656 (corrected)Speeches to the National Summit on the US-Israel Special Relationship

Speeches to the National Summit on the US-Israel Special Relationship

Newsletter published on 25-04-2014

(1) Summit gathered our favorite commentators, but dodged discussing
Iraeli involvement in 9/11 - Debbie Menon
(2) Jeffrey Blankfort's address to the National Summit: Gatekeepers on
the Left
(3) Philip Weiss at the Summit: Journalists are starting to cover the
Israel lobby
(4) Philip Giraldi speaks on "Is Israel a U.S. Ally?"
(5) Stephen Walt reassesses the "special relationship"
(6) Stephen Sniegoski: Neoconservatives and the Iraq war
(7) Justin Raimondo: Christian Fundamentalists have more clout than AIPAC
(8) Correcting Raimondo: Executive Director of Christians United For
Israel is Jewish, a former AIPAC official
(9) The Missing Debate on 9/11 and Israel: Alan Sabrosky's shocking
Press TV Interview

(1) Summit gathered our favorite commentators, but dodged discussing
Iraeli involvement in 9/11 - Debbie Menon

http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2014/03/09/403654national-summit-to-reassess-the-u-s-israel-special-relationship-video/
http://mycatbirdseat.com/2014/03/americas-first-national-summit-to-reassess-us-israel-relations/

Sunday, March 9th, 2014

Posted by Debbie Menon

NATIONAL SUMMIT TO REASSESS THE U.S. - ISRAEL "SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP" VIDEO

{Visit the links to see the videos of the speeches}

Yesterday, March 7, the "National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel
'Special Relationship,'" was held at the National Press Club in
Washington, DC. The presentations lasted from 9:00-am to 5:00-pm and
were very informative and not a single word about it in either the
Washington Post or the Washington Times, so for Washington, it did not
happen.

While that might be true, it looks like it was a full house anyway,
which the smart organization and perseverance of the summit organizers
Alison Weir, Philip Giraldi, Grant F Smith, Paul Findley and Janet
McMahon can take full credit for.

by Debbie Menon

It was the most joyful 9 hours spent watching and listening to some of
my favorite and frequently featured writers and commentators all in one
large tent speak with precision, sophistication and objectivity in
analyzing US-Israel "special relationship" and providing a wealth of
information and historical chain of events, that has brought us to this
day in which it has been unanimously concluded by these diverse experts,
authors, investigative journalists and former counter intelligence
analysts on the panel that Israel is indeed a liability to America and
not an ally or a friend.

{visit the webpage to watch videos of each talk, and of the entire Summit}

Our Dr. Stephen Sniegoski, author of The Transparent Cabal, spoke at the
outset on the "Neoconservatives and the Iraq War." He began to speak at
about 1:08:20. Speakers were only allotted a maximum of 13 minutes. At
about 3:25:36, Sniegoski tried to deal with a question on the very taboo
topic of possible Israeli involvement in 9/11--which included the
"dancing Israelis" viewing the falling buildings from across the Hudson
River in New Jersey. He admittedly "sort of hemmed and hawed on this
one." He subsequently emailed us saying : " A fellow from the audience
later handed me a CD on the FBI investigation of the matter, which is
called the "High Fivers." I was told it provides some apparent evidence
that the Israeli "movers" were positioned to photograph the buildings
before the first plane hit. ( I haven't looked at it yet, but I see
there is information on the "High Fivers" investigation on the Internet
that does provide such evidence.) Significant parts of the investigation
are still classified and blacked out, which would seem odd for something
that was considered perfectly innocuous."

The two taboo subjects barely touched upon of course was the Holocaust
and 9/11. A lady in the audience did make a reference to: why is 'the
Holocaust' education mandatory teaching in American public schools, to
which Jefftrey Blankfort attempted to respond but Philip Weis took
serious exception to the lady's question. So the matter ended there.

Someone in the audience asked another explosive question, "Why no
scrutiny is allowed on Israel's nuclear arsenal?," to which Alison Weir
responded in three words : "The Israel Lobby."

AIPAC-Move-Over-AIPAC-Time-for-a-new-Middle-East-policy-484-x-440-green-brushed

For those of us wanting a change in US foreign policy, I would encourage
you to please listen to all of the inspiring speakers very carefully and
make a note and act upon their specific recommendations, it is worth
your time, starting with the Honorable Mr. Paul Findley's brilliant
recommendation of the 'Executive Order' and the petition to President
Obama, Alison Weir's recommendation -- stopping all aid to Israel. The
two editors from The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs provide
useful information on 'The Israel lobby network and coordinated PACs
that finance U.S. elections and U.S. aid to Israel in numbers'. Cynthia
McKinney's -- Must know who's who in the zoo, Grant F Smith's extensive
espionage research concluded there is no US law that stands in the way
of Israel and its US Lobbies, Justin Raimondo, James J. David, Dr.
Stephen Sniegoski -- the neoconservative wars, Philip Giraldi, Ray
McGovern -- Is Israel an ally ?, Allen Brownfeld provides interesting
insights into the ACJ and battles over Zionism inside Jewish social
welfare organizations, Scott McConnell, Mark Perry -- Mossad poses as
CIA? No-holds-barred national security reporting in the current
environment, Jeffrey Blankfort -- Are there Israel lobby gatekeepers and
damage control squads on the Left?, and Stephan Walt, co-author of (that
book that opened eyes wide) The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,
emphasizes "Israel is increasingly a liability."

CNI-Billboards

Ernest Gallo president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association speaks
about "What really happened? What did not?" during the attack by Israeli
aircraft and torpedo boats on the American intelligence ship USS
Liberty, that killed 34 of his comrades and wounded many.

Gareth Porter provides valuable information about the manufactured "Iran
Crisis" as documented in his new book. Geoffrey Wawro speaks on Key
findings from the book "Quicksand" and what happens to historians who
revise history and Paul Pillar a pleasant surprise, and a notably clear,
precise and concise speaker expounded on- Are threats to Israel's
security inflated to justify occupation and U.S. support?.

It literally felt like racing through a 250 page book in a day on the
devastating US-Israel so-called "special relations," you can see the
shock, distress and grief on some of the faces in the audience.

Justin Raimondo and Phil Weiss concluded respectively: "Let us hope this
successful event is going to be a milestone" and "Will we finally see
the high noon to the Israel Lobby?" and if I may add justice to
Palestinians?

Readers are requested to do your part to kindly assist this important
movement grow from strength to strength by helping these conscientious,
courageous and tireless advocates for peace, justice and a better world,
by simply disseminating the link to the National Summit using social
media, and uploading the fascinating speeches to you tube for further
dissemination.

  For more information visit the websites of the sponsors: the Council
for the National Interest, The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern
Policies, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and If Americans
Knew.

(2) Jeffrey Blankfort's address to the National Summit: Gatekeepers on
the Left

http://natsummit.org/transcripts/jeffrey_blankfort.htm

  NATIONAL SUMMIT TO REASSESS THE U.S. - ISRAEL "SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP"

Washington, DC - March 7, 2014 8AM-5PM at the National Press Club

Are there Israel lobby gatekeepers and damage control squads on the
Left? (Video YouTube, Audio MP3)

by Jeffrey Blankfort

Blankfort is a journalist and radio programmer. His articles have
appeared in CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Mondoweiss, Pulse Media, Left
Curve, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and the Encyclopedia
of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. He currently hosts a twice monthly
program on international affairs for KZYX, the public radio station for
Mendocino County in Northern California where he now lives.
Blankfort was a founding member of the November 29th Committee on
Palestine, a co-founder of the Labor Committee on the Middle East and
editor of its publication, The Middle East Labor Bulletin (1988-1995).

Thank you very much. The question I've been asked to address today is,
"Are there Israeli lobby gatekeepers and damage control squads on the
left?" Speaking from 40 years' experience, the answer is clearly "yes."

Some years ago, historian and veteran left activist Lenni Brenner, who
wrote extensively about Zionist and Nazi collaboration, a taboo subject
for Phil over there, described the left as the rear guard of Israel
lobby. He was referring not just to the unwillingness of the left in the
anti-war movement to challenge or even speak about the lobby but to the
efforts of the leading factions, all of whom claimed to be anti-Zionists
to isolate the Palestinian struggle from protests against South African
apartheid and U.S. intervention in Central America in the '80s while
Israel was occupying Lebanon and during the first Fatah and not to talk
about the role of Israel in Central America and supporting South African
apartheid. Thirty years later, nothing has changed. The same factions
are still in control.

With Washington also being an Israel occupied territory, they have every
base covered. Little wonder why the Palestine solidarity movement has
not had the slightest impact on U.S. policy in all the years it's been
in existence.

