Category: The war that will not end in our lifetimes

Israel is seizing land and water from Palestinians for Jews. Resources are being transferred, under the guns of Israel’s military occupation, from one disempowered group – Palestinian Christians and Muslims – to another, preferred group – Jews. That is racism, pure and simple.

Moreover, there is abundant evidence that Israel discriminates against Palestinians elsewhere. The "Israeli Arabs" – about 1.4 million Palestinian Christian and Muslim citizens who live in Israel – vote in elections. But they are a subordinated and marginalized minority. The Star of David on Israel’s flag symbolically tells Palestinian citizens: "You do not belong." Israel’s Law of Return grants rights of automatic citizenship to Jews anywhere in the world, while those rights are denied to 750,000 Palestinian refugees who were forced or fled in fear from their homes in what became Israel in 1948.

Israel’s Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty establishes the state as a "Jewish democracy" although 24 percent of the population is non-Jewish. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, counted 20 laws that explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews.

The government favors Jews over Palestinians in the allocation of resources. Palestinian children in Israel attend "separate and unequal" schools that receive a fraction of the funding awarded to Jewish schools, according to Human Rights Watch. Many Palestinian villages, some predating the establishment of Israel, are unrecognized by the government, do not appear on maps, and thus receive no running water, electricity, or access roads. Since 1948, scores of new communities have been founded for Jews, but none for Palestinians, causing them severe residential overcrowding.

Anti-Arab bigotry is rarely condemned in Israeli public discourse, in which Palestinians are routinely construed as a "demographic threat." Palestinians in Israel’s soccer league have played to chants of "Death to Arabs!" Israeli academic Daniel Bar-Tal studied 124 Israeli school texts, finding that they commonly depicted Arabs as inferior, backward, violent, and immoral. A 2006 survey revealed that two-thirds of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in a building with an Arab, nearly half would not allow a Palestinian in their home, and 40 percent want the government to encourage emigration by Palestinian citizens. Last March, Israeli voters awarded 11 parliamentary seats to the Israel Beitenu Party, which advocates drawing Israel’s borders to exclude 500,000 of its current Palestinian citizens.

Some say that Palestinian citizens in Israel enjoy better circumstances than those in surrounding Arab countries. Ironically, white South Africans made identical claims to defend their version of apartheid, as is made clear in books such as Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull.

Americans are awakening to the costs of our unconditional support of Israel. We urgently need frank debate to chart policies that honor our values, advance our interests, and promote a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. It is telling that it took a former president, immune from electoral pressures, to show the way.

The debate should now be extended. Are Israel’s founding ideals truly consistent with democracy? Can a state established in a multiethnic milieu be simultaneously "Jewish" and "democratic"? Isn’t strife the predictable yield of preserving the dominance of Jews in Israel over a native Palestinian population? Does our unconditional aid merely enable Israel to continue abusing Palestinian rights with impunity, deepening regional hostilities and distancing peace? Isn’t it time that Israel lived by rules observed in any democracy – including equal rights for all?

George Bisharat (bisharat@uchastings.edu) is a professor of law at University of California Hastings College of the Law. He writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.

© 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.philly.com

An attack on Iran by the U.S. has been widely predicted – Tony Blankley gave voice to this growing certainty in Washington on the New Year’s edition of The McLaughlin Group – but an invasion? The usual scenario is a series of bombing raids targeting Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons facilities, but almost no one has suggested putting American "boots on the ground" in Iran, not even Mad John McCain, for whom the phrase has become a rhetorical signature.

Yet it is difficult to imagine that there won’t be extensive ground fighting if and when we exercise a military option against Iran. After all, Iraq, which shares a long border with Iran, has some 130,000 American troops on its soil. They will hardly be immune to attack: indeed, it will be open season on them in Iraq, with pro-Iranian Shi’ites uniting in anger with Sunnis to target the country’s "liberators."

