The murder of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in his room at the Al Bustan Rotana, a 275-room five-star luxury hotel, in Dubai on January 19 has been widely perceived to be a Mossad operation involving, by the most recent count, 27 suspects traveling on fraudulently obtained and falsified European or Australian passports.  In late February and early March, the plot thickened suddenly and significantly when major US media outlet reports connected the crime and many of those involved in it to the USA and to corporations based in the USA and Israel and revealed that some of the suspected assassins, apparently members of a Mossad kidon team, had entered the USA after leaving Dubai.

ABC News reported on February 24 that Dubai police had identified 15 new suspects as part of a ring that killed Al Mabhouh.

“Fourteen of the suspects purportedly used credit cards from META Bank, a regional American bank, to pay for hotel rooms and travel arrangements. … Dubai police linked META Bank to a New York-based company called Payoneer, which provided prepaid MasterCard credit cards issued by META Bank. According to its Web site, Payoneer has a research and development center in Tel Aviv,” reported ABC.

The TV network report noted that some of the additional suspects played a central role in the crime while others were accused of “‘providing prior logistical support and preparations to facilitate,’ making a series of trips to Dubai in advance” of the assassination.

The New York Times reported on March 1 that, “At least two suspects in the killing of a Hamas official in a hotel here in January traveled to the United States afterward, according to a person familiar with the investigation.”    

“One suspect traveling on a British passport arrived in the United States on Feb. 14; the other used an Irish passport and arrived on Jan. 21, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case. He did not say where the men entered the country, and added that there was no known record of their leaving,” wrote Robert F. Worth in a story filed from Dubai. 

Worth’s report noted that if the suspected assassins who entered the U.S. presented foreign passports, they would have been photographed and finger printed upon arrival. 

The Wall Street Journal’s Chip Cummins filed a similar report from Dubai on the same day attributing the information to “people familiar with the situation” and “records shared between international investigators.”  In many previous news reports from Dubai information about the investigation had been attributed to Dubai’s Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim.

Neither report explored the rather remarkable news that the suspect carrying a British passport in the name Roy Allan Cannon was confident enough to travel on the falsified document more than three weeks after the assassination and to present it upon arrival in the USA, where passport controls are generally assumed to be most stringent.

“At one time it was possible to produce false identity documents with little or no regard for what is referred to as backstopping as data bases at national points of entry were unsophisticated and were generally unlinked to any central sources of information.  That has all changed in the past eight years.  European and American passports in particular can all be verified from central data bases that include information that is also drawn from other public record sources,” wrote former CIA officer Philip Giraldi in a February 25 column for Antiwar.com.

On March 3, Al Jazeera TV reported that Tamim, “said he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and the head of Mossad [Meir Degan].”

Tamim’s investigation, which has been described by Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble as “thorough,” has seriously inconvenienced and embarrassed the Israeli government and its espionage organization.

The Money Trail

The Independent Monitor contacted MetaBank’s corporate headquarters in Storm Lake, IA to ask why an Iowa bank would provide credit cards to 14 suspected members of a death squad. 

MetaBank’s Lisa Binder, Vice President for Investor Relations and Corporate Communications responded via telephone and e-mail with a statement saying, in part, “The Meta cards in question were issued in conjunction with a Meta Payment Systems program, not at a retail bank location.  Meta Payment Systems, which has issued more than 150 million prepaid cards, markets its payroll cards through various Program Managers─in this case, Payoneer─to offer reputable US companies network branded payroll cards with which American companies can pay expatriates, employees and contractors of their company who live in the US and in foreign countries.  The cards in question were ‘loaded’ by the companies using direct deposit for payroll, disbursements, and other compensation.”

The Independent Monitor attempted to contact Payoneer offices at 410 Park Avenue in New York City but found that the only phone answered at Payoneer headquarters was a customer support line for Payoneer’s Birthright Israel customers. 

Birthright Israel provides first time educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26.  The program sends “thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people,” according to the organization’s website.

Funding for Birthright Israel is “provided by our partners: private philanthropists through The Birthright Israel Foundation; the people of Israel through the Government of Israel; and Jewish communities around the world (North American Jewish Federations, Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Agency for Israel). …

“Taglit-Birthright Israel requires that all participants pay their deposit through Payoneer. … If you lose your Payoneer card while in Israel, it can be immediately blocked and will be replaced with a new card within 24 hours. … You will not need to contact your bank back home or worry about making many calls. One call to our Customer Support center and you are all set,” says the www.birthright.payoneer.com website.

Payoneer’s Birthright customer support center declined to provide the Independent Monitor with contact information for Payoneer founder and CEO Yuval Tal or for Payoneer corporate communications/media relations personnel.

“Since the assassination, Tal has been shielded by a wall of public relations representatives and does not respond to media requests for comments. … Tal’s public relations representatives in New York have refused to comment on his past and relations with Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad,” wrote Abbas Al Lawati, a staff reporter for Gulf News.com on March 3.

“Tal is referred to by his associates in Israel as ‘an outspoken Israeli patriot’ despite having lived in New York for over ten years.  In a 2006 Fox News interview about Israel’s summer war on Lebanon, Tal was presented as a ‘special ops commando’ on Fox and Friends, and stated that ‘this is a war Israel cannot (afford to) lose,’” wrote Al Lawati.

Payoneer’s website proclaims that the company is “a registered MasterCard Merchant Service Provider (MSP), and partner with MetaBank or Choice Bank Limited to deliver our services.  Privately held, our funding partners include Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Crossbar Capital.”

