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Hasbara: Blame it on the Wasps.

A Review of Stephen Zunes ‘The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really?’

Published May 18, 2006

Updated June 4, 2006

America’s Ruling Establishment.

Over the last four decades a succession of America administrations have sent the Jews-only state in Palestine (Jos) a vast treasure chest to implement its racist policies in Palestine and consolidate its military supremacism in the Middle East. “Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. (John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt ‘The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy’ rwp_06_011_walt.pdf March 2006 p.2). According to Stephen Zunes in his essay, ‘<a href=“http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3270”>The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really?</a>’ America’s ruling elite sees the Jos as its colony or client state. It lavishly funds the Jos to pursue its strategic interests in the Middle East.

Zunes implies this ruling elite consists of Wasps, “these influential and (mostly) wealthy, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant lawmakers ...” (Stephen Zunes ‘The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really?’ http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3270 May 16, 2006). According to Zunes, Wasps have created the world’s sole military hyper power and run what is increasingly looking like an American empire. American Jews are mere supplicants to the court of the Wasp emperors and the Jos is an American colony more or less wholly dependent on America for its survival. If the Jos doesn’t obey Wasps’ orders, it won’t be rewarded, and it won’t survive. In other words, the Jos is no different from any other American colony such as Honduras. Zunes argues that neither the Jos nor the Jews-only lobby in America (Jol)[i] is powerful enough to extract such monies if it wasn’t in the interests of America’s ruling Wasp elite.

There is little doubt that, up to the second world war, America’s ruling elite consisted primarily of Wasps. But, thereafter, American Jews have become increasingly wealthy and politically powerful. Whilst there are still many Wasps amongst America’s ruling establishment, it is currently dominated by American Jews. They own or manage a significant part of America’s economy. They own, manage, and run, most of America’s media. They finance, and predominate in, some of America’s most prestigious universities. Although American Jewish billionaires are only a minority amongst America’s wealthiest people, they are by far and away the most politically active. They fund a variety of organizations in order to convert their wealth into political power to achieve their political objectives. They have established more think tanks and lobbying organizations than any other lobby group in America - a remarkable achievement given that American Jews compose only 2-3% of America’s population. They fund American political parties not merely the Republican and Democratic parties but even the country’s smaller parties. American Jews also predominate in all of these parties. A major component of America’s ruling establishment is what is commonly referred to as the military industrial complex. Zunes implies firstly, that this complex is run entirely by Wasps even though he presents no evidence it is. And, secondly, that the political power of the complex derives from being America’s biggest industry. This may have been the case in the past but no longer. America’s biggest industry is the media and entertainment industry which is dominated by American Jews.

Since the second world war, America’s Jewish elite has succeeded in persuading/pressuring/bribing a succession of American administrations into supporting the Jos on a number of critical occasions. Over time, these victories have become increasingly frequent and increasingly beneficial to the Jos until, after the Pentagon and New York bombings, the dominance of America’s Jewish elite slid almost imperceptibly into position as America’s ruling elite. America is now ruled by a Jewish elite consisting of Jewish billionaires, Jewish media owners, Jewish dominated academic institutions, Jewish run think tanks, Jewish dominated political parties, Jewish dominated state legislatures, Jewish owned Congress, and the huge proportion of American Jews in the Bush administration.[ii]

The increasing domination of American Jews over America’s economy and political system explains a number of critical political developments. Firstly, that America’s defence and foreign policies have all been imported, primarily by American Jews, from the Jos. Secondly, the extraordinary transformation of the Jos’s enemies into America’s enemies even though they pose no threat to America nor even to American interests in the Middle East. "With the assault on Iraq," wrote the distinguished historian, David Hirst, "the U.S. was not merely adopting Israel's long-established methods - of initiative, offense and pre-emption - ; it was also adopting Israel's adversaries as its own...” (quoted in Jeffrey Blankfort ‘A War for Israel’ http://www.leftcurve.org/LC28WebPages/WarForIsrael.html April 2004).[iii]

Finally, the vast donations that American Jews have been able to extract from successive American administrations. Today these donations have become tribute payments that the Jos, with the aid of America’s ruling Jewish elite, extracts from its American colony. These tribute payments ensure the Jos’s military supremacism not only in the Middle East but around much of the rest of the world.

Over the last sixty years, the growth in the economic, social, political, and cultural, power of American Jews has been phenomenal. This has fostered the equally phenomenal rise in the military and political power of the Jos. The Jos did not exist in early 1948 but is now commonly regarded as the fourth most powerful military in the world. “Israel has become a military superpower in its own right. Its army and air force rival those of the major European countries, and it has become the world's fourth largest nuclear power, despite never signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.” (Jeff Halper ‘Israel as an Extension of American Empire’ http://www.counterpunch.org/halper11072005.html November 7^th 2005). American Jews’ control over the American political system gives them dominance, but not yet total dominance, over America’s military hyper power. The Jos, America’s ruling Jewish elite, and the Jewish elite in many western countries including Russia, compose a global Jewish elite which runs a Jewish empire for the benefit of this elite and its headquarters in the Jos.

Zunes’s Ideological Stance.

Here then are two opposing models of the composition of America’s ruling elite and thus the relationship between America and the Jos. It might be expected that political scientists would collect evidence, develop explanations for historical and political events, and perhaps even make predictions about the future course of events in order to determine which of these models is correct. However, as far as Zunes is concerned, this is not the case. He ignores vast tracts of evidence. He says nothing about America’s Jewish elite, the scale of its political power, nor its rise within the American elite over the last sixty years. He says nothing about the proportion of Jewish owned businesses in the American economy nor the inhibiting effect this has on the political views of millions of people employed by these businesses. He says nothing about the Jewish domination of America’s biggest industry and the colossal impact this has on shaping the views of ordinary Americans. He says nothing about what Jeff Blankfort terms the military-industrial-Israeli complex.[iv] It should be added that Mearsheimer and Walt do not address such issues either although this is not relevant in this review.

When Zunes’s dismisses the proposition that American Jews were responsible for pushing America into the invasion of Iraq he makes a critical generalization. “There are a number of plausible explanations, ranging from control of the country's oil resources to strategic interests to ideological motivations. One explanation that should not be taken seriously, however, is the assertion that the right-wing government of Israel and its American supporters played a major role in leading the US to invade Iraq.” (Stephen Zunes Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006).[v] Zunes is not merely dismissing a particular hypothesis. In effect, he is saying that he refuses to discuss any aspect of Jewish power. Zunes not only ignores any facts concerning Jewish economic and media interests, he dismisses any discussion of Jewish power whether in America or around the world. He refuses to even countenance the theory that stands in stark contrast to his own.

Ignoring his academic duty as a political scientist to examine all sides of the argument Zunes dismisses the accusation that American Jews pushed America into a proxy zionist war on the grounds that. “Because this particular theory parallels dangerous anti-Semitic stereotypes that exaggerate Jewish power and influence, however, it is a particularly grievous misinterpretation, not just because it reinforces long-standing oppressive attitudes against a minority group, but because it diverts attention away from those who really are responsible for the unfolding tragedy in Iraq.” (Stephen Zunes ‘Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006). But until questions about how much “power and influence” American Jews actually possess are determined then how is possible to be certain who is exaggerating their power or “who really [was] responsible” for the war in Iraq?

Zunes resorts to a historical analogy to explain his view of the current relationship between Wasps and American Jews. “Throughout Europe in past centuries, the ruling class of a given country would, in return for granting limited religious and cultural autonomy, set up certain individuals in the Jewish community to become the visible agents of the oppressive social order, such as tax collectors and money lenders. When the population would threaten to rise up against the ruling class, the rulers could then blame the Jews, sending the wrath of an exploited people against convenient scapegoats, resulting in the pogroms and other notorious waves of repression that have taken place throughout the Jewish Diaspora over the centuries.” (Stephen Zunes ‘Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006). So, those devious medieval rulers set up Jews as tax collectors and money lenders solely to protect themselves from the revolting peasants! This questionable medieval reality is supposed to illuminate modern global politics, “Using Israel as an excuse for unpopular US policies in the Middle East is nothing new, either. In short, American officials are using classic anti-Semitic scapegoating by blaming an alleged cabal of rich Jews behind the scenes for being responsible for a widely perceived injustice as a means of deflecting attention away from those who actually are responsible.” (Stephen Zunes ‘Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006). It could be quipped that Zunes’s refusal to discuss Jewish interests and Jewish power because of this fantastic medieval analogy, is a very convenient scapegoat for condoning, and thus protecting, Jewish power.

