Author Archives: James Petras

haredi-protest

An Argument in Defense of Haredim Jews and Against Secular Zionist Militarism

Israel is heading towards a profound internal crisis: a Jew on Jew confrontation, which, however, has major implications for its relations with Palestinians, as well as its Middle East neighbors. The conflict is between the highly militarized Zionist state and the Haredim religious movement over a number of issues, including recent proposals by Netanyahu to end the religious exemption of Haradi youth from serving in Israel’s colonial armed forces.

haredi-protest

Haredim and the Zionist Colonial State

Even before the forcible imposition(‘founding’) of the Israeli state, the Haredim were opposed to Zionism. Today the vast majority of Haredim in Israel remain staunchly opposed to the Zionist state for religious, ethical and political reasons. Haredim religious teaching claims that the Jewish people are bound by three oaths (1) not to settle in Israel by using force (2) not to war with other nations and (3) not to act as if the nations of the world would persecute Israel. Haredim were in opposition to Israel’s violent ethnic cleaning of over 850,000 Palestinians in the course of establishing the Israeli State and continues to oppose Israel’s settlers’ violent dispossession of Palestinians. Unlike other so-called “ultra-Orthodox” sects, who support Israeli colonialism and bless the military, Haredim believe that Israeli militarism corrupts the spirit and that Zionists have converted Jews from worshippers of the Torah to rabid ethnocentric upholders of a militarist State. For the Haredim, State worship especially the waving of the Israeli flag in the houses of worship, is a sacrilege comparable to the renegade Jews condemned by Moses for worshipping the Golden Calf.

The majority of Haredim boycott elections, organize their own schools (Yeshivas), encourage students to deepen their religious studies, emphasize community and family values (of a oppresive patriarchal sort) with numerous children and strongly reject the State’s attempt to conscript Haredim youth into their colonial occupation army, the so-called Israeli Defense (sic) Force (IDF). All the major Zionist political parties and the ruling colonial regime demonize the Haredim, claiming they are shirking their military responsibilities .Via the mass media and public pronouncements they incite Israeli hatred toward the Haredim: a study in 2006 claimed that over a third of Israeli Jews considered the Haredim the most hated group in Israel.

The Haredim, on the other hand, have reason to fear and loath the secular militarist Zionist state and politicians. After World War II in the Zionist controlled camps for Jewish refugee children in Teheran, the Jewish Agency imposed Zionist ideology and militarist anti-religious policies to cut Haredim children from their spiritual roots. According to one Haredim report many groups of Jewish youth from Poland, mostly survivors of the Holocaust and Soviet Russia, were subjected to “unimaginable mental and physical cruelty with one goal in mind: obliteration of Judaism”. Given the Israeli drive today to harness a corrupted form of Judaism to colonial militarism, the Haredim have every reason to believe that the conscription of its youth will be accompanied by cruel, systematic Zionist brainwashing to ensure they make “good”, brutal occupation soldiers.

Haredim versus Israeli State Values

The Haredim fervently believe and practice in the Biblical teaching, “Be fruitful and multiply”. They have large families and the median age of Haredim is 16 years. Their peaceful message to militarist Zionists could be “make babies not bombs”.

Some Haredim leaders have met with Palestinian and Iranian leaders and in line with their religious doctrine have declared their support for peaceful resolution of conflicts and have denounced Israel’s aggressive military posture.

Haredim are intensely religious and discuss and debate the readings of some of the great religious scholars: their message to the Zionists is read Maimonides’ ethical treatices not Netanyahu’s bellicose, blood curdling rants.

Haredim live and study largely in the confines of their cohesive communities. They send their sons to the yeshivas to study religious doctrine not to the West Bank to kill Palestinians.They call on their children to serve G-d not the IDF. They seek truth in the Torah not in conquest via the Preventive War Doctrines espoused by prestigious Israeli and overseas Zionist academic militarists.

Haredim focus on building a better life within their community; they reject the efforts of the Zionist state to entice them into joining self-styled “jewish” settlers engaged in vicious land grabs in the West Bank, in the name of “contributing to society (sic)”. Haredim’s ‘introverted way of life’ is seen as a prophylactic alternative to the crass militarism, money laundering, financial speculation, body parts enterprises and real estate swindles rife among the elite Jews in Israel and among sectors of overseas Zionists engaged in procuring multi- billion dollar tribute from the US Treasury.

Haredim believe, with exemplary evidence, that conscripting their youth into the Israeli colonial army would destroy their moral values, as they would be forced to grope Arab women at checkpoints, break the legs of stone throwing Palestinian children, defend lawless self-styled “Jewish” settlers scribbling obscene graffiti in mosques and churches … not to speak of the ill effects of what secular Israeli Jews call a “modern education”, full of historical fabrications about the origins of Israel, scientific readings on high tech war-making and “advanced” economic doctrines proclaiming the sacred role of the free market,and justifying the 60% poverty rate among Haredim as “self-induced”:

No, the Haredim demand that the Israeli Jewish elite stop trying to conscript their youth into the Army and practicing employment discrimination, which triples the unemployment rate among Haredim.

The Coming ‘Civil War’: Zionist State versus the Haredim

The elected leader Yair Lapid of newly formed Yesh Atid Party, dubbed a “centrist” by the New York Times and a ‘moderate’ by the leading ideologues of the Zionist “lobby”, ran on a platform of forcibly ending the Haredim exemption from conscription into colonial military service. Yair Lapid, in the run-up to joining a new Netanyahu coalition regime, has launched a vicious attack on Haredim. Lapid premises his agreement to joining Netanyahu’s war machine on forcibly confronting the Haredim leadership. Yair Lapid taps the class and secular resentments of Israel’s upwardly mobile youth who bitterly complain of having to serve in the army and delaying their money-making opportunities while the poor, semi-literate “blacks” (derogatory term for the clothing of Haredim) engage in “worthless studies” of the Torah. Lapid, using the same perverted logic as Netanyahu, claims that “Ten percent of the population cannot threaten 90 percent with civil war” (Financial Times, 2/14/13, p. 6.). The executioner (Lapid) accuses the victim (Haredim) of the violence he is about to commit. Yesh Atid, the “centrist party” (sic), has allied with Naftali Bennett’s neo-fascist Jewish Home Party (pushing for the annexation of all of Palestine) in support of smashing Haredim’s opposition to conscription. They hold veto power over the next cabinet. This rabid secular military assault has provoked the opposition and unity of other Zionist-religious parties. The Shahs and United Torah Judaism have taken up the defense of the Haredim.

Lines are being drawn far beyond a Haredim-Zionist State confrontation.

The Larger Meaning of the Haredim-Zionist Conflict

The Haredim hostility to the secular Zionist state is in part based on its opposition to military conscription thus calling into question Israeli militarism ,in general, and specifically its policy of colonial occupation and regional aggression. While some Haredim may oppose conscription for religious reasons and seek exemption solely for its own youth, objectively, the effect is to undermine Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights and to call into question the entire apartheid system. By speaking to spiritual values, they deny the legitimacy of the idea of a Jewish police state based on force, violence, torture and disappearance of political prisoners. Their questioning of the institutional configuration upholding Jewish supremacy and Israel as the homeland of the Chosen People, they strike a powerful blow at the ideological underpinnings of the overseas activity of the Zionist power configuration. Their animosity to the fusion of Jewish chauvinism and religious rituals and the tribal deification of the Israeli state is counterposed to their embrace of Moses Ten Commandments.

The Haredim study the teaching of the renowned Judaic philosophy Maimonides and abhor Zionist militaristic strategists like Walzer, Dershowitz, Kagan, Feith, Netanyahu, etc. who preach colonial “just war” doctrines. Representing 10% of the Israeli population and a far greater percentage of military age youth, the Haredim are in a position to sharply limit the scope of future Zionist wars.If they succeed in blocking conscription, they would provide a lasting contribution to making the world in general, and the Middle East in particular, a more secure and peaceful place to live.

Facing the prospect of a loss of future cannon fodder to sustain its colonial ventures, and in their frenzied attacks on the Haredim, the Israeli-Zionist elite have incited the majority of Israeli Jews to demonize them as ‘backward’, illiterate, freeloaders and to blame the religious curriculum for their growing and current 60% rate of poverty and high unemployment. Israel’s war machine needs fresh recruits to maintain its imperial quest for a Greater Israel. Demographics – with families exceeding five children –indicate the Haredim are likely to double their percentage of the Israeli population over the next two decades. Faced with the facts in the womb,the colonial expansionist imperative drives all the leading zionist parties to end Haredim’s exemptions. In response Haredim leaders threaten to engage in massive civil disobedience if the Zionists impose conscription, rightly seeing conscription of its youth as an assault on its most profoundly held spiritual and family values and as an opening wedge in destroying community solidarity and reciprocal relations.

The Haredim share a common plight with Israel’s Arab population: both face increasing police harassment, discrimination, religious persecution and rising levels of poverty. A Haredim-Arab alliance would unite 30% of the population against a common secular militarist and plutocratic enemy. Farfetched as it seems on the subjective level, there are objective historical and structural processes which are driving the two groups together.

It is one of the great ironies of history that the world’s modern secular anti-imperialist movements should find their most consequential allies among Israel’s most traditional and deeply religious movement.

 

James Petras, 20th February.

Israeli-terror-campaign-2012

Israeli Terror: The “Final Solution” to the Palestine Question

Introduction

israeli-destruction-in-GazaFor the past forty-five years the state of Israel has been dispossessing millions of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, confiscating their lands, destroying homes, bulldozing orchards and setting-up ‘Jews-only’ colonial settlements serviced by highways, electrical systems and water works for the exclusive use of the settlers and occupying soldiers.  The process of Israeli territorial expansion throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem has greatly accelerated in recent years, converting Palestinian-held territory into non-viable isolated enclaves – like South Africa’s Bantustans – surrounded by the Israeli soldiers who protect violent settler-vigilantes as they assault and harass Palestinian farmers at work in their fields, beat Arab children on their way to school, pelt Palestinian housewives as they hang their laundry and then invade and defecate in Palestinian mosques and churches.

The Rage and Rape of Gaza and its Apologists

Israel ’s strategic goal is to impose ‘Greater Israel’ on the region: to take over all of historical Palestine,  expell the entire non-Jewish population and subsidize ‘Jews-only’ settlements (for settler-immigrants, often from the US and former USSR ).  While bulldozers and tanks have dispossessed Palestinians in the West Bank for decades, the launching of thousands of missiles and bombs have become the ‘weapons of choice’ for uprooting and eliminating the Palestinians in Gaza .  In just eight days, Israel ’s latest blitzkrieg resulted in the killing of 168 Palestinians (42 children and 100 civilians), the wounding of 1,235, the destruction of over 1,350 buildings and the further traumatizing of over 1.7 million children, women and men fenced in the world’s largest concentration camp.  According to the Israeli Defense Minister, the Jewish State dropped “a thousand times more bombs onto Gaza ” than the Palestinians fired back into Israel .

The current Israeli offensive began with the gruesome assassination of a prominent Hamas leader, Ahmed Jabari, and immediately escalated into an assault on the entire Palestinian population of Gaza. Secure in the knowledge that the Palestinians had no capacity to retaliate with similar weaponry, the Israeli High Command ordered the systematic destruction of civilian life, workplaces and densely populated neighborhoods. Over 75% of the casualties have been non-combatants; almost half are children, women and elders.

Israeli-terror-campaign-on-Gaza
The Israeli propaganda machine and its ‘Fifth Column’ in the US fabricated and repeated the Big Lie: that the Jewish state was ‘defending itself’… Right… with only six (mostly military) deaths and 280 wounded (the majority non-threatening) versus the nearly 200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, slaughtered.  The US Zionist power configuration (ZPC), embedded in the policy centers of the US Executive, the Congress and both political parties, parroted this line.  All the major US TV networks and print media reproduced verbatim Israeli Foreign Office press handouts about Israel ’s ‘defensive’ … genocide … while entire Palestinian families were being buried under the rubble of their bombed apartments.

Israeli-terror-campaign-2012

Death and destruction, planned and executed with the unanimous support of all the major Israeli political parties and leaders, enthralled the mass of its Jewish citizens: Indeed, over 80% of Israeli Jews supported the terror blitz against Gaza .  As the Russian media outlet (RT) reported: “

A new wave of hatred towards Palestinians is sweeping through Israel from public figures to the man (person) in the street.

