Once again James Petras takes us on a

182 Pages·2008·1.1 MB·English

by  James Petras

"Once again James Petras takes us on a "An outstanding analysis of the political
fearless truth trip—with lucid style, tough machinery responsible for so much suffering
factual blows, commanding research, and in the Middle East: the social science
compelling analysis. This is an eye-opening, equivalent of John Adam's opera
must-read book for every advocate of "Klinghoffer". Brilliant and substantive".
democracy." —John Saxe-Fernandez
—Michael Parenti A leading world authority on US
author of The Culture Struggle and foreign policy and the oil industry
Superpatriotism National Autonomous University of Mexico
"Jim Petras has been one of the few "Always meticulously researched and full of
courageous individuals, in or outside of insight, in the final analysis Petras' opinions
academia, to take a critical view of the pro- are almost always vindicated by events. I
Israel lobby and its influence over US Middle believe that this will be the case here." —Cy
East policy and to challenge the "conven- Gonick Canadian Dimension magazine
tional wisdom" on the part of the Left that
Israel acts as a "cop on the beat" and is
simply serving America's imperial interests."
—Jeff Blankfort A leading Jewish
authority in the US on the pro-Israel
Lobby
"Jim Petras is one of the best informed
political scientists of his generation, not
given to avoiding difficult issues. Here he
addresses one such, which he tackles in a
characteristically challenging way."
Tom Brass, Editor The
Journal of Peasant Studies
"A breath of fresh air. This critique has to be JAMES PETRAS is a Bartle Professor
internalised if the Left wills to regain its (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton
place in society." University, New York. He is the author of 62
Israel Shamir, Jaffa books published in 29 languages, and over
Leading Russian-Israeli intellectual 560 articles in professional journals,
writer, translator and journalist including the American Sociological Review,
"A provocative analysis of a serious problem British Journal of Sociology, Social
that should be discussed and debated Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies.
widely... this book succeeds in exposing in He has published over 2000 articles in
great detail the enormous power and nonprofessional journals such as the New
influence of Israel and the Jewish Lobby in York Times, the Guardian, the Nation,
shaping U.S. policy toward the Middle East." Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy,
Berch Berberoglu, Ph.D. New Left Review, Temps Moderne, Le
University of Nevada, Reno Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary
Author of Turmol in the Middle East is widely carried on the internet. He is
winner of a Life Time Career Award of the
American Sociology Association, and the
Robert Kenny Award for Best Book, 2002.
TO RACHEL CORRIE
US citizen and humanitarian
internationalist volunteer in Palestine
murdered by the Israeli military
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My wife, Robin Eastman-Abaya, for her substantial contributions,
editing, comments and criticism; Jeff Blankfort for sharing his encyclopedic
knowledge of the pro-Israel lobbies; Diana G. Collier for her outstanding and
highly professional and supportive editing; and all the alternative websites
that provided information not available in the mass media.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION/11
PART I: ZIONIST POWER IN AMERICA
Chapter 1.
WHO FABRICATED THE IRAQ WAR THREAT? /19
The Jewish Lobby, Not Big Oil /21
Chapter 2.
THE US-IRAQ-ISRAEL-ZIONIST CONNECTION 127
Who Benefited from the Iraq War? / 27
Unanswered Questions: September 11 and the Israelis / 35
Theoretical Issues/36
Who Finances the State of Israel? / 39
Support for Israel from the US Government/41
Israel Bonds / 43 Accomplices to Genocide / 45
The Zionist Power Configuration in the United States / 46 The ZPC in
Action: The Iraq War / 48 Israel and the Right of Free Speech / 54
Chapter 3.
THE LIBBY AFFAIRE AND THE INTERNAL WAR / 61
The War Within / 63
Chapter 4.
EXPOSING THE EXPOSE: SEYMOUR HERSH
AND THE MISSING ZIONIST-ISRAELI CONNECTION/ 65
The Zionists and Torture in Iraq / 67
A Close Look at Hersh's Method / 67
Conclusion/71
Chapter 5.
THE SPY TRIAL: A POLITICAL BOMBSHELL/73
AIPAC On Trial/76
PART II: ISRAEL AND MIDDLE EAST WARFARE
Chapter 6.
THE HOUSE OF HORRORS:
TORTURE, ASSASSINATIONS AND GENOCIDE / 82
Empire Building/82
Imperial Consolidation / 83
Targeted Assassinations / 84
Destruction of Civilian and Military Infrastructure / 86
Conclusion/90
Chapter 7.
ISRAEL'S FINAL SOLUTION: THE ASSAULT ON GAZA/ 93
Introduction/94
From the Present to the Past / 95 The Final Destruction of Six Myths
about the Jewish State and the Lobby / 96
1. Israel and Democracy / 97
2. Israel and Peace / 97
3. Israel and the Possibility of a Two-State Solution / 99
4. Israel and Terror / 99
5. The Jewish Lobby: The Central Issue /100
6. Israel and Prisoner Exchanges: The Record /102 Mass
Media Propaganda at the Service of Ethnic Cleansing /104
Epilogue/107
Chapter 8.
