HARPER: A REMINDER OF THE OBSCENE POWER OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY

On November 14, over 40 members of Congress--both Democrats and Republicans--wrote to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, warning him of their concerns about Iran establishing a permanent presence in Syria, and thus completing a Shia Corridor, running from Iran through Iraq and Syria into the Mediterranean coast of Lebanon.  The signers of the letter, we learned, had just returned from a visit to Israel, "our regional ally," and the views "they" expressed were, for all intents and purposes, word-for-word from the mouth of the Israeli government.

To say that the members of Congress who signed on to this Made in Israel tract are brainwashed may be a bit strong.  They were surely intoxicated by the experience of hearing the briefings from the Israeli Defense Forces, the Mossad and the Office of the Prime Minister.

I cannot say with 100 percent certainty, but I presume that these US elected officials were in Israel during a recess "CODEL" (Congressional Delegation), which means they were there are US taxpayers funds, soaking up the Israeli propaganda on your dime.

Some visits by members of Congress and other American influential are directly financed through the Israel Lobby, through organizations like AIPAC, the ADL and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).  ADL brings American law enforcement officers to Israel, while JINSA concentrates on retired US military flag officers.

The letter was such a flagrant piece of Israeli propaganda that it reminded me again of the overreach by the Israeli government and its vast lobby.  

In his latest article for Unz Review, Phil Giraldi reported that a US tax exempt organization called Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces FIDF) just conducted fundraisers in Los Angeles and New York, which generated $70 million in contributions.  The organization had a bank account with $190 million in reserve, going into those events.  How can the Treasury Department grant tax exempt status to an organization that is a lobby for a foreign military institution?  

How did the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith retain its tax exempt status after the 1992 revelations that they were recruiting US law enforcement officers to spy for Israel.

When President Dwight Eisenhower demanded that Britain, France and Israel withdraw from the Suez Canal in 1956, it was only after he threatened to strip away the US tax exempt status of the Zionist Lobby organizations that Israel agreed to withdraw (after Britain and France had already agreed to pull out).  With perhaps one or two exceptions, that was the last time that the Israelis and their lobby were genuinely put in their place by an American President.  That was 61 years ago.

Look where coddling to Israel has gotten us.

Comments

[Clueless Joe]

But remember, it is Evil Russia which is influencing US politics, and Russia Today which is the propaganda arm of a foreign power. You're only a traitor if you speak to Russians, not if you speak to Israelis.

[ann]

I believe The Oslo Accord was signed after GHWB withheld funds from Israel in order to stop the settlements. This would be a small intervention. Other than that, they take our money and do as they wish, and we do as they wish also. As for "where coddling . . Israel has gotten us", Looks a lot like war in the ME. And I am sure our money and the U.S. Military will be there.

[outthere]

How tough was Ike on Israel, really?
In 1958, CIA flew U2 over Israel and took pictures of nuclear weapons plant(s) being built. CIA and Ike buried this information, did nothing about it at all.
Read Hersh, "Samson Option".

[outthere]

Hersh, Samson Option
quote
There was no way that Lundahl and Brugioni could wink at
the imminent construction of a secret nuclear reactor. They
and their colleagues in the U-2 shop believed strongly in Is-
rael's right to exist, but were equally convinced that an Israeli
bomb would destabilize the Middle East. They also knew that
they were dealing with political dynamite, and chose to wait;
speculation would be deadly. "Whenever you get something on
the Israelis and you move it along," said Brugioni, "you'd bet-
ter be careful. Especially if you've got a career."

The pouring of concrete footings for the reactor's circular
dome was all the evidence Lundahl needed. Lundahl rushed
the early raw photographs to the White House; it was late 1958
or early 1959.* Lundahl understood the rules: he carried no
written report — paper was never to be generated in the U-2
briefings. "Ike didn't want any notes — period," recalled Lun-
dahl. . .

Lundahl anticipated a Phase Two or Three request on the
Israeli intelligence. Instead, he recalled — still amazed, more
than thirty years later — there was "no additional requirement.
No request for details." In fact, added Lundahl, over the next
years, "nobody came back to me, ever, on Israel. I was never
asked to do a follow-up on any of the Israeli briefings."

But no one told him not to do so, and so the U-2 continued to
overfly the Negev. Lundahl also relayed the findings on
Dimona to Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission, and a few AEC aides who were among the hand-
ful of officials in the Eisenhower administration cleared for U-2
intelligence.
endquote

https://archive.org/stream/Sampson_Option/Sampson_Option_djvu.txt

[Richardstevenhack]

Only 40 Senators? AIPAC must be losing their grip. They used to claim they could get 60 Senators to pass any bill that AIPAC wrote on the back of a napkin.

And today Bibi claims Israel will "go it alone" to get rid of Iranians in Syria. That seems pretty much a declaration of war. Especially since he has no intention of "going it alone" as the referenced letter pretty clearly shows. He's expending considerate effort to get the US to attack Hizballah in Lebanon and then carry it over into Syria - a reverse of the previous plan to take out Syria first and then Hizballah apparently...

