Time to declare our independence from Israel -- before they draw us into full-scale war throughout t

July 7, 2007

Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The

country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973

war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the

Suez and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American

military transport planes came to the rescue. They began landing every

half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of

its heavy armor. By the time the war was over, the United States had

given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid.

The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil

embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was

perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system

the United States has provided to the Jewish state.

Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. recognized the new

state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly

embrace ever since.

Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a

moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and

got Israel's withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956.

During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS

Liberty. The ship, flying the U.S. flag and stationed 15 miles off the

Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications

from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. sailors and

wounded 171. The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington's

enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only

bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-

financed Israel lobby that set out to merge Israeli and American

foreign policy in the Middle East.

Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been

given more than $140 billion in U.S. direct economic and military

assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance

annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. foreign aid budget. Although

most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military

purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to

use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and

profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from

accounting for how it spends the aid money. And funds are routinely

siphoned off to build new Jewish settlements, bolster the Israeli

occupation in the Palestinian territories and construct the security

barrier, which costs an estimated $1 million a mile.

The barrier weaves its way through the West Bank, creating isolated

pockets of impoverished Palestinians in ringed ghettos. By the time

the barrier is finished it will probably in effect seize up to 40

percent of Palestinian land. This is the largest land grab by Israel

since the 1967 war. And although the United States officially opposes

settlement expansion and the barrier, it also funds them.

The U.S. has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons

systems and given Israel access to some of the most sophisticated

items in its own military arsenal, including Blackhawk attack

helicopters and F-16 fighter jets. The United States also gives Israel

access to intelligence it denies to its NATO allies. And when Israel

refused to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the United States

stood by without a word of protest as the Israelis built the region's

first nuclear weapons program.

U.S. foreign policy, especially under the current Bush administration,

has become little more than an extension of Israeli foreign policy.

The United States since 1982 has vetoed 32 Security Council

resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes

cast by all the other Security Council members. It refuses to enforce

the Security Council resolutions it claims to support. These

resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

There is now volcanic anger and revulsion by Arabs at this blatant

favoritism. Few in the Middle East see any distinction between Israeli

and American policies, nor should they. And when the Islamic radicals

speak of U.S. support of Israel as a prime reason for their hatred of

the United States, we should listen. The consequences of this one-

sided relationship are being played out in the disastrous war in Iraq,

growing tension with Iran, and the humanitarian and political crisis

in Gaza. It is being played out in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is gearing

up for another war with Israel, one most Middle East analysts say is

inevitable. The U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is unraveling.

And it is doing so because of this special relationship. The eruption

of a regional conflict would usher in a nightmare of catastrophic

proportions.

There were many in the American foreign policy establishment and State

Department who saw this situation coming. The decision to throw our

lot in with Israel in the Middle East was not initially a popular one

with an array of foreign policy experts, including President Harry

Truman's secretary of state, Gen. George Marshall. They warned there

would be a backlash. They knew the cost the United States would pay in

the oil-rich region for this decision, which they feared would be one

of the greatest strategic blunders of the postwar era. And they were

right. The decision has jeopardized American and Israeli security and

created the kindling for a regional conflagration.

The alliance, which makes no sense in geopolitical terms, does makes

sense when seen through the lens of domestic politics. The Israel

lobby has become a potent force in the American political system. No

major candidate, Democrat or Republican, dares to challenge it. The

lobby successfully purged the State Department of Arab experts who

challenged the notion that Israeli and American interests were

identical. Backers of Israel have doled out hundreds of millions of

dollars to support U.S. political candidates deemed favorable to

Israel. They have brutally punished those who strayed, including the

first President Bush, who they said was not vigorous enough in his

defense of Israeli interests. This was a lesson the next Bush White

House did not forget. George W. Bush did not want to be a one-term

president like his father.

Israel advocated removing Saddam Hussein from power and currently

advocates striking Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Direct Israeli involvement in American military operations in the

Middle East is impossible. It would reignite a war between Arab states

and Israel. The United States, which during the Cold War avoided

direct military involvement in the region, now does the direct bidding

of Israel while Israel watches from the sidelines. During the 1991

Gulf War, Israel was a spectator, just as it is in the war with Iraq.

President Bush, facing dwindling support for the war in Iraq, publicly

holds Israel up as a model for what he would like Iraq to become.

Imagine how this idea plays out on the Arab street, which views Israel

as the Algerians viewed the French colonizers during the war of

liberation.

"In Israel," Bush said recently, "terrorists have taken innocent human

life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a

functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its

responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're

looking for in Iraq."

