Zion-power and War: From Iraq to Iran
The Deadly
Embrace
James Petras
November 2007
Introduction
Explanations for the US attack on Iraq range from military-political
pretexts to accounts focusing on geopolitical and economic interests.
The original official explanation was the now discredited claim that
Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, biological and other weapons of mass
destructions (WMD), which threatened the US, Israel and the Middle East.
Subsequent to the US military occupation, when no WMD were discovered,
Washington justified the invasion and occupation by citing the removal of a
dictator and the establishment of a prosperous democracy in the Arab world. The
imposition of a colonial puppet regime, propped up by an imperial occupation
force of over 200,000 troops and irregular death squads, which have killed close
to a million Iraqi civilians, forced over 4 million into exile and impoverished
over 95% of the population, puts the lie to that line of argument. The latest
line of justification revolves around the notion that the US occupation is
necessary to ‘prevent a civil war’. Most Iraqis and military experts think the
presence of the US colonial occupation army is the cause of violent conflict,
particularly the US military’s devastating attacks on civilians, their financing
of rival tribal leaders and Kurdish mercenaries and their contracting of local
police-military to repress the population. Since most Americans (not to speak
of the rest of the world) are not convinced by these specious arguments, the
Washington regime rationalizes its continued war and occupation by citing the
need for a colonial military victory to maintain its world and regional status
as a super-power, and to assure its Middle East client regimes that Washington
can defend their ruling cliques and their hegemonic ally, Israel. The Bush
White House and pro-Israel Congressional leaders claim a victory in Iraq will
bolster Washington’s image as a successful global ‘anti-terrorist’
(anti-insurgent) regime. These post-facto justifications have lost credibility
as the war drags on, popular resistance grows in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine,
Lebanon, Somalia, Thailand, Philippines, Pakistan and elsewhere. The longer the
war continues, the greater the economic cost and the demoralization and
depletion of military personnel, the more difficult the task of sustaining the
capacity to intervene in defense of the empire.
If the official political and military justifications for the US
colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ring hollow and convince few, what of the
other economic explanations for the war put forth mostly but not exclusively
by critics of the Bush administration?
The major focus of the economic determinists of the war centers on the issue of
oil, as in ‘war for oil’.* These explanations in turn break down into several
variants: The first and most popular is that the big US oil companies were
behind the war, that Bush and Cheney were pressured by their Big Oil handlers
into launching the war so that US oil companies could seize the nationally-owned
Iraqi oil fields and refineries. A second, slightly modified, version argued
that the White House was not pressured by Big Oil but acted on their behalf as a
reflex action. (This is put forth to explain why the spokesmen for Big Oil
multinationals were so conspicuously absent from the media and halls of Congress
in the lead-up to the war.)
(* see recent statements in September and October by former Federal Reserve
Chairman, Alan Greenspan and US General John Abazaid among others)
A third version argued that the US went to war to secure oil for US
national security interests threatened by Saddam Hussein. This explanation
cites the danger of Saddam Hussein closing down the Strait of Hormuz, invading
the Gulf States, inciting revolts in Saudi Arabia and/or reducing the flow of
Middle East oil to the US and its allies. In other words, the ‘geopolitics’ of
the Middle East dictated that a non-client regime was a threat to US, European
and Japanese access to oil. This is apparently the latest argument put forth by
Alan Greenspan, a former proponent of the WMD propaganda.
The major advocates of the ‘war for oil’ (WFO) argument fail several
empirical tests: Namely that the oil companies were not actively
supporting the war via propaganda, congressional lobbying or through any other
policy vehicle. Secondly the proponents of WFO fail to explain the efforts by
major oil companies to develop economic ties with Iraq prior to the invasion and
were in fact, working through clandestine third parties to trade in Iraqi oil.
Thirdly, all the major oil companies operating in the Middle East were mainly
concerned with political stability, the liberalization of the economic policies
of the region and the opening of oil services for foreign investors. The big
oil companies’ strategies were to advance their global interests through the
on-going liberalization process in the Middle East and conquering new markets
and oil resources through their formidable market power – investments and
technology. The onset of the US invasion of Iraq was viewed with anxiety and
concern as a military action, which would destabilize the region, increase
hostility to their interests throughout the Gulf and slow down the
liberalization process. Not a single CEO from the entire petroleum industry
viewed the US invasion as a positive ‘national security’ measure, because they
understood that Saddam Hussein, after over a decade of economic and military
sanctions and frequent bombing of his military installations and infrastructure
throughout the Clinton years, was not in a position to launch any acts of
aggression against Gulf oil companies or states. Moreover the oil companies had
several real prospects of developing lucrative service and commercial oil
contracts with Saddam Hussein’s regime in the lead-up to the war. It was the US
government pressured by the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC), which pushed
legislation blocking (through sanctions) Big Oil from consummating these
economic agreements with Iraq.
The argument that Big Oil promoted the war for its own benefit fails
the empirical test. A corollary to that is that Big Oil has failed to benefit
from the US occupation because of the heightened conflict, continuous sabotage,
the predictable resistance of the Iraqi oil workers to privatization and the
general insecurity, instability and hostility of the Iraqi people.
The American Left jumped on Alan Greenspan’s declaration that the
Iraq war was about oil, as some kind of confirmation in the absence of any
evidence. Yet everyday that has transpired since the beginning of the war five
years ago, demonstrates that ‘Big Oil’ not only did not promote the invasion,
but has failed to secure a single oil field, despite the presence of 160,000 US
troops, thirty thousand Pentagon/State Department paid mercenaries and a corrupt
puppet regime. As of September 19, 2007 the Financial Times of London
featured an article on the conspicuous absence of the ‘Oil Majors’ in Iraq:
“Big Oil Plays a Waiting Game over Iraq’s Reserves’ (September 19, 2007). Only
a few small companies (‘oil minnows’) have contracts in Northern Iraq
(‘Kurdistan’), which has only 3% of Iraq’s reserves. ‘Big Oil’ did not start
the Iraq war, nor has ‘Big Oil’ benefited from the war. The reason why ‘Big
Oil’ did not support the war is the same reason they haven’t invested after the
occupation: “The level of violence is still unacceptably high…if anything the
prospects of agreement appears to be receding as tensions between parties grow.”
(ibid) ‘Big Oil’s’ worst nightmares leading up to the Zionist-influenced war
have all been utterly confirmed. Whereas ‘Big Oil’s’ negotiations and third
party deals with pre-war Iraq provided a stable and consistent flow of oil and
revenue, the war has not only reduced these revenues to zero, but has all but
eliminated any new options for the next decade.
Despite the war, liberalization elsewhere in the region has
proceeded and US oil and financial interests have advanced despite the increased
obstacles and hostilities, which have grown out of the US slaughter of Muslims.
Big Oil, Texas billionaires, even big contributors to the Bush
family political
campaigns were no match for the ZPC when it came to Middle East war policy. They
lacked the inside and outside power, the disciplined grass roots organization of
Jewish community organizations to overcome the Zionist warmongering power over
Congress, their position in strategic executive offices and their army of
academic scribes from Harvard, Yale and Hopkins churning out bellicose
propaganda in the US media. What is striking about the position papers and
op-ed reprints in the Daily Alert is the total absence of any deviation
from official Israeli pro-war positions: Whether it is killing children in
Jenin, bombing population centers in Lebanon, shelling Arab families relaxing at
the beach in Gaza, the Daily Alert simply echoes the official Israeli
line and blatant lies about human shields, accidents, gunmen among school
children, self-induced atrocities. Never in the entire period analyzed is there
a single critical article questioning Israel’s massive displacement of hundreds
of thousands of Palestinians. No crime against humanity is too great for the
Presidents of the Leading American Jewish Organizations to defend. It is this
slavish obedience to the official Israeli policy that marks out the Zionist
Power Configuration as something much more than just another lobby as its ‘left’
apologists and even Walt and Mearsheimer claim. The ZPC is much more sinister
both as a transmission belt for the policies and interests of a colonial power
hell-bent on domination in the Middle East and as the most serious authoritarian
threat to our democratic freedoms: no single individual who dares criticize can
escape the long hand of the pro-Israel authoritarians. Book sellers are
picketed, editors are intimidated, university presses and distributors are
threatened, university presidents are blackmailed, local and national candidates
are browbeaten and smeared, meetings are cancelled and venues are pressured,
faculty are fired or denied promotion, corporations are blacklisted, union
pension funds are raided, theater performances and concerts are cancelled. And
the list of repressive actions taken by these authoritarian Zionist
organizations at the national and local levels runs on, arousing fear among
some, anger among many more and a slowly burning resentment and growing
awareness among the silent majority. The second geo-political version
of ‘oil for war’ focuses on the national security issues. After the First Gulf
War in 1991 and eleven years of economic sanctions and military disarmament,
Iraq was an impoverished, weak nation partially dismembered by the US backed
Kurdish enclave in the north and constant US bombing and over flights. Iraq was
severely bombed several times during the Clinton regimes and over 1 million of
its citizens, including an estimated 500,000 children, died prematurely from
conditions related to the US imposed deprivation of food and essential medical
and water treatment supplies.
