“That’s right, the country that 95% of Congress would name as America’s greatest ally is actually undermining one of the president’s core foreign policy initiatives.”
“There is no cause for the US to go to war with Iran, a country that has not attacked the United States and has no plans to. Iran has no nuclear weapons, is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (unlike nuclear-armed Israel), and has not worked to weaponize its civilian energy program.”
“If Iraq was an unwinnable quagmire, Iran might just be the war that brings the collapse of the American Empire.” Quite likely.
The US has already paid ahead for this project with $$$ and weapon$ thanks to congress. If Bibi and AIPAC have their way we can add US body bags.
Washington appears to be preparing for an Israeli assault on the Islamic Republic.
The Washington Post reports:
“The United States is on high alert in anticipation of a potential Israeli strike on Iran, with the State Department authorizing the evacuation of some personnel in Iraq and the Pentagon green-lighting the departure of military family members across the Middle East.
The State Department recently ordered all embassies within striking distance of Iranian assets – including missions in the Middle East but also Eastern Europe and Northern Africa – to convene emergency action committees (EACs) and send cables back to Washington about measures to mitigate risks.”
Maybe the most surprising part of the report is that Tel Aviv is planning to take action against the wishes of the White House. The Post continued:
“In recent months, US intelligence officials have grown increasingly concerned that Israel may choose to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities without the consent of the United States. Such a move would almost certainly scuttle the Trump administration’s delicate nuclear negotiations and prompt an Iranian retaliation on US assets in the region.”
That’s right, the country that 95% of Congress would name as America’s greatest ally is actually undermining one of the president’s core foreign policy initiatives.
For most of its existence, FARA was relatively obscure and rarely invoked; since 2017, the law has been enforced with far greater regularity and intensity, particularly against officials connected to the Trump administration.
Last I knew AIPAC is not subject to FARA. Whodathunkit?
The government of Georgia has tried for some time to implement a law “On transparency of foreign influence”. Its aim is to publicly identify organizations and parties who receive a significant amount of their budget from abroad:
The draft law “In order to ensure transparency”, initiated for the second time by the Georgian Dream faction, envisages the registration of such non-entrepreneurial (non-commercial) legal entities and media outlets, whose income – more than 20% – is received from abroad as an organization carrying out the interests of a foreign power. According to the project, everyone who is considered an “organization carrying the interests of a foreign power” must be registered in the public register under the same name in a mandatory manner. At the time of registration, it will be necessary to reflect the received income. At the same time, the organizations will have the obligation to fill in the financial declaration every year.
Those organization who currently receive money from the various U.S. or EU government or non-government organizations are of course not amused that they will have to reveal their association with such sources. They want to lobby for foreign positions without being identified as foreign influencers.
They have therefore launched protests against their country’s government and parliament which has passed the law in the first reading. Two further readings will be required to finalize the law.
The protesters against the law claim that it is a “Russian law” against “foreign agents”.
Since 2012 Russia does have a law that is somewhat similar to what Georgia is attempting to implement but such type of laws are certainly not a Russian intervention:
Supporters of the [Russian version of the] law have likened it to similar legislation in the US that requires lobbyists employed by foreign governments to reveal their financing.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) (22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq.) is a United States law that imposes public disclosure obligations on persons representing foreign interests. It requires “foreign agents”—defined as individuals or entities engaged in domestic lobbying or advocacy for foreign governments, organizations, or persons (“foreign principals”)—to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and disclose their relationship, activities, and related financial compensation. … FARA was enacted in 1938 primarily to counter Nazi propaganda, with an initial focus on criminal prosecution of subversive activities; since 1966, enforcement has shifted mostly to civil penalties and voluntary compliance.
For most of its existence, FARA was relatively obscure and rarely invoked; since 2017, the law has been enforced with far greater regularity and intensity, particularly against officials connected to the Trump administration.
The “two-state solution” is functionally just a psychological box that liberals mentally tick off so they can pretend they have a real position on Israel-Palestine. Israeli leaders publicly spit on the notion of a Palestinian state with its own military and national sovereignty, and there is no political wherewithal to make such a thing happen. It’s nothing more than a conceptual construct which lets liberals feel nice about their personal politics without actually taking a stand against the western-backed tyrannical power structure that is the state of Israel.
And the conservative position is much simpler. Print money and keep on bombing.
More importantly-Licking Netanyahu’s boots keeps that AIPAC money rolling in.
Here are five noises western liberals often make to avoid having to take a real position on Gaza:
1. “It’s heartbreaking!”
2. “It’s complicated!”
