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AMERICA'S RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL: NOT SO "SPECIAL"
At What Cost the Israel Lobby?
By Jeff Gates STAFF WRITER/Editor
More than 46 years ago, President John F. Kennedy sought to preclude a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In June 1963, he wrote the last in a series of insistent letters to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Those letters sought what Israel now demands of Iran: international inspections of its nuclear facilities.
The key difference: Kennedy knew for certain that Israel, while portraying itself a friend and ally, had repeatedly lied to him about its nuclear weapons development at the Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert.
Best estimates point to sometime between 1962 and 1964 when Israel produced its first weapon in what is now a nuclear arsenal estimated at 200-400 warheads, including multiple means of delivery.
Kennedy’s letter to Ben-Gurion was anything but friendly. The words chosen came not from diplomacy but from the instructions that a judge gives a jury on criminal culpability. In that brusque letter, the U.S. commander-in-chief insisted that this purported ally prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the Zionist enclave was not developing nuclear weapons.
One day after that June 15th letter was cabled to Tel Aviv for delivery by the U.S. ambassador, Ben-Gurion abruptly resigned citing undisclosed personal reasons. As his resignation was announced before the letter could be physically delivered, Jewish authors routinely claim that Kennedy’s message failed to reach Ben-Gurion. Nonsense.
That interpretative gloss ignores what we now know about Israeli operations inside serial U.S. presidencies-and about Tel Aviv’s routine intercept of White House communications.
Deprived of an Israeli government with which to negotiate, Kennedy was denied a national security victory that may well have spared the world a problem he foresaw almost a half-century ago. In retrospect, that Israeli conduct raises topical questions about the ability of the U.S.-or any nation-to hold Zionist extremists accountable.
The Khazars vs. the Kennedys
During this same 1962-63 period, Senator William J. Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, convened hearings on the legal status of the American Zionist Council. The AZC received funds from the Jewish Agency, a predecessor to the state of Israel. As a recipient of U.S. taxpayer funds, the Jewish Agency used those funds to lobby for more funds. Under U.S. law, that conduct required that the AZC register as a foreign agent.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy joined Fulbright in that quest. Their effort was thwarted by the Israel lobby and then by the murder of President Kennedy. Thereafter, concerns about the impact of Zionist influence on U.S. policy making continued to grow. By 1973, Fulbright could announce with confidence: "Israel controls the U.S. Senate." In 1974, he lost his Senate seat. [See: "How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy."]
Fast-forward to today and imagine the Middle East without an enclave of nuclear-armed Jewish nationalists. The threat that Kennedy posed to Tel Aviv’s arsenal was eliminated five months after Ben-Gurion’s strategically well-timed resignation. When Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as his successor, LBJ quickly increased the arms budget for Israel. Imagine today’s Zionist influence on U.S. policy had Fulbright and the Kennedys succeeded in requiring that the lobby register as what it is: a foreign agent.
Following the Kennedy assassination in November 1963, Nicholas Katzenbach replaced RFK as Attorney General. Soon thereafter, the AZC evaded registration as it morphed into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC now oversees a transnational network of pro-Israeli political operatives commonly known as "the Israel lobby."
The Kennedy/Fulbright risk to Zionist influence reemerged five years later when Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for the presidency during the height of an unpopular war. That war was vastly expanded under the leadership of the Texan who replaced his brother as president. Another Kennedy presidency posed for Tel Aviv a two-fold threat.
First, Robert Kennedy’s peace candidacy revived the possibility that he would pursue his brother’s agenda and target for elimination Israel’s nuclear arsenal in order to preclude a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Second, with Senator Fulbright still wielding influence on U.S. foreign policy, another Kennedy administration revived concerns about restrictions on the Israel lobby.
When this charismatic contender surged in the political polls, that threat was eliminated June 5, 1968 at a campaign event in Los Angeles. His murder at the hand of Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian émigré, coincided with the first anniversary of the Six-Day War. The assassin later cited as his motive Kennedy’s campaign pledge to provide more fighter jets to Israel.