Before the invasion in 2003 Iraq did not even control its shorelines, airspace
or even a third of its national territory. As the US invasion demonstrated,
Saddam’s military lacked the most elementary capacity to mount any defense in a
conventional war, not even a single fighter plane presented a threat to any
offshore US client or to the Strait of Hormuz. The stiff resistance to the US
came later in the form of irregular forces engaged in guerrilla warfare, not
from any organized force established by the Baathist regime. In other words no
matter how far the concept of ‘national security’ is stretched to include US
military bases, oil installations, client rulers and transport and shipping
lanes in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein was clearly not a threat. If however
the concept of ‘national security’ is re-defined to mean the physical
elimination of any potential opponent of US and Israeli domination in the
region, then Saddam Hussein could be labeled a national security threat. But
that takes the discussion of the explanation for the US war against Iraq to
another terrain and a discussion of the political forces who manipulated the
phony WMD and ‘War for Oil’ propaganda to justify a war for US and Israeli
hegemony in the Middle East. Even more important the disinformation campaign
about who was responsible for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is highly
relevant to the current propaganda blitz driving us toward a war with Iran.
From the
Iraq War Cover-up on to Iran War Propaganda
The pro-Israel power configuration beats the war drums for an
assault on Iran with greater insistency and successfully induces the Democratic
Congress and Presidential hopefuls as well as the Republican White House to “put
the military option on the table.” Parallel to overt war propaganda, a number
of liberal critics of the Iraq war have published articles arguing that Israel
“really opposed the Iraq war.” Writers as diverse as Gareth Porter, ex-CIA
analyst Ray McGovern, Colonel Wilkerson (Colin Powell’s Aide), ultra Zion-Con
Michael Ledeen and others claim that Israel opposed the war because they wanted
the US to target Iran. Others argue that Israel had advised the US that an
invasion of Iraq would have dire consequences for the Middle East, tipping the
balance toward Iran and which they now claim to have predicted. These
Israel-exonerators point to other culprits, namely Bush-Cheney-Rumsfelt or the
American Neo-Cons (better known as the Zion-Cons) who, they insist, have acted
independently of Israel or ignored Israeli priorities in the region.
There is an alternative view, which argues that Israel promoted the
US attack on Iraq, did all in its power through its US pro-Israel followers to
design, propagandize and plan the war. This alternative view sustains that at
no point did the Zion-Cons act contrary to Israeli state interests. In fact,
Israeli officials worked on a daily basis with its US agents inside the
government, particularly the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans to provide
disinformation to justify the military attack. If, as we will show, Israel was
deeply involved in pushing the US to attack Iraq and is behind the current
disinformation campaign to provoke a US war against Iran, then anti-war forces
and US public opinion must openly confront the ‘Israel factor’.
We will argue that the exoneration of Israel is mainly an attempt to
deflect US public hostility away from those Israel Firsters who manipulated us
into this costly, bloody unending war. Exoneration of Israeli responsibility
for the US invasion of Iraq allows the Jewish state and its US agents to escape
any blame for the degradation of US forces in Iraq and provides them a ‘clean
moral slate’ for launching a new bloody US attack against Iran. Rather than
seeing Israel as giving us a double dose of an incurable colonial disease,
exoneration allows Israel and its agents to follow the same Iraq invasion
pattern of manipulation and duplicity in leading us to war with Iran. The White
House and Democratic Congress, echoing Israel, are using inflated threats of
nuclear attack, demonizing Iran’s leaders, financing low intensity warfare
through the training and funding of violent Iranian exile-based clients,
economic sanctions and ‘failed’ diplomatic maneuvers …to lead up to a new war.
Taking advantage of their liberal (Zion-lib)-led exoneration for their role in
the invasion of Iraq, the Zionist Power Configuration, through such loyal
mouthpieces as Senator Joseph Lieberman, blame the Iranians for the deaths of US
soldiers in Iraq. It is not the Zionist pro-war officials in and out of the
government who sent young American soldiers to die in Iraq at the behest of the
Israeli state to whom the US public should direct its anger, but rather the
Iranians who are accused of arming and training Iraqi resistance fighters.
Leaving Israel out and bringing Iran into the debacle in Iraq serves the Israeli
purpose of covering their backsides while inciting Americans into a new military
adventure against the much larger and better-armed Iranians.
The exonerators of Israel are not homogeneous in their political
background or goals. Some liberals, fearful of arousing a powerful Zionist
backlash, seek to whitewash Israel’s lobby operatives in the US as a way of
gaining sympathy among pro-Israel Congressional Democrats and financial backing
from wealthy Jewish liberals critical of the Iraq war. Democratic Party
Chairman Howard Dean, following the new Israeli script declared during a visit
to Tel Aviv in 2006 that the ‘the US invaded the wrong country!’
The price of the ‘exonerate Israel’ strategy is to overlook the
powerful role that the Israel First lobby is playing in bringing us to a new war
with Iran as part of a sequence of invasions promoted by Israeli strategists.
These clever ploys are backfiring. Playing to the prejudices of the liberal
pro-Israel crowd in the Democratic Party has lead to the current absence of any
significant anti-war movement against the Zionist-led propaganda and
war-mongering blitz against Iran.
There is no question that some anti-war Zion-Libs are trying to put
some distance from the Zion-Con/Israeli policymakers who promoted the invasion
of Iraq. But this does not come from any opposition to another new and more
dangerous military commitment. On the contrary, the Zion-Libs criticize the
discredited Bush-Cheney-Iraq policy in favor of a new more aggressive war policy
toward Iran. By exonerating Israel and its transmission belt of organized local
and national Jewish and fundamentalist Christian organizations, the liberals
have not found allies for peace – they have revived the powerful influence of
Israel and its US apparatus which was being increasingly rejected by the US
public and elements in the US military. By putting the blame for the debacle in
Iraq exclusively on Bush/Cheney and their allies in ‘Big Oil’ and excluding the
role of Israel, the ZPC and their toadies among the Democrats in Congress, the
liberal exonerators, open the way for a new cycle of war in the Middle East. To
prevent a future Zionist and Israeli-orchestrated US attack against Iran, we
must be perfectly clear about who maneuvered the US into attacking Iraq.
Israel, the
ZPC and the Run-up to the Invasion of Iraq
Analytically, the differences between Israeli state policy and the
leading US Zionist organizations are, with very rare exceptions,
indistinguishable. The run-up to the US attack on Iraq is a case in point.
