(1) Lobby panics that BDS is turning next generation of American leaders against it (2) Apartheid Dip? Campus Protests threaten the historical relationship with Israel (3) Are the Clintons Israeli Agents? - Philip Giraldi (4) Israel’s conflict with the Arabs turned into a new Crusade (5) US facing its captivity by Neocons, pro-Israel ideologues who want endless war on Islam (6) Jill Stein is Jewish, but No special treatment for Israel  (1) Lobby panics that BDS is turning next generation of American leadersagainst it   Israel lobby panics about ‘spoiled’ next generation of American leaders turning against it  Philip Weiss on August 6, 2016  Last week the New York Times reported a shocking statement from the former University of California chancellor on the importance of stopping the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) on campus because it threatens to poison the next generation of American leaders against the special relationship between the United States and Israel.  Linda K. Wertheimer reported:      [I]n December, Mark G. Yudof, former president of the University of California system, helped create the Academic Engagement Network. The group has some 275 members, mostly faculty, on about 110 campuses working in opposition to the B.D.S. movement. "I don’t want to see B.D.S. become stronger because, 20 years from now, these students will be judges, heads of Congress," Mr. Yudof told me. "We have to respond now to maintain the historical relationship with Israel."  Yudof is not alone in being panicked about the effect of college politics on the future of the Israel lobby.  Last December, the leading US Jewish journalist Jeffrey Goldberg and the Israeli politician Yitzhak Herzog expressed the same concern, specifically about young Jews, in a conversation at the Saban Forum.  Goldberg noted that Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports BDS, is the fastest-growing organization on his daughter’s college campus in the northeast, then went on:      This is not speculation on my part, that things are shifting radically not only in non Jewish America but in Jewish America as it concerns Israel and its reputation… What are you going to do about it?… The reality among liberal American Jews and liberal Americas is that they are turning, slowly sometimes, not so slowly other times, against Israel….  Goldberg then expressed his own contempt for those young Jewish Americans:      A lot of very mainstream Israelis ask, Why should we risk our lives by taking positions that could in fact hurt us physically, so that a group of spoiled children at Harvard and Yale and UCLA feel better about the Jewish state? The Jewish state was not created so that 18 year olds at Berkeley feel good.  Herzog responded that BDS is the latest manifestation of the "onslaught against Zionism for generations;" but he said that he is worried about it, for the same reason Yudof is:      The problem that you’ve mentioned is the growing disparity between the Jewish community in the United States, and the next generation who are going to take the leadership, who are going to be government officials, who are going to be opinion makers, who might be the next Mark Zuckerbergs’– and Israel.      And that’s definitely a strategic risk because part of our national strength was derived from the fact that the Jewish diaspora especially in the United States was extremely close to us, extremely supportive, and had major influence on the American policy overall. And what we will see in the next generation is if we hear and listen from our young generations– is Israel hate. Without understanding the case, without having a clue… about the vibrant, aggressive, impressive democracy that we have got.  Both these items (from last week and last December) underscore a profound truth that the Israel lobby has been denying for ten years: the power of the Israel lobby in U.S. politics. That’s what Yudof is afraid is being undermined; and Herzog is even more straightforward about it: It’s Jewish power, the "major influence on the American policy" exerted by older American Jews.  This is no casual matter; the loss of the lobby is a "strategic risk," Herzog said; and this is precisely why Jeffrey Goldberg and Alan Dershowitz and Dennis Ross and Aaron David Miller and Richard Haass and others vehemently denied the allegations in the paper and book The Israel Lobby, published 9 and 10 years ago, because identifying this power openly was a threat to it. To "Jewish enfranchisement," as Goldberg stated on the stage of the Center for Jewish History.  Now ten years on, the Israel lobbyists face a greater threat than academic critics of the Israel lobby: young Americans, who are awaking to Palestinian conditions on college campuses, thanks to the efforts of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Black Lives Matter. And, pace Herzog, young Jewish Americans, the very Jews who are supposed to compose the leadership of the lobby– they’re deciding that Zionism with its inherent ethnic discrimination is not an ideology worth living for, yet alone dying for.  I would only comment that Yudof, Goldberg and Herzog are the real threats to the Jewish future. They would happily swap out any real intellectual and moral engagement with the world on the part of their children for an attachment to Israel. They have thereby destroyed the vaunted Jewish mind, which produced so many wonderful achievements in the west over the last 100 years, and given us Jewish automatons.  Thankfully, many young Jews are thinking for themselves, and their dependence in doing so on Palestinians and non-Jewish groups will forever change the definition of the liberal American Jewish community. And not a moment too soon.  (2) Apartheid Dip? Campus Protests threaten the historical relationship with Israel   Students and the Middle East Conflict  By LINDA K. WERTHEIMER  AUG. 3, 2016  What some see as a celebration of culture through food, others see as a political statement, and an offensive one at that. Just slip an Israeli flag on a toothpick.  To the Tufts chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, last fall’s Taste of Israel was appropriation, pure and simple.  "I don’t think the Palestinian students on this campus would see it as ‘cultural’ if they were to walk in and see flags of Israel all over the food their grandmother used to cook before she was evicted from her village," said Nic Serhan, an S.J.P. member who is part Arab, part African-American.  