Left sites which
covered Al Jazeera doco on Jewish Lobby, and those which did not
Newsletter published on November 24, 2018
(1) Left sites which
covered Al Jazeera doco on Jewish Lobby, and those which did not
(2) A shorter video
about Congress & Lobby, taken from Al Jazeera etc - Alison Weir
(3) Dissident Voice
published the four parts of the Al Jazeera documentary
(4) Art of the Smear:
the Israel Lobby Busted, by Sheldon Richman - Counterpunch
(5) Registering
Israel's Useful Idiots - Philip
Giraldi
(1) Left sites which
covered Al Jazeera doco on Jewish Lobby, and those which did not
- Peter Myers, November 26, 2018
The promotion of BDS and the exposing of the Jewish Lobby are
two strategies for dealing with Jewish dominance of US Foreign Policy.
BDS is favoured by the Trotskyoid Left, and emulates their
similar campaign against apartheid South Africa.
Exposing the Jewish Lobby is favoured by everyone else.
Once the Jewish Lobby is exposed to the light, its
subterranean power is diminished. But the Trotskyoid Left does not like to make
any mention of Jewish Power, and tries to avoid using the term 'Jewish Lobby'.
In this, they follow Noam Chomsky.
The Al Jazeera documentary on the Jewish Lobby, recently
released at Electronic Intifida, shows Israeli and Jewish-Lobby activists
campaigning to smear BDS activisits as racist 'hate' groups.
One would have thought, then, that BDS activists would
publish that Al Jazeera documentary. But Trotskyoid sites have gone quiet on
it.
Max Blumenthal published it.
Global Research was quick to publish it:
and Counterpunch later followed suit:
Stretagic Culture and Voltaire Network have not done so. Nor does Robert Fisk seem to have
made any comment on it, despite earlier calling for its publication.
I wrote to the Trotskyist site wsws.org about it some weeks
ago, but they have made no mention of it. I searched their site for 'jazeera',
sorted by date.
Other Trotskyoid sites, which run the 'street' Trots i.e.
Antifa types, never mention the Jewish Lobby, but I would not deign to write to
them. They are beneath contempt.
(2) A shorter video
about Congress & Lobby, taken from Al Jazeera etc - Alison Weir
From: Alison Weir <alisonweir@ifamericansknew.org>
Subject: Re: Monitoring Left sites for coverage of the Al Jazeera
documentary on Jewish Lobby in USA
Also check this somewhat shorter video about Congress, taken
from Al Jazeera and a few other places: https://youtu.be/6PsGZz19cHk
(3) Dissident Voice
published the four parts of the Al Jazeera documentary
From: "'Angie' angie4justice@nl.rogers.com
[shamireaders]" :
Dissident Voice published the four parts of the Al Jazeera
documentary. See:
(4) Art of the Smear:
the Israel Lobby Busted, by Sheldon Richman - Counterpunch
NOVEMBER 19, 2018
Art of the Smear: the Israel Lobby Busted
by Sheldon Richman
In 2016 and 2017 Al Jazeera produced a program that
unmistakenly documents the Israel government and U.S. Israel lobby’s all-out
effort to spy on, smear, and disrupt American students and other activists who
are working to build an understanding of the Palestinians’ plight. The Lobby —
USA, however, has never been broadcast by Al Jazeera. Reporting indicates that
it was suppressed after pressure from the lobby on the government of Qatar,
which funds Al Jazeera. Nevertheless, it is now available at The Electronic
Intifada and on YouTube. Watch all four parts here and here. What the program
presents is shocking.
The Lobby — USA, which features an undercover journalist who
won the trust of key pro-Israel operatives and who videoed revealing meetings,
demonstrates beyond question the lengths to which the Israelis and their
supporters in the United States will go to prevent a change in American thinking
about the beleaguered Palestinians. The effort aims to smear Palestinian
students in the United States and pro-Palestinian American activists and
political candidates who criticize Israeli policy as anti-Semites and enablers
of terrorism. The paid pro-Israel operatives, guided by Israeli government
officials and embassy staff, have used social media and other channels in an
attempt to destroy the career potential of student activists who work to raise
Americans’ consciousness about the Palestinians. Establishment news operations,
such as the Washington Post, are also implicated. Major targets are activists in
the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement and Students for Justice in
Palestine.
