Jewish organizational official said. One concern voiced by Jewish activists was that Aipac's enemies would use this opportunity to discredit the Jewish community. The first such salvo came from conservative pundit and former presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan last Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." Alluding to Jonathan Pollard, the American Jewish Navy analyst now serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, Pat Buchanan said: If the allegations proved true, he said, "we are getting dangerously close to the T-word," an apparent reference to treason. Such attacks on Aipac will affect the whole Jewish community, communal insiders said. An official with one major Jewish organization worried that Aipac's aggressive lobbying tactics have alienated some lawmakers, making them more likely to move away from the organization as the scandal unfolds. "They have a crappy reputation with some members of Congress who say certain [positive] things publicly, and behind the scenes say: 'I am tired of them twisting my arm.'" Several Jewish activists, speaking on condition of anonymity, also cautioned against what they described as a defiant reaction on the part of some communal leaders who raised the specter of antisemitic conspiracy. "If every single time we get into trouble we cry antisemitism, no one is going to believe us when we confront the real problem of antisemitism," a senior official of a Jewish organization said. Another organizational official said: "It's ridiculous to react like that before you know what happened there. In the absence of accurate knowledge, any comment is just silly."
Over Leak of FBI Probe "
Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat said,
Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank said that the investigation "does appear to be an effort to discredit, to get Aipac." He said: "I'm troubled by it. It's a very inappropriate effort to criminalize a policy debate. It's John Ashcroft, and the president and [Vice President Dick] Cheney."
Alen Specter told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Ashcroft should launch an investigation into the leaks. "I know Aipac; I know its integrity. It's a smear."
In Jewish communal circles, the criticisms and calls for investigations were focused on either the media leaks or the probe itself."Who did it and why? What's the agenda?"
Anonymous sources have been leaking information to the media on a regular basis, suggesting that the probe extends beyond one Pentagon official sharing one document with Israeli diplomats or pro-Israeli lobbyists: "We also need to investigate whether there is a nest of Pollardites in the Pentagon who have been transmitting American secrets through Aipac, the Israeli lobby, over to Reno Road, the Israeli embassy, to be transferred to Mr. Sharon."
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
U.S. Body Bags Reached a Tragic Milestone of 1,000
Memory Refresh: President Bush stood on the US aircraft carrier a year ago and said: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! So the President had won the war.
More sons and daughters of Americans are dying..and still dying.... in a war launched by President Bush that Saddam Hussein had WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.
... Americans will vote for the next President . ..and hopefully, the next President will lead Americans to another war that will not be based on a lie or on a foreign policy that serves the interest of another sovereign nation, instead of its own.
September 8th 2004 "... the AIPAC affair could deliver a knockout punch to one of Washington's most powerful, and feared, lobbying groups. Not only that, it could also destroy the neoconservative wing of the Republican foreign policy establishment by demonstrating, in a court of law, the key link between neoconservatism and espionage.
And ask why is it that Israel is given the sort of leeway that no country can afford to give another – without necessarily answering your own question. Be polite, but, by all means, feel free to point out that if the "A" in AIPAC stood for Arab, one wonders if members of Congress would be so." Read here for
..Attempts to minimize the damage, mostly conducted in the pages of the Jerusalem Post and the New York Times have so far downplayed the significance of the documents allegedly given to AIPAC officials by Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin, and then passed on to Israel.
We can stop the cover-up, but only if we act now. Get on the horn and call your congressional representatives: your two Senators as well as the member of the House from your congressional district.
Let it not be said that, when it came time to speak up, and defend the country from treason only traitors could find words to defend their co-conspirators. Call, write, and make your voice heard. And be polite.
Simply ask WHY the investigation seems to have been hampered, not helped, by the intervention of John Ashcroft.
more
Read here full article by JAMES HALL , Foreign Editor of "The Scotsman"
THE United States death toll in Iraq passed the 1,000 mark yesterday, nearly 18 months after American-led forces invaded the country to topple the government of former president Saddam Hussein.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the latest Pentagon figures showed that 997 US soldiers and three civilian employees of the defence department had been killed in Iraq.
A defence official confirmed the milestone toll.
The rising death toll includes more than a dozen US soldiers killed in fighting and attacks by insurgents since Friday. Nearly 7,000 US soldiers have also been wounded since the invasion.
With George Bush, the president, under sharp criticism from Democrats - including the presidential candidate John Kerry - for invading Iraq without support from major allies, the milestone is expected to play a major role in debate ahead of the election in November.
