AIPAC/Congress Lovefest 2005
Consider how much AIPAC dominatesAIPAC’s 2005 policy conference provides an excellent example.
the entire political scene in Washington.
Is the CIA the ZIA?
The WaPo’s Dana Milbank has written a very interesting report,
providing lots of color (metaphorically speaking, of course)
on the scene, e.g.,
[T]his is the “largest ever” conference,In a rare moment of bipartisanship in Washington,
with its 5,000 participants attending
“the largest annual seated dinner in Washington”
joined by
“more members of Congress
than almost any other event,
except for a joint session of Congress
or a State of the Union address.”
both parties united in groveling to the Israeli lobby:
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and informal administration foreign policy adviser Richard N. Perle tried to one-up each other in pro-Israel views.
Perle drew cheers for denouncing Palestinian anti-Semitism and the French. Harman mentioned that an aide once worked for AIPAC, called her audience “very sophisticated” and celebrated Yasser Arafat’s death as “a blessing.” Debating a hard-liner in front of a pro-administration crowd, Harman heaped praise on President Bush, calling the Iraqi elections “sensationally impressive” and moving to “applaud” or “commend” Perle and the administration a dozen times. “Richard is right, and so is President Bush,” she said at one point.
But after half an hour of this, Harman could not keep up. Perle provoked cheers from the crowd when he favored a military raid on Iran, saying that “if Iran is on the verge of a nuclear weapon, I think we will have no choice but to take decisive action.” When Harman said the “best short-term option” is the U.N. Security Council, the crowd reacted with boos.
[Compare...]
[What AIPAC wants, AIPAC gets...
and gets again...]
[And for a totally different view,
which we would be wise to take to heart...]
Glenn Kessler has provided a straight news report
on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech there,
and a very interesting reaction from Edward Abington,
a former State Dept. official
now advising the Palestinian Authority.
Abington observes (emphasis added):
[E]mphasizing democracy is appropriateIt is remarkable how thoroughly
but U.S. officials tend to
miss the link
with the continued Israeli occupation.
Democratization has to go hand in hand
with the end of occupation,
or it will ultimately fail.
American politicians and the news media
are avoiding discussing the need for
“the end of [West Bank] occupation.”
Their avoidance of this topic is grossly irresponsible,
for pressing the Israelis and their AmJew supporters
to end the occupation
will cause such loud cries of anguish
(listen to the cries over just leaving Gaza!),
and persistent attempts at resistance and delay,
that early and constant reminders of the need for such
is absolutely necessary
if such a withdrawal is actually going to take place.
And if it doesn’t,
then there will be, indeed, No End to War with the Muslim world.
Kessler’s article concludes (emphasis and comment added):
In essence,Again, it is difficult to see how Sharon’s emphatic vows
Israel is giving up 1,800 homes in Gaza
while issuing permits to build
at least 6,500 more homes in the West Bank,
Abington said
[more of the century-long Zionist shell game].
Sharon told Jewish leaders in New York on Sunday that
he would “never negotiate on Jerusalem,”
while in a speech yesterday he said
three major settlements on the West Bank
“are going to stay in the hands of Israel
forever and ever.”
are in any way compatible with peace.
Two NYT articles describe
the address Israel’s Prime Minister Sharon gave in New York
just before he arrived in Washington to address AIPAC,
and reaction to it from the NY Jewish community.
The articles are:
- Jennifer Medina, 2005-05-23,
In New York, Sharon Finds Division Over Gaza Pullout, - Clyde Haberman, 2005-05-24,
Needing Help From New York to Leave Gaza.
about the astounding (to me) difficulty American Jews
have in coming to terms with
the need for their Israeli kinsmen to leave Gaza,
let alone the occupied portions of the West Bank.
For example, in Haberman’s article we find (emphasis added):
More Jews live in New York than in any other city in the world,
including Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
When an Israeli leader is embarked on a highly contentious course,
he almost reflexively reaches out to American Jewry for support
or, at a minimum, understanding.
Almost by definition, that means that he turns to New York.
...