Al Jazeera produced a similar program about Israeli
interference in British politics, which led to resignations of a key Israeli
embassy official and other reactions that confirmed Al Jazeera’s damaging
charges.
I could not do justice to the program even in a long article.
Instead, I will urge readers to watch it in its entirety — and think carefully
about what it means.
As one critic of Israel asks on the program, if Russia or
Iran or China were doing what Israel and its American friends are doing, most
people would be outraged. This is hardly the first time that Israel and friends
have been caught covertly and overtly trying to influence discourse and even
elections here through smear campaigns against activists, writers, and political
candidates, but this is certainly among the most flagrant and elaborate
examples.
Let’s step back from the poisonous trees for a moment to view
the forest. In 1948 the leaders of a European and nominally Jewish movement,
Zionism, unilaterally declared the existence of the State of Israel, which they
proclaimed the nation-state of all Jews everywhere, a status recently reaffirmed
by the Israeli Knesset. (The UN General Assembly recommended partitioning
Palestine into a larger Jewish state and a smaller Palestinian state, but it had
no power to actually create the state of Israel.)
It so happened this state was built on land taken by force
from the long-standing majority indigenous Palestinian population, most of which
was Muslim and Christian. Hundreds were massacred, three-quarters of a million
were driven from their homes, and the remainder were subjected to martial law
for two decades, before being given third-class citizenship with no power to
improve their legal status. (Arab nations half-heartedly tried to assist the
overwhelmed Palestinians, although the king of Jordan worked with Israel to
divide the spoils.) Almost 20 years later, the rest of Palestine was taken
through warfare, producing what are known as the occupied territories in the
West Bank, with its apartheid-like regime, and the Gaza Strip, which is nothing
more than an open-air prison under a cruel Israeli blockade.
Why? Because a
“Jewish State” could not be realized if it were populated by non-Jews. And
if some non-Jews remained, the state
could not be a liberal democratic state, with equality under the law, for
obvious reasons. All this was aided from the start by European Christians who,
apparently guilt-ridden over how the Jews of Europe had been tyrannized,
culminating in the Nazi genocide, opted to assuage their guilt with the land,
blood, and liberty of the innocent people of Palestine, long the plaything of
colonial powers.
Since that time, Israel has repressed the Palestinians in a
variety of ways, depending on whether they are in the state as it existed in
1949; the West Bank, which was seized during the June 1967 war; or the Gaza
Strip (also called the Gaza Ghetto), also seized in that war. Meanwhile,
millions of refugees — people (and descendants of people) driven from their
homes by Zionism’s terrorist militias, have been confined to refugee camps,
stateless, rightless, and destitute. At various time, Israel, with America’s
backing, has cut deals with Arab states and Palestinian quislings for the
purpose of keeping the Palestinians from winning their rights either in a single
secular democratic state or through a two-state plan. Western political and
media establishments have overwhelmingly sympathized with the Israelis and
demonized the Palestinians (and Arabs and Muslims generally). It didn’t take
long for the public to be propagandized, against all evidence, into believing
that the Palestinians are the aggressors and the Israelis the victims.
Apparently, a person is anti-Semitic if he objects to having his property stolen
by someone who claims that property in the name of the Jewish People.
But after so many decades of Israeli wars, massacres,
repression, and routine brutal dehumanization, the tide has started to turn.
Israel pulverized Gaza and its people one too many times; it shot and broke the
bones of too many children before too many video cameras. And so public opinion,
especially among younger Americans — and particularly among younger Jewish
Americans, has been turning against Israel. Then the BDS Movement arose to
accomplish what a similar movement help to accomplish against apartheid South
Africa: bringing world attention to an intolerable situation and take concrete
steps to change it.
All of this has been too much for Israel’s ruling elite and
its supporters in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere, and they are
fighting back. They know they can’t win on the merits. Well-documented
historical studies and basic morality have seen to that. So they smear their
opponents as Jew-haters and supporters of terrorism. As one Israel lobby
operator puts it in the Al Jazeera program, you discredit the message by
discrediting the messenger — which is what The Israel Project, Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, Israel on Campus Coalition, Canary Mission, Emergency
Committee on Israel, Israeli Embassy in Washington, Israeli Ministry of
Strategic Affairs, and the other co-conspirators have set out to do. Their goal,
as their leaders themselves acknowledge, is to identify criticism of Israel with
anti-Semitism. (Also see this.)
