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Thread: What If the Israeli Lobby was the Islamic Lobby?

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    What If the Israeli Lobby was the Islamic Lobby?

    The People's Voice, TN
    Aug 31 2008

    What If the Israeli Lobby was the Islamic Lobby?
    B. R. Gowani

    What if:

    Abu Faisal was White House press secretary (instead of Ari Fleischer)

    Altaf Adham was deputy national security advisor (instead of Elliott

    Sofian Bishr was Supreme Court Justice instead of Stephen Breyer

    Tarf Kaukab was Nightline host (instead of Ted Koppel)

    Dawud Bushr was New York Times columnist (instead of David Brooks)

    Rukan Badar Ghiyath was Supreme Court Justice (instead of Ruth Bader

    Thamer Furud was New York Times columnist (instead of Thomas Friedman)

    Laith Keid was host of Larry King show (instead of Larry King)

    Yousuf `Yo' Luqman was US Senator from Connecticut (instead of Joseph
    `Joe' Lieberman)

    Zuhaa Midlaj was New York Times reporter (instead of Judith Miller)

    Dawud Fouad was Bush's speechwriter (instead of David Frum)

    Lu'ay Labib was Cheney's Chief of Staff (instead of Lewis Libby)

    Polat Walif-Rizk was Rumsfeld's Deputy Secretary of Defense (instead
    of Paul Wolfowitz)

    Mahdi Parvez was editor of The New Republic magazine (instead of
    Martin Peretz)

    Basil Kishwar was the editor of The Weekly Standard instead of (Bill

    Ali Wisam was the famous Nobel Peace laureate (instead of Elie Wiesel)

    Jaafer Ghawth-Badr was a staff writer at New Yorker (instead of
    Jeffrey Goldberg)

    Rifat Pir was the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory
    Committee (instead of Richard Perle)

    Yaman Sikandar was the famous filmmaker (instead of Steven Spielberg)

    Ibrahim Faqih-Ma'n was the head of the Anti-Defamation League (instead
    of Abraham Foxman)

    Alam Daoud-Vida was the famous lawyer (instead of Alan Dershowitz)

    Imagine the above Muslims in key positions. There are 2 per cent Jews
    in the US and the same percentage of Muslims. Now consider for a
    moment that both communities have exchanged places as it happens on
    that TV show `Wife Swap.' Here not only wives but the entire community
    exchanges places. Or a still better example would be the 1970 film
    `Watermelon Man' in which a white man wakes up in the morning and
    discovers he has turned into a black person. Blackness becomes his

    However, first let us check out the power Jews have in the United
    States in order to imagine how things would have been different if the
    Muslims had exactly the same power.

    This article, however, realizes that Jews are not a monolithic
    group. For instance: 75 per cent of Americans supported the war in
    2003 in US, whereas the Jewish support was at 50 per cent.

    Like many other Jews, the billionaire George Soros favors a dialogue
    between the Hamas (the elected government in the Palestinian
    territories) and the Israelis:

    `... Israel, with the strong backing of the United States, refused to
    recognize the democratically elected Hamas government and withheld
    payment of the millions in taxes collected by the Israelis on its
    behalf. This caused great economic hardship and undermined the ability
    of the government to function. But it did not reduce popular support
    for Hamas among Palestinians, and it reinforced the position of
    Islamic and other extremists who oppose negotiations with Israel....'

    There have always been Jewish people and institutions who have tried
    to work for some peaceful solution of the Palestinian/Israeli problem
    but the Jewish Lobby and pro Israel individuals have always succeeded
    in silencing or marginalizing those voices.

    Bill and Kathleen Christison explain how the word `anti-Semite' is

    `Anyone who has the temerity to suggest any Israeli instigation of, or
    even involvement in, Bush administration war planning is inevitably
    word `domination' anywhere in the vicinity of the word `Israel,' as in
    `U.S.-Israeli domination of the Middle East' or `the U.S. drive to
    assure global domination and guarantee security for Israel,' and some
    leftist who otherwise opposes going to war against Iraq will trot out
    czarist forgery that asserted a Jewish plan for world domination.'

    A Few Clarifications

    Before proceeding any further, it is important to remember the
    historic injustices suffered by the Jewish people. The past has not
    been especially nice to the Jews; rather it has been extremely
    cruel'mainly, in the form of European Christianity. The atrocious
    climax reached between 1939 and 1945 under Nazi Germany. Between five
    to six million Jews were murdered. But since then, although there have
    been some instances of targeting Jewish people and desecrating their
    cemeteries in Europe and elsewhere, these have not in any way affected
    their survival and growth as a distinct religious and cultural
    entity. And economically they are one of the few most powerful groups
    in the world.

