Why did the US go to war against Iraq in March 2003 with further plans to attack Syria, Iran and probably Lebanon? None of the reasons thus far given provide a shred of evidence. No weapons of mass destruction have been discovered. No ties between Iraq and Al Queda have been established. No threats to […]
Why did the US go to war against Iraq in March 2003 with further plans to attack Syria, Iran and probably Lebanon? None of the reasons thus far given provide a shred of evidence. No weapons of mass destruction have been discovered. No ties between Iraq and Al Queda have been established. No threats to US security existed. Many of the US past and present allies have equal or worse human rights records than Iraq. The war, the conquest, occupation, killing and vile systematic torture and imprisonment of thousands of Iraqis has aroused the hostility and indignation of hundreds of millions of Christians, Muslims and free thinkers throughout the world, justly discrediting the whole political establishment in Washington and overseas. US oil companies have been unable to benefit in the face of a growing anti-colonial resistance, their investments throughout the Middle East and South Central Asia are under siege. The OPEC countries for a time rejected US and EU pressures to pump more oil to lower sky-high prices – partly a hostile response to the US invasion of Iraq.
Who benefited then from the US war? By examining the beneficiaries we can get an idea who had a motive for promoting this crime against humanity. The only major beneficiary of the war is the State of Israel, which succeeded in having the US destroy its most consistent Arab adversary in the Middle East – the regime that extended the greatest political support to the Palestinian resistance. Together with Iran and Syria they formed the core resistance to Israeli expansionist plans to expel the Palestinians and conquer and occupy all of Palestine. The plan to «democratize» the Middle East proposed by US Zionists in the government in essence meant a joint control by the US and Israel over the entire Middle East via a series of wars.(1)
What were the obstacles to Greater Israel? First the Intifada, the uprising of Palestinians who refused to be driven out of their country and was able to inflict losses on the self-styled Chosen People of God (Israel is by law an exclusively Jewish state, inhabited by immigrants mainly from Europe and their children and governed by exclusionary religious dogma).
Secondly Hezbollah had inflicted a strategic military-political defeat on Israel, forcing them and their client Lebanese Maronite Christian mercenary allies to evacuate from Southern Lebanon. Thirdly Iraq, Iran and Syria, the three countries which were most consequential in their opposition to Israeli annexation and regional domination, were developing economic and political ties with a multitude of countries and especially in the case of oil contracts, signing trade and exploitation agreements with Japan, China, Russia as well as Western European corporations. Israel’s hopes for sharing Washington’s co-prosperity economic sphere of domination based on servile, client Arab regimes were increasingly doubtful. Fourthly the Iraqi regime was slowly recovering, despite the decade long US-European boycott and constant military aggression. With time running out, the Israelis and their Zionist agents in the Bush administration realized that an agreement to end the boycott and normalize relations with Iraq was on the horizon. Finally there was a deepening internal crisis in Israel over the economic costs and personal insecurity accompanying the policy of the criminal settlements and savage repression in the occupied territories. Israel’s out-migration exceeded its in-migration, its Jewish based welfare policies were in tatters, and hundreds of active reservists refused military duty in the dirty colonial war.
A series of US wars against independent Arab regimes, beginning with Iraq, was clearly in the interests of the Israeli state and so it was perceived by the Sharon regime, its secret police (Mossad), the Israeli military and right-wing Zionists in positions of influence in Washington.
How was the Israeli state able to influence the US imperial state into pursuing a series of wars, which would imperil its own imperial economic and security interests and further those of Israel?
The most direct answer is to be found in the role played by key pro-Zionist officials in and around the most important policymaking positions in the Bush administration. These US officials had long-standing ideological and political ties to the Israeli state, including policy advisory positions. Throughout most of their political lives they had dedicated themselves to furthering Israel’s state interests in the US. While the design and execution of the US war strategy was in the hands of Zionist civilian militarists in the Pentagon they were only able to succeed because of the powerful support exercised by Sharon’s acolytes in the major Jewish organizations in the US. The Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, and thousands of their activists – doctors, dentists, philanthropists, real estate brokers, financiers, journalists, media moguls and academics – acted in concert with key Jewish politicians and ideologues to press the case for a war, because they would argue, it was in the interest of the state of Israel to destroy Saddam Hussein and the secular Baath Party state apparatus.
ISRAEL AND THE US: A UNIQUE RELATIONSHIP
U.S.-Israel relations have been described in a variety of ways. Politicians refer to Israel as the U.S.’s most reliable ally in the Middle East, if not the world. Others speak of Israel as a strategic ally. Some speak of Israel and the U.S. sharing common democratic values in the war against terrorism. On the Left, critics speak of Israel as a tool of U.S. imperialism for undermining Arab nationalism, and a bulwark against fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. A few writers point to the «excess influence» which the Israeli governments exercise on U.S. government policy via powerful Jewish lobbies and individuals in media, financial and governmental circles.
While there is a grain of truth in much of the above there is a unique aspect in this relationship between an imperial power like the U.S. and regional power such as Israel. Unlike Washington’s relation with the EU, Japan and Oceana, it is Israel which pressures and secures vast transfer of financial resources ($2.8 billion per year, $84 billion over 30 years) (2). Israel secures the latest arms and technology transfers, unrestrictive entry into U.S. markets, free entry of immigrants, unconditional commitment of U.S. support in case of war and repression of colonized people and guaranteed U.S. vetoes against any UN resolutions.
From the angle of inter-state relations, it is the lesser regional power which exacts a tribute from the Empire, a seeming unique or paradoxical outcome. The explanation for this paradox is found in the powerful and influential role of pro-Israel Jews in strategic sectors of the U.S. economy, political parties, Congress and Executive Branch. The closest equivalent to past empires is that of influential white settlers in the colonies, who through their overseas linkages were able to secure subsidies and special trading relations.
The Israeli «colons» in the U.S. have invested and donated billions of dollars to Israel, in some cases diverting funds from union dues of low paid workers to purchase Israel bonds used to finance new colonial settlements in the occupied territories. In other cases Jewish fugitives from the U.S. justice system have been protected by the Israeli state, especially super rich financial swindlers like Mark Rich and even gangsters and murderers. Occasional official demands of extradition from the U.S. Justice Department have been pointedly ignored.
The colonized Empire has gone out of its way to cover up its subservience to its supposed ally, but in fact hegemonic power.
The U.S.-Israeli relationship is the first in modern history in which the imperial country covers up a deliberate major military assault by a supposed ally. In 1967, the U.S. Liberty a communications and reconnaissance ship was bombed and strafed by Israeli fighter planes in international waters for nearly an hour, killing and wounding hundreds of seaman and officers. Intercepted Israeli messages as well as the clearly displayed U.S. flag demonstrate that this was a deliberate act of aggression. Washington acted as any Third World leader would when faced with an embarrassing attack by its hegemon: it silenced its naval officers who witnessed the attack and quietly received a compensation and pro-forma apology. Apart from the fact this was an unprecedented action in U.S. military and diplomatic relations with an ally, there is no case in record of an imperial country covering up for an assault by a regional ally (3). On the contrary, similar circumstances have been followed by diplomatic and bellicose responses. This apparent anomaly cannot in any way be explained by military weakness or diplomatic failures: Washington has far superior armaments and its diplomats are capable of forceful representation to allies or adversaries, when the political will is present. The Jewish-American lobby, Congress people, media and Wall Street moguls strategically located in the U.S. political economic system ensured that President Johnson would act as a docile subject. No direct pressures were necessary, for a hegemonized political leadership, acts, seemingly on its own beliefs, having learned the rules of the political game. Israel-U.S. is a unique relationship that not even an unprovoked military attack should call into question. Like all hegemonized powers, Washington threatened the
U.S. Naval witnesses with a court marital if they spoke out, while they coddled their attackers in Tel Aviv (4).
Another illustration of the asymmetrical relation is found in one of the most important espionage cases during the Cold War involving an Israeli agent, Jonathan Pollard and the Pentagon. Over several years Pollard stole and duplicated bagfuls of top-secret documents about U.S. Intelligence, counter-intelligence, strategic plans, military weaponry and turned them over to his Israeli handlers. This was the biggest case of espionage carried out against the U.S. by any ally in recent history. Pollard and his wife were convicted in 1986. The U.S. Government privately protested to the Israeli government. The Israeli’s on the other hand, through their Jewish-American allies organized a lobby to propagandize in his favor. Eventually all top Israeli leaders and Jewish-American lobbyists campaigned for his pardon, and almost succeeded with President Clinton.