From the late 1980’s, through the first Gulf War, the Clinton Administration’s
sanctions, daily bombings and territorial separation of northern Iraq,
‘Kurdistan’, from the rest of the country, to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the
Israeli government pressured US Congress-people and senior policy makers toward
bellicose policies toward Israel’s ‘enemies’. Israeli state policy urging
further US degradation of Iraq was transmitted through the major Zionist
organizations and key Zionist officials in the Clinton and later Bush
administrations. Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Madeleine Albright, Richard
Holbrook, Sandy Berger, William Cohen and others were the most important foreign
policy-makers toward the Middle East in the Clinton Administration and they
produced and implemented the sanctions, bombings and territorial dismemberment
of Iraq. Following their term of office, key Clinton Zionists went to work at
pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington. Following the attacks of September 11,
2001, the Zion-Cons in top level positions in the Bush Administration (Ari
Fleischer, Paul Wolfowitz, David Frum, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Eliott
Abrams, Irving (Scooter) Libby, David Wurmser and others) and key Zionist
Congress-members like Senator Joseph Lieberman, called for the US to attack
Iraq, as part of a series of sequential wars, to include Syria and Iran. They
echoed the policies of the Israeli state and in particular Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon.
Israeli state officials, at no point expressed any reservations or
differences with the bellicose efforts of its highly placed liaison agents in
the Bush Government, nor with its servile lobby, AIPAC, nor with the pro-Israel
Op-Ed writers of the major newspapers and broadcast media. Zionist ideologues
prevailed everywhere berating the US military officials for their timid
caution. Israel, consistent with its policies since the late 1980’s, encouraged
the Bush Administration toward an invasion and occupation of Iraq in all of its
top level meetings with Rumsfelt, Powell, Rice and Bush. The Israeli media,
with rare exceptions, demonized Saddam, played up his ‘threat’ to the Middle
East and Israel’s security, conflated Palestinian suicide bombings with Iraqi
support for the Palestinian people’s national aspirations, and energized their
fundamentalist Christian allies in the US to follow suit in calling for an
invasion of Iraq.
An analysis of the relationship between the Israeli state and highly
placed Zionist officials in the Bush Administration reveals first and foremost
that Tel Aviv laid out the strategic policies of eliminating Middle East regimes
opposed to its ethnic cleansing of the occupied territories and unlimited
expansion of colonial settlements in Occupied Palestine and the consolidation of
Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. The Zionist elite in the Bush regime
invented the pretext and the propaganda for war and most important, successfully
designed and operationalized the US invasion of Iraq. This ‘division of labor’
included the Zion-Cons in the executive branch, backed by the Presidents of the
Major Jewish American Organizations (including AIPAC), the regional, state and
local Jewish federations through their influence over Congress.
Testimony by former Pentagon analyst, retired
U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski
confirms that throughout the period leading to the Iraq war, Israeli military
officials, intelligence officers and other high ranking functionaries had daily
access with top Zionist Pentagon officials like Undersecretary of Defense
Douglas Feith. Frequent consultation, intelligence coordination and joint
planning between top Zion-Cons in the Pentagon and top Israeli military
operatives in the US indicates that there was close agreement in directing the
US to invade Iraq. There was Zion-Con/Israeli agreement, confirmed in the
immediate aftermath of the initial ‘successful’ occupation, that Iraq was the
first of a series of invasions in the Middle East, to be followed by attacks
against Iran and Syria. The Israeli joke current at the time was: ‘Anyone can
take Baghdad, real men go for Tehran.’ In November 2002, Ariel Sharon, in an
interview with the Times of London, called for the bombing of Iran ‘the day
after the US invades Iraq’.
The Zion-Con/Israeli blueprint for
sequential wars was explicitly stated in the policy paper “Project for a New
American Century’, a kind of American-Israeli Mein Kampf of US world domination
in which Israel would be a co-benefactor of American military might and
treasure. Most of the Zion-Con designers and executers of US war policy in the
Middle East were listed as authors or sponsors of the ‘New American Project’.
Many were also contributors to the policy paper for Likud leader, Benyamin
Netanyahu, which specifically called for the dismemberment of Iraq into
manageable ethnic enclaves.
Israeli intelligence
‘disinformation’ about Saddam Hussein’s ‘threat’ to the region was embellished
One is by parleying influence over a small group of
Congressmen into a large majority. For example, AIPAC wrote up the bill,
presented by Senator Lieberman and co-signed by Senator Kyl, labeling the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards as ‘terrorists’, which paves the way for Bush to
launch an attack. It was passed by 80% of Congress.
Cumulative power is the convergence of different
sectors of the ZPC on a single issue. For example, pro-Israel writers and
Jewish leaders from all major organizations and spheres of its media from Left
to far Right, joined to denounce Mearsheimer and Walt’s essay and subsequent
book, most resorting to either ad hominem attacks (‘anti-Semites’) or illogical
and convoluted arguments ignoring the empirical data.
Propaganda of the deed is a favorite power tool of the ZPC.
This involves publicizing the successful punishment of critics of Israel
and the ZPC in order to intimidate current or future policymakers. An example
is how Ziono-fascist Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School
successfully campaigned, with backing from the ZPC, ousted Professor Norman
Finkelstein from his university post, thus serving as ‘exemplary punishment’ to
any future academic critics of Israel. Dershowitz campaign went so far as to
slander Professor Finkelstein’s deceased mother, a survivor of the Nazi death
camps, as a Jewish ‘kapo’ or Nazi collaborator.
The ZPC has multiple resources that are mutually
re-enforcing in both the private, and public spheres. Large-scale,
long-term party and electoral financing buy Congressional influence. This in
turn increases the power of the large minority of Zionist Congressmen in gaining
control over party nominations and committee assignments in Congress. This in
turn feeds back into greater influence for the ZPC in shaping US-Middle East
foreign policy and facilitating access of pro-Israeli writers to the Op-Ed pages
of the major dailies, weeklies and other branches of the corporate media.
Zionist power is also the result of a long-standing, pervasive and
totally one-sided propaganda campaign which demonizes Israel’s Arab, especially
Palestinian critics, and paints Israel (the world’s fourth largest and Middle
East’s only nuclear power) as a democratic fortress, surrounded by hostile
authoritarian governments. Through its access and partial control over most of
the major media, the Zionist Power Configuration provides heavily biased reports
on events such as the Israeli terror bombings of populations centers in Lebanon,
Gaza and elsewhere. Reputational power projected by the ZPC in the US
counteracts reality in the Middle East to the extent that Palestinian victims of
all ages and genders, suffering 40 years of Israeli military rule, land
expropriation and constant violent assaults are made into aggressors and the
Israeli executioners are portrayed as virtuous, peaceful victims.
Israel
Lobby or ‘Zionist Power Configuration’?
Mearsheimer and Walt describe the pro-Israel power configuration as
a ‘lobby, just like any other US lobby’, a ‘loose collection of individuals and
groups’ outside of government, acting on behalf of Israel. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The power of Israel in the United States is manifested
through a multiplicity of highly organized, well financed and centrally directed
structures throughout the United States. The ZPC include several score
political action committees with innocuous names, at least a dozen propaganda
mills (‘think tanks’) employing scores of former highly connected top
policymakers mostly in Washington and the East Coast, and the 52 major American
Jewish Organizations grouped under the umbrella listing ‘Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations’ (CPMAJO). AIPAC and other
national organizations (ADL, AJC etc ) are important influences at the national
Executive-Congressional lobbying levels. But equally or even more important in
censoring and purging critics, controlling local media and shaping opinion
throughout cities, towns and villages are the local Jewish community federations
and organizations which browbeat local cultural programmers, editors,
bookstores, universities, churches and civic groups to deny public platforms to
speakers, writers, artists, religious spokespeople and other public figures
critical of Israel and its Zionist disciples.