    In addition: There are many interest groups or lobbies in the United
    States who are doing immense harm to people within and without, and
    the dominant corporate press is one of those groups. People who want
    to register their protest or recommend changes are at the mercy of the
    media managers. So, the Jewish Lobby is not the only one exerting
    influence. Nevertheless, the Lobby's power is enormous and it has
    wielded it in such a devastating way that the whole of Middle East has
    been burning for quite a long time now ' and in turn it affects the
    entire world.

    There is, of course, a convergence of the US interest to control the
    oil; and, the Israeli interest to be the sole regional power. If one
    thinks from that perspective, then without doubt the US would have
    been in a better shape if it would have avoided the 2003 complete
    destruction of the almost-destroyed Iraq of 1991 and if it had left
    Saddam Hussein pitted against Iran. Not only would this have saved the
    US billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives but would
    have preserved its hegemony a little longer.

    Anti-Arab, anti-Palestine, anti-Iran, anti-Muslim?

    When a corporation exploits its workers it is called an
    exploiter. When a member of the majority discriminates against a
    member of the minority then she/he is called a racist. When a male
    discriminates against a woman he is called a sexist. When one person
    discriminates another on the basis of religion then that person is
    called a communalist. When anyone hates or kills a Jew (simply because
    he is a Jew), that person is called an anti-Semite. When a Muslim
    kills someone in the name of Islam, he is called a Muslim

    What would you call those influential Jews, individuals and those
    belonging to the Lobby, in the US who played an important role in the
    war to destroy an Arab country of Iraq without any reason or are now
    pushing for a war against Iran?

    They are beardless, suited, booted. They are not overtly religious
    like Taliban and so we can't call them Jewsratics or Jews who are
    Israel Fanatics. However, their religion is Israel and so the
    appropriate word (for their world devastating pro Israel stand) should
    be `Israel Fanatics' or `Isratics.' These Isratics are on a revenge
    path for past injustices.

    The victims are now the victimizers. Their victims are not the white
    Europeans but the Palestinians and other Arabs.

    And the Isratics are equipped with a WMD or word of mass destruction,
    and so the moment anyone points out their control over the US
    Congress, government, news media, etc. she/he will be labeled an


    Auschwitz, located in Poland, (then under German control) was the
    largest of the many concentration camps where the Jews were
    transported and were murdered using all sorts of inhuman
    methods. Other communities suffered too.

    For the organized Jewry, the `Holocaust' has become a profitable
    enterprise, as Norman Finkelstein's insightful study, `The Holocaust
    Industry,' makes clear. Just one example: The Swiss banks' offer of
    $600 million was rejected by the Jewish leaders and so in August 1998,
    they agreed to pay $1.25 billion. A press release by Swiss banks
    explained `the aim of the additional payment' `is to avert the threat
    of [US] sanctions as well as long and costly court proceedings.' Back
    in March, Edgar Bronfman, president of World Jewish Congress had
    warned the Swiss banks: `If the Swiss are going to keep digging their
    heels in, then I'll have to ask all US shareholders to suspend their
    dealings with the Swiss [emphasis mine].' Finkelstein reminds us that
    the United States is equally guilty of the three categories (Swiss
    denial of asylum to refugees, claimants to inactive Swiss bank
    accounts, and victims of slave labor which proved advantageous to the
    Swiss) for which the Swiss had to pay; whereas, the US has not even
    been threatened, let alone charged.

    `Many' lawyers were charging $600 an hour for filing claims, and one
    lawyer wanted $2,400 for reading Tom Bower's book `Nazi Gold.'

    Many other European governments, including Germany, have also paid
    huge sums of money to organized Jewry.

    The US itself has never paid any money to the Native Indians, the
    blacks, and many others. One may wonder as to why the US government
    threatens other governments or their institutions to pay reparations
    to the Jews!

    (In 1986, the World Court ordered the US to pay $17 billion to
    Nicaragua for multiple crimes. The US ignored the verdict.)

    Most interesting to note: Finkelstein says, `The Holocaust's mystery,
    Wiesel avows, is `noncommunicable;' `we cannot even talk about it.'
    Thus, for his standard fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine),
    Wiesel lectures that the `secret of Auschwitz's `truth lies in

    Daniel McGowan provides a good portrait of this peace laureate.

