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Site 911: Secret US Construction in Israel

By Stephen Lendman on 12/02/2012

Washington and Israel partner in jointly planned imperial wars and related activities.

Walter Pincus reports on national security issues for the Washington Post. He’s been at it many years. In late December he’ll turn 80.

On November 28, he headlined “US overseeing mysterious construction project in Israel,” saying:

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an Israel Defense Forces complex…”

It’s called “Site 911.” It’ll be built at an Israeli air force base near Tel Aviv. Construction will take two years or longer. Time frames are often extended. Cost is expected to be about $100 million. Before completion, double that amount or more wouldn’t surprise.

Washington’s Baghdad embassy was originally projected to cost $592 million. When completed, cost overruns spiraled the total over $2 billion some believe.

The Israeli facility will “have classrooms on Level 1, an auditorium on Level 3, a laboratory, shock-resistant doors, protection from non-ionizing radiation, and very tight security.”

“Clearances will be required for all construction workers. Guards will be at the fence, and barriers will separate it from the rest of the base.”

Construction bids are due by December 3. Only US firms are involved.

Under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, Washington supplies weapons, munitions, and other defense related services to other nations and international organizations.

Sometimes they’re sold. Other times they’re given. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) administers FMS.

Washington was involved in many previous construction projects for Israel’s IDF. They’re undertaken under FMS.

About half a billion dollars in US military construction for Israel followed its 1998 Wye River Memorandum with Palestine. Another half billion went for Israeli security measures. Palestine got smaller amounts.

Both sides agreed to terms. At issue was finalizing the September 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Oslo II).

Israel reneged like it always does. Palestine was blamed. Netanyahu was prime minister at the time.

Pincus omitted those inconvenient facts. Israeli construction was done in the Negev. IDF forces got three new bases. Supposedly it was to facilitate redeploying forces from West Bank locations.

Israel’s Nevatim air base was built at the time. It’s one of Israel’s largest. The Corps of Engineers constructed extensive facilities. Other ones were built earlier.

They included “underground hangers for Israeli fighter-bombers, facilities for handling nuclear weapons…command centers, training bases, intelligence facilities and simulators.”

Washington provides Israel more aid than all other nations combined. It’s very generous with US tax dollars for its imperial ally.

The Corps maintains three facilities in Israel. In the past two years, it built Nevatim hangers. They cost $30 million.

It also “supervised a $20 million project to build maintenance shops, hangers, and headquarters to support Israel’s large Eitan” UAV program.

Site 911 will be built elsewhere. It appears to be one of the Corps’ largest projects. Three underground floors will be roughly 41,000 feet each.

Sponsored by:


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Two others below them will be smaller. They’ll store equipment. Security is high. So is secrecy. Non-Israeli workers will only come from America, “Canada, Western Europe countries, Poland, Moldavia, Thailand, Philippines, Venezuela, Romania and China.”

Palestinians are excluded. According to security considerations, the site “shall have one gate only for both entering and exiting the site.”

“No exit or entrance to the site shall be allowed during work hours except for supply trucks.”

Guards will only be Israeli citizens with air force experience. “The collection of information of any type whatsoever related to base activities is prohibited.”

Israeli architectural firm Ada Karmi-Melamede is involved. Eventual site employees will be provided amenities.

Mezuzahs are parchments with inscribed Hebrew verses. Usually they’re contained in decorative cases.

The facility will have special ones. They’ll be “written in inerasable ink on….uncoated leather parchment.” They’ll be handwritten by a ‘scribe’ “holding a written authorization according to Jewish law.”

They’ll “be proof-read by a computer at an authorized institution for Mezuzah inspection, as well as manually…for the form of the letters by a proof-reader authorized by the Chief Rabbinate.”

Mystery surrounds the site. Pentagon and Israeli Defense Ministry spokesmen said little. Pincus said bids for another secret Israeli project costing about $100 million for starters is scheduled to be awarded next summer.

It will involve “a complex facility with site development challenges.” Services required will include “electrical, communication, mechanical/HVAC, and plumbing.”

The US contractor chosen must have secret US/Israeli clearance. Two years of construction are likely. Pincus guesses it’s for a “secure command center.” What’s planned for Site 911 “is far less clear.”

What’s ongoing nearer-term matters most. Iran’s in focus. Washington and Israel want regime change.

Previous articles explained lawless sanctions, sabotage, subversion, cyber attacks, assassinations, saber rattling, falsified IAEA hype, Netanyahu bluster, US warmongering, spurious accusations, manipulated to fail P5+1 talks, and inflammatory headlines.

Will Obama attack in 2013? Will Israel ride shotgun? Netanyahu will likely be reelected in January. Expect him to head a new coalition government.

It may be more hardline than the current one. Prospects for peace aren’t good. Washington and Israel deplore it.