The power base of the ZPC is found in the local activist doctors,
dentists, lawyers, real estate brokers and landlords who preside over the local
confederations and their several hundred thousand affiliates. It is they who
harass, badger, browbeat, raise money and organize propaganda junkets for
elected officials and ensure their support for Israeli wars and increases in the
US multi-billion dollar aid packages to Israel. The local Zionist power
structure organizes successful campaigns forcing state pension funds to purchase
billions of dollars in underperforming Israel state bonds and to disinvest in
companies engaged in economic transactions with Israel’s self-described ‘state
terrorists adversaries’. It is the Jewish based pro-Israel student
organizations which spy on US professors, who may or may not be critical of
Israel and smear them in local and national newsletters and pressure
administrations to fire them. Even where less than 1% of the local population
is Jewish, Zionist zealots are able to pressure small private Christian colleges
to ban a Nobel Peace Prize winning theologian, like Bishop Desmond Tutu, from
speaking on their campus. The Zionist octopus has extended its tentacles far
beyond the traditional centers of big city power and national politics, reaching
into remote towns and cultural spheres. Not even the American small town
obituary pages are exempt: When a Connecticut newspaper published a memorial of
a prominent Palestinian grandmother and community leader from Hebron (May 2003)
the 61 year old Shadeen abu Hijleh, who was shot in her home by Israelis
soldiers, members of the local Jewish confederation expressed outrage at the
exposure of Israeli military crimes – thus censoring a moving obituary page
tribute written by her American friends and relatives.
Centralized structures – coordinated policy, targets, quotas, fund
raising, large-scale special campaigns, black lists (‘anti-Semites’ and
‘self-hating Jews’), and networks all are integral parts of the ZPC.
Mearsheimer and Walt have failed to analyze the organizational relations between
the head office, regional staff and local organizations of the major pro-Israel
Jewish organizations and how quickly they can be mobilized to stigmatize, censor
or support a given speaker, activity or fund raiser in favor of Israeli
interests.
Throughout the country the newsletters of local Jewish Community Relations
Councils have parroted the line or reprinted libelous canards of their national
offices denouncing Mearsheimer and Walt’s book The Israel Lobby – and
from their rather ill-informed caricatures of M and W’s discussion it is clear
they have barely even read the book’s cover.
One thing is clear from the largely emotional ejaculations from the
predominantly Jewish intellectuals’ attacks against the book, the intellectual
level of contemporary Jewish intellectuals has seriously deteriorated to the
point that envy, communal spite and partisan vitriol has gotten the better of a
reasoned review of data and logic. The literary efforts by Abraham Foxman of
the ADL to answer M and H are reminiscent of the Stalinist diatribes featured
during the Moscow show trials of the 1930’s (our Jewish version of Andrei
Vishinsky). What accounts for the influence of these intellectual mediocrities
is neither the evil vapors emanating from their venomous writing, nor their
appeal to reason – though some pretense to reasoned debate is made by Zionist
progressives – if such exist – but the fact that their repetitious message
circulate throughout their mass media outlets uncontested.
The ZPC, having organized the war through falsified data, via the
top two officials in the Pentagon (Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith), the Vice
Presidents office (Wurmser and Irving Scooter Libby) and the National Security
Council (Elliot Abrams) organized the President’s office (Ari Fleischer) and
written Bush’s pre-emptive war speech (David Frum) are now fearful they will
face the anger of the American people who have suffered the loss of thousands of
soldiers – to an extent not experienced by the authors and implementers of this
war for Israel. To avoid identification with this disastrous war, Zionist Power
Configuration War planners and propagandists have resorted to lies (denial of
the crucial role of Israel in bringing the US to war) and the somewhat more
clever operators like Alan Greenspan have joined the mindless American left to
drag out the old canard of ‘War for Oil’.
War For Oil
or War For Israel: The Public Record
Zionist Power Configuration support for the Iraq War was an open,
relentless, propaganda campaign by well-known writers, publicists, and community
leaders as well as by the 52 leading Jewish organizations. There was ‘no
conspiracy’ or ‘cabal’ – the Zionist campaign was brazenly public, aggressive
and reiterative.
A systematic review of the major propaganda organ of the Presidents
of the Major American Jewish Organization’s newsletter, Daily Alert, from
2002 to September 2007 – 1,760 issues – provides us with a scientific sample of
ZPC opinion. On average, each issue contained 5 articles in favor of the war or
moves toward war with Iraq and/or Iran. The Daily Alert featured op-ed
articles by the major liberal, conservative and Zion-fascist writers and
academics which regularly appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal,
the New York Sun, and the New York and Los Angeles Times, the Daily Telegraph
and Times of London, YNet and others. In other words, in the crucial pre-war to
post-invasion period, the leading pro-Israel Jewish organizations produced
approximately 8800 pieces of pro-Iraq war propaganda and circulated it to all
its member organizations, every Congressman, every leading member of the
executive branch with follow-ups by local activists and an army of Washington
lobbyists (150 from AIPAC alone) plus several hundred full-time activists from
local and regional offices.
In a comparable survey of the leading Anglo-American business and
financial newspaper, the Financial Times between 2002 and September 2007,
regarding Big Oil’s policy toward war with Iraq and now Iran is just as
revealing. I reviewed the opinion, editorial and letter pages of 1,872 issues
of the Financial Times and there is not a single article or letter by any
spokesperson or representative of a major (or minor) oil company calling for the
invasion and occupation of Iraq or the bombing of Iran. There was no oil lobby
or grass roots organization demanding Congress or the Bush Administration to go
to war in defense of US oil interests. But the ZPC was active, promoting the
lie that disarmed and embargoed Iraq represented an ‘existential threat’ to the
nuclear armed Israel.
A similar comparison of Zionist and Big Oil regarding propaganda for
a US military confrontation with Iran reinforces the argument of the centrality
of the major Jewish organizations in promoting United States involvement in
Middle East wars for Israel. Between 2004 and September 2007 (3 years and 9
months) the Zionist propaganda sheet, the Daily Alert, published 960
issues in which an average of 6 articles argued for an immediate or near future
US or Israeli preemptive military attack on Iran, tougher economic sanctions
than the Security Council was willing to support, organized disinvestment and
boycotts of Iran. A survey of the Financial Times during the same
period, 1053 issues, (the FT prints 6 times a week, the Daily Alert
5 times), fails to produce a single letter or op-ed article by any
representative or spokesperson of Big Oil supporting war against Iran. On the
contrary, as was the case with Iraq, major oil leaders expressed anxiety and
fear that an Israeli instigated war would destabilize the entire area and lead
to the destruction of vital oil installations, undermine transport routes and
shipping lanes and cancel lucrative service contracts. Contrary to the latest
Zionist propaganda, Big Oil wants the US to lift its sanctions against
investment in Iran, since it has lost lucrative deals to competitors.
In complete contradiction to the ‘leftist’ Trotskyist-Zionist finger
pointing at Big Oil as the main push for war, big Texas oil was working
profitable with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, signing hundreds of millions of dollars
in illegal contracts with the now executed ruler. Oscar Wyatt, a Texas oil
billionaire, recently convicted for paying bribes to Saddam Hussein, was one of
many big oil dealers involved in the lucrative pre-war oil trade with Iraq (Financial
Times Oct. 2, 2007, p.2).
Zionist
Warmongering: Fear and Venom
As the pressure from Israel for a US-backed military attack on Iran
mounts, and as top US military officials and the general public grow
increasingly hostile to Zionist arm twisting and gross manipulation of policy
makers, the ZPC turns aggressively authoritarian in its effort to silence
opposition which exposes its role as a disloyal actor for a foreign power. In
the past, agents for a foreign power, once detected, usually received severe
sanction or worse. Today, numerous Zionist insiders know they are playing an
increasingly risky game as the perceived costs of a new war with Iran rise and
their Israeli ‘handlers’ press them to promote an attack Iran at the top of
their agenda.
Ultimately, the Zionist Power Configuration, despite their wealth
and current dominance over US Middle East policy, know that they represent less
than 1% of the population: They are an elite without a mass base. They have
power only as long as the other 99% of the population is inactive, manipulated
or intimidated to serve Israel’s interests. But as the growing flow of books,
articles and speeches begin to call attention to the Israeli-directed ZPC and
their destructive war-mongering activities, their self-promoted images of their
members as brilliant professionals, successful leaders in the world of business
and finance and compassionate politicians serving the best interests of the USA,
begins to erode. The ugly side of their servile loyalty to Israel, an arrogant,
racist colonial power provoking wars via the US to establish itself as an
unchallenged regional power has entered into the American public debate.
The ZPC is at or near the peak of its political power – in Congress,
the Executive, the Office of Homeland Security and prospective Attorney
General, in ‘culture’ and the mass media propaganda. But paradoxically, as the
ZPC peaks, it also exposes more of itself – much more than it wants to be seen
by the American public.
