Iran is on a highway to its own destruction

[curious]

Israel is about as close to a useless country as you will ever find. Israel does next to nothing to advance the United States' interests, and the U.S. obediently answers to Israel no matter what.

Just about every nation in the world is critical of the Israel government, even Israelis themselves. Every nation in this world is supportive of the Palestinians and supports their continued struggle for freedom. Only the U.S. refuses to criticize a thing that Israel does. The U.S. is an absolute joke.....it's them and Israel who are an impedement to peace and not the other way around. Israel does not want peace, it wants to expand. Most people fail to realize that b/c they've been brainwashed by the Israel Lobby and corporate news media in this country. Watch any news station and you'll find nary a critical voice of Israel among the established news personalities in this country. Even the most "liberal" radio hosts defend Israel no matter the crime or massacre they committ.

Anyway, for those of you interested in an intellectual read on this topic, feel free to look over the critically aclaimed The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt esteemed professors at some of the finest academic institutions in the world.

Of course, not critically acclaimed by the corporate media but by anyone with half a brain or conscience. They lay out with evidence and let the facts do the talking about the current situation and how Israel is subverting the peace process. You won't hear the standard emotive bluster about irrelevant events that that happened generations and centuries ago in this book.

here is a link to it, http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U...8018015&sr=1-1

Struggle for freedom? From Israel? Do you know ANYTHING about the plight of the Palestinians? They have no freedoms because the Muslim countries they live in refuse to grant them any human rights. The Israelis unilaterally withdrew from the West Bank, Gaza, and southern Lebanon. The Palestinians are free to do what they please. Which so far has been to fire rockets into civilian areas in Israel. Which is why they have the problems they do with the IDF. If they would stop that nonsense the IDF would leave them alone.

Subverting the peace process? You cannot be serious. There is no peace process. The terrorists that control Gaza and West Bank have yet to detract their stated goal of the total destruction of Israel. The nutjobs in Gaza fire rockets into civilian areas of southern Israel daily. This is a "peace process"? Israel is done talking to these murderers. As they should be. Murderers should not be negotiated with, they should be rooted out and destroyed.

Israel wants to expand? Please put down the crack pipe. And pick up a history book. At one time, Israel controlled the Sinai peninsula, the West Bank, southern Lebanon, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. Israel gave Egypt the Sinai in exchange for a peace treaty which both sides have kept. Israel unilaterally withdrew from the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon. This is a strange kind of expansion.

I notice that you aren't upset that the media never mentions the crimes that the murderers in Gaza commit on a daily basis, the firing of rockets into Israeli civilian areas.

The murderers claimed that they were fighting for "land". Israel made a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon. They forcibly evicted Israeli citizens who had built homes and businesses in these areas, sometimes at gunpoint. The military leaders advised that this was a mistake, that it made the defense of Israel much more difficult, and they were getting nothing in return.

What did Israel get in return for unilaterally withdrawing from these areas? Rockets fired deeper into Israel proper is what they got for it. And three wars not of their making.

There will be no peace process as long as the murderers are allowed to keep murdering Israeli civilians with rocket attacks. As well there should not be.

What other country on earth has it demanded of them that they sit by and do nothing while their enemies fire rockets into their cities?

[capitalist pig]

We the USA are hated world wide at this point, if we are going to launch some missles at Iran, to destroy nuclear facilities that may or may not be there, now is the time.If we get lucky and actually destroy some nuclear missle bases we will be heroes, if we F up and cant prove we destroyed them , we will be right where we are now in the worlds eyes. Seems like a win win situation, but we must act quickly,JMO.

later

[curious]

Maybe Israel should stop putting Palestinians in concentration camps and stealing their land and destroying their olive groves and water, eh?
I mean listen to how you talk. You are insane with religious and racial hatred. I don't care if your Jewish, your as bad as the most insane jihadi. Peas in a pod.
I could care less about Israel. Its just another crazy middle east country full of fanatical nutjobs like yourself. Problem is the same mindset of nutjobs are currently in control of the US government.

"...religious and racial hatred"? Please quote what I said that shows this. I said that the Iranians were taking actions that were going to lead to a war and they would lose this war. In what way is that racist? I don't remember saying anything about religion.

"...don't care if you are Jewish". I am not.

