Israel’s European Lobby

In their 2006 article “The Israel Lobby,” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt famously assert, “Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.” Having for decades successfully steered policymaking in Washington in a pro-Israel direction, Israel’s American Lobby has more recently turned its attention to Europe. Despite its brief presence in Brussels, it appears to have already had marked success in influencing the nascent foreign policy of the European Union.

One of the most important of the more than 60 organizations that make up “the Lobby” is the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Jeff Blankfort, an American Jew who is one of the Lobby’s most trenchant critics, described the AJC as “the Lobby’s unofficial foreign office.” Extending its global diplomatic mission, the AJC opened an office in Brussels in 2004. Since then, according to Blankfort, it has held weekly meetings with a high official or the chief of state of EU member states. The meetings seem to be having the desired effect. As Blankfort wrote in 2006, “Over the past year the EU has moved away from relative support for the Palestinians to adopting one position after another reflecting Israeli demands.”

As part of its lobbying efforts in Brussels, the AJC founded the Transatlantic Institute (TAI) in February 2004. According to its mission statement, the institute functions as “an intellectual bridge between the United States and the European Union” with the aim of “strengthening transatlantic ties.” Although it describes itself as “nongovernmental, non-partisan and independent,” TAI’s publications leave little doubt that it intends to shift the EU in a more aggressively pro-Israel direction, as the neoconservatives succeeded in doing with the Bush administration’s Middle Eastern policy.

Like American neocons, the TAI’s executive director, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi, has a “special affinity for Israel.” Before moving to Brussels, the Jewish Italian academic taught Israel Studies (a discipline which Mearsheimer and Walt describe as “intended in large part to promote Israel’s image”) at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, after having received his PhD in political science from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. And like the current Israeli government and pro-Israeli groups worldwide, Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons are Ottolenghi’s overriding concern at the moment – now that the threat of Iraq’s non-existent WMDs has promptly been forgotten. In his 2009 book, Under a Mushroom Cloud: Europe, Iran and the Bomb, Ottolenghi urges Europeans to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Despite his concern about the bomb, it’s unlikely that he would support a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons in the Middle East – since Israel is the only country in the region that currently possesses them.

Israel’s crying wolf is nothing if not predictable though. As for the “mushroom cloud” that’s supposedly looming over Europe, who, bar the mainstream media, could forget Condoleezza Rice’s pre-Iraq invasion soundbite: “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”? It was Michael Gerson, Bush’s pro-Israel speechwriter, who thought up that one. Incidentally, Gerson was so incensed by Mearsheimer and Walt’s criticism of the Lobby that he accused them in his Washington Post column of “sowing the seeds of anti-Semitism.”

Anyone for World War IV?

Before European policymakers give too much credence to the prescriptions of Ottolenghi and his “non-partisan” institute, they should familiarize themselves with the geopolitical outlook of Commentary, the magazine for which Ottolenghi blogs. Like the Transatlantic Institute, which became “the flagship of neoconservatism” in the 1970s, it was also founded by the American Jewish Committee, a relationship that lasted from 1945 to 2006. But above all, Commentary has been dominated by the political views of Norman Podhoretz.

Podhoretz, who has edited Commentary since 1960, claims that September 11, 2001 marked the beginning of World War IV (he considers the Cold War to have been World War III). “We are only in the very early stages of what promises to be a very long war,” declares the doyen of neoconservatism, “and Iraq is only the second front to have been opened in that war: the second scene, so to speak, of the first act of a five-act play.” Whatever about the incalculable cost in blood and treasure to the United States, presumably Israel won’t have any enemies left standing by the end of this bloody drama. Coincidentally or not, in 2007, the same year he published World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Podhoretz was honoured by Bar-Ilan University with its Guardian of Zion Award, bestowed on Jews who have been supportive of the State of Israel.

However, those who question the motives behind Podhoretz’s enthusiasm for World War IV, or believe that his belligerent Zionism poses a far greater threat to world peace than “Islamofascism” – a nebulous concept that lumps together disparate entities such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and Al Qaeda – are invariably smeared as anti-Semites. It’s not surprising, of course, that Zionists like Ottolenghi, in a transparent attempt to discredit their opponents, claim that “anti-Zionism is anti-semitism.” After all, “the charge of anti-semitism,” as Mearsheimer and Walt point out, is one of the Lobby’s “most powerful weapons.”

What is worrying, however, is that the EU now legitimates the deployment of that weapon by pro-Israelis against their critics. According to the definition given by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency, it seems that you’re an anti-semite if you agree with Mearsheimer and Walt that pressure from Israel and the Lobby played a “critical” role in the decision to invade Iraq, or if you suspect that the likes of Podhoretz and Ottolenghi may be more loyal to Israel than they are to their respective countries. Before coming up with their working definition of anti-Semitism in 2004, the EU consulted with Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee. If they were asked about the question of loyalty, the AJC probably forgot to mention the case of Jonathan Pollard.