In any case, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq may come sooner than any of us now believe possible – if we take seriously the possibility that American soldiers will soon be fighting in Iran. This is what they mean by " phased redeployment" somewhere " over the horizon."

We keep hearing from Democratic critics of the war that the Bush administration has " failed," because we can’t keep order in Baghdad and the Iranians are in a position of unparalleled influence not only in Iraq but throughout the region. Yet this evaluation is based on a series of remarkably naïve assumptions, all of which have been proven utterly wrong.

The announced war aim of the Bush administration was to rid Saddam of his alleged "weapons of mass destruction," and when the WMD myth was finally and definitively debunked, they told us we were there to install a functioning democracy. That didn’t pan out, either – unless one considers Shi’ite death squads, and a campaign of ethnic cleansing that puts the one supposedly initiated by Slobodan Milosevic to shame, legitimate expressions of the demos.

America’s real war aims are another matter entirely, and they are coming into focus as the situation on the ground develops. After all, why assume that what is currently happening in Iraq isn’t part of the program? Surely the Americans knew the dismemberment of the Iraqi state would have to mean Shi’ite hegemony, an empowered Iran, and the prospect of a regionalized conflagration. It defies belief that they didn’t: our rulers may be evil, but they sure as heck aren’t stupid (and I’m not talking about the president, who is a genuine dolt).

We have every reason to believe that the death and decomposition of the Iraqi state is precisely what they had in mind when they decided to invade in the first place. Furthermore, a civil war had to be the outcome of a sudden vacuum of legitimacy, and it was bound to be a religious conflict, pitting Sunnis against Shi’ites. Looked at in a larger context, it makes perfect sense that the War Party is now playing the "Shi’ite card," as the visit of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim to Washington indicates. Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ( SCIRI), met with the president, chatted with Condi, and took a tour of the Pentagon. If we’re looking for the true origins of the "surge" strategy in Iraq – the prospect of adding some 30,000 troops to "stabilize" Baghdad and rebel provinces – we need look no further than Hakim’s Dec. 4 speech [.pdf] to the U.S. Institute of Peace:

"We believe that the deterring factors are not up to the level of their criminal activities. The strikes they are getting from the multinational forces are not hard enough to put an end to their acts, but leave them stand up again to resume their criminal acts. This means that there is something wrong in the policies taken to deal with that danger threatening the lives of the Iraqis. Eliminating the danger of the Civil War in Iraq could only be achieved through directing decisive strikes against terrorist Bathists terrorists [sic] in Iraq. Otherwise we’ll continue to witness massacres being committed every now and then against the innocent Iraqis."

Translation: Help us to finally smash the Sunnis by sending more troops. That this is about to happen is all but certain, in spite of noises coming from the Democratic peanut gallery. It’s all part of the administration’s grand strategy – or, rather, the neocons‘ strategy, which is one and the same thing – and it’s not like this has been any great secret. Writing in the Wall Street Journal two full years ago, neocon tactician and retired spook Reuel Marc Gerecht showed the War Party’s hand:

"In Iraq, the U.S. ought to have two obvious goals. To crush the Sunni insurgency before it can provoke the birth of an exclusive, angry Shi’ite political identity willing to do to the Arab Sunnis what the Ba’ath once did to the Shia. If such an identity is born, it is most unlikely democracy can prevail. Washington must thus ensure that the democratic process in Iraq, regardless of the violence, keeps on rolling. As long as it does, clerical Iran will not be able to gain much traction inside the country. SCIRI, the Da’wa, and the Sadriyyin are not puppets controlled by Tehran; the rising power of southern Iraq’s Shi’ite tribes, which historically have looked askance at clerical direction from any quarter, will further frustrate Iranian influence.

"Persians stick out in Iraq like sore thumbs (very few Iranians can speak Arabic with any facility). They must have Iraqi surrogates to advance their interests, which are in opposition to those of most Iraqis. The U.S. could bomb uranium-enrichment facilities in Iran and it’s much more likely Washington will see protests in the anti-Shi’ite Sunni Arab world than among Iraq’s Shi’ites. This is a paradox that Washington should understand. If we don’t, a nuclear-armed Iranian theocracy is likely to win in Iraq, and beyond."