3. “BUT TRUMP!”
4. “I really hope there can be peace there someday!”
5. “I support a two-state solution!”
Let’s talk about these a bit.
“It’s heartbreaking!”
Liberals love talking about how “sad” and “heartbreaking” what’s happening in Gaza is like it’s some kind of natural disaster, some tragically tragic tragedy that their government has been passively witnessing instead of actively facilitating. It lets them express their progressive humanitarian feelings without actually taking a meaningful political position against what’s being done in their name with their tax dollars and with their tacit consent.
In reality the genocide in Gaza is not sad or heartbreaking or tragic; those are words you use for diseases and accidents. When someone is murdered with malicious intent, we don’t heave a heavy sigh and shed a tear and move on — we prosecute their murderer. It isn’t raining bombs in Gaza because that’s just the unfortunate weather there today, those bombs are being dropped by Israel with genocidal intent with the full backing of the United States and its allies. This is a crime which requires outrage and punishment, not empty crocodile tears.
What it has done is made enemies that the U.S. would not otherwise have had.
The Truman State Department warned in the late 1940s that the U.S. would squander this good will via President Truman’s bias toward Israel (which Truman told Clark Clifford was dictated largely by domestic political considerations). The U.S., they said, would share the blame for whatever Israel did (and indeed Truman was evidently appalled at how Israel handled the refugee situation).
You will not run across anyone in official conservatism telling you this. Their salaries depend on not telling you.
I lost some subscribers yesterday, which I expected. But I’m still here and all is well.
One person accused me of a “double standard” because all lobbying groups pursue their interests. So why was I singling out AIPAC?
How about because AIPAC smeared the most principled and courageous U.S. congressman we have? Is that answer sufficient for the police?
I wouldn’t say there’s exactly been a shortage of criticisms of other lobbying groups — the military-industrial complex gets its share of attention, I’d say — in my writing.
Again, imagine creating an organization aimed entirely at enriching a foreign country at the expense of the one in which you live, and then throwing career-destroying smears around at people who decline to comply. You cannot imagine that, thank goodness, because you’re not motivated by narcissistic self-preoccupation.
I have heard and I understand the reasons people have for supporting the Israeli regime.
My points are these:
(1) It is not reasonable to describe the Israeli government as our “greatest ally.” If you thought silly platitudes that are supposed to become true through repetition were confined to the left, think again. This particular one is a favorite of Conservatism, Inc. The “special relationship” with Israel confers no benefit on the U.S. How could it? What can a country of 9 million, half a world a way, do for us?
What it has done is made enemies that the U.S. would not otherwise have had.
Yes, I have heard the arguments: the Muslim world would have hated us no matter what we did, etc. I don’t buy it. At the time of the King-Crane Commission, the United States had an excellent reputation in the Middle East. When asked what country they’d like to govern them as League of Nations mandates, Middle Easterners overwhelmingly said the United States. That’s so inconceivable today that I wouldn’t blame you for not believing me.
The Truman State Department warned in the late 1940s that the U.S. would squander this good will via President Truman’s bias toward Israel (which Truman told Clark Clifford was dictated largely by domestic political considerations). The U.S., they said, would share the blame for whatever Israel did (and indeed Truman was evidently appalled at how Israel handled the refugee situation).
You will not run across anyone in official conservatism telling you this. Their salaries depend on not telling you.
(2) Christians may have their own secular reasons for wishing to lend support to the Israeli government, but they are under no theological obligation to do so.
He even brutally attacked fellow Democrat Member Jim Moran (D-VA) for pointing out the worst kept secret in US history: that AIPAC was instrumental in pushing the US into a war on Iraq that in no way served the US interest but did very much serve Israeli government interests.
If you could mash-up all that is disgusting, evil, hypocritical, and idiotic in the US Congress, the resulting conglomeration would look a lot like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). His entire career has been spent gorging himself at the trough of the US taxpayer: he’s never had an honest job.
Hoyer is shameless. A fetid product of the bowels of Washington DC – a 20 term (40 year!) Member of Congress who has never met a war he did not want to send poor kids off to fight. He loves war, he loves the Beltway war machine, and his dedication to Israel and to the continued oppression of the Palestinians is limitless. He even brutally attacked fellow Democrat Member Jim Moran (D-VA) for pointing out the worst kept secret in US history: that AIPAC was instrumental in pushing the US into a war on Iraq that in no way served the US interest but did very much serve Israeli government interests.