The Israeli Interior Minister declared that

Gaza should be bombed into the Middle Ages.

Israeli demonstrators in Tel Aviv shouted; “

they (the Palestinians) don’t deserve to live, they must die,

may your children die

and

now we must go back there (to Gaza) and kick out all Arabs.

The prominent Israeli Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, the son of a former chief rabbi, made a speech in the Cave of the Patriarchs in occupied Hebron where he blessed the Israeli soldiers and urged them “to slaughter their enemy“.

Even more to the point, Israel Katz , Israel ’s Transport Minister demanded,

Gaza be bombed so hard the population will have to flee into Egypt (the Sinai desert).

Avi Dichter, the Minister of Home Front Defense, incited the Israeli military to “re-format” Gaza – that is to erase its population with bombs.

Almost half of Israeli Jews considered Netanyahu’s terror bombing of Gaza insufficient: According to the independent Israeli Maagar Mohot poll, half of Israelis opposed the cease fire and demanded the bloody assault against the Palestinian population of Gaza continue.  The same poll reported that almost a third of Israeli Jews thought their government should have sent ground forces into Gaza, an invasion which would have led to tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties and total destruction of their vital infrastructural life-lines.  Netanyahu and his allies in power now confront a new, totalitarian mass opposition that openly embraces a genocidal ‘Final Solution’ to the Palestinian problem.

Genocide at the Service of Greater Israel

The parallels between the pronouncements and actions of Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel are overwhelming.  The bloodlust in Israel goes far beyond psychopathic raving of a few deranged rabbis and marginal politicians:  it extends from the top Cabinet members to the average citizen.

In Israel, almost an entire people – over 80% of Jews – support, with varying degrees of intensity,  the terror bombing and slaughter of the people of Gaza.  Setting aside the profound sociopathic disorders of the raging and racist multitude in Israel , what is politically more significant are the totalitarian rants of leading Israeli public figures, published as editorials, in such newspapers as the ‘respectable’ Jerusalem Post:

We need to flatten all of Gaza . There should be no electricity in Gaza , no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing,

writes Gilad Sharon and the statements of prominent Knesset members, like Michael Ben-Ari ,

There are no innocents in Gaza … mow them (all) down.

These outbursts reveal Israel ’s strategic goal: Genocide at the service of Greater Israel– the bloody purge of 5 million Palestinians, the creation of a 100 percent ‘pure’ Jewish State.  Overseas (mostly US) Zionist-Jewish media moguls, Ivy League university academics, billionaires, US Congress people and government officials finance, underwrite, propagandize for and promote with single-minded perseverance the defense of Israel’s most heinous war crimes, its violations of international law and its ongoing crimes against humanity.

During the entire period of the recent Israeli blitzkrieg, Israel ’s Fifth column, the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, the New York Times and the rest of the major US press rose to the dirty task of giving unconditional support for Israel ’s war crimes.  Vocal support from the US White House and by extension the leaders of the European Union echoed Netanyahu’s lies.  In order to grasp the media white wash of these ongoing crimes against humanity one could compare the US press reports on Israel’s bombing of Gaza to those which would have appeared in the leading fascist newspapers at the time of Hitler’s ‘defensive‘ attacks on Poland and Belgium and the bombing blitz of civilians in London.

The true purpose of Israel ’s terror bombing raids and assassinations in Gaza and the cutting up of the West Bank is to make these territories uninhabitable for the Palestinians. The daily humiliation and destruction of the basic conditions for normal life are designed to force young, educated, ambitious Palestinians to abandon their land, homes and families for less grotesquely barbaric sites, where they might achieve a normal civilized existence, free from foul-mouthed Jewish settlers, unending military incursions, Israeli soldiers pistol-whipping their fathers or breaking the legs and arms of stone-throwing Arab schoolkids.

The Logic of Public Flogging

This obscene Israeli-Jewish behavior is intentionally open and flagrant:  Flaunting Jewish military superiority over the defenseless Arab is vital part of the psychological war reinforcing the idea of Arab inferiority and of Palestinians as aliens in their own country.  Israel ’s underlying slogan

Arab Raus! (Arabs Get Out!),

echoes the Nazi screed,

Juden Raus! (Jews Get Out!).

 The message is clear:

If you are not a Jew then you do not exist! Your very alien presence is an abomination in the eyes of the Zionist God. So if you won’t leave politely we will hasten your departure with a few thousand bombs, missiles and a rain of white phosphorous.

That is the deeper meaning of Israel ’s rape of Gaza.

The Impact of Israel ’s Genocide on US Society

Leading journalists in the politically most influential US newspapers, academics from the most prestigious universities and ‘experts’ from the leading research institutes have systematically defended every Israeli war-crime, including the rape of Gaza, the demolition of Palestinian civil society and the cruel blockade of 1.7 million Palestinians in the biggest ‘open air concentration’ camp in the world.

As usual, the Uber-Zionist Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz and his acolytes provide a legal gloss on the savage bombing of essential public services and private communication and media centers.  Not to be outdone by the loudmouths in Harvard Square , Yale and Princeton professors, with tribal loyalties to the Jewish state, describe the Israeli killing machine as a righteous citizen army defending its eternally victimized people.  “Experts” at the Brookings Institute, Hudson Institute and dozens of other ‘research’ (read propaganda) centers provide ‘scientific’ explanations regarding Israel ’s unique right to dispossess millions of Palestinians. The experts’ justifications of Israeli war crimes permeate the mass media, penetrate the homes of millions of Americans and fill the heads of elected officials.  Meanwhile they ‘convince’ and/or browbeat thousands of non-tribal school teachers and educators into complicity or silence, thus perverting and hollowing out what residual humane and democratic values remain embedded in the citizenry.

It is precisely the much-vaunted ‘high achievements’ of so many Israel-Firsters that has led to their rise to the most influential positions in US society and state and makes their support of terror bombings, ethnic cleansing and genocide so deeply destructive to the US political culture.  In spite of this, some of the same expert-academic apologists for Israel’s terror against the Arab civilians are the most vociferous defenders of human rights everywhere else in the world - including the US (piously condemning US war crimes whenever and wherever they are not explicitly aligned with the interest of the Jewish State).  These ‘experts’ have perverted the concept of universal human rights in the minds of the US public.

As the US mass audience and political class watches the smoke, debris and wreckage of Gaza – and even catch glimpses of a child’s dismembered small body – they are told by the tribal loyalists that this destruction is morally justified, that the target is really “Hamas” – even over the piercing cries of Palestinian mothers for their slaughtered children.  US citizens are told that Israel ’s aggressive aerial bombing and mass shelling from warships off-shore is really a “defensive” maneuver against a “terrorist” regime – one which just happens to lack a single airplane, warship, tank or missile capable of hitting a single major Israeli military or civilian installation.

The Zionist Academic – Journalist Propaganda Complex

The Israeli academic-journalist propaganda complex in the US has pushed the entire US political narrative even further to the fascist right.It has perverted our political vocabulary, equating mass slaughter with national defense; equating the ‘anxiety’ of Israeli Jewish civilians with the homeless, jobless and traumatized widows and children emerging from their devastated densely-populated urban neighborhoods.

The tribal scholars and mass media pundits excel in transforming executioners into victims and victims into executioners.  The Liberal-Zionists, peace-time critics of Israel, remove their peace buttons and pick up scripts defending ‘just wars’, as soon as Israel starts bombing another Arab population or adversary.  For the liberal (human-rights-spouting) Zionists, bombing civilians is always illegal – except when it is Israel launching the missiles.  Propaganda zealots for Israel saturate the media attacking any human rights activist critical of Israel with charges of “anti-Semitism”. They smear, threaten and blackmail each and every dissenting voice daring to oppose their narrative.

The entire mass media and the most prestigious universities censor any mention of Israeli crimes against humanity.  As bombs rained on Gaza not one single Congressional voice denounced the odious American President Obama when he defended Israel’s eight-day “Guernica” against a defenseless population.  Unlike the citizens in Nazi Germany, we, in the US and Western Europe, cannot claim that we did not know about Israeli war crimes as they were happening.  On the other hand, how can the mass of semi-literate TV viewers in the US really ‘know’ what is going on when Israel-Firsters have so thoroughly ‘framed the context’ – claiming it’s all defensive, that only Hamas “terrorists” are targeted …despite the images of children being frantically pulled from the wreckage of their homes.  However, the educated classes in the US do know about Israel ’s tradition and practice of mass civilian bombings; they do remember Lebanon 2006 as well as Gaza 2008-2009 (and countless Israeli massacres in the late 20th century). At the same time, they also “remember” the vicious reprisals and vitriolic attacks the Zionist ideological attack-dogs launched against the critics. Having ‘learned their lessons’ from the Zionist ‘thought-cops’ they conveniently remember … to forget and walk away… from the whole ‘Middle East mess’.  Worse still, they sanctimoniously blame the Palestinians for their efforts to retaliate in the face of Israel ’s blatant murders of their most prestigious leaders as well as their stubborn refusal to surrender.

There are a few Left-Zionists who actually praise the ‘resilience’ of the Palestinians and their refusal to surrender to the dictates of Israel and its occupying army. They note how the Gazans ‘celebrate’ their ‘victory’ amidst the rubble after having secured a very tenuous cease fire.  Any reasonable observer could reply to this sentimental nonsense:

Is survival in an open air concentration camp for another day, the daily prospect of Israeli drone flights overhead and a brutal land and sea blockade any “victory”?

There is no cause for celebration:  Transforming Israeli war crimes into Palestinian virtues is a cheap liberal Zionist sideshow.  An eight-day Israeli assault, which had successfully destroyed every major and minor public office responsible for providing the people of Gaza with essential services, and the savaging of the  water and sewage system, power and electrical grids and media offices (not to mention perishable food and medicine) is nothing to celebrate.  In fact the underlying strategic goal of the Jewish state – to make the remains of historical Palestine uninhabitable (a modern ‘howling wilderness’) for its people – has been advanced by leaps and bounds.  Surviving another day in order to bury loved ones and scrounging among the burnt ruins of a home for a birth certificate or photograph is hardly the noble “Hamas victory” proclaimed by Norman Finkelstein and Uri Avneri.

Why NATO – Washington Support Israel ’s Genocidal War

Unlike in the past, where some international organizations and European states raised tepid objections to Israel ’s military assaults against Palestine or Lebanon , this time around nothing took place.  The White House immediately embraced Israel ’s terror bombing as did the governments of Western Europe.  Meanwhile, Turkey, the Gulf States, the Arab League and the pan-Islamic organizations did nothing concrete, offering no arms, no boycotts, no oil embargos – only shallow symbolic gestures. Netanyahu timed his assault to take advantage of the western imperial offensive against independent countries and leaders who had historically supported the Palestinian liberation struggle for decades.  Since NATO states had invaded and bombed the sovereign nation of Libya back into the Stone Age, Netanyahu’s Cabinet Ministers must have reasoned, “Why can’t we send the Gazans back to the Middle Ages with our bombs”?  When NATO and the Gulf States now arm, finance and support a prolonged terrorist-led assault against the secular regime, people and infrastructure of Syria , Netanyahu reasons, “Why don’t we do the same to the Palestinians”?

With the EU, Washington and the Gulf States engaged in covert and overt wars against all of Palestine’s staunchest allies (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya Syria, Iran and the Sudan) and against the people’s movements in Yemen, Bahrain and Pakistan, Netanyahu’s plan to ethnically purge Palestine has advanced with total impunity – indeed with overt Western approval and without concern for any international ‘humanitarian’ sanctions or even protest.

Netanyahu’s murderous war on Gaza , with full US complicity, has unmasked the collaborationist-nature of Egypt ’s Islamist President Morsi.  Morsi, together with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, secured a cease fire only after Netanyahu had accomplished his immediate goal of destroying the public institutions of civil society and undermining the vital public functions of the Hamas government.

Against the protests of the blood-thirsty Israeli public, who wanted their bombers and army to ‘finish the job’, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu negotiated and signed an agreement overseen by Morsi on a cease fire where Israel will ”pay no indemnity to the devastated civilians of Gaza while confirming the Mubarak-era Israeli– Egyptian treaty and starvation blockade of Gaza.      Right after the ‘cease-fire’, President Morsi assumed dictatorial powers over the Egyptian state.  With the shameful terms of the cease fire and Morsi’s assumption of dictatorial powers the ‘Arab Spring’ has come to a tragic end.