Even the brash and impudent Zionist polemicists who hole up in the
prestigious universities and ‘think tank-propaganda mills’ are beginning to feel
public anxiety, even perhaps private worries. As they do so, they back track,
trying to cover their fingerprints on all the war plans and propaganda leading
to the now-massively unpopular invasion of Iraq. They resort to outright lies
in the form of denials or complicity or ‘war-mongering’. Outrageous denials
abound! For the more aggressive die-hard Zion-Cons, exposure of the disloyal
role of the ZPC and their complicity evokes savage rejoinders, academic screeds
in the gutter language of ad hominem abuse which reflects poorly on their
vaunted academic positions. The ZPC, its scribes, operatives and power brokers
are vulnerable – they have committed great crimes against the interests
of the American people. Their actions have led to the death and maiming of tens
of thousands of US soldiers, 99.9% of whom have no ‘loyalties’ to the interest
of greater Israel or its US agents who have their own children pursuing
lucrative civilian careers. Recent estimates found less than 0.2% of US
soldiers serving on the ground in Iraq are American Jews, some of whom were
Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. This despite the strong Zionist
pressure to invade and destroy Iraq and Iran. The manipulations of the ZPC in
pushing the Bush Administration into invading and occupying Iraq has led the US
military into an unprecedented state of disgrace and demoralization, with
thousands of officers tendering their early retirement, thousands of troops
going AWOL and facing court-martial, and an increasing number of retired senior
officers expressing outrage. It is no surprise that Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates secured the support of top military officers in the Middle East in
opposing an immediate invasion of Iran.
Zionist vituperation against their critics expresses fears of
exposure and unmasking of their double discourse, their false amalgamation of
Israeli colonial policies with the democratic values of the American people.
Nothing else can explain the shrill verbal personal assaults – aimed at killing
the messenger rather than facing unpleasant realities and working to rectify a
disastrous situation. While the state of Israel has placed its American
promoters in an uncomfortable position as the occupation of Iraq crumbles and
Americans resist shrill calls for attacking Iran, nevertheless Israel has turned
out to be the real winner, in the short term, having achieved the destruction of
the unified, secular republic of Iraq.
From a
Scratch to Gangrene: The Transition from Zionism to Zion-Fascism
The ‘mainstream’ Zionist conservatives early on demonstrated their
authoritarian politics through their whole-hearted and un-problematical support
for Israel’s brutal campaigns driving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from
their homes and lands. Subsequently, the Zion-Cons fully and un-questioningly
endorsed the killing and jailing of thousands of Palestinian civilians
protesting the Israeli military occupation and conversion of the occupied West
Bank and Gaza into ‘open air’ concentration camps, with over 500 military
outposts and roads blocks. More recently the entire leadership of the major
Jewish organizations, comprising both Zion-Cons and Zion-Libs, defended Israel’s
building of a massive 30 meter wall, effectively corralling the entire
Palestinian population in ghettos resembling the walls constructed around the
huge Jewish population in Warsaw by the Nazis. The wall and the military
outposts strangle trade, movement of food and people from the occupied
territories to markets, schools and hospitals and prevent farmers from even
tilling their lands.
On Octobert 10, 2007 the Jerusalem Post quoted Aron Soffer,
head of research and lecturer at the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) National
Defense College. The 71-year old father of 4 and grandfather of 8 had said on
May 21, 2004: “When 2.5 million people live in a closed off Gaza, its going
to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than
they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at
the border will be awful. Its going to be a terrible war. So if we want to
remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day…every day.”
This is the literal message of murder taught to Israeli officers at
their most advanced military school by eminent Zion-Fascist lecturers. This
helps us understand the naked brutality and homicidal behavior of Israeli
soldiers in the occupied territories.
A recent Israeli study by two prominent psychologists illustrates
the deep strain of sadism and racism inculcated by Israel’s military academies
and backed by Israel’s top politicians, including the Prime Minister’s Office.
According to Haaretz on September 21, 2007, two Israeli psychologists
interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers, who expressed “their innermost emotions
about the horrendous crimes, in which they took part: murder, breaking the bones
of Palestinian children, acts of humiliation, destruction of property, robbery
and theft.” One of the Israeli psychologists was “shocked to find that
the soldiers enjoyed the ‘intoxication of power’ and had pleasure from using
violence.” She said, “Most of my interviewees enjoyed their own instigated
violence during the occupation.” (Haaretz September 21, 2007)
Absolute colonial domination brings out the psychopathic tendencies in an
occupation army. Soldier C testified, “If I didn’t enter Rafah (Palestinian
City in Gaza) to put down some rebellion – at least once a week I’d go beserk.”
Like previous colonial occupiers, the Israeli soldiers adopt a totalitarian
‘super-race complex’. Soldier D testified, “What is great is that you don’t
follow any law or rule. You feel that YOU ARE THE LAW. Once you go into the
Occupied Territory YOU ARE GOD!.” The soldiers’ internalization of the
powerful Zion-fascist ideology provides a self-justification in the eyes of the
interviewees for castrating a man, bashing in the face of a woman protester,
shooting an innocuous pedestrian, breaking the arm of a 4-year old child and
other ‘gratuitous’ acts of random violence.
The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations never ever
mention, let along criticize, the daily psychopathic behavior of the IDF. Major
Jewish billionaire philanthropists contribute hundreds of millions in support of
the IDF’s violent occupation and repression of Palestinian civilians, described
with cruel pleasure by the soldier-subjects of the Israeli study. In fact, the
biggest Zionist contributor to the Democratic Party, Haim Saban ($12.3 million
dollars in 2002), has a ‘soft spot for Israeli combat soldiers.’ According to
Haaretz (September 12, 2006), Saban declared, “I can’t handle combat
soldiers, whenever I have any interaction with them…I cry.” There is a
powerful emotional bond that links Israeli Zion-fascism to its US counterparts.
Saban arrogantly points to the primacy of his loyalty to Israel, “I strut
around like a peacock in America and say I am an Israeli-American. What you
hear…an Israeli-American.” (Haaretz October 14, 2007). The formerly
respectable Brooking’s Institute now houses the ‘Saban Center’, financed by Haim
Saban, turning Brookings into just another of a dozen propaganda mills churning
out apologetics for the totalitarian practices of the IDF – their leading
research directors and their Prime Minister. The deadly ‘sentimentality’ of the
Israeli-American billionaires toward the psychopaths in the IDF does not extend
to the young Americans serving Israel’s interests as US soldiers in Iraq and who
are suffering the burdens of a war to extend Israel’s regional power. Saban,
like the great majority of the top leaders of the most influential Zionist
organization are pushing for another war – this time with Iran. According to
Saban, “I would try other things first, but if they don’t work, then
attack…In Iran you go in and wipe out their infrastructure completely. Plunge
them into darkness. Cut off their water.” (Haaretz October 14,
2007). These are not the homicidal ranting of a fanatical Jewish settler
beating a pre-adolescent Palestinian shepherd. Saban is a major leader in AIPAC,
family friend and political broker of the Clintons and the entire current
Israeli leadership. His $2.8 billion dollars buys the fawning attention of all
major US presidential “candidates courting Jewish support” (MSNBC, October 14,
2007).