"MAD DOG" RAVAGES LEBANON /110
Epilogue/117
Chapter 9.
ISRAEL'S WAR WITH IRAN:
THE COMING MIDEAST CONFLAGRATION/122
Introduction/122
Israel's War Preparations /122
Israel's War Deadline /123
US-Israeli Disagreements on an Iran War /124
Fabrication of Iran's Nuclear Threat/129
Conclusion/132
Chapter 10.
THE CARICATURES IN MIDDLE EAST POLITICS /136
Denmark: Center of Mossad Activity /138
Flemming (or Flaming) Rose: Journalist with a Cause /139
Provoking Conflict Between Muslims and the West/139
Sayanim—Defenders of Western Civilization /141
Mossad War Propaganda and the "Cartoon Controversy"/141
Beyond Religious Blasphemy /143
Epilogue/145
PART III: EXPERTS ON TERROR OR TERRORIST EXPERTS?
Chapter 11.
EXPERTS ON TERROR:
LOOKING IN THE MIRROR /148
The Terror Expert Genre /149
Interrogation: Questions for the Terror Experts /151
Bibliography/158
Chapter 12.
SUICIDE BOMBERS:
THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE /159
Introduction/159
Total War: Content and Consequences /160
Total War and the Resistance /161
Degradation: The Logic of Total War/161
The Technique of Degradation: The Larger Meaning /162
Political Consequences of Defiling the Sacred /163
Suicide Bombers: A Response to the Desecraters /164
Conclusion/165
PART IV: DEBATES
Chapter 13.
NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY:
FIFTEEN ERRONEOUS THESES /168
Introduction/168
Chomsky's Fifteen Theses /170
Conclusion/180
Chapter 14.
CONFRONTING ZIONISM AND
RECLAIMING AMERICAN MIDDLE EAST POLICY/182
INTRODUCTION

On January 25, 2006 the Palestinian people voted overwhelmingly in
favor of Hamas in the cleanest election to take place in any Arab Middle Eastern
country. The Israeli government immediately refused to recognize the
democratic outcome. It refused to turn over Palestinian tax revenues, deliberately
blocked all trading outlets to drastically reduce what was already Palestinian
subsistence living, and began an intense and prolonged series of violent assaults on
Palestinian cities and villages, killing and maiming hundreds.
In the two and a half weeks prior to the Palestinian suicide attack of
April 17, 2006 that killed nine Israelis, Israeli forces had already killed 26
Palestinians, including five children, and injured 161 men, women and children. In
fact, according to the internationally respected human rights group, the
Palestinian Center for Human Rights, between April 6-12, 2006 alone, Israelis
killed 19 Palestinians including three children. Ten of these were "extrajudicial
executions," and 94 Palestinians, including 32 children, were wounded. The
Israeli Occupation Forces conducted 27 incursions into Palestinian
communities in the West Bank and 70 Palestinian civilians, including six
children, were arrested. Israeli settlers attacked several farming communities,
stealing livestock and destroying property. During that period overall, the
Israeli military carried out 369 raids into the West Bank.
Similarly, according to UN reports, between March 30-April 12, Israeli
forces launched 2300 artillery and tank shells and 34 missiles into Gaza.
Defense for Children International reports that 4,000 Palestinian children have
been arrested in the past five years (2001 -2006) 400 of whom are
currently still in prison. Then on April 19,
Not a single US or EU leader
2006, after the Palestinian retaliation,
stated a word of criticism of
Israelis seized the mothers and wives of the preceding Israeli state
men on their 'wanted' lists and held terror.
them hostage in detention centers to
force the men to surrender. Mosques were broken into and scores of families
were forced out of their houses while Israeli soldiers ransacked their homes.
None of these violent Israeli killing expeditions were reported in the
electronic or print mass media, by National Public Radio or in any of the
Jewish Lobby propaganda sheets like the Daily Alert. Not a single US or EU
leader stated a word of criticism of the preceding Israeli state terror. Only
when a Palestinian group took credit for the suicide bombing and Hamas
defended the right to reprisal did the entire Washington political elite and
mass media denounce terrorism. The Lobby's propaganda ploy of focusing
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The Power of Israel in the United States / James Petras
exclusively on isolated and sporadic Palestinian attacks and ignoring Israel's
daily systematic executions has become the daily fare offered by the US
political elite and the mass media to the American public. This serves to
legitimize and justify the Lobby's advocacy for starving the Palestinian people
into submission and its proposal that the US Congress give an additional $10
billion dollar aid package to resettle Israelis in the West Bank.