The idea is that a U.S./Shi’ite alliance would act as a brake on Iran. The big problem for the Americans is that the Sadrists are militantly anti-American, as well as hyper-nationalistic, and that the supposedly "moderate" SCIRI and Da’wa Party activists tend to be more pro-Iranian. Nevertheless, it appears that the U.S. has chosen SCIRI as the new American client in Iraq, and is now planning an offensive against the Sadrists, which is what the proposed "surge" is partially about.

As I noted at the time, Robert Dreyfuss was right on target with his 2004 analysis of how playing the "Shi’ite card" fits into the larger strategy of "transformation" in the Middle East:

"This theory, now official doctrine for the neocons, is at the heart of their Iran strategy. It counts as second Big Mistake of the Iraq war. Big Mistake No. 1 was the neocon belief that the Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms – instead, they welcomed us with arms. Big Mistake No. 2, now taking shape, is that Iraq’s Shi’ites are Good Guys who will lead a pro-American Iraq against Iran’s ‘clerical dictatorship.’ I believe that they really believe this. But the reality is that in a Shi’ite-dominated Iraq, the hard-liners and the people with guns (i.e., the Badr Brigades) will take over, and they will make common cause with some of the clergy in Iran. It will be a dagger all right, but one aimed at Saudi Arabia’s Sunni state. Of course, that too is part of the long-term Israeli-neocon strategy, to overthrow the Saudi king. It’s a regional regime-change strategy (one that includes Syria of course) and it has been central to their whole Middle East policy for a decade. It is also a fantasy, with a thousand possibilities for things to go terribly wrong. Big Mistake No. 1 led to the Iraqi insurgency. Big Mistake No. 2 could lead to a Middle East inflamed by Islamic revolution in spades."

Seen in the context of the "war on terrorism," the strategy undertaken by the U.S. in Iraq makes a twisted kind of sense. If we approach the problem in theological terms, the idea of going on the offensive against militant Islam means splitting the Muslim world along sectarian lines – which is precisely what is happening in today’s Iraq. Tomorrow the same thing will be happening throughout the Middle East. Or so the War Party hopes.

Contra Dreyfuss, I don’t believe in the neocons’ good intentions: they don’t really believe the Shi’ites are the "Good Guys" – not with the Badr Brigade on the rampage, carrying out a religious "cleansing" alongside the Mahdi Army of the Sadrists. And what about those Iranians caught in Hakim’s SCIRI compound, who were accused by the Americans of directing attacks on U.S. (and, presumably, Iraqi) forces?

The War Party is desperate to provoke the Iranians into a military conflict, and they are pulling out all the stops to do so. With economic sanctions against Iran already in place, and likely to be ratcheted up – along with the anti-Iranian propaganda campaign – the likelihood of war with the mullahs of Tehran is an eventuality that seems almost fated to occur, whether or not the American people support it. Less than half now believe a war with Iran in the next year is likely: however, I predict that number is bound to increase as 2007 drags on. The chances of war rise as we examine the positions of various prominent candidates for president on the Iran question, with even alleged peacenik Barack Obama openly musing that American military action is an "option ."

George W. Bush has been savagely criticized and mercilessly mocked for declaring " mission accomplished" at the very moment when the anti-American insurgency was birthed, but in retrospect this makes perfect sense – if one realizes that our mission was the utter destruction of Iraq. As a dress rehearsal for the larger event – the coming Sunni-Shi’ite civil war that will go down in history as comparable to Europe’s Thirty Years’ War pitting Catholics against Protestants – Iraq is truly a "model" for the rest of the region, albeit not in a way anybody but the perpetrators of this criminal policy expected.

