The Israel Lobby

[swifty's revenge]

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/w ... 1_walt.pdf
Had you seen this yet?

edited for title..and twice for ooops

[swifty's revenge]

here is the abstract, with links to response from other Harvard faculty.
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/w ... /RWP06-011

[SausageCreature]

hmmm... Pro-Israel? Here I was thinking it'd be in Israel's interest to encourage stability in the region and not actively antagonize the Muslim population, but what do I know? That's why we leave international politics to those experienced in the matter, such as....uhm....Henry Kissinger...?

[sv-wolf]

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/w ... 1_walt.pdf
Had you seen this yet?

edited for title..and twice for ooops

It would be nice if any of it were true!!!!!

[swifty's revenge]

what makes you think it isn't true? Coz its not on the news?

these are the core points. Edited.sry, i always edit.

1) There is an extremely powerful, radically pro-Israel power inside the government and media of the United States.

2) That this power is organized by many powerful Jewish groups and has allies among some Gentiles and some evangelical groups.

3) That this power has influenced American foreign policy to support the criminal actions of Israel.

4) That support of Israel and its agenda has harmed the strategic and other interests of the American people.

5) That it has made America a target of terrorism

6) That it had a leading role in America going to war in Iraq for the strategic interests of Israel while damaging the interests of America

[sv-wolf]

what makes you think it isn't true? Coz its not on the news?

these are the core points. Edited.sry, i always edit.

1) There is an extremely powerful, radically pro-Israel power inside the government and media of the United States.

2) That this power is organized by many powerful Jewish groups and has allies among some Gentiles and some evangelical groups.

3) That this power has influenced American foreign policy to support the criminal actions of Israel.

4) That support of Israel and its agenda has harmed the strategic and other interests of the American people.

5) That it has made America a target of terrorism

6) That it had a leading role in America going to war in Iraq for the strategic interests of Israel while damaging the interests of America

Swifty, please don't think I take seriously ANYTHING that is put out in the conventional media!!!!

On the contrary. I think it probably very likely that the Israeli government has an extremely powerful lobby at Washington. The Israelis invest a huge amount of money and effort into their propaganda machine. They crow about it quite openly. And they are extremely clever at reconstructing and recontextualising their outrageous behaviour in terms that the rest of the world will swallow. They have much of the Western media and a good deal of the Western population thinking that 'poor little Israel' with its nuclear arsenal, its committment to torture as a political tool and its viciously aggressive leaders (the last one was a convicted war criminal) is the victim here instead of the agressor. There are all sorts of structural reasons why it is so successful in convincing people of these things, but that's another argument.

No, what I found laughable about this document was that, just like the American and much of the British media, it has swallowed the Bush government's propaganda line that the current Administration is trying to create a democratic framework within the Middle-East, etc, etc. It expects us to believe that the failures of this administration are the results of distortion by Israeli lobbying. This is the 'poor little U.S doing its best to save the world but being manipulated by clever foreigners' argument all over again. U.S. government propaganda effort to its own population and the rest of the world is just as successful as anything that the Israelis put out at hiding its true motives. It is the best resourced propaganda machine in the world and its successes put the Israelis into the shade.

The current Bush administration, like its predecessors (and the Blair governement, like its predecessors) is simply following some well-established and by now traditional, Foreign Policy goals, to gain control of an economically critical region. The fact that it is a messy business and costing thousands of lives is pretty traditional too. Violence on this scale is always uncontrollable.

Academic apologists will always find ways of blaming their government's actions on others. The broad strategic policies of Bush and his cohorts are not a mistake or a miscalculation (though their actual tactics seem to have been based on a totally ignorant perception of the region), they are not the result of meddling by foreign lobbyists and pressure groups, they are intended.

The last thing Bush or any American or British government would want to see in the Middle East is any independent, democratic system developing. The governments of our two countries have been working to keep the region destablished for over a century. They have brought down any regional government that looked as though it might have some ideas of its own. A democratic Middle-East would be much more difficult for the West to control.

Just look at the foreign policy history of your governments (and mine), where just about everywhere they have supported dictatorial and agressive regimes, destablised democratic ones and supplied genocidal maniacs with the wherewithall to commit atrocities. Their support of Israel is just one example in a long line of the same.

The boot is actually on the other foot. Israel is totally dependent for its position of a vast programme of military aid from the U.S. The U.S. supports it to do its dirty work for it in the region. The U.S. could easily have restrained Israel's recent genocidal actions, for instance. It chose not to do so for its own reasons. That also is typical.

