Israel Lobby

Former Australian Foreign Minister Confirms that the Israel Lobby Controls Australia’s Foreign Policy

/6 Comments/in , /by
Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr

Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr

In my series of extended essays entitled “The War on White Australia” I described how Jewish activism was pivotal in ending the White Australia policy and initiating the mass non-White immigration that is rapidly transforming that nation. In addition, I showed how Jewish activism was instrumental in establishing multiculturalism as the ideological and legislative basis for social policy in Australia. Recently I explored the Jewish role in pushing for the enactment and extension of laws banning speech deemed contrary to their interests. Given the profound impact of Jewish ethno-politics on the Australian nation, nobody will be surprised to learn that Jewish influence also extends to the determination of Australia’s foreign policy.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr recently confirmed that this is indeed the case, observing that Australia’s foreign policy (particularly with regard to the Middle East) was being virtually dictated by organized Jewry. Carr, Australia’s Labor Party foreign minister from March 2012 to September 2013, made his comments while promoting his new book Bob Carr: Diary of a Foreign Minister. Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Carr hit out at the “pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne,” saying it wielded “extraordinary influence” on Australia’s foreign policy during his time in Julia Gillard’s cabinet.  As The Guardian reported:

Asked about the comments by the ABC’s 7.30 he said: “Certainly they enjoyed extraordinary influence. I had to resist it and my book tells the story of that resistance. … It needs to be highlighted because I think it reached a very unhealthy level.”

Asked how the lobby achieved this influence he said: “I think party donations and a program of giving trips to MPs and journalists to Israel. But that’s not to condemn them. I mean, other interest groups do the same thing. But it needs to be highlighted because I think it reached a very unhealthy level.

Following Carr’s comments The Jerusalem Post sourly noted that: “John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who wrote a 2007 book alleging that the ‘Israel lobby’ has a stranglehold on US Foreign policy, have an Australian cousin: former foreign minister Bob Carr.” Read more

Alison Weir on the Early Days of the Israel Lobby

/3 Comments/in , , /by

In “Background traits for Jewish activism” I listed several traits of Jewish activist groups that make them so effective. They are all on display in Alison Weir’s excerpt from her book Against Our Better Judgment: How the US was Used to Create Israel. 

1. Jewish groups are well organized and lavishly funded. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by the incredible scale of Zionist activism during the 1940s, both financially and in the scale of their outreach efforts. But it is truly remarkable. Weir describes the “gargantuan financial resources” available, amounting to $1.5 billion in today’s dollars. A big part of the effort was aimed at non-Jewish elites in business, labor, religion, and academia; pro-Zionist books by non-Jews were subsidized.

For example, at its beginning in 1945

[the American Zionist Emergency Council] booked Madison Square Garden, ordered advertisements, and mailed 250,000 announcements – the first day. By the second day they had organized demonstrations in 30 cities, a letter-writing campaign, and convinced 27 U.S. Senators to give speeches. Grassroots Zionist action groups were organized with more than 400 local committees under 76 state and regional branches. AZEC funded books, articles and academic studies; millions of pamphlets were distributed.

This top-down approach making alliances with sympathetic non-Jews is typical of Jewish efforts generally, as with the neoconservatives whose networks of think tanks and access to the media and the highest levels of government provide excellent career prospects for ambitious Jews and non-Jews alike. As a small minority, Jews must reach out to others and they are very effective at doing it. Read more

The Israel Lobby: Nowhere to Hide

/4 Comments/in , /by

Mondoweiss excerpted a talk by a rabbi, Melissa Weintraub, on strategies used by the Jewish community for dealing with Israel. The difficulty that Jews have is that they are the vanguard of the liberal, pro-immigration/multicultural anti-White left in the U.S., while at the same time their favorite country, Israel, is energetically engaged in apartheid and ethnic cleansing. This leads to cognitive dissonance and intense politicking in the Jewish community. But it’s clear that the most common strategy is simply avoidance (two versions).