The Independent Monitor found that all three of Payoneer’s funding partners are venture capital firms that have offices in or strong connections to Israel.

Charlie Federman, Managing Partner of Crossbar Capital, previously co-founded BRM Capital in 1999, headed its New York office, and served as a Managing Director of the Israel and New York based fund until 2007.  BRM Group, headquartered in Herzliya was founded by Nir Barkat, mayor of occupied Jerusalem.

Carmel Ventures is also headquartered Herzliya.  Greylock Partners, founded in 1965, “operates in a number of global centers of innovation, including Boston, China (Beijing), India (Bangalore), Israel (Herzliya) and Silicon Valley. … Current Greylock portfolio companies include Data Robotics, Digg, Facebook, Imperva, LinkedIn, Palo Alto Networks, Pandora, Picarro, Redfin, Workday and ZipCar,” according to the firm’s website.  Greylock’s investment activities in Israel were launched in 2002 by partner Moshe Mor, who “served six years in the Israeli Army as a Captain in the Military Intelligence branch.”

Tal almost certainly possess information that could be of value to U.S. law enforcement and counter-intelligence investigators, but whether their political masters, many of whom have been effectively co-opted by Israel, will allow U.S. investigators to pursue any sort of meaningful investigation is an open question.  Thus far there has been little to indicate that U.S. officials are seriously interested in investigating the funding of travel expenses and hotel accommodations of suspected Israeli assassins through U.S. corporations, despite the reported entry of at least two of the suspects into the U.S. on fraudulent, falsified passports.

When the Independent Monitor contacted the Department of State (DoS) for comment about the news reports, a DoS press officer declined to comment and referred questions to the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press offices.  A DoJ press officer also declined to comment and referred questions to a DHS press officer who has not responded to an e-mail message sent on March 5.

The Sayanim Network

Any substantive U.S. investigation of the suspected Dubai killers’ connections to the USA would likely focus on members of the Mossad’s worldwide network of sayanim, diaspora Jews who provide a wide variety of services to the Israeli intelligence and special operations agency.  In his books, By Way of Deception (1990) and The Other Side of Deception (1994), former Mossad field officer or katsa Victor Ostrovsky described the sayanim network.

“Sayanim─assistants─must be 100 percent Jewish,” wrote Ostrovsky in 1990.

The Mossad’s helpers, chosen because they are well placed, willing, and able to provide valuable assistance to Israeli agents, are businessmen, doctors, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, police officers, intelligence officers, politicians, government bureaucrats, university professors and administrators, media professionals, information technology specialists, any occupation, profession, or position in which a sayan might prove useful in support of Israeli espionage operations.

Though they do not live in Israel, their first loyalty is to Israel.  They do whatever Mossad officials, field officers, or assassins ask of them in behalf of Israel against the enemies of Israel or those who are seen as opposed to Israeli policies. 

“Often the loyalty of sayanim is abused by katsas who take advantage of the available help for their own personal use.  There is no way for the sayan to check this,” wrote Ostrovsky.

“The one problem with the [sayanim] system is that the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the diaspora if it was known.  The answer you get if you ask is: ‘So what’s the worst that could happen to those Jews?  They’d all come to Israel?  Great,’” wrote Ostrovsky.  

“A sayan will rent a car or pass money to a kidon with no questions asked,” said Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (1999) in a report by Alun Palmer of the Mirror (UK) on February 18.  Thomas, who has estimated that there are at least 20,000 sayanim in the US and Great Britain, writes that all Mossad assassinations are authorized by the office of the prime minister of Israel.

The illegal use of U.S. banks and credit card companies to fund the movements and other expenses of a Mossad death squad in the Middle East indicates an alarming expansion of Israeli espionage operations on US soil and reveals to an unprecedented extent the foreign intelligence agency’s penetration of major U.S. financial institutions, developments that limn the breadth, depth, and success of the Mossad’s desperate efforts to expand and consolidate Israel’s malignant influence over the Washington foreign policy establishment and sway within a broad range of U.S. institutions, despite growing popular opposition to Israel’s the brutal and patently illegal occupation of Palestine and the punishing siege of Gaza.

The Myth, Cult, and Culture of Redemptive Violence

The supposed clash of civilizations, the conflict between the putatively modern Western Judeo-Christian tradition and radical Islam, the Bush administration’s Global War on Terrorism later rebranded by the Obama administration as Overseas Contingency Operations, and the suppurating wound that is Israel’s long-running illegal occupation and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine are evidence of a retrograde social and political dynamic that now threatens the continued progress and future of human civilization.  That dynamic is epitomized by the myth, cult, and culture of redemptive violence.

“The myth of redemptive violence defends the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace. It is one of the oldest stories in the world.  It misappropriates the language, symbols and scriptures of Christianity.  Its God is the tribal God worshipped as an idol.  Its offer is not forgiveness but victory.  Its good news is not unconditional love of enemies but their elimination.  Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy.  It is blasphemous.  It is idolatrous.  And it is immensely popular,” writes Dr. Walter Wink, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City.

Wink might have added that while Christian scripture is tainted by the myth of redemptive violence, the Hebrew Old Testament scriptures, attached at the spine of the Holy Bible to the New Testament, are Christianity’s primary source of the pernicious mythology of redemptive violence.  Only about 10 percent of the New Testament is devoted to Jesus’ teachings about the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, the kingdom of Heaven, the happiness of peacemakers, and forgiveness and mercy as moral and spiritual imperatives.  

