new essay by petras - american zionists against the pro-democracy movement - see attached - please confirm receipt of essay - jpetras
Attachment(s) from James Petras
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The veto and the case for impeaching President Obama
Never before has an American President's fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress been so exposed as it was by Obama's decision to veto the Security Council resolution condemning continued, illegal Israeli settlement activities on the occupied West Bank and demanding that Israel "immediately and completely cease" all such activities. In a different America - an informed America - some might think, I do, that Obama should be impeached. The charge? TREASON.
After she had exercised the Obama administration's first veto, the plea made by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice for understanding of America's position could not have been more absurd. "Our opposition to the resolution before this Council today should not be misunderstood to mean that we support settlement activity. On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity."
So why the veto? Ambassador Rice said:
"The United States has been deeply committed to pursuing a comprehensive and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, In that context, we have been focused on taking steps that advance the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, rather than complicating it. That includes a commitment to work in good faith with all parties to underscore our opposition to continued settlements."
What nonsense! If the Obama administration really wanted to underscore its stated opposition to Israel's on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem, there was no better or more effective way of doing so than voting for the resolution or abstaining. In either case the resolution would have passed and that would have opened the door to real global pressure on Israel if it continued to defy international law.
As for advancing the goal of a two-state solution, the Obama administration has done the opposite. By allowing Israel to continue its illegal settlement activities and consolidate its occupation, it, the Obama administration, has helped to guarantee that there can never be a viable Palestinian state living side by side with an Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war.
In the context of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, the only thing to which the Obama administration has been deeply committed is not provoking the wrath of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress and the mainstream media. For all practical purposes Obama has surrendered policy making on Israel-Palestine to this lobby. (The veto marked the complete surrender).
The essence of the problem this presents can be simply stated. The Zionist lobby's agenda - unquestioning support for Israel right or wrong - is not in America's own best interests. (In reality it is not in anybody's best interests including those of Israeli Jews and the Jews of the world).
As I pointed out on I February in my post Crunch time coming for America in the Middle East?, what all Arab peoples want is not only an end to corruption and repression and a better life in their own countries. They also want an end to the humiliation caused by Israel's arrogance of power and American support for it.
It is clear that the manifestations of Arab people power the world is witnessing were not instigated by Islamist extremist groups and are spontaneous protests with demands by citizens from all sections of civil society. So at the present time that is no evidence to suggest that change brought about by people power in Arab states will create more cover, more scope and more popular support for extremist and violent forces which use and abuse Islam in much the same way as Zionists use and abuse Judaism. But this could change, in my view will change, if America goes on supporting Israel right or wrong. In other words, the more the administration in Washington D.C. is perceived by the Arab street as being complicit in the Zionist state's defiance of international law and crimes, the more American interests and citizens are likely to be targeted and hit.
The American Constitution states that a president can be impeached and removed from office for "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours."
In my view a president who allows a lobby group to put the interests of a foreign power above those of the country of which they are citizens, and who by doing so puts his fellow citizens more in harm's way than they otherwise would be, is guilty of treason. (And all the more so when the American-Jewish lobby in question does not speak for more than about a third, and possibly only a quarter, of America's mainly silent and deeply troubled Jews)
Footnote:
The admirable and courageous Gideon Levy, the conscience of Israeli journalism, has a brilliant article (which I have tweeted) in today's Ha'aretz with the headline With settlement veto resolution, Obama has joined Likud.
And this is how Gideon concluded his piece:
"If the U.S. had been a responsible superpower, it would have voted for the resolution on Friday to rouse Israel from its dangerous sleep. Instead, we got a hostile veto from Washington, shouts of joy from Jerusalem and a party that will end very badly for both."
Attachment(s) from ReporterNotebook
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Wednesday 24 December 2003
According to a contact they are required to sign, male workers may not have any contact with Israeli women - including prostitutes, a police spokesman, Rafi Yaffe, said.