Israel has become the most volatile wedge issue in American Jewish life, by most observers, journalists, rabbis, people who are immersed in this field. We’ve got 3 prevailing avenues for Israel engagement, currently.

One is avoidance. Nearly every American Jewish social justice organization– I was recently in a room with all the luminaries of the Jewish social justice movement and veritably every one of them has an organizational policy to avoid Israel. The rabbis of every denomination and from across the political spectrum talk about what actually a local rabbi Scott Perlo who’s at 6th and I calls the “the death by Israel sermon”, which means we can talk about anything but Israel. We can talk about health care or guns or other controversial issues, but say anything about Israel and we could be fired. It seems every day I hear of another organization that’s banned Israel from its listserve….

So that’s avoidance, the first pattern… The first pattern is really reacting to the second pattern, but I stated avoidance first because it’s become most ubiquitous…

The Second pattern is more overt antagonism; vilification, demonization; attacks and counter attacks on op ed pages, funding threats, boards and executive directors in utter terror, paralyzed, because they are in damned if you do and damned if you don’t situations on a regular basis. A lot of this is outside of public view, but I can tell you as someone who works in this field that I hear dozens of institutions facing these kinds of dilemmas every month.

And you know equally as damaging: reckless caricatures of each other’s positions, distortions, quoting each other out of context, impugning each other’s motives, antagonism.

The third pattern I call avoidance 2.0. And that is congregating with, conferencing with those who agree with our own politics, and dismissing everybody else as loony, or malicious, or dangerous. Taking pride in the numbers of those who are with us, categorically, one dimensionally dismissing everyone else. And that is becoming increasingly common as well.

So whatever happens with the current campaign for war with Iran, don’t expect American Jews to change their status as the backbone of the anti-White left. They may avoid the issue or do a lot of screaming at each other, but it won’t affect their attitudes on the core issues facing White America.

The rabbi’s remarks indicate an uptick in anxiety about Israel  among American Jews. For one thing, the BDS movement, and in particular the recent anti-Israel resolutions by the American Studies Association and the Modern Language Association, indicates a shift in elite opinion where non-Jewish liberals feel the need to act on their principles. Israel as a pariah state is increasingly obvious to everyone.

Secondly, and more immediately, there is the push for war with Iran which, as everyone who is not living under a rock knows, is a project of Israel and its fifth column in the U.S. Indeed, although the New York Times failed to mention the Lobby in a recent article on the Kirk-Menendez-Schumer Iran war bill in the Senate, the role of the Israel Lobby is obvious.  The Economist gets it:

economistobama-12014

  Read more

Stanley Fischer: A Dual U.S./Israeli Citizen and Pro-Israel Activist as Vice-Chair of the Fed

/6 Comments/in , , /by

fische1Grant Smith, writing at Antiwar.com provides an enlightening account of the nomination of Stanley Fischer as Vice-Chair of the Federal Reserve (“AIPAC’s Fed Candidate Stanley Fischer on a Warpath against Iran: Dual-citizen nominee’s lifetime benefit to Israel comes at a heavy cost to America“). When I first read that Fischer was a possibility, my only thought was something like “Can’t we find anyone who’s not Jewish to fill a post like that?” After all, the Chair of Federal Reserve has been Jewish since 1987, Janet Yellen, the present vice-chair, will likely be the next chair, and Yellen’s predecessor was Donald L. Kohn.

And one would think that appointing an Israeli citizen —and a high-level one at that (former head of the Israeli Central Bank and likely on a first-name basis with everyone who matters in Israel) — would raise all kinds of red flags about old-fashioned issues like dual loyalty.