OK Rant over.

Glum!!!!!

[swifty's revenge]

Well thank you for the reply Mr. Wolf.

what makes you think it isn't true? Coz its not on the news?

Apologies, i didnt realize right off that i was talking to someone with a brain.
You may be correct in your assesments, but I was mostly interested in proliferating this material because it addresses things the we have known for a long time as stereotypes in terms of fact. I myself am mostly sickened by the Zionist-enabler role my nation takes.
And especially i feel regurtative due to my perception of the decay of the american culture, race, and nationalism that has escalated in the last 50 years. It's hard not to scapegoat, and I truly think i have not, but when a foriegn people has such control in the news and entertainment media, i feel inclined to call a spaid a spaid.

[swifty's revenge]

And btw, how is it that Israel is doing our dirty work?

have they soothed Iraqi insurgency?

have they made the middle east a peaceful and reliable source of resources for us?

[sv-wolf]

Hi swifty

Well not 'your' dirty work - I'm talking about the dirty work of U.S. government and big business. Unless you own a pretty hefty wedge of share capital, it is not being done on your behalf.

Israel is the big threat, ever on hand just in case a major conflict should erupt. The Middle East is, economically, perhaps the most important region in the entire world. Lots of eyes will be looking this way in the future.

And, of course Israel, has been very useful to the U.S. government in the past, channellng arms to Persia (Iran) during the time of the U.S. backed and bloody reign of the Shah and afterwards when it thought it could defeat the Mullahs by supplying arms to insurgents.

It has been useful keeping other Middle-Eastern nations in check, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The U.S. installed Saddam in power knowing his record as a mass murderer but believing that he would be a useful puppet. They covered up for him when he gassed the Kurds and at other times. When he started acting independently against U.S. interests and became a liability Israel was used to keep him quiet - bombing his nuclear plant etc. It could be used in the same way again, if needed.

And of course Israel is the big destablising influence in the region which is what is required from a Western elite perspective. The big flaw in the paper you posted is the assumption that the U.S. wants to see stability and democracy in the region. While it is true that the U.S. government did not want to escalate the conflict while its own forces were present in the area, don't have any doubt that it would be quite happy to unleash the Israeli military under other circumstances.

Israel is a military state. It has been desribed as an army with a state not a state with an army. The military have a huge amount of influence over government policy. The U.S. does not sustain this just to 'deal with' the Palestinians.

The big issue is Iran. The U.S. has established a strong power base in the region with both Israel and Turkey as close allies. The U.S. supplies them both with huge amounts of military aid for the purpose of destroying any challenges to their power (from the Kurds in Turkey and the Palestinians in Israel. From the U.S. governement's point of view Israel's recent invasion of Lebanon was useful as an attempt to eliminate a further threat to Israeli power from Hamas and Hezbollah who would become a liability if ever the U.S. decided to go for Iran. Iran is the big power base in the area and the only significant threat to U.S. control of oil production in the region.

I don't think the U.S. government is looking to the Middle East (just yet )as a source of oil. It's main concern at the moment is not access but control. That is in itself very lucrative (Haliburton contracts etc), but the purpose is mainly strategic. Control of the region would give the U.S. control over oil prices. Very nice too if you are an oil baron! However, oil supplies are running out round the world. China has recently become dependent for the first time on foreign imports of oil and has been looking very closely at the Caspian oil fields and beyond. The Indian economy is expanding exponentially. Europe might well take an independent interest here if there were a major threat to the income of its economic elites. In the capitalist world, alliances are made and broken in a moment.

The U.S. government is wanting to secure its control over the region. That is why they are building permanent military bases near the main oil fields all over Iraq. (That's how you help to establish and independent, 'democratic' state? Hmmmm.) It's quite likely that Iraq is also being used as an easy test case for the new Bush/PNAC doctrine of pre-emptive strikes. Just to let the world know that it means business and is THE imperialist power on the world scene.

However, at some point the U.S. will become more interested in the Iraqi oilfields. The U.S. still has a lot of domestic oil but it is becoming ever more expensive to extract. Iraqi oil, apart from being plentiful is also very cheap to extract and process.

Other supplies are looking dubious. The U.S. backed Saudi regime looks like it is under considerable threat from internal forces that would not be so favourable to the U.S. in the future and supplies from Venezuela are becoming increasingly uncertain from a U.S. perspective given the political situation there at the moment.

It's an interesting and very worrying scenario. The power elites (governments, military and business interests) round the world look like they are muscling up for another big conflict. While the rest of us...