When trying to assess the power relationships between American Wasps and American Jews and thereby the existence of either an American, or a Jewish, empire Zunes rules out of consideration not merely the notion of a Jewish empire but of any Jewish power - indeed any Jewish interests. This doesn’t exactly leave too many alternatives as to who the real power holders might be! Zunes’s position is thus transparently ideological. He starts from the premise that Wasps control the American empire and then deduces everything from it ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

Is the Jos America’s Strategic Asset in the Persian Gulf?

According to Zunes, America’s Wasp establishment manages a global empire which forces the Jos into protecting Wasps’ strategic interests in the region, “It has long been in Washington's interest to maintain a militarily powerful and belligerent Israel dependent on the United States.” The Jos is a strategic asset which obeys orders from its American rulers. It is important to point out that Zunes’s view of America’s relationship with the Jos is not a hypothesis whose validity has been assessed in terms of empirical evidence. It’s an ideology. He starts from the premise of Wasp global domination and then logically deduces the Jos’s servile role. Similar views are held by other left wingers such as Noam Chomsky, Joseph Massad, Jeff Halper,[vi] and Norman Finkelstein.[vii] Zunes’s ideology is virtually divorced from reality for a number of reasons.

Firstly, he argues the Jos “projects” America’s military power in the Middle East. “Washington wants a Middle East where Israel can serve a proxy role in projecting U.S. military and economic interests.” Michael Neumann retorts, “Furthermore, what does 'projecting US power' mean? What exactly is this projection system supposed to be? If the US sends troops to the region, it does not do so via Israel. If it sends ships, it does not use Israeli ports. If it sends aircraft, it does not use Israeli airfields. It may use Israeli intelligence a bit, but it also uses Jordanian, Saudi and Egyptian intelligence, and its own monitoring systems do not depend on Israeli satellites. Israel does not supply the US with oil or other vital resources for its military operations. Israeli banks do not wire secret US funds to Middle Eastern capitals.” (Michael Neumann ‘The Stability and Value of Israel’ http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann05132006.html May 13/14, 2006). Left wingers would have us believe that the Jos protects America’s oil supplies but how exactly could it be of military assistance? “Israel would have to shove through Syria or Lebanon or Jordan to get near any oil. That would cause a major conflagration and - guess what - destroy enormous amounts of oil-producing capacity.” (Michael Neumann ‘The Israel Lobby and Beyond’ http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann04042006.html April 4, 2006).

Secondly, if the Jos is America’s colonial asset it seems bizarre the Jos has never fought any wars for America nor has it lost a single soldier in a battle to protect America or American interests. Even worse is that occasionally a Jos politician will let slip that the Jos wouldn’t go to war for America or sacrifice its soldiers for America. Whilst the Jos has never gone to war for its supposed colonial master, America has intervened to support the Jos during one of its invasions of neighbouring countries, and fought a couple of proxy zionist wars, resulting in the loss of thousands of American lives. From the perspective of Zunes’s ideology, even more incongruous is that in 1967 the Jos killed nearly three dozen American servicemen when it attacked the USS Liberty. Neumann concludes, “The view that Israel is an indispensable ally is a contagious disease of the Zionist imagination. We are taught to regard Israel as standing shoulder to shoulder with the US government in some nebulous battle. What battle is that? The US fights all its battles without Israel, and always has.” (Michael Neumann ‘The Stability and Value of Israel’ http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann05132006.html May 13/14, 2006). So, which is the empire and which is the colony?

Thirdly, the baseline reality that needs to be considered when assessing America’s strategic interests in the Middle East is that the Jos has no oil whereas Arab/Islamic countries have a super-abundance of oil. Transparently, objectively, and overwhelmingly, America’s strategic interests lay with the Arab/Islamic world not with the Jos. This is a no-brainer. This stark reality had to be confronted by American administrators and politicians after the second world war when the founding of the Jos was being discussed and planned. Many opposed the idea. “Following World War II, foreign policy professionals wrote scores of position papers that warned an independent Jewish state would trigger a 'reject phenomenon' throughout the Middle East. Most of President Truman’s cabinet was against it. The most formidable naysayer was then Secretary of State Gen. George Marshall.” (Arnaud De Borchgrave ‘Touching the third rail’ http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1157963.php/Touching_the_third_rail Apr 24, 2006).

President Harry Truman eventually supported the establishment of the Jos. Firstly, because he needed the votes of American Jews in key states in the 1948 presidential election campaign. “Harry Truman knew as well as any Republican that the Democrats did not have a prayer to win New York state unless they could pile up a huge majority in heavily Jewish New York City.” That Date in November’ http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,934016,00.html Oct. 14, 1946). Secondly, because rich American Jews were financing the Democratic party’s electoral campaigns. According to Truman’s daughter, "More than once, the Palestine question was put to Dad in terms of American politics. At a cabinet luncheon on October 6, 1947, Bob Hannegan almost made a speech, pointing out how many Jews were major contributors to the Democratic Party's campaign fund and were expecting the United States to support the Zionists' position on Palestine." (Lenni Brenner ‘The Lobby and the Great Protestant Crusader’ http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner05172006.html May 17, 2006). Thirdly, as the Christisons have pointed out, most of Truman’s inner circle of advisors were Jews who were fervent supporters of a Jewish state, “Truman would probably not have been as supportive of establishing a Jewish state without the heavy influence of his very pro-Zionist advisers.” (Kathleen and Bill Christison ‘The Rise of the Israel Lobby: A Measure of Its Power – CounterPunch May 16-31, 2006). Fourthly, Truman faced popular demonstrations by American Jews for the establishment of Jos. “A quarter of a million people marched in Manhattan. One hundred thousand squeezed into Madison Square Garden, many of them in uniform. Over 100,000 telegrams deluged the White House. All demanded the immediate recognition of the about-to-be-born new state of Israel.” (Arnaud De Borchgrave ‘Touching the third rail’ http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1157963.php/Touching_the_third_rail Apr 24, 2006).[viii] Finally, although initially parts of the Jewish owned media in America opposed the establishment of the Jos, the zionists browbeat them into support. “In 1946, Arthur Hays Sulzberger gave a synagogue speech denouncing Zionist attacks on calls for liberalizing America's immigration laws, passed in 1924 to keep down the number of Catholic and Jewish immigrants. These Zionists wanted Jews in Displaced Persons camps in Germany to have no choice but to go to Palestine. They retaliated by getting the city's Jewish department stores to pull ads from the paper.” (Lenni Brenner ‘The Lobby and the Great Protestant Crusader’ http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner05172006.html May 17, 2006). These same tactics were later adopted by the Jol and continue to be used today.

Any one of these factors might have been enough to persuade Truman to support the establishment of the Jos but to be faced by all five made the decision almost a foregone conclusion. This was an over-caused event. Domestic, party political considerations trumped America’s strategic interests. Truman sacrificed his country’s geopolitical interests, primarily the oil industry, to support the foundation of the Jos. This sacrifice was not an anomaly - thereafter it became a constant and ever louder refrain. America has suffered increasingly for its support for the establishment of the Jos. It’s also interesting that when Truman made his decision, members of America’s Wasp ruling elite, especially those in the oil industry, couldn’t be bothered to fund the Democratic party despite the dangers to their interests of allowing American Jews to fund the party and thus influence the country’s foreign policies when there was a democratic presidency. The interests of any multi-national corporation are important to society but unless corporations translate their economic power into political power to defend and promote their interests they will be overwhelmed by other political forces – and this is what has happened to America’s Wasp elite. What is so remarkable about America is not merely the rise to power of the Jewish elite but Wasp billionaires’ lack of concern about translating their economic wealth into political power.