By James Petras

“It’s no great secret why the Jewish agencies continue to trumpet support for the discredited policies of this failed administration.  They see defense of Israel as their number-one goal, trumping all other items on the agenda.  That single-mindedness binds them ever closer to a White House that has made combating Islamic terrorism its signature campaign.  The campaign’s effects on the world have been catastrophic.  But that is no concern of the Jewish agencies.” December 8, 2006 statement by JJ Goldberg, editor of Forward (the leading Jewish weekly in the United States)

Many Jewish writers, including those who are somewhat critical of Israel, have raised pointed questions about our critique of the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the United States and what they wrongly claim are our singular harsh critique of the state of Israel.  Some of these accusers claim to see signs of ‘latent anti-Semitism’, others, of a more ‘leftist’ coloration, deny the influential role of the ZPC arguing that US foreign policy is a product of ‘geo-politics or the interests of big oil.  With the recent publication of several widely circulated texts, highly critical of the power of the Zionist ‘lobby’, several liberal pro-Israel publicists generously conceded that it is a topic that should be debated (and not automatically stigmatized and dismissed) and perhaps be ‘taken into account.’

ZPC Deniers: Phony Arguments for Fake Claims

            The main claims of ZPC deniers take several tacks:  Some claim that the ZPC is just ‘another lobby’ like the Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club or the Society for the Protection of Goldfish.  Others claim that by focusing mainly on Israel and by inference the ‘Lobby’, the critics of Zionism ignore the equally violent abuses of rulers, regimes and states elsewhere.  This ‘exclusive focus’ on Israel, the deniers of ZPC argue, reveals a latent or overt anti-Semitism.  They propose that human rights advocates condemn all human rights abusers everywhere (at the same time and with the same emphasis?).   Others still argue that Israel is a democracy – at least outside of the Occupied Territories (OT) – and therefore is not as condemnable as other human rights violators and should be ‘credited’ for its civic virtues along with its human rights failings.  Finally others still claim that, because of the Holocaust and ‘History-of-Two-Thousand-Years-of-Persecution’, criticism of Jewish-funded and led pro-Israel lobbies should be handled with great prudence, making it clear that one criticizes only specific abuses, investigates all charges – especially those from Arab/Palestinian/United Nations/European/Human Rights sources — and recognizes that Israeli public opinion, the press and even the Courts or sectors of them may also be critical of regime policies.

            These objections to treating the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict and the activities of Zionist Lobbies as central to peace and war serve to dilute, dissipate and deflate criticism and organized political activity directed at the ZPC and its directors in Israel.

            The response of the critics of Israel and the ZPC to these attacks has been weak at best and cowardly at worst.  Some critics have responded that their criticism is only directed toward a specific policy or leader, or to Israeli policies in the OT and that they recognize Israel is a democracy, that it requires secure borders, and that it is in the interests of the Israeli ‘people’ to lower their security barriers.  Others argue that their criticism is directed at securing Israeli interests, influencing the Zionist Lobby or to opening a debate.  They claim that the views of ‘most’ Jews’ in the US are not represented by the 52 organizations that make up the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations of America, or the thousands of PACs, local federations, professional associations and weekly publications which speak with one voice as unconditional supporters of every twist and turn in the policy of the Zionist State.

            There are numerous similar lines of criticism, which basically avoid the fundamental issues raised by the Israeli state and the ZPC, and which we are obliged to address.  The reason that criticism and action directed against Israel and the ZPC is of central importance today in any discussion of US foreign policy, especially (but not exclusively) of Middle East policy and US domestic policymaking is that they play a decisive role and have a world-historic impact on the present and future of world peace and social justice.  We turn now to examine the ‘big questions’ facing Americans as a result of the power of Israel in the United States
The Big Questions Raised by the ZPC and Israeli Power in the USA: War or Peace:
Critical study of the lead up to the US invasion of Iraq, US involvement in providing arms to Israel (cluster bombs, two-ton bunker buster bombs and satellite surveillance intelligence) prior to, during and after Israel’s abortive invasion of Lebanon, Washington’s backing of the starvation blockade of the Palestinian people and the White House and Congress’ demands for sanctions and war against Iran are directly linked to Israeli state policy and its Zionist policy-makers in the Executive branch and US Congress.  One needs to look no further than the documents, testimony and reports of AIPAC and the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations to observe their claims of success in authoring legislation, providing (falsified) intelligence, engaging in espionage (AIPAC) and turning documents over to Israeli intelligence (now dubbed ‘free speech’ by liberal Zionists).