The unequal relation is clearly evident in the case of a major fugitive from justice, Marc Rich. A financier and trader, he was indicted in the U.S. federal court on several counts of swindling and defrauding clients. He fled to Switzerland and subsequently obtained an Israeli passport and citizenship, investing hefty sums of his ill begotten wealth into Israeli industries and charities. Despite the seriousness of his offense, Rich hobnobbed with top political leaders in Israel and its economic elite. In the year 2000, the Prime Minister of Israel and numerous pro- Israeli Jewish personalities, including Rich’s ex-wife convinced Clinton to pardon him. While an outcry was raised about a linkup between the Rich pardon, and his wife’s $100,000 plus contribution to the Democratic Party, the underlying relationship of subordination to Israeli influence and the power of the Israeli lobby in the U.S. were clearly more important. It is worth noting that it is extraordinarily unusual for a U.S. President to consult with a foreign ruler (as Clinton consulted with Barak) in dealing with an accused swindler. It is unprecedented to pardon an indicted fugitive who fled his trial and never served any sentence.
The power of Israel is manifested in the numerous annual pilgrimages that influential U.S. politicians make to Israel to declare their loyalty to the Israeli state, even during periods of intensive repression of rebellious subject people (5). On the contrary, U.S. satraps of the Israeli’s mini-empire applauded the Jewish state’s invasion of Lebanon, its bloody repression of the Intifada I and II and opposed any international mediation to prevent further Israeli massacres, sacrificing any credibility in the United Nations.
In votes in the United Nations, even in the Security Council, despite overwhelming evidence of human rights violations presented by EU allies, Washington has toiled in the service of its hegemon. Sacrificing international credibility and deliberately alienating 150 other nations Washington labeled criticisms of Israeli racism as «anti-Semitism». This does not mark the high point of Washington’s servility to Israel.
The most recent and perhaps the most important instance of U.S. servility occurred in the months preceding and following the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On December 12, 2001 Fox news learned from U.S. Intelligence sources and federal investigators that 60 Israelis engaged in a long-running effort to spy on U.S. government officials were detained since 9/11. Many of those arrested are active Israeli military or intelligence operatives. They were arrested under the Patriot Anti-Terrorism Law. Many failed polygraph questions dealing with surveillance activities against and in the United States. More seriously federal investigators have reason to believe that the Israeli operatives gathered intelligence about the September 11 attacks in advance and did not share it with its Washington ally. The degree of Israeli involvement in September 11 is a tightly guarded secret. A highly placed federal investigator told Fox news there are «tie-ins». When asked to provide details, the federal investigator refused «Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information (6).»
Nothing exemplifies the power of Israel over Washington as this case of Israeli espionage. Even in the case of the worse bombing in U.S. history, Washington suppresses federally collected evidence linking known Israeli spies to possible evidence about prior knowledge. Clearly this evidence might raise questions about the links and ties between political and economic elites as well as undermining strategic relations in the Middle East. More important it would pit the Bush Administration against the Jewish American lobby and its powerful informal and formal networks in the media, finance, and in government. Fox News obtained numerous classified documents from federal investigators probably frustrated by the cover-ups of Israeli espionage by political leaders in Washington. These documents unearthed by Cameron reveal that even before September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secret investigation of large scale, long term Israeli espionage in the United States. Not one of the major print or electronic media reported on these arrests. Neither the President nor any Congressional leaders spoke out on Israeli’s pervasive and sustained effort to obtain key U.S. military and intelligence information.
The classified documents detail «hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country,» that investigators claim could be an Israeli organized intelligence gathering activity. Israeli agents targeted and penetrated military bases, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and dozens of government facilities and even secret office and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel according to the Federal documents, cited by Fox News. The General Accounting Office (an investigatory arm of the U.S. Congress) document referred to Israel as «Country A»; it said «the government of Country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the U.S. of any U.S. ally.» A Defense Intelligence report said Israel has «voracious appetite for information…It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority.»
The Fox News Report written by Carl Cameron appeared on the Fox News internet site briefly (Dec. 12, 2001) and then disappeared – there was no follow up. None of the other mass media picked up on this major espionage report. No doubt the powerful pro-Israeli influentials in the mass media played a role. More significantly than direct «pressure» Israeli hegemony «persuades», «intimidates», the media establishment and political leaders to operate with maximum discretion in limiting reporting about Israel’s appropriation of strategic information.
While the web of Israeli agents are sometimes subject to arrest, interrogation and expulsion, the Israeli state and the ministers in charge are never publicly condemned, nor are there any official diplomatic riposte such as the symbolic temporary withdrawal of the U.S. Ambassador.
The closest parallel to U.S. behavior toward Israeli spies is the response of poor, dependant Third World countries to U.S. espionage. In that context docile rulers quietly ask the Ambassador to rein in some of the more aggressive agents.
Unanswered Question: September 11 and the Israelis
Following September rumors circulated throughout the Arab East that the bombing was an Israeli plot to incite Washington to attack Muslim-Arab adversaries. These stories and their authors provided nothing more than circumstantial evidence, namely that Bush’s anti-terrorism campaign legitimated Sharon’s «anti-terrorist» repression of Palestinians. The stories implicating Israel were completely dismissed by all the media and political leaders across the spectrum. Now U.S. federal investigators reveal that the Israeli’s may have known about the attack before it occurred and did not share it.
This raises the question of the relationships between the Arab terrorists and the Israeli secret police. Did the Israelis penetrate the group or pick up information about them (7)? Federal investigators’ confidential information could probably clarify these vital questions. But will the confidential information ever become public? Most likely not. For the very reason that it would expose Israeli influence in the U.S. via its secret agents and more importantly via its powerful overseas lobby and allies in government and finance. The lack of any public statement concerning Israel’s possible knowledge of 9/11 is indicative of the vast, ubiquitous and aggressive nature of its powerful Diaspora supporters (8). Given the enormous political and economic importance which the mass media have given to 9/11, and the sweeping powers, funding and institutions created around the issue of national security, it is astonishing that no mention has been made about Israel’s spy networks operating in the U.S.’s most delicate spheres of counter-terrorism.
Of course it is not astonishing if we understand properly the «unique relationship» between the U.S. Empire and Israel, a regional power.
Theoretical Issues
The relationship between the U.S. – a global imperial power – and Israel, a regional power provides us with a unique model of inter-state relations. In this case the regional power exacts tribute ($2.8 billion annually in direct contributions from the U.S. Congress), free access to U.S. markets, protection of overseas felonious Jews from prosecution or extradition to the U.S., while engaging in pervasive espionage and money laundering. Moreover Israel establishes limits on U.S.-Middle Eastern policy, in the international forums. Israel’s hegemonic position has endured under both Democratic and Republican presidencies for almost half a century. In other words it is a structural historical relation, not one based on personalities, or particular transitory policymaking configurations.
Several hypotheses emerge from an examination of this unique relationship.
The first stems from the fact that the territorial Israeli state has little power of persuasion, economic reach or military clout in comparison to the major powers (Europe and the U.S.). The power of Israel is based on the Diaspora, the highly structured and politically and economically powerful Jewish networks which have direct and indirect access to the centers of power and propaganda in the most powerful imperial country in the world. Tribute is exacted via the influence of these «internal colonialists» who operate at the level of mass media opinion makers and via Congress and the Presidency. Close to 50% of the funding of the Democratic Party comes from pro-Israeli Jews. For every dollar spent by the Jewish networks in influencing voting outcomes, the Israeli state receives $50 in aid to finance the building and arming of colonial settlement in the Occupied Territories complete with swimming pools, Rumanian gardeners and Filipino maids.
Through the overseas networks the Israeli state can directly intervene and set the parameters to U.S. foreign aid in the Middle East. The overseas networks play a major role in shaping the internal debate on U.S. policy toward Israel. Propaganda associating Israeli repression of Palestinians as the righteous response of the victims of the Holocaust has been repeated and circulated throughout the mass media. From the heights of the network to the lawyers boardroom, and the doctor’s lounge the supporters of the network aggressively attack as «anti-Semites» any critical voices. Through local intimidation and malicious intervention in the professions, the zealots defend Israeli policy and leaders and contribute money, organize voters and run for office. Once in office they tune in to Israeli policy needs.
The phenomenon of overseas expatriates attempting to influence an imperial power is not an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. The Cuban exiles in Miami exercise significant influence in both major parties. But in no other case has linkage led to the establishment of an enduring hegemonic relationship: An empire colonized by a regional power, the U.S. paying tribute to Israel and subject to the ideological blinders of its overseas colons.
Many questions remain to be answered as the Empire aggressively pursues its military expansion and the internal voices of repression narrow the terms of public debate.
As the colons extend their influence throughout the political and intellectual spheres, they feel more confident in asserting Israel’s superiority to the U.S. particularly in the areas of political coercion and war. They brazenly boast of Israel’s superior security system, its methods of interrogation including its techniques of torture and demand the U.S. follow Israel’s war agenda in the Middle East. Israel has acknowledged state-sanctioned physical and mental abuse of prisoners in interrogation, which has broad public support (9).
