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From: Alan Hart <alan_hart_esq@btinternet.com>
Zionist lobby's new orders for Obama
By Alan Hart
After his appointment as Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, California's representative Howard Berman told The Forward, "Even before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist." This is the man, one of the Zionist lobby's most influential stooges in Congress, who introduced House Resolution 1734 which gives President Obama his new orders.
Thoroughly disingenuous, the resolution, which was drafted by AIPAC and in my view is an indication of panic on its part, was approved unanimously by the House of Representatives on 15 December. It
- strongly and unequivocally opposes any attempt to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations or other international forums;
- calls upon the Administration to continue its opposition to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state;
- calls upon the Administration to affirm that the United States would deny any recognition, legitimacy, or support of any kind to any unilaterally declared ''Palestinian state'' and would urge other responsible nations to follow suit, and to make clear that any such unilateral declaration would constitute a grievous violation of the principles underlying the Oslo Accords and the Middle East peace process;
- calls upon the Administration to affirm that the United States will oppose any attempt to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations or other international forums and will veto any resolution to that end by the United Nations Security Council (my emphasis added);
- calls upon the President and the Secretary of State to lead a high-level diplomatic effort to encourage the European Union and other responsible nations to strongly and unequivocally oppose the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state or any attempt to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations or other international forums; and
- supports the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the achievement of a true and lasting peace through direct negotiations between the parties.
As M.J. Rosenberg predicted (http://america-hijacked.com/2010/12/15/aipacs-palestinian-bashing-bill-rushed-to-floor-today) the Berman bill passed overwhelmingly, actually unanimously, "because that is how things work in a city where policy is driven by campaign contributions - and not just on this issue." He added: "The only difference between how AIPAC lobbyists dictate U.S. Middle East policy and pretty much every other major lobby is that AIPAC works to advance the interests of a foreign country. In other words, comparisons to the National Rifle Association would only be applicable if the gun owners that the NRA claims to represent lived in, say, Greece. Oh, and NRA-backed bills usually take longer than a day to get to the House floor." (My emphasis added).
What Rosenberg thinks and writes is particularly interesting because in the early 1980s he was editor of AIPAC's weekly newsletter Near East Report.
He noted that as is usual with Berman, "his resolution exclusively blames Palestinians for the collapse of peace talks; not a word of criticism of Israel appears."
He went on: "There is only one reason that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations collapsed. It is the power of the 'pro-Israel lobby', led by AIPAC, which prevents the United States from saying publicly what it says privately: that resolution of a conflict which is so damaging to U.S. interests is consistently being blocked by the intransigence of the Netanyahu government and its determination to maintain the occupation." (My emphasis added).
For now, Rosenberg says, the bottom line is money. "The U.S. government dances to Israel's tune because it is afraid to risk campaign contributions." But he also gives optimism a voice (as I sometimes do).
"It doesn't have to be that way. If the administration and Congress put U.S. interests (and Israel's too) over the craving for campaign contributions, the United States could tell the Israeli government that, from now on, our aid package comes with strings. Like an IMF loan (although aid to Israel is a gift, not a loan), we could say that in exchange for our billions, our UN vetoes of resolutions criticizing Israel, and our silence in the face of war crimes like Gaza, we want Israel to end the occupation within, say, 24 months. And Israel would have to comply because our military assistance is, as AIPAC likes to call it, 'Israel's lifeline.'"
I would like Rosenberg to be right about how Israel's leaders would respond to real American pressure, but I am very far from convinced that he is. As my regular readers know, I think there is a possibility, even a probability, that if real American push came to Zionist shove, the preference of Israel's deluded leaders would be to tell the American president of the moment (and the whole world) to go to hell. Whether or not they would actually do so would depend, I imagine, on the state of Israeli (Jewish) public opinion at the time. If most Israeli Jews were still as brainwashed by Zionist propaganda as they are today, they would probably back the mad men who lead them.
Question: Why do I think that Berman's resolution is an indication of AIPAC panic?
The answer, most of it, is in my last post which was headlined Obama's last card - Will he play it? My main point was that because he does not have to honour the promises made to Netanyahu to secure his delivery of a 90-day freeze on illegal settlement activity on the occupied West Bank, Obama is free to discontinue the presidential practise of vetoing Security Council resolutions which are critical of Israel.
My speculation is that AIPAC drafted House resolution 1734 and then got Berman to rush it through because it feared that Obama is thinking about instructing the US ambassador to the UN to the effect that there will be no further American veto on Security Council resolutions which are critical of Israel and/or call for the recognition of a Palestinian state inside 1967 (pre-war) borders.
So the question waiting for an answer is - Will Obama obey Zionism's latest orders?
Attachment(s) from ReporterNotebook
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Beltway Bunkum
Posted By Philip Giraldi On December 15, 2010 (11:00 pm) In Uncategorized
It has been observed that the elites that prowl the streets of the nation's capital and proliferate in the universities and think tanks nationwide have little in common with most of the American people. The talking heads whose fraternal banter can be best observed on Sunday morning television represent the inner circle punditry, all of whom embrace the view that the United States should be engaged worldwide and forever for the good of mankind, a view that large po rtions of the public do not necessarily share as the economy sinks and boys and girls from small towns are increasingly coming home in coffins. Of course, among the advantages in being a television personality are a high income and status, good benefits, and relative job security, particularly if one is prepared to stroke the powers that be, underlining the fact that inside-the-Washington-beltway reality has little to do with the rest of the world.
