From the new book by American Jew Jack Ross:
The writer Irving Howe, who came to bitterly regret his alliance with the neoconservatives in his final years, gave a speech in 1989 foreseeing that “because the religion of most American Jews is not serious, it has become almost totally defined by Israel, and a major crisis will erupt as Israel’s actions become less and less defensible.”
Peter Van Buren, an American diplomat just back from a year running a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq, writes about the talking heads that appear daily in our media praising the glorious US army:
I’m neither a soldier nor a journalist. I’m a diplomat, just back from 12 months as a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) leader, embedded with the military in Iraq, and let me tell you that nobody laughed harder at the turgid prose reporters used to describe their lives than the soldiers themselves. They knew they were trading hours of boredom for maybe minutes of craziness that only in retrospect seemed “exciting,” as opposed to scary, confusing, and chaotic. That said, the laziest private knew from growing up watching TV exactly what flavor to feed a visiting reporter.
In trying to figure out why journalists and assorted militarized intellectuals from inside the Beltway lose it around the military, I remembered a long afternoon spent with a gaggle of “fellows” from a prominent national security think tank who had flown into Iraq. These scholars wrote serious articles and books that important people read; they appeared on important Sunday morning talk shows; and they served as consultants to even more important people who made decisions about the Iraq War and assumedly other conflicts to come.
One of them had been on the staff of a general whose name he dropped more often than Jesus’s at a Southern Baptist A.A. meeting. He was a real live neocon. A quick Google search showed he had strongly supported going to war in Iraq, wrote apology pieces after no one could find any weapons of mass destruction there (“It was still the right thing to do”), and was now back to check out just how well democracy was working out for a paper he was writing to further justify the war. He liked military high-tech, wielded words like “awesome,” “superb,” and “extraordinary” (pronounced EXTRA-ordinary) without irony to describe tanks and guns, and said in reference to the Israeli Army, “They give me a hard-on.”
Bombing Libya is welcomed across the world from so many supposedly well-meaning types who haven’t a clue about what the country is like or what they’re really backing. But hey, Gaddafi is a bad man!
This Haaretz editorial weighs the risks:
While the joint Western and Arab action against Libya’s dictatorial regime has widespread support, it raises a complicated dilemma. Up to now, the populations of Arab states such as Tunisia and Egypt managed on their own to topple their regimes, and set the stage for democratic reform. Furthermore, the revolutionary developments in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and (two years ago in ) Iran won public legitimacy because they were viewed as authentic civil uprisings which were not assisted by foreign elements.
In Libya, however, the Facebook revolution is liable to turn into the Tomahawk revolution: The intervention of forces from Western states is liable to undermine the legitimacy of civilian movements there and perhaps in other states.
The Israel Lobby co-author Steve Walt blogs eloquently about the now default position of the American establishment. As for “liberals” who hear a few Libyan rebels calling for Western air-strikes and don’t recognise the inherent problems with rushing into a military conflict with no true end goals, get real and learn from history:
Last Wednesday I spoke at an event at Hofstra University, on the subject of “Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy.” The other panelists were former DNC chair and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean and longtime Republican campaign guru Ed Rollins. The organizers at Hofstra were efficient and friendly, the audience asked good questions, and I thought both Dean and Rollins were gracious and insightful in their comments. All in all, it was a very successful session.
During the Q & A, I talked about the narrowness of foreign policy debate in Washington and the close political kinship between the liberal interventionists of the Democratic Party and the neoconservatives that dominate the GOP. At one point, I said that “liberal inteventionists are just ‘kinder, gentler’ neocons, and neocons are just liberal interventionsts on steroids.”
Dean challenged me rather forcefully on this point, declaring that there was simply no similarity whatsoever between a smart and sensible person like U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and a “crazy guy” like Paul Wolfowitz. (I didn’t write down Dean’s exact words, but I am certain that he portrayed Wolfowitz in more-or-less those terms). I responded by listing all the similarites between the two schools of thought, and the discussion went on from there.
I mention this anecdote because I wonder what Dean would say now. In case you hadn’t noticed, over the weekend President Obama took the nation to war against Libya, largely on the advice of liberal interventionists like Ambassador Rice, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and NSC aides Samantha Power and Michael McFaul. According to several news reports I’ve read, he did this despite objections from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon.
The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that U.S. power — and especially its military power — can be a highly effective tool of statecraft. Both groups are deeply alarmed at the prospect that WMD might be in the hands of anybody but the United States and its closest allies, and both groups think it is America’s right and responsibility to fix lots of problems all over the world. Both groups consistently over-estimate how easy it will be to do this, however, which is why each has a propensity to get us involved in conflicts where our vital interests are not engaged and that end up costing a lot more than they initially expect.
So if you’re baffled by how Mr. “Change You Can Believe In” morphed into Mr. “More of the Same,” you shouldn’t really be surprised. George Bush left in disgrace and Barack Obama took his place, but he brought with him a group of foreign policy advisors whose basic world views were not that different from the people they were replacing. I’m not saying their attitudes were identical, but the similarities are probably more important than the areas of disagreement. Most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has become addicted to empire, it seems, and it doesn’t really matter which party happens to be occupying Pennsylvania Avenue.
Times are changing, Jewish neo-cons are furious and the long overdue conversation inside the American Jewish community is happening; do they back illegal colonies in the West Bank and if not what are they going to do about it?
As the Jewish community struggles to combat efforts to delegitimize Israel and still retain a “big-tent” strategy, a mainstream consensus appears to have taken shape in recent weeks that boils down to this: one can support a targeted boycott of Israeli settlements and even a cultural ban against the West Bank settlement of Ariel — as long as one also supports Israel as a democratic Jewish state.
Helping to crystallize the issue was the Oakland, Calif.-based organization Jewish Voice for Peace, which last week was rebuffed by the Hillel chapter at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. Hillel’s board voted to reject the group’s application to come under its umbrella of Jewish organizations because JVP’s support of a boycott of Israeli settlement goods runs counter to a position adopted by it and its parent, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.
Although the boycott issue was sufficient to place JVP beyond the pale for Hillel, that alone would not have been sufficient for most other Jewish groups, according to Martin Raffel, who is overseeing a multimillion-dollar Jewish communal effort (dubbed the Israel Action Network) to counter Israel delegitimization efforts.