The Zionist Power Configuration has buried 3 top level political
initiatives designed to reach a settlement of the Israeli colonial occupation of
Palestine. A statement to President Bush and Secretary of State Rice sent by
former top political officials of both political parties, including Brzezinski,
Lee Hamilton, Brent Scowcroft and others calling for Israel to abide by UN
Security Council Resolution 242 and 338 and other initiatives, was totally
dismissed by the Democratic Congress and the Republican White House, after the
ZPC intervened and labeled Brzezinski as ‘hostile to Israel’ – following the
Israeli state’s complete dismissal of the statement. Tony Blair’s efforts as
head of the ‘Quartet Peace-Making Mission’ has been a total failure in resolving
even the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians, in the face of Israeli
intransigence and rejection of any but the most banal conversations with the now
subdued (formerly so frenetic) ex-British Prime Minister (Guardian
October 13, 2007). Secretary Rice’s efforts to organize a Middle East peace
conference for late November in Annapolis, Maryland were diluted to the point of
pointlessness by Israeli pronouncements. Israel rejects any substantive
agreements on borders, timetables, Jerusalem, settlements, territory etc.. They
insist the conference focus on meaningless general agreements that commit them
to nothing. In action designed to further humiliate US Secretary of State Rice,
the Israeli government illegally seized several hundred acres of Palestinian
lands – a clear example of extending the settlements (Aljazeera October
14, 2007). While trying to appear stylish in a dunce cap, Secretary Rice
responded that the new Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land might ‘erode
confidence in the parties’ commitment to a two state solution’ (BBC
October 14, 2007).
Recognizing that the ZPC has completely tied up her negotiation
position, that she cannot demand anything substantive from Israel, Secretary
Rice has signaled the futility of the Annapolis meeting by calling for ‘lower
expectations’, that is no agreements of substance. There is good reason to
believe that Israel and its Fifth Column have effectively scuttled Bush’s own
Annapolis initiative. Even US clients like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and even
the Palestinian puppet Abbas have expressed doubts since there are no
substantive agreements on state boundaries, anathema to Israel and the ZPC.
Whether the conference is ‘postponed’ or actually takes place, the event
promises to be another inconsequential gesture, another US Middle East defeat,
another victory for Israel’s colonial status quo and another reason for
increased Arab resistance in the Middle East.
What is more ominous, Israel and the ZPC will find that their
successful sabotage of the White House Annapolis Peace Conference is likely to
encourage them to press ahead with further violent seizures in the Occupied
Territories, new more deadly incursions in Lebanon and Syria and heightened
pressure for war with Iran. Zion-fascism feeds into the sense of irresistible
power over US Middle East policy against any major US institutional force, which
fails to follow the Israeli line.
Along with the right-wing radicalization of Zion-Con ideology with
regard to Israel’s push toward totalitarian solutions, came overt manifestations
of racist anti-Islamic, anti-Arab and anti-Persian practices and speeches from
leading Zion-Con spokespeople and especially academic propagandists in the
United States.
War propaganda and military solutions dominate Zion-Con rhetoric:
first against Palestine, then Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia and
Sudan. Accompanying the radicalization of Zion-con rhetoric is a growing number
of repressive acts within US society.
The ZPC and
Holocaust Denial: At the Service of Israel
Leading Zionist Democrats following Israeli directives played a major role in
undermining a Congressional resolution condemning as genocide the Turkish murder
of 1.5 million Armenians. For many years the state of Israel and its academic
specialists both in Israel as well as in the US have denied Turkish-led
Genocide against the Armenians in their ancient homeland between 1915-1917
despite the voluminous documentary record complied by scholars throughout the
world. One reason is that the Jewish Holocaust industry insists on the
exclusive franchise on 20th century genocide, in order to push its
fundraising and propaganda efforts. An even more important contemporary reason
for Israeli and US Zionist holocaust denial is the close military collaboration
between Israel and Turkey and more recently the heavy presence of Israeli
military advisers and secret police (Mossad) operations in Kurdish-controlled
Northern Iraq, dubbed Kurdistan.
Former member of the Israeli armed services, ‘US’ Congressman Rahm Emanuel,
Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, opposed the resolution from the start
and convinced a group of senior House Democrats to demand the Democratic
Congressional leadership drop plans for a vote on the measure. Deeply
implicated with the interests of Israel, Emanuel has both feet in the terrain of
an Israeli-defined Middle East reality. Congressman Emanuel cynically
rationalized his service for the state of Israel in a convoluted statement:
“This vote (on the Armenian genocide) came face to face with the reality on the
ground in that region of the world.” (NT Times, October 16, 2007) The
Israeli fifth column in the US Congress has extended the scope of its control
beyond narrow focus on the contemporary Middle East and Israel’s quest for
regional dominance to encompass historical issues involving non-Arab, non-Muslim
people who indirectly affect Israeli strategic interests. Israeli strategists
see the Congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide as provoking Turkish
hostility to the US, increasing the likelihood of an invasion against the US and
Israeli-backed ‘Kurdistan’ in Northern Iraq. Israeli officials have been
training and arming Kurdish commandos to engage in terrorist activities in Iran
and elsewhere on the Turkish, Iranian and Syrian border. A Turkish land
invasion and aerial attack would, at a minimum, destroy or disarticulate these
terrorist bases and more likely lead to a generalized Kurdish mobilization in
defense of the Kurdish irregulars. The Kurds are loyal clients and their
Pershmerga militias play an integral role in ethnic cleansing of non-Kurds in
Northern Iraq and savage repression in Central Iraq as US-led mercenary forces
against the Iraq Arab resistance. A Turkish invasion is likely to result in the
transfer of the Kurdish military toward their Turkish frontier, undermining US
control in Iraq and weakening their assaults on Iran. The Israelis will have to
choose between its alliance with Turkey, its only consequential ally in the
Middle East, by withdrawing its operative and arms sales from ‘Kurdish’ Northern
Iraq or its support for Kurdish separatists.
The entire ZPC was on maximum alert to block or defeat the Armenian resolution
in the US Congress in order to show the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan that
Israel is using its power over the US Congress on Turkey’s behalf. In this
conflict between, on the one hand, millions of Americans who abhor genocide –
wherever it occurs and whoever is victimized – and the influential Armenian
lobby, and, on the other hand, a few dozen highly placed ‘Israel First’ Congress
members and their billionaire Zionist political contributors, the latter won
out. Even on an issue as palpable as genocide, the ZPC has no fear or shame in
opposing a symbolic resolution recognizing a world-historic crime.
The Zionist Congressional victory on the Armenian resolution illustrates in the
most graphic manner the way Israeli interests degrades our institutions and
values. The fact that many Congress-members, including the majority of
Democrats, were initially convinced of the justice of passing the resolution,
and later under the pressure of the Zionist Congressional leadership, withdrew
their support, is indicative of just how far Congress has degenerated into a
Zionist colonized institution. Not only does Congress ignore its electorate,
the values of the people who elected them, but also they surrender their own
values and conscience, for what Seymour Hersh aptly refers to as ‘New York
Jewish money.’
The Israeli effort to head off a Turkish attack on their Kurdish clients is
closely related to their efforts to undermine Iranian defenses and gain
intelligence via terrorist ‘commando operations’ by Kurdish irregulars.
The centerpiece of activity for all the major national, state and local
pro-Israeli Jewish organizations is to isolate and destroy Iran, by economic
sanctions and a massive military attack by the US. There is absolutely no
consideration of the millions of Iranians who would be killed, injured or made
homeless by a US or Israeli effort to ‘wipe Iran off the map.’
The major recipient of ‘New York (and Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago) Jewish
money’ is Hillary Clinton, the most hawkish Democratic war monger in the 2008
president race – in fact the most hawkish Democratic candidate since the Vietnam
era. Clinton, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, has all but
written the date and weapons with which the US will strike Iran. She argues
that ‘Iran poses a long-term strategic challenge to America and its allies and
that it must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons…” If Iran
does not comply, all options must remain on the table. (Guardian,
October 15, 2007).
Israel keeps a box-score on how servile US presidential candidates
are to Israeli state interests and obedient to the dictates of the Israel
lobby. Clinton, by far, is the Zionist choice among Democratic presidential
candidates. They have forgiven her for kissing Suha Arafat over a decade ago,
because she has kissed both cheeks of each and all male and female Zionist
lobbyists and Israeli officials in Washington and applauded the repression of
Palestinians. Clinton aroused the passion and pleasure of the pro-Israel
Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organization by being the only
Democratic presidential candidate to support the Senate resolution calling on
the US government to declare the Iranian government’s ‘Revolutionary Guards’, an
elite division of Teheran’s military, to be a ‘terrorist entity’, thus providing
the Bush administration with a justification for a massive pre-emptive attack
against Iran and its infrastructure.