Despite these genocidal policies, the Hamas government observed a
ceasefire, even as it asserted that Palestinians had the internationally
sanctioned right to resist colonial violence. Having ignored Israel's sustained
'storm trooper' assaults on Palestinians, the US propaganda media launched
an all out campaign to overthrow the Hamas government following the
Palestinian suicide bomber attack, while the Lobby linked Iran to the incident in
an effort to provoke a US military attack upon that country.
In response to the triumph of Palestinian democracy and taking their
cues from the Israeli state, the entire pro-Israeli lobby and its Congressional
and Executive branch spokespeople launched a successful propaganda blitz
binding US policy to the genocidal Israeli blockade. The result was
Washington's total adherence to every tenet of Israeli policy toward Hamas.
Aid, including humanitarian aid, was cut. US officials were prohibited from
even meeting with any Hamas officials in any capacity, while US diplomats
pressured every European, Asian, Arab, and Latin American country to join
the total blockade of any humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. While several
Arab states balked at cutting off all aid, as did France and Russia, long-time
US client leaders in Jordan and Egypt, as well as China, refused to meet
representatives of the Hamas government. The US repudiated its own
The US repudiated its ostensible policy of "democratizing" the Middle
own ostensible policy East. President Bush's initial welcome of the
of "democratizing" the democratic elections in Palestine was quickly
Middle East. replaced by an embrace of Israel's policy of
starving the Palestinians into submission. These
shifting policies were largely the result of the power exercised by the Jewish
Lobby— as practically all Israeli commentators fondly refer to it.
A review of the Daily Alert published for the Conference of Presidents of
Major Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
(distributed daily to every member of the US Congress and Executive branch)
between January to May, 2006 provides overwhelming evidence of the Jewish
Lobby's intense efforts to strangle the Palestinian economy and promote a US
military attack and embargo against Iran. The leading and most aggressive
Senatorial proponent of a military attack on Iran is Senator Joseph Lieberman, an
unfailing transmission belt of the Israeli Foreign Office. According to an
interview in the Jerusalem Post (April 18, 2006) Lieberman, also a major
leader and spokesman of the Jewish Lobby, stated, "I don't think anyone is
12
Introduction
thinking of this as a massive ground invasion, as in Iraq, to topple the
government... [he envisioned] an attempt to hit some of the components of
the nuclear program." Lieberman is not a loose cannon but the former Vice
Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party and one of its most influential
spokespersons on Middle East affairs. Lieberman's 'bombs over Teheran'
position is a verbatim repetition of the current Israeli pro-war posture and in
total accordance with the program of AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of
Major Jewish Organizations, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-
Defamation League and the Zionist Organization of America.
This book is about the power of the Jewish Lobby to influence US Middle
Eastern policy. In addition to unconditional US backing of Israel, this includes
launching an aggressive war against Iraq, inciting a military attack on Iran, and
securing US backing for Israeli colonization of Palestine and the massive uprooting of
Palestinians. The power of the Jewish Lobby in shaping US policy has long
been recognized by Israeli leaders and certainly has allowed them to ignore the
occasional Presidential pleas to cease and desist from massacres,
assassinations, home demolitions, collective punishments, and other genocidal
practices perpetrated against the Palestinians. As former President Ariel Sharon
once boasted, regarding his influence over President Bush, "We have the US
under our control". Yet despite their awareness of the massive, sustained, and
unprecedented US funding to Israel, a great many otherwise progressive observers
have been in denial or invented specious arguments for explaining away the link
between the Israeli state/the Jewish Lobby and US Middle East policy. This
book provides a chapter-by-chapter analysis and documentation of the power
exerted by Israel via the Lobby on US Middle East policy.
Over 170 years ago, Alexis DeToqueville, an acute observer of US
politics, expressed his fear of the "tyranny of the majority'- of an unruly majority,
which would override the rights of minorities in pursuit of their narrow interests.1
Today the threat to democracy, at least as it involves US policy toward the
Middle East and questions of war and peace, is not in an unruly majority of
the electorate, but in the majority of fundraisers for the Democratic Party and
the minority financiers of the Republican Party. J.J. Goldberg in his book,
Jewish Power: Inside the Jewish Establishment2 based on data in the early
1990's, noted that 45 percent of the fundraising for the Democratic Party and 25
percent of the funding for the Republicans came from Jewish-funded Political
Action Committees (PACs). A more recent survey by Richard Cohen of the
Washington Post shows higher figures: 60 percent of Democratic financing
comes from Jewish pro-Israel PACs and 35 percent of the Republican
fundraising. Almost all of the Lobby's party fundraising is tied to a single
issue which cuts across the liberal-neocon divisions—unconditional and knee-
jerk support for Israel, its policies, its institutions, its land grabs and its
political-military definition of enemies. No single other lobby including Big
Pharma, Big Oil and Agro-business plays such a dominant financial role in
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