Editors' Note: Ten, even five years ago, a fierce public debate over the nature and activities of the Israeli lobby would have been impossible. It was as verboten as the use of the word Empire, to describe the global reach of the United States. Through its disdain for the usual proprieties decorously observed by Republican and Democratic administrations in the past , the Bush administration has hauled many realities of our political economy center stage. Open up the New York Times or the Washington Post over the recent past and there, like as not, is another opinion column about the Lobby.

CounterPunch has hosted some of the most vigorous polemics on the Lobby. In May we asked two of our most valued contributors, Kathy and Bill Christison, to offer their evaluation of the debate on the Lobby's role and power. As our readers know, Bill and Kathy both had significant careers as CIA analysts. Bill was a National Intelligence Officer. In the aftermath of the September, 2001, attacks we published here his trenchant and influential essay on "the war on terror". Kathy has written powerfully on our website on the topic of Palestine. Specifically on the Lobby they contributed an unsparing essay on the topic of "dual loyalty" which can bed found in our CounterPunch collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

In mid May they sent us the detailed, measured commentary, rich in historical detail, that we are delighted to print below in its entirety. Which is the tail? Which is the dog? asked Uri Avnery in our newsletter, a few issues back, apropos the respective roles of the Israel Lobby and the US in the exercise of US policy in the Middle East. Here's an answer that will be tough to challenge.

-- A.C./J.S.C.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the University of Chicago and Harvard political scientists who published in March of this years a lengthy, well documented study on the pro-Israel lobby and its influence on U.S. Middle East policy in March , have already accomplished what they intended. They have successfully called attention to the often pernicious influence of the lobby on policymaking. But, unfortunately, the study has aroused more criticism than debate ­ not only the kind of criticism one would anticipate from the usual suspects among the very lobby groups Mearsheimer and Walt described, but also from a group on the left that might have been expected to support the study's conclusions.

The criticism has been partly silly, often malicious, and almost entirely off-point. The silly, insubstantial criticisms ­ such as former presidential adviser David Gergen's earnest comment that through four administrations he never observed an Oval Office decision that tilted policy in favor of Israel at the expense of U.S. interests ­ can easily be dismissed as nonsensical . Most of the extensive malicious criticism, coming largely from the hard core of Israeli supporters who make up the very lobby under discussion and led by a hysterical Alan Dershowitz, has been so specious and sophomoric, that it too could be dismissed were it not for precisely the pervasive atmosphere of reflexive support for Israel and silenced debate that Mearsheimer and Walt describe.

Most disturbing and harder to dismiss is the criticism of the study from the left, coming chiefly from Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, and abetted less cogently by Stephen Zunes of Foreign Policy in Focus and Joseph Massad of Columbia University. These critics on the left argue from a assumption that U.S. foreign policy has been monolithic since World War II, a coherent progression of decision-making directed unerringly at the advancement of U.S. imperial interests. All U.S. actions, these critics contend, are part of a clearly laid-out strategy that has rarely deviated no matter what the party in power. They believe that Israel has served throughout as a loyal agent of the U.S., carrying out the U.S. design faithfully and serving as a base from which the U.S. projects its power around the Middle East. Zunes says it most clearly, affirming that Israel "still is very much the junior partner in the relationship." These critics do not dispute the existence of a lobby, but they minimize its importance, claiming that rather than leading the U.S. into policies and foreign adventures that stand against true U.S. national interests, as Mearsheimer and Walt assert, the U.S. is actually the controlling power in the relationship with Israel and carries out a consistent policy, using Israel as its agent where possible.

Finkelstein summarized the critics' position in a recent CounterPunch article ("The Israel Lobby," May 1, http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein05012006.html), emphasizing that the issue is not whether U.S. interests or those of the lobby take precedence but rather that there has been such coincidence of U.S. and Israeli interests over the decades that for the most part basic U.S. Middle East policy has not been affected by the lobby. Chomsky maintains that Israel does the U.S. bidding in the Middle East in pursuit of imperial goals that Washington would pursue even without Israel and that it has always pursued in areas outside the Middle East without benefit of any lobby. Those goals have always included advancement of U.S. corporate-military interests and political domination through the suppression of radical nationalisms and the maintenance of stability in resource-rich countries, particularly oil producers, everywhere. In the Middle East, this was accomplished primarily through Israel's 1967 defeat of Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser and his radical Arab nationalism, which had threatened U.S. access to the region's oil resources. Both Chomsky and Finkelstein trace the strong U.S.-Israeli tie to the June 1967 war, which they believe established the close alliance and marked the point at which the U.S. began to regard Israel as a strategic asset and a stable base from which U.S. power could be projected throughout the Middle East.

Joseph Massad ("Blaming the Israel Lobby," CounterPunch, March 25/26, http://www.counterpunch.org/massad03252006.html) argues along similar lines, describing developments in the Middle East and around the world that he believes the U.S. engineered for its own benefit and would have carried out even without Israel's assistance. His point, like Chomsky's, is that the U.S. has a long history of overthrowing regimes in Central America, in Chile, in Indonesia, in Africa, where the Israel lobby was not involved and where Israel at most assisted the U.S. but did not benefit directly itself. He goes farther than Chomsky by claiming that with respect to the Middle East Israel has been such an essential tool that its very usefulness is what accounts for the strength of the lobby. "It is in fact the very centrality of Israel to U.S. strategy in the Middle East," Massad contends with a kind of backward logic, "that accounts, in part, for the strength of the pro-Israel lobby and not the other way around." (One wonders why, if this were the case, there would be any need for a lobby at all. What would be a lobby's function if the U.S. already regarded Israel as central to its strategy?)

The principal problem with these arguments from the left is that they assume a continuity in U.S. strategy and policymaking over the decades that has never in fact existed. The notion that there is any defined strategy that links Eisenhower's policy to Johnson's to Reagan's to Clinton's gives far more credit than is deserved to the extremely ad hoc, hit-or-miss nature of all U.S. foreign policy. Obviously, some level of imperial interest has dictated policy in every administration since World War II and, obviously, the need to guarantee access to vital natural resources around the world, such as oil in the Middle East and elsewhere, has played a critical role in determining policy. But beyond these evident, and not particularly significant, truths, it can accurately be said, at least with regard to the Middle East, that it has been a rare administration that has itself ever had a coherent, clearly defined, and consistent foreign policy and that, except for a broadly defined anti-communism during the Cold War, no administration's strategy has ever carried over in detail to succeeding administrations.

The ad hoc nature of virtually every administration's policy planning process cannot be overemphasized. Aside from the strong but amorphous political need felt in both major U.S. parties and nurtured by the Israel lobby that "supporting Israel" was vital to each party's own future, the inconsistent, even short-term randomness in the detailed Middle East policymaking of successive administrations has been remarkable. This lack of clear strategic thinking at the very top levels of several new administrations before they entered office enhanced the power of individuals and groups that did have clear goals and plans already in hand ­ such as, for instance, the pro-Israeli Dennis Ross in both the first Bush and the Clinton administrations, and the strongly pro-Israeli neo-cons in the current Bush administration.

The critics on the left argue that because the U.S. has a history of opposing and frequently undermining or actually overthrowing radical nationalist governments throughout the world without any involvement by Israel, any instance in which Israel acts against radical nationalism in the Arab world is, therefore, proof that Israel is doing the United States' work for it . The critics generally believe, for instance, that Israel's political destruction of Egypt's Nasser in 1967 was done for the U.S. Most if not all believe that Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon was undertaken at U.S.behest, to destroy the PLO.

This kind of argumentation assumes too much on a presumption of policy coherence. Lyndon Johnson most certainly did abhor Nasser and was not sorry to see him and his pan-Arab ambitions defeated, but there is absolutely no evidence that the Johnson administration ever seriously planned to unseat Nasser, formulated any other action plan against Egypt, or pushed Israel in any way to attack. Johnson did apparently give a green light to Israel's attack plans after they had been formulated, but this is quite different from initiating the plans. Already mired in Vietnam, Johnson was very much concerned not to be drawn into a war initiated by Israel and was criticized by some Israeli supporters for not acting forcefully enough on Israel's behalf. In any case, Israel needed no prompting for its pre-emptive attack, which had long been in the works.

Indeed, far from Israel functioning as the junior partner carrying out a U.S. plan, it is clear that the weight of pressure in 1967 was on the U.S. to go along with Israel's designs and that this pressure came from Israel and its agents in the U.S. The lobby in this instance ­ as broadly defined by Mearsheimer and Walt: "the loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction" ­ was in fact a part of Johnson's intimate circle of friends and advisers.