Seymour Hersch urges the U.S. FBI and Intelligence Agencies to follow the Israeli secret police’s tactics and use or threat to use torture of family members of terror suspects (10). The US follows suit by imprisoning the wives and daughters of wanted Iraqi Baathists. Richard Perle, highly influential in Rumsfeld’s Defense Department, advocates the Israeli tactics of offensive bombing of adversaries. «In 1981 the Israelis faced an urgent choice: should they allow Saddam Hussein to fuel a French built nuclear reactor near Baghdad or destroy it? The Israelis decided to strike preemptively. Everything we know (SIC) about Saddam Hussein forces (SIC) President Bush to make a similar choice: to take a pre-emptive action or wait, possibly until it is too late.(11)»
Another prominent colon, Senator Joseph Lieberman called on the U.S. to bomb Syria, Iraq and Iran immediately after 9/11, echoing Primes Minister Sharon’s policy advice to President Bush. Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor, publicly endorsed both torture and repressive legislation in the U.S. – modeled on the Israeli system of unlimited detention of Palestinians (12).
The colon’s subordinate U.S. policy to Israel’s foreign policy needs, independent of circumstances and the extremities to which Israel’s colonial policies push it. Moreover as representatives of the hegemonic power in the U.S., they even try to micro manage security measures – torture in interrogation – as well as becoming vociferous advocates of a generalized Middle East war. The colons have successfully influenced the U.S. government to block any EU initiatives toward international mediation, as well as the U.S. sponsored Mitchell Plan, advocating peace observers in the occupied territories. In a word, the U.S., despite its occasional inconsequential criticism of Israel’s excesses, has not only been an unconditional supporter of Israel, but it has done so, in the context of a prolonged bloody, repression and occupation of Palestinian territories, to which Washington is a party to securing. Israeli hegemony over the U.S. via its colons is a formidable weapon for neutralizing the U.S.’s NATO allies, Arab petroleum clients, the vast majority of the general Assembly in the United Nations and even its own public on certain Middle Eastern issues.
Even more dangerous is the irrational paranoia which the colons transfer from Israeli politics to the U.S. All Arabs are suspect. Middle Eastern adversaries should be threatened if not bombed. Secret military tribunals and summary justice should be meted out to suspected terrorists. The mass media is especially tuned to pick up the Israeli paranoid syndrome: magnifying every threat, featuring Israeli resolution and efficiency against Arab «terrorists». The paranoid style of politics had led to Israel’s attacks on Arab countries in the Middle East, espionage on the U.S., illegal purchase of nuclear devices in the U.S. and unremitting violence against Palestinians and Lebanese. The danger is that the assimilation of the paranoid style by the U.S. has vast consequences not only for the Mid-East but for the rest of the world and to democratic freedom in the U.S.
What the intellectual colons and other Israeli publicists forget to mention is that Israeli security policy in the occupied territories is a total disaster: Israeli bus stations, public malls, five star hotels, pizzerias and all of its frontiers have been attacked and hundreds of Israeli citizens have been killed and injured. Tens of thousands of educated Israelis flee the country precisely because of insecurity and the proximity of violence, which neither the Shin Ben, the Army or the settlers are capable of preventing. Israeli intellectuals are especially embittered by the enormous costs of the settlement movement (13).
Blind to Israel’s security failure, the colons insist on creating conditions for internal repression and external war. Given their influential role in the mass media, their prominence in the editorial and opinion pages of the most prestigious newspapers, the colons message reaches far beyond their limited numbers and the mediocrity of their intellect. Location and money can make up for their psychological and political pathologies as well as override any qualms about dual loyalties.
Israel’s Colonial Style: The US Pays Tribute to the State of Israel
In the face of Israel’s defiance of world public opinion, and its refusal to permit any international humanitarian organization to examine the results of its murderous destruction of the towns and refugee camps in the Occupied Territories, who is financing the Israeli state and why does that financing continue in the face of world opprobrium?
The attempt by the United Nations to investigate Israel’s near total destruction of Jenin in the spring of 2003 has evoked the hostility of the entire Israeli political class. Shimon Perez (the self-styled labor moderate in Sharon’s government) accused the 170 plus member United Nations Organization of «blood libel» presumably including the U.S. which voted in favor of the resolution creating the investigatory commission.
The question of who is financing the Israeli state is basic because, Israel as we know it today, is not a viable state without massive external support. Billions of dollars are raised from a variety of Jewish and non-Jewish institutions to sustain the Israeli war machine, its policy of generous subsidies for Jews enticed to settle in colonies in the Occupied Territories and in Israel, with the world’s 20th highest living standards for Israel’s Jewish citizens (14). Without external aid Israel’s economy would require severe cutbacks in living standards and working conditions, leading to the likely flight of most Israeli professionals, businessmen and recent overseas immigrants. The Israeli military budget would be reduced and Israel would be obligated to reduce its military interventions in the Arab East and the Occupied territories. Israel would cease being a rentier state living on overseas subsidies and would be obligated to engage in productive activity – a return to farming, manufacture and services minus the exploitation of low paid Asian maids, imported Eastern European farm workers and Palestinian construction laborers.
Europe continues to privilege the importation of Israeli exports and financial services, despite overt and malicious attacks by leaders of both Israeli parties. Prominent Jewish organizations in France and England, linked to major parties have muted any efforts to use the «trade card» to pressure Israel to accept European Union or United Nations mediation. European trade and financial ties to Israel however are not the basic prop for the Israeli war machine. The principle basis for long-term, large-scale financial support is found in the U.S., among public and private institutions.
In the United States there are essentially four basic sources of financial, ideological and political support for the Israeli rentier economy:
1. Wealthy Jewish contributors and powerful disciplined fund-raising organizations.
2. The U.S. government – both Congress and the Presidency.
3. The Mass media – particularly the New York Times, Hollywood and the major television networks.
4. The trade union bosses and the heads of pension funds.
There is substantial overlap in these four institutional configurations. For example, Jewish supporters in the Israeli lobby work closely with Congressional leaders to secure long-term, large- scale U.S. military and economic aid for Israel. Most of the mass media and a few trade unions are influenced by unconditional supporters of the Israeli war machine and its rentier economy. Pro- Israeli Jews are disproportionately represented in the financial, political, professional, academic, real estate, insurance and mass media. While Jews are a minority in each and every one of these categories, their disproportionate power and influence stems from the fact that they are organized, active and concentrate on a single issue – U.S. policy in the Middle East, and specifically in securing Washington’s massive, unconditional, and continuing military, political and financial support for Israel. Operating from their strategic positions in the power structure, they are able to influence policy and censor any dissident voices from circulating freely in the communications and political system.
In the political sphere, pro-Israeli politicians and powerful Jewish organizations have joined force with pro-Israel ultra right-wing mass based Christian fundamentalists and powerful political leaders tied to the military – industrial complex like Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney.
Israel’s unconditional support of Washington’s Cold War and subsequent anti-terrorist military offensive has strengthened ideological and military ties between U.S. right-wing political leaders, pro-Israeli politicians and the leaders of the leading Jewish organizations. The politics of Washington’s new imperialism coincides splendidly with the Sharon-Peres conquest and destruction of the Occupied Territories. It is not surprising that four of the leading Pentagon advocates of Washington’s permanent war doctrine and Israeli aggression are Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams and Richard Perle, both staunch supporters of right-wing Jewish-American organizations.
The mass media in the U.S., particularly the «respectable» New York Times has been in the forefront of propagandizing Israeli conquest and destruction as a «defensive», «anti-terrorist war». Not a single voice or editorial in the New York Times has spoken of the mass killing of Palestinians civilians and Israel’s destruction of priceless historical and religious sites that go back over 2000 years (15). While Israel’s war machine destroys ancient monasteries and the heritage of world culture, the pro-Israeli mass media in the U.S. focus their critical lenses on the scandals of the Catholic clergy. The Church’s protests at the Israeli shelling of the Church of the Nativity and the murder of those seeking sanctuary are thus silenced.
Wealthy and organized Jewish organizations, compliant Congressional representatives and right-wing fundamentalist organizations are not the only financial supporters of Israel. U.S. taxpayers have been funding the Israeli war machine with over $3 billion a year of direct assistance for over 35 years (over $100 billion and continuing). Rank and file trade union members might be surprised to learn that their pension funds have been invested in Israel bonds with below normal rates of return and higher risk . Despite the poor investment quality of Israel bonds, some of the U.S. largest trade unions, employee pension funds and major multi- national corporations have collectively loaned billions of dollars to the Israeli regime. In all cases, the decisions to purchase a foreign government’s bonds are made by the trade union bosses and corporate fund managers without consulting the membership or stockholders(16).
Nathan Zirkin, a financial director of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union when asked if his union would continue to purchase Israel bonds despite Israel’s repression and arrest of Palestinian trade unionists and activists, replied «Absolutely. The Palestinians didn’t have a damn thing until Israel came in.(17)» The bonds proceeds are used to fund Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Most of the rest of the bond revenues are transferred to the ordinary budget to be spent on the military and the Israeli intelligence agencies.