    `He is a multi-millionaire, but carefully cultivates the image of a
    perpetually disheveled professor. Although he has won the Nobel Peace
    Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Guardian of Zion Medal,
    and the Oprah Book Award, many people in Israel resent the way he has
    used the Holocaust to make his living. Some Israelis refer to him as a
    `sho'an.' The word `sho'a' is Hebrew for Holocaust; with the suffix it
    indicates a professional specializing in the subject. So it is both
    funny and derogatory, not unlike Norman Finkelstein referring to
    Wiesel as the `resident clown' of the Holocaust circus.'

    Wiesel was awarded a Noble Peace Prize in 1986. In 1983, according to
    the Norwegian Nobel Committee's secretary, his name was recommended by
    half of the US Congress.

    Noam Chomsky says that in the US, Wiesel is respected as a `secular
    saint' and is considered a `critic of fascism.'

    However, the saint keeps his mouth shut where Israel's crimes are

    `I support Israel, period. I identify with Israel, period. I never
    attack; never criticize Israel when I am not in Israel.'

    This so called harbinger of peace was in the White House on February
    27, 2003 to see the National Security Advisor Condoleezza
    Rice. President George Bush was also there. Wiesel echoed the same old
    nonsense of comparing Germany of the late 1930s with 2003's Iraq. In
    simple words he wanted Bush to start a war. He said: `It's a moral
    issue. In the name of morality how can we not intervene.' `I'm against
    silence.' So he wanted Bush to scream out loud with weapons.

    Further, there are people like the late Nahum Goldmann, President of
    the World Jewish Congress, who have criticized those who exploited the
    Jewish tragedy:

    `We will have to understand that Jewish suffering during the Holocaust
    no longer will serve as a protection, and we certainly must refrain
    from using the argument of the Holocaust to justify whatever we may
    do. To use the Holocaust as an excuse for the bombing of Lebanon, for
    instance, as Menachem Begin does, is a kind of `Hillul Hashem'
    [sacrilege], a banalization of the sacred tragedy of the Shoah
    [Holocaust], which must not be misused to justify politically doubtful
    and morally indefensible policies.'

    The letter H in the word `Holocaust' is in capital letter because many
    influential Jewish leaders firmly believe that theirs is the unique
    tragedy. In other words, they have a copyright over the word
    `Holocaust' and thus the millions of Native Indians, African slaves,
    Armenians (victims of Turks), the Congolese (victims of Belgium), the
    Bengalis of East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, (victims of West
    Pakistan, now Pakistan), Roma and Sinti people or gypsies (victims of
    Nazi Germany), and others can't claim their tragedies as holocaust.

    Robert Fisk tells us that the word holocaust has been in currency
    since the 18th century. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
    as a matter fact, used it for the Armenians:

    `In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the
    infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor.'
    The `war criminals,' that is the Turks, massacred `uncounted thousands
    of helpless Armenians - men, women and children together; whole
    districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust - these were
    beyond human redress.'

    Money Talks, Politicians Walk

    It is the power of the influential Isratics. And they are everywhere
    in the US. The third richest man in the US (and the richest Jew in the
    world) and the owner of two of Las Vegas's huge casino resorts, the
    Palazzo and the Venetian, Sheldon Adelson, opposes the two-state
    (Israel/Palestine) solution. In October 2007, during Republican
    donors' visit to the White House, he warned President George Bush that
    the policy which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is pursuing in
    the Middle East would ruin him.

    His both arms around Adelson and his wife's shoulders, Bush replied:
    `You tell your Prime Minister [Israel's Ehud Olmert] that I need to
    know what's right for your people'because at the end of the day it's
    going to be my policy, not Condi's. But I can't be more Catholic than
    the Pope.'

    AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)

    The Jewish Lobby is made up of several Jewish groups. The Israel Lobby
    includes some pro Israel Evangelical Christians and Christian
    Zionists. AIPAC is one of the most important of the Jewish groups.

    Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in 2005 that AIPAC's `leaders can be
    immoderately frank about the group's influence.' Years back, while
    dining with AIPAC's Steve Rosen, Goldberg asked if the 1992 incident
    involving the then AIPAC President David Steiner had hurt the AIPAC's
    influence. `A half smile appeared on his face, and he pushed a napkin
    across the table. `You see this napkin?' he said. `In twenty-four
    hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this

    The above conversation is not an isolated incident.

    On October 22, 1992, New York businessman Haim (Harry) Katz [HK]
    recorded his conversation with AIPAC President David Steiner [DS]
    without his knowledge. Later, when the conversation became public,
    Steiner resigned. Excerpts of that conversation:

    DS: Besides the $10 billion in loan guarantees which a fabulous thing,
    $3 billion was in foreign, in military aid, and I got almost a billion
    dollars in other goodies that people don't even know about.

    DS: ... I said look Jim [Baker, Papa Bush's Secretary of State], `You
    don't want a fight before the election. It's going to hurt Bush....