Heading into the new year, look for propaganda to intensify. An Iranian threat will again make headlines. Perhaps a major false flag is planned. Put nothing behind extremists in charge in both countries.

Direct US-led NATO intervention in Syria perhaps looms. Washington won’t quit until the entire country is destroyed. Libya 2.0 may be planned.

Death squad mercenaries need air power. Installing US-controlled Patriot missiles in Turkey on Syria’s border ups the ante. At issue is providing no-fly zone protection. Doing so is an act of war.

Reports suggest Obama plans “deeper intervention.” “Responsibility to protect (R2P)” slaughter and mass destruction may follow.

Post-election, Obama is unrestrained. Hawks want him to act. He needs little pushing. Full-scale intervention could come anytime. It won’t stop until Syria is entirely ravaged.

Perhaps Pillar of Cloud was act one. Terror-bombing Syria may follow. Hezbollah may be next. Then Iran if plans to isolate the Islamic Republic succeed.

Post-holiday tidings are worrisome. The entire region may be ravaged. At stake are more monstrous crimes. No end of them loom.

Article by Stephen Lendman | © Sabbah Report: http://sabbah.biz/mt/?p=15817

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Obama’s Middle East Cynicism

MJ Rosenberg

The U.S. vote against raising the status of Palestine at the United Nations was a deeply cynical move. It was cynical because there is not a chance that President Obama believes that he did the right thing. It is also cynical because, in the name of friendship for Israel, Obama led Israel closer to the cliff.

The last thing a true friend of Israel would have done would be to stand by as Israel demonstrated its almost complete international isolation. Just eight countries backed the Israeli position – the US, Panama, Palau, Canada, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Czech Republic and Micronesia – while 138 voted with the Palestinians. Was this display helpful to Israel?

But Obama was not trying to be helpful. The administration enabled this “disaster” (from Israel’s point of view) because Obama seems to truly not care about Israelis or Palestinians.

Take the two most recent examples. The first was his absolute refusal to express a word of sympathy for the Palestinians killed in the Gaza war. Under previous administrations, certainly under every Democratic administration, sympathy was expressed for the dead and injured on both sides along with a call for an end to the fighting. But Obama would not do that. Even when asked directly his spokesperson at the State Department would only speak of Israel’s pain. (To her credit, Secretary of State Clinton did say that she felt for both sides.)

But not Obama. He is determined not only to demonstrate that there is “no daylight” separating the two countries but that no amount of darkness separates us either.

The argument that he has to behave this way because of the power of the lobby doesn’t hold up. I would be the last person in the world to deny that the lobby is a powerful force in the making of U.S. Middle East policy. But, unless there is some mysterious element to the lobby’s power that I am missing, its ability to intimidate ends when a president is re-elected.

Believing that Obama is worried about Congressional Democrats being punished in 2014 is just as inaccurate. One: that is two years away. Two: Obama has rarely demonstrated (like almost all presidents before him) much concern for the Congressional wing of his party. And, three: the November 6th election demonstrated yet again that Jewish voters do not cast their ballots (or make campaign contributions) based on Israel. Nor do Israel’s fundamentalist Christian backers. Jews are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats and Christian Zionists are conservative Republicans. Those facts seem never to change.

Besides, does Obama really believe that he would lose votes or campaign contributions from Jews and other pro-Israel Americans if he expressed sympathy for dead Palestinian children? Or called on both sides to stop the violence. I hold no brief for the lobby but Obama could have said what he no doubt felt without losing anyone’s support. Even the lobby does not demand that politicians withhold human sympathy.

As for the United Nations vote, Obama could have prevented the huge embarrassment inflicted on both Israel and the United States by telling Israel to “chill.” I am glad he didn’t because I think the vote will be seen by history as a significant step toward Palestinian statehood. But it also delegitimized Israel in the eyes of the world which is a terrible defeat for those of us who care about Israel ultimately achieving peace and security alongside the Palestinians.

And it could easily have been averted if Obama had told Israel that the United States would vote for the resolution and that Israel should, too. In that case, the vote for Palestine’s elevated status would have been unanimous which would have rendered the Palestinian victory meaningless. Unanimous backing for any measure almost always demonstrates the measure’s insignificance. Instead, Israel’s hysteria and America’s arm-twisting against the resolution gave the Palestinians a big victory, a victory that the United States and Israel both elevated to historic proportions.

So why did Obama behave the way he did? I am afraid it is because he does not think Israelis or Palestinians are worth the hassle. If he can avoid dealing with Netanyahu and his vocal backers here, he will. He has more important fish to fry – like the domestic economy and preserving the social safety net.