Many of the trade unions, which are purchasers of Israeli bonds, are controlled or influenced by the Mafia. The teamsters unions is the biggest purchaser of Israel bonds; it is also the union which has seen more senior officials indicted for Mafia ties, illicit use of union funds and massive robbery of membership pension funds. In this case the trade union Mafioso were buying favorable propaganda from the mass media and support from the «respectable» Jewish organizations via the purchase of Israel bonds.
Union pension funds have also been used by trade union bureaucrats to purchase Israel bonds. The most notorious case is the former International Ladies Garment Workers Unions (ILGWU), now called UNITE, a union whose workers are 95% Black, Hispanic, and Chinese, most earning at below the minimum wage. UNITE’s leadership and staff is overwhelming Jewish and earning between $100,000 to $350,000 a year plus expenses (18). By channeling over $25 million in pension funds to Israel, the U.S. workers are deprived of access to loans for housing, social services, legal defense, etc. Clearly the Jewish trade union bosses have a greater affinity for the state of Israel and its oppression of Palestinian workers, than they has with their own poorly organized workers, employed under some of the worst working conditions in the U.S.
Israeli bond promoters, with support from Mafia -influenced corrupt trade union bosses, have sold hundreds of millions of dollars of Israel bonds to 1500 labor organizations at interest rates below those of other available securities and well below what most investors would expect from loans to an economically troubled foreign government like Israel.
Three factors account for the U.S. trade union bosses channeling their members pension funds and union dues into Israel bonds: political protection and respectability in being associated with Israel and its lobbyists – this is especially important to Mafia-linked and corrupt officials. Ideological and ethnic ties between Jewish trade union leaders and Israel is a second factor. Thirdly, the use of Israel bonds to launder funds obtained illicitly by union bosses. The main organization selling Israel bonds managed to settle money-laundering accusations brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission «out of court.»
Accomplices to Genocide
In April 2002, over 100,000 mostly Jews and Christian fundamentalists marched in support of the Sharon regime in the midst of the siege of Jenin. In Israel two out of three Israelis (65%) polled in late April 2002 supported Sharon and almost 90% believed the regime’s propaganda that the U.N. commission to investigate Israeli devastation of the Occupied Territories «will not be fair to Israel.» The Israeli public, the U.S. trade union bosses, and political and financial elites who finance Sharon are accomplices to the crimes against the Palestinian people. Obviously the shrinking minority of Jews in Israel who oppose the military machine have little or no influence in policy, in the media and in securing overseas financial support.
The wealthy and powerful reactionary overseas Jews gravitate toward Sharon. Seven of the eight billionaire Russian Mafia Oligarchs have donated generously to the Israeli state and are on excellent terms with Sharon and Shimon Peres and have no use for dissident military reservists.
Because of powerful unconditional external financial and military support primarily from influential Jews in the U.S., Christian Fundamentalists, the military industrial complex, the Pentagon extremists, and corrupt U.S. trade unionists, Israel is able to defy world public opinion, slander humanitarian organization and human rights leaders, and brazenly continue its genocidal policies. Israeli leaders know «their people»: they know they have unconditional supporters who have already been tested. They know that their bankers, professionals and fundamentalists will back them up to the last murdered Palestinian: the march of the 100,000 in Washington in the midst of the Jenin massacre proved it. The huge turnout of politicians at the annual AIPAC conference during the massacres in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza strip confirms that they support the butchers of Rafah.
Fabrication of the Iraq War Threat: US Zionists in Action
There is growing debate and criticism in the US Congress and media of the Bush Administration’s fabricated evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Even more serious the investigation and testimony of top US military and civilian officials in the Pentagon and State Department reveal profound differences and divisions between themselves and the «political appointees». The testimony and evidence of the professionals’ revelations are crucial to understanding the structure of real power in the Bush Administration. It is in times of crises and divisions in the governing class that we the public are given insights into who governs for whom. The debate, criticism and division in Washington today is just such an instance.
After years of UN inspections, and almost five months of thousands of searches and interviews by over thousand US military, intelligence and scientific inspectors it has been definitively demonstrated that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction (or even of useful national defense), a point now practically conceded by some members of the Bush Administration. This raised the next key question – Who in the Bush regime provided the fabricated evidence and for what purpose.
The initial response of the Bush apologists was to attribute the fabrications to «bureaucratic errors» and «communication failures» or as Wolfowitz cynically claimed to «secure a consensus for the war policy»(19). CIA Director Tenant became the self-confessed scapegoat for the «mistakes» and eventually had to «resign». As the investigations progressed however, testimony from a multiplicity of high level sources in the Bush regime revealed that there were two channels of policy making and advisers, the formal structure made up of career professional military and civilians in the Pentagon and State Department and a parallel structure made up of political appointees. From all available evidence it was the «unofficial» political advisers organized by Wolfowitz, Feith and Rumsfeld in the Office of Special Planning (OSP) who were the source of the fabricated evidence, which was used to «justify» the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The OSP was headed by Abram Shulsky and included other neo-conservatives, who have virtually no professional knowledge or qualification in intelligence and military affairs. Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense, and Paul Wolfowitz set up the OSP. Shulsky is an avid follower and protégé of Richard Perle, the well-known militarist and long time supporter of military attacks on Arab regimes in the Middle East.
According to the testimony of a Pentagon insider, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski who worked in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Near East and South Asia Division and Special Plans in the Pentagon, the «civil service and active duty military professionals were noticeably uninvolved in key areas» of interest to Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, namely Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowski goes on to specify that «in terms of Israel and Iraq all primary staff work was conducted by political appointees, in the case of Israel a desk officer appointee from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and in the case of Iraq, Abe Shulsky.» Equally important, the ex-Pentagon official describes the existence of «cross-agency cliques». She describes how the members of a variety of neo-conservative and pro-Israel organizations, (Project for a New American Century, the Center for Security Policy and the American Enterprise Institute), who are now in the Bush regime only interact among themselves across the various agencies. She points out that major decisions result from «groupthink» – the uncritical acceptance of prevailing points of view and the uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated views». She was forced to resign by her chief after she told him that «some folks (the cliques and networks) in the Pentagon may be sitting beside Hussein in the war crimes tribunal» for their destructive war and occupation policies (20).
What is very clear is that the OSP and its directors Feith and Wolfowitz were specifically responsible for the fabricated evidence of the «Weapons of Mass Destruction» that justified the war.
The OSP and the other members of the networks that operated throughout key US agencies shared a right-wing pro-militarist ideology and were fanatically pro-Israel. Feith and Perle authored an infamous policy paper in 1996 for Likud Party extremist, Benjamin Netanyahu, entitled «A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm», which called for the destruction of Saddam Hussein and his replacement by a Hashemite monarch. Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran would then have to be overthrown or destabilized for Israel to be secure in a kind of ‘Greater US-Israel Co-Prosperity Sphere.’ The OSP was an arm of the Wolfowitz-Feith policy of furthering the policies of the most extremist groups of the Sharon regime, forging close ties with a parallel ad hoc intelligence operation in the Israeli regime according to a report from the British newspaper, The Guardian (21).
The finger clearly points to Zionist zealots who directed the OSP, like Abram Shulsky and Feith, as the source for the «phony intelligence» which led to the war that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were seeking. The manner in which the Zionist zealots organized and acted – as a clique of arrogant like-minded fanatics hostile to any contrary viewpoints from the professional intelligence, civilian and military officials suggest that their loyalties and links were elsewhere, most evidently with the Sharon regime in Israel.
To understand the central role of the Zionist ideologues in shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East it is important to frame it in the context of US-Israel relations and the powerful influence of the pro-Israel lobby inside of the US. As Patrick Seal describes in the liberal US weekly The Nation , «The Friends of Ariel Sharon (among the Jewish pro-Israel zealots) loath Arabs and Muslims… What they wished for was an improvement in Israel’s military and strategic environment»(22). The US invasion of Iraq and its aggressive military posture toward most Arab regimes in the Middle East has made the names of these Zionist policymakers known to the world. Wolfowitz and Feith are second and third in command of the Pentagon. Their protégés in the OPS include Abram Shusky, Richard Perle of the Defense Policy Board, and Elliot Abrams (a defender of the Guatemalan genocide of the 1980’s) senior director for Middle East affairs for the National Security Council. Washington’s most influential pro-Israel zealots include William Kristol and Robert Kagan of the The National Standard, the Pipes family and a large number of pro-Israel institutes which work closely with and share the outlook of the rightwing Zionists in the Pentagon. The growing consensus among US critics of the Bush Administration is that «9/11 provided the right-wing Zionists zealots with a unique chance to harness US Middle East policy and military power in Israel’s interest and succeeded in getting the United States to apply the doctrine of pre-emptive war to Israel’s enemies» .
Concerned more with Israeli supremacy than US military losses, the zealous Zionists plan new wars – Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz are now targeting Iran, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, raising a whole new series of «intelligence reports» accusing the Arab countries of funding, protecting and promoting terrorism. And the pre-fabricated intelligence flowed from the members in the OPS and their cliques and networks so well described by Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowski.