Conclusion

The people of the Middle East , especially the Palestinians, are in their worst position ever.  Palestinians have lost the political, financial and military support of the independent, secular regimes of Libya , Syria and Iraq .  And Iran, the principle source of arms for the Palestinians, faces a US Naval armada off its coast.  Israel is accelerating its naked land grabs in the West Bank.  The PLO continues to be Israel ’s frontline ‘cop on the block’ – jailing resistance fighters and dissidents by the hundreds.  Israel ’s Fifth Column in the US ensures unconditional support for Israel ’s ethnic cleansing of its non-Jewish population. Above all, as the terror bombing of Gaza reveals, Israel, as a state and as a people, is free to bomb and destroy Gaza in order to force a mass exodus of the Palestinians so that they may establish a ‘pure’ and unadulterated Jewish state on historical Palestine.

Epilogue

Less than 24 hours after the so-called “cease fire” Israeli soldiers murdered an unarmed Palestinian protestor and wounded dozens with live ammunition on the Gazan side of the border.  Israel storm troopers raided West Bank homes and arrested 55 Palestinians accused of supporting Hamas.  Scores more Palestinians in the Beit Lahia area of the West Bank were summarily arrested and jailed as suspected Hamas members.  Jewish vigilante settlers near occupied Hebron uprooted 400 olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers from the village of Hawara .  As the missile murderers take their break, the bull dozers rev up their engines:  Israel ’s leaders pursue their strategic objective of a “pure” Jewish state with their inexorable and destructive juggernaut.  The ‘cease fire’ merely changed the methods and the terrain of the dispossession for the time being.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has totally demolished its vibrant recovery and growth since the previous war of destruction.  In 2011 the economy of Gaza grew by 20%; after the recent Israeli attack who would dare consider Gaza as a place to live and invest?

Venezuelan Elections: a Choice and Not an Echo

Introduction

On October 7th, Venezuelan voters will decide whether to support incumbent President Hugo Chavez or opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski.  The voters will choose between two polar opposite programs and social systems:  Chavez calls for the expansion of public ownership of the means of production and consumption, an increase in social spending for welfare programs, greater popular participation in local decision-making, an independent foreign policy based on greater Latin American integration, increases in progressive taxation, the defense of free public health and educational programs and the defense of public ownership of oil production.  In contrast Capriles Radonski represents the parties and elite who support the privatization of public enterprises, oppose the existing public health and educational  and social welfare programs and favor neo-liberal policies designed to subsidize and expand the role and control of foreign and local private capital.  While Capriles Radonski claims to be in favor of what he dubs “the Brazilian model” of “free markets and social welfare”, his political and social backers, in the past and present, are strong advocates of free trade agreements with the US, restrictions on social spending and regressive taxation.  Unlike the US, the Venezuelan voters have a choice and not an echo:  two candidates representing distinct social classes, with divergent socio-political visions and international alignments.  Chavez stands with Latin America, opposes US imperial intervention everywhere, is a staunch defender of self-determination and supporter of Latin American integration.  Capriles Radonski is in favor of free trade agreements with the US, opposes regional integration, supports US intervention in the Middle East and is a diehard supporter of Israel. In the run-up to the elections, as was predictable the entire US mass media has been saturated with anti-Chavez and pro-Capriles propaganda, predicting a ‘victory’ or at least a close outcome for Washington’s protégé.

The media and pundit predictions and propaganda are based entirely on selective citation of dubious polls and campaign commentaries; and worst of all there is  a total lack of any serious discussion of the historical legacy and structural features that form the essential framework for this historic election.

Historical Legacy

For nearly a quarter of a century prior to Chavez election in 1998, Venezuela’s economy and society was in a tailspin, rife with corruption, record inflation, declining growth, rising debt, crime, poverty and unemployment.

Mass protests in the late 1980’s early 1990’s led to the massacre of thousands of slum dwellers,  a failed coup and mass disillusion with the dual bi-party political system.  The petrol industry was privatized; oil wealth nurtured a business elite which shopped on ‘Fifth Avenue, invested in Miami condos , patronized private clinics, for face-lifts and breast jobs, and sent their children to private elite schools to ensure inter-generational continuity of power and privilege.  Venezuela was a bastion of US power projections toward the Caribbean, Central and South America. Venezuela was socially polarized but political power was monopolized by two or three parties who competed for the support of competing factions of the ruling elite and the US Embassy.

Economic pillage, social regression, political authoritarianism and corruption led to an electoral victory for Hugo Chavez in 1998 and a gradual change in public policy toward greater political accountability and institutional reforms which signaled a turn toward greater social equity.

The failed US backed military-business coup of April 2002 and the defeat of the oil executive lockout of December 2002 – February 2003 marked a decisive turning point in Venezuelan political and social history:  the violent assault mobilized and radicalized millions of pro-democracy working class and slum dwellers, who in turn pressured Chavez “to turn left”.  The defeat of the US-capitalist coup and lockout was the first of several popular victories which opened the door to vast social programs covering the housing, health, educational and food needs of millions of Venezuelans.  The US and the Venezuelan elite suffered significant losses of strategic personnel in the military, trade union bureaucracy and oil industry as a result of their involvement in the illegal power grab.

Capriles was an active leader in the coup, heading a gang of thugs which assaulted the Cuban embassy, and an active collaborator in the petrol lockout which temporarily paralyzed the entire economy.

The coup and lockout were followed by a US funded referendum which attempted to impeach Chavez and was soundly trounced.  The failures of the right strengthened the socialist tendencies in the government, weakened the elite opposition and sent the US in a mission to Colombia, ruled by narco-terrorist President Uribe, in search of a military ally to destabilize and overthrow the regime from outside.  Border tensions increased, US bases multiplied to seven, and Colombian death squads crossed the border .But the entire Latin and Central American and Caribbean regions lined up against a US backed invasion out of principle, or because of fear of armed conflicts spilling beyond their borders.

This historical legacy of elite authoritarianism and Chavez successes is deeply embedded in the minds and consciousness of all Venezuelans preparing to vote in the election of October 7th.  The legacy of profound elite hostility to democratic outcomes favoring popular majorities and mass defense of the ‘Socialist president’ is expressed in the profound political polarization of the electorate and the intense mutual dislike or ‘class hatred’ which percolates under the cover of the electoral campaign.  For the masses the elections are about past abuses and contemporary advances, upward social mobility and material improvements in living standards; for the upper and affluent middle class there is intense resentment about a relative loss of power, privilege, prestige and private preferences. The rightwing elite’s relative losses have fueled a resentment with dangerous overtones for democracy in case of lost elections and revanchist policies if they win the elections.

Institutional Configuration

The rightwing elite may not control the government but they certainly are not without a strong institutional base of power.  Eighty percent of the banking and finance sector is in private hands, as are most of the services manufacturing and a substantial proportion of retail and wholesale trade.  Within the public bureaucracy, the National Guard and military the opposition has at least a minority actively or passively supportive of the rightwing political groups.  The principle business, financial and landowners associations are the social nuclei of the right.  The rightwing controls approximately one third of the mayors and governors and over forty percent of the national legislators.  Major U.S. and EU petroleum multi-nationals have a substantial minority share in the oil sector.

The rightwing still monopolizes the print media and has a majority TV and radio audience despite government inroads.  The government has gained influence via the nationalization of banks – a 20% share of that sector, a share of the mining and metal industry and a few food processing plants and a substantial base in agriculture via the agrarian reform beneficiaries.

The government has gained major influence among the public sector employees and workers in the oil industry, social services and the welfare and housing sector.  The military and police  appears to be strongly supportive and constitutionalist.  The government has established mass media outlets and promoted a host of community based radio stations.

The majority of the trade unions and peasant associations back the government.  But the real strength of the government is found in the quasi-institutional community based organizations rooted in the vast urban settlements linked to the ‘social missions’.

In terms of money power, the government draws on substantial oil earnings to finance popular long term and short term social impact programs, effectively countering the patronage programs of the private sector and the overt and clandestine “grass roots” funding by US foundations, NGOs and “aid” agencies.  In other words despite suffering major political defeats and past decades of misrule and corruption, the rightwing retains a powerful institutional bases to contest the powerful socio-economic advances of the Chavez government and to mount an aggressive electoral campaign.

Social Dynamics and the Presidential Campaign

The key to the success of the Chavez re-election is to keep the focus on socio-economic issues: the universal health and education programs, the vast public housing program underway, the state subsidized supermarkets, the improved public transport in densely populated areas.  The sharper the national social polarization between the business elite and the masses, the less likely the rightwing can play on popular disaffection with corrupt and ineffective local officials.  The greater the degree of social solidarity of wage, salaried and informal workers the less likely that the right can appeal to the status aspirations of the upwardly mobile workers and employees who have risen to middle class life styles, ironically during the Chavez induced prosperity.

The Chavez campaign plays to the promise of continued social prosperity, greater and continuing social mobility and opportunity, an appeal to a greater sense of social equality and fairness; and it has a bed rock 40% of the electorate ready to go to the barricades for the President. Capriles appeals to several contradictory groups: a solid core of 20% of the electorate, made up of the business, banking and especially agrarian elite and their employees, managers, and professionals who long for a return to the neo-liberal past, to a time when police and army and intelligence agencies kept the poor confined to their slums and the petrol treasury flowed into their coffers.  The second group which Capriles appeals to are the professionals and the small business people who are fearful of the expansion of the public domain and the ‘socialist ideology’ and yet who have prospered via easy credits, increased clientele and public spending.  The sons and daughters of affluent sectors of this class provide the “activists” who see in the downfall of the Chavez government an opportunity to regain power and prestige that they pretend to have had before the ‘revolt of the masses’.  Capriles past open embrace of neo-liberalism and the military coup of 2002 and his close ties to the business elite, Washington and his rightwing counterparts in Colombia and Argentina assures the enraged middle class that his promise to retain Chavez social missions is pure electoral demagoguery for tactical electoral purposes.

The third group which Capriles does not have, but is vital if he is to make a respectable showing, is among the small towns, provincial lower middle class and urban poor.  Here Capriles presents himself as a “progressive” supporter of Chavez social missions in order to attack the local administrators and officials for their inefficiencies and malfeasance and the lack of public security – Capriles, hyper-activity, his populist demagogy and his effort to exploit local discontent is effective in securing some lower class votes; but his upper class links and long history of aggressive support for  rightwing authoritarianism has undermined any mass defection to his side.

Chavez on the other hand is highlighting his social accomplishments, a spectacular decade of high growth, the decline of inequalities (Venezuela has the lowest rate of inequalities in Latin America) and the high rates of popular satisfaction with governance.  Chavez funding for social impact programs benefits from a year-long economic recovery from the world recession(5% growth for 2012), triple digit oil prices and a generally favorable regional political environment including a vast improvement in Colombian-Venezuelan relations.

The Correlation of Forces:  International, Regional, National and Local

The Chavez government has benefited enormously from very favorable world prices for its main export-petroleum; it has also increased its revenues through timely expropriations and increases in royalty and tax payments, as well as new investment agreements from new foreign investors in the face of opposition from some US MNC.

Washington, deeply involved in conflicts in oil rich Muslim countries, is in no position to organize any boycott against Venezuela one of its principle and reliable petrol providers; its last big effort at “regime change” in 2002-03, during the “lockout” by senior executives of the Venezuelan oil company backfired –it resulted in the firing of almost all US ‘assets’ and the radicalization of nationalist oil policy.

US efforts to ‘isolate’ the Chavez regime internationally has failed; Russia and China have increased their trade and investment, as have a dozen other European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries.  The EU recession and the slowdown of the US and world economy has not been conducive to fostering any sympathy for any restrictions in economic ties with Venezuela.

Most significantly the rise of center-left regimes in Latin America, the Caribbean and Central America, has favored increasing diplomatic and economic ties with Venezuela and greater Latin American integration. In contrast Obama’s backing for the Honduran and Paraguayan coups and Washington-centered free trade agreements and neo-liberal policies have gone out of favor.  In brief, the international and regional correlation of forces has been highly favorable to the Chavez government, while Washington’s dominant influence has waned.