I understand that but nonetheless ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian issue – by simply parroting the Israeli line – has done terrible damage to America’s standing in the world. Look at the UN vote which was neatly summed up by the front-page New York Times headline: “UN Assembly, In Blow To U.S., Elevates Status of Palestine.” Perhaps it is of no concern of Obama’s that Israel appears utterly isolated, but so does the United States. To put it in crude terms: we look like Israel’s tool.

I will not conclude by expressing the hope that Obama will now do the right thing for Israel, Palestine and, most importantly, the United States by convening negotiations and acting as an “honest broker.” I doubt he can do that anymore both because he has entirely lost the trust of the Arab world and because events have demonstrated, in large part due to this administration, that history can move on without us. But primarily because I do not think President Obama cares enough to invest any time or energy in Middle East peacemaking. He seems not to care that resolving conflict in a vital region of the world is not just some favor we do for people 6000 miles away; it is something we do to defend America’s interests. It’s sad. But above all, it is just cynical.

Postscript: Prime Minister Netanyahu reciprocated President Obama’s misplaced kindness today when he announced that he will build 3000 new settler housing units in the E-1 corridor of the West Bank. This housing, designed to permanently separate the southern West Bank from the northern part and to separate both from Jerusalem would destroy any chance of achieving the two-state solution. It also breaks a specific promise Netanyahu made to Obama.

Additionally, AIPAC is rushing to get Congress to “punish” Palestinians for going to the UN by blocking aid. Netanyahu and his lobby now believe (probably correctly) that Obama will permit them to do whatever they want. This is what the United States gets for its “no daylight” policy and what we taxpayers get for $3.5 billion a year in aid.

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Barack Obama: Dying to Give a Damn

by Richard Silverstein on November 19, 2012 · 67 comments

 

Day 6: 95 Palestinians killed, 720 wounded.

The title of this post is harsh.  But the one I first considered was even more so: “Barack Obama, go to Hell.”  I am so glad I didn’t vote for this man for president.  At the time I cast my vote I did it thinking I was doing the right thing.  But in my heart regretting it.  If I had voted for him, now I my heart would be turning bitter as gall.

Here is what this sorry excuse for a leader had to say today in Thailand:

“[T]here is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders. So we are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people’s homes…

Let’s understand what the precipitating event here was that’s causing the current crisis, and that was an ever-escalating number of missiles that were landing not just in Israeli territory but in areas that are populated.”

I also discovered this statement which appears to have been made separately and covers related, but different ground:

“Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory,” President Barack Obama said at a news conference in Bangkok at the start of a three-nation visit to Asia.

“If that can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that’s preferable,” Obama said. “It’s not just preferable for the people of Gaza. It’s also preferable for Israelis, because if Israeli troops are in Gaza, they’re much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.”

Let’s address this lame excuse for a political argument.  First, it could’ve been (and possibly was) drafted by an Aipac staffer.  It’s directly taken from pro-Israel talking points.  You’ve heard the same bullshit from Michael Oren a hundred times.  What this argument omits is that Israel has Gaza in a stranglehold.  It has turned the enclave into a virtual prison having no economy, no exports, no ability to travel in or out.  Gaza is occupied in effect by Israel.  This occupation is illegal.  Any nation has a right to resist such an occupation.

I do not support firing missiles from Gaza into Israel.  But I do not support Israel’s occupation of Gaza either.  I do not expect Gazans to roll over and play dead for Israel’s benefit or for the benefit of a U.S. president who has his head up his ass.

The real issue isn’t whether Israel has a right to attack Gaza.  The issue is how to get at the root causes of this conflict and resolve it.  F-16s, drones, targeted assassinations and helicopter gunships only kick the football farther down the road, as Mitt Romney so aptly put it (who’d have ever thought that Obama would actually follow a Mideast policy outlined by Romney).

Obama says he’s opposed to an Israeli invasion not because many Gazans will be killed (he clearly doesn’t care about that) but because Israelis will die.  Have you ever heard anything so callous?  Yes, I suppose in all the history of this conflict there have been far more callous statements.  But by a U.S. president?  Not so many.

Barack Obama: go to Hell.  You don’t give a damn.  You don’t have a moral bone in your body.  Give back that Nobel Peace Prize.  You don’t deserve it. In fact, you’ve pissed on it and turned it from gold to (cast) lead.

netanyahu election war(Guardian, Steve Bell)

Former Israeli national security advisor Gen. Giora Eiland, on the other hand, made an amazingly forthright statement about what should be the outline for a fair resolution of the current impasse in Gaza.  For that reason, of course, it will be ignored by those in power.  But it still deserves a fair hearing:

“Israel’s bottom line interest toward Gaza is a security issue – that they won’t fire at us,” said Eiland, who also served as the head of Israel’s National Security Council. “Consequently, if we can reach an arrangement, it’s preferable to give ground on certain political issues in exchange for a better security arrangement.”

