Chazzsongs 'Zionism'

`Bangkok Post' daily acts as voice of Zionist lobby in Thailand

2007-04-05T09:09:00.002-07:00

`Bangkok Post' daily acts as voice of Zionist lobby in Thailand

Thailand Zionists

The Thai daily Bangkok Post affiliated to Thailand's Zionist lobby has been acting as the voice of Tel Aviv in the major developments of the Middle East and world of Islam.

During the 33-day war launched by the Zionist regime against the defenseless people of Lebanon, in particular the disastrous genocide in Ghana which provoked worldwide protest, in the articles of Bangkok Post, the oppressed Lebanese people were branded as terrorists.

Meanwhile, concerning the issued related to Iran, the Thai daily gives special attention to the interests of the Zionist regime.

The growing trend of Iran-Thailand political, economic and cultural relations, which naturally makes Iran's role in the issues associated with Thai Muslims more decisive, has always been challenged by this daily.

In the editorial of its Monday issue, Bangkok Post raised questions on Iran's stance on British marines' violation of the country's territorial waters by repeating the claims of the media associated with Zionist organizations.

The daily accused Iran's coast guards of taking into custody the British marines in the territorial waters of Iraq.

Upon illegal entry into Iran's territorial waters on March 23, 2007, fifteen British marines were arrested by Iranian coast guards.

Following such a violation, without paying any attention to the data and information registered in the Global Positioning System (GPS) of the arrested marines, British officials attempted to pretend through extensive media and political propaganda that their servicemen have been arrested in Iraqi waters.

The arrested marines confessed to their illegal entry into Iran's waterways and apologized to the Iranian people.

The media experts of Southeast Asia believe that the Bangkok Post editorial is in line with the goals of the media centers associated with Zionists aiming to make Iran give up its inalienable international rights.

`Bangkok Post' daily acts as voice of Zionist lobby in Thailand

2007-04-05T09:09:00.001-07:00

`Bangkok Post' daily acts as voice of Zionist lobby in Thailand

Kuala Lumpur, April 4, IRNA

Thailand Zionists

The Thai daily Bangkok Post affiliated to Thailand's Zionist lobby has been acting as the voice of Tel Aviv in the major developments of the Middle East and world of Islam.

Meanwhile, concerning the issued related to Iran, the Thai daily gives special attention to the interests of the Zionist regime.

The daily accused Iran's coast guards of taking into custody the British marines in the territorial waters of Iraq.

Upon illegal entry into Iran's territorial waters on March 23, 2007, fifteen British marines were arrested by Iranian coast guards.

The arrested marines confessed to their illegal entry into Iran's waterways and apologized to the Iranian people.

FOX News airs Most Important Interview on Earth

2007-03-25T03:43:00.000-07:00

FOX News airs Most Important Interview on Earth

FOX's Neil Cavuto conducts what is perhaps the most important interview on earth because it unequivocally trashes in no uncertain terms the diabolical HOAX that has tricked people of good will around the world into supporting the un-Godly abomination that calls itself a “Jewish state.”

Friday, August 04, 2006

Cavuto asks whether Israel should exist and Rabbi Yisroel Weiss from Jews United Against Zionism tells him, and the world, how badly the state of Israel has f*cked things up for EVERYONE - both Jews and non-Jews.

Rabbi Weiss: This is the view that was shared throughout the past hundred years, when the whole movement of Zionism was created, the concept – the ideology – of transforming Judaism from spirituality, a religion, into materialism a nationalistic goal to have a piece of land, all the rabbinical authorities said this is antithetical with what Judaism is all about – expressly forbidden by the Torah because we are in exile by God.

Cavuto: So, you shouldn’t have a state? You shouldn’t have a country? You shouldn’t have a government?

We shouldn’t have a state. We should be living amongst all the nations as the Jews were doing for two thousand years as loyal citizens, people who are serving God, emulating God with compassion . . .

Contrary to what people believe, that it’s a religious conflict, we have been living for hundreds of years among Muslims and Arab communities without any UN human rights groups to watch…

Cavuto: Let me ask you this, Rabbi, was life better for the Jews prior to the creation of the Jewish state of Israel?

Weiss: 100%. In Palestine, we have the testimony of the Jewish community living there and other lands that they were living in harmony and they pleaded with the United Nations, in the documents we have, the chief Rabbi of Jerusalem said we do not want a Jewish state. The Muslim, Christian and Jewish inhabitants were ignored with the creation of the State . . .

Cavuto: Neverthless, you might not have had a country per se, but you were not a stranger to being abused or slaughtered over the millennia, particularly as recently as fifty sixty years ago?

Weiss: There is an issue of being killed because of anti-semitism, and then there’s another issue where you antagonize and you create your anti-semitism through Zionism . . . in other words, it’s not a free for all – you knock out your neighbors windows and yell anti-semitism.

Cavuto: I know you are an orthodox Jew, what do traditional Jews think of that position?

Weiss: [The mainstream Jewish view] is that, true, we shouldn’t be having a state, but once it’s created the Zionist propaganda that the Arabs want to throw every Jew into the ocean and there’s a ingrained hate against the Jews, which they’ve convinced many Jews to believe, this is why they’re fearful of returning the land . . .

Cavuto: Well you can’t blame them, right, I mean you have the president of Iran who says the Holocaust never existed and if he had his druthers he’d destroy Israel and all the Jews.

Weiss: That’s also patently false. He has a Jewish community in Iran and they haven’t murdered them when they had the opportunity to . . .

Cavuto: So, you don’t take him at his word that he would try to kill Jews?

Weiss: He would [want] the dismantling of the political state of Israel. In fact, we went, a whole group of Rabbis this last year to visit Iran, and we were taken up by the leaders, we met with the vice president, he [Ahmedinejad] was in Venezuela at the time, we met with religious leaders, all of them stated unequivocally that don’t have a conflict with [Jews]

Cavuto: So as long as Israel exists, Rabbi, you think – just itching for trouble

Weiss: Jews are suffering, Palestinians and Lea are suffering . . . we pray for the speedy and peaceful dismantlment of the Jewish state.

Cavuto: It’s interesting Rabbi, you don’t hear that view often.

Israeli Lobby - The Report

2007-02-08T05:29:00.000-08:00

Israeli Lobby - The Report

by Ted Lang
3-25-6

"Mearsheimer and Walt's paper leaves absolutely no doubt that Israel not only controls our entire U.S. government, our Pentagon, our foreign policy and our political parties, but our media as well."

It's all coming together so quickly now, but never should we even remotely consider relaxing our assault. In federal government circles, selection by upper management of a candidate to attend the senior management program offered to upwardly mobile government executives as offered by the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, is in and of itself a high privilege and an honor. It clearly signifies to all that an attendee and graduate of the program is destined for the highest ranks of government service; namely, the Senior Executive Service.

During my employment with the federal government, virtually every high-level executive I reported to was an SES that graduated from this high-power school. The John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University is, therefore, a very prestigious center of learning, both in terms of academic ranking and in terms of its ranking by the highest levels of management within the United States government. Professor Stephen M. Walt is a professor at JFK, while John J. Mearsheimer is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

As with all institutions of higher learning, professors at these colleges and universities are continuously urged, if not actually pressured, to produce essays, technical reports, and books expounding upon their respective areas of expertise based on their concentration of educational and research disciplines. The JFK School provides just such a vehicle for technical reporting and essay writing in their "Faculty Research Working Papers Series." It was through this venue, that Mearsheimer and Walt published their latest eye-opening report, entitled: "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." Needless to say, at this time in our nation's history, it couldn't come at a more critical time.

As Americans feverishly attempt to understand the workings of the twisted mind of a totally out-of-control genocidal lunatic and mass-murdering warmongering buffoon and his gang that has hijacked the government of the United States, explanations for his unilateral and unnecessary invasion abound in limitless speculation and inquiry. However, the most frequently offered rationale, if that is what it can be called, is that it was primarily about oil. But considering the hostility of Israel, its penchant and perfected planning and execution of terror, it becomes increasingly clear that the foreign policy of the United States is dictated by Israel. I have often pointed out that assessment in this space.

Mearsheimer and Walt's paper leaves absolutely no doubt that Israel not only controls our entire government, our Pentagon, our foreign policy and our political parties, but our media as well. Digressing a moment from the natural order of topics in their magnificent paper, let's move immediately to the report's treatment of Israeli control of the American corporate mainstream establishment media, as it will be the intention of that un-American element and institution to work hard and feverishly to spike and cover up this damaging report that exposes the motivational madness of the Bush regime.

Addressing the section, "Manipulating the Media," Mearsheimer and Walt offer: "In addition to influencing government policy directly, the Lobby [AIPAC] strives to shape public perceptions about Israel and the Middle East. It does not want an open debate on issues involving Israel, because an open debate might cause Americans to question the level of support that they currently provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organizations work hard to influence the media, think tanks, and academia, because these institutions are critical in shaping popular opinion."

The report goes on: "The Lobby's perspective on Israel is widely reflected in the mainstream media in good part because most American commentators are pro-Israel. The debate among Middle East pundits, journalist Eric Alterman writes, is dominated by people who cannot imagine criticizing Israel., He lists 61 columnists and commentators who can be counted upon to support Israel reflexively and without qualification., Conversely, Alterman found just five pundits who consistently criticize Israeli behavior or endorse pro-Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favors the other side."

Certain key elements of the Alternative Media, this site among them, have consistently exposed the one-sidedness of the MSM in protecting Israel and extending this protection therefore to the Bush administration. That is precisely what empowers the administration as a regime. And what it doesn't say in the report, is the astonishing control that Jews sympathetic to Israel, and therefore supportive of the Bush crime machine, overwhelming own, manage and operate print and TV and cable electronic news reporting. This subject wasn't even touched on.

The report then turns to a brief analysis of the New York Times. This is "America's newspaper of record" and as Bernie Goldberg has revealed, is the national editorial gatekeeper and assessor of what is newsworthy and what is not. It is the Times that decides what news will be on TV and cable later in the evening, and you may rest comfortably sure that this Mearsheimer and Walt report will not make it, nor will Charlie Sheen. It is the Times, that blocked the Downing Street Memo report and is now also dedicated to blocking a full, open investigation of the Bush 9-11 plot.

Concerning the Times, Mearsheimer and Walt offer: "Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times. The Times occasionally criticizes Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but it is not even-handed. In his memoirs, for example, former Times executive editor Max Frankel acknowledged the impact of his own pro-Israel attitude had on his editorial choices. In his words: I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert., He goes on: 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 recognized, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.,"

The report goes on to give examples of the organized manner in which the Israeli Lobby encourages the supportive consumers of newspaper, radio and television news, to literally bombard news entities with protest letters and e-mails in the true and time-worn fashion of Zionist agitation to stifle news and views they don't like, and to urge for propaganda favoring Israel. Examples of Zionist rank and file pressure on CNN and NPR are cited. The report concludes this section on the media offering, "These factors help explain why the American media contains few criticisms of Israeli policy, rarely questions Washington's relationship with Israel, and only occasionally discusses the Lobby's profound influence on U.S. policy."

It should be crystal clear that my labeling of the MSM as being "The Zionist Media" is now virtually proven fact, especially coming from this highly regarded institution of government studies and from trainers of candidates for the Senior Executive Service. And you can count on the fact that the Zionist media is burning the midnight oil to feverishly suppress this critical exposé.

The report's opening remarks now: "U.S. foreign policy shapes events in every corner of the globe. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East, a region of recurring instability and enormous strategic importance. Most recently, the Bush Administration's attempt to transform the region into a community of democracies has helped produce a resilient insurgency in Iraq, a sharp rise in world oil prices, and terrorist bombings in Madrid, London, and Amman. With so much at stake for so many, all countries need to understand the forces that drive U.S. Middle East policy.

