Joe Klein launches a truth rocket, but …

… doesn’t himself quite escape the gravitational pull of the Israel-first mentality. At least, so far.

First, credit where its due: Time’s political columnist Joe Klein joins a growing number of journalists (Chris Hedges, Jim Lobe, Justin Raimondo, Eric Alterman) and academics (Walt and Mearsheimer, James Petras) who are speaking up and out about the belligerent and unrepresentative group of neoconservatives in the US who happen to be mostly Jewish, a signal that this elephant in the room has finally moved into the mainstream discourse after the alternative press has long been ahead of the game.

Klein has done well to speak up for the majority of Jewish Americans for whom the neocons and the Likud Lobby (ADL, AIPAC etc) definitely does not speak nor represent. As a friend noted, he starts out like a rocket in a recent Atlantic interview (Joe Klein on Neoconservatives and Iran), standing by remarks that have got the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL) in such a tizzy. Read the rest of this entry »

Israel, Palestine, and the US Congress: CNI Event

Three video clips from the Council for the National interest (CNI) Public Forum event: Israel, Palestine, and the US: Realities and Opportunities at the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC.

  • Part 1 features James Abourezk, former US Senator, and Dr. Menachem Klein, Professor of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
  • Part Two features US Ambassador Edward Peck and Uri Avnery, Israeli peace activist and former Knesset Member.
  • Part Three features Professor John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago, and co-author of The Israel Lobby.

Israel, Palestine, and the US: Realities and Opportunities

Part One (9.54)
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Oybama: the most promising candidate disappoints with pandering to hardliners

When Barack Obama, the most promising Presidential candidate in a generation, out-Bushes Bush in bellicose and Likudnik rhetoric on I-P and Iran, there is cause for concern. His turn-about and sharply escalated rhetoric was so striking even the WaPo could not fail to notice this pandering to the Likudnik AIPAC Lobby.

I was especially surprised and dismayed by Obama’s grave error and lack of judgment in calling for an “undivided” (which is to say, Israeli) Jerusalem. Jerusalem is international territory and East Jerusalem, currently militarily occupied, is slated to be the capital of a Palestinian state.

Not only does a single country not recognise the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem, it also constitutes a departure from longstanding US policy on the issue, which, if not backed up by action, was at least enshrined in principle and has embodied a rare instance of neutrality and justice in policy. It is also worth remembering that most countries’ embassies, including that of the US, are located in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.

As Ian William writes (see selected article excerpts below), Obama “would be better off building up ties to J-street, the new Peace-Nowish lobby whose views seem to represent far more American Jews than AIPAC, which more and more looks like a Likudnik-Neocon lobby, prepared to fight to the last Israeli – and indeed the last GI – for their eschatological visions. Let us hope Obama’s speech was just a passing pander and that the peace drive he promised takes international law on occupied territories into account.”

Change and hope, Mr Obama?

***UPDATE: See Obama clarifies united J’lem comment ***

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Mearsheimer and Finkelstein debate and other Al Jazeera coverage on the Israel Lobby

Al Jazeera has produced a few programs recently that engage with the topic of the Israel Lobby; the Inside Iraq program features a short debate between John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein; Frontline America also recently examined the influence of the Israel Lobby on Capitol Hill.

Inside Iraq – Motives for war – 04 April 08

Inside Iraq examines the ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ reasons the US invaded Iraq.

Part 1 (12.09)

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Not In Our Name: We the People Respond To Australian Parliamentary Motion On Israel At 60

In response to PM Rudd’s Motion on Israel’s 60th Anniversary year, many Australians, including this blogger, supported and signed an advertisement that appeared prominently on page 7 of The Australian national broadsheet on Wednesday 12 March. The statement reads:

Not in Our Name

We, as informed and concerned Australians, choose to disassociate ourselves from a celebration of the triumph of racism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the al-Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948. As we write, Israel continues to expand illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem.

Australia and Australians should not give the Israeli people and its leaders the impression that Australia supports them in their dispossession of the Palestinian people. Israel has poisoned our (the West’s) relations with the whole of the Arab and Muslim world. Rather than celebrating the creation of the State of Israel, we should be recognising the people of Palestine, those who were dispossessed, those who lived and died as refugees, those who continue to live and die and suffer at the hands of the State of Israel, and those who will continue to suffer and die in the future until justice is done. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten Reasons Why “Save Darfur” is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa

Cartoon © Khalil Bendib, All rights reserved.