Both in terms of financing war resolutions and sanctions campaigns against Iran,
in terms of lobby authored legislation and Congressional speeches, of hours
campaigning for an attack on Iran, of op-ed columns published and media pundits
comments, the Zionist Power Configuration exceeds by a multiple of ten any other
group in pushing for a war with Iran. Not only do the Zionist monopolize the
‘attack Iran’ propaganda, but they are leading all other authoritarian groups in
silencing US critics of this aggressive military option.
Let us be perfectly clear that the ZPC, the Presidents of the Major
American Jewish Organizations, the Rahm Emanuels (Israeli-Americans) controlling
the Democratic caucus agenda…do not always and everywhere speak for the majority
of American Jews, especially on the denial of the Turkish genocide of the
Armenians. Pugnacious ADL President Abraham Foxman found out in Watham,
Massachusetts that both the local Armenian-American community and their
Jewish-American compatriots and neighbors do not tolerate the denial of genocide
– even by the ADL. Substantial sectors of American Jews object to Clinton’s war
mongering and find her servile truckling to Israeli officials offensive, even
obscene. Zionist polls reveal the majority of educated young American Jews are
less and less interested in Israel and its local Fifth Column – much to the
chagrin of the self-styled ‘leaders’ of the community. Saying that a Jewish
minority speaks in the name of an unwilling majority, however, does not lessen
its power and stranglehold over US political institutions and public opinion
with regard to policy or appropriations touching on the Middle East or
Israeli-defined interests.
“Jew-haters’ became the agitation slogan animating the Zion-con
purge of public forums and a call for mass direct action by hundreds of local
Jewish notables and ‘community’ councils. Even Presbyterian elders were
brow-beaten by Jewish Zionists because of their tepid stand divesting from US
companies involved in oppressing Palestinians.
There is no transcendent event, which defines the moment in which
Zion-conservation became Zion-Fascism. The transition was an evolutionary
process, during which racism, militarism and authoritarianism developed a mass
community base and took hold over time and became the definitive modus operendi
of the ZPC.
Like earlier fascist movements, Zion-fascism subscribes to racialist doctrines
of knowledge: According to Zionist epistemology only Jews can (if they dare)
criticize Jews as knowledge of Jewry is monopolized by a closed communally
defined people. This Zion-fascist theory of knowledge is buttressed by the
frequent utterances of progressive or leftist Zionists who frequently dismiss or
warn non-Jewish writers that they enter the ‘Jewish’ debate at their peril.
Zion-fascism is not merely an ideological expression of a marginal group of
unbalanced extremists – its ideology and practice, in full or part, has been
taken over by mainstream Jewish organizations.
Zionist
Authoritarianism on the March
Grassroots Zionist-led authoritarianism, practicing coercion,
repression and financial blackmail in defense of Israel and the ZPC is occurring
in every region of the country, in every sphere of social, cultural and academic
life at an accelerating pace. Below we cite a small sample of cases which have
gotten national and even international attention and which illustrate a far more
extensive pattern. We lack a comprehensive data bank to cover the hundreds of
incidents of Zionist intimidation and thought control which occur on a weekly
basis and go unreported by their victims for fear of retaliation or because they
would not receive sympathetic public attention given the media bias. In
informal interviews, writers and journalists have reported to me ‘visits’ by
local Jewish ‘notables’ and members of the Jewish Community Councils to local
newspaper editors to demand the firing of columnists who dared to criticize, for
example, Israel’s horrific invasion of Lebanon. After one such ‘visit’ and
‘talk’, a local columnist never ventured to criticize or even write about the
Middle East. This is not a matter confined to the United States. In 2004,
after I wrote an article for the Mexico City daily, La Jornada, critical
of Israel’s savage repression of Palestinians in Jena and the US Zionist apology
for mass killings, the Israeli Ambassador in Mexico visited the editors to
demand they discontinue publishing my articles. The editor refused to accede at
that time, but immediately afterwards they published several vicious personal
attacks by their regular columnists (one a Troskyist, and the other a Jewish
dentist) labeling my critiques as ‘Nazi’ propaganda , in line with the
‘Protocols of Zion’. This was in a reputed independent progressive daily
newspaper.
‘Private visits’, abusive phone calls by Zionist zealots, including death
threats are not uncommon practices among ‘respectable’ Zion-fascists. One
incident involved a local doctor who received a ‘visit’ to her office by a
fanatical Zionist ‘colleague’ complaining of her letter to the local newspaper
criticizing the role of the Zionists in financing the electoral defeat of
Georgia Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney because of her criticism of Israeli
policy. She was ‘warned’ that it was anti-Semitic to criticize the activities
of organized Jewry in destroying politicians, especially black politicians, for
their support of Palestinian civil rights. African Americans, she was told,
were increasingly ungrateful to American Jews, who had lead and financed the
civil rights struggle, and therefore had to be taught a history lesson. A local
‘group’ of notables had chosen her Harvard-educated Zionist colleague to deliver
this message. When he declared himself ‘a Jew and a Zionist’, she countered
that she was ‘an anti-fascist and an anti-Zionist’ and pointed to the door but
not before asking him how an educated man of high professional standing could
stomach such a degrading task of trying to censor a colleague. These types of
‘visits’ from ‘respectable’ Zionists intimidate others with less standing and
intestinal fortitude.
When presented with the manuscript of my book, The Power of Israel in the
United States, many of my previous editors informed me that it would make a
great book…but…they didn’t want to face the backlash, threats and vituperation
that they expected from the ZPC, Jewish academics, writers on contract and
publishers. Even the publisher and editor who finally agreed to publish my MS
expressed real fear of Zionist hostility – and eventually a dozen or so Jewish
academics cancelled book orders for their classes.
A sample of the most publicized cases of Zionist efforts to silence and purge
American society of critics of Israel and the Zionist Power Configuration
includes the case of over one thousand Zionist alumni of Barnard College
campaigning to deny tenure to Professor Nadia Abu el-Haj for publishing Facts
on the Ground , her ground-breaking critique on Israeli archeologists
efforts to erase centuries of continued Palestinian presence in the Holy Lands (Chronicle
of Higher Education, August 5, 2007).
More recently there was the public campaign to rescind Colombia University’s
invitation to Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmedinejad resulting in an
unprecedented insulting introductory address by the President of Colombia
University.
Banning the successful British play, ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’ based on the
writings of the murdered American activist from scheduled performances in New
York, Miami and Toronto caused consternation among theater goers and actors on
both sides of the Atlantic. The Israeli soldier who murdered the young woman
was exonerated in Israel while Rachel’s words were banned from the cultural
capital of her own country.
Even more recently, the Chicago Council of Global Affairs bowed to pressure from
the Zionist lobby and cancelled a lecture by the respected professors of
political science, John Mearsheimer and Stephan Walt because of their critical
study The Israel Lobby.
The list goes on to include the cancellation of a concert by Marcel Khalife in
San Diego, California and the cancellation of an invitation to Nobel Peace Prize
winner, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu because of his criticism of Israeli
apartheid policies in the occupied territories.
There was a successful campaign to prevent author Susan Abulhawa from presenting
her gripping novel, The Scar of David, at a Barnes and Noble Bookstore in
Bayside, New York. This was followed by a cyberspace attack on the author to
undermine a scheduled speaking tour. This pro-Israel attack was led by 14
rabbis and the President of the Queens Jewish Community Council.
The University of Michigan Press was pressured to withdraw distribution of Joel
Kovel’s Overcoming Zionism, violating a contract with his publisher,
Pluto Press. The University Press then threatened to stop distribution of all
books published by Pluto Press.
The recent Congressional Hearings of a blue ribbon committee, which finally got
around to investigating the Israeli military attack on the USS Liberty (after 40
years of successfully preventing an official investigation through the pressure
of the Israel lobby) found Israel guilty of the deliberate killing and maiming
of over 100 US service personnel. Its explosive findings, published in the
Congressional Record, never appeared in the print and broadcast media.