…
Raffel’s thinking on the issue of “settlements-only” boycotts seems to have evolved since the Israel Action Network was formed in December. At the time, he told The Jewish Week, “I don’t know that a consensus has crystallized on this subject.
“If a person believes that Israel ought to do more to achieve peace based on a two-state formula, the question is, will boycotting a settlement advance the day that there will be peace? I’d argue that no, it will only harden positions and be counterproductive,” he said in December, “but being misguided in one’s policies doesn’t mean one necessarily has become part of the ranks of the delegitimizers.”
This week Raffel cited Meretz USA as a group that, though it might fit his earlier description of “misguided,” is safely in the tent, so to speak. The group supports the targeted boycott of Israeli settlement products and the cultural boycott of Ariel, but, Raffel said, “it is fully supportive of the Jewish state and it repudiates the BDS movement.”
The good old days of America just invading, bombing and regime changing when she wanted. The days of empire are wonderful for armchair generals directing the carnage.
And then you have neo-con hacks like Michael Ledeen (the great man detailed here) who simply want to use American weaponary to kill people.
Here’s his latest advice over Libya:
Since our leaders evidently have no clue what to do in Libya, let’s give them a few ideas. The basic rules are easy: don’t do anything that is likely to make things worse, and you can forget about “negotiated settlements” once the bloodshed has reached the dimensions now engulfing Libya. Finally, forget the UN (see point 1).
The first thing to do is deprive Qadaffi of as many instruments of mass murder as possible. The most obvious of these is the Libyan Air Force, which is a small and outdated collection of aircraft, many of which belong in a museum. More specifically: some French F-1 fighters; some old Sukhoi’s, some old MIGs, and some helicopter gunships. (h/t Steve Bryen)
Destroy them. It’s easy. Our Air Force can probably wipe them out in less than half an hour. If we want to play “good ally” we can invite other NATO countries to join in. It seems the Brits are available (as they should be, after their disgusting liberation of the Lockerbie bomber), and I’ll bet you anything that the French and Italians, both of whom have decades of complicity with Qadaffi, will be happy to participate. And the French have the Foreign Legion in the area, if memory serves.
That won’t “solve” the problem, but it will ease the people’s pain, and it might lessen the dreadful impression we have created, especially during the Obama years, that we only talk or negotiate slow-acting sanctions; we don’t go in for decisive action (that is so Bush).
The destruction of the Libyan aircraft is a good start, but it would be nice to do more. Once upon a time, the CIA cultivated ambitious military officers (typically colonels) in such places for emergencies such as this. We’d give the word and they’d execute a coup.
I am not up to speed on the capabilities of the clandestine service, but I doubt they have any colonels on the shelf ready to move. I’d love to be wrong, needless to say, and I’m rooting for them, in the unlikely event the president pushes that button. Even if CIA can’t do it, maybe our military guys have someone.
Yes, I know it’s meddling in another country’s “internal affairs,” and a strike against the Libyan Air Force may be considered an act of war in some lawyers’ offices. But if we did those things we’d save a lot of innocent lives and enhance our chances of being more effective in the future.
We should have done it in Sudan years ago, by the way. We’d have saved a lot of southerners and speeded up the whole process.
Finally, the president should issue an executive order requiring the removal of all those bumper stickers that read “war never solved anything.” As the Marines say, except for fascism, Nazism, communism and warlordism.
My following article is published by leading Indian magazine Tehelka:
The Middle East is the region where global empires lavishly exercise their chequebook. Since the Second World War, America has bribed, cajoled and backed autocratic regimes in the name of stability.
Israel, self-described as the only democracy in the area, has been insulated from the vagaries of democratic politics by simply colluding with dictatorships across its various borders.
Zionism has thrived due to Arab leader corruption and silence in the face of occupation against Palestinian lands.
But the mass uprisings across Egypt are threatening these cosy arrangements.
The Israeli mainstream is fearful of what Arab democracy may mean, but for the majority in Egypt decades of repression may be coming to an end.
The resignation of President Hosni Mubarak is the first necessary step in restoring dignity to the Egyptian political process, though it is only the beginning.
The millions of demonstrators won’t tolerate a military coup simply replacing one tyrant with another.
We can marvel at the success of a peaceful protest movement and wonder which other western-backed thugs may be next.
Today, the Muslim world sees what is possible with weeks of determined protest; America and Israel no longer control the agenda of who rules the Arab street.
Tel Aviv is already fearful of what true democracy may mean for its position.
While there is no unified message of the protesters for the future, a few key demands are clear; free and fair elections, an orderly transition, an end to torture, better employment opportunities and an end to being manipulated by foreign powers.
Sadly and predictably, many neo-conservative and Jewish commentators in America are whipping up fear of an Islamist take-over of Egypt while the situation remains incredibly fluid.
Besides, the western world has consistently refused to accept to its own detriment the legitimate positions of many Muslims since 11 September 2001 who wants their religion integrated into a democratic system.
Turkey is a model here, an imperfect example of an Islamic democracy.
Former Egyptian President Mubarak, wholly supported by Washington and Tel Aviv for three decades and much of the US corporate press, has shaped a state that routinely tortured its own citizens as well as suspects in the American-led “war on terror.”
New Vice-President Omar Suleiman is implicated in a range of crimes committed since 9/11, including overseeing torture himself against alleged terror suspects.
The New Yorker’s Jane Meyer wrote last week:
“Technically, U.S. law required the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn’t face torture. But under Suleiman’s reign at the intelligence service, such assurances were considered close to worthless.
As Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. officer who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified before Congress, even if such “assurances” were written in indelible ink, “they weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.””
In the last weeks, Egyptians authorities blocked Internet access and mobile phone services in an attempt to stop information getting out to the world.
It failed spectacularly but far too many western commentators were quick to jump to conclusions and claim this was a Facebook revolution or Twitter revolution.
But, despite Facebook playing a key role in initially organising outrage, the vast majority of Egyptians didn’t need a website to register their anger.
It was pleasing to read Google and Twitter joining forces to launch SpeaktoTweet, a service allowing Egyptians to call an international number and record a voice message that would then be tweeted from a Twitter account.
It is increasingly difficult to silence the masses in a globalised age, though we shouldn’t be seduced by the false belief that free Internet access automatically brings western-style democracy.