Americans are increasingly isolated and reviled in the world. They

remain blissfully ignorant of their own culpability for this

isolation. U.S. "spin" paints the rest of the world as unreasonable,

but Israel, Americans are assured, will always be on our side.

Israel is reaping economic as well as political rewards from its lock-

down apartheid state. In the "gated community" market it has begun to

sell systems and techniques that allow the nation to cope with

terrorism. Israel, in 2006, exported $3.4 billion in defense products

-- well over a billion dollars more than it received in American

military aid. Israel has grown into the fourth largest arms dealer in

the world. Most of this growth has come in the so-called homeland

security sector.

"The key products and services," as Naomi Klein wrote in The Nation,

"are hi-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio

surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation

systems -- precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to

lock in the occupied territories. And that is why the chaos in Gaza

and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel

Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless

war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and

containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in

the 'global war on terror.' "

The United States, at least officially, does not support the

occupation and calls for a viable Palestinian state. It is a global

player, with interests that stretch well beyond the boundaries of the

Middle East, and the equation that Israel's enemies are our enemies is

not that simple.

"Terrorism is not a single adversary," John Mearsheimer and Stephen

Walt wrote in The London Review of Books, "but a tactic employed by a

wide array of political groups. The terrorist organizations that

threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it

intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian

terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or 'the

West'; it is largely a response to Israel's prolonged campaign to

colonize the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More important, saying that

Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the

causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good

part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way

around."

Middle Eastern policy is shaped in the United States by those with

very close ties to the Israel lobby. Those who attempt to counter the

virulent Israeli position, such as former Secretary of State Colin

Powell, are ruthlessly slapped down. This alliance was true also

during the Clinton administration, with its array of Israel-first

Middle East experts, including special Middle East coordinator Dennis

Ross and Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of the American

Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, one of the most powerful

Israel lobbying groups in Washington. But at least people like Indyk

and Ross are sane, willing to consider a Palestinian state, however

unviable, as long as it is palatable to Israel. The Bush

administration turned to the far-right wing of the Israel lobby, those

who have not a shred of compassion for the Palestinians or a word of

criticism for Israel. These new Middle East experts include Elliott

Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, the disgraced I. Lewis "Scooter"

Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser.

Washington was once willing to stay Israel's hand. It intervened to

thwart some of its most extreme violations of human rights. This

administration, however, has signed on for every disastrous Israeli

blunder, from building the security barrier in the West Bank, to

sealing off Gaza and triggering a humanitarian crisis, to the ruinous

invasion and saturation bombing of Lebanon.

The few tepid attempts by the Bush White House to criticize Israeli

actions have all ended in hasty and humiliating retreats in the face

of Israeli pressure. When the Israel Defense Forces in April 2002

reoccupied the West Bank, President Bush called on then-Prime Minister

Ariel Sharon to "halt the incursions and begin withdrawal." It never

happened. After a week of heavy pressure from the Israel lobby and

Israel's allies in Congress, meaning just about everyone in Congress,

the president gave up, calling Sharon "a man of peace." It was a

humiliating moment for the United States, a clear sign of who pulled

the strings.

There were several reasons for the war in Iraq. The desire for

American control of oil, the belief that Washington could build puppet

states in the region, and a real, if misplaced, fear of Saddam Hussein

played a part in the current disaster. But it was also strongly shaped

by the notion that what is good for Israel is good for the United

States. Israel wanted Iraq neutralized. Israeli intelligence, in the

lead-up to the war, gave faulty information to the U.S. about Iraq's

alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And when Baghdad was

taken in April 2003, the Israeli government immediately began to push

for an attack on Syria. The lust for this attack has waned, in no

small part because the Americans don't have enough troops to hang on

in Iraq, much less launch a new occupation.

Israel is currently lobbying the United States to launch aerial

strikes on Iran, despite the debacle in Lebanon. Israel's iron

determination to forcibly prevent a nuclear Iran makes it probable

that before the end of the Bush administration an attack on Iran will

take place. The efforts to halt nuclear development through diplomatic

means have failed. It does not matter that Iran poses no threat to the

United States. It does not matter that it does not even pose a threat

to Israel, which has several hundred nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

It matters only that Israel demands total military domination of the

Middle East.

The alliance between Israel and the United States has culminated after

50 years in direct U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. This

involvement, which is not furthering American interests, is unleashing

a geopolitical nightmare. American soldiers and Marines are dying in

droves in a useless war. The impotence of the United States in the

face of Israeli pressure is complete. The White House and the Congress

have become, for perhaps the first time, a direct extension of Israeli

interests. There is no longer any debate within the United States.

This is evidenced by the obsequious nods to Israel by all the current

presidential candidates with the exception of Dennis Kucinich. The

political cost for those who challenge Israel is too high.