These included the number-two man at the Israeli embassy, a close personal friend; the strongly pro-Israeli Rostow brothers, Walt and Eugene, who were part of the national security bureaucracy in the administration; Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas; U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg; and numerous others who all spent time with Johnson at the LBJ Ranch in Texas and had the personal access and the leisure time in an informal setting to talk with Johnson about their concern for Israel and to influence him heavily in favor of Israel. This circle had already begun to work on Johnson long before Israel's pre-emptive attack in 1967, so they were nicely placed to persuade Johnson to go along with it despite Johnson's fears of provoking the Soviet Union and becoming involved in a military conflict the U.S. was not prepared for.

In other words, Israel was beyond question the senior partner in this particular policy initiative; Israel made the decision to go to war, would have gone to war with or without the U.S. green light, and used its lobbyists in the U.S. to steer Johnson administration policy in a pro-Israeli direction. Israel's attack on the U.S. naval vessel, the USS Liberty, in the midst of the war ­ an attack conducted in broad daylight that killed 34 American sailors ­ was not the act of a junior partner. Nor was the U.S. cover-up of this atrocity the act of a government that dictated the moves in this relationship.

The evidence is equally clear that Israel was the prime mover in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and led the U.S. into that morass, rather than the other way around. Although Massad refers to the U.S. as Israel's master, in this instance as in many others including 1967, Israel has clearly been its own master. Chomsky argues in support of his case that Reagan ordered Israel to call off the invasion in August, two months after it was launched. This is true, but in fact Israel did not pay any attention; the invasion continued, and the U.S. got farther and farther embroiled.

When, as occurred in Lebanon, the U.S. has blundered into misguided adventures to support Israel or to rescue Israel or to further Israel's interests, it is a clear denial of reality to say that Israel and its lobby have no significant influence on U.S. Middle East policy. Even were there not an abundance of other examples, Lebanon alone, with its long-term implications, proves the truth of the Mearsheimer-Walt conclusion that the U.S. "has set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state" and that "the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the region is due almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"

As a general proposition, the left critics' argumentation is much too limiting. While there is no question that modern history is replete, as they argue, with examples of the U.S. acting in corporate interests ­ overthrowing nationalist governments perceived to be threatening U.S. business and economic interests, as in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, and elsewhere ­ this frequent convergence of corporate with government interests does not mean that the U.S. never acts in other than corporate interests. The fact of a strong government-corporate alliance does not in any way preclude situations ­ even in the Middle East, where oil is obviously a vital corporate resource ­ in which the U.S. acts primarily to benefit Israel rather than serve any corporate or economic purpose. Because it has a deep emotional aspect and involves political, economic, and military ties unlike those with any other nation, the U.S. relationship with Israel is unique, and there is nothing in the history of U.S. foreign policy, nothing in the government's entanglement with the military-industrial complex, to prevent the lobby from exerting heavy influence on policy. Israel and its lobbyists make their own "corporation" that, like the oil industry (or Chiquita Banana or Anaconda Copper in other areas), is clearly a major factor driving U.S. foreign policy.

There is no denying the intricate interweaving of the U.S. military-industrial complex with Israeli military-industrial interests. Chomsky acknowledges that there is "plenty of conformity" between the lobby's position and the U.S. government-corporate linkage and that the two are very difficult to disentangle. But, although he tends to emphasize that the U.S. is always the senior partner and suggests that the Israeli side does little more than support whatever the U.S. arms, energy, and financial industries define as U.S. national interests, in actual fact the entanglement is much more one between equals than the raw strengths of the two parties would suggest. "Conformity" hardly captures the magnitude of the relationship. Particularly in the defense arena, Israel and its lobby and the U.S. arms industry work hand in glove to advance their combined, very compatible interests. The relatively few very powerful and wealthy families that dominate the Israeli arms industry are just as interested in pressing for aggressively militaristic U.S. and Israeli foreign policies as are the CEOs of U.S. arms corporations and, as globalization has progressed, so have the ties of joint ownership and close financial and technological cooperation among the arms corporations of the two nations grown ever closer. In every way, the two nations' military industries work together very easily and very quietly, to a common end. The relationship is symbiotic, and the lobby cooperates intimately to keep it alive; lobbyists can go to many in the U.S. Congress and tell them quite credibly that if aid to Israel is cut off, thousands of arms-industry jobs in their own districts will be lost. That's power. The lobby is not simply passively supporting whatever the U.S. military-industrial complex wants. It is actively twisting arms ­ very successfully ­ in both Congress and the administration to perpetuate acceptance of a definition of U.S. "national interests" that many Americans believe is wrong, as does Chomsky himself.

Clearly, the advantages in the relationship go in both directions: Israel serves U.S. corporate interests by using, and often helping develop, the arms that U.S. manufacturers produce, and the U.S. serves Israeli interests by providing a constant stream of high-tech equipment that maintains Israel's vast military superiority in the region. But simply because the U.S. benefits from this relationship, it cannot be said that the U.S. is Israel's master, or that Israel always does the U.S. bidding, or that the lobby, which helps keep this arms alliance alive, has no significant power. It's in the nature of a symbiosis that both sides benefit, and the lobby has clearly played a huge role in maintaining the interdependence.

The left's arguments also tend to be much too conspiratorial. Finkelstein, for instance, describes a supposed strategy in which the U.S. perpetually undermines Israeli-Arab reconciliation because it does not want an Israel at peace with its neighbors, since Israel would then loosen its dependence on the U.S. and become a less reliable proxy. "What use," he asks, "would a Paul Wolfowitz have of an Israel living peacefully with its Arab neighbors and less willing to do the U.S.'s bidding?" Not only does this give the U.S. far more credit than it has ever deserved for long-term strategic scheming and the ability to carry out such a conspiracy, but it begs a very important question that neither Finkelstein nor the other left critics, in their dogged effort to mold all developments to their thesis, never examine: just what U.S.'s bidding is Israel doing nowadays?

Although the leftist critics speak of Israel as a base from which U.S. power is projected throughout the Middle East, they do not clearly explain how this works. Any strategic value Israel had for the U.S. diminished drastically with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They may believe that Israel keeps Saudi Arabia's oil resources safe from Arab nationalists or Muslim fundamentalists or Russia, but this is highly questionable. Israel clearly did us no good in Lebanon, but rather the U.S. did Israel's bidding and fumbled badly, so this cannot be how the U.S. uses Israeli to project its power. In Palestine, Finkelstein himself acknowledges that the U.S. gains nothing from the occupation and Israeli settlements, so this can't be where Israel is doing the U.S.'s bidding. (With this acknowledgement, Finkelstein, perhaps unconsciously, seriously undermines his case against the importance of the lobby, unless he somehow believes the occupation is only of incidental significance, in which case he undermines the thesis of much of his own body of writing.)

Owning the Policymakers

In the clamor over the Mearsheimer-Walt study, critics on both the left and the right have tended to ignore the slow evolutionary history of U.S. Middle East policymaking and of the U.S. relationship with Israel. The ties to Israel and earlier to Zionism go back more than a century, predating the formation of a lobby, and they have remained firm even at periods when the lobby has waned. But it is also true that the lobby has sustained and formalized a relationship that otherwise rests on emotions and moral commitment. Because the bond with Israel has been a steadily evolving continuum, dating back to well before Israel's formal establishment, it is important to emphasize that there is no single point at which it is possible to say, this is when Israel won the affections of America, or this is when Israel came to be regarded as a strategic asset, or this is when the lobby became an integral part of U.S. policymaking.

The left critics of the lobby study mark the Johnson administration as the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli alliance, but almost every administration before Johnson's, going back to Woodrow Wilson, ratcheted up the relationship in some significant way and could justifiably claim to have been the progenitor of the bond. Significantly, in almost all cases, policymakers acted as they did because of the influence of pro-Zionist or pro-Israeli lobbyists: Wilson would not have supported the Zionist enterprise to the extent he did had it not been for the influence of Zionist colleagues like Louis Brandeis; nor would Roosevelt; Truman would probably not have been as supportive of establishing a Jewish state without the heavy influence of his very pro-Zionist advisers.

After the Johnson administration as well, the relationship has continued to grow in remarkable leaps. The Nixon-Kissinger regime could claim that they were the administration that cemented the alliance by exponentially increasing military aid ­ from an annual average of under $50 million in military credits to Israel in the late 1960s to an average of almost $400 million and, in the year following the 1973 war, to $2.2 billion. It is not for nothing that Israelis have informally dubbed almost every president since Johnson ­ with the notable exceptions of Jimmy Carter and the senior George Bush ­ as "the most pro-Israeli president ever"; each one has achieved some landmark in the effort to please Israel.