Cartoon © Khalil Bendib, All rights reserved.

Bruce Dixon makes the compelling case that the “Save Darfur” campaign is more or less a “humanitarian imperialism” front to be used to justify intended neocon oil and resource wars in the African continent, particularly in the resource-rich Sudan.

See also IPS, War in the Name of Peace: Interview with Jean Bricmont, author of ‘Humanitarian Imperialism’; Paul de Rooij, “Humanitarian Wars” and Associated Delusions (review of Bricmont); Kevin Funk and Steve Fake, Divestment and Darfur: Solution or Diversion?; Mahmood Mamdani, The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency (and here for an interview on Democracy Now!); Ned Goldstein, Exploiting African Genocide for Propaganda; Roger Howard, Where anti-Arab prejudice and oil make the difference; Alexander Cockburn, Gaza and Darfur: When Will Kristoff Go to the Occupied Territories?; William Reed, How to Save Darfur; Keith Harmon Snow, The US’s War in Darfur.

Top Ten Reasons to Suspect “Save Darfur” is a PR Scam to Justify US Military Intervention in Africa

by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

The star-studded hue and cry to “Save Darfur” and “stop the genocide” has gained enormous traction in U.S. media along with bipartisan support in Congress and the White House. But the Congo, with ten to twenty times as many African dead over the same period is not called a “genocide” and passes almost unnoticed. Sudan sits atop lakes of oil. It has large supplies of uranium, and other minerals, significant water resources, and a strategic location near still more African oil and resources. The unasked question is whether the nation’s Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite are using claims of genocide, and appeals for “humanitarian intervention” to grease the way for the next oil and resource wars on the African continent. Read the rest of this entry »

A glass half full: small but significant victories

Celebrating two significant recent victories for justice.

1. Anthropologist Professor Abu El-Haj Granted Tenure At Columbia

facts-on-the-ground.jpgCongratulations to Barnard’s Nadia Abu El-Haj for duly being awarded academic tenure. For this Beirut, Tehren and US-educated Palestinian-American and author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, this is also a win against the desperate, McCarthyist and ideologically-driven attacks and smears of the Likudnik-Zios in the US of the kind that saw Norman Finkelstein denied tenure a few months ago. See:

2. LA8 Victory

A favourable closure on one of the US’s longest-running and most controversial deportation cases, one that tested whether immigrants have the same First Amendment rights as citizens. Phyllis Bennis, investigator with the National Lawyers’ Guild describes the victory in this now twenty-year-old Los Angeles Eight case:

This deportation effort by the U.S. government, starting in the Reagan administration and continuing through Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, tried to deport eight activists for Palestinian rights — 7 Palestinians and a Kenyan woman married to one of them — for First Amendment-protected activities. First they were tried under the old McCarthy-era McCarran-Walter Act, for being “members or supporters of an organization supporting world communism” and when that was overturned by congress, they were charged with supporting a terrorist organization. Their “deportable” activities were distributing a newspaper and raising money for hospitals, clinics and schools in the West Bank and Lebanon’s refugee camps, linked to one of the factions of the PLO. They were never accused of ANY illegal or violent activities, never accused of committing, supporting, aiding, talking or even dreaming about terrorist acts. (During a two-year FBI investigation, an FBI agent moved into an apartment adjoining that of two of the LA 8 and kept listening devices against their bedroom wall for six months… he heard nothing.)

Judge William Webster, former head of the FBI, said explicitly that if the Eight were citizens, there would have been no basis even to arrest them.

So twenty years later, vindication. I’ve been part of the legal team for 20 years, and it’s been a huge privilege.

See also:

The intrepid contagion of truth continues: thank you Archbishop of Canterbury, Helen Thomas, Eric Alterman, Sen. Mike Gravel, Sen. Robert Byrd et. al.

Peacebuilders do have cause for hope. Despite the disastrous, brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the various operations in Africa and elsewhere; despite the warmongers rattling their sabres at Iran in continued hubris; we would do well to hold up the oases of persons of integrity swimming against the tide of manufactured warmongering and the influence of certain powerful lobbies. Now more than ever, we could encourage those that speak up and act.