Some of this might be a desperate tactic to get another war going so he can dodge his legal difficulties, but I doubt it.

[Mishkilji]

"The letter was such a flagrant piece of Israeli propaganda that it reminded me again of the overreach by the Israeli government and its vast lobby."

It's only overreach if the propaganda fails.

There is zero evidence that has occurred.

[FourthAndLong]

The historical roots of zionism, of the so-called jewish homeland on American and British thought and policy go back to the puritans of the 17th century. The jews did not originate the present day zionist nonsense, it dates to the days of the Protestant reformation. The phenomenon of Christian zionism is not to be ignored:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism

It accounts, to no small degree, for the tenacity with which the delusion maintains its grip.

[Yeah, Right]

Hard to see how this can be neutered via legislative or administrative changes - the lobby is too powerful and the politicians too in thrall to it.

It would require an external shock - an FBI sting, perhaps, that leads to a number of CongressCritters being led away in handcuffs, or a Harvey Weinstein-style outing that makes associating with the Israel Lobby so toxic that any self-serving politician will have no choice but to run a mile.

Money be damned in that case, just as all of Harvey Weinstein's undoubted $millions can't buy him out of the hole he now finds himself if.

But an internal, legislative reform intended to break the back of the Israeli Lobby?

Or a President with the courage to force all Israeli "charities" to register as agents of a foreign government?

Nope, neither is going to happen. They're politicians, after all....

[kooshy]

The Judiciary, Law, Finance, Entertainment, Media, Congress, Medicine, etc. and even the underwear we wear (garment) are majority owned by rich American jews or Christian zionist, they believe in protecting Israel project with all they can. To make this changed to real America first, will take generations of hard working real American firsters patriarchs. US congress ( currently Knesset west) needs to be taken back before any reform can happen to other sectors and distributions. WWW and Sites like this and your post are the best hope, if not the only hope, to inform the younger generations what and who has made this country to lose her moral stand, that correctly or not, was the pride of being American .

[turcopolier]

richardstevenhack

40 members of the House. Try to read more accurately. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

I think it unrealistic for Protestant Christians to say good bye to all of that.
What is potentially possible a JCPOA-like cease fire in Palestine which could mitigate the Cold War between the Shia and the Protestants; between Western Fortress and Iran and her allies; a 99-year long one

[Babak Makkinejad]

I think only a conversion to Catholicism could alter this; a healing of the schism in Christianity.

[The Beaver]

demanded that Britain, France and Israel withdraw from the Suez Canal in 1956, it was only after he threatened to strip away the US tax exempt status of the Zionist Lobby organizations that Israel agreed to withdraw (after Britain and France had already agreed to pull out).

And to stick it to France and Britain, Ben Gourion later produced the Israeli signed copy of the Protocole de Sèvres (The Brits and French supposedly burned theirs when the existence of the signed copies of the secret protocol was leaked)

[The Beaver]

There is an article here also :
https://www.thenational.ae/world/43-congress-members-urge-tillerson-in-a-letter-to-counter-iran-in-syria-1.676143

and then Yvet said this:
ISRAEL WON'T ALLOW SYRIA TO BECOME IRAN FORWARD BASE: LIBERMAN

[Anna]

"Tobias Schneider, an international security analyst based in London, told The National that “while the US [with Russia] has made the south-west de-escalation zone a priority in its Syria policy, it has no realistic means of actually rolling back Iranian influence across the border.” https://www.thenational.ae/world/43-congress-members-urge-tillerson-in-a-letter-to-counter-iran-in-syria-1.676143
The tribal delirium comes to light after the western world had produced the Nuremberg Protocols more than half a century ago. At least, there is no more cover left for the morally bankrupt Jewish state and the Lobby. The ziocons are busy with replaying the Nazi story, and the whole production looks and sounds like a sadistic farce.
It is unfortunate that Jewish intelligence is so significantly overrated. The obnoxious fools want their toys by any means - even for a price of destruction of the world. Let's see how much the US taxpayers’’ money are going to be allocated by "western Knesset" in DC for the defense of Jewish Lebensraum.

[Yeah, Right]

It is a bizarre concept, isn't it: Israel claims a right of veto over whom Syria can and can't enter into an alliance.

The Israelis apparently have a serious problem with their English-to-Hebrew dictionary, insofar as someone must have substituted the definition for "Suzerainty" under the entry for "Sovereignty", and the Izzies have been confused over the difference ever since.

Still, suzerainty is a very 18th - 19th century concept, so it is no surprise that it is so appealing to a Zionist mindset.

[English Outsider]

Harper,

Apologies to you and to our host for breaking in. I heard this morning, BBC "Today" around 8.50, an interview with a Guardian journalist Luke Harding. Harding has a book coming out on Trump. It is called "Collusion" and details the contacts Trump and his team have had with the Russians.