"...stop putting Palestinians in concentration camps". If you would put down the crack pipe and pick up a book you will see that it was the Muslim countries surrounding Israel that put the Palestinians in camps, the Israelis did not do this.

" ...fanatical nutjobs like yourself". I am a nutjob for pointing out that if Iran continues to threaten a war of genocide on Israel and continues trying to obtain the means to conduct such a war that they will put the Israeli government in a position where the Israelis have no choice but to shoot first? And to show that the Israelis are contemplating this I pointed out that they recently created an "Iran front" and a new combined arms army which is being specially trained in asymmetric warfare? That makes me a "fanatical nutjob"?

[BuddyBear]

If curious you were in the military, then that explains why you think like this. It's unfortunate b/c most military members are brainwashed and led to believe that the U.S. and Israel are one and the same Rah Rah Rah.

Step back and put the crack pipe down, think about it for a moment....Jimmy Carter-a person who has done more than anyone on this earth to secure peace and safety for Israel-is highly critical of Israel's policy and described it as apartheid. Esteemed political science professors are saying the U.S./Israel alliance is all but useless.

I mean you tell me, why does the entire world outside of the U.S. support the Palestinians??? Come on man, think for a change instead of parroting the same tired out old rhetoric about Israel and how benevolent a country they are.

[donjuan]

Buddy Bear,

What do you propose as a solution for Israel/Palestine?

OLGC,

Nation of fanatical nutjobs? Most Israelis lead a secular life and aren't very concerned with religion.

Capitalist Pig,

You are insane. By the way, there was a recent poll done and worldwide opinion of the US has improved in the last year.

Curious,

You are insane.

[Kerfuffle]

OLGC slayer =

[Thor4140]

I forgot that when talking about Israel, both sides are allowed to completely make shít up.

FYI, the monthly minimum wage in Israel is approximately $940 for a 40-hour work week, according to the US State Department's website. Now I know most people on this forum aren't fond of math, but that works out to about $5.85 an hour.

Boosting the minimum wage
By Nehemia Strasler
Tags: minimum wage

Yes, 2007 was a good year for the Israeli economy. Growth maintained its rapid clip, the unemployment rate declined, the balance of payments is in the black, the budget is balanced, inflation is low and the national debt has shrunk. In addition, international credit rating agencies have upgraded Israel. And 2008 will also be a good year. If something positive emerges from the Annapolis conference and serious peace talks are conducted, 2007's results will pale beside 2008's. So it is hard to understand the Knesset's decision yesterday to postpone updating the minimum wage for six months.

It all started in mid-2007, when the finance ministry proposed postponing the third stage in upgrading the minimum wage by an entire year - from December 2007 to December 2008. The Histadrut labor federation's leaders were furious. In August, Finance Minister Roni Bar-On and Histadrut chief Ofer Eini met and arrived at a compromise: The minimum wage would be upgraded in July, not December, 2008. In other words, the postponement was shortened to six months. On Tuesday, the Knesset's Labor and Welfare Committee approved the postponement by a majority of eight, with six opposed, after an exhaustive discussion that lasted all of 10 minutes. The Knesset approved it yesterday after a stormy debate. Many Labor MKs voted against, but the Pensioners Party mobilized, creating a majority.

The outcome is that Israeli society's weakest members will continue earning NIS 3,710 a month (NIS 19.95 hourly), and their salaries will increase only in July - to the stunning monthly level of NIS 3,850. That is, by NIS 140.
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The treasury meanwhile will save a paltry NIS 116 million. Why paltry? Because in the 2008 budget debate, the treasury increased the education budget by NIS 1.7 billion, the defense budget by NIS 1.6 billion, the health budget by half a billion, senior-citizen allowances by half a billion and compensation payments to surviving victims of the Nazis by NIS 700 million. Was the treasury unable to find another NIS 116 million in a budget whose total expenditure is NIS 300 billion?

The freeze on the minimum wage is a delayed - and mistaken - reaction to the Second Lebanon War. It was decided after that war that ministry budgets would be slashed because of fears of both a recession and a reduction in tax revenue. But neither scenario occurred. Economic growth accelerated and productivity sharply increased. Nonetheless, the upgrade of the minimum wage was postponed from June 2007 to December 2007, and this week it was again postponed.