Fourthly, Zunes promotes the traditional, left wing proposition that the foreign policies of America’s Wasp elite are preoccupied by oil. “Indeed, oil companies and the arms industry exert far more economic and ideological influence over Washington's policy in the Persian Gulf region than does the Israel lobby.” He doesn’t bother to explain why America is preoccupied with oil only in the Middle East rather than in South America or Africa or Russia. Perhaps the most blatant example of oil’s secondary importance is that in 1995, under pressure from the Jos/Jol, president Clinton banned America’s gigantic multinational oil companies from making any substantial investment in Iran. These oil companies could have made vast profits from the exploitation of Iran’s vast fossil fuels reserves – such profits would also have boosted the American economy. Oil company leaders were none too pleased about the ban. No less a figure than Dick Cheney objected to it on behalf of what was then a minor oil company, “Go back to March 1996. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, which was eagerly seeking to win energy business in Iran. The Clinton Administration had imposed sanctions on Iran a year earlier. “I think,” said Cheney, “we Americans sometimes make mistakes. There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what's best for everybody else and that we are going to . . . get everybody else to live the way we would like.” Two years later, in a speech at the Cato Institute, Cheney was even more scathing toward American sanctions on Iran. He said that in 1997 America's partners in the Middle East had refused to allow U.S. military forces to be based on their territory in anticipation of taking “military action against Iraq in order to get [it] to honor the U.N. resolutions.” And why were our friends being so recalcitrant? In part, Cheney explained, because the United States “had been trying to force the governments in the region to adhere to an anti-Iranian policy, and our views raised questions in their mind about the wisdom of U.S. leadership. They cited it as an example of something they thought was unwise and that they should not do . . . The nation that's isolated in terms of our sanctions policy in that part of the globe is not Iran. It is the United States. And the fact that we have tried to pressure governments in the region to adopt a sanctions policy that they clearly are not interested in pursuing has raised doubts in the minds of many of our friends about the overall wisdom and judgment of U.S. policy in the area.”” (Ken Silverstein ‘Dick Cheney, Dove’ http://harpers.org/sb-cheney-3020932092.html May 17, 2006). What must have been even more galling to leaders of America’s oil corporations was that the ban was introduced not on the grounds of any immediate or long term threat to America’s national security let alone its national interests but because of Iran’s support for Hezbollah freedom fighters trying to end the Jos’s illegal occupation of southern Lebanon. At this period in time the idea of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons belonged to the realm of political fantasy. That America’s Jewish elite was able to overpower America’s gigantic multi-national, oil companies was one thing but to sacrifice the country’s oil giants, and the American economy, for the sake of the pathetically miniscule threat that Hezbollah posed to the Jos reveals a much more frightening degree of Jewish power in America’s political system.

This was not the only grossly disproportionate sacrifice that America has made for its Jewish masters. One of the reasons Zunes gives for dismissing the proposition that America invaded Iraq in order protect the Jos is that he believes Saddam posed no threat to the Jos. .. “in the years leading up to the March 2003 invasion, Iraq was no longer a strategic threat to Israel nor was it actively involved in anti-Israeli terrorism. In short, Israelis had little to worry about Iraq during Saddam Hussein's final years in power.” (Stephen Zunes Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006). Zunes is correct about the threat posed by Saddam. Given Saddam’s precarious position, the only policy he could risk in order to express his opposition to the Jos was providing compensation for the families of Palestinian freedom fighters whose homes had been demolished by the terrorist Jos state. “It is also true that Iraq supported a tiny pro-Iraqi Palestinian group known as the Arab Liberation Front, which was known to pass on much of these funds to families of Palestinians who died in the struggle against Israel. In any case, given that Israeli occupation forces routinely destroyed the homes of families of suicide bombers and the Iraqi money fell far short of making up for their losses, it was hardly an incentive for someone to commit an act of terrorism, which tends to be driven by the anger, hopelessness and desperation from living under an oppressive military occupation, not from financial incentives.” (Stephen Zunes Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006). But, contrary to Zunes’s conclusion, as far as the Jos/Jol were concerned the miniscule financial and ideological contribution Saddam was making to the Palestinians was more than enough to warrant an invasion. If American Jews could get America to ban its oil companies in Iran because of Hezbollah’s pin pricks, then why shouldn’t they try to get America to invade Iraq because of Saddam’s diminutive financial contributions to Palestinian freedom fighters? After all, such an invasion wasn’t going to cost any Jewish lives or resources.

Finally, it has to be wondered how the Jos can be an American colony when it determines America’s enemies even though they pose no threat to America. Saddam was never an enemy of America. He posed no threat to America or even to American interests. On the contrary, he went to war against Iran in order to show what a staunch ally he could be to America. Throughout most of the 1980s he was feted by the Reagan administrations which recognized his strategic value.[ix] Saddam believed his reward for fighting the terrible war against Iran which killed millions and nearly bankrupted both countries, was that he could annexe Kuwait, an artificial construct created by the British empire, to help rejuvenate his economy and military power. His army sat on the Kuwaiti border for three weeks until the Bush senior administration acquiesced in the invasion. And yet shortly after the invasion, the Jol/Jos succeeded in pushing the Bush senior administration into betraying Saddam and, with the help of the Jewish dominated American media, almost instantly transformed him into America’s greatest enemy. One of Zunes’s defences for his beloved Jos is that, “In contrast, Washington's Arab allies - still suspicious of U.S. intentions and lacking the Israeli advantages of well-trained armed forces, political stability, technological sophistication, and the ability to mobilize human and material resources - could never substitute for America's alliance with Israel.” In the 1980s Iraq had as many advantages as the Jos, if not more – which, indeed, is why the Jos was so intent on decimating the country.

Iran hasn’t regarded America as an enemy since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. Despite being labeled as part of the axis of evil, Iran attempted to seek a compromise with America in 2003. It poses no threat to America or its interests in the Middle East. And yet America’s ruling Jewish elite has succeeded in hyping up the view that it is now America’s greatest enemy – in the belligerent, paranoid view of the Jewish neocons, Ahmadinejad has been turned into the latest in a long line of Adolf Hitler’s! But, according to Juan Cole, Iran is no more of an urgent global strategic problem to America than Burma or Zimbabwe. “While it is difficult to see why the United States should be more exercised about Iran than about Burma or Zimbabwe, it is no secret what the Israeli government thinks about the matter.” (Juan Cole ‘More on Autonomous Regions’ http://www.juancole.com/2006_05_01_juancole_archive.html May 02, 2006). Raimondo concurs, “Iran represents a threat to nothing and no one but Israel, and everybody knows it.” (Justin Raimondo ‘Steppingstone to War’ http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8914 April 28, 2006).

The Jos is an Ever Increasing Catastrophe for America.

The Jos has never lived up to its propaganda image as America’s strategic asset in the Middle East. It has been a nightmarish liability for America ever since its establishment. It has continually undermined, distorted, and even wrecked America’s interests in the region – only rarely supporting America when it was in its interests to do so.

* The Jos’s violent, terroristic foundation, its continual slaughter of Palestinians, its continual expropriation of Palestinian property, and its increasingly hideous humiliation of the innocent Palestinian people, has alienated the Arab/Islamic world for the last sixty years despite the desperate desire of many Arab/Islamic leaders for a mutually beneficial relationship with America. During the cold war period, the establishment of the Jos constantly pushed the Arab/Islamic world towards the Soviet empire despite its reluctance to move in this direction.

* In 1956 Britain, France, and the Jos, invaded Egypt. The Jos was clearly acting against the strategic interests of its alleged colonial master. When Eisenhower discovered what was happening he forced the withdrawal of the invading armies.

* Thereafter, the Jos carried out a series of black propaganda operations to sabotage America’s relationship with Egypt even though Nasser wanted an alliance with America.[x] Such an alliance would have been in America’s interests.

* From the late 1950s onwards the Jos deliberately misled successive American administrations about its construction of a nuclear power reactor, its acquisition of nuclear fuel, and its development of nuclear weapons. This was a fundamental deception about which virtually nothing is said in America as if it was of no significance to America’s geostrategic interests.

* In 1967 the Jos pre-emptively attacked, and comprehensively defeated, four Arab armies. The Arab world’s lack of preparedness for war shows clearly their disinterest in warmongering. The Jos also attacked an American naval vessel. “The special U.S.-Israel relationship encountered another major hiccup during the 1967 Six-Day War ... Israeli warplanes repeatedly attacked the USS Liberty, a ship intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides, flying the U.S. flag on a clear day, 15 miles off the Sinai coast, killing 34 sailors, wounding 171.” (Arnaud De Borchgrave ‘Touching the third rail’ http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1157963.php/Touching_the_third_rail Apr 24, 2006). This was just a hiccup? Wait a minute, didn’t America fabricate a north Vietnamese attack on an American patrol boat in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to declare war on north Vietnam? How is it that America declared war on Vietnam for an incident which never happened but refused to declare war against the Jos despite a very real, and bloody, attack? The Christisons have concluded. “In other words, Israel was beyond question the senior partner in this particular policy initiative; Israel made the decision to go to war, would have gone to war with or without the U.S. green light, and used its lobbyists in the U.S. to steer Johnson administration policy in a pro-Israeli direction. Israel’s attack on the U.S. naval vessel, the USS Liberty, in the midst of the war – an attack conducted in broad daylight that killed 34 American sailors – was not the act of a junior partner. Nor was the U.S. cover-up of this atrocity the act of a government that dictated the moves in this relationship.” (Kathleen and Bill Christison ‘The Rise of the Israel Lobby: A Measure of Its Power – CounterPunch May 16-31, 2006).