As students sampled pomegranate seeds, hummus, falafel and pita, Mr. Serhan and fellow protesters strode into the event carrying signs reading "Taste of Israeli Occupation," "Don’t dip into apartheid" and "Fresh from stolen Palestinian land." Then they passed out chocolates with anti-Israel sentiments on the wrappers and asked: "Do you want the real truth about Israel?"  This was not the biggest or loudest such protest at Tufts, a private university of some 12,000 students just outside of Boston. But it was the last straw. Whenever Friends of Israel or Hillel staged a lecture or event, it seemed, S.J.P. was there. There had been die-ins (students had to step over bodies on red cloths signifying blood) and checkpoints (mock Israeli soldiers conducted security checks around campus). Friends of Israel had already requested campus security at programs, but after the food festival they filed a complaint with Tufts’s judicial affairs office.  "It’s bullying masquerading as social justice," Anna Linton, co-president of the club, told me.  Mr. Serhan countered: "Protests are supposed to be disruptive in nature."  When it comes to the Middle East on campus, the environment is increasingly uneasy and even hostile. Many universities are grappling with how to balance students’ right to protest with Jewish students’ fears that their culture is under attack. Some students say they are ostracized when they show support for Israel, while Palestinian activists talk of being labeled "terrorists," and finding their photos and names posted on canarymission, a website that tracks professors and students who, it says, promote "hatred of the United States, Israel and Jews." S.J.P. members insist they are anti-Israel, not anti-Semitic — a debatable distinction to those who cannot separate the state of Israel from their Jewish identity.  While a majority of Americans, 54 percent, say they side with Israel and its struggles against terrorism, sympathy for the Palestinians’ cause has been rising, according to a Pew Research Center study released in May. The most significant increase is among millennials, to 27 percent from 9 percent in 2006. Images of the separation barrier running through the occupied West Bank, which_______________________ Palestinian suicide bombings and shootings, have helped shift sentiments. Activists see parallels with apartheid in South Africa.  S.J.P., founded in 2001 at the University of California, Berkeley, has become the leading pro-Palestinian voice on campus. (Jewish Voice for Peace is another student group critical of Israel.)  A national organization was established in 2010 to connect chapters’ work, including annual conferences and speaking tours. There are now roughly 170 chapters, about 55 more than in 2014, according to conference organizers and a report by the Anti-Defamation League. The Tufts chapter, which has a core group of 25 members, is a significant player in this movement. It hosted the 2014 conference, which drew more than 500 attendees and sparked protests from Jewish alumni who objected to the university’s allowing the conference on campus.  Jeffrey Summit, executive director of Tufts Hillel, has watched sentiment against Israel rise during his 37 years on campus. "Our country is so polarized," the rabbi said. "We’re trying to do something different here."  That something is not to discourage protests, said Celene Ibrahim, Tufts’s Muslim chaplain, but to encourage students to converse about the complex arguments that divide them. But first they need to become comfortable with each other. She and Rabbi Summit have been working to bring both sides together in the same room.  After the Taste of Israel brouhaha, Rabbi Summit and students in Hillel established the Visions of Peace initiative. Leaders from Hillel and the Muslim Students Association teamed to organize a day in April that would include attending each other’s religious services and a talk by a Palestinian activist and a Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank. In September, students would be able to meet families who had lost loved ones in the conflict and are united on peace efforts. Chaplain Ibrahim also is planning a Jewish-Muslim women’s retreat.  The chaplain is careful to note that the division on campus isn’t necessarily a Muslim-Jewish one: Jews, Christians and Hindus as well as Muslims are members of S.J.P. chapters. Tufts is roughly a quarter Jewish, but there are only a few hundred Muslim students. Most come from South Asia and may not have a stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, the Muslim Students Association has taken no stance on the conflict or S.J.P. And some members of Friends of Israel actively lobby against Israel’s policies toward the West Bank and Gaza.  "This is one of the stereotypes I’m trying to undo," Chaplain Ibrahim said. "What does it mean to be pro-Israel? There’s a lot of nuance around it."  Mr. Serhan, a rising senior, has participated in numerous S.J.P. actions and marched in a Black Lives Matter protest on campus. He does not identify with a particular religion. His parents are Christian. His mother, from New Orleans, is black; his father was born in Kuwait. Mr. Serhan began advocating for Palestinians while taking a freshman course on peace and justice, when he heard an S.J.P. member speak about what Palestinians lost when Israel became a state in 1948. He said he is passionate about protesting any event or lecture celebrating Israel.  He reached into his backpack to pull out his kaffiyeh, draping the scarf around his neck as he headed out of a cafe for a panel discussion on cultures affected by colonization, part of national Israeli Apartheid Week. As we walked across campus, he described how a Tufts student called him and two other activists "terrorists" because they were wearing kaffiyehs, the iconic symbol of Yasir Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization leader.  The Most Pro-Palestinian Generation  What exactly does S.J.P. want? During its first national conference, in 2011 at Columbia, S.J.P. created a mission statement that called for the boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israel and its products (causes the B.D.S. movement is named for); for an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank; and for dismantling the separation barrier. In answer to charges that S.J.P. fosters anti-Semitism, members point to this mission directive: Chapters must be vigilant against "homophobia, sexism, racism, bigotry, classism, colonialism, and discrimination of any form." It condemns terrorism.  "Criticism of Israel is a criticism of a state," said Amahl Bishara, a Palestinian-American professor of anthropology at Tufts. "I don’t see any blurred lines there."  To leaders of Jewish organizations, those lines are frequently blurred. They equate supporting the B.D.S. movement to supporting Hamas and the destruction of their homeland. They point to S.J.P.-sponsored speakers who have compared Israelis to Nazis yet defend those who have committed random attacks of violence against Israelis.  Leonard Saxe, director of the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, led a survey of 3,199 Jewish students and recent graduates from some 100 universities. A quarter said they had been blamed for actions of Israel. Nearly three-fourths had been exposed to at least one anti-Semitic statement in the previous year.  Last year at the University of California, Davis, vandals spray-painted swastikas on a Jewish fraternity house, and in March, protesters marched to the front of a classroom and loudly chanted, "Israel is an apartheid state." The guest speaker was an Israeli diplomat whose topic was the art of diplomacy  Concerned about a swell in incidents, the Zionist Organization of America in 2014 coordinated a letter to 2,500 college and university presidents asking them to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism, specifically from what it called S.J.P.’s "harassment and intimidation tactics." And in December, Mark G. Yudof, former president of the University of California system, helped create the Academic Engagement Network. The group has some 275 members, mostly faculty, on about 110 campuses working in opposition to the B.D.S. movement. "I don’t want to see B.D.S. become stronger because, 20 years from now, these students will be judges, heads of Congress," Mr. Yudof told me. "We have to respond now to maintain the historical relationship with Israel."  In March, the University of California adopted a statement condemning anti-Semitism and "anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism." Stanford’s student government later approved a similar resolution. Opponents object to such resolutions as anti-Arab and attempts to curtail free speech.  "It is not the place of the president, the chancellor or the former chancellor to tsk-tsk the students because they don’t like the style of debate," said Liz Jackson, a lawyer with Palestine Legal, which formed in 2012 to work with activists.  Lawyers who advise S.J.P. members facing disciplinary charges say that First Amendment rights are routinely ignored when Israel is the subject, and that universities are trying to intimidate members into silence.  Northeastern University’s chapter was suspended for the remainder of the school year after its members slipped 600 strongly worded mock eviction notices under dorm room doors to mirror the eviction of Palestinians. The notices reminded some of the expulsion of Jews during the Holocaust. And after various incidents at the City University of New York, including the disruption of a faculty meeting at Brooklyn College, several state lawmakers began an effort to get S.J.P. chapters expelled, even though a broad coalition of activists had caused the disruption. They did not succeed. But in February, the Zionist Organization of America sent a letter to CUNY asking for a public condemnation of S.J.P. for promoting anti-Semitism and creating a "hostile campus environment" for Jewish students on at least four CUNY campuses.  Friends of Israel, in its complaint to Tufts administrators, said that the Taste of Israel protest had victimized students and violated university policy, including one called Working With One Another. They wanted to meet with S.J.P. leaders and a mediator.  "They can push back on our belief and opinions of Israel, but they actually have to hear us out first," Itamar Ben-Aharon, president of the club, said after a meeting in which members discussed current events, competed in a trivia quiz on Israel and boned up on how to counter criticism during Israeli Apartheid Week.  S.J.P. declined mediation after a string of unproductive exchanges, saying they had not intimidated students and saw no need for university involvement, and besides, debate is encouraged at its events. Friends of Israel, fearing an escalation in hostility, dropped its complaint this past spring. The university would not comment on the incident. But Mary Pat McMahon, a dean of student affairs, posited this challenge: "How do we foster learning and students working together even when it’s unlikely common ground will come any time soon?"  "How could it be for 33 years I lived in an area where there were nine Palestinians for every Israeli and I never met a Palestinian?" Rabbi Schlesinger asked, almost shouting the question, as if admonishing his younger self. Some 40 years ago, he had left New York to live in a Jewish settlement on the occupied West Bank. Settlers and Palestinians spoke different languages, practiced different religions and lived under different laws. "Under these circumstances," he said, "there will be ignorance, stereotypes, and if you add in the violence, of course there’s going to be fear and anger toward the other for killing us."  His fear faded after attending a dinner of Palestinians and Jewish settlers organized by Roots, an effort based in the West Bank to achieve peace with nonviolence. He grew to realize that "our triumph was their tragedy," and went on to lead Roots with Ali Abu Awwad, who co-founded the initiative in 2014.  Mr. Awwad took his turn on the stage. He told the audience in a soft, impassioned voice that his father became a refugee when his village was depopulated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. His mother was a P.L.O. leader and beaten in front of him in their home. "I don’t think you need to teach someone how to hate in that situation," he said.  He was arrested twice during uprisings and would spend four years in prison. In 2000, he was wounded in the knee in a drive-by shooting by an Israeli settler. A few months later, his older brother was killed by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint. "How many Israelis have to die to bring justice?" he asked. "The only justice I can think of is to have him back, and that won’t happen."  