One of the last Latin American bastions of US efforts to destabilize Chavez, Colombia, has sharply shifted policy toward Venezuela,. With the change in regime from Uribe to Santos, Colombia has reached multi-billion dollar trade and investment agreements and joint diplomatic and military agreements with Venezuela, signaling a kind of ‘peaceful coexistence’.  Despite a recent free trade agreement and the continuance of US military bases, Colombia has, at least in this conjuncture, ruled out joint participation in any US sponsored military or political intervention or destabilization campaign.

US political leverage in Venezuela is largely dependent on channeling financial resources and advisors toward its electoral clients.  Given the decline in external regional allies, and given its loss of key assets in the Venezuelan military and among Colombian para-military forces, Washington has turned to its electoral clients .Via heavy  financial flows it has successfully imposed the unification of all the disparate opposition groups, fashioned an ideology of moderate ‘centrist’ reform to camouflage the far right, neo-liberal ideology of the Capriles leadership and contracted hundreds of community agitators and ‘grass roots’ organizers to exploit the substantial gap between Chavez’s programmatic promises and the incompetent and inefficient implementation of those policies by local officials.

The strategic weakness of the Chavez government is local, the incapacity of officials to keep the lights on and the water running.  At the international, regional and national level the correlation of forces favors Chavez.  Washington and Capriles try to compensate for Chavez regional strength by attacking his regional aid programs, claiming he is diverting resources abroad instead of tending to problems at home.  Chavez has allocated enormous resources to social expenditures and infrastructure – the problem is not diversion abroad, it is mismanagement by local Chavista officials, many offspring of past clientele parties and personalities.  The issue of rising crime and poor low enforcement would certainly cost Chavez more than a few lost  votes if the same high crime rates were not also present in the state of Miranda where candidate Capriles has governed for the past four years

Electoral Outcome

Despite massive gains for the lower classes and solid support among the poor, the emerging middle class product of Chavez era prosperity, has rising expectations of greater consumption and less crime and insecurity; they look to distance themselves from the poor and to approach the affluent; their eyes look upward and not downward.  The momentum of a dozen years in power is slowing, but mass fear of a neo-liberal reversion limits the possible electorate that Capriles can attract.  Despite crime and official inefficiencies and corruption, the Chavez era has been a period extremely favorable for the lower class and sectors of business, commerce and finance. This year -2012-is no exception. According to the UN, Venezuela’s growth rate (5%)exceeds that of Argentina(2%) Brazil(1.5%) and Mexico(4%).Private consumption has been the main driver of growth thanks to the growth of labor markets, increased credit and public investment. The vast majority of Venezuelans, including sectors of business will not vote against an incumbent government generating one of the fastest economic recoveries in the Hemisphere.  Capriles radical rightist past and present covert agenda could provoke class conflict, political instability, economic decline and an unfavorable climate for international investors.

Washington is probably not in favor of a post-election coup or destabilization campaign if Capriles loses by a significant margin.  The popularity of Chavez, the social welfare legislation and material gains and the dynamic growth this year ensures him of a victory margin of 10%.Chavez will receive 55% of the votes against Capriles 45%.  Washington and their rightist clients are planning to consolidate their organization and prepare for the congressional elections in December.  The idea is a “march through the institutions” to paralyze executive initiatives and frustrate Chavez’s efforts to move ahead with a socialized economy.  The Achilles heel of the Chavez government is precisely at the local and state level: a high priority should be the replacement of incompetent and corrupt officials with efficient and democratically controlled local leaders who can implement Chavez’s immensely popular programs.  And Chavez must devote greater attention to local politics and administration to match his foreign policy successes:  the fact that the Right can turn out a half a million demonstrators in Caracas is not based on its ideological appeal to a ruinous, coup driven past, but in its success in exploiting chronic local grievances which have not been addressed – crime, corruption., blackouts and water shortages.

What is at stake in the October 2012 election is not only the welfare of the Venezuelan people but the future of Latin America’s integration and independence, and the prosperity of millions dependent on Venezuelan aid and solidarity.

A Chavez victory will provide a platform for rectification of a basically progressive social agenda and the continuation of an anti-imperialist foreign policy.  A defeat will provide Obama or Romney with a trampoline to re-launch the reactionary neo-liberal and militarist policies of the pre-Chavez era – the infamous Clinton decade (of the 1990’s) of pillage, plunder, privatization and poverty.

greekprotests

Greece: What Can be Done?

greekprotests

Demonstrators outside of Syntagma Square rallied to mark the 24 hour general strike against increasing austerity measures

Greece faces the unenviable choice between accepting the terms of “the Troika” and facing the continuation and deepening of a socio-economic crises, which includes five years of negative growth, over 23% unemployment, an astronomical rise in poverty (from less than 15% to over 40%) and  mounting suicides, or a rejection of the “memorandum”, and a likely cut-off of Eurozone funding and capital markets with virtually few reserves to cover salaries, pensions or public services.

While the immediate cost of a break with catastrophic conditions imposed by Eurozone bankers may be high, it opens up the possibility of transforming the internal and external relations and structures which led Greece to ground zero.

Crises as Opportunity?

The prolonged and unending downward spiral of the Greek economy and living standards, the disastrous and destructive policies pursued by the formerly dominant two parties (PASOK and New Democracy) has conclusively demonstrated that Greek “capitalism” and EEC integration has been an unmitigated disaster; tried tested and failed to meet the minimum standards of human existence.  Only dogmatic true believers in the innate virtues of ‘capitalism’ and the EEC can continue to prattle about the “need” to continue the same “austerity” policies which have devastated the lives of 80% of the people, closed half the business establishments in the country and fails to provide jobs for half of the young labor force (under 30 years of age).

The profound crises demonstrates the need for basic changes in the organization of the economy, the urgency for new political leadership and the desire for a new political system responsive to the vast majority.

The old ruling oligarchies are totally discredited.  The existing links to the EEC only bleed the economy:  providing loans which deepen debt and which pass through the economy to overseas bankers.  EEC ‘integration’ is in fact a great suction pump which depresses the economy and living standards in order to extract wealth for overseas bondholders.

No capitalist or politician of the old order provides any redeeming argument. In the past they plundered the economy; in the present they extract and transfer wealth abroad; and for the future they can only promise more of the same.

The basic challenge is not the abysmal conditions of the present but the opportunity that exists for a fundamental transformation.  The problem is fashioning a transition from an unmitigated disaster to an equitable, dynamic and participatory economy.  The problem facing a transition is the flawed structural and behavioral features of contemporary Greek society, polity and economy.  Greece is deeply embedded with the legacy of a culture of pervasive state-party corruption and kleptocracy and bloated expenditures for the military and cliental bureaucracies.  Most important Greece is dominated by rent seeking economic elites which pretend to be capitalists, but profit from state and overseas handouts from the Eurozone bankers and states.

To effect a transition requires that we first face the negative legacy of the past an order to see what proposals are viable and necessary.

The Negative Legacy and Debt Default:  Greece is not Argentina

Many radical critics of the ‘austerity’ and debt crises in Greece cite the “Argentine example” of debt default, (over $100 billion dollars) and its ability to fashion a successful recovery and growth model based on ‘self-financing’.  The critical advocates ignore the profound differences in the economic and social structures of the two countries as well as their respective locations in the regional economies.

Argentina, at the bottom of its crises, was actually in a worse situation than Greece today.  Unemployment hovered between 25% – 30% and over 50% in many working class districts, compared to 24% in Greece.  Poverty levels in Argentina exceeded 45%; in Greece they exceed 35%.  The depression in Argentina led to a negative growth rate of approximately 20% over the 3 year duration, equal to the loss in Greece over the past 5 years.

Despite starting from a more difficult and worse situation Argentina had several strategic advantages.

In the first place, in Argentina the ouster from power of the crises driven ruling elite was affected by a mass popular uprising (December 2001 – January 2002).  In Greece, while mass demonstrations have certainly politicized, mobilized and radicalized a part of the electorate, the radical coalition vying for power (SYRIZA), has taken the electoral route.  Secondly, the Argentine upheaval was a continuous process as mass unemployed picketers (piqueteros) blocked all roads and transport as a negotiating tool to ensure that resources were transferred from debt payments to unemployed workers’ family allowances and in reviving the economy.  In Greece the vast army of unemployed has neither the organized capacity to sustain constant transport blockage nor can they count on neighborhood and trade union organizations for anything more than repeated one day work stoppages and marches.

Argentina immediately drastically devaluated its currency – eliminating the dollar peg – from one to one, to three to one and vastly increased the competitiveness of Argentine export products.  The center-left regime encouraged the substitution of local products for costly imports.  Argentina, unlike Greece was not part of a currency union and could set its own currency rate.  Greece, is bound to the euro and will have to convert to the drachma in order to take control over its finances, currency rate and monetary and investment policy tools.

Argentina possessed a substantial industrial – manufacturing sector, idled by the crises, but with the worker-engineering-management capacity to respond to a new stimulus program.  In addition, Argentina had a dynamic highly competitive agro-business sector, a world leader in beef, grains and soya, as well as energy (oil) and mineral wealth, which the center-left regime could activate.

Greece, during its 30 year membership in the European Union actually saw its meager and backward manufacturing and agricultural base shrink, in the face of cheap and better imports from developed capitalist countries like Germany, France, Holland and elsewhere.  Unlike Argentina, Greece received billions of dollars in “transfers”, compensation funds to upgrade its economy and competitiveness and prepare it for full integration (lowering of tariff barriers).  However, the “transfers” were not channeled into productive activity either by the two ruling parties or by the ‘capitalists’ and ‘farmers’.  The ruling parties used the transfers to build extensive electoral patronage machines; they squandered funds for overpriced state contracts to provide builders engaged in non-productive building projects (including the multi-billion dollar swindle around the Olympic Games).  Tens of thousands of unemployed graduates and party loyalists bloated the national, regional and local bureaucracy, increasing consumption, blocking any meaningful productive activity.

Capitalists designed “productive projects and then transferred EU- loans and handouts to local and overseas real estate investments and luxury purchases.  The Greek elite transferred loans to London, Swiss and Cypriot bank accounts – while the government signed off as ultimate guarantor.

In the agriculture sector, many property holders were doctors, dentists, lawyers and high officials who used the ownership of a few dozen olive or orange trees to receive low interest loans, import tax free luxury 4 x 4 vehicle imports and to build second or third vacation houses .Many farmers who received loans and grants, purchased land for homes for their married children or for extra room to rent to tourists or to send their sons and daughters to overseas universities.

Most important, the economic elite – bankers, ship owners, construction-real estate – politicians, speculators skimmed off billions from the EEC transfers in the form of illicit loans to cronies and in the form of fees, management charges for credit dealings and pension funding.

The European bankers, government officials and exporters were acutely aware that the “transfers” were being pillaged – but they went along, for obvious reasons of economic and political gain:  lucrative interest payments flowed into their coffers; exporters took over Greek consumer markets; bankers and investment houses found willing pension fund manager’s ‘open’ to dubious investments.  Even tourists enjoyed the sun and imports which reminded them of home: wiener schnitzel, English ale, Dutch feta.  Moreover, Greece spent 15% of its budget on the military, serving NATO goals and bases.

Contrary to superficial appearances, Greece was not ruled by capitalists, small business people and farmers’ as some political scientists claim.  Greece was ruled by an extensive class of kleptocrats, tax evaders and rentiers who pillaged, borrowed, consumed and invested overseas.  Technologically Greece was among the most backward agro-manufacturing countries.  Its overseas trained and educated professionals, returned and ‘adapted’ to the kleptocratic-rentier culture:  most held several positions in public-private activities, guaranteeing a mediocre performance and conflicts of interests.

In summary Greece is not Argentina.  A Greek default is an absolute necessity to begin the process of transition toward a productive and equitable economy.  But the horrendous Greek legacy raises a whole series of new problems and challenges with few economic resources and in the absence of leading productive classes. The Difficult Road Out of Crises

Any road map out of the Greek crises will be difficult, complex, and arduous – given the “scorched earth” economy which a left government (LG) will inherit. The first and most basic concern of a LG is to end the policies and especially the agreements with the “Troika” that demand further mass firings of public employees, the reduction in social services, the cuts in minimum wages and pensions.  A new LG needs to impose a series of emergency measures to avoid economic bankruptcy.

It is absolutely clear that European bankers and regimes want to punish Greece for transgressions of their “austerity pact”.  If Greece should succeed in renouncing the austerity pact, the Euro bankers fear that other countries – Spain, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus and Ireland might follow suite.