This sort of agreement would include “a mutual cease-fire and an Egyptian guarantee of not just quiet, but also that no weapons will enter Gaza,” Eiland said, adding that “this arrangement would be guaranteed by additional parties, for example, Qatar and Turkey.”

Among the political compromises that could be made in exchange for such a security arrangement, Eiland listed lifting the naval blockade of Gaza “so that the European Union member countries could send under supervision dinghies into Gaza’s port.”

Eiland also suggested that Israel recognize Gaza as a state under Hamas’ rule. “This is a country a ruled by an elected government and I expect that this government will act in a responsible manner, like a state would,” Eiland said.

“It’s not enough to say ‘Hamas will surrender,’” Eiland continued. “We need to give something, if not to Hamas, then to others. It’s impossible to reach a point where one side will surrender. Sometimes we become captive to slogans like ‘We won’t talk with Hamas.’ I say the opposite. It’s a fact that Hamas rules Gaza and that Gaza is a state. We need to recognize this and utilize the advantages this situation presents.”

The thinking is that if Israel recognizes Hamas as ruler of Gaza, it will place the onus on the Islamist group to run Gaza and fully control what happens there.  In effect, Eiland is saying to make Hamas put their money where their mouth is: you want to rule this place–do it.  And if you don’t, we and the world community who are enforcing this agreement will hold you accountable.

There is also a strategic element to his thinking that is unspoken.  If Israel breaks Palestine into two entities, then Palestinian strength and aspirations for statehood will be even more fragmented than they are now.  Hamas will have less interest in creating a coalition government with Fatah because it will control its own fiefdom in Gaza.  The West Bank and Gaza may be permanently severed.  That part of Eiland’s strategy is pernicious in the long-term.  But it doesn’t mean that much of what he’s saying wouldn’t make things better than they are now in Gaza itself.

I can’t tell you how refreshing this breeze is.  It’s a bit of truth.  And coming from a general bristling with medals and lots of dead Israeli enemies under his belt.  This is not some peacenik or “Arab lover.”  This is the very same dude who whitewashed the Mavi Marmara massacre on behalf of the IDF, for whom he investigated it.

I do have to say though that there’s a strange dynamic at work in Israeli politics: when you’re an official and within the system, you lie and say things that make you and your country sound like an idiot.  When you leave the system, all of a sudden you become a seer and things you didn’t appear to know or couldn’t say come tripping off your tongue.  The same phenomenon occurred with Ehud Olmert after he resigned his prime ministership. While he was in office he tried to sell Mahmoud Abbas a bill of goods in the guise of a legitimate peace agreement.  After he left, he called the settlements a cancer eating at Israel’s insides.

So some of this may be at work in Eiland’s change of heart, if you can call it that.  But who cares?  Truth is truth whether it comes from a sane person or a mad man.

Something further that is interesting here is that Eiland is making these statements–ones that cut to the heart of the weakness of Israel’s “mowing the grass” approach to Gaza–only five days after the start of hostilities and even before the expected invasion.  In other words, the general is already saying the emperor has no clothes.  The way this usually works is that the critics wait until a few weeks in after the soldiers and civilians have started dying in significant numbers.  That’s the time when the body politic becomes more receptive to such contrarian thinking.  So Eiland is bucking this trend and deserves credit for doing so.

al dalou gaza massacre

al-Dalou family children massacred in Gaza (Harry Fear)

When you read the following you will understand my outrage directed against Barack Obama.  Today should be the Kfar Kana or the al-Samouni moment in this war.  The former was the tragedy during the 2006 war when Israel attacked a Lebanese village near a UN base killing scores of civilians.  After that atrocity, the war was essentially over though Israel didn’t realize it at the time.  My fear is that the murder of 12 Gaza civilians in a bombing that flattened a 3-story apartment building filled with civilians will not be enough of a tragedy to end this growing madness.  More of the innocent may have to die before the world tells Israel: Dayenu!

The al-Dalou family was sheltering in its home from the bombardment.  Earlier, two male family members had left to procure supplies because they feared an imminent invasion.  They survived.  Five women, four children (all between two and five years-old) and two men died.  One of the women was 81 years old:

Khalil al-Dallu screams. “They said Mohammed was alive!” he shouts as emergency workers pull the body of a young man from a Gaza City home levelled by an Israeli strike on Sunday.  His face quickly crumples into tears as the emergency staff tell him that his cousin is in fact dead — one of six members of the Dallu family killed when an Israeli missile struck the Nasser neighbourhood, flattening the three-story building where they lived.

“The whole family is martyred!” he cries, as the body of 35-year-old Mohammed al-Dallu is placed in an ambulance.

“What was the sin of the children and the infants, Israel?” he screams, raising his hands to the sky.

The emergency workers carry on with their grim task. By the time their work is done they have pulled 11 bodies from the pancaked building and others around it.  The body of Mohammed’s wife is also retrieved, as well as those of five of their children. The body of another woman, also a family member, is also pulled out although she is not immediately identified.