The western reaction to the Egyptian protests has been a mixture of awe and confusion.
The internal logic of many westerners is contradictory and hypocritical.
Backing the US-led invasion of Iraq, currently run as a Tehran-friendly police state, was seen as a noble gesture to liberate the oppressed masses but when the citizens agitate themselves without our help they’re lectured about remaining ‘moderate’.
Famed Slavoj Zizek wrote last week in the UK Guardian that the West so rarely sees a revolutionary spirit in its own countries that there is automatic suspicion when it occurs somewhere else, such as Egypt.
Ironically, post 9/11 paranoia about Islamic fundamentalism is due to its presence in nations the West has supposedly ‘liberated’, namely Iraq and Afghanistan.
Neither nation has a long history of religious extremism; foreign meddling has allowed these forces to incubate.
Dictatorships in the Arab world don’t just materialise, they are created and sustained over decades.
Washington funds Cairo to the tunes of billions annually (second only to Israel) and yet the results are clear to see; stagnation and political corruption on a vast scale.
This arrangement suits America, Israel and the West just fine; client states aren’t independent thinkers and that’s how their funders like it.
Take former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told CNN that Mubarak had been ‘immensely courageous and a force for good’ in the Middle East over the Israel-Palestine ‘peace process’.
Blair was merely echoing the standard post 9/11 view of the region; political Islam must never be engaged, even if parties win legitimate elections (witness Hamas after its victory in Palestine in 2006).
But what comes after Mubarak? His infrastructure of terror must be dismantled but this can’t happen unless Western policy fundamentally reviews its attitude toward the Middle East.
Why should only Israeli Jews be allowed freedom in the region? Must Arabs be suppressed for the pleasure of the Zionist state?
Sixty years is more than enough of this paradigm. And Arab people-power has loudly announced that it won’t tolerate decades more living under autocracy.
Egypt provides salutary lessons for other nations, including India.
Mubarak created a highly centralised state of control allowing him to crush potential rivals. But the voice of the people has been bubbling beneath the surface for years – I witnessed it during various visits there, from bloggers, union members and dissidents.
Cairo, however, refused to listen, believing brute force would allow the status-quo to survive.
Responsive, democratic governments work best when the interests of the people, especially minorities, aren’t ignored but acted upon.
Blocking the Internet in a large country is almost impossible in the 21st century due to the economy’s reliance on it but Egypt joins an increasingly long list of nations attempting to shut out modernity (including Myanmar and North Korea).
Although the central government in New Delhi is unlikely to administer such a draconian plan, leaders should be open to robust debate on the most controversial subjects, including Kashmir and the Naxalites.
Mature democracies are ones that welcome disagreement and don’t threaten prosecution for those who dare challenge the mainstream view.
There are disturbing signs in many western nations of overzealous officials wanting to regulate the openness of the Internet in the fight against ‘terrorism’.
This must be resisted.
Likewise in India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be well advised to listen to dissent due to the decentralised nature of his country; ignoring such difficult questions is not the sign of a leader who consults but a man who relies on harsh counter-terrorism techniques to quash dissent.
Hosni Mubarak could inform him of the dangers of this path.
Australian journalist and author Antony Loewenstein, 36, has published a best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question, and has spent time working and travelling across the Middle East and beyond. His book, The Blogging Revolution, examines the role of the internet in repressive regimes, including Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China. He has written for publications such as the Guardian, Haaretz and the BBC World and regularly appears in the local and global media discussing human rights and politics.
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:
While the Egyptian masses are uprising in unprecedented ways across the country against a Western-backed dictator, Israel fears the worst.
The country’s President Shimon Peres said last week that, “no matter what they say, we owe Mubarak true gratitude for being as steadfast as a rock and for working towards peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told CNN that Mubarak was “immensely courageous and a force for good” for the Israeli/Palestinian “peace process.”
The Israeli mainstream media is filled with apocalyptic visions. Ben Caspit writes in Maariv that, “Al-Jazeera has become the greatest enemy of the old world, the world of stability and moderate Middle Eastern regimes.”
Truly free speech in the Arab world threatens Israel because a wide diversity of views, including Islamists and critics of Zionism, will be more loudly heard and necessarily incorporated into the political mainstream.
The American media and our own are filled with neo-conservative doomsayers who argue the Muslim Brotherhood is on the verge of taking over Egypt though there is no evidence for this.
Indeed, Washington and Britain have a history of working alongside Islamists in their battles against Communism and the years after September 11, 2001.
Israeli-connected “experts” routinely feature in our media despite having no success in bringing peace to the Middle East. Here in Australia, last week’s ABC TV’s Lateline interviewed former American ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk though he wasn’t once asked about Israel.
What we are seeing is nothing less than a profound identity crisis for the Zionist state. The region is awake and Israel fears losing its mantle as the “Middle East’s Only Democracy” Inc.
Naomi Klein tweeted last Wednesday: “Israel, call your brand managers, the whole world sees your claim to being ‘only democracy in ME’ relies on supporting dictatorship.”
Jewish Israeli blogger Magnes Zionist articulated the sentiment well a few days ago :
“For if the price to pay for a Jewish state is acquiescing in tyranny and injustice for reasons of realpolitik – as Israel did with apartheid South Africa – then arguably that price is too high…”
Washington, via its mouthpiece the New York Times, has essentially acknowledged that the Egyptian crisis for them is all about Israel.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, told The New York Times what was keeping Washington up through the night: “It really can be distilled down to one thing, and that’s Israel.”
For decades Israel has maintained regional hegemony through a combination of US protection and bribery. Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are relied upon to take American money to maintain the fiction of peace with the Jewish state while abusing the Palestinians living within their borders.
Indeed, mainstream Jewish writers in the US have been continuing this delusion, stating that Egypt’s “moderation” under Mubarak allowed Israeli/Arab peace to develop. Leslie Susser wrote in JTA that President Obama was sending the wrong message to “moderate” Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia that they “might be as peremptorily abandoned in time of need.”
Women can’t work or drive in “moderate” Saudi Arabia.
Middle East “stability” has led to this: the West Bank occupation has deepened, fascism has gone mainstream within Israel, the siege on Gaza continues (with Egyptian help) and Israel’s Jewish mainstream increasingly turns away from democratic norms (a new study found more than half polled would limit media freedom if Israel’s image was being threatened).
