Recently received an email from the Council for the National Interest, Washington, DC with an invitation to visit their website. On their front page, I saw what appears to be their latest advertisement, one that appeared in the New York Times on Sunday, November 5th, 2006, which they still seem to be featuring. It is freely distributed by the Council and I felt that it could make for lively discussion by people interested in the Middle East, the hotbed of our foreign policy.
This NYT ad is about a very controversial subject and not everyone will agree with its premises. The role of the Israel Lobby in US foreign policy is extremely contentious as its past discussion attest. It has stirred opinions that extend from full derision to full confirmation. But what is the extent of Israel Lobby influence? Was Iraq done for Israel sake and will whatever is in store for Iran likewise be laid at the Israel Lobby’s doorstep. That’s what the Council seems to imply in this NYT’s ad.
Questions the ad asks, once again:
Did the Israel Lobby encourage the preemptive war with Iraq?
Is the Israel Lobby currently encouraging a US attack on Iran?
Is the Israel Lobby stand attempting to block a real two state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
For publication sake, I had to break the ad up, but I hope that the essentials of its message are plain.
This cartoon, part of the ad, speaks for itself.
The views represented in this ad belong to the Council for the National Interest. But they are food for thought for anyone else interested in where the Middle East has been and where it may be going.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3355786,00.html
It’s definitely an interesting premise and there may even be a kernal of truth to it. But an ad placed in the NYT as the foundation for this theory? I need a little more to go on, frankly. If you have more time, go digging for names of people inside the Israeli lobby and see if there are any link between those people and the big-time policy movers inside the beltway.
Certainly you are correct. But this accusation of the Israel Lobby pushing Washington’s buttons is old hat and has a history at least 15 years old. After a while, there is so much thick smoke that a fire is no longer needed to conclude, looking just at the ZOA/AIPAC/Likudnik line, that the Israel right wing has and is pushing the US into conflicts that would seem to hold some vested interests to the right wing Israel government.
After a while, we need to stop fooling ourselves and look hard at the obvious. No proof you say? That’s the defense: prove it, prove that Israel is wagging America’s tail. Denials like Indyk’s only convince one more and more that America is doing the bidding of the Israeli right wing governments.
Proof? The Palestinians are now being encircled by the Wall, going on in quiet, being pushed into the bantustans that Carter warned about. But he of course is just another antiSemite. Why listen to him. Pushing the US into an attack of Iran is a related matter. If Israel cannot be the only guy on the block with nuclear, it will not survive. Who the hell would want to emigrate to Israel with a nuclear Holocaust hanging over their heads? And the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs keep breeding a high rates.
It is all so complicated, isn’t it?
The American people are not hearing moderate Israelis, who are trying to build a future. Neither are they hearing moderate Iranians, who actually have some (limited) political mechanism for changing government within Iran. I can’t help but think that it’s very deliberate what the media do to filter what voices are expressed in MSM.
Can’t this medium give these voices a way to reach the people?
…for those moderates (Israeli Jews, Muslims, American Christians of Fundamentalist sects, and all other groups of humans) who refuse to stand up for reason and justice, and allow their groups to be hijacked by extremists who create mayhem and murder. It’s time for those who are not entering into the “conversation” to speak up, loudly and clearly, for reason.