Pollard, an American Jew, is now serving a life sentence for stealing thousands of documents while employed as an analyst for US naval intelligence during the mid-1980s. In Dangerous Liaison, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn write, “Though he always maintained that he was motivated purely by devotion to Israel, he was well paid for his services.” That money may have come from the US-Israeli Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD), according to Claudia Wright, the author of Spy, Steal, and Smuggle: Israel’s Special Relationship with the US. When Jordan Baruch, an adviser to BIRD’s board, was asked for an audit report, he replied, “Even if I did (have one), I couldn’t release it.” Interestingly, it was Baruch and his wife, “long-time AJC leaders,” who funded the Transatlantic Foundation.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, Benjamin Netanyahu portrayed Israel’s grievance against Iran as a conflict which “pits civilization against barbarism.” It’s tempting to dismiss the Israeli leader’s assertion as the hyperbolic trope of a demagogue, but there may be some truth to what he said. After all, what better word than “barbarism” to describe what Israel has done to the Palestinians for the past six decades? Or the havoc that Israel’s supporters in America have wrought on the people of Iraq? Or the untold devastation they have in mind for the Iranians? The influence the Israel Lobby wields in Washington has ensured that the United States has long been complicit in Israel’s barbarism. And if the Lobby gets it way in Brussels, so too will the European Union.

Maidhc Ó Cathail writes extensively on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. Read other articles by Maidhc, or visit Maidhc's website.

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  1. Michael Kenny said on October 28th, 2009 at 9:57am #

    Like the song says, it’s a long, long way from Clare to here! Japan is a long way from Brussels and I wouldn’t exaggerate Israel’s influence on the EU. I certainly wouldn’t lend any credence to claims by Lobby representatives like Mr Blankfort, whose job it is to claim that the EU is in Israel’s pocket. Europe is neither neutral nor pro-Palestinian nor pro-Israeli. It is, quite simply, pro-Europe. Only Americans seem to find it difficult to comprehend that countries defend their own interests. Europe’s interest is to keep out of other people’s quarrels.
    Also, a lawyer’s point: it is totally wrong to claim that merely agreeing with Mearsheimer and Walt could constitute “anti-semitism”. In European hate speech law, everything turns on the form of words used. The kind of adolescent howling and screeching that many US extremists go on with is already illegal in Europe, whether the subject is Israel or not. The Fundamental Rights Agency doesn’t make law and any of its definitions which were subsequently adopted into law, which is not the case in regard to anti-semitism, would be subject to the European Convention on Human Rights, notably, in this case, the principle of equality before the law. Israel could not be given a privileged position, therefore.

  2. bozhidar balkas vancouver said on October 28th, 2009 at 10:38am #

    We do know that ?all lands want or actually steal land and knowing that they wld have to kill people as well.
    Using the label “zionism”, and which probably 90% of n.americans don’t understand or never heard of, obnubilates very understandable [u don’t have to go to school for that]: theft of land with intent to murder.

    Is then any wonder that ‘jew’ robbers are supported by n. americans and europeans; they being the biggest robbers?
    And then, question arises, do some bn and a half land roobbers need that much a few thousand ‘jews’ to tell them what to do or actually make them perp?

    It may be that US-nato pols simply pick some money from rich ‘jews’ on the way to rob s’mbody. Or, nonjewish plutos, generals, cia agents, pols s’mwhat more or much more stupid than ‘jewish’ mindchangers and -controllers?

    And, shldn’t there be a record of that somewhere? If not, is US then a banana land? tnx

  3. b99 said on October 28th, 2009 at 11:49am #

    It seems Michael, that powerful European institutions may be more and more interpreting ‘pro-Europe’ to include an increasingly positive relationship toward Israel.

  4. mary said on October 28th, 2009 at 12:35pm #

    In addition to the Friends of Israel lobby groups of the three main parties in the British House of Commons, we have the European Friends of Israel with 1,000 members. Any named here? Not on your life.

    http://www.efi-eu.org/content/view/5/56/

    The House of Commons FoI members, many Cabinet Ministers and Shadow Cabinet Ministers among them, do not declare their membership or their interest when speaking. One way to establish this secret membership is to consult the Wikipedia pages where the lists are sketchy or the Parliamentary Register of Member’s Interests and find out if they have visited Israel, fares and hotels courtesy of the Israeli government.