Greece should suspend debt payments, impose tight capital controls and freeze bank deposits to avoid capital flight, in the face of the Troika cut-off of funding.  The LG should convoke a series of emergency commissions to (1) secure alternative sources of emergency financing from several reserve funds with Euro holdings.  They must seek loans from Russia, Iran, Venezuela, China and other states not beholden to the Troika (2) make an inventory of available and potential productive enterprises – bankrupt or troubled firms, indebted enterprises – and convert them into state sponsored worker-employee operated co-operatives (3) investigate public debt to determine what can be classified as ‘legitimate’(loans channeled into productive employment) or illegitimate (loans that enriched speculators, corrupt contractors, political leaders) (4) investigate and attach overseas holdings of wealthy  Greeks who were engaged in multi-year multi-million tax evasion and who accumulated illicit income via unpaid loans and money laundering.  Greek auditors should proceed to demand that Eurozone creditors should collect debt payments from the bank accounts of wealth Greeks who laundered and deposited in London, Zurich, Frankfurt, New York and elsewhere.

The principle of the LG should be “those who borrowed the loans and profited, should pay them”.  The European bankers who lent to corrupt politicians and business kleptocrats must assume the loss, for failing to exercise “due diligence” – oversight into the viability of the activity they were financing.  After all private business ‘justifies’ its profits by the “risks” it takes.  In the case of Greece, Euro-bankers’ demands that private bank loans and repayments be  “guaranteed” by the state (no matter how badly they were managed) risk ‘moral hazard’: Guaranteeing bankers’ profits, irrespective of their ‘soundness’, encourages a repetition of reckless speculation such as had transpired in Greece over the past 30 years.

The LG should repudiate illegal debts (the vast majority) and renegotiate and roll-over the rest over an extended time frame, pending an economic recovery.

What should be recognized is that past Greek governments (despite being formally elected) engaged in illegitimate activity which prejudiced the sovereignty, productive capacity and livelihood of an entire people.

What is not acceptable is to force an entire people to sacrifice their lives because a minority of Greeks borrowed and didn’t invest or pay their debts to overseas creditors.  Currently the kleptocratic millionaires are given “cover” and their illicit multi-billion Euro bank accounts and real-estate holdings are protected by the banks demanding payments from the Greek government. Their current demands are based on a savage demolition of living standards for a whole people.  For outstanding obligations, the Greek LG can transfer tax debts of Greek tax evaders to creditors, letting them attach the overseas accounts of their Greek clients.

The LG can self-finance a recovery by drastically changing budget priorities:  mainly by slashing its military budgets.  Greece’s military expenditures as a percentage of its total budget, is one of the highest in the European Union.  By eliminating expenditures for NATO operations, overseas military expedition and numerous military bases, a LG can prioritize industrial and service investments.

Greece needs a (1) growth tax – a flat tax on the self-employed – professions, shop keepers, hotels, etc. – to ensure that they pay their share in financing the new economy.  While the very rich engaged in mega swindles and evasions, it was also the case that the 50% self-employed sector imitated their behavior at the micro-level (2) a tourist tax – at airports, ferry-docks, tour ships stops – with tight oversight and or replacement of corrupt tax inspectors/collectors and customs officials who take a big cut of proceeds. Incarceration of corrupt officials should be mandatory. (3) A real estate tax which reflects the real value of land and property, especially of unused or uncultivated lands. (4) A tax on financial transactions and an end to tax exemptions for major banks, corporations and so-called property developers. Exploiting Unused or Underutilized Human Resources

The new government has many sources of ‘human capital’ – hundreds of thousands of unemployed young educated people who can be mobilized for work in productive activity through selective public investments in priority areas, especially outside of the “greater Athens region”.

There are many regions and islands which have the potential to provide income and employment, properly addressed.  One of the most salient is in food processing; one of the many perversities of the Greek economy is the production and exports of apples and citrus products to Germany and the import of juices.  Another is the failure to link local food and manufacturing to the 14 million tourist sector.  Most food and furniture is imported; most vacation packages benefit overseas multi-nationals and foreign transport agencies.As a result the Greek economy and labor force derives a small share of total income from its “leading sector”.  Greece with 300 days of sun is ideal for solar energy development. The New Economy Cannot be Built with Kleptocrats of the Past

As mentioned above, Greece had few if any real entrepreneurs, who invested their own profits, invested in research and development and modernized their plant.

Public sector enterprises were overloaded with the unemployed ‘party members’, many virtually ‘no shows’; and many public sector unions  engaged in nepotism and multiple-employment at the expense of efficient services, profitability and long-term development strategies.  Public sector enterprises require a kind of re-nationalization’, to generate revenues and income to finance new jobs in new enterprises.  Management of public enterprises should be transferred from the hands of stagnant ‘life time job-holders’ to dynamic workers – entrepreneurial – engineering management teams looking to broaden the scope and quality of activity within the new economy.

Pension funds and other savings must be mobilized alongside the billions retained by the state’s debt default to pay current expenses (pensions, salaries, basic imports etc.), to stimulate the revival of production among enterprises which show a willingness to rebuild the economy and which show a willingness to collaborate in activating production and employment.  Public profits should finance worker takeovers of factories and services abandoned by their previous owners, of which there are thousands.

The public sector must take the lead in investing, servicing and producing to create “confidence” among the small and medium size producers.  The public sector must take the lead in negotiating with potential lenders and economic partners outside the Eurozone: new markets and financial arrangements will be necessary if the Eurozone cuts off all funding as a consequence of debt default or a moratorium.

The danger is that SYRIZA follows through on the default and has no alternative emergency plan in place to respond to a Eurozone cut-off.  In the face of an EU/IMF offensive and lacking an alternative, a sector of SYRIZA  (ex. PASOK public sector unionists) may back-track and seek to accept some form of “renegotiated” pact … which would divide and undermine the prospects for a truly viable and radical transformation and condemn Greece to its catastrophic downward spiral. Conclusion

SYRIZA has been raised to a serious contender for state power by the most devastating capitalist crises to affect a Western European country since WWII.  It gained adherence through its dynamic grass roots organizing and the relative cohesion of its disparate components.  It’s clear and forthright exposé of the corruption and pillage of the dominant parties and its image as a party with ‘clean hands’ has propelled it forward among a broad spectrum of classes, regions and generational groups.  However, the very depth of the crises, the total pillage and emptying of the treasury by the kleptocratic political-business class and the dismantling of the entire productive sector and the transfer of billions of Euros abroad by the millionaire rentier class, has created an immensely difficult terrain from which to launch the necessary transformation.  The new government can and must guarantee the sovereignty of the nation by rejecting imperial dictates and end any further degradation (“austerity”) of the Greek people.  Emancipation requires that first and foremost the new leadership takes the lead in making sacrifices:  cutting out all the perks of office, salaries and overseas commitments.  The new social priorities demand severe cuts in military budgets – bases, NATO, arms purchases.  The new leaders must tell the Euro-bankers to collect payments from the accounts of the overseas billionaires who borrowed, bled the country and are now sheltered in the same banks.

The Left must move from criticism to practical deeds; from theorizing to creating jobs!  Greece with a new government can put an end to open-ended austerity and decay.  It can and must change its place in the international economy.  In the final analysis, it is Greece’s last best hope.

 

The Massacre of the Afghan 17 & the Obama Cover-Up

The March 11 Massacre of the 17 Afghan citizens, including at least nine children and four women, raises many fundamental issues about the nature of a colonial war, the practices of a colonial army engaged in a prolonged (eleven-year) occupation and the character of an imperial state as it commits war crimes and increasingly relies on arbitrary dictatorial measures to secure public compliance and suppress dissent.

After the cold-blooded murder of the 17 Afghan villagers in Kandahar Province the US military and the ever-complicit Obama regime constructed an elaborate cover-up, exposing the Administration up to charges of conspiracy to suppress the essential facts, falsify data and obstruct justice : All are grounds for criminal prosecution and impeachment.

This massacre is just one of several hundred committed by US armed forces according to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. It could ruin the Obama presidency, by putting him on trial for conspiracy to obstruct justice and arguably send him to jail for war crimes.

Obama’s deliberate lies about the events surrounding the massacre and the fundamental responsibility of the high military command for the crimes committed by its troops underscores the breakdown of the occupation of Afghanistan, the very centerpiece of Obama’s war policy. The President of the United States has personally played a major role in the cover-up. From a political vantage point, the executive conspiracy charge has wider and deeper implications than the massacre itself, as horrible as it is.

The Massacre, the ‘Official’ Story (1st version) and the Cover-Up

According to the US military command in Afghanistan and the Obama regime, at 3am on March 11, 2012 a deranged soldier walked off a Special Forces Base in rural Kandahar Province and without command authority entered two villages (two miles apart), shot and killed 17 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children and wounded an unspecified number of villagers; then he doused their bodies with gasoline, set them on fire and hiked back to base to surrender himself to his commanders. This ‘surrender’, the Pentagon claims, was recorded on video and no less than the President of the United States , Barack Obama, vouched for its authenticity as conclusive proof for the story of a lone, unbalanced mass murderer. The military command quickly whisked the initially unnamed murderer out of the Afghanistan to the maximum security federal prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and only then identified the madman as a 38-year old, multi-decorated, 11-year army veteran, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. The US has rejected all attempts by the Afghan President, the Afghan Army Chief and members of the Afghan Parliament to interview Sgt Bales, gather testimony and bring the suspect to trial in Afghanistan .

According to an independent Afghan parliamentary investigation led by Sayed Ishaq Gillami, and initial investigations by General Sher Mohammed Karimi of the Afghan Army, who interviewed residents of the two villages, there are significant contradictions in the US military’s and President Obama’s “official story”. Eye witnesses have testified that up to 20 soldiers were involved, aided by a helicopter. What they described was typical of a US Special Forces’ night time raid, which involved the systematic breaking down of doors, rousing the sleeping families and shooting Afghan victims.

Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today, finds the villagers’ version of events quite plausible for the following reasons: The villages, where the murders occurred, were two miles apart, making it highly unlikely that a lone, fully armed solder could haul a multi-gallon jerry can of gasoline from his base to the first sleeping village, break down the doors of one or more homes, commit the murders, douse and burn his victims and then proceed on foot two miles further on to the second village, shoot, kill and burn the next set of unarmed villagers and then walk back to his base and surrender.

It makes far more sense that a heavily armed group of Special Forces troops, engaged in village ‘pacification’ operations, left their base in military vehicles, passed through the gate in the wee hours of the morning, on a routine official operation, authorized by the bases military command and something went wrong. What was supposed to have been a typical midnight assault on a “pacified” village in search of Taliban supporters, turned into the mass murder of children and their mothers in bed with virtually no adult males (husbands, fathers, uncles or brothers) present to protect them. Typically, all Afghan farmers keep weapons in their homes, but these villages had been disarmed by the Special Forces and the adult men had either been detained in earlier sweeps or were in hiding from just such brutal operations in the expectation that their wives and children would not be attacked.

Whatever triggered the mass murder of mothers and children in their nightclothes in those villages in Kandahar , one thing is clear: the President of the United States conspired with the US military command to obstruct justice in the cover-up of a heinous war crime, a felony punishable with impeachment.

When the implausibility first ‘official’ story became embarrassingly evident to the most superficial observer, the Obama ‘cover-up’ crew released a new version on March 26: According to the revised version of events, the lone, deranged Sgt. Bales committed the first massacre in the early morning hours of March 11, walked back to base for breakfast and lunch and then walked out again to a second village for another round of mass murder – before returning and turning himself in to his commander posing for the video.

Why the Obama Cover-Up: Military Demoralization and the Iran War

Why would President Obama engage in such a clumsy cover-up further eroding US relations with the Afghan President Karzai, the Afghan military and especially the Afghan people? Why would he risk charges of conspiracy to protect war criminals by insisting on an easily refutable cover-up?

The story of the alleged assassin, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, provides some leads about the larger crisis facing the imperial military. Bales is a ‘decorated’ soldier rewarded for his three tours of combat duty in Iraq and his more recent Afghan assignment where he would have participated in similar types of Special Pacification Operations among civilians in the countryside in Afghanistan. In the days after news of the massacre leaked out, a furious Afghan President Karzai claimed that “hundreds” of similar massacres had been perpetrated by US and NATO forces and had gone unreported in the Western media and unpunished. Karzai has repeatedly called for an end to US Special Forces’ night raids on sleeping villages. But, until now, there had been no need for a US Presidential cover-up up. With the approaching US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the growing expressions of militant Afghan nationalism, the Obama regime must hide the true nature of the occupation. Washington ’s Afghan clients can no longer ignore US war crimes against innocent children and women and other non-combatants. This is especially true in the so-called ‘pacified’ villages where the adult Afghani men have already been arrested in sweeps or driven into hiding and with the few remaining, disarmed and ‘under the control’ of the US Special Forces.