* The Jos’s pre-emptive war in 1967 also pushed America toward an economic calamity. Arab countries retaliated against Jewish aggression by launching an oil boycott against America – unfortunately without success. “In 1967, after Israel trounced its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War, five oil-producing Arab countries used what they called the "oil weapon" and cut off supplies to the United States and its European allies. But the weapon turned out to be a dud. The United States increased its production by a million barrels a day, and more modest boosts by three other oil-producing nations defused the crisis.” (Steven Mufson ‘The Weapon Iran May Not Want to Use’ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051802089_pf.html May 19, 2006). Despite these two near calamitous setbacks to its strategic interests, after the war America started developing a closer political relationship with the Jos. What this shows, once again, is that America’s strategic concern for its oil supplies was secondary to its support for the Jos. Paradoxically, it was at this point that America’s Jewish elite significantly increased its propaganda about the Jos being a strategic asset to America.

* Despite the outpouring of propaganda about the Jos being an American asset it wasn’t long before the Jos was jeopardizing America’s oil interests yet again. This time there was no escape. A mere five years later, in October 1973, the Jos once again resorted to a pre-emptive war without the slightest concern for the impact this would have on American interests. The Jos used nuclear blackmail to force the Nixon administration to send military supplies to prevent a Jos defeat. The Arab world once again imposed an oil embargo. This time it was all too effective. It plunged America, and the rest of the world, into an economic recession that lasted for over a decade. Does it not seem strange that even though alarm bells had rung five years earlier about the vulnerability of its oil supplies, America was still willing to risk supporting the Jos? The whole point of the Jos being a strategic ally was that it was supposed to ensure America’s oil supplies weren’t disrupted and yet here was the Jos stirring up two wars with the Arab world, in order to promote its own interests, that inevitably resulted in just such a disruption.

* As if this wasn’t enough, in 1973 both the Jos/Jol combined to undermine Nixon’s policy of détente with Russia which could well have brought about a huge peace bonanza. Détente could have stimulated massive economic growth in both countries as Russia traded its vast natural resources for American consumer goods. But American Jews sacrificed good relations between the superpowers simply to provide Russian Jews with the ‘human right’ to emigrate from Russia. (When huge numbers of Russian Jews were given the right they went to America so the Jol forced Congress to block their entry into America in order to force them to move to the Jos). To undermine the strategic interests of the world’s two gigantic superpowers and resurrect the cold war was an astounding achievement for such a seemingly insignificant country as the Jos. But, what is so shocking is not so much that the Jol/Jos could deter America from pursuing its strategic interests – cooperation with Russia - but that such vast economic and political interests were once again being sabotaged for such miniscule gains to the Jos. The grossly disproportionate sacrifices that America was making for microscopic benefits to the Jos are striking.

* In the early 1980s the war mongering Jos invaded Lebanon. Reagan demanded the Jos’s withdrawal and was humiliated when it refused. “Although Massad refers to the U.S. as Israel’s master, in this instance as in many others including 1967, Israel has clearly been its own master. Chomsky argues in support of his case that Reagan ordered Israel to call off the invasion in August, two months after it was launched. This is true, but in fact Israel did not pay any attention; the invasion continued, and the U.S. got farther and farther embroiled.” (Kathleen and Bill Christison ‘The Rise of the Israel Lobby: A Measure of Its Power – CounterPunch May 16-31, 2006). But even worse was to come for Reagan. It might have been thought that Reagan would have been so resentful about his humiliation he would have refused to respond to the Jos’s request for help when its forces found themselves overstretched in the Lebanon. And yet Reagan responded by sending in American marines who were then hit by a truck bomb killing 241 servicemen.[xi] Soon after, Reagan pulled American forces out of the mess created by the Jos. America had been dragged into the Lebanon to support the Jos’s illegal invasion and suffered a massive retaliatory attack. Yet again, Americans were laying down their lives for yet another illegal Jewish war.

* The military relationship between America and the Jos was eventually formalized heavily in favour of the Jos. “In 1987, the U.S. designated Israel a “major non-NATO ally,” thus giving it access to military technology not available otherwise. The notion of demanding concessions from Israel in return for this favored status – such as, for instance, some restraint in its settlement-construction in the West Bank – was specifically rejected. The U.S. simply very deliberately and abjectly retreated into policy inaction, leaving Israel with a free hand to proceed as it wished wherever it wished in the Middle East and particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories.” (Kathleen and Bill Christison ‘The Rise of the Israel Lobby: A Measure of Its Power – CounterPunch May 16-31, 2006).

* The collapse of the Soviet empire opened the floodgates for the Jos/Jol to pursue their interests in the Middle East even though this meant accelerating the scale of the strategic liabilities the Jos inflicted on America. The claim is often made that after the 1967 war, America saw the Jos as an outpost to counter Soviet influence in the Middle East. It was deemed to have played this strategic role until the demise of the Soviet empire. But this interpretation makes little sense. Nixon and Kissinger sought détente with Soviet Russia in the early 1970s which could have produced a monumental peace bonanza – one of even more staggering proportions if China had also been brought into the peace. If the policy had succeeded the Jos’s strategic value would have disappeared leaving it exposed to the dreadful desiccating winds of peace. The Jewish neocons must have appreciated this implication so they must have concluded it was imperative to resurrect the cold war in order to re-establish the Jos’s supposed vital role as a bastion against the spread of communism.

* In 1990, America’s Jewish elite and the Jos pushed the Bush senior administration into its first proxy zionist war in order to oust Saddam from Kuwait even though the administration had given Saddam the green light for the invasion.

* After the Pentagon and New York bombings, Sharon succeeded in positioning himself as the leader of the western world in the fight against so called Islamic terrorism.[xii]  The power of America’s Jewish elite had grown significantly after the collapse of the Soviet empire but after the Pentagon and New York bombings its growth has been even more dramatic. This was the first time the Jos and America’s Jewish elite could be seen directing America’s foreign policies. In effect, America’s Jewish elite became America’s ruling elite. This Jewish usurpation of power would soon have a calamitous impact on America’s foreign policies. It was in America’s interests to locate and dismember al Quaeda but instead of pursuing this goal Sharon, with the aid of America’s ruling Jewish elite, manipulated America into a proxy zionist invasion of Iraq for the sake of boosting the regional supremacy of the Jos. As a consequence, America has still not captured bin Laden nor dismantled al Quaeda but now finds itself militarily and politically bogged down in Iraq for the sake of the Jos thereby creating even more widespread popular support for bin Laden and al Quaeda. Al Quaeda has now regrouped and, in conjunction with the Taliban, is currently launching a spring offensive in Afghanistan against American and Nato forces. If American Wasps had pursued their own interests they would have dealt with al Quaeda and continued to contain Saddam – they would not have allowed Sharon to dictate America’s foreign policies in the region by pushing America into an irrelevant invasion of Iraq. Zunes’s view of this issue is merely that the Pentagon and New York bombings reinforced the Jos’s strategic relationship with America. “Since the Sept. 2001 terrorist attacks, the perception of Israel as a natural ally in President George W. Bush's “war on terror” has cemented the strategic partnership still further, as the Pentagon pre-positions equipment in Israel to enhance military readiness for intervention elsewhere in the Middle East.” What Zunes celebrates as the cementation of a “strategic relationship” was in reality the Jos pushing America into the abyss of ignominy and defeat in Iraq and, quite possibly, opening the way for what Jewish neocons have been advocating, a third world war against the moslem world. As an aside it’s interesting that Zunes suddenly elevates the Jos from being a mere colonial asset with no natural resources to the dizzy heights of a strategic partnership.