About 1,000 people from mainstream Jewish groups gathered on Sunday in an auditorium at Baruch College to hear Mr. Sharon.
Normally,
an Israeli leader can take their support for granted.
Pope Benedict XVI will be criticized in L’Osservatore Romano
before you hear the Jewish establishment in America
speak out publicly against Israel’s prime minister.
But normality has been knocked off kilter this time.
American Jewish groups have not exactly raced
to show solidarity with Mr. Sharon.
“It had to be pulled a little,”
acknowledged Abraham H. Foxman,
national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Sharon’s subsequent speech at the AIPAC conference in Washington
is covered in Glenn Kessler’s
Sharon Calls for ‘Real Actions’ From Palestinians on Peace Plan.
A sample:
In a rousing speech before a conferenceThat is a quite accurate paraphrase of (some of) the actual words
of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
Sharon declared that
commitments he secured from President Bush last year
eliminated the possibility
of Palestinian refugees entering Israel and
ensured that major Israeli settlements
will remain part of Israel in any peace deal.
in Sharon’s speech.
For a somewhat more recent presentation of Sharon’s views
to a much less homogeneous audience,
see his 2005-09-15 speech at the United Nations.
Conclusions
The articles above, the references below,illuminate the complex relations
between Sharon, Israeli Jews, American Jews,
and the Bush administration.
The somber conclusions to be drawn are:
- the total incompatibility of Israel’s territorial goals
with the possibility of peace, and - organized American Jews,
who have great influence over both political parties in the United States,
are even less inclined
to withdraw to the 1949 armistice line
than Israel is.
How can there be peace in the Middle East
when American Jews are so out of step
with the entire rest of the world,
while simultaneously carrying the clout
that they most evidently do
when it comes to determining American policy
vis-à-vis the Mideast?
The 2006 update from Dana Milbank:
Amid AIPAC's Big Show, Straight Talk With a Noticeable Silence
References
- George Washington,
1796-09-17 Farewell Address
[An excerpt (emphasis added):]
[A] passionate attachment of one nation for another
produces a variety of evils.
Sympathy for the favorite nation,
facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest,
in cases where no real common interest exists, and
infusing into one the enmities of the other,
betrays the former into
a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter....
It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation
of privileges denied to others,
which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions;
by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and
by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and
a disposition to retaliate
in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.
And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens,
(who devote themselves to the favorite nation,)
facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country....
...
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence
(I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,)
the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake;
since history and experience prove that
foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes
of republican government.
[Of the remaining references,
[Findley] and [Mearsheimer and Walt] are mainly about
the external interactions and effects of the Jewish political machine;
the other references down to [Halkin] more focus
on its internal construction and goals,
while the last are a miscellany of references
that support or amplify the ideas above.
Further related citations and excerpts
are in the references to Is the CIA the ZIA?.] - Paul Findley,
- John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, 2006,
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” - J. J. Goldberg, 1996,
Jewish Power:
Inside the American Jewish Establishment
Speaking of changes in the American Jewish community
wrought by the Six-Day War and other developments circa 1967,
Goldberg on page 147 writes
(emphasis added):
“The new Jewish particularists presumed...
to speak for the entire Jewish community.
Driven
by fear of anti-Semitism,
by guilt over past Jewish timidity, and
by suspicion of Gentiles, liberalism, and coalition politics,
the new particularists simply
took over the machinery of American Jewish politics.
Hardly anyone tried to stop them.
The opinions of the majority of American Jews
became largely irrelevant to the process of policy-making.
The Jewish community
became the preserve of a passionate minority,
driven by a terrible vision.
This was the real revolution of 1967.”
[Compare...]
Note that Goldberg’s picture of Jewish internal politics
is fully consistent with that of MacDonald.
Further excerpts from Goldberg are available concerning
the founding of the settlements. - Alfred Lilienthal, 1981,
Zionism and American Jews
An excerpt (emphasis added):
The one senator who, over many years, consistently refused to bow to Zionist pressures and who defied the Israeli lobby was Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright.
