A shake-up in the Jewish lobby

[annabanana]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=561001&contrassID=1&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y


-snip-
In spite of the sense of crisis in the wake of the ongoing FBI investigation of the leaking of security material to Israel, and the temporary dismissal of two senior workers, the lobby is attempting to broadcast an atmosphere of business as usual.

-snip-
In the American system of separation of powers and of checks and balances, the administration does not have the right to interfere in the investigation. In fact, the representatives of the other arms of the administration and the Congress have proven their total loyalty to AIPAC: Bush appeared at a convention of the lobby at the height of the crisis, three months ago, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, promised to participate in the annual convention in May.

-snip-
There are signs that the FBI, which in the summer of 2004 leaked the investigation to CBS television, is today interested in lowering its profile, and even in reaching an agreement that will remove the subject from the agenda. On the other hand, pro-Arab factors are trying to continue to discuss the issue as well as the notion of "dual loyalty" of American Jews. The Zogby PR agency, which represents Arab interests as well, conducted a tendentious public opinion survey in order to demonstrate that most of those polled are suspicious of the activity of the lobby and want to register it as the agency of a foreign government.

[Jim Sagle]

1. AIPAC RRRAWWWKSSS!!!!

[Trajan]

2. *blinks*

[not systems]

5. Yes. Breaks rocks on a chain gang for treason, hopefully. n/t

[Jim Sagle]

16. AIPAC helped get rid of Bush Sr. Good job well done.

[not systems]

19. link? n/t

[Jim Sagle]

21. No link needed, it's common knowledge.

[not systems]

22. Because he was forcing Israel in to a peace settlement?

Or what?

If it is such "common knowledge" I am sure you can point
to some discussion of the details of how, what and why?

Right?

[Jim Sagle]

23. Google it and find it yourself.

[not systems]

24. Well if you will not provide a link or even a clue...

to what you are referring to I will take a guess.

I don't think attacking George Bush Sr. for not being
a rabid enough warmonger makes a great case for lionizing
AIPAC who now and then were allied with the far right
Christian Zionist's like Pat Robertson.

Great company your heroes keep.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Israel/Israel_Lobby_US.html

Distorting U.S. Foreign Policy:
The Israel Lobby and American Power
by Michael Lind

...

Although Nixon, an anti-Semite in his personal attitudes, rescued Israel in the 1973 war, Eisenhower infuriated the Jewish-American community by thwarting the joint seizure of Egypt's Suez Canal by Israel, Britain and France in 1956. Another Republican president, George Bush Sr., enraged the Israel lobby during the Gulf war by pressuring Israel not to respond to Iraq's missile attacks, choosing not to occupy Baghdad and promising America's Arab allies that the U.S. would push Israel on the Palestinian issue. The elder Bush was the last president to criticize the lobby publicly, in September 1991, when he complained that "there are 1,000 lobbyists up on the Hill today lobbying Congress for loan guarantees for Israel and I'm one lonely little guy down here asking Congress to delay its consideration of loan guarantees for 120 days."

The Democrats exploited this split between the Israel lobby and the first Bush administration. In an address to AIPAC in May 2000, presidential candidate A1 Gore recalled, "I remember standing up against Bush's foreign policy advisers who promoted the insulting concept of linkage, which tried to use loan guarantees as a stick to bully Israel. I stood with you, and together we defeated them."

...

Richard Perle, chairman of Bush's quasi-official Defense Policy Board, co-authored a 1996 paper with Douglas J. Eeith for the Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," it advised Netanyahu to make "a clean break from the peace process." Feith now holds one of the most important positions in the Pentagon-deputy-under-secretary of defense for policy. He argued in the National Interest in Fall 1993 that the League of Nations mandate granted Jews irrevocable settlement rights in the West Bank. In 1997, in "A Strategy for Israel," Feith called on Israel to re-occupy "the areas under Palestinian Authority control" even though "the price in blood would be high." On Oct. 13, 1997, Feith and his father were given awards by the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, which described the honorees as "the noted Jewish philanthropists and pro-Israel activists."

...

The liberalism and Democratic partisanship of most Jewish Americans forces the Zionist right to find its popular constituency, not in the Jewish community itself, but in the Protestant evangelical right of Pat Robertson and others many of whose members share the Christian Zionism of the early British patrons of Israel. In 1995, after I exposed the anti-Semitic sources of Pat Robertson's theories about a two-century-old Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy in an essay in The New York Review of Books, Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, denounced me rather than Robertson. Podhoretz conceded that Robertson's statements about Jewish conspiracies were anti-Semitic but argued that, in the light of Robertson's support for Israel, he should be excused according to the ancient rabbinical rule of batel b'shishim.

...

[Jim Sagle]

25. Lind's analysis is good for the viewpoint it expresses, but it's

incomplete. It doesn't deeply explore the malign role of Jimmie Carter in forcing hardline Zionists out of their natural habitat, the Democratic party.

Much has been written about the Scaife and Mellon financing of the new rightist infrastructure. Scant attention has been paid to how Carter took a sledgehammer to the Democratic Party and smashed it wide open.

[not systems]

26. Do you mean the Camp David accords allienated...

hardliners?

I assume the idea is that something was wrong with
the agreement to give the Sinai back to Egypt?

So the hardliner Zionists joined in with Reagen and now Bush Jr.
even though many of them are social and/or economic liberals
who are pushed to the right by their military support for an
expansionist Israel?