The postponement is a mistake - socially and economically. It clashes with our economic policy to encourage people to enter the labor market. Silvan Shalom and Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) initiated the process when they reduced the guaranteed income allowance while lowering the income tax rate.

The result was that Israelis were encouraged to go out and work. Former Labor Party leader Amir Peretz climbed on the bandwagon when he demanded an increase in the minimum wage to $1,000. Although some companies were forced to reduce their workforces because of the increase, some businesses went ahead with the pay raise, even recruiting additional employees.

The undeniable fact is that since 2003, 400,000 people have entered the job market and the percentage of Israelis in the national labor force has climbed from 54 to 57 percent - an important social achievement.

An increase in the minimum wage is the appropriate answer to poverty and the socioeconomic gap. It is the best incentive for encouraging people to enter the labor market and emerge from poverty's vicious circle because, among families where both partners work, only 4 percent live below the poverty line.

An increase in the minimum wage is a much better solution than the dubious invention known as negative income tax, which creates red tape and needless complications, promotes deceptive behavior, and discourages people from advancing themselves in their careers and earning more. So it is infuriating to hear that the same finance minister who agrees to allocate NIS 300 million for a negative income tax wants to save NIS 116 million by delaying an upgrade to the minimum wage.

The postponement should be canceled. The minimum wage should be raised today to NIS 3,850 amonth. It should be raised again next year to NIS 4,000. As long as the economy grows quickly and demand for workers increases, employers can and should pay a higher minimum wage. That is why it is high time to upgrade the working conditions of those prepared to abandon a life of inactivity and enter the job market.

[curious]

If curious you were in the military, then that explains why you think like this. It's unfortunate b/c most military members are brainwashed and led to believe that the U.S. and Israel are one and the same Rah Rah Rah.

Step back and put the crack pipe down, think about it for a moment....Jimmy Carter-a person who has done more than anyone on this earth to secure peace and safety for Israel-is highly critical of Israel's policy and described it as apartheid. Esteemed political science professors are saying the U.S./Israel alliance is all but useless.

I mean you tell me, why does the entire world outside of the U.S. support the Palestinians??? Come on man, think for a change instead of parroting the same tired out old rhetoric about Israel and how benevolent a country they are.

Jimmy Carter is an idiot who single handedly turned Iran over to the Islamofascists. He also almost single handedly destroyed our economy. Do you forget 20% interest rates, 15% inflation rates, 10% unemployment rates during the reign of this idiot? When the Islamofascists invaded our sovereign territory and kidnapped our citizens, one of the most brazen acts of war in modern history, the "great peace maker" did nothing. This only emboldened our enemies. Clausewitz, who knew a little something about war and hated it, said "If you want peace prepare for war".

I know that you don't want to be confused with facts, but I don't get my information from the media, I get it from original source documents as much as possible. Here is the truth about the plight of the Palestinians. Saying that Israel is an apartheid state is preposterous.

During WWI the British Empire promised the Jews their own state if they would help the British win the war. This agreement was called the Balfour Agreement. The British occupied most of the Middle East, including the non "nation" they named "Palestine". Palestine was not a nation, has never been a nation, and has no citizens. The term "Palestinian" doesn't actually make any sense. But, I digress.

After WWII, the Jews, remembering the promise that the British Empire made them about having their own country, started an independence movement in the area under British control known as the British mandate of Palestine. This area included Biblical Israel, and a large territory much larger than Biblical Israel that for most of history had been Egyptian territory.

This independence movement was not religious in nature. There was no idea of carving up the British mandate of Palestine, the United Nations did that later.

Britain was of two minds about what to do about this. They were obligated by the Balfour agreement to grant independence, but the leaders of Britain were dishonest and did not honor the agreement publicly. Privately they kept saying to the Jews that the agreement would be honored.

Britain finally tried to wash their hands of the entire affair and turned the whole mess over to the United Nations. The United Nations sent a fact finding team to the former British territory which wrote a recommendation that there be one new country set up, not two, and that this new country not be based on religion. Most of the inhabitants of the former British mandate of Palestine agreed with this proposal, which is why the UN team proposed it.

At the last minute, the United States intervened and demanded a two state resolution to the problem. The United Nations then passed resolutions granting two states independence, one called Israel and the other temporarily known as Palestine to be given an official name by the inhabitants.

