Israel Lobby

More on Dual Loyalty — Dr. Lani Kass and Gen. Norton Schwartz

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Dual loyalty issues have once again arisen, this time in conjunction with Philip Giraldi’s astonishing essay on antiwar.com. Giraldi discusses the curious career of Dr. Lani Kass — formerly a senior military officer in the Israeli Defense Force, and now the  senior Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Norton A. Schwartz. “Kass appears to have close and continuing ties to her country of birth, frequently spicing her public statements with comments about life in Israel while parroting simplistic views of the nature of the Islamic threat that might have been scripted in Tel Aviv’s Foreign Ministry.”

Giraldi notes that her appointment raises a host of issues, including the possibility that she is an Israeli spy and exactly how she managed to get security clearance. Given that the official policy of the Israeli government is to advocate a war with Iran, it is more than interesting that she has an important influence on US policy and that she is involved in Project CHECKMATE responsible for drawing up war plans. She is quoted as having what Giraldi characterizes as a “dismissive” comment on a possible war with Iran, and has the views on the Islamic threat usually associated with neocons.

The role of Kass in the Defense Department is at least as questionable as the role of Dennis Ross in the State Department. In fact, it would seem to be an even more clear-cut case because Kass was actually born and raised in Israel and rose to the rank of major in the IDF. Although she is a naturalized US citizen, she has doubtless retained her Israeli citizenship. It would more than a bit surprising if she did not retain an allegiance to Israel. And is there any evidence at all that she has allegiance to the US? When asked about possible war with Iran, she responded, “We can defeat Iran, but are Americans willing to pay the price?” — as if she is not an American.

By Stephen Walt’s criteria, therefore, Kass should not have any policy-making role on any issue that relates to Israel. A more difficult case is that of her boss, Gen. Norton Schwartz. Schwartz is also Jewish, although does not have the close ties to Jewish activist organizations like Ross or the strong connections to Israel like Kass. As reported in the Forward,

Schwartz’s Jewish identity did not go unnoticed after his appointment, particularly given the current military tensions with Iran. Press TV, an Iranian English language media outlet, wrote an article last week, titled “U.S. Names Jewish [sic — presumably an intentionally awkward translation] as Air Force Chief.”

There have long been rumors that Schwartz’s predecessor, Michael Moseley, was opposed to a military attack on Iran. The appointment of Schwartz has prompted speculation in the Iranian press and on some blogs that the Bush administration is yet again seriously considering the military option to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Unlike the vast majority of Americans, the Iranians assume that Schwartz’s ethnic identity would make a difference, and I must agree that it should raise red flags. The vast majority of American Jews have a very strong emotional commitment to Israel that may bias their judgment even if they are not consciously aware of their biases.

As I noted elsewhere,

In my ideal world, Jonah Goldberg’s op-eds and Paul Wolfowitz’s advice to presidents and defense secretaries should be accompanied by a disclaimer: “You should be cautious in following my advice or even believing what I say about Israel. Deception and manipulation are very common tactics in ethnic conflict, so that my pose as an American patriot should be taken with a grain of salt. And even if I am entirely sincere in what I say, the fact is that I have a deep psychological and ethnic commitment to Israel and Judaism. Psychologists have shown that this sort of deep commitment is likely to bias my perceptions of any policy that could possibly affect Israel even though I am not aware of it.”

We would certainly like to know the details of Schwartz’s ties with Jewish organizations and activist groups, as well as any ties that he has with Israel. (For example, Paul Wolfowitz has family members living in Israel.) The fact that Schwartz has hired Kass as his senior Special Assistant suggests that the taboo against discussing Jewish loyalty issues is so strong that they feel free to be entirely public about it. (There might be some sensitivity, however, since the Pentagon has removed Kass’s biography from its website.)

Nevertheless, a war with Iran would be very costly for the US and may well have huge long term implications for the region and the world. Surely if the government wanted to project the image that US policy was not being shaped by people with a strong personal ethnic attachment to Israel (as clearly happened in the war with Iraq), they would remove people like Ross, Kass, and Schwartz from any role in making policy.