But there is much more to the story. Fischer, it turns out, will be AIPAC”s man at the Fed.  Smith notes that

as Bank of Israel governor, Stanley Fischer played a central role in coordinating the implementation of AIPAC-generated sanctions against Iran—ostensibly over its nuclear program.  Stuart Levey, the head of the U.S. Treasury Department’s division for “Terrorism and Financial Intelligence,” an office created after heavy AIPAC lobbying, met often with Fischer in Israel alongside the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and chiefs of both the Mossad and Shin Bet to explore how to “supplement” UN sanctions and end-run Russian and Chinese opposition.[v]  The Levey-Fischer strategy was “to work outside the context of the Security Council to engage the private sector and let it know about the risks of doing business with Tehran” particularly against European banks that had only partially drawn back their business dealings with Iran.  In 2010, Israel dispatched Fischer to meet with Chinese and Russian “counterparts” in order to financially isolate Iran.[vi]

Smith’s phrase “ostensibly over its nuclear program” is beautifully suggestive. The fact is that Israel has many reasons to want a destructive war with Iran besides the putative nuclear weapons program—its support of Hezbollah, its alliance with Syria, its hostility toward Israel, and simply the fact that it is an energy-rich, technologically sophisticated neighbor with a population of around 75 million and regional ambitions. Israel would love to crush a rising rival power in the region before it becomes too difficult. Read more

The Organized Jewish Community: Wall-to-wall Support for a Strike on Syria

/12 Comments/in , , , /by

One of the self-deceptions of Jewish life is the belief that “two Jews, three opinions” — the idea that Jews are especially likely to disagree with one another. But on critical issues like Israel, immigration, multiculturalism and Christianity in the public square, the Jewish community speaks with one (very powerful) voice. A Bloomberg article illustrates the broad-based support among Jews for a strike on Syria (“Adelson New Obama Ally as Jewish Groups Back Syria Strike). The broad-based Jewish support for a military strike on Syria is breath-taking, especially considering that Congress is finding “record opposition” to an airstrike in the rest of America.

Recent polls already show little appetite among the American people for military intervention in Syria. A Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday found just 29 percent of Americans supported air strikes “in response to reports that the Syrian government used chemical weapons,” while a Washington Post/ABC poll out the same day had 36 percent of Americans in favor of air strikes. … Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), a vocal opponent of military strikes against the Syrian government, told reporters after Thursday’s briefing that a vote to use military force in Syria would fail. “The House doesn’t want it, the American people don’t want it. People here listen to their constituents,” Grayson said. “First of all, public opinion is entirely against it. Secondly, public opinion is vehemently against it.” (“U.S. Lawmakers Say Constituents Opposed To Syria Intervention, Cite Record Opposition“)

Morris Amitay, former head of AIPAC and who now heads of the Washington Political Action Committee (whose motto is “A strong and secure Israel is America’s best interest”) favors a military strike. Both the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Jewish Democratic Council advocate a military strike. The Bloomberg article also notes that the ADL and the and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations are also on board.

One tactic is to point out that  Jews were gassed in WWII. The Simon Wiesenthal Center began its letter to all U.S. Senators and Representatives: “It was seventy-one years ago in August 1942, just a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, that Gerhard Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Switzerland informed the US and British governments of the diabolical plan to exterminate Europe’s Jews using gas.” A group of 17 rabbis, “descendants of Holocaust survivors and refugees, whose ancestors were gassed to death in concentration camps” and spanning the Jewish religious spectrum endorsed a military strike.

Most importantly, the 800-lb. gorilla (AIPAC) not only released a statement supporting a military strike but now says it is mounting a full-scale campaign to get Congress to approve. 250 activists will descend on Washington to lobby every last senator and representative.

The amount of money the Israel Lobby is able to muster for an effort like this is staggering. The Bloomberg article notes:

The pro-Israel community contributed $14.5 million to federal campaigns for the 2012 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than the $11.1 million in donations by the defense aerospace industry, one of the biggest and most consistent political contributors.

It bears mentioning that the American aerospace industry is massively intertwined with Israel’s and that they both have a shared interest in getting Congress to cough up money for defense contractors. For example, the Arrow 3 missile is a joint venture between Boeing and Israel Aerospace Industries. David’s Sling, a short-range anti-missile system, was jointly developed by Raytheon and Rafael, another Israeli aerospace company. The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (“Securing America, Strengthening Israel”) advocates shared American-Israeli ownership of Iron Dome, which is already deployed in Israel.