  5. dan e said on October 28th, 2009 at 1:54pm #

    Jeff Blankfort is a “Lobby representative”? Actually I’m glad Kenny posted this ludicrous lie because it will make it that much easier for people like Mr. Wingo McNutt to discern that Kenny is complete nutcase, a crackpot with pro-Vatican inclinations but without the sophistication.

  6. James said on October 29th, 2009 at 2:41am #

    Tuesday, September 11, 2007

    Zionist Control of the British Media

    As in America, Zionist Jews have an almost total grip on the both the electronic and printed media in Britain, and consequently shape ‘public opinion’ and government policy by simply choosing which news they wish to disseminate, and in what manner. In this way, they have promoted the ‘multicultural and multiracial’ policy of Third World immigration and ‘anti-racism’ for so long, that they have nearly succeeded in demonizing even the slightest opposition to such policies, while at the same time being implacably opposed to the rightful rights of the Palestinian people in the land of their birth.

    Television and Radio

    ITV

    The Independent Television (ITV) network is divided into fourteen regions, all of which are controlled by two Jewish-controlled companies, Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc. Carlton controls Central, London, West Country, and HTV Wales and West: while Granada controls Anglia, Border, Granada, London Weekend, Meridian, Tyne Tees, and Yorkshire. The Jew Michael Green heads up Carlton Communications plc., and the Zionist Jew Steve Morrison heads up Granada plc.

    Carlton Channels division also includes 50% of London News Network, 25% of GMTV and 20% of Independent Television News (ITN). Carlton Productions is a major producer for ITV, producing drama, entertainment, factual, comedy, and children’s titles, investing over £200m a year in producing new television programs for ITV, BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and digital channels. It includes the producer Planet 24, responsible for Gay Time TV, and the supplier of game show formats Action Time. Carlton International controls and sells a library of 2,000 films and 18,000 hours of television programs to over 100 countries. Carlton America produces seventeen films for television each year. Green is also Director of ITN, which provides the news for the ITV network, of GMTV Limited and of Thomson multimedia in France. He is also Chairman of the Media Trust.

    Granada plc. owns seven of the ITV stations: Anglia, Border, Granada, London Weekend, Meridian, Tyne Tees and Yorkshire. It broadcasts to 60% of Britain’s homes. Its other ITV investments are ITN (20%), GMTV (25%), London News Network (50%), and the Scottish Media Group (18.1%), which controls Grampian, and Scottish. Granada Creative produces nearly 9000 hours of original television programs and films per year, which it sells to more than 120 countries. It made 60 % of the ITV Network’s original programs in 2000.

    BBC TV

    Managing Director of this formally state-owned broadcaster is the Zionist Jew Tony Cohen. Alan Yentob is Director of Drama, Entertainment, and Children’s Program for all of BBC television. Formerly, Yentob was Director of Television from 1997 to 2000, and before that, Director of Programs.

    According to Broadcast magazine in 1996, his former title gave him “control over all non-news BBC programs including those for satellite channels and those in English for the World Service.” The atheist Jew, Alan Bookbinder, has headed up BBC’s Religion and Ethics division since July 2001.

    BBC Radio

    The Jewess Jenny Abramsky is Director of BBC Radio and Music and has control of all of BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Live, and of the BBC’s digital radio operation. Abramsky is the most powerful executive in radio in the UK, public service or commercial: with control of the five national radio stations, she oversees 49% of all radio listening in Britain. She has an annual programming budget of £290 million, a staff of 600 and takes home £258, 000. She has spent over 30 years in BBC Radio, only taking a two-year break as Director of the BBC Continuous News Services. Abramsky has also been a Governor of the British Film Industry since February 2000.

    BSkyB

    British Sky Broadcasting is a significant television broadcaster in the United Kingdom, and a part of the global media empire, News Corporation. Newscorp is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who had a Jewish mother, Elizabeth Green. According to Jewish law, this makes him Jewish. His daughter is chief executive of BSkyB. British Sky Broadcasting is Britain’s leading pay-TV provider and one of the world’s top 250 companies. It broadcasts news, entertainment, and sports programs to over 10 million subscribers and their families in Britain and Ireland, which includes five and a half million subscribers to its digital satellite service, which was launched in 1998 with 140 channels. By 1999, satellite and cable television channels accounted for over 15% of total UK viewing. Murdoch has spoken of “my faith and News Corporation’s faith in the integrity and worthiness of the Zionist undertaking,” and has explained that, “I have always believed in the future of Israel and the goals of the international Jewish community.”

    Pinewood-Shepperton Limited

    Pinewood-Shepperton Limited is the result of the merger of Britain’s two leading film and television production studios, Pinewood and Shepperton. It is controlled by the Jew Michael Grade, who is the nephew of the Jew Lew Grade, also a film producer and one of the founders of the ITV network. Michael Grade was formerly Controller of BBC 1 in 1984, Director of BBC Programs in 1986, and as Chief Executive of Channel 4 from 1988 to 1997, he was dubbed “pornographer-in-chief” by the Daily Mail.