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Robert Satloff and the Jewish Culture of Deceit

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Stephen Walt had the audacity to suggest, given Dennis Ross’s close ties to WINEP, that Ross should not have a policy-making position on Middle East issues in the Obama Administration. Neocon Robert Satloff responded with outrage, claiming that Ross has been doing nothing but promoting “U.S. interests in peace and security for the past quarter-century.” And he disingenuously asks, “To which country do we allegedly have a ‘strong attachment’?  Our foreign-born scholars hail from virtually every country in the Middle East — Turkey, Iran, Israel, and at least a dozen different Arab countries.”

The best response is by MJ Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, an organization that advocates a two-state solution to the conflict:

Steve Rosen [who was acquited on charges of spying for Israel in 2009] … cleverly came up with the idea for an AIPAC controlled think-tank that would put forth the AIPAC line but in a way that would disguise its connections.

There was no question that WINEP was to be AIPAC’s cutout. It was funded by AIPAC donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located one door away, down the hall, from AIPAC Headquarters (no more. It has its own digs). It would also hire all kinds of people not identified with Israel as a cover and would encourage them to write whatever they liked on matters not related to Israel. “Say what you want on Morocco, kid.” But on Israel, never deviate more than a degree or two.

In other words, Satloff’s claims that WINEP is not tied to any particular lobby or country are part of an ongoing subterfuge that fools no one except the mainstream media: “It matters because the media has totally fallen for this sleight of hand and WINEP spokespersons appear (especially on PBS) as if WINEP was not part of the Israel lobby. Some truth-in-labeling is warranted.”

This sort of subterfuge is central to Jewish efforts at influencing policy in a wide range of areas. Because they are a small minority in the US and other Western societies, Jews must recruit support from the wider community. Their positions cannot be phrased as benefiting Jews, but as benefiting the interests of the society as a whole. As a result, these movements cannot tell their name.

A great example is the $PLC, an organization that we now know is funded by Jews and, apart from the sociopathic Morris Dees, is also largely staffed by Jews. Yet whenever there is a story about “immigrant rights” or angry White people, the SPLC is called on by the mainstream media as a “respected civil rights organization” rather than for what it is: A Jewish activist organization actively attempting to further the ethnic  interests of Jews, typically at the expense of White Americans.

This sort of subterfuge was true of all the Jewish intellectual and political movements discussed in The Culture of Critique. As I noted in Ch. 6:

It is thus not surprising that although these theories were directed at achieving specific Jewish interests in the manipulation of culture, they “could not tell their name”; that is, they were forced to minimize any overt indication that Jewish group identity or that Jewish group interests were involved …. Because of the need for invisibility, the theories and movements discussed here were forced to deemphasize Judaism as a social category—a form of crypsis discussed extensively in SAID (Ch. 6) as a common Jewish technique in combating anti-Semitism. In the case of the Frankfurt School, “What strikes the current observer is the intensity with which many of the Institute’s members denied, and in some cases still deny, any meaning at all to their Jewish identities” (Jay 1973, 32). The originators and practitioners of these theories attempted to conceal their Jewish identities, as in the case of Freud, and to engage in massive self-deception, as appears to have been common among many Jewish political radicals. Recall the Jewish radicals who believed in their own invisibility as Jews while nevertheless appearing as the quintessential ethnics to outside observers and at the same time taking steps to ensure that [non-Jews] would have highly visible positions in the movement (pp. 91–93). The technique of having non-Jews] as highly visible exemplars of Jewish-dominated movements has been commonly used by Jewish groups attempting to appeal to gentiles on a wide range of Jewish issues (SAID, Ch. 6) and is apparent in the discussion of Jewish involvement in influencing immigration policy. …  [Chap. 7]: Beginning in the late nineteenth century, anti-restrictionist arguments [on immigration]  developed by Jews were typically couched in terms of universalist humanitarian ideals; as part of this universalizing effort, [non-Jews] from old-line Protestant families were recruited to act as window dressing for their efforts, and Jewish groups such as the AJCommittee funded pro-immigration groups composed of non-Jews (Neuringer 1971, 92).

It’s an old technique, arguably present (see also here)  from the origins of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. The sad thing is that people who should know better continue to be deceived.