The U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S. support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security.

This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries is based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives. As we show below, however, neither of those explanations can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel." Now we may all rest more than comfortably assured that virtually all organized Jewry, and all levels of American government, political parties, and especially the media, will violently explode with outrage and spring into overwhelming unified and coordinated action over this 83-page unabashed truthful report which exposes the horrific damage Zionism has already perpetrated against our once free and beautiful nation. This Zionism required "the Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century," and it is becoming increasingly clear that such an amount of plotting and execution as serves the immediate interests of Israel likely generated the compliant action on the part of the traitors in our own government that engineered and made 9-11 happen. It makes the likelihood of 9-11 less an act of random terrorism and more a deliberate action considering all the key Pentagon players who have dual citizenship with Israel.

How could any thinking American anywhere in our government entrust our most powerful military might and its top secret sensitivity to individuals with dual citizenship with the 106th ranking nation in terms of population, and a ranking as fourth as a world-leading nuclear power, a rogue nation that is actively waging terrorism upon other nations? How can such power be turned over to citizens of a nation that lusts for the destruction of the entire Arab world and Islam, a race, people and nations that control the Earth's most vital oil supplies? How can politicians calling themselves "Americans" put their entire nation at risk of reprisal for the terrorist outrages that Zionist criminals in Israel have perpetrated against all the peoples of the Middle East? How? Ask Bush!!!

Need one raise more obvious questions? Where did WE learn how to become terrorists and turn on our own? Why did we turn against the whole world and ignore human decency and morality, and ignore the Geneva Conventions and begin campaigns of torture and mass terror, and slaughter unarmed captive men, women and children? Who showed US how to do this and get away with it? Who? Ask Israel!!!

Mearsheimer and Walt summarize: "It is not surprising that Israel and its American supporters want the United States to deal with any and all threats to Israel's security. If their efforts to shape U.S. policy succeed, then Israel's enemies get weakened or overthrown, Israel gets a free hand with the Palestinians, and the United States does most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding, and paying.

But even if the United States fails to transform the Middle East and finds itself in conflict with an increasingly radicalized Arab and Islamic world, Israel still ends up protected by the world's only superpower. This is not a perfect outcome from [AIPAC's] perspective, but it is obviously preferable to Washington distancing itself from Israel, or using its leverage to force Israel to make peace with the Palestinians."

The report concludes: "Can the [Israeli-AIPAC] Lobby's power be curtailed? One would like to think so, given the Iraq debacle, the obvious need to rebuild America's image in the Arab and Islamic world, and the recent revelations about AIPAC officials passing U.S. government secrets to Israel. One might also think that Arafat's death and the election of the more moderate Abu Mazen would cause Washington to press vigorously and evenhandedly for a peace agreement. In short, there are ample grounds for U.S. leaders to distance themselves from the Lobby and adopt a Middle East policy more consistent with broader U.S. interests. In particular, using American power to achieve a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians would help advance the broader goals of fighting extremism and promoting democracy in the Middle East.

But that is not going to happen anytime soon. AIPAC and its allies [including Christian Zionists] have no serious opponents in the lobbying world. They know it has become more difficult to make Israel's case today, and they are responding by expanding their activities and staffs. Moreover, American politicians remain acutely sensitive to campaign contributions and other forms of political pressure and major media outlets are likely to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it does." <<Theodore E. Lang

Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.

The Israeli Lobby Unmasked And Exposed

Council For The National Interest Foundation
3-20-6

Two professors from Harvard University and the University of Chicago have just released an 81-page study on "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" that concludes that the "overall thrust of U.S. policy in the [Middle East] is due almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"

The study is currently available as a Harvard "working paper" with extensive footnotes or as a shorter version published in the London Review of Books.

The authors systematically examine the facts of the U.S.-Israel relationship, concluding that Israel is neither a strategic asset nor a "compelling moral case for sustained U.S. backing," and point a finger squarely at the Israel lobby for "[managing] to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical."

The authors examine the entire scope of the Israel lobby's efforts, from its intimidation of the press, think tanks and academia into presenting a misleading image of Israel to its success at co-opting the Congress and the Executive Branch into implementing Israel's policy aims.

The paper is significant not just for its substance but also for the fact that it was published at all. The authors note in their section on the lobby's intimidation of the press: "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."

Stephen Walt is Academic Dean and Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His latest book is "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy" (W. W. Norton & Co., 2005). According to his faculty website, he has previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, in addition to consulting for the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the National Defense University.

John Mearsheimer is a Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, where he is an authority on security affairs and international politics. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.

Both authors previously wrote "An Unnecessary War," which argued against invading Iraq, in the January/February 2003 edition of Foreign Policy magazine.

Council for the National Interest Foundation
1250 4th Street SW, Suite WG-1
Washington, District of Columbia 20024
http://www.cnionline.org/
http://www.rescuemideastpolicy.com/
Phone 202-863-2951
Fax 202-863-2952

Comment

Bob - Wyoming
3-20-6

Now here is a real shocker!!! And, you will not see this on the CBS evening news. Five years ago, who would have ever thought that control of American foreign policy had been hijacked by a foreign power, and for the purpose of advancing an alien agenda? I mean who knew?

All along I thought we were over there killing Arabs because "they hate our freedom." This was supposed to be all about the "war on terror." Whatever that means. And, then let's not forget all those scary weapons of mass destruction. (Those must be the ones we gave to Iraqis to use on the Iranians?) Now, we are told that that we have to teach the Iraqis about democracy? What's next? Well, what's behind door number three? Those darned Iranians, we are told, are building an atomic bomb. Whew!!!! You know what that means.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been slaughtered, and it will be generations before this nation recovers, if ever, from this madness. Soon the bombs will be falling on Iran like a spring rain and thousands more innocents will die. More of our sons will come home in rubber bags.

And I can't help but wonder whether anyone in Washington will have the moral courage to tell the truth? Perhaps we should take a stab at it right now: "They gave their lives advancing the cause of International Zionism."

The Israel Lobby And Its Choke-Hold On America

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.

Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticise Israeli policy, which some people attribute to a resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe. We are 'getting to a point', the US ambassador to the EU said in early 2004, 'where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s'. Measuring anti-semitism is a complicated matter, but the weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. In the spring of 2004, when accusations of European anti-semitism filled the air in America, separate surveys of European public opinion conducted by the US-based Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that it was in fact declining. In the 1930s, by contrast, anti-semitism was not only widespread among Europeans of all classes but considered quite acceptable.

The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic country in Europe. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community said that 'France is not more anti-semitic than America.' According to a recent article in Ha'aretz, the French police have reported that anti-semitic incidents declined by almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this even though France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Finally, when a French Jew was murdered in Paris last month by a Muslim gang, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets to condemn anti-semitism. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin both attended the victim's memorial service to show their solidarity.

No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist. But this is a separate matter with little bearing on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the 1930s. Nor would anyone deny that there are still some virulent autochthonous anti-semites in Europe (as there are in the United States) but their numbers are small and their views are rejected by the vast majority of Europeans.

Israel's advocates, when pressed to go beyond mere assertion, claim that there is a 'new anti-semitism', which they equate with criticism of Israel. In other words, criticise Israeli policy and you are by definition an anti-semite. When the synod of the Church of England recently voted to divest from Caterpillar Inc on the grounds that it manufactures the bulldozers used by the Israelis to demolish Palestinian homes, the Chief Rabbi complained that this would 'have the most adverse repercussions on . . . Jewish-Christian relations in Britain', while Rabbi Tony Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said: 'There is a clear problem of anti-Zionist -- verging on anti-semitic -- attitudes emerging in the grass-roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church.' But the Church was guilty merely of protesting against Israeli government policy.

Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or questioning its right to exist. But these are bogus charges too. Western critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist: they question its behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis themselves. Nor is Israel being judged unfairly. Israeli treatment of the Palestinians elicits criticism because it is contrary to widely accepted notions of human rights, to international law and to the principle of national self-determination. And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp criticism on these grounds.

In the autumn of 2001, and especially in the spring of 2002, the Bush administration tried to reduce anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and undermine support for terrorist groups like al-Qaida by halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had very significant means of persuasion at his disposal. He could have threatened to reduce economic and diplomatic support for Israel, and the American people would almost certainly have supported him. A May 2003 poll reported that more than 60 per cent of Americans were willing to withhold aid if Israel resisted US pressure to settle the conflict, and that number rose to 70 per cent among the 'politically active'. Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States should not favour either side.

Yet the administration failed to change Israeli policy, and Washington ended up backing it. Over time, the administration also adopted Israel's own justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began to mimic Israeli rhetoric. By February 2003, a Washington Post headline summarised the situation: 'Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy.' The main reason for this switch was the Lobby.

The story begins in late September 2001, when Bush began urging Sharon to show restraint in the Occupied Territories. He also pressed him to allow Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Yasser Arafat, even though he (Bush) was highly critical of Arafat's leadership. Bush even said publicly that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. Alarmed, Sharon accused him of trying 'to appease the Arabs at our expense', warning that Israel 'will not be Czechoslovakia'.

Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the White House press secretary called Sharon's remarks 'unacceptable'. Sharon offered a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the Lobby to persuade the administration and the American people that the United States and Israel faced a common threat from terrorism. Israeli officials and Lobby representatives insisted that there was no real difference between Arafat and Osama bin Laden: the United States and Israel, they said, should isolate the Palestinians' elected leader and have nothing to do with him.

The Lobby also went to work in Congress. On 16 November, 89 senators sent Bush a letter praising him for refusing to meet with Arafat, but also demanding that the US not restrain Israel from retaliating against the Palestinians; the administration, they wrote, must state publicly that it stood behind Israel. According to the New York Times, the letter 'stemmed' from a meeting two weeks before between 'leaders of the American Jewish community and key senators', adding that AIPAC was 'particularly active in providing advice on the letter'.

By late November, relations between Tel Aviv and Washington had improved considerably. This was thanks in part to the Lobby's efforts, but also to America's initial victory in Afghanistan, which reduced the perceived need for Arab support in dealing with al-Qaida. Sharon visited the White House in early December and had a friendly meeting with Bush.

In April 2002 trouble erupted again, after the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield and resumed control of virtually all the major Palestinian areas on the West Bank. Bush knew that Israel's actions would damage America's image in the Islamic world and undermine the war on terrorism, so he demanded that Sharon 'halt the incursions and begin withdrawal'. He underscored this message two days later, saying he wanted Israel to 'withdraw without delay'. On 7 April, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, told reporters: '"Without delay" means without delay. It means now.' That same day Colin Powell set out for the Middle East to persuade all sides to stop fighting and start negotiating.

Israel and the Lobby swung into action. Pro-Israel officials in the vice-president's office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell. They even accused him of having 'virtually obliterated the distinction between terrorists and those fighting terrorists'. Bush himself was being pressed by Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were especially outspoken about the need to support Israel, and DeLay and the Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, visited the White House and warned Bush to back off.

The first sign that Bush was caving in came on 11 April -- a week after he told Sharon to withdraw his forces -- when the White House press secretary said that the president believed Sharon was 'a man of peace'. Bush repeated this statement publicly on Powell's return from his abortive mission, and told reporters that Sharon had responded satisfactorily to his call for a full and immediate withdrawal. Sharon had done no such thing, but Bush was no longer willing to make an issue of it.

Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. On 2 May, it overrode the administration's objections and passed two resolutions reaffirming support for Israel. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House of Representatives version passed 352 to 21.) Both resolutions held that the United States 'stands in solidarity with Israel' and that the two countries were, to quote the House resolution, 'now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism'. The House version also condemned 'the ongoing support and co-ordination of terror by Yasser Arafat', who was portrayed as a central part of the terrorism problem. Both resolutions were drawn up with the help of the Lobby. A few days later, a bipartisan congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission to Israel stated that Sharon should resist US pressure to negotiate with Arafat. On 9 May, a House appropriations subcommittee met to consider giving Israel an extra $200 million to fight terrorism. Powell opposed the package, but the Lobby backed it and Powell lost.