The recent comments of Representative Jim Moran and of Seymour Hersh, for example, were covered in the last fortnight or so. In the past year we’ve seen Mearsheimer and Walt’s landmark article and subsequent book on the influence of the Israel Lobby in the US, coming after former President Carter’s book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, and other moves in the right direction.

Here are some other glimmerings recently picked up.

1. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams

The Head of the Anglican Church (there are around 77 million Anglican Christians globally), has said of Israel’s apartheid wall that it is “a sign of all that is wrong in the human heart” and symbolised “the terrible fear of the other, of the stranger, which keeps us all in one kind of prison or another” when visiting Bethlehem last Christmas. The good doctor and Archbishop has also spoken up against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Just in the last few days, Dr Rowan has kept up his public criticism of the belligerents picking a military fight against Iran and Syria:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has issued an angry rebuke to those in the United States who favour military action against Syria or Iran. “When people talk about further destabilising of the region, when you read about some American political advisers speaking about action against Syria and Iran, I can only say that I regard that as criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly,” he said.

Dr Williams has just returned from a visit to Syria where he met hundreds of Christian Iraqi refugees.

2. Helen Thomas, The Democrats Who Enable Bush (Seattle PI, 4 Oct):

Bush ought to know about campaign rhetoric. Remember how he ridiculed “nation building” in the 2000 presidential campaign? Now he claims he is trying to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush’s war.

Pelosi removed a provision from the most recent war-funding bill that would have required Bush to seek the permission of Congress before launching any attack on Iran. Her spokesman gave the lame excuse that she didn’t like the wording of the provision. More likely, she bowed to political pressure.

Is it any wonder the Democrats are faring lower than the president in a Washington Post ABC approval poll? Bush came in at 33 percent and Congress at 29 percent.

Members of Congress seem to have forgotten their constitutional prerogative to declare war; World War II was the last time Congress formally declared war.

Presidents have found other ways to make end runs around the law, mainly by obtaining congressional authorization “to do whatever is necessary” in a crisis involving use of the military. That’s the way we got into the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?

3. Eric Alterman on AIPAC (2:33)

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Paul Craig Roberts on the Iraqi Genocide

More refreshing plain-speaking from Paul Craig Roberts (excerpted):

bendib_cartoon_9-29-academic-freedom.jpg… Bush’s private Waffen SS known as Blackwater has taken to gunning Iraqi civilians down in the streets. How do Blackwater and Custer Battles killers escape the “unlawful combatant” designation?

One can only marvel at the insouciance of the US Congress to the current Iraqi Genocide while condemning Turkey for one that happened 90 years ago.

People seldom see the beam in their own eye, only the mote in the eyes of others. Every member of the Bush Regime is busily at work denouncing Iran for causing instability in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the US has invaded two countries, throwing them into total chaos, while beating the drums for war with Iran and conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and to attack Syria.

The indisputable facts are that the US and Israel have attacked four Middle East countries and are determined to attack a fifth. Yet, it is peaceful Iran, at war with no one, that Bush and Israel blame for causing instability in the Middle East.

Not content with its many wars in the Middle East, the Bush Regime is sponsoring wars in Africa and is setting up an African Command. The US government has been bombing and attacking other countries ever since the cold war ended. Instead of peace, the gang in Washington DC chose war.

Other than the Israel Lobby, the greatest supporters of Bush’s wars are Christian evangelicals, specifically the “rapture evangelicals” and the “Christian Zionists.”

I remember when Christianity was about saving one’s soul. Today it is about bringing on Armageddon. While the various evangelical Christians preach war in the Middle East, they condemn Islam for being a “warlike religion.” Read the rest of this entry »

Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism video, and a Message From Howard Zinn

UPDATE: See also Zionist Pressure Fails to Stop Overcoming Zionism Book

Dr. Joel Kovel is an author, editor, activist and former psychotherapist whose new book Overcoming Zionism is a contribution to the growing body of literature advocating a single democratic state in Israel/Palestine. It is also a biting critique of Zionism, and Kovel joins in the call to boycott the Israeli state that it may end its apartheid, as South Africa was pressured.

Following the video clips of Professor Kovel in Canada last month (thanks Ressentiment) is a message from Howard Zinn on behalf of the Committee for an Open Discussion of Zionism (CODZ). Zinn alerts us to the fact that certain ultra-zionist Israel Lobby groups are attempting to intimidate publishers and distributors of the book, and suggests what we can do to help.

Part 1 20-minutes

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