This means there will be no peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-

Israeli conflict. It means the incidents of Islamic terrorism against

the U.S. and Israel will grow. It means that American power and

prestige are on a steep, irreversible decline. And I fear it also

means the ultimate end of the Jewish experiment in the Middle East.

The weakening of the United States, economically and militarily, is

giving rise to new centers of power. The U.S. economy, mismanaged and

drained by the Iraq war, is increasingly dependent on Chinese trade

imports and on Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. China

holds dollar reserves worth $825 billion. If Beijing decides to

abandon the U.S. bond market, even in part, it would cause a free fall

by the dollar. It would lead to the collapse of the $7-trillion U.S.

real estate market. There would be a wave of U.S. bank failures and

huge unemployment. The growing dependence on China has been

accompanied by aggressive work by the Chinese to build alliances with

many of the world's major exporters of oil, such as Iran, Nigeria,

Sudan and Venezuela. The Chinese are preparing for the looming

worldwide clash over dwindling resources.

The future is ominous. Not only do Israel's foreign policy objectives

not coincide with American interests, they actively hurt them. The

growing belligerence in the Middle East, the calls for an attack

against Iran, the collapse of the imperial project in Iraq have all

given an opening, where there was none before, to America's rivals. It

is not in Israel's interests to ignite a regional conflict. It is not

in ours. But those who have their hands on the wheel seem determined,

in the name of freedom and democracy, to keep the American ship of

state headed at breakneck speed into the cliffs before us.

http://www.alternet.org/story/55827/

September 4, 2007

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 18:50:17 -0700, Grim Reaper

<pilgriminabarrenland@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist.

Note: My replies to the drivel below, which was apparently

taken from "alternet" will be preceded and followed by " " so as

to be made more readable. Since the poster (actually another one of

"Joe S."s' identities) didn't mention this at the beginning, I assumed

this had all been written by him and replied as though I was replying

to him. Usually he makes a note of where anything quoted is from at

the beginning of his diatribes, but this time he only did so at the

end. I'm not going to go over everything I've already typed out now

just to address this, so I'll just post it as it is.

Israel didn't need any help to begin to exist, so why not? By

the way, if you want to post this crap, why don't you just post under

your usual name of "Joe S."?

>The

>country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973

>war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the

>Suez and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American

>military transport planes came to the rescue. They began landing every

>half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of

>its heavy armor. By the time the war was over, the United States had

>given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid.

...and if the Egyptians and Syrians hadn't gotten aid from the

Soviet Union, they wouldn't have been able to attack in the first

place. "Everybody has his own gringo...".

>

>The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil

>embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies.

"Wreaked havoc"? OPEC is a creation of American and British

oil interests, not of the Arabs who own the oil themselves. US oil

reserves under the control of US oil companies went up 400% in value

during that crisis. You might have had some down days going and

waiting in line at the pumps, but the oil executives were happy as

pigs in s t.

>This was

>perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system

>the United States has provided to the Jewish state.

Israel was already the 4th largest exporter of fruit in the

World in 1992. What makes you think they "need" charity?

>

>Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. recognized the new

>state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly

>embrace ever since.

That's a bit melodramatic...

>

>Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a

>moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and

>got Israel's withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956.

>During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS

>Liberty.

...which was a SPY ship. "ELINT" (Electronic INTelligence)

ships are equipped to eavesdrop on electronic communications. That's

what the Liberty was doing there. Sometimes allies spy on allies, and

sometimes it's not appreciated (Google "Jonathan Pollard").

>The ship, flying the U.S. flag and stationed 15 miles off the

>Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications

>from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. sailors and

>wounded 171. The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington's

>enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only

>bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-

>financed Israel lobby

I think you mean "...smoothed out by an administration that

would have been hard pressed to explain why it felt the need to spy on

an ally nation", and THAT is why it was only a bump. Johnson didn't

want to have to explain why the Navy had a spy ship in Israeli waters.

>that set out to merge Israeli and American

>foreign policy in the Middle East.

>

>Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been

>given more than $140 billion in U.S. direct economic and military

>assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance

>annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. foreign aid budget. Although

>most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military

>purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to

>use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and

>profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from

>accounting for how it spends the aid money. And funds are routinely

>siphoned off to build new Jewish settlements, bolster the Israeli

>occupation in the Palestinian territories and construct the security

>barrier, which costs an estimated $1 million a mile.

So Israel is getting a fraction of the money that Halliburton

gets for work it isn't doing? That's not so bad. Say, Mr. "I was in

military intelligence" Joe S., what do you suppose the MiGs that the

Israelis provided to the CIA and other entities, and the air to air

and surface to air missiles they provided were worth to the US? Ben

Rich (manager of Lockheeds' Advanced Projects Division, aka "Skunk

Works") said that because of many of the items that Israel captured,

the US was much better prepared to know how it's forces would fare

against certain types of Soviet equipment.