The U.S.-Israeli bond has always had its grounding more in soft emotions than in the hard realities of geopolitical strategy. Scholars have always described the tie in almost spiritual terms never applied to ties with other nations. A Palestinian-French scholar has described the United States' pro-Israeli tilt as a "predisposition," a natural inclination that precedes any consideration of interest or of cost. Israel, he said, takes part in the very "being" of American society and therefore participates in its integrity and its defense. This is not simply the biased perspective of a Palestinian. Other scholars of varying political inclinations have described a similar spiritual and cultural identity: the U.S. identifies with Israel's "national style"; Israel is essential to the "ideological prospering" of the U.S.; each country has "grafted" the heritage of the other onto itself. This applies even to the worst aspects of each nation's heritage. Consciously or unconsciously, many Israelis even today see the U.S. conquest of the American Indians as something "good," something to emulate and, which is worse, many Americans even today are happy to accept the "compliment" inherent in Israel's effort to copy us.

This is no ordinary state-to-state relationship, and the lobby does not function like any ordinary lobby. It is not a great exaggeration to say that the lobby could not thrive without a very willing host ­ that is, a series of U.S. policymaking establishments that have always been locked in to a mindset singularly focused on Israel and its interests ­ and, at the same time, that U.S. policy in the Middle East would not possibly have remained so singularly focused on and so tilted toward Israel were it not for the lobby. One thing is certain: with the possible exceptions of the Carter and the first Bush administrations, the relationship has grown noticeably closer and more solid with each administration, in almost exact correlation with the growth in size and budget and political clout of the pro-Israel lobby.

All critics of the lobby study have failed to note a critical point during the Reagan administration, surrounding the debacle in Lebanon, when it can reasonably be said that policymaking tipped over from a situation in which the U.S. was more often the controlling agent in the relationship to one in which Israel and its advocates in the U.S. have increasingly determined the course and the pace of developments. The organized lobby, meaning AIPAC and the several formal Jewish American organizations, truly came into its own during the Reagan years with a massive expansion of memberships, budgets, propaganda activities, and contacts within Congress and government, and it has been consolidating power and influence for the last quarter century, so that today the broadly defined lobby, including all those who work for Israel, has become an integral part of U.S. society and U.S. policymaking.

The situation during the Reagan administration demonstrates very clearly the closeness of the bond. The events of these years illustrate how an already very Israel-centered mindset in the U.S., which had been developing for decades, was transformed into a concrete, institutionalized relationship with Israel via the offices of Israeli supporters and agents in the U.S.

The seminal event in the growth of AIPAC and the organized lobby was the battle over the administration's proposed sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1981, Reagan's first year in office. Paradoxically, although AIPAC lost this battle in a head-on struggle with Reagan and the administration, and the sale to the Saudis went forward, AIPAC and the lobby ultimately won the war for influence. Reagan was determined that the sale go through; he regarded the deal as an important part of an ill-conceived attempt to build an Arab-Israeli consensus in the Middle East to oppose the Soviet Union and, perhaps even more important, saw the battle in Congress as a test of his own prestige. By winning the battle, he demonstrated that any administration, at least up to that point, could exert enough pressure to push an issue opposed by Israel through Congress, but the struggle also demonstrated just how exhausting and politically costly such a battle can be, and no one around Reagan was willing to go to the mat in this way again. In a real sense, despite AIPAC's loss, the fight showed just how much the lobby limited policymaker freedom, even more than 20 years ago, in any transaction that concerned Israel.

The AWACS imbroglio galvanized AIPAC into action, at precisely the time the administration was subsiding in exhaustion, and under an aggressive and energetic leader, former congressional aide Thomas Dine, AIPAC quadrupled its budget, increased its grassroots support immensely, and vastly expanded its propaganda effort. This last and perhaps most significant accomplishment was achieved when Dine established an analytical unit inside AIPAC that published in-depth analyses and position papers for congressmen and policymakers. Dine believed that anyone who could provide policymakers with books and papers focusing on Israel's strategic value to the U.S. would effectively "own" the policymakers.

With the rising power and influence of the lobby, and following the U.S. debacle in Lebanon ­ which began with Israel's 1982 invasion and ended for the U.S. with the withdrawal of its Marine contingent in early 1984, after the Marines had become involved in fighting to protect Israel's invasion force and 241 U.S. military had been killed in a truck bombing ­ the Reagan administration effectively handed over the policy initiative in the Middle East to Israel and its American advocates.

Israel and its agents began, with amazing effrontery, to complain that the U.S. failure to clean up in Lebanon was interfering with Israel's own designs there ­ from which arrogance Reagan and company concluded, in an astounding twist of logic, that the only way to restore stability was through closer alliance with Israel. As a result, in the fall of 1983 Reagan sent a delegation to ask the Israelis for closer strategic ties, and shortly thereafter forged a formal strategic alliance with Israel with the signing of a "memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation." In 1987, the U.S. designated Israel a "major non-NATO ally," thus giving it access to military technology not available otherwise. The notion of demanding concessions from Israel in return for this favored status ­ such as, for instance, some restraint in its settlement-construction in the West Bank ­ was specifically rejected. The U.S. simply very deliberately and abjectly retreated into policy inaction, leaving Israel with a free hand to proceed as it wished wherever it wished in the Middle East and particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Even Israel, by all accounts, was surprised by this demonstration of the United States' inability to see beyond Israel's interests. Prime Minister Menachem Begin had attempted from early in the Carter administration to push the notion that Israel was a strategic Cold War asset to the U.S. but, because Israel did not in fact perform a significant strategic role for the U.S. and was in many ways more a liability than an asset, Carter never paid serious attention to the Israeli overtures. Begin feared that the United States' moral and emotional commitment to Israel might ultimately not be enough to sustain the relationship through possible hard times, and so he attempted to put Israel forward as a strategically indispensable ally and a good investment for U.S. security, a move that would essentially reverse the two nations' roles, altering the relationship from one of Israeli indebtedness to the U.S. to one in which the United States was in Israel's debt for its vital strategic role.

Carter was having none of this, but the notion of strategic cooperation germinated in Israel and among its U.S. supporters until the moment became ripe during the Reagan administration. By the end of the Lebanon mess, the notion that the U.S. needed Israel's friendship had so taken hold among the Reaganites that, as one former national security aide observed in a stunning upending of logic, they began to view closer strategic ties as a necessary means of "restor[ing] Israeli confidence in American reliability." Secretary of State George Shultz wrote in his memoirs years later of the U.S. need "to lift the albatross of Lebanon from Israel's neck." Recall, as Shultz must not have been able to do, that the debt here was rightly Israel's: Israel put the albatross around its own neck, and the U.S. stumbled into Lebanon after Israel, not the other way around.

AIPAC and the neo-conservatives who rose to prominence during the Reagan years played a major role in building the strategic alliance. AIPAC in particular became in every sense of the word a partner of the U.S. in forging Middle East policy from the mid-1980s on. Thomas Dine's vision of "owning" policymakers by providing them with position papers geared to Israel's interests went into full swing. In 1984, AIPAC spun off a think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, that remains one of the pre-eminent think tanks in Washington and that has sent its analysts into policymaking jobs in several administrations. Dennis Ross, the senior Middle East policymaker in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, came from the Washington Institute and returned there after leaving government service. Martin Indyk, the Institute's first director, entered a senior policymaking position in the Clinton administration from there.

Today, John Hannah, who has served on Vice President Cheney's national security staff since 2001 and succeeded Lewis Libby last year as Cheney's leading national security adviser, comes from the Institute. AIPAC also continues to do its own analyses in addition to the Washington Institute's. A recent Washington Post profile of Steven Rosen, the former senior AIPAC foreign policy analyst who is about to stand trial with a colleague for receiving and passing on classified information to Israel, noted that two decades ago Rosen began a practice of lobbying the executive branch, rather than simply concentrating on Congress, as a way, in the words of the Post article, "to alter American foreign policy" by "influencing government from the inside." Over the years, he "had a hand in writing several policies favored by Israel."

In the Reagan years, AIPAC's position papers were particularly welcomed by an administration already more or less convinced of Israel's strategic value and obsessed with impeding Soviet advances. Policymakers began negotiating with AIPAC before presenting legislation in order to help assure passage, and Congress consulted the lobby on pending legislation. Congress eagerly embraced almost every legislative initiative proposed by the lobby and came to rely on AIPAC for information on all issues related to the Middle East. The close cooperation between the administration and AIPAC soon began to stifle discourse inside the bureaucracy. Middle East experts in the State Department and other agencies were almost completely cut out of decision-making, and officials throughout government became increasingly unwilling to propose policies or put forth analysis likely to arouse opposition from AIPAC or Congress. One unnamed official complained that "a lot of real analysis is not even getting off people's desks for fear of what the lobby will do"; he was speaking to a New York Times correspondent, but otherwise his complaints fell on deaf ears.