Donald Rumsfeld sought to play down the impact of the symbolic figure, telling reporters at the Pentagon that the "civilised world" had long passed the 1,000th death at the hands of terrorists.
He cited the 3,000 deaths during the attacks on 11 September, 2001, and the hundreds who died in the school siege in southern Russia.
But Mr Kerry called US military deaths in the Iraq conflict passing 1,000 a "tragic milestone".
At the Pentagon, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, blamed the increase in US combat deaths on an insurgency that "is becoming more sophisticated in its efforts to destabilise the country".
"Make no mistake, we will continue to pursue those who seek to disrupt progress in Iraq," Gen Myers said.
US soldiers were again engaged in pitch battles yesterday.
In the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, US troops battled Shiite militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Thirty-seven people were killed, including two US soldiers, and more than 200 civilians were injured. Five other Americans also died in separate incidents, mostly in the Baghdad area.
A Sadr spokesman in Baghdad, Sheikh Raed al-Kadhimi, blamed "intrusive" US patrolling for provoking the fighting.
"Our fighters have no choice but to return fire and to face the US forces and helicopters pounding our houses," Sheikh Kadhimi said in a statement.
West of the capital, US warplanes flew low over the Sunni insurgent-controlled city of Fallujah, launching retaliatory strikes on suspected militant strongholds after American officials said marines came under attack.
Tanks and artillery also fired into the city and its outskirts, where seven marines died in a car bombing on Monday.
In Baghdad, the hostage crisis entered a new phase when armed men in olive green uniforms stormed the office of an Italian aid group and seized two Italian women and two Iraqis, one male, one female.
It was only the second known kidnapping of foreign women since a wave of hostage-takings began earlier this year.
About 15 men drove up to the house used by the aid organisation A Bridge to Baghdad, witnesses said.
The men claimed to work for the office of the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Two of them pushed their way into the office, put guns to the heads of the aid group’s guards and grabbed the four workers, Jean-Dominique Bunel of the NGO co-ordination committee in Iraq, said.
The Iraqi woman resisted, but they dragged her by her head-scarf, threw her into a car and sped away, witnesses said.
"They have been taken hostage," Mr Bunel said. "We have contacted religious authorities and we have informed their families. We are working for their release."
The two Italian women were named as Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29. They had been working on water and school projects. The two Iraqis were identified as Raad Ali Aziz and Mahnaz Bassam. Ms Torretta, who is the head of the organisation’s Iraqi operation, has been in the country since before the war started. Ms Pari arrived in Iraq in June 2003, to work on a school project in the capital.
Mr Bunel said he knew of no plans by other private aid organisations to evacuate the country because of the kidnapping. A car bombing last year at the offices of the international Red Cross prompted many aid groups to flee the country.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
U.S. Rep. Artur Davis (D-Birmingham) - Biggest Beneficiary of AIPAC's Political Campaign Contribution
"Everyone (in Congress) is scared of it. They are afraid the same thing that happened to me will happen to them." "At its height, the allegation would simply be that the information was used to make the Israeli government aware of Iran's nuclear program. There is no suggestion that this intelligence was designed to harm American interests or to compromise American safety." "When I go into churches in the 4th District. There are only two countries I pray for: Israel and the United States."
Read here FULL article, "Rep. Davis helped by group tied to spy case" by Eric Fleischauer, staff writer for The Decatur Daily News
5th September 2004
The major beneficiary of pro-Israel campaign contributions in this state (Alabama) has been U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham.
According to an estimate by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, Davis received $206,595 in pro-Israel contributions in advance of the 2002 election.
This despite the fact he was NOT an incumbent, and despite the fact his five-term incumbent opponent, Earl Hilliard, was also a Democrat.
Even under the conservative CRP estimate, Davis' 2002 pro-Israel receipts were more than double his total contributions from his previous try at Hilliard's seat, in 2000.
Seventy-six percent (76 %) of Davis' contributions during the 2002 election cycle came from outside Alabama, most from New York City.
"I received a lot of money from the Jewish community. I agree with that," Davis said.
The contributions to Davis were higher than pro-Israel contributions to any other candidate for the House in 2002, according to the CRP.
Steve Weiss, head of the CRP, said the organization's methodology in calculating pro-Israel contributions tends to underreport them.
This is the case because it must largely ignore individual contributions.
Davis' filings with the Federal Elections Commission suggest the pro-Israel contributions are much higher than CRP estimated.