With that murder, the road to the presidency was cleared for Richard Nixon. When lobbied by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, Nixon readily agreed to endorse an "ambiguous" status for Israel’s nuclear arsenal, akin to "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell."
Special Standard for a Special Friend
Due to its "special relationship" with the U.S., Tel Aviv remains a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its Dimona facility has never been subjected to the inspections it now seeks for Iran. But for photographs taken inside the Dimona facility in 1986 by nuclear technician Mordecai Vanunu, that "ambiguity" might well remain intact.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly certified that Iran is not enriching uranium beyond the 3.5% required for nuclear energy. Tehran has agreed to send its uranium abroad for the further enrichment required for medicine (19.5%), a level still well below the 90% required for nuclear weapons. It remains to be seen whether such an arrangement can proceed consistent with Iranian sovereignty.
In mid-September, the U.S. intelligence agencies reported to the White House that their assessment since the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 remains unchanged. They still do not believe that Iran has resumed nuclear weapons development work. A November 5th report by the IAEA found "nothing to be worried about" in Iran’s newly disclosed uranium enrichment site.
What about Israel and the nuclear threat that Jewish nationalists pose to the region? What has their lobby been doing? Answer: lobbying. As during the Kennedy era, Tel Aviv remains focused on a single goal: ensuring that its ally and patron continues a six-decade policy ensuring that Israel is not held accountable-for anything.
At what cost has the U.S. acted as if the Israel lobby is not a foreign agent? The strategic issue faced by Fulbright and the Kennedys remains unresolved: how best can the U.S. eliminate Israeli influence as a threat to U.S. national security?
Since that fateful letter of June 1963, what has been the cost of this lobby to U.S. interests? But for this entangled alliance, what would be the relationship of the U.S. to other nations in the region? What costs have been imposed on other nations by this special relationship? At what point will Americans say: Enough?
Veterans Today Editor, Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution and a US Army Vietnam Veteran. See
http://www.criminalstate.com/
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=9392
Posted by Jeff Gates on Nov 14 2009, With 0 Reads, Filed under 9/11. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Maybe Americans will say ENOUGH when The Media reports on Mordechai Vanunu’s open air imprisonment -on top of 18 years in Ashkelon- under 24/7 surveillance in occupied east Jerusalem, denied the right to leave the Jewish state.
On March 26, 2006, Vanunu told me:
“Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no…CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can’t do it because they don’t want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing.
“Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it. Also big media from Germany, France, Italy, Japan. None of them wants problems with the Israelis.”
On January 25, 2006, Vanunu was convicted by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order that prohibited him from talking to non-Israelis and because he supposedly attempted to leave Israel by taking a cab to go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity in 2004.
The original indictment included 22 different violations; Vanunu was charged with 19 and acquitted of four. He was acquitted of speaking to foreign nationals on the internet and via video and voice chats.
On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreigners-who happened to be media-in 2004.
On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Vanunu’s sentence to three months, “In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy.”
On June 14, 2009 Vanunu told me, “The Central Commander of the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long as I do not talk about nuclear weapons.”
On July 6, 2009, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish continued to deny Vanunu the right to leave the Jewish State, claiming his “case is still generating great interest, like any other security-related case. The media’s attention he gets is proof of that.”
In 2005, Vanunu told me:
“When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them. Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”
2005, 2006, 2008 video interviews with Vanunu freely streaming @ VANUNU ARCHIVES:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Just to name 2 recent events:
1) Professors Mearsheimer and Walt raised the issue (2006) of the influence of the Jewish Lobby on American Foreign Policy” a couple of years ago, (in “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”).
At once agents of the same Lobby, within US Academia and Media, started a crusade against them, calling their well research white paper “amateurish and biased against Jews. For the record both professors are Jewish… Leading the wolves pack against Mearsheimer & Walt, was Prof. Alan Dershowitz, from Harvard Law School, but the taboo was broken and the debate on of said issue a reality the Lobby could not y can not stop.