True religion opposes violence as a technique of social evolution, but many Christians have been and are today all too willing and ready to embrace Hebrew Old Testament teachings that glorify war and the wholesale slaughter of innocents and ascribe such acts to the commands of a wrathful God that is both vengeful and violent.  The popularity of the myth of redemptive violence in the West and the attitudes and policies it engenders in political and economic spheres of activity severely undercuts the supposed moral superiority of Western modernity and culture in relation to other traditions and cultures.     

U.S. leaders often attempt to justify their wars with self-serving declarations that they are fighting for peace.

“One day the Iraqi people will understand that we came in peace,” averred Secretary of State Colin Powell in March 2003 as U.S. troops advanced on Baghdad after a devastating and enormously destructive “Shock and Awe” air assault on the city. 

If the status of a civilization can be accurately gauged by the fairness of its courts and the integrity of its judges, resort by national leaders to extra-judicial killings conducted by intelligence agency death squads is emblematic of the West’s glorification of war and ruinous reversion to militarism─autocratic, cruel, and savage.  Rigidly ultranationalistic Israel, more an army and an espionage agency with a country than a country with an army and an espionage agency, clearly intends to be the West’s model and instructor in this regard.

A feature article by Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman published in the Washington Post on March 4 quoted Jonna Mendez, who worked for the CIA for 27 years and became the agency’s chief of disguise.  Mendez “believes the Dubai perpetrators took the fallout into account, all of it: the TV footage, the blown aliases and the head shots. The agents, she said, clearly knew they were under surveillance─they had simply decided it was unavoidable and a price worth paying.

“‘You can be sure they knew they were being surveilled. Likewise, they would assume that the documents they were using would be made available after the fact,’ said Mendez. ‘What does this mean? It means it didn’t matter. The faces and the documents that were captured by the cameras will probably never be seen again.’

“The fact that the perpetrators had to take the identities of real people rather than simply invent false identities is a symptom of the new world facing modern-day spies, one of databases and traceable passport information, she said.

“The real agents likely don’t resemble the faces in the photos, she said … And if they do, plastic surgery, dental implants and hair grafts can ensure they are unrecognizable afterward.

“‘Steal the identity, disguise the participants, be ready on the other side with another set of identities and documents, and embrace and conceal the protagonists on their return,’ she said.

“‘With that goal in mind this may, in fact, be the operation of the future,’” wrote Friedman.

Thinking Americans have an increasingly clear choice. 

They can join the cult of redemptive violence, kneel before a Zionist tribal God of vengeance, and watch their country and its culture revert to the law of nature as militarism runs amok and Israeli spies and assassins, protected by corrupt and co-opted political leaders, roam America at will. 

Or they can embrace and actively support not the savagery of assassins but the rule of law.  They can cultivate the wisdom, insight, and foresight that are indispensable to the endurance of nations.  They can persevere in their efforts to elect honest, wise, and progressive leaders.  And they can continue to strive to live up and into the noblest ideals of their religions.

Lieberman holds the 60th vote Senate Democrats need to pass a health care bill. Last week, Democrats reached a compromise that would allow 55- to 64-year-old Americans to buy into Medicare while excluding the public option that is seen as essential to reform by many Democrats. On Sunday, Lieberman informed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he would block any bill that included a buy-in.

Speculation about Lieberman’s motives has focused on his connections to the insurance industry in Connecticut, home to 72 insurance companies with more than 65,000 employees, the highest concentration of insurance industry jobs in the U.S., and an annual payroll of more than $6 billion in 2007, according to report by Janet Kaminski, an attorney with the Connecticut General Assembly.

Writing for Harper’s Magazine, Scott Horton noted in late October that, “When he was seeking reelection in 2006, Joe Lieberman campaigned as a supporter of healthcare reform and expressed his support for ‘universal healthcare.’ When the rubber hit the road, however, Lieberman emerged as a frontline warrior for the healthcare industry in its efforts to block reform. Yesterday, he not only noted his opposition to the very modest public option contained in the legislation that Majority Leader Harry Reid put forward, he also stated that he would cross the aisles to support a Republican filibuster. Should we be surprised? No. Lieberman has long been one of the industry’s favorite players on the hill, accepting more than $1 million in campaign contributions from the insurance industry and more than $600,000 from pharmaceuticals and related healthcare-products companies. But his ties run deeper than that. His wife Hadassah previously worked for two lobbying firms, Hill & Knowlton and APCO, handling matters for their healthcare and pharmaceuticals clients. Throughout the 2006 campaign, Lieberman pointedly refused to discuss the scope of his wife’s engagement for the healthcare industry or even the specific clients for whom she was working.”

Marc Ambinder, writing for The Atlantic on December 14, suggested an element of revenge at work in Lieberman’s political calculations.

“What Lieberman is actually trying to do — and surely, the Democratic leadership has discovered this by now — is to kill or weaken the bill. Since, really, 2006, Lieberman has felt alienated from his caucus, and he’s grown more conservative. He does not care about liberals, who tried to drum him out of office in 2006; he seems to enjoy poking them in the eye. He’s not likely to run for office again, so he’s not terribly worried about loud protests. His contempt for liberals coincides with his new conservative friends, aides, colleagues, donors,” wrote Ambinder.