To any outside observer, Bush’s capitulation to Sharon over the Jos’s illegal invasion of Jenin was one of the most revealing political events of his presidency exposing the underlying balance of power between the two countries. Who could possibly forget Sharon calling Bush a Chamberlain and further humiliating the leader of the so-called American empire by publicly refusing to withdraw from Jenin not once, not twice, but three times? Zunes regurgitates his usual defence of this event by arguing that Bush didn’t cave in to Sharon at all but to America’s Christian zionists, “However, most accounts of President Bush's backtracking attribute it not primarily to pressure from AIPAC and other Jewish groups but rather to the more than 100,000 emails received by the White House from Christian conservatives defending the Israeli offensive.” Of course when two million British people did far more than tap out a few emails in their spare time but spent huge amounts of time and money demonstrating against the proposed invasion of Iraq they were just ignored. Bush wasn’t pushed onto the defensive by this email democracy, it provided him with a fig-leaf to cover up his humiliation before his master Ariel Sharon. The fact that America’s Christian zionists sided with Sharon rather than their own president shows the degree to which these gullible victims of zionist ideology have even lost their sense of patriotism. Zunes portrays the current power of the Christian zionists as an independent force from that of America’s Jewish elite but fails to acknowledge that this group would never have escaped its lunatic fringe existence if it hadn’t been for the Jol.[xiii]  In 1975 the Jol started cultivating, financing, and publicizing a tiny, crackpot Christian sect until today it is supported by tens of millions of Americans. .. “in fact, the rise of a religious right in the West owes much of its impetus to Zionism and Israel ..” (Jeff Halper ‘Israel as an Extension of American Empire’ http://www.counterpunch.org/halper11072005.html November 7^th 2005).

* In 2003, America’s ruling Jewish elite pushed the country into its second proxy zionist war – the invasion of Iraq. No sooner was the invasion pronounced as being over than the Jos/Jol were howling for a proxy zionist attack on Iran.

Zunes criticizes Mearsheimer and Walt’s allegation that the Jos/Jol was responsible for initiating the war against Iraq, “Perhaps the most twisted argument in their article is the authors' claim that the 2003 invasion of Iraq “was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.”” There were certainly a number of commentators who, even before the invasion took place, suggested the Jos/Jol were pushing America into a proxy zionist invasion of Iraq. But, since the invasion, a lot of evidence has emerged about the Bush administration’s preparations for the invasion and, as a consequence, even more commentators have reached the same conclusion.[xiv] American Jews were the most prevalent, and the most vociferous, group in support of the invasion and their prominence was heightened by the virtual absence of support for this policy from America’s oil industry and even the American military. The main reason Zunes gives for believing this argument to be twisted is that, “Israel is far less secure as a result of the rise of Islamist extremism, terrorist groups, and Iranian influence in post-invasion Iraq than it was during the final years of Saddam Hussein's rule, when Iraq was no longer a strategic threat to Israel or actively involved in anti-Israeli terrorism.” This view is twisted. Just because the invasion did not turn out to be the “cakewalk” American Jewish commentators predicted it would be, doesn’t negate the proposition that they were responsible for pushing America into the war. America’s ruling Jewish elite, and the Jos, strategized the Jos would be better off as a result of deposing Saddam. It was a gamble they were willing to take. If they are losing, it is their own fault. The lead up to the attack on Iran is following a similar pattern to the preparations for the invasion of Iraq. The most blatant protagonists of a war against Iran are America’s ruling Jewish elite and the Jos whereas America’s oil companies and the American military are even more wary of such a war after America’s terrible humiliations and tribulations in Iraq. There are now many commentators who suggest not only that American Jews are the main group promoting the war against Iran but that they are the only group doing so. If American Jews push America into an attack on Iran, it is to be hoped the Jos unequivocally loses this gamble.

Zunes’s argument that the Jos is worse off now than prior to the invasion of Iraq is Jewish propaganda solely designed to protect the Jos from accusations that it initiated the invasion. When the Jos/Jol pushed America into the invasion of Iraq they intended to install Ahmed Chalabi in place of Saddam.[xv] When this didn’t work out they established the Coalition Provisional Authority which was basically a Jewish administration running Iraq which, after a decade of sanctions, had learnt to hate and despise the Jos.[xvi] When this didn’t work out they still had a third option – the break up of Iraq. Zunes himself has admitted that Jewish neocons desired this eventuality. “Top analysts in the CIA and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in a violent ethnic and sectarian conflict. Even some of the war's intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be "ripped apart" by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to "expedite" such a collapse anyway.” (Stephen Zunes ‘The US Role in Iraq's Sectarian Violence’ http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zunes.php?articleid=8668 March 7, 2006). The break up of Iraq is currently a distinct possibility and this would boost the Jos’s strategic interests. Zunes denies the Jos is benefiting from the invasion because he wishes to defend the Jol/Jos from accusations they pushed America into the war.

Given this recitation of the major incidents between America and the Jos, it is difficult to conclude the Jos has been a strategic asset to America. The foundation of the Jos was a strategic liability for America. Since then it has become an increasingly disastrous liability for America. It pressured America into a war to oust Saddam from Kuwait and then pushed America into an invasion of Iraq that has become little less than catastrophic. It is now on the verge of pushing America into an even greater catastrophe – a war against iran - that could lead to its moral, political, military, and economic, bankruptcy. If anyone should want to understand the power of propaganda not merely to distort reality but to substitute for it, they could find no more brazen example than the Jewish propaganda that the Jos is America’s strategic asset.

The idea of the Jos as an American ally was coined after the foundation of the Jos. “Seymour Reich of the Israel Policy Forum insisted that Washington is only pro-Zionist because, "beginning with President Harry S. Truman's, every American administration has viewed Israel as an important strategic ally."” (Lenni Brenner ‘The Lobby and the Great Protestant Crusader’ http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner05172006.html May 17, 2006). However, the Jol didn’t start popularizing it until after the 1967 war. The Jewish media hyped up this propaganda primarily to cover up for the Jos’s continual undermining of American interests in the Middle East. The more the Jos has undermined America’s interests, the more the increasingly Jewish dominated media in America has had to pump out the ‘Jos is an ally’ message. This propaganda has been hyped to such an extent it has become a cliché. The one saving grace concerning this propaganda is that the greater the military power of the Jos, the more opportunities it has had to fabricate sops to the idea of being America’s asset in the Middle East. But equally, the more commonplace this propaganda has become, the greater the opportunity it has created for the Jos to undermine America’s strategic interests in the region even more fundamentally. This propaganda has also deterred Americans from questioning their relationship to the Jos let alone demanding retaliation for the Jos’s misdeeds.

The great contradiction at the heart of America’s foreign policies in the Middle East is that America regards the Jos/Jol as a strategic asset even though it devastates America’s interests in the region. This contradiction has become so stark it has reached the point now where America’s proxy zionist invasion of Iraq has dramatically reduced the country’s oil exports, dramatically increased oil prices, and thrown the global oil markets into a state of nervousness where the slightest hint of further trouble sends the price of oil even higher. Such a contradiction will become even more blatant if America’s ruling Jewish elite succeeds in pushing the country into a proxy zionist attack on Iran. It is difficult to imagine how such an attack could avoid a catastrophic impact on the world’s oil supplies. This contradiction can be explained solely by the rise of America’s ruling Jewish elite i.e. the Jewish dominated media, Jewish think tanks, the Jewish owned congress, and the Jewish dominated Bush administrations.

The reasons American Wasp politicians refuse to face up to this contradiction are firstly, the massive hype being pumped out by America’s Jewish elite through the Jewish dominated media, Jewish think tanks, and academia. Secondly, the economic and political power of American Jews to bribe Wasp politicians into accepting such hype. And, thirdly because the Jos has gone out of its way to find ways of being useful to America in order to give some substance to the hype. Zunes has provided a long list of examples where the Jos has helped American foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond - even though such examples are of little significance. What he does not provide is any sort of list of the ways in which the Jos has undermined American interests let alone outline the history of the Jos as an increasingly catastrophic liability to America.

The Dominance of the Jol over the Oil Lobby.

In his response to Mearsheimer and Walt’s publication, Chomsky refers to evidence provided by Stephen Zunes concerning the Jol’s financial contributions to members of Congress and political parties. “As Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes has rightly pointed out, "there are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the Lobby generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied donors to congressional races."” (Noam Chomsky ‘The Israel Lobby?’ http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9999&sectionID=11 March 28, 2006. Quote taken from Stephen Zunes ‘Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006).