2) Recently president Obama wanted to nominate Freeman as head of a national security agency: He was at once thrown to the wolves by the same Lobby and the president had to back-paddle, Freeman resigning in order to ease the pressure on the president…
Israel received $ 3.000 millions of hard working American taxpayers each year and is the only state to do so in the beginning of the financial year, so that money can gain interest for Israel. Also it is allowed to spend 25% of the amount outside the USA and as it pleases… On top of that it receives an equal amount in arms and amo, paid for by the hard working US men and women.
The policy of using force in order to bring the Middle East into submission that the Israel were coaching the USA to use, obviously failed totally in Iraq, same in Afghanistan, where the US taxpayers money is used to fund the Taliban and to grow opium,
The question now is: What America has gained or will gain by sleeping in the same bed as Israel and paying for it?
President Kennedy was murdered because he wanted to nationalize the Federal Reserve and to rein in the Jewish Lobby.
i have survived by trying to know what my enemy knows. at least on a small scale. i read your point of view. i read gordons paki connections point of view. without giving away too much, could we have an Indian viewpoint? is there an isreali writer out there interested in countering any of this? is it gospel? that is a “heavy” statement at the end of your treatise.
The kind of “Indian” you are looking for, Barrie W., won’t come, most because he doesn’t care for any veterans web site and secondly because he or she belongs to a very well structured, disciplined and purposeful tribe.
The warriors from that tribe work on long term strategies and plans. They are sent and positioned in key areas that matter for them, according to their strategy:
1) Universities, infiltrated and controlled by SAYANIM (pro Israel foot soldiers, born and/or living in the USA-EU-Centra-South America and elsewhere). “Campus Watch” is one of the organizations they operate through, interconnected to the ADL and other Zion-Talmudist Outfits,
2) Congress and Senate: Harmann- Lieberman and the likes: “Israel First People”
3) Wall Street: That’s where the money to support all the above comes mainly from,
4) Think Tanks: All though many policies and recommendations come from think tanks located in the USA, before reaching the government or Committees in Congress and the Senate, they are submitted to the approval of the big brass in Tel Aviv-London and Brussels, so as no detail can be left unattended.
And that is why newspapers are in financial trouble.
We are witnessing the rise of an intrinsic core on the web these days which attempt to stifle intellectual discussion by appearing uninformed and intransigent . This is evidenced by attempts to steer discussions back to the trivial with infantile, child like accusations of racism and bigotry, such as are you from storm front, are you antisemitic, remember the holocaust, Israel is fighting for it’s life, where is my car dude and so on. I think it is now common fodder for the room temperature I.Q . type to accuse anyone who doesn;t agree with them of being a conspiracy theorist.
I think it partially springs from here:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6c8_1247454118
Israeli Thought police Declare All Out War On The Web
“The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000) will be earmarked to the establishment of an “Internet warfare” squad.
The Foreign Ministry intends to hire young people who speak at least one language and who study communication, political science, or law – or alternately, Israelis with military experience gained at units dealing with information analysis.
Beyond the fact that these job requirements reveal a basic lack of understanding in respect to the dynamics of the online discourse – the project’s manager argued that “adults don’t know how to blog” – they are not too relevant either. An effective talkbacker does not need a law degree or military experience.
Any attempt to plant talkbacks online must fail. Especially if the State is behind it. Not only because it’s easy to identify responses made on behalf of someone, but also because it’s anti-democratic. When the Israel Electric Company or other companies do it, it’s annoying. Yet when the State does it, it’s dangerous.
Imposters on behalf of the government are threatening free discourse even if they only wander through the virtual space. The Internet was meant to serve as an open platform for dialogue between people, rather than as a propaganda means.
Something worrisome is happening here lately. We see the accumulation of silencing attempts. The Nakba Law, the bill calling for a ban on protests outside the homes of politicians, Lieberman’s Loyalty Law, and the biometric information database. The free speech hunting season is on.
