The Zionists on the Defensive - Israel’s Friends overwhelm Capitol Hill

[yankeedoodle]

From Phil Giraldi:
The Zionists on the Defensive
Israel's Friends overwhelm Capitol Hill
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-zionists-on-the-defensive/

Yes folks, there is an international conspiracy and it is all about "protecting" Israel. It operates through front and lobbying groups that uniquely promote the interests of a foreign country, Israel, even when those interests do serious damage to the host country where the lobbyists actually live. In Britain, for example, there are a Conservative Friends of Israel and a Labour Friends of Israel, comprising together 216 members of parliament and party officials. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been silent about Gaza apart from expressing "deep concern" and blaming both sides while Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has also been under pressure to say something, has focused on how four car loads of alleged Palestinian supporters in London may or may not have driven around shouting out "anti-Semitic" comments. Starmer, one recalls, ran on a leadership campaign pledging to root out "anti-Semitism" in the party as a response to previous leader Jeremy Corbyn's apparently ill-advised public recognition that Palestinians are human beings. Also in Britain, contesting details of the standard narrative of the so-called holocaust can result in a large fine and even some jailtime.

In 2017, Al-Jazeera ran an undercover operation directed against various Israeli front groups in Britain and in the US which determined that officers from the respective Israeli Embassies, presumably intelligence linked, were meeting regularly with members of the alleged non-government organizations that had been set up to provide support for the Jewish state. In Britain, the interaction included explicit discussions on how to destroy the careers of politicians who were deemed to be insufficiently pro-Israeli. In the US the objective has been to disrupt the activities of pro-Palestinian groups, most particularly the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The pro-Israeli and anti-Arab initiatives were coordinated with and sometimes initiated by the Israeli Embassy officers, suggesting that they were actually intelligence operations.

That many American Jewish groups are collaborating directly with the Israeli Embassy raises two concerns. First, it is ipso facto a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which should require registration and complete transparency regarding one's sources of income and interactions with the foreign embassy. And second, as many of the groups are in tax exempt status with the IRS as either charitable or educational foundations, that status should be rescinded given their foreign affiliation. Of course, the reality is that the Treasury Department has known all that and more for many years and has never taken any action relating to deceptive behavior by pro-Israel groups.

Elsewhere in Europe, "Holocaust denial" even if it only consists of challenging clearly fabricated "factual" details of the event can also land you in jail in Germany and France while criticizing the state of Israel is construed as anti-Semitism, a hate crime. Jewish groups have, in fact, promoted an official "International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance" (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which includes any criticism of Israel as a defining characteristic. The United States Department of State has accepted that definition and language.

Yes, the United States has an office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and it is always headed by a Jew, as has been also the office in the Justice Department that continues to be dedicated to rooting out 90 year old Nazis. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, most particularly in its Trump version, is so close to Israel that it might reasonably be regarded as part of the Israel Lobby. And the Democrats are not much better, though there has been some dissent from progressives, which has led to the creation of a Zionist pressure group within the party called the Democratic Majority for Israel. It exists to defend Israel against any and all criticism while also protecting the billions of dollars and other benefits that the Jewish state receives from the US Treasury and government annually.

One might speculate that there is a whole federal government infrastructure devoted to Jewish and Israeli issues. How did that develop? Well, of course, money is what has made it happen. American politicians have notoriously always been easily corruptible, all it takes is a little cash. But no one is allowed to point out that obvious truth as linking Jews to money is regarded, by Jews and their captive media of course, as some kind of "anti-Semitic trope."

Now it appears that a ceasefire is more-or-less in place but Israel's ethnic cleansing that preceded its high-tech slaughter of Palestinian civilians who were being deliberately targeted has been perceived by the world, including many Americans, as particularly brutal. Which means the Zionist propaganda plus coercion machine has been working full time. Capitol Hill offices and the White House have no doubt been inundated with calls, emails and visits from constituents all singing the same song that was also being repeated by the President and Congress. It goes like this: "Israel is being attacked by Hamas terrorists and has a right to defend itself!" Sometimes there is a second verse which includes "The only democracy in the Middle East and America's best friend and ally."

Too bad that none of it is true, but the media also did its best to support the narrative by reporting how Hamas was launching "swarms" of rockets against Israel, making it appear as if a beleaguered Israel was valiantly defending itself against terrorist hordes. But the actual numbers told a different tale with only 12 Israelis killed after the violence erupted versus 232 Palestinians, including 65 children. Considerable infrastructure was also deliberately targeted and destroyed in Gaza versus limited damage in Israel while the calculated destruction of the building housing Associated Press (AP) and al-Jazeera should be seen as an attempt to eliminate any independent media observers on the ground in Gaza, even though AP predictably has hardly been critical of the Jewish state.