The strike has also killed two of their neighbours from the Muzzana family.

Mohammed’s father, Jamal, and his 17-year-old son Abdullah, are among the survivors. When the Israeli strike happened, they were out buying food to boost the family’s stocks because they feared an Israeli ground invasion.

Jamal leans on a bloody electricity pole for support, overwhelmed at the horror and loss in front of him, his relatives crowding around as pieces of his grandchildren are plucked from their former home.  Near hysterical with anger and sorrow, Ibrahim shouts: “Don’t tell his brother Abdullah, the trauma will kill him!”  The brother, 26-year-old Abdullah, is currently studying in Turkey to become a doctor.

…  Ahmed Hato, 13, is still dazed by the sudden death visited on the family.”I was playing with the sons of the neighbours at the entrance to the street. There was a huge explosion, the earth shook and dust and rocks went everywhere. I don’t know how, but I ended up on the ground and without injuries,” he says.

Ahmed’s father can’t watch the rescue efforts, and doesn’t answer his phone. Instead he cries openly for Mohammed, whom he saw just an hour before the strike.  Mohammed, a Hamas police officer, “was a good man, moral and kind to everyone,” he says. “Everyone loved him. His death is a huge loss for the family.”

It turns out, as it often does in these sorts of IDF incursions, that the IAF was trying to assassinate the head of Hamas’ rocket warfare unit, Yechiya Rabiah (must be the guy who took over from Dirar Abusisi after his “forced retirement” at the hands of the Mossad and Ukrainian intelligence), who lives nearby.  Ooops, they got the wrong house.  Another intelligence failure.  Only killed 12 innocent civilians as a result.  Terribly regrettable.  But if Rabiah would only do the IDF the favor of living in an open field so it could kill him cleanly, these sorts of things wouldn’t have to happen.  You know how that Hamas uses civilians as human shields.

What created even more bitter irony is that just as when it dropped a bunker buster bomb during the 2006 war on Hassan Nasrallah’s Beirut hiding place, the IDF crowed that it’d taken out yet another terrorist bad guy.  Turns out that Nasrallah and Rabiah are very much alive.  What do you say in the midst of such insanity: woops?

Even an IDF journalist-stenographer like Avi Issacharoff writing in Haaretz concedes the Gaza operation is “starting to get into trouble” because too many civilians are dying.  All I can say is boker tov buddy, civilians were dying from the first moment of the fighting.  It’s just that now they’re starting to pile up like cordwood.  But if Issacharoff wants to wake up only today on day six, it’s better than sleep walking through an entire war before realizing 1,400 Gazans have been slaughtered as happened during Cast Lead.

At what point does Barack Obama become moved enough, or boxed in enough by this suffering that he’s finally got to get off his ass and do something?

By the way, Israeli polls find that while 90% of Israelis support the Gaza war (only 16% support a ceasefire), only 46% support an invasion while 32% are opposed.  That’s a sizable minority viewpoint.

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Stop pretending the US is an uninvolved, helpless party in the Israeli assault on Gaza

Glenn Greenwald

A Palestinian man carries a wounded child at a hospital following an Israeli air raid in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 17, 2012. Photograph: Moiz Salhi/AFP/Getty Images

A Palestinian man carries a wounded child at a hospital following an Israeli air raid in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 17, 2012. Photograph: Moiz Salhi/AFP/Getty Images

Read by 532 people

Saturday 17 November 2012

The Obama administration’s unstinting financial, military and diplomatic support for Israel is a key enabling force in the conflict

A central premise of US media coverage of the Israeli attack on Gaza – beyond the claim that Israel is justifiably “defending itself” – is that this is some endless conflict between two foreign entitles, and Americans can simply sit by helplessly and lament the tragedy of it all. The reality is precisely the opposite: Israeli aggression is possible only because of direct, affirmative, unstinting US diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel and everything it does. This self-flattering depiction of the US as uninvolved, neutral party is the worst media fiction since TV news personalities covered the Arab Spring by pretending that the US is and long has been on the side of the heroic democratic protesters, rather than the key force that spent decades propping up the tyrannies they were fighting.

Literally each day since the latest attacks began, the Obama administration has expressed its unqualified support for Israel’s behavior. Just two days before the latest Israeli air attacks began, Obama told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas “that his administration opposes a Palestinian bid for non-state membership of the UN”. Both the US Senate and House have already passed resolutions unequivocally supporting Israel, thus earning the ultimate DC reward: the head-pat from Aipac, which “praised the extraordinary show of support by the Senate for Israel’s struggle against terrorist attacks on its citizens”. More bipartisan Congressional cheerleading is certain to come as the attacks continue, no matter how much more brutal they become.