Writing for Think Progress on December 14, Matthew Yglesias noted that, “Lieberman wants no public option, no trigger that might create a public option, and no expansion of existing programs as a substitute for a public option. And he doesn’t care about expressing that view in misleading ways, timed to cause embarrassment to the Democratic leadership. And, frankly, unlike some other troublesome Democratic Senators one can hardly be all that surprised that he’s making problems for the Obama administration’s #1 domestic priority. After all, Lieberman took the view that John McCain would be the better President. … The leverage that Lieberman and other ‘centrists’ have obtained on this issue (and on climate change) stems from a demonstrated willingness to embrace sociopathic indifference to the human cost of their actions.

One seasoned observer of Washington politics argues that another factor influenced Lieberman’s desire to weaken or kill any health care insurance reform legislation. Consortium News founder Robert Parry pointed out on December 15 that, though many are questioning Lieberman’s motives, “no one is mentioning the unmentionable, the cause that has come to define Lieberman’s career: Israel.”

“Is it possible that Lieberman’s obstructionist behavior doesn’t relate to Connecticut’s insurance industry or to his political ego – the two most cited explanations – but rather to a calculation that he can use his leverage on health care to limit the pressure that President Barack Obama can put on Israel to make concessions on a Mideast peace plan?” asked Parry, who proceeded to point out the flaws in the more common explanations of Lieberman’s actions.

“While it is true that Lieberman’s constituent Hartford-based insurance companies fear any government intrusion in their industry, the actual proposals for the Medicare buy-in or the tightly constrained “public option” actually would benefit the industry in the near term.

“Those uninsured Americans 55 to 64 are customers whom the insurance industry doesn’t want. They are the part of the uninsured population that is most likely to need medical care, which is why private insurers have driven up the rates so high that these people can’t afford to buy health insurance.

“Letting these desperate Americans buy into Medicare wouldn’t cost the health insurance industry much of anything – and it would reduce the moral (and PR) crisis that has led so many Americans to view private insurers as vultures preying on the most vulnerable.

“In his past position in favor of the Medicare buy-in, Lieberman has recognized this reality, noting that this over-55 group faces a particular crisis because they have ‘retired early or unfortunately have been laid off early’ and can’t afford health insurance.

“Though Lieberman has long been a major recipient of health insurance industry backing, that has never before prevented him from favoring this Medicare buy-in. Only now does Lieberman say that he would join a Republican filibuster to kill the entire bill if his earlier proposal is included,” wrote Parry.

Parry also questioned Lieberman’s obdurate opposition to a triggered or a tightly-constrained public option noting that, “The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that only about six million people would sign up for the House version of the public option … The current Senate version, with a state-by-state opt-out provision, would draw even fewer customers, the CBO said.

“Yet either version actually helps the health insurance industry by siphoning off sick people and thus allowing the industry to corner the market on healthier customers, where the biggest profits lie.

“So, Lieberman may not be serving the industry’s best interests by jeopardizing passage of a health reform bill. Not only does the industry stand to pick up tens of millions of new customers who will be compelled to buy insurance – and sometimes with government subsidies – but a decent reform bill also blunts demands for more radical changes,” wrote Parry.

Pointing to Israel as, “Lieberman’s most treasured priority in his political life,” Parry quoted Mark Vogel, chairman of the pro-Israel National Action Committee: “Joe Lieberman, without exception, no conditions … is the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress. There is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman.”

Parry notes that Lieberman’s aggressive support for military action against Israel’s enemies and his adoption of the neoconservative ideology caused Connecticut Democrats to deny him the Senate nomination in 2006 and forced him to run as an Independent.

“Partly because Obama opposed the Iraq War, Lieberman went on the stump for Republican John McCain in 2008, even questioning Obama’s patriotism.

“Standing with McCain in August 2008, Lieberman called the election a choice ‘between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not.’

“Since the start of Obama’s presidency, Israel’s hawkish Likud government has made no secret of its concern that Obama might pressure it into making territorial and other concessions to the Palestinians and Syria to secure a Mideast peace agreement.

“In Washington, the still-influential neocons also have been demanding that Obama continue Bush’s belligerent policies and side with Israel in a hard-line approach to Iran.

“In that sense, Lieberman and the neocons have much in common with Republicans, such as Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, who declared in July that ‘If we’re able to stop Obama on this [health reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.’

“A broken Obama could be easier to manipulate regarding Mideast peace talks and Iran,” wrote Parry, who proceeded to make the case that whatever hurts Obama strengthens Israel’s hand.

“If Lieberman succeeds in sinking Obama’s chief domestic priority – health care reform – or waters it down so much that it alienates Obama from his liberal base, Obama may find himself essentially the captive of the neocons, needing their blessing to maintain any political viability in Washington.

“Lieberman has been careful not to connect his disruptive behavior on health-care reform to his support for Israel, but there can be little doubt that a chastened Obama, either defeated on health care or forced to sign a bill that liberals will view as a betrayal, will have much less political capital to expend in applying pressure on Israel.

“A hobbled Obama won’t be able to push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt expansion of West Bank settlements or to take other steps that might lead to a Palestinian state. Obama also could be pushed around himself if Israel – itself an undeclared nuclear power – decides to launch airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“The Israel explanation for Lieberman’s behavior on health-care reform is the one that seems to make the most sense,” concluded Parry.

Missing in all of these analyses is another important aspect of Lieberman’s political clout, his connections to the defense industry.