As US military casualties mount daily in Iraq, with over 10,000 wounded and over 800 deaths by June 2004, as the military costs of the war undermine the US economy, the US public is becoming disenchanted with the Bush Administration. If and when the identity and political loyalties of the architects and propagandists of the US war against Iraq and for Israel’s supremacy are made public, there is likely to be a harsh and righteous backlash by the general public against the neo-conservative Zionist ideologues and their networks in and out of the government. Up to now their role has been the worst kept secret in Washington.
The Zionist Power Configuration in the United States
C. Wright Mills once wrote that he US «power elite» ruled by denying it held power; the Zionist elite follows this formula, but defends it by accusing its adversaries of being «anti-Semites» and pursuing retributive measures that would please former Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Zionist power configuration (ZPC) cannot be understood merely as the «Jewish lobby» or even the AIPAC, as formidable as it is with 150 full-time functionaries. The ZPC can best be understood as a complex network of inter-related formal and informal groupings, operating at the national, regional and local levels and directly and systematically subordinated to the State of Israel, its power holders and key decision makers. Influence is wielded via direct influence by Zionist representatives in the Government (most notably in the Pentagon under Bush) both in the Executive branch, as well as in the Congress; indirectly via its use of campaign funds to influence the selection of candidates within the two major political parties and to defeat critics of Israel and reward elected officials who will toe the Israel line. The parameters of political debate on Israel-related issues – which have broadened over time – are shaped by Zionist and Jewish organizational pervasive influence in the mass media, censoring and virulently attacking critics and pushing pro-Israel «news» and commentaries. The fourth circle of influence is through local and sectoral organizations (professional bodies, trade unions, pension funds etc), both those affiliated with national apparatus and those embedded in local «civil society». This is probable the most serious threat as it inhibits average US citizens from voicing their doubts and criticisms of Israeli policy. All over the US, local editors, critical intellectuals and activists and even doctors have been branded as «neo-Nazis» and have suffered threatening phone calls and visits by local pro-Israel zealots – including ‘respectable’ members of the Jewish community. The consequences usually stop discussion and/or to intimidate local citizens advocating an independent and democratic foreign policy. Zionist power is cumulative as each sector complements the others giving the minority great influence overall.
Moreover the ZPC’s formal and informal structure has a crucial dynamic element to it: Each power center interacts with the rest, creating a constant «movement» and activity, which converges and energizes both leaders and followers. Secondly those non-Jewish or even non-Zionist political, media and civic leaders influenced by the ZPC in turn influence their constituency, multiplying several fold, the initial influence of their «hegemons». The relative absence of an informal, organized and active grass-roots democratic foreign policy movement, particularly in relation to Mid-East policy gives the ZPC a clear field with virtually no competitors. Over time the same pattern of Zionist influence has manifested itself in US executive agencies. The State Department’s «Arabists» are bring replaced by pro-Zionists as is the case with senior civilian militarist in the Pentagon, in the Mid East think tanks and the Council of Foreign Relations, among others. It should be noted that the so-called «single issue» (US-Middle East Policy) focus of the ZPC of the past has been replaced by the new Zionist strategies in the Pentagon and right-wing think tanks who link the expansion of Israeli power beyond Palestine, to US-European relations (especially French bashing), US nuclear policy and US military and energy strategy. This analytical framework is useful in understanding the US-Iraq war, macro-imperial policy as well as micro-colonial practices.
The ZPC in Action: The Iraq War
The major theoretical strategist of US World Empire is Paul Wolfowitz who first presented a detailed outline of action in 1992. The argument for permanent wars, unilateral action and colonial conquest was spelled out for the first Bush Administration, and later supported implicitly during the Clinton Administration’s continued military attacks against Iraq, its unconditional backing of Israel’s war against the Palestinians, the Balkan wars, the de facto takeover of the ex-Communist states of Eastern Europe, the Baltic states and the South-Central Republics of the ex-USSR. The Clinton Administration’s vigorous intervention in favor of Yeltsin’s seizure of power and backing of the Russion Oligarchs played a major role in dismembering and weakening its former adversary to world domination. Clinton’s unconditional support for Israel and more important the formulation of a Mid-East strategy convergent with Israeli foreign policy was tied to three sets of policies: Destroying the military and economic power of one of Israel’s main critics in the Mid East (Iraq) via economic boycotts, arms inspections and unilateral disarmament of Iraq, while Israel stock piled nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction; financing and arming Israeli expansion and colonization of Arab Palestine; maintaining an economic boycott of Libya, Iran (supporters of the Palestinians) while subsidizing Arab client states friendly to Israel (Egypt and Jordan). Direct Zionist influence over US Mid East policy was shaped by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who, while a convert from Catholicism to the more elite Episcopalian Church, had benefited from her newly discovered Jewish ancestry when she justified the US induced deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children during her tenure in office, declaring «It was worth it.» Secretary of Defense Cohen was instrumental in promoting Israeli military dominance in the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke, a closet Zionist was one of the most influential Clinton advisers on the Middle East «peace negotiations». President Clinton and the Democrats laid the basis for the eventual capture of US foreign policy making by the Zionists in the subsequent Bush administration by accepting Zionists in strategic foreign policy positions influencing Mid-East policy and shaping US policy to fit Israeli expansionist aims. To be sure Clinton and his «moderate» Zionists did not threaten Israel’s critics like Saudi Arabia or the rest of the Arab countries with military attacks – as did the Bush regime dominated by the ultra-Zionist militarists. Nor did his regime follow the Israeli line of accusing all of Europe, especially France, of being anti-Semites for criticizing Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. The Clinton regime and its moderate Zionist influentials believed it was possible to establish US dominance by consulting with Europe and conservative Arab regimes and sharing the economic benefits of imperial spoils in the Mid-East while supporting Israeli expansionism.
The Bush regime represented a qualitative advance in Zionist power in US policies, both foreign and domestic. The key economic policy maker was Greenspan, head of the US Central Bank (Federal Reserve Bank), a long time crony of Wall Street financial interests and promoter of the major pro-Israeli investment houses – responsible for the speculative boom and bust economy of the 1990’s. Paul Wolfowitz, Under-Secretary of Defense was the architect of the US war policy for the Middle East. Richard Perle, the vituperative influential civilian militarist whose hatred of Arabs was matched by his blind tirades against the professional military commanders and intelligence agencies who refused to subordinate US military policy to Israel’s regional interests, was head of the Defense Policy Board. Douglas Feith, Assistant Secretary of Defense, a fanatical Zionist and lifetime defender of Israel’s interests, consultant with right-wing Israeli regimes and was the principal planner and successful propagandist for the US attack on Iraq. David Frum, the major policy speech writer for Bush and author of Bush’s infamous «Axis of Evil» speech which made explicit and operational «Bush’s policy» of permanent wars against Arab nations and other critics of Israeli power is a Canadian Zionist. Elliot Abrams, a racist Zionist (he condemns American Jews who marry Gentiles(23)) and a long term proponent of the Israel First doctrine within the Zionist elite was put in charge of Middle East Policy despite being a convicted felon for his role in the Central American Iran-Contra (Drugs for Guns) Scandal, and an intellectual architect of the Guatemalan genocide of 1981-1983. Their influence on US Middle East policy far exceeds their formal positions because they are backed by an array of influential Zionist academic ideologues (Kagan, Cohen, Pipes), political pundits (Kristols, Krauthamer, Peretz etc) and directors of war think-tanks (Pipes, Rubin) who are given constant access to the opinion pages of the major US newspapers, or interviewed as Middle East «experts» on pro-Israeli television and radio shows -advancing their war propaganda designed to promote US defense of Israel’s Middle East agenda. These policy and opinion makers, backed by the mass media have been working in close consultation and in tandem with the major Jewish organizations in the US and in close «consultations» with top officials in the Sharon regime. Mossad agents, Israeli diplomats and key officials in the Sharon regime have free access to the offices of the Zionists officials in Washington and interchange information on how to optimize Israeli interests.
Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, all the Zionists in key policy positions and their counterparts in Congress backed a US war with Iraq; after 9/11, Wolfowitz and Senator Liebermann immediately proposed a war against Iraq – demanding that the Intelligence agencies «find» the connection and accusing the military of being cowards, for not engaging in war to «protect» Israel. Despite Herculean efforts by Feith et al, to twist CIA and MI reports to serve their pro-war Israeli line their bellicose rhetoric lacked substance. They then invented the, now admitted, BIG LIE (by Wolfowitz) of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction threat to US security. To pursue this line the Zionist in the Pentagon by passed the traditional military/intelligence agencies and created their own propaganda – «intelligence» agency or «Office of Special Plans) run by fellow Zionist fanatic Abram Shulsky , under the control of Douglas Feith, which worked closely with Chalabi and the Mossad in «cooking» the data on WMD to fit the plans of their Zionist bosses in the Pentagon. The Mossad was later chastised for «intelligence failures» by the Israeli Knesset after release of the Steinitz Report on March 29, 2004, but their Zionist counterparts in the Pentagon, Shulsky, Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams were never called to account, their collaboration with the Mossad never questioned, nor was an investigation of their pursuit of Israel’s interests ever even raised. Only the Gentiles in the Military and the CIA were questioned. Zionist power manifested itself first in the making of the war and then in imposing impunity on the crimes of the war makers in the government. The Zionists then painted a totally unrealistic and false picture of the war, its consequences and the response of the Iraqi resistance to an Israeli style conquest and colonization. The Zionist were initially able to marginalize the high military officials who questioned the war, like General Anthony Zinni, and who opposed the way the war was launched and the length and breadth of the engagement. The Zionists shut out all debate of who would benefit and who would lose from the war: US soldiers killed, rising oil and energy costs, huge budget deficits, and of course massive loss of life and property among the Iraqis.
Wolfowitz claimed that the invading army would be welcomed as liberators (evoking the liberation of Paris). Perle claimed «the Arabs» would offer little or no resistance (being a «tribal» society). Kagan claimed that «one big bomb» would silence the Arab street and public opinion. Feith and Wolfowitz promoted the massive purge of the entirel Iraqi civil service, professions, universities, schools and hospitals of Baathists: as well as the dismantling and dismissal of 400,000 Iraqi military and police personnel – over the shocked objections of experienced senior US military officers who had expected to work with the surrendered military and administrative structure of Iraq to control the colony. This opened the way for the pillage of Iraq’s complex infrastructure and historic treasures and libraries, as well as the growth of criminal gangs involved in theft, kidnap for ransom, murder and rape – activities virtually unknown under the tight Baathist regime.
Rumsfeld dismissed the massive destruction of Iraqi society as the «messiness of freedom».
Many top US military officials objected, as did the first US pro-consul, former General Jay Garner. But the Zionists in the Pentagon and their partners in crime, Rumsfeld and Cheney, were determined to dismantle the secular Iraqi state. This was the result of a policy to turn Iraq into a desert kingdom – loose collection of at least three «tribal» client mini-states based on ethnicities, religious-tribal loyalties and forever incapable of opposing Israeli expansionism, particularly in Northern Iraq (24). Instead of easy conquest, the ‘Israel First’ Pentagonistas provoked a massive popular opposition, unified the religious and secular groups in opposition to the US occupation, and swelled the ranks of the armed resistance with thousands of discharged armed professionals. In the course of pursuing a policy of strengthening Israel’s regional position, the Zionists weakened the US colonial occupation and medium term plans to convert Iraq into a US oil colony. The result has been thousands of US military and client collaborators dead, maimed and wounded, and a burgeoning worldwide opposition, particularly in the Arab East, and among several hundred million Muslims.
The Israel First Pentagonistas successfully promoted the idea that the Israeli military and intelligence experts had a lot to teach their ignorant American counterparts on «urban warfare» and «information gathering» drawing on Israel’s wealth of experience: Over 50 years, Israel expelled and destroyed Palestinian communities and developed interrogation and torture techniques on Palestinian and Lebanese captives (25). The purpose of the Pentagon Zionists was to deepen the ties with Israel’s security apparatus as part of a middle term goal of making «the cause of Israel as the cause of America» (as prostrate Presidential candidate Kerry has pledged (26)). The long-term goal was to leverage military security and co-manufacture of military weaponry between the US and Israel into the Grand Scheme of a Greater Middle East US-Israel Co-Prosperity Sphere. Imperial Israel would then have access to water, oil, capital and markets, which the heavily subsidized rentier militarist state lacks at the present.
The torture-interrogation techniques taught by the Israeli instructors converged nicely, updated and refined the older CIA torture manuals, more specifically introducing specificities pertaining to torturing Muslims and especially Arabs (27). Once again the Zionist-Israeli priorities undermined US imperialist policies: The photo revelations of US soldiers torturing, raping and humiliating Iraqi prisoners discredited the US occupation worldwide, heightened Arab and Muslim resistance throughout the Middle East and discredited the Bush regime. Congressional hearings and mass media reportages even provoked a burst of public disapproval of the invasion of Iraq and Bush’s handling of the occupation. Throughout the country there were calls, including from members of Congress, for Rumsfeld’s resignation. Curiously enough, there were virtually no calls for the resignation of the Israel First Pentagonistas – who were equally implicated and responsible for the mass torture of Muslim detainees. According to Newsweek, Douglas Feith was in charge of setting policy on Iraqi detainees (28). Even in the face of this horrible crime against humanity, even in the general national outcry to investigate, impeach and hold responsible those involved, the top Zionist co-architects of the war, the responsible heads (number 2 and 3) of Pentagon intelligence in the Iraq war involved in ordering the torture have escaped critical scrutiny, protected as they are up to now by the pro-Israel pundits, political fundraisers, presidential campaign fundraisers and influentials,(see the appendix on the exposé of Seymour Hersh).
Nevertheless, the widespread condemnation of these war crimes, the media exposure of the systematic lies of the Pentagonistas and the fear that the highly influential and visible role of the Israel Firsters has raised alarm bells among some of the most astute Congressional Zionists, fearful of an anti-Israel backlash(29). Senator Frank Lautenberg (Democrat-New Jersey) a committed Zionist called for the «replacement» of Wolfowitz and Feith. «The men in charge have let down the soldiers in uniform. Simply replacing Secretary Rumsfeld will change little at the Pentagon if his discredited team of advisers remains in high-level positions. It is time for us to bring in new civilian leadership at the Defense Department» (Newsday May 13, 2004). Lautenberg makes it abundantly clear that the Pentagon Zionists are central to the whole US war effort, from beating the war drums, to cooking the data, designing the war strategy, to micromanaging the business of interrogation-torture.
Several former top US military professionals objected to the Zionist control over US policy and their close network of collaborators. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski has given us an inside picture of the Feith/Shulsky operation whose links to the Mossad seemed closer than to the US military. The Rumsfeld-Zionist group’s monopolization of military policy, war strategy, military calculations and military promotions all alienated the military high command. Some who clearly foresaw the disastrous consequences of the policies of the Israel First crowd on US global ambitions were silenced and marginalized. It is likely that the torture photos release to the media was deliberately encouraged or promoted by highly placed military officials or former officials as a way of discrediting Rumsfeld and the Pentagon Zionists (30). This move severely undercuts the war effort, which more and more of the military high command sees as destined to fail and are determined not to become the Neo-Cons’ scapegoats. However to gain an «honorable» withdrawal they must know that they have to remove Rumsfeld and his Zionist colleagues, whose criteria for evaluating the war has less to do with the aims of the US military and more to do with Israeli expansionist goals in the Middle East.
While the Pentagon Zionists and the powerful network of pro-Israel Jewish organizations have seen their Iraqi serial war strategy collapse, they have succeeded in securing Presidential economic sanctions against Syria and bind US political support to Sharon’s destruction and annexation of the remnant of Palestine. Moreover the leading Jewish organizations were able to secure a near unanimous vote in Congress (407 to 9) in favor of Bush’s declaration supporting Israel’s «new borders» in Palestine (31). Once again the Zionist lobby has demonstrated its power – even turning Bush and Congress into self-effacing political idiots before Sharon. After Bush put all of his limited credibility in Mid East politics in his «Roadmap» for a Middle East peace accord, Sharon unilaterally declared a policy of «annexation and separation» and told Bush to swallow it. All the major Jewish organizations back Sharon’s plan. Bush submits and endorses this, alienating virtually every European country, all Arab countries and clearly demonstrating the slavish complicity of US policymakers who once again renounce US Middle East imperial interests in order to accommodate Israel’s expansion into the remnants of Palestine. Bush’s policy reversal was backed by the vast majority of Congress who are forever fearful of Zionist-Jewish retaliation for the least deviation from unconditional and total support for Israel.
During the invasion and occupation of Iraq, some Congress members have been critical of the war. Hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated their disapproval. Many Jewish Americans have participated in the protests and in some cases have led the protests. Mass media outlets have on occasions (especially after the torture exposé) publicized adverse news on the war (tortures, civilian victims, wedding parties bombed and homes and orchards bulldozed). While the US pursues the war in Iraq, the Israeli government has been equally brutal: engaging in premeditated assassination of Palestinian leaders, systematically destroying thousands of homes, farms, orchards, stores, schools, mosques and factories, and killing and maiming thousands of Palestinians activists, civilian women and children. They resort to the routine hooding, manacling and torture of detainees. All the major pro-Israel Jewish groups in the US, high and low, have defended all these crimes against humanity, successfully pressured both major parties, the Congress and President to say nothing: no protest, no investigation, no punishment. More perversely in the face of the Israeli mayhem they secure $10 billion dollars more in aid and lucrative joint-venture military contracts (no outcry about Halliburton-type contracting).