But it goes beyond that. The Israel lobby realizes that the
anti-Semitism charge no long sticks so tenaciously to people who merely indict
Israel for its obvious mistreatment of the Palestinians. So the lobby has
resorted to a broader brush: it says that those who support BDS and the
Palestinians are anti-American, anti-democracy, and anti-all-blessed-things. BDS
and Students for Justice in Palestine, the lobby contends, are hate groups. This
of course is patently absurd, but Israel’s side observes no limits it what it is
willing to say and perhaps do to destroy the reputations anyone who realizes
that the Israeli emperor has no clothes.
Al Jazeera, the Electronic Intifada, Max Blumenthal’s The
Gray Zone Project, and others have performed a much-needed service on behalf of
freedom, justice, and decency. I urge you to watch this program and spread the
word.
Sheldon Richman, author of America’s Counter-Revolution: The
Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is a senior fellow
and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society, and a
contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He
is also the Executive Editor of The Libertarian Institute.
(5) Registering
Israel's Useful Idiots - Philip
Giraldi
From: sadu nanjundiah <sadu_nanjundiah@hotmail.com>
Registering Israel's Useful Idiots
FDD and AIPAC need adult supervision
By Philip Giraldi, November 20, 2018, Information Clearing
House
Depending on what criteria one uses, there are between 200 and 600 groups in the United
States that wholly or in part are dedicated to furthering the interests of
Israel. The organizations are both Jewish, like the Zionist Organization of
America, and Christian Zionist to include John Hagee’s Christians United for
Israel, but the funding of the Israel Lobby and both its political and media
access comes overwhelmingly from Jewish supporters and advocates.
Many of the groups are registered with the Internal Revenue
Service for tax purposes as 501(c)3 “educational” or “charitable”
foundations, which enables them to solicit tax exempt donations. One might dispute
whether promoting Israeli interests in the United States is actually
educational, but as of right now the Department of the Treasury believes it can
be so construed, protected by the First Amendment.
But there is a more serious consideration in terms of the
actual relationships that many of the groups enjoy with the Israeli government.
To be sure, many of them boast on their promotional literature and websites
about their relationships with the Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, so the
issue of dual loyalty or, worse, acting as actual Israeli government
agents must be considered.
There is a legal remedy to hostile foreigners acting against
American interests and that is the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938
(FARA). Originally intended to identify and monitor agents of Nazi Germany
propagandizing in the United States, it has since been applied to individuals
and groups linked to other nations. Most recently, it was used against Russian
news agencies RT America and Sputnik, which were forced to register. It is also
being considered for Qatar based al-Jazeera.
FARA requires identified agents to be transparent in terms of
their funding and contacts while also being publicly identified as representing
the interests of a foreign nation. They must report to the Department of Justice
every contact they have with congressmen or other government officials. The text
of the Act defines a foreign agent as
“any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee,
or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request,
or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of
whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled,
financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal, and
who directly or through any other person— (i) engages within the United States
in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (ii)
acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent,
information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of
such foreign principal; (iii) within the United States solicits, collects,
disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value
for or in the interest of such foreign principal; or (iv) within the United
States represents the interests of such foreign principal before any agency or
official of the Government of the United States.”
In spite of language that would presumably cover many of the
hundreds of Jewish organizations acting for Israel, FARA has never been used to
compel registration of any such groups or individuals even when it was public
knowledge that they were working closely with the Israeli government to
coordinate positions and promote other Israeli interests. That failure is at a
minimum a tribute to Jewish power in the United States, but it is also due to
the fact that the organizations are funded from within the United States by
wealthy American Jews, not by Israel, which is the argument sometimes
inaccurately made by the groups themselves to demonstrate that they are not
being directed by the Israeli government.
The difficulty in proving that one is directed by a foreign
government has been definitively resolved regarding one group the Foundation for
the Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has become the leading neoconservative
bastion seeking a war with Iran, Israel’s bête noir. The recent al-Jazeera
expose on the activities of the Israeli lobbies in both Britain and the United
States, which I wrote about last week, included a surreptitiously filmed
conversation with Sima Vaknin-Gil, a former Israeli intelligence officer who now
heads the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which is tasked with countering what is
perceived to be anti-Israeli activity worldwide. The Ministry is particularly
focused on the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS),
which is increasingly active in both the United States and Europe.