    Newspapers

    Express Newspapers

    Express Newspapers owns the Daily Express, the Sunday Express, and the Daily Star. The Daily Express has an average daily circulation of 927,785, and is Britain’s second leading mid-market paper. The Sunday Express has an average circulation of 842, 003, and the Daily Star 828,823. All together Express Newspapers distributes an average 13 million newspapers in Britain per week. Express Newspapers was bought in November 2000 by the Jew Richard Desmond, who made his fortune in pornography.

    News International

    Rupert Murdoch, (discussed earlier under BSkyB) also owns News International, which runs The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times, and News of the World. The latter has an average daily circulation of 4,042,714, and The Sun of 3,507,176. They are the two best selling daily papers in Britain, with a joint average daily circulation of over 7.5 million copies, with perhaps twice that many people actually reading them. The Sunday Times has an average weekly circulation of 1,383,683, being the best-selling Sunday broadsheet, and The Times a daily circulation of 717,657, being the second best-selling daily broadsheet. Altogether, News International distributes over 50 million newspapers a week in Britain.

    The Telegraph Group

    Another major newspaper group in Britain is the Telegraph Group Limited, which was recently sold by Hollinger International Inc. to a company owned by the Catholic Barclay brothers, more famous for the bank of the same name. The Telegraph group publishes the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Weekly Telegraph, and The Spectator magazine, as well as other, lesser media interests, including The Saturday Telegraph. Although the outright owners of these papers are therefore not Jewish, the editorial stance remains identical to the other media forms in the UK: solidly pro-Jewish.

    Hollinger International, the former owners of these papers, belongs to the gentile, Conrad Black, who is married to the Jewess Barbara Amiel. Black referred to the Palestinians in his Jerusalem Post in 1993 as “vile and primitive,” while Mrs. Black likened them to “animals” in the November 7, 2000 edition of their Telegraph.

    Conrad Black explained that, “If editors disagree with us they should disagree with us when they’re no longer in our employ. The buck stops with ownership. I am responsible for meeting the payroll; therefore I will ultimately determine what the papers say and how they’re going to be run.”

    Associated Newspapers

    The flagship national circulation newspaper of Associated Newspapers is the Daily Mail, which has an average daily circulation of 2,477,416. The Managing Director of the Daily Mail is the Jew Guy Zitter.

    Source: http://natallnews.com/

  7. James said on October 29th, 2009 at 2:44am #

    Britain’s Gordon Brown becomes patron of Zionist agency
    By Redress Information & Analysis

    http://www.redress.cc/stooges/redress20070728

    28 July 2007

    British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has agreed to become patron of the UK arm of the Jewish National Fund, whose funds have contributed to Israeli ethnic cleansing, the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expropriation of Palestinian land, and whose constitution requires it to promote and implement policies that discriminate against Israel’s Arab population.

    Gordon Brown has crossed a new threshold on the path to becoming a fully-fledged Zionist.

    According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle, Gordon Brown has agreed to become a patron of the British arm of the Jewish National Fund (JNF UK) “following an invitation from JNF UK President Gail Seal, who wrote conveying her good wishes the day after he took office”.

    In a letter to Gail Seal, Gordon Brown said that he was “delighted to accept your offer to become a patron of JNF UK”. A spokesman for Brown confirmed that the British prime minister had “agreed to become a patron of JNF UK”, and that he had done so “in order to encourage their work to promote charitable projects for everyone who lives in Israel”.

    In fact, far from being “a charity” that benefits “everyone who lives in Israel”, the JNF is a principal tool of Israel’s discriminatory system of land administration. Founded in 1901 to help establish a Jews-only state in the Arab country of Palestine, the JNF’s constitution requires it to benefit Jews exclusively. It therefore promotes and implements policies that discriminate against the Arab population of Israel.

    The JNF is also guilty of ethnic cleansing, the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expropriation of Palestinian land. According to PalestineRemembered.com, in its operation in Israel, the JNF has

    expropriated illegally most of the land of 372 Palestinian villages which had been ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948. The owners of this land are over half the UN-registered Palestinian refugees. The JNF had actively participated in the physical destruction of many villages, in evacuating these villages of their inhabitants and in military operations to conquer these villages. Today, the JNF controls over 2500 sq. km of Palestinian land which it leases to Jews only. It also planted 100 parks on Palestinian land.

    In addition, the JNF has a long record of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel as reported by the UN. The JNF also extends its operations by proxy or directly to the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. All this is in clear violation of international law and particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids the confiscation of property and settling the occupiers’ citizens in occupied territories. Ethnic cleansing, expropriation of property and destruction of houses are war crimes. As well, use of tax-exempt donations in these activities violates the domestic law in many countries where JNF is domiciled.

