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Challenging AIPAC’s Abuse of Taxpayers
U.S. citizens bankrolling Israel’s system of occupation, racial discrimination and denial of basic human rights with billions annually without knowing what they were funding and why
By Omar Barghouti
The Arab democratic spring, striving to end authoritarian rule and establish freedoms and social justice, has not been welcome by all. Israel and its main lobby in the U.S., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), for instance, appear to have been caught off guard and visibly disturbed by the seemingly irreversible transformations that these uprisings promise to bring about in the Arab world and, to an extent, the world at large.
ARAB DEMOCRATIC SPRING -- 2011
Having stood on the wrong side of history during the Tunisian and then the Egyptian revolutions, supporting the despots and authoritarian regimes against the people, Israel has a lot to lose from the democratic winds of change in the region. When Hosni Mubarak was about to be overthrown by the people’s revolution in Egypt Israel launched a diplomatic campaign to convince key Western capitals to support him lest stability is lost and Israel’s other tyrannical friends in the region feel abandoned.
In Tunisia, as well, the vaunted electronic surveillance apparatus of the former dictator Ben-Ali was run in close cooperation with Israel, as exposed by Tunisian civil society organizations. With more of Israel’s friends in the region being dethroned, it is becoming abundantly clear how much Israel and its Western partners have invested in safeguarding and buttressing the unelected, autocratic regimes in the Arab world, partially to make a self-fulfilling prophecy of Israel as the “villa in the midst of the jungle” — the myth often repeated by AIPAC. The impact of debunking that myth cannot be overstated.
Israel has, for decades, extracted billions of dollars, not to mention diplomatic, political, and scientific support from the U.S. and European states partially based on this misleading image of Israeli democracy, and despite all the evidence to the contrary. A state that has been imposing an occupation regime for almost 44 years on Palestinians in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, that has denied on racial grounds millions of refugees their UN-sanctioned right to return home, and that is regularly condemned by its chief benefactor and ally, the U.S. government, for its “system of institutional, legal and societal discrimination” against its own Palestinian minority carrying Israeli citizenship cannot reasonably be regarded as a “democracy.”
STOP AIDING OCCUPATION WITH OUR TAX DOLLARS
The fact is, U.S. citizens have been bankrolling Israel’s system of occupation, racial discrimination and denial of basic human rights to the tune of billions of dollars annually without knowing what they were funding and why. AIPAC is the main culprit in this process of defrauding the American people, while one cannot ignore the fact that the U.S. military and oil establishments have also stood to gain from Israel’s colonial expansion, endless bloody wars of aggression, and role as the police of the region, preventing popular revolt from threatening the pillage of its vast strategic resources.
GAME OVER AIPAC
For many years AIPAC has falsely advertised Israel as a democratic state that best serves U.S. interests in a turbulent and unpredictable part of the world, covering up Israel’s suppression of human rights and its very nature as a state premised on fanatic militarism, racial segregation and injustice, contrary to the supposed “shared values” with the “West” that AIPAC has fed to the American public so effectively with its well-oiled media machine and its unmatched power of intimidation as well as suppression of debate and dissent by anyone who dares to slightly step out of line and question the “Israel-first” agenda.
But given that Israel in the last few years, especially since the start of the recent Arab revolutions, has largely and quite demonstrably failed in hindering the outbreak of popular uprisings and democratic transformations in the Middle East, leading pundits have started to raise serious doubts about the taken-for-granted mantra of convergence between Israeli and American interests.
STOP AMERICAS WARS FOR AIPAC
Furthermore, at a time when average Americans are losing jobs, benefits and hope, should the U.S. be spending billions to help Israel maintain its regime of oppression and violations of international law? When schools and hospitals in the U.S. are being closed, and when hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers are mired in endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere, where they sow mass destruction and death among the populations of these countries, while they themselves suffer increasing casualties, should U.S. taxpayers continue to fund this immoral war agenda? Should Israel and its lobby groups be allowed to pull the U.S. into more wars or to continue to justify Israel’s own brutal and patently illegal wars of aggression, as the one against Palestinians in Gaza in 2008-09 and on Lebanon in 2006?
If members of the U.S. Congress dare not ask these critical questions for fear of AIPAC’s wrath – perceived and carefully marketed as invincible – and an almost certain loss of career, shouldn’t the working people of the U.S. pose them and demand accountability and, indeed, democratic regime change?
It is in this context that one cannot but highly admire the courage, creativity and resilience of human rights and advocacy groups in the U.S., like CODEPINK, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Jewish Voice for Peace and many others that insist on challenging AIPAC’s domination of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond and its detrimental and deeply corrupting influence over U.S. decision making in general. The CODEPINK-led campaign to “expose AIPAC and usher in a new foreign policy,” to be launched in Washington, DC in May is a badly needed and truly inspiring effort that should be widely supported by all those who care about the cause of justice and peace in the U.S. and, by extension, the entire world.
Omar Barghouti is a human rights activist and author of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS): The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket, 2011)
Take action by attending Move Over AIPAC, a gathering in Washington DC from May 21-24, 2011, to expose AIPAC and build the vision for a new US foreign policy in the Middle East! More information can be found at www.MoveOverAIPAC.org. http://www.codepink4peace.org/
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=103207
Posted by Veterans Today on May 14 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under Corruption, Government, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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“Game Over”. Fingers crossed!