    HK: ... But you met with Baker. . .

    DS: Personally.

    HK: Personally. Because you know, he's the one who cursed, who cursed
    the Jews.

    (When the Jewish influence in the US was mentioned at a government
    meeting on Middle East, Baker supposedly said, `Fuck the Jews. They
    don't vote for us [Republicans] anyway.')

    DS: Of course, do you think I'm ever going to forgive him for that?


    DS: Do you think I could ever forgive Bush for what he did September
    12th [1991] a year ago? What he said about the Jews for lobbying in

    (Bush Sr. had said: I was `up against some powerful political forces
    . . . I heard today there was something like 1,000 lobbyists on the
    Hill working on the other side of the question. We've got one lonely
    little guy down here doing it.')


    HK: ... I thought [presidential candidate Rose] Perot did marvelous in
    the debates.

    DS: He doesn't know how to govern. He's not going to make it. And
    there was an incident where his daughter was going out with a Jewish
    professor at school and he said, `I wouldn't have my daughter marry a


    DS: ... you ought to think about coming to some of these things. I'll
    have a dinner this fall. I'll have 18-20 senators there. I run
    programs in Washington. We just had a, I had at Ted Kennedy's house
    last month kosher dinner. I brought foremost caterers down. I had 60
    people on the couch for dinner. Last year, I did it in Al Gore's


    DS: I personally am not allowed, as president of AIPAC, to get
    involved in the presidential campaign, because I have to deal with
    whoever wins. ...

    HK: ... what will he [Bill Clinton] do for Israel, better than Bush...

    DS: ... Gore is very committed to us. (Gore once said: `I have a 100
    percent voting record for Israel, even though there wasn't one
    synagogue in my congressional district.' And this person had lectured
    Jesse Jackson for meeting Yasser Arafat.)


    DS: I've known Bill for seven, eight years ... One of my friends is
    Hillary Clinton's scheduler, one of my officer's daughters works
    there. We gave two employees from AIPAC leave of absences to work on
    the campaign. I mean, we have a dozen people in that campaign, in the


    DS: Let me tell you the problem with the $10 billion in loan
    guarantees, right? We only have the first year. We have authorization
    from Congress, but it's at the discretion of the president every year
    thereafter, so if Bush is there, he could say, you know, use it as a
    club, you know. `If you don't give up Syria, I won't give you the
    money. If you don't give up the Golan Heights.'


    DS: ... A girl who worked for me at AIPAC stood up for them [Clintons]
    at their wedding. Hillary lived with her.... We have never had that
    with Bush...

    DS: ... He's got something in his heart for the Jews, he has Jewish
    friends. Bush has no Jewish friends.


    DS: Reagan had something . . . He knew Jews from the film industry; he
    was one of the best guys for us. He had an emotional thing for the
    Jews. Bush doesn't have it.... Bush is, there's a man with no
    principles. Absolutely no principles.


    HK: ... I wish we had a Jewish candidate for president.

    DS: I don't think the country's ready. ...

    HK: ... I think Joe Lieberman would have, uh, would have, if he wasn't
    Jewish.... (Lieberman was Albert Gore's running mate in the 2000
    presidential elections.)

    DS: I'd like to see him on the Supreme Court.

    HK: If Clinton is elected, has he told you who he's going to put on
    the Supreme Court?

    DS: We're talking now.... We're more interested right now, in the
    secretary of state and the secretary of National Security
    Agency. That's more important to us.

    HK: If Clinton is elected, who do you think will be secretary of
    state? ...

    DS: I've got a list.... I'm not allowed to talk about it.

    John Mersheimer and Steven Walt point out the use of pro-Israel
    congressional staffers as one more source for the Lobby. They quote
    former AIPAC chief Morris Amitay:

    `There are a lot of guys at the working level up here' ` on Capitol
    Hill ` `who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at
    certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys
    senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.'

    A former AIPAC staff member Douglas Bloomfield sheds light on how the
    congresspersons conduct their research:

    `It is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to
    AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of
    Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or
    administration experts.'

    `[AIPAC is] often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation,

    A senior congressional staffer, writing under the pen name George
    Sunderland, here on the CounterPunch site, explains how the
    politicians attending the annual AIPAC meetings act:

    `Command performances before AIPAC have become standard features in
    the life of a Washington elected official, like filing FEC reports and
    hitting on interns. The stylized panegyrics delivered at the annual
    AIPAC meeting have all the probative value of the Dniepropetrovsk
    Soviet's birthday greeting to [the Soviet leader, Joseph] Stalin,
    because the actual content is unimportant; what is crucial is that the
    politician in question be seen to be genuflecting before the AIPAC
    board. In fact, to make things easier, the speeches are sometimes
    written by an AIPAC employee, with cosmetic changes inserted by a
    member of the Senator's or Congressman's own staff.'