Then, bereaved Jewish families came to offer solace to his family. "For the first time, I saw an Israeli crying. You don’t see Jewish tears at checkpoints. I couldn’t even imagine that Jewish people had tears."  Scanning the students in the room, Mr. Awwad criticized S.J.P. and divestment supporters for refusing to enter into dialogue with Jewish groups because they felt it legitimized Israel. Both sides lay claim to the land. Both sides have been victimized. He implored the students not to focus on which side was right. "I spent nights of my life hoping Israel will disappear and explode," he said. Now he was in a different place, working for peace.  After the talk, Rabbi Schlesinger said he was disappointed at how few Muslims were in the room. All told, some 250 students showed up for at least one of the day’s events; only about two dozen were Muslim, but half of them took Hillel up on the invitation to attend the Jewish prayer service. Some were entering Hillel’s center for the first time, "and that’s the crossing of a threshold," said Chaplain Ibrahim.  Most S.J.P. members saw Visions of Peace as an attempt to mollify their group and vowed to skip it. Leah Muskin-Pierret, who is Jewish, was the sole S.J.P. attendee at the talk. Her voice rising and quickening, she told me she found much of it infuriating. She was embarrassed by an American Jewish settler wanting dialogue about Israel. She wished the focus had been on the daily hardships faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation.  Mr. Ben-Aharon appreciated the frank talk but had doubts. Roots was idealistic. Opposing sides would not suddenly work together. And every time the campus experiences an uptick in tension, the answer is the same: Start a new initiative.  Before the dinner, as part of interfaith storytelling in one of Hillel’s prayer spaces, Nazifa Sarawat told a circle of fellow students and clergy members how she had arrived in New York City as a toddler from Bangladesh. She and her family had had little exposure to other religions, so she saw non-Muslims as the "other."  One of the day’s organizers, she wanted more collaboration, and with Hillel the key player, she worried about a power imbalance. Maybe students at the grass-roots level should be in charge, she said. Maybe a Mideast culture group should form and partner with Israeli clubs.   From the clerics’ perspective, the day was a beginning. "Here, people are listening to one another," Rabbi Summit said. "On so many college campuses, opposing sides are just shouting."  At the dinner that closed the program, after students led the group in blessings over the challah, Chaplain Ibrahim, wearing a hijab that shimmered in the light, stood up and described the sensation she had during the Sabbath service. She felt as if she were experiencing her own faith of Islam because so much of the liturgy sounded familiar.  "It pains me," she said softly, "to see events in the world dividing communities that are meant to be together."  Correction: August 7, 2016  An article on Page 10 this weekend about tensions on campus over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict misstates part of the name of a group critical of Israel. It is Jewish Voice for Peace (not Voices). The article also refers incorrectly to the position of Open Hillel, a national organization that is independent of Hillel. It says that it seeks open discourse; that it is not critical of Israel.  Linda K. Wertheimer is author of "Faith Ed., Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance" and former education editor at The Boston Globe.  A version of this article appears in print on August 7, 2016, on page ED10 of Education Life with the headline: The Middle East Conflict on Campus.  (3) Are the Clintons Israeli Agents? - Philip Giraldi   Are the Clintons Israeli Agents?  Man who "ran the CIA" offers an entirely new perspective  Philip Giraldi  August 23, 2016  On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled his New York Times op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the process whereby Trump had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career intelligence officer, is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities… In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."  I have previously observed how incomprehensible the designation of "unwitting agent" used in a sentence together with "recruited" is, but perhaps I should add something more about Morell that might not be clear to the casual reader. Morell was an Agency analyst, not a spy, who spent nearly his entire career in and around Washington. The high point of his CIA experience consisted of briefing George W. Bush on the President’s Daily Brief (PDB).  Morell was not trained in the arduous CIA operational tradecraft course which agent recruiters and handlers go through. This means that his understanding of intelligence operations and agents is, to put it politely, derivative. If he had gone through the course he would understand that when you recruit an agent you control him and tell him what to do. The agent might not know whom exactly he is really answering to as in a false flag operation, but he cannot be unwitting.  Morell appears to have a tendency to make promises that others will have to deliver on, but perhaps that’s what delegation by senior U.S. government officials is all about. He was also not trained in CIA paramilitary operations, which perhaps should be considered when he drops comments about the desirability of "covertly" killing Russians and Iranians to make a point that they should not oppose U.S. policies in Syria, as he did in a softball interview with Charlie Rose on August 6th.  Morell appears to be oblivious to the possibility that going around assassinating foreigners might be regarded as state sponsored terrorism and could well ignite World War 3. And, as is characteristic of chickenhawks, it is highly unlikely that he was intending that either he or his immediate family should go out and cut the throats or blow the heads off of those foreign devils who seek to derail the Pax Americana. Nor would he expect to be in the firing line when the relatives of those victims seek revenge. Someone else with the proper training would be found to do all that messy stuff and take the consequences.  