Mubarak has provided false comfort for too long. He was feted by every Israeli Prime Minister since the 1980s, happy to collude with the ongoing degradation of the Palestinian population because he was paid to do so. He wasn’t an independent actor – alongside Jordan and Saudi Arabia’s leaders – because he knew his role and received countless billions to fulfil his mission.
Egypt has been the second highest recipient of US aid after Israel for years and money has bought him Western political elite legitimacy. But his people largely loathed him (something I heard time and time again during my various visits to Egypt).
The brutal siege on Gaza, maintained by Israel and Cairo, is a discriminatory policy designed to crush the Hamas party that rules there. But the opposite has happened; the Islamist group has been strengthened. Israel is now even demanding that whatever new Egyptian government may emerge must recognise the peace treaty with the Jewish state, regardless of what it has done to the Palestinians under occupation.
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times is urging the Israelis to do a deal with the Palestinians in light of the Egyptian uprisings, as a way to save the Jewish state. The wishes of the Palestinian people are clearly secondary. Egyptians (or Palestinians for that matter) can never see the West as an honest broker when their opponents are funded and armed to oppress them.
Some in Israel are realising an opportunity. Haaretz has editorialised that Benjamin Netanyahu should prepare for a “new regional order…in which the citizens of Arab states, and not just tyrants and their cronies, influence the trajectory of their countries’ development.”
Anshel Pfeffer argued in Haaretz that Israel’s image, by so closely backing a brutal Arab regime, is shown to be saying that only the Jewish state deserves choice and freedom from authoritarianism:
“But even if it is difficult for us to accept it, Israel was simply not a factor in the whole Egyptian saga of the past week. And there is no reason that it should be. True, they don’t like us, and why should they? They are Arabs and Muslims, and rightfully or not, they see Israel as an occupying country, and they want an Egyptian government to do more to right the wrong. Been to Europe lately? They don’t like us much there either, for precisely the same reasons — but the Europeans apparently deserve democracy more than Egypt. After all, we were happy when the Berlin Wall fell.”
Israel fears losing its status as the Middle East’s brave island of democracy. The threat of a true Arab democracy, writes Yoav Fromer in Tablet, is “the chance that a genuine Arab democracy might raise the bar for Israel and prompt international calls for it to get its own democracy in order, end the occupation of Palestinian territories, and amend its discriminatory policies toward its Arab minority.”
*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question
Mainstream media coverage, especially in the United States, has been filled with misleading tales. With help from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pro-Israel commentators, the regime has distracted many outlets with the arrant nonsense that the popular protests presage a takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brothers. The Muslim Brothers, yes, are the largest and best-organized political force in the country, and their cadres are indeed present among the crowds, even serving as marshals in places. But the Islamist party was late to join the protest movement, having declined to endorse the January 25 Police Day gatherings that inaugurated it, and has subsequently made no attempt to lead it or shape its discourse. Tellingly, the Brothers endorsed a secular figure, ElBaradei, as a possible interlocutor between the protesters and the regime. Speculation about the Brothers’ future role is just that — speculation.
Lee Smith in Tablet shows why his ideology is about as relevant to the Arab world as rabies:
Maybe this should be one of the tests for Egypt’s democrats in the streets: Where do you stand on Israel? If they are really democrats, or just pragmatists, the young among them protesting for higher pay would answer that warmer relations with an advanced, European-style economy—like, say, Israel’s—would provide jobs for the millions of Egypt’s unemployed.
Burn, baby, burn. Israel and America are scurrying for some kind of response to the Egyptian uprising. The poor lambs. What on earth will they do if a compliant dictatorship actually falls? For example, the siege on Gaza may well be about to change. I hope. And so do the people of Gaza. They deserve nothing less.
US neo-con Eli Lake, who spent the last decade backing every US-led war in the Middle East, is offering free advice to Barack Obama. Thanks, Eli, your understanding of the world seems about as nuanced as the “liberation” of Iraq.
Robert Fisk is on the ground in Cairo:
It might be the end. It is certainly the beginning of the end. Across Egypt, tens of thousands of Arabs braved tear gas, water cannons, stun grenades and live fire yesterday to demand the removal of Hosni Mubarak after more than 30 years of dictatorship.
And as Cairo lay drenched under clouds of tear gas from thousands of canisters fired into dense crowds by riot police, it looked as if his rule was nearing its finish. None of us on the streets of Cairo yesterday even knew where Mubarak – who would later appear on television to dismiss his cabinet – was. And I didn’t find anyone who cared.
They were brave, largely peaceful, these tens of thousands, but the shocking behaviour of Mubarak’s plainclothes battagi – the word does literally mean “thugs” in Arabic – who beat, bashed and assaulted demonstrators while the cops watched and did nothing, was a disgrace. These men, many of them ex-policemen who are drug addicts, were last night the front line of the Egyptian state. The true representatives of Hosni Mubarak as uniformed cops showered gas on to the crowds.
Such average citizens are exactly the ones Mubarak, Israel and the US have ignored for decades.
Blocking the internet entirely appears to have had little effect on information getting out.
The Guardian’s Brian Whitaker believes Washington is working out a post-Mubarak period:
With his plans to attend the Cairo Book Fair today regrettably disrupted, President Mubarak will instead spend the day choosing a new cabinet to replace the one he dismissed on television last night.
But his sudden offer of “dialogue” after 30 years in power is not going to cut any ice with the protesters on the streets whom he laughably accused in his TV broadcast of being “part of a bigger plot to shake the stability and destroy the legitimacy” of Egypt’s political system. Nor will his promise that “We will not backtrack on reforms”. The people want him to go and will not be satisfied until he does, but he is not listening yet.
Mass arrests are allegedly taking place, including against the Muslim Brotherhood.
Editor Ahmad Shokr provides interesting background:
Well, the people who initiated the protest call are largely a group of youth activists that have been organizing through social media, mostly through Facebook. They started a Facebook page to call for this demonstration, which immediately received just an outpouring of support. Tens of thousands of people signed up and expressed support for the demonstration, inspired largely by the events of Tunisia a few weeks ago. So this was a youth-led spontaneous movement that’s being fueled by the anger of young people across Egypt at all of the things that I listed before.
“Egypt is a Praetorian regime”, says Juan Cole.