Stephen Green, who examined State Department archives dealing with
Israel and U.S. relationship for his book on the subject Taking Sides:
America's Secret Relations with Militant Israel, concluded that after
Eisenhower,

"Israel and friends of Israel in America have determined the broad
outlines of U.S. policy in the region. It has been left to American
presidents to implement that policy with varying degrees of enthusiasm
and to deal with the tactical issues."

There's a corollary to Green's conclusion. Within the left, in general,
and with the organized opposition to Israel's crimes against the
Palestinians and Lebanese people, there are similar limits. The
parameters in which Israel and its friends in America may be
legitimately criticized without the critic being stigmatized by being
called an anti-Semite have been adapted for misinformation concerning
Israel - U.S. relations that has advanced over the years, largely by
Professor Noam Chomsky, an admitted Zionist, and echoed by, largely and
most prominently, Institute for Policy Studies' Phyllis Bennis.

To a large degree, these parameters have been accepted without question
by the left by mainstream religion institutions and, sad to say, by many
Palestinians and Arab-Americans. They have been spread and enforced by
an influential handful of Jewish activists, most notably Bennis, who
appears to play an important role behind the scenes with Jewish Voice
for Peace and U.S. Committee to End the Occupation, [U.S. Campaign to
End the Israeli Occupation] the two most prominent and well-financed
groups dealing with Israel - Palestine conflict on the opposition.

In the media, where Jewish domination of this issue is observable--as
the late Alexander Cockburn once said--Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman has
been of incomparable value as a gatekeeper for AIPAC and the American
Jewish establishment, about which I'll say more in a moment. Given the
time limits, I'll focus on two of the most important of what might be
called the "Chomsky parameters."

The first is his insistence that Israel is backed by the U.S. because it
is a strategic asset, America's cop on the beat in the Middle East he
has written. And it will not undertake any major action without the
approval of the White House. This is simply wrong. It's also the U.S.,
according to Chomsky, that has led Israel in rejecting an agreement with
the Palestinians, implying that Washington's opposition to Israeli
settlements is a ruse, another falsehood. His distortion of the facts on
the ground became enshrined in stone for the solidarity movement in 1983
with a publication of his book The Fateful Triangle: the United States,
Israel and the Palestinians.

[That] an Israeli soldier has yet to shed a drop of blood on America's
behalf and that Bush's father, the Bushes, father and son, paid off
Israel to stay out of both Gulf Wars hasn't dissuaded Chomsky or his
followers from adhering to that position. The result of this, from a
political standpoint, has been that the left has allowed members of
Congress who publically support Israel, particularly democrats, to go
unchallenged if they are considered good on other issues.

In The Fateful Triangle, Chomsky didn't spare words describing
atrocities committed by Israel during the 1982 war in Lebanon. But in a
clever bait-and-switch, he placed the ultimate blame for those crimes
not on Israel but on the U.S. for providing the weapons to commit those
crimes. The weaponry was provided, according to Congress [Chomsky], not
because of pressure on Israel by AIPAC but because the Reagan
administration approved the invasion. What's telling is there's no
mention of AIPAC in his entire book.

A possible reason for Chomsky placing the blame for Israel's crimes at
the foot of Washington and the willingness of Israel's critics inside
and outside of the Jewish community to accept it is that the alternative
is something that few of them, at least publically, will acknowledge:
that those responsible for the plight of the Palestinians were the
Zionist Jews and their supporters around the world who, backed by no
empirical power, carried out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948
and the capture of the West Bank and Gaza again in 1967.

To fit that war within his analysis, Chomsky described Nasser's defeat
as a "favor" to the United States. He's frequently said that, after
1948, when Israel declared statehood, it was as legitimate as any other
state and should be recognized as such by the Palestinians, implying
that the theft of their country, their being expelled, and the
destruction of 500 Palestinian villages was something they should put
behind them.

Most critics of Israel, Jews and non-Jews, don't want to acknowledge
Jewish culpability for the Nakba because a notion of blaming the Jews
has an ugly historical precedent, and they share the fear of provoking
anti-Semitism. Thus, in the alter of protecting Jewish sensibilities,
the oppression of the Palestinians continues, as does AIPAC's occupation
of Congress.

Downplaying the influence of the Israel lobby in determining U.S. Middle
East policies is the second of Chomsky's parameters and flows from the
first. For him, the lobby is just pushing through an open door. "I don't
write about it, I don't talk about it," he once wrote in explaining why
he wouldn't debate the issue. The invasion of Iraq was a major threat to
Chomsky's positions, particularly the attention given to John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's excellent book The Israel Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy, which attributed the launching of the war to the lobby
and punctured the left mantra that it was a war for oil.

In response to that book, the first on the subject released by a major
publisher in more than two decades on the subject, The Rear Guard,
rallied its forces, essentially linking arms with Alan Dershowitz to
dispute Mearsheimer and Walt's thesis and sully their reputations.

First on the attack, ironically, was Palestinian professor Joseph
Massad, who had been targeted by a lobby group while teaching at
Columbia. His experience had apparently taught him how to behave, and
now the lobby leaves him alone.

Excessively long attacks on the book followed, one by longtime AIPAC
apologist and Chomsky favorite Professor Stephen Zunes and another by
Jewish Voice for Peace's Mitch Plitnick. Amy Goodman's response,
however, took the prize for damage control because, as an untouchable
icon of the left with an ever-widening listening and viewing audience,
what she does and doesn't say about it of singular importance. Rather
than invite either Mearsheimer or Professor Walt to be a guest on her
program to discuss the book, she brought in Chomsky, who obviously
hadn't read it. It was no surprise he dismissed it. Mission accomplished
for both of them.

The exclusion of Mearsheimer and Walt on Goodman's show, which, on these
issues, should be renamed "Damage Control Now", is, of course, an
experience shared by most, if not all, of today's speakers. Telling your
viewers and listeners the truth about Israel - U.S. relations, the Iraq
War, and the build up to a war in Iran is clearly not on the Goodman
agenda. Bringing in Chomsky to throw cold water on the Mearsheimer/Walt
book was in keeping with the tradition of ignoring AIPAC. She never
reports on the almost unanimous votes on sanctions legislation against
Israel's enemies that AIPAC drafts for Congress, nor on its annual
policy conferences here in Washington, which are not insignificant events.

Even the public confrontation between Obama and AIPAC over new sanctions
has rated only a single headline on which she now intones everyday as
the war and peace report. What Goodman also shares with Chomsky and
Bennis and other of her frequent guests is their silence concerning the
network of pro-Israel think tanks that dominate the Washington Beltway.

We had to learn about the Project for the New American Century from the
Scottish Morning Herald years after PNAC initiated and made up of
prominently Jewish neocons began promoting regime change in Iraq. Today,
we hear nary a word or its successors the Foreign Policy Initiative and
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which sprang into existence
the day after 9/11, both of which also are dominated by Jewish neocons,
some the very same ones.

When on a panel here in 2011, during AIPAC's policy conference, I asked
an audience of over 100 people who had attended an ostensibly anti-AIPAC
event an hour earlier if they had heard of either one of these
organizations. Only one hand went up. How many here have heard of the
Foreign Policy Initiative? Not many. How about Foundation for Defense of
Democracies? Not many. You should wonder why not.

Then there's the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, or WINEP,
whose resident experts are quoted on a daily basis by The New York Times
and other national media on Middle East issues and routinely testify
before Congress on issues affecting Israel. Who, aside from the present
company, knows that it was created by AIPAC in 1985 to do exactly what
it is doing now? That is, founding director Martin Indyk and one of his
leading spokespersons, David Makovsky, were appointed by John Kerry to
bridge the differences between Israelis and Palestinians during the
phony peace talks that are now going on. That should be news, no? No.
Not at least for the mainstream media, nor for Chomsky, Bennis, or
Goodman, nor for their followers, nor for the left, nor for the
Palestinians who they have managed to fool.

In his biography, Colin Powell blamed the war on Iraq on "the JINSA
crowd," the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. How many
readers of this book have ever heard of it? How many people outside of
this room that has been around since 1976 and a Dick Cheney, Richard
Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Paul Wolfowitz, and former CIA chief James
Woolsey have been among its members should be news, no? No. Not for our
damage control trio and those who worship them uncritically.

One may argue that they know their audience and only say what their
audience wants to hear. The role of the gatekeepers is to keep it that
way. In 1991, speaking at Berkeley, Chomsky was asked by an
Iraqi-American in the audience about the role of the Israel lobby in
pushing George Bush, Sr., to attack in Iraq in 1991. To the loud
applause of his fans in the audience, Chomsky said the lobby played no
role. It wasn't true, but it was what they wanted to hear.