The leaders of the peace movement, both Jews and non-Jews reject any effort to include Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine – for fearing of alienating the «public» (read the major Jewish organizations) and the self-styled progressive Jews, who are ever protective of everything Jewish – even war crimes. Worse still, with a few rare exceptions, the «progressive» Jewish critics of the war and Israel are forever and adamantly determined to avoid criticizing the role of powerful Zionist policy makers in the government, their ties to Israel and the powerful support they receive from the major Jewish organizations in all matter which pertains directly or remotely to Israeli interests. With blind simplicity they all see Israel as simply a «tool» of the US for weakening the Arabs in the service of US oil interests. Apparently they have never consulted US petrol CEO’s, advisers or investment brokers, who all agree that US support of Israel is destabilizing the region, threatening oil supplies, boosting prices to US consumers and creating enemies out of Arab client rulers who invest in the US, buy US currency to keep it from collapsing and raise OPEC quotas to help lower US prices. By its blind support for Israeli colonial brutality the US has alienated several hundred million Muslims, millions of Arabs of all faiths, the great majority of Europeans, Africans and Asians, heightening US global isolation. With imperial tools like Israel, who needs to organize an anti-imperial movement: its embedded in the policy. Even the crude virulent anti-European ideology propagated by Israeli ideologues and their transmission belt Jewish organizations in the US and Europe has influenced the US government. At a time when Muslims and Arabs are conquered and persecuted, thousands jailed and many «disappeared» by the US, Israeli and European governments, Secretary of State Powell convenes a meeting in Europe on the rising danger of … «anti-Semitism»!! And the UN, under Kofi Annam, follows suit with its own meeting on ‘anti-Semitism’ during the ongoing devastation in the Rafah refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. The major Jewish organizations repeat the Sharon line «anti-Zionists» are «anti-Semites» – and it becomes established policy in the US and in some countries of Europe… to the point that individuals critical of Zionism are fired, cultural institutions pressured into censoring anti-Zionist events and creating a general culture of fear of offending the hegemonic Jewish organizations. Even Webster’s recent dictionary equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. In the midst of this, the major Jewish organizations in France openly condemn the manufactured hysteria as an Israeli mechanism to encourage the migration of French Jews to Israel (32).
Jews in North America, South America and Europe are disproportionately in the highest paid positions and the most influential ethnic group, with the highest proportion in the exclusive, prestigious private universities, with disproportionate influence in finance and the media, memberships of country clubs and exclusive – it is clear that «anti-Semitism» is a very marginal issue.
The tragic myopia, or perverse refusal of leftist Jews to face up to the prejudicial role of the major Zionist and Jewish groups promoting the Israel First policy and imposing it in the electoral agendas substantially undermines their and our efforts to secure peace and justice in the Middle East and to forge a democratic US foreign policy.
Conclusion
The problems of peace and war, humane treatment of all racial and ethnic groups, of allocating foreign aid to those in the Third World who need it most and not to an aggressive colonial state with the 20th highest per capita income are foremost on our agenda. Confronting Zionists, the colonial state and its overseas loyalists requires us to face up to the inter-related challenges of opposing US military and economic imperialism and its class and ethno-religious backers, regardless of their claims of being a special people with a unique history, cause or claims on humankind. Many profound questions are pending and will be certainly raised after the Iraqi military debacle, which cost so many US lives and bled the budget of so many billions that should have been spent on tens of millions of US citizens and residents without health care and adequate living standards. There will certainly be a call for Congressional investigation to answer questions about «Who lost Iraq?» «Why did the US launch the war?» Why did the US «lose the war?» And above all – «Who was responsible?» There will be one series of questions however which will provoke the most vehement and concerted opposition and that would focus on the role of the Pentagon Zionists, their advisers, collaborators and supporters in and out of the Bush regime.
This line of inquiry will predictable be opposed by the neo-conservatives, liberals and philanthropic Jewish organizations and their non-Jewish allies in and out of the government, including those who did a magnificent job of exposing the non-Zionist militarists in the Bush Administration, but curiously enough forgot to even mention the Zionist cohorts and their ideological and organized backers in «civil society»(33).
The inquiry could serve as an educational experience in informing US citizens on the profoundly undemocratic nature of decision-making in questions of war and peace, the threats that civilian-militarists represent in relation to international law and the rights of national self-determination and the real threat of highly organized internal elites who become transmission belts for colonial mini-states carving out regional empires.
There are two lines of inquiry with regard to the Zionist disastrous influence on US war policy in the Middle East. One line is from the «nationalist» empire builders who see the problem of Zionist power in terms of the negative effect that the war had on US empire building(34). They are likely to testify that the Israel loyalists, isolated the US from its European and conservative allies, by pushing for a unilateral military conquest strategy, instead of engaging in joint diplomatic and economic strategies and pressuring Israel to act like a «normal state», by negotiating a ‘peace for land’ two state solution. These conservative empire builders will seek to publicize the role of the Zionists in the Pentagon and their slavish adherence to Israeli state interests, its devastating effects on US world political, economic position, by focusing on the US’s loss of leverage over Arab and Muslim oil producers, and particularly the mindless threats to Saudi Arabia. In particular the professional military and intelligence officials will seek to demonstrate how the Zionists seized control over decision making, marginalized and manipulated them, ignored internal intelligence reports in favor of «cooked reports» by their specially invented cohort and Israeli intelligence in order to maximize Israeli interests. The professional officials will especially emphasize the deliberate and wanton disregard of internal experts who warned against the war, the futility of looking for weapons of mass destruction, the irrationality of a series of Middle East invasions, and the likelihood of greater resistance during a colonial occupation. The NATO oriented military will point out how the Israeli-oriented policy makers, deliberately provoked needless hostilities to their European allies in empire building, by orchestrating virulent «anti-Semitic» campaigns against France and Belgium because they were critical of Israel’s territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing.
In a word, the conservatives (political, military and intelligence officials) will argue that the Zionists by putting Israel in the center of their policy making undermined US empire building, draining troops, resources, money and public support to support Israel’s quest for regional domination(35).
Another line of inquiry, from the left or progressive side, is likely to address the question of Zionist power over war and peace in the Middle East and elsewhere by focusing on the usurpation of democratic rights of US citizens in the making of foreign policy: the fact that a small elite of several thousand highly organized, affluent and well-funded lobbyists can control the voting behavior of congress members, intimidate or defeat political representatives who criticize Israel’s colonial policies, and who buy, silence and/or intimidate media outlets and public spokespeople who dare to raise questions about Iraqi-Israeli inter-connects. The progressive critique will be directed not only at the role of the Pentagon Zionists in twisting US war policy to favoring Israel but their whole world view drawn on the Israeli view of its relation to the world: A paranoid and self-serving vision of eternal external enemies everywhere and unreliable allies, of perpetual repudiation of international law, covenants and Geneva Accords, of shrill polemics and deep penetration of ostensible allies’ military and intelligence apparatuses. Progressives will attack the Israeli view that labels adversarial states mortal enemies who only understand force and that considers negotiation a cynical device to neutralize critics, to disarm adversaries in order to create new «facts on the ground» through forces and violence. Progressives will have to courageously make the connection between the Pentagon Zionists, their affinity for Israeli ideology and their destruction of diplomacy, international law and co-operation.
The inquiry will have to point out that a great deal is at stake beyond law and peace: That the architects of the Iraqi war planned a series of aggressive wars of conquest based on the principle of domination by violence, torture, collective punishment, total war on civilian populations, their homes, hospitals, cultural heritage, churches and mosques, means of livelihood and educational institutions-these are the highest crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity are inevitable in «total wars» based on ideologies of exclusive ethno-religious loyalties, whether Jewish, Christian, Hindu or Muslim. The worst crimes are committed by those who claim to be a divinely chosen people, a people with «righteous» claims of supreme victimhood. Righteous victimology, linked to ethno-religious loyalties and directed by fanatical civilian militarists with advance weaponry is the greatest threat to world peace and humanity. Progressives must forcefully reject «righteous victimology» by exposing its contemporary imperialist agenda and the fact that many descendants of victims have now become brutal executioners. They must reject «special exemptions» in naming Zionists power brokers and decision makers, especially by their Jewish colleagues on the Left. Selective criticism not only weakens the political substance and credibility of the critique, but is morally reprehensible as it denies an important truth – the politics of the Zionist architects of US imperial policy making. The progressives must reject all imperial politics with or without Israeli design. It must return to republican principles, but in so doing progressives have to point to the incompatibility between a democratic republic and empire building, between narrow, explicit or implicit, ethno-religious loyalties and internationalism, between expansionist capitalism and democratic socialism. In order to pursue the progressive line of inquiry and alternative political perspective we should expect a prolonged, vitriolic and irrational assault.