As of March 31, 2002, according to the FEC, Davis had reported $92,100 in political contributions. At that point, Davis' receipts were about one-fourth of Hilliard's receipts.
In mid-April of 2002, Davis attended a series of fundraisers, coordinated by AIPAC members, in New York City and Washington D.C.
Davis' receipts skyrocketed.
By May 15, 2002, Davis was up to $446,821.
Of the 517 individual contributions to Davis in the weeks surrounding the fundraisers, only four came from Alabamians.
After beating Hilliard in the primary, Davis' only opposition in the general election was a little-known Libertarian. Davis, nonetheless, had collected receipts totaling $1.6 million by the end of the 2002 election cycle.
Earl Hilliard, from Birmingham, who lost to Davis, knocked heads with the pro-Israel lobby in 2001 when he and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus took pro-Arab positions on several issues.
He said Tuesday he believes pro-Israel money won Davis the 2002 election.
Hilliard said his main concern is that pro-Israel money tends to crowd out the voice of Arab countries, a result he said could eventually lead to more wars in the Middle East.
"We are being embroiled in a 3,000-year-old conflict," Hilliard said. "Israel's influence is tremendous."
Davis actively courted AIPAC and the pro-Israel vote BEFORE the 2002 election.
He spoke at FIVE fund-raisers sponsored by AIPAC members in New York City.
This year, he had one fund-raiser sponsored by an AIPAC member in New York City and another one sponsored by a Birmingham AIPAC member.
Two weeks after the 2002 election, an AIPAC publication explained why he received strong Jewish support.
"Davis has met with AIPAC activists and staff and has close ties to members of the local and national pro-Israel community."
A pro-Israel PAC, To Protect Our Heritage, said in a newsletter that it contributed money to Davis' 2002 campaign because "Hilliard has one of the most dismal records in Congress in Israel-related issues."
The issue is to some extent the chicken-or-egg dilemma.
Did Davis become pro-Israel to get Jewish contributions, or did the Jewish community support him because he was pro-Israel?
Davis said whatever AIPAC's involvement in alleged espionage, he had no relationship with the committee.
Davis said, "I have never accepted money from AIPAC. My relationship has been with donors who are members of AIPAC."
Despite its name, AIPAC is not a political action committee. It cannot legally contribute to candidates, but it can — and does — recommend that its members make contributions.
The Fiscal Year 2005 Defense Appropriations bill, approved by the Senate, included more than $300 million for joint U.S.-Israel weapons programs.
It also included $2.22 billion in military aid to Israel.
In 2004, Israel received $2.16 billion in military aid.
Hilliard said these numbers indicate the power of AIPAC.
Hilliard said:
Davis said the allegations against Franklin may suggest illegal activity, but not anti-American activity.
Davis said,
U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, said the allegations against AIPAC disturbed him. Cramer received $50,400 in pro-Israel contributions since 1996.
U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, has received $36,500 from pro-Israel groups and individuals since 1996. Aderholt said he accepts pro-Israel contributions and supports Israel legislatively, in part, because it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Aderholt said,
Sunday, September 05, 2004
AIPAC: The Israeli Front in Washington for Spying on the US
"AIPAC is doing important work. In Washington and beyond, AIPAC is calling attention to the great security challenges of our time. You've always understood and warned against the evil ambition of terrorism and their networks. In a dangerous new century, your work is more vital than ever." The L.A. Times reported on Friday that the American administration does NOT believe Israel's contention that it does not spy on America and that U.S. government officials say Israel secretly maintains a large and active intelligence-gathering operation in the U.S.
OTHER RELATED ARTICLES..... The only members of the American Congress who are aware of the true figures or even suspect the total of US funding to Israel, are the Congress members who sit on the committees that allocate these funds. These committees have mainly Jewish members. Often these committee members have received huge campaign donations from Israel’s Washington lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Among them are Hadassah, the Zionist women’s organisation, which arranges a steady stream of American Jewish visitors to Israel and the American Jewish Congress, which mobilises support for Israel among members of the traditionally moderate left-of-centre Jewish mainstream.