Chomsky's Fateful Triangle was a polemic designed to prove that
supporting Israel has been high on the agenda of every U.S. president
that followed Eisenhower. When it hasn't, he simply ignores it. That's
why there's no mention of Kennedy in his book. Kennedy strongly opposed
Israel developing nuclear weapon and was the last president to do so.

He also supported the Palestinian right of return and wanted implemented
to some degree. At the time of his murder, his Justice Department, under
brother Bobby, was engaged in a serious effort to get the American
Zionist Council, a creation of Israel's Jewish Agency, to register a
foreign agent, and it became AIPAC.

All these positions were red lines, as far as Israel was concerned. Why
didn't Chomsky mention them in his book or mention them since? Why also
didn't he mention Gerald Ford's delaying a major weapons shipment to
Israel in 1975 for six months when he [Israel] refused to disengage from
Sinai land captured in the '73 war and Ford's concurrent threat to call
on Israel to return to the '67 borders, which AIPAC was able to stymie.

Later, he'd tell his readers that George Bush, Sr., who went on national
TV to block Israel's request for $10 billion of loan guarantees and who,
when vice president, wanted to sanction Israel both after bombing the
Iraq Osirak reactor and after invading Lebanon, that he was ardently
pro-Israel. Chomsky said he was pro-Israel, and the Israelis would find
that very ironic. As a matter of fact, Moshe Arons wrote a whole book
about attacking George Bush Sr.

I believe these historical errors and omissions on Chomsky's part are
not accidental, anymore than those of Goodman or Bennis. We have to
answer them with the truth, and this conference is a way to begin.

Thank you very much.

(3) Philip Weiss at the Summit: Journalists are starting to cover the
Israel lobby

http://natsummit.org/transcripts/philip_weiss.htm

What is changing in "permissible" mainstream public debate--and what is
not? (Video YouTube, Audio MP3)

by Philip Weiss

Weiss is an American journalist who co-edits Mondoweiss, a news website
devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly
from a progressive Jewish perspective.
Weiss has written for the New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine,
Esquire, and the New York Observer. In 2006 he began writing a daily
blog called Mondoweiss on The New York Observer website. In the spring
of 2007 he started Mondoweiss as an independent blog because of 9/11,
Iraq, Gaza, the Nakba, the struggling people of Israel and Palestine,
with the aim of building a diverse community, with posts from many authors.
He co-edited The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark
Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (2011) with Adam Horowitz and Lizzy
Ratner.

Thanks for having me today. I'm a progressive blogger, so I'm going to
be a little more superficial than some of the earlier comments you've
heard, a little less scholarly. And I'm also going to tell a progress
narrative because I believe in progress.

I can remember that day eight years ago when Scott sent me, Scott
McConnell sent me "The Israel Lobby" over the internet. It had just been
published in the London Review of Books, Steve Walt and John
Mearsheimer's paper. And I was just completely stunned that such truths
would be expressed, and I remember running around the house saying it's
high noon for the Israel lobby. You know, I even had my six-guns out.

And since I'm going to talk about where the media are on Israel, I have
to look back at that moment and say that I was really wrong. I thought
that the scales were going to fall from Americans' eyes. I thought that
the doors were open, the gates were open. I didn't anticipate the
enormous resistance there would be to these ideas. Myself, I hadn't even
been to Palestine or Israel, so I didn't understand how much censorship
was going on. And so, instead, I realized that, it was probably around 3
in the morning for the Israel lobby, but there was sort of a hint of,
the dark before the dawn was sort of coming to an end.

So as someone who monitors the media pretty closely on these issues, I
want to relate to you, first, to convey how much the Israel lobby is
still entrenched. And when I say Israel lobby here, I mean sort of just
a strong partisanship for Israel is still entrenched in the mainstream
media.

I want to just relate one day, a week ago actually, three different news
accounts that came across my screen that I blogged about. One was that
Wolf Blitzer had Michael Oren on CNN and presented Oren as, you know,
our new CNN analyst. And Michael Oren is a former ambassador for Israel,
and he moved to Israel from, I think, upstate New York and a true
believer. I mean, a Zionist zealot really. And here he is presented as
an analyst on CNN by Wolf Blitzer, who I think is someone who's waking
up on the issue but used to work at AIPAC or for a journal that was
associated with AIPAC as a young man.

And Oren was saying, I should emphasize what Oren was saying. He was
saying that Palestinians must not go, if the two-state peace process
fails, Palestinians must not go to international forums, they must not
exercise that. So he was saying these people have no rights in
international fora, they should not take any of their powers, and he's
saying this to Wolf Blitzer without contradiction. And this is presented
as analysis of the two-state solution or the peace process.

The same day, I was sent two links to Hadassah Magazine, which I hadn't
really read until that day, I have to say. I think I have to get a
subscription. In one of them, Ari Shavit, an Israeli writer who recently
had a triumphant book tour to the United States. He was just sort of
celebrated everywhere. He was celebrated on Charlie Rose. He was on
Fresh Air. He was, the 92nd Street Y. I think his book was excerpted in
The New Yorker, and he got these, I think it was on the front page of
The New York Times book review, too.

But Shavit is just a unreconstructed, I mean he's a reconstructed
Zionist. He acknowledges the Nakba. He acknowledges that Palestinians
were dispossessed, but it's all a miraculous narrative. He uses the word
"miracle" to describe Israel. Israel is a miracle in Shavit's rendition.

And he said that, he was talking to Hadassah Magazine about this
incredible, it was just a joyful month for him here. And he said that
this came about because of, in part, because of four menschen. He was
using the Hebrew or Yiddish word for man, plural menschen. Four
menschen: David Remnick, Leon Wieseltier, Tom Friedman, and Jeffrey
Goldberg.

So he was referring to these kind of very powerful journalists who had
played such a role in embracing him and celebrating him. And it was a
frank description of the degree to which people who have a very positive
view of Zionism and of Israel, and, in Wieseltier and Jeffrey Goldberg's
case, are really right wing Zionists, the degree to which they play a
central role still in our media.

The other piece in Hadassah Magazine was one in which they interviewed
Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times, and she talked all about her Jewish
background. And she said that she had gone to Israel first with the
United Synagogue Youth as a girl and that she has come to this issue
with great knowledge of the American Jewish experience and the Israel,
the Jewish Israeli side of the conflict, which is really, I mean, it's a
tragic kind of admission, from my standpoint, especially as it's borne
out by her coverage, because this is not someone who has extended
herself to the other narrative. She knows this narrative. She's saying
this is the narrative I came with and, as it turns out, if you look at
her coverage, she has not really extended herself. She's really operated
inside this comfort zone in what I call a sort of culturally-bound fashion.

And she was sort of, the tragedy, from my standpoint, is that The New
York Times would send someone over to this area who has this background
who just un-interrogated. Everyone has a background, but, in her case,
it seems so un-interrogated.

Now, this is all-familiar terrain to you. And I should just emphasize
that Rudoren, lately, in describing the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions movement, characterized it and said, you know, many are
comparing it in Israel to the Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses. So she
was using this highly-inflammatory language to describe this very
powerful movement for Palestinian rights, which I thought was biased.

All of you are familiar with this terrain or you would not be here, I
think. So I don't need to go over and over it. The thing that I want to,
I now want to move to is the kind of more positive developments that
we're seeing, even within this -- and I'm focused here on the elites,
the mainstream elites, because I think they're significant in the end.

I mean, there are many people from the grassroots here. There are many
people from the Washington establishment, sort of a more marginalized
Washington establishment. I'm more from the grassroots now, and all
these are powerful elements but they're not the sort of mainstream
establishment elite. So three positive statements that indicate the sort
of changes that we're beginning to witness. Tom Friedman said in a
column, he described the Congress as being bought and paid for by the
Israel lobby. He said this last year or so. And to make that type of
assertion, you know, ten years ago, eight years ago, you were just
branded as anti-Semitic. Now, of course, he has J-positive blood, so he
gets a break. But, no, he is making an assertion that was just beyond
the pale, I think, a few years ago.

And he's doing it because he's honest. There is an honest component to
Tom Friedman, and he knows what's going on. He also made, he was
speaking at Oxford last year and he said that when someone was
interlocked or, I think, a scholar at Oxford was asking why does the
Israel lobby have such power, and he referred to George Bush's loss in
1992 when Bill Clinton ran to his right on settlements. And he said that
his son absorbed the lesson of that. You know, you can't go too far
right on the Israel question and that's what our politicians understand.
He was describing the power of the Israel lobby. It was a very good
statement. He hasn't written that up, unfortunately.

