Influence of Zionist extremists warping U.S. foreign policy
Home News Tribune Online 04/3/07
HASSAN
MAHMOUD
Be Counted
A civil discourse about ideas is anathema to fanatics, whether they are al-Qaida followers or Zionism espousers. Both practice bigotry and intimidation against their opponents and commit unspeakable violence to achieve their sinister goals.
[Editor's note: Any discourse with Zionists wastes time and can delay or stop action/activism. AIPAC trains volunteers to engage bloggers, etc, to neutralize opposition.]
Al-Qaida wants to establish an archaic form of Muslim caliphate empire from Spain to Indonesia, and the Zionists want to establish a biblical kingdom from the "river of Egypt unto the great river, the Euphrates," Genesis 15:18. The current Israeli flag, which exhibits two blue parallel lines (the Nile and Euphrates) dominated by the Star of David in the middle, thus encompassing the land from Egypt to Iraq, symbolizes that fantasy. Both enterprises are based on religious intolerance.
In an article titled "On Israel, America and AIPAC" in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, financier George Soros explains how The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — which espouses the Zionist ideology — strongly affects both the Democratic and the Republican parties in their policies in the Middle East and their uncritical support of Israeli policies. The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism of any Israeli brutal actions in the occupied Palestinian territories and Lebanon.
To illustrate AIPAC's tremendous power, Mr. Soros points to its successful pressure upon the newly elected Democratic House leadership to drop from a military appropriation bill the requirement that the president obtain congressional approval before taking military action against Iran. Those same leadership members plus all the Democratic presidential candidates, who have been assailing Bush for his misbegotten Iraq war, have fallen upon themselves at the recent AIPAC convention declaring that they would not take the military option against Iran off the table.
The extremist American Jewish organizations equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. They consider criticism of Israel's oppressive actions against the Palestinians as anti-Semitism. Many thoughtful American Jews who think otherwise have been labeled as self-hating Jews.
Even detrimental Israeli action against U.S. interests could not be publicly criticized. The unauthorized Israeli sale to China (our adversary) of American secret technology in weapons such as the Harpy attack drones and the American-financed ($3 billion) Lavi military jet (reborn as China's J-10 warplane) has been hushed. The Israelis merely apologized and promised to tighten controls over arms exports.
Also, there was no word of protest when Israel used antipersonnel cluster bombs in Lebanon in violation of the sale agreement of these bombs with the United States.
Jonathan Pollard spied for Israel for money and transferred a huge amount of top secret intelligence to Israel, and the late Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger reportedly concluded that this intelligence had been given to the Soviet Union in order to facilitate the immigration of the Soviet Jews to Israel. Despite all these harmful actions against our interests, some still call Israel our closest ally.
Our support for Israel's actions against the Palestinians is fueling the anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and inhibiting a full involvement of the Arab governments to bring the Iraq war to a conclusion.
According to studies by professors John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," the United States has given Israel direct aid of $140 billion since 1976, or about $500 of subsidies to each Israeli per year. This largess is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with per capita income equal to South Korea or Spain.
The influence of AIPAC and its Zionist supporters has to come to an end and the voice of the honorable patriotic American Jews should be heard instead.
"Be Counted" columnist Hassan Mahmoud is a resident of Westfield. "Be Counted" columnists are members of the public. Their opinions do not represent those of the Home News Tribune.