Connecticut is home to General Electric, United Technologies, Ensign Bickford, Electric Boat, Colt, and other defense industry heavyweights. If Lieberman is the Senator from Aetna and the Senator from Israel, he is also the Senator from War, Inc.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been widely reported to be sinkholes of wanton waste, fraud, and abuse. A Congressional Research Service document dated June 24, 2009 and titled “Defense Logistical Support Contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan: Issues for Congress,” reported that, “Recent assessments from GAO [Government Accountability Office], DOD [Department of Defense]’s IG [Inspector General], and the SIGIR [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction] reveal a lack of Federal oversight, management, and accountability for funds spent in Iraq contracting. According to Charles Williams, Director, Defense Contract Management Agency, there are vacancies for more than 600 oversight positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. An audit conducted by the DOD IG revealed that the Federal government failed to substantiate the disbursement of at least $7.8 billion of $8.2 billion spent for goods and services in Iraq. In a May 22, 2008 congressional hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, DOD officials revealed estimates that the Army disbursed $1.4 billion in commercial payments that lacked the minimum supporting justification and documentation for a valid payment – such as certified vouchers and invoices. In one reported instance, a payment of $325 million was made without justification beyond a signature.”

Lieberman, as Chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (SCHSGA), is well placed to agitate for wider war and to threaten Iran and Israel’s other enemies, as he often does, occasionally while speaking to reporters in Groton, CT, after meetings there with officials at Electric Boat, a division of General Dynamics that builds and refits the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered and -armed submarines. Apparently Lieberman places a higher priority on his dual role as a promoter of war and Israel’s enforcer than on his responsibilities as a steward of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars.

SCHSGA has jurisdiction over budgetary and accounting measures other than appropriations and is authorized to investigate the operations of all branches of the Government including the possible existence of fraud, misfeasance, malfeasance, collusion, mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, or unethical practices, waste, extravagance, conflicts of interest, and the improper expenditure of Government funds. Or not – as under Lieberman’s chairmanship. Lieberman, who made sure there was no serious Senate investigation of Enron’s trading of energy derivatives, Lieberman, who declined look at the Bush administration’s criminal incompetence and malfeasance in responding to Hurricane Katrina, Lieberman, who has shown no real interest in examining the failure of Federal regulators to prevent the crimes and abuses that led directly to the collapse of the financial services industry and the most severe recession since the Great Depression, has also given major defense contractors, including PMCs (private military company) such as Blackwater, a free pass on corruption and other criminal activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Israel has a long history of and a well-deserved reputation for espionage and corruption, both of which are rampant in the defense industry. The Dotan case is illustrative.

In 1992, General Electric pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati to four Federal criminal fraud charges involving the illegal sale of jet engines to Israel, while in Israel, former Israeli Brigadier General Rami Dotan was convicted of diverting tens of millions of U.S. military aid dollars from a General Electric contract to unauthorized Israeli military projects and to secret Swiss bank accounts set up by an Israeli intelligence operative. Dotan was sentenced to 13 years in an Israeli military prison.

“American investigators suspect Dotan’s actions were part of a scheme to launder U.S. aid money for use in clandestine Israeli intelligence operations, and were in fact approved at the highest levels of the Israeli government. … General Electric … was fined $69 million for its part in the thefts. Herbert Steindler, a resident of Israel and the GE official in charge of contracting with Israel, was discharged from the company. Several other GE employees were disciplined.

“However, no criminal charges have been placed against the GE employees involved, nor have any public announcements yet been made of investigations of other companies and individuals believed to have been involved in similar diversions of U.S. military aid funds under other contracts entered into by the government of Israel,” wrote Frank Collins in the December/January 1992/1993 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. The report noted that U.S. investigations were underway as a result of alleged similar misconduct at Pratt and Whitney, General Motors and Teledyne.

“When the diversions of U.S. taxpayer funds to unauthorized Israeli military programs and to secret Swiss bank accounts by Dotan and Steindler were revealed, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Defense made some half-hearted efforts to investigate but were rebuffed by the Israeli government on the pretext that, because Israeli security was involved, Israeli law forbade access by U.S. investigators to Israeli government personnel, regardless of the terms of the U.S. government-funded contract.

“Under prodding by Congressman John Dingell [then chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee of Commerce and Energy, which he also headed], who threatened to shut down the entire military aid agreement until Israel complied with its terms, U.S. investigators insisted upon interviewing Dotan – now demoted from general to private and serving his sentence in an Israeli military jail – and Harold Katz. Katz, who holds U.S. and Israeli citizenship, is an Israeli intelligence official who was implicated in the case of U.S. Navy counter-intelligence specialist Jonathan Jay Pollard, convicted of espionage against the U.S. on behalf of Israel. Now Katz is believed to have masterminded the transfer of funds siphoned from GE contracts through U.S. dummy corporations to a number of Swiss banks, presumably for clandestine Israeli intelligence purposes in Europe or the U.S.,” wrote Collins.

“In late September, the government of Israel announced that it would allow U.S. questioning of Dotan. However, the questioning of the American citizen Harold Katz, resident in Israel, was not mentioned. The procedures proposed by Israel for the interrogation of Dotan were agreed upon by the U.S. government and made public in Washington. They lead to the suspicion that the questioning will be a travesty of judicial procedures, and is designed to close rather than break open the case, which has the potential to reveal more intelligence operations in the U. S. or Western Europe comparable to the Pollard case.

