Rattling the Cage: ‘Die, J Street, die!’ is the title of this article from Jerusalem Post writer, Larry Derfner. As he puts it, there is presently an ongoing attempt by right wing Zionist groups in the US to undermine the convention next week being held by J Street, the liberal alternative to AIPAC.
The telephones are ringing, allegedly from the Weekly Standard and other right wing sources to scare off US Congresspersons and Senators from attending the J Street convention.
THE Weekly Standard, Pajamas Media, Commentary, StandWithUs, ex-AIPACer Lenny Ben-David and assorted other soldiers in Israel’s information war, there’s a campaign on not to disagree with J Street, not to criticize it, but to destroy it. There’s a telephone crusade led by Weekly Standard Online editor Michael Goldfarb to scare senators and congressmen away from the convention. The strategy is to slander J Street, it’s having more than a little success, and Goldfarb is confident the cancellations will snowball.
“Will Senator Mark Pryor really go to the mat for an anti-Israel, pro-Hamas organization?” he asks rhetorically.
“Anti-Israel, pro-Hamas.” That’s J Street to these people.
Read on HERE
Most liberals I believe are familiar with The Weekly Standard, the right wing Neocon rag started by William Kristol and Fred Barnes, originally owned by Rupert Murdock, which today makes no apologies for being deep into Israeli politics, as a supporter of Likudnik right wing occupation/colonialism of Palestine. Well, who didn’t know that?
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(NY Times) – During the July meeting, held in the Roosevelt Room, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told Obama that “public disharmony between Israel and the U.S. is beneficial to neither” and that differences “should be dealt with directly by the parties.” The president, according to Hoenlein, leaned back in his chair and said:
“I disagree. We had eight years of no daylight” — between George W. Bush
and successive Israeli governments — “and no progress.”
J Street does not accept the “public harmony” rule any more than Obama does. In a conversation a month before the White House session, Ben-Ami explained to me: “We’re trying to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel. You don’t have to be noncritical. You don’t have to adopt the party line. It’s not, ‘Israel, right or wrong.'”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."We hope that Obama means what he says, but some observers are already growing skeptical, given Obama’s willing to compromise with the Netanyahu government and withdraw mandates. It is almost as if Netanyahu is calling the shots, and Obama is complying. He is just not being listened to, on settlements or the Gaza siege, as just two examples.
Until Obama takes a stand with Israel, either at the UN and/or in terms of the yearly dole, nothing will happen.
Israel has called the shots in our relationship for the last 15 years, why should that change now?
It goes back further than 15 years. The short answer is: I don’t know.
U.S. Interests vs. The Jewish State
September 26, 2009
by Jeff Gates
I spent a considerable part of my childhood in a Jewish neighborhood, attending public schools with many Jewish students, and there were extended stretches of time during which all of my close friends were Jews, for which I consider myself lucky: in the South, an agnostic is not likely to have many Christian friends, and there sure as hell aren’t a lot of other agnostics to hang out with. While I don’t automatically assume every Jew I meet is going to be a wonderful person, I’ve learned that I’m usually safer giving an unfamiliar Jew the benefit of the doubt than members of most other religious factions.
That said, my loathing for the state of Israel only grows every time I have to preface any criticism of Israel with a lengthy biographical disclaimer because the thugs in Jerusalem have done such a good job of convincing people that Israel equals Judaism and opposition to Israel equals anti-Semitism, neither of which are true. The Israeli Jews who make that argument aren’t even good Jews: when G-d started handing out the mitzvot on Mount Sinai, one of the first ten prohibited the telling of lies, and there was no exception provided for national security purposes.
But the thing that bothers me most when it comes to Israel’s influence in Congress and the White House is that Israelis don’t get to vote in American elections. These are — or are supposed to be — our elected representatives. And while I am not prone to the sort of jingoistic nationalism popular on the right wing, at the end of the day, I would greatly prefer it if American politicians would put the interests of the United States of America ahead of other countries, and I cannot for the life of me understand why they managed to do this for every other country except Israel.
While I still think Hurria is full of it when she tries to ignore the religious dimensions of the I-P conflict and its international participants — the American interest in Israel indisputably consists of absolutely nothing but religion since the end of the Cold War — it might be helpful to agree to the fiction for the clarifying effect it has on what’s going on in Washington: high treason.
We have American politicians systematically harming their own country in the service of a foreign power, fueled by money pumped into the political system at the direction of a foreign state that receives the overwhelming majority of all foreign aid issued by the United States.