In 1948 Israel, in accordance with the United Nations resolutions claimed independence, the territory granted them by the UN for their new nation occupied roughly 54% of the former British mandate of Palestine. The new Palestinian nation was given most of the rest, with a few % given to Jordan and Egypt.

One fact that the hysterics in the media overlook when talking about the "palestinians", besides the fact that there never was any such country, is that the Jews were also Palestinians. The Jews are also Arabs, so to say that this is an "Arab Jewish" problem is incorrect. You can't even say that it is a Jewish problem because Israel contains people of many faiths.

On the same day that Israel declared independence, all the Muslim countries surrounding Israel launched a war with the stated purpose of killing all the Jewish inhabitants of the area. This is a fact which you can easily look up. The words of the leaders of these countries and the military leaders of the Muslim armies were broadcast on the radio and printed in many newspapers. The Muslim inhabitants of the new nation of Israel were told to leave their homes so that the Muslim armies would have a free hand in carrying out their war of genocide. And, after the war was over they could go back home and pick the best of the property from the soon to be dead Jews. This is also a fact.

Many Muslims took this advice and left their homes, settling temporarily, or so they thought, in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and the territory granted independence by the U.N. as the second nation to be formed from the former British mandate of Palestine.

The Muslims miscalculated and lost their war of genocide with Israel.

Two things now happened which is why the Palestinians are in the shape they are today. First, the Muslims refused to create a new country as granted them by the U.N. resolutions from their half of the mandate of Palestine. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon then made a land grab for this territory. Palestine ceased to exist, Israel was independent, but there was no new independent Muslim country as allowed by the U.N. resolutions.

Second, and this is the most important part. Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon decided that they didn't really want all these refugees living in their countries so they put them in camps and denied them citizenship and human rights.

This is how these camps were created, and this is why these Muslim people who are the descendents of the former Muslim inhabitants of the British Mandate of Palestine became people without a country, people without an identity.

It is true that in successive wars, launched by the Muslims, the Israelis did occupy territories inhabited by these refugees. But, what else were the Israelis to do? Allow Syria to fire artillery shells into the heart of Israel from the Golan heights daily? Allow the Egyptians to fight a proxy war from bases right on Israel's border? Allow the Jordanians to fight a proxy war from bases right on the Jordan river?

No sane country would put up with that.

If you want to blame someone for the plight of the former inhabitants of the British mandate of Palestine and their descendents, blame the Muslim countries who refuse to give these people any human rights but continue to treat them as squatters. And blame these people themselves for refusing to set up their own country in 1948 as authorized by the U.N.

I notice that this cry of "but they stole the land" is never leveled at Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, or Egypt who carved up the other half of the British mandate of Palestine in direct defiance of U.N. resolutions.

[Kerfuffle]

Thor4140

1 USD = 3.6 NIS

You must be Baghdad Bob's assistant.

[ShamsWoof10]

We the USA are hated world wide at this point, if we are going to launch some missles at Iran, to destroy nuclear facilities that may or may not be there, now is the time.If we get lucky and actually destroy some nuclear missle bases we will be heroes, if we F up and cant prove we destroyed them , we will be right where we are now in the worlds eyes. Seems like a win win situation, but we must act quickly,JMO.

later

I bet my life on it that if asked five years ago (around the start of the Iraq) war about Iran and their "so called" abilities you would NOT have this opinion... It's 5 years of conditionning that has changed it...

I have several friends who claimed they would be pissed if we went into Iran because the reasoning would be bullsh*t like Iraq was... It's now 5 years later and they believe as C_P does.. What changed their opinion or WHOOOOO...????

Also a question for everyone... It is pretty clear Isreal has WMD's... Why are they NOT inspected and why is it ok for them to have them..?

[Kerfuffle]

Wow, so many Arabs and Moslems are gamblers.

Don't they cut your dicks off or something if your caught?

[curious]

I bet my life on it that if asked five years ago (around the start of the Iraq) war about Iran and their "so called" abilities you would NOT have this opinion... It's 5 years of conditionning that has changed it...

I have several friends who claimed they would be pissed if we went into Iran because the reasoning would be bullsh*t like Iraq was... It's now 5 years later and they believe as C_P does.. What changed their opinion or WHOOOOO...????

Also a question for everyone... It is pretty clear Isreal has WMD's... Why are they NOT inspected and why is it ok for them to have them..?