Honesty is such a rare beast in journalism. Perhaps that’s why it takes a master who doesn’t fear a corporate overlord to silence/intimidate (ignore the petty intro):
DOHA, Qatar—David Remnick, call your office.
In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.
“Just when we needed an angry black man,” he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, “we didn’t get one.”
It quickly went downhill from there.
Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the “Cheney-Bush years” and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration.
He said that he was keeping a “checklist” of aggressive U.S. policies that remained in place, including torture and “rendition” of terrorist suspects to allied countries, which he alleged was ongoing.
He also charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative “crusaders” in the former vice president’s office and now in the special operations community.
“What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” he said of his forthcoming book. “It’s not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it — how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced.”
Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. “In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting? … Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.’”
“That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”
He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”
Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to “defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,” according to its website.
“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”
“They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.””
Hersh relayed that he had recently spoken with “a man in the intelligence community… somebody in the joint special operations business” about the downfall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. “He said, ‘Oh my God, he was such a good ally.’”
“Tunisia’s going to change the game,” Hersh added later. “It’s going to scare the hell out of a lot of people.”
Moving to Pakistan, where Hersh noted he had been friendly with Benazir Bhutto, the journalist told of a dinner meeting with Asif Ali Zardari, the late prime minister’s husband, in which Hersh said the Pakistani president was brutally disdainful of his own people.
Hersh described a trip he made to Swat, where the Pakistani military had just dislodged Taliban insurgents who had taken over the scenic valley, a traditional vacation area for the urban middle class. Hersh said he asked Zardari about the tent cities he saw along the road, where people were living in harsh, unsanitary conditions.
“Well, those people there in Swat, that’s what they deserve,” the Pakistani president replied, according to Hersh. Asked why, Hersh said Zardari responded, “Because they supported the Taliban.” (Note: Hersh’s conversation is not recounted in his 2009 New Yorker article on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, presumably because it coudn’t be verified.)
The veteran journalist also alleged that the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who was recently recalled after his name surfaced in Pakistani court documents and in the lively Pakistani press, had actually been fired for disputing the plans of Gen. David Petraeus, who took over the Afghan war last summer after General McChrystal was summarily dismissed.
“When Petraeus issued a very optimistic report about the war in December that he gave to the president,” Hersh said, the station chief “just declared it was bankrupt… internally. He just said ‘This is completely wrongheaded. The policy’s wrongheaded.’ Off he goes. Out he goes.”
“I’ve given up being disillusioned about the CIA,” Hersh said. “They’re trained to lie, period. They will lie to their president, they will lie certainly to the Congress, and they will lie to the American people. That’s all there is to it.”
Hersh was speaking on the invitation of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, which operates a branch campus in Qatar.
A reader sent me this incisive post:
Last Wednesday, a group of prominent Bush-era Republicans, including former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former White House adviser Frances Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, flew to Paris to speak in support of a Marxist Iranian exile group there – one that’s been designated an official terrorist organization by the U.S. (Frankly I’m more surprised they’re supporting Marxists).
Now, recall how Octavia Nasr was fired for an impolitic tweet offering condolences to Fadlallah. Double standards at CNN?
Townsend is CNN’s resident terrorism expert. Yet she is often billed as a neutral National Security expert and her ties to Bush are rarely shown on the screen when she’s asked for her expertise. But she’s part of this group literally providing MATERIAL support to Iranian Marxists that the US government has labeled as an official terrorist organization.
Here is the US Government’s legal definition of “material support” for a terrorist group.
My following article appears on ABC Unleashed today:
The rolling revelations of the WikiLeaks US embassy cables will continue for months but equally interesting is the reaction of the global media.
Many in the British media establishment, not given advance look at the documents, fumed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and repeated government spin that the release would endanger lives. This is from media groups who claim to believe in press freedom and there is no evidence that any WikiLeaks releases have harmed a soul, something even acknowledged by the US government.
It is expected that governments affected by the leaks would be upset but this week has seen a very clear fault-line expanding between those who endorse an authoritarian mindset towards leakers and others who understand the importance of airing America’s dirty tricks to the world.
Assange makes no secret of wanting to harm the image of the US and lessen American power. Indeed, in an interview this week
“US officials have for 50 years trotted out this line when they are afraid the public is going to see how they really behave”, Assange said.
Ironically, many of the public figures today allegedly worried about US lives being lost are the same people who wholly backed the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and drone attacks in Pakistan.
It’s unsurprising that Fox News-funded Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin both condemn the release (with the latter comparing Assange to Al Qaeda). Bill O’Reilly said the “traitor” who leaked the information to WikiLeaks should be “executed”.
The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, a Jewish neo-conservative who backs endless war in the Middle East, wants Assange silenced and the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer argues for the prosecution of journalistic “collaborators” with WikiLeaks. A senior adviser to Canadian leader Stephen Harper states Assange should be murdered by drone attack.
Predictably, many in the mainstream media have mimicked the Obama administration’s concerns over the leaks.
It was painful on Monday listening to ABC radio’s The World Today grilling a New York Times journalist about his paper’s decision to publish some of the revelations. Virtually every question asked by host Eleanor Hall could have come from the State Department. The contents and implications of the cables were mostly ignored.
The ABC reporter in Washington also heavily featured official perspectives at the expense of real analysis of the release. It’s been left to astute bloggers to articulate the importance of establishment embarrassment at a time when US foreign policy under Obama has mostly continued the pattern set by the Bush administration.
One example is the litany of documents that prove Israel and the US looking to spy on Palestinian officials and gather information such as frequent flyer and credit card numbers. Many in the Israeli press are pleased that the documents prove that US-backed autocrats support the hardline Israeli stance on attacking Iran. Why a supposedly democratic nation like Israel would want to be in bed with one of the most brutal regimes in the world, Saudi Arabia, has gone largely unremarked.
But little of this has surfaced in the corporate press as they’ve been too busy repeating the talking points of outraged officials in Canberra, London and Washington. The reaction of Arab bloggers has also been mostly ignored.
The details of the WikiLeaks story are arguably the most interesting. For example, the New York Times supposedly had to rely on the Guardian for the documents because Assange had been displeased with a recent profile of him in the Times. Editor Bill Keller was keen to negotiate with the White House which documents would not offend American goals.