>

>The barrier weaves its way through the West Bank, creating isolated

>pockets of impoverished Palestinians in ringed ghettos. By the time

>the barrier is finished it will probably in effect seize up to 40

>percent of Palestinian land. This is the largest land grab by Israel

>since the 1967 war. And although the United States officially opposes

>settlement expansion and the barrier, it also funds them.

If the Palestinians hadn't made careers out of bombing Israeli

civilians, the barrier would never have been proposed.

>

>The U.S. has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons

>systems and given Israel access to some of the most sophisticated

>items in its own military arsenal, including Blackhawk attack

>helicopters

Blackhawks are troop carrying helicopters. I'm finding it hard

to believe that you were ever in military intelligence, Mr. "Lots of

friends in the CIA" Joe S. Anyway, whether or not you were, Blackhawks

are troop carriers. Apaches are the gunships, and if I'm not mistaken

Israel has probably been sold some, although they're certainly not as

high-tech as you seem to think. The RAH-66 Comanche might be

considered a somewhat advanced helicopter, since it's "stealthy", but

it's about the only one aside from the PAVE Hawks and PAVE LOWs of the

Special Operations air wing.

>and F-16 fighter jets. The United States also gives Israel

>access to intelligence it denies to its NATO allies.

"...it's NATO allies"? Like Germany, which sells hi-tech

weapons to almost every enemy the US has, including North Korea?

>And when Israel

>refused to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the United States

>stood by without a word of protest as the Israelis built the region's

>first nuclear weapons program.

...and chances are if you were the leader of a country whose

enemies outnumbered it vastly, you would have done the same. The

Israelis also said they would not be the first to use WMDs in a Middle

East war.

>

>U.S. foreign policy, especially under the current Bush administration,

>has become little more than an extension of Israeli foreign policy.

>The United States since 1982 has vetoed 32 Security Council

>resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes

>cast by all the other Security Council members. It refuses to enforce

>the Security Council resolutions it claims to support. These

>resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

Those "occupied territories" are the areas through which

Israel's enemies (under the leadership mostly of Nasser of Egypt,

although Jordan was also a belligerent in that war) were planning to

invade Israel in 1967, in their attempt to "...drive the Jews into the

sea", as Nasser said. The Israelis decided that they didn't want to

leave the best possible invasion routes into Israel (the West Bank and

Gaza Strip) completely to their enemies, and occupied them. When you

misuse it, you lose it sometimes, and all the UN resolutions that the

idiots who sit and vote there can pass won't change that.

>

>There is now volcanic anger and revulsion by Arabs at this blatant

>favoritism. Few in the Middle East see any distinction between Israeli

>and American policies, nor should they. And when the Islamic radicals

>speak of U.S. support of Israel as a prime reason for their hatred of

>the United States, we should listen.

Well, if it's all about fairness, then they're going to have

to curtail their weapons buying from Russia, China, Germany, and

France if they want to look credible, right?

>The consequences of this one-

>sided relationship are being played out in the disastrous war in Iraq,

>growing tension with Iran, and the humanitarian and political crisis

>in Gaza. It is being played out in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is gearing

>up for another war with Israel, one most Middle East analysts say is

>inevitable. The U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is unraveling.

>And it is doing so because of this special relationship. The eruption

>of a regional conflict would usher in a nightmare of catastrophic

>proportions.

Unfortunately, the Lebanese people paid the price for their

government letting Hezbollah take effective control of the country.

>

>There were many in the American foreign policy establishment and State

>Department who saw this situation coming. The decision to throw our

>lot in with Israel in the Middle East was not initially a popular one

>with an array of foreign policy experts, including President Harry

>Truman's secretary of state, Gen. George Marshall. They warned there

>would be a backlash. They knew the cost the United States would pay in

>the oil-rich region for this decision, which they feared would be one

>of the greatest strategic blunders of the postwar era. And they were

>right. The decision has jeopardized American and Israeli security and

>created the kindling for a regional conflagration.

"...jeopardized American and Israeli security"? You idiot!

What you're saying in effect is that you think the US should have cast

it's lot with Israel's enemies, and then pretending to be concerned

about "Israeli security". IDIOT!

>

>The alliance, which makes no sense in geopolitical terms, does makes

>sense when seen through the lens of domestic politics. The Israel

>lobby has become a potent force in the American political system. No

>major candidate, Democrat or Republican, dares to challenge it.