He was critically responsible for ginning up then-skeptical Democrat Party support for the Iraq war. And when it became clear to anyone with a brain that the Iraq war was, as the late former NSA Director Bill Odom put it, “the greatest strategic disaster in American history,” Hoyer continued to dutifully lead the charge to keep funding that brutal, immoral, anti-American, and counterproductive occupation and continued war on the Iraqi people.
So what’s the latest beef against this supremely corrupt symbol of American decline? His rank hypocrisy.
President Trump, disturbingly but characteristically, did not consult Congress about this action. The only beneficiaries from such a troop reduction right now will be Russia and Iran, which continue to seek ways to thwart American interests, destabilize our allies, and exploit our weaknesses. President Trump has just handed them a gift at the expense of our national security and the safety of our men and women in uniform.
I believe that President Biden is making the right decision to bring all of our personnel home this year. … I thank President Biden for his determination to bring our troops home…
America: do you want to know why we can’t have nice things? The Steny Hoyers of the country who continue to serve up feces and try and convince us it’s delicious chocolate.
This is what AIPAC wants. It sent out this letter and got 390 members of Congress to sign it, including Omar. The fact AIPAC was able to get these signatures is a testament to its influence and the hurt that it can bring down on politicians when comes to re-election. Like Omar.
That will ensure that the other embargoes, the ones that affect food, medicine, basic necessities, continue to strangle ordinary Iranians. This is about “maximum pressure” and it’s what AIPAC and the hawks in Congress want. In her own “narrow” way, Omar is supporting their vicious cycle, one that she has already admitted, will not work.
It looks like AIPAC, the most influential pro-Israel organization in the U.S., has gotten to Rep Ilhan Omar.
The Muslim-American congresswoman who had been targeted by the lobbying behemoth a year ago for her “anti-Semitic” comments about “dual loyalty” in regards to members of Congress supporting a ban on American’s boycotting Israel businesses (BDS), has now signed onto a typically loaded AIPAC letter calling for the extension of a UN arms embargo against Iran.
The move has her supporters and political observers scratching their heads. The wider sanctions regime against Tehran, by all reports, was crushing the Iranian people long before the COVID virus began spreading through the country. Oil revenues, imports of basic necessities, all have been brought to a grinding halt thanks to the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Now Iranians are struggling for life-saving equipment and medicines in the wake of a pandemic.
In a tweet on April 22 she seemed to be of the mind that sanctions are a dead end:
Sanctions haven’t worked in North Korea.
Sanctions haven’t worked in Iran.
Sanctions haven’t worked in Cuba.
It’s time Congress rethinks the humanitarian, human rights, and geographical impacts of our sanctions. pic.twitter.com/fRPnmvF7Gi
Omar’s office released a statement after the AIPAC letter story broke, saying the congresswoman still opposes wider economic sanctions, but “has consistently, for a long time, supported arms embargoes against human rights abusers.” It is not that she “supports [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo’s tactics or that her position on sanctions has changed, or that she is not in support of the [nuclear deal]. It was just a narrow ask that we couldn’t find anything wrong with.”
So what is this “narrow ask”? AIPAC, which has spent millions of dollars opposing the JCPOA, otherwise known as the “Iran nuclear deal,” wants to make sure a United Nations weapons embargo on Iran does not sunset as proscribed in the agreement, this fall. That will mean whatever is remaining of the deal since the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 will fall apart. That will likely trigger an escalation in the Iranians’ uranium enrichment, which was capped in the deal, and likewise lock all economic sanctions in, this time with the wider support of the other P5+1 countries that originally signed onto it (China, Russia, Germany, the European Union, the UK, and France).
This is what AIPAC wants. It sent out this letter and got 390 members of Congress to sign it, including Omar. The fact AIPAC was able to get these signatures is a testament to its influence and the hurt that it can bring down on politicians when comes to re-election. Like Omar. A tough Democratic primary candidate has emerged in Antone Melton-Meaux, an African-American attorney and civil rights mediator who said in an April op-edin the Minnesota Star-Tribune that Omar was disconnected from her district, has gotten no legislation passed for Minnesota, and cut a divisive figure on Capitol Hill. Furthermore, Melton-Meaux said:
Omar has repeatedly made divisive statements that have been hurtful to members of our Jewish community. She creates distraction and drama, not results. That doesn’t work for us.
Rep. Omar believes that sanctions are economic warfare and is a vocal advocate for abolishing them, particularly for Iran. Yet she supports sanctions on Israel. She has repeatedly refused to explain this inconsistency. That doesn’t work for us.