Another thing that I would point to is a review of John Judis' book on
Truman that's coming out in The New York Times that's very -- and John
Judis' book about Truman is all about how Truman was for the separation
of church and state and folded on that because of the power of the
lobby. And this piece in The Times frankly describes the power of the
lobby without any kind of bias. He doesn't share Judis' view, but it's a
fair review.

The question what is happening and why are these changes taking place, I
think the first thing I'd refer to is, of course, the internet, which
has changed everything. It's changed all our lives. I remember ten years
ago I was here covering a congressional hearing for a magazine. When I
was in the mainstream media, I was making a lot of money for this
article. I'd get $10,000 for covering this hearing and doing a piece on
the anti-war movement. And at this hearing, there were three bloggers
there who were making nothing, and I was just confused by this.

And I met Craig Newmark of Craigslist soon after, and I said, "Craig,
there's something wrong with this model. I'm getting $10,000. These
three people are getting zero. The money has got to be averaged out.
There's something wrong." And he said, "There's nothing wrong with the
model," and he said, "These three people are all getting something out
of what they're doing." And I really hadn't thought about -- he said,
"One is being entrepreneurial. One is having freedom. One is supporting
a cause. These people are using the First Amendment and not worrying
about how much money they're going to make off of it."

And the surprise to me is that, in the last ten years, I've switched
sides. I'm one of those three people now. I've broken out of that sort
of elite mind set, and there's been a lot of freedom, and that's
happening with many journalists. And many journalists are beginning to
understand what great stories there are in covering the Israel lobby.

I'm coming down to the end of my time, so I'll leave out the tribal
piece. I was going to get into the whole Jewish piece of this, the
degree to which Jewish life is changing. Allen addressed this. But to
the extent that Jewish life is changing, it has given other people,
because there is an element of deference for many reasons, you know,
including the donors and the voters and the hammerlock. There's
deference to the Jewish community inside the American establishment. And
because that Jewish community is now beginning to fracture openly, that
is giving people permission to talk about it. That's one piece.

The other piece I'd mention, though, is -- and I think that journalists
are also understanding that these are great stories. I think that any
journalist who came here today and listened today will understand what
just amazing stories there are if you look back over the history of the
Israel lobby, from the silencing of Sobran to the USS Liberty attack to,
I think about James Forrestal's death in the 1950s, why he went mad, the
Balfour Declaration.

I mean, there's just this very rich history that John Judis has treated
in his book but that all journalists who love stories, I think we're
going to see more and more of that. And that's when we'll finally see
the high noon for the Israel lobby. Thank you.

(Applause.)

(4) Philip Giraldi speaks on "Is Israel a U.S. Ally?"

http://natsummit.org/transcripts/philip_giraldi.htm

Is Israel a U.S. Ally? (Video YouTube, Audio MP3)

by Philip Giraldi

Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military
intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA). Giraldi is a recognized authority on international security and
counterterrorism issues. He is a regular contributor to Antiwar.com in a
column titled "Smoke and Mirrors" and is a Contributing Editor who
writes a column called "Deep Background" on terrorism, intelligence, and
security issues for The American Conservative magazine. He has written
op-ed pieces for the Hearst Newspaper chain, has appeared on Good
Morning America, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and local affiliates of
ABC television. He has been a keynote speaker at the Petroleum Industry
Security Council annual meeting, has spoken twice at the American
Conservative Union's annual CPAC convention in Washington, and has
addressed several World Affairs Council affiliates. He has been
interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British
Broadcasting Corporation, Britain's Independent Television Network, FOX
News, Polish National Television, Croatian National Television,
al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, 60 Minutes, and Court TV. He prepares and edits
a nationally syndicated subscription service newsletter on September
11th issues for corporate clients. Giraldi is the Executive Director of
the Council for the National Interest, a group that advocates for more
even handed policies by the U.S. government in the Middle East.

I would like to go a bit beyond the comments that both of my colleagues
have made and suggest not only that Israel is no ally, but also that it
is not actually a friend, because it does actual damage to the United
States through using its considerable access to Congress and the media
to promote policies that are neither good for the United States nor for
Israel. I'm sure you've all heard the expression that a friend does not
let a friend drive drunk. Well, the United States has been driving drunk
for quite some time, and that dangerous behavior has to some extent been
caused by Israel and its many supporters in Washington.

Israel might or might not have been an actual enabler of the disastrous
American invasion of Iraq but it is undeniably true that the American
officials extremely close to the Israeli government were behind the rush
to war and the forgery of phony intelligence that fed the process. If
the Washington goes to war with Iran in the near future it will not be
because Tehran actually threatens America, it will be because Israel and
its powerful lobby in the U.S. have succeeded in creating an essentially
false casus belli to mandate such action.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who once commented that 9/11 was good
for Israel, has repeatedly sought to commit our government to draw red
lines that would narrow options for the White House and de facto require
it to take action with the military against Iran. Congress is meanwhile
advancing legislation that would commit the United States to intervene
militarily in support of a unilateral Israeli attack, meaning that
Israel could easily be empowered to make the decision on whether or not
the US goes to war.

Nothing relating to Israel is quite like the US interaction with other
countries. Delinda and Janet have outlined the dollar costs and special
financing arrangements that go to support Israel, measures that are not
in place for any other nation. Congress also approved on Wednesday as
part of the United States Israel Strategic Partnership Act by a vote of
410-1 an Israeli exemption from the reciprocity mandated by the
so-called visa waiver program. Israelis will be able to travel freely to
the United States while their government will be allowed to refuse entry
to American citizens. This is a privilege that is granted to no other
country. One congressman has recently even introduced a bill to cut off
federal funding for any academic organization that engages in boycotting
Israel. Boycotting other countries is okay.

Israel interferes in American elections, most recently on behalf of Mitt
Romney, it has corrupted our congress, its head of government publicly
rebukes our own head of state, [its] government ministers insult and
ridicule John Kerry, and its intelligence officers actually provide
alarmist and inaccurate private briefings for American Senators on
Capitol Hill. I also would not doubt, accustomed to behaving with
impunity toward its alleged friend and patron in Washington, might
manufacture a pretext to draw the U.S. into a new conflict. Something
reminiscent of the Lavon Affair in Alexandria Egypt in 1954 or the false
flag attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. Israel currently strongly
supports using force to intervene in Syria, a proposition that is
opposed overwhelmingly by the American public. In short, Israel has no
reluctance to use its enormous political and media clout in the US to
pressure successive administrations to conform to its own foreign and
security policy views.

One other very good reason why Israel should not receive billions of
dollars in military assistance annually is its persistent espionage
against the United States. Grant Smith has described how friends of
Israel stole enriched uranium from a Pennsylvania refinery to create a
nuclear arsenal. More recently we have learned how Arnon Milchan, a
Hollywood producer born in Israel, arranged for the illegal purchase of
800 nuclear triggers. Milchan picked an Oscar last Sunday without any
interference from the FBI.

The existence of a large scale Israeli spying effort at the time of 9/11
has been widely reported, incorporating Israeli companies in New Jersey
and Florida as well as hundreds of "art students" nationwide. Five
Israelis from one of the companies were observed celebrating against the
backdrop of the twin towers going down.

While it is often observed that everyone spies on everyone else,
particularly true when one is referring to our own NSA, espionage is a
high-risk business that most countries are extremely careful when spying
on friends for fear of blowback. Israel, which relies on Washington for
billions of dollars in aid and also for political cover in international
fora like the United Nations, does not spy discreetly, largely because
it knows that few in Washington will seek to hold it to account. There
were, for example, no consequences for the Israelis when Israeli Mossad
intelligence officers using [US] passports and pretending to be
Americans recruited terrorists to carry out attacks inside Iran, as
noted by Mark Perry this morning. Israelis using US passports in that
fashion put every American traveler at risk.

Israel, where government and business work hand in hand, has obtained
significant advantage by systematically stealing American technology
with both military and civilian applications. The US developed
technology is then reverse engineered and used by the Israelis to
support their own exports. Sometimes, when the technology is military in
nature and winds up in the hands of an adversary, the consequences can
be serious. Israel has sold advanced weapons systems to China that are
believed to incorporate technology developed by American companies,
including the Python-3 air-to-air missile and the Delilah cruise
missile. There is evidence that Israel has also stolen Patriot missile
avionics to incorporate into its own Arrow system and that it used US
technology obtained in its Lavi fighter development program, which was
funded by the US taxpayers to help the Chinese develop their own J-10
[fighter].

The reality of Israeli spying is indisputable. I might cite the names of
Jonathan Pollard, Ben-Ami Kadish, Stuart Nozette and Larry Franklin as
spies for Israel who have been caught, but they are only the tip of the
iceberg. Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report
called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage." The 2005
report states "Israel has an active program to gather proprietary
information within the United States. These collection activities are
primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and
advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel's sizable
armaments industry." It adds that Israel recruits spies, uses electronic
methods, and carries out computer intrusion to gain the information.