Vaknin-Gil was discussing his activities with Tony Kleinfeld,
an undercover investigative reporter who was secretly recording and filming his
encounters with various members of the Israel Lobby as well as of the Israeli
government.Vaknin-Gil provided explicit confirmation that the FDD works directly
with the Israeli government, making it an Israeli agent by the definition of
FARA.
For those who are unfamiliar with FDD, it is probably
currently the most prominent neocon organization though it nevertheless claims
to be a non-partisan “research group.” It focuses on foreign policy and security
issues by “Fighting Terrorism and Promoting Freedom,” as it informs us on its
website masthead. It works to “defend free nations against their enemies,” which
frequently means in practice anyone whom Israel considers to be hostile, most
particularly Iran. FDD’s Leadership Council has featured former CIA Director
James Woolsey, Senator Joe Lieberman, and Bill Kristol. Its Executive Director
is Canadian import Mark Dubowitz, who is obsessed with Iran. Its advisors and
experts are mostly Jewish and most of its funding comes from Jewish
oligarchs.
FDD’s auditorium has become a preferred venue for senior
officials of the Trump Administration to go and make hardline speeches, just as
the American Enterprise Institute was under George W. Bush. Mike Pence, Mike
Pompeo, John Bolton and Nikki Haley have all spoken there recently, frequently
focusing on Iran and the threat that it allegedly constitutes.
FDD aside, Vaknin-Gil also confirmed that there were other
groups in the United States doing the same sorts of things on behalf of Israel.
He said “We have FDD. We have others working on this,” elaborating that FDD is
“working on” projects for Israel including “data gathering, information
analysis, working on activist organizations, money trail.”
So Vaknin-Gil was admitting that FDD and others were working
as Israeli proxies, collecting information on U.S. citizens, spying on legal
organizations, and both planning and executing disinformation at Israeli
direction. Kleinfeld also spoke with a Jonathan Schanzer, a senior official in
FDD, who filled in a bit more of what the foundation is up to in terms of
discrediting groups in the U.S. that support the BDS movement.
Schanzer admitted “BDS has taken everybody by surprise”
before complaining that the Jewish response has been “a complete mess. I don’t
think that anybody’s doing a good job. We’re not even doing a good job.” He then
complained that attempts to discredit Palestinian groups by linking them to
terrorist groups had failed, as also had the use of the label anti-Semitism.
“Personally I think anti-Semitism as a smear is not what it used to be.”
So, when will the Justice Department move on FDD now that its
true colors have been exposed by al-Jazeera? The group must be required to
register if justice be done, but will it? Its principal partner in crime the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has avoided registering for
more than sixty years by claiming that it is an American organization working to
educate the U.S. public about the all the good things connected to Israel. Even
though it meets regularly with Israeli government officials, it claims not to be
representing Israeli interests. But just as in the case of FDD, it is time to
require AIPAC to register as what it really is: a foreign agent. As a registered
agent, it will still be able to exercise First Amendment rights to defend Israel
but it would not be able to be involved in lobbying on Capitol Hill and
directing money to politicians who are described as pro-Israeli, as it does now.
Its finances will be transparent and it will be perceived as an official
advocate for Israel, not as an educational resource for what is happening in the
Middle East. Hopefully, when AIPAC stops throwing money around, the politicians
and media types will find another place to roost.
To be sure the love fest for Israel in government extends far
beyond FDD and AIPAC. It can be found in many dark corners. National Security
Advisor John Bolton recently received the “Defender of Israel” award from the
Zionist Organization of America. And one might suggest that the U.S. United
Nations delegation, headed by Ambassador Nikki Haley, is directed by the Israeli
government, particularly given events of last Friday whereby the U.S. voted
against a motion condemning Israel’s continued illegal occupation of the Syrian
Golan Heights, thereby recognizing for the first time Israel’s sovereignty over
the area. Whether Haley was speaking for herself or for the administration was
characteristically unclear, but it hardly matters. Nikki Haley might be referred
to as a useful idiot, as Lenin put it, but her consistent pattern of extreme
loyalty in defense of Israel marks her out as being particularly beholden to the
Jewish state, which will no doubt arrange to richly reward her through some
position in financial services for which she is totally unqualified when she
leaves her post in January. And then she will be well funded to run for
president in 2020. Having Haley in charge, one might just as well vote for
Benjamin Netanyahu.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.