    Since becoming prime minister at the end of June 2007, Gordon Brown has appointed several Israel apologists to key positions in the British government. He has also been at pain to stress his Christian Zionist credentials.

    As patron of JNF UK, Gordon Brown will join a club that includes prominent British politicians and religious figures who, on the one hand, speak of the need for peace and justice in the Middle East while, on the other, promote and defend the racist Jews-only state of Israel. They include Tony Blair, Conservative leader David Cameron and Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who is said to be a close friend of Brown.

  8. James said on October 29th, 2009 at 2:48am #

    MEDIA MANAGEMENT AND DEMOCRACY

    The disturbing phenomenon outlined in the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, is actually nothing new.

    Michael Palumbo says in his book The Palestinian Catastrophe (1987):
    ‘No widely circulated non-Zionist account of 1948 has appeared in English. In the United States no major company would dare to publish an honest history of the expulsion of the Palestinians since such a book would quickly be forced out of circulation by the powerful Zionist lobby. There is in fact a double standard in both Britain and America since books which deal with Arab ‘terrorism’ are usually published without protest but someone who writes a book about Zionist atrocities against Palestinians is accused of being ‘anti Semitic’.. What concerns Zionist propagandists most is not what Israelis think about 1948 but what the British and even more importantly what the American public is told about the exodus of the Palestinians.. It is of course unthinkable that Hollywood could ever produce an honest film about 1948. An accurate account of the Palestinian exodus is not permitted even in a documentary on American TV.. The Zionist version of 1948 is constantly being portrayed in English-language books, magazines and newspaper articles as well as in movies and TV programs that are seen by tens of millions of people..’

    Dr Alfred Lilienthal courageously published his devastating book The Zionist Connection back in 1978, outlining the terrible record of seemingly never-ending major Israeli human rights violations. He basically ascribed the persistence of problem to Zionist media and political control in the US, devoting a number of chapters to demonstrating how far-reaching this was at that time. Although the details of

    Here are a few brief excerpts from his long and detailed analysis:

    ‘One-sided reportage on terrorism, in which cause is never related to effect, was assured because the most effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media control. It is well known that American public opinion molders have long been largely influenced by a handful of powerful newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the St Louis Post-Dispatch – owned respectively by the Sulzbergers, Eugene Meyer and now his daughter Katherine Graham (half-Jewish, who also owns Newsweek), and the Pulitzers, a Hungarian Jewish family. The New York Post was until recently in the capable hands of Dorothy Schiff, the granddaughter of banker Jacob Schiff.

    ‘Walter Annenberg, who served as Nixon’s ambassador to Britain, owned the Philadelphia Enquirer, The Morning Telegraph, Seventeen, and TV Guide as well as several television stations. Samuel Newhouse, of Jewish background, owns some forty-nine newspapers, including the influential Newsday on Long Island, four television stations, a number of radio stations and a cluster of vital magazines, including Vogue, Glamour, Mademoiselle and House and Garden.

    ‘Other newspapers, not Jewish-owned, have top editors, directors and advertising chiefs who are Jewish. In 1978 the Washington Star’s owner was [non-Jewish] but the views of the executive editor Sidney Epstein and associate editor Edwin Yoder were clearly reflected in its editorials and articles during the critical Middle east developments. All the leading magazines, ranging from Commentary, Esquire, Ladies Home Journal, New York Review of Books, New Yorker and US News and World Report have Jews in key positions as publishers, editors, or managing editors. These people at very least have the veto power over what appears in their publications. No one is about to criticize Jews – or even take Israel to task – for fear of being out of line with the boss, who is likely to fire him or her…’ (pp 218-9).

    Dr Lilienthal has this to contribute to any discussion on American democracy:

    ‘An added tower of strength to the Jewish connection has been the Jewish location: 76 percent of American Jewry is concentrated in sixteen cities of six states – New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and Florida – with 181 electoral votes. It takes only 270 electoral votes to elect the President of the US. Our Chief Executive is chosen by a plurality of the Electoral College votes, not of the popular vote.. This explains why the politicians have been mesmerized by fear of the “Jewish vote” and by those who claim they can deliver the “swing vote” in a hotly contested state.. Hence the happy alliance dating back to World War I between the supine American politicians and the Zionists, who have controlled the Congress in its near 100 percent pro-Israel stance.. (p239).

    ‘It was none other than Joseph Alsop, long one of the most ardent, frenetic supporters of Israel, who wrote: “With the possible exception of Senator Edward Kennedy, no liberal Democrat gets less than 50 percent of his campaign financing from the Jewish community. In certain cases, the percentage reaches much higher” (p 264).