An example of the ADL’s fund raising style, were two letters sent out in the 1980’s warning Jewish parents against the alleged negative influences on their children, arising from the increase of Arabs at American universities. It also keeps secret files on individuals in Arab-American, African-American and peace and justice groups.Read here for more The pro-Israel lobby, whose principal Jewish component is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), became a significant force in shaping public opinion and US Middle East policy after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Its power was simultaneously enabled and enhanced by Israel's emergence as a regional surrogate for US military power in the Middle East in the terms outlined by the 1969 Nixon Doctrine. In the 1970s and 1980s, the lobby was able to unseat representatives and senators who could not be counted on to support Israel without qualification, such as Sen. Charles Percy (R-IL), Rep. Paul Findley (R-OH) and Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-CA). In 2002, the pro-Israel lobby successfully targeted African-American representatives Earl Hilliard (D-AL) and Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) for defeat in Democratic primaries. Hilliard and McKinney were both vulnerable for reasons unrelated to Israel. McKinney, for instance, was defeated in part because the open primary allowed Republicans angered over her comments about the September 11 attacks to cross over and vote against her in the Democratic primary. Nonetheless, their defeat enhanced the impression that the pro-Israel lobby wields great power in electoral politics.
Thus, the adoption of WINEP's policy recommendation to "resist pressures for a procedural breakthrough" by both the Bush and Clinton administrations delayed the start of meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, contributed to the demonization of the PLO and multiplied the casualty rate of the first Palestinian intifada.
CLICK HERE on the list of names of TOP TEN US CONGRESSMEN who received contributions from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in 2002
TOTAL for 2001-2002 Election Cycle
$ 3,015,086
TOTAL 1978-2002 Funds to Congressional Candidates
$37,622,268
TOTAL No. of Recipient Candidates, 1978-2002
1,865
Don't expect these funded-Congressmen, the elected representatives of citizens of the United States to speak out against AIPAC as a negative influence on United States' national interest, least of all for spying on the US.
Read here article by Thomas B. Edsall and Molly Moore in Washington Post " AIPAC Is Embroiled in Investigation of Pentagon Leaks"
On May 18, President George W. Bush stood before the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington and spoke effusively to its members :
Just over three months later, the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization in the United States is embroiled in an FBI probe into whether Pentagon officials gave AIPAC representatives classified material and whether they in turn passed it to the Israeli government.
For AIPAC, the allegations are potentially devastating to its credibility and large influence in Washington.
"What really is troubling is the issue of dual loyalties," said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Calif.), one of many senior members of the House who have defended AIPAC.
Israel was established in 1948, and AIPAC was set up six years later. It now has 85,000 members, an annual budget of $33.4 million and a staff of 165, with offices in Washington, 10 states and Israel.
In 2003, the organization reported spending $1.28 million on lobbying.
Read here article by Nathan Guttman " FBI probes Jewish sway on Bush government"
The FBI investigation into the Pentagon mole affair has expanded beyond data analyst Larry Franklin's immediate circle to encompass the entire issue of Jewish influence on the neoconservative part of the administration.
The FBI queries have recently been focusing on a number of officials, all from the neoconservative wing, who had access to the debates on Iranian affairs, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The officials include
The officials said the FBI and other bodies spy on Israeli diplomats in Washington and New York as a matter of routine. The report said that Israel has long attempted to recruit U.S. officials as spies and to procure classified documents, according to the Times.
For many years we have read that Israel separately receives $1.8 billion in military aid and $1.2 billion in economic aid. Both these figures are accurate, but since they are never combined with indirect funding and are often quoted separately, it gives a false impression of the total annual US aid to Israel.
AIPAC draws on the support and resources of the Conference of Presidents of major American Jewish Organisations, an umbrella group set up solely to co-ordinate some 52 national Jewish organisations throughout America.
The American Jewish Committee plays the same role with the centre and right-of-centre Jewish community. It also publishers ‘Commentary,’ one of the lobby’s principal national publications.
The most controversial lobbying group is the B’nai B’riths Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Its original pupose was to protect the civil rights of American Jews.
The last 20 years have seen the ADL regress into a conspiratorial and well funded (US$45 million a year) hate group.
The establishment of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) in 1985 greatly expanded the lobby's influence over policy as well. WINEP's founding director, Martin Indyk (former Jewish Australian), previously been research director of AIPAC which, then as now, focuses much of its efforts on Congress.
Indyk developed WINEP into a highly effective think tank devoted to maintaining and strengthening the US-Israel alliance through advocacy in the media and lobbying the executive branch.
When Israel became serious about attempting to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, it circumvented the US-sponsored negotiations in Washington (and the pro-Israel lobby) and spoke directly to representatives of the PLO in Oslo. The result was the 1993 Oslo Declaration of Principles.