Here's a sneak peek from tonight's interview with legendary White House reporter Helen Thomas. She got in a bit of trouble last year for her candid views about Jews and Palestine. Does she regret what she said? Apparently, not in the least. What is your take on this highly controversial subject? Feel free to comment below. Filed under: Interviews February 16, 2011 Helen Thomas: Jews didn't have to go anywhere after World War 2
Posted: 06:33 PM ET
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jul/12/israel.iran
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
@ 917-974-6367
What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?
A very encouraging development is that the Israel Lobby is increasingly on the defensive with the Republican base. Both Ron Paul and Rand Paul have proposed cutting the foreign budget. A letter from Ron Paul was headlined"Stop buying friends overseas, save $6 billion!"
"Borrowing money from China — or printing it out of thin air — to hand out overseas in [an] attempt to purchase friends has been a failing foreign policy, as we see most recently in Egypt where there is not even a government in place!" Paul wrote in his Dear Colleague letter. "We should seek friendly relations and trade overseas, but we cannot justify lavish gifts to foreign leaders when American taxpayers are increasingly feeling the pain of our economic crisis…. We cannot afford to have 'business as usual' when we are bankrupt."
The bill is not endorsed by the leadership and probably won't pass, but "Paul's amendment represents the rising tide of opposition to foreign aid and the increased difficulty of defending such aid in Congress."
These calls to restrict foreign aid are framed entirely within the context of a completely out of control federal budget. But that hasn't stopped the David Horowitzfrom his usual over the top craziness, painting anyone who doesn't do everything Israel wants as an anti-Semite: "Ron Paul is a Vicious Anti-Semite and Conservatives Need To Wash Their Hands of Him."
Long ago Bill Buckley drummed the anti-Semites out of the conservative movement, and the movement thrived as a result. But the Jew-haters have returned. For years the Texas crackpot, Ron Paul, has been attacking America and Israel as imperialist powers — the Great Satan and the Little Satan, and calling for America's retreat from the battle against our totalitarian enemies. At the recent CPAC conference Paul's Jew-hating storm-troopers swarmed the Freedom Center's table to vent their spleen against Israel as a Nazi state. Now Paul is making a priority of withdrawing aid for Israel — the only democracy in the Middle East and the only reliable ally of the United States.
"Vicious anti-Semite"? "Jew-hating storm troopers"??
The "Jew hating storm troopers" refers to hundreds of thugs plastered with swastikas who stormed Horowitz's table at the CPAC conference and viciously beat up the presenters.
Oh wait. That's how the scene played out in Horowitz's diseased mind. In the real world, the people manning Horowitz's table were confronted by a whole lot of young conservatives who have gotten the message that Israel is an apartheid state bent on ethnic cleansing and oppression of the Palestinians. They seem to be aware of the hypocrisy of Jewish activist organizations that preach multiculturalism for non-Jews and aggressive ethnonationalism for Jews.
One of Horowitz's operatives, David Swindle (who really should think about changing his name), recounts the avalanche of indifference and hostility that he and the others manning the booth faced. There was a paleoconservative fan of "the infamous anti-Semite Pat Buchanan" and a great many others who confronted the Horowitz group:
We heard it all — some points nakedly anti-Semitic, others nonsensical, and some emanating from the talking points of Ron Paul. Was this reallythat important of an issue? Israel doesn't have a right to exist. Israel is a "Nazi state." It's hard to be sympathetic for Israel when they oppress the Palestinians so much. People are starving in Gaza….
Swindle says he was "drained" by the experience (probably like I'd feel manning an anti-immigration, pro-White booth at an ADL conference), reviving only at a Shabbat dinner with people who were completely on page with his pro-Israel views. It's nice to see a pro-Israel activist beaten down like that, finding refuge only among his Jewish friends. Perhaps the Israel Lobby really is on the defensive now in a way it hasn't been for years, as the people at Mondoweiss keep saying.
And the really encouraging thing is that a great many young conservatives are turning away from neocon Israelocentrism as a paradigm for what it means to be conservative, and that's all to the good.