Melton-Meaux is one of three primary challengers, but he has already raised nearly $500,000, more than any of them. He seems to have touched a nerve and is not afraid to use Omar’s reported issues with the pro-Israel crowd to his political advantage. According to a glowing profile in the Jewish Insider, Melton-Meaux already “has the endorsement of “pro-Israel America.” More:
In 2012, during a Jewish Community Relations Council meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Melton-Meaux delivered a Dvar Torah, expounding on the connections between Leviticus 19 and Matthew 26, which calls for all people to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” He added: “If there was ever a time when Jews, Christians, and all people of faith need to be reminded that we share a common bond, the time is now.”
And:
Melton-Meaux alleges that his opponent, who has risen to prominence as a member of “The Squad,” has not worked to find common ground with others, including many of her Jewish constituents.
“Omar has made statements that have been reckless and harmful to the Jewish community,” Melton-Meaux told Jewish Insider. “I have spent time with the Jewish community and have met with Jewish leaders, and there’s a deep sense of betrayal by her actions and displeasure with the way that she has handled herself in the process with regard to the residents in this district.”
And according to Gateway Pundit, Omar’s top Republican opponent, Lacy Johnson, got a huge boost from donors this week after an endorsement from President Trump.
Omar has been accused of anti-Semitic comments, but a closer look of course reveals a muddier picture. In an all-consuming debate last year on whether banning U.S. companies and citizens from boycotting Israeli businesses for its treatment of Palestinians was an infringement of Constitutional rights, the tweets and public attacks on both sides were flying. Omar made comments about AIPAC “funding” Republican support for Israel and decried its influence operations (which are notorious by the way on Capitol Hill, described by one former Hill staffer and AIPAC as a system of “rewards and retribution”). After this, Omar was accused by other members of Congress and by AIPAC of promulgating the trope that some Jewish-Americans have “dual loyalty,” and her words were condemned as anti-Semitic.
She ended up apologizing for a February 2019 tweet saying that support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins.”
“Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” Omar said in a statement released on Twitter, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the entire Democratic leadership publicly scolded her for engaging in “deeply offensive” anti-Semitic tropes.
“My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole,” Ms. Omar wrote, adding, “I unequivocally apologize.”
But she did not take back her comments about AIPAC.
Omar’s recent signature on a letter that would have garnered hundreds of her colleagues’ support and made a splash with or without her, is a signal to AIPAC that she knows her seat is at risk, and that she would rather neutralize the feud with the pro-Israel powerhouse than send it flocking to the aid of her opponents. AIPAC spends millions each year lobbying Congress on behalf of its agenda, but does not give directly to candidates. However, its members do, and it works with other pro-Israel groups and individuals who give tons of money each election cycle (more than $12.4 million so far in 2020, compared to $15.5 million in all of 2016). Omar’s comments about “the Benjamins” could come back to bite her, and it will be, all about the Benjamins. That’s how campaigns rise and fall.
So why should we care? Omar says it’s a “narrow ask” to support extending the arms embargo, but it’s clear the Trump Administration is using this embargo to further kill the deal. If the deal is crushed, the hardliners in Iran will blow through uranium enrichment restrictions (in fact they already have, in response to U.S. sanctions). That will ensure that the other embargoes, the ones that affect food, medicine, basic necessities, continue to strangle ordinary Iranians. This is about “maximum pressure” and it’s what AIPAC and the hawks in Congress want. In her own “narrow” way, Omar is supporting their vicious cycle, one that she has already admitted, will not work.
. . . the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), supports Trump’s stringent sanctions regime. . .Democrats closely aligned with AIPAC, including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations panel, Bob Menendez, D-N.J., have explicitly called for the current U.S. sanctions to remain in place.
The New York Times does continue to report on the U.S. effort to stop humanitarian aid from reaching Iran during the coronavirus crisis. The paper, to its credit, even editorialized against the vicious sanctions. But the Times either ignores or covers up key factors that motivate the Trump administration’s inhumane policy: Israel, and the Israel lobby inside the United States. The U.S. just increased the pressure another notch, by using its power at the International Monetary Fund to block Iran’s request for an emergency $5 billion loan to fight the pandemic.
Neither the paper’s latest report nor its March 25 editorial mentioned Israel one single time. But anyone who gives recent Middle East history more than a passing glance recognizes that Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu has for years tried to instigate the U.S. to increase pressure and even launch military attacks against Iran — although Teheran is no threat to American national interests (with one semi-exception). Netanyahu’s vigorous campaign against the Iran nuclear deal is just one example of Israel’s provocative intervention in America’s foreign policy, but the Times saw no need to remind its readers of that history.