A 1996 Defense Investigative Service report noted that Israel has great
success stealing technology by exploiting the numerous co-production
projects that it has with the Pentagon. It says "Placing Israeli
nationals in key industries ...is a technique utilized with great
success." A General Accounting Office (GAO) examination of espionage
directed against American defense and security industries described how
Israeli citizens residing in the US had stolen sensitive technology to
manufacture artillery gun tubes, obtained classified plans for
reconnaissance systems, and passed sensitive aerospace designs to
unauthorized users.

The GAO has concluded that Israel "conducts the most aggressive
espionage operation against the United States of any US ally." In June
2006, a Pentagon administrative judge overruled an appeal by an Israeli
who had been denied a security clearance--if you can imagine that, an
Israeli with a security clearance at the Pentagon, but any way, they
overruled it what he appealed it --and said "The Israeli government is
actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United
States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to
proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage."
More recently, FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported
how many cases of Israeli espionage are dropped under orders from the
Justice Department. He provides a "conservative estimate" of 125 viable
investigations into Israeli espionage involving both American citizens
and Israelis that were stopped due to political pressure.

So the answer to the question of "is Israel an ally of the United
States" is most definitely no. Is it even a friend? Well, I suppose
there are all kinds of friends in the world, but if you judge Israel by
its record on how it interacts with the American government and people I
think the answer would also have to be no.

(5) Stephen Walt reassesses the "special relationship"

http://natsummit.org/transcripts/stephen_walt.htm

The "special relationship" and what has changed since publication of The
Israel Lobby book (Video YouTube, MP3 Audio)

by Stephen Walt

Walt is professor of International Affairs at Harvard University;
previously taught at Princeton University, University of Chicago;
consultant for the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval
Analyses, and the National Defense University. He presently serves on
the editorial boards of Foreign Policy, Security Studies, International
Relations, and Journal of Cold War Studies.
Walt also serves as Co-Editor of the Cornell Studies in Security
Affairs. Author of The Origins of Alliances, which received the 1988
Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award and, with co-author John
J. Mearsheimer of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

It's a pleasure to be here today, and I want to thank all of you for
coming to this important and timely gathering. I'm going to talk
primarily about how things have changed since 2006. In 2006, almost
eight years ago, John Mearsheimer and I published an article in the
London Review of Books entitled "The Israel Lobby."

By that summer, it had been downloaded about 300,000 times, had
generated a firestorm of criticism, including some intense personal
attacks on John and myself. And although most of the criticisms were
without foundation and the personal smears were predictable, by
mid-summer, the tide actually had begun to turn a bit. The Journal of
Foreign Policy organized a symposium on the article, and, by fall, we
had a book contract.

We wrote the article and we wrote the subsequent book because the Israel
lobby was a taboo subject that many people knew about but hardly anybody
talked about openly, and we wanted to challenge that taboo and open up a
broader discussion.

So, again, I want to take the opportunity today to look back and reflect
on what's changed since 2006. And to do that, first I'm going to
summarize briefly what we said in the book and also what we didn't say.
Second, I want to consider what's changed since 2006 but also what
hasn't changed. And, lastly, I want to offer some recommendations based
on our experience, at this point what course of action would I prescribe
going forward.

So what we said. Our core arguments were actually very straightforward
and not especially surprising. First, we argued there was a special
relationship between the United States and Israel that was unlike any
other bilateral relationship in American history. We gave it enormous
economic, military, and diplomatic support and did so almost
unconditionally. Moreover, Israel was largely immune from criticism by
American politicians. In fact, American politicians routinely expressed
a level of devotion they would never utter toward any other foreign country.

Second, we argued you couldn't explain this on either strategic or moral
grounds. Israel might have been a strategic asset during the Cold War,
but the Cold War was over and it was increasingly a liability. The moral
case was undermined by Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and
especially by the occupation. Yet, the special relationship kept getting
deeper and deeper, and the question was why?

Third, the answer was the political influence of the lobby. We defined
the lobby as a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that
actively worked to promote that special relationship. And those groups
didn't agree on every issue, but all of them worked to convince American
politicians to support Israel no matter what.

We emphasized that these activities were, in most respects, no different
than other interest groups, like the NRA, the financial industry, the
farm lobby, other ethnic lobbies. They just happened to be particularly
good at it. And we showed in considerable detail how groups in the lobby
worked within the political system to get sympathetic people elected or
appointed to key positions, to keep those who might have different views
out of power, and to pressure politicians to embrace their policy
preferences.

We also documented how individuals and groups in the lobby tried to
control discourse on this subject by writing books and articles
themselves, by funding think tanks like the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, by putting pressure on other media organizations
whenever they published or broadcast things that were critical of Israel
or critical of the lobby. Some members of the lobby also tried to smear
opponents, usually by accusing them of being anti-Semitic, even when
this was completely false.

Fifth, we argued that the special relationship and the other policies
pushed by the lobby were not in the American national interest or, for
that matter, in Israel's interest either. The lobby's influence made it
impossible for the United States to be an honest broker, which is why
American efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had failed
and the settlements had grown steadily for more than 40 years. The lobby
and especially the neo-conservatives within it played a key role in
convincing the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003. And the lobby
had also worked to thwart any possible detente with Iran, a policy, by
the way, that had failed to halt Iran's nuclear program and it increased
the risk of war.

And so we argued the United States should have a normal relationship
with Israel, not a special relationship. We said the United States
should come to Israel's aid if its survival were at risk, but we should
also use American leverage to get a two-state solution. And, in fact, in
the conclusion, we even suggested that a powerful pro-Israel lobby would
be a good thing if it was supporting smarter policies that were in
America's and Israel's interests.

Now, we weren't saying anything that other writers hadn't said before,
people such as Paul Findley, Edward Tivnan, George Ball, Michael
Massing. What we wrote was also common knowledge inside the Beltway.
Bill Clinton had said that AIPAC was "better than anyone else lobbying
in this town." Politicians as diverse as Lee Hamilton, Fritz Hollings,
Barry Goldwater, Newt Gingrich, and Richard Gephardt had written or
spoken about AIPAC's power in the past. Even passionate defenders of
Israel, like Jeffrey Goldberg and Alan Dershowitz, had written proudly
about the lobby's clout.

Yet, we provoked an extreme reaction, partly because we provided more
detail about the lobby's influence, partly because we were both rather
middle-of-the-road boring figures from well-known universities, partly
because we weren't left wing, we weren't Muslim, we weren't Arab, we
weren't married to Palestinians, and partly because it was obvious in
the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War that something had gone badly awry in
U.S. Middle East policy.

Now, let me turn now to what we didn't say. The rather hysterical
reaction to our work confirmed one of our main points: it was very
difficult to have a calm, reasoned, fact-based discussion on this topic.
Because most of our critics could not find fault with our logic or fault
with our evidence, they accused us of saying many things we hadn't said
and, in most cases, things that were the exact opposite of what we had
actually written.

Now, I'm not going to bore you with all the false accusations. But just
for the record, here's what we didn't say: we didn't say that the Israel
lobby was a cabal or a conspiracy, part of some deep plot to control the
world. In fact, we said over and over it was nothing of the sort, it was
an interest group like so many others here.

We did not question Israel's legitimacy or right to exist. On the
contrary, we explicitly defended it. Third, we didn't blame Israel for
all the problems that trouble the Middle East, and we didn't say that a
normal relationship with Israel and a two-state solution would
immediately solve all of them. We said it would help, but it wasn't a
magic bullet or anything like that. We did not say the lobby controlled
every aspect of U.S. Middle East policy or argue that it was the only
reason the United States invaded Iraq or has a bad relationship with
Iran. We didn't accuse members of the lobby of disloyalty, and we
neither argued, nor hinted, that something should be done to limit the
lobby's political power or marginalize its supporters.

Finally, we did not connect Israel or the lobby to the 9/11 attacks
themselves. We didn't say any of these things because we didn't think
they were true, and that's important. We were accused of saying all
those things, of course, and people in the lobby made repeated and
sometimes successful efforts to silence us. Virtually every place we
were invited to speak told us that they had been pressured to cancel our
appearances, and a number of places, the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, Google Headquarters, the City University of New York succumbed
to this pressure.

But the campaign to silence us failed. The book sold well. It's been
translated into over 20 languages, and John and I have remained active
participants in the debate on this and other foreign policy issues.

The real question is what impact did any of this have? What's changed
and what hasn't?