He incurred Zionist wrath when he stated on “Face the Nation” in 1973 that:
“The Israelis control the policy of the Congress
and the Senate...
Somewhere around 80% of the Senate of the U.S. is completely in support of Israel--of anything Israel wants...”
Jews in Arkansas blasted the Senator:
Fulbright’s rival in the May 1974 Democratic primary,
Governor Dale Bumpers boasted:
“I could have bought central Arkansas with the offers of money from the Jewish community ...
The offer of assistance came from people in New York and California who had raised a lot of money in the Jewish community for political purposes.”
To the great satisfaction of the lobby, this flow of money helped defeat Senator Fulbright and return him to private life....
In a memorable speech on the floor of the Senate,
Mr. Fulbright placed
“the whipsawing of foreign policy
by certain minority groups
to the detriment of the national interest”
in its broader, historical perspective:
“Mr. President, this nation has welcomed millions of immigrants from abroad. In the 19th century we were called the melting pot, and we were proud of that description. It meant that there came to this land people of diverse creeds, colors and races. These immigrants became good Americans, and their ethnic or religious origins were of secondary importance. But
in recent years we have seen
the rise of organizations dedicated apparently,
not to America, but to foreign states and groups.
The conduct of foreign policy for America
has been seriously compromised in this development.” - Kevin MacDonald, 2003,
Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism
From the abstract (but with my added emphasis):
The history of Zionism illustrates
a dynamic within the Jewish community in which
the most radical elements end up
pulling the entire community in their direction.
...
Over time,
the more militant, expansionist Zionists have won the day
and have continued to push
for territorial expansion within Israel.
This has led to conflicts with Palestinians
and a widespread belief among Jews
that Israel itself is threatened.
The result has been
a heightened group consciousness among Jews
and ultimately
support for Zionist extremism
among the entire organized American Jewish community.
Also by Kevin MacDonald:
Neoconservatim as a Jewish Movement, 2004
(excerpted in my post Neoconservatism) - Israel Shahak, 1993,
Relations between Israel and the Organized American Jews
From the conclusion (written in 1993!):
Organized U.S. Jews are chauvinistic and militaristic
in their views.
This fact, unnoticed by other Americans,
is already apparent to some Israeli Jews.
As long as organized Jewry remained united,
its political power remained unchallenged. - Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, 2004,
Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel
From an Amazon “Spotlight” review (emphasis added):
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is that
it draws almost entirely on Israeli sources in Hebrew,
rather than
the self-censoring and often apologetic
English-language press
which attempts to put as good a light on things as possible,
largely for the benefit of the diaspora. - Hillel Halkin,
“The Settlers’ Crisis, and Israel’s”, Commentary, March 2005
I think most people’s understanding
of what motivates Zionist expansionism
is a combination of standard ethnic nationalism
with the “Yahweh promised it to us” argument.
This article, not freely available so far as I know,
discusses, in terms that I do not fully understand,
an argument based on Jewish messianism
that was new to me.
Risking the wrath of the AJC (or the ADL!),
here’s an extract from the article (emphasis added):
“It is indeed remarkable that in our day
Jewish religious messianism has returned,
not once but twice,
and in ways that, 50 years ago,
no historian or sociologist of religion
would have considered possible.
It has often been remarked upon that
both Zionism and Communism,
the latter of which
was founded by the grandson of a rabbi and
attracted Jews in disproportionate numbers,
were nourished by secularized messianic impulses....
“[M]any observers (myself included)
who were sympathetic to the settlement movement,
viewing it as a valuable element
in Israel’s struggle to redraw
its dangerously constricted pre-1967 borders,
were slow to grasp the strength
of the messianic forces driving it.
Although its Kookian theology was present from the start,
one was tempted to dismiss this
as a metaphorical structure,
a way of intellectually organizing
an attachment to the Jewish homeland
that would not, ultimately,
prove an obstacle to rational decision-making.
When the day for such decisions came,
it was presumed, many religious settlers
would understand the need for them,
and most of those who did not
would accept the decree of majority rule.