In short, Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United States and triumphed. Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, reported that Sharon's aides 'could not hide their satisfaction in view of Powell's failure. Sharon saw the whites of President Bush's eyes, they bragged, and the president blinked first.' But it was Israel's champions in the United States, not Sharon or Israel, that played the key role in defeating Bush.

The situation has changed little since then. The Bush administration refused ever again to have dealings with Arafat. After his death, it embraced the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but has done little to help him. Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a unilateral settlement on the Palestinians, based on 'disengagement' from Gaza coupled with continued expansion on the West Bank. By refusing to negotiate with Abbas and making it impossible for him to deliver tangible benefits to the Palestinian people, Sharon's strategy contributed directly to Hamas's electoral victory. With Hamas in power, however, Israel has another excuse not to negotiate. The US administration has supported Sharon's actions (and those of his successor, Ehud Olmert). Bush has even endorsed unilateral Israeli annexations in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson.

US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush 'wrapped around his little finger', the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said in October 2004. If Bush tries to distance the US from Israel, or even criticises Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories, he is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its supporters in Congress. Democratic presidential candidates understand that these are facts of life, which is the reason John Kerry went to great lengths to display unalloyed support for Israel in 2004, and why Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing today.

Maintaining US support for Israel's policies against the Palestinians is essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not stop there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration's policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.

Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the 'real threat' from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The 'unstated threat' was the 'threat against Israel', Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. 'The American government,' he added, 'doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.'

On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that 'Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein.' By this point, according to Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached 'unprecedented dimensions', and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it, 'Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities.'

Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. 'The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,' Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. 'Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.'

At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that 'the greatest risk now lies in inaction.' His predecessor as prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled: 'The Case for Toppling Saddam'. 'Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,' he declared. 'I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam's regime.' Or as Ha'aretz reported in February 2003, 'the military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.'

As Netanyahu suggested, however, the desire for war was not confined to Israel's leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, Israel was the only country in the world where both politicians and public favoured war. As the journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, 'Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced.' In fact, Israelis were so gung-ho that their allies in America told them to damp down their rhetoric, or it would look as if the war would be fought on Israel's behalf.

Within the US, the main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to Likud. But leaders of the Lobby's major organisations lent their voices to the campaign. 'As President Bush attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq,' the Forward reported, 'America's most important Jewish organisations rallied as one to his defence. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.' The editorial goes on to say that 'concern for Israel's safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.'

Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war started, Samuel Freedman reported that 'a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent.' Clearly, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on 'Jewish influence'. Rather, it was due in large part to the Lobby's influence, especially that of the neo-conservatives within it.

The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or WINEP, and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war.

At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the US and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Bush rejected his advice and chose to go after Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now regarded as a serious possibility and on 21 November the president charged military planners with developing concrete plans for an invasion.

Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of power. We don't have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though neo-conservatives on his staff -- Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff and one of the most powerful individuals in the administration -- also played their part. By early 2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war was inevitable.

Outside the administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on terrorism. Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure on Bush, and partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and outside the government. On 20 September, a group of prominent neo-conservatives and their allies published another open letter: 'Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,' it read, 'any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.' The letter also reminded Bush that 'Israel has been and remains America's staunchest ally against international terrorism.' In the 1 October issue of the Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William Kristol called for regime change in Iraq as soon as the Taliban was defeated. That same day, Charles Krauthammer argued in the Washington Post that after the US was done with Afghanistan, Syria should be next, followed by Iran and Iraq: 'The war on terrorism will conclude in Baghdad,' when we finish off 'the most dangerous terrorist regime in the world'.

This was the beginning of an unrelenting public relations campaign to win support for an invasion of Iraq, a crucial part of which was the manipulation of intelligence in such a way as to make it seem as if Saddam posed an imminent threat. For example, Libby pressured CIA analysts to find evidence supporting the case for war and helped prepare Colin Powell's now discredited briefing to the UN Security Council. Within the Pentagon, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was charged with finding links between al-Qaida and Iraq that the intelligence community had supposedly missed. Its two key members were David Wurmser, a hard-core neo-conservative, and Michael Maloof, a Lebanese-American with close ties to Perle. Another Pentagon group, the so-called Office of Special Plans, was given the task of uncovering evidence that could be used to sell the war. It was headed by Abram Shulsky, a neo-conservative with long-standing ties to Wolfowitz, and its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks. Both these organisations were created after 9/11 and reported directly to Douglas Feith.

Like virtually all the neo-conservatives, Feith is deeply committed to Israel; he also has long-term ties to Likud. He wrote articles in the 1990s supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain the Occupied Territories. More important, along with Perle and Wurmser, he wrote the famous 'Clean Break' report in June 1996 for Netanyahu, who had just become prime minister. Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu 'focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq -- an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right'. It also called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush administration to pursue those same goals. The Ha'aretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that Feith and Perle 'are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests'.

Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. The Forward once described him as 'the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration', and selected him in 2002 as first among 50 notables who 'have consciously pursued Jewish activism'. At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award for promoting a strong partnership between Israel and the United States; and the Jerusalem Post, describing him as 'devoutly pro-Israel', named him 'Man of the Year' in 2003.

Finally, a brief word is in order about the neo-conservatives' prewar support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi National Congress. They backed Chalabi because he had established close ties with Jewish-American groups and had pledged to foster good relations with Israel once he gained power. This was precisely what pro-Israel proponents of regime change wanted to hear. Matthew Berger laid out the essence of the bargain in the Jewish Journal: 'The INC saw improved relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause. For their part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better relations between Israel and Iraq, if and when the INC is involved in replacing Saddam Hussein's regime.'

Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests. Last March, Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee acknowledged that the belief that Israel and the neo-conservatives had conspired to get the US into a war in Iraq was 'pervasive' in the intelligence community. Yet few people would say so publicly, and most of those who did -- including Senator Ernest Hollings and Representative James Moran -- were condemned for raising the issue. Michael Kinsley wrote in late 2002 that 'the lack of public discussion about the role of Israel . . . is the proverbial elephant in the room.' The reason for the reluctance to talk about it, he observed, was fear of being labelled an anti-semite. There is little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war. It's a decision the US would have been far less likely to take without their efforts. And the war itself was intended to be only the first step. A front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the war began says it all: 'President's Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a Region: A Pro-US, Democratic Area Is a Goal that Has Israeli and Neo-Conservative Roots.'

Pro-Israel forces have long been interested in getting the US military more directly involved in the Middle East. But they had limited success during the Cold War, because America acted as an 'off-shore balancer' in the region. Most forces designated for the Middle East, like the Rapid Deployment Force, were kept 'over the horizon' and out of harm's way. The idea was to play local powers off against each other -- which is why the Reagan administration supported Saddam against revolutionary Iran during the Iran-Iraq War -- in order to maintain a balance favourable to the US.

This policy changed after the first Gulf War, when the Clinton administration adopted a strategy of 'dual containment'. Substantial US forces would be stationed in the region in order to contain both Iran and Iraq, instead of one being used to check the other. The father of dual containment was none other than Martin Indyk, who first outlined the strategy in May 1993 at WINEP and then implemented it as director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.

By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the burden of containing both. But it was a strategy the Lobby favoured and worked actively in Congress to preserve. Pressed by AIPAC and other pro-Israel forces, Clinton toughened up the policy in the spring of 1995 by imposing an economic embargo on Iran. But AIPAC and the others wanted more. The result was the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions on any foreign companies investing more than $40 million to develop petroleum resources in Iran or Libya. As Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz, noted at the time, 'Israel is but a tiny element in the big scheme, but one should not conclude that it cannot influence those within the Beltway.'

By the late 1990s, however, the neo-conservatives were arguing that dual containment was not enough and that regime change in Iraq was essential. By toppling Saddam and turning Iraq into a vibrant democracy, they argued, the US would trigger a far-reaching process of change throughout the Middle East. The same line of thinking was evident in the 'Clean Break' study the neo-conservatives wrote for Netanyahu. By 2002, when an invasion of Iraq was on the front-burner, regional transformation was an article of faith in neo-conservative circles.

Charles Krauthammer describes this grand scheme as the brainchild of Natan Sharansky, but Israelis across the political spectrum believed that toppling Saddam would alter the Middle East to Israel's advantage. Aluf Benn reported in Ha'aretz (17 February 2003):

Senior IDF officers and those close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, such as National Security Adviser Ephraim Halevy, paint a rosy picture of the wonderful future Israel can expect after the war. They envision a domino effect, with the fall of Saddam Hussein followed by that of Israel's other enemies . . . Along with these leaders will disappear terror and weapons of mass destruction.

Once Baghdad fell in mid-April 2003, Sharon and his lieutenants began urging Washington to target Damascus. On 16 April, Sharon, interviewed in Yedioth Ahronoth, called for the United States to put 'very heavy' pressure on Syria, while Shaul Mofaz, his defence minister, interviewed in Ma'ariv, said: 'We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians and it is appropriate that it should be done through the Americans.' Ephraim Halevy told a WINEP audience that it was now important for the US to get rough with Syria, and the Washington Post reported that Israel was 'fuelling the campaign' against Syria by feeding the US intelligence reports about the actions of Bashar Assad, the Syrian president.

Prominent members of the Lobby made the same arguments. Wolfowitz declared that 'there has got to be regime change in Syria,' and Richard Perle told a journalist that 'a short message, a two-worded message' could be delivered to other hostile regimes in the Middle East: 'You're next.' In early April, WINEP released a bipartisan report stating that Syria 'should not miss the message that countries that pursue Saddam's reckless, irresponsible and defiant behaviour could end up sharing his fate'. On 15 April, Yossi Klein Halevi wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times entitled 'Next, Turn the Screws on Syria', while the following day Zev Chafets wrote an article for the New York Daily News entitled 'Terror-Friendly Syria Needs a Change, Too'. Not to be outdone, Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the New Republic on 21 April that Assad was a serious threat to America.

Back on Capitol Hill, Congressman Eliot Engel had reintroduced the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. It threatened sanctions against Syria if it did not withdraw from Lebanon, give up its WMD and stop supporting terrorism, and it also called for Syria and Lebanon to take concrete steps to make peace with Israel. This legislation was strongly endorsed by the Lobby -- by AIPAC especially -- and 'framed', according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, 'by some of Israel's best friends in Congress'. The Bush administration had little enthusiasm for it, but the anti-Syrian act passed overwhelmingly (398 to 4 in the House; 89 to 4 in the Senate), and Bush signed it into law on 12 December 2003.

The administration itself was still divided about the wisdom of targeting Syria. Although the neo-conservatives were eager to pick a fight with Damascus, the CIA and the State Department were opposed to the idea. And even after Bush signed the new law, he emphasised that he would go slowly in implementing it. His ambivalence is understandable. First, the Syrian government had not only been providing important intelligence about al-Qaida since 9/11: it had also warned Washington about a planned terrorist attack in the Gulf and given CIA interrogators access to Mohammed Zammar, the alleged recruiter of some of the 9/11 hijackers. Targeting the Assad regime would jeopardise these valuable connections, and thereby undermine the larger war on terrorism.

Second, Syria had not been on bad terms with Washington before the Iraq war (it had even voted for UN Resolution 1441), and was itself no threat to the United States. Playing hardball with it would make the US look like a bully with an insatiable appetite for beating up Arab states. Third, putting Syria on the hit list would give Damascus a powerful incentive to cause trouble in Iraq. Even if one wanted to bring pressure to bear, it made good sense to finish the job in Iraq first. Yet Congress insisted on putting the screws on Damascus, largely in response to pressure from Israeli officials and groups like AIPAC. If there were no Lobby, there would have been no Syria Accountability Act, and US policy towards Damascus would have been more in line with the national interest.

Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran is widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most likely to acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an Islamic country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to their existence. 'Iraq is a problem . . . But you should understand, if you ask me, today Iran is more dangerous than Iraq,' the defence minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, remarked a month before the Iraq war.

Sharon began pushing the US to confront Iran in November 2002, in an interview in the Times. Describing Iran as the 'centre of world terror', and bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, he declared that the Bush administration should put the strong arm on Iran 'the day after' it conquered Iraq. In late April 2003, Ha'aretz reported that the Israeli ambassador in Washington was calling for regime change in Iran. The overthrow of Saddam, he noted, was 'not enough'. In his words, America 'has to follow through. We still have great threats of that magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran.'

The neo-conservatives, too, lost no time in making the case for regime change in Tehran. On 6 May, the AEI co-sponsored an all-day conference on Iran with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute, both champions of Israel. The speakers were all strongly pro-Israel, and many called for the US to replace the Iranian regime with a democracy. As usual, a bevy of articles by prominent neo-conservatives made the case for going after Iran. 'The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East . . . But the next great battle -- not, we hope, a military battle -- will be for Iran,' William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard on 12 May.

The administration has responded to the Lobby's pressure by working overtime to shut down Iran's nuclear programme. But Washington has had little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. As a result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other articles now warn of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution against any appeasement of a 'terrorist' regime, and hint darkly of preventive action should diplomacy fail. The Lobby is pushing Congress to approve the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would expand existing sanctions. Israeli officials also warn they may take pre-emptive action should Iran continue down the nuclear road, threats partly intended to keep Washington's attention on the issue.

One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping Iran from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran's nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the US would hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but US policy would be more temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option.

It is not surprising that Israel and its American supporters want the US to deal with any and all threats to Israel's security. If their efforts to shape US policy succeed, Israel's enemies will be weakened or overthrown, Israel will get a free hand with the Palestinians, and the US will do most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying. But even if the US fails to transform the Middle East and finds itself in conflict with an increasingly radicalised Arab and Islamic world, Israel will end up protected by the world's only superpower. This is not a perfect outcome from the Lobby's point of view, but it is obviously preferable to Washington distancing itself, or using its leverage to force Israel to make peace with the Palestinians.

Can the Lobby's power be curtailed? One would like to think so, given the Iraq debacle, the obvious need to rebuild America's image in the Arab and Islamic world, and the recent revelations about AIPAC officials passing US government secrets to Israel. One might also think that Arafat's death and the election of the more moderate Mahmoud Abbas would cause Washington to press vigorously and even-handedly for a peace agreement. In short, there are ample grounds for leaders to distance themselves from the Lobby and adopt a Middle East policy more consistent with broader US interests. In particular, using American power to achieve a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians would help advance the cause of democracy in the region.

But that is not going to happen -- not soon anyway. AIPAC and its allies (including Christian Zionists) have no serious opponents in the lobbying world. They know it has become more difficult to make Israel's case today, and they are responding by taking on staff and expanding their activities. Besides, American politicians remain acutely sensitive to campaign contributions and other forms of political pressure, and major media outlets are likely to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it does.

The Lobby's influence causes trouble on several fronts. It increases the terrorist danger that all states face -- including America's European allies. It has made it impossible to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a situation that gives extremists a powerful recruiting tool, increases the pool of potential terrorists and sympathisers, and contributes to Islamic radicalism in Europe and Asia.

Equally worrying, the Lobby's campaign for regime change in Iran and Syria could lead the US to attack those countries, with potentially disastrous effects. We don't need another Iraq. At a minimum, the Lobby's hostility towards Syria and Iran makes it almost impossible for Washington to enlist them in the struggle against al-Qaida and the Iraqi insurgency, where their help is badly needed.

There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the Lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians. This situation undercuts Washington's efforts to promote democracy abroad and makes it look hypocritical when it presses other states to respect human rights. US efforts to limit nuclear proliferation appear equally hypocritical given its willingness to accept Israel's nuclear arsenal, which only encourages Iran and others to seek a similar capability.

Besides, the Lobby's campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy for democracy. Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts -- or by suggesting that critics are anti-semites -- violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends. The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned.

Finally, the Lobby's influence has been bad for Israel. Its ability to persuade Washington to support an expansionist agenda has discouraged Israel from seizing opportunities -- including a peace treaty with Syria and a prompt and full implementation of the Oslo Accords -- that would have saved Israeli lives and shrunk the ranks of Palestinian extremists. Denying the Palestinians their legitimate political rights certainly has not made Israel more secure, and the long campaign to kill or marginalise a generation of Palestinian leaders has empowered extremist groups like Hamas, and reduced the number of Palestinian leaders who would be willing to accept a fair settlement and able to make it work. Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and US policy more even-handed.

There is a ray of hope, however. Although the Lobby remains a powerful force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult to hide. Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but reality cannot be ignored for ever. What is needed is a candid discussion of the Lobby's influence and a more open debate about US interests in this vital region. Israel's well-being is one of those interests, but its continued occupation of the West Bank and its broader regional agenda are not. Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for one-sided US support and could move the US to a position more consistent with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in the region, and with Israel's long-term interests as well.

10 March

Footnotes

An unedited version of this article is available at http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011, or at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=891198.

War of Words Over Paper on Israel

by Scott Jaschik - insidehighered.com

When “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” first appeared on the Web site of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government this month, the paper’s title page featured the globe and Harvard seal that make up the Kennedy School’s logo, and that routinely appear on papers posted there. If you download the paper now, however, you won’t find the logo on the PDF. The Kennedy school — with the authors’ permission — took the logo off, a sign of just how sensitive this paper has become.

Critics — led at Harvard by Alan Dershowitz and elsewhere by The New York Sun — are lobbing criticism after criticism at the paper, saying that it is bigoted, ignorant, stereotypical, uses material out of context, and borrows from hate-oriented Web sites. Defenders of the article, meanwhile, say that it is bringing attention to an important issue and that the reaction to the article demonstrates one of its key themes, which questions the logic of close ties between the United States and Israel and argues that a powerful pro-Israel lobby make its difficult to deviate from its views.

The article itself is certainly getting unusual attention for a scholarly work. (If you want to judge for yourself, but don’t have time for the full version, which is 82 pages counting footnotes, the authors have also published a shorter version in The London Review of Books.)

The authors of the controversial article are both well respected political scientists: Stephen M. Walt, who is academic dean and also holds an endowed chair in international relations at the Kennedy School, and John J. Mearsheimer, who holds a chair at the University of Chicago. Their article argues that the United States has hurt its own security by being too close to Israel, that Israel is not deserving of such support, and that pro-Israel lobbyists silence anyone who would question Israeli interests. The article uses “the Lobby” as a phrase to cover the activities of a number of groups that work to build support for Israel.

While not a major focus of the article, the piece touches on the state of campus debate about Israel and the Middle East. The article says that pro-Israel groups have increased their activities on campuses, and it specifically criticizes the David Project, which led criticism of Middle Eastern studies professors at Columbia University. Generally, the article says that while “the Lobby has gone to considerable lengths to insulate Israel from criticism on college campuses,” it has failed to do so because “academic freedom is a core value and because tenured professors are hard to threaten or silence.”

Since the article was published, it has been the subject of repeated articles and editorials in The New York Sun, a relatively small daily, but one with influence in neoconservative and media circles. Among the more embarrassing pieces there was one with the headline “David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated by a Harvard Dean,” which quoted the white supremacist as a fan of the new study, of which he said: “It is quite satisfying to see a body in the premier American university essentially come out and validate every major point I have been making.”

Joining the criticism on Friday was the Anti-Defamation League, which published an analysis of the article that called it an “amateurish and biased critique of Israel, American Jews and American policy.”

At Cambridge, meanwhile, Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard law, has been leading the charge. In an interview, Dershowitz said that the article took quotes out of context, was factually inaccurate in parts, and came down to “the conspiratorial argument that the Jews have too much power and control.”

Dershowitz said that the article was “bigoted” for implying that Jews are monolithic in support of all of Israel’s policies and of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. In fact, Dershowitz said, while he is a strong supporter of Israel, he has numerous disagreements with Israel’s policies and opposed the war in Iraq. Asked for examples of facts that are wrong or lack context, Dershowitz cited the article’s reference to the “blood kinship” of Jews as the basis for citizenship in Israel. Dershowitz noted that Israel has Arab citizens who are Christian and Muslim. Further, he said that Israel has a much larger percentage of non-Jews as citizens than the United States has of non-Christians or that most countries have of minority religions.

Many donors to Harvard are furious about the article, Dershowitz said, and with good reason. “People are outraged and embarrassed by this trash,” he said.

Criticism has been multiplying online — some of it quite detailed in going through statements in the article and raising questions about its fairness.

As all of this has been going on, the scholars who wrote the piece have been largely quiet — giving a few early interviews in which they defended their work, but declining to get into a point-by-point discussion and also criticizing their critics for implying that their piece is anti-Semitic. (Most of the critics do stay a bit away from that explicit charge, and while “bigoted” is used frequently, “anti-Semitic” is generally not, at least by the professors discussing the article.)

Mearsheimer did not respond to messages seeking comment for this article.

In a phone interview, Walt said that the authors stood behind their work and looked forward to scholarly discussion of it, but he also declined to respond to specific criticisms being raised.

He said he wasn’t surprised by the strong reaction the article is receiving. “Anybody who writes on a controversial topic is bound to face criticism and may also face personal attacks of various kinds,” he said. “Our purposes in writing the piece was to open up a broader discussion of American policy in the Middle East. We hope people will read what we wrote and engage in a serious discussion of the arguments.”

Variations of that response have further angered some of the authors’ critics.

“So let me get this straight: the authors have written and published a paper because they want to provoke an open debate — and then decide not to respond to any of the critiques made of the paper,” wrote Daniel W. Drezner, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

While the paper was written by professors at two universities — Chicago and Harvard — the full article was published on a Harvard Web site and many of the critical articles about it that appeared early on called the work a “Harvard paper” or “Harvard study” or some variation, so much of the criticism has been directed toward Cambridge, not Hyde Park.

The Kennedy School issued a statement indicating that the institution “stands firmly behind the academic freedom of its faculty, including Professor Stephen Walt.”

The statement noted that papers published on the school’s Web site always include a disclaimer reflecting Harvard’s policy of not interfering with or dictating professors’ views. The routine statement says: “The views expressed in the KSG Faculty Working Paper Series are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the John F. Kennedy School of Government or Harvard University.”

The Kennedy School said that — with Walt’s approval — the school’s logo had been removed from the paper “in an effort to minimize the confusion” created by press accounts about the paper being a Harvard study. Also citing “apparent confusion in the media” about the paper, the authors added “clarifying language” to the cover page of the study. The clarification said that the authors were “solely responsible” for the views expressed and that the article should not be taken to reflect the views of either Harvard or Chicago.

Roger W. Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, said on Friday that in the previous 24 hours he had received e-mail or calls from a dozen people, around the world, concerned about the way the article’s authors were being treated, and that the AAUP was monitoring the situation.

Bowen said that the irony over the furor is that the argument in the paper is “not particularly new.” The reaction is largely because of the association of the argument with Harvard, he said.

Harvard’s policy of having professors indicate that their papers reflect their views, and not those of the institution, is not only appropriate, but helps academic freedom, Bowen said. “No institution can take responsibility for what one of its faculty members writes. If they were to take responsibility that also implies that they have the right to make changes,” he said.