You couldn't give details of one of Lockheed's ripoffs of the

US government (taxpayers) without your posts being taken off, but your

anti-Israel BS will stay on Google with a 20,000 year half-life, and

you are now subscribing to the theory that you can't challenge the

"Israeli lobby"? A middle manager at Halliburton has more influence

with the US government than the whole Israeli lobby you imbecile.

>The

>lobby successfully purged the State Department of Arab experts who

>challenged the notion that Israeli and American interests were

>identical. Backers of Israel have doled out hundreds of millions of

>dollars to support U.S. political candidates deemed favorable to

>Israel. They have brutally punished those who strayed, including the

>first President Bush, who they said was not vigorous enough in his

>defense of Israeli interests. This was a lesson the next Bush White

>House did not forget. George W. Bush did not want to be a one-term

>president like his father.

George Herbert Walker Bush, aka "the capo de capo tuy tutti"

did not fail to be reelected because of the Israeli lobby. He raised

taxes when he said he wouldn't, and called his opponent a "bozo" while

campaigning, which his opponent was, but which many people thought

distasteful.

>

>Israel advocated removing Saddam Hussein from power and currently

>advocates striking Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

>Direct Israeli involvement in American military operations in the

>Middle East is impossible. It would reignite a war between Arab states

>and Israel. The United States, which during the Cold War avoided

>direct military involvement in the region, now does the direct bidding

>of Israel while Israel watches from the sidelines. During the 1991

>Gulf War, Israel was a spectator, just as it is in the war with Iraq.

A British-Kuwaiti oil company did in fact drill into an Iraqi

oil field; that much of what Hussein said is true, and that is part

of what sparked the war, or at least provided the excuse. My theory

was that Hussein wanted to get control of the oil that Japan and some

European countries depended on (Kuwait's) in order to "force" them to

support his Middle East policies.

Obviously, the reasons why wars start are not necessarily

"simple", and may often not be known, but suppose I was right about

the reason. What does that mean? That means that Hussein (who wanted

Iraq to be the "capital" of the Arab world, with him as it's "maximum

leader") was a dangerous man in terms of what could be expected in the

region, since he had MANY ambitions for it. Now you subscribe to the

leftist mythology that everything that happens there is Israel's

fault, and Gulf War I had more to do with Israel than with British and

US oil interests? Jackass. JACKASS!

You yourself have pointed out that Iraq is the last great

supply of near-the-surface crude oil, which is the most profitable. It

was a BRITISH company that gave Hussein the excuse to attack Kuwait.

It was a US ambassador that TOLD HUSSEIN THAT THE US HAD "NO OPINION"

about Arab vs. Arab conflicts in the region. It was Bush Sr. who took

the opportunity to seize upon the seizing of Kuwait as an EXCUSE to

invade Iraq after his appointed diplomat had helped get the whole

thing started, and here you are to tell us that it's all because of

Israel? You IMBECILE.

>

>President Bush, facing dwindling support for the war in Iraq, publicly

>holds Israel up as a model for what he would like Iraq to become.

>Imagine how this idea plays out on the Arab street, which views Israel

>as the Algerians viewed the French colonizers during the war of

>liberation.

The Arabs got into that area in about the 600s AD. What makes

you think the Israelis of the time didn't see them as "colonizers"?

>

>"In Israel," Bush said recently, "terrorists have taken innocent human

>life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a

>functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its

>responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're

>looking for in Iraq."

Bush cares about American business interests, not Israel. He

has often cited Israeli security as part of the reasoning for

occupying Iraq, etc. It's total baloney, and he knows it. Shrewd

politicians don't state their real reasons. In his mind, it's "Why not

let Israel take the heat, and myself, Dick, Halliburton, Bechtel, and

the boys will take the profits". Do you believe that the war in Iraq

wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for the Israel lobby Joe? If so,

I'm glad you're no longer in "military intelligence"; let's just say I

don't have faith that you'd have had much to contribute.

>

>Americans are increasingly isolated and reviled in the world. They

>remain blissfully ignorant of their own culpability for this

>isolation. U.S. "spin" paints the rest of the world as unreasonable,

>but Israel, Americans are assured, will always be on our side.

>

>Israel is reaping economic as well as political rewards from its lock-

>down apartheid state.

Better apart then bombed daily.

>In the "gated community" market it has begun to

>sell systems and techniques that allow the nation to cope with

>terrorism. Israel, in 2006, exported $3.4 billion in defense products

>-- well over a billion dollars more than it received in American

>military aid. Israel has grown into the fourth largest arms dealer in

>the world. Most of this growth has come in the so-called homeland

>security sector.