The Israel Lobby is, to be sure, expert at promoting and marketing its product. It is currently engaged in attacking celebrities and others who expressed any sympathy with the Palestinians while they were being slaughtered by the Israelis as anti-Semites. The larger and more openly combative Lobby groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) have supporters in virtually every congressional district in the United States who can be called upon to get on the phone and start pouring out emails as needed. So every congress critter hears the call and knows what it means. And no one wants to have a hostile Israel Lobby on one's back if there is any thought of being re-elected. In some cases, approaches include suggestions that significant donations to support one's political campaign will either increase or be denied depending on what the legislator chooses to do or say.

And then there are the personal visits on Capitol Hill from the Israel lobbyists. The door is always open for the man or woman from AIPAC. Sometimes the Congressman is actually urged to sign a statement on his or her view of the conflict, a document carefully prepared in advance by The Lobby, of course. And the work by the Israel Firsters is almost always effective. Witness for example what took place concerning the assault on Gaza, where Congress and the White House tried to outdo each other in declaring how much they love Israel even though they don't necessarily have to say or do anything as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did what he wanted anyway. Biden reportedly spoke with Netanyahu six times urging teethlessly "de-escalation" of the fighting but the Israeli each time insisted that he would continue the operation "mowing the grass" in Gaza until "its aim is met."

The Israeli grip on the US government is and should be astonishing and one has to ask why the American people put up with it. They likely endure because they are unaware of the extent of it. If anyone still doubts the degree to which Jewish power is a major force in the United States it is only necessary as a test case to look at the Congressional and White House comments on Gaza, which served absolutely no American interest and which will only make the world even more anti-US due to the Administration's enablement of the slaughter of the Palestinians. Washington's UN Ambassador vetoed three Security Council resolutions calling for a cease fire, as is often the case, the only country to vote "no."

Several aspects of the US role in the fighting particularly demonstrate the ability of Israel and its domestic lobby to get what they want from Washington even when it seems counterintuitive for the Administration and Congress to be falling in line. To be sure, 138 Congressmen and 29 Senators eventually signed onto letters urging a cease fire, but the texts tended to be generic, lacking any context, which means the recommendations were basically useless and not intended to go anywhere.

A highly partisan approach, in line with many of the comments by other government spokesmen, was reflected in a letter from Kevin McCarthy, the "leading Republican" (sic) in Congress, who released a statement confirming his allegiance to Israel. Part of it read:

"The ongoing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians show why America must act immediately to support Israel, condemn Hamas, and sanction those who fund terrorism. Instead of pressuring Israel to compromise with this terrorist group, Democrats should join Republicans in voting to cut off international funding for terrorists.

"That is why today, Rep. Brian Mast, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served alongside the Israel Defense Force (IDF), will push for a vote on the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2021.

"This bipartisan bill, which passed the House last Congress, would sanction foreign governments and individuals who fund Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, such as Iran." 

For starters, how exactly is it that a US Army combat veteran served alongside the Israeli Army? And now this great admirer of Israel is in Congress? Once upon a time one would lose US citizenship for serving in a foreign army. Mast must have missed something about swearing an oath to uphold the US Constitution, not Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of thugs and war criminals. And why are McCarthy and Mast including Iran in their indictment? Possibly because Tehran support of the Palestinian cause would be a pretext for another war? And what are McCarthy and Mast doing pledging anything at all to a foreign country which at the time was engaged in genocide?

Bad enough, but what is really appalling is the role of Joe Biden "the peacemaker" in hurriedly pushing through approval to provide the Israelis with $735 million dollars-worth of precision guided missiles, exactly the kind of weapon being used by Israel currently to kill Gazans. One might reasonably ask "What was Joe thinking?" but that raises the second question of "Was he thinking at all, apart from exercising knee jerk loyalty to Israel and its psychotic leader?" He did not have to provide more weapons to the Jewish state, which apparently was not running out of weapons of its own, but he did it anyway.

The United States already pays one fifth of Israel's so-called "defense" budget and this extra contribution, as well as the funds provided annually to pay for Iron Dome defense, is on top of that. If there was any question whether the US was enabling the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians the question was surely answered by the decision made by the president, who knowingly provided US made weapons to be used by Israel to commit war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the US Arms Control Export Act and the existing Arms Supply Agreement between the US and Israel. He also was providing advanced tactical weapons to a country which is in violation of the Leahy Law due to its uninspected nuclear arsenal and is therefore ineligible for US government military assistance of any kind.

To be sure, some in Congress introduced a resolution to stop the weapons "sale" (a euphemism as Israel never pays for anything). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have proposed blocking the presidential authorization based on its one-sidedness and unsuitability when fighting is actually going on, but it was a futile gesture as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will surely let the bill die in committee. It will never reach the House floor for a vote. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a similar resolution in the Senate which will likely suffer the same fate.