What is of concern in this case, he said, is if Harvard is going beyond its normal policies to disassociate itself from these arguments more than it would from any argument put forward by a faculty member. At this time, he said, he doesn’t feel he has enough information to know if that’s the case.

Some critics of Walt have noted that because he holds an administrative position at the Kennedy School, he is more closely associated with the institution than other faculty members would be. Bowen said that was true, but had no relevance on his academic freedom. “You don’t give up your scholarly credentials” when you take on an administrative role, Bowen said.

The AAUP recently found itself spending a lot of time on Middle Eastern politics — when it planned, postponed, and eventually abandoned a planned conference on academic boycotts. The conference imploded amid reports that the association had accidentally sent anti-Semitic materials from Holocaust deniers to conference participants. But the invitation-only conference was already being criticized for a guest list that many said gave too many slots to professors who want to endorse boycotts of Israeli universities. Critics of the conference say that it fell apart because it was poorly organized with an unbalanced attendee list, but supporters of the conference say that the association was punished for opening the meeting to critics of Israel.

“I think there is something called the Israel lobby,” Bowen said. “I don’t think anyone doubts that, and I think Walt and Mearsheimer — just like any other scholar — have every reason in the world to comment, and academic freedom guidelines protect their right to do research in this area in the same way scholars who disagree have every right in the world to take them to task and to do critical research on their study.”

While academics comment on a range of controversial issues all the time, Bowen said that dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issues posed particular difficulties. Bowen said that one of his “real shocks” at the AAUP was when “a very close friend and colleague” who is Jewish, a “strong civil libertarian,” and has “wonderful values on academic freedom” approached him about trying to urge Duke University to block a group there from organizing a national conference for student supporters of the Palestinian cause. “On that issue, there are blinders,” Bowen said.

“Any time you deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even indirectly, you need to be prepared,” he said.

Jewish Rule

2007-02-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

by JB Campbell

Probably the best description of the problem which confronts humanity is in Douglas Reed’s The Controversy of Zion.

Reed, a foreign correspondent for the Times of London, discusses the struggle within Judaism between those who craved a Jewish homeland in the former Judea, which for many centuries has been known as Palestine and populated by Semitic Palestinians, and those who thought this was a crazy idea, due to the Jewish nature.

The Khazarian Zionists

The ones who wanted a homeland called themselves Zionists and the ones who didn’t merely called themselves Jews. Oddly, the Zionists were mostly non-Jews whose ancestors had themselves converted to Judaism around 800 AD in a place called Khazaria, in the Caucasus Mountains between the Caspian and Black Seas.

They were quite literally Caucasians. The history of the Khazars can be found in the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Britannica and especially in Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe, and of course online.

This is one of the many aspects of the Jewish Question: Who is a Jew? What is a Jew? What do Jews do and what do they want? One of the results of the Holocaust legend is that it has made people around the world wary of even mentioning Jews, or the word "Jew." Substitutes are often used - but not by Jews of course. Jews call themselves Jews - they just don’t like non-Jews to say the word "Jew." It disturbs them because they know that coming from a non-Jew, the word "Jew" is an accusation of a crime, generally usury, sometimes worse. Today, it has become something far worse.

Sephardics

And so, we have two kinds of Jews: Western Jews and Eastern Jews. Western Jews are the more civilized ones, the ones who traditionally occupied themselves in the money business - gold, silver, banking, finance, lending, precious gems, etc. They are the real Jews, who can trace their ancestry to Spain, Morocco, Egypt and the Middle East. There is no trace of Judeans. Ironically, Western Jews generally were not the ones who wanted a Jewish homeland ripped out of Palestine; those ones were the Eastern Jews from Russia.

Ashkenziams

These Eastern Jews, who are known as Ashkenazim, are the ones who have been pretending to be Jews. The amazing thing is that they have redefined Judaism thoroughly via an utter obedience to the Talmud, which does qualify them as Honorary Jews. One should refer to the history of the Khazars to learn the source of the ruthless nature of these people, who were always what we have come to know as Terrorists. Roughly 90% of Jews are Ashkenazi Jews - maybe more. Since the early 20th Century, they have flooded America and Europe and much of the world.

In Russia, in the late 19th Century, these ruthless people developed simultaneously two types of Terrorism. One of them was Communism and the other one was Zionism and they were both forms of Judaism. As Stephen S. Wise, chief rabbi of the United States in the 1930s said, "Some call it Marxism - I call it Judaism!" Both Communists and Zionists desired to rule the world - literally. The Communists wanted to murder the Romanoffs, liquidate millions of Russian Christians, seize control of the Russian homeland and make Moscow the center of world domination. The Zionists wanted the center to be in Palestine, because they were fanatical Talmudists and had this recurring pipe dream that they were the people of the Old Testament. Zionism called for the Russian Jews to emigrate to Palestine, get settled and take it over from the Palestinians, rename it "Israel" and make The Law go forth from there. The Russian gang was a cult of pretenders; steeped in the Talmud, ruthlessly bossed by rabbinic commissars, they were prepared to kill their way out of Russia and into Palestine. They possessed the deadly zeal of the convert and they planned to migrate en masse to Palestine starting soon.

Herzl Convenes The Zionist Congress

The first Jewish Century began in Basel, Switzerland in 1897 with the Zionist Congress convened there by Theodore Herzl and his associates. One group of associates, the Russian branch of Zionism and Communism, soon eliminated Herzl and took over the movement. Herzl was the godfather of Zionism and was surprised by these strangers from the East, who had no ancestral ties to the Middle East. The Western or Spanish Jews such as Herzl may have had some tenuous connection to Judea - but that is not proven. For years there were to me some remarkable coincidences: How the Khazars and their descendants the Ashkenazim could mimic so perfectly the Hebrews of Leviticus and Deuteronomy; how a typical coarse Ashkenazi Jew such as Kissinger could be so like a supposed Spanish Jew such as Bernard Baruch, the tall and regal financial high priest of the Wilson and Roosevelt administrations?

Baruch's Protégé

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that the smartest thing he ever did was, as a lieutenant colonel going nowhere, to ask Bernard Baruch for advice on his career. Within months, despite his utter incompetence and lack of combat experience, Ike was picked to become the first five-star general in US history, and overlord of the most terrible war criminals in human history. Douglas Reed answered my question on Baruch: he revealed that Baruch was in fact a Russian Jew, not a Western Jew as he pretended. One mystery solved!

And it is interesting that Herzl would supposedly design the concept of Zionism in complete ignorance of the Russian "Jews" who were sharpening their knives and pining for a miraculous transportation to the new Zion. Once Herzl was out of the way, Zionism was a Russian operation, no less than Communism.

But the question remains: Should we refer to these pirates as Jews, as Zionists, as Talmudists? Some are obviously Zionists but since all Jews refer to themselves as Jews, we should, too.

Did Zionists, Or Jews, Murder The Romanovs

The horrors mentioned below were mainly committed by Jews who were not Zionists. The Romanoffs and twenty million Russians were not murdered by Zionists, but by Communist Jews. The Hungarians and Ukrainians were destroyed by Communist Jews.

The banking and business depredations mentioned below were committed by Rothschild gangsters who were not Zionists. Now, of course, our government has been taken over totally by Zionist Jews and Zionist non-Jews, but the glue holding them all together is Judaism.

What if Israel implodes or is just no longer viable as a safe haven and the persecuted ones must once again depart for friendlier lands? That would be the end of Zionism but not the end of Judaism. Jews would still gravitate to Capitol Hill and the White House to demand special exemptions for themselves and unearned, unnatural powers over the rest of us.

The Zionists have pressured and even terrorized other Jews into supporting Zionism - the secular religion justified only by the grimmest fairy tale of all, the Holocaust. It has become an obsessive compulsion for some Jews and the most terrible problem for many more who see a nightmare coming. They know that the nightmare was designed by Jews and was tacitly supported by virtually all Jews, Zionist or not.

Zionism was at first rejected by reactionary Western Jews, who had been trying to assimilate themselves into Gentile society for centuries.

Rothschilds, Oil, And the Mideast

Perhaps the Rothschilds and Warburgs and Oppenheims, et al, realized the futility of assimilation with those whom they were plundering with their fractional reserve banking, or perhaps the idea of a Jewish headquarters appealed to them, but for some reason the Jewish Money Power got behind the Zionist plan for the invasion of Palestine. It is my theory that the invasion coincided with the discovery of oil in the Middle East and that the Rothschild Group simply needed Jewish special forces in the region to control events in whatever way needed. Jews would not be discovering or producing any oil, but they could make sure that it would be as expensive as possible.

Oil is the most lucrative business after banking and cocaine trafficking but it depends on a reliable price structure. That is, consumers have had to be persuaded that oil is rather scarce and hard to find to justify ever-rising oil prices. Rothschild’s American banking and oil commissar, John D. Rockefeller, planted the idea that oil supplies were short and in danger of drying up at any time. This myth was exploded on January 10, 1901 near Beaumont, Texas when the massive Spindletop well blew out. That monster produced around four million barrels of oil and ended Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly on oil prices, based on his Indiana and Ohio wells and his criminal railroad transportation practices. Spindletop ended the belief he’d sold the people that oil was scarce. Prices plummeted, although there wasn’t much demand for oil at the time. There wouldn’t be for a few more years until the advent of the automobile. A better method for control of raw materials - mainly oil - would have to be developed.

Oil Or Ideologies

It was at this time that the Rothschild/Rockefeller Group devised the best method of all to keep unwanted oil in the ground, where it would not threaten the price structure. Only oil owned by the Group would be exploited, and at very controlled amounts. The Group began in 1917 to place its agents in control of governments of countries whose oil supplies, if exploited, would hurt profits by lowering the price. Their first agents were two Communist Jews named Bronstein and Ulyanov, better known as Trotsky and Lenin. These ruthless characters murdered the entire potential Russian middle class and thereby prevented the emergence of Russian oilmen. Anyone with the idea of being a businessman was killed. The oil stayed in the ground.

European oil production was mainly in Rumania. Who can forget the wanton destruction of the Ploesti oil fields and massive storage facilities by the American and British air forces in the early 1940s? Our wonderful boys flew months of air raids against Ploesti. The German war machine switched to synthetic gasoline, produced by the gasification of coal! This was in fact a Standard Oil process, but we are not told about it today.

More Rothschild Protégés

China, of course, also represented a threat to the price structure if Chinese oil were produced. So the Group installed two more extremely ruthless agents in China’s government: Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. These two Rothschild boys slaughtered sixty-four million potential middle class enemies by 1964, according to the congressional records. There were no Chinese oilmen to come up with a Chinese Spindletop. They were all dead. We can just imagine how China would have blossomed under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, based on the performance of tiny Taiwan, which rose to number four GNP in the world in just twenty years.

The same thing happened in Vietnam, where the US installed the Communist Ho Chi Minh, who made sure that a Vietnamese Spindletop would never be produced. (Ho was a US intelligence agent during World War II. He sent his reports to the OSS from the Texaco office in Hanoi.)

In fact, every Communist dictatorship in the world since 1917 was installed by the US State Department either overtly, as in the Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese examples, or covertly, as with the Cuban example. Mainly, though, it’s been overt and usually based on the "corruption" of an American puppet installed some years before. And the State Department is staffed in all important positions by members of the Rothschild/Rockefeller private ministry of war called the Council on Foreign Relations.

Council On Foreign Relations

The CFR was developed because of the failure of Woodrow Wilson’s handlers to shove us into their League of Nations following their first big bloodletting known as World War I. The handlers organized a think-tank in Manhattan that would design another World War so terrible that the people would accept a New World Order to prevent another war. It only took twenty years to organize the biggest slaughterhouse in world history, one that would eliminate 45-60 million potential threats to the New World Order. The survivors accepted the structure of world government known as the United Nations Organization in 1945. Every one of the organizers of the UNO was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the same little outfit that has announced the North American Union, in which our country will be merged with Mexico and Canada by 2010.