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Stephen Walt on Dennis Ross

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Stephen Walt has once again raised the issue of dual loyalty of American Jews — this time in the context of the role of Dennis Ross in shaping Obama Administration policy in the direction of Israel. As I have argued previously, I think that Walt (and Mearsheimer) tend to underestimate the problem of Jewish dual loyalty. It’s often been said of Jews that they are just like everyone else, only more so. In the case of dual loyalty, it’s certainly true that other people have various loyalties, but no other group has had such a passionate attachment to a foreign country. As The Israel Lobby shows, the American Jewish community is galvanized around doing the bidding of a foreign government. Dissent within the Jewish community has been effectively silenced, and the most energized, radical elements of the Jewish community determine the direction of the entire community.

Given all that, it is certainly not surprising that issues of loyalty would be raised. And, because of their status as a wealthy, powerful elite, Jews, far more than other minority groups, have been able to influence American foreign policy in the direction of Israel despite making up less than 3% of the population.

The charge of dual loyalty is an ancient one (reviewed here under the heading “The Theme of Disloyalty”), present in Jewish religious writing. In the Book of Exodus, Pharaoh states, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land” (Exod. 1:9–10).

Walt writes that the accusation of dual loyalty was “a nasty anti-Semitic canard in old Europe.” But, then as now, dual loyalty accusations had much more than a grain of truth. For example, between the mid-19th century and the Bolshevik Revolution, there can be little doubt that the Jewish Diaspora throughout Europe and America opposed the Russian government and often influenced policy in other countries to oppose Russia — often in opposition to the governments of those countries. In 1911, long before Jews attained the level of power in the US that they have now, there was a successful Jewish campaign to abrogate a US trade agreement with Russia aimed at getting Russia to change its policies on Jews in opposition to the views of the Taft Administration.

The similarities to today are striking: AIPAC has rammed through punitive trade restrictions on Iran not because such restrictions benefit the US, but because Iran is seen as threatening Israel. And now there is a major push to get the US to bomb Iran — again promoted by Israel’s friends in the US. (Here’s Bill Kristol stating that it’s better for the US to attack Iran than for Israel to have to do it.)

Walt writes:

Needless to say, in a melting-pot society like the United States, it was inevitable that many Americans would also have strong attachments to other countries. These different attachments may reflect ancestry, religious affiliation, personal experience (such as overseas study), or any number of other sources. The key point, however, is that in the United States it is entirely legitimate to manifest such attachments in political life.  Americans can hold dual citizenship, for example, or form an interest group whose avowed purpose is to shape U.S. policy towards a specific country. This is how the American system of government works, and there is nothing “disloyal” about such conduct.

Dual loyalty issues therefore mesh with America as a multicultural society. Jewish dual loyalties are no different, say, from Mexican dual loyalties. But, whatever its legitimacy in multicultural America, dual loyalties are surely not ideal for the country as a whole because they detract from cohesion and sense of common interest and purpose. Whereas in the past assimilation was the norm (and was easy because the vast majority of immigrants were European ethnically), immigrants now are encouraged to retain their own language and culture, and they are encouraged to retrain powerful ties to their countries of origin.

Historically, this ideology of multiculturalism was the product of Jewish intellectuals (prominently Horace Kallen) designed to legitimize Jewish separateness in America while at the same time legitimizing the continuing ties between American Jews and the rest of the Diaspora. (Kallen, for example, was a strong Zionist and activist on behalf of Jews in Eastern Europe.) In the future we can expect that the US will be increasingly Balkanized as different ethnic and national groups jockey for political power in the US and seek to influence foreign policy in favor of the countries they left behind.

But I have to agree with Walt that even accepting the legitimacy of a multicultural model, people like Dennis Ross should not be allowed to have a voice within the administration. Walt points out that Ross has a long involvement with pro-Israel activist organizations, such as being director of WINEP.

But Ross’s ties to Israel are even deeper than that. Until his appointment as Middle East envoy in the Obama Administration, from 2002–2009 Ross was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. This organization has assumed the role of long term planning for the Jewish people, not only in Israel but also the Diaspora. The JPPPI is an independent think tank that reports to the Israeli government and has close ties with other Jewish organizations. Its mission is “to promote the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry. JPPPI’s work is based on deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state.”

The JPPPI’s report Facing Tomorrow 2008 is interesting because it focuses on the threat of Iran and but also because it sees people like Stephen Walt as a threat to Israel:

The Jewish people must, as the highest priority, develop an appropriate response to the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and to global stability as a whole. While there is no ambiguity about the need to do so in Israel, it is necessary to mobilize Jewish opinion around the world as well. The American Jewish community cannot be intimidated either by a post Iraq syndrome in the United States, or by the false and pernicious allegations of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, or former President Carter.