I dont' really care about any of this. Iran has been at war with us since 1979, they have murdered hundreds of our citizens. They are fighting a war against us in Iraq.

Unless you will accuse me of making up these facts also.

[ShamsWoof10]

This article is soooo dead on IMO...

This is the first paragraph only but it's enough...

An invention called 'the Jewish people'
By Tom Segev 02 marzo 2008

Israel's Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.

[durito]

If curious you were in the military, then that explains why you think like this. It's unfortunate b/c most military members are brainwashed and led to believe that the U.S. and Israel are one and the same Rah Rah Rah.

Step back and put the crack pipe down, think about it for a moment....Jimmy Carter-a person who has done more than anyone on this earth to secure peace and safety for Israel-is highly critical of Israel's policy and described it as apartheid. Esteemed political science professors are saying the U.S./Israel alliance is all but useless.

I mean you tell me, why does the entire world outside of the U.S. support the Palestinians??? Come on man, think for a change instead of parroting the same tired out old rhetoric about Israel and how benevolent a country they are.

Curious was not in the US military he was a secret action mercenary. He single handedly won the first gulf war.

[curious]

Buddy Bear,

What do you propose as a solution for Israel/Palestine?

OLGC,

Nation of fanatical nutjobs? Most Israelis lead a secular life and aren't very concerned with religion.

Capitalist Pig,

You are insane. By the way, there was a recent poll done and worldwide opinion of the US has improved in the last year.

Curious,

You are insane.

Please quote specific things I said which are "insane". I stated what is going on and what is likely to come from it. Yes, a country purposely setting itself up to be destroyed is insane. Please write to the President of Iran and tell him so.

[ShamsWoof10]

I dont' really care about any of this. Iran has been at war with us since 1979, they have murdered hundreds of our citizens. They are fighting a war against us in Iraq.

Unless you will accuse me of making up these facts also.

No "curious" I only accuse you of double talk...

If they are fighting a war against the US in Iraq then as YOU stated Iran is a "NAT" to the US military because if they wanted to they can start in the morning and be done by nightfall... What's the worry then..? Don't give this WMD stuff either...

Let them fight the US it will be a good warm up for whoever is next that gives the US competition...

I stated what is going on and what is likely to come from it.

No curious let's get this clear here... You are REPEATING what is being told is going on....

[Kerfuffle]

Curious why are you arguing with all the Arabs/Muslims at this site? They've been indoctrinated since childhood and now your going to change their views?

[ShamsWoof10]

Curious why are you arguing with all the Arabs/Muslims at this site? They've been indoctrinated since childhood and now your going to change their views?

How many Arab/Muslims are there and what is off about their views... or mine because I know I am who you are talking about...

[Kerfuffle]

You
buddybare
Thor
OGLC slayer
Maybe dorito

Only Arabs/moslems would write the stuff you guys are writing.

[ShamsWoof10]

You
buddybare
Thor
OGLC slayer
Maybe dorito

Only Arabs/moslems would write the stuff you guys are writing.

So what are you views exactly because you have provided NOTHING tangable so far...

[BuddyBear]

No real solution to the Israel/Palestine crisis. Everything has failed miserably. Israel is as much as fault as the Palestinians like it or not. Best thing is to have a 1 state solution where both groups are assimilated with one another or move all the Jews to New York City or South Beach.....

One thing is that the Muslims won't ever give up the land and fight till the end. Islam is an extreme and fanatical religion. If I were a Jew in Israel living with violence every day of my life, and I saw the U.S. with so many successful Jews and the security that Jews are afforded and the ability to worship as I please...I'd say fukc it, I am getting out of here ASAP.

All this nonsense about a covenant with God and the land was given to them by God is all nonsense and hocus pocus. They should just leave....there was a group of people living there before them for hundreds of years. Just give it back and move to the U.S. It's not their land, no matter what "God" says....

[BuddyBear]

You
buddybare
Thor
OGLC slayer
Maybe dorito

Only Arabs/moslems would write the stuff you guys are writing.

The vast majority of the world population, world leaders, and international governing institutions agree with the positions we are endorsing

[Kerfuffle]

It don't matter. You guys see things through the Arab view, and nothing's going to change your view. No sense in arguing with you. You aren't impartial or open minded.