This kind of pervasive influence, a chill on discourse inside as well as outside policymaking councils, does not require the sort of clear-cut, concrete pro-Israeli decisions in the Oval Office that David Gergen naively thought he should have witnessed if the lobby had any real influence. This kind of influence, which uses friendly persuasion, along with just enough direct pressure, on a broad range of policymakers, legislators, media commentators, and grassroots activists to make an impression across the spectrum, cannot be defined in terms of narrow, concrete policy commands, but becomes an unchanging, unchallengeable mindset, a sentimental environment that restricts debate, restricts thinking, and determines actions and policies as surely as any command from on high. When Israel's advocates, its lobbyists, in the U.S. become an integral part of the policymaking apparatus, as they have particularly since the Reagan years ­ and as they clearly have been during the current Bush administration ­ there is no way to separate the lobby's interests from U.S. policies. Moreover, because Israel's strategic goals in the region are more clearly defined and more urgent than those of the United States, Israel's interests most often dominate.

Chomsky himself acknowledges that the lobby plays a significant part in shaping the political environment in which support for Israel becomes automatic and unquestioned. Even Chomsky believes that what he calls the intellectual political class is a critical, and perhaps the most influential, component of the lobby because these elites determine the shaping of news and information in the media and academia. On the other hand, he contends that, because the lobby already includes most of this intellectual political class, the thesis of lobby power "loses much of its content". But, on the contrary, this very fact would seem to prove the point, not undermine it. The fact of the lobby's pervasiveness, far from rendering it less powerful, magnifies its importance tremendously.

Indeed, this is the crux of the entire debate. It is the very power of the lobby to continue shaping the public mindset, to mold thinking and, perhaps most important, to instill fear of deviation that brings this intellectual political class together in an unswerving determination to work for Israel. Is there not a heavy impact on Middle East policymaking when, for instance, a lobby has the power to force the electoral defeat of long-serving congressmen, as occurred to Representative Paul Findley in 1982 and Senator Charles Percy in 1984 after both had deviated from political correctness by speaking out in favor of negotiating with the PLO? AIPAC openly crowed about the defeat of both men ­ both Republicans serving during the Republican Reagan administration, who had been in Congress for 22 and 18 years respectively. Similarly, does not the media's silence on Israel's oppressive measures in the occupied territories, as well as the concerted, and openly acknowledged, efforts of virtually every pro-Israeli organization in the U.S. to suppress information and quash debate on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, have an immense impact on policy? Today, even the most outspoken of leftist radio hosts and other commentators, such as Randi Rhodes, Mike Malloy, and now Cindy Sheehan, almost always avoid talking and writing about this issue.

Does not the massive effort by AIPAC, the Washington Institute, and myriad other similar organizations to spoon-feed policymakers and congressmen selective information and analysis written only from Israel's perspective have a huge impact on policy? In the end, even Chomsky and Finkelstein acknowledge the power of the lobby in suppressing discussion and debate about Middle East policy. The mobilization of public opinion, Finkelstein writes, "can have a real impact on policy-making ­ which is why the Lobby invests so much energy in suppressing discussion." It is difficult to read statement except as a ringing acknowledgement of the massive and very central power of the lobby to control discourse and to control policymaking on the most critical Middle East policy issue.

Interchangeable Interests

The principal problem with the left critics' analysis is that it is too rigid. There is no question that Israel has served the interests of the U.S. government and the military-industrial complex in many areas of the world by, for instance, aiding some of the rightist regimes of Central America, by skirting arms and trade embargoes against apartheid South Africa and China (until the neo-conservatives turned off the tap to China and, in a rare disagreement with Israel, forced it to halt), and during the Cold War by helping, at least indirectly, to hold down Arab radicalism. There is also no question that, no matter which party has been in power, the U.S. has over the decades advanced an essentially conservative global political and pro-business agenda in areas far afield of the Middle East, without reference to Israel or the lobby. The U.S. unseated Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala and Allende in Chile, along with many others, for its own corporate and political purposes, as the left critics note, and did not use Israel.

But these facts do not minimize the power the lobby has exerted in countless instances over the course of decades, and particularly in recent years, to lead the U.S. into situations that Israel initiated, that the U.S. did not plan, and that have done harm, both singly and cumulatively, to U.S. interests. One need only ask whether particular policies would have been adopted in the absence of pressure from some influential persons and organizations working on Israel's behalf in order to see just how often Israel or its advocates in the U.S., rather than the United States or even U.S. corporations, have been the policy initiators. The answers give clear evidence that a lobby, as broadly defined by Mearsheimer and Walt, has played a critical and, as the decades have gone on, increasingly influential role in policymaking.

For instance, would Harry Truman have been as supportive of establishing Israel as a Jewish state if it had not been for heavy pressure from what was then a very loose grouping of strong Zionists with considerable influence in policymaking circles? It can reasonably be argued that he might not in fact have supported Jewish statehood at all, and it is even more likely that his own White House advisers ­ all strong Zionist proponents themselves ­ would not have twisted arms at the United Nations to secure the 1947 vote in favor of partitioning Palestine if these lobbyists had not been a part of Truman's policymaking circle. Truman himself did not initially support the notion of founding a state based on religion, and every national security agency of government, civilian and military , strongly opposed the partition of Palestine out of fear that this would lead to warfare in which the U.S. might have to intervene, would enhance the Soviet position in the Middle East, and would endanger U.S. oil interests in the area. But even in the face of this united opposition from within his own government, Truman found the pressures of the Zionists among his close advisers and among influential friends of the administration and of the Democratic Party too overwhelmingly strong to resist.

Questions like this arise for virtually every presidential administration. Would Jimmy Carter, for instance, have dropped his pursuit of a resolution of the Palestinian problem if the Israel lobby had not exerted intense pressure on him? Carter was the first president to recognize the Palestinian need for some kind of "homeland," as he termed it, and he made numerous efforts to bring Palestinians into a negotiating process and to stop Israeli settlement-building, but opposition from Israel and pressures from the lobby were so heavy that he was ultimately worn down and defeated.

It is also all but impossible to imagine the U.S. supporting Israel's actions in the occupied Palestinian territories without pressure from the lobby. No conceivable U.S. national interest served ­ even in the United States' own myopic view ­ by its support for Israel's harshly oppressive policy in the West Bank and Gaza, and furthermore this support is a dangerous liability. As Mearsheimer and Walt note, most foreign elites view the U.S. tolerance of Israeli repression as "morally obtuse and a handicap in the war on terrorism," and this tolerance is a major cause of terrorism against the U.S. and the West. The impetus for oppressing the Palestinians clearly comes and has always come from Israel, not the United States, and the impetus for supporting Israel and facilitating this oppression has come, very clearly and directly, from the lobby, which goes to great lengths to justify the occupation and to advocate on behalf of Israeli policies.

It is tempting, and not at all out of the realm of possibility, to imagine Bill Clinton having forged a final Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement were it not for the influence of his notably pro-Israeli advisers. By the time Clinton came to office, the lobby had become a part of the policymaking apparatus, in the persons of Israeli advocates Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, both of whom entered government service from lobby organizations. Both also returned at the end of the Clinton administration to organizations that advocate for Israel: Ross to the Washington Institute and Indyk to the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which is financed by and named for a notably pro-Israeli benefactor. The scope of the lobby's infiltration of government policymaking councils has been unprecedented during the current Bush administration. Some of the left critics dismiss the neo-cons as not having any allegiance to Israel; Finkelstein thinks it is naïve to credit them with any ideological conviction, and Zunes claims they are uninterested in benefiting Israel because they are not religious Jews (as if only religious Jews care about Israel). But it simply ignores reality to deny the neo-cons' very close ties, both ideological and pragmatic, to Israel's right wing.

Both Finkelstein and Zunes glaringly fail to mention the strategy paper that several neo-cons wrote in the mid-1990s for an Israeli prime minister, laying out a plan for attacking Iraq these same neo-cons later carried out upon entering the Bush administration. The strategy was designed both to assure Israel's regional dominance in the Middle East and to enhance U.S. global hegemony. One of these authors, David Wurmser, remains in government as Cheney's Middle East adviser ­ one of several lobbyists inside the henhouse. The openly trumpeted plan, crafted by the neo-cons, is to "transform" the Middle East by unseating Saddam Hussein, and the notion, also openly touted, that the path to peace in Palestine-Israel ran through Baghdad grew out of the neo-cons' overriding concern for Israel. Both Finkelstein and Zunes also fail to take note of the long record of advocacy on behalf of Israel that almost all the neo-cons (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, and their cheerleaders on the sidelines such as William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and numerous right-wing, pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington) have compiled over the years. The fact that these individuals and organizations are all also advocates of U.S. global hegemony does not diminish their allegiance to Israel or their desire to assure Israel's regional hegemony in alliance with the U.S.