In other words, Jews around the world are encouraged to mobilize to combat the threat to Israel represented by Iran. The assumption is that Jews have common interests as Jews no matter what country they happen to live in. Dennis Ross is doing his best to promote exactly this view within the Obama administration.

One might think that such a view would leave Jews in the Diaspora open to the charge of disloyalty, but the problem is easily finessed: Jews in the Diaspora are told to frame Israel’s concerns about Iran as a global threat, not simply as a threat to Israel.

Of course, that’s what we are seeing now. But we needn’t be naïve. Jews like Dennis Ross are clearly far more loyal to Israel than to the US. Speaking as a psychologist, they wouldn’t be able to see a conflict of interest between the US and Israel if it was staring them in the face. Indeed, as Gore Vidal said of Norman Podhoretz, they are unregistered agents of a foreign government.

In a sane society, there would be a huge groundswell of public opposition to Ross’s appointment–as there has been for a number of Obama’s appointments. But that won’t happen.

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Review of Podhoretz, Part I

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I have a rather longish review of Norman Podhoretz’s Why are Jews Liberals? posted at AlternativeRight.com. I thought I would post a summary here to encourage commentary. Part I is “Remaking the Right: Liberals, Jews, Conservatives” and deals with how Jews see their history in Europe — the lachrymose view of European history in which Jews have been the victims of irrational hostility ever since the origins of Christianity. The take home point is:  “It’s a very short jump from blaming the culture created and sustained by Europeans to the idea that Europeans as a people or group of peoples are the problem. Ultimately, this implicit sense that Europeans themselves are the problem is the crux of the issue.”

This then feeds into the Jews as a hostile elite theme that is so apparent today. What’s really scary is that the Jewish Republican branch of the hostile elite represents itself as conservative. A conservative elite hostile to the traditional people and culture of the US. Orwell would love it.

The other theme is how neocon Jews like Podhoretz displaced true conservatives from the Republican Party in the interests of aiding Israel. However, they have not shed any of their hostility toward Europeans and their culture. Indeed, they have been complicit in the movement for massive non-White immigration. As I note, “With conservatives like these, who needs liberals? ”

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The Netanyahu-Obama Flap

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Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the US, says that the US-Israel relationship is at its lowest ebb in 35 years. Well, maybe.  But the Israel Lobby is far from dead. Half of Congress turned out at the recent AIPAC convention in Washington, and there were  pledges of eternal support by Hilary Clinton, followed up by a host of politicians. In the conflict between the Obama administration and Netanyahu, the media was solidly lined up on the side of a foreign country.  Indeed, as Philip Giraldi notes, “The Washington Post led the charge, calling on ‘expert’ analysis of the situation from Elliot Abrams, Danielle Pletka, David Makovsky, Aaron David Miller, Daniel Curter, Martin Indyk, and Charles Krauthammer while excoriating the White House with its own lead editorials.”

Dominating the mainstream media definitely has its advantages.

Meanwhile, more than 3/4 of the House of Representatives signed on to a statement asserting “unbreakable bonds” between the US and Israel and ludicrously asserting that “A strong Israel is an asset to the national security of the United States and brings stability to the Middle East.”

We are reassured that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s commitment to put in place new procedures will ensure that such surprises [a municipal Jerusalem announcement on approval of another step towards the construction of 1,600 apartments in a post-1967 Jerusalem neighborhood during U.S. Vice President Biden’s recent visit to Israel], however unintended, will not recur.

In other words, the House is satisfied that Israel will not to make any surprise announcements that coincide with a visit of a US dignitary. But the House does not expect Israel to stop confiscating Palestinian land and building housing for Jews. Business as usual. Don’t ask. Don’t tell.

There is a long history in which Congress is far more susceptible to pressure from the Israel Lobby than the administration. Congress understands that opposition to the lobby means that their opponents will suddenly have a great deal of money donated by Jews who live outside their districts and they will have far less positive media coverage.