In reflexive defense of Israel, the US government thus once against put itself squarely at odds with key nations such as Turkey (whose prime minister accused Israel of being motivated by elections and demanded that Israel be “held to account” for mounting civilians deaths), Egypt (which denounced Israeli attacks as “aggression against humanity”), and Tunisia (which called on the world to “stop the blatant aggression” of Israel).

By rather stark contrast, Obama continues to defend Israel’s free hand in Gaza, causing commentators like Jeffrey Goldberg to gloat, not inaccurately: “Barack Obama hasn’t turned against Israel. This is a big surprise to everyone who has not paid attention for the last four years” (indeed, there are few more compelling signs of how dumb and misleading US elections are than the fact that the only criticism of Obama on Israel heard over the last year in the two-party debate was the grievance that Obama evinces insufficient fealty – rather than excessive fealty – to the Israeli government). That the Netanyahu government knows that any attempt to condemn Israel at the UN would be instantly blocked by the US is a major factor enabling them to continue however they wish. And, of course, the bombs, planes and tanks they are using are subsidized, in substantial part, by the US taxpayer.

If one wants to defend US support for Israel on the merits – on the ground that this escalating Israeli aggression against a helpless population is just and warranted – then one should do so. As I wrote on Thursday, it’s very difficult to see how those who have cheered for Obama’s foreign policy could do anything but cheer for Israeli militarism, as they are grounded in the same premises.

But pretending that the US – and the Obama administration – bear no responsibility for what is taking place is sheer self-delusion, total fiction. It has long been the case that the central enabling fact in Israeli lawlessness and aggression is blind US support, and that continues, more than ever, to be the case under the presidency of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The US is not some neutral, uninvolved party. Whatever side of this conflict you want to defend – or if you’re one of those people who love to announce that you just wish the whole thing would go away – it’s still necessary to take responsibility for the key role played by the American government and this administration in enabling everything that is taking place.

Media coverage

Due to extensive travel the past few days, I’ve been subjected to far more television news coverage than is probably healthy, and it’s just been staggering to see how tilted US media discourse is: Israeli officials and pro-Israel “experts” are endlessly paraded across the screen while Palestinian voices are exceedingly rare; the fact of the 45-year-old brutal occupation and ongoing Israeli dominion over Gaza is barely mentioned; meanwhile, every primitive rocket that falls harmlessly near Israeli soil is trumpeted with screaming headlines while the carnage and terror in Gaza is mentioned, if at all, as an afterthought. Two cartoons perfectly summarize this coverage: here and here.

On a related note, the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill was interviewed on Tuesday night after a Sundance Institute panel on political documentaries which I moderated. Scahill, who is working on a documentary entitled “Dirty Wars” about the US violence in Yemen and other parts of the Muslim world, spoke for 12 minutes to We Are Change about Obama’s terrorism and foreign policies; I highly recommend it:

UPDATE

According to Haaretz, Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this about Israel’s attacks on Gaza: “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.” Let me know if any of the US Sunday talk shows mention that tomorrow during their discussions of this “operation”.

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The Think Tank Clown

October 1, 2012 § Leave a Comment

by William A. Cook

[youtube http://youtu.be/PfoaLbbAix0?]
Clowns befuddle a crowd. They appear a pretense of the normal but caricatured to evoke laughter, surprise, at times derision, but always in context where they absorb self-deprecation, become the butt of jokes, become the audiences’ self, a make believe self, receiving the jibes, jests and buffoonery never allowed when alone. Thus do they become vessels of deep seated self- ridicule, inhibited expression, personal inadequacy, a self-conscious parody of the normal.  They are used images, commodities to be bought and sold for the purchaser’s benefit, set amidst their fellows as manikins to be pinched and probed, facsimiles of all, but receivers of ridicule to protect their brethren.

full article here

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Why I Booed Jerusalem

by Sep 10, 2012 9:45 AM EDT

For one day last week, the Democratic Party appeared to stake out a novel—yet very reasonable—position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A college student from George Washington University, I was among the youngest delegates at the convention. On Tuesday, we voted to approve our platform without the usual—and hollow—promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

By Wednesday afternoon, however, chaos ensued in Charlotte after party officials sought to insert a plank into the platform establishing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In what was surely the most awkward moment of the convention, delegates voted three times on the late additions. Even when it was clear the “ayes” didn’t have the required two-thirds majority by the third round, convention chair L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa adopted the resolution anyway.

DNC Chair Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaks on stage. (Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)
DNC Chair Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaks on stage. (Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)

During the voice vote for the amendment, a fellow delegate from New York sitting next to me at the Time Warner Cable Arena wildly shouted “Aye!” all three times. After the mostly negative reaction to the result—many delegates, including myself, booed—I asked him why he voted for the change. His response: “I don’t know.”