In the BBC interview it is taken for granted that the Steele dossier is genuine. Also taken for granted is the suspicious nature of Trump's contacts with the Russians, the inference that Russian financing had political consequences, the Russian release of the DNC files to further Trump's election prospects and the claimed Russian operation to influence the US election. Also inferred is that Wikileaks had a pro-Trump political agenda. The interview is a hit piece of considerable force. All proof by inference and expertly put together.

It will have been very effective with most of those hearing it. The notion that Trump and the Russians were up to no good is now firmly lodged in the minds of most people in the UK who take the UK media seriously. Which I'm afraid might still be many of us.

This is a straight information campaign - the use of the BBC to further a political agenda, the use of the London press to run a campaign against the US President. Any idea about what's going on here?

[Harper]

Bibi cannot bring Israel to war on his own, especially as he is facing an almost imminent criminal indictment, along with his wife. He must get the backing of the security inner cabinet and then must get the support of the IDF command and the intelligence services. This is not likely to happen. The Israelis cannot defeat Hezbollah alone, and the military commanders know that. They have had eleven years of relative calm on the Lebanese border, and they have recently been using Lebanese air space to fire off-set missiles into Hezbollah targets inside Syria. The big play is to draw the US into such a conflict in which the US effectively goes to war against Iran. That is the shared goal of Saudi Arabia and Israel. That too has a big hurdle to overcome--namely, the military advisers to President Trump, who are not newcomers to the Middle East (Mattis, his most trusted military adviser was CENTCOM commander and both Kelly and Dunford, JCS Chairman, know the region well also. Despite his signals of pro-Saudi leaning, I do not believe President Trump will order some flight-forward military action unless Iran does something really stupid and provocative. While that cannot be 100 percent ruled out, it is not likely at this time. And lurking in the background of all of this is Russia, which has re-emerged as a regional factor since the September 2015 intervention into the Syrian war, which turned the tide.

[Harper]

It appears that the British were more flipped out over the Trump victory than Hillary and the Hillary-cons. A recent timeline by Byron York of the Washington Examiner strongly suggests that it was the first of the Christopher Steele "reports" that triggered the FBI investigation in the first place in July 2016. If that proves to be the case (and there is pressure on AG Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to probe the collusion between the FBI, the Hillary campaign, the DNC and Steele from a foreign intelligence service) we will likely learn more about the bizarre goings on between Steele, Comey, Hillary's campaign and how the "narrative" of Trump being a Russian tool got going. The move evidence that comes out showing the underlying fraud behind the Trump-Russiagate business, the more the mainstream media in both the US and the UK pour it on to preserve the narrative. It becomes almost a survival issue. If the whole thing is shown to be a hoax, the backlash would be pretty significant.

[David Rosa]

"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East." -- John Sheehan, S.J.

To understand the wars of the 20th century, wars in the Middle East, present-day Russophobia, abortion, pornography, gay marriage, transgenderism, third-world immigration, the tearing down of Christian culture, et al., you must turn to the work of a (tenured!) professor of evolutionary psychology at Cal State, Professor Kevin MacDonald. Once you read his seminal work, The Culture of Critique, you will no longer see world events and movements in the same way. You can find this book free on Internet Archive in various formats (PDF, ePub, Kindle, et al.): https://archive.org/details/TheCultureOfCritiqueKevinMacDonald1998

[JohnB]

EO

I heard the Harding interview. I am surprised that his Russiaphobia still gets air time or maybe I shouldn't be surprised!

May's speech at the Lord Mayor's Dinner is all part of a major campaign for Cold war 2. It justifies increased defense and intelligence budgets and of course allows the PM to deflect away from her disintegrating govt.

Maybe it will give May the chance to cancel Brexit if she can build a case for Russian interference.

I don't just see this as a campaign against Trump it has far wider targets in its sights mostly of a domestic nature.

That said I think the British view on trump has more to do with his maverick tendencies.The FO likes American Presidents who are on message and reliable not wild cards.

[JohnB]

The Israeli influence of British Politics is another area worthy of further research.

Whatever ones views of Jeremy Corbyn are. It's hard to think how he could ever become PM of the UK given his views on Palestine and nor could anyone else.

If you want to see what interference in a democratic election looks like, wait until the next GE in the UK.

[jpb]

The slick agitprop campaign against Russia vectors the American intelligentsia on PBS Frontline: Putin's Revenge 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pWALA6vgoY

[Imagine]

The previous Senate has already unanimously pledged to back Israel with the full might of the Pentagon, and the Treasury, once Israel goes to war against Iran in righteous self-defense:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/senate-resolution-us-will_b_3099788.html

Iran does not need to attack. The US-AID-backed White Helmets could be doing literal human sacrifices of babies to Great Chaos, and not even the U.N. would blink twice:

http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/03/07/white-helmets-swedish-doctors-denounce-medical-malpractice-and-misuse-of-children-for-propaganda-purposes/

[turcopolier]

imagine

the US Senate has no power to commit the US armed forces to anything. pl