It was insufficiently appreciated that
this would be no more cognitively possible for them
than it is possible for a man hearing voices
to accept the fact that they do not exist.” - Benny Morris,
Righteous Victims:
A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 - Ari Shavit, 1996-05-27 NYT,
How Easily We Killed Them
Ari Shavit is a columnist for Haaretz,
a Hebrew-language newspaper in Israel.
What follows is an excerpt from his NYT op-ed;
emphasis is added to highlight the part
most relevant to this post.
“We killed 170 people in Lebanon last month. Most were refugees. A good number were women, children and the elderly. Nine civilians, including a 2-year-old and a 100-year-old man, were killed at Sachmor, a village. Eleven civilians, including seven children, were killed at Nabatiyeh, a town. At the United Nations compound at Qana, a village, 102 were killed.
...
“It would seem we have matured quite a bit, for this time we shot and did not weep. This time, we killed with yuppie efficiency. We were meticulous in our cold calculations and matter-of-fact considerations. Meticulous in emptying out the villages in an orderly, precise manner. Meticulous in killing only from a distance. And we did it all in a secular way -- ignoring the archaic concepts of sin, of God’s image, of ‘Thou shalt not kill.’
“Our one big alibi was this: The responsibility is not our own; it is Hezbollah’s. But this is a somewhat bogus alibi. For when we decided to carry out a large-scale offensive in civilian regions in southern Lebanon (at a time when no mortal danger was posed to Israel), we decided in fact to spill the blood of X number of civilians. When we decided to remove half a million people from their homes and to shell those remaining behind (at a time when in Israel there was not a single civilian victim), we decided in fact to execute dozens.
...
“All we knew was that a large-scale killing of civilians was inseparable from the futuristic combat style the Israel Defense Forces have chosen. All we knew was that it could be assumed that the operation would kill 100 civilians, give or take a few.
“Still, it is important to be precise. We did not kill them with prior intent. We killed them because it was not important for us not to kill them.
Because the yawning gap between
the unlimited sacrosanct importance we attribute to our own lives
and
the very limited sacred character we attribute to the lives of others
allowed us to kill them.
“We killed them out of a certain naive hubris.
Believing with absolute certitude that now, with
the White House,
the Senate and
much of the American media
in our hands,
the lives of others do not count as much as our own. Believing we really have the right to instruct 400,000 people to leave their homes within eight hours. And that we have the right, when those eight hours have passed, to treat their homes as military targets. And that we have the right to drop 16,000 shells on their villages and small towns. And that we have the right to kill without being guilty.” - maps showing Israel’s expansion
- Council for the National Interest [the anti-AIPAC]
They seem to have two web sites:
this and this.
Note especially their message
AIPAC’s Agenda is not America’s. - Glenn Kessler, 2004-10-16 Washington Post,
Scowcroft Is Critical of Bush
Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to Bush I,
told the Financial Times:
“Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger,
I think the president is mesmerized.
...
When there is a suicide attack [followed by a reprisal]
Sharon calls the president and says,
‘I’m on the front line of terrorism,’
and the president says,
‘Yes, you are . . . ’
He [Sharon] has been nothing but trouble.” - Dana Milbank, 2005-06-26 Washington Post,
Trading Places
One of a collection of short observations by Milbank
(but the emphasis is mine,
as are several comments,
in square brackets and this color):
“The good news for President Bush:
A poll last week found massive enthusiasm
for him and his policies.
“The bad news:
The poll was of Israelis.
“A poll of Israeli and American Jews
done this spring for Yeshiva University finds that
Israelis are far more supportive of Bush than Jews here are.
Conversely,
American Jews are more enthusiastic
about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
than Israelis are.
Four out of five Israeli Jews
had a favorable view of Bush,
compared with only 35 percent of American Jews.
A majority of Israelis believed
the Iraq war made them safer,
while only 28 percent of American Jews think
the United States is more secure because of the war.
Four out of five Israelis
supported Bush’s policy toward Israel,
compared with two-thirds of American Jews.”
[That’s impressive.