“Journalists have discovered that after Dotan pled guilty and was sentenced for diverting the U.S. funds, a whole new prison wing was built to accommodate him and he was permitted to choose a prison mate. He chose a man who is serving three months for the murder of several Palestinians. While the Israeli authorities are allowing Dotan’s family liberal access to his prison quarters, they are denying any direct access to the U.S. investigators,” wrote Collins.

Many long time observers of Washington politics and U.S. Middle East foreign policy find it impossible to imagine that Sen. Lieberman would initiate any investigation that might reflect negatively upon Israel or threaten that country’s interests as he perceives them.

Meanwhile, though the government of Israel has long provided universal health care for all its citizens, the Senator from Israel is doing his utmost to block health care insurance reform in this country and undermine President Obama’s efforts to halt the further expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land and bring Israeli leaders to the negotiating table – and peace to the Middle East – at last.

Huckabee’s effort to effectively release the negative ad while announcing his decision not to release it brought guffaws of laughter from the reporters assembled for the press conference. But no one was laughing over at the ordained Southern Baptist minister’s campaign headquarters a few blocks away where Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) and Occupation Campaign activists walked into Huckabee’s Iowa headquarters and unfurled a banner emblazoned with the question “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

Stunned staffers fingered their cell phones in an effort to reach their supervisors, most of whom were at the press conference with Huckabee. Soon, staffers began demanding that the activists, Robert Braam of Manhattan, IL, Kathy Kelly, of Chicago, IL; and Mona Shaw of Iowa City, IA, leave the office immediately. The activists politely declined and began singing “Auld Lang Syne” in remembrance of Iraq war dead. They also read from a list of the names of the dead, chanting “We remember you,” after each name. And they engaged staffers with the question, “Who would Jesus bomb?” imploring Huckabee to sign a pledge to completely withdraw from Iraq within 100 days of assuming office; halt all military actions against Iraq and Iran; and fund the rebuilding of Iraq as well as health, education and infrastructure needs in the U.S. and “the highest quality health care, education and jobs training benefits for veterans of our country’s Armed Services.”

A private security guard reiterated the Huckabee staffers’ demands that the activists leave, and again they politely refused. Moments later, a senior Huckabee staffer arrived and gave the order to call police officers to remove the protesters. The staffer, a tall man, said he was authorized to speak for the campaign but he declined to do so or to give his name. The staffer then advanced on Braam and attempted to intimidate him verbally. When his words failed to have the desired effect, the staffer went nose to nose with Braam and jostled him in an apparent attempt to physically intimidate or provoke the activist. Braam calmly backed away, asking the Huckabee staffer, “Are you pushing me?”

“Prior to the event we have in-depth discussions about nonviolence,” Braam said later. “We are fully prepared.”

Outside in the sub-freezing cold six activists, Razia Ahmed, Catholic Worker Community leader Frank Cordaro, Elton Davis, Lee Lewis, Catholic Peace Ministry executive director Brian Terrell, and John Tuzcu, acted in support of their colleagues who were risking arrest inside. While Tuzcu video taped the event for later posting on YouTube, others held a banner proclaiming, “End the Iraq War/No War with Iran” and spoke with members of the press and with passersby. Lee Lewis held aloft a placard bearing the question, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

The activists received unexpected support from a group of Ron Paul volunteers, college students who came to Iowa at the campaign’s expense for something called “Ron Paul’s Christmas Vacation.” The Paul campaign volunteers trooped out of Paul’s Iowa campaign headquarters, which is located in the same building as Huckabee’s. The groups met and mingled with a large contingent of print reporters, photojournalists, and broadcast media personnel from local, national, and international news organizations who arrived at Huckabee’s headquarters for a scheduled event.

As Des Moines Police Department officers arrived and prepared to arrest the activists, their supporters, along with some 35 or 40 reporters and media personnel and the group of Paul campaign volunteers, milled about on the sidewalk and in the street. At one point, the activists and the group of Paul volunteers chanted antiwar slogans responsively.

When Huckabee’s bus arrived, his campaign headquarters entrance was effectively blocked forcing Huckabee to sit in his idling bus as Cordaro, a former Catholic priest who left the priesthood in 2003, shouted question after question at the ordained Southern Baptist minister to the delight of the crowd of activists, reporters, Paul campaign volunteers, and a growing number of curious onlookers.

“We’re here to ask the governor, ‘Who would Jesus bomb?’” shouted Cordaro.

“What kind of Christianity does he back? The Jesus of ‘love your enemy,’ the Jesus of the Beatitudes, or the USA-stamped-Jesus, the Jesus of empire?” shouted Cordaro.

After about 20 minutes, the bus pulled away with Huckabee still on board. Huckabee’s schedule was delayed for about an hour.

Arrested for trespassing, Braam, Kelly, and Shaw were escorted by officers through a cheering crowd to a waiting paddy wagon and transported to Des Moines Police Headquarters where they were issued citations and promptly released.

The contrast between the belligerent attitude Huckabee’s senior staffer in charge inside the campaign headquarters and the calm, quiet professionalism of the arresting officers was remarkable.

“They were very gentle with us,” Kelly said in the foyer of the Des Moines Police Department headquarters after she and her colleagues had been released. She noted that the arresting officers had not found it necessary to handcuff the arrestees.

“One commented that the Auld Lang Syne song verses that we were singing always got to him,” said Kelly. “It was almost genteel.”

In a news release issued by the Des Moines Catholic Worker Community, Kelly, co-director of VCNV, was quoted as saying, “We’re very respectful of the Iowa Caucus process and the long history behind it, but we feel quite strongly that the issues of this war must be inserted into the process of narrowing down the candidates for the presidential election.”