The claimed interchangeability of U.S. and Israeli interests ­ and the fact that certain individuals for whom a primary objective is to advance Israel's interests now reside inside the councils of government ­ proves the truth of the Mearsheimer-Walt's principal conclusion that the lobby has been able to convince most Americans, contrary to reality, that there is an essential identity of U.S. and Israeli interests and that the lobby has succeeded for this reason in forging a relationship of unmatched intimacy. The "overall thrust of policy" in the Middle East, they observe quite accurately, is "almost entirely" attributable to the lobby's activities. The fact that the U.S. occasionally acts without reference to Israel in areas outside the Middle East, and that Israel does occasionally serve U.S. interests rather than the other way around, takes nothing away from the significance of this conclusion.

The tragedy of the present situation is that it has become impossible to separate Israeli from alleged U.S. interests ­ that is, not what should be real U.S. national interests, but the selfish and self-defined "national interests" of the political-corporate-military complex that dominates the Bush administration, Congress, and both major political parties. The specific groups that now dominate the U.S. government are the globalized arms, energy, and financial industries, and the entire military establishments, of the U.S. and of Israel ­ groups that have quite literally hijacked the government and stripped it of most vestiges of democracy.

This convergence of manipulated "interests" has a profound effect on U.S. policy choices in the Middle East. When a government is unable to distinguish its own real needs from those of another state, it can no longer be said that it always acts in its own interests or that it does not frequently do grave damage to those interests. Until the system of sovereign nation-states no longer exists ­ and that day may never come ­ no nation's choices should ever be defined according to the demands of another nation. Accepting a convergence of U.S. and Israeli interests means that the U.S. can never act entirely as its own agent, will never examine its policies and actions entirely from the vantage point of its own long-term self interest, and can, therefore, never know why it is devising and implementing a particular policy. The failure to recognize this reality is where the left critics' belittling of the lobby's power and their acceptance of U.S. Middle East policy as simply an unchangeable part of a longstanding strategy is particularly dangerous.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades, CounterPunch's history of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

For those who want peace and justice in the Middle East, i call your attention to a new website, http://www.stopaipac.org

This will be a tool in the fight against the extremist anti-justice policy positions pushed by AIPAC and its friends.

From your website: " it is no wonder that congressional staffers consider it one of the most powerful and effective lobbies on Capitol Hill. "

Yet look at the actual list of most powerful lobbies from Lobby Watch and their expenditures:
Chamber of Commerce for the U.S.A. $204,614,680
Altria Group Inc $101,220,000
General Electric Co. $94,130,000
American Medical Association $92,560,000
Northrop Grumman Corp. $83,405,691
Edison Electric Institute $82,866,628
Verizon Communications Inc. $81,870,000
Business Roundtable $80,380,000
American Hospital Association & State Affiliates $79,205,772
Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America $72,720,000
National Association of Realtors $68,810,000
ExxonMobil Corp. $59,672,742
SBC Communications Inc. $58,035,037
Freddie Mac - Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation $57,740,000
Boeing Co. $57,258,310
Lockheed Martin $55,373,840

Where's AIPAC on the list?
Enquiring minds want to know.

That's not "the actual list of most powerful lobbies." it's a ;ist of doners whose donations Lobby Watch knows about.

Most of what the Israel Lobby does, Lobby Watch doesn't report:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/163082_comment.php#163478

SF-IMC interviewed Jeffery Blankfort a couple days ago. We're not done typing it up. It's long. But here's a little preview that's relevant to current discussion.

* * * * *

(snip)

Jeffery Blankfort: It isn't just the money, however. Money is very important. But it's the way they approach politicians. AIPAC, for example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is the only foreign lobby that isn't required to register as a foreign agent. They hold regional meetings around the country, at which they invite supervisors, mayors, city council people, public officials from the area, to come to these luncheons and dinners, where the speaker will be a US Senator or some very important government official, who will come into town, unknown to the media, with no notice to the media. He or she will make no speeches to the media, give no press conferences, and will leave. It will be reported in the local Jewish paper, but it will not be reported in the state where the person lives, except perhaps in the Jewish press there. And there's no interest in the media in following up why, for example, this Senator Christopher Dodd, when he comes to San Francisco, or Mario Cuomo speaks out in Danville, why does he not have a press conference and talk to the media here?

In any case, they go to this meeting, and they, these Congress people . . . I'm speaking from knowledge here because I joined AIPAC and I went to one of these luncheons . . .

SF-IMC: (laughs) Good for you.

Jeffrey Blankfort: . . . and I saw what was going on there. And I said, my god, this is brilliant. They have all the leading figures from Northern California at the meeting, from whose ranks will come the next member of Congress, no doubt.

What happens after AIPAC leaves, then the Jewish Federation, or some local Jewish organization, maybe it's the Koret Foundation, some local Jewish organization will then send local supervisors, city council people, mayors, and so on all expense paid trips to Israel. They meet the Prime Minister, whoever it is, the Defense Minister, and so on, both political parties, they take a trip to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, to Massada, where Jews supposedly committed suicide in Roman times, to the West bank, where they may meet a house Arab, and they come back here knowing that they have good friends, important friends, in the Jewish community.

These people who go into politics, all of them are ambitious. So they know that if they want to run for office, it's not just a matter of money. It's a matter of personal acquaintance. And there are certain instances where I believe people are promoted to run for office by the Lobby, and so in a sense they become the Lobby's employee from the get go. Daniel Inouye, the one armed bandit from Hawaii, his first job was selling State of Israel Bonds. He doesn't list that in his official biography, but the Jewish press has written about that. And he has been one of the foremost supporters of Israel. Tom Daschle is another. They seem to have been promoted into running for office.

You also have something else called blackmail, which the Left never considers as a reason for somebody doing something. But the Anti-Defamation League is a major spying organization, the largest private spying organization in the country. They spied on me. In the Bay Area, in Northern California, they spied on twelve thousand individuals, about 600 hundred organizations. Every organization, progressive, ecological, NAACP, the Asian Law Caucus, Filipino groups, Irish Northern Aid, all of them, and Jewish groups as well, progressive Jewish groups. Why do they do this? Information is important. They don't get information just gratuitously and pay people to do that.

For example, I was spied on, but nothing compared to a politician. So, for example, when Congressman Tom Harkin of Iowa, who was on the board of directors of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, was visited one day by a member of the Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC, and sent his employees home, the next day Tom Harkin, soon to run for senator, is all for Israel, totally for Israel. What did they do? Did they offer him money? I doubt it. They probably found something out about Congressman Harkin. They've given Congressman Harkin reasons that he should be pro Israel and how they'll make him a US Senator, perhaps, and give him a lot of money, which they have, as contributions.

I know of another case where a progressive congressman never would criticize Israel. And if I know something about that person, so would the Israel Lobby. They have people working on this 24/7. There are many people who think that in Britain, Tony Blair is being blackmailed to support the United States. There is no good reason for the British to support the United States. They materially gain nothing. Their corporations have made nothing. And given the British public school education, photographs could be taken . . . there's a very good likelihood that Blair might be being blackmailed. People try to find all kind of political reasons and there may be no other political reasons than self survival.

So these are all these aspects, so AIPAC has this job, this role, of directing funds to various politicians to support them. Also, even if they don't give money, the threat of them giving money to an opponent is there. So in August, 1989, a pro Israel congressperson told Morton Kondracke of the New Republic that it's not out of affection for Israel that Israel gets three billion a year and that there's no debate on the floor of congress. It's the fear that if you do so, you will wake up the next morning to find that your opponent has a half a million dollar war chest to use against you. That was '89. Today, the war chest would be larger. So, there are these threats.

(snip)

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/163082_comment.php#163483

(snip)

Jeffery Blankfort: The Democratic Party is a wholely owned subsidiary of the Israel Lobby. Anyone who thinks that can change by supporting an individual Democrat, other than McKinney, who gets no support from the party, is crazy.

The head of the Democratic Party Senate campaign, the one who determines where the money is going to go is Charles Schumer, an open, leading, Jewish Zionist from New York. For the House, it's Rahm Emmanuel, who when he was working for Bill Clinton as a high level staff member, took time off during the first Intifada to do volunteer work in Israel for the Israeli Defense Force. His family is Israeli. He says he's not. In any case, here you have two Jewish Zionists, one running the Democrats' House campaigns and one running the Senate campaigns, determining who is going to get the money in the 2006 election. It's flagrant. And yet, you can't discuss this on the Left, because they'll say, that sounds like anti-Semitism, or it's not important that they're Jewish, like it's not important that the Pope's Catholic. This is what we're dealing with.

(snip)

Try as you might to smother the debate with drawn out spammed posts riddled with lies, the truth will prevail.