The moment epitomized for me the absence of level-headed and intelligent political discourse about Israel. On so many issues, President Obama and Mitt Romney stake out diametrically opposed positions, providing voters with a stark choice. But not when it comes to Israel.

The same dynamic has plagued these issues for years: too many Democrats blindly support Israel, allowing Republicans to gain traction by attacking those of us who urge more nuanced policy positions. Last week, Republicans said delegates like me who voted “no” on the changes hate God and Israel.

That couldn’t be farther from the truth. After all, I am myself Jewish. But before supporting Israel, I support peace. The language inserted into Democratic platform does at best nothing to improve the chances for a future two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And if the addition of meaningless wording that could harm the prospects for peace was disappointing, the plank’s undemocratic insertion into the platform was downright disturbing. The platform deserved the wrath it incurred.

Most supporters of an equitable two-state solution see Jerusalem as a final-status issue that must be resolved in direct negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. A divided Jerusalem has been widely recognized by American and Israeli leaders as essential to a two-state solution, with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem and Israeli sovereignty over West Jerusalem. Even Israel’s current right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said (sometimes) that Jerusalem will be a subject for peace negotiations.

That’s why no U.S. presidents, including Republican administrations, have recognized Israeli sovereignty over the ancient city and the world’s embassies remain based in Tel Aviv. Yet both parties always make empty campaign promises of moves toward recognition.

So why did the Democratic Party continue this destructive charade? Post-truth politics dominate our debates today on so many issues—especially this one. Rhetoric overwhelms public discourse at the exclusion of substance. When Obama repeatedly gives Israel unprecedented assurances and security aid, Mitt Romney can still state that Obama “threw Israel under the bus,” and a large swath of the population will actually believe it.

Instead of having a real discussion, the Democratic Party succumbed to criticism from the right. We adopted a resolution that is situated to the right of the position George W. Bush held when in office (despite his own platform pledges). The position ignores even the possibility of a divided Jerusalem, let alone what many see as its inevitability.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, recently said that “there has never been and will never be daylight between the two parties” when it comes to Israel. That’s precisely the problem.

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Alex Yudelson is a junior at George Washington University where he studies philosophy and political science. He is a member of the College Democrats and, in 2012, served as a National Convention delegate from New York’s 29th Congressional District. Alex hails from Rochester, New York.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

source : http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/10/why-i-booed-jerusalem.html

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More on the undemocratic vote

See On Democracy Now

Controversy erupted at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday when party leaders forced through a platform change to reinstate references to God and the view that Jerusalem is Israel’s undivided capital. The language in question was included in 2008, but was left out when delegates approved their 2012 platform earlier this week. Following criticism from Republicans, DNC chair and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa presided over a voice vote to reinstate the references through a two-thirds majority. Villaraigosa appeared prepared to automatically accept the change, but those voting “no” were so loud that he ended up holding the vote three times. The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital stands in contrast to longstanding U.S. government policy, which calls for the city’s status to be resolved through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967

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A democrat (undemocratic) vote

[youtube http://youtu.be/09cEwnivdr0?]

Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. Do you hear a 2/3 majority here ?

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America Planning for a Post-Israel Middle East?

By Franklin Lamb

August 28, 2012 “Information Clearing House” —-  Congresswoman Illena Ros-Lehtinen will have her hands full as she makes the political and social rounds at this month’s Republican National Convention. Illena, is the only female committee chair in the House of Representatives and arguably Israel’s most ardent agent. She is a constant thorn in the Obama administration’s side, regularly castigating the president for playing “political games with U.S. foreign policy” and being “soft on Iran” and undermining the legitimacy of Israel. Ros-Lehtinen is a congressional cheer leader also for her Jewish voters in Florida — a key battleground in the rapidly approaching US presidential election. Most recently, Ros-Lehtinen helped shepherd through Congress yet another bill tightening sanctions against Iran while calling for US military action against the Assad regime in Syria.

The Congresswomen’s focus will likely not be on pushing the republican’s talking points regarding her party’s nominee, Mitt Romney the former “moderate Massachusetts governor” who she is aware is unlikely to win the White House. Nor, according to a source at the Democratic National Committee, frantically putting together final touches on their own Convention, to be held the week of September 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina, will Ileana spend much time with or promoting Mitt’ running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan. Ryan, an Ayn Rand (author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as well as founder of the Objectivism movement) follower, regularly tells audiences that “Ayn Rand’s teachings have been one of the most profound philosophical influences of my life.” Well, except for religion and abortion and a few other matters, as Ayn, who passed away in 1982 was an avowed atheist and strongly pro-abortion, the opposite of what Ryan tells audiences he is.

Rather, Ros-Lehtinen will be meeting with local, national, and international Jewish leaders in this must win state where she has been assigned the task of reassuring them that the Republican Party is Israel’s best friend and that a recent US government draft report urging a US re-think of its relationship to Israel is the responsibility of none other than Barack Obama, and it reveals his true disdain for Israel.