In violation of United Nations resolutions, Israel’s military aggression against
Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, were rewarded by the US Congress with an
additional $30 billion dollars in military aid over the next 10 years, making
the US annual ‘tribute to Israel’ in excess of $6 Billion dollars a year (NY
Times, August 16, 2007). At a time of record US deficits and cuts in
domestic health programs for poor children and educational services, the vote to
give Israel an additional $30 billion dollars passed with virtually no
opposition or even discussion.
Australian journalist and documentary maker, John Pilger produced a searing
critique of Israel entitled “Palestine is Still the Issue” which has been viewed
all over the world. Its scheduled showing on the public educational channel in
San Francisco was blocked by a campaign led by the Jewish Community Relations
Council.
The bilingual Arabic-English public middle school in New York City named after
the Lebanese Christian poet, Kahil Gibran, was attacked by the ZPC (NY Times
August 11, 2007) leading to the firing of its Arab American Principal. Her
‘crime’ was accurately translating the Arabic word ‘intifada’ into ‘shaking off’
instead of ranting against the Palestinian rights movement in the Occupied
Territories. The Zionist-controlled United Federation of Teachers actively
backed the blatant purge of one of its own members for her thought crimes.
At San Francisco State College there was a campaign led by the executive
director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco to ban a
mural depicting a famous Palestinian cartoon character, a little boy defiant
before Israeli occupiers. The subject in question was a child holding a key in
his hand, which, according to the local Jewish leadership represented a ‘veiled
reference to Palestinian right of return to Israel’ (Jewish Forum, August
10, 2007).
One of the most bitter and successful Zionist Purge campaigns was to deny tenure
to highly respected scholar, Professor Norman Finkelstein of De Paul University
in Chicago. The purge, led by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, was a
direct response to Finkelstein’s numerous scholarly studies critical of Israel
and the exploitation of the Holocaust to further the aims of the Zionist Power
Configuration.
Despite the recommendations of three academic committees at Yale University,
Zionist millionaire philanthropists were able to block the appointment of
renowned Middle East specialist, Professor Juan Cole. The millionaires
threatened to withdraw contributions and several Zionist professors prepared a
scurrilous attack on Professor Cole (June 1, 2006).
A campaign was mounted to pressure several state pension funds to divest funds
from any company doing business with Iran and pushing the funds to invest in
Israel bonds. This has so far succeeded in Texas, Florida, New York, and New
Jersey. Several state governors were ‘persuaded’ while on Zionist-paid junkets
to Israel (see Houston Chronicle, July 18, 2007). During one of these junkets,
the now disgraced New Jersey Governor McGreevy met an Israeli operative with
whom he formed a homosexual relation and later had him installed as ‘Homeland
Security’ Chief for the State of New Jersey, until the FBI intervened. McGreevy
resigned from office after denouncing the Israeli, Golan Cipal, for blackmail.
The Anti-Defamation League, pro-Israel transmission belt, forced the only Muslim
Congressman, Keith Ellison, to recant and humiliate himself for daring to
compare the tactics of the Bush Administration to the Nazis (Jewish Telegraph
Agency, July 20, 2007). As in the case of Congresswoman McKinney, Zionist
‘punishment’ against African-American politicians is particularly vehement.
The major Zionist organizations led by the American Jewish Committee
successfully mobilized the major US trade union bureaucrats to denounce the
United Kingdom’s militant trade union’s boycotts of Israel (Jerusalem Post,
July 22, 2007). The AFL-CIO unions are under the thumb of the ZPC and have
purchased over $5 billion dollars of their members pension funds in Israel bonds
which consistently under-perform market indexes, thus costing their 12 million
members hundreds of millions of investment returns each year.
The dean of religion Barry Levin, a pro-Israel activist at McGill University
recently fired Professor Norman Cornelt after 15 years of teaching for his
support of Palestinian human rights (Montreal Gazette, June 2, 2007).
Every major newspaper published editorials and scurrilous book reviews attacking
former US President Jimmy Carter’s critical study, Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid. This was part of a high-priority propaganda campaign coordinated
by major Zionist organizations and prominently included Professor Alan
Dershowitz (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2007).
The prominent Jewish writer, Professor Tony Judt of New York University was
dis-invited from a scheduled talk at the Polish Consulate because of Zionist
opposition to his criticism of Israeli policy.
B’nai Brith of Vancouver, Canada attacked a Canadian web site called Peace,
Earth and Justice forcing the removal of 18 articles critical of Israel.
In early 2007 the ZPC intervened in the US Civil Rights Commission and
introduced a section equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and slandered
dozens of academic Middle Eastern studies programs as centers of campus
‘anti-Semitism’. The Middle East Studies Association of North America, the
major academic group, wrote a reasoned refutation on June 11, 2007.
Plans to construct a mosque for the Muslim community in Roxbury, Massachusetts
were attacked in a campaign by the ‘David Project’, a Zionist front group
affiliated with the Jewish Community Council of Greater Boston.
On the basis of secret testimony by Israeli intelligence agents and backed by
the ZPC ‘terrorism’ charges were made against 16 members of a US Islamic
charity. A Texas court convicted them of ‘crimes’ against Israel, even though
many of the accused were US citizens and had no access to challenge their hooded
accusers, Israeli secret agents operating in the US. The lead defendant, Dr.
Rafil Dhofer received a sentence of 22 years for an ‘Israeli’ crime – although
he was never convicted of any crime committed in the US. The defendants and
their attorneys were never allowed to question the secret foreign ‘witnesses’.
Campus Zion-fascist organizations run by their ‘little fuehrer’ David Horowitz,
routinely bait blacks, Latinos and Arab Americans by praising the ‘benefits’ of
the African slave trade and defend the use of torture and assassination by
Israelis and their US counterparts in Iraq and Guantanamo. In addition, they
smear professors not sufficiently favorable to Zionism, spy on instructors,
disrupt classes, bring lawsuits for ‘anti-Zionist’ bias against teachers, other
students and college administrators throughout the US.
Despite the Zionist turn to fascist tactics and embrace of
authoritarian-coercive measures, the fact of the matter is they still only have
partial control over civil society and political power. Some of the
Zion-fascist power plays were, at least temporarily, defeated in specific
circumstances. The play, My Name is Rachel Corrie played to packed houses in
London, Seattle and other courageous cities even as it was banned in New York,
Toronto and Miami.
Norman Finkelstein was fired, but he got powerful support throughout the
academic world and was able to negotiate monetary compensation for De Paul
University’s cowardly betrayal of one of its faculty. Above all, Professor
Finkelstein is fighting back.
The University of Michigan was forced to distribute Kovel’s book even as they
threatened to cancel their contract with his publisher, Pluto Press.
The lesson is clear: the rise of Judeo-fascism (JF) represents a clear and
present danger to our democratic freedoms in the United States. They do not
come with black shirts and stiff-arm salutes. The public face is a
clean-shaved, necktied, pink-jowled attorney, real estate philanthropist or Ivy
League professor. They work hard to send the family members of non-Zionists to
fight wars in the Middle East in the interest of Greater Israel. And they tells
us to keep quiet or face slander, ostracism in our communities, loss of jobs or
worst… And it is the exemplary punishment of the many small voices, which keeps
the number of vocal critics low…until recently. There is rising anger and
hostility in America against the ZPC, against its arrogant authoritarian
communal attacks on our democratic values. Sooner or later there will be a
major backlash – and it ill behooves those who, through vocation or conviction,
engaged in the firings, censoring and intimidation campaigns against the
American majority. The American people will not remember their cries of
‘anti-Semitism’ they will recall their role in sending thousands of American
soldiers to their death in the Middle East in the interests of Israel.
Let us hope that those who seek justice will not use the same authoritarian laws
like the Patriot Act, nor the harsh interrogation techniques of degradation
(torture) and anti-Arab/Muslim practices promoted by the Zionists in the
Pentagon, Congress, Justice Department and Homeland Security. Those who oppose
Zionism need to abide solidly by higher moral standards.
James Petras’ latest books: The Power of Israel in the United States
(2006) and Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists and
Militarists (2007).
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