Lets check a website without an agenda:

Look at the actual list of most powerful lobbies from Lobby Watch and their expenditures:

Chamber of Commerce for the U.S.A. $204,614,680
Altria Group Inc $101,220,000
General Electric Co. $94,130,000
American Medical Association $92,560,000
Northrop Grumman Corp. $83,405,691
Edison Electric Institute $82,866,628
Verizon Communications Inc. $81,870,000
Business Roundtable $80,380,000
American Hospital Association & State Affiliates $79,205,772
Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America $72,720,000
National Association of Realtors $68,810,000
ExxonMobil Corp. $59,672,742
SBC Communications Inc. $58,035,037
Freddie Mac - Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation $57,740,000
Boeing Co. $57,258,310
Lockheed Martin $55,373,840

Where's AIPAC on the list?
Enquiring minds want to know.

Just like Monty Python.

Its been reprinted for a second time.

Yes, AIPCA is powerful. Not as powerful as the indymedia rhetoric would suggest. Its broad base of support comes from Americans who are firmly committed to the survival of Israel.

" AIPAC, for example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is the only foreign lobby that isn't required to register as a foreign agent"


Ok, Mr. Blankfort- do you know why this is?

Its because AIPAC's funding is entirely from Americans! Its not a foreign agent.

Don't worry, I'm watching.

Interestingly, 'Sheepdog' seems to have taken a long furlough and Meyer London seems to have run out of ideas to bait with. His double standards have been exposed.

Wendy KKKampbell is trolling other IMC's with her unique brand of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial.

(1.) Does the word "launder" mean anything to you?

(2.) Even if, in the unlikely event that, no Israeli *money* is invloved, that does not make AIPAC not be a de facto foreign lobby. In fact, it's a modern day Bund. The Zionists have not only learned very well from their Nazi mentors, they have built on and expanded that knowledge. But so what? A racist is a racist is a racist. Whether they are Nazis or Zionists, or Chetniks, Klansmen or the Interahamwe, matters not one iota. AIPAC supports the racist state of Israel. Ergo, it's evil, no matter where it's money comes from.

"Even if, in the unlikely event that, no Israeli *money* is invloved"

Logical fallacy. It's a pointless rebellion against the truth, i.e. an exercize in rabid anti-Zionist futility.

The rabid anti-Zionist 'nessie' has not only learned very well from his Nazi mentors, he has built on and expanded that knowledge. But so what? A racist is a racist is a racist. Whether they are Nazis or anti-Zionists, or Chetniks, Klansmen or the Interahamwe, matters not one iota. AIPAC supports the anti-racist state of Israel. Ergo, to oppose it completely is evil, no matter where it's money comes from.

JEFFREY BLANKFORT WRITES: ".....public officials from the area, to come to these luncheons and dinners, where the speaker will be a US Senator or some very important government official, who will come into town, unknown to the media, with no notice to the media. He or she will make no speeches to the media, give no press conferences, and will leave."

BECKY: Blankfort sees something sinister in this. I don't. In fact, I wonder why public officials who are always looking ahead to the next election would cooperate in a media blackout. I can't see why they would agree to this. Therefore I suspect that Blankfort noted at the one meeting he attended that there was no press conference with the media scheduled, and has manufactured this "conspiracy" out of the fluff in his brain.

(1.) Does the word "launder" mean anything to you?
Damn! Yes, it does. I need to do darks today- I'm out of jeans.
Oh, yes, and your statement is an "unsubstaniated allegation", is it not?
I've learned so much reading Indymedia.

(2.) Even if, in the unlikely event that, no Israeli *money* is invloved, that does not make AIPAC not be a de facto foreign lobby. In fact, it's a modern day Bund.

Another "unsubstantiated allegation"

. AIPAC supports the racist state of Israel. Ergo, it's evil, no matter where it's money comes from.

Israel is a democractic state. It is however a flawed democractic state. Israel recognizes two official languages, Arabic and Hebrew. Israel recognizes 22 religions. All Israeli citizens can vote.

From Israel's Declaration of Independence:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

Tuesday evening 5-6?


Just wondering..... ; - )

Just like Monty Python.

Indeed, I'm off topic.

From an e-mail by Terry Messman, publisher of Street Spirit, a homeless newspaper that writer, Becky Johnson, contributed articles to for ten years until Blankfort and Anderson conducted a "witch hunt" to drive her out.

TERRY MESSMAN WRITES:

"....only the two people who had written repeatedly to protest Street Spirit’s publication of your work anymore: Joseph Anderson and Jeff Blankfort. Both had written to us repeatedly to reveal the extent of your involvement with the extremist positions of DAFKA and bitterly complained to us about all this. I felt I had to answer their e-mails, because they would not let this go. Even in writing to them, I asked them to understand that I still held your homeless activism in the highest regard and therefore did not want to publicly repudiate nor denounce you in any way. Evidently, they disregarded my appeal."

Why is it that people who lobby for the interests of Communist states are required to register as agents of a foreign power but AIPAC and other pro-zionist lobbying groups are not?

Q. What is FARA?

A. FARA is short for the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Q. What is the purpose of FARA?

A. The purpose of FARA is to insure that the American public and its law makers know the source of information (propaganda) intended to sway public opinion, policy, and laws. In 1938, the FARA was Congress' response to the large number of German propaganda agents in the pre-WWII U.S.

Q. Are foreign governments the only foreign principals?

A. No. The term also includes foreign political parties, a person or organization outside the United States, except U. S. citizens, and any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.

Q. What constitutes an agent?

A. An agent of a Foreign principal is any individual or organization which acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal, or whose activities are directed by a foreign principal who:

1. engages in political activities, or

2. acts in a public relations capacity for a foreign principal, or

3. solicits or dispenses any thing of value within the United States for a foreign principal, or

4. who represents the interests of a foreign principal before any agency or official of the U.S. government.

The term "agent" does not include an American owned and operated newspaper meeting certain requirements.

Q. How does the Act work?

A. 1. The Act requires every agent of a foreign principal to register with the Department of Justice and file forms outlining its agreements with, income from, and expenditures on behalf of the foreign principal. These forms are public records and must be supplemented every six months.

2. The Act also requires that informational materials (formerly propaganda) be labeled with a conspicuous statement that the information is provided by the agents on behalf of the foreign principal. The agent must provide copies of such materials to the Attorney General.

3. Any agent testifying before a committee of Congress must furnish the committee with a copy of his most recent registration statement.

4. The agent must keep records of all his activities and permit the Attorney General to inspect them.

Q. When does one register?

A. One must register within ten days of agreeing to become an agent and before performing any activities for the foreign principal.

Q. Does the Act limit an agent's lobbying and publishing informational materials (propaganda) for a Foreign principal?

A. No, the Act requires only registration.

Q. Are there criminal penalties for violating the Act?

A. Yes, failure to register, keep accounts, mark informational materials, provide a congressional committee with a copy of the agent's most recent registration, and agreeing to a contingent fee are crimes. [It should be noted, however, that FARA officials find most violations to be unintentional and normally seek to obtain voluntary compliance with the statute rather than to obtain criminal convictions.]

That post seems like more evidence that the zionist lobbying groups should be required to list themselves as agents of a foreign power. That is what they are. The fact that they themselves are Americans is irrelevant.

Meyer seems to be upset apparently because he regards the registration compulsion as a humilation to communists.

There is no justification for requiring lobbyists for some nations to register as agents of foreign powers and not requiring lobbyists for other nations. I think all the registration stuff should be abolished, but I am pointing out the basic unfairness and hypocrisy involved.

The Americans within AIPAC are not actings as agents of Israel- they are acting as Americans who feel it is in the best interest of America to support the one true ally we have in the middle east.

because he's going on emotion rather than logic, which is why he doesn't want to fathom what you've just accentuated.

AIPAC and other pro-zionist lobbying groups really have the interests of US steel workers, nursing home residents, barrio and ghetto dwellers, the disabled, office workers now forced to do as individuals the work that used to be done by two or three people, and disabled veterans at heart when the argue that more billions should be spent on Israel. Perhaps you really believe that. But then again, you think that white European Jews have a claim on Palestine because they are biological descendants of the ancient Hebrews. You believe that people like Sharon and Begin were idealistic fighters for freedom. You believe that settlers have a right to be in the West Bank. You believe that Samaria and Judea still exist, somewhere to the east of Gaul and Hibernia. In other words, you believe in fairy tales, or at least claim that you do.

AIPAC and other pro-zionist lobbying groups really have the interests of US steel workers....

No the AFL- CIO represents their interests in the US Congress to the tune of 26 million per year.

Perhaps you really believe that.

The retired people have AARP. The environmentalists have the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. For better or worse, Lobbying is legal and is part of the political system.