Thankfully we have the Internet, and it enables us to identify processes, discuss them, warn about them, and join forces against them. We can assume that soon we’ll see the establishment of a website opposed to this new initiative, unless such site already exists. Perhaps even a group on Facebook. I wonder whether all its members will be Foreign Ministry agents, or whether it will also include some real people.
This is not a police state: This is a thought-police state.”
This type subversion probably works on a sesame street form but this is a veteran network.
Order your tee shirt now: ( Hey dude wrong link, are you a conspiracy nut, antisemite, where is my car dude? ) Daddy was a two star general and mommy fought in nam!
Jeff the American indians have have a pretty good handle on this.
http://www.heyokamagazine.com/heyoka_magazine.28.censorshiprags.htm
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Censorship and the dying rags
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
It is becoming popular to moan the death of US newspapers. Americans like to be romantic, nostalgic, when things pass on. But the truth is newspapers are not just dying because of the Internet, shrinking advertising and dismal profits.
US newspapers are dying because they became the prostitutes of commercialism and stopped telling the truth. Many people stopped buying newspapers because they became the rags of a corrupt industry. Too many journalists swallowed their pride, ignored their integrity and did what they had to do to pay the mortgage. They followed the marching orders of editors and publishers who forgot, or never knew, what journalism was intended to do.
Television news became entertainment, a boiling sea of lies and half truths. It focuses on a few murders to hypnotize Americans. It sensationalizes and fuels the inherent racism. When it comes to promoting the war and warmongering corporations, no one does it better than television news, regurgitating US press releases as if those were truth.
For readers of newspapers, it became too hard to tell the wag-the-dog spin of the press releases of politicians and corporations from real news and real truth. For corporations and politicians, it became too easy to take their lush profits and threaten a lawsuit whenever the real truth was exposed. The corporations and politicians learned how to kill off the good journalists, whether it was with the threat of a million dollar lawsuit, a bloody murder on the backroads or streets of Mexico or an explosion in Iraq. Other reporters, along with the activists who revealed the truths, were quietly “suicided” or overdosed with drugs.
How many newspapers today have articles on the Serb death squad leader who was a top CIA agent, or the chemical spraying planned for the border? (Seize the land and kill off anyone and anything that remains seems to be the agenda.) How many newspapers are pointing the finger at the US for the drug war in Mexico? The people in the US are buying the drugs and creating the demand for the drugs. It is the US that is supplying the weapons, running those south. The US even trained the most notorious killers in the drug war, the Zetas, as US special forces. The Zetas later broke away and became the most savage killers.
How many newspapers reported that the FBI had to halt a sting in the Tucson area because so many US soldiers in the Army, Marines, Airforce and National Guard were smuggling cocaine from the border at Nogales, Arizona, to Phoenix?
How many newspapers are investigating the number of assaults, rapes and murders by US Border Agents that are concealed? Where are undercover reports of US Border Agents smuggling drugs from the southern border, with their “spotters” positioned along the route. Where are the reports of the people killed by US agents, including Tohono O’odham? Where are the reports in print newspapers from Mexico on how US dollars, disguised as fighting the drug war, are really used to silence activists, such as in Guerrero? (Articles are at Narco News online: http://www.narconews.com )
Where are the news reports on what the Zapatistas really represent? The Zapatistas stood up for integrity, honor, Indigenous autonomy and self-rule, not for the trendy fashions of tourists and boring intellectuals. How many print newspapers publish the issues exposed by the Mohawk editors, Mohawk grandmothers, at Mohawk Nation News http://www.mohawknationnews.com/
Are any newspapers analyzing the number of power plants, coal mines, uranium mines, oil and gas wells, nuclear dumps planned for American Indian lands and borderlands? How many reporters are following the pro-nuclear trend, disguised as green, with no thought of where to put all the nuclear waste. Perhaps they could dump it in the EPA officials’ backyards or have a toxic dump in DC, between the Capitol and the White House. Are any reporters investigating the global scam and fiction of carbon credits, along with the role of the World Bank and the corporate seizures of Indigenous lands in the carbon trading scam?