[curious]

This article is soooo dead on IMO...

This is the first paragraph only but it's enough...

An invention called 'the Jewish people'
By Tom Segev 02 marzo 2008

Israel's Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.

The vast majority of the inhabitants of the new nation of Israel in 1948 lived there all their life and their ancestors had lived there for generations if not millenia.

What you quote is sort of true, but there are a lot of mistakes in it. First, there have been many diaspora throughout history. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Medo-Persians, Romans, Arabs, and Mohammedans all fought wars against the nation of Israel in which large numbers of people were forcibly removed from Israel.

It is not true that the Romans did not remove large numbers of people from Israel after the temple was destroyed in 70. Did they depopulate the entire area? No. Did they do an ethnic cleansing? No. But you cannot say that they did not disperse large numbers of people.

Is the Exodus story myth or fact? Well, there is one set of facts which cannot be denied. There was an invasion by a very large tribal force of the area we now know as the Sinai, Gaza, and Israel and the nations formerly occupying this area were all totally destroyed. The invaders killed everyone, men, women, children, cats, dogs. Everyone. That cannot be disputed. Where did these invaders come from? The only place they could have come from is Egypt or Nubia. Was this invasion force a large slave army and their wives and children? No one knows. Did their leader part the Red Sea and drown the Pharoah's armies? No one knows for sure. Can you say with certainty that this did not happen? No, you cannot. Can you say it is unlikely that it happened? Perhaps. But, how do you know that Moses did not use a sonic weapon of some sort to part the waters? There is evidence that these invaders used advanced sonic weapons in their conquest of the "holy land". How else did they totally destroy five nations each of which outnumbered them?

If these were the same people who built the pyramids, they knew a lot about a lot of things. I am not saying they were, no one knows for sure. But, if you say "slaves built the pyramids, the Israelis were the Egyptian slaves, a slave army fled Egypt and totally destroyed at least 5 nations in the ensuing warfare" then it is not too farfetched to think that these "slaves" possessed technology beyond what the nations they destroyed possessed.

yes, I agree that most of the declaration of independence for the state of Israel is fantasy.

[ShamsWoof10]

Islam is an extreme and fanatical religion.

You see KF this should tell you he's not Muslim.. He's already off...

[curious]

The vast majority of the world population, world leaders, and international governing institutions agree with the positions we are endorsing

What position is that exactly? You want the Israelis to stop defending themselves and allow their Muslim enemies to destroy them? Have you ever read any of the statements by their enemies? The PLO charter STILL has two articles which are declarations of a war of genocide.

So, what is it that you want exactly?

[curious]

Curious why are you arguing with all the Arabs/Muslims at this site? They've been indoctrinated since childhood and now your going to change their views?

I'm not arguing, I am posting facts. So far no one has challenged a single one of them. They just keep calling me names.

[ShamsWoof10]

It don't matter. You guys see things through the Arab view, and nothing's going to change your view. No sense in arguing with you. You aren't impartial or open minded.

IT DOESN'T MATTER..???? Then why are you making any comments then if IT DOESN'T MATTER..??

When asked about your views ...now it suddenly doesn't matter... and IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'm not open minded...

Yeah ok dude... stick to sports... I don't even know if you know that but I'm guessing there is something you must know....

[ShamsWoof10]

I am posting facts. So far no one has challenged a single one of them.

CURIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!! How the F*CK can you call some of this sh*t "FACTS"...? How is having 65 Nukes and trying to develope them fact..? That's like saying I have OVER 194.5 and it went over AND it went under... It's one or the other and no I am not changing the angle here I am QUOTING you..

[curious]

No "curious" I only accuse you of double talk...

If they are fighting a war against the US in Iraq then as YOU stated Iran is a "NAT" to the US military because if they wanted to they can start in the morning and be done by nightfall... What's the worry then..? Don't give this WMD stuff either...

Let them fight the US it will be a good warm up for whoever is next that gives the US competition...



No curious let's get this clear here... You are REPEATING what is being told is going on....

So now you know not only what I think, but also what I read and listen to. Interesting that you know so much about me.

We are at war with Iran, a war they declared in 1979 when they invaded our sovereign territory and kidnapped our citizens. A war they continued with terrorist actions that killed hundreds of our citizens from that day to this. A war they continue by using their special forces units to launch attacks on our troops and the civilians that those troops are protecting.