Tlaib has argued that "The US cannot continue to give the right-wing Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with US-supplied weapons. To read the statements [from the Biden Administration] you'd hardly know Palestinians existed at all. No child, Palestinian or Israeli, whoever they are, should ever have to worry that death will fall from the sky. How many of my colleagues are willing to say the same, to stand for Palestinian human rights as they do for Israel? How many Palestinians have to die for their lives to matter?"

So it is all same old, same old. Biden, who boasts that American ties to Israel are "unbreakable," has welcomed the cease fire in Gaza but it is at best a pause in what has become generational intercommunal warfare based on Israeli intentions to eliminate the Palestinians. And Biden will even be seen as having provided the weapons to further that process. Americans, who have no compelling interest in being involved at all apart from their domination by a ruthless Israel Lobby on foreign policy issues relating to the Middle East, will pay the piper as they rearm the Israelis and enable the next round of killing. Some believe that the tide of public opinion is turning against Israel due to its brutality, but I have my doubts as the Lobby has been in control for so long and knows exactly which buttons to push to get what it wants. That, the subversion and corruption of American democracy, is the real tragedy.

[yankeedoodle]

A week later, Phil Giraldi gives us this report about Israhell's counterattack.  You guessed it:  it's all about attacks by "anti-semites."

Recantations Are All the Rage
Israel and its friends demonize critics
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/recantations-are-all-the-rage/

Several things are happening simultaneously. Most important, Israel has lost the public opinion war in much of the world through its brutality during the recent attack on Gaza and it continues to lose ground even in the wake of a cease fire due to mass arrests of Palestinians and armed police intrusions in and around the al-Aqsa mosque. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is by its actions making clear that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine will continue at a time that he chooses. This in turn has produced a storm of criticism, including from Jewish groups and individuals, that is condemning the bloodshed and also sometimes explicitly seeking to distance Judaism the religion from Zionism, the political movement.

Some have suggested that we have finally reached a tipping point in which Israel has gone too far, evident in the Irish Government's condemnation of Israeli "de facto annexation" of Palestinian land. Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told the Dial that "The scale, pace and strategic nature of Israel's actions on settlement expansion and the intent behind it have brought us to a point where we need to be honest about what is actually happening on the ground ..."

The Jewish state has even succeeded in alienating many who are normally supporters in countries like the United States, quite possibly leading to an eventual shift in policy in Congress and at the White House. That view might be exaggerated given the power of the Israel Lobby and its ability to make past atrocities go away, but it might obtain some back-handed credibility from the ferocity of the counter-attack being waged by Israel and its friends against the celebrities and politicians who have finally developed backbones and have spoken out in defense of Palestinian rights.

The Jewish state's reaction to criticism is being fueled by repeated assertions that anti-Semitism is surging in the United States and Europe. The media has become relentless on the issue, which is in any even irrelevant even if it were true. Last Saturday, internet news site Yahoo featured links to no less than three articles on increasing attacks on Jews, two coming from NBC and one from BBC.

Despite the recent one sided slaughter in Gaza, American Jewish organizations even had the hubris to declare last Thursday "In light of the surging wave of antisemitic violence, "A Day of Action Against Antisemitism." Frustration of many people with Israeli behavior is indeed increasing, but the assumption that any shouted insult or organized protest directed at Netanyahu and/or his gang of cutthroats at a time when they are mass-killing Arabs represents pure hatred of Jews is quite frankly unsustainable. It is hatred not of religion but of what Israel is doing, supported by Washington and Israel's powerful domestic lobby, and most people understand clearly that distinction.

The underlying narrative being offered is that Jews are always the victims, even when they initiate violence, because, they would argue, they are only acting of necessity and preemptively as self-defense. That argument means that they are never guilty of what many might call war crimes, and they are adept at fabricating stories about their opponents labeling them as both terrorists and cowards willing to use civilians as human shields to protect themselves. This effort to burnish the apartheid regime's record also means in practice that there have to be regular invocations of the tale of increasing anti-Semitism as well as direct attacks on anyone who dares to appropriate or in any way diminish the so-called holocaust.

Numerous critics of the Israeli bombing of Gaza have been attacked by the Israel Lobby and its allies in the media. The idea is to humiliate the critic and put so much pressure on him or her that he or she will actually apologize for what was either said or written. Even better, the Israeli partisans often push far beyond that point to obtain a complete recantation of what appeared in the first place. In the case of actors or entertainers, for example, the weapon used is obvious. If one wants to continue to be gainfully employed in an industry that is dominated by Zionist Jews it is necessary to either keep one's mouth shut or quickly apologize claiming that one was "misinformed" or "misspoke."

