Re: Avnery on the Israel Lobby......

docremington wrote:
hlmeankin@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Avnery on the Israel Lobby

Avnery is just a notoriously uninspiring kook,

Name calling is the last resort of someone who
does not have anything of value to contribute
to a conversation.

he even branded a
palisimian

It is bad manners to engage in childish name calling.

rights group as "collaborators" for their criticism of the
palisimian corruption. It is bad manners to ever bring him up as an
authority, or proof.

It is bad manners to ever take anything docremington
says seriously.

Editor's note: Avnery calls the ADL the "thought-police of the Jewish
establishment." A more precise description is the "Gestapo-wannabes of
the Jewish establishment."
Who's the dog? Who's the tail?

Evidently, Avnery himself in both instances.

Evidently, docremington refuses to ever engage
in honest debate.

by Uri Avnery | 22.4.2006

I DON'T usually tell these stories, because they might give rise to the
suspicion that I am paranoid.

For example: 27 years ago, I was invited to give a lecture-tour in 30
American universities, including all the most prestigious ones -
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Berkeley and so on. My host was the
Fellowship of Reconciliation, a respected non-Jewish organization, but
the lectures themselves were to be held under the auspices of the
Jewish Bet-Hillel chaplains.

On arrival at the airport in New York I was met by one of the
organizers. "There is a slight hitch," he told me, "29 of the Rabbis
have cancelled your lecture."

In the end, all the lectures did take place, under the auspices of
Christian chaplains. When we came to the lone Rabbi who had not
cancelled my lecture, he told me the secret: the lectures had been
forbidden in a confidential letter from the Anti-Defamation League, the
thought-police of the Jewish establishment. The salient phrase has
stuck to my memory: "While it cannot be said that Member of the Knesset
Avnery is a traitor, yet..."

AND ANOTHER story from real life: a year later I went to Washington DC
in order to "sell" the Two-State solution, which at the time was
considered an outlandish, not to say crazy, idea. In the course of the
visit, the Quakers were so kind as to arrange a press conference for
me.

When I arrived, I was amazed. The hall was crammed full, practically
all the important American media were represented. Many had come
straight from a press conference held by Golda Meir, who was also in
town. The event was to last an hour, as is usual, but the journalists
did not let go. They bombarded me with questions for another two hours.
Clearly, what I had to say was quite new to them and they were
interested.

I was curious how this would be reported in the media. And indeed, the
reaction was stunning: not a word appeared in any of the newspapers, on
radio or TV. Not one single word.

By the way, three years ago I again held a press conference, this time
on Capitol Hill in Washington. It was an exact replica of the last
time: the crowd of reporters, their obvious interest, the continuation
of the conference well beyond the appointed time - and not a single
word in the media.

I COULD tell some more stories like these, but the point is made. I
recount them only in connection with the scandal recently caused by two
American professors, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of
the University of Chicago. They published a research paper on the
influence of the Israel lobby in the United States.

In 80 pages, 40 of them footnotes and sources, the two show how the
pro-Israel lobby exercises unbridled power in the US capital, how it
terrorizes the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives,
how the White House dances to its tune (if indeed a house can dance),
how the important media obey its orders and how the universities, too,
live in fear of it.

The paper caused a storm. And I don't mean the predictable wild attacks
by the "friends of Israel" - which means almost all politicians,
journalists and professors. These pelted the authors with all the usual
accusations: that they were anti-Semites, that they were resurrecting
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and so forth. There was something
paradoxical in these attacks, since they only illustrated the authors'
case.

But the debate that fascinates me is of a different nature. It broke
out between senior intellectuals, from the legendary Noam Chomsky, the
guru of the Left throughout the world (including Israel), to
progressive websites everywhere. The bone of contention: the conclusion
of the paper that the Jewish-Israeli lobby dominates US foreign policy
and subjugates it to Israeli interests - in glaring contradiction to
the national interest of the US itself. A case in point: the American
assault on Iraq.

Chomsky and others rose up against this assertion. They do not deny the
factual findings of the two professors, but object to their
conclusions. In their view, it is not the Israel lobby that directs
American policy, but the interests of the big corporations that
dominate the American empire and exploit Israel for their own selfish
aims.

Simply put: does the dog wag its tail, or does the tail wag its dog?

I AM NERVOUS about sticking my head into a debate between such
illustrious intellectuals, but I feel obliged to express my view
nevertheless.