A war they continue by threatening to murder 100% of the population of the state of Israel.

A war they continue by buying offensive missile technology from China.

My point was that Iran is trying to build a first strike missile capability and if they succeed they won't get to use it because Israel will hit them first. If as you say Iran is not doing this then they have nothing to worry about.

[curious]

CURIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!! How the F*CK can you call some of this sh*t "FACTS"...? How is having 65 Nukes and trying to develope them fact..? That's like saying I have OVER 194.5 and it went over AND it went under... It's one or the other and no I am not changing the angle here I am QUOTING you..

You must be high today. I said Israel has over 65 nukes. I said Iran is trying to obtain nukes. Not sure what you are talking about.

[Kerfuffle]

IT DOESN'T MATTER..???? Then why are you making any comments then if IT DOESN'T MATTER..??

When asked about your views ...now it suddenly doesn't matter... and IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'm not open minded...

Yeah ok dude... stick to sports... I don't even know if you know that but I'm guessing there is something you must know....

The general thought was directed to Curious, you interrupted, I answered you.

[BuddyBear]

It don't matter. You guys see things through the Arab view, and nothing's going to change your view. No sense in arguing with you. You aren't impartial or open minded.

yeah, okay....and you see things through a different paradigm, what's your point?

If anything, I am VERY VERY sympathetic with Jewish suffering and very upset about the way in which many Arab states have handled this situation by calling for relentless violence and non stop attacks. I don't endorse that. However, that does mean Israel is allowed to committ massacre after massacre and war crime after war crime and not be called out. Israel is a major deterant to peace, it's well documented.

You think I am going to get my info from an idiot poster like Curious? I asked him if he read the NIE and he said yes and he arrived at the exact opposite conclusion of the report...the guy is an obvious moron who does not care about facts.

Listen, nearly the entire world supports the Palestinian cause and their right for self-determination. Sure, maybe some people are motivated by anti-semitic considerations but when you have high profile world leaders and institutions that document the crimes by Israel, you can't arrive at any other conclusion than Israel is culpable in this situation.

The sad part is that the corporate media gives you a very biased look here at the situation always favoring the Israel perspective. Show me one news personality figure who constantly criticizes Israel??? Just one? If the American public actually knew what was going on, there is no way in the world they would continue to endorse Israel.

Look around you fellows, nobody outside of the United States is supporting Israel with such zeal other than a corporate and zionest controlled Congress.

[Scorpion]

The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.

Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy ‘step-by-step’ process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation.

This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America’s proxy after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities.

Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America’s relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For all that, Israel’s armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.

The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again.

Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.

‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.

As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons – which is obviously undesirable – neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming retaliation. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire.

A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.

Israel’s strategic value isn’t the only issue. Its backers also argue that it deserves unqualified support because it is weak and surrounded by enemies; it is a democracy; the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment; and Israel’s conduct has been morally superior to that of its adversaries. On close inspection, none of these arguments is persuasive. There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel’s existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, its past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians.

Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, ‘the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents.

That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies around the world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when this was thought to advance its interests – it has good relations with a number of dictatorships today.

Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a ‘neglectful and discriminatory’ manner towards them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights.

A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland, many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States. The country’s creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.

This was well understood by Israel’s early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:

If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians’ national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously remarked that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian.’ Pressure from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people does not obligate the US to help Israel today no matter what it does.

Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’

The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn’t surprising. The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he ‘would have joined a terrorist organisation’.

So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it?

The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ emotionally attached to Israel.

Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party’s expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups – such as Jewish Voice for Peace – strongly advocate such steps. Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners both favour giving steadfast support to Israel.

Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, ‘it is routine for us to say: “This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think.” We as a community do it all the time.’ There is a strong prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on Israel is considered out of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of ‘perfidy’ when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial ‘security fence’. His critics said that ‘it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel.’

Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich, advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as ‘irresponsible’: ‘There is,’ his critics said, ‘absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related policies . . . of Israel.’ Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced that ‘the word “pressure” is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.’

Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the Washington ‘muscle rankings’.

The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.

The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so.

In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task even easier.

The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.

A key pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: ‘My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.’ One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel’s interests.