I think the most dramatic and obvious change since 2006 has been an
opening up of discourse on this general topic. Discussions of Middle
East policy and U.S. - Israeli relations are more open. A wider range of
views is now being expressed. Let me just give you some of the evidence
behind this claim.

Media figures, such as Tom Friedman, Nick Kristof, Roger Cohen, and
Andrew Sullivan now write openly and, at times, very critically about
Israeli policy, about American support for that policy, and the lobby's
role in promoting it. Even Jeff Goldberg has written a couple of pieces
that sound a bit like us, although I doubt he'd admit it.

Articles about American Middle East policy more generally increasingly
mention AIPAC's influence. It's just no longer a big secret or stuck in
the background of the piece. Jon Stewart, if you watch Comedy Central at
all, Jon Stewart has done a number of segments making fun of AIPAC, as
well. Books like Peter Beinart's Crisis of Zionism, Dan Fleshler's
Transforming America's Israel Lobby, John Judis' recent Genesis have
followed in our footsteps, documented the role the lobby plays in
driving U.S. policy.

Other people, like MJ Rosenberg, have emerged as articulate and
knowledgeable critics. Writers, like Max Blumenthal, have published
critical accounts of anti-democratic trends in Israel itself. Websites,
like Mondoweiss, MuzzleWatch, Electronic Intifada, and others now
provide alternative perspectives. And groups, like J Street, Jewish
Voice for Peace, Code Pink, Americans for Peace Now, and many others
have become more visible and effective in presenting an alternative view
to the traditional lobby organizations. Now, note these groups are not
homogeneous. They don't all agree on every single issue. My point is
simply that there is a much wider range of views out there now, and they
are getting noticed.

This development is, of course, not entirely our doing because a number
of events in the real world have made the lobby's power hard to miss:
the complete failure of Barack Obama's push for a two-state solution and
a settlement freeze in his first term; the craven American response to
Operation Cast Lead, including the American trashing of the Goldstone
Report; the spectacle of the 2012 election when the GOP candidates
looked like fools trying to out-pander each other in the GOP primary
season and where Sheldon Adelson spent $100 million trying to buy the
election first for Newt Gingrich and then for Mitt Romney. Because
discourse was more open and people were now aware of the role of the
lobby, more people noticed these things and could put two and two together.

A second development, the accusation of anti-Semitism is losing its
power to intimidate. And let me be very clear about this: like all forms
of bigotry, anti-Semitism is a despicable practice. Every one of us
should condemn it whenever it appears. At the same time, using false
charges of anti-Semitism to stifle debate and destroy people's
reputations is an ugly tactic that has no place in a democracy, and
people who use it in that way should also be called to account. And I
think, fortunately, this tactic has been so overused and used against so
many people who are obviously not anti-Semites that it's no longer able
to stifle reasonable discussion. And that's going to make it easier to
have an honest conversation going forward.

The third change is that some of the policies the lobby has promoted are
increasingly hard to defend. Instead of a weak Israeli David surrounded
by a hostile Arab Goliath, we have a powerful nuclear-armed Israel
maintaining a brutal occupation for more than four decades using its
military power to dominate a Palestinian population denied political rights.

Fourth, AIPAC and other groups in the lobby have lost several important
fights in recent years. They could not convince the Bush administration
to use force against Iran or support an Israeli attack on Iran. They
could not derail the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of
Defense, although some hard-line groups tried to do so in especially
ugly ways. Earlier this year, they could not convince Obama to bomb
Syria. And, more recently, AIPAC could not get the Senate to pass a
resolution threatening greater economic sanctions on Iran because it was
widely recognized this would immediately derail any possibility of a
diplomatic deal.

These episodes remind us that the lobby does not control U.S. Middle
East Policy, does not get every single thing it wants, especially when
what it wants might push the United States closer to war. That's a lot
for any lobby to ask for, and it takes very special circumstances to
pull something like that off. Those events I think also tell us that
AIPAC and company are not invincible.

Now, those setbacks have led a number or observers to conclude that
AIPAC's in deep trouble, that the lobby's influence has been broken. Let
me say why I think that is premature because there are a number of
things that haven't changed.

First of all, the special relationship is still intact. We still give
generous economic and military assistance, even though Israel is a
wealthy country and has clear military superiority over its neighbors.
And we give this aid unconditionally. There's no hint we might reduce
our assistance to get Israel to stop building settlements or to allow
creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Second, that's, of course, why the peace process continues to go
nowhere. Remember, Obama came into office promising a two-state solution
in his first term and called for a settlement freeze in his famous Cairo
speech in June 2009. He's been in steadfast retreat ever since. He
basically gave up on this in the first term and handed the problem over
to John Kerry. But there's little evidence that Kerry's efforts are
going to succeed. The settlements have been expanding all the while.

Notice, by the way, that a two-state solution may well be impossible at
this point. But politicians in the District of Columbia continue to
pretend that it is the only American goal. I'm a two-state person
myself, but I'm also a realist. And at some point, one does have to at
least start acknowledging the possibility that we're not going to get a
two-state solution.

Third, the lobby still gets enormous deference from American
politicians. A few weeks ago, the left wing progressive mayor of New
York City, Bill de Blasio, was recorded telling an AIPAC group that
defending Israel was part of his job description as mayor of New York.
If you were paying attention, earlier this week a number of prominent
American politicians, including Secretary of State Kerry, Nancy Pelosi,
and John McCain all gave the usual flowery speeches at the AIPAC policy
conference. And even today, there's really no other lobbying group that
gets this kind of deference and attention here in Washington.

Fourth, although discourse is more open now, it is still, I think,
extremely risky for young, ambitious foreign policy wannabes to question
key elements of U.S. Middle East policy and especially the "special
relationship." You can if you have tenure at a university, if you don't
have your heart set on working in the U.S. government, or if you're
retired. But it's hard to find people inside the foreign policy
establishment who are willing to say what they think on this issue out
loud. Just look at how Chuck Hagel and Samantha Power had to contort
themselves during their confirmation hearings, and you see the lobby's
continued influence.

And please don't forget that we're still a long way from a deal with
Iran or a two-state solution. And the lobby will be working 24/7 to make
sure that the United States doesn't do anything Israel doesn't want. In
short, reports of the lobby's demise have been greatly exaggerated. And
given that fact, what do I think we ought to do about it? I'll just give
you, I think, four basic lessons here.

Lesson number one: it's just politics, stupid. The first lesson I would
emphasize is this is all about politics. The Israel lobby is powerful
because it has all the features that make an interest group powerful,
and it uses all the tools available in a democracy: direct lobbying,
financial contributions, grassroots organizing, pressure on the media,
etcetera. There is nothing magical, nothing conspiratorial about this.

They're also influential because they haven't faced strong and
well-organized opposition. And if they are facing greater headwinds
today, say on Iran, it's because others are starting to play that
political game more effectively.

Lesson number two: it's going to get worse before it gets better. The
lobby's main goal is protecting the special relationship, and that's
going to be harder to do as Israel moves rightward and as it becomes
obvious that there's not going to be a two-state solution. Israel's
control over the West Bank will be recognized more and more as
apartheid. Pressure to give the Palestinians political rights is going
to grow. One person, one vote is easy for Americans to understand. And
if you saw the recent poll by Shibley Telhami, that's what Americans
overwhelmingly favor if they believe a two-state solution is no longer
possible. Then they favor one state democracy.

Getting the United States to back a state that privileges one ethnic or
religious group over others is going to be an increasingly hard sell
over time. And to try to make that sell, groups like AIPAC are going to
have to do even more to try and influence discourse, to try and
discredit critics. But in my estimation, the more strident and
heavy-handed their tactics are the more resentment it will sow and the
more people will be turned off over time.

Lesson number three: be realistic and build a big tent. Reversing
policies that have been in place for decades does not happen overnight,
and you don't do it by writing a single article or a single book. What
one needs is a big tent for people who want a normal relationship with
Israel and a Middle East policy that conforms to a broad conception of
the American national interest. That doesn't mean that everybody in this
room has to agree on everything. The Israel lobby is a loose coalition
united by a couple of shared goals, and we should take a page from their
playbook, while making sure that our ranks are not filled with those who
sow hatred or spread discredited conspiracy theories.

Lastly, if we were to write the book today, how might it be different?
Well, it would have to be a lot longer because a lot of new information
has come to light since 2007. And you could even argue that the entire
Obama administration is a case study of the lobby's continued influence.
So, you know, we'd have to do volume two and it would have to be just as
long as the first edition was. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think
John or I would change our central arguments at all because events since
2006 - 2007 have vindicated almost all of what we wrote.