Be that as it may, Morell was a very senior officer and perhaps we should accept that he might know something that the rest of us have missed, so let’s just assume that he kind of misspoke and give him a pass on the "recruited unwitting agent" expression. Instead let’s look for other American political figures who just might be either deliberately or inadvertently serving the interests of a foreign government, which is presumably actually what Michael Morell meant to convey regarding Trump. To be sure a well-run McCarthy-esque ferreting out of individuals who just might be disloyal provides an excellent opportunity to undertake a purge of those who either by thought, word or deed might be guilty of unacceptable levels of coziness with foreign interests.  So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.  And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill’s one-sided pro-Israeli diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely condemned January 2001 last minute pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell’s formulation, might more reasonably be described as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.  Trump’s crime, per Morell, is that he is disloyal to the United States because he is not sufficiently hostile to the evil Vladimir Putin, which somehow means that he is being manipulated by the clever Russian. Trump has indeed called for a positive working relationship with Putin to accomplish, among other objectives, the crushing of ISIS. And he is otherwise in favor of leaving Bashar al-Assad of Syria alone while also being disinclined to get involved in any additional military interventions in the Middle East or elsewhere, which pretty much makes him the antithesis of the Clintonian foreign policy promoted by Morell.  In comparison with the deeply and profoundly corrupt Clintons, Trump’s alleged foreign policy perfidy makes him appear to be pretty much a boy scout. To understand the Clintons one might consider the hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it from foreign sources, that have flowed into the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State. And there is the clear email evidence that Hillary exploited her government position to favor both foreign and domestic financial supporters.  The leading individual foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 was Ukrainian Viktor Pinchuk, who "directed between $10 and $25 million" to its Global Initiative, has let the Clintons use his private jet, attended Bill’s Hollywood 65th birthday celebration and hosted daughter Chelsea and her husband on a trip to Ukraine. Pinchuk is a Jewish oligarch married to the daughter of notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. He is very closely tied to Israel, a supporter of regime change in his country, who was simultaneously donating money and also lobbying in Washington while Hillary was Secretary of State and promoting a similar agenda as part of her $5 billion program to "democratize" Ukraine. Clinton arranged a dozen meetings with substantive State Department officers for Pinchuk.  Hillary and Bill’s predilection for all things Israeli and her promise to do even more in the future is a matter of public record. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz asserted that of all the political candidates in the primaries "Clinton had the longest public record of engagement with Israel, and has spent decades diligently defending the Jewish state." In a speech to AIPAC in March she promised to take the "U.S.-Israel alliance to the next level." Hillary’s current principal financial supporter in her presidential run is Haim Saban, an Israeli who has described himself as a "one issue" guy and that issue is Israel.  Hillary Clinton boasts of having "stood with Israel my entire career." Her website promises to maintain "Israel’s qualitative military edge to ensure the IDF is equipped to deter and defeat aggression from the full spectrum of threats," "stand up against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS)," and "cut off efforts to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood outside of the context of negotiations with Israel." In a letter to Haim Saban, Hillary declared that "we need to make countering BDS a priority," which means she is prepared to support laws limiting First Amendment rights in the U.S. in defense of perceived Israeli interests.  As part of the Obama Administration Hillary Clinton at first supported his attempts to pressure Israel over its illegal settlements but has now backed off from that position, only rarely criticizing them as a "problem" but never advocating any steps to persuade Netanyahu to reverse his policy. Notably, she has repeatedly decried terroristic attacks on Israelis but has never acknowledged the brutality of the Israeli occupation of much of the West Bank in spite of the fact that ten Palestinians are killed for each Jewish victim of the ongoing violence.  Clinton supported Israel’s actions in the 2014 Gaza War, which killed more than 500 children, describing them as an appropriate response to a situation that was provoked by Hamas. On the campaign trail recently husband Bill disingenuously defended Hillary’s position on Gaza, saying that "Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket Israel they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools…" placing all the blame for the large number of civilian casualties on the Palestinians, not on the Israelis. When the media began to report on the plight of the civilians trapped in Gaza Hillary dismissed the impending humanitarian catastrophe, saying "They’re trapped by their leadership, unfortunately."  Earlier, as a Senator from New York, Hillary supported Israel’s building of the separation barrier on Palestinian land and cheer-led a crowd at a pro-Israel rally that praised Israel’s 2006 devastation of Lebanon and Gaza. She nonsensically characterized and justified the bombing campaign as "efforts to send messages to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians – to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom…" More than nine hundred civilians died in the onslaught and when a vote came up subsequently in Congress to stop the supply of cluster bombs to countries that use them on civilians Hillary voted against the bill together with 69 other pro-Israel senators.  