I'll start with the Jew, who went to the Rabbi and complained about his
neighbor. "You are right'" the Rabbi declared. Then came the neighbor
and denounced the complainant. "You are right'" the Rabbi announced.
"But how can that be," exclaimed the Rabbi's wife, "Only one of the two
can be right!" "You are right, too," the Rabbi said.

I find myself in a similar situation. I think that both sides are right
(and hope to be right, myself, too).

The findings of the two professors are right to the last detail. Every
Senator and Congressman knows that criticizing the Israeli government
is political suicide. Two of them, a Senator and a Congressman, tried -
and were politically executed. The Jewish lobby was fully mobilized
against them and hounded them out of office. This was done openly, to
set a public example. If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the Ten Commandments, 95 Senators (at least) would sign the
bill forthwith.

President Bush, for example, has withdrawn from all the established
American positions regarding our conflict. He accepts automatically the
positions of our government, be they as they may. Almost all the
American media are closed to Palestinians and Israeli peace activists.
As to professors - almost all of them know which side of their bread is
peanut-buttered. If, in spite of that, somebody dares to open their
mouth against the Israeli policy - as happens once every few years -
they are smothered under a volley of denunciations: anti-Semite,
Holocaust denier, neo-Nazi.

By the way, American guests in Israel, who know that at home it is
forbidden to mention the influence of the Jewish-Israeli lobby, are
dumbfounded to see that here the lobby does not hide its power in
Washington but openly boasts of it.

The question, therefore, is not whether the two professors are right in
their findings. The question is what conclusions can be drawn from
them.

LET'S TAKE the Iraq affair. Who is the dog? Who the tail?

The Israeli government prayed for this attack, which has eliminated the
strategic threat posed by Iraq. America was pushed into the war by a
group of Neo-Conservatives, almost all of them Jews, who had a huge
influence on the White House. In the past, some of them had acted as
advisers to Binyamin Netanyahu.

On the face of it, a clear case. The pro-Israeli lobby pushed for the
war, Israel is its main beneficiary. If the war ends in a disaster for
America, Israel will undoubtedly be blamed.

Really? What about the American aim of getting their hands on the main
oil reserves of the world, in order to dominate the world economy? What
about the aim of placing an American garrison in the center of the main
oil-producing area, on top of the Iraqi oil, between the oil of Saudi
Arabia, Iran and the Caspian Sea? What about the immense influence of
the big oil companies on the Bush family? What about the big
multinational corporations, whose outstanding representative is ***
Cheney, that hoped to make hundreds of billions from the
"reconstruction of Iraq"?

The lesson of the Iraq affair is that the American-Israeli connection
is strongest when it seems that American interests and Israeli
Interests are one (irrespective of whether that is really the case in
the long run). The US uses Israel to dominate the Middle East, Israel
uses the US to dominate Palestine.

But if something exceptional happens, such as the Jonathan Pollard
espionage affair or the sale of an Israeli spy plane to China, and a
gap opens between the interests of the two sides, America is quite
capable of slapping Israel in the face.

AMERICAN-ISRAELI relations are indeed unique. It seems that they have
no precedent in history. It is as if King Herod had given orders to
Augustus Caesar and appointed the members of the Roman senate.

I don't think that this phenomenon can be wholly explained by economic
interests. Even the most orthodox Marxist must recognize that it also
has a spiritual dimension. It is no accident that American (as well as
British) fundamentalist Christians invented the Zionist idea well
before Theodor Herzl hit upon it. The evangelical lobby is no less
important in today's Washington than the Zionist one. According to its
ideology, the Jews must take possession of all the Holy Land in order
to make the Second Coming of Christ possible (and then - the part they
don't shout about - some Jews will become Christians and the rest will
be annihilated at Armaggedon, today's Meggido in Northern Israel).

At the basis of the phenomenon lies the uncanny similarity between the
two national-religious stories, the American myth and the Israeli. In
both, pioneers persecuted for their religion reached the shores of the
Promised Land. They were forced to defend themselves against the
"savage" natives, who were out to destroy them. They redeemed the land,
made the desert bloom, created, with God's help, a flourishing,
democratic and moral society.

Both societies live in a state of denial and unconscious guilt feelings
- over there because of the genocide committed against the Native
Americans and the horrifying slavery of the blacks, here because of the
uprooting of half the Palestinian people and the oppression of the
other half. Both here and there, people believe in an eternal war
between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness.

ANYHOW, THE American-Israeli symbiosis is unique and far too complex a
phenomenon to be described as a simple conspiracy. I am sure that the
two professors did not mean to do so.

The dog wags the tail and the tail wags the dog. They wag each other.

.