    So we’ve had the extremely peculiar situation that for at least half a century, a minority tribal grouping representing around 3% of the US population is able to dictate their own self-interested foreign policy to the other 97%.

  9. James said on October 29th, 2009 at 2:49am #

    Quote:

  10. James said on October 29th, 2009 at 2:50am #

    Quote:

    The New York Sun, a newspaper published by Ronald Weintraub and edited by Seth Lipsky, and known for its pro-Israel bias, carried an article recently on the obeisance made by Hillary Clinton to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in New York, which might almost be called a pledge of allegiance to Israel. Quoth the Sun’s staff reporter, Jill Gardiner:

    “A Democratic political consultant who worked on President Clinton’s re-election campaign, Hank Sheinkopf, noted that the AIPAC dinner always draws a parade of politicians.

    ‘New York is the ATM for American politicians. Large amounts of money come from the Jewish community,’ he said. ‘If you’re running for president and you want dollars from that group, you need to show that you’re interested in the issue that matters most to them.’

    Mrs. Clinton, who has opted out of the public campaign financing system, has tapped into the circuit of influential Jewish donors for years and has strong support in the community. A spokesman for AIPAC, Joshua Block, said yesterday that the senator and former first lady has ‘an extremely consistent and strong record of support on issues that are important to the pro-Israel community.'”

    Hillary apparently sang the song that everyone at AIPAC loves to hear, for later in the Sun’s article, we read, “While Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton have different positions on how to deal with the Iraq war, each has used harsh language on Iran.”

  11. James said on October 29th, 2009 at 2:53am #

    It’s now official – there’s no actual shortage of Holocaust survivors:

    ‘The Israeli Prime Minister’s office recently put the number of “living Holocaust survivors” at nearly a million’ (extract from The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York, published by Verso, London and New York, 2000, p.83).

    I’ve checked out the six volumes of Churchill’s Second World War and there is not a single mention of Nazi ‘gas chambers,’ a ‘genocide’ of the Jews, or of ‘six million’ Jewish victims of the war.

    Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; Churchill’s Second World War totals 4,448 pages; and De Gaulle’s three-volume Mémoires de guerre is 2,054 pages.

    In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi ‘gas chambers,’ a ‘genocide’ of the Jews, or of ‘six million’ Jewish victims of the war.

  12. George Wanker Bush said on October 29th, 2009 at 8:18am #

    James … that’s anti-cementheadism.

  13. Steve said on October 29th, 2009 at 8:25am #

    No..thats Fact George…

  14. mary said on October 29th, 2009 at 8:35am #

    Arrested at a checkpoint. Why? Because she comes from Gaza? This is both shocking and disgraceful.

    BETHLEHEM UNIVERSITY

    ???????? ?????? ??????

    PRESS RELEASE
    For Immediate Release
    28 October 2009
    Bethlehem, Palestine

    Seeking HELP for a Bethlehem University Student
    28 October 2009

    Earlier today we learned that Ms. Berlanty Azzam, a 4th year student enrolled at Bethlehem University, majoring in Business Administration with a minor in Translation, is now being held in detention by the Israeli military authorities.

    The Israeli Military authorities are holding this 4th year Christian student in the Sharon Detention Center near Netanya in Israel and are threatening to “deport her’ to Gaza “for trying to complete her studies at Bethlehem University.” Berlanty is originally from Gaza, but she has been living in the West Bank since 2005, after she received a travel permit from the military to cross from Gaza to the West Bank.

    Berlanty is a 4th year student, seeking to complete her bachelors degree – but today she was arrested by the Israeli military at a checkpoint while traveling from one part of the West Bank to another part of the West Bank. The Israeli military has banned Palestinian residents of Gaza from studying at Palestinian universities in the West Bank.

    We need your help.

    Berlanty needs your help!

    What can you do to help? RIGHT NOW, please send a letter to the Israeli military authorities by email (moc.liamgnull@namsekopstagoc) or by fax (+972 3 697 6306) and let them know that you demand that they release Berlanty Azzam immediately so that she can resume and complete her last year of studies at the Vatican-sponsored Bethlehem University.

  15. babette said on October 29th, 2009 at 8:38am #

    Auschwitz has officially reduced its number of jewish dead from 4 to 1 million, and that number is under scrutiny too. Others have done likewise.

    We’re getting an avalanche of holohaux survivors spouting BS and getting paid for it. Spielberg is being sued for his documentary ’cause “Zisblatt blatantly stole other Jewish people’s experiences during World War II and passed them off as her own in order to further the Jewish political agenda and profit off of these fantastical tales.”