To repeat, we wrote the book to encourage a more open discussion of
these issues because we thought a more open debate would bring a lot of
additional truths to light and would be better for everybody in the end.
And I think that's precisely what has happened, though, again, we do not
take all the credit for it.

I just want to close by thanking those of you who have worked for many
years, long before we got into this, to counter the lobby's arguments
and hasten the day when the American relationship with Israel is guided
primarily by strategic interests and moral principles and not by
domestic politics. When that day arrives, it's going to be better for us
but also better for Israel and also for its neighbors, as well.

Thank you very much.

(6) Stephen Sniegoski: Neoconservatives and the Iraq war

http://natsummit.org/transcripts/stephen_sniegoski.htm

Neoconservatives and the Iraq war (Video YouTube, Audio MP3)

by Stephen Sniegoski Ph.D. earned his doctorate in American history,
with a focus on American foreign policy, at the University of Maryland.
His focus on the neoconservative involvement in American foreign policy
is the subject of his book The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative
Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel. The
book asserts that although it is generally understood that American
neoconservatives pushed hard for the war in Iraq, the neocons' goal was
not the spread of democracy, but the protection of Israel's interests in
the Middle East. Showing that the neocon movement has always identified
closely with the interests of Israel's Likudnik right wing, the
discussion contends that neocon advice on Iraq was the exact opposite of
conventional United States foreign policy.

I should point out that I only have time to provide a real brief outline
today, but if you would like a pdf copy of my book [The Transparent
Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the
National Interest of Israel]--free--please contact me at my emal
address, hectorpv@comcast.net, up here, Hector, Achille's friend, Paul
,Victor, at Comcast dot net.

The neoconservatives were the driving force for the 2003 war on Iraq.
The neoconservatives have a close relationship with the Israeli Likudnik
Right. And they are essentially a hard line element of the Israel lobby
here in the United States. The neocons had come into existence in the
early 1970s The original neocons were converts from liberalism.

They were heavily Jewish--although there are a sizable number of
gentiles in the group--and they are concerned about Jewish interests.
They believed that a number of aspects of 1970s liberalism had become
dangerous to Jewish interests. One of these was liberalism's de-emphasis
on the threat of the Soviet Union The neoconservatives saw the Soviet
Union as being anti-Semitic and anti-Israel and they took a hardline
anti-Soviet position.

Now, after failing to move the Democratic Party in their direction, the
neocons would switch to supporting the Republicans in 1980 party as
Ronald Reagan ran for presidency. And despite being newcomers, the
neoconservatives were able to get positions--a large number of
positions--in the Reagan administration. And they played a significant
role in pushing Reagan's foreign policy in a hardline foreign
[anti-Soviet] policy direction, and I might say they had support from
traditional conservatives as well. but they did play a significant role.

Now with the demise of Soviet Communism, the neoconservatives' foremost
concern became Israel and the Middle East.. In 2001 as the Bush
administration began, the neoconservatives had already developed their
plan to reconfigure the Middle East--according to them--this would make
the Middle East more peaceful, democratic, and less a threat to the
United States However this plan to reconfigure the Middle East.would
entail the elimination of regimes that were hostile to Israel, beginning
with Iraq, and including Iran, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia.

Now this plan had strong similarities to a geostrategy that prevailed on
the Israeli Right in the 1980s and was best articulated by Likudnik Oded
Yinon in an 1982 article. In that article he maintained that Israel's
enemies were quite fragile and only held together by harsh dictatorial
regimes This--he claimed--would make it relatively easy to bring them
down--since there wasn't any natural support in these countries for
them--and he hed that if these countries were disturbed by war they
would fragment into ethnic and sectarian groups who would war among each
other. Of course this would --by weakening Israel's enemies--this would
of course enhance the security of Israel and Yinon advocated that Israel
launch a war.

In 1996, neocons--Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and David Wurmser would
be part of a small group that presented a variant of this strategy--to
then incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, it is sort
of interesting that Americans are advising Israel, and this
plan--entitled "A Clean Break"--would again have Israel begin this
process of reconfiguring the Middle East by war.

But very soon after this, however, the neocons would have the US as the
war initiator--presumably acting for American interests. However the
neocons acknowledged that their policy would benefit Israel and held
that this was simply because American and Israeli interests were
identical. But the background for many--if not most--of the neocons
shows a close personal identification with the state of Israel. It's
reasonable to say--I think--that the neoconservatives viewed American
foreign policy in the Middle East through the lens of Israeli interest,
as perceived by the Likudniks.

Now, with the onset of the George W. Bush administration in 2001, the
neoconservatives had become a powerful network of think tanks,
organizations, and media outlets. Vice President Dic Cheney, who had a
very close connection to the neoconservatives for a number of years
prior to 2001, played the major role in bringing them in to the George
W. Bush administration.

The neoconservatives, however, didn't get the upper hand in shaping
American Middle East foreign policy until after the 911 terror attacks.
This terrorism enabled the neocon's bogus propaganda and militaristic
agenda to resonate with the American people and with Congress the 9/11
[terror attacks] made the American people fearful, and angry, and the
neocons provided a way of retaliating and of course the neocons did
connect Sadaam Hussein with this terrorism along with emphasizing his
alleged, extremely dangerous WMD.

  President George W. Bush was essentially a convert to the neocon agenda.

Now to achieve their war on Iraq the neocons had to overcome opposition,
of one degree or another, from other parts of the executive branch--the
military, the state department, the CIA and from members of the
traditional foreign policy establishment who put their emphasis on
America maintaining stability in the Middle East in order to facilitate
the flow of oil. Of course the neocon plan would bring about instability.

Now as the trauma of 9/11wore off, this opposition was able to prevent
the neoconservatives from continuing their Middle East war agenda to
bring about regime change in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East in
the same direct manner as they achieved the war on Iraq.

However the neocons have been able to move American foreign policy and
the Middle East to some extent--a significant extent--in the direction
that they sought, even though more indirectly than directly like the war
in Iraq. So now we know there are stringent sanctions and requirements
placed on Iran--put in lieu of war but certainly harming Iran. Syria,
Iran's ally, is in a state of collapse and fragmentation. There's a
regional Shiite-Sunni war spreading from Iraq. So all of Israel's
enemies are fighting among each other. So essentially Israel's enemies
are fragmented and warring among each other just as Yinon had predicted
and--of course--hoped for. So overall, I think one could say, Israel's
geostrategic position has improved, at least from the viewpoint of the
Israeli right, whereas the United States interest--if one would hold the
traditional belief in the need for stability in the region, well, that
has obviously worsened.

Well thank you very much!

(7) Justin Raimondo: Christian Fundamentalists have more clout than AIPAC

http://natsummit.org/transcripts/Justin_Raimondo.htm

Has the Israel Lobby Captured the Right? (Video YouTube, Audio MP3)

by Justin Raimondo

Raimondo is an American author and the editorial director of
Antiwar.com. In addition to his thrice-weekly column for Antiwar.com,
Raimondo is a regular contributor to The American Conservative and
Chronicles magazines. Raimondo's books include Reclaiming the American
Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (Center for
Libertarian Studies, 1993), reissued in 2008 with new introduction by
George W. Carey, by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Into the Bosnian
Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (AFPAC,
1996). Colin Powell and the Power Elite (America First Books, 1996). An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard, (Prometheus Books,
July 2000).

My topic today is Israel and the American Conservative Movement: A
History, and as is the case in so many other ways, the conservative
movement's position on the state of Israel isn't what it used to be.
Just as what we call the Old Right, the pre-[William F.] Buckley right
was anti-interventionist and good on civil liberties, so the
conservatives of the 1940s and 1950s were hostile to Israel, and
sympathetic to the Arabs, believe it or not. A good example of this is
revealed in a letter from the neoconservative guru Leo Strauss to the
editors of National Review magazine. He was objecting to an article in
the November 17, 1956 issue of the magazine that contained the following
sentence:

"Even the Jews, themselves the victims of the most notorious racial
discrimination of modern times, did not hesitate to create the first
racist state in modern history."

Now this is coming from National Review magazine in 1956. So things have
changed. It is unimaginable that such a sentence would ever find its way
into the National Review of Rich Lowry, the current editor, because Mr.
Lowry represents a movement that has been thoroughly co-opted and
corrupted by, first, the cold war, and secondly our endless "war on
terrorism."

The conservative movement of the 1940s and 50s openly challenged the
entire conception of a Jewish state: this argument was made in several
books published by the very first conservative book publisher in America
Henry Regnery, who issued a whole series of books reporting on the
dispossession of the Palestinian people and calling into question the
whole Zionist project. For example, there was Nejla Izzeddin's The Arab
World published in 1943 [1953], and noted by the Kirkus reviewing
service as follows:

  "The writer is also, if perhaps naturally, violently against the
creation of the state of Israel which she feels was prompted more by
international power politics than by humanitarian principles and
represents an American and British threat to the Arab world."