What’s more, Israel advocates in America are vigorously promoting the hostility to Iran. A small but influential lobbying group in Washington called the “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,” a disguise if ever there was one, pushes the anti-Iran line. The estimable John Judis profiled the FDD a few years ago, pointing out that its “chief funders have been drawn almost entirely from American Jews who have a long history of funding pro-Israel organizations.”
The truth is that Iran today is not targeting the United States. Americans who remember the 1979-80 hostage crisis may not have fond memories, but the only area of friction right now is inside Iraq, where 5000 U.S. troops are still stationed 17 years after the disastrous 2003 invasion. During the long fight against ISIS, those American soldiers actually cooperated with local militias that are allied with Iran, but now tensions are rising — especially after the Trump administration assassinated the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in January. But that dispute could be resolved without a war between the U.S. and Iran.
Let’s look at how another publication is covering the Iran coronavirus crisis. Al-Monitorreports all sides of the the dispute, including quoting a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. But then its comprehensive article goes on to note that:
. . . the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), supports Trump’s stringent sanctions regime. . .Democrats closely aligned with AIPAC, including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations panel, Bob Menendez, D-N.J., have explicitly called for the current U.S. sanctions to remain in place.
The New York Times could ask its army of reporters in Washington, and its Jerusalem bureau, to investigate further. Surely there are Congressional staffers, or dissident Israelis, who are disgusted by the inhumane Trump/Netanyahu policy toward the Iranian people and could provide off-the-record detail.
What’s more, if there’s anything we’ve learned so far it’s that the coronavirus does not respect national frontiers. As the pandemic bites deeply into Iran, 200,000 Afghans who were working there without papers are fleeing eastward toward home — where they may spread the disease, undermine fragile attempts toward a peace settlement, and even threaten the health of American soldiers who are still stationed there.
Much better known is the March 2003 killing of Washington State’s Rachel Corrie, who was deliberately run over by an Israeli military bulldozer when she was protesting the destruction of a Palestinian village. A month later there was an incident in which Brian Avery, a 24-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was shot in the face in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin by Israeli soldiers in an armored personnel carrier firing machine guns at protesters.
One of the principal functions of a United States Embassy overseas is to provide citizen services, which includes coming to the assistance of Americans who are treated badly by the local government. It is a responsibility that most embassies take seriously, with the exception of the facility currently located in Jerusalem. One has to understand that that is so because the United States Embassy in Israel is like no other. In other countries, the American Embassy exists to support American travelers, businesses and a broad range of national interests. In Jerusalem the Embassy exists to support Israeli interests and to serve as an apologist every time the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes on a killing spree or does something else that is similarly outrageous, to include bombing neighboring Syria every other day.
America’s current ambassador, former Trump bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, has funded Israel’s illegal settlements, which did not in any way complicate his confirmation as nearly everyone in Congress and the White House does not believe that the Palestinians actually are human beings. Since taking up his position, Friedman has defended Israel when its army sharpshooters have shot down scores of unarmed Gazans, including children, and has both praised and endorsed out-and-out theft by the Israeli government in Jerusalem, on the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
What the U.S. Embassy under Friedman will not do is put any real pressure on the Israeli government if its security forces or rampaging settlers kill, beat, maim or torture an American citizen, especially if said citizen happens to be of Palestinian descent. Indeed, Friedman is only the latest manifestation of Israel-first-itis among U.S. Ambassadors, the rot having started inevitably with Bill Clinton, who appointed Australian citizen Martin Indyk as the first Jewish ambassador to Tel Aviv. The two most recent ambassadors, Friedman and Daniel Shapiro, both political appointees, have also been Jewish. Shapiro so enjoyed being an Israeli that he decided to remain in the country after his appointment as ambassador was completed. He now works for an Israeli government funded think tank.
The Israeli army and police have in fact killed a number of American citizens without any real pushback from the Department of State or White House. The unwillingness to confront Israel on any level stems from the formidable Jewish power in the United States, which uses money and media control to corrupt the political system at national, state and local levels. The media and the chattering political class worry about Russian interference while ignoring the implications of a Haaretz article that appeared on February 12th entitled “AIPAC Must Stop Bernie Sanders – At All Costs!” AIPAC is, of course, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, widely regarded as the chief U.S. lobbying arm of the Jewish state.