Hillary enjoys a particularly close relationship with Netanyahu, writing in November, "I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office." She has worked diligently to "reaffirm the unbreakable bond with Israel – and Benjamin Netanyahu." She has boasted of her being one of the promoters of annual increases in aid to Israel while she was in the Senate and Secretary of State and takes credit for repeatedly using America’s Security Council veto to defend it in the United Nations.  So I think it is pretty clear who is the presidential candidate promoting the interests of a foreign country and it ain’t Trump. Hillary would no doubt argue that Israel is a friend and Russia is not, an interesting point of view as Israel is not in fact an ally and has spied on us and copied our military technology to re-export to countries like China. Indeed, the most damaging spy in U.S. history Jonathan Pollard worked for Israel. In spite of all that Israel continues to tap our treasury for billions of dollars a year while still ignoring Washington when requests are made to moderate policies that damage American interests. Against that, what exactly has Moscow done to harm us since the Cold War ended? And who is advocating even more pressure on Russia and increasing the rewards for Israel, presumably in the completely illogical belief that to do so will somehow bring some benefit to the American people? Hillary Clinton.  (4) Israel’s conflict with the Arabs turned into a new Crusade    APRIL 5, 2003  Israelization of the United States   by M. SHAHID ALAM  The images of the American armada plowing through the deserts of Iraq, bombing military and civilian targets, laying siege to Iraqi cities, targeting Iraqi leaders, shooting civilians, blinded by sandstorms, stalled, ambushed, shocked by the Iraqi resistance, facing suicide attacks, suggests an eerie but inescapable comparison. Is this America’s West Bank? Is this the Israelization of United States–heading to its logical conclusion?  Most Americans have been taught by their captive media to interpret what happens today in the Middle East in terms of what happened yesterday. The clock of history in this region always starts with the most recent "suicide" attack mounted by Palestinians against "peaceful," "innocent" Israeli "civilians." If, somehow, these Americans could be persuaded to take the long view, they might begin to understand that the war against Iraq is perhaps the culmination of a process that had been long in the making: the Israelization of United States. [...]  The end of the Cold War in 1990 stripped the special relationship of its old rationale. Israel would now have to invent a new one to continue to sell itself as a strategic asset. It would now market itself as the barrier, the break-water, against the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism. For many years, the chief opposition to the corrupt and repressive regimes in the Arab world, whether dictatorships or monarchies, had taken Islamist forms. Pro-Israeli apologists in the media and academia–mostly Jewish neoconservatives and Middle East experts–argued that the West now faced a new Islamic threat, global in its scope, which hated the freedoms, secular values and prosperity of the West. Bernard Lewis, the "doyen" of Middle East experts and a passionate Zionist, solemnly intoned in 1993 that this was nothing less than a "clash of civilizations." This was a clever move, but also a necessary one, to convert Israel’s conflict with the Arabs into a new Crusade, the war of the West (read: United States) against Islam. It was clever move also because it had support from Christian fundamentalists, who were now a strong force in the Republican party.  The new Crusaders worked in tandem with Islamic extremists in the al-Qaida camp who also wanted to provoke a war between Islam and the US. Every time Osama’s men struck at American targets, it was exploited by the pro-Israeli lobby to promote the Clash thesis. When the nineteen hijackers struck on September 11, 2001, they could not have chosen a better time. The man at America’s helm was a born-again Christian, an isolationist, elected by right-wing Christians, with a cabinet that took its advice on foreign policy mostly from Jewish neoconservatives. The neoconservative’s plan for a new Crusade had been ready long before 9-11. They had the President’s ears after 9-11, and the President bought into their plan.  In no time, George Bush had been converted into a new Crusader. He described Ariel Sharon as a "man of peace," after embracing every one of his extremist positions on the Palestinians: reoccupation of West Bank, repudiation of Oslo, removal of Arafat, and dismantling of the Palestinian authority. He laid out his binary doctrine–you are with us or against-us–and prepared for pre-emptive wars against the "axis of evil."  The new Crusade is now underway. The world’s only superpower, commanding one-third of the world’s output, and nearly one-half its military expenditure, has entered Iraq to effect "regime-change," to bring democracy to a people it has emasculated with bombs and sanctions for twelve years. In its new Crusade, United States stands at the head of a numerous "coalition of the willing," now including forty-five countries. But Israel is missing from this long list, even though a team of colonial administrators, handpicked by Paul Wolfowtz, has already arrived in Kuwait City to take over Baghdad. That is a trick no magician could imitate. The Israelization of United States is complete.  M. SHAHID ALAM is an economist, essayist, political satirist, and poet. He teaches economics at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. His recent book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave (2000). He may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.  (5) US facing its captivity by Neocons, pro-Israel ideologues who want endless war on Islam   The U.S. is at last facing the neocon captivity  Philip Weiss on May 19, 2015  The best thing about this political moment in the U.S. (if not for the good people of Iraq) is that the rise of ISIS and the Republican candidates’ embrace of the Iraq war is posing that deep and permanent question to the American public, Why did we invade Iraq?  Last night Chris Matthews asked that question again and David Corn said it was about the neoconservative desire to protect Israel. Both men deserve kudos for courage. Here’s part of the exchange:      Matthews: Why were the people in the administration like [Paul] Wolfowitz and the others talking about going into Iraq from the very beginning, when they got into the white house long before there was a 911 long before there was WMD. It seemed like there was a deeper reason. I don’t get it. It seemed like WMD was a cover story.      