It’s time to pull the plug on this toxic relationship. Let the Zionists pay for their own subversive activities out of their own pockets, and let’s insist that our elected representatives serve our country for a change.
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Loyalty, the support of the Neocon led Pentagon for Likud and Israel didn’t go far enough …
For Franklin, ties with Rosen and Weissman were instrumental. He had grown frustrated with decisions made by his Pentagon bosses on Iraq and Iran, believing that regime change in Iran was the course America should pursue.
Franklin warned that Americans “would return in body bags” from Iraq because of Iranian intervention, and called for a preliminary show of force against Iran before invading Iraq, but got no response. Viewing the AIPAC lobbyists as well connected, Franklin bypassed his superiors and asked Rosen to convey his concerns on Iran to officials at the National Security Council [Abrams], to whom he believed the influential lobbyist had access.
My secret plan to overthrow the mullahs – by Larry Franklin
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“Franklin warned that Americans “would return in body bags” from Iraq because of Iranian intervention“
What BS! Americans returned in body bags because of American intervention, and for no other reason.
“Israelis don’t get to vote in American elections.“
Not entirely correct. There are hundreds of thousands Israeli citizens who are also American citizens, and you’d better believe they vote in American elections.
“Hurria is full of it when she tries to ignore the religious dimensions of the I-P conflict and its international participants“
I do not ignore or deny that there is a religious “dimension” to the conflict. What I try over and over again to help people understand is that Israel was not created for religious reasons, Israel is not maintained for religious reasons, the Arabs’ objections to the Zionist project were not religious, and the principle issues Arabs, and even Muslims have with Israel are not religious. It is true that over time certain elements on both sides have attempted to turn the conflict into a religious one, but the conflict is not in the main religious, and to view it as such is to fundamentally misunderstand both its origin and its nature.
“the American interest in Israel indisputably consists of absolutely nothing but religion since the end of the Cold War“
That is, on its face, complete nonsense. The American interest in Israel is, as it has always been, almost entirely political.
What shadowy political interests, pray tell, do the American relationship with Israel serve? Support for Israel may attract Zionist and evangelical voters, but there are other ways to coddle the evangelical vote, and they dwarf the Zionists by such a huge margin that it hardly seems worth the trouble of funding Israel and being endlessly tied up in Middle Eastern conflicts for a handful of Zionist votes when you can just froth a little about abortion and get tens of millions of Christian nutjobs to vote for you.
Geostrategically, Israel is all liability and no benefit. We don’t need a beachhead in the eastern Mediterranean to fight the Soviets anymore, and we can’t use Israel as a staging ground for our local interventions without plunging the whole region into war. If we jettisoned Israel tomorrow — heck, if we even suggested the possibility — we’d have the entire Arab League lined up to kiss the President’s ring.
So what — other than a long line of American leaders with delusions of grandeur about having a hand in the Second Coming — is Washington’s interest in being Jerusalem’s bitch?
“Shadowy political interests”? There is nothing shadowy about it, nor does it consist of “nothing but religion”. The evangelical vote is no doubt part of it, but it is a relatively minor part, and only became a significant factor quite recently.
Your logic is so full of holes it is impossible to know where to begin. You start out by basing it on a set of premises built on thin air, and your reasoning is fallacious in the extreme.
“It is almost as if Netanyahu is calling the shots, and Obama is complying.“
ALMOST as if?
Israel’s control of the White House is silently become a theme that more Americans are appreciating. And there is no one in office today in Israel better capable of exposing it to us than Netanyahu. Arrogance personified.
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J-street Conference Speakers
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
(Jerusalem Post) – The student sessions included activism training on using the media, building campus organizations and lobbying political leaders. They also addressed issues of concern, including “Anti-Semitism and Israel,” a session described as focusing on the fact that “anti-Semitism does exist, even within progressive communities we often consider our allies” and asking how open conversations can still be promoted. Another event was titled “Reckoning with the Radical Left on Campus: Alternatives to Boycotts and Divestment,” and called for “developing alternative methods for change.”
“It is our goal to change traditional conversations when it comes to Israel and to broaden the notion that there is only one way to express love and concern for it,” Ben-Ami said to applause. “We are here to redefine and expand the very concept of being pro-Israel. No longer should this ‘pro-‘ require an ‘anti-.'”
He read letters of support from President Shimon Peres and opposition leader Tzipi Livni, neither of whom were able to attend but both of whom expressed support for including a wide swath of American Jews in the issues connected to Israel.
Self-serving gobbledygook
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."J Street is AIPAC lite, and is showing itself as such more and more as time goes on.