Sheldon Adelson’s financial commitment is truly staggering:

While most of the Jewish groups’ donations lean Democratic, Adelson alone transformed the 2012 Republican primary when he and his wife used $15 million in private funds to sustain the unsuccessful candidacy of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and then poured $53 million into groups advancing Republican nominee Mitt Romney. In all, Adelson and his wife donated $93 million to Republican causes in the 2012 campaign, center data shows.

Imagine if White advocacy had people like Adelson willing to commit $93 million to the cause.

Instead, Adelson, a board member of the RJC, will now be gearing up his millions for a military strike — no matter what the great majority of Americans want.

How the media works: David Makovsky on the non-existent AIPAC 800-lb gorilla

/7 Comments/in , , /by

On my way into work today I was listening to an NPR promo spot with the catch phrase “no rant, no slant” — the implication being that NPR is above partisan wrangling that one sees on FOX News or MSNBC.  Well, that’s certainly refreshing.

The problem is that the programming then segued into an interview of David Makovsky by Renee Montagne. Makovsky is introduced simply as someone affiliated with the Washington Institute on Near East Policy. Unless the listener knows something about the 800-lb. gorilla of U.S. Middle East policy, he or she would not know that WINEP is a pillar of the Israel Lobby which is anything but even-handed when it comes to anything even remotely relevant to Israel. To say it is slanted would be to put it mildly.

As noted in my previous comment on the Israel Lobby and the Syria crisis,  WINEP has numerous articles advocating an aggressive posture on Syria aimed basically at regime change. I also mentioned an article co-authored by Makovsky on the website of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs—another pillar of the Israel Lobby. Makovsky’s JINSA article advocates a very destructive attack aimed at “sending a credible and menacing message” to the Syrian government. Not much question where he stands.

Makovsky was invited on to address this quote that appeared in the New York Times:

One administration official, who, like others, declined to be identified discussing White House strategy, called Aipac “the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” and said its allies in Congress had to be saying, “If the White House is not capable of enforcing this red line” against the catastrophic use of chemical weapons, “we’re in trouble.”

AIPAC an 800-lb gorilla? Definitely not news that’s fit to print (so the Times soon deleted it; see below). As an AIPAC lobbyist once noted, “A lobby is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.” Best to keep AIPAC out of public consciousness. Read more

The Israel Lobby and the Organized Jewish Community Want Regime Change in Syria

/14 Comments/in , , /by

President Obama is now saying his administration has decided to attack Syria but will seek Congressional approval before doing so. This sets up a really interesting situation if Congress doesn’t agree, as seems quite possible.

The idea of Obama ordering an act of war on Syria without significant international support and without a Congressional mandate always was a head scratcher. Here’s our far left president advocating yet another war in the Middle East after opposing the Iraq war when he was a senator. The same president who has a frosty relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu and has repeatedly fallen short of the demands of the Israel Lobby.

Of course the rationale is framed in moral terms—like all American wars, but there was more than a touch of that in the run-up to the Iraq war as well. Here the case for the hawks is made more difficult because the WMD story turned out to be false. Lest we forget, this story was manufactured by strongly identified ethnically Jewish, pro-Israel operatives linked to the Office of Special Plans in the Department of Defense, including Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Abraham Shulsky, Elliott Abrams, David Wurmser, Michael Ledeen, David Schencker, and Michael Rubin, with the close cooperation of Israeli intelligence (see here, p. 47ff).

The Weekly Standard’s usual neocon suspects — including many of the same people who promoted for the Iraq war — are pressing for a very large U.S. involvement in Syria. It’s mind-boggling to read in the statement of these so-called “experts” that the president must act “to ensure that Assad’s chemical weapons no longer threaten America.” Shades of how Iraq under Saddam Hussein was going to destroy the U.S. with his WMD’s. How Assad is going to unleash his chemical weapons on America is anybody’s guess. Read more