Betty McCollum. U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 4th congressional district at a women’s roundtable at Hillary for Minnesota Headquarters in St Paul, MN. Credit: Lorie Shaull/ Flickr
And witness the fate of Congresswoman Betty McCollum from Minnesota, who fell afoul of the Israel Lobby when she introduced H.R.2407, legislation that prohibits American taxpayer money from being used by Israel to arrest and detain Palestinian children. She stated that “Israel’s system of military juvenile detention is state-sponsored child abuse designed to intimidate and terrorize Palestinian children and their families. It must be condemned, but it is equally outrageous that U.S. tax dollars in the form of military aid to Israel are permitted to sustain what is clearly a gross human rights violation against children.” She might have added that the estimated 10,000 Arab children who have been detained since 2000 are frequently tortured by the Israeli authorities. The bill currently has 23 cosponsors and is unlikely to attract more due to fear of the Lobby. It will never reach the House floor for a vote and will never become law.
McCollum’s courage was on display when she was viciously attacked by AIPAC, which posted Facebook ads that referenced “radicals in the Democratic party,” including a photo of McCollum, with the text stating that “It’s critical that we protect our Israeli allies especially as they face threats from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah ISIS and — maybe more sinister — right here in the U.S. Congress.” McCollum stood her ground against being called “more sinister” than ISIS and released a statement that describes AIPAC as a “hate group,” which of course it is, but she will find few in the Democratic party brave enough to defend her.
Israel’s willingness to kill Americans in support of what it perceives as its own interests goes back nearly to the founding of the state in 1948. The Lavon Affair of 1954 was an Israeli plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo Egypt, blaming the attacks on the Egyptians to draw the United States closer to Israel. The bombs were placed by Egyptian Jews acting for Israeli intelligence. They exploded, but fortunately no one was killed.
In June 1967 Israel was at it again, attacking the intelligence gathering U.S. naval vessel the U.S.S. Liberty in international waters, killing thirty-four American sailors, Marines and civilians in a deliberate air and sea onslaught that sought to sink the intelligence gathering ship and kill all its crew. It was the worst attack ever carried out on a U.S. Naval vessel in peace time. In addition to the death toll, 171 more of the crew were wounded in the two-hour assault. The Israelis, whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up so Egypt could be blamed, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and with gunboats from the sea. When one Israeli pilot hesitated, refusing to attack what was clearly an American ship, he was instructed to proceed anyway.
The most disgusting part of the tale relates to how U.S. warplanes sent to the Liberty’s aid from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean were called back by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acting under orders from President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who declared that he would rather see the ship go to the bottom of the sea than embarrass his good friend Israel. Ironically, the first ship to reach the Liberty and offer assistance was from the Soviet Union, an offer that was declined.
More recently there have been a number of killings of Americans. In a bizarre incident in August 1988, an elderly Palestinian-American with a heart condition died after being forced to climb stairs to paint over anti-Israeli graffiti on a school wall. Rebhi Barakat Kaid, 67, of Columbus, Ohio, was on the West Bank visiting relatives. He died of a heart attack after three Israeli soldiers ordered him and his 14-year-old Chicago-born grandson at gunpoint to climb the 22 steep steps that led from the house to the street above without his being allowed to take his heart medicine first.
Much better known is the March 2003 killing of Washington State’s Rachel Corrie, who was deliberately run over by an Israeli military bulldozer when she was protesting the destruction of a Palestinian village. A month later there was an incident in which Brian Avery, a 24-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was shot in the face in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin by Israeli soldiers in an armored personnel carrier firing machine guns at protesters.
(Picture taken at 4:47PM on 16 March 2003, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Rachel Corrie lies on the ground fatally injured by the Israeli bulldozer driver. Rachel’s fellow activists have dug her a little out of the sand and are trying to keep her neck straight due to spinal injury. Photo by Joseph Smith. Credit: ISM Handout
In March 2009 Tristan Anderson, a 37-year-old from Oakland, California, suffered permanent brain damage when Israeli soldiers shot him in the face with a tear gas canister as he watched a protest in the West Bank village of Nilin.
Another American citizen, Furkan Doğan, an 18-year-old born in Troy, New York, was killed aboard the Turkish flagged Mavi Marmara in the Mediterranean Sea in May 2010 as a flotilla of international activists attempted to break Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip to deliver humanitarian supplies. The United Nations’ General Assembly Human Rights Council determined that Doğan had been killed by Israeli naval commandos through an “extra-legal, arbitrary and summary execution.” He was shot five times, including once in the face from “point blank range.”
Furkan Doğan
The same day that Israel murdered Furkan Doğan, 21-year-old Emily Henochowicz of Potomac, Maryland, was protesting the attack on the flotilla at the Qalandiya checkpoint near Jerusalem, when an Israeli soldier shot her in the face with a teargas cannister, resulting in the loss of an eye.