Several recent mea culpa's for criticizing Israel have made the news as has also the virtual crucifixion of a congresswoman for her citation of the holocaust. Actor Mark Ruffalo may have believed that he was doing the "right thing" by speaking out on Palestinian suffering. He tweeted "Over 30 children killed. Mothers dead. Hundreds injured. We are on the brink of a full-scale war. Sanctions on South Africa helped free its Black people – it's time for sanctions on Israel to free Palestinians. Join the call" and also in another tweet referred to the killing as "genocide." He came under intense pressure and soon apologized, tweeting "I have reflected & wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing 'genocide'. It's not accurate, it's inflammatory, disrespectful & is being used to justify antisemitism here & abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole."

Ruffalo did not quite crawl on his belly to preserve his career, but the metaphor certainly comes to mind. And what Ruffalo experienced was a walk in the park compared to what was dished out to British pop singer Dua Lipa who was subjected to a full-page New York Times ad paid for by no less than "America's rabbi" Shmuley Boteach's World Values Network. The singer Dua Lipa as well as Palestinian-descended models Gigi Hadid and Bella Hadid were accused of "anti-Semitism" after they expressed public support of the pro-Palestine cause. The Boteach ad claimed that the three women were "ignorant" and spreading "disgusting libel," calling on them to instead "condemn [Hamas] now" arguing that "the three mega-influencers have vilified the Jewish state in a manner that is deeply troubling... Hamas calls for a second Holocaust."

Dua Lipa did not however recant when confronted by the hideous Boteach's rant. She responded in part "This is the price you pay for defending Palestinian human rights against an Israeli government whose actions in Palestine [include both] persecution and discrimination." A number of other celebrity-critics of the Israeli slaughter in Gaza also stood firm, including comedian John Oliver and Susan Sarandon, but there were also more victims of the wrath of Zion. The Associated Press, itself having been on the receiving end of the Israeli bombing of Gaza, fired a reporter Emily Wilder for what were alleged to be pro-Palestinian views while an undergraduate at Stanford several years before. Wilder, who is Jewish, recently also posted a question which was used against her, asking why the US media regularly uses the word Israel but avoids referring to Palestine, legitimizing the statehood of the former at the expense of the latter.

In Fairfax County Virginia there were demands to remove a school board member Abrar Omeish who, during the attack on Gaza, had tweeted "Hurts my heart to celebrate while Israel kills Palestinians & desecrates the Holy Land right now. Apartheid & colonization were wrong yesterday and will be today, here and there." She soon came under pressure and quickly recanted with "War is terrible for everyone. I hear those hurting. I'm here for each of you. People of all faiths deserve Holy Land peace. Ensuring justice & honoring humanity of all remain urgent. I look ahead to robust & empathetic engagement with Jewish leaders. Let's build together." Local resident Jennifer Katz was not satisfied, however, telling the board that the tweet "could be reasonably interpreted as a microaggression" against Jewish students.

But perhaps the most bizarre nonsense to surface from the knee-jerk defense of Israel effort played out, perhaps not surprisingly, on Capitol Hill where Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, to put it mildly, got in trouble. The first-term Republican Representative from Georgia had already attracted widespread criticism from both Democratic and Republican colleagues for her alleged trafficking in conspiracy theories but she unleashed the hounds of hell when she made an observation regarding the government's compelling people working in grocery stores to submit to the COVID vaccines. She said "You know, we can look back in a time and history where people were told to wear a gold star. And they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany."

Congresswoman Greene is not renowned for her brain power and it was the sort of comment that is so stupid that it is best handled by ignoring it, but as it concerned the so-called holocaust that was not the end of it. She has been shredded by the leadership of both parties and also by individual legislators as well as the usual suspects in the media. She had previously been stripped of some of her committee assignments over other misdemeanors, but this time around her "colleagues" have been calling for her censure at a minimum and even possible expulsion from the House of Representatives. The lesson learned is that you trifle with the sanctity of the holocaust at your peril. It belongs to Jews and is a vital component of the uniqueness of Jewish suffering narrative.

Over the next few weeks there will no doubt be a flood of stories and commentary reminding everyone in America about just how much the Israelis were victims of a premeditated Hamas attack and what wonderful people they really are. It will be an attempt to regain the propaganda advantage for the Israel Lobby. And yes, more heads of critics will be rolling in the dust, with recantations by celebrities adding sparkle to the event. But even at the end of that process the true horror that modern day Israel represents will be remembered by many and as the game goes on there will hopefully be many more American voices raised in protest.

[abduLMaria]

Fuck the Jews.

I get so tired of their Whining.