    They want to stop investigations of the holocaust as badly as they try to stop investigations of 9-11 and every other top level/Pentagon/CIA/Mossad crime in modern history.

    It’s too late.

    Should you need a good laugh in these desperately ugly times:

    htt://www.cloning of holocaust martyrs.com

    b
    911=USrael

  16. babette said on October 29th, 2009 at 8:40am #

    Sorry, maybe this will work?

    http://www.cloning of holocaust martyrs.com

    b
    911=USrael

  17. Tom Blank said on October 29th, 2009 at 10:41am #

    …and if Tony Blair does become president of the EU, it will get a damned sight worse. He is the chap whom Netanyahu has boasted of his close friendship with in the Jerusalem Post, how they met ten times in one year, and see eye to eye on most things. Indeed they do.

  18. dan e said on October 29th, 2009 at 12:06pm #

    Thank you James:)

    you too Babette, Mary, good work!

  19. Mista D said on October 29th, 2009 at 1:22pm #

    Hey James….. thanks for the info.

    It explains all the jew-loving-propaganda that gets rammed down our throats every time Israel goes on one of it’s genocidal escapades.

  20. Andrew F said on October 29th, 2009 at 3:46pm #

    Just to clarify a side issue re Michael Kenny’s post in order to address a common misperception: the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the Convention) is an international (regional) legal instrument of a separate legal order to that of the European Union (E.U.). Namely, of the Council of Europe (CoE) which has its own adjudicating body: the European Court of Human Rights (E.Ct.H.R). Both the E.Ct.H.R and the CoE are organically, institutionally, and constitutionally unrelated to the E.U. despite the fact that every Member State of the E.U. is also a signatory of the Convention, and member of the CoE.

    There have been pronouncements by the various E.U. bodies and the European Court of Justice (an E.U. legal order institution) as to the espousal of the spirit of the Convention but these do not and have not amounted to an importation of the Convention into the E.U. legal order and ‘acquis communitaire’ (that’s to say, the E.U. corpus of law and jurisprudence). The text of the Lisbon Treaty (proposed E.U. constitutional document not yet adopted) refers to questions regarding the admission of the Convention into the E.U. legal order , if I’m not mistaken, but this have no legal effect at present.

    Coming to the topic, I think the very noticeable pro-Israel stance of the E.U. which came into sharp focus during the Onslaught in Gaza during the end of 2008 can reasonably be attributed to pressure on the E.U. as an organisation (rather than on the collective membership) by perennially atlanticist and zionist bourgeois interests. The hawkish and unashamedly pro-zionist stance and rhetoric of the foreign affairs ministers of both France and the U.K. vis-a-vis the perceived nuclear capacity of Iran, should not be ignored.

    It’s unfortunate but sadly very predictable that the cheerleaders of ultra-zionism seek to deflect any criticism by referring to anti-semitism – while, again unfortunately, anti-semitism is well alive and kicking, there seems to be less and less space in which to level valid criticism against Israel. In 1932 that brilliant and farsighted mind that was Trotsky wrote: “the blind-alley in which German Jewry finds itself as well as the blind-alley in which Zionism finds itself is inseparably bound up with the blind-alley of world capitalism, as a whole”. I have great empathy for Israelis and great empathy for those in their hawkish ruling class have dispossessed and displaced. Solutions have to go to the root of the matter and should be everlasting – the affinity between the working classes of all ethnoreligious/ethnosocial groups present should be evoked and maintained to turn the weapons against their common enemy who unhesitatingly sends them to their deaths in order to protect its own privileges and supremacy. For context re Trotsky’s position, visit: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/xx/jewish.htm

  21. sid wright said on October 30th, 2009 at 6:09am #

    There’s Nothing Quite Like it

    Half way between Tel Aviv and Haifa, Caesarea is an attractive Mediterranean port with a Roman aqueduct and amphitheater which hosts the Annual Jazz Festival against the timeless backdrop of the sea.
    Herod the Great dedicated the port to Caesar Augustus more than 2,000 years ago. Today, it is one of Israel’s major tourist attractions and an increasingly popular place for Israel’s elite to make their homes.
    Caesarea offers sandy beaches, ancient harbor, restaurants and cafes overlooking the beach and museum which takes the visitor on a magical journey through Caesarea’s history.
    On May 2009 a new Pete Dye designed golf course was opened to the great delight of local and international golfers as this is the only 18 holes course in the country!
    Israel can enjoy now golf tourism, particularly due to its mild climate, where golf can be played all year long.
    Experts estimate that the name of Pete Dye, designer of the new golf course, will attract golf tourists from all over the world.