And then there was in October 2014 the shooting by Israeli soldiers of Orwa Hammad, a 14-year-old Palestinian-American from Louisiana. The Israeli army claimed that Hammad was throwing a Molotov cocktail at the time of his death, but witnesses stated that he was among a group of children throwing rocks at the heavily armed and armored soldiers.
And most recently, there is the case of Florida-born 16-year-old Palestinian-American Mahmoud Shaalan who was shot repeatedly at an Israeli check point on the West Bank on February 26, 2016 while he was walking to a nearby village to visit his aunt. He was still alive after the shooting, but Israeli soldiers denied him any medical treatment for three hours and he died before an ambulance was allowed to approach him.
Arrest of Palestinians and others without probable cause under “administration detention” guidelines followed by torture has also become a hallmark of Israel’s occupation of Arab land. Torture methods used by Israel include stress positions, severe beatings, sleep deprivation, emotional blackmail, threats of torture of family members and the transfer of detainees to secret prisons where torture is constant. In one case reported to a Human Rights Association “The harsh beating was committed with the intention to kill the detainee.”
In another reported case of torture, nineteen-year-old Mahmoud Zakarner’s testicles were smashed by soldiers in front of his uncle to force the man to provide the names of Palestinian resistance members. Mahmoud is now paralyzed and unable to speak as a result.
Israeli expertise in torture is in demand from authoritarian regimes worldwide, creating a growth industry for the specialized “advisers and technicians.” Many are currently working with right wing regimes in South and Central America. Several even showed up at Abu Ghraib as trainers for U.S. interrogators and were able to suggest refinements like the “Palestinian chair.”
Inside Israel torture of Palestinians is routine on the grounds of “necessity” and absurd “ticking-bomb” scenarios. The courts and the medical profession aid and abet the practice. Over 1200 complaints regarding the torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons have not resulted in even a single indictment of the torturers.
So, killing Americans as well as many others and torturing prisoners are all in a day’s work for the Jewish state. What is disgraceful, of course, is the fact that the United States government, which has the power to do something about it, instead chooses to do nothing to stop the bleeding or even to demand inquiries to find out who is to blame. Instead, Washington lavishes money and praise on Israel, reportedly America’s best friend and closest ally, while it also avoids looking at the horrors that are evident to most of the rest of the world.
This primary season will spell the end of the Democratic Party as a viable political construct after this election cycle. Hillary is the stalking horse for the nomination. She’ll lose to Trump. They will alienate Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard in the process, all those voters will either jump to their potential independent ticket, back Trump or sit on their hands.
The most deeply despised members of Congress will now fall under investigation. Trump has the neocons happy right now. The Republicans who work for AIPAC will side with him as long as he keeps things as they are between now and November.
The annual theatre surrounding the President’s State of the Union address took another nasty turn in 2020. In times past with Nancy Pelosi (D-Shadow Gov’t) as Speaker of the House we’ve seen her grandstand on sending out the invitation.
She’s always there to take the spotlight onto herself, make herself the story to detract from President Trump. This year she didn’t disappoint against the backdrop of the greatest political defeat of her career.
Bookending Trump’s self-congratulatory speech where he took credit for a stock market he has nothing to do with and celebrating the starving and terrorizing the people of Iran, Pelosi first made a big show of Trump refusing to shake her hand and then tore up her copy of his speech after making sure the cameras were on her.
But what did she expect from someone who hasn’t spoken to her since October and who she hounded with an impeachment that garnered zero support from a single Republican? Flowers?
Remember, Trump called Nasty Nancy a “Third rate politician” before she stormed out of the room, again playing to the cameras with all the sincerity of your average 1990’s late night TV huckster selling steak knives. She’s certainly got the hair color and botox levels adjusted correctly for that gig.
And at this point she should actually apply to QVC for that gig. Because the longer she holds onto the ‘awesome power’ of the Speaker’s gavel the more damage she does not only to the U.S. and what’s left of its constitutional authority over its people but to the party she’s supposedly leading into the 2020 election in November.
In making the State of the Union all about her, Pelosi sent the very strong message to her party operatives that opposition to this President is now their number one priority. The impeachment was something that she knew would damage the party, but she went along with it and the lies it was built on because she was told to.
That much she betrayed by her flip-flopping on it. Remember, this time last year Pelosi was talking down impeachment. But, her inability to control the far left within her own party as well as Trump stepping on the third rail of Democratic corruption – the entrenched malfeasance in Ukraine – put her in no position but to try and turn it around on him.
It failed spectacularly.