The first line of ideological attack, particularly by the ZPC’s, will be the «labeling» tactic – hard hitting critical analysis will be labeled «anti-Semitism» to inhibit readers and listeners from discussing the evidence and substance of the issues. The examination of linkages between the Israel-centered Pentagonistas and the Israeli state will be labeled «pages from the ‘Protocols of Zion'» and other such spurious analogies.
The second line of attack will be to conflate Zionist power today with the not too distant past (1940’s-1950’s) when Zionism was only one of several views among US Jewry and when it was less organized and influential in politics, the media and economy. The purpose of this dishonest amalgamation is to polemicize by citing past examples of relative Zionist weakness and to falsely attribute to the critics a worldview of a worldwide, long-term Jewish conspiracy.
The third line of attack and the most morally reprehensible is to conflate the victims of the Holocaust with the state terrorists of the Israeli state and their intellectual apologists and supporters among US Zionists. The use of «blood ties» to make this connection when there is no social-economic-political similarity only reveals the irrational mystical and reactionary nature of the current ideology of the Zionist right. The purpose of course is to secure public acquiescence with Israeli and US Zionist crimes against humanity by presenting their actions in terms of «defensive» or «survival» tactics in the face of another holocaust-in-the-making. No evidence is needed – just breathless, vicious invective about the holocaust-in-the-making deniers. For the Zionist ideologues Israel is presented as the incarnation of universal values of democracy, liberty and justice and those who criticize Israel are then labeled as supporters of «Arab» dictatorships, repression, injustice and terrorism. The stated universal values are worth upholding but abundant evidence exists that they are not practiced in Israel – where Arabs, both Muslim and Christian – are treated as second-class citizens, and death, destruction and ethnic genocide is daily fare for the Palestinians, and Israel’s nuclear arms threaten its Middle East neighbors (35). Finally one will hear from Zionists the «relativist» argument: «Israel’s crimes are no worse than many countries in the world». Except that few countries (except the US) are engaged in colonizing a neighbor, bombing adversaries with impunity (and killing massive number of innocent bystanders), storing nuclear warheads with an offensive doctrine, securing 2/3 of US foreign aid including its most advanced technology, controlling US congressional voting on Mid East issues, shaping the Mid East political agenda for both Presidential candidates, routinely torturing thousands of political prisoners (and sending advisers throughout the world), and practicing the totalitarian law of collective punishment for popular resistance.
There are many and profound reasons to single out Israel for condemnation, because while many countries practice some of the Israeli injustices, Israel and its overseas network in the US contain a whole configuration of power relations which threaten not only the oppressed people of Palestine but the rights of people throughout the world.
Facing this ideological attack will not be easy because media access is totally unequal. The opposition is well organized, strategically located and well financed. But the crimes and failures of policy particularly as the Iraqi debacle deepens and many more Americans are open and increasingly involved in seeking answers, the critics of the Israel-Zionist-Pentagon connection have a grand opportunity to expose and weaken the ties that bind. Moreover outside the US we have mass public opinion in our favor. Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia – the great majority see Israel as a threat not a force for peace. Secular, democratic Jews anywhere else in the world have no problem criticizing US Zionists and their leading policy-makers in the Pentagon. Nowhere except in North America do the Israeli-centered Zionists have such power as they have in the US. Even in Israel there is a minority of Jews who openly despise the Pentagon-Zionists and their proposed serial wars; they especially despise Zionist ideologues like Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, who from afar, are willing to sacrifice the last Jewish soldier for their megalomaniacal idea of «Greater Israel».
In this battle of ideas we have many allies around the world, our ideas and questions are relevant and will resonate in this time of deep anxiety among the American people. Let’s move ahead and de-colonize our country, our minds and politics as a first step in reconstituting a democratic republic, free of entangling colonial and neo-imperial alliances!
Notas
1. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, et al, Institute of Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. 1996
2. US Financial Aid to Israel: Facts, Figures and Impacts, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 2004
3. James Bamford, Body of Secrets:Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (Doubleday, New York ,2001)
4. James Ennes, Assault on the Liberty, (Random House 1980
See also Statements by Ward Boston, Jr., Captain, JAGG USN (Ret), January 9 2004 and Admiral Thomas Moorer, USN (Ret) January 11, 2003.
5. Washington Report on Mid East Affairs, Pro-Israel PAC Contributions to 2002
Congressional Candidates, June 2003.
6. See Carl Cameron Investigates (Parts 1-4) Fox News Network, Dec. 17, 2001.
7. Richard Reid, the ex-con and would-be shoe bomber, convicted for trying to blow up an American Airlines passenger jet over the Atlantic in December 2001, managed to enter Israel on an El Al flight despite his unusual background, BBC News, Dec. 28, 2001.
8. See Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul, (Carol and Graf, New York, 2002) for in depth discussion of the powerful media links with Israel.
9. Frankel, Glenn, Prison Tactics A Longtime Dilemma for Israel, Washington
Post, June 16, 2004; page A01
10. National Public Radio Interview, October 2004
11. NY Times, December 28, 2001, p. 19.
12. CBS News September 20, 2002
13. Gideon Levy, Compensate settlers for what?, Haaretz, June 15, 2004.
14. US Financial Aid to Israel: Facts, Figures and Impact. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
15. William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain, Harper Collins1997. Chapter 5 chronicles the systematic devastation of the ancient Orthodox Christian communities in Israel and the Occupied Territories, including the Armenians.
16. Israel Bonds Raise $130 million from US Labor, Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2001. see also Forward, Feb. 21, 2003 – El Al Moves to Avoid Tiff with Big Labor – Sharon Steps in.
17. Russel Mokkiber, Bonds of Affection, Multinational Monitor 1988 (multinationalmonitor.org.)
18. Rachel Donadio, Talking the Talk at Jewish Labor Diner, Forward, March 22, 2004., see also Robert Fitch, The Question of Corruption, Metro Labor Press Association, October 21, 1999, and Robert Fitch, Testimony, House of Representatives, Hearing on Workplace Competitiveness, March 31, 1998.
19. Paul Wolfowitz in Vanity Fair interview, July 2003, «the issue of weapons of mass destruction» was chosen «for bureaucratic reasons because it was the one reason (for invading Iraq) that every one could agree on.»
20. Jim Lobe, Insider fires a broadside at Rumsfeld’s Office ( Air force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Asia Times, August 7, 2003. Col. Kwiatkowski remarked «I suggested to my boss that if this (evidence for invading Iraq) was as good as it got, some folks on the Pentagon’s E-ring may be sitting beside Hussein in the war crimes tribunal.»
21. Julian Borger, The Spies who Pushed for War, Guardian, UK, July 7, 2003
22. Patrick Seale, A Costly Friendship, The Nation, July 2, 2003
23. Elliot Abrams, Faith or Fear: How Can Jews Survive in Christian America, The Free Press, June 1997.
24. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, et al, Institute of Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. 1996, see also Lelie Gelb, «The Three-State Solution», New York Times, November 25, 2003 and Seymour Hersh, Plan B , New Yorker, June 28, 2004 on Israeli activity in Kurdish Northern Iraq.
25. Glenn Frankel, Prison Tactics A Longtime Dilemma for Israel, Washington Post, June 16, 2004.
26. John Kerry, Perspectives: An Israel Review, Brown University Publication, November 19, 2003.
27. Matthew Clark, Concrete, razor wire, ID cards, Christian Science Monitor, December 8, 2003.
28. Newsweek Magazine, June 7, 2004, page 35
29. see Haaretz, April 24, 2004 where Israeli deputy ambassador to UN, Arye Mekel complained that criticisms «only enhance suspicions … linking us with Iraq where we nave no business.»and Nathan Guttman, Prominent US. Jews and Israel Blamed for Start of Iraq War, Haraatz, May 31, 2004
30. Martin Sieff, Army, CIA want torture truths exposed, United Press International, 5/18/2004
31. Sharon praises U.S. on West Bank Refugees, Haaretz, June 25, 2004
32. Xavier Ternisien, Des responsables communautaires protestant contre un «plan» isralien incitant les juif francais a emigrer, Le Monde, June 17, 2004.
33. In the entire body of exposés by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker during April-June, 2004: the role of the Zionist Pentagonistas is not discussed.
34. On June 16, 2004, 27 retired top diplomats and top military officials released a statement calling for Bush’s electoral defeat and in May 2004 a more specific open letter to President Bush signed by 60 retired diplomats referred to the damage the US-Zionist relationship had done to US prestige and influence in the Muslim world and in Europe.
35. U.S. Senator Ernest Fritz Hollings, Bush’s failed Mideast Policy is creating more terrorism, May 6, 2004 and Why we’re in Iraq, June 23, 2004.
36. Yulie Khromchenco,Poll: 64% of Israeli Jews support encouraging Arabs to leave, Haaretz, June 22, 2004. Citing a survey by the Hiafa University National Security Study Center, a remarkable 25% of Jewish Israeli would support the banned racist Kach Party in an election.
June, 25, 2004