Jeff Blankfort responded, “This claim cannot be substantiated simply because it isn't true. In 2002, for example, Haim Saban, the Israel-American who funds the Saban Center at the Brooking Institute and is a big contributor to AIPAC, gave $12.3 million to the Democratic Party, almost as much as the $14 plus million the arms manufacturing PACs gave to both parties. In 2001, Mother Jones listed on its web site, the 400 leading contributors to the 2000 national elections. Seven of the first 10 were Jewish, as were 12 of the top 20 and 125 of the top 250. I didn't go any further. Were all these Jews supporters of Israel? To some degree it is quite likely but, as a number of observers over the years have said, in the eyes of Congress, there is only one key issue for American Jews and that is Israel. Now, if "ME Scholar Stephen Zunes," who Chomsky quotes, or Chomsky himself, has evidence that contradicts this, let them present it. I have sent copies of this email to both of them.” (Jeffrey Blankfort Chomsky on the Israel Lobby’ jblankfort@earthlink.net March 28 2006).

Zunes must have accidentally deleted Blankfort’s email before reading it. “The arms industry contributes more than $7 million each election cycle to Congressional campaigns, twice that of pro-Israel groups. In terms of lobbying budgets, the difference is even more profound: Northrop Grumman alone spends seven times as much money in its lobbying efforts annually than does AIPAC and Lockheed Martin outspends AIPAC by a factor of four. Similarly, the lobbying budget of AIPAC is dwarfed by those of General Electric, Raytheon, and Boeing and other corporations with substantial military contracts.”

Michael Massing offers the following figures. “The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that analyzes political contributions, lists a total of thirty-six pro-Israel PACs, which together contributed $3.14 million to candidates in the 2004 election cycle. Pro-Israel donors give many millions more. Over the last five years, for instance, Robert Asher, together with his various relatives (a common device used to maximize contributions), has donated $148,000, mostly in sums of $1,000 or $2,000 to individual candidates.” (Michael Massing ‘The Storm over the Israel Lobby’ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19062 May 11^th 2006).

This is not the place to try and reconcile these contradictory figures. Instead, let’s take the worst case scenario and assume that both the oil industry and America’s arms manufacturers donate more bribes to members of Congress and the country’s two main political parties than the Jol. So what? Firstly, this is not a competition to become the biggest spender of lobby money. It is about spending money to achieve objectives. If the Jol can achieve its political objectives by spending x million dollars why should it throw away 2x or 10x millions just to become the most extravagant lobbyist? The evidence that the Jol/Jos is achieving more of its objectives than either America’s oil industry or the American military derives from an interpretation of events not an inspection of lobbying league tables. The Jol/Jos’s success in preventing American oil companies from trading with Iran for the last decade is one very powerful piece of evidence indicating their superior power. This was reinforced by a revelation resulting from the Katrina hurricane disaster in New Orleans. Katrina was a global burning disaster causing significant amounts of damage not only to residential properties but to America’s oil industry. That America’s oil companies couldn’t get the government to spend money on environmental defences to protect their billion dollar investments in the city (primarily because the government was spending so much money on the proxy zionist invasion of Iraq) reveals where real power lays in American politics – especially given the oil connections of George.Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleeza Rice.

Secondly, developing the theme of only paying what is needed to achieve an objective, Michael Massing provides an example of the critical impact a small donation can make to a political campaign. “One congressional staff member told me of the case of a Democratic candidate from a mountain state who, eager to tap into pro-Israel money, got in touch with AIPAC, which assigned him to a Manhattan software executive eager to move up in AIPAC's organization. The executive held a fund-raising reception in his apartment on the Upper West Side, and the candidate left with $15,000. In his state's small market for press and televised ads, that sum proved an important factor in a race he narrowly won. The congressman thus became one of hundreds of members who could be relied upon to vote AIPAC's way. (The staffer told me the name of the congressman but asked that I withhold it in order to spare him embarrassment).” (Michael Massing ‘The Storm over the Israel Lobby’ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19062 May 11^th 2006).

Finally, it would not be surprising if arms’ manufacturers spend more on lobbying than the Jol/Jos because whilst the latter is concerned about bribing American politicians to protect one country, the former has the much more substantial task of boosting arms’ sales to a large number of countries.

The Power of the Military-Industrial Complex or the Military-Industrial-Jewish Complex?

As regards the tribute payments that America makes to the Jos, Zunes claims. “Matti Peled, the late Israeli major general and Knesset member, reported that as far as he could tell, the $2.2 billion figure of annual U.S. military support of Israel at that time was conjured up “out of thin air.” (Thereby) reinforcing his impression that “aid to Israel” is little more than a U.S. government subsidy for American munitions manufacturers.” Politicians in America might well have invented this ruse to boost military sales but what Zunes ignores is the issue of who owns the American military-industrial complex. In other words, who really benefits from the political ruse? Zunes deduces it must be Wasps but, given the reality of the military-industrial-Israeli complex, it could also be American Jewish arms manufacturers. The ruse is not the issue: the issue is who benefits from it.

Zunes supports his fantasy that America’s ruling Wasps treat the Jos as a strategic asset, not with evidence but with a speculation. “Similarly, if there ever came a time when those in power in Washington decided that a major shift in policy toward Israel was necessary, they could likely effect such a shift, however the Israel lobby might react.” In 1956, president Eisenhower forced the Jos to withdraw from the Sinai. But the days when an American president would dare to demand the Jos withdraws from land it has occupied or illegally annexed are long since gone. American presidents would no longer risk insisting on the Jos’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Syria, or the West Bank, because to do so might trigger another American civil war. Certainly America has the military and economic power to force the Jos out of lands it is illegally occupying but it no longer has the political power to do so because America’s ruling Jewish establishment would never permit such a policy. It is laughable to believe America will order the Jos to do anything when members of Congress are too frightened to even criticize the Jos.[xvii]

The Jol: Powerful or Powerless?

Chomsky dismisses the political influence of the Jol. He argues that even if the Jol didn’t exist America’s pax americana policies towards the Jos, the Middle East, and the rest of the world would be exactly the same. Zunes sees the logic of Chomsky’s argument. “Indeed, U.S. policy in the Middle East over the past several decades .. is remarkably similar to U.S. policy toward Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. If the United States can pursue such policies elsewhere in the world without pressure from the Israel lobby, why is its presence necessary to explain U.S. policies in the Middle East?”

It is true American imperialism is no less disgustingly barbaric in Iraq than it was in South East Asia in the 1960s-1970s and in Central America in the 1980s.[xviii] What is fundamentally different, however, is that in the past America defined its own enemies whereas today the Jol determines America’s enemies. America ignores it own enemies to devote itself to confronting the Jos’s enemies. If American Wasps were currently pursuing their own strategic interests they would be focussing not on the Middle East but on South America, China, and Russia. They would not have allowed themselves to become so politically and militarily bogged down in the Middle East that they could do little about developments in these other regions. The power of America’s ruling Jewish elite can be seen in its ability to focus America’s foreign policies on the Middle East, fighting the Jos’s enemies in order to promote Jewish supremacism, thereby preventing America from confronting adverse political developments in South America and China.

In South America the rise of left wing governments is posing a growing threat to America’s oil supplies. There is no strategic sense for America to focus on the Middle East where it gets relatively little oil whilst ignoring South America from where it gets more of its oil. This anomaly can be explained only by America’s ruling Jewish elite determining America’s foreign policies.

America’s focus on the Jos and the Middle East is undermining its own national defence strategy to combat the rise of any future rival. America’s ruling Jewish elite are deceiving Americans into focussing on the Middle East whilst the country is losing global dominance to China. Juan Cole laughs at the absurdity of America’s current foreign policy posture. “At what point would Iran be a greater military threat to the United States than Communist China? It certainly is not now. It is just a poor, small, ramshackle, mulla-ridden society with no unconventional weapons at all.” (Juan Cole ‘More on Autonomous Regions’ http://www.juancole.com/2006_05_01_juancole_archive.html May 02, 2006). America and the Jos have divergent interests as regards China. To America, China is an increasing global rival. To the Jos, and even some Jewish neocons, it is a trading partner. That America has put China on the backburner for the sake of the Middle East, once again indicates the power of America’s ruling Jewish elite.