Considering even the US official story, why would the Special Forces commanders in charge of the Sgt. Bales base ignore the loud bursts of gunfire and screams of women and children in a village within 100 meters of its perimeter at 3 am? According to their official version, the base command only became aware of the massacres when Sgt. Bales walked back to base, raised his hands high for a video-op and confessed to killing and desecrating the bodies of 17, mostly children and women.

Obama has tried to sell the ‘confession’ video as proof of the ‘official version’ of events to a skeptical Afghan President Karzai who contemptuously demanded the ‘alleged’ video be turned over for a detailed examination for authenticity. Obama’s refusal to release the video tends to confirm his role in the cover-up.

Obama’s contention that a ‘lone unbalanced gunman’ committed the crime is completely self-serving and exposes serious and deep structural problems with the war in Afghanistan . US combat troops in Afghanistan are demoralized and angry because their military commanders have marched them into a cul de sac – a dead end. They are engaged in a long, losing war where every dead US soldier is accompanied by scores who are maimed, blinded and mentally traumatized. In Obama’s war, the wounded are patched up and recycled back into the same meat grinder in an increasingly hostile environment, where rape, torture, maiming and murder become their only ‘recreation’. Sgt. Bales was coerced into multiple tours of duty in Iraq and then shipped off to Afghanistan , contrary to his expectations of a promotion and an end to overseas combat assignments.

There is a huge gap between the world of the political warlords in Washington and their accomplices among the warmongering ‘lobbies’ and that of the soldiers who risk their lives in imperial wars of occupation. These dispensable soldiers are repeatedly deployed to brutal colonial wars thousands of miles from their homes to confront an ‘enemy’ they cannot possibly understand. They end up brutalizing the families, friends, neighbors and compatriots of the elusive Afghan anti-colonial fighters – who are everywhere. Back in the Washington none of the political war-mongers ever experience the pain and suffering of a prolonged war, which for any soldier on the battlefield, is ever present, everywhere. Soldiers, like Sgt. Bales, operate in a very hostile environment where, a roadside bomb or a grenade thrown from a motorcycle, or even a ‘trusted’ Afghan ally, who might turn his gun on his US ‘mentors,’ are omnipresent threats to their ever returning home in one piece.

Obama has to conspire with the Pentagon in covering up this mass murder, defending the officers in charge of these ‘pacified’ villages, because there are no alternatives, no back-ups, no new recruits eager to engage in the 12th year of war in Afghanistan . There are only the re-cycled killers, willing to pursue their career in ‘Special Forces’ involving ‘kill and destroy’ operations. Furthermore, Obama cannot rely on the international allies who are rushing to withdraw their own troops from this quagmire. And Obama has a problem with his allied Afghan warlords and kleptocrats, who managed to run off with over $4.5 billion dollars in 2011 (half of the entire state budget) (Financial Times, 3/19/12, p. 1). President Obama cannot allow an entire garrison, including their commanding officer to be put on trial for the war crimes in this massacre. Holding anyone, besides the hapless Sgt. Bales, accountable for the massacre would incite a general rebellion within the armed forces, or, at a minimum, further demoralize the elite Special Forces who are expected to man these long-term engagements after the regulars withdraw, which in the case of Afghanistan could last until 2024.

This issue has implications far beyond Afghanistan : Obama has developed his entire new counter-insurgency strategy centered on the easy entry and bloody exits of US Special Forces targeting over seventy-five countries. The Special Forces figure prominently in Obama’s military preparations for Syria and Iran , which have been developed at the behest of his Zionist overlords.

In the final analysis, the entire imperial military apparatus of the Obama regime, while formidable on paper, depends on the ‘Special Operations’ formations. As such, they are the centerpiece of the new imperial warfare, developed as a response to the demands for reduced ground forces, budgetary constraints and growing domestic discontent. Their ‘actions’ are designed to leave no witnesses and no embarrassments. They may be the butchers of children, women and unarmed civilians but they are the White House’s butchers.

Despite all their crimes and cover-ups, the Obama regime’s priority is to defend the empire with whatever personnel is available at his disposal. So while Sgt. Bales is in Leavenworth , the Afghan elite cry in justice , the families in Kandahar mourn their dead and the Taliban plan their revenge.

On the domestic front, Obama faces strong popular opposition to the costly unending wars, which have destroyed the US economy, and growing anger and demoralization in the armed forces. As a result of the massive popular discontent among the American people with politicians of both parties who have recklessly sent troops into anachronistic colonial wars, which serve the interest of foreign powers, the President has issued an executive decree, allowing him to assume dictatorial powers in order to militarize the entire economy, its resources and its work force. On March 16, 2012 Barak Obama issued an Executive Order-National Defense Resource Preparedness in order to sustain the global empire.

Clearly prolonged colonial wars cannot be sustained through the consent of the citizens and such wars cannot be prosecuted according to military manuals and the Geneva Conventions. At this point, only Presidential ‘rule by decree’ can secure compliance of the citizens at home and only massacres and cover-ups can sustain the colonial occupations abroad. But these are desperate and temporary: When the extreme measures have run their course there will be nothing to fall back on and nothing can save the president of a collapsing empire from the revolt of its citizens and soldiers.

OBAMA-AIPAC

Israel’s Willing Executioners: AIPAC Invades Washington

OBAMA-AIPAC

U.S. President Barack Obama addressing American Israel Public Affairs Committee Conference, Washington, DC, March 4, 2012

by James Petras and Robin Eastman Abaya

Introduction:  A Week of National Humiliation:

From March 4th to March 9th, 2012, 13,000 militant Israel Firsters, took over “political Washington”[1] and imposed a foreign regime’s (Israel) political agenda to the rousing applause and appreciation of their captive vassal US legislators and executives who crowded the halls and platforms groveling for the imperious nods of their visiting Israeli overlords[2].  The annual meeting of the American (sic) Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most outrageous public display of Zionist-Jewish power as it shapes US foreign policy.  The sole purpose of AIPAC is to ensure Israel’s unchallenged military and political power over a huge region from North Africa to the Persian Gulf.  Over three quarters of the US Congress members paraded themselves before the AIPAC, as well as President Obama and Vice President Biden and any high ranking Cabinet members in any way related to US foreign policy (Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Panetta included).  They all loudly parroted the political agenda and military priorities that the AIPAC has imposed on the United States[3].

AIPAC:  A launch pad for Israeli Leaders

The AIPAC gathering is clearly not a meeting of “just another lobby”[4]: It is the launch pad used by Israel’s top political and military leaders to drag the US into another major war in the Middle East – this time against Iran[5].  Shimon Peres, Israel’s President opened the conference, setting the militarist tone and political framework for US President Obama who followed, slavishly echoing the language and substance of the Israeli leader[6].  The following day the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, spoke, and forcefully laid out the line for a US war against Iran [7]with thousands of prominent and respectable Jewish Americans, Israel Firsters, leaping to their feet dozens of times in fanatic support for a US war – a war, in which few, if any, of them, their children, relatives or friends will suffer loss of life or limb[8].  This was the same Bibi Netanyahu who once opined that the 9-11 attack on the US benefited Israel because it linked the US closer to Israeli interests.

Not since the War of 1812, which saw the British occupation and burning of Washington, has the US capital been so utterly humiliated by a foreign power.  Unlike the British crown, which then negotiated a peace settlement, allowing the US to regain its sovereignty and capital, the Israeli leaders and their rabid “fifth column” demand a military agreement, in which Israel dictates the terms under which the US goes to war with Iran.

Israeli leaders have not secured the submission of the US because of Israel’s military, economic or political superiority:  They have a puny economy, a fraction of the US nuclear weapons and have few allies and even less public approval in the international community.  But they do have at least a half million fanatical, unconditional Zionist militants in the United States, including thousands of loyal multi-millionaires and billionaires who fund the campaign of both Democrat and Republican parties[9].  AIPAC is the vanguard of Israel’s shock troops in the US.  Highly disciplined and organized, AIPAC lobbyists invade the offices of every Congressperson armed with a legislative script carefully prepared by and for the State of Israel[10].  They have secured the full commitment of most members of Congress for Israel’s agenda waving both dollar signs and stars (of David).  As past history has amply demonstrated, Congressional staff or legislators who dare hesitate or ask for time to reflect, rapidly find themselves on the receiving end of AIPAC’s political bullying and threats which usually secure acquiescence.  Refusal to capitulate to AIPAC means the end of a political career in Washington.

The Israeli (and therefore AIPAC’s) agenda is to pursue an unprovoked war, either initiated by the US or as part of a US-backed Israeli sneak attack, against the sovereign Islamic Republic of Iran[11].  Iran is targeted today because the other opponents of Israel’s colonization of Palestine have been destroyed in previous Zionist-backed US wars, namely Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and the ongoing proxy war against the Assad regime in Syria[12].

Today Israeli leaders insist that Iran should be violently denied what over 120 other nations practice freely:  the legal enrichment of uranium for medical, commercial and scientific purposes.  Past Israeli propaganda, echoed by the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, falsely claimed Iran possessed nuclear weapons or … was in the process of manufacturing them and therefore posed an ‘existential’ threat to Israeli.  Even the mere ‘capacity’ to enrich uranium for medical purposes (many times below the level needed for a weapon) is presented as a major threat to the Jewish State.   Meanwhile, the 27 US intelligence agencies (in their yearly ‘findings’) and even the US-influenced International Atomic Energy Agency have found no such evidence of an ongoing weapons program – thus the need for bizarre terms like ‘existential threat’.

Israel’s high command has now come up with a new flimsy pretext for war.  Iran’s potential (through its advanced scientific and technical manpower and research centers) for acquiring a ‘nuclear weapon capability’ may constitute a sufficient cause for war[13]. In other words, Israel has ordered its 13,000 AIPAC militants, to demand every US Congress person vote for a war resolution on the basis of Iran’s current uranium enrichment program geared to medical uses and on its sophisticated scientific and intellectual potential!  Meanwhile, the Mossad has launched a not-so-secret program of terrorist assassinations of Iranian scientists – in their homes, offices and universities; with nary a protest from the ‘Zionized’ US press.

Israel’s Willing Executioners

Netanyahu’s newest criterion for war (Iranian capability) has the blind support of the major Jewish organizations in the US[14].  American Zionists are the willing executioners promoting an aggressive, unprovoked, military attack against the homeland (and homes) of 75 million Iranians.  Let us be clear, there are naked genocidal impulses permeating some of the pronouncements of leading US Jewish religious leaders.  The executive vice president of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Herring, suggested that Israel should consider “the use of tactical nuclear weapons in areas that aren’t so populated or in the open desert  …to show the Iranians that their lives are on the line, that Israel won’t go quietly”.[15]  The rabbi did not specify whether population centers of a quarter of a million inhabitants or less qualify under his definition of “not so populated” and therefore are suitable targets for this educational display of thermo-nuclear destruction, “just to show the Iranians”….  Let us keep in mind that among the Zionist fundamentalists, “not a few organizational leaders … wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons right now”[16].

When Netanyahu gave the command to the AIPAC delegates to invade the US Congress and secure a war commitment on the basis of Iran’s ‘capacity’ (for uranium enrichment), there was no debate and no dissention among the ‘shock troops’ – only blind unanimous approval among Jewish American citizens for their foreign master. These respectable Jewish-Americans marched lock-step in platoons right up to the Congress members on their lists, canned arguments in one hand and Israeli-ghost-written legislation in the other.  They boast of having rounded up a substantial majority of elected US representatives – for war!

If Israel’s power in the US depends on AIPAC’s tight control over the US Congress, the lobby, for its part, depends on the power of the wider Zionist power configuration permeating strategic political and administrative offices, political party structures and the electoral process itself.  This, in turn, depends on Zionist media influence linked back to economic and financial power.  The democratic and representative process has been totally crushed under this narrow-focused juggernaut for war on behalf of Israel.