The NAU will of course be governed by members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the ones who installed Communist butchers all around the world. Today the CFR is reportedly 70% Jewish. The NAU will not be a Zionist country but rather a part of the Jewish World Revolution as described by Hungarian Louis Marschalko in his important 1958 book, The World Conquerors (which resulted in his death).

Versailles

Sometimes, as the Germans learned after World War I, you can’t tell the purpose of the war until you read the peace treaty. The Versailles "peace treaty" revealed the purpose of the Great War: to steal all German wealth, redraw the maps of Europe and the Middle East and to create a Zionist enclave in the heart of the Middle East. This enclave of insanity would be operated appropriately under Old Testament rules of conduct: no mercy for enemies of Yahweh. This Jewish cult takes the position that Yahweh ("God") is the Jewish people. As I said - they’re nuts. But deadly nuts.

Control Of Oil Prices

The constant threat to the Rothschild/Rockefeller group is a drop in oil prices. David Rockefeller was himself the organizer of OPEC, back at the first Baghdad meeting in September, 1960. With the criminal invasion of Iraq by their alcoholic thug, GW Bush, the oil price may never drop again in our lifetime. All of Bush’s lies for the reasons to invade a non-threatening country have been forgotten. The bottom line for Iraq is: Iraqi oil will stay in the ground as agreed by the majors after Versailles. Iraqi oil production must be slowed. Bush’s criminal invasion has seen to that. Except oil for Israel, which the Israelis appear to be getting for free, reportedly being pumped directly from Iraq into Haifa by a new pipeline. Bush’s war has raised the price of our gas by over a dollar, with constant threats that it might go as high as six dollars per gallon. With Ben Shalom Bernanke in charge of counterfeiting - why not?

Bush’s reason for being is to protect Israel because Israeli aggression and intrigue are required to maintain and increase the price of oil. Bush studies the Talmud and meekly obeys either Sharon or Olmert in their vile atrocities against the Semitic peoples of Palestine and Lebanon.

All of the above is known or should be known by informed Americans. Our government, which is run by vote fraud, bribery, extortion, lies and murder, is at war with the whole world on behalf of the Jews who own the Federal Reserve Corporation and the major oil companies - in other words, by the Rothschilds and their many stooges.

Lebanon Bloodlust

The first step is to acknowledge that we have a serious Jewish problem. This should be pretty obvious by the current Zionist land grab of Lebanon and their blatant intent to make that country the second part of Greater Israel. The Zionists have decided to go for broke with no apologies for their bloodlust, greed and hatred. The Zionists own the Bush administration and Rush Limbaugh and all the "conservative" figures except Buchanan, Roberts and a few others. They own all the big newspapers and television networks and the movie production companies. They own the radio stations and music production companies, which is why "American" country music is pro-war, anti-Moslem and belligerent, except the Dixie Chicks, who were blackballed by the Jewish industry.

As the Clinton crowd might have said - It’s the Jews, stupid. It’s always been the Jews. The problem is not really Zionism - it’s Judaism. The problem is Christianity, which is Judaism for Gentiles. Christians cannot deal with Jews because they believe that Jews are "God’s Chosen People." The Jews believe that they are God, and of course that’s ‘way beyond the comprehension of Christians. Any people that would hold itself up as somehow "chosen by God" is by definition insane, so that is a fundamental Jewish problem, especially when you read the Old Testament stories of the troubles old Yahweh had with his chosen ones.

The US government grants total tax exemption to the Christian churches. Why? Because they serve the Jewish plan. Christianity is an off-shoot of Judaism and a public relations organization that always works for "interfaith" cooperation, meaning Jewish control of Gentile religious thinking. Can you imagine any rabbi allowing a priest or minister to set standards for Jews? It’s always the other way around. Jews complain about Christians but they secretly rejoice that the Goyim ("cattle") are dumb enough to fall for their impossible fairy tales and absurd laws of conduct as found in the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes are prescriptions for destruction at the hands of the crafters of that play. To become a Christian is to deny yourself your right of survival in the deadliest struggle on earth. Those whom the Jews destroy they first make Christian, because it assures the Jew that the enemy will not fight back.

This Is A No Win Situation

We have a serious Jewish problem. It’s not just a Zionist problem, because there’s no mention of Zionism, or making The Law Go Forth From Zion, in the Talmud. Zionism was dreamed up in the 19th Century in Russia and is merely the Talmudic way that Jews deal with their neighbors when they have some power. If they don’t have power, they are the revolutionary proletariat. As Herzl said, "And when we rise, there rises the terrible power of our purse." When the Jews are down, they make trouble, always demanding - and receiving - special treatment. When they are up, they are our merciless overlords. And there is no getting on their good side, because they don’t have a good side. Ask the Palestinians.

Ask the Russians how it was to be under Jewish rule after 1917, when criticism of Jews was a capital offence. Ask the Hungarians, who finally had to rise up and kill as many of them as they could in October, 1956. The Soviets had put Jews in all positions of power in Hungary.

First Iraq Then Syria

Those of us who understood the Jewish plan for world dictatorship, known loosely as the New World Order, have wondered when the Jews would make their big move for total power. That appears finally to be now. People around the world are appalled at the second destruction of Beirut in twenty-four years. But this time it is being done under the specific protection of the American president, who has said repeatedly that Israel must be protected by America. He is right now sending tons of weapons of mass destruction to the Psychopaths of the Desert. Israel is doing exactly what Bush wants it to do, which is exactly what the Council on Foreign Relations wants it to do. Syria and Iran are next, and are subject to the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. Saudi Arabia and Egypt cannot be far behind.

Israel intends to take over the Moslem world and kill as many Moslems as possible, with the aid and encouragement of Washington, DC. This does appear to be the beginning of the end of civilization as we have known it.

Final Kickoff

We are confronted by Jewish psycho-terrorists in the US government - mad serial killers who worship death. They commenced their plans for world dictatorship with their shock and awe attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan five years ago. That immediately resulted in unprovoked attacks against two Moslem countries by the US and UK. Under the distraction of those slaughterhouse disasters which were designed by Jews, the Israelis now obliterate Lebanon in an attempt to provoke Syria to respond, and Iran, too. Israel knows that Bush will order nuclear strikes against those countries if they take the bait, for such plans have already been revealed by frightened officers in the Pentagon.

Israel may use nuclear weapons against those two countries soon, and claim that America did it. As we know, there is no one in the US government who will blame Israel for anything it does, because that would be "anti-Semitic." But, who are the Semites? Short answer: the Arabs. Who are the anti-Semites? Short answer: the Jews.

The purpose of this essay is to prepare the reader for a life of struggle against Jewish rule in this country. We have been under total Jewish control for decades, because everything we are allowed to see, read and hear via the mainstream media comes through the Jewish filter. Truth is only available from the Internet, which is why the Internet will have to go - to prevent terrorism, of course.

Coming To A Town Near You

The government has already smeared the most powerful websites, such as Rense.com, as "dangerous organs of disinformation - " the second-highest accolade bestowed by the government, the highest being the charge of sedition. To be charged or accused of sedition means the recipient is really doing his job. This writer has been so accused but my friend Louis Beam of Texas has actually been prosecuted for sedition. The fact that he was acquitted does not diminish his stature in my eyes. Louis has enjoyed the highest place on the ADL’s enemies list for years. For some reason, they never mention my name

Jewish control is one thing. But Jewish rule will be quite another. Ask the Palestinians, the Russians, the Hungarians. Hell - ask the Israelis what it’s like to live under Jewish rule in Israel. It is an insane asylum, because the Jews thrive on insanity. They are the ultimate control freaks.

I don’t expect anyone to start attacking the Israeli Embassy or to burn down synagogues. I don’t expect anyone to call for a revolution against the Jewish US government, as I did in 1989 when I started the ill-fated militia movement that year. It is my opinion that the Jews, through their agent Morris ("Seligman") Dees of Mobile, Alabama and his Mossad front known as the Southern Poverty Law Center, destroyed the militia movement in a few minutes in April, ’95 when they exploded the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and murdered scores of federal employees and their children. This was the beginning of the Jewish rule, instead of just Jewish control, of the US.

Will We Become Palestinians?

But there is coming a time soon in which we shall have to fight Jews because they are Jews and because we are not. They will leave us with no other choice, just as they left the Russians and the Palestinians and the Hungarians and now the Lebanese with no other choice but fight or die a nasty death after captivity and thirst and starvation and torture.

Remember, the favorite Jewish method of control and extermination is by famine. This is because it is both excruciating and humiliating. And it doesn’t cost them a dime. They simply withhold food. Ask the Ukrainians, who lost several million souls to the Jewish famine in the 1930s. The Jews simply confiscated their food and they starved.

People forget that every single cabinet office under Clinton was headed by a Jew! What are the odds? Are they such superior people that only they are qualified to take such powerful positions over us? The dozen or so Zionist Jews around Bush bragged at first how they got us to attack Iraq. So look at how our Jewish-run government has wreaked havoc in that poor country that never threatened America in the slightest. The Iraqis suffer deliberate shortages of fresh water and food. The Palestinians are starving and dying of thirst and have lost thousands of children because of Jewish rule. The Jews have dozens of ways to kill you and they try them all.

If you still wonder if I’m exaggerating - or writing "Jew" when I should be writing "Zionist" - read James Bacque’s two books on this subject: Other Losses and Crimes & Mercies. The first details the Jews’ extermination of approximately one million helpless German POWs directly following their surrender in 1945. The other reveals how the Jews slaughtered approximately 13 million helpless German civilians in the first few years after the surrender, before the Berlin Airlift showed the world what benefactors we were, because we needed a new enemy and a new ally. This was done under the authority of the Morgenthau Plan for Germany.

Morgenthau, of course, was a Jew and not a Zionist, as was his chief butcher, Eisenhower. And remember that Germany was considered a paradise by the Jews, and the German people very tolerant and generous towards the Jews in the years before the tough guys took over. Remember too that Jews consider America an extremely threatening place, and unruly Americans much more dangerous to them than Germans ever were. So we can count on very bad treatment from them under Jewish Rule. Just keep that in mind.

Their Magical Touch

It’s my idea that Jews - Zionist or otherwise - ought not to rule anywhere. Everything they touch turns to garbage. Music, literature, art, science, government, education, labor, medicine, race relations - everything goes bad fast when they are involved in it. The main Jewish contribution to science has been the nuclear bomb, which is only consistent with their battle cry, "We are the destroyers!" That’s really all the Jews know how to do - steal and destroy things. Look at Israel, which they stole from the Palestinians. They destroyed it. Now they’re destroying Lebanon, just as they did in 1982. They got us to destroy Iraq and we and they together will keep destroying everything because the Jews are in control of Bush. Not just Zionists - Jews.

We’ve all seen the photos of Bush’s White House kitchen, full of orthodox rabbis who pronounced it "Kosher." We’ve seen Bush and Cheney wearing their yarmulkes (skull-caps) so we can see just how total is the Jewish control of our government. There is no official opposition to Jewish Rule, just as there is no official opposition to Mexicans sneaking across the border and flooding this country with hostiles. Bush and Cheney and their underlings are traitors who are sponsoring Jewish Rule, which will immediately lead to the North American Union and one Jewish government over the US, Canada and Mexico.

I believe that Jewish Rule must be prevented at all costs. I believe that anyone who promotes Jewish Rule from an official position is by definition a traitor. There is only one penalty for Treason, as even our rump government acknowledges.

So, get ready for action. In the coming years (if not sooner), be prepared to kill or get killed. For a preview of life under the Jews in the North American Union in 2010, just look at Israel and what quality of life it has created in that tragic region, or Russia after 1917, or Hungary or Poland or East Germany after 1945.