Corn: I can explain that. For years. Paul Wolfowitz and other members of the neocon movement had talked about getting rid of Iraq and there would be democracy throughout the region that would help Israel and they came to believe actually a very bizarre conspiracy theory that al Qaeda didn’t matter, that Saddam Hussein was behind all the acts of violence…      Matthews: The reason I go back to that is there’s a consistent pattern: the people who wanted that war in the worst ways, neocons so called, Wolfowitz, certainly Cheney.. it’s the same crowd of people that want us to overthrow Bashar Assad, .. it’s the same group of people that don’t want to negotiate at all with the Iranians, don’t want any kind of rapprochement with the Iranians, they want to fight that war. They’re willing to go in there and bomb. They have a consistent impulsive desire to make war on Arab and Islamic states in a neverending campaign, almost like an Orwellian campaign they will never outlive, that’s why I have a problem with that thinking. … we’ve got to get to the bottom of it. Why did they take us to Iraq, because that’s the same reason they want to take us into Damascus and why they want to have permanent war with Iran.  What a great exchange. And it shows up Paul Krugman, who mystifies this very issue in the New York Times. ("Errors and Lies," which poses the same question that Matthews does but concludes that Bush and Cheney "wanted a war," which is just a lie masquerading as a tautology.)  Here are my two cents. We invaded Iraq because a powerful group of pro-Israel ideologues — the neoconservatives — who had mustered forces in Washington over the previous two decades and at last had come into the White House were able to sell a vision of transforming the Middle East that was pure wishful hokum but that they believed: that if Arab countries were converted by force into democracies, the people would embrace the change and would also accept Israel as a great neighbor. It’s a variation on a neocolonialist theory that pro-Israel ideologues have believed going back to the 1940s: that Palestinians would accept a Jewish state if you got rid of their corrupt leadership and allowed the people to share in Israel’s modern economic miracle.  The evidence for this causation is at every hand.  It is in the Clean Break plan written for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996 by leading neocons Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser — all of whom would go into the Bush administration — calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein and the export of the Palestinian political problem to Jordan.  It is in the Project for a New American Century letters written to Clinton in 1998 telling him that Saddam’s WMD were a threat to Israel. (A letter surely regretted by Francis Fukuyama, who later accused the neocons of seeing everything through a pro-Israel lens.)  It is in the PNAC letter written to George W. Bush early in 2002 urging him to "accelerate plans for removign Saddam Hussein from power" for the sake of Israel.      the United States and Israel share a common enemy. We are both targets of what you have correctly called an "Axis of Evil." Israel is targeted in part because it is our friend, and in part because it is an island of liberal, democratic principles — American principles — in a sea of tyranny, intolerance, and hatred.  It is in Netanyahu testifying to Congress in 2002 that he promised there would be "enormous positive reverberations" throughout the region if we only removed Saddam.  It is in Wolfowitz saying that the road to peace in the Middle East runs through Baghdad. (Possibly the stupidest thing anyone has ever said in the history of the world, including Douglas Feith.)  It is in all the neocon tracts, from Perle and Frum’s An End to Evil, to Kristol and Kaplan’s The War Over Saddam, to Berman’s Terror and Liberalism, saying that Saddam’s support for suicide bombers in Israel was a reason for the U.S. to topple him.  It is in war-supporter Tom Friedman saying that we needed to invade Iraq because of suicide bombers in Tel Aviv— and the importance of conveying to Arabs they couldn’t get away with that.  It is in the head of the 9/11 Commission, former Bush aide Philip Zelikow, saying Israel was the reason to take on Iraq back in 2002 even though Iraq was no threat to us:      "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 – it’s the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002. "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."  It is in Friedman saying that "elite" neoconservatives created the war in this interview with Ari Shavit back in 2003:      It’s the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman says. It’s the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.  It is in Tony Judt’s statement about the Israel interest in the war back in 2003:      For many in the current US administration, a major strategic consideration was the need to destabilize and then reconfigure the Middle East in a manner thought favorable to Israel.  And yes this goes back to rightwing Zionism. It goes back to Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol launching neoconservatism in the 1970s because they said that the dovish policies of the Democratic Party were a direct threat to Israel– an analysis continued in this day by Norman Braman, Marco Rubio’s leading supporter, who says that the U.S. must be a military and economic power in order to "sustain" Israel.  An Economist blogger wrote several years ago that if you leave out the Zionism you won’t understand the Iraq war:      Yes, it would be ridiculous, and anti-semitic, to cast the Iraq war as a conspiracy monocausally driven by a cabal of Jewish neocons and the Israeli government. But it’s entirely accurate to count neoconservative policy analyses as among the important causes of the war, to point out that the pro-Israeli sympathies of Jewish neoconservatives played a role in these analyses, and to note the support of the Israeli government and public for the invasion. In fact any analysis of the war’s causes that didn’t take these into account would be deficient.  Many writers, including Joe Klein, Jacob Heilbrunn, and Alan Dershowitz, have said the obvious, that neoconservatism came out of the Jewish community. And I have long written that the Jewish community needs to come to terms with the degree to which it has harbored warmongering neoconservatives, for our own sake.  