    Talking to the New York Sun in January 2003, Howard Kohr said,

    `Quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq was one
    of AIPAC's successes over the past year.'

    Occasionally AIPAC is not successful. In 1981, it vehemently opposed
    the US sale of AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) to Saudi
    Arabia but failed to block the sale. Former President Gerald Ford was
    infuriated at the AIPAC antics and called a Republican senator and

    `Are we going to let the fucking Jews run American foreign policy?'

    Reagan announced the AWACS sale on national television with these

    `It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign

    But Edward Tivnan sees this sale as not much of a victory:

    `... AIPAC had taken on the President of the United States, and
    almost, as Ronald Reagan himself had claimed, embarrassed him in front
    of the whole world. (What kind of President couldn't sale five
    airplanes to a small Arab country, particularly one sitting on
    billions of dollars of oil crucial to American prosperity?) ... '

    Abraham Foxman

    In March 2003, Collin Powell had said: `It is not driven by any small
    cabal that is buried away somewhere, that is telling President Bush or
    me or Vice President Cheney or [National Security Adviser Condoleezza]
    Rice or other members of the administration what our policies should

    But the reality is exactly opposite.

    Foxman, National Director of Anti-Defamation League, is a very
    important figure; his power can be gauged by the meeting he had with
    Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, i.e., foreign minister,

    ``In his [Powell's] own State Department there was a keen awareness of
    the strength of the Jewish lobbyists. Secretaries of State did not
    usually meet with lobbyists, but both Jewish officials and Jews that
    did not officially represent specific groups from Abe Foxman of the
    Anti-Defamation League to Ronald Lauder, could meet with Powell on
    short notice.... At the State Department, Foxman had an aura of
    omnipotence. He was held responsible for the appointment of [Martin
    S.] Indyk as Undersecretary of State under Clinton, and was thought to
    have played a role in the appointments of Secretaries of State
    [Warren] Christopher and [Madeline] Albright. Powell related to Foxman
    almost as if he were someone to whom he must capitulate. Once Foxman
    told one of his deputies that Powell was the weak link. When the
    Secretary of State heard this he began to worry. He knew that in
    Washington a confrontation with the Jewish lobby would make his life
    difficult. Once he arranged a meeting with Foxman, but the busy Foxman
    postponed the meeting three times. When they eventually met, the head
    of the Anti-Defamation League apologized to the Secretary of State
    [for the postponements]. `You call, we come,' replied Powell,
    paraphrasing a well known advertisement for a freight company. That
    statement had much more meaning than just a humorous polite reply.''
    (from Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, Boomerang...).

    Nevertheless, one has to accept the fact that even though Powell had
    been a part of governments during the 1991 Iraq War and the 2003 Iraq
    War, he was not in favor of war. One can argue that in that case he
    should have quit his position and thus boosting the morale of the
    anti-war movement.

    Once on a visit to Jerusalem, he stood his ground, when he refused to
    comply with Sharon's order.

    Sharon: I don't want you to go to Damascus [Syria]. I don't think it
    serves the interests of peace, and we don't like it here in Israel
    when you go to Damascus.

    Powell: Ariel, thank you very much but I am going anyway. I am
    Secretary of State of the United States of America and not the foreign
    minister of Israel.

    Powell was fed up with the neo-cons pushing for war and called them
    the `fucking crazies.'

    It is obvious that it is the Israel Lobby's power that enabled Sharon
    to order Powell; otherwise, in reality, he was just a premier of a
    tiny country ' although in military means, the fourth most powerful
    country in the world.

    To be continued Monday

    &#xC2;&#xA4; &#xC2;&#xA4; &#xC2;&#xA4; &#xC2;&#xA4; &#xC2;&#xA4;

    B. R. Gowani can be reached at [email protected] Notes and
    references available from the author on request.

    &#xC2;&#xA9; 2008 B. R. Gowani

    URL: n/blogs/voices.php/2008/08/31/what_if_the_israeli_ lobby_was_the_islami

    http://www.thepeoplesvoice. org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/08/31/p28231

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

  2. #2
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    Sep 2005

    What If the Israeli Lobby was the Islamic Lobby


    thought i was gonna read something blockbuster

    as drj would say... try again, please

  3. #3
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    Sep 2005

    You expressed it superbly.

    Seriously a good deal of helpful data!|
    Nicely put. Regards! -

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