On the other hand, American presidents must at least make a show of promoting peace in the region, and that means putting up a credible facade to other countries. All American administrations since Carter have officially opposed the colonization of the West Bank, and this has at times led to well-publicized conflict. For example, in 1992 the first Bush administration attempted to withhold loan guarantees for Israeli housing. It backed down, with Bush famously saying “I’m one lonely little guy” up against “some powerful political forces” made up of “a thousand lobbyists on the Hill.” Bush seems to believe that his defeat in the 1992 election stemmed from this action, and I can vividly remember the sudden shift in media coverage of Bush at the time. George W. Bush’s awareness of the power of the Israel Lobby from conversations with his father may well have been a primary force in making him the most pliable president  in history to the pleadings of the Israel Lobby.

The clincher from the House statement is: “Above all, we must remain focused on the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons program to Middle East peace and stability.” And therein lies the rub for AIPAC. For all its influence on Congress, it will be much more difficult to get an angry Obama and his administration fully on board with the Israel Lobby’s project of destroying Iran. The reality of the Lobby’s power even in presidential politics, as indicated by what happened to George H. W. Bush,  is doubtless sobering to the Obama administration. But it’s one thing to effectively turn a blind eye to Israeli colonization and apartheid (as, in the end, all US administrations have done). It’s quite another ball of wax to get the US to lead the charge in a confrontation with Iran after 5000 deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan and a $3 trillion price tag just for the war in Iraq. This in an era where the federal deficit is already through the roof. Doing the Israel Lobby’s bidding on Iran requires a great deal of pro-active effort in getting international cooperation in the teeth of Israeli intransigence on settlement issues and the spectacle of Israel as an expansionist apartheid state for all the world to see.

Indeed, in her speech to AIPAC Hilary Clinton pointedly noted that “We cannot escape the impact of mass communications” — perhaps a comment that the reality of Israel’s brutal program of expansion is a very hard sell to the rest of the world, especially in the age of the Internet when there is more and more leakage in Jewish control of the media in the US and elsewhere. The statement by General David Petraeus that Israeli policies oppose US vital interests in the Middle East is all over the Internet — much to the chagrin of the ADL.  Petraeus himself has done his best to limit the damage by disputing this account.

It’s the same for Joe Biden’s statement that Israeli policy is dangerous for the US. It’s also all over the Internet,  quoted, for example, by John Mearsheimer in his blog — despite denials by Biden that he ever said it. As Mearsheimer notes, “it is now commonplace to talk about the lobby in the mainstream media and almost everyone who pays serious attention to American foreign policy understands – thanks mainly to the internet – that the lobby is an especially powerful interest group.”

With information about Israel more available than ever, with the costs of doing Israel’s bidding ever more prohibitive, and with Israel getting ever uglier with the passage of time, the job ahead for the Israel Lobby is going to be increasingly difficult. And Israel can’t escape its ugliness. The slow motion ethnic cleansing and land grabbing, the apartheid, the vast open air prisons for 3.8 million Palestinians simply can’t be stopped by any force within Israeli society. And it certainly won’t be stopped by the Jewish Diaspora no matter how much hypocrisy that entails given its commitment to multiculturalism and its opposition to White ethnonational interests. The racialist and religiously fundamentalist right is firmly in charge in Israel, and all the Jewish demographics are on their side. The extremists, as always, will win the day. That forecasts a very bloody future in the Middle East and beyond. And here in the US, AIPAC and the ADL have a long, tough road ahead.

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Pat Buchanan is Censored by Human Events

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Pat Buchanan is a national treasure — by far the most articulate and sensible spokesman in the mainstream media — or at least close to it — for a wide range of issues, from immigration, to economic nationalism, to foreign policy issues. Unfortunately, his exposure in the MSM seems to be on the wane. He still appears on the McLaughlin Group, but his former base at MSNBC has disappeared, and his exposure in the major newspapers seems non-existent. I can remember in the 1990’s when he was a regular on the LA Times op-ed page, which seems inconceivable now. (There was an LA Times column he did on the Frankfurt School at a time when I was starting to research Jewish intellectual movements. After reading his account of how the Frankfurt School undermined the family, I thought that there might be a Jewish story there. Not a bad guess. The Frankfurt School was labeled a “Jewish sect” by Gershon Scholem, and the Frankfurt School became the subject of Ch. 5 of The Culture of Critique and much subsequent writing. Thanks Pat.) Not surprisingly, Buchanan has a very long rap sheet at the ADL.