It is sometimes quite astonishing how ridiculous the opinion makers can be as they argue that black is white. Sunday's Washington Post featured a front page article on WikiLeaks. The sub-headline in the print edition described WikiLeaks as an "anti-privacy group." It is a curious turn of phrase, particularly as...
Article taken from Antiwar.com Original - http://original.antiwar.com
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/12/15/beltway-bunkum/
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 | INSIDE STORY: THE MORAL CORRUPTION OF ISRAELI SOCIETY desertpeace | December 16, 2010 at 11:12 | Categories: Corrupt Politics, Ethnic Cleansing, Hasbara, Israel, Nonviolent Resistance, Occupation, Palestine, Soldier Brutality, zionist harassment | URL: http://wp.me/pahWK-5fL |
Army takes over a house in Hebron, 16.10.08. Photo by Activestills.org
After being arrested in a Palestinian demonstration near Hebron some time ago, I was handcuffed and blindfolded then sat in the direct sun along with another Israeli activist. After some time, an IDF commander arrived on the scene and asked one of his soldiers, "why are those two in the sun?" The soldier reported that he just put us next to some Palestinians that were arrested in the same demonstration. The commander, clearly upset with his young soldier, ordered that we be moved to the shade because 'they are Jews." Then he personally inspected the zip-tie handcuffs of the Palestinians, making sure that they were as excruciatingly tight as possible. This was one of my first concrete experiences in the West Bank in which I was able to see just how soldiers viewed Palestinians. It was as if they were not fully human or at least, not as human as Jews.
Purposeless is a word that is used often in the new Breaking the Silence collection of IDF soldiers' testimonies from the past ten years of occupation in the West Bank. Testimony after testimony tells a story of some experience where soldiers harassed, terrorized and 'controlled' Palestinians for seemingly no purpose at all. Soldiers would raid a house, arrest an unwanted man, or shoot unarmed civilians while forcing families to stand in the cold wearing only night cloths for no reason whatsoever. After telling their stories of abuse, many soldiers say they saw no purpose in conducting these actions. From an operational standpoint, there is no purpose in arresting an unwanted man or harassing a village with sound bombs at four in the morning. However, there is a greater purpose for the constant harassment of Palestinians. It is done to reinforce the notion that they are an occupied and controlled people as well as to indoctrinate young soldiers in the ways that the army understands the Palestinian population; as not completely human. Viewing Palestinians as less than human is a profound example of the moral corruption of Israeli society.
In order to occupy, with all the violations of the humanity of the occupied, the occupier must internalize a moral high ground. The 'purposeless' arrests, night raids, and other violations of human rights are a necessary component for soldiers to understand their high ground. The fact that most of the horrific crimes discussed in the testimonies were conducted by commanders and others in supervisor positions further reinforces this idea that 'purposeless' operations are done for a clear purpose. Breaking the Silence has given us a window into the method of indoctrination in Israel at its most sacred level, that of the army.
One of the most recent testimonies from the book, reports of 'purposeless' activities in Ramallah and Hebron in 2008-2009:
We also had arrests that we were tired of. There was a feeling that they were purposeless, for example looking for people who cut the fence or people who threw stones or were identified at demonstrations against the fence or inciters. It was a feeling of purposelessness. If in Hebron there was a feeling that you were arresting an unfortunate person, the feeling here was that we were doing nothing. There was one arrest, I don't remember in which village it started heating up, and there was chaos and I remember the company commander cocked his weapon and said they need to calm down, and the Shin Bet came in the middle of the village among a few houses of a large family.
Testimony 22 evokes another picture of terror. Titled, "The battalion commander marched him barefoot", a soldier recalls having his commander order a house raid in Gaza in 2002-3:
We are taking everyone out of the house at four in the morning in the freezing cold and leaving them outside in the cold, in robes, without a minute of warning to put on some clothes, and leaving them for a half hour outside until you do the search. Up to cases where they come with a Givati force in Gaza, they go in with the battalion commander; they find someone there who isn't connected to anything, a house that's not at the location they received, a different house. And of course in every home in Bet Lahia, outside of the house, there are pictures of Shahids so he says to him: "What's this?" And then he decides to take him with us and he's barefoot. They walk three kilometers from his house to the border and he's barefoot. He asked the battalion commander if he could put shoes on, sandals, he asked him in Hebrew and he goes to him: "No"! He started bleeding on the way.
As I was reading this document in disbelief and sadness, I mentioned a couple of testimonies to my flat mate who was an IDF commander three years ago. I told him about one testimony which described how soldiers in Hebron would train for house arrests by selecting, at random, a Palestinian home. In the middle of the night, they would raid the house and arrest whom they pleased. After the terrorizing was over, the soldiers would release the innocent man (or men) that they captured and have an operational debriefing to inspect performance. My flat mate, rather dismissively, asked if I was surprised by this. "I used to do the same thing", he exclaimed and continued, "They are doing the same right now somewhere out there in the West Bank."
The majority of soldiers have committed similar actions or watched them happen. When soldiers, our national pride, bravely come forward and speak of what happens behind our walls and checkpoints, we have a privileged position to better analyze the national psyche. What is found is that the occupation has led to a moral corrosion of Israeli society which has almost reached a point of no return.