Albright has since characterized that comment, but not the Iraq sanctions policy itself, as “one of the worst mistakes I ever made.” In 2003, with the assistance of a collaborator, Bill Woodward, Albright wrote a memoir, Madam Secretary. In 2006, she followed that with another book, described as an amplification of her earlier work, also written with Woodward’s help, focusing on religion, foreign policy, and statecraft.

Albright was in Ames on September 14, speaking in the Memorial Union’s Sun Room at Iowa State University, following speaking engagements on Hillary Clinton’s behalf in Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Grinnell, and West Des Moines. The Independent Monitor caught up with Albright in Ames, where the subject of her presentation was “Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs,” which is the subtitle of her 2006 book, The Mighty and the Almighty.

The Independent Monitor: Welcome to Iowa, Madam Secretary. … I know you get a lot of political questions, obviously, and I thought I would ask a philosophical question. In your 2006 book, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs, you argue that the successful practice of statecraft requires understanding foreign countries and cultures and you say, “that cannot be done without taking religious tenets and motivations fully into account.” This is a new perspective in foreign affairs and statecraft.

Some religionists teach that God establishes a mercy credit of lavish proportions and sufficient grace to insure the survival of every rational creature who sincerely desires eternal life. And on the secular side, Shakespeare wrote that, “the quality of mercy is not strained.”

So, my question is, Do you believe that genocidaires strain the quality of mercy? Or exhaust their mercy credit? Or, put more simply, in terms of your book: Does the Almighty have mercy on the mighty who seem to have none?

At that point, as the questions sank in, a ripple of laughter spread through the audience, which numbered about 300. To this reporter, the questions seemed fair enough. After all, Albright did not challenge the number of children killed by the policy she defended when Stahl put the question to her in 1996. In 1998, when Albright was serving as Clinton’s Secretary of State, after an authoritative UNICEF report confirmed that the sanctions had caused the “excess” deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, Albright’s State Department issued a report which sought to place the blame for the deaths on Saddam Hussein.

Not one but two United Nations officials responsible for the U.N. humanitarian aid program in Iraq during the sanctions regime resigned in protest, both citing their terrible human cost. Dennis Halliday was U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq for 13 months during 1997 and 1998. Halliday, whose career in the United Nations spanned 34 years, characterized the sanction as “a totally bankrupt concept” that violated the U.N. Charter and U.N. conventions on human rights. Halliday said he “could not continue to take part in a policy that was deliberately causing grave and widespread suffering throughout Iraq, while failing to address the root causes of the humanitarian crisis.”

According to journalist Michael Jansen, writing in The Daily Star (Lebanon) in 2000, Halliday also said he believed there were some in Washington who wanted to bring sanctions to an end. “These people, he said, have come to realize that the US, and specifically the Clinton administration, could ‘be blamed for crimes against humanity, including possibly genocide’ because of the sanctions,” wrote Jansen.

From 1998 to 2000, Hans von Sponeck held the post from which Halliday had resigned. When von Sponeck resigned in protest after 15 months, he said, “As a U.N. official, I should not be expected to be silent to that which I recognise as a true human tragedy that needs to be ended.”

“How long should the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, be exposed to such punishment for something that they have never done?” asked von Sponeck.

Days after von Sponeck’s resignation, Jutta Burghardt, head of the U.N. World Food Program in Baghdad, offered her resignation in protest of the economic sanctions against Iraq and their effects on innocent civilians.

In February 2000, seventy members of the U.S. Congress, who had earlier signed a letter urging President Clinton “to do what is right: lift the sanctions,” held a joint press conference with Arab-American groups in Washington. The group’s spokesperson, David Bonior, House Democratic Whip who represented Michigan’s 12th Congressional district, described the sanctions as “infanticide masquerading as policy.” Bonior added, “Our message is simple. We’re saying millions of children are suffering and we refuse to close our eyes to the slaughter of innocents.”

The Iraq sanctions regime was established during the administration of the first President Bush, but if Madeline Albright was its staunchest and most visible supporter during the Clinton administration, she was not the only Clinton administration figure to defend the sanctions policy. As recently as September 22, 2005, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, now a presidential candidate, defended the Iraq sanctions when questioned by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

Amy Goodman: … “many say that, although President Bush led this invasion, that president Clinton laid the groundwork with the sanctions and with the previous bombing of Iraq. You were President Clinton’s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. … the U.N. sanctions, for example … led to the deaths of more than a half a million children, not to mention more than a million Iraqis.”

Governor Richardson: “Well, I stand behind the sanctions. I believe that they successfully contained Saddam Hussein. I believe that the sanctions were an instrument of our policy.”

Amy Goodman: “To ask a question that was asked of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright, do you think the price was worth it, 500,000 children dead?”

Governor Richardson: “Well, I believe our policy was correct, yes.”

Libertarian journalist and author James Brovard reported in 2004 that, “One major reason for the animosity to U.S. troops is the lingering impact and bitter memories of the U.N. sanctions imposed on the Iraqis for 13 years, largely at the behest of the U.S. government. It is impossible to understand the current situation in Iraq without examining the sanctions and their toll.