The Washington Post reports that the Wall Street Journal and CNN, offered the cables but refused, were told by WikiLeaks that they would be liable for $US100,000 if any embargo was broken.
But where is the bravery in the media assessing the fallout of the leaks? Slate’s Jack Shafer calls for the resignation of Hillary Clinton because of the hard evidence that she demanded her foreign-service officials to spy on friend and foe. Here was – in black and white – documentation that shows Washington engaged in a global network of espionage. When Tehran or Beijing acts similarly, it’s called terrorism.
And where are the legal and civil rights lobbies in Australia as growing threats against Assange and his website increase by the day? A handful are speaking out, including Sydney University’s Ben Saul, claiming that Australia’s priority should be asking America about its crimes revealed in the WikiLeaks dump. Few journalists are arguing similarly.
Rupert Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt defends the spying as a necessary price to pay to maintain American hegemony in the world seemingly oblivious to the fact that Washington’s ability to influence the world has irreversibly declined since September 11, 2001, helped by a lessening of fear towards American power.
Indeed, there seems to be a major degree of jealousy within the mainstream media. Why haven’t more of them been leaked key documents? Why did sources rely on WikiLeaks instead of a major news organisation? As Assange told Forbes this week, in lieu of another major leak related to a major US bank in early 2011:
“We’re totally source-dependent. We get what we get. As our profile rises in a certain area, we get more in a particular area. People say, ‘Why don’t you release more leaks form the Taliban?’ So I say ‘Hey, help us, tell more Taliban dissidents about us’.”
Many journalists and editors would read that and wonder why Taliban dissidents hadn’t contacted them.
Perhaps somebody should examine what the motives of Assange actually are; he’s written a manifesto of sorts years ago.
But professional frustration isn’t the only key issue here. It’s the media’s overly-respectful posture towards authority. There is an overly-suspicious attitude towards people like Assange who refuse to play the traditional media game. He’s an outsider with exclusive information. He hasn’t spent years cultivating contacts inside the media tent. And he doesn’t spend most of his free time socialising with political staffers, editors and insiders.
John Kampfner, chief executive of Index on Censorship, reminds journalists of the truth:
“All governments have a legitimate right to protect national security. This should be a specific, and closely scrutinised, area of policy. Most of our secrecy rules are designed merely to protect politicians and officials from embarrassment.”
The Australian media’s performance this week has been mixed at best. There has been a fascination with the Gillard Government’s response and an attempt to mitigate the potential embarrassment for authorities.
The vast bulk of the local reporting – Paul McGeough in Fairfax was a notable exception though he mistakenly claimed the previous WikiLeaks drops on Iraq and Afghanistan were “relatively harmless” – has challenged the reliability of Assange and questioned his sanity and seriousness. A Fairfax video was entitled, ‘Assange reliability under question’ when in fact nobody credibly claimed the cables were falsified.
It’s as if the corporate press can’t quite bring itself to acknowledge the lies told by the US government, fearful of losing access in the process. Instead, many in the Australian press are giving valuable space to the US ambassador in Canberra who unsurprisingly condemns the leaks.
Moreover, one of the key take-away points from the revelations is the US contempt for democracy around the world. Public opinion can be essentially ignored for the perceived greater good; backing Zionist and Arab dictatorships in the name of oil security. We should care that US officials pressured nations not to investigate alleged human rights committed by the US post 9/11.
Interestingly, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) just announced that no part of WikiLeaks remains on the Australian blacklist of banned websites.
All WikiLeaks releases bring up questions of accountability of the organisation itself. This week leading human rights groups expressed concern that activists in repressive regimes, who may have had contact with US embassies, could be named in the cables and threatened.
Pentagon Paper’s leaker Daniel Ellsberg said this week that WikiLeaks had made “mistakes” in the past by inadvertently releasing names and personal details in previous dumps. He also stressed that the Pentagon was prone to exaggerating the threat posed to anyone listed in the documents. Quite simply, there is zero evidence of lives being threatened or lost over any WikiLeaks documents though a Canadian aid worker claims the cables will hurt dissidents in repressive regimes.
The job of real journalists is not to insulate officials or governments from embarrassment but to investigate legitimate stories relevant to the public interest. Note how many reporters are primarily worried about Washington’s loss of information, not the details contained within the files.
Damaging the “national interest” is a principle that should be questioned when policies of the state are deliberately designed to ensure secrecy over state-sponsored terrorism. Transparency and accountability are what WikiLeaks offers. Those who oppose it must be vigorously challenged. with America’s ABC he said that Washington simply wasn’t credible when they claimed the release of documents would hurt individuals.
My following investigation appears in today’s edition of Crikey:
The Middle East “quagmire” is largely “the fault of Israel”, according to Paul Howes, national secretary of the Australian Workers Union (AWU).
In an interview with Crikey, the author of Confessions of a Faceless Man said that he was a “critical friend of Israel” and the ongoing building of illegal settlements in the West Bank was “mad”.
An investigation into Australian’s union embrace of the Palestinian issue, the growing popularity of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement and the pro-Israel stance of Howes and the AWU has discovered deep divides between the AWU and many other mainstream unions.
Following Britain’s biggest union decision earlier this year to boycott Israeli companies, Australian unions are also signing up to target firms that profit from Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
The unions include the Electrical Trades Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union. The move was condemned by The Australian and Howes last month. “We don’t believe that it’s in the interests of Palestinian or Israeli workers to seek to divide them in the peace process,” he said to the Murdoch paper.
Howes told Crikey that he opposed BDS because he supported a two-state solution and believed “Israel was a vibrant democracy”. But he included this: “If I thought BDS could solve the problem (the Middle East conflict) I would back it but I know it will have no effect on the ground in Palestine. The analogy with apartheid South Africa is wrong because BDS had no effect there until Western states, including the US, boycotted the country.”
Meanwhile, increasing numbers of Jewish writers overseas are expressing public concern over the direction of Israeli politics.
Gideon Levy, in Israeli daily Haaretz, says that “your beloved Israel is addicted to occupation and aggression”. Bradley Burston in the same paper claims that Americans are “emotionally divesting” from the conflict. This Washington Post report cites the fact that ultra-orthodox Jews are reproducing at such high rates that a more pro-settler mindset is gaining a foothold in the country and reducing its secular footprint.