    The Golf Residence is located at the highest point in Caesarea. It borders on the golf course and is inundated with extensive green spaces. The Golf Residence includes a total of 384 lots of 600 and 1,000 m2. About 300 lots have already been sold.
    The new residence is being constructed adjacent to the new golf club and as we know, golf has a great effect on the value of real estate and the closer the lot is to the golf course, the higher the price.

    Real estate consultants who specialize in golf neighborhoods around the world clarified that a lot designated for construction that was located near a Pete Dye-designed golf club is considered a ‘tremendous prize’ around the world.
    There are still 11 lots that border the Golf Club, each of which occupies
    1 dunam of land.
    Beside the new Golf Club, other attractions at Caesarea are the old city and the Caesarea Harbor which offer the visitor a tourism experience of scenery, tastes, and a touch of the history of one of the most beautiful and major cities in ancient Israel. This ‘voyage in time’ is accomplished through innovative technologies, computerized animation and interactive displays.
    The Harbor also features an artists’ complex, galleries, a souvenir shop, restaurants, and coffee shops, as well as a pleasant breeze, magnificent sunsets, a well-equipped beach, special scenery and plenty of atmosphere.

  22. mary said on October 30th, 2009 at 7:25am #

    Update on Berlanty. In great contrast to the crowing above by a supporter of the terror state. Luxury golf course for the Occupiers (bought with US tax Dollars incidentally). Checkpoints, arrest, blindfold, handcuffs and a military truck for the Palestinian girl. Pure evil.

    BETHLEHEM UNIVERSITY PRESS RELEASE
    For Immediate Release 29 October 2009

    Bethlehem, Palestine

    Seeking HELP for a Bethlehem University Student

    The Israeli military has gone one step further in denying a young Christian woman her right to complete her bachelor degree at the Vatican-sponsored Bethlehem University in the Holy Land.

    On Wednesday, 28 October 2009, we learned that Ms. Berlanty Azzam, a Bethlehem University student studying business administration and
    translation, was arrested by the Israeli military.

    On Thursday, 29 October 2009, we spoke with Berlanty via mobile phone and learned that on Wednesday night at 11:00pm the Israeli military loaded her into a military jeep – blindfolded and handcuffed – and moved her from Bethlehem to Gaza – against her will.

    Since August 2005, Berlanty, a 21 year old Christian woman, has been a student at Bethlehem University. “Since 2005, I refrained from visiting my family in Gaza for fear that I would not be permitted to return to my studies in the West Bank,” said Berlanty. “Now, just two months before graduation, I was arrested and taken to Gaza in the middle of the night, with no way to finish my degree.” Berlanty is scheduled to complete her bachelor degree in December 2009.

    Why was she removed from Bethlehem (in the West Bank and not in Israel) and taken to Gaza? Just because her address in the Israeli-controlled Population Registry is listed in the Gaza Strip- but she lives in Bethlehem and has done so since the year 2005.

    We need your help. Berlanty needs your help. What can you do to help? Visit our website (www.bethlehem.edu) and Gisha (www.gisha.org) for more updates.

    May God Bless You!

  23. Debbie Menon said on November 5th, 2009 at 12:49am #

    Maidhc O’ Cathail writes a good article and it is timely.

    It is time to start stressing that the US is not the only country in which Israel has an illicit and incestuous monopoly on blackmail, political, personal and violent intimidation of press, Industry, politics and business in pursuit of Zionist ambitions and objectives.

    When people in other countries read about the devastation of the AIPAC influence in the US, they will tend to regard it as something which is happening “over there” but which does not directly involve them. When they read something like what O’Cathail has written here, or something which is happening right there in their own front garden, or just across the street, they might have cause to pause and take a closer look at their own politicians, their leaders, and their connections and intimidating influences.

    Debbie Menon

  24. David Sharpe said on November 5th, 2009 at 6:53pm #

    It is amazing how all of you are afraid of a country with 6 million Jews. Israel is a more sucessfull country than any country on the European continent and you probably resent it. The IDF can defaeat any of the Euro-Weenies so talk all you want but at the end of the day Israel will be there and do as she pleases. So, keep on talking 🙂 – because that is all you can do 🙂 🙂

  25. mary said on November 6th, 2009 at 1:11am #

    The last ‘speaker’ should have been at the talk given in London last night by Dr Mads Gilbert on his experiences at El Shifa Hospital during Cast Lead. There is one of God’s good men – a true humanitarian with love in his heart. Watch some of the contemporaneous video on the link here for some enlightenment on the true nature of a preplanned high powered military attack on civilians, women and children, who had nowhere to run to.

    At the talk he played a terrifying sound tape of the overhead drones (as many as three at a time and the thud of the exploding bombs. The slides of the amputations caused by Israel’s DIME weapons were even more horrific.

    http://israelpalestinenewscompiler.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/a-tribute-to-mads-gilbert/