“President Bush, in the months before attacking Iraq, portrayed the sufferings and deprivation of the Iraqi people as resulting from the evil of Saddam Hussein. Bush’s comments were intended as an antidote to the charge by Osama bin Laden a month after 9/11 that ‘a million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt.’ Bin Laden listed the economic sanctions against Iraq as one of the three main reasons for his holy war against the United States,” wrote Brovard.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) cited Rahul Mahajan in Extra! in late 2001: “Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It’s also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01).

“But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote─in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale─a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one’s political ends─does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media,” wrote Mahajan.

Albright seems to be keenly aware that her support of the Iraq sanctions regime, an instrument of U.S. policy that killed hundreds of thousands and perhaps more 1.5 million innocent Iraqis, goes to the heart of the charge of American exceptionalism. During her prepared remarks prior to the Q&A at Iowa State University last Friday, Albright unsuccessfully attempted to defuse that issue. Employing language crafted to both affirm and qualify American exceptionalism, Albright seemed to want to have it both ways.

“We are an exceptional country. I believe that. But we cannot ask that exceptions be made for us. We are the ones that have set a lot of the international norms, and therefore we have to obey them ourselves,” said Albright, conveniently neglecting to mention the Iraq sanctions regime or her own singularly important and active role in support of the sanctions during the Clinton administration.

Let’s look at Albright’s answer to The Independent Monitor’s questions: “Do you believe that genocideaires strain the quality of mercy? Or exhaust their mercy credit? Or, put more simply, in terms of your book: Does the Almighty have mercy on the mighty who seem to have none?”

Albright: “… I think that it is important for people to understand the motivation of religion, and we could talk more about that, but to answer your question, I think that we cannot possibly exist in a world where people think that God’s commandment is, ‘Thou shalt kill.’ And therefore, those who kill for no other reason except to satisfy some primeval urge, I think God’s mercy runs out on─that’s my own personal opinion.

“I think the hardest part is to understand what it is that is motivating some people to think that when they kill they are doing it on God’s behalf. And to then, also, stereotype a whole religion as a result of the actions of some people. And the tragedy is that all three of the great Abrahamic religions have extremists in them, who are using the language of their Holy books to justify killing when in fact God’s commandment is ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

Albright might be commended for pointing out that all three Abrahamic faiths include extremists who justify murder by citing the language of their Holy books. She might be commended as well for noting that it is wrong to stereotype a whole religion on the basis of the acts of a few extremists, a reference, apparently, to attempts by some in the West to equate Islam with fascism and terrorism. But one can only wonder why she thinks “the hardest part is to understand what it is that is motivating some people to think that when they kill they are doing it on God’s behalf.” It is, after all, common knowledge that Old Testament writings considered Holy by both Christians and Jews contain numerous passages with explicit language attributing to God acts of mass murder, which today we refer to as genocide, as well as commandments supposedly issued by God to his followers to commit mass murder.

According to author Walter Wink, Biblical scholar Raymond Schwager, “… has found 600 passages of explicit violence in the Hebrew Bible [the Old Testament], 1000 verses where God’s own violent actions of punishment are described, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people, and several stories where God irrationally kills or tries to kill for no apparent reason. Violence … is easily the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible,” wrote Wink. Could it be that the reason Zionists so often use the argument that “The only language the Arabs understand is the language of force,” is that force is Christian and Jewish political Zionism’s language of choice?

Albright must also be aware that Jewish and Christian fundamentalists and conservatives generally believe that the authors of the Bible were inspired by God and that their writings are perfect, without error. Inerrantists believe that the genocides occurred exactly as described in the Bible, and some apparently view Biblical commands to commit mass murder as being valid today, just as the authors of these ancient texts believed them valid when they wrote them. And surely Albright knows, as the Ontario Conference on Religious Tolerance points out, that the Book of Revelation in the Christian New Testament, “interpreted literally, predicts that a massive genocide will occur at some time in our future, in association with the war of Armageddon and the end of the world as we know it.”

Somehow, Jesus’s teachings about the ethic of reciprocity seem to have been lost in the theological and ideological shuffle.

Albright’s answer also fails to take into account that, in the modern era, genocidaires have often killed for reasons of policy, or have, at any rate, ascribed their forays into mass murder to reasons other than “some primeval urge.” Nor, unsurprisingly, does her response take into account sanctions policies that for the most part kill silently, not with bullets or bombs, but by preventing access, for instance, to chemicals for purifying drinking water and certain medicines and medical equipment, as did the Iraq sanctions, and by limiting the amount of food that could be purchased from abroad, as did the Iraq sanctions. Thus, it would seem that Madam Secretary’s answer was substantially disingenuous.

Albright may wish to clarify her thoughts about the relationship between the “primeval urge” to kill, about which she spoke in Ames, and commandments to commit mass murder attributed to God in the Holy books of Christians and Jews. In the meantime, given Albright’s high-profile role as a champion of one of the deadlier examples of American exceptionalism as policy run amok in the Middle East─a policy that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi children even before George W. Bush unleashed the current war, a policy that many say set the stage for the current debacle─perhaps informed and thoughtful observers can be forgiven questioning the Clinton campaign’s choice of Albright as a surrogate and an authority on the topic of religion and foreign policy for a campaign that features the motto, “Ready for Change.”

Unless, of course, rather than merely admitting that her earlier comments about that policy were incorrect, Madam Secretary is now prepared to say publicly what the world has long known, that the Iraq sanctions were a profoundly flawed and unconscionable policy, the disastrous consequences of which continue to reveberate today. Were the Clinton campaign serious about changing the destructive dynamics of U.S. Middle East foreign policy, that would be a good way to begin.