>

>"The key products and services," as Naomi Klein wrote in The Nation,

>"are hi-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio

>surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation

>systems -- precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to

>lock in the occupied territories. And that is why the chaos in Gaza

>and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel

>Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless

>war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and

>containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in

>the 'global war on terror.' "

The West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians would not have been

uprooted in the first place if no armies had surrounded Israel in 1967

and tried to invade through those areas. Further, if Klein is so

offended that Israel may be profiting somewhat from decades of PLO

stupidity, why doesn't she encourage them to stop providing rationale?

>

>The United States, at least officially, does not support the

>occupation and calls for a viable Palestinian state.

A huge mistake, and one that I was disappointed to see the

people appointed by Bush I make. Saddam did at least get that out of

the US administration of the time, and it's too bad he did, although

it appeared to me that Gorby appointees had more to do with convincing

US leaders to go along with that. It should be noted that Bush I was

reported to have been "furious" with James Baker III for promising to

cooperate with the then Soviet Union on the Israeli-Palestinian issue,

and in fact had no business whatsoever making such a promise; he was

an appointee who was supposed to be taking policy directives from his

commander in chief, not making them up as he went along.

>It is a global

>player, with interests that stretch well beyond the boundaries of the

>Middle East, and the equation that Israel's enemies are our enemies is

>not that simple.

>

>"Terrorism is not a single adversary," John Mearsheimer and Stephen

>Walt wrote in The London Review of Books, "but a tactic employed by a

>wide array of political groups. The terrorist organizations that

>threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it

>intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian

>terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or 'the

>West'; it is largely a response to Israel's prolonged campaign to

>colonize the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Which wouldn't have happened if Israel hadn't been surrounded

by Arab armies in 1967, whose leaders hoped to invade through the West

Bank and Gaza Strip. That's THE fundamental issue here, and like a

politician, you have avoided it entirely Mr. "military intelligence".

>More important, saying that

>Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the

>causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good

>part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way

>around."

You've got this ass-backwards, as you have a lot of issues. If

the Arabian peoples knew how much they were and are getting screwed by

US and European oil interests, they'd be far more furious about that

than the fact that Israel chooses not to be invaded more easily than

it otherwise might be.

The leaders of the oil rich countries however, don't want

their citizens to know about that. They don't mind at all that they

get preoccupied with Israel however, or that the mullahs teach that

Israel and the US are the source of all the problems there.

>

>Middle Eastern policy is shaped in the United States by those with

>very close ties to the Israel lobby. Those who attempt to counter the

>virulent Israeli position, such as former Secretary of State Colin

>Powell, are ruthlessly slapped down. This alliance was true also

>during the Clinton administration, with its array of Israel-first

>Middle East experts, including special Middle East coordinator Dennis

>Ross and Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of the American

>Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, one of the most powerful

>Israel lobbying groups in Washington. But at least people like Indyk

>and Ross are sane, willing to consider a Palestinian state, however

>unviable, as long as it is palatable to Israel. The Bush

>administration turned to the far-right wing of the Israel lobby, those

>who have not a shred of compassion for the Palestinians or a word of

>criticism for Israel.

Would you like to explain to the readers of this newsgroup how

it is that they ought to have more "compassion" for "Palestinians"?

The "Palestinians" of the West Bank are JORDANIANS, and the

"Palestinians" of the Gaza Strip are EGYPTIANS, as are the people of

the city of Gaza, which is not far away and which is a part of Egypt.

Every map of the World of 1967 showed the West Bank and Gaza

Strip as exactly what they were - parts of Jordan and Egypt,

respectively.

The mythology now is that the "Palestinians" had a "country of

their own" before the Israeli occupation. Actually, they had two;

Jordan and Egypt, because they were and are Jordanians and Egyptians.

Egypt and Jordan, you may remember, were two of the prominent

belligerents in the Six Day War of 1967.

Are you, perchance, beginning to understand some of this now?

>These new Middle East experts include Elliott

>Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, the disgraced I. Lewis "Scooter"

>Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser.

>

>Washington was once willing to stay Israel's hand. It intervened to

>thwart some of its most extreme violations of human rights.

Like pushing people into the sea?

>This

>administration, however, has signed on for every disastrous Israeli

>blunder, from building the security barrier in the West Bank, to

>sealing off Gaza and triggering a humanitarian crisis, to the ruinous

>invasion and saturation bombing of Lebanon.

Check this group for quotes from an interview with a former

citizen of the Gaza Strip who noted that relations with Israel were

very good in the '70s... until Yasser Arafat and the PLO ruined them.

As for the bombing of Lebanon, let's take a look at something

that people with an agenda but no reasoning on this issue don't like

to look at; it's called "the sequence of events".