Helping her smear the White House with the findings in the draft  analysis will be William Kristol, publisher of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and Director of the New American Century, an “Israel first” Washington-based lobby “promoting joint Israeli and American political and military leadership across the globe, while bringing democracy to the Middle East”.

So what is all the fuss about?

It’s a paper entitled: Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East, an 82 page analysis that concludes that the American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors concludes that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations with Arab and Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community.

The study was commissioned by the US Intelligence Community comprising 16 American intelligence agencies with an annual budget in excess of $ 70 billion. The IC includes the Departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Defense Intelligence Agency, Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasury, Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned the study.

Among the many findings that Ros-Lehtenin and Kristol and other unregistered agents of Israel will likely try to exploit politically between now and November 6, by using them to attack the Obama Administration. A sampling of the findings includes the following:

•   Israel, given its current brutal occupation and belligerence cannot be salvaged any more than apartheid south Africa could be when as late as 1987 Israel was the only “Western” nation that upheld diplomatic ties with South Africa and was the last country to join the international boycott campaign before the regime collapsed;

•   The Israel leadership, with its increasing support of the 700,000 illegal settlers on the occupied West Bank is increasing out of touch with the political, military and economic realities of the Middle East;

•   The post Labor government Likud coalition is deeply complicit with and influenced by the settlers’ political and financial power and will increasingly face domestic civil strife which the US government should not associate itself with or become involved with;

•   The Arab Spring and Islamic Awakening has, to a major degree, freed a large majority of the 1.2 billion Arab and Muslims to pursue what an overwhelming majority believe is the illegitimate, immoral and unsustainable European occupation of Palestine of the indigenous population;

•   Simultaneous with, but predating, rapidly expanding Arab and Muslim power in the region as evidenced by the Arab spring, Islamic Awakening and the ascendancy of Iran, as American power and influence recedes, the US commitment to belligerent oppressive Israel is becoming impossible to defend or execute consistent given paramount US national interests which include normalizing relations with the 57 Islamic countries;

•   Gross Israeli interference in the internal affairs of the United States through spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and  approximately 7,500 US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate the media and agencies of  the US government which should no longer be condoned;

•   That the United States government no longer has the financial resources, or public support to continue funding Israel. The more than three trillion dollars in direct and indirect aid from US taxpayers to Israel since 1967 is not affordable and is increasingly being objected to by US taxpayers who oppose continuing American military involvement in the Middle East. US public opinion no longer supports funding and executing widely perceived illegal US wars on Israel’s behalf. This view is increasingly being shared by Europe, Asia and the International public;

•   Israel’s segregationist occupation infrastructure evidenced by legalized discrimination and increasingly separate and unequal justice systems must no longer be directly or indirectly funded by the US taxpayers or ignored by the US government;

•   Israel has failed as a claimed democratic state and continued American financial and political cover will not change its continuing devolution as international pariah state;

•   Increasingly, rampant and violent racism exhibited among Jewish settlers in the West Bank is being condoned by the Israeli government to a degree that the Israel government has become its protector and partner;

•   The expanding chasm  among American Jews objecting to Zionism and Israeli practices, including the killing and brutalizing of Palestinians under Israeli occupation,  are gross violations of American and International law and raise questions within the US Jewish community regarding the American responsibility to protect (R2P) innocent civilians under occupation;

•   The international opposition to the increasingly  apartheid regime can no longer be synchronized with American claimed  humanitarian values or US expectations in its bi-lateral relations with the 193 member United Nations;

The Draft ends with language about the need to avoid entangling alliances that alienate much of the World and condemn American citizens to endure the consequences.

Interestingly, it notes Iran as an example of a country and people that have much in common and whose citizens have a real interest in bilateral associations (here an apparent reference to Israel and its US lobby) not determined by the wishes of other countries and their agents. It also highlights the need for the US to undertake “the repairing relations with Arab and Muslim countries including the drastically curtained use of drone aircraft.

The coming days will clarity the success of Israel’s in making an issue of the finding in the soon to be published daft report and the degree to which the Republican Party will gain for its findings in the race for the White House.

Franklin Lamb, former Assistant Counsel, US House Judiciary Committee and  Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil., and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Following three years at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Lamb was visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Center.

He is currently doing research in Lebanon and volunteers with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign and the Sabra-Shatila Foundation.  Lamb is the author of: Israel’s 1982 War in Lebanon:  Eyewitness Chronicles of the Invasion and Occupation, South End Press, First Printing, 1983, International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, Imp. TIPE: 42, Rue Lebour 93100 Montreuil, Paris, France 1984, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons in Lebanon (Lamont Press) 2007, His latest book, The Case for Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon, is due out shortly.

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