It is my opinion that Americans are responsible for the Jewish destruction of so much of the world and that we must take responsibility for our part. We must repay our victims or their survivors as best we can and we must ensure that Jewish Rule is ended as quickly as possible, before it destroys us all. We can all think of ways to end Jewish Rule. Let’s figure out the best ways and use them.

How Israel Controls America

2007-02-07T09:35:00.000-08:00

How Israel Controls America

ESSENTIAL VIDEOS

If Americans Only Knew How Israel Controls Us

Nader Explains How Jewish Lobby Robs Americans

The Israel Lobby And US Foreign Policy

The US-Israel Empire

Mearsheimer - Israel Lobby Has Warped US Policy - Part 1

Mearsheimer - Israel Lobby Has Warped US Policy - Part 2

Prof John Mearsheimer On The Isreal Lobby

Measheimer And Walt On The Israel Lobby

Why I Don't Believe In The Holocaust

2007-02-06T07:19:00.000-08:00

"Why I Don't Believe In The Holocaust"

by Andrew Winkler - 3-14-7

Last week, a regular ZioPedia contributor asked me where I stand on the topic of the Holocaust. My immediate answer back to him was, on the side of freedom of speech and research. I'm neither a historian nor a forensic scientist. And like most people, I don't have the time to follow up on all footnotes and sources used on either side of the Holocaust debate. That means, just by taking the various arguments at face value, it's not easy to say which side is telling the truth.

What I know, though, is that our governments have repeatedly lied to us, to an extent that I have come to believe that most of our politicians lie whenever they open their mouths. And I believe that there is nobody who has been using lies and deception more systematically and ruthlessly than the Zionists as a means of pursuing their criminal goals.

The mainstream media are working very hard to make us believe that Holocaust revisionists had all sorts of evil motives. But frankly, I couldn't care less whether they are saints or have an axe to grind. Maybe their anger is not just caused by their findings. Maybe it isn't just caused by the treatment they received for publishing them. All I care about is their right to research and publish whatever they damn please. And the more our professionally lieing politicians and lobbyists are trying to prevent revisionists from doing so, the more inclined I am to believe them.

Whenever our rulers put in a big propaganda effort to push a particular belief and create laws and powerful taboos to prevent dissidents from contradicting them, it is fairly obvious who is telling the truth and who isn't. In the Middle-Ages astronomers were tortured and burnt to death for saying that the earth wasn't flat. Why? Because the Catholic Church couldn't prove that their reasoning was wrong. These days, people have their careers ruined and get imprisonned for saying that there were no gas chambers and that there were no six millions Jews killed by the Nazis. Only someone who is afraid of the truth would resort to such oppression.

Not unlike the 9/11 truth debate, the Holocaust is more about believing than knowing. Do I believe that our governments and the media would lie to the public in such an outrageous manner, yes or no? There are hundreds and thousands of books and sites that provide anyone interested with a wealth of information on the matter and most of the arguments of those who are saying that the Holocaust and 9/11 were a hoax make a lot of sense.

So, why don't more people have a closer look? Why don't they care whether they are lied to by their governments in such an important matter? In my opinion, most people are so busy paying off their mortgages and so afraid of loosing their jobs that they don't dare to care. They are too busy getting ahead or not being left behind in their careers, too afraid of isolating themselves socially and professionally. They don't want to be seen to rock the boat. They know subconsciously that this is all a big, fake illusion we are living in, but they are too afraid of the unknown to do anything about it.

This kind of attitude is obviously very selfish. What kind of a world would we leave to future generations if all we cared about was acquiring personal wealth and showing off the latest and most impressive status symbols? There is so much more to a dignified life than money can buy.

Andrew Winkler is the editor/publisher of Sydney based dissident blog and online encyclopedia ZioPedia. Andrew can be contacted under editor@ziopedia.org

The Reality Of Israeli Apartheid

2007-02-05T07:33:00.000-08:00

U.N. votes 150-6 against West Bank barrier

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly last year to call on Israel to dismantle a barrier that would seal off the West Bank.

Israel has staunchly defended the barrier as a means to thwart Palestinian terrorist attacks, and it immediately condemned the vote and said it would continue building the barrier.

"Thank God that the fate of Israel and of the Jewish people is not decided in this hall," said Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.

Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative to the United Nations, called the vote a "very important development."

"Thank you all for doing this great job today," he said. "We are confident that all member states will deal with the provisions of the draft resolution with utmost, needed seriousness with regard to the implementation."

In the General Assembly, 150 members voted in favor of the resolution, while six, including the United States, voted against it. There were 10 abstentions.

The resolution calls on Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion issued July 9 and tear down the barrier.

The planned 425-mile barrier is about one-third complete. In some areas, the barrier is a fence; in others, a concrete wall.

Al-Kidwa asked for the nonbinding resolution last week, and hailed Tuesday's vote as a landmark decision.

"This, indeed, could be the most important resolution of the General Assembly again since the adoption of the Resolution 181 of 1947," he said.

That resolution partitioned British-ruled Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arabic.

Gillerman said the world body had been duped by a Palestinian propaganda machine.

"We should not be so detached from reality as to treat an advisory opinion as though it were binding, and binding Palestinian obligations as though they were nonexistent," Gillerman said. "This is not a recipe for progress, it is a sure recipe for failure."

The international court's opinion was sought by the General Assembly after it adopted a resolution in October proposed by Arab states demanding that "Israel stop and reverse the construction of the [barrier] in the occupied Palestinian territory," the court noted.

The court said the barrier is "contrary to international law" because it infringes on the rights of Palestinians. The court urged that Israel remove it from occupied land.

The court also said that Israel is obligated to return confiscated land or make reparations for any damage to homes, businesses and farms caused by the barrier's construction.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered construction of the barrier to continue despite the court ruling.

Is it a Fence? Is it a Wall? No, it's a Separation Barrier

Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 1 August 2003

The Wall around Qalqiliya. A twenty-five foot high concrete cage cuts residents off from their agricultural land, necessary for their survival, and prevents you from traveling even 5 minutes out of the City. A single gate, open at the whims of the occupying army, controls 100,000 residents.
Israel's Separation Barrier, dubbed the "Apartheid Wall" or "Berlin Wall" by Palestinians, has increasingly attracted international media attention, largely due to the hard-to-ignore scale of the project.

The most obvious historical parallel to the barrier is the Berlin Wall, which was 96 miles long (155 kilometers). Israel's barrier, still under construction, is expected to reach at least 403 miles in length (650 kilometers). The average height of the Berlin Wall was 11.8 feet (3.6 metres), compared with the maximum* current height of Israel's Wall -- 25 feet (8 metres).

[*it is not clear whether the shorter fence sections, about 6 meters in height, are first or final stages in Israel's construction of the barrier.]

Israel's barrier is therefore planned to be four times as long and in places twice as high as the Berlin Wall.

Photographs of the barrier available on the wire services show two main types of section -- a wall made of concrete or concrete/fence combination, and a fence-only version of the barrier. Some references in the media suggest that the two main forms of the barrier correspond to differing levels of implementation of security by Israel, with the wall sections reserved for areas perceived as "especially vulnerable", the fence sections for areas less so. (Source: Text of multimedia element on website of The Guardian).

Interactive wall graphic from The Guardian

It is not so simple. In addition to the concrete wall and fencing materials used in the construction of the structure, sections of Israel's Separation Barrier additionally include electrified fencing, two-meter-deep trenches, roads for patrol vehicles, electronic ground/fence sensors, thermal imaging and video cameras, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sniper towers, and razor wire.

At this point in time it is not known exactly what proportions of the length of the barrier is fence versus wall, or if the fence is merely a temporary state until a wall can be built in all areas but -- nonetheless -- the wall unquestionably represents a considerable portion of the visible manifestation of the barrier.

WIRE SERVICE IMAGES OF THE SEPARATION BARRIER

Wire service images are important at they represent part of the education of foreign and photo editors sitting in newsrooms around the world who have not actually seen the barrier with their own eyes. With caption descriptions of the barrier ranging from "concrete wall" to the wonderfully inventive "concrete fence" of AFP's Yoav Lemmer, a large number of images from the wire services make it absolutely clear that the barrier is not merely or entirely a "fence".

The original AFP caption attached to the bottom right image includes some editorialising, claiming the barrier was built to "stop Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel", with no mention of what effect it has on the farmers and residents of Qalqiliya.

As you read the captions, and look at the photos, it's hard to ignore what is in front of your eyes. This structure is clearly no "fence".

Original caption: A foreign activist from the International Solidarity Movement organization sprays graffitti to the cement-blocks wall erected by Israel, during a demonstration against the wall, in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya Thursday July 31, 2003. Protesters splashed the separation barrier with balloons filled with green, black, red and white paint -- the colors of the Palestinian flag -- and hoisted a banner calling the fence, which Israel says was built for its security, an apartheid wall. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Original caption: Palestinian farmers tend to their aubergine crop in the shadow of a concrete wall erected across their land by the Israeli army to stop Palestinian militants slipping into Israel from the West Bank city of Qalqilya July 7, 2003. Palestinians fear the barrier, consisting of walls and electronic fences now stretching around 150 kms (90 miles), will dash their dream of a viable state in the West Bank, the goal of a new U.S.-backed peace plan. (Reuters/Mahfouz Abu Turk)

Original caption: An aerial view shows the construction site of the security fence which will seperate Israel from the West Bank, near the West Bank city of Tulkarm, July 30, 2003. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has told U.S. President George W. Bush that Israel will keep building a West Bank security fence despite U.S. concerns the barrier could block Middle East peacemaking. (REUTERS/Reinhard Krause)

Original caption: The concrete fence erected by Israel alongside the West Bank town of Qalqiliya to stop Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel. The Israeli defence ministry announced the completion of the first section of the barrier. (AFP/File/Yoav Lemmer)

SEMANTIC PROBLEMS RELATING TO THE STRUCTURE OF THE BARRIER

Typically, Israeli terminology is favored in US reportage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Hebrew, the word for fence is gader. Consequently, the preferred Israeli terminology for the barrier is gader hafradeh ("separation fence").

The Hebrew words for wall are qir and chomah. The former is mostly used for structures and buildings; the latter for protective fortifications -- the formulation chosen by Israeli activist organisation Gush Shalom. Either of them would be more appropriate for this particular structure.

The semantic problems posed by the use of the word "fence", in either language, are enormous:

fence (n.)

A structure serving as an enclosure, a barrier, or a boundary, usually made of posts or stakes joined together by boards, wire, or rails.

wall (n.)

An upright structure of masonry, wood, plaster, or other building material serving to enclose, divide, or protect an area, especially a vertical construction forming an inner partition or exterior siding of a building.
A continuous structure of masonry or other material forming a rampart and built for defensive purposes. Often used in the plural.
(a) Something resembling a wall in appearance, function, or construction.

Source: American Heritage English Dictionary (irrelevant definitions deleted)To characterise the structure as a "fence" without referencing its other features is highly misleading.

The route of the wall

Similarly, looking at the route of Israel's Wall, it is clear that the wall does not run along the Green Line that separates Israel proper from the West Bank but rather runs through the West Bank, on Palestinian land.

A Palestinian-compiled map of the Israeli barrier plans from the Palestinian Hydrology Group and the Land Research Center. EI altered the legend text for greater clarity.