AIPAC’s Congressional and Executive Collaborators

While much has been made of the influence AIPAC exercises over the US Congress and Executive via ‘lobbying’, better termed intimidation and pressure tactics, a great part of its success is based on the larger Zionist matrix of power operating within the government, civil society and the economy.  When AIPAC lobbyists approach Congress members with Israeli-dictated foreign policy priorities in hand, they coordinate and are given a major platform by the forty-plus elected Zionist legislators who, just happen, to occupy strategic positions, such as the chairpersons of Congressional committees dealing with foreign policy, especially policy related to the Middle East.  In other words, AIPAC’s conquest of Congress is ‘by invitation’.  The relation is ‘reciprocal’.  AIPAC and the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and various fundraisers mobilize money and activists to help elect the reliable Zionists to office.  Once in place, they openly collaborate in writing pro-Israel legislation and ensuring that ‘majorities’ vote the ‘right way’[17].

Mark Dubowitz, executive director of “Foundation for Defense of Democracies” helped write the latest (Iran) sanctions bill … (Financial Times March 6, 2012, pg. 9).  The “Foundation” is better known as an unconditional and unquestioning promoter of Israel’s agenda.  Dubowitz is one of many un-elected ‘legislators’ who write and promote laws at Israel’s behest.  The legislation to impose sanctions on Iran, authored by Dubowitz, is designed to brutalize and starve 75 million Iranian citizens into submission to further Israel’s goal of unquestioned supremacy in the Middle East.

AIPAC’s operations are not confined to Congress or  to the electoral process.  From the Reagan Administration to the Obama Administration, AIPAC has supplied committed Zionists to key positions in the Treasury, State Department, National Security Council and the President’s inner circle of advisors on the Middle East[18].  AIPAC pressure ensures the appointment of Zionists to the executive branch and has led to the creation of special administrative posts designed specifically to pursue Israel’s agenda.  A good example of AIPAC’s success is the post of Undersecretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Intelligence.  The position was first held by Stuart Levey, a Zionist zealot, whose whole purpose was to design and implement US (and later EU) sanctions against Iran.  His replacement, David Cohen, a clone also from AIPAC, is the author of legislation pushing for punitive sanctions against Syria[19].

Dennis Ross, widely known as ‘Israel’s lawyer’ and a former AIPAC leader, was appointed senior adviser to Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, was the architect of US support for Israel’s starvation blockade and criminal bombing of Gaza (1999), the murderous invasion of Lebanon (2006).  He has provided ‘cover’ for Netanyahu’s  massive building of Jews only settlements on occupied Palestinian lands and his cynical ‘peace negotiations’ ploy[20].

Jeffrey Feltman, the current AIPAC front man in the State Department, is  the key official in charge of Middle East affairs, especially Lebanon, Syria and Iran[21].  Obama’s own inner circle of advisers is dominated by unconditional Israel supporters, including David Axelrod as chief confidant and the former Presidential Chief of Staff, dual US-Israeli citizen and current Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel[22].   What is striking is the constant cycle from leadership and activity in Zionist (Israeli-front) organizations, entry into powerful government post, return to one or another pro-Israel think tank, ‘civic organizations’,  electoral office or lucrative private practice – all promoting the interests of Tel Aviv.

AIPAC and the 52 Grassroots Organizations

AIPAC’s power in Washington depends on the activism of hundreds of thousands of American Zionists affiliated with organizations under the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (MAJO).  While there is considerable overlap of membership,  MAJO leaders openly serve as a transmission belt for Israel: transmitting the political line from Tel Aviv to their membership, including activist doctors, dentists and stock brokers in New York, Miami, Kansas City, Los Angeles and San Francisco and all points north, south, east and west.  When AIPAC has ‘trouble’ securing an elected representative’s sign-on to legislation for sanctions against whichever country is currently targeted by Israel, the reluctant legislator becomes a prime target for local Zionist notables and ‘fund raisers’, who pay them a ‘visit’ to persuade, if possible, threaten retaliation, if necessary.  If a legislator still refuses to hew to Israel’s line, or considers service to a foreign power to be harmful to United States, he/she will soon find that AIPAC has raised millions of dollars to fund a campaign of slander and electoral defeat[23].

Along with these upper middle class ‘grass roots’ activists there are the numerous highly politicized Zionist mega-millionaires and billionaires, like Adelson, Saban and scores of others, who make no bones about being fanatical Israel Firsters and donate  millions to Congresspeople willing to subordinate US interests to Israel’s quest for Middle East supremacy[24].

Besides this legal corruption of the political process, there is the issue of illegal espionage and thuggery on AIPAC’s part, most recently evidenced by the ongoing law-suit by one of two former top AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen caught spying for Israel (passing classified documents on US military policy towards Iran).   Rosen, who was acquitted in a highly manipulated ‘trial’, maintains that AIPAC routinely encouraged its officials to secure confidential US government documents for Israel[25].

And then there are the prominent free-lance Zionists, who engage in vicious, highly publicized, political thuggery, physical assaults and blackmail against critics of Israel[26].  The most prominent defamers, like Abraham Foxman of the Anti (sic) Defamation League, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, manipulate legions of respectable and wealthy thugs to pressure schools, universities and other employers to censor and fire critics of Israel.  These Zionist organizations far exceed the reach and effective blacklisting of an earlier generation of witch hunters, like Senator Joseph McCarthy, who were rank amateurs in comparison.  The recent antics of Israel-Firster Andrew Adler, editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times, whose call for the Israeli Mossad to assassinate President Obama[27] led merely to his resignation as editor after several weeks of nervous outrage (but no federal investigation or charges).

What is striking here is that while most respectable Zionists dissociate themselves from AIPAC spies and verbal assassins, the power of the Israel Firsters ensures that such goons and thugs are rarely charged for their crimes and have never gone to jail[28].

The wider impact of Zionist influence and thuggery is evident in the timorous self-censorship of the majority of Americans who privately express fear and loathing at the confrontational, strident and abusive Zionist-Americans pushing a foreign agenda.[29]

Israel, Zionism and the Mass Media

The mass media is a key political resource, which the pro-Israel power configuration exploits to the full.  Not a single major print, television, film or radio outlet is willing to provide a balanced account of the Israel-Palestine conflict[30].  Israel’s dispossession of thousands of Arab families from their homes and the daily terrorist Zionist settler and military assaults against Palestinians protesting land seizures go unreported[31].  The hundreds of nuclear weapons in Israel’s arsenal are never mentioned while the Jewish State’s hysterical claims that non-nuclear Iran represents an existential threat are repeated and magnified, ad nauseam.  The leaders of the 52 know their Goebbels:  A lie repeated often enough becomes an accepted truth.

Zionism and Leveraging Power

What is crucial in understanding the Zionist Power Configuration’s stranglehold over our government is how it leverages power.  For example, a tiny minority falsely claims to speak for all American Jews, who represent about 3% of the US population.  However, based on this claim, they mobilize and raise funds to elect the committed Zionists who hold about 10% of the seats in the US Congress and Senate.  These representatives, in turn, enjoy the support of a tiny cadre of super rich Zionists, whose promotion allows them to gain control over key committees dealing with Middle East policy and security.

Domestic security has been deeply influenced by the Zionist-Israeli agenda:  Former US Attorney General, Michael Mukasey and Homeland Security Tzar, Michael Chertoff have been among the most prominent officials orienting US domestic security to focus on critics of Israel and the entrapment of Muslim citizens in bizarre webs of phony terrorist plots, while real domestic security has suffered and civil rights have been shredded.  The over-representation of Zionists on the US Supreme Court (3 out of 9) and the careful selection of recent justices, like Justice Sotomayor, underscore the profound nature of the process as it extends to the judiciary.[32]

The Zionist Power Configuration controls the Mid-East policies of both Democratic and Republican Party and their Presidential nominees through their Congressional and political party power bases.  The US President, in turn, is leveraged, in order to secure key policy appointments for Zionists in the State Department, Treasury and Pentagon.  Their leverage in the foreign policy establishment allows Zionist officials to put pressure on allies and clients in the United Nation and European Union to support policies, such as Israel’s boycott and punishment of the elected Hamas government in Gaza and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Leverage is how Israel, an infinitely small and insignificant state with less than 1% of world GNP, exports and market shares and occupying .001% of the world’s territory, can play such a disproportionate role in the reconfiguration of power in the Middle East.  Through its American-Zionist influentials, Israel has manipulated the US into a quagmire of wars in the Middle East, costing the world’s consumers of oil untold billions of dollars and pushing the world economy into recession.

Israel’s “Petroleum Tax”: War Threats and the Price of Gas

During the first 3 months of 2012, the price of oil rose 15% (over 30% since the summer 2011) largely due to Israel’s war mongering and threats to launch an offensive war against Iran.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Peres and Foreign Minister Lieberman have all repeatedly demanded the US bomb Iran, or failing that, they warn, Israel would launch its own offensive war against the Iranian people and drag the US into another war.

Almost all oil experts and political analysts agree that the spike in oil prices is a result of Israel’s war mongering, as major international oil speculators bet that an Israeli assault on Iran will provoke a major disruption in production and transportation of petroleum in the Middle East and provoke a global shortfall[33].

The 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations have added to the war hysteria by echoing and embellishing on Israel’s claims of an Iranian nuclear threat (or Iran’s “growing capacity” to threaten Israel in the future)[34].

During the first three months of this year alone, the increased price of gasoline – or more accurately Israel’s war tax on the American consumers and drivers costs an additional 60 cents a gallon, or $9 dollars more to fill a 15 gallon tank.  This represents the tribute the Zionist power configuration has imposed on the American consumers in their push for a new war on Israel’s behalf.  No US politician would dare discuss this issue, let alone speak up and tell the Zionist chattering classes and their “beloved leaders” to stop pimping for war or else risk the cutting off of Israel’s $3 billion dollar annual handout from the US taxpayers.

Leading economists have stated that the price hike in petroleum (caused by a bellicose Israel) is stunting growth and pushing the US and EU back into recession … costing millions more job losses[35].  If we add the consumer losses caused by high gas prices to the losses in world economic output, the mere war chants of Netanyahu, Lieberman, Peres and the AIPAC will cost the global economy hundreds of billions over the course of the year.

Any mention of Israel’s gas tax on the American family’s budget will elicit outraged accusations of anti-Semitism from respectable Zionists and ugly threats from their thug accomplices.  When Obama performed his infamous annual belly crawl to pleasure the AIPAC delegates and their Israeli guests, in the midst of cheers over his re-affirmation of America’s unconditional loyalty to the state of Israel, he also quietly asked Israel to lower the war cries at least until after the November elections because of its effects on the price of gasoline on the American voter[36].

The high price of oil is damaging Obama’s chances for re-election.  The American electorate may not understand the real cost of Obama’s submission to Israel and may not be aware of Israel’s gas tax, but they are holding their putative President responsible for their pain at the pump!  There is only one thing that Obama cherishes more than Zionist support and that is the votes of an economically squeezed American electorate, who are turning against him in droves as the price of gasoline soars.

Conclusion

The week of March 4 to 11, 2012 will go down in history as a week of national humiliation; a time when legions of fanatical American Zionists took over Washington; when the entire Cabinet, led by President Obama, groveled before the officials of a foreign state – in the heart of Washington DC.  When the President and Prime Minister of Israel directed their foreign legionaires to march on the US Congress and shove their flimsy pretexts for  war with Iran into the faces of cringing legislators, the simplistic and idiotic message was: Bomb Iran because it may soon have … a nuclear ‘capacity’.  If asked what constitutes capacity, they quote their beloved leaders in Tel Aviv, including the semi-literate (former nightclub bouncer) Foreign Minister Avi Lieberman, the morally corrupt Bibi Netanyahu and the quietly diabolic Shimon Peres that Iranians can ‘enrich uranium’ – a capacity long held by 125 other countries.

It is with supreme arrogance that the followers of AIPAC and the 52 Presidents penetrate the US government in order to serve a foreign government.  None bother to hide their past, present or future affiliations with the state of Israel.  They are backed by prestigious Zionist academics, whose tendentious justifications for war have already sent tens of thousands of US soldiers to an early grave or to the wards of military and veteran hospitals and clinics across the country: They have sold us the argument that by serving the interests of the State of Israel we serve the United States.  From this, it only follows that to break the law and act as an unregistered agent for a foreign power, to transfer highly classified government documents to Mossad agents at the Israeli embassy and to threaten Americans who criticize or oppose Israel is a patriotic act[37].  Naval analyst Jonathan Pollard, the convicted US master-spy for Israel, is widely celebrated in Israel as an honorary Colonel in the IDF and a hero; the leaders of the major Zionist organizations are again pressuring Obama to release this traitor.