More illegal structures are being built in East Jerusalem, yet barely any of this seems to enter the Australian discussion. Recent studies indicate the Jewish Diaspora here is “most closely tied to Israel” compared to every other Diaspora community.
This mindset has resulted in very few major figures speaking out against Israel’s occupation or ongoing siege of Gaza. I spoke to countless union officials and leaders across the country and most refused to talk on the record about these matters, the AWU and Howes.
Why? Perhaps it indicates an awareness of Howes’ media reach, his likely longevity in the Labor Party and union movement — he was recently voted one of the most powerful people in Australia in the Australian Financial Review.
But Howes is a contradiction. He is a man of the Labor Right, who is pro gay marriage and pro-refugees, supportive of nuclear power and the US alliance, mildly open to climate change and vehemently pro-Israel.
Howes told Crikey that he opposed Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla, Israeli discrimination against Palestinians, settlement expansion and the blockade of Gaza and acknowledged that he displeased Zionist audiences when he told them these views. He constantly said that he was optimistic about Middle East peace under US President Barack Obama and was hopeful Washington wouldn’t allow the situation to deteriorate further.
I asked Howes why his union was so active in pro-Israel activity, what his members thought about it and who was paying for it all. “Most AWU members probably don’t care about Israel but we are a democratic union and I’ve received virtually no criticism for our stance. I’ve received one letter about it and it was backing our position.”
A union source told Crikey that the AWU was run like a business with little member discussion about important issues, so any serious disagreement of the union’s Israel policy could be ignored. It is impossible to determine how much AWU members’ money is spent on pro-Israel advocacy.
In his younger days, when Howes was in the Trotskyite Democratic Socialist Party, he said he “may have been anti-Israel” but the issue barely came up. “I strongly believe that Israel has the right to exist but it has no right to occupy other’s lands.” He took comfort from the fact that “most Israelis oppose colonies” but I asked if this was truly the case when settlements continued to expand at an unprecedented rate. It was because of Israel’s political system, Howes countered, that allowed “fringe” parties too much power.
Howes has placed pro-Israel campaigning at the centre of his union’s business. At the 2009 national conference, an Israeli trade union leader praised the AWU’s stand against boycotts. Howes himself gave a speech recently at the Zionist Federation of Australia conference in Melbourne where he vehemently opposed BDS but barely said a word against the occupation and implied that Palestinian workers were against BDS. In fact, the opposite is true, with the vast majority of Palestinian civil society groups agreeing in 2005 to a cultural and academic boycott of Israel.
Zionist advocacy is conducted in the AWU by a handful of major figures: national communications co-ordinator Andrew Casey in Sydney and campaigns co-ordinator Daniel Walton, who just returned from a Zionist lobby-paid trip to Israel. Several union sources told Crikey that Casey and Howes spend considerable time trying to pressure other local unions not to join the BDS movement.
Howes said he spoke regularly to union leaders in Australia and overseas and the vast bulk of them who do back BDS are doing so “because of constant Palestinian activist pressure” rather than actual belief in the ideology behind it.
Indeed, although the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union recently signed up for BDS, national secretary Dave Oliver, when contacted by Crikey, refused to comment beyond simply acknowledging the union’s “support for BDS at the national council”. I have been informed that Oliver is concerned about talking publicly about BDS for fear of upsetting Howes.
Howes, who acknowledged many times during our interview that he “didn’t know that much about the issue”, told me that he spends “0.1% of my time on Israel” and fully backs the TULIP (Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine) campaign that links some Israeli and Palestinian workers and “challenges the apologists for Hamas and Hizbollah in the labour movement”.
Supporting TULIP makes sense for Howes when he told me that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East — he included Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda — “must be fought”. I challenged him to acknowledge that none of these groups are alike — for example, Hamas and Hizbollah have major electoral support — and conflating all Islamist organisations into one evil entity is the classic and deliberate mistake made by neo-conservatives since September 11.
Other union leaders do not share Howes’ liberal Zionist and rose-coloured view of the Middle East. The CFMEU’s John Sutton told Crikey that his union backed BDS and Palestine because of its history of supporting “left causes”. Israel was moving further to the right, he said, and he rejected allegations that he was anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. “I don’t back full BDS, just boycott of settlement products”, Sutton told me. “I back a two-state solution and UN resolutions.” He hoped the ACTU would follow the CFMEU’s embrace of BDS but knew Howes was desperate to avoid the major union body backing a partial BDS motion.
Former NSW CFMEU’s state secretary and political aspirant Andrew Ferguson told Crikey that the views of the AWU and Howes were “not relevant” to the BDS campaign. Ferguson’s union “has a large non-English speaking and Arabic membership, many of whom are pro-Palestinian”. He told me that Andrew Casey, AWU’s Jewish communications man, “reinforced Howes’ view on the Middle East”. Ferguson said Howes “has a strong point of view” on the Middle East and “he pushes that legitimately”.
It’s not a view shared by departed Labor politician Julia Irwin. She spoke exclusively to Crikey in August about the Zionist lobby’s infiltration of the ALP. When asked about Howes last week, Irwin said that her former Labor colleague Michael Forshaw, currently chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, “often argued that his union [the AWU] had long and binding ties with the [Israel union] Histadrut and this was the basis of his support for Israel”. The reason behind the affection for Israel felt by Howes was no different.
Irwin also expressed concern that ALP Jewish backbencher Michael Danby would likely become chair of the Defence and Foreign Affairs Committee next year, potentially upsetting Arab states with his hard-line Zionist views. She exclusively told Crikey that Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean, “who fought off a determined challenge from Jewish influences in the Victorian ALP to retain pre-selection”, was furious with the potential Danby position but Danby had “done his homework”, being close to the architects of Rudd’s deposing.
When I asked Howes about the only Labor MP who spoke publicly for the rights of the Palestinians, he said that Irwin had “gone as far as her abilities would allow”. He claimed that there were several other ALP parliamentarians who were critical of Israeli policies but he couldn’t name one who said anything on the public record.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the long interview with Howes was a discussion about what was actually happening in Israel and Palestine. He was not like Canadian leader Stephen Harper, who this week said that Israel must be supported no matter what. “Unless Israel moves soon [and ends the occupation], disaster awaits”, Howes told me. “I don’t give a blank cheque for Israel.”
