Saturday, November 3, 2007

The Lobby unmasked

On Wednesday, Antiwar.com hosted a couple of important articles on The Lobby's current positions. Both Justin Raimondo and Ray McGovern showcased what The Lobby is typifying: distorting US foreign policy in order to promote Israel's "security" needs, at the expense of American dollars (naturally).

Raimondo points to The Lobby's effectiveness in suppressing dissent, and their ability to camouflage its intent to criticise Israel as unmerited attacks with a different agenda:

"What is this "unwritten contract" [with the US]? I'll tell you what it is: it's an agreement to censor anything and everything that offends the Lobby and its glorified, sanitized view of Israel. Here, after all, is a country that practices apartheid, imprisons children, and was founded on ethnic cleansing and bigoted religious obscurantism – and yet they present themselves to the world as a valiant little "democracy," a beleaguered outpost of "the West" in the midst of an Arab sea. It takes a lot of cosmetics to hide the true face of this dog, and that's what CAMERA is all about – prettifying an increasingly ugly reality. The Lobby reserves the right to censor any material that presents Israel in a more realistic light, and anyone who opposes them in their mission on behalf of a foreign power is smeared as an "anti-Semite."

He is relentless in his disgust at the efforts by CAMERA, who are attempting to "level the playing field" for Israel's supporters. There is simply too much outrage hitting the headlines that embarasses the Jewish State, and Levin at CAMERA is having none of it. Israel's policy is not in question: it's those who report on the atrocities are.

"Here is the totalitarian mentality of fanatic nationalists like Levin exposed for all to see: she and her fellow fifth columnists are lobbying a foreign government to interfere with freedom of the press in America, on behalf of foreign interests. It doesn't get much more disgusting than that, now does it?

Yeah, they have a "very free press" in Israel – much freer than our own, thanks to groups like CAMERA. In Israel, of course, newspapers like Ha'aretz regularly report on matters that offend the Lobby – such as, for example, the existence and unmitigated power of the Lobby itself – and CAMERA can't do a damn thing about it because their influence there is minimal. It's only in the U.S. – where they are bold enough to have called on the Israeli government to take legal action against American media – that they have the kind of power they need to close down debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East."

Everyone else can accept it, even Israel itself. But not in America. And it seems that they are steamrolling their way into attacking another Islamic nation starting with an "I". McGovern noted duly:

"The Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Sallai Meridor, let the cat out of the bag while speaking at the American Jewish Committee luncheon on Oct. 22. In remarks paralleling those of Rice, Meridor said Iran is the chief threat to Israel.
Heavy on the chutzpah, he served gratuitous notice on Washington that effectively countering Iran's nuclear ambitions will take a "united United States in this matter," lest the Iranians conclude, "come January '09, they have it their own way."


Meridor stressed that "very little time" remained to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. How so?"

McGovern stresses the most important figure here calling for a strike on Iran is Dick Cheney, who is,

"a big fan of preemption, Cheney has done little to disguise his attraction to Israel's penchant to preempt, such as Israel's air strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981.

Ten years after the Osirak attack, then-Defense Secretary Cheney reportedly gave Israeli Maj. Gen. David Ivri, commander of the Israeli air force, a satellite photo of the Iraqi nuclear reactor destroyed by U.S.-built Israeli aircraft. On the photo Cheney penned, "Thanks for the outstanding job on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981.""


And Cheney seems to have a couple of tricks (or yes-men) up his sleeve in order to pull the trigger. All the Ahmadinejad talk, all the amendments that bypass Congress, and the actions that put the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a "terrorist organisation", connecting Iran with American casualties in Iraq, is procured to fit nicely that Iran is out to get the US in Iraq, and "wipe off" their best buddy, the Israelis. Well not on Cheney's watch. Pre-emption is the key.

No evidence. No worries. Repeat it enough times then it becomes a fact.

Here's an example:

"Less than two months after the cancellation of Mearsheimer and Walt’s talk at the Chicago Council, administrators at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, cancelled a scheduled talk by the Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu... [Julie] Swiler [an employee of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas] was referring to remarks allegedly made by Tutu comparing Israel to Hitler. In the weeks after the University of St. Thomas cancelled Tutu’s appearance, it came to light that those comments attributed to Tutu were a fabrication. In paraphrasing remarks by Tutu in Boston conference, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, distorted Tutu’s remarks in a ZOA press release. The distorted version worked its way into the media and, in the words of the Jewish Daily Forward, “over time it acquired the status of a factual account.”"

Perfect fit. Put it on the page enough times and it becomes a "status of a factual account". It matters not that it was a baseless lie to vilify a person with stature. Only the marginal can be ignored. Others with prestige have to be accounted for.

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