The Truth of the uglyness of the bastard zionist state of is–ra–hell is a fact of life. the jews will stop at nothing to destroy america and the world. THIS IS THE WORST OF ALL POPULACE IN THE WORLD. These SCUM BAGS should crawl back under the rock were thry came from. THIS ALSO INCLUDES THE BASTARD ( AIPAC ) American IS–RA–HELL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE. ( the Lunatics of the world ) Jesus said it best when he said all Jews will have no peace. nothing can describe the uglyness,idiot, moron, imbecile,society of the disgrace full JEWS.
[...] Challenging AIPAC's Abuse of Taxpayers Money | Veterans Today [...]
The lax enforcement of The Logan Act, The Foreign Agents Registration Act/FARA, the 1917 Espionage Act, Thompson Memorandum guidelines for prosecuting corporate crime coupled with the fear of being labeled anti-Semitic and a media who have failed at their commission to seek and report the truth have all colluded to exert an undue influence over Congress and thus; we the people of America to be “under the de facto influence of a powerful foreign interest.”
Senator Fulbright’s concerns over activities of unregistered foreign agents who worked to influence public opinion and policy resulted in the 1963 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings to investigate the Jewish Agency and uncovered the “conduit” operation run by the American Zionist Council. In 1959, The American Zionist Council was renamed AIPAC.
Within eight years, the Council received over a half a million “from the Jewish Agency to create a favorable opinion in this country for Israeli government policies. The Senate investigation closed down the conduit, but the extensive propaganda activities still go on…[and] by 1998, “US aid to Israel exceeded $3 billion a year, the highest amount of US aid given to any country.”
“AIPAC’s illegal tactics harm America…[and] corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined…Harvard economist Thomas Stauffer estimated the total cost of [the] prolonged conflict in the Middle East at $3 trillion [in 2002 USA dollars and he] lays a good deal of the blame for this at the doorstep of AIPAC.”
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=959&Itemid=202
PS: I will be in D.C. next weekend to report on the AIPAC Conference and will be introducing myself as A Citizen of Conscience for US House of Representatives:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2048&Itemid=245
Eileen Fleming, Yes, it is good, as you do here, to go back to the roots of how and by whom America has been perverted-depraved-corrupted and its Institutions infiltrated and hijacked.
I will just add that as long as the Federal Reserve is in the hands of Jewish Owners (since deceitfully created in 1913, in the December hollydays, by bought off Congressmen while the Nation was busy with Christmas festivities), there will be no hope for True American Patriots to throw away the chains, imposed upon them by the Zion Talmudic Mafia Dons.
Technically and from a national security point of view it is ABSOLUTELY WRONG and SUICIDAL for the USA and DEMOCRACY not to have its own Central Bank OWNED by the PEOPLE.
1) All the woes of America and the world come from the fact that the FEDERAL RESERVE (which is not federal at all, but privately owned by Jews) is in the WRONG HANDS. Why should America citizens pay interests to a private outfit that has bankrupt the country when they do do not need to. The role of the Fed can be assumed by a US CENTRAL BANK, dedicated to pursuing a monetary and financial policy for the benefit of the US PEOPLE and PEACE, not ISRAEL or the ROTHSCHILD.
2) The very existence of the AIPAC is in itself and by far the major THREAT for US sovereignty and Nacional Security, because it is no less than a foreign AGENT interfering in US affairs and bullying-bribing-blackmailing its politicians.
One more thing you all need to know, if you follow ALL THE REAL EVIDENCE of 9/11 you will see that it was in-fact a Mossad/Isareli operation, with help covering it up from key US Government Officials that are either Dual Citizens (Isreal/US), or have very strong ties and sypathies to Israel, and not the US as it should be of ANY US Government Official! IT WAS NOT ARAB HIJACKERS, ETC.! THIS IS FACT!
I have even personally been turned in to Homeland Security, and had an attempt on my life for speaking about this, and I am just a mear citizen that is tired of this crap! I love my country, The US, and I would give my life for it, and it sickens me that I am called into question for speaking the truth about what is really going on here in the US!
Look up the King David Bombings in Jeruselum, The Lavon Affair, The USS Liberty, and all the Duel US/Israeli Citizens we have in our government! Look up Building 7 of the World Trade Center, the third building that that fell without even being hit by anything! Look up the Dancing Israeli’s there to document the event before-hand! Look at who owed the security for the Airports that supposedly let the hijackers on the planes, etc.! Look at who owned the World Trade Centers, and how he only insured it for terrorist attacks, etc.! Do some research of your own! SPREAD THE WORD TO ALL AMERICANS! Look up what Dr. Alan Sabrosky has to say about all this, and how he is the former Director of Studies at the US Army War College with impectable credentials!
DO SOME RESEARCH FOLKS! LEARN WHAT IS BEING DONE TO OUR COUNTRY FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER!
PLEASE WAKE UP! THEN SPREAD THE WORD TO ALL AMERICANS!
US Army Veteran, and Patriotic American
Marc C. Daniele
Herculaneum, Mo.
One last thing folks, ask youself, with all the REAL evidence out there about 9/11, etc., why is it not being investigated properly?