If, as the overwhelming evidence indicates, the ZPC played a major role in the major wars of our time, wars capable of igniting new armed conflicts, then it ill behooves us to dilute the role of the Zionist/Jewish Lobby in promoting future US wars.  Given Israel’s militarist-theocratic approach to territorial aggrandizement and its announced plans for future wars with Iran and Syria, and given the fact that the ZPC acts as an unquestioning and highly disciplined transmission belt for the Israeli state, then US citizens opposed to present and future US engagement in Middle East wars must confront the ZPC and its Israeli mentors.  Moreover, given the extended links among the Islamic nations, the Israel/ZPC proposed ‘new wars’ with Iran will result in Global wars.  Hence what is at stake in confronting the ZPC are questions which go beyond the Israeli-Palestine peace process, or even regional Middle East conflicts:  it involves the big question of World Peace or War.

Democracy or Authoritarianism

Without the bluster and public hearings of former Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Jewish Lobby has systematically undermined the principal pillars of our fragile democracy.  While the US Congress, media, academics, retired military and public figures are free to criticize the President, any criticism of Israel, much less the Jewish Lobby, is met with vicious attacks in all the op-ed pages of major newspapers by an army of pro-Israeli ‘expert’ propagandists, demands for firings, purges and expulsions of the critics from their positions or denial of promotions or new appointments.  In the face of any prominent critic calling into question the Lobby’s role in shaping US policy to suit Israel’s interests, the entire apparatus (from local Jewish federations, AIPAC, the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations etc) go into action – smearing, insulting and stigmatizing the critics as ‘anti-Semites’.  By denying free speech and public debate through campaigns of calumny and real and threatened repercussions the Jewish Lobby has denied Americans one of their more basic freedoms and constitutional rights.

The massive, sustained and well-financed hate campaigns directed at any congressional candidate critical of Israel effectively eliminates free speech among the political elite.  The overwhelming influence of wealthy Jewish contributors to both parties – but especially the Democrats – results in the effective screening out of any candidate who might question any part of the Lobby’s Israel agenda.  The takeover of Democratic campaign finance by two ultra-Zionist zealots, Senator Charles Schumer and Israeli-American Congressman Rahm Emanuel ensured that every candidate was totally subordinated to the Lobby’s unconditional support of Israel.  The result is that there is no Congressional debate, let alone investigation, over the key role of prominent Zionists in the Pentagon involved in fabricating reports on Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, and in designing and executing the war and the disastrous occupation policy.  The Lobby’s ideologues posing as Middle East ‘experts’ dominate the op-ed and editorial pages of all the major newspapers (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post).  In their pose as Middle East experts, they propagandize the Israeli line on the major television networks (CBS, NBC,ABC, Fox, and CNN) and their radio affiliates.  The Lobby has played a prominent role in supporting and implementing highly repressive legislation like the Patriot Act and the Military Commission Act as well as modifying anti-corruption legislation to allow the Lobby to finance congressional ‘educational’ junkets to Israel.  The head of Homeland Security with its over 150,000 functionaries and multi-billion dollar budget is none other than Zionist fanatic Michael Chertoff, head persecutor of Islamic charity organizations, Palestinian relief organizations and other ethnic Middle Eastern or Moslem constituencies in the US, which potentially might challenge the Lobby’s pro-Israel agenda.