Buchanan’s latest article, “The Poodle Gets Kicked,” on the Biden visit to Israel will do nothing to endear him to the ADL. Buchanan makes an excellent case on the absurdity of supposing that US and Israeli interests are identical. The  interesting thing is that the version that appeared on the Human Events website was about half the length of the original. (See “Human Events Censors Pat Buchanan’s Latest Column” at Buchanan.org). Linda Muller, who runs Buchanan.org, suggests that this is the result of neocon censors at Human Events, and notes that the revised version leaves out any mention of AIPAC or the USS Liberty incident.

It should surprise no one that Human Events would be involved in such a clumsy version of censorship. These are the people who fired Kevin Lamb after a phone call from the SPLC. (See Lamb’s VDARE article, “The Leftward Course Of Human Events.“)

The Human Events censor seems to have been motivated to expunge statements implying extreme groveling by Biden, as in his ridiculous statement  “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.” Of course, the opposite is the case. No space means that Israel can stall peace talks forever without having to worry that the US will do anything about it. Biden should have a special place in George Orwell’s Hall of Fame.

The censor also expunged the most egregious examples where Israel has demonstrated quite clearly that it has always pursued its own interests even when they conflict with US interests — not only in the USS Liberty case, but also stealing uranium during the JFK administration, transferring US technology to China, and spying on the US. (Buchanan was being kind by only mentioning Pollard; there are many more examples; see here and here.) The Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing on the West Bank and Jerusalem is therefore part of a long list of areas where Israel refuses to modify its goals by listening to its poodle. Why should it? Nobody cares what poodles think.

The following is Buchanan’s entire column with the censored parts underlined.

Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode.

First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.”

“For world Jewry,” Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans, “Israel is the heart. … Israel is the light. … Israel is the hope.”

Meeting Shimon Peres the next day, Joe confessed that when he first visited at age 29, “Israel captured my heart.”

In Peres’ guestbook, he wrote, “The bond between our two nations has been and remains unshakeable.”

He then told Peres and the world, “There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.”

As Peres spoke, Biden took notes. When Peres called him “a friend,” Joe gushed, “It’s good to be home.”

Even at AIPAC, they must have been gagging.

Walking around the corner to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office, Joe called him by his nickname, “Bibi,” declared him a “real” friend and said the U.S. relationship with Israel “has been and will continue to be the centerpiece of our policy.”

Then the sandbag hit.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced construction of 1,600 new apartment units in Arab East Jerusalem. Stunned and humiliated, Biden issued a statement saying he “condemned” the decision.

He then retaliated by coming late to dinner at Bibi’s house.

Netanyahu has apologized for the timing, but they are going ahead with the apartments. What are the Americans going to do about it? At this point, nothing but bluster.

Indeed, a day later, at Tel Aviv University, Joe was back at it: “(T)he U.S. has no better friend … than Israel.”

On his departure for Jordan, Ha’aretz reported that Israel plans to build 50,000 new homes in East Jerusalem over the next few years.

Biden may feel he was played for a fool, and Americans may feel jilted, but we got what grovelers deserve. And if we wish to understand why the Arabs who once respected us now seem contemptuous of us, consider that battered-spouse response to a public slap across the face.

Consider also the most remarkable statement of Biden’s first 24 hours.

“Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.”

Biden is saying we are a more effective force for Mideast peace in a region where Arabs outnumber Israelis 50 to one if everyone knows we sing from the same song sheet as Israel and have no policy independent of Israel’s.

How can America be seen as an honest broker between Arabs and Israelis if there is “no space” between America and Israel?

Even with the closest ally in our history, Britain in World War II, there was space between Winston Churchill and FDR on where to invade — North Africa, Italy, France, the Balkans? — whether to beat Stalin to Berlin, Prague and Vienna, who should be supreme allied commander, even whether the British Empire should survive.

Israel keeps its own interests foremost in mind, and when these dictate actions inimical to U.S. interests, Israel acts unilaterally. David Ben-Gurion did not seek Dwight Eisenhower’s permission to attack Egypt in collusion with the French and British in 1956, enraging Ike.

Israel did not consult JFK on whether it could steal enriched uranium from the NUMEC plant in Pennsylvania for its atom bomb program.

Israel did not consult us on whether it could attack the USS Liberty in the Six-Day War, or suborn Jonathan Pollard to loot our security secrets, or transfer our weapons technology to China. They went ahead and did it, knowing the Americans would swallow hard and take it.