Regnery also put out Freda Utley's Will the Middle East Go West?, which
expressed a viewpoint just as fresh today as it was back in 1957:
"Freedom and justice for Israel," she wrote, "depend on freedom and
justice for the Arabs."

That same year Regnery put out another book, this time a book of
photographs depicting life in a Palestinian refugee camp, entitled They
Are Human Too, as well as a novel about Palestinian refugees. And you
should see this photo book, it looks like Gaza today, I mean nothing has
changed. But it's very interesting that it was put out by a
conservative, explicitly ideologically conservative publisher. And then
there was What Price Israel?, by Alfred M. Lilienthal, who I believe is
the founder of the American Council on Judaism, which made what was back
then the mainstream Jewish argument against the idea of a specifically
Jewish state.

On the other hand, we see the same reversal--now you can see how things
have been reversed--but on the left there was another reversal going on,
albeit in the opposite direction. In the beginning, in 1948, the
American left was very much pro-Israel. Henry Wallace made support for
Israel a major issue in his presidential campaign that year as the
candidate of the leftist Progressive party, which had the fulsome
backing of the American Communist Party.

And the Soviet Union itself was initially sympathetic to the Israelis,
with Andrei Gromyko arguing at the UN in favor of the creation of a
Jewish state in Palestine. And this wasn't just talk, mind you, the
Soviet bloc provided the arms that made the establishment of Israel
possible. Indeed, the Czech Communist government was single-handedly
responsible for arming the Haganah, and the Irgun. Soviet propagandists
even commented approvingly on the Stern Gang when they blew up the King
David Hotel. What's more, 200,000 emigrants from socialist countries in
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union came to Israel to fight the British
in the war for independence. A US arms embargo--by the way--prevented
all but a trickle of aid from reaching the Israelis from America.

Now Harry Truman was not inclined to support Israel, but was persuaded
by the challenge coming from Wallace and the left to recognize its
existence. Yet the Soviets--again-- were the first to recognize Israel
as a specifically Jewish state: in Truman's declaration--if you look at
the original actual text where he crossed things out and put things in,
the word "Palestine" is still used and the phrase "Jewish state" is
crossed out.

So, what happened to change things into their exact opposite?

Well, what happened was the cold war. When the arms embargo favoring the
Arabs was repealed in the United States, the Israelis began to warm
toward the West. Although the Soviets had allowed Jews to emigrate to
Israel, the huge numbers of applicants from the Soviet Union itself made
them a little bit nervous: after all, who would want to leave their
workers paradise? Well. When the Korean war broke out and Israel sided
with the UN, the Soviets dropped their support for Israel, started
selling arms to Egypt and Syria, and initiated a series of appalling
show trials targeting Jews in the Soviet bloc: including the [in]famous
"Doctor's Plot" and the Slansky trials in Czechslovakia

On the right, simultaneously, the big turnaround was also due to the
cold war. It can be seen largely as a tribal reaction to the left's
growing anti-Zionism. It was also due to the incursion of a number of
former leftists who gathered around National Review magazine and later
became known as the neoconservatives. The neocons, as we affectionately
call them, are partisans of Israel who have often been accused -
sometimes unfairly - of putting Israel's interests over and above
American interests. Now the truth is that they see no dividing line: as
long as Israel's interests are served, they believe, so are America's.
This has become an increasingly hard position to defend, however, since
the 9/11 terrorist attacks and subsequent efforts by the United States
government to minimize the influence of Islamist radicals--like Al-Qaeda.

Another factor in the great turnaround of the American right on the
Israel question has been the growth of the evangelical "born again"
movement as a force to be reckoned with in the conservative movement.
Here is where theology impacts politics - as it so often does and isn't
really noticed by the anti-religious media--and this in turn has a
direct effect--and has had a direct effect-- on US foreign policy.

The doctrine of premillennial dispensationalism, bear with me here,
which holds that the coming together of the Jews in Israel marks the
beginning of the end of days, has exerted a powerful attraction to
millions of evangelicals. Dispensationalists--briefly--hold that the
promise made to Abraham and to the Jewish people have been held in
abeyance but will be fulfilled by the so-called "time of tribulation"-
an era that will prefigure the end of history and the return of Christ
to earth. What this means, among other things, is that the borders of
the land supposedly given to Abraham and his descendants - the Jewish
people - will extend from the Nile to the Euphrates--as it says in the
bible. In the dispensationalist theology, Christ will return to a Jewish
kingdom, the epicenter of which will be a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem.

Now according to this theology, the "time of tribulation" is imminent:
the rapture, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the coming of the
Antichrist will all signal the end of days - and the final battle
between good and evil on the plane of Armageddon. Many
dispensationalists explicitly state that this will be a nuclear war -
another Holocaust, in which Israel--and all mankind by the way--will
perish, with only the pure of heart ascending to Heaven.

Now, the single largest - and, arguably most effective - component of
the Israel lobby consists--not of AIPAC--but of a highly organized and
very resourceful Christian dispensationalist element. They have their
own lobbying organizations such as Christian United for Israel (CUFI),
which is run by the Rev. John Hagee who I believe is in Texas and is
very active. They are particularly active in the Republican party and
pose a mighty obstacle to any politician who seeks to restore balance to
American foreign policy in the Middle East.

There is hope, however: there is a resurgence of foreign policy realism
in the GOP and in the conservative movement generally: in response to
the general war weariness we are all feeling. Opposition to US
intervention overseas, embraced as a principled position by the
increasingly influential libertarian wing of the Republican Party, will
tend to distance the GOP from a pro-Israel lobby that is perpetually
trying to draw us into Israel's wars.

For those of us who want to change American foreign policy and steer it
in a less interventionist direction, the road ahead is going to be long,
hard and filled with many obstacles, not the least of which is the
tremendous motivation of the pro-Israel lobby in all its aspects. Yet
the costs of maintaining this "special relationship" have long since
outweighed the gains, and America is slowly but surely waking up to this
fact. Let us hope that this event--a very successful event-- is going to
be a milestone in this awakening. Thank you.

COMMENT (Peter M.): Raimondo is echoing the Chomsky line, that the
Christians (not AIPAC) have the real clout. But Alan Sabrosky says that
the Executive Director of Christians United For Israel is Jewish, a
former AIPAC official - see next item.

(8) Correcting Raimondo: Executive Director of Christians United For
Israel is Jewish, a former AIPAC official

Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2014 07:38:56 -0600
From: Alan Sabrosky <docbrosk@comcast.net>
To: peter@mailstar.net
Subject: Re: Pentagon classifies Evangelical Christians, and Catholics, as
  "domestic hate groups"

You might be interested in knowing that the executive director of CUFI
(Christians United For Israel), AIPAC's Christian counterpart and a
powerful force in the Republican Party, is (or was, when I last looked a
couple of months ago) Jewish and a former AIPAC official. I think this
is him, but it may be a successor with similar  credentials:

http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_executive_board_brog
-Alan

Executive Director, Christians United for Israel

David Brog is the executive director of Christians United for Israel
(CUFI). Before CUFI, Brog worked in the United States Senate for seven
years, rising to be chief of staff to Senator Arlen Specter and staff
director of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has also served as an
executive at America Online and practiced corporate law in Tel Aviv,
Israel and Philadelphia, PA. Brog is the author of Standing with Israel:
Why Christians Support the Jewish State (2006) and In Defense of Faith:
the Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity (2010). In 2007,
the Forward newspaper listed Brog in its "Forward 50" most influential
Jews in America. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard
Law School.

http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_executive_board_brog
-Alan

Executive Director, Christians United for Israel

David Brog is the executive director of Christians United for Israel
(CUFI). Before CUFI, Brog worked in the United States Senate for seven
years, rising to be chief of staff to Senator Arlen Specter and staff
director of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has also served as an
executive at America Online and practiced corporate law in Tel Aviv,
Israel and Philadelphia, PA. Brog is the author of Standing with Israel:
Why Christians Support the Jewish State (2006) and In Defense of Faith:
the Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity (2010). In 2007,
the Forward newspaper listed Brog in its "Forward 50" most influential
Jews in America. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard
Law School.

(9) The Missing Debate on 9/11 and Israel: Alan Sabrosky's shocking
Press TV Interview

Sami Joseph <sajoseph2005@yahoo.com> 14 September 2011 20:22

9/11 AND ISRAEL: ALAN SABROSKY'S SHOCKING PRESS TV INTERVIEW

A 24:12min video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIka141BKjw

Well worth watching.