The biggest threat to democracy in its fullest sense of the word – the right to debate, to elect, to legislate free of coercion – is found in the organized efforts of the Zionist lobby, to repress public debate, control candidate selection and campaigning, direct repressive legislation and security agencies against electoral constituencies opposing the Lobby’s agenda for Israel.  No other lobby or political action group has as much sustained and direct influence over the political process – including the media, congressional debate and voting, candidate selection and financing of congressional allocation of foreign aid and Middle East agendas as the organized Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) and its indirect spokespeople heading key Congressional positions.  A first step toward reversing the erosion of our democratic freedoms is recognizing and publicly exposing the ZPC’s nefarious organizational and financial activities and moving forward toward neutralizing their efforts.

Their Foreign Policy or Ours?

        Intimately and directly related to the loss of democratic freedoms and a direct consequence of the Jewish lobby’s influence over the political process is the making of US Middle East policy and who benefits from it.  The entire political effort of the Lobby (its spending, ethnic baiting, censorship and travel junkets) is directed toward controlling US foreign policy and, through US power, to influence the policy of US allies, clients and adversaries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.  The Lobby’s systematic curtailment of our democratic freedoms is intimately related to our own inability to influence our nation’s foreign policy.  Our majoritarian position against the Iraq War, the repudiation of the main executioner of the War (the White House) and our horror in the face of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and destruction of Gaza are totally neutralized by Zionist influence over Congressional and White House policymakers.  The recently victorious Congressional Democrats repudiate their electorate and follow the advice and dictates of the pro-Zionist leadership (Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emmanuel, Stephan Israel and others) by backing an escalation of troops and an increase in military spending for the war in Iraq.  Bush follows the war policy against Iran proposed by the zealous Zionist fanatics in the American Enterprise Institute, repudiating the diplomatic proposals of the bi-partisan Baker Commission.  Congress quadruples US arms stored in Israel (supposedly for dual use) in the aftermath of Israel’s bombing of Southern Lebanon with one million anti-personnel bomblets from cluster bombs in direct defiance of US electoral opinion.  While hundreds of millions of undernourished women and children suffer and die in Africa, Latin America and Asia, the Lobby ensures that over half of US foreign aid goes to Israeli Jews with per capita incomes of over $22,000 USD.

            No other organized political action group or public relations firm acting on behalf of the Cuban and Venezuelan exiles or Arab, African, Chinese or European Union states comes remotely near the influence of the Zionist lobby in shaping US policy to serve the interest of Israel.

             While the Lobby speaks for less than 2% of the US electorate, its influence on foreign policy far exceeds the great majority who have neither comparable organizational nor financial muscle to impose their views.

            Never in the history of the US republic or empire has a powerful but tiny minority been able to wield so much influence in using out nation’s military and economic power and diplomatic arm-twisting in the service of a foreign government.  Neither the Francophiles during the American Revolution, the Anglophiles in the Civil War and the German Bund in the run-up to World War Two, nor the (anti-China) Nationalist Taiwan Lobby possessed the organizational power and sustained political influence that the ZPC has on US foreign and domestic policy at the service of the State of Israel.

Confronting the Lobby Matters

            The question of the power of the Lobby over US policies of war or peace, authoritarianism or democracy and over who defines the interests served by US foreign policy obviously go far beyond the politics of the Middle East, the Israeli-colonial land grabs in Palestine and even the savage occupation of Iraq.  The playing out of Zionist influence over the greatest military power in the world, with the most far-reaching set of client states, military bases, deadly weapons and decisive voice in international bodies (IMF/World Bank/United Nations Security Council) means that the Lobby has a means to leverage its reach in most regions of the world.  This leverage power extends over a range of issues, from defending the fortunes of murderous Russian-Jewish gangster oligarchs, to bludgeoning European allies of the US to complicity with Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

            The ZPC represents a basic threat to our existence as a sovereign state and our ability to influence whom we elect and what agendas and interests our representatives will pursue.  Even worse, by serving Israeli interests, we are becoming complicit with a State whose Supreme Court legalizes political assassinations across national boundaries, torture, systematic violations of international law and a regime which repudiates United Nations resolutions and unilaterally invades and bombs its neighbors and practices military colonist expansionism.  In a word Israel resonates and feeds into the most retrograde tendencies and brutal practices of contemporary American politics.  In this sense the Lobby through its media, Congressional influence and think tanks is creating an Israeli look-alike.  Like Israel, the US has established its own Pentagon assassination teams; like Israel, it invades and colonizes Iraq; like Israel, it violates and rejects any constitutional or international legal restraints and systematically tortures accused but untried prisoners.