How many of Bush’s policies
receive a two-thirds approval rating
from the general public?
Obviously, Bush knows who he has to please.
For the prewar popularity of the American-Iraqi war with the Israeli public, see this.]
“Sharon, meanwhile, drew a favorable rating from
74 percent of American Jews but
65 percent of Israelis.
And his plan for withdrawing from Gaza was supported by
two-thirds of Jews in the United States but
54 percent in Israel.
Both groups were optimistic about peace
with the Palestinians,
but both prefer a U.S. policy
that emphasizes a peace process
rather than the promotion of democracy in the Arab world.”
[I sure don’t see much support
from the vocal part of the American Jewish community
for anything resembling a “peace process”
that might end in terms that were in the least fair and
(potentially) acceptable to the Palestinians,
by which I mean:
return, with minor and mutually-agreed-to modifications,
to the pre-1967 West Bank border.] - John Kerry, 2004-09-30
The first Bush-Kerry debate included this exchange
between the moderator, Jim Lehrer, and Senator Kerry
(emphasis added):JIM LEHRER:
Note well what Kerry views
New question, Mr. President. Two minutes.
Has the war in Iraq been worth the cost
of American lives, 1,052 as of today?
[Bush’s response, Kerry’s response,
and Bush’s follow-up are omitted;
here is Kerry’s follow-up:]
JIM LEHRER:
Senator Kerry, you have 30 seconds.
You have 30 seconds, right.
And then the president.
SENATOR KERRY:
Secretary of State Colin Powell told this president
the Pottery Barn rule:
If you break it, you fix it.
Now, if you break it, you made a mistake.
It’s the wrong thing to do.
But you own it.
And then you’ve got to fix it and do something with it.
Now that’s what we have to do.
There’s no inconsistency.
Soldiers know over there that
this isn’t being done right yet.
I’m going to get it right for those soldiers, because
it’s important to Israel,
it’s important to America,
it’s important to the world,
it’s important to the fight on terror.
But I have a plan to do it. He doesn’t.
as the most important reason for us to be in Iraq:
Israel.
Our entire political/media establishment
puts the needs of Israel ahead of the needs of America.
That explains, for example, why Bush and his Iraq policies
are so much more popular
in Israel than in the country which elected him.
One more comment:
Kerry later in the transcript says:
“But that’s how we’re going to win the peace,
by rapidly training the Iraqis themselves.”
It is beyond me, what is wrong with our elite,
all the part that speaks in the media anyhow,
when all they talk about is “training,”
as if that is all that is needed
for the army of the Iraqi government
to defeat its adversaries.
Anyone who has even been near
a credible military organization
knows that the absolute prerequisite
for effective soldiering
is motivation, not training.
You can take a motivated fighter
and easily shape him into a highly effective one.
But an unmotivated individual
will never become a good soldier,
no matter how much training he receives.
Why do the people talking about
the prospects for Iraq’s American-trained army
never make this point?
I think our entire elite has lost touch with reality.
They’ve spent too much time in sensitivity sessions
and other instruments of PC indoctrination,
and too many of them are either feminized
or under the spell of those whose interests
are centered on Israel rather than America,
to be able to speak, or possibly even comprehend,
the truth. - Eric Lichtblau, 2005-10-06 NYT,
“Pentagon Analyst Admits Sharing Secret Data”
[From the news article:]
A senior Defense Department analyst admitted Wednesday [2005-10-05] that he shared secret military information with two pro-Israeli lobbyists and an Israeli official in an effort to create a “backchannel” to the Bush administration
[!!! he was in the Bush administration!]
on Middle East policy.
The analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, pleaded guilty in federal court here to three criminal counts for improperly retaining and disclosing classified information, and he gave the first account of his motives and thinking in establishing secret liaisons with people outside the government.
...
Mr. Franklin said in court that he believed
the Aipac lobbyists had access and influence
at the National Security Council,
which coordinates policy issues for the president
and was deeply involved in setting the administration’s course on Iran.
He said he hoped
the lobbyists could help influence policy
by passing on information
that he knew was classified.