The divergence of strategic interests between America and the Jos can also be seen over the Kurds. Zunes provides an example of where the Jos is acting as a strategic asset for America, “Israelis have helped arm and train pro - American Kurdish militias.” It is true that Kurdish militias are pro-american (and pro-Jos) but this doesn’t mean that America supports an independent Kurdish state in Iraq, and a greater Kurdistan covering territory annexed from Iraq, Iran, Syria, and possibly even Turkey. It is in the strategic interests of the Jos to support such developments - even though it has an alliance with Turkey. Neither are in America’s interests. Firstly, because it would undermine support from Turkey but, secondly, because it would critically undermine support from the Arab world. It doesn’t matter to the Jos if it further alienates the Arab world but if America did so the adverse consequences could be significant – Saudi Arabia would think seriously about its relationship to America if the Arab world was faced with the prospect of a greater Kurdistan. The Kurdish issue is an example of the Jos pursuing an independent foreign policy which runs counter to America’s global interests. Yet again the Jos is undermining America’s strategic interests in the Middle East whilst maintaining the fiction that it is acting on America’s behalf.

America’s Divide and Rule Tactic.

Zunes postulates that Wasps’ pax americana has turned the Jos into a strategic asset. However, Wasps do not merely bribe the Jos with a vast treasure chest to do its bidding. Zunes believes that Wasps have inflicted a terrible political price on the Jos. They employ the well known imperialist tactic of ‘divide and rule’ to keep Jews and Palestinians in conflict with each other. The benefit of this tactic is that both sides will be more willing to obey American orders in order to win favours from their global emperors. For Zunes, the implications of this tactic are wide ranging.

Firstly, Zunes believes America is responsible for forcing the Jos to institute racist laws and policies towards Palestinians. American Wasps have deliberately set out to produce conflict between Jews and Palestinians who otherwise would be living happily together because of their shared religious and historical heritage. “U.S. policy has resulted in dividing Israelis from Arabs, although both are Semitic peoples who worship the same God, love the same land, and share a history of subjugation and oppression.” According to Zunes, the Jews in the Jos are not responsible for the racist policies they have implemented against the Palestinians because they are being forced to implement such policies by America.

Secondly, Zunes proposes that America’s Wasp imperialists were responsible for forcing the Jos into wars against the Arab world in 1967, 1973, and in 1982. It was not Jos belligerence that brought about these wars but Wasp imperialists. Zunes’s view is not uncommon amongst America’s Jewish left, “Similarly, the U.S. doesn't want an Israel truly at peace with the Arabs, for such an Israel could loosen its bonds of dependence on the U.S., making it a less reliable proxy.” (Norman Finkelstein ‘It's Not Either/Or http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein05012006.html May 1, 2006). The Christisons have pointed out two examples of left wingers blaming America for pushing the Jos into wars. “The critics generally believe, for instance, that Israel’s political destruction of Egypt’s Nasser in 1967 was done for the U.S. Most if not all believe that Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon was undertaken at U.S. behest, to destroy the PLO.” (Kathleen and Bill Christison ‘The Rise of the Israel Lobby: A Measure of Its Power – CounterPunch May 16-31, 2006).

Thirdly, Zunes holds that Wasp imperialists are responsible for preventing peace agreements from being reached between Jews and Palestinians.

Fourthly, Zunes suggests the vast majority of Jews in the Jos support peace and want to live happily with their Palestinian neighbours.

Finally, similarly Zunes suggests the majority of American Jews also support peace in the Middle East.

Zunes’s analysis borders on fantasy. The imperialist tactic of divide and rule has been used throughout history. The idea is to alternately reward (or punish) each side so they compete for rewards from their imperial master. The aim is to provoke both sides into violence against each other so they keep each other weak thereby enhancing imperialist power. If the two sides collaborated they could seriously challenge the imperial power so the latter has to ensure the conflict between them keeps them both powerless.

This model does not apply to Palestine. Whilst it is quite true that both sides use violence against each other, the overwhelming majority of the violence comes from the Jews. America has not sought to weaken both sides. On the contrary, it has helped boost the military power of the Jos over the Palestinians until it is virtually total. It constantly rewards the Jews whilst constantly punishing the Palestinians. Each of Zunes’s points can be criticized.

Firstly, America was not responsible for forcing the Jos to enact racist laws. Since its inception, zionist ideology was an explicit form of Jewish racism. Jewish racism was the backbone of the zionist movement for fifty years before American politicians were bribed into supporting the establishment of the Jos. Despite American support for the foundation of the Jos, the Jos treated America with contempt up until 1967 so there was no chance for American imperialism to impose itself on the development of the Jos.

Secondly, it was the Jos, not American Wasps, who initiated wars against its Arab neighbours. These wars were solely the responsibility of the Jos not Americans. “The evidence is equally clear that Israel was the prime mover in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and led the U.S. into that morass, rather than the other way around. Although Massad refers to the U.S. as Israel’s master, in this instance as in many others including 1967, Israel has clearly been its own master.” (Kathleen and Bill Christison ‘The Rise of the Israel Lobby: A Measure of Its Power – CounterPunch May 16-31, 2006).

Thirdly, America has not sought to prevent peace agreements from being developed between Jews and Palestinians. On the contrary, it is America who has initiated all the peace negotiations and it is the Jews who have done their best to wreck these negotiations. Only one Jewish leader made any serious effort to promote peace rather than war – and he was assassinated by a Jewish extremist.

Fourthly, it is not the case that the vast majority of Jews in the Jos support peace. Most want a Jews-only state with as few non-Jews as possible. Most are racists and treat Arabs with contempt. They regard all Palestinians as terrorists and do not want to negotiate with them in order to live peacefully together.

Finally, the majority of American Jews support the stance taken by the Jos and the Jewish people. The number of American Jews who support peace is minimal.

In conclusion, Zunes’s proposal that America is employing a divide and rule tactic against those living in Palestine is yet another Jewish lie - this time one perpetrated by left wing American Jews rather than, as is usually the case, by right wing American Jews. America has never had the power over the Jos to use the divide and rule tactic. The Jos has never acted as America’s asset despite Jewish claims that it is an American asset. On the contrary it has forced America into becoming a Jewish asset. If America had the imperial power to use such a tactic to force the Jews to do its bidding, why would it need to bribe the Jos with such vast sums of money? America has given the Jos more than enough weapons for it to defeat deter its enemies so why does America keep providing it with even more military assistance? Implicit in Zunes’s ideology is the assumption that America’s imperial takeover of the Jos was achieved a lot more easily than America’s takeover of Iraq. Whilst the Jews have seemingly submitted themselves in silence to American domination, the Iraqis have heroically resisted American occupation and exploitation. It is absurd to believe that Jewish extremists like Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon, would ever accept servility so easily.

American Jews’ Need to see the Jos as America’s Strategic Asset in the Persian Gulf.

Zunes’s basic premise, that America’s Wasps use the Jos as their pet bulldog to threaten their enemies in the Middle East, is Jewish propaganda. But, it does have a psychological benefit of enormous significance to many American Jews.

To summarize: Zunes believes firstly, that in the medieval period, Jews were used as scapegoats by European rulers to escape the wroth of their subjects when things went wrong. Secondly, that since the the foundation of the Jos, American Wasps have deliberately set out to produce conflict between Jews and Palestinians. Thus the Jews in the Jos are not responsible for implementing racist policies against the Palestinians because they have been forced to do so by America. They are as innocent and as blameless as the Palestinians. Thirdly, that American Wasp imperialists have been responsible for pushing the Jos into wars against the Arab world. It was not the Jos’s belligerence or its strategic interests that brought about these wars. Fourthly, that in the run up to America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, American Wasps needlessly blamed Jews for initiating the war as a means for deflecting popular criticism away from themselves. Fifthly, that the Jol is as powerless and ineffectual as the Jos. The conclusion should be clear. Zunes is transparently whitewashing the Jews of any responsibility for everything. He is peddling the modern version of the Jew as an eternal victim.

Blankfort explains the belief in Jewish innocence, powerlessness, and victimhood, in terms of social conditioning. “That most of those from the Left who have criticized the Mearsheimer-Walt paper happen to be Jewish is not an accident. They have been conditioned from childhood to automatically resist anything that appears to be "blaming the Jews" even when the accusation applies to only a certain segment of the Jewish population. That their influence in the Palestine support movement has been pervasive is one of the major reasons for its utter failure to date.” (Jeff Blankfort ‘The “Israel lobby” controversy’ jblankfort@earthlink.net May 17 2006).