ABBAS', BUSH'S AND SHARON'S WORD CHOICES WHEN CHARACTERISING THE SEPARATION BARRIER

Above: President George W. Bush and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas hold a joint press conference in the Rose Garden Friday, July 25, 2003. "To break through old hatreds and barriers to peace, the Middle East needs leaders of vision and courage and a determination to serve the interest of their people. Mr. Abbas is the first Palestinian Prime Minister, and he is proving to be such a leader," said President Bush. (White House/Paul Morse)

Abbas: On 25 July 2003, during a press meeting at the White House with US President George Bush, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, referred to the barrier as a "wall" twice, stating that the Palestinian vision for achieving peace: "cannot be realized if Israel continues to grab Palestinian land. If the settlement activities in Palestinian land and construction of the so-called separation wall on confiscated Palestinian land continue, we might soon find ourselves at a situation where the foundation of peace, a free Palestine state, living side-by-side in peace and security in Israel is a factual impossibility. Nothing less than a full settlement freeze will do because nothing less than a full settlement freeze will work. For the sake of peace, and for the sake of future Palestinian and Israeli generations, all settlement activities must be stopped now, and the wall must come down." (Source: White House Transcript)

Above: President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon laugh together during their joint press conference in the Rose Garden Tuesday, July 29, 2003. (White House/Paul Morse)

Sharon:In his speech at a later meeting with Bush on 29 July 2003, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke of "the security fence" -- with no mention of any "wall": "which we are forced to construct in order to defend our citizens against terror activities," later adding, "The security fence will continue to be built, with every effort to minimize the infringement on the daily life of the Palestinian population."

Bush: During his earlier meeting with Abbas, Bush commented on the barrier, saying: "I think the wall is a problem, and I discussed this with Ariel Sharon. It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and the Israel -- Israel -- with a wall snaking through the West Bank."

Bush additionally characterised the barrier twice during the meeting with Abbas as a "fence", the sole word he used when Sharon was present.

Following Sharon's speech, during the media question time, an Israeli journalist present challenged President Bush on his earlier use of the word "wall", asking:"Mr. President, what do you expect Israel to do in practical terms in regarding the separation fence that you call the wall? Due to the fact that this is one of the most effective measure against terrorism, can you clarify what do you oppose -- the concept of the separation fence, or only its roots?" Bush's answer displayed far less resolve on the matter than during the meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas just four days previously:"Look, the fence is a sensitive issue, I understand. And the Prime Minister made it very clear to me that it was a sensitive issue. And my promise to him is we'll continue to discuss and to dialogue how best to make sure that the fence sends the right signal that not only is security important, but the ability for the Palestinians to live a normal life is important, as well."

(Source: White House Transcript)Nonetheless, politicking aside, Bush did acknowledge during the course of the two meetings that he recognised that part of the structure was a "wall" even if he only used this word interchangably with 'fence' when the Israelis were not around. He also acknowledged that its path was "snaking through the West Bank," which maps of the wall depict unambiguously.

MEDIA REPORTAGE OF THE SEPARATION BARRIER

With the US President acknowledging both the physical structure and path of the Separation Barrier and the photographs and maps of the Wall available on the wire services available to the US media, one would be tempted to imagine that journalists would notice a few obvious facts.

First, that the Separation Barrier is very possibly a wall under construction -- with some areas having both fence and wall, and other areas still with just a fence (perhaps the first stage of a wall). And second, that its path does not run along the Green Line between the West Bank (which the internatonal community considers to be occupied Palestinian territory) and Israel -- but actually inside the West Bank, on Palestinian land.

The barrier ranges from 30 to 150 meters wide in places, a considerable loss of land. According to Palestinian environmental umbrella organisation PENGON, as of April 2003, "some 14,680 dunums of land have been razed for the footprint of the Wall, including the uprooting of over 102,000 trees." When completed, 95,000 Palestinians or 4.5% of West Bank population will be isolated and 200,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem will be totally isolated from the rest of the West Bank. A joint Israeli government/Settlers Council (YESHA) proposal to modify the route of the Wall will isolate another 110,000 Palestinians to reach a total of 400,000 isolated, including those in East Jerusalem, on the Israeli side of the Wall or within a completely isolated section.

Needless to say, as regular readers of The Electronic Intifada's Coverage Trends section will be painfully aware, the US media seems unable to recognise basic realities that fuel and perpetuate the conflict, thus leaving the citizens that these newspapers, magazines, and electronic media purport to inform in the dark.

The day of Bush's speech during Abbas' visit, The Washington Post website published an article ( "Bush Criticizes Israeli Fence", July 25th), which noted: "President Bush criticized Israel's efforts to build a fence separating Palestinians and Israelis on the West Bank yesterday, saying it is 'a problem' that makes it 'very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel'", choosing to emphasise Bush's use of the word "fence" rather than "wall".

While noting at least that the barrier included both fence and wall components, the Post's preferred choice of word is apparent when the frequency of appearance is noted:"The decision by the Bush administration to press the fence issue appears to have taken the Israeli government by surprise. The fence, which is a high concrete wall in some areas and an electronic wire fence elsewhere, has emerged as a key concern for Palestinians, who contend that Israel is using the fence to draw the contours of Palestinian state that would be limited to 45 percent of the West Bank territory. But the fence is not formally mentioned in the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the road map, which is supposed to guide negotiations."CNN has had some problems as well over the entirety of the last year, with multiple reports on the website referring to the barrier only as a "fence" and various claims that the barrier runs between the West Bank and Israel:"Israel's government insists the fence -- which will stretch along the border between Israel and the West Bank -- is meant only to provide security, not to form a border."

(Source: "Israel building fence along West Bank", CNN.com,18 June 2002)

"Israelis say the huge fence system being built along their border with the West Bank will give them more security. Palestinians say the construction of the barrier system will take some of their land."

(Source: "Opposing views of West Bank fence", CNN.com, 3 July 2003)

Following effective intervention by at least one correspondent, the text of recent articles on CNN's website was updated to reflect the realities and hi-tech nature of the structure, although CNN's graphic of the barrier remains deeply flawed, including the delineation "ISRAEL" appearing over the occupied West Bank:

In a 19 July 2003 article with an Associated Press byline, "Penn State student arrested at Palestinian protest back in U.S.", the article managed to both mischaracterise the barrier as a fence, and its route as on the Green Line:A part-time Penn State University student arrested while protesting the construction of a security fence between Israel and Palestinian territories is back in the United States, officials said."Reuters was less confused, careful to both attribute the source of the terminology to the sides using them in the conflict and the location of the wall: "Israel pushed ahead Wednesday with construction of a security barrier in the West Bank despite Palestinian dismay and Secretary of State Colin Powell's pledge to keep pressing on the issue. President Bush failed in talks Tuesday to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to stop building what Israel says is a security fence and Palestinians call a new "Berlin Wall."And noting it's makeup: "But continued construction of the security barrier -- a concrete wall in some place and a metal fence topped with razor wire in others -- stoked resentment among ordinary Palestinians."

(Source: "Israel Builds Security Barrier Despite Outcry", Reuters, 30 July 2003).In this Israeli-Palestinian conflict version of "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Superman!" multi-perspective confusion -- as the issue flies across our screens before we can grasp hold of what exactly it is -- we are once again cautioned to pay close attention to the language used by the media compared with the actual realities described. Journalism has the potential, like teargas, to blind and disperse while the horrors of history elude us.

As Israel fails to learn the lessons that normal people in East and West Berlin ultimately taught the world on 9 November 1989, we should pay attention to these same people in Palestine, currently living in an increasingly caged environment, watching their land daily swallowed up as Israel rushes to put new facts on the ground while we struggle to keep in focus the fast pace of history -- and the even faster pace of Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land.

Israeli 'shoot to kill'-style warning sign on part of the separation barrier. As expected, the Hebrew word for the barrier is gader ("fence"). However, the Arabic word used is jidar, which -- while related at its root to the Hebrew word gader actually means "wall" in Arabic. (ISM)

They just wanted to go home together

by Amira Hass
www.haaretz.com
23/02/2006

The Reality Of Israeli Apartheid

R. had a work meeting in Ramallah. She planned to return home, to East Jerusalem, with M., her partner, who works in Ramallah. They reached the Hizma checkpoint, east of the Pisgat Ze'ev settlement, where there is a permanent Israel Defense Forces post that checks all travelers heading to Jerusalem. You are forbidden to take this route, said the soldiers. Only your husband is allowed. Take the Qalandiyah checkpoint route

R. and M. have been married for about 10 years. He is a Palestinian, born in East Jerusalem, an Israeli resident. She has an ID card from the territories. She has a permit to be in Jerusalem, at home, with her children and spouse.

As soon as they were married they applied to the Israeli Interior Ministry for "family unification." Despite promises, including written promises, she is still waiting for the residency document. They've been through a lot of Kafkaesque travails as a result, but the new prohibition against going home together shocked even them. They thought it might have been a soldier's whim, but a news item in Haaretz last Friday made clear to them that it is a military order, signed by Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, commander of the IDF in the Judea and Samaria region. The order forbids Palestinians from entering Israel via any route other than 11 special crossings that were allocated only to them - and they can only cross those on foot. Palestinians are not allowed to drive inside Israel. The order also prohibits Israelis from bringing Palestinians into Israel through passages designated for Israelis only.

At the Hizma junction, which is for Israelis only, the "seam administration of the Defense Ministry has not yet hung the signs that it already hung on the road leading from the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim to Jerusalem. The signs are hung alongside the road and at the military checkpoint, and say, in Hebrew and Arabic, "Passage is for Israelis only. Transporting and/or movement of people who are not Israelis is forbidden through this passage."

The yellow signs explain who is an Israeli. The definition is in the major general's order, and is the standard definition used in military orders declaring "a closed military area" to Palestinians, where only Israelis are allowed to enter. "An Israeli," says the order and the sign, "is a resident of Israel, someone whose residency is in the region [meaning the occupied territory - A.H.] and is an Israeli citizen [a settler - A.H.] or one who is eligible to become an immigrant according to the Law of Return-1950 and someone who is not a resident of the region but has a valid entry permit to Israel [a tourist - A.H.]

A military source confirmed to Haaretz that a decision has been made to allow Palestinians who work for international organizations to travel, with their foreign co-workers, through two passages designated for Israelis only "instead of making them go to the ends of the earth" to passages designated for Palestinians only. The problem with the separate passages is not only that they are remote and distant, as the military source admits; the problem is not only the wasted time involved in reaching those passages, the revolving doors that suddenly are locked, the humiliating crowdedness, the alienating technological devices or that most of the "passages" effectively legitimize more land expropriation and annexation of Palestinian territory to Israel. The problem is that they are another building block in the policy of separate development for Jews and non-Jews, another expression of the mentality that cloaks itself in security but whose real purpose is to preserve the hegemonic privileges of Jews, at the expense of the Palestinians in the territories conquered from them.

This policy of separate development of two demographic groups in the same territorial region - the occupied West Bank, where the Israeli army is the sovereign - began with the first settlement. It continued and deepened as the settlements proliferated and grew into separate demographic-territorial pockets where Israeli law, which does not apply to the original inhabitants of the area, is in force.

The residents of those territorial pockets also won extra rights, which are denied to the native neighbors and the non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Like the right to choose where they want to live, on both sides of the Green Line. Protected by the superiority of the ruling military force, territorial borders were set and bureaucratic limits were placed that a priori limit the separate development of the native Palestinians: The area available to them is gradually shrinking, water quotas are dwindling in comparison with what is made available to Jews, freedom of movement is limited, and economic development is shackled and controlled.

With time, and with international accommodation and the increase in the number of Israelis who benefit from the system, the settlements are being transformed from "Israeli territorial pockets" to Jewish territorial contiguity, in which there are poor, rights deprived, over croweded and inferior "populated pockets" of the Palestinians.

A comparison between flourishing Pisgat Ze'ev on the lands of Hizma and Anata with Hizma and Anata, hemmed in and suffocating behind a horrendous cement wall, proves that the policy of separate development began long before the suicide bombings and the rise of Hamas.