Are any US newspapers analyzing why the US refuses to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? Have any US newspapers published those rights, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their own aboriginal territories? How many print newspapers have exposed the violations of human rights of imprisoned migrants, including women and children, at private US prisons.
Which newspapers are publishing the rights of the Western Shoshone in the Treaty of Ruby Valley and how the New York Times was pimping for Barrick Gold in Nevada. The federal court and New York Times agree that the heart of Western Shoshone territory, and the region of sacred Mount Tenabo, should be cored out for a gold mine. It is a gold mine that President Bush, Sr., made possible in Nevada.
Are news reporters exposing the murders and rapes of villagers by Barrick Gold around the world? Have print newspapers reported on the assassinations of Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala who oppose mining or the cancer clusters around mines in the First Nations territories in Canada? Are reporters exposing the mass graves of Indian children in church residential schools in Canada or how the US plans to exploit the natural resources of First Nations?
Are there any US newspapers pointing out the fact that most elected Native American tribal councils are “puppets” of the US government, designed and created by the US to sign leases to exploit Native American land, air, water and resources?
Which newspapers are holding Bush and Cheney responsible for torture and war crimes? Which newspapers are holding Israel responsible for the use of white phosphorus? Who is demanding that leaders responsible for violating the Geneva Conventions be held responsible? Who is exposing the hazards of depleted uranium? (See articles online at http://www.unobserver.com/)
Journalism will survive, but let’s celebrate the death of the whore houses, those shacks that still have the word “news” swagging on their storefronts.
brendanorrell@gmail.com
The last paragraph was best.
Main stream media is becoming a non essential item.
Are news reporters exposing the murders and rapes of villagers by Barrick Gold around the world? Have print newspapers reported on the assassinations of Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala who oppose mining or the cancer clusters around mines in the First Nations territories in Canada? Are reporters exposing the mass graves of Indian children in church residential schools in Canada or how the US plans to exploit the natural resources of First Nations?
Are there any US newspapers pointing out the fact that most elected Native American tribal councils are “puppets” of the US government, designed and created by the US to sign leases to exploit Native American land, air, water and resources?
Which newspapers are holding Bush and Cheney responsible for torture and war crimes? Which newspapers are holding Israel responsible for the use of white phosphorus? Who is demanding that leaders responsible for violating the Geneva Conventions be held responsible? Who is exposing the hazards of depleted uranium? (See articles online at http://www.unobserver.com/)
Journalism will survive, but let’s celebrate the death of the whore houses, those shacks that still have the word “news” swagging on their storefronts.
brendanorrell@gmail.com
Get a life for God’s sake, yest the native Americans had it rough and were treated bad, to say the least, but I am sure you will be first in line to give your property back because of a busted treaty.
What does that have to do with uranium mining on going on the reservations right now and the newspapers never reporting anything whatsoever about it?
Grotto there were 361 treaties to be exact and 361 broken.
Meanwhile other breaking news.
The President of the United States, Barack Obama has shares in Baxter, the company many say is responsible for the h1n1 swine flu pandemic. Back 2005 Barack Obama bought $50,000 worth of stock in two companies.
Right after he bought the shares also in 2005 Barack Obama (still a senator at that time) introduced the first comprehensive bill to address the threat of avian influenza pandemic. AVIAN Act (S. 969)
Then it makes it even more interesting that over $60 million dollars was awarded for a vaccine against the bird flu (2007) that at the time did not mutate till afterwards.
The guy sure knows his planning, I guess that is change you can believe in. From investor to President.
http://fto.co.za/news/barack-obama-has-shares-baxter-2009111015772.html
________________________
2 more women in Portugal have miscarriages directly after swine flu shot.
New Hitachi chip fits right into a syringe. What a surprise. It probably has an alarm clock feature to wake you up and let you know it is time go go to the work camp.