Ehud Olmert did not consult President-elect Obama on whether to launch a war on Gaza and kill 1,400 Palestinians. Nor did Netanyahu consult us before Mossad took down the Hamas minister in Dubai.

What Netanyahu and Yishai are telling Obama with their decision to keep building on occupied land is, “When it comes to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, we decide, not you.”

And if Netanyahu has jolted Joe and others out of their romantic reveries about Israel, good. At least now we no longer see as through a glass darkly.

Israeli and U.S. interests often run parallel, but they are not the same. Israel is concerned with a neighborhood. We are concerned with a world of 300 million Arabs and a billion Muslims. Our policies cannot be the same.

If they are, we will end up with all of Israel’s enemies, who are legion, and only Israel’s friends, who are few.

And if our policy and Israel’s are one and the same, the Arab perception will be what it is today — that America cannot stand up to Israel, even when her national interests command it.

Joe’s performance before he got the wet mitten across the face only underscored the point: The mighty superpower is a poodle of Israel.

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Christian Zionism

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Max Blumenthal has a post that he  claims shows that “Biden should have known that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu intended to upset his plans by Netanyahu’s appearance with John Hagee.” This refers to one of the oddest phenomena in American politics: The rabid pro-Israel activities of the Christian Zionists as exemplified by Pastor Hagee. Hagee is the ultimate Christian Zionist, using his speech before a who’s who of the Israeli government and other elements of the Israeli far right to state that Jerusalem is “the undivided, eternal capitol of the Jewish people.” He called Iranian President Ahmadinejad “the Hitler of the Middle East” and denounced the Goldstone Report as “character assassination by an unbiased and uninformed committee.”

In the audience was “Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of the illegal West Bank settlement of Efrat who gained notoriety for lobbying President Bill Clinton to pardon his friend, fugitive billionaire Marc Rich. Ayalon had stirred controversy days before when he refused to meet with a US congressional delegation brought to Israel by the progressive Jewish group J Street.”

What’s amazing to me is that the point of Hagee’s speech was to tout the $58,000,000 (!) that his group of Christians have donated to far-right causes in Israel since 2001, including settler groups and a group that aims to ensure” that students in Israel are on the right path, the path of Zionism, the love of Israel, the path of solidarity.”

As it was explained to me, Hagee, believes that God actually decreed not one, but two, plans of salvation:  one for the church, which requires faith in Christ’s atonement, and another for the Jews, which does not require them to have faith in Christ at all, but is a parallel covenant that bypasses the Church and Christ completely.  They regard the creation of the modern state of Israel as nothing less than the precursor of that heavenly kingdom, the fulfillment of prophecy, and the sign of Christ’s imminent return.

Christian Zionism is a very powerful force for philosemitism in the US.  There is a fascinating history (see, e.g., here) that suggests but falls short of proof that early Zionists like Samuel Untermeyer were important in promoting and publicizing the work of C. I. Scofield whose annotated Bible, published by Oxford University Press in 1909, is the basis of Christian Zionism. In any case, the above source discusses footnotes to the Scofield Bible added in 1967 that emphasize Zionist aims. For example,  “For a nation to commit the sin of anti-Semitism brings inevitable judgment.” ” God made an unconditional promise of blessing through Abram’s seed to the nation of Israel to inherit a specific territory forever.” “It has invariably fared ill with the  people who have persecuted the Jew, well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.” (Footnotes to Genesis 12:3)

Jews have not stood by idly on this but have actively supported the Christian Zionism movement. Beginning in 1978, the Likud Party in Israel has taken the lead in organizing this force for Israel, and they have been joined by the neocons. For example, in 2002 the Israeli embassy organized a prayer breakfast with the major Christian Zionists. The main organizations are the Unity Coalition for Israel which is run by Esther Levens and Christians United for Israel, run by David Brog. The Unity Coalition for Israel consists of ~200 Christian and Jewish organizations has strong connections to neocon think tanks such as the Center for Security Policy, headed by Frank Gaffney, pro-Israel activist organizations the Zionist Organization of America, the Likud Party and the Israeli government. This organization claims to provide material for 1,700 religious radio stations, 245 Christian TV stations, and 120 Christian newspapers.

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