There’s plenty not to like about Trump’s presidency but it is still his presidency, won against all odds and the kind of under-handed electioneering that was on full display in Iowa this week. And Pelosi acting like she doesn’t believe that is the height of tragi-comedy.
Because, as I said, she’s not that good an actress.
She knows the impeachment was garbage, but she can’t say that. The goal of propaganda is shame. Getting people to believe something that isn’t true puts them into a place where they have to defend it lest they admit to themselves and the world that they were 1) wrong and 2) a fraud.
We saw this clearly on display during Brexit where the hardest of hard-core Remainers were gaslit into believing things that were simply not true. And they used those fake facts as justification for treating everyone who wanted to leave the EU as sub-human.
In a remarkable moment, Nigel Farage took a phone call on his radio show the Monday after Brexit where the caller was ashamed of the person he’d become during the Brexit fight. He realized how vile his behavior had been and was self-aware enough and strong enough to admit it in public. Sure, he still didn’t agree with Brexit but that didn’t excuse his treatment of his fellow Britons.
Do we see anything like that coming from the Democrats in the U.S.? Even Tony Blair realized the fight was lost and asked everyone to put the bitterness behind them. Tony “Mr. Globalist Himself” Blair!
Does Pelosi, as leader of the party, realize the damage she’s doing? Does she understand what message she’s sending in her refusal to admit that she lost and that there are limits to the fight if you care at all about anything other than yourself?
No.
I don’t think she gives one whit about any of that. And that’s why the U.S. is headed for a real civil war not the internal power struggle of factions in D.C.
It’s clear the DNC bosses don’t want Bernie Sanders as their nominee. They will lie, cheat and steal delegates from him to ensure that happens. We saw this in Iowa as somehow they concocted the outcome they wanted – Pete Buttigieg gets the plurality of delegates while Bernie wins the popular vote and has no momentum coming into New Hampshire.
This primary season will spell the end of the Democratic Party as a viable political construct after this election cycle. Hillary is the stalking horse for the nomination. She’ll lose to Trump. They will alienate Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard in the process, all those voters will either jump to their potential independent ticket, back Trump or sit on their hands.
Pelosi has signaled her troops to go on the warpath but she also just sent all the centrists that Bernie supposedly has trouble with more forcefully back under Trump’s umbrella.
And with the impeachment’s end Trump will be free to enact revenge against those who have tormented him for the past three years. The most deeply despised members of Congress will now fall under investigation. Trump has the neocons happy right now. The Republicans who work for AIPAC will side with him as long as he keeps things as they are between now and November.
His speech was nothing if not grist for that mill and it’s a shame. It spoke to the civilizational fight that is the backdrop of U.S. foreign policy, which Alistair Crooke touched on in his latest piece here. It’s something that needs changing but it’s not going to happen on either Pelosi’s or Trump’s watch.
It’s our job to win that fight.
But what Pelosi did at the State of the Union tells us what comes next. She knows now that they cannot win in November on ideas, issues or facts. All they have is emotion and envy.
And envy never wins elections, persuasion does. So, violence and theft is all that’s left.
Pelosi’s lack of self-control is the cancer eating at the heart of the political left in the U.S. It overshadows their real and reasoned criticisms of Trump and the Republican party and it will destroy them.
What comes next is full on insurrection against Trump the Impeached. Nothing he says is valid. Nothing he wants is reasonable. And from here to November it will be every decent American’s duty to obstruct this illegitimate president and work for his removal from office.
Now you expect some of that metaphorically in an election year. But I think we’re far beyond metaphor and will be looking at outright thievery.
And the vestiges of the Democratic party still exist within the state and local governments. They exist, like Brenda Snipes the disgraced Supervisor of Elections in Broward County Florida, as wrenches to openly throw into the gears of an election to ensure their person wins.
If you think Brenda Snipes is bad, imagine multiplying her by a thousand in every ‘purple’ county in the U.S. This isn’t a conspiracy I’m talking about. This is pure naked hatred manifest as political action. This is the stuff pogroms are made of.
It is that which all dying empires face as ego and self-interest overwhelm the impulse to decency. Democracy exists, if it exists at all, on the principle of Loser’s Consent. Without that, societies tear themselves apart. Pelosi may as well have torn up a copy of the Constitution the other evening.
I’ve said for a long time that the U.S. is too big to govern as a single entity. Maybe Pelosi did us a favor here in the long run, but as a leader she had the opportunity and, frankly, responsibility to rise above this and be better. To find a way to communicate something other than vitriol and vindictiveness.
Now we all pay the price for her lack of humility.
MCViewPoint 