“I asked them to use their contacts
to get this information backchannels
to people at the N.S.C.,”
he said.
Mr. Franklin was also applying for a position at the N.S.C. in early 2003
and asked Mr. Rosen to “put in a good word” for him,
according to a filing on Wednesday by prosecutors as part of the plea agreement.
Mr. Rosen said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
[So,
this “mid-level” U.S. intelligence official is convinced that
if he wants to influence U.S. policy,
the most likely way of doing that successfully
is to assist AIPAC,
because
AIPAC has more influence with the NSC
than he, or perhaps his organization, the DIA,
does!] - Jerry Markon, 2005-10-06 Washington Post,
“Defense Analyst Guilty in Israeli Espionage Case”
[From the news article:]
A Defense Department analyst pleaded guilty yesterday to passing government secrets to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group and revealed for the first time that he also gave classified information directly to an Israeli government official in Washington.
Lawrence A. Franklin told a judge in U.S. District Court in Alexandria that he met at least eight times with Naor Gilon, who was the political officer at the Israeli Embassy before being recalled last summer.
The guilty plea and Franklin’s account appeared to cast doubt on long-standing denials by Israeli officials that they engage in any intelligence activities in the United States. The possibility of continued Israeli spying in Washington has been a sensitive subject between the two governments since Jonathan J. Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, admitted to spying for Israel in 1987 and was sentenced to life in prison.
...
[In pleading guilty, former DIA analyst Larry]
Franklin said he passed the information because he
was “frustrated” with the direction of U.S. policy
and
thought he could influence it
by having them relay the data through “back channels”
[AIPAC!]
to officials on the National Security Council. - Steven Erlanger, 2005-11-25 New York Times,
“Europeans Rebuke Israeli Jerusalem Policy”
[From the news article (emphasis added):]
JERUSALEM, Nov. 24 -
The European Union’s diplomatic representatives
in East Jerusalem and Ramallah
have sharply criticized Israel’s policies in East Jerusalem,
saying they
“are reducing the possibility
of reaching a final-status agreement on Jerusalem
that any Palestinian could accept.”
In an unpublished report presented to European Union foreign ministers, the representatives recommend a more aggressive European stance toward Israeli policies in East Jerusalem, whose annexation by Israel has not been recognized by the European Union or the United States.
The report,
a copy of which was sought by The New York Times and
obtained from someone who wanted to publicize it,
accuses Israel of
increasing illegal settlement activity
in and around East Jerusalem
and of
using the route of its separation barrier
“to seal off most of East Jerusalem,
with its 230,000 Palestinian residents,
from the West Bank” and
to create a “de facto annexation of Palestinian land.”
In general, the report asserts,
“prospects for a two-state solution
with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine
are receding,"
and it warns that
“Israeli measures also risk
radicalizing the hitherto relatively quiescent
Palestinian population of East Jerusalem.”
The European Union diplomats, who deal with the Palestinians, made a number of recommendations, including having political meetings with Palestinian Authority ministers in East Jerusalem instead of in the West Bank, as they currently do, and requesting Israel “to halt discriminatory treatment of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, especially concerning working permits, building permits, house demolitions, taxation and expenditure.”
...
Israel does not regard the Jewish inhabitants of East Jerusalem as settlers.
Israel seized East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed it, promising that the city would never again be divided.
Both the Europeans and the United States oppose any measures that would prejudge the outcome of a peace treaty, including the status of East Jerusalem.
“We claim full sovereignty over Jerusalem, and
the Europeans think East Jerusalem is occupied territory,”
[a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry] official said.
“But to say that the timing is wrong is an understatement.
My guess is that it will be put aside.”
...
The report says that Israel is making it increasingly difficult for Palestinians to travel between East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
“Israel’s main motivation,” the report asserts,
“is almost certainly demographic -
to reduce the Palestinian population of Jerusalem,
while exerting efforts to boost the number of Jewish Israelis living in the city.”
Labels: AIPAC, Congress, Israel Lobby
posted by KHarbaugh at 11:00
<< Home