But then again, you think that white European Jews have a claim on Palestine because they are biological descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

1. 57% of Israeli Jews are descended from the North African Jewish community
2. The claim is based on religious, historic, and legal principles. Becky articulates it well in other posts.
In the post on the "farm", a protestor carries a sign "The land belongs to those who use it". That is another part of the claim. The land of Israel was neglected for many years. it has flourished with the return of the Jewish community


You believe that people like Sharon and Begin were idealistic fighters for freedom.

Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence. Assumes facts not in evidence. I have expressed no such belief.

You believe that settlers have a right to be in the West Bank. You believe that Samaria and Judea still exist, somewhere to the east of Gaul and Hibernia. In other words, you believe in fairy tales, or at least claim that you do.

Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence. I have expressed no such belief.

unless they are investors in the "defense industry" or executives in those companies. These lobbying groups represent the interests of Israel, which happen to coincide with the interests of US corporate imperialism. If the US ruling class ever decides that its interests do not match those of Israel, it will shed Israel and zionism faster than Courtney Love sheds her clothes when she is on drugs.

If the US ruling class ever decides that its interests do not match those of Israel, it will shed Israel and zionism faster than Courtney Love sheds her clothes when she is on drugs


I don't doubt this. The influence of Big Oil is formidable. If this is indeed the case, I count on the Jewish community to pick up the slack. We've done it before. We'll do it again.

"I don't doubt this. The influence of Big Oil is formidable. If this is indeed the case, I count on the Jewish community to pick up the slack. We've done it before. We'll do it again."

For sure. Time to start using those JNF tzedakah boxes, again.

To understand the bond between the Jewish People and the land of Israel, to feel the power of the Zionist consciousness, and the commitment to redeeming the Land, just look to a tin collection box-the Blue Box.

The Fifth Zionist Congress established Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael - the Jewish National Fund, on December 28, 1901 in Basle, Switzerland. Charged with the task of fundraising in Jewish communities for the purpose of purchasing land in Eretz Yisrael, JNF-KKL is the largest owner of land in Israel (12.5% of all land)--second only to the State. Since its creation, JNF has been redeeming the land of Israel and working to help it prosper. This feat could not have been accomplished without Blue Box proceeds, which purchased more than half of the land owned by the KKL-JNF (375,000 acres) prior to the establishment of the State of Israel.

When a bank clerk named Haim Kleinman placed a Blue Box marked "Keren Le'umit" (National Fund) in his office upon the establishment of the JNF and suggested that every Jewish home follow his example, a powerful symbol was born, from an idea well-rooted in Jewish tradition. Professor Zvi Hermann Schapira (right) had unveiled a tin collection box as early as 1884.

For dozens of years the pushke, or "Blue Box"-so called because of its blue and white colors-could be found in almost every Jewish home and institution in the Diaspora. These tin collection boxes were not only popular means of fulfilling the Zionist dream of statehood; they also grew
to become a powerful symbol of the shared enterprise by the JNF, the Jewish People, and the State of Israel. More importantly, the Blue Box also became an important educational tool, notably for the youth, in forging a link between the Jewish People and the soil of their homeland. The very act of collecting funds in a special box aroused in Jews everywhere a longing for the tastes and fragrances of Eretz Yisrael and strengthened their yearning for the homeland.

Thirty years after placing the first Blue Box in his office, Kleinman visited pre-state Israel and was gratified to learn that the idea had become a reality. Funds collected in these little Blue Boxes were redeeming the land of Israel. Sadly, he perished in the Holocaust before he was able to make aliyah, but the Blue Box, which he had conceived together with Professor Zvi Hermann Schapira, lives on to this day.

The Blue Box has also remained a precious symbol in the Diaspora and is still a common sight in most Jewish homes, symbolizing their support for the Zionist enterprise.

You're trying to rhetorically compartmentalize AIPAC people as concerned only with Israeli problems as if they can't and aren't US citizens with other concerns about intrnal US matters that are unrelated to Israel per se. You're employing bigoted logic. Your misleading racist rants about white European Jews laying a claim on "palestine" won't change that.

"You believe that people like Sharon and Begin were idealistic fighters for freedom. "

Pretty close.

"You believe that settlers have a right to be in the West Bank. "

Damn straight.

"You believe that Samaria and Judea still exist, "

Absolutely. Just as the Malvinas still exist.

You, however, believe in fairy tales.

It sounds like you need a vacation - maybe in the Malvinas. Get a prescription for some sedatives or try petting cats or going on quiet walks.
By the way, do you think that the people forced to register as agents of Communist countries ever had concerns about internal US affairs?

I'm still giggling at how you presented the belief of certain Zionist currents that Jews have a right to be in Judea-Samaria as though it's inconsistent with nature's laws or a historical abberation, as if Arabs and only Arabs or Palestinians can naturally live there.

I wouldn't demand registration from US citizens who weren't officially agents of Communist countries. The problem lies in the liberal definition you anti-Zionists give "agent" when it comes to Israel.

Every racist should be hounded from their job. Drive them all out.

No it wasn't.

Just like Monty Python.

Just like Monty Python.

This is clearly the work of a man with nothing intelligent to say.

Another false flag op. How typical.

Another forgery by the intrepid troll. How typical.

Just think it through for a moment. Whose identity get's famously spoofed by these guys all over the network? Why are they doing it?

Just think it through for a moment. Whose personality gets famously dragged through the mud all over the network, courtesy of the object of mockery himself? Why does he instigate it?

It seems to me that Nessie incites flame wars for kicks. I don't think thats how he got that limp though.

>Why does he instigate it?

I don't. All I do is speak out against Zionism. For this, I get slandered, forged and my life threatened. Why? Because that's the kind of people that Zionists are. Besides, there *is* no honest defense of ethnic cleansing.

Now THATS bunk logic! Anybody and everybody who has been compelled to have to deal with Nessie's Leavings" on indymedia sites acros the country has gotten to see his;

1. endless Anti-semitism thinly veiled as "anti-zionism"
2. fascist thoughts expressed in qusai-leftist rhetoric
3. boundless hypocracy
4. general misegyny and condescending hatred of women commenters
5. canned moronic responses cut and pasted in
6. occasional pro-NAMBLA posts

You instigate it and proceed to claim all you do is speak out against Zionism. You engage in countless frivolous flame wars across the IMCs that have nothing to do with Zionism or "Palestine" at all. All the drivel that you're spouting now won't change these facts. That you try to mislead about these facts shows what utter contempt you have for those readers who happen on your silly flame wars on IMCs like NC-IMC, Arizona, etc etc. There you indirectly admit you're inconsequential.

Now that's entertainment!

I suspect its the only way he gets any attention nowadays, those kids ...they just don't respect their elders anymore...and something there is that does not love an aging anarchist....
Something, perhaps like ZIonists, parents of young boys, environmentalists, plover fans....

Poor Nessie. You never expected to just fade away, did you? You always hoped you go in a burst of glory.

Hell, why aren't your kids visiting you on Fathers Day, Nessie?

> You engage in countless frivolous flame wars across the IMCs

He means I bother to point out when I have been forged and/or lied about by the Zionist stalk squad. For obvious reasons, they would much prefer I ignore their deceptions. "By way of deception," after all, is how they "wage war." Don't take my word for it. Ask Ostrovsky.

like the boy who cried wolf, Nessie, who has been caught lying on so many occasions, now expects us to believe that the posts that he now wishes to distance himself from were "forged." Give it a break! Does your nose grow when you type crap like that?

I didn't mean what you're so typically mendaciously claiming I meant. As you'd say: stop putting words in my mouth. It's rude, it's dishonest, it's very bad form.

"By way of deception" characterizes just how you and your similar rejects like Ryan wage war.

Like anyone who's been paying attention thinks I'm not being forged. Pah-leeez.

NESSIE WRITES: "
Good work, Jeff.
by examplary behavior Saturday, Jun. 17, 2006 at 5:57 PM

Every racist should be hounded from their job. Drive them all out.

BECKY: So did you have a problem with all the pro-active articles I wrote for Street Spirit for the past ten years?

Are you and Jeffery Blankfort now going to pick up the banner and monthly do investigative reporting on the homeless situation in Santa Cruz County?

And as for your charge of so-called "racism" --can you please provide readers with a single example of my so-called racists writings----either in my hundreds of homeless articles or in nearly the same number on the mideast?

Or is it just a groundless charge made from behind the anonymity of an internet forum?

To support a racist state, any racist state, any racist institution, any racist person, any racist statement, is racist. Her support for the racist state of israel is all ove this website. Pick one. They're all racist.

Zionism is racism. Support it, and you're a racist, too, just like Becky Johnson.