The documented performance of the leading Zionists in public office in the United States over the past two decades has been an unmitigated disaster. The self-proclaimed best and brightest have led the country into the worst economic and military catastrophes in a century.  It was Alan Greenspan, as head of the Federal Reserve, who de-regulated the financial sector and optimized conditions for the mega-swindles and speculative frenzy bringing down the entire financial system.  It was his replacement, Ben Bernacke, who pushed for trillions of US tax-payer dollars in bail-out funds to save his cronies on Wall Street and set them back on course, in the last 2 years, to repeat their speculative orgy – and allow such tribal compatriots as Stephen Schwartzman to reap $213 million in earnings in 2011[38].

It was Fred Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Libby, Abrams and Ross, as well as their less prominent lieutenants, who pushed the US into wars on Israel’s behalf in Afghanistan and Iraq, all the while confidently predicting ‘low cost, quick victories’ (even slam-dunks).  Never has such a cohort of Ivy League mediocrities collectively produced so many disastrous policies in such a brief historical time while never being held in any way, shape or form responsible or accountable for their performance.  It is obvious that these policy disasters did not result from faulty intellect or lack of an elite education.  Their apparent ignorance of historical, political, economic and military realities was a result of their blinding Zionist loyalties to the Israeli state whose real interests they embraced.  This lack of accountability guarantees that this process will continue until the US, as a republic, is destroyed for the masses of its misled citizens.

In order to justify a war against Israel’s regional adversaries, these blind mediocrities have distorted the realities of Arab nationalism.  It was with supreme tribal arrogance and racism that they assured themselves that Arabs could never sustain prolonged resistance to their imperial juggernaut.  They believed precisely what their tribal religion/ideology told them:  They were a chosen people (genetic studies aside).  They were the most financially successful investors or speculators.  They attended and taught at the most prestigious universities.  When, on occasion, a leading Zionist philanthropist, like Bernard Madoff, fell afoul—and actually went to jail– it was because, like his fellow tribalists,  Milken, Boesky and Pollard — he didn’t buy his one way ticket to Israel soon enough.

When a country, like the United States, is in decline, it is not because of external competition:  Declining competitiveness is only a symptom.  It is because of internal rot.  Decline results when a nation is betrayed by craven leaders, who crawl and humiliate themselves before a minority of thuggish mediocrities pledged to a foreign state without scruples or moral integrity.

James Petras latest book is The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattacks

(Atlanta:  Clarity Press 2011) 2nd edition.

[1] For full coverage of the daily activities and the uncritical reportage of the major media see the Daily Alert , the official mouthpiece of 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, especially March 4 – 6, 2012.

[2] See the AIPAC video reports and the list of speakers. http://www.aipac.org , 3/2/2012 and subsequent reports.

[3] White House press release of Obama’s declaration that US subordinate relation to Israel is “sacrosanct”, March 4,/20/12.

[4] The reference is to Noam Chomsky whose laughable effort to downplay the influence of the Zionist power configuration is widely rejected and is once again refuted by the most superficial observation of the proceedings, pledges and  prostrations of all top US policy makers at the AIPAC meeting.

[5] Netanyahu’s public pronouncements and AIPAC speech were duly recorded, amplified and supported by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and especially the Washington Post (2/6/2012). He explicitly called on the US to militarily attack Iran on behalf of Israel, on the basis of Teheran’s ‘capacity’ to make a nuclear weapon.  According to Netanyahu “we can’t afford to wait much longer …” Prime Minister’s Office 3/5/12.

[6] New York Times, 3/5/12.

[7] Prime Ministers Office as quoted in the Daily Alert, 3/6/12.

[8] AIPAC video daily reports, 3/6/12.

[9] For example, just one of the numerous Zionist billionaires, the casino tzar, Sheldon Adelson has already contributed “tens of millions of dollars” to influence the current Presidential elections. Haaretz, 2/29/12.  Haim Saban, another Israel-Firster billionaire, bought the principle Spanish language TV outlet in the US, UNIVISION, and then proceeded to promote sensationalist Israeli propaganda about an Iranian-Islamist “takeover” of Latin America.

[10] AIPAC press releases, 3/7/12 – 3/10/12.

[11] A survey of the Daily Alert , from March 4 to March 9, reveals there is not one single article that discusses the alternative of a diplomatic settlement with Iran, while over a dozen articles feature calls for war.

[12] For documentation and details on the decisive role of Zionist policy makers in launching the US war against Iraq see my The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta:  Clarity Press 2006).

[13] New York Times, 3/1/12

[14] The 52 Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations repeatedly endorsed Netanyahu’s pretext for war.  See Daily Alert, 3/6/2012

[15] Quoted in http://Mondoweiss.net, 3/2/12.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Key Zionist Congressional operatives include Representatives Berman, Cantor, Harman, Lieberman, Ros- Lehtinen, and Levin as well as their Christian side-kicks, like McConnell and Pelosi among others who appeared at the AIPAC war fest. AIPAC promotional flyer 3/2/12.

[18] See The Power of Israel in the United States (op cit.)

[19] See “On Bended Knees: Zionist Power in American Politics” in James Petras, War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column (Clarity, Atlanta 2010.

[20] The Power of Israel in the United States, op cit.

[21] Though Ross has formally resigned, he is still a key Obama adviser on the Middle East.  See Haaretz 1/27/12,

[22] One of the key Zionist operatives is Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.  He played a crucial role in support of Israel ‘s bombing  of Lebanon in 2006, during his term as Ambassador, calling Hezbollah a “terrorist organization”. He dictated policy to the US client ruler Fouad Siniora.  Feltman twice served in Israel.  He was stationed in Gaza where he collaborated with the occupying Israeli Defense Forces.  He worked with uber-Zionist US Ambassador Martin Indyk backing Israel’s position in the phony “Peace Process” from 2000 to 2001. Other Zionists in key positions include Jack Lew,  current Chief of Staff to President Obama; David Plouffe senior adviser, Dan Shapiro, Ambassador to Israel; Steven Simon, Head of Middle East/North Africa Desk at the National Security Council; and Eric Lynn, Middle East policy advisor. Jewish Virtual Library a Division of the American-Israeli Enterprise 2012.

[23] Prominent Zionists, who served in strategic positions in the foreign policy realm of the Obama regime, included Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff to the President, David Axelrod, Senior Advisor;  James Steinberg Deputy Secretary of State; and  Richard Holbrooke Special Envoy to Pakistan/Afghanistan (deceased).

[24] Several studies estimate that Jews make up about 25% of the Forbes 400 richest Americans; over half are contributors to Israel or Zionist organizations or causes.  J.J. Goldberg in his book on Jewish power estimates that 45% of Democratic fundraising comes from pro-Israel Jews.  (Jewish Power: Inside the Jewish Establishment, Reading: Addison-Wesley 1996)

[25] Steve Rosen, a top policy director of AIPAC, along with his colleague, Keith Weissman admitted to handing over confidential documents to the Israeli embassy.  Rosen later filed suit against AIPAC for firing him and Weissman and refusing to pay their legal fees; he claimed that the Lobby frequently condoned its employees’ receipt and illegal transfer of classified US government information citing numerous AIPAC documents to back-up his case.  The Jewish Daily Forward, 12/15/2010.

[26] The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, urged Netanyahu to order the Israeli secret spy service, the Mossad, to assassinate President Obama,  Haaretz 1/21/12.  Rabbi Michael Lerner, a moderate Zionist critic of Israel, has been subject to four attacks on his home in the past two years, while accused of being a ‘self-hating Jew’ by Zionist fanatics.  Mainstream Zionist organizations dissociate themselves from physical violence, while slanderously labeling opponents and critics of Israel as “anti-semites”, which has created precisely the political climate that encourages the less balanced among their audience to violent activity. Leading Zionist ideologues have been extremely active in inducing colleges and universities to fire critics of Israel, as was the case in the failure of DePaul University to renew the contract of a widely published scholar like, Norman Finklestein.   Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, authors of an erudite study of The Israel Lobby, were subject to vitriolic attacks by American Zionist leaders, including A. Foxman of the Anti (sic) Defamation League as well as a superficial critique by left-Zionist Noam Chomsky.  The racist rantings of uber-Zionists like David Horowitz and Pamela Geller helped to detonate the Islamophobic and Zionophilic mass murderer, Anders Breivik, in Norway.

[27] See the Atlantic Jewish Times editorial 1/20/12.

[28] The editor of the Atlantic Jewish Times who called for Obama’s assassination was not charged with any federal security offense. The confessed Zionist spy, Colonel Ben-Ami Kadish, who stole secret US nuclear weapon plans for Israel, did not spend a single day in jail although he paid a $50,000 fine for handing over scores of documents to Israel.  (See Grant Smith Foreign Agents, Institute for Research Middle East Policy (IRMEP) Washington 2008. On AIPAC spying see IRMEP 2/6/12.

[29] Not to be ignored, the rarified atmosphere in high level scientific research journals has been politicized – most outrageous is the censorship of a genetic-immunologic study (by a leading international team of scientists) showing the close genetic relationship, if not identity between Levantine Jews and Palestinians.  University libraries around the world were advised to ‘tear-out’ (eyes closed) the offending study from the pages of the journal, Human Immunology, lest such data might undermine the racist ‘raison d’etre’ for an exclusively Jewish State.  (see Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians, Robin McKie, Guardian-Sunday Observer (London), November 25, 2001 and Hum. Immunol. 62 (9): 889–900.)

[30] A review of new reports and editorials of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, published by the Daily Alert during the AIPAC conference, reveals a close alignment with the extremist militarist position of the Israeli regime and AIPAC leaders  See Steve Lendman ‘New Times Promoting War on Iran’ 3/3/12.

[31] During the month of February 2012, the Israeli Army and armed paramilitary Jewish settlers carried out 145 attacks on Palestinians, killing and wounding dozens, demolishing homes, seizing thousands of acres of land and uprooting scores of families: The Wall and Settlements Information Center, Palestinian Authority 3/1/12. Neither the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post reported on these Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians.

[32] Among Chertoff’s current clients are the manufacturers of the intrusive and nationally detested ‘body scanners’ used at US airports.  He was also instrumental in the release and repatriation of a dozen Israeli Mossad agents arrested in New York and New Jersey within 24 hours of the 9/11 terrorist attack.  Three of the nine justices,Ginsberg, Breyer and Kagan, are Zionists unwilling to challenge the Executive usurpation of war powers and promotion of torture and rendition.  The others are all affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church.  Not a single Protestant-affiliated Justice (numerically the majority religion in the US) has been appointed to the Supreme Court since the 1990 appointment of respected constitutional scholar, David Souter (by George Bush the First), because of their ‘unreliability’ (code-word for upholding the Bill of Rights and Constitution).  The recent appointment of Justice Elena Kagan, whose lackluster academic career did not deter uber-Zionist Laurence Summers from appointing her Dean of the Harvard Law School, uderscores the mediocre criteria used in the high judiciary.  The most recent appointment of Sonya Sotomayor to replace the brilliant (and Zionistically ‘unreliable’) J.P. Stevens, was promoted heaviliy for the Supreme Court on the basis of her strong ties to Israel, starting with her first (of many) ‘leadership’ tours to Israel (see The Jewish Chronicle – Life story Israel trips tie Sotomayor to Jews, Ron Kampeas – May 26, 2009).

[33] Financial Times 3/6/12, p. 9.

[34] Howard Kohr AIPAC executive director, during his vitriolic war mongering speech at the conference exceeded even Netanyahu’s explicit call for an immediate military attack on Iran.  See AIPAC daily report, 3/16/12.

[35] Most experts agree that the oil price increase has stymied ‘economic recovery’ and if it continues to rise will plunge the world back into deep recession.

[36] Obama’s speech to the AIPAC meeting pointedly called on the Israeli leaders to tone down on their military rhetoric, clearly linking rising oil prices to Israeli war mongering.

[37] See Grant Smith, ‘AIPAC Directors Use of Classified Missile Data, Harmed National Security – US State Department’, Business Wire 2/6/12.

[38] Financial Times 3/1/12, p. 17.