            Because of these fundamental considerations, we cannot oblige our Jewish ‘progressive’ colleagues and compatriots and refrain from confronting the Zionist Lobby with force and urgency.  Too many of our freedoms are at stake; too little time is left before they succeed in securing a greater military escalation; too little of our sovereignty remains in the face of the concerted effort by the Lobby and its Middle Eastern ‘expert-ideologues’ to push and shove us into a new and more devastating war with Iran at the behest of Israel’s pursuit of Middle East dominance.

            No other country, abuser or not, of human rights, with or without electoral systems, has the influence over our domestic and foreign policy as does the state of Israel.  No other Lobby has the kind of financial power and organizational reach as the Jewish Lobby in eroding our domestic political freedoms or our war-making powers.  For those reasons alone, it stands to reason, that we American have a necessity to put our fight against Israel and its Lobby at the very top of our political agenda.  It is not because Israel has the worst human rights agenda in the world – other states have even worst democratic credentials – but because of its role in promoting its US supporters to degrade our democratic principles, robbing us of our freedom to debate and our sovereignty to decide our own interests.  The Lobby puts the military and budgetary resources of the Empire at the service of Greater Israel – and that results in the worst human rights in the world.

            Democratic, just and peaceful responses to the Big Questions that face Americans, Europeans, Muslims, Jews and other peoples of the world passes through the defeat and dismantlement of the Israeli-directed Zionist Power Configuration in America.  Nothing less will allow us to engage in an open debate on the alternatives to repression at home and imperialism abroad.

The Australian, 8/12/2006, p.21

Source: Erisk Net 

 

Full story: The Sydney Morning Herald 

By Stephen Zunes
November 15, 2006

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/15/falling_in_line_on_israel.php

The election of a Democratic majority in the House and Senate is unlikely to result in any serious challenge to the Bush administration’s support for Israeli attacks against the civilian populations of its Arab neighbors and the Israeli government’s ongoing violations of international humanitarian law.

The principal Democratic Party spokesmen on foreign policy will likely be Tom Lantos in the House of Representatives and Joe Biden in the Senate, both of whom have been longstanding and outspoken supporters of a series of right-wing Israeli governments and opponents of the Israeli peace movement. And, despite claims­even within the progressive press­that future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a “consistent supporter of human rights,” such humanitarian concerns have never applied to Arabs, since she is a staunch defender of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his predecessor Ariel Sharon.

For example, when President George W. Bush defended Israel’s assaults on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure this summer and defied the international community by initially blocking United Nations efforts to impose a cease-fire, the Democrats rushed to pass a resolution commending him for “fully supporting Israel.” The resolution, co-authored by Rep. Lantos, claimed that Israel’s actions were legitimate self-defense under the U.N. Charter and challenged the credibility of reputable human rights groups. Although groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch groups documented widespread attacks by Israeli forces against civilians in areas far from any Hezbollah military activity, the resolution praised “Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcom[ed] Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties.” All but 15 of the House’s 201 Democrats voted in support.

Similarly, the Democrats echoed President Bush’s support for Israel’s 2002 offensive in the West Bank in another resolution co-authored by Lantos. In response to Amnesty International’s observation that the massive assault appeared to be aimed at the Palestinian population as a whole, all but two dozen Democrats went on record supporting the devastating Israeli offensive and claiming that it was “aimed solely at the terrorist infrastructure.”