However, one of his columns in this year’s Sunday Telegraph was a complete backing for the Israeli assassination of Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh and the use of Australian passports in the hit. He argued that Israel, along with “moderate” Arab states and Australia, were engaged in a war “fighting Islamo-fascism” and the extra-judicial murder of untried “terrorists” was a “small victory”.
But Howes wanted to stress that even he had limits. “If Israelis become hell-bent on ethnic cleansing [of Palestinians] I’ll know, and my support won’t continue.” Although it is true that the ALP has a long tradition of blindly backing the Zionist state, Howes said that he regularly condemned Israeli actions “but The Australian and Australian Jewish News only report my pro-Israel comments”.
He denied having any ALP career ambitions but argued that “being critical of Israel isn’t an impediment to career progression” in the party.
Although Howes has long spoken warmly towards Israel, his planned upcoming Zionist lobby trip to Israel will not happen, along with Labor front-bencher Bill Shorten and ALP politician David Feeney, due to the presence and tensions with Kevin Rudd, according to comments by Howes on ABC in Melbourne on 11 November. Howes told me that he realised deeper involvement in the issue was required when former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a motion to congratulate Israel on its 60th anniversary in 2008. “I thought it was highly inappropriate [for some union leaders and pro-Palestinian activists] not to praise Israel’s achievements. The activists had to be challenged.”
On the day of Rudd’s motion, a large advertisement appeared in The Australian condemning the move and accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing. Howes responded at the time: “In a de facto manner, Julie Irwin and some trade union people can be perceived to be supporting the lot of Islamic Jihad and Hamas through the action they have taken here.”
But union head Andrew Ferguson indicated to Crikey that he had recently noticed a small shift in the ability of the Zionist lobby to “convince Australian unions of the Israeli position”. Although he said the ALP was a “conservative party and never backed a pro-Palestinian position”, there was more questioning within ALP ranks and less fear of being accused of backing terrorism and Hamas for simply speaking out.
Demographic shifts in Australian society, Ferguson stressed, were changing perceptions of Palestine. As Israel moves further to the right, younger members of the ALP [such as Muslim and Arab members] and the general public were moving the Labor movement in a different direction. “In 10-15 years time,” he said, “we will see a real shift” towards more critical perspectives on Israeli actions.
Crikey has obtained a motion that was passed at the Brisbane South ALP regional conference (and other regional conferences) in late October, which signals growing anger within Labor ranks. It stressed support for a two-state solution but called for an end to Israel’s “separation wall” through the West Bank, an end to the siege on Gaza, cessation of West Bank colonies and a fair outcome for Palestinian refugees.
It was then sent to the ALP National Executive for action and shows frustration that the Gillard Government and Labor leadership are willing to simply mouth the official US policy on the region. Howes had no criticism of Gillard’s position on the Israel/Palestine conflict.
But Ferguson warned me not to under-estimate the power of Zionist lobbying and money on mainstream politicians to be seduced by the Zionist narrative. Witness the upcoming largest Australian parliamentary delegation ever to visit Israel organised by Melbourne-based, Zionist lobbyist Albert Dadon. They will be accompanied by journalists from most major Australian media companies.
Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.
Crikey Ed: This story originally cited national occupational health and safety unit director Dr Yossi Berger in Victoria in relation to Zionist advocacy conducted in the AWU; this reference has now been removed due to inaccuracy.
The strange and disturbing mix of radical Zionism, hatred of Muslims, neo-conservatism and increasingly mainstream politics:
The English Defence League, a far-right grouping aimed at combating the “Islamification” of British cities, has developed strong links with the American Tea Party movement.
An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.
The league has also developed links with Pamela Geller, who was influential in the protests against plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. Geller, darling of the Tea Party’s growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group’s actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.
Geller, who denies being anti-Muslim, said in one of her blogs: “I share the EDL’s goals… We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the west.”
Great post by MJ Rosenberg on Jonathan Franzen’s new best-seller Freedom and its deep message about the Zionist lobby:
I just want to comment on a minor stream that runs through the book: it is that neo-conservatives are loathsome, that they joined up with war profiteers to get us into Iraq, and that they were motivated by a combination of pro-Israel zeal, profits, and the belief that we must Americanize the Middle East. One character, who I think is modeled on Norman Podhoretz, gets to pronounce the neocon philosophy at a Thanksgiving dinner (basically a thanks giving for the blessing of the Iraq war).
Before the crazies say it, I want to add that Franzen is by no means anti-Jewish, just anti-neocon. In fact, there is an ultra-Orthodox family in the book, whose dream is to live in the West Bank, who are lovely people — just a little muddled.
So why is this significant? It is significant because this book is so huge (about as big as any work of fiction can be in this country) and that it’s “oh-by-the-way” incorporation of the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis demonstrates that the two professors have won. Nobody much argues about the role of the neocons in promoting Middle East wars.
Communism is dead. Islamism is the new threat. And the same radical Zionists who once fought (from their bedrooms, of course) against the Evil Empire are now focusing on Islam and Iran.
Richard Silverstein uncovers the role of neo-conservatives Jews who once again want to be defined solely through war.
Blogger Andrew Sullivan, recently made aware of the disastrous and destructive actions of radical Jews and hardline Zionists, gets it in one:
Peter Beinart heralds it in:
“Ever since 9/11, according to opinion polls, Republicans have worried more about terrorism than have Democrats. Initially, this fear translated into overwhelming support for military action abroad. But as Republicans (like everyone else) have grown tired and embittered by America’s wars, they have turned their anxiety inward, lured by the same idea that attracted Palmer and the McCarthyites: that America could guarantee its safety on the cheap by ferreting out the real threat, which resides within.”
They have found the new communism. It’s called Islam. But I fear, unlike Peter, that they have not tired of wars, just counter-insurgencies, and will never support actual withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan ever, because it reveals “weakness” in the war they want to escalate rather than defuse, and to use for domestic purposes rather than to understand and win.
I also predict that a military attack on another Muslim country, Iran, will be the next outward expression of this new McCarthyism. And if Israel does it, it will be used by the neocon and Palinite right as a sign that Obama was too Muslim and too weak and too un-American to do it himself. The script is pretty obvious. What the neocons have to do first is kill off the peace process to pave the way for the Greater Israel Palin supports and believes in. Watch them do it.