Jewish belief in their blamelessness may be transmitted through social conditioning but its roots lay in Jewish religion, Jewish traditions, and Jewish folk-lore. There is no doubt that some Jews have been persecuted terribly in many places and at many times throughout their history – especially of course during the age of totalitarianism. But they have not always, and everywhere, been victims. The British have a far more substantial claim to victimhood than the Jews given that the country was invaded by the Celts, Saxons, Romans, Vikings, Normans and came close to being invaded in Elizabethan times by the Spanish armada, in Napoleanic times by the French, and of course, during world war two by the Germans. Doubtlessly many other European countries could also make such claims.

Zunes’s ideology is that Jews are always powerless, they are always the victims of manipulation by greater powers. No matter how much power and wealth Jews might actually have they are always manipulated by non-Jews with more power and more wealth. Even today when the Jos possesses nuclear weapons and is the fourth most powerful military power in the world Zunes still believes it is a pawn in Wasps’ pax americana. Conversely, the Jews have never been responsible for anything they have done throughout their history. No matter how barbarically they have acted, they are eternally innocent. Ariel Sharon was a terrorist who physically murdered Palestinians but he too was an innocent victim pushed into such acts of barbarism by American imperialism. For Zunes, anti-semitism is blaming Jews for doing things they did not do or, if they did, were not responsible for doing because they were forced into doing it by greater powers. “Indeed, that has largely been the functional purpose of anti-Semitism throughout Western history: to misdirect popular opposition to economic injustice, disastrous military campaigns, or other failures by political and economic elites on to a convenient and expendable target.” (Stephen Zunes ‘Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006). Given such a blatant ideology, it has to be concluded that these days Jewish accusations of anti-semitism are simply a cover for the continuing accumulation of Jewish power.

In some respects Zunes appears to be a modern, progressive, left wing, rational thinker. But, in other respects, he seems to be modernizing the lament of many religious figures throughout Jewish history – “Why is it always us?”; “Why do they always pick on us?”; “Why do they always hate us?”; “Why are we always the victims?”; “Why are we always too powerless to defend ourselves?” Underneath Zunes’s sophisticated left wing thinking is a devout rabbinical scholar who wails against the injustices that powerful, evil, non-jews have perpetrated against powerless, eternally innocent, divinely sanctioned, Jews.

It was suggested that Zunes starts with the basic premise that American Wasps are all powerful and then logically deduces everything else from it. To be more precise, his fundamental premise is that ‘all Jews are victims’. This is the premise from which he makes the logical deduction that American Wasps must be more politically powerful than American Jews. Zunes has borrowed this ‘Jews are Blameless’ ideology from Chomsky, the chief rabbi of the left.

Zunes’s Vested Interests.

Zunes’s pro-semitic bigotry permeates his article in such expressions as “Israel's democratic institutions”. The Jos is a racist state and is no more democratic than was apartheid South Africa. Only Jewish racists proclaim the Jos is a democracy. Zunes also proclaims, “Israel is the world's only Jewish state” - as if its racist nature is something to be proud of. It is quite true that Britain is a British state (although whilst it is becoming increasingly multi-cultural, the Jos continues to ethnically cleanse Palestine.) It has been this way for nearly a millenium. However, if it colonized another country let’s say Peru at the same time and in the same way that Jews colonized Palestine, would Zunes proudly proclaim, ‘Peru is only the world’s second British state.” Thirdly, Zunes refers to Palestinians’ efforts to rid themselves of their racist oppressors as “armed factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) .. launching terrorist attacks inside Israel” They’re freedom fighters as he’d admit if he wasn’t a Jewish racist. The Palestinians have an international legal right to resist occupation especially when confronted by a terrorist state which continually steals their land and resources, deliberately wrecks Palestinian civil society, whilst refusing any negotiations.

Zunes, like most other commentators who believe American Jews must remain invisible, also uses the vacuous phrase “the corporate-owned media in America” (Stephen Zunes ‘Israel not to blame for Iraq mess’ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA11Ak01.html Jan 11, 2006). This formulation is not incorrect, but it is inadequate and deceptive. A more accurate phrase is “the American Jewish dominated media” indicating that American Jews own substantial parts of the media; that a high proportion of those employed in the industry are American Jews; and that many non-Jewish owned media outlets are fanatically devoted to boosting the interests of the Jos.[xix]

Finally, Zunes’s phraseology, “my opposition to U.S. support for the Israeli government's policies of occupation, colonization, and repression” is another way of saying that if America’s ruling Wasp imperialists weren’t forcing the Jews in Palestine to occupy, colonize, repress, and humiliate, Palestinians then they would be living in harmony with Palestinians.[xx] Zunes’s view of the world is ideologically warped.

Many reviewers of Mearsheimer and Walt’s publication have concluded that the reaction to their paper from many American Jews has proved one of the authors’ main conclusions - that anti-semitism is being used as a weapon to silence critics. Quite amazingly for a left winger, Zunes tries to belittle this conclusion by claiming that such a reaction can’t have anything to do with Jewish racism since he’s also been subjected to exactly the same sort of treatment as Mearsheimer and Walt. “I have often been on the receiving end of such attacks. As a result of my opposition to U.S. support for the Israeli government's policies of occupation, colonization, and repression, I have been deliberately misquoted, subjected to slander and libel, and been falsely accused of being “anti-Semitic” and “supporting terrorism;” my children have been harassed and my university's administration has been bombarded with calls for my dismissal. I have also had media appearances and speaking engagements cancelled, even by groups generally supportive of the right to dissent.” What he’s implying is that the attacks on Mearsheimer and Walt are not evidence of racist abuse by American Jews but just an experience suffered by any controversial writer criticizing American policies. Isn’t this similar to saying that a racist attack has nothing to do with racism because violence is endemic in society?

The Political Bankruptcy of the Left.

There is a strong case for proposing that one of Zunes’s criticisms of Mearsheimer and Walt should also be applied to his own views. “What progressive supporters of Mearsheimer and Walt's analysis seem to ignore is that both men have a vested interest in absolving from responsibility the foreign policy establishment that they have served so loyally all these years.” According to Blankfort, Zunes has his own vested interests when discussing the racist Jos. “In this article, Prof. Stephen Zunes, a self-declared Zionist ("I will be a Zionist as long as there is anti-semitism"), who has publicly said on more than one occasion that he "supports Israel as Jewish state" and that the establishment of Israel "was an example of global affirmative action" indulges in the most vicious attack yet on the Israel Lobby paper by Mearsheimer and Walt. He also has written that the US has been using Israel as the feudal lords used Jews as middlemen and that Israel is therefore the victim of anti-semitism on the part of the US government. That anyone uttering and writing such poppycock could be taken seriously, let alone considered an authority on the Middle East and on the Israel-Palestine should make us shake our heads, but his book Tinderbox which includes this formulation has been praised by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Michael Lerner, As'ad AbuKhalil, Naseer Aruri, Richard Falk, Joel Beinin, Howard Zinn, and Saul Landau. Whether or not any of them actually read the book before endorsing it is questionable but it illustrates the intellectual poverty from which "the Left," such as it is, not to mention the domestic Palestinian movement, has approached this issue.” (Jeff Blankfort ‘Stephen Zunes: The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really?’ jblankfort@earthlink.net May 16 2006).

According to Zunes’s fundamental tenet, borrowed from the basic tenets of Jewish religion, tradition, and folk-lore, Jews have been, and always will be, victims. By definition anything they do cannot be blamed on them because there is always some mysterious, omniscient, conspiratorial power lurking around in the shadows directing Jews like puppets. The mirror image of his ideology is the wacky anti-semitic conspiracy theory that, throughout history, Jews have been all powerful and have ruled the world from the shadows. Zunes believes, “There is something quite convenient and discomfortingly familiar about the tendency to blame an allegedly powerful and wealthy group of Jews for the overall direction of an increasingly controversial U.S. policy.” But it is easy to reverse this fantasy and apply it to Zunes. “There is something quite convenient and discomfortingly familiar about the tendency to blame an allegedly powerful and wealthy group of Wasps for the overall direction of an increasingly controversial U.S. policy.” It has to be suspected that as far as Zunes is concerned, even if the Jewish army goose-stepped into the Oval office he’d still insist they were being forced to do it by some hidden power. Until Zunes dispenses with his Jewish ideology and explores who owns America’s industries, its media, and the military-industrial-Jewish complex then he is never going to expose the truth or help bring justice to the world.

Zunes and other American Jewish commentators are inflicting crippling political damage on the left through