1) Hezbollah infiltrated in Lebanon.

2) Hezbollah personnel kidnapped a few Israeli soldiers.

3) Israel sent a small expeditionary force to try to get the

soldiers back.

4) Hezbollah used this as an excuse to fire HUNDREDS of

rockets at Israeli civilian areas.

5) Israel struck Lebanon to bomb Hezbollah out of it's

hidey-holes.

6) Hezbollah spokespeople said "Look what the Israelis are

doing to us!"

7) The government of Lebanon, instead of trying to get

Hezbollah out, caved in and blamed Israel.

8) The media mythology has now become all about how "Israel

bombed Lebanon", as if there was no reason for them to do so.

9) Plenty of Lebanese are angry that Hezbollah set up in a

country not their own and used it as a base to get a war started with

Israel. Seek, and ye shall find, if you're interested in knowing what

many Lebanese think of what Hezbollah did.

>

>The few tepid attempts by the Bush White House to criticize Israeli

>actions have all ended in hasty and humiliating retreats in the face

>of Israeli pressure. When the Israel Defense Forces in April 2002

>reoccupied the West Bank, President Bush called on then-Prime Minister

>Ariel Sharon to "halt the incursions and begin withdrawal." It never

>happened. After a week of heavy pressure from the Israel lobby and

>Israel's allies in Congress, meaning just about everyone in Congress,

>the president gave up, calling Sharon "a man of peace." It was a

>humiliating moment for the United States, a clear sign of who pulled

>the strings.

>

Sharon was probably as much of a pig as many people said he

was. I liked Netanyahu, personally. Nevertheless, he was clearly not

wrong to reoccupy the West Bank.

>There were several reasons for the war in Iraq. The desire for

>American control of oil, the belief that Washington could build puppet

>states in the region, and a real, if misplaced, fear of Saddam Hussein

>played a part in the current disaster. But it was also strongly shaped

>by the notion that what is good for Israel is good for the United

>States. Israel wanted Iraq neutralized. Israeli intelligence, in the

>lead-up to the war, gave faulty information to the U.S. about Iraq's

>alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

I doubt that it was very faulty. Hussein had a hard-on for war

with the United States for some time, and there is a reason why he had

agents in the US buying the graphics processing chips from Sony

Playstation game consoles; it's because they are powerful enough to

guide cruise missiles over desert terrain, provided there are smart

people to write the computer programs to allow them to do so, which

Iraq certainly had.

These reports were no figments of a politicians imagination,

by the way; they were real. I don't think Hussein was going to be as

much of a danger to anyone as he was hyped to be, certainly, and I

don't support the Iraq war either, but Israeli intelligence didn't

"fool" the US into attacking Iraq. That's neo nazi mythology of the

type that comes from groups like Kevin Alfred Strom's "National

Alliance", etc. The Bush family was involved in the first scam to get

into Iraq in 1990/1991, and still is.

>And when Baghdad was

>taken in April 2003, the Israeli government immediately began to push

>for an attack on Syria. The lust for this attack has waned, in no

>small part because the Americans don't have enough troops to hang on

>in Iraq, much less launch a new occupation.

>

>Israel is currently lobbying the United States to launch aerial

>strikes on Iran, despite the debacle in Lebanon. Israel's iron

>determination to forcibly prevent a nuclear Iran makes it probable

>that before the end of the Bush administration an attack on Iran will

>take place. The efforts to halt nuclear development through diplomatic

>means have failed. It does not matter that Iran poses no threat to the

>United States. It does not matter that it does not even pose a threat

>to Israel, which has several hundred nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

>It matters only that Israel demands total military domination of the

>Middle East.

Ahmedinejad is a nutcase, pure and simple. I don't think it

would be a good idea to attack Iran (although I do believe that was

thought of way back), but resistance groups who would be willing to

try to take Ahmedinejad out should be supported. Hashemi Rafsanjani

was an infinitely more sane leader than anyone could hope for

Ahmedinejad to ever be. He's a lunatic, pure and simple. Rafsanjani

has even been caught saying some nice things about the United States

on occassion, but apparently the mad mullahs that run Iran couldn't

stand that.

By the way, since you mentioned geopolitics, but don't seem to

know what the term means, I'd like to ask you if you've ever taken a

look at a map of Iran in the larger context of the region of which

it's a part; have you?

I thought that having been in military intelligence, this was

something you might have thought to do. If you did, did you notice how

Iran is kind of nestled between Iraq and Afghanistan to a great

degree? How it's semi-surrounded by those two countries?

>

>The alliance between Israel and the United States has culminated after

>50 years in direct U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. This

>involvement, which is not furthering American interests, is unleashing

>a geopolitical nightmare.