Another source of the Lobby’s power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, ‘there are a lot of guys at the working level up here’ – on Capitol Hill – ‘who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.’

AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby’s influence in Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.

There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had ‘displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns’. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: ‘All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians – those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire – got the message.’

AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, ‘it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.’ More important, he notes that AIPAC is ‘often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes’.

The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: “Help AIPAC.”’

Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money’. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them.

Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.

When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more ‘even-handed role’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of selling Israel down the river and said his statement was ‘irresponsible’. Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a letter criticising Dean’s remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that ‘anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning – without much evidence – that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.’

This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to ‘bring the sides together’, Washington should act as an honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn’t tolerate even-handedness.

During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits the country. These men were among Clinton’s closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals. Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were ‘negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag’.

The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby.

The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do most to shape popular opinion.

The Lobby’s perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate among Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is ‘dominated by people who cannot imagine criticising Israel’. He lists 61 ‘columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel reflexively and without qualification’. Conversely, he found just five pundits who consistently criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favours the other side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing a piece like this one.

‘Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me,’ Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that strongly support Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard defend Israel at every turn.

Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In his memoirs the paper’s former executive editor Max Frankel acknowledges the impact his own attitude had on his editorial decisions: ‘I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.’

News reports are more even-handed, in part because reporters strive to be objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied Territories without acknowledging Israel’s actions on the ground. To discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets 6000 email messages in a single day complaining about a story. In May 2003, the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel. Boston’s NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come from Israel’s friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight.

The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped to found WINEP. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded and run by individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda.

The Lobby’s influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel.

Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a well-deserved reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings’s coverage is conducted through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, which is financed by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre’s director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk. What was once a non-partisan policy institute is now part of the pro-Israel chorus.

Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on university campuses. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was underway, there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger with Oslo’s collapse and Sharon’s access to power, becoming quite vociferous when the IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force to subdue the second intifada.

The Lobby moved immediately to ‘take back the campuses’. New groups sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers to US colleges. Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Hillel joined in, and a new group, the Israel on Campus Coalition, was formed to co-ordinate the many bodies that now sought to put Israel’s case. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programmes to monitor university activities and to train young advocates, in order to ‘vastly expand the number of students involved on campus . . . in the national pro-Israel effort’.

The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity.

Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of the presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. ‘One can be sure that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the pre-eminent literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails, letters and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him,’ Jonathan Cole, its former provost, reported. When Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from Chicago, the same thing happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.

A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that faculty members of Columbia’s Middle East Studies programme were anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel. Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and the only incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had ‘responded heatedly’ to a student’s question. The committee also discovered that the academics in question had themselves been the target of an overt campaign of intimidation.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor what professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts have not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed on controlling debate.

A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel Studies programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programmes already in existence) so as to increase the number of Israel-friendly scholars on campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory. Academic administrators emphasise their pedagogical value, but the truth is that they are intended in large part to promote Israel’s image. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes it clear that his foundation funded the NYU centre to help counter the ‘Arabic [sic] point of view’ that he thinks is prevalent in NYU’s Middle East programmes.

No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.

[curious]

No real solution to the Israel/Palestine crisis. Everything has failed miserably. Israel is as much as fault as the Palestinians like it or not. Best thing is to have a 1 state solution where both groups are assimilated with one another or move all the Jews to New York City or South Beach.....

One thing is that the Muslims won't ever give up the land and fight till the end. Islam is an extreme and fanatical religion. If I were a Jew in Israel living with violence every day of my life, and I saw the U.S. with so many successful Jews and the security that Jews are afforded and the ability to worship as I please...I'd say fukc it, I am getting out of here ASAP.

All this nonsense about a covenant with God and the land was given to them by God is all nonsense and hocus pocus. They should just leave....there was a group of people living there before them for hundreds of years. Just give it back and move to the U.S. It's not their land, no matter what "God" says....

Actually there is a solution. The murderers in Gaza who fire rockets into civilian centers in Israel on a daily basis should be brought to justice and the U.N. should make it crystal clear to the nutjobs in Gaza that their behavior will no longer be tolerated and they will get NOTHING more from the U.N. until they stop these attacks.

Then perhaps the people in Gaza and the West Bank will start building a nation and stop living a life based on victimhood.