But America needs to come to terms with the extent to which it allowed rightwing Zionists to dominate discussions of going to war. This matter is now at the heart of the Republican embrace of the war on Iran. There is simply no other constituency in our country for that war besides rightwing Zionists. They should be called out for this role, so that we don’t make that terrible mistake again. And yes: this issue is going to play out frankly in the 2016 campaign, thanks in good measure to Matthews.  (6) Jill Stein is Jewish, but No special treatment for Israel   No special treatment for Israel, Jill Stein says  Rania Khalek Activism and BDS Beat 18 August 2016  Americans who tuned into CNN’s Green Party town hall last night were exposed to political ideas and analyses that are rarely given airtime on mainstream news networks.  Moderated by CNN host Chris Cuomo, the town hall allowed people in the audience to ask questions of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka.  An audience member identifying herself as a US army veteran expressed dismay at Stein’s support for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to hold Israel accountable for ongoing human rights abuses against Palestinians.  "Why do you single out Israel being that they are a democratic ally to us?" she asked, reciting a standard pro-Israel talking point. "Why don’t you do the same for other Middle Eastern States, many of which are committing horrific crimes and abuse of people?"  Stein pushed back, noting that she emphatically supports ending US aid to human rights abusers across the board.  "What we’re saying is our foreign policy will be based on international law and human rights," said Stein. "So when we say to Israel that we will not continue to give you $8 million a day when the Israeli army is occupying territory in Palestine, conducting home demolitions and assassinations and things of that sort that are recognized by the UN, we’re not going to do it for the Saudis either."  Stein added that the same would apply to Egypt which continues to receive major US subsidies despite "incredible human rights violations."  Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid, accounting for 55 percent of the total, to the tune of about $3 billion a year.  President Barack Obama is currently negotiating a new deal that his administration vows will be the biggest military aid package to any country in history.  Egypt is in second place, receiving $1.5 billion in US military aid annually, an estimated 20 percent of the total.  "Have you advocated to boycott Saudi Arabia?" Garcia asked.  "Yes, absolutely," Stein replied. Arms to Saudi Arabia  While Saudi Arabia receives little direct military aid from the US, it does rely on US technology and has been the top purchaser of US arms every year since 2011.  Despite the mounting civilian death toll and famine-like conditions that have resulted from the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, the Obama administration recently approved another $1.15 billion weapons deal with the Saudis.  "The international community must go ‘all in’ on a peace agreement," Scott Paul, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam America, told Foreign Policy. "A sale of major arms to Saudi Arabia signals the opposite — that the US is instead all-in on a senseless war that has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies."  Saudi Arabia’s wanton destruction of Yemen is so severe that the editorial boards at both The New York Times and The Guardian are calling on the US to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia.  Of course neither newspaper has applies this logic to American sponsorship of Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians as Stein has done. Singling Israel out?  As though playing the role of Israel’s lawyer, CNN’s Chris Cuomo argued that Israel "occupies a special alliance with the United States and, supporters would argue, faces an existential threat that others do not."  In other words, Israel should be singled out, but for special treatment rather than boycott.  Cuomo’s brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, is a strong believer in giving Israel special treatment.  In what has been slammed by civil liberties groups as a McCarthyite violation of constitutionally protected speech, Governor Cuomo signed an executive order in June that requires state agencies to divest from companies and institutions that back efforts to boycott Israel.  "I happen to be of Jewish origin," Stein responded, noting she has relatives living in Israel. And because of that, "I don’t think we are doing Israel a favor by condoning a policy that makes Israel very insecure, that makes Israel the target of hostility from its neighbors," she said.  Ignoring Stein’s response, Cuomo repeated his question: "Do you believe that as a state Israel has a preference as an ally … do you believe they’re a special ally, yes or no?"  Stein refused to play into his narrative, saying, "I believe all our allies are special allies."  She added: "I think we have responsibilities to everyone to create a world that works for all of us. And by sponsoring a very hostile military policy that violates international law, that doesn’t do us any favors."  Stein hopes to persuade disaffected supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to vote for the Green Party instead of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November.  While Sanders raised the issue of Palestinian human rights during the primary, he never went as far as supporting BDS and largely refrained from talking about foreign policy more generally.  With Stein polling around 4 percent, she has no realistic chance of winning. And it’s unlikely she’ll meet the 15 percent polling threshold to be included in the presidential debates.  But with the majority of Americans heavily dissatisfied with both of the major party candidates, there is more interest than ever in learning about third parties.  Stein’s message about boycotting Israel and ending military support for it and Saudi Arabia are rarely given air time.  And as the CNN town hall demonstrated, mainstream journalists have no counterargument against such a reasonable and universally applied demand.   -- Peter Myers |
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