It's clear to me that your understanding of the "big issues"

is very limited. You're like the students at Berkeley to take whatever

they can from the PLO, and have their good leftist English majors

dress them up like Walt and Mearsheimer did; with "professional"

sounding language, etc. You don't know about how oil has been called

the "engine of freedom of the Western World", and even if you had ever

heard that said, you don't know WHY it was called that. You don't know

who puts that idea forth, or the business interests that support that

idea, or what it really means to your country.

The people who put forth that idea for the interest of their

continued profits are your problem; not Israel, and it isn't Israel's

fault that you don't know it.

What it means is that you will be free in the way you are

accustomed to being free only as long as the oil barons are allowed to

make unGodly profits to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars

per year. That's what it means to you.

The Bush administration has proven this. What Bush is doing

for big business in the US is being done in case the foreign ventures

don't work out. What Bechtel did in Columbia it is now trying to do in

the US, following Halliburton's lead, and Halliburton started off as

an oil services company.

Your freedom should not be dependant upon the wealthiest 1%

getting what they want. If you want to criticize someone, learn a bit

about who those people are and how they do what they do, who they use

to enable it, etc.

>American soldiers and Marines are dying in

>droves in a useless war. The impotence of the United States in the

>face of Israeli pressure is complete. The White House and the Congress

>have become, for perhaps the first time, a direct extension of Israeli

>interests. There is no longer any debate within the United States.

>This is evidenced by the obsequious nods to Israel by all the current

>presidential candidates with the exception of Dennis Kucinich. The

>political cost for those who challenge Israel is too high.

If you challenge Israel, AIPAC may lobby against you. If you

talk about t he oil barons or try to do anything about them, you'll be

assassinated if you can't be pushed out any other way, and the Iraq

war, as it was in 1990/1991 is their creation, and is being fought

first for THEIR interests, not Israel's. You don't know enough to

speak on this issue Joe.

>

>This means there will be no peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-

>Israeli conflict. It means the incidents of Islamic terrorism against

>the U.S. and Israel will grow. It means that American power and

>prestige are on a steep, irreversible decline. And I fear it also

>means the ultimate end of the Jewish experiment in the Middle East.

If that's what you're afraid of, quit griping about the

occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are how Israel

maintains it's security.

>

>The weakening of the United States, economically and militarily, is

>giving rise to new centers of power. The U.S. economy, mismanaged and

>drained by the Iraq war, is increasingly dependent on Chinese trade

>imports and on Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. China

>holds dollar reserves worth $825 billion. If Beijing decides to

>abandon the U.S. bond market, even in part, it would cause a free fall

>by the dollar. It would lead to the collapse of the $7-trillion U.S.

>real estate market. There would be a wave of U.S. bank failures and

>huge unemployment. The growing dependence on China has been

>accompanied by aggressive work by the Chinese to build alliances with

>many of the world's major exporters of oil, such as Iran, Nigeria,

>Sudan and Venezuela. The Chinese are preparing for the looming

>worldwide clash over dwindling resources.

The US has enough oil in the shale mountains to last at

current consumption rates for 3,000 years, and it isn't even necessary

to dip into that at all, since the US could be producing synthetic oil

from it's coal already and do so cheaper than it can buy oil from the

oil companies.

Did you notice I said "buy oil from the oil companies", and

not "buy oil from the Saudis"? I said that because the money consumers

are paying at gas stations above what they used to pay for a gallon of

gas isn't going to the Saudis. The Iraq war was just an excuse to bump

up prices, and Hurricane Katrina was just another excuse. The oil

companies made HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars in profit because of

these public relations maneuvers (excuses).

They're run by people who know it would be more economical

already to produce synthetic fuel. They felt they had to lie about the

feasibility of doing so in the 1950s. Obviously, it would make even

more sense now.

The US has vast reserves of anthracite coal, and unlike

Germany's coal reserves, US coal is high in hydrogen. When the nazis

produced synthetic fuel for their war machine in the '40s, they had to

add hydrogen during the process to raise the octane of the fuel;

that's one whole step in an already efficient process that the US

would not have to take.

>

>The future is ominous. Not only do Israel's foreign policy objectives

>not coincide with American interests, they actively hurt them. The

>growing belligerence in the Middle East, the calls for an attack

>against Iran, the collapse of the imperial project in Iraq have all

>given an opening, where there was none before, to America's rivals. It

>is not in Israel's interests to ignite a regional conflict. It is not

>in ours. But those who have their hands on the wheel seem determined,

>in the name of freedom and democracy, to keep the American ship of

>state headed at breakneck speed into the cliffs before us.

>

>http://www.alternet.org/story/55827/

September 4, 2007