Am I close?

[Jim Sagle]

27. Yes...but that's only part of it.

Carter's brokering of an Israel-Egypt accord did indeed alienate the Greater Israel crowd, but it was good news for that vast majority of pro-Israelis who prefer peace to war.

Carter's loud and insistent and bullheaded advocacy of the Palestinian cause badly weakened the Democratic party's hold on one of its key constituences.

[Rose Siding]

3. Tom DeLay's fall could be having an influence here

as far as AIPAC is concerned, anyway.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=AIPAC%2C+%22tom+delay%22&btnG=Search

[TygrBright]

4. Whattheheck is...

...."THE" Jewish Lobby?

I know a lot of Jewish people, and they don't exactly agree with each other on everything (or even anything, in some cases.) They support DOZENS of lobbies that relate to issues that concern them as Jews.

Including the ACLU.

Identifying one particular lobby as "the" Jewish Lobby strikes me as a bit, uh... imprecise.

Not to say, "ignorant."

suspiciously,
Bright

[starroute]

6. So try calling it the pro-Israel lobby instead

There really is one of those -- although its claim to speak for all American Jews is, at best, a load of chutzpah.

Of course, it would sound a lot less impressive if you did that.

[annabanana]

8. It's not MY headliine..........see link (n/t)

[not systems]

9. Something haaretz thought was a good title for an article...

I doubt that they are out of line.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. The controlling Jews

They are a political lobbyist group. Why is it so unbelievable that they would "lobby" for their political interests?! Also, they are far from being "the" Jewish lobby. I also find it interesting that "pro-Arab factors are trying to continue to discuss the issue as well as the notion of "dual loyalty" of American Jews." Should we also discuss the same notion with those who identify themselves as Arab-Americans? That does sort of happen doesn't it? Citizens of the United States treated unfairly because of who they are. Why would a group already suffering from this want it for another group?

[not systems]

10. It is not the lobbing for interests that is being investigated it is the..

sending secrets to a foreign government that is.

[Behind the Aegis]

11. And where are they getting those secrets?!

If they are coming from within the US government, then that is who the investigation should focus on. If I work for company A, and I regularly meet with "union" members of company B, and these members pass along information to company B from me, then I am responsible, not the members of the union! So, if they are passing along "secret" information, how are they coming by that information? IF it is spying, then we have a problem, but if it is someone in the US government, there is where the problem lies.

[not systems]

12. Here is some background.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/27/eveningnews/main639143.shtml

FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case

(CBS) CBS News has learned that the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to -- in FBI terminology -- "roll up" someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

...

Here is a write up by Juan Cole:

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467

AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops

CBS is reporting that a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst detailed to Undersecretary of Defense for Planning Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans is under FBI investigation for spying for Israel. The person passed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) confidential documents, including those detailing Bush administration policy toward Iran, and AIPAC then passed them to Israel. There are wiretaps and photographs backing up the FBI case (the FBI agents involved are extremely brave to take this on).

...

Note that over 80% of American Jews vote Democrat, that the majority of American Jews opposed the Iraq war (more were against it than in the general population), and that American Jews have been enormously important in securing civil liberties for all Americans. Moreover, Israel has been a faithful ally of the U.S. and deserves our support in ensuring its security. The Likudniks like to pretend that they represent American Jewry, but they do not. And they like to suggest that objecting to their policies is tantamount to anti-Semitism, which is sort of like suggesting that if you don't like Chile's former dictator Pinochet, you are bigoted against Latinos.

...

[Behind the Aegis]

13. Interesting articles...thanks.

Then isn't the person passing on the information the traitor? If this person works for the AIPAC, then the group is in trouble. However, if the informations was passed on without knowledge of its secrecy, then the group is not to blame, and therein lies the problem: proving that AIPAC knew the information was secret. However, I wouldn't be surprised if more countries didn't do this...spy on their allies.

[not systems]

14. I don't know...

if it was an individual or a small group. I certainly
don't think it was everyone at AIPAC.

I think you are right that countries spy on allies
but when policy is being influenced by covert spying
and it is found out the law should apply.

If someone passes on information from inside the
pentagon or state department I doubt the "I didn't know"
defense will get them very far.

This will all probably come to nothing because it is
politically inconvenient. The big AIPAC Republican love fest
on CSPAN during the Republican convention showed that
their are lots of powerful people who would probably prefer
this to blow over.

[Behind the Aegis]

15. It will be interesting.

I am not sure that this will blow over. If it gets too big the Rethugs have a new scapegoat to exploit. The Rethugs will sell AIPAC down the river faster than a duck on a junebug!

[seemslikeadream]

17. Israel's Mole Inside the Pentagon

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=783161

check
post #93

FBI probe into leaked secrets takes aim at AIPAC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1341144

Fieth resigns from Pentagon today
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1186412

[Behind the Aegis]

18. Makes you wonder

How many more moles do we have in our government? Chalabi? Some drunk who can't keep his mouth shut? A prostitute? I bet there are all kinds of moles. What will be interesting is if people will see the difference between Israel and Judaism. Or will this news and a possible discovery of a mole inflame anti-Semitism?

[not systems]

20. I doubt it because no one will know about it except news junkies...

reading fringe websites like this.

If this story ever sees days light, I will eat my hat.

If a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound?

Look how the fact the Chalabi was a Iranian agent has
barely made a ripple. He is still considered an ally
by Judith Miller and lots of other neo-cons.