See? You're a "racist" -- once nessie has suitably gerrymandered his definition of "racism." Note that "someone who hates 99.5% of American Jews" -- as nessie does -- does not qualify as "racist" under the nessie bizarro-lexicon definition. Which is why, like so much else that pours from nessie's keyboard, it ain't worth shit other than as diagnostic clues into his very fucked-up little mind.

@%<

By definition, if you believe that one ethnic group has more rights to land, water, arms and power than other ethnic groups, you're a racist. This belief is the definition of Zionism. Zionism is racism.

>99.5%

One more time:

I believe you should hate 100% of all racists, whether they are Jews or not. To make an exception for Jews is itself racist by definition

We ignore Nessie, because despite his pitiful representations about being "anti-racist" he's proven ver and over that he is deeply bigoted against Jews.

"To support a racist state, any racist state, any racist institution, any racist person, any racist statement, is racist."

Well, 'nessie' supports Angie Tibbs and virtually all her statements -- including the racist ones -- on Israel, Zionism and the "Chosen People", ergo he's a racist.

Zionism is not racism. Rabid anti-Zionism sure is. It's adherents are all racist, just like 'nessie'.

And just think of the year nessie spent running interference for Wehrmacht Wendy Campbell. Every time she spewed her antisemitic crap into SF-IMC, nessie was there not only to lap it up but to attack me for pointing out its antisemitism.

Some of the threads are pretty amusing, seeing how nessie tries at every opportunity to deflect the accusations of antisemitism against Wendy, to change the subject at all costs, even as the antisemitica she was spewing fell into the old classics of antisemitism -- the Khazar canard, the "kosher tax," all the old goosestepper greatest hits. And nessie was with her every step of the way, making sure she could fly her swastikas with pride.

When it finally became so blatant that nessie knew he could no longer maintain the pretense that Wehrmacht Wendy wasn't a goosestepper, he pretended that she had suddenly *bang!* gone over the line, and that he was forced by that sudden *bang!* one post to ban her. Despite the fact that the post was exactly the same sort of shit she'd been posting all along, same links and all.

@%<

Though I recall his audacity went even further, for he didn't realy ban her until after the fracas generated by the discussion of his shenanigans on UC-IMC.

They can't "ignore" me and talk about me at the same time. It's not possible. To claim so insults your intelligence.


>the year nessie spent running interference for Wehrmacht Wendy Campbell.

It was the same year SF-IMC simultaneously allowed gehrig to post his equally racist spew. I tried to stop it, but every time I brought it up, my proposal was blocked by our resident Zionist mole. One benefit to the SF-IMC/Indybay split was that he wound up on the other side. Ergo, I immediately banned both Wendy and gehrig on the same day, and for the same reason, i.e., a racist is a racist is a racist. No racists are welcome at SF-IMC, not anti-Semites, not pro-Semites, not any.

Both Wendy and Joseph Anderson have been spamming their racist crap through the entire IMC network this week...They've been busy little anti-Semites, and with this latest assault have clearly crossed the line from polemics into mass-marketing.

If you aren't busy, their trite little canards deserve comment.... We are gearing up for another hate-fest in Berkeley, tomorrow, so us locals have our hands full.
I look forward to screaming at both Wendy and Joseph up close and personal. I'm sure Yid has special plans, too.

They can ignore nessie as a self-appointed purveyor of anti-racism. It's possible. To claim otherwise insults your intelligence.


>the year nessie spent running interference for Wehrmacht Wendy Campbell.

It was the same year SF-IMC simultaneously allowed gehrig to post his anti-racist speach. nessie never tried to Wendy's racist spew. One benefit to the SF-IMC/Indybay split was that virtually all users wound up on the other side. Ergo, nessie banned gehrig and only banned Wendy several days afterward, and for different reasons, i.e., Wendy is a racist and nessie doesn't like gehrig's anti-racist positions. Some anti-Jewish racists still welcome at SF-IMC.

I've been hoping to find JA alone on the streets ever since he threatened me with his "gatt". So he's planning to be at the Tues event, eh?

nessie is a Jew hating anti-Zionist bastard, who allowed Wendy to post at SF for a year or more, and gehrig is an anti-racist and his anti-hate screeds were posted at known Zionist sites. nessie knew about Wendys vile anti-Semitism, and did nothing for more than a year. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

narcissie: "gehrig to post his equally racist spew"

Again and again, nessie, you antisemitic fuckwad, I have challenged you to point to anything I have ever said that was more "racist" than this: I believe the Palestinians have the right to an independent, sovereign state side by side with Israel.

You have never been able to. Why? Because I'm not a racist, that's why. It's only in that cuisinarted thought-puree you call your "brain" that it seems otherwise.

But of _course_ you have to try to say that I'm a "racist," nessie, because otherwise you'd have to be forced to acknowledge how your own antisemitism let you give Wehrmacht Wendy the run of the place, with her knowing that you'd turn a blind eye. Which you did.

"nessie is a Jew hating anti-Zionist bastard, who allowed Wendy to post at SF for a year or more, and gehrig is an anti-racist and his anti-hate screeds were posted at known Zionist sites. nessie knew about Wendys vile anti-Semitism, and did nothing for more than a year. Nada. Zip. Zilch."

Yes, that's it exactly.

@%<

That's racist enough. Israel's very existence is a racist atrocity. Anyone who supports the existence of this racist state, or any racist state, is a racist by definition.

nessie is very racist. His very existence is a racist atrocity. Anyone who supports the existence of this racist person, or any other racist racist, is a racist by definition.

nessie: "Israel's very existence is a racist atrocity."

That's just how fucked up you are, nessie, ya Jew-hating loon. That's how much of a drooling fool of an extremist Jew-hating nutcase you are -- so deeply ingrained is your antisemitism that there is literally nothing Israel could do to make you happy except to cease to exist. How dare these Jew untermenschen dare to be a nation?

Do us all a favor, nessie, you Jew-hating bastard. Hold your breath until Israel does what you command.

Do it today. Start now.

@%<

They say that about all anti-Zionist, even those that are Jews.

Only about the rabid anti-Zionists like you. Whether they're Jewish or not matters zilch. You're all Jew hating bastards. And this is not a rebuttal.

Death to 'nessie'.

"They say that about all anti-Zionist, even those that are Jews."

No, nessie, ya Jew-hating monstrosity, I don't. It's entirely possible to be anti-Zionist without being an obvious and overt Jew-hater. But that's a fate you'll never know, as you goosestep through life.

@%<

And don't forget this guy:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/163082_comment.php#163478

nessie: Never once have I said that I hated "Jews,"

Never once did Nixon say "I am a crook."

@%<

Nixon behaved like a crook.

and Nessie speaks like a Nazi. It all fits.

I speak against Nazis.

For example:

http://www.transbay.net/~nessie/Pages/company.html

http://www.transbay.net/~nessie/Pages/atabrine.html

In fact, the very reason I speak against Zionists is their uncanny resemblance to Nazis. They're peas in a pod, these two, racists every one. A racist is a racist is a racist. The name of the ethnic group is irrelevant.

"In fact, the very reason I speak against Zionists is their uncanny resemblance to Nazis. They're peas in a pod, these two, racists every one. A racist is a racist is a racist. The name of the ethnic group is irrelevant. "

This is the very racist drivel that betrays you as a crypto-Nazi at heart.

Death to 'nessie'.

To Nessie;

all national liberation groups seeking to assert their right to national self determination are to be lauded-Except Jews.

All peoples of the world have the same rights, and that includes the right to resist an oppressive occupier-Except Jews.

All theocracies are bad, unless they are theocracies like Hamas that kills Jews-then its alright.

In fact, the very reason I speak against these "anti-Zionists" hypocrites, is that when they get the least bit emotional then their true inner uncanny resemblance to Nazis becomes manifest. They're peas in a pod, these two, racists every one. A racist is a racist is a racist. And thats pretty much everyones conclusion about Nessie.

nessie: "Nixon behaved like a crook."

And you behave like an antisemite.

That's why Nixon's credibility and yours are equally pegged at the not-worth-rat-shit level.

@%<

They *really* don't want us to focus on the Lobby, doe they?

Nessie *really* doesn't want to take responsibility for his own personality, does he? Especially his own antisemitism. It must be terribly frustrating for him to have his antisemitism become the topic of conversation on a board upon which he doesn't exercise his Il Duce censorship lock, but he tries to compensate for it with his whine, "mo-o-o-ommy, they're TALKING ABOUT ME again."

We're simply holding up the mirror so that you can see yourself, nessie. Look hard, you Jew-hating charlatan, and you'll be as repelled by what you see as we are when we look at you.

@%<

I am looking to fellate a big burly neo-nazi. Email me at PowerBottom4U@NAMBLA.com

The spammer ('toady'?) has grown even more desperate in the interim that it feels it must forge my nym even to its pathetic childish spam.