In March 2003, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders signed a letter to President Bush opposing the White House-endorsed Middle East “Road Map” for peace, which they perceived as being too lenient on the Palestinians. The authors insisted that the peace process must be based “above all” on the end of Palestinian violence and the establishment of a new Palestinian leadership, not an end to Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land seized in the 1967 war. Indeed, there was no mention of any of the reciprocal actions called for in the Road Map­not ending Israel’s sieges and military assaults on Palestinian population centers and not halting the construction of additional illegal settlements.. The letter also voiced opposition to the U. N. or any government other than the U.S. monitoring progress on the ground.

The Democrats have attacked the International Court of Justice for its landmark 2004 ruling calling for the enforcement of the Fourth Geneva Convention in Israeli-occupied territories. In a resolution that summer, the Democratic leadership and the overwhelming majority of Democrats in both houses also condemned the World Court’s near-unanimous advisory opinion that Israel’s separation barrier could not be built beyond Israel’s internationally-recognized border into the occupied West Bank in order to incorporate illegal settlements into Israel.

More recently, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have condemned former President Jimmy Carter’s newly-released book criticizing Israeli violations of international humanitarian law in the West Bank. Carter’s use of the word “apartheid” in reference to Israeli policies of building Jewish-only settlements and highways on confiscated Palestinian land and allowing Palestinians to enter only as laborers with special passbooks proved particularly inflammatory to Pelosi and her colleagues. Meanwhile, they have refused to criticize this policy by any name and insist that the Israeli colonial outposts in the occupied territories­constructed in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions­are legitimate.

Ongoing talks between Fatah and Hamas for a coalition government have raised the hope that the Palestinian Authority will soon have a non-Hamas prime minister and a largely non-partisan, technocratic cabinet. However, the Democrats support Bush’s policy of refusing to resume normal relations with the PA unless the cabinet excludes members of Hamas or any party that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. By contrast, no prominent Democrat has raised any concerns over Olmert’s recent appointment of Avignor Lieberman, who has called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel and much of the West Bank, as a cabinet minister and his new deputy prime minister.

The Democrats have also pushed for increasing U.S. military aid to Israel and have rejected calls to condition the aid on an improvement in Israel’s human rights record. The Democrats have also pushed for an increase in economic assistance to Israel’s rightist government, already the recipient of nearly one-third of all U.S. foreign aid, despite the country’s relative affluence and the fact that Israelis represent only one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population.

The decision by Democratic members of Congress to take such hard-line positions against international law and human rights does not stem from the fear that it would jeopardize their re-election. Polls show that a sizable majority of Americans believe U.S. foreign policy should support these principles. More specifically, regarding Israel and Palestine, majorities support a more even-handed U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and oppose the blank check given by the United States to Israel.

Nor is it a matter of Democratic lawmakers somehow being forced against their will to back Bush’s policy by Jewish voters and campaign contributors. In reality, Jewish public opinion is divided over the wisdom and morality of many Israeli policies endorsed by the Democrats, recognizing that such policies actually harm Israel’s legitimate long-term security interests. Furthermore, the vast majority of Democrats who support Bush’s Middle East policies come from very safe districts where a reduction in campaign contributions would not have a negative impact on Democratic re-election. Contrary to the belief that it is political suicide to condemn the policies of the Israeli government, every single Democrat who opposed this summer’s resolution in support of the Israeli assault on Lebanon was re-elected by a larger margin than in 2004.

Perhaps more damaging than pressure from right-wing PACs has been the absence of pressure from progressive groups that oppose Israeli policies. Indeed, some of the most hard-line Democratic opponents of Israeli peace and human rights groups were endorsed by leading U.S. peace and human rights groups.

Until the progressive community seriously challenges Democratic hawks, there is little hope that the new Democratic majority can be expected to contribute anything to the cause of peace